You Have Too Many

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Judges 7:2-4 "The LORD said to Gideon, 'You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, "My own strength has saved me." Now announce to the army, "Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead."' So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained. But the LORD said to Gideon, 'There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there. If I say, "This one shall go with you," he shall go; but if I say, "This one shall not go with you," he shall not go.'"

Think

Gideon finally has an army.

Thirty-two thousand men have shown up. After seven years of hiding in caves, after a lifetime of being the least in his family, he is standing in front of an actual fighting force. For the first time, this might be survivable.

And God's opening line is, you have too many.

Not you need more. Not this is a good start. Too many. It is one of the strangest sentences in the Bible and it unlocks the entire chapter.

God explains himself immediately, which he does not always do. "I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.'"

God is not worried about the odds. He is worried about the story that gets told afterward.

Because there is a version of this where Israel wins with thirty-two thousand men and everybody goes home saying we did it, we were tougher, we wanted it more. And the God who was the entire cause of it disappears from his own story.

So God starts subtracting. Anyone who is afraid can go home, and twenty-two thousand men take him up on it, roughly two out of every three. Gideon watches most of his army walk away in a single afternoon. And then God says there are still too many.

By the end of the chapter he is down to three hundred. Thirty-two thousand to three hundred. That is God removing about ninety-nine percent of everything Gideon was counting on before letting him do the thing God had already promised.

Think about what that feels like from the inside. Gideon does not experience this as a nice spiritual lesson. He experiences it as everything falling apart. Every step of preparation is a step of loss.

That is worth sitting with, because it is possible that the thing you are currently reading as God being absent is God subtracting on purpose.

When a team wins by one point, everybody argues about the referee for a week. When a team wins by fifty, nobody argues about anything, because there is only one explanation available. God cut the numbers until there was only one explanation available.

This is not God being insecure and needing credit. This is God protecting people from the worst possible outcome, and the worst possible outcome is not losing. It is winning in a way that convinces you that you never needed him.

Plenty of us would rather have a life we can explain than a life that requires God. A manageable faith. Something impressive enough to feel good about and small enough to handle alone.

Look at the phrase in verse 4. "I will thin them out for you there." For you. God frames the subtraction as something he is doing on Gideon's behalf. Losing that army was a gift, and it would not have felt like one for a second.

So what has been taken from you this year that you have been reading as abandonment?

It is worth asking whether God is emptying your hands so that when something finally happens, you will know exactly who did it.

Apply

Give God the credit out loud – Think of one good thing in your life that you normally explain by talking about your own work, talent, or effort. Thank God for it specifically today, and then tell one other person that you believe he is the reason for it.

Pray

God, I want a life I can take credit for and I know that is backwards. When you take things away from me, help me stop reading it as you leaving. Empty my hands if you need to. I would rather need you than impress anybody. In Jesus' name. Amen.