Resurrecting the Voices of Victory — Carter Conlon

Resurrecting the Voices of Victory in Judges 6

Judges, chapter 6, please, if you will. I want to speak to you this morning about resurrecting the voices of victory. Now, Father, this message is deeper than I am. It's not just a word. It's not just a thought.

Lord Jesus Christ, this is your heart speaking. I pray, God, with everything in me, for the grace to deliver this. I pray for the mind and the heart to deliver it. I pray that you give us the ears to hear it.

For, Lord, you're not idly speaking to this generation. You're giving us a word. You're saying to us, this is the way. Walk in it. Help us to hear, Lord. God Almighty, help us not to just accumulate knowledge that leads to powerlessness.

Help us to apply it. Give us a heart to want to apply it. Make us like the men on the road to Emmaus, that when they heard the scriptures, they turned and went back the way they had come from. Give us grace, O God Almighty, as a church age, to give back to what we've left behind.

Give us the grace, Lord, to humble ourselves in your sight. Give us the grace, Lord Jesus Christ, to declare your ways to be right and our ways to be wrong. Give us the grace, O God, to bend our knee before you.

Give us the grace, Lord Jesus Christ, to make a difference in this generation. For the glory of your name, first, and for the souls of men, second. I thank you, God, for the strength to speak this. I thank you, Lord Jesus Christ.

You're the only one, Holy Spirit, that can ignite this word and make it real. You're the only one that can make it burn in our hearts, and if you don't do that, it's just an accumulation of more knowledge.

I pray, God, make it burn in us. Don't let us put it away. Don't let us put it down. Don't let us just say, that was nice. Lord, let it be life-changing. I pray, God, for many here today, those listening online, those in the sanctuary, there should be a life-changing moment when things are put away that need to be and things that are laid hold of.

As you speak to us, God, that we do and begin to move in that direction. Thank you for it, God, with all my heart. Thank you for mercy in the midst of the judgment we so justly deserve. Thank you for mercy.

Thank you, God Almighty, that you give every man, woman, and child an opportunity to hear of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you for this, Lord God. I bless you with all my heart for this, Lord.

We're asking it, Lord, because we know the heart of the one we pray to. We know the one who went to a cross. We understand why you said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. Jesus, Son of God, thank you for mercy.

Thank you for enduring this wicked generation for the sake of one, two, 10, or 100 ,000 that will still cry out to you. Thank you for enduring it. We ask, O God, this day that you would be honored and glorified, that you would be loved, that you would be cherished, Lord, by the hearts of your people.

And I thank you for it with everything in me in Jesus' mighty name. Judges chapter 6, Resurrecting the Voices of Victory. I'm going to read from verses 1 to verse 12. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.

And the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. Now, keep that in mind. It's God allowed this. God allowed a foreign, godless power to come in and overthrow what appeared to be his testimony for a season.

And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel. And because of the Midianites, the children of Israel made them dens, which are in the mountains and caves and strongholds. What a testimony for the people of God.

Everyone just now trying to survive, trying to get through the days, trying to stay unnoticed, trying to make it through the storm to the other side. And so it was when Israel had sown that the Midianites came up and the Amalekites and the children of the east, even they came up against them.

And they encamped against them and destroyed the increase of the earth till you come to Gaza and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents and they came as grasshoppers for multitude.

For both they and their camels were without number and they entered into the land to destroy it. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites. And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.

A Cry of Repentance and a Return to Prayer

Oh, my heart longs for that moment in this nation when there's a cry again in the house of God. Pray with me about this. The Lord has opened the door. And beginning in September, I'll be on radio right across the country calling this nation back to prayer again and back to God.

So I cherish your prayer with everything in my heart. I need you to pray because we're all in this together. That cry has to come back into this country. It's got to come back into the house of God again.

And it came to pass when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites that the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel which said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and I brought you forth out of the house of bondage and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all that oppressed you and drove them out from before you and gave you their land.

And I said to you, I am the Lord your God. Fear not the gods of the Emirates in whose land you dwell, but you have not obeyed my voice. And there came an angel of the Lord which sat under an oak which was in Orpah that pertained to Joash the Eburezeit and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. God will even allow his own people to go through seasons of appointed hardship that we might once more be willing to embrace his ways of power and mercy.

God appoints it. God will get his church back to himself again. There's a season, there's times when the Lord says, for my namesake, you read it in Ezekiel 36. He said, for my namesake, I can't let this go on anymore.

I can't let you be declared as my people. You profaned my name as you traveled throughout the nation, declaring these are the people of the Lord. And God says, now for my own holy namesake, I'm going to arise now and I'm gonna draw you out of all the places where you've been taken captive and I'm gonna wash you with clear and clean water.

You're gonna put away your idols. You're gonna put away your filthiness and I'm gonna gather you again to myself and the heathen are going to look at the work that I will do in you. And when they see it, they will begin to glorify God.

He says, I don't do this for your sake, I do it for my holy namesake, which you profaned among the heathen, whether you went. America, it's a tragedy in my heart, coming back from Europe and realizing that throughout the world, we're now known as America the decadent.

It was once called America the beautiful, once a place where God brought people from around the world who were being oppressed, who were being persecuted for what they believed and brought them to their own land and prospered a nation in just a few hundred years in measure like is not seen anywhere else in the world.

Gave prosperity, gave blessing, gave intellectual ability, technological ability that changed the world as we know it today and how did we reward him as a nation? Romans chapter one says, and holding the truth in unrighteousness, he turned them over to a spiritual reprobation, a darkened thinking.

And now we've arrived at that place in this nation where our thinking is dark, evil is now good and good has now become evil. Anyone, as Isaiah said, who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Anyone who wants to do good now finds a certain segment of society pouncing on them and vilifying and branding those who want to walk with God with names like domestic terrorists and people unworthy and changers of good social order and such like things.

Amazing that where we've come to and how we have rewarded God as a nation for all the blessings he's given, for all the good things he's done. Yet in the midst of it all, folks, the wonderment to my heart and the wonderment to your heart is that God remains merciful.

The Cross, Mercy, and the Need for a Corporate Cry

It is an amazing thing that one more time, one more time is it possible, one more time that we could look at the cross of Jesus Christ again, one more time God's people could begin to gather of every denomination, of every church, of everywhere where there's even a flicker of a flame left of love for God.

One more time we could begin to gather and look away from everything that has caught our affections and our attention and look to that cross where the Son of God came foreordained before the foundation of the world to die for a humanity that would cause unspeakable pain to the heart of God.

One more time that we would gather, one more time that there would be a cry, one more time, see folks, because God won't intervene until the cry comes. Won't intervene until prayer meetings come alive in churches all across this city.

Won't intervene until people turn off their sporting events and go to the house of God and begin to pray. He won't intervene. We'll just deceive ourselves. We'll just keep heaping to ourselves, teachers having itching ears and being told new and wondrous fables in the name of God, but God won't intervene until there's a cry for righteousness, true righteousness that comes in to his house from the hearts of his people.

God allowed the Israelites of this generation to experience their own weakness to the point where it says in verse 4, their sheep and their oxen and even their donkeys were taken away. That means their sustenance was not assured for the future.

Their strength was leaving, and even their mobility was gone. Their ability to go even socially from one place to another was being taken away. They were beginning to experience now the weakness that comes into every nation and upon every society that turns away from God.

You'll read it for yourself how the prophets and priests are prophesying foolishness out of their own hearts. Those that are supposed to be leading the nation are doing so for their own gain. Truth has fallen into the streets.

It doesn't matter if people bold-facedly lie anymore because nobody's held accountable. Nobody's expected to speak the truth anymore. God, help us how far we have fallen, how far we've come down. It's not that America was ever perfect.

Don't misunderstand me. There are incredible blights in the past in this country, but the one thing that this country did have was a respect for the Word of God. Even when it was misguided, there was still a respect for the Word of God and a nature that could be turned, and I have to believe with all my heart that we've not gone so far that we can't turn back again, even for a short season of mercy.

National Decline and the Prophetic Call to Listen

The Midianites and all of their associates came in as a multitude, so there's a sudden overwhelming of the society. With that which is foreign, that which is anti-God, that which is intent on destroying the nation and devouring the testimony of God, the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and we're seeing that in our generation.

Professing to be wise, we've become fools, and we have worshiped the creature and turned away from the Creator. We have fulfilled the Scriptures again in our generation, just like many before us have gone.

And Israel, verse 6, was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites, and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord. If you're gonna pray for anything now, pray for that cry. Oh, God, produce a cry in America.

It's gotta be the cry of my heart. It has to be the cry of your heart, and it has to start with the people of God. When they did so, when they cried, the Lord sent them a prophetic voice, and he will always do so to reason with his own people, to reason with them about their part in the moral, the spiritual, the social, the ethical dilemma they now found themselves in.

He said, I brought you up from Egypt. I brought you out of a place of bondage. I delivered you from the hand of those that oppressed you. Now think of it. When God speaks, he's going right back to the first generation.

He remembers what we don't. He has us clear in his mind as if it happened five minutes ago, what we don't even teach in high school or grade school anymore. He remembers it. He remembers those who came and sought freedom.

He remembers the day when it was true. Bring me your oppressed. Bring me your lame. Bring me your maimed. Bring me your poor. Send them to us. We will take them if nobody else wants them. He remembers when that which was in the heart of God was in measure in the heart of a people that he set apart in a nation for himself.

And he said, I delivered you from their hand and all that oppressed you. I drove them out and I gave you their land. And I said to you, I am the Lord, your God. Don't fear the gods of the Amorites and whose land you dwell.

But you have not obeyed my voice. Don't bow to them. Don't let them grip your heart. Don't let them become your direction. Don't let them steal the vision of your eyes, but you've not listened. John the Baptist was sent as a voice, a similar type of voice just before Jesus Christ, the man at 30 years of age comes on the scene for the most significant three years of ministry in the history of humankind.

John the Baptist and the Call to Bear Fruit

John was sent by God to introduce his coming. And as the people came out to be baptized of John and that baptism represented the failure of all of human effort to produce that which glorifies God, the failure to live up to a standard that they were trying to preach, but nobody could keep it.

And John in the wilderness in Matthew chapter three, basically said this to the people. If you have borne fruit that bears witness to the fact that you have a living relationship with God, then produce a testimony of it.

And if not, let it be cut down and cast into the fire, throw it away from you. If all of your human effort, if everything you're doing and have done, if it has truly produced that which glorifies God, then bear witness to it.

Otherwise throw it away from you. In Acts chapter 27, as the vessel Paul the apostle was traveling on, it finally now became evident. They had defied the word of God. They had put away the warnings that they should not go on this journey.

And they had continued on the journey for the sake of what they felt was right and going to bring them to a desired end only to end up in a storm. And no matter how they tried to hold it together, it obviously got to the point where the ship was falling apart.

And Paul, not in might or power or anything of his humanist stands on the deck of that ship, but he's now sustained by the spirit of God. He has a word that is beyond advice. It's something that begins to resonate in the hearts of those 276 people on the deck of that ship that we're hearing from something that is supernatural.

And Paul said, sirs, you should have hearkened to me and not loosed from Crete and have gained this harm and loss. Now it's often in these, the worst of times to the natural eye that a window of miraculous mercy opens before those who are willing again to listen to the voice of God.

A window of mercy. That's what I pray for now every day. Oh God, give us a window of mercy. I know we deserve judgment and I know judgment could come in one hour. We live on the edge of eternity. We're singing about heaven, but we don't realize what we're going to have to go through now to get there.

We don't understand the hour. Many people have just put it far away from their thinking. Don't realize how perilous this moment in history really is. As our nations are beginning to rise against nation, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, as Jesus foretold it is beginning to happen right in our generation.

But it's at these times that God will open a window of mercy. Paul said in Acts 27, 22, in spite of the fact the ship is falling apart, in spite of the fact that people didn't listen to the warnings of God and got themselves into this mess, Paul says, now I exhort you to be of good cheer.

Amazing. I've been in the presence of God. I have a word from the Lord and we're all going to make it. Now it doesn't mean they're all going to go to heaven, but they're going to make it physically to be able to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist after telling people put away all the false righteousness, put away all these imitations of godliness, put it all away from you. He then says, behold the Lamb of God. And once we're willing to walk in humility before God, once we're willing to realize that we need the strength of God to make it through, then suddenly there's a beholding of the Lamb of God.

Christ's Deliverance Comes Through Apparent Weakness

God's deliverance doesn't come with what looks like to the natural eye, might or power, but it comes in a way that looks feeble and oftentimes looks foolish to those who walk in their own strength. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah said, who has believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

Isaiah said, who will know the power of God? Who will know the strength of God? For he will grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground. He has no form or come, in other words, he's not naturally even handsome.

And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. It was God's plan that his son would come and even be ordinary. He's despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him.

He was despised and we esteemed him not. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 .18, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. Think about Jesus for a moment, born in a stable, not in a palace.

Think about his mother and father coming in, stepfather coming into the temple on the day of purification when he's to be dedicated to the Lord and the scripture says they came in to offer pigeons or turtle doves, which was the offering of the poor.

Think of the religious system of the day looking at this man and his wife coming in, perhaps late in the day and everyone there more or less looking around to see who's going to do this. Everyone wants to get home to their family.

All those who have jockeyed for position, all those who are using their position in the temple for their own influence and authority, they're all blind. None of them can see the power of God. None of them have any understanding of how God works.

All those that have settled for form and tradition, but there's no real inward working of the life of God, they have no spiritual sight whatsoever. They have no idea who's just come into the temple. God himself has just come in, but because he's not come in the way that could enhance their position, they're not able to see it.

They've preached it a certain way, but they can't see where the power of God really lies. The only one who really sees it is an old man who's had a heart longing after God, and he has said, Lord, don't let me die until I've seen your plan of salvation for this generation.

And the moment they come walking in, his eyes are open and he begins to understand something the religious of that day could never understand. And another woman and a prophetess who'd made a choice through sorrow to continue living for God, she too had a vision of what this baby really meant.

It's a deliverance that's hidden from the natural eye and from the proud of heart. The scripture tells us that God came to a young man called Gideon, and he looked upon him and he said, go in this your might and you will save Israel from the hand of the Midianites, have not I sent thee?

And he said, oh Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh and I am the least in my father's house. Consider your calling, brethren, not many mighty, not many noble, not many of royal birth, not many movers and shakers in society, but God has chosen the foolish things of this world.

God has chosen the weak things of this world. God has made his choice that no flesh can glory in his presence. He has made to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. In other words, he becomes our all in all, our encompassing strength, our covering on the outside, the transformative power of our lives, the new song that is within our hearts, the ability to love that wasn't there before, the courage to stand in an unpopular time, the ability to speak a word that can't be stood against in the power of the Holy Ghost.

No, he doesn't take the wise in their own sight. He doesn't take those that are using religion for their own gain. He doesn't take those that are all caught up in the gods of the Amalekites and the Amorites all around them.

No, no, no, no, no. He goes to those that are hiding in the backyard and don't see any strength in themselves. That is you and that is me. That's the glory of this moment. If God is calling me in my weakness to make a difference in my generation, then what am I to do?

Tearing Down the Altars That Bring Weakness

What do I do? That's the next question. That's what everybody always asks. What do I do? Do I start preaching tomorrow? Do I pray for the courage? You can do all of that, all of those things that are good, but here's the one thing, the very first thing that God speaks to Gideon to do, and if you and I are going to know strength in this generation, this is what we have to do.

In verse 25, he said, and it came to pass the same night, the Lord said to him, take your father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the grove that is by it and build an altar unto the Lord your God on the top of this rock in the ordered place and take the second bullock and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down.

Here's the very first thing that you do. If you're going to be used of God, if I'm going to be used of God, if you and I are going to make a difference, folks, we don't have a long time to get this right.

You have to understand what we're up against now. We're up against a tsunami of evil. We're up against a complete upheaval of everything that is godly and a turning around, a vilifying of those who walk with God and an exalting of those who are godless.

Folks, we are living in a Midianite hour in this country right now. If you and I are going to make a difference, there's one thing that you've got to do first before anything else. Turn away from that which is brought weakness by association.

Turn away from every altar, every place, every relationship, every practice, everything that you know is wrong. And it has brought you into a place of weakness because it's in your yard. Get everything out of your yard.

Get everything out of your apartment. Get everything that's weakening you out of there. Whether it's flesh and blood, whether it's a laptop, whether it's books or magazines or whatever it is, get it out of your apartment and build again an altar of obedience to God.

There's no strength apart from that. God's not going to come to you in all of the mixture and just suddenly fall on you and you're going to be a great evangelist and you're going to have the power to stand and not bow to the golden idols of this age that we're now living in.

When the music plays, this society is saying, you will bow or it's going to get real hot for you. You won't have the courage to stand until you get rid of that altar, until you get rid of that place that you sit down before by association.

Those things that you do, those clubs you're attending, the relationships you're in, whatever that practice is, put it away. I don't say this to condemn you. I say this from the heart of God because God wants to take you to a place in Him that you've only ever dreamed about.

It's a place of power. It's a place of glory. It's a place of strength. It's a place of vision. It's a place of singing. It's a place of a future. It's a place of spiritual authority over powers and principalities and all things that come against you.

It's a place where you will be made into something you could never hope to be in yourself. You'll be taken places you could never hope to go in your own strength, given resources you could never possess.

In any amount of human effort, it's a supernatural place that comes from God. It's a place of God's Holy Spirit being alive within you, taking you from image to image and glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Gideon's Three Hundred and the Foolishness of the Cross

It's a place of returning to the foolishness, may I call it such, of believing that God, here's the foolishness of it all. Gideon and the hundred men that were with him came to the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch, but newly set to watch.

They blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers that were in their hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers and held the lamps in their left hands and the trumpet in their right hand to blow withal.

And they cried, the sword of the Lord and the sword of Gideon. And they stood, every man in his place, round about the camp and all the host, that's those things sent to destroy the nation, ran and cried and fled.

Why? Because 300 people had chosen to obey God. 300 people had adopted again the weakness of God as their strength. 300 people had decided to turn away from what brings weakness and turn again to what God says is the source of strength.

300 people had chosen the preaching of the foolishness of the cross of Christ and embraced the power of it one more time. 300 people, 300 people and companies of 100 stood on a hilltop in what is in the naturalist suicide mission and broke those vessels of clay and lifted, oh God, that torch of God, lifted it high, declared their relationship with God, declared it visibly, declared it honestly, declared it forcefully and shouted out with their right hand and the trumpet in their right hand, the sword of God in the hand of man, the word of God given to surrendered human vessels.

There never has been another plan. There never will be another plan. Returning to foolishness to believe that as we live for God with his life contained in our surrendered vessels, as we lift our voices again in plain view, as we declare the power and majesty of his life within us and his kingdom without, that the victory will once again be ours.

Pentecost, Courage, and the Power of Obedient Prayer

120 people went into an upper room. They went in as failures. They went in without strength. The only thing they had left in their hearts, all their boasts, all their bragging, all their jockeying for position on the left and right hand of Christ was gone.

Every one of them knew that without God they weren't going any farther and the whole testimony of Christ would be triumphed over. But they went in in obedience to God into that upper room and when they began to pray the scripture says a rushing mighty wind came and God filled them with only that that can come from his hand and they came out of that upper room with courage.

They came out of that upper room as Gideon and his troops did and they made a bold declaration that the glory of God had come. The presence of the Lord was now in their lives and the murderous crowd that had once been among those yelling out crucify him now are pounding on their chest saying what must we do to be saved.

We're living in such a generation folks. I'm telling you casual religion, casual worship, casual attendance at the house of God, listening to big name preachers exalt themselves. None of this is going to do it now.

The days of this kind of foolishness are over. The scripture says in Hebrews that God winks at it but now commands all men everywhere to repent. There must be a cry in your heart. There must be a cry in mine.

God help us in this generation to realize what hour we're living in. Yes heaven is coming soon but we're going to have to go through a valley of the shadow of death my friend. You're going through it whether you hide, try to hide in a cave whether you, no matter what kind of a thing you build for your own protection you're going to go through it.

I'm going to go through it. The question now is are we going to make a difference? Are you and I going to stand in this generation? Will our voices matter? Will we count for anything? Will anybody want to listen to us?

I prayed for my own life that like Paul was that God give me the strength to willingly embrace the journey he has for me and to give me the strength to stand in the midst of a season where it looks like everything is falling apart and to boldly declare the goodness of God.

You'll notice in Paul's words the warning was very short the instruction of goodness was very long and he had everybody on the deck of that ship in good spirits actually before the whole thing fell apart.

We've got to be a people of good news. We've got to be a people of courage. We've got to be a people of strength. We have to be a people who had the answer. There must be a cry before any of this can happen.

Forgiveness, Holiness, and Removing Every Stumbling Block

Everything that weakens you must be put away. That was the first instruction to Gideon. Everything that weakens you and you already know what that is. Put it away. What is the point of it? Why hang on to it?

Why continue embracing it? Put it away. If you need to forgive somebody, forgive as Christ has forgiven you. Let the old grievances go or you won't have any power. There must not be found in this house anything that offends the cross of Jesus Christ.

We must be willing to put it away. There must not be division. There must not be racism in this house. There must not be greed in this house. There must not be anything that offends Christ in this house.

God help us to take seriously this charge. I happen to believe this morning there are some great evangelists here. You just don't know it yet. I happen to believe people are going to rise up and make a difference in this generation.

You just simply don't know it yet. Like Gideon, you sit in your backyard and now a message has come to you. Rise up mighty person of valor. God says, I've given you great resources and the only thing you need is my word.

It's all that you need. Gideon says, how am I going to do this? I'm so insignificant. My house is insignificant. In case you haven't noticed, my father has an altar to Baal in the backyard and a grove beside it.

God says to Gideon, all you need is my word. It's all that you require. It's hard to obey it, believe it, and begin to walk in it. You and I will make a difference in this generation. We're going to pray when we meet here on Tuesday nights that every church of every denomination be filled with praying people in this city.

We're going to believe God with everything in us. We're going to pray for that cry to come. We can't pray for other places, things that we're not experiencing here for ourselves. I want to give an altar call this morning and it's very simple, but then again it isn't.

The Altar Call: Putting Away What Makes Us Powerless

What is that altar that keeps you powerless? What is that place you keep going back to that takes away your strength? Now God would not have called Gideon to do this if he didn't have the ability to do it.

Now God's called you to do it and he'll give you the ability. The ability to tear down something that needs to be torn down. To put away something that needs to be put away. Most of you here are not novices to the word of God.

You already know what it is. But God says if you will do this, I'm going to take you into something of my strength. That right now you're only reading about it, but you're going to experience it if you're willing to do this.

I'm going to give you a new heart, a new mind, a new spirit, new courage, a new value system. I'm going to give you power over your enemies. I'm going to raise you up to make a difference in a very, very darkened time.

Have courage, my friend. Have courage, my brother, my sister. Have courage. Put away what needs to be put away. It means different things for different people. In some, it's just age-old grievances that need to be put away if you're really going to make a difference.

Others, it's practices in the workplace. You already know what that's all about. You need to put it away. Some, it's relationships. You need to put those things away. God help you. God help me to make a difference.