God is Out To Destroy Us? by Tullian Tchividjian

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.’  Judges 7:2 (NIV)

All too often, though we admit that God is in the business of destroying our idols, we forget, that that includes our biggest idol—our own self-sufficiency.

Before Gideon faces the Midianites, God takes his army from thirty-two thousand well-armed fighting men to three hundred who lap like dogs, armed with trumpets and jars of fire. He does this for an explicit reason: He doesn’t want any confusion. He wants Gideon and the nation of Israel to know just who it is who has delivered them.

God makes Israel weak so that He might be shown to be strong. God shows Israel their need for a Savior by sending almost the entire army home (v. 3) before answering that need, saying, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands” (v. 7).

God uses His law to show us our need, to strip us down to our bare bones. This hurts. Gideon goes from a well-outfitted army of thirty-two thousand to a group of three hundred dog lappers with trumpets and empty jars. Just when we think we have it all together, the brakes go out on the car, a credit card bounces in public, or your kid pees on your couch.

But our God is the God of resurrections. That’s His second job. His first job, announced with His first word, the law, is to destroy us. Or at least, to destroy our idea of an “us” that is not already destroyed. This is God’s first work, destroying our idol of self-sufficiency.

There is, though, good news. We’re sitting in the middle of the rubble of our lives, wondering how we ended up like this. We’re looking at the walls of the Midianites, and all we’ve got are some trumpets and some jars with a little fire. We’re dead. But our God is a God of resurrection, and He has promised to make all things new, and that includes you and me. Today! Right now! We are made new! Death has been defeated and life eternal has been won, and it’s all been announced before we ever had to do a thing. Jesus did everything so that we need do nothing. It is finished—right now, today, and forever.


from Tullian Tchividjian - It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News.