Judges 6–7; Ezekiel 22:30 · Preached by Dr. Nana Boadum · April 27, 2025
Gideon's question is ours — "Where are all the miracles our fathers told us about?" — and the answer of this message is sobering and hopeful at once: the miracles have not ceased; the men and women who will trust God and move, so that God moves with them, have stopped rising. God is still looking for someone to stand in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30).
The seven movements
The cycle that empties a people. Judges 6:1-10 — Israel does evil, falls under Midian for seven years, hides in caves while raiders strip every harvest. The Lord's verdict in verse 10: "you have not obeyed My voice." Deuteronomy 28's blessing runs on the premise of hearing Him — we cannot veer from His voice and still expect the covering.
When we do it without God. We run our own missions — the spouse search, the debt plan, the health goal, the business, even the ministry — with due diligence done and God left out, until the roadblock comes. The winepress is where doing it without God always ends: threshing wheat in hiding.
God greets the hidden man as a hero. The Angel of the Lord finds Gideon hiding and says, "The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor." Gideon answers with our two questions — why all this suffering if the Lord is with us, and where are all His miracles? God doesn't debate the questions; He commissions the questioner: "Go in this might of yours."
Encounter tears down altars. Gideon builds an altar — The-Lord-Is-Peace — and then tears down his father's altar to Baal. Once you encounter God, some altars, idols, and relationships have to go; you cannot keep God at the center and the stars, charms and backup gods on the side.
Obedience doesn't wait for zero fear. Gideon obeyed afraid — he asked for the fleece, he raided Baal's altar at night, he crept to the enemy camp still trembling — and God kept meeting him with confirmation at every scared step. You are not waiting for fear to vanish before you move; you move, and the Lord moves with you.
Down to 300 — so no flesh can boast. God thins 32,000 to 300 lappers "lest Israel claim glory for itself, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'" Torches, pitchers and trumpets against an army without number — "the sword of the LORD and of Gideon" — and the miracle everyone had been asking about happens through the man who stood in the gap.
The gap still needs standing in. Ezekiel 22:30 — "I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap." For your family that has been prayed over for seven years, for the city, for the unsaved on your list: be the one who will not stop praying, who trusts God while afraid, and the miracles will happen through you, by you, with you — for others.
The message closed in extended prayer — praying in understanding and in the Spirit, asking God to open eyes to see more — with the charge to be clothed with the word of God and the declaration: "The Lord is with me; what can man do to me? Miracles, miracles, miracles — always."