God can get the job done with minimal help

We had a mighty fine discussion in Sunday School this morning. As an elderly man, I am in what is known as the "adult men's" class. Ours is a small rural church, so the only other classes are the adult women's class, the young adults class, and then the youth and children's classes.

There are just three old men in our class, but we stay on track and discuss the lesson from the "quarterly," which is the Bible study booklet that is published by our denomination every three months. This quarter -- June, July and August -- we are studying Joshua, Judges and Ruth. Joshua got seven weeks. Judges gets four and Ruth gets two.

Today's lesson was about Gideon and the 300 men who ran the Midianites out of Israel, even though Israel was outnumbered four to one. It is a short but riveting story. Gideon start out with 32,000 fighting men, but God tells him that's way too many. God, whose name is Yahweh, told Gideon to announce to his fighting men that anyone who was scared and trembling about the upcoming battle to go on home. Well, 22,000 of them up and skedaddled back home.

That left Gideon with 10,000 fighting men to take on the 120,000 Midianite fighters. You've got too many men, God told Gideon. Why? God wanted the Israelites, His chosen people, to understand that their victory would be His doing, not theirs.

God told Gideon to test his fighting men by taking them down to the river and let them drink water. God told Gideon to keep on eye on how the men drank that water. Those that got down on their hands and knees to lap the water up like a dog would go in one group. Those who went to the water, put their cupped hands in and then lifted their hands to their mouths to drink would go in the other.

God told Gideon to send all the dog-like drinkers home while keeping the men who drank out of cupped hands and kept their eyes on their surroundings. Well, that left Gideon with 300 alert fighting men out of his original 32,000. And those 300 would go up against the Midianites who numbered 120,000. Goodness, gracious, sakes alive, as my Grandma Howe would say.

So, on the day of the attack, Gideon divided his men into three groups of 100 each. Every man had a ram's horn to blow like a trumpet, plus a clay pitcher with a torch inside it. The three companies took their places in the middle of the third watch, according to the scripture, which was around midnight or a little after. 

Then, they blew their trumpets and smashed the jars and held up their torches.They also shouted "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" All that horn-blowing and pitcher breaking noise and hollering, along with the lights from the torches, scared the Midianites so much that they tried to run away from what they thought were thousands upon thousands of Jewish soldiers. The Midianites started running around, trying to high-tail it out of there, and they got so scared and confused that they commenced to fighting one another as they sought a way of escape. Well, the Midianites got out of there and headed east. Gideon put the word out to his men, apparently even including those who did not take part in the assault on the Midianite camp, to chase them home. And so they did.

What this shows is that God can get the job done with minimal help. Actually, He can do it without any help, but he wants us to be a part of the work He is doing on this earth. On the other hand, He wants it to be clear that it is He, not we, who are in control. 

Imagine if all of the Israelite men had gotten into the fight and won. They would have needed God's help, but they would likely have taken all the credit for themselves. That's why God cut the number to 300 valiant fighters. He made it clear the work was done by Him through them.

That's still the way it works. What you accomplish in life is done by Him through you. Now that is quite a story and here in Rolla, Missouri, a scientific and intellectual community, there are likely not many people who believe it to be true. We country church people do believe it, though, for we see God as all-powerful and all-knowing. We figure He has given us these Old Testament accounts to build our faith in Him.

Even more important, though, is the New Testament account of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and literally God Incarnate (in the flesh), who lived a perfect life and then was killed on cross. While on that cross, all of our sins were put on Jesus and the Father poured out his wrath on those sins. Repent, believe in Jesus as your Savior and follow Jesus as your Lord if you want to spend eternity with God

He said himself that he is "the Way, the Truth and the Life" and that "no man comes to the Father except through me." Tell him you believe that and then live like you believe it.

Do it now so you can spend the rest of your life here on earth getting to know him by reading and studying the book he dictated to writers, The Holy Bible.

This building isn't going to build itself out of nothing

The Workingman lives in Rolla, Missouri, home of the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The faculty and, yes, even the youngest students are all far more intelligent than The Workingman.

These are the brightest of scholars, and The Workingman suspects that most of the approximately

6,000 students and approximately 400 faculty members would pooh-pooh the opening verses of the

first chapter of Genesis. Well, most likely, they pooh-pooh the entire Holy Bible. They trust The Science,

not The Living God.

Now, The Workingman recently read in the newspaper that the university is preparing to expand from preparing

young engineers to build roads, bridges, buildings, computers to preparing them to be bioengineers,

biomedical engineers and who knows what else.

They cut a ribbon to announce officially that they are fixing to build something called a Bioplex. You can read

about it right here: Here.

Keep in mind that these young people and their pedagogues do not believe that God created the heavens

and the earth. Instead, they believe that the universe created itself out of nothing.

Each day, these youngsters are prepared and taught by their teachers to go into the world and create

something new, invent something new, build something new, because all the tools, the processes,

the luxuries that we have were created, built and developed by someone.

Everything we deal with daily was created; well, everything but the heavens and the earth and life itself.

That was all created by itself from nothing, the experts say. 

The Workingman is not a brilliant thinker, so he cannot figure out why this scientific university continues

to build, create and develop new buildings and new programs. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just wait

for new buildings to build themselves from nothing.

If the big ole universe can build itself from absolutely nothing, surely a little ole building muster up

enough energy to build its own self and save the taxpayers some money.

Well, obviously, The Workingman is having a little fun with a little sarcasm mixed in.

Of course, everything that is built, developed, created comes from a creator. Right now, The Workingman

is creating a little sarcasm here in the digital world of the internet.

It seems logical to The Workingman that the existence of the universe (the heavens and the earth)

prove there is a Creator. But there are many in the universities, including the one over yonder a ways from

The Workingman’s Bible study room, who continue to believe that life just popped up out of nothing all by itself.

Quite honestly, the idea of these non-believing folks moving from bricks, steel, mortar

and asphalt into the realm of cells and organs makes The Workingman a bit uneasy.

"How to Read and Study the Bible"

That title above is the same title as some of the books and articles you might run across in so-called ministries and the like. Everybody has some idea of the best way to read and study the Word, even though about half of today's Christians don't call the Holy Bible the Word.

The Workingman is digressing, but that reminds him of a preacher he used to listen to on the radio years ago. His name was Lester Roloff, and he was one of the few good preachers around, in The Workingman's opinion. He said Jesus and the Bible were both the Word of God. The Bible is "Jesus written down," Brother Lester said.

You can take that for what it is worth and think about it. It is worth more than most of what you read on the internet.

Well, The Workingman was curious about ways to read the New Testament, so he went ahead and looked it up on the internet. One way he discovered is to read it chronologically, i.e. read the books in the order they were written. That was the suggestion of one of the most pointy-headed liberal theologians around, a fellow named Martin Borg, who The Workingman is not sure is still alive or if he even believed Jesus was God in the flesh or that He rose from the grave.

This guy said the books were written in this order: I Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Mark, James, Colossians, Matthew, Hebrews, John, Ephesians, Revelation, Jude, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Luke, Acts, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Peter, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, 2 Peter.

Then The Workingman ran across some outfit called Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto. The Workingman doesn't know what they believe. There is no telling nowadays, but these biblical experts and geniuses said the order is this way: James, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Mark, Matthew, Philemon, Colossians, Luke, Acts, Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, Jude, John, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Revelation.

Then The Workingman looked at a place called UnderstandChristianity.com. He doesn't know anything about this bunch either; they might all be atheists, as far as The Workingman knows, for he recently read excerpts from a book about Christian preachers who are atheists. Figure that out if you can. Anyway, those experts said the New Testament was written in this order: Matthew, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Luke, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians, Acts, Mark, 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, Hebrews, Jude, John, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Revelation.

So right off the bat, The Workingman figured out these biblical experts have no idea what they are talking about. You can apparently pretty much just make it up as you go along if you are preacher or a theologian.

But The Workingman is just a Bible reader who goes to a country church on Sunday. He reads, listens, discusses in Sunday School with other workingman and tries to figure out the truth that sets us free.

The Workingman believes that Truth is Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh.

And the only way The Workingman has found to learn about Jesus is the reading of the written Word, the Bible, which he recommends to you, too.