Welcome to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. I'm your host Eric Kahn and in today's episode we're going to be talking about girl bosses Taylor Swift in yoga pants

smashing feminism's idols in the public square. I want to begin in judges

chapter six. You remember Judges Chapter 6, we find Israel oppressed by the Midianites

because they had embraced. Israel had the idolatries of the pagans around them.

And so what happens the people are oppressed by the Midianites?

Of course we find Gideon in the wine press, he's down in a hole threshing wheat so that they can hopefully keep some of their produce because everything is being consumed by the nation around them and so what happens? Well the people cry out to God for

deliverance the people who had sinned and the people who are oppressed cry out to

God for deliverance and God responds in a couple of ways. First of all he responds by raising up a prophet. God

responds by raising up a prophet to call the people to repentance, a prophet with hard words and so the people are called to repent but

God also responds by rousing this warrior this Christian prince if you will

Gideon and he's going to fight against God's enemies

There's a lot of questions being asked right now do we need top-down change or do we need bottom-up change and I think the answer that God gives us at least in judges chapter six is yes.

The people need to repent and we need new leaders and we need profits and

pastors who are willing to speak boldly to the idols of the day, the specific idols to name them and to go after them.

And you notice in Judges Chapter 6 before there is ever a battle.

Before there is any deliverance at all from the Lord, God gives Gideon a

specific task.

He says to Gideon, I want you to burn down the altar of your father in the public square.

That's right, I want you to go into your household and I want you to purge the idol from your household this idol that everybody in your culture is worshiping and I want you to do it publicly

And in his place I want you to Iraq to the altar of the Lord in public

You see God is demanding a public declaration of war against the idols of his day. Because the altar he destroyed belonged to Bale, Gideon would therefore be given the name

Jareh Bale, which means he who goes to war with Bale, he who fights Bale.

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