450 to 1. That’s how outnumbered Gideon’s 300 soldiers were. An army of 135,000 vs. an army of 300 (if you can call 300 soldiers an army!). There is not a military strategist in history who would go to battle with those odds. There is no plan that could be devised that would see 300 soldiers victorious against 135,000 – especially in the days predating all the technology and weapons we have today to fight wars with – when hand-to-hand combat was how battle was carried out. No one in his right mind would take those odds, that chance, and willingly initiate any sort of engagement when the deck is that stacked against you.
But you know what? God can do a lot with a little. He makes that abundantly clear as we focus on the next judge in our series, Gideon.
Before we dig more into the story of Gideon, in order for today’s takeaway to sink in, I want to take a few moments to consider where you might need this reminder that God can do a lot with a little. There are so many areas in our lives that are filled with too little, with not enough – so many areas that are inadequate or insufficient. Or at least that’s the way we allow ourselves to think. Where do you think you are too little, or you have too little, or are lacking in one way or another? Now ask this question: do you really have too little in these areas of your life, or is the real issue that you think too little of God to be able to do anything with it? May our time exploring God’s goodness to Gideon this morning change not only your mind, but the way you think about God and what he is capable of.
Look what God had to work with in the case of Gideon. He started with a nobody. When the Lord came to Gideon, he wasn’t decked out in imposing armor preparing to lead an army into a glorious victory on the battlefield. He wasn’t seated on a throne in kingly fashion in some palace somewhere. No, he was threshing wheat, and not even in the normal fashion, but as inconspicuously as possible – he was hidden in a winepress so as not to alert the Midianites. He was nothing more than a common man carrying out manual labor. That’s when the Lord addressed him. “The LORD turned to him and said, ‘Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?’ ‘But Lord,’ Gideon asked, ‘how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family’” (Judges 6:14-15). Gideon didn’t see himself as being up to the task. His view of self was so low that he could not imagine God using him for such a monumental task! Sound familiar? Remember when the Lord came to Moses to send him to save Israel from Pharaoh’s hand? His response was similar: “Who am I?” (Ex. 3:11). Gideon wasn’t the first time the Lord used a nobody to get things done, and he won’t be the last.
Can you relate to Gideon? You can. You have. Throughout different stages of life we all struggle with the same feelings of inferiority or being unqualified. “I’m not ready to make the jump to high school. I’m not actually good enough to do the job for which I just got hired. I’m not qualified to be a parent to a newborn – I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t make this marriage work. I can’t care for my aging parents. I can’t be a leader in my church.” We echo the same refrain that Moses and Gideon echoed: “How can I do this? Who am I?” Do you know why that’s so natural for us to think that way?
Because it’s true. When God started with you, he started with a nobody. Actually it was worse than that. A nobody would have been neutral, indifferent, happy to just remain anonymous. But by nature you came into this world as God’s enemy. The sin you were born in set you against God from the start. His perfect holiness doesn’t sit well with sinners. So we oppose him. We despise him. We guard our sin. We defend our sin. We don’t need him telling us it’s wrong today. If nothing changes, we remain on that same path of opposition to God the rest of our lives.
But you’re here because something did change. You did, because God changed you. God took you, his enemy – a nobody, and washed you clean with Jesus’ blood. The very God we despised by nature is the gracious God who made us more precious in his eyes than we could ever have made ourselves. Grace and forgiveness transform nobodies into somebodies in God’s eyes. Without sin as a barrier between you and God, he sees you as he made you to be: perfect, righteous, and ready. Ready for him to use you as he sees fit. Ready to be sent for his purposes. God can do a lot with a little. You are the proof. You weren’t much. But now you are everything to him. He would die for you. He did die for you.
Speaking of doing a lot with a little, kind of sounds like how the Lord carried all of this out, doesn’t it? God made a powerful demonstration of that through Jesus in general. A lot with a little. A little child. Born in little Bethlehem. A little cross outside Jerusalem. One man, not a nobody by any stretch of the imagination, but the God-man, Jesus, put to death on it. Yet through this one crucifixion, this one little death on Good Friday, a cataclysmic event unfolded. Hell lost its hold. And on Easter morning, as the empty tomb opened up, so did heaven, ready to welcome every nobody made a somebody through faith in the Savior, Jesus.
God can do a lot with a little. Jesus made a powerful demonstration of that in our Gospel today as he fed thousands with a little. He had previously turned out the best wine ever tasted at a wedding in Cana, only needing a little water to do so.
So let us bring it back to Gideon. Could God do a lot with a little? You already know the answer, but it’s as if God wanted to underscore it in the way he weeded out Gideon’s fighting force. He started with 32,000, but that was too many in God’s opinion, for he was concerned about Israel boasting that its victory was a result of its own strength (7:2-3). So he had Gideon dismiss 22,000 who were afraid to fight and allowed them to return home. That left 10,000 soldiers, but God wasn’t done weeding them out yet. He then had the remaining men get down for a drink of water, and from the different ways they drank water, he sorted them out so that just 300 men remained. That was how God wanted to demonstrate that he could do a lot with a little.
But what of Gideon’s doubt, you ask? What about his insistence on a handful of signs? There are of course instances in Scripture in which the demand on the part of God’s people for a sign stems from outright doubt. This does not appear to be one of them. No, in this case, Gideon was simply well aware of his own insufficiencies. He wasn’t questioning anything on God’s end; he was questioning himself. So he asked God to let him know that he was sure he had the right guy for the job, a nobody like Gideon.
What does this say to your doubts? Do you have a rather low opinion of yourself like Gideon? Or perhaps your view of yourself is is on the other end of the spectrum – rather inflated? Finally, let’s confess that sin of thinking of self too much and leave it behind and instead deal with the real issue: the question of what we think of God? What is God able to do? The answer is, anything. Anything. There is nothing he cannot do. Now I don’t know if we have kind of forgotten that or if the common “science-backed” refrain we hear everywhere today has eaten away at our confidence that God actually can do anything, but it remains true. God can do anything. And, God can do anything with anyone.
That includes you. So go back and revisit those areas of life in which you think or you have too little, those areas where you’re convinced that nothing’s ever going to change or improve because you just don’t measure up. If God – not Gideon, but God – can use 300 men to topple an army of 135,000, is God able to change or improve that area of life where there’s too little, where you’re too little? Absolutely. If you struggle to believe it, then it’s because your confidence is misplaced. You think too little of yourself. You don’t think you can do it. You think you’re not enough. Stop limiting what God can do by wrongly thinking you’re the one doing it! It’s not you. It’s not going to be you. It’s going to be God, always the Lord, who can do a lot – so much more than you could imagine! – with a little.
Stop thinking you’re too old. Stop thinking you’re too young. Stop thinking you’re not smart enough. Stop thinking you’re not spiritual enough. Stop thinking you’re not experienced enough. Stop. Thinking. About. Yourself. Let those who think like this belong to the world. Let the Church instead be filled with bold believers whose confidence rests 100% in a good, gracious God who can do anything with anyone.