Maybe we’re going about it wrong.
By “we” I mean the Church. By “it” I mean the programs geared toward growth.
In Judges 6 we find the nation of Israel in trouble. Because of their sin, the Lord has handed them over to the Midianites for a period of punishment living in poverty and fear. It’s a familiar pattern in the Old Testament (as in our own lives)—sin, refusal to repent, consequences, repentance, deliverance and blessing, sin, refusal to repent, etc.
Gideon is confronted by an angel who appears as a man, as he works in hiding. Instead of pointing out the obvious (that he’s afraid and living in defeat), the angel calls him a “mighty warrior” and says that God is with him. Not only that, he commissions him to deliver the entire nation. This would impress most of us, but Gideon is so down-trodden by his circumstances that he has trouble believing it. His clan is small. He’s the youngest in his family. But when he asks for a sign, the angel is very convincing. His faith restored, Gideon obeys in a relatively small act of defiance—he pulls down an altar of Baal.
Before he’ll take on the entire nation of Midian, however, he needs to be really, really sure God will have his back. He lays out a sheep fleece and asks God to make it wet in the midst of dry ground. Done. Just to make sure, he lays it out again and asks God to make the fleece dry and the ground wet. Done. (God is so patient with us, isn’t he?)
Filled with confidence and faith, Gideon musters 32,000 men to fight with him. It’s not as many as he would like, but it will have to do. Wrong—God tells him to send home anyone who is afraid. Gideon’s probably thinking, Who wouldn’t be?! Amazingly, he still ends up with 10,000. Still too many. God engineers a test whereby the number drops to 300. That’s not even a tithe of the original group. It’s a tithe of the tithe! Despite this, God uses Gideon and his army of 300 to rout 120,000, and the eventually successful revolt against Midian is on.
Why such a little army? Judges 7:2 says, “The Lord said to Gideon, ‘The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’”
We’ve been called to evangelize the world. Tell sinners to repent. Pray for more laborers for the harvest. God desires that all men will be saved. Etc. Etc. But maybe…just maybe…sometimes less is more. Maybe our attempts to get bigger and bigger building programs and more numbers and fill the seats and pack the house have been, at least in one respect, counter-productive. Maybe we have watered down the gospel to make it more palatable so much so that it fails to quench the real thirsts in peoples’ lives. Maybe we’ve lost focus on the task of building God’s kingdom and are tempted to think that our “own hand” has been responsible for building our own kingdoms.
Maybe we don’t need more soldiers in God’s army, but better soldiers. Maybe we don’t need to make Christianity so socially pleasing and acceptable, but use the same tactics as Jesus, who said things like:
· “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off” (Matthew 5:30).
· “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you” (Matthew 7:6).
· “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
· “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (Luke 12:51)!
· “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).
· “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).
Jesus sometimes seems to have gone out of his way to deliver a hard word, a statement few would understand, a command that no one in his right mind would rush to obey. He chose to make it difficult to come to him. “For the gate is narrow and road is hard that leads to life; and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14).
Following Jesus…being a true Christian…is simple, but it perhaps it shouldn’t be as easy as the Church in 2010 sometimes makes it out to be, at least in the United States. Fellow believers around the world (a relatively smaller number than in attendance at mega-churches of the West) who face persecution and hardship, even death, on a daily basis, might find little in common with our level of complacency and comfort every Sunday morning, but I have a gut feeling that those beleaguered “300” are accomplishing far more.
Of course, it’s not really about the numbers at all, is it? It’s what’s in the hearts of those who come to the battle.
By “we” I mean the Church. By “it” I mean the programs geared toward growth.
In Judges 6 we find the nation of Israel in trouble. Because of their sin, the Lord has handed them over to the Midianites for a period of punishment living in poverty and fear. It’s a familiar pattern in the Old Testament (as in our own lives)—sin, refusal to repent, consequences, repentance, deliverance and blessing, sin, refusal to repent, etc.
Gideon is confronted by an angel who appears as a man, as he works in hiding. Instead of pointing out the obvious (that he’s afraid and living in defeat), the angel calls him a “mighty warrior” and says that God is with him. Not only that, he commissions him to deliver the entire nation. This would impress most of us, but Gideon is so down-trodden by his circumstances that he has trouble believing it. His clan is small. He’s the youngest in his family. But when he asks for a sign, the angel is very convincing. His faith restored, Gideon obeys in a relatively small act of defiance—he pulls down an altar of Baal.
Before he’ll take on the entire nation of Midian, however, he needs to be really, really sure God will have his back. He lays out a sheep fleece and asks God to make it wet in the midst of dry ground. Done. Just to make sure, he lays it out again and asks God to make the fleece dry and the ground wet. Done. (God is so patient with us, isn’t he?)
Filled with confidence and faith, Gideon musters 32,000 men to fight with him. It’s not as many as he would like, but it will have to do. Wrong—God tells him to send home anyone who is afraid. Gideon’s probably thinking, Who wouldn’t be?! Amazingly, he still ends up with 10,000. Still too many. God engineers a test whereby the number drops to 300. That’s not even a tithe of the original group. It’s a tithe of the tithe! Despite this, God uses Gideon and his army of 300 to rout 120,000, and the eventually successful revolt against Midian is on.
Why such a little army? Judges 7:2 says, “The Lord said to Gideon, ‘The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’”
We’ve been called to evangelize the world. Tell sinners to repent. Pray for more laborers for the harvest. God desires that all men will be saved. Etc. Etc. But maybe…just maybe…sometimes less is more. Maybe our attempts to get bigger and bigger building programs and more numbers and fill the seats and pack the house have been, at least in one respect, counter-productive. Maybe we have watered down the gospel to make it more palatable so much so that it fails to quench the real thirsts in peoples’ lives. Maybe we’ve lost focus on the task of building God’s kingdom and are tempted to think that our “own hand” has been responsible for building our own kingdoms.
Maybe we don’t need more soldiers in God’s army, but better soldiers. Maybe we don’t need to make Christianity so socially pleasing and acceptable, but use the same tactics as Jesus, who said things like:
· “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off” (Matthew 5:30).
· “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you” (Matthew 7:6).
· “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
· “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (Luke 12:51)!
· “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).
· “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).
Jesus sometimes seems to have gone out of his way to deliver a hard word, a statement few would understand, a command that no one in his right mind would rush to obey. He chose to make it difficult to come to him. “For the gate is narrow and road is hard that leads to life; and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14).
Following Jesus…being a true Christian…is simple, but it perhaps it shouldn’t be as easy as the Church in 2010 sometimes makes it out to be, at least in the United States. Fellow believers around the world (a relatively smaller number than in attendance at mega-churches of the West) who face persecution and hardship, even death, on a daily basis, might find little in common with our level of complacency and comfort every Sunday morning, but I have a gut feeling that those beleaguered “300” are accomplishing far more.
Of course, it’s not really about the numbers at all, is it? It’s what’s in the hearts of those who come to the battle.
Permission to use with acknowledgement of source. Quotations from New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
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