God Can Still Work With What You Have Left | Charlie Dates

- From the pulpit to the classroom and throughout the city of Chicago, the Reverend Dr. Charlie Dates is a powerful voice for faith, justice, and lasting change. - Yeah, you never needed no counselor, but you have in your times of needing counsel. When you've got a decision to make, when you cannot figure out which way to go, he's a wonderful counselor. - He serves as senior pastor to both progressive Baptist Church and Salem Baptist Church, two of the nation's most influential black congregations. A gifted preacher, scholar, and civic leader, Dr. Dates brings biblical truth into conversation with the challenges of our time. KCMC, please welcome Dr. Charlie Dates. (audience applauding) - Have you ever found yourself out-numbered and under-resourced and wondered to yourself how in the world will God make a way? I want you to hear these words of Judges, chapter seven. Then Jerub, by all, that is Gideon, and all the people who were with him rose early and camped beside the spring of Herod. And the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moray in the valley. The Lord said to Gideon, "The people who are with you are too many for me "to give Midian into their hands.

"For Israel would become boastful, "saying, 'My own power has delivered me.'" Now, therefore, come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, "Whoever's afraid and trembling, "let him return into part from Mount Gilead." So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, "The people are still too many. "Bring them down to the water, "and I will test them there for you. "Therefore, it shall be that he of whom I say to you, "this one shall go with you, he shall go with you. "But every one of whom I say to you, "this one shall not go with you, he shall not go." So he brought the people down to the water. The Lord said to Gideon, "You shall separate everyone who laps the water "with his tongue as a dog laps, "as well as everyone who kneels to drink." Now, the number of those who lapsed putting their hand to their mouth was 300 men, but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, "I'll deliver you with a 300 man who leapt "and will give the Midianites into your hands." So let all the other people go, let all the other people go, let them go, each man to his home. So the 300 men took the people's provisions in their trumpets and to their hands

and Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley. God does some strange math. - Amen. - He likes to add by subtracting. - Amen. - And multiply by dividing. I want to tag this text, a word of encouragement to all the brothers in the room. God can win with what's left. - Amen. - All right, the best I got. God can win with what's left. Will you breathe a word of prayer with me, please? Father, I pray now for clarity, concision, and conviction, give me, O Lord, I pray, a fresh enablement of your Holy Spirit to preach your word this afternoon to these men for your glory and our good in Jesus name, amen. Still mourning, feels like afternoon. If you have ever found yourself outnumbered and under-resourced, wondering how God will make away, I want you to know that that feeling of inferiority and insufficiency is a common human experience. In fact, feeling like you don't have enough. of a woman born Sarah Breedlove. You may have heard of her by her entrepreneurial name, Madam C.J. Walker. She was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 and was an orphan

by the age of seven. She is literally a picture of a person born with less. Less family, less housing, less money, less security, less opportunity, less education, less, less, and less. Something happened with her as a young woman. She developed scalp issues. And hair loss at that time was common for black women under the conditions in which they led and led to a lot of pain. But her pain opened a door for her. She became curious as to how to solve her hair problems. So she experimented. Coming up with concoctions in the kitchen. She learned, studied the follicles of hair. And eventually she created a salve and then a brand that not only distinguished her from her competitors, but that helped women grow their hair back in full strength and made her America's first self-made female millionaire. Madam C.J. Walker's life testifies to this simple and profound truth that starting with less does not disqualify you. Actually, having less develops you. Develops something in you that those with more never learn. We fail to appreciate that less is sometimes the route to more. I want to submit to you while we're in this room this morning that history is replete with examples that you don't have to start out with or possess even now more than what you have to overcome. In fact, that's the story of Judges 6, 7, and 8. That God seems to favor people with a little

because he likes to bring his all-sufficiency to our insufficiency so that he gets the glory when we overcome. Preach, Charlie Dates. I'm telling you, if you don't have a lot in the profit column, you're doing all right. If it feels like you got more in the lost column, you're doing OK. So long as God is on your side because God chooses to work with less to prove that he is more. Friends, it ain't about what you have. It's not about what you accumulated. It's about who you have. And this morning, we learn from the study and the story of a man named Gideon that not everything you lose goes into the lost column of life. No friends with God, what you lose gets added to the profit column. The narrative that I read to you today from Judges 6, actually, Judges 7, actually starts with Judges 6. It is an unsightly, unsamly story that speaks to the failure of Israel to stick with the one true living God. Whatever reason, when you read the narrative of Israel in the Old Testament, they are a lot like us. They are consistently inconsistent. Whenever God seems to bless them with more, they start to attribute their good living to their hard work, and God gets bumped down on the priority list. And they ain't no need of y'all looking to me like, you don't know what I'm talking about.

You know what I'm talking about. You know how it goes. When you broke, you don't have everything. You seek in God in every way. Maybe it ain't y'all, but it's your cousins in Chicago. When they ain't got much, they in church every Sunday, every Wednesday, go into a discipleship class. They even show up from funerals to people they don't even know who died just to see if they could get a word from the Lord. And then when God blesses with a little bit of elevation and things start to get better, you don't come every Sunday. You don't go to every Wednesday. You don't participate in every discipleship class like you used to. You come when it's convenient for you because success has a way of creating a kind of-- Israel suffered from that same malady. They show us what it's like to get stuck on yourself. That it's easier for men to attain imminence than it is to retain dependence and humility once you get there. And God knows, since he will not tolerate second place and where your weight fully belongs, that sometimes the only antidote to your arrogance is to let your success give way to poverty and humiliation. That sometimes you and I end up suffering not because God is not good, but because God is good. And because God needs to show you how to maintain dependence upon him. I want to submit to you friends that God just ain't involved in the winds in your life.

But God is just as involved in the losses of your life as he is in the victories of war. And since you didn't say, "Hey man, I'm glad I brought my own," that's the story of Jacob in Genesis chapter 32. He had to learn how to win by losing. That's the story of 2 Samuel 11 through 15 where David ends up learning how to pray, Lord, have mercy. That's the story of Mordecai in Esther chapter five. See, loss can be a sacred experience because its sobriety is more instructive than the euphoria of victory. Loss teaches you some things. Now, nobody likes to lose. This passage that I'm preaching to you this morning is not an encouragement to enjoy losing. But it does encourage you and I to rebound appropriately. See, it's the adjustments that you make in the light of loss. It's the repentance that we practice in the face of humiliation. It's the ordinariness that we assume after defeat that pleases the Lord. And when the curtain raises, at verse one of Judges chapter six, we get the same dreary notice of that same dreary failure that Israel encounters. They are worshiping idol gods. This time, God lets their enemies function as an instrument of his discipline. And we get, I think in the first six verses

of Judges chapter six, the most detailed description of their distress. Seven years in a row, they get invaded by an enemy army and they lose. What kind of economy can get robbed on schedule? Seven years in a row and survive. 2019, their crops were taken. In 2020, their livestock was stolen. 2021, they were invaded from the east. 2022, from the west. 23, from the north, 24, from the south. 2025, their grain was destroyed and they waiting on 2026. See friends, Israel learned what I'm not sure is a shameful thing to learn. And I want to encourage you if you're here today and you're in this Israeli position I'm about to describe. That when the humiliation came upon them, they did in verse six, what people always learn to do. They cry out unto the Lord. All right, that didn't move none of y'all. When trouble strikes, it seems like people know how to go to church. I don't know how many of you all are old enough to remember 9/11. But man, our churches were full after 9/11. One crisis is all it takes to drive people to faith. And then when things get good, they move on. Truth is, some of us are in this room this morning

'cause things are not good. Truth is, somebody showed up this morning because you're trying to find some answers, some comfort and some company because things have gone wrong. And you might not be the majority of men in this room, but you're not by yourself. You're sitting there wondering, dear God, what do I do? And how do I respond? And I've learned not to beat up on people when they come to God looking for answers after their failure. I've come to see that there's room at the cross. It doesn't matter how low you've gone. And I need to say this to somebody today, that you cannot sin so much that you bankrupt No, I want to say it almost like D.M.R. Lloyd-Jones. I know what you're talking about here. Sometimes, grace is so deep that your sin will fall exhausted at the feet of God's grace. After you get done doing all the sinning you can, grace will look at you and say, "Is that all you got?" Whoo! You need to run to the altar when you find yourself bankrupt. And people do it because they come to discover that God is patient, God is kind, God is long-suffering. But here in Judges 6, God does reply, but he replies in one of the strangest ways. Have you ever felt like you prayed and God gave you a strange, if not inappropriate answer

to your prayer? That ain't what I was asking for. See, rather than sending them relief when they turned to God, God sent them a prophet. Rather than sending them a sword, he sent them a sermon. All right, that didn't land the way I thought it would. Let me -- let's say -- what's an expressway around here? I -- 70. Let's say your car breaks down on I-70. You get safely over to the side of the road. Don't you worry, you got AAA, you pay for it. And you're a singer, so you get a singer discount. And you get the dispatcher on the phone. They say, "Give us your mild marker. You give them the mild marker." And they say, "No worries. We'll have an agent right there." Turn the music up a little bit. ♪ I sought the Lord ♪ ♪ And he heard and he answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord ♪ ♪ And he heard, "That's why I trust him." ♪ And he said, "That's why." And you notice the car pulls up behind you. But it's not a tow truck. It's not a pickup truck. It's a sleek S-Class Mercedes. Black, the tinted windows. Brother gets out, he's got on black pants, a white shirt. Black tie grabs his jacket out of the back seat,

flips it on, and walks up to you and you're wondering, "Who is this and what do they have to say?" And he beckons, "Let the window down." So you grab hold that thing that you're keeping your car and you let the window down. And he says, "Triple A sent me." And you go, "Who are you?" And he goes, "I'm a philosopher." And you go, "Well, I didn't ask for a philosopher. My car's broken. I need a mechanic." And rather than sending you a mechanic, Triple A has sent you a philosopher because this is the fourth time you didn't call Triple A. And they've come every time you've called and fixed your problem. But you've not learned from what put your car in that problem. So rather than sending you somebody to fix the problem, they send somebody to explain to you why you keep ending up in the problem. See, sometimes God doesn't just want to get you out of what you're in, but God wants you to interpret why what you are in is so bad. Because deliverance without correction is premeditated relapse. Friends, everybody wants to be delivered, but God wants you to be enlightened. God wants you to be transformed. And one of the kindest things that God can do for you

is to bring you under the criticism of his word to expose the reasons for your brokenness. Friends, I'm here today to tell you God sent them a prophet. But oh, in the goodness of God. While, this is like a movie saying, while a prophet is coming to the children of Israel, explaining to them, in chapter six, why they are in the condition that they're in. God is moving at the same time, the Bible says, meeting a guy who is treading out the grain at his thrushing floor. His name is Gideon. He's a hewer, a feller. And the angel comes to him and calls him a mighty warrior, valiant warrior. Didn't seem to be much very valiant about Gideon at the time. But I take this overlapping in scenes as a great kind of interpretive encouragement. That while God is helping and explaining to the children of Israel why they are in the condition that they are in, he's also employing a deliverer to get them out. See, God can do that. No, that didn't come out the way I wanted it to. While you're in the right now, God is working in the not yet. And when you get to the not yet, He will have moved on to the no longer. God is so much a God, God is leaving where God is going. (congregation cheering)

So I'm trying to encourage somebody right now. If you are under correction, don't worry. He's also at the same time bringing about deliverance and elevation. You cannot judge the faithfulness of God by the right now. You got to live long enough to get to the not yet. I wish I had the church that I pre-check 'cause somebody would have caught on fire right there. Some of y'all have been in this room. All you've had to do is live long enough to see that the promises of God are yay and a man. That God actually is a keeper of His work. And even when you rebel, though you repent, He brings about something good and something joyful. And now the angel comes to tell Gideon, hey man, God is raising you up as a deliverer. The God of your fathers, Gideon has a problem with this. 'Cause Gideon has looked at the Midian Knights reigning and scourging the children of Israel. And he's saying, who is this God? You'll see in verse 13, if God was with us, why is He abandoned us to Midian? Every generation of descendants, of delivered people have their version of this question. If God is so good to us, the God of our fathers and grandfathers, why are we in the condition we're in now? If I may, and permit me to be me. I think that's the question that a lot of young black people are asking all around our nation.

They've heard about God's goodness in delivering us from the long night of chattel slavery. They heard about the AME pastors who became senators through the failed experiment of reconstruction. They heard the stories of how our four parents fought to dismantle Jim Crow. But now America seems to be in a similar, strange condition. And they are wondering, where is that God act? The God of Frederick Douglass, the God of Sojourner Truth. There is the God of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., or Fannie Lou Hamer. Why I wanna encourage somebody today? I don't have all the answers, but what I do know is that we don't need no new God. We have the only God. And with things being as dark and as difficult and as damning as they are now, what we do know is that the same God who brought our people through the middle passage. The same God who ushered their faith and made it strong. The same God that let them pick cotton and let them stand and tell the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth. The same God who brought about the Emancipation Proclamation. The same God who brought us through Abraham Lincoln. The same God who stood up the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is able to stand up with the fellow who's in office right now.

(audience applauding) Whatever your fears are based upon the circumstances and the conditions that seem to oppress the people who you love and who you know, you got to know God is greater than your worst oppressor. That God is stronger and can bring about a mighty deliverance. And so you got to trust, even when you got less, that God can do more with less. I'm in my seat, no, I ain't, I'm gonna finish this. And then I'm gonna get in my seat. Here now God comes and says, Gideon, you're the man I'm gonna use. Gideon fleeces the Lord and he asks God for some signs. You better be careful what you ask God for by the way. And he is amazed at what God shows him. So then he goes on a recruiting journey. This is at the end of chapter six. Now we come to chapter 37, it must've been a great day 'cause Gideon now has 32,000 soldiers. 32,000, woo, how you get 32,000? So he believes that they are ready. Gideon says, who is it? God comes in and says to me, man, hey listen, you ain't ready. So Gideon goes, oh, we need more? I mean, what do you mean, we're not ready? We got 32,000, I mean, that's more than we've ever had. And God says, no, you're not ready, not because you don't have enough troops. You're not ready 'cause you got too many of them.

He says in verse two, the Lord said to Gideon, the people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands. Y'all missed the movement of the pronoun. Let me read that one more time. The Lord said to Gideon, the people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands. Okay, let me try it one more time. God says Gideon is too many for me to win this battle and let y'all have the victory. Gideon, you ain't the one who gonna win. I'm the one who's going to deliver and when I deliver, I'm gonna put it in your hands and what I'm telling you is it's too many of them for me 'cause if I do it with that many, they gonna get proud and take the credit. I don't want you to confuse the source of your victory with the resources that come as a result of your victory and the challenge for a lot of us is that we confuse the source with the resource. The resource is your paycheck but the source is the one who gives you a living. The resource is Hulu and Disney Plus and Netflix. That's where you stream your entertainment but your joy comes from the source. The resource is the bad you sleep on at night but your real rest comes from heaven which is God above and I've come today to encourage somebody. Don't you confuse your source, your resources with your source, your source deserves all the credit,

your source deserves all the praise, your source deserves your time, your source deserves your talent, not your resource. So here it is. God says bring them down. Now that's the challenge for me because well, I'm thankful for our military being the most powerful military in the world. And generally you think that whoever's got the most power and the most people win. But that ain't how God does his math. God comes to him and says, here's what I want you to do, man. I want you to go to all the fellows and say to them, whoever's scared, don't feel bad, you can go home. Here Gideon is 32,000. He could not have anticipated this town. He stands up and says, all right. Whoever among y'all is scared, it's okay. You can go home, no penalty. Ain't nobody gonna talk about you. It's all right. Just go. You use your imagination, guys. They, the men started looking around and say, we can go. (audience laughing) Leave your weapons, leave all this stuff, say okay. All right, you good? You good? Y'all all right?

You good? You good? (audience laughing) Now, we tend to make fun of the guys who left, but I'm concerned about the guys who stayed. What you mean you ain't scared? Now y'all better than I am. Fear, healthy fear is a responsible thing. Some stuff you just ain't supposed to do. These 10,000 watched the 22,000 walk off singing, "I ain't never scared." (audience laughing) Gideon has to be like, God, this ain't a good idea. What do you mean it's too many of them? So I want you to take them down to the water, and I want you to watch how they drink, because some of them aren't focused, and the guys who lap water like a dog who can bring the water up to their mouths, who can keep their eyes on you while they take care of themselves. Those are the ones who I want you to stay. The other ones who go down and get water drunk, who go throw their heads into the water, they got to go. I'm about to be in my seat, but I need to say to somebody this today, "Everybody can't go with you to where God is taking you." Some of y'all got too many, and the wrong ones. What I'm saying is going to hurt your feelings, because you don't want to let them go, but God can't get you where God is taking you with them still on your payroll. Sometimes the people who helped you get there can't help you stay there, and they're not the same crew to help you go to the next level. You have got to learn how to be bold enough to let some people go from your life. This is the hardest thing in the world, but you've got to recognize that it's God and

God alone who issues you the victory that you have and never the crew that you're rolling with. One of the hardest things that I've had to face and embrace in my ministry even recently is watching who I thought were necessary people walk off. Have you ever had that in your life? For people who you thought you needed said goodbye, and you had to watch them walk. Thirty-two thousand swords, thirty-two thousand shields, thirty-two thousand spears, watching them walk. But I came today to tell you that God can win with what's left. You might not have a lot of time left. You might not have a lot of money left. You might not have a lot of resources and friends left, but let me tell you God specializes in doing more with little. Come here, Jesus. Help me preach my sermon. One day the disciples were at an outdoor festival and they were getting ready to Jesus and preaching. He said, "We need to feed the people." And they said, "We ain't got no food. We got a little boy over here with two fish and five loaves of bread." And what is that with so many people? Well, Jesus said, "Bring it here real fast," and they brought it over. And the Bible says that Jesus blessed the bread and he broke it and he multiplied it until it was enough to feed thousands of men, not including women and children. And they had more left over because, well, little becomes much when you place it in the master's hands. You can take the little that you got left and put it in God's hands and God can win. You might not have a lot of trust, but you can take the little you got and put it in his hands. You might not have a lot of faith, but you can take the little that you got and put it

in his hands and God is so good. I said God is so good. God is so strong that he can win what you got left, but there's only one thing God wants. Where you win, he wants the credit that it was him. Now this is my challenge. This is my challenge in a pulpit in front of a church and in a room full of men is that you and I have got to learn how to assign the glory to the right agent. In Memphis, Tennessee, there's Lemoine Owens College, it's an HBCU. There was a young woman who was at the commencement address coming down the aisle to get her name called to receive her diploma. Dr. D. King would tell this story at Monumental Church in Chicago. He was the commencement speaker that day. And they gave these instructions. You know how they do it at graduations. Please don't make noise when your loved one's name is called. Everybody wants to hear their loved one's name called. So we ask you to wait until you get to the end. And some people were trying to do that. This woman was coming down to receive her diploma when an older black woman who heart was talking about that type who had walked with God, who had read his word, but had never graduated from college, who had to work multiple jobs to help her daughter get through college. She saw her daughter coming down that aisle. The old woman's name is Juanita Farthington, and old man D. King said she was sitting in the back, squirming like this. Says she just, she had to turn one way and turn another way. If you ain't up in through struggle, this might not mean a whole lot to you. And so she started to mumble something

underneath her, but nobody but Jesus. And the closer her daughter got, the louder she got, nobody but Jesus. You see, her daughter was the first one in the family to graduate from college. And she knew from when she had come. And by the time her daughter came around, she jumped up and started yelling, nobody but Jesus. D. King said he got up and he asked everybody, stop, we got to let this woman get it out. And she started shouting, nobody, but Jesus. And the day will come when your back is up against the wall, and God has delivered you. And he has brought your kids through some things. And he has helped them to graduate and get their knees met. And you won't come in here and somebody will look at you saying you ought to shut up, but you won't be able to shut up. Because when you think about the goodness of Jesus, you will have but one boast. You will shout it, nobody. (audience applauds) (audience cheers) (applause) (applause)