300

300, the film adaptation and fictionaliised retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, fascinates me a lot. I was drawn to the plot of how King Leonidas of Sparta took along his 300 valiant Spartans to take on an army of over one-million soldiers. Although the film is said to be fantasy, it is told to be 90 percent relevant to the historical event. Given that this epic battle had really occurred, I believe one cannot help but admire the courage of these 300 men as they took on the impossible task. Though they all perished, these men were greatly honoured for their glorious sacrifice.

Strangely, I was brought to a somewhat similar event that actually occurred in the bible. I couldn’t help but draw similarities and differences to the epic Battle of Thermopylae.

Just like King Leonidas, Gideon took along 300 men in a battle against the Midianites and the Amalekites.

Some background for this battle:

Judges 6:1b-5 – the Lord gave them into the hands of Midian seven years. And the poewr of Midian prevailed against Israel. Because of Midian, the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For it was when Isreal had sown, that the Midianites would come up with the Amalekites and the sons of the east and go against them. So they would camp against them and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel as well as no sheep, ox, or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents, they would come in like locusts in numbers, both they and their camels were innumerable; and they came into the land to devastate it.

Judges 7: 12 – Now the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as numerous as the sand on the seashore.

It seemed that Gideon was in the same situation as King Leonidas. His people oppressed by the Midianites and the Amalekites so badly and his army was tremendously outnumbered, 300 to an army as numerous as locusts and camels as numerous as the sand on the seashore.

But unlike King Leonidas who was brave enough to fight with only 300 men, Gideon would like to fight with more. Initially, he had 33,000. Then, it went down to 10, 000 and finally decreased to 300.

In the Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas had no choice but to bring along only 300 men, but Gideon had a choice. He could have brought all 33,000 men to fight and he would have stood a better chance perhaps against the uncountable hordes of the Midianites and Amalekites. But God limited his army to only 300 men.

This was a very irrational decision to make. Every battle commander knows that a larger army would stand a better chance against the enemy. What could 300 men do against an army of innumerable men even with a perfect strategy?

But God had a reason for choosing only 300 men. This was it:

Judges 7:2 – And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, lest Israel become boastful, saying ‘My own power has delivered me.’

It was because 33,000 men was too many for the Lord.

Something struck me here: 33,000 was too few for men to win the battle, but 33,000 was too many for the Lord! In fact, 300 was already too many for the Lord. The Lord needed none of mens’ efforts at all, he simply needed his own.r

The result of the battle was even more amazing. King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans managed to destroy more than half of their enemies, but they all perished, losing the battle. Gideon and his 300 won the battle, chasing the enemy away, without even losing a single man.

I’ve been pondering over this and I realised that this has a great deal of application for my life. Many times in my life, when I’m placed into impossible situations, I tried to use my ‘33,000 men’ to try to win the battle, but the odds were always simply too great. I wasn’t able to get out of those situations. No matter how hard I tried, using my own human efforts, I was never be able to overcome these situations by myself.

I realised that what God has been teaching me is similar to Judges 7:2 – The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, lest Israel become boastful, saying ‘My own power has delivered me.’

If I had overcame by my own human efforts, I would become boastful for I got out of it myself. Things were so tough and I got out of it. I deserve to be commended. I deserve to be rewarded. I deserve the praise and the glory.

But if God was the one who fought the battle, he deserve the praise, the honour and the glory.

The striking thing is that God always wins the battle, he always overcome the impossible situation no matter how impossible it might seem to us when we lay down our own desperate attempts and let him take over.

 

End Of The Spear

On Saturday, I when to Victor’s place to watch a movie on DVD with my other discipleship group members. The movie is a christian film named End of The Spear. “It is based on a true story of a group of Christian missionaries in Ecuador who set out to reach the Wadani tribe (a violent Ecuadorian tribe defined by revenge killing). When the 5 men from this group are speared to death by Mincayani and others in the tribe, the wives and children of those men move into the Wadani tribe to teach them about God.” I took this from some plot summary. Although personally for me, movies are more of a sort of entertainment, certain thoughts couldn’t help up flash in my mind after this movie. As it was based on a true story, I tend to perceive the drama and action as very realistic and true-to-life, especially the part when the missionaries got speared to death by the Wadani people. Not so much because they were speared to death, but more so, they did not retaliate or could not retaliate. When the son of missionary, Nate, asked him if he would fire his guns if the Wadani people attacked, shaking his head he replied in this manner, “They are not ready for heaven yet.” He had an eternal purpose in mind, that if he killed any of those Wadani people, they would end up eternally in hell. Hence, he had made up his mind to lose his life rather than retaliate from any attacks. Eventually, that was what happened to him and the others. They lost their lives refusing to fire their weapons at the attackers. This could paint 2 different pictures in people’s mind. In the world, this would be foolishness or extreme weakness. They all had guns. All they needed to do was to fire shots and they would have lived. But all they did was fire the guns into the air and took the spearing from the Wadanis. This is the first picture: Foolishness and Weakness. But if these men were foolish, wouldn’t Jesus Christ be the most foolish of all? He gave his life up to his enemies without retaliation, like a lamb that was going to be slained. Moreover, he wasn’t just man, he was God. Would that make God foolish? I recall a bible verse in 1 Corinthians 1:21: “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” As christians we ought to be “foolish” or being christians, we are already “foolish”, having believed a “foolish” message in the first place. But God is well-pleased in this “foolishness” that we can be sure of. For this “foolishness”,that the world reckons, isn’t true foolishness. On the contrary, it is the wisdom of God. For the passage continues in 1 Corinthians 1:25, 27 “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.” This men who gave their lives for the Wadani people had the foolishness and weakness of God. They did things that this world regarded as the foolish and weak, not retaliating to an attack, even to the point of our death. But in doing so, the wise and strong in the world is shamed. I was asking myself, would I have the courage to do what they did. No, I won’t. To do what they could do needed true strength. This is second and true picture painted: Wisdom and Strength. They walked the path that Jesus walked, giving up their lives as sacrifices for the sake of the lost. The true story ended, bearing much fruit, just as Jesus’s death did. The wives and children of those men move into the Wadani tribe and lived amongst them. By Wadani tradition, the children would avenge the father by killing the murderers. But instead, the family of the missionaries cared for them, providing medical support and logistics, even through a tough period of a polio outbreak in the Wadani tribe. That surprised the killers and convinced them thoroughly of God. It was love, grace and mercy that brought the Wadani tribe into faith in Jesus Christ, because evil was returned with good. What a explicit example of the passage in Matthew 5:39 that says: “Do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The missionaries and their families did just that. I imagined myself in the same situation as them. I wouldn’t have possibly done the same thing as they did. They lived as Jesus had lived and died as Jesus had died. Theirs was the sign of true discipleship, following in the footsteps of the master. What a great reminder this is about the calling of God to follow him!