Despite the disobedience, the failures, and the apostasies that always seem to dog the heels of God’s people in the Old Testament era, the faith of Joshua, Gideon, and Samson are still remarkable lessons for us today. Bursts of faith and sparks of reformation are seen in the Old Testament record, but still, these had not yet received the promise until Jesus came. The hearts of the sons had yet to turn to the fathers. Yet the hearts of the fathers turned to God in faith, over and over again in Old Testament record. With the coming of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the covenant blessings which were still a shadow then are ours by faith today. Here is an encouragement to faith, great faith, generational faith in the New Testament age. Where the Old Testament saints met failure, Jesus brings tremendous covenantal blessings “far as the curse is found.”

In 30 minutes, let's pray. Father, I pray your blessing on this. Help me not to speak too long. And we pray the kingdom would come by word and by power, But mostly by your Holy Spirit today in Jesus name Amen Let's read from Job. I'm sorry Joshua chapter 24 in verses 14 and 15 as we get started on Joshua and Judges Joshua chapter 24 in verse 14 Now therefore fear the Lord serve him in sincerity and in truth and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt serve the Lord and if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." In a very real sense, this is the pattern of Joshua and judges and much of the Old Testament we get something of the good news and the bad news Joshua is doubtful concerning the children of Israel we get that throughout this chapter he warns them again and again to put away the gods which are among you and incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel that's verse 23 so throughout Joshua is doubtful concerning God's people and yet he has this commitment for himself and for his household. So on the one hand he says, if it seems evil to serve the Lord your God, then you have a choice. You can serve these gods or those gods, the gods over on the other side where the Babylonians are, the Mesopotamians are down over by the Egyptians, or those gods that are among the Canaanites, the Amorites. And so there are these gods that the Israelites have picked up through the centuries. And you say you may choose to serve these gods or these gods or those gods, but as for me and my house, we don't get a choice.

We will serve the Lord. As for me and my children, as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. So we get a great picture of faith there with Joshua. So much of the New-Old Testament ultimately is giving us a sense of our need for Christ. And I think every sermon needs to do that to some extent in our Sunday services.

We want to present our need for Jesus And the Old Testament lays this out. So throughout 4, 000 years and throughout the revelation of these Old Testament books, we get this massive justification or an explanation of our need for Jesus throughout. Well, let me take both the negative and the positive as we consider Joshua and Judges this morning. Here we have insight into the desperate need for God's salvation. The Old Testament is so much a record of covenantal unfaithfulness.

We might find a 10-day revival at times. Certainly at the crossing of the Red Sea, there was something of a week or two weeks before they fell into their complaining and idolatry. But for the most part, the Old Testament is this record of covenantal unfaithfulness. We've seen in the Old Testament Eli, his sons did not turn out well. Samuel, his sons did not turn out well.

David, his sons did not turn out well. And yet, what a testimony the Holy Spirit brings in the New Testament age that there is a man named Ralph, that is my father, who is raising six children out on an island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the 1970s, And by God's grace, all six children serving God in some capacity somewhere around the world today. And that's all the grace of God. That's the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament age. And so, you know, Ralph was one of the most unknown persons in the history of Christendom.

I'll tell you that. His church out on that island never exceeded more than 10 or 12 of us, but by God's grace, he used my father to reach the hearts of his children, and now all the children, all the grandchildren continue to follow Jesus. And so we see that in the New Testament there is this, this outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is such an encouragement, such a strengthening that comes in, in this age. Well, Joshua and Judges gives us this pattern of disobedience and failures. We see this spiraling down that's going on even all the way back to Achan in the book of Joshua and then into the book of Judges where all men did that which was right in their own eyes and multiple covenantal disruptions throughout.

Listen to the way the book of Judges begin in chapter 2 and verse 10, when all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done in Israel. For some reason they forgot the amazing works of God despite the fact that 400 years after, witch doctors in Philistia were still reminding their own people of what God did at the Red Sea, and Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, was referring to what God did in the overcoming of Egypt at the Red Sea 40 years after it happened. Despite all of that, God's people forget in just a week or two Or a single generation. So this is the record of God's people in the Old Testament. This disruption of a covenantal continuity.

Gideon's illegitimate son kills all the rest of his brothers and ends the legacy abruptly. The man called himself Abimelech, that is the father of many kings. Turned out he wasn't the father of many kings. His career lasted about three years before a woman balked him on the head with a millstone. Jephthah, another illegitimate son, becomes an important leader of God's people, but he was a flawed leader and his posterity didn't do anything for the kingdom.

And then Deborah is forced to lead God's people, as you know, into battle, and this also indicates something of a brokenness of God's people in the book of Judges. Samson is plagued by the temptresses in the world. He was a mighty man. At times he was filled with the spirit of God. He was able to overcome thousands of God's enemies, and yet at the same time he is overwhelmed by these temptresses, and His career is cut short.

And then Judges chapter 20 and 21 details some of the most horrendous experiences or details concerning God's people that we read of in all of Scripture. We have a civil war that breaks out because of the dysfunctionality that goes on in Gibeah where the Levites' concubine was violated and killed and pieces of her body were sent to the twelve tribes. This is the horrendous story of God's people in the Old Testament. Now I'd like to briefly apply that to what is happening right now in the U.S. In the Western world.

I just completed a book called Epoch, The Rise and Fall of the West, and I believe that we are living very much in the period of the judges. There are so many examples of the failure of the family and the family jurisdiction in the Western world. Do remember that by God's grace, infanticide and abortion were very much eliminated in the Western world. It was one of the most outstanding indications of the rise of Christian civilization over a period of about 800 years and Iceland is one of the last of the Western nations to overwhelm overcome infanticide somewhere around the year 1000 And then it was brought back in about a thousand years later as most of the Western countries have now adopted child killing. And it was Northern Ireland and the nation of New Zealand that brought it in and effectively completed the vision of destroying the Christian influence in Western culture, and that happened in the year 2020.

It was all completed about six days before COVID-19 hit, and God shut down the entire Western world by a disease and by an economic disaster. These things I think are very interesting. God's hand is upon the nation still and yet what we're seeing is a breakdown of a thousand years of Christian influence in the Western world. It was 1300 years ago that the law of the innocence banned women in combat in the Western world. It was Adamun, the follower of Colombo of Iona, who's a mighty man of God, Took up the role of the abbot there and drafted the law of the innocence in which at that time There were women Female warriors lying dead on the fields of battle one medieval source quoted in the law of the innocence recorded that they beheld the battlefield they saw nothing more touching and pitiful than the head of a woman in one place and the body in another and her little baby upon the breast of the corpse, a stream of milk upon one of its cheeks and a stream of blood upon the other." Now that has come back to the Western world and Tucker Carlson from Fox News got in deep water last month when he criticized maternity flight suits.

But do remember that we have come out of 1300 years of the rise of Christian civilization and then the breakdown of that civilization that has occurred in just the last 50 to 100 years. We have seen the fall of the west. The fall of the west is not going to fall. The west is already fallen. Western civilization has already fallen.

But by God's grace, 1300 years ago, 91 tribal leaders, these were pagan leaders that came together throughout the British Isles and banned women in combat. And that returned first in Norway in 1988 and then the United States in 2013. So these are just examples of the destruction of the family. By the way, my friends, we live in Gibeah today. Let's not deny it.

We live in Gibeah where the concubine is violated constantly, all the time. Sexual sin has been unleashed upon all of the nations. The neurotic agenda, that is what Nero favored, that is homosexual marriage, has been adopted by all of the western nations in just the last 20 years or so. The destruction has occurred primarily in just the last 20 to 30 years. The destruction is horrendous.

If you include the children who are killed by the IUD, And that doesn't even include the birth control pill. Just look at the number of children, the percentage of children that are conceived in America, killed by the abortion clinics and by the IUD, just that part of those children conceived. 67% of American children are killed every year. 67% of American children worldwide. The number is closer to 63% of babies conceived in the world are killed.

This is the mass production of killing and it's happening in our churches. It's happening in our communities. Sexual sin as I mentioned is all over the place. One pastor shocked me in just the last couple of weeks. We had a conversation.

He said in his counseling, he's concluded that he thinks every one of the women in his church have been molested or abused as a child. Every single one of them. We live in Gibeah. We live in an age much like Judges 20 and 21, my friends. Our world has descended into scandalous sin, violence, sexual anarchy, sexual nihilism, exceeding what the children of Israel were facing in Judges 20 and 21.

And I'm deeply concerned about this. Here's what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned that Christians have severely underestimated the situation. Severely underestimated the situation. Christians have failed to see the world as God sees the world.

There seems to be something of an optimism still not just with the post-millennials but with the all Millennials and the pre-millennials. I think all of evangelicalism is way too optimistic about the current situation. We are broken down friends. Institutionally we're in trouble. We're worse off than Carthage and Rome and Greece in the pagan years.

I think the polygamous nations had a sexual situation that was more solid than what we find ourselves dealing with today. Transgenderism is the utter destruction of humanity. It's the final desecration of God's image. It's autonomy at the highest level. Technology and wealth has enabled a mass production of this murder and suicide and sexual perversion.

The most powerful governments in the world now have endorsed these things. That was not happening a thousand years ago. But in America, everything is just fine because Americans can still afford their opioids and their psychotropic drugs. So it's as if things are still okay. People are still in the trance.

They still think that Everything is going to be fine, but we're just at the cusp of running out of other people's money. Socialism, that's the problem, is you will run out of other people's money. We're facing massive economic debacle right now in the midst of this social disintegration. The conditions of the developed world and the post-Christian world is desperate as I see it. It's cataclysmic.

God's judgment has already descended and entire civilizations will be affected. Last night my wife commented after Pastor Washer's message, what sobriety? A man is so sober he brings us back to a sober recognition of our own sin, our own condition. And I said, that's so beautiful. I was just wonderful.

This is what we need more than anything else is a sober reflection upon the human heart, upon our own condition. And there's something about the conditions of our civilization that depict the true nature of our hearts and the rebellion that is expressed against God in the most blatant ways in the present day. God has removed the restraints of common grace. That is what has occurred in the Western world. And now this is revealing more and more the foulness and the vileness of ourselves.

So if there's anything we need to get is the magnitude of our sins, both individual and corporate. We do need the hypocrisies and the facades to be stripped away and the Word of God, the law of God to come down hard upon us to reveal the sinfulness of our hearts so that we would be more honest with our hypocrisies and the whitewashings and the self-justifications and the deceptions and that we would more likely be humbled and there'd be a radical turning to God for salvation in Jesus Christ. All of this accentuates our brokenness in our churches. We're not doing well friends. Our churches are not the the paragon of virtue and the amazing accomplishment of some high level of sanctification, that isn't going on with our churches.

We are the sinner woman at the feet of Jesus. And we are, we're weeping at his feet, we're seeing our sin, we're receiving his forgiveness. We're seeing increasing levels of the magnitude of our sin and what is done to ourselves and to our families and to our society and we find the great tonic of the blood of Jesus Christ and the the beauty of his grace and his mercy and we hear his beautiful words. Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more and receive these words and they're so refreshing.

They sweep over our souls and we realize we're in the presence of the Savior. But one more thing, the entire Western world is ultimately in apostasy. This is what we're dealing with. Regular church attendance has dropped off from 49% 10 years ago to just last month 17% of Americans attending church. This is the most radical, most precipitous breakdown of church attendance in the history of Christianity.

England's didn't go that quickly. Ours has dropped off in just 10 years. The lack of covenantal continuity has been a grief to my heart. I remember as a little boy on the mission field in Japan, one of the MKs. The term MK, or missionary kid, or PK is a pejorative in our language.

Why? Because I remember This one boy taken back out of Mission Field in handcuffs and deposited in American prison. So these are the sorts of memories I have concerning so many of my friends who are pastors' kids and missionary kids. It was rare. I'm telling you, I didn't know a family like my own family.

We didn't run into people who were discipling their children very often, even among the missionaries in Japan. But what is this? This is a breakdown of covenantal continuity. This is the judges, again, affecting us. Barna's latest survey came out last month.

6% of Americans hold to a biblical worldview down from 12% some 20 years ago, and only 2% of American millennials hold to the very basic distinctives of a biblical worldview as defined by Barna. That's extraordinary, only 2%. By the way, 61% of them still refer to themselves as Christians. Extraordinary. What we're seeing is a massive generational apostasy.

We live in a post-Christian age, better an anti-Christian age, not even a humanist age. I don't like to refer to it as secular humanism. We're dominated by post-Christians and anti-Christians. This is what we're dealing with. Who are these post-Christians?

Who are the anti-Christians? They're the ones who used to attend church 140 years ago. Who are all these atheists in Europe and elsewhere? They were Lutherans. They were Anglicans.

They were attending church 150 years ago. That's who they are. They're the judges. They're the people who have abandoned the faith. They have apostatized.

This is the age of apostasy. So as we follow the book of Judges, essentially it's an argument for man's failures, for man's sins, for the degradation of man's condition and his inability to save himself. Four thousand years, forty-two books of making the case for our need, our desperate need for the Messiah of God to come and to rescue us. This is the one we've been waiting for. The last, the four thousand years prior to coming of Jesus was a cry for help.

It was developing increasing levels of frustration against the temporal saviors whether it be those in Israel, those in the empires, Either way, preparing the world for Jesus, 4, 000 years of seeing the bankruptcy of man as the inability of his own ability to save himself. As our brother said, we only have one hero. The book of Judges has these heroes, but they're human and they're flawed. And so what comes with Jesus is the ultimate Joshua. Remember, Jesus is Joshua.

It's the New Testament rendering of the Hebrew word. Their name, Joshua. Yahweh saves. Yahweh saves, that's the name. It's by his name we are saved.

And he comes personally himself to bring about this salvation by his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So Jesus comes, he is the savior, he's the real savior of his people. The strong man, the ultimate strong man to save us from our enemies. He comes like Samson to with with the jawbone crushing a thousand enemies all at one time there at the cross. We see Jesus our hero.

Jesus our champion. Jesus our Joshua overcoming the greatest enemies of the human soul, sin and death and the devil. There he did it at the cross. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Say hallelujah. He came like Gideon. Humbled, outnumbered. Gideon had 300 Jesus alone. Our lord, our hero, our strong man came all by himself.

To do the work on the cross for us. Amen. Isaiah sixty-three, one of my favorite passages. Listen, who is this who comes from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah? This is the one who's writing in the battle on the cross.

Getting himself bloodied on the cross but not just not his blood it's the blood of his enemies as well he's overwhelming his enemies listen this is the one who's glorious and apparel traveling in the greatness of his strength I who speak in righteousness mighty to save Why is your apparel red your garments like one who treads in the white breasts? I have trodden the winepress alone And from the people's no one was with me. I Chills just go up and down my back as I read this because Jesus came to save us. He came to save us alone. For the day of vengeance is in my heart, the year my redeemer's come.

I look, but there is no one to help. I wondered that there was no one to uphold, therefore my own arm brought salvation to me. Hallelujah. Jesus is our savior. Then we read that he brings the Holy Spirit.

Remember the key verse that hinges the Old Testament with the New Testament is that He will come, John the Baptist, as a forerunner for Jesus, turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons and sons to the fathers. Something that didn't happen for Eli, Samuel, and David. But there He is. He comes to turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons and sons to the fathers lest he smite the world with a curse which is exactly the crying need of our day to day. The curse will come, the judgments will fall if There is no covenantal continuity of generation to generation in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God.

And this is the quintessential depiction of the Holy Spirit's presence in the New Testament age. What's the first thing out of Joel's mouth in Joel chapter two, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. There it is. That's the main indication of a Holy Spirit Pentecostal outpouring.

It's not the emotionalism, it's not the carpet biting, it's ultimately going to be whether or not this father teaching his children on an island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for 18 years, reading the word of God, pulling out Pilgrim's Progress, reading the Holy War, and singing the Psalms and the hymns, and praying to God, and somehow the Holy Spirit descends upon this household. And six children spread around the world to take the gospel to the nations. That's the indication of the Holy Spirit's outpouring, friends. And then Peter refers to the same prophecy again in verse 39 of Acts chapter 2. As he refers, he says, this is what's happening, guys.

Your children will prophesy. And listen, he says, the promise, that is the promise of the Holy Spirit, is to you and to your children. So with the coming of Jesus comes the Holy Spirit-filled age, and some of the most amazing stories in the building of Western civilization. I bring it out in my book, Epoch, but one of the most outstanding stories of all is the Irish Chaldeans, who were not celibate in their discipleship centers, and so the fathers, who were the pastors of churches, their sons would be discipled into taking the pastorate, and in some cases, 15 to 20 generations, over 400 to 600 years, saw a covenantal continuity in these churches continuing to disciple the nations from a primitive paganism to a Christianity that overwhelmed the world over a period of about a thousand years. These things were amazing, but all because of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us.

Well, I talked about the negative. We resolve the negative at the cross of Jesus and by the resurrection of Christ and the outpourings of His Spirit, but here's one more takeaway as we consider the influence and the importance of these great men of God in the Old Testament. They were men of faith. What shall I say more? Hebrews 11, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephthah, of David also, and Samuel the prophets.

Through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword of whom the world was not worthy. So we have the example of Moses and we have the example of Gideon and there Gideon is, a fairly weak man. He was not prepared for the kinds of challenges that were before him, but God, as he did with Moses, takes him by the hand, meek Moses by the hand, gets him into the courts of Pharaoh, and gets him right up by the Red Sea, and there's that final moment where Moses raises the rod, and there are the armies of the largest empire on earth descending down upon this man of God and all the people of God completely unarmed facing a mountain on the right, a mountain on the left, an ocean in front of them and Moses just simply says, watch this. And I'm sure there was that moment where the rod's in the air in which he's saying, I hope this works. No.

He was a man of faith at this point in which God saw him exercise faith on that great and wonderful context of this stage of the world and the most spectacular miracle that anybody had ever seen or has played out in the presence of millions of people. It was extraordinary. God's work in saving his people came about right there, right then, and then Gideon, same thing. God nurtures his faith. Due on the fleece, first hint of a family reformation.

He heads out at night. He was a little embarrassed about the whole thing, but he burned up his father's gods. His father, the Reformation, is a family Reformation there. It kind of works in retroactive fashion, but there Gideon's father says, good riddance. Good riddance to the gods.

High five, brother. And it's a beautiful scene in which he names his son Jerubabel. You remember this, right? Jerubabel is basically an insult to Baal. Hey, Baal, you big oaf, you're useless.

Come and get it, you big guy. That's basically the name Jerubabel. And so you have this great exercise of faith with Gideon's father, and then Gideon is beginning to gain some faith, and God sends him down to the enemy camp, you know, and he hears the dream, and He hears the enemy say, I saw this bun. And it's like a bun? Yeah, it's like a bun, like a roll, like cinnamon roll or something like that.

Just saw this bun. What happened to the bun? Well, the bun just started to roll, and it rolled, and it rolled and it rolled over my tendon and it rolled and it killed everybody And get in here's the dream and he gets it And he rushes back to his 300 men. By the way, three million not ready to face the enemy. But he runs back to his 300 men and says, okay guys, here's the military strategy.

What we're going to do is we're going to break some lanterns and we're going to yell, the sword of Lord of Gideon. So that's it. Yeah, that's it. God is gonna bring back victory today for us. So just 46 seconds left.

Moms and dads, the lesson of faith for all of us. Oh, we need faith. We need to look up. We need to see that God is here to help us. Yes, we are in the midst of this dysfunctionality, the breakdown of family relationships and all the rest.

But in fact here, the greatest faith challenge in my life and I think in many of your lives has been your own children. God tests our faith with our own children, as he did with that little boy with the big demon coming to Jesus. And Jesus saw the faithless and perverse generation just like ours. He saw it. He saw the big demons.

He saw what the demons were doing to the children. He saw the 67% were being slaughtered in the womb. He saw this. And yet he challenged that man, do you believe? He looked in that father's eyes.

He says, do you believe, man? Do you believe I can do this the man says Lord I believe but help thou my unbelief And Jesus cast that demon out a little boy People bring their children to Jesus they always meet obstacles the disciples failure to cast out the demon was discouraging to the man. The Syrophoenician woman, she met with Jesus' pushback. Ah, the food's for the children, not the dogs. Oh, but how about a few crumbs?

The Syrophoenician woman meets Jesus' pushback. He didn't answer her prayer right away. The disciples rebuke the moms and dads bringing the kids to Jesus. They they're always being the obstacles, the crowds prevented the guys bringing the paralytic to Jesus but they tore up the roof and brought him down. Brothers and sisters, we gotta tear up the roof.

Tear up the roof. You have challenges in your home with your children. Tear up the roof. Bring your children to Jesus. Jesus looks at your faith and he says to the paralytic your sins are forgiven you the faith of a parent matters the fair parent faith of fathers and mothers are important close it here Do not minimize the challenge we face.

Satan is targeting your children. All the prince powers and powers, as I see it, have got all their guns clicked on automatic and full power. And they are unleashing all of their weaponry upon your children, by culture, by education, by peer groups, by everything. Augustine, in his last words in the City of God, he says there will come a time, it's a prophetic moment in Augustine's writings, he says There will come a time in which the worst case scenario will happen where the institutions are all entirely controlled by demonic forces and they will be unleashed upon children. Somehow this didn't happen in the fourth century, it didn't happen in the fifth century, it didn't happen in the eighth century, the tenth, the twelfth, the fourteenth, the fourteenth, the sixteenth, the seventeenth, the eighteenth, until you get to the twentieth century.

He says at some point there will be a time in which all hell will be let loose upon the kids, upon Christian families. And he says this, Only the utmost resoluteness and faith in parents will conquer the strong one and enable their children to walk with Jesus. So brothers and sisters, it is a fight of faith. I challenge you to faith. Look to Jesus, pray, wait, watch, wrestle.

Wait only upon God. Watch for him. It is a good thing for a man to Hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord to come to his home. It's a it's a chance It's a challenge of faith, but engage the battle of faith Tear up the roof to get your children to Jesus. I'm telling you tear up the roof to bring your kids to Jesus.

Pray every day. Bring the Word to them. Pray through the enchanted ground and you know it's everywhere in our churches. Pray through Apollyon, through the valley of the shadow of death, through Downing Castle. Pull out all the stops.

We are in all-out war for the minds and souls of our children. Wake up parents, believe in the power of Jesus. You believe He can do this? Do you believe He can do this? Let's all say, Lord I believe.

Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief. Father, please help us. God increase our faith. Visit us with your Holy Spirit.

Return your Holy Spirit to each family here. We pray, oh God, for a wonderful outpouring in our generation. We plead with you God, increase our faith and provide salvation for every one of our children that they indeed would speak the word of God in our homes. In Jesus' name, Amen. You