<TITLE>08. Par 36-39</TITLE>L-36 Israel always getting out of the harmony of God... Nothing goes right till you come back to harmony of God. And now, they'd just been delivered from a--an alien army. And instead of turning to the Lord, they turned right back away from Him again. Isn't it strange? We'll get sick; the baby will be so sick till we just don't know what to do. Mother will wring her hands. And her and dad will say, "Oh, God, we'll serve You if You'll just heal this baby." And the baby gets well. Then you forget about it. See, see? So easy to forget about it. Yes, sir.
And you'll see a accident that just almost takes your life and you'll say, "Oh, if I would've died... Lord, thank You for sparing me. I'm going to serve You." Then forget about it (See?), until one's done caught you. See? And then--then it's too late. See, you--you always... The people usually forget God. They don't always do it, thank God for that. But mostly it's so easy to forget when everything's going good. Then you know, He said if you would neglect Him, and wouldn't serve Him, then when your calamity comes He'd just laugh at you. You see? So you must remember; we must keep God first always.

L-37 Now, the people had got away from God and had gone wrong. And so the Midianites, and the Philistines, and different nations would come in and take them over. Now, we don't have Midianites and Philistines, but we have a lot worse. The world gets right in and eats us up, just takes us right down (See?), unbelief. And we get right away from the Spirit part of the church, and the Spirit part of God, get out too formal. And just, "How do you do, pastor? I want to take my letter out of this church over here, because they--the... Sister So-and-so, she and I don't speak. So I'm going to bring it over to your house." See? Oh, oh, yes. See? And then (See?), we're just passing letters. But when you once write it on the Lamb's Book of Life, it's at home then. See? That's right.

L-38 Now. But we find out that these things happen. And the--the time had come in this case for action, because the Midianites had come in like locusts across the country. And the Israelites had to dig caves in the mountains to hide, get back in there and hide a little food to live--just getting back, way back, get away from them, because that, why, they was coming in just swarms of them.
They'd bring their sheep, their cattle, their oxes, and eat up everything that the Israelites had planted, all their crops and things like that, just drive them on back. So they was--they was going to get rid of them. And so... Eat up what they had. They wouldn't kill them. Let them come back the next year and make a crop. And about the time the crop got ripe, here he'd come in again and take them out.

L-39 So we find out that there was a mighty man of--of valor, who really didn't claim to be. But he was threshing his wheat down by the wine press, trying to get a--a little together to take care of his family for that year. His name was Gideon: later become a judge in Israel.


<A HREF="P9">Next Page</A>