Heroic: Addition by Subtraction with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

So good to see you here.

If you are new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

And uh we have been in our series called Heroic for quite some time now.

Uh, if you haven't been with us, one of the first things we learned is that the Bible actually has its own Hall of Fame, or what we've been calling in the series the Hall of Heroes.

It's in the New Testament in a letter called Hebrews, chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

And what we've been doing is trying to find out how we as individuals and as a collective movement can live heroic lives ourselves.

We believe here at MetaCurch that God takes ordinary people like you and I, people with incredible potential and power and purpose, who are also broken and jacked up in all our own unique ways.

God takes ordinary people and uses us to make an extraordinary impact on the world around us.

And so the idea is simple by really investigating the lives of some of the heroes of Scripture, we can find traits, virtues, and characteristics that, if we were to apply to our own life, would lead us to a heroic conclusion as well.

This week we're looking at a man named Gideon.

He's mentioned in verse 32.

It says, and what more can I say?

Time is too short for me to tell about Gideon, Barack, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the pros uh and the prophets.

Gideon helps us understand how to be heroic.

When everything we think we need in life is taken away.

Because of that, my message today is called addition by subtraction.

Addition by subtraction.

That is a phrase that is uh basically an oxymoron.

It doesn't really make any sense, and yet maybe you've even used this in your life.

Uh I didn't go to uh a super advanced level of math when I was in school.

As a matter of fact, two years ago, Lane was in ninth grade, and that was the moment I could no longer help him with his homework.

Like it had advanced beyond me.

So given that I I'm not a math genius, what I learned in math is that you cannot get an addition by taking things away.

You do not get more by subtracting.

And so while addition by subtraction doesn't make any sense mathematically, it makes plenty of sense in our everyday lived experience.

It's a saying that you've probably heard, and it's similar to a few other sayings.

One of them is that sometimes less is more, or that too much of a good thing can actually be a bad thing.

Addition by subtraction.

A piece of cake is good.

As a matter of fact, I love cake.

An entire cake, every meal, three meals a day, is not good.

As a matter of fact, it's actually deadly.

You have to subtract some of that in order to increase the quality.

Addition by subtraction is adding quality to something by subtracting the quantity of that thing.

I'm getting to watch this play out really practically in my own house.

Lane is about to turn 17.

He's like a young entrepreneur, he runs three different businesses, and all of them do pretty well.

Like it's crazy he's actually making money, and one of the things maybe he did or didn't get from me is a love of sneakers.

He's got an awesome sneaker collection.

And it seems like when he was younger, the idea was something like how many shoes can I possibly get?

Like, what is the highest number of sneakers I can put on my shelf?

But over time, his mindset has shifted.

And I'm watching, it's very interesting.

What he'll do is he'll take two or three pairs of cool shoes that just, you know, are kind of normal, and he'll sell all three of them in order to buy one pair that's very rare.

Maybe it was limited release or a collaboration with someone that was really, really popular.

And so over time, he has subtracted the number of shoes that he owns, but he has actually added to the overall quality and even to the overall investment of his collection.

He's thinking about it differently.

It's addition by subtraction.

This is a very hard concept to grasp because we live in a culture that doesn't teach addition by subtraction.

It teaches addition by addition by addition by addition.

We live in a consumer culture that tries to convince you that you are so close to happiness, you're so close to satisfaction, you are so close to finally feeling significant, all you need is a little bit more.

Rockefeller, back in the day, the richest man in the world, was asked, How much money do you need?

And his famous answer was one more dollar.

What he was saying is there's no such thing as enough.

And we think if we just get enough money or enough credibility or enough power or enough influence, if we have enough hookups, if we have enough followers on social media, we think if we can just add and add and add that eventually we'll have everything we need to finally be fulfilled in life.

And yet there is never enough.

And if you think that the answer to all of your problems lies on the other side of addition by addition by addition, all you have to do is take five minutes and think just in your lifetime of the people who had it all, the celebrities who had more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime, who had more influence than the next 10,000 people combined, who had more and more and more and yet took their own lives anyway.

We can just look around, and if our eyes are open and if we're paying attention, it's not hard to see that the pursuit of adding and adding and adding and adding eventually leaves you emptier than where you started.

I believe scripture gives us a picture of addition by subtraction, of increasing the quality of your life by getting the wrong things out of your life.

And for some of you, your marriages are in real trouble.

And for some of you, your parenting seems like it is on really shaky ground.

And for some of you, at the same time, you're working 60, 80 hours a week.

You don't feel like you know your kids, but you know you're providing for them.

And at the end of the day, you might have to subtract some overtime so that you can add some time of quality into your kids and into your family.

And for some of you, you have a very big social circle, but you don't have any real friendships that go beyond the surface level.

And maybe you need to subtract some of the time that you're investing into trying and trying to build more social credibility and more influence and actually add some real time to get to know people at a level that will push you forward and grow you as a human being.

Addition by subtraction is critical if we are going to live the heroic life.

And no one demonstrates that better than Gideon.

Before we jump into scripture, would you pray with me?

Father, we love you and we thank you for loving us.

We are jumping into a concept that is a struggle just because our culture constantly pushes us in a completely different direction.

And so I ask that, especially today, we would truly open our minds and our hearts, that we would allow you to speak to us.

And God, my words alone are never enough.

They are never sufficient.

And so I ask that your spirit would take these words, God, and they would they would plant them directly in the minds and hearts of the people listening exactly what they need to hear, God, that you would speak to us.

You would continue to change us and to move us.

We love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to add through subtraction, say, Amen.

Amen.

We said it every week, but as we've been really examining these biblical heroes, one of the things that has just jumped off the pages is just how ordinary these people are.

Growing up in church, I would think of the great heroes of scripture, like Noah and Abraham and Moses and Samson, like they might as well be in the Justice League.

These were like real-life superheroes.

And what we would focus on is all the extraordinary aspects of who they were and what they did.

But when you really examine their stories, you see these were ordinary, broken, flawed, jacked up people like you and like me.

And it's been such an encouragement.

Because what it means is that no matter what you've done in life, no matter where you've been, no matter what habits you are currently stuck in, God is looking for ordinary people who are willing to give themselves to his purposes and you can live a life that affects change in the world as well.

Gideon is no different.

If you know his story, you know at the end of it, he's like one of the greatest warriors in scripture.

But at the beginning, he shows up as one of the greatest cowards in scripture.

In the Old Testament book of Judges, chapter six, we meet Gideon.

It says, The angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash.

And his son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites.

We need like two minutes of context to make sense of the story at all.

In the Old Testament, which is also the Jewish scriptures, the Israelites were God's chosen people.

What that meant is that the nation of Israel was God's vehicle for his plan of redemption and rescue of humanity.

The same way that today the church is God's vehicle to push forward his mission.

That was Israel in the Old Testament.

Gideon grew up in Israel, and if you followed God, the nation was prosperous.

God would protect them.

They lived under his blessing.

However, that wasn't Gideon's experience.

A neighboring country called Midian had come in and taken Israel captive.

The Midianites worshipped false gods.

They were pagans and they were involved in cultic pagan practices that flew directly in the face of God's law and God's commandments.

Now, Gideon was doing his job.

He was threshing wheat.

Now they didn't have advanced technology, so the way that you thresh wheat is you grind the wheat up.

And there's a problem because there is wheat and there is chaff.

And your job is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And the way that they would do this is they would gather it together, they would go up, usually on a hilltop where it was very windy, and they would toss the wheat in the air.

The chaff was lighter than the wheat, so the wind would carry it away, and you would catch what was left, which was the wheat.

Now, Gideon, because of his fear of Midian, who had come in and taken over God's people, he was threshing wheat down in the wine press.

A wine press was like a basement.

It was built down into the ground.

What that means is Gideon was threshing wheat, a job that requires wind, down under the earth.

And I'm not a meteorologist, but under the earth, there's no wind.

He is down there making his job all but impossible, and he's doing it because he is afraid of the Midianites.

He's afraid that if he is seen, they will take his produce or maybe even take his life.

And so he's hiding out.

And it begins to betray Gideon's mindset, his inner narrative of what he thinks about himself.

We won't read it today, but later in Judges 6, he says straight out what he thinks about himself.

He's speaking to the angel of the Lord, and he says, Look, dude, I am from like the smallest, weakest family in town, and I'm the youngest of all of the brothers.

I am the weakest of the weakest.

I am like the biggest loser, the loser of the losers.

This is how Gideon thinks about himself.

And it makes the next verse all the more remarkable.

In verse 12, it says, Then the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, The Lord is with you, valiant warrior.

Hiding down in a wine press, threshing wheat in the most impossible manner, scared for his life, scared for his livelihood, no courage, no bravery, no fortitude.

And the Lord shows up and says, You, Gideon, are a valiant warrior.

Now we know that God doesn't get things wrong, but at this point, you have to wonder, did the angel get the wrong address?

You know?

Like Gideon knows himself, valiant warrior.

He's like, I don't know if you use Google Maps or Apple Maps to get here, but one of one of them gets you here, one of them.

This this doesn't, this is unrecognizable.

Gideon, valiant warrior.

Last week we talked about finding our identity.

It's been a thread all throughout this heroic series.

And it's been a thread precisely for the reason that the heroes of Scripture did not start in their heroicism.

They started as ordinary, flawed, broken people.

Abraham didn't start as the father of nations, as the patriarch of the lineage of the savior of the world.

He started as a grown man who hadn't moved out of his parents' house.

He was like the world's first millennial.

His parents couldn't get rid of him.

He had to have a new identity before he discovered a new purpose.

Identity is so key.

And it's so key because we're broken people living in a broken world.

And because we are broken and living in a broken world, we end up developing broken identities and broken false narratives.

What Gideon thinks about himself is in direct opposition to what God says about Gideon.

And all of us have false narratives.

These are the scripts that run through our minds again and again and again.

These are the lies that we have allowed into our life that keep us stuck and hold us back from our God-given purpose.

These are the voices that the closer you get to breaking through and living a significant life, the closer you get to following God's call on your life, the closer that you get to really living out your purpose, the louder and louder and louder the voices become.

Gideon's story is showing us the first of three categories of addition by subtraction that we have to figure out if we're going to live a heroic life.

We first have to get your mind right.

You see, false narratives keep you hiding.

God called Gideon a valiant warrior.

But the truth is that he was a warrior.

He was stuck down in the wine press of his life, hiding from his true potential, and you're not hiding in a wine press, but there's a good chance you're hiding behind your worries.

And what are those voices?

The question that Gideon's story begs is what do you really, honestly think about you?

And for some of you, your marriage is always up and down, and you're always fighting the inner narrative that says, your parents didn't stay together, their parents didn't stay together, your first marriage didn't last, you cheated on everyone you love, it's going to happen again.

You might as well give up now.

You struggle in your parenting.

And of course you did.

You never had an example set for you.

The way that they handled things was either silence, ignoring you, enabling you, beating you.

How are you supposed to be a good parent?

And it just runs in your head.

And every time you have trouble with your kids, it's like, of course I don't know how to do this.

Of course I'm ill-prepared.

Of course I don't know how to parent.

Of course I overreact.

Of course I get physical.

These are the voices over and over and over again.

It's like, how am I supposed to change the world?

I barely got a GED.

And every time you get close to taking that step of faith or starting that business or stepping out and believing something about yourself and why God has you on this earth, the voice is there to remind you.

You're gonna do what?

You didn't graduate high school.

You had to go back as an adult.

You barely passed it then.

And the closer you get to your purpose and the closer you get through breakthrough, the louder and louder and louder.

What do you believe about you?

Gideon said, Dude, smallest family in town, weakest family in town, I'm the youngest of all of them.

They're screwed up, I'm screwed up, probably my kids will be screwed up.

That's just the way it is.

I'm in a wine press threshing wheat.

You think I'm proud of myself?

And the angel of the Lord showed up and said, The Lord is with you.

Valiant warrior.

And the broken records that are repeating again and again and again in your mind are lies that were not placed there by God.

They do not line up to what God says about you.

And at the core of who you are, if you cannot believe that you have worth, you cannot believe that you have value, you cannot believe that you are lovable, you must begin to investigate what the God of the universe who created you says about you.

You must begin to realize that you have so much value and so much worth, you have so much purpose inside of you that the perfect God who is above it all came down into the midst of our brokenness and gave his life for you.

What God has to say about you is infinitely more true than what you think about yourself or what the world around you has spoken into your life.

So, what do we do about this?

Addition by subtract.

And if you can subtract the false, broken stories that are holding you back, God is not only willing, but he's ready.

He is on the edge of his seat, desperate to show you, to add to your mind, to add to your soul, to add to your understanding exactly who it is that he created you to be, to push past all the layers of just crap and nonsense that the world has piled on top of you.

He wants to add power and potential and perspective.

He wants to add it, but we must make room, addition through subtraction.

And if you can go to battle, and if you can begin to engage with your false, broken narratives, dismember them and disregard them, God will add to you the truest source of your identity.

Before Gideon could do anything, he had to get his mind right.

Hundreds of years ago, the great philosopher Descartes said, I think, therefore, I am.

And your thoughts and the narratives you have about yourself are driving your life more than almost any other single factor.

Gideon's story continues, and there's quite a bit more subtraction to come.

After he began to get his mind right, God had work for him to do.

Gideon has some pushback.

The angel of the Lord came, said, Here's what we're gonna do.

You're gonna be in charge, command the troops, we're gonna go into Midian, we're gonna take them out, we're gonna get our land back.

And Gideon has some pushback.

In verse 13, Gideon said to him, Please, if the Lord is with us, why has all of this happened?

And where are all of his wonders that our ancestors told us about?

They said, hasn't the Lord brought us out of Egypt?

But now the Lord has abandoned us.

He's handed us over to Midian.

Fair questions.

Gideon has grown up hearing about how they're the chosen people, and anytime Israel's in a pinch, man, God really shows up.

He's heard about the miracles, they get trapped at the Red Sea, the waters part.

They get trapped at Jericho, the walls come tumbling down.

But that's not his experience.

His experience is growing up under the captivity of foreign pagan invaders, losing again and again and again to Midian when God had said he would bless them.

It's a fair question.

And yet, God so often is so loving and he's so kind and he's so patient that he doesn't always reveal with direct answers.

A lot of times he just patiently moves us along and helps us come to our own understanding.

You know, we're so smart, right?

Like we have all the answers and we know how to fix things, and this world is broken.

But if we were just in charge of the world, man, things would be fixed really, really quickly.

And so, so often we want to argue with God, and the only picture I can come up with is like when you're arguing with your two-year-old, you know, and they barely know how to talk, and it's like, man, you're cute.

Also, you don't know anything.

Like, like the levels here are so different.

That's us trying to argue with God, and God is so loving and patient, he just brings us to the truth.

Gideon pushes back.

He's like, Look, man, you abandoned us.

Great story, bro, but I'm I've been under Midian my whole life.

And the angel doesn't even regard his questions.

He doesn't respond in any way.

And then, 12 verses later, in verse 25, it says, On that very night, the Lord said to Gideon, Take your father's young bull and a second bull, and then tear down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father, and cut down the ashera pole beside it.

Now, these are like terms that you might not be familiar with, but Baal was the preeminent god of Midian, a false god.

And on getting Family property, there was a statue, an altar that had been put up in worship of a false god.

Next to it was the Asherah pole.

And Asherah was like the female counterpart to Baal, and they worshipped Asherah because she was supposed to be in charge of fertility and reproduction.

And so to Baal they would put together like a stone monument, and to Asherah, they would carve out of wood a pole that was sexually explicit to say the least.

And they would put them in their yards and they would bow down and worship these false idols.

God is answering his question with a command.

You see, all throughout the Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures, God is clear.

If you worship me and if you follow me, you will have provision, you will have protection, you will live under my blessing.

But if you worship other gods, I will remove my hand and they will overtake you.

What is God showing Gideon?

He's saying, God did not abandon you.

You abandoned God.

And so he tells Gideon, before you get to battle, before you show off your valiant warrior skills, you gotta get your mind right and you gotta take care of some idols.

In verse 26, he says, Build a well-constructed altar to the Lord your God on the top of this mountain, and take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the asteroid you cut down.

This is called a flex.

This is God showing the entire nation exactly what is up.

This is God marking his territory.

He said, Tear down Baal, make an altar out of those stones, tear down Asherah, cut it up for kindling, take your sacrifice, and show all of Israel who the one true God is.

God is done playing games.

He is ready to take his people back.

In verse 27, it says, Gideon took ten of his male servants and did as the Lord told him, but because he was too afraid of his father's family and the men in the city to do it in the daytime, he did it at night.

And this is indicative of just how immersed Israel had become in the worship of false gods.

Gideon was right.

In the next verses, the people of town show up and they want to kill him.

They are so dedicated to these idols and their own idolatry, they are so dedicated to turning their back on the one true God that they want to kill Gideon just for him tearing down the false idols that were holding them back.

You have to get your mind right.

You have to break free of false narratives.

But you also have to practice addition by subtraction, not just by getting your mind right, but by getting your house in order.

We live in a world where everyone feels like they have the answer to every problem.

And it feels like a little bit of a generational thing, you know?

Like baby boomers were like, hey, we're on Earth, we should probably work hard, hopefully have some money for retirement, have some kids, and try to stay out of trouble.

And then Gen X was kind of in between, and somehow the millennials showed up and were like, just because I was born, I should probably change the world.

Like something has shifted where everyone assumes they should be in charge of everything, and they have the answers to all of the issues in all of the world.

And now we all have a platform to signal our virtue and to push forward all of our own great ideas on social media.

But here's the problem: you know these people, and you know that the very people who are arguing and trying to put their path forward to fix all of the issues in the world don't even have their own life put together.

They want to tell everyone how to live, and yet their marriages are falling apart, their kids are out of control, their finances are upside down, their health is deteriorating, and yet, even though they are a mess, they can fix the rest of the world's solutions.

Wherever you fall politically, left, right, in the middle, up, down, I think it's time that we say if you think that you can put a country back together, you better be able to keep your house together.

If you think you can fix all of society's problems, you better have some social skills yourself.

Here's a general rule of living a heroic life.

Until you can be heroic in your own house, you are not qualified to be heroic for the rest of the world.

So often we can point at all the flaws and all the problems and offer all of the solutions, and yet all of these things that we can't control, we put our energy towards while ignoring the very few things that we can control.

You gotta get your house in order.

When you don't do this, you end up with authors of best-selling marriage books getting divorced.

They can tell you how to do it, but they don't have their own house in order.

You end up with pastors building huge ministries, preaching hellfire and damnation on everyone else, meanwhile, sweeping their sins at home under the rug.

Gideon's gonna be one of the greatest warriors in all of scripture.

And yet, before God calls him to the front lines, he calls them back to his family's house.

He has a big problem in the way.

At the house he grew up in, on their property, there are statues erected to false gods.

The very reason that Israel has come under God's judgment.

We all want to change the world.

But we must start by getting our house in order.

And this will mean significant subtraction.

Gideon had to risk his life tearing down these idols, chopping up the ash aeropole, sacrificing his father's animals as a display of God's dominance.

And you know, chances are you don't have like an altar to Baal in your front yard, you know?

Hopefully, you don't have an ash aeropole because your HOA is probably gonna call pretty soon.

That will be inappropriate.

But I was thinking while I was preparing this message, that might actually be an advantage.

Like, in order to worship our own false gods, if it required us to build 10-foot monuments in our front yard, at least we would have to own it.

At least we couldn't deceive ourselves into thinking that our worship only goes to Jesus.

At least we would have to actually put our hands on something.

And the truth is, many of the most sinister things you will ever come under in your life will be the most subtle things that you come under in your life.

And we don't build 10-foot statues to false idols.

What we do is we cram them back into the corners of our phones that we live with in our pockets and sleep with under our pillows.

And if you think just because you're not getting on your knees and bowing down to wood or rocks that you don't have false gods in your life, then you don't understand what an idol is.

Idols are anything that take our worship away from God.

Worship looks like giving your time, your energy, your resources.

But more than that, worship is when you give your expectation and your hope to something other than God.

We've got to get our houses in order.

And it starts with getting your mind right because many of the idols we develop are idols that we use to alleviate the pain of broken narratives that we live with.

You get your mind right, you can start getting your house in order.

You can start seeing the people, places, and things that you have put the weight of expectation and the weight of hope on.

And I promise, live long enough, you'll learn they can't handle the weight of it.

And so many people worship their money.

And so a pandemic comes and you lose your job and you lose your income, and when you lose your income, you think you've lost your life.

It couldn't hold the weight of your expectation or the weight of your hope.

It is time to begin to subtract the false gods out of your life so that worship will go to the one and only true God, so you can lose a job and you can lose an income, and that's a big heartbreaking thing.

But you can know that your faith is secure because it was never in things of this world in the first place.

And some of you are worshiping your kids.

And if your kid doesn't grow up to take over the family business or make lots of money, if your kid doesn't go to Harvard or Baylor or wherever you went, and if your kid doesn't grow up and make the major leagues, even though they're eight years old right now, then like it's like your world is gonna be shattered.

And please listen, you cannot worship a child and parent a child at the same time.

Some of you worship your spouses, and I'm sure you got a great spouse, but they cannot hold the weight of your hope.

You are putting a burden on them they did not sign up for, and the weight will crush them and maybe the marriage in the process.

We have to get our house in order, and there's very few things we can control in life.

You can't control a pandemic, you can't control the actions of other people, you can't control your company, much less your boss.

There's so many things we can't control, and so much of our time is dedicated to worrying about the things outside of our control and abdicating the very few things that we can control.

And you can control going to battle with the false narratives that are holding you back, the scripts that run through your mind.

You can speak truth to them, you can get in God's word and allow the light of God's truth to illuminate the lies and dispel them from your life.

You can't control many things, but you can get your house in order.

You can look at where your time, energy, and resources go.

You can see the things that you have put the weight of your hope and the weight of your expectation on.

You can repent of those things, change your mind about them, and give that hope and expectation to the only one who can actually bear it.

Addition by subtraction, we have to remove the false gods and idols out of our life to add the power of the one true God into our life.

Finally, it was time for the military conquest.

If you know the story of Gideon, this is probably the part that you know.

God cemented Gideon as the leader of the Israelite troops, and a call went out to join the ranks.

32,000 men showed up.

It's a large army, but they needed all the help they could get.

Midian was a far superior fighting force.

We know that because Midian has already taken Israel captive.

They've already been beat once.

32,000 men show up.

It was then in Judges 7, verse 2, the Lord said to Gideon, You have too many men.

Judges 7:2

Okay.

This is the part, if I'm Gideon, that it's like, I got it.

Addition by subtraction, you know, you gotta subtract, you know, in your mental health to add, you gotta subtract the false idols.

But the military, like, the military is an area where quantity and quality seem to go hand in hand.

If you're gonna get jumped by five guys, do you want ten guys with you or two?

It's not a trick question.

The more people, the more fighting force, and God says, You have too many men.

I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, thinking my own strength has saved me.

And so announced to the army: anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.

And so, started with 32,000.

22,000 men left.

Over two-thirds of Gideon's army is subtracted.

We've learned ever since week one of this series that the number one virtue you have to live have to have to live a heroic life is you have to have faith.

He had the faith to fight his inner narratives and get out of the wine press.

He had the faith to get his house in order and knock down the idols.

Now Gideon has to have the faith to go against a far superior fighting force with only one third of the army he started with.

And Gideon does it.

To his credit, he is still ready to fight.

And this is the point where we start putting expectation on God.

I did the thing and I knocked down the things, and then they left, and I'm still in.

So now it's time, God, now it's time for you to bring the blessing, you know?

Like now it's time for one of my guys to invent the grenade launcher, you know, like let's get some kind of advantage because we are down in numbers in verse 4.

But the Lord said to Gideon, there are still too many men.

Still too many, which again, militarily speaking, is kind of not a thing.

It's hand-to-hand combat.

You know, they're not flying helicopters around at each other.

This is like I fight you, you fight me.

Still too many men.

God puts them in through like the weirdest social experiment of all time.

In verse 5, Gideon took the men down to the water, and the Lord told him, Separate those who lap the water with their tongues as a dog laps, from those who kneel down to drink.

And three hundred of them drank from cupped hands, lapping like dogs, and all the rest got on their knees to drink.

So Gideon takes them down to a river, and there's basically two strategies to drinking water.

The first one is you get down on your knees and you put your face in the water, kind of like the world's biggest water fountain, and you can directly drink the water out of the stream, like someone with a brain.

And then the other strategy is to stay standing and to get water in your hands, and as it's leaking out through all the cracks in your fingers, to like slurp it up to the best of your ability.

And so it's kind of obvious what's going on here.

God is like separating out the people who are intelligent from all of the idiots in camp, you know?

It's like, good job, God.

You know, we'll take this 9,700, those 300 probably would have slowed us down.

In verse 7, the Lord said to Gideon, with the 300 men that lapped like dogs, I will save you.

And I would give the Midianites into your hands, and let all of the other 9,700 men go home.

And it's hard because I grew up hearing this story, and the question that would always get answered is like, or get asked was, What was that about?

You know, like is God proving something?

Like I can win with the dumbest people in the group, or like what exactly is going on here?

And and really, people struggle to give an answer.

As a matter of fact, even scholars really struggle to give an answer.

It took me 30 years, and I finally looked in a Jewish commentary, and from a Jewish perspective, it was very obvious what this was about.

You see, this all started with the problem of Israel worshiping the gods of other nations.

And the practice and the tradition to worship gods like Baal and the Asherah was to get down on your knees and bow down before them.

As a matter of fact, this was such an ingrained tradition, and getting on your knees was so closely correlated to the worship of idols that the few people in Israel who were sold out to the worship of the one true God, the few actual Orthodox Israelites left, made it a practice to never be seen on their knees in public, fearing that it would give someone the opportunity to think that they worship something other than God.

9,700 men got down on their knees.

Either they worshiped idols themselves, or they didn't care if someone thought that they worshiped idols, and they all got sent home.

From 32,000 to 300, and how did we get there?

Well, the first 22,000 left because they weren't able to get their mind right.

Anyone who is afraid, anyone who is living with a fearful false narrative, anyone who is living without the faith that God will see you through can go on down the road.

Not only that, God said, if I were to win for them, they would brag, thinking they had done it themselves.

Their false narratives disqualified them from the victory.

The next 9,700 who left, it seems like they had their minds right, but they did not have their houses in order.

They were still worshiping other gods.

And God said, You will have no other gods except for me.

He sent them home and set out to prove that God can do more with 300 who have their minds right and their houses in order than man can do with an army.

This teaches us our third category.

We have to get our minds right.

You have to get your house in order and you have to get your circle straight.

And we all have a circle.

At Metachurch, we call it your circle of influence.

These are the people that you have allowed to have influence in your life socially.

We call it a circle of influence because you influence them, but importantly, they also influence you.

And we all have a circle.

You may not have a MySpace top eight anymore.

You may not have an ATT circle of five that you can call long distance without getting charged.

Gen Z thinks I'm speaking in tongues right now.

We all have a circle.

Some of you are introverted, you have three people, and that's all you need.

Some of you are on the other end of the spectrum, you have 15 best friends.

But it is worth taking an honest inventory of who we are allowing to speak into our life.

Psychologists say that you will become a combination of the five people that you allow closest to you in life.

Who we put in our circle matters.

And we're talking about addition by subtraction.

But I want to make something very clear.

We're not talking necessarily about subtracting people out of your life.

And this gets dangerous because one of the huge mistakes I think the church, especially in the West, has made over the last hundred years is they've decided that all the Christians, all the good people, are gonna get together and we're gonna bunker down, we're gonna close our circle really tight, we're gonna spend all of our time together, we're gonna have our own little weird Christianese language, we're gonna make fun and judge all the bad people out there, and we're not gonna come in proximity to them.

And Jesus.

Jesus hung out with the people in society who the religious elite would never step foot in front of.

Jesus did not subtract out of his circle.

The apostle Paul said, We are not fighting against flesh and blood.

We are in a spiritual battle.

The mistake the church has made is thinking that it's us against them.

And I'm here to tell you the people of God do not fight against people, we fight for them.

And what you need to know about getting your circle straight is that in order for you to pour out, in order for you to fight for, you must be filled up.

Take an inventory of your circle and see who are you fighting for and who are you fighting with.

And a lot of times we come to Jesus late in life and we have our circle set.

And if you're honest, you're giving 5% of your time to people in your circle who are mature and godly, who have wisdom, who can bring you along and set an example of the life that you could be living, and 95% of your proximity you're giving to people who are keeping you stuck in the same vicious cycles that you're desperate to get out of.

I'm not saying subtract people out of your life.

I am saying that you may need to subtract time in order to add time around people who can fill you up so that you can pour yourself out.

Your circle matters.

And if we can get our circle right, then we can get our mission right.

You have to get your mind right, you have to get your house in order, you have to get your circle straight.

If we will trust God with the subtraction, he will bring the additions that we so desperately need.

If you think about Gideon, he had to have like everything he had and all the things he thought he needed stripped away.

He had to subtract his false narratives, he had to subtract the false gods in his life.

He had to subtract two-thirds of his army.

And if that wasn't enough, he had to subtract all the way down to only 300 men.

And subtraction can be an incredibly painful process.

I tried to imagine being Gideon, getting ready to go to battle against a far superior fighting force, putting your life on the line, watching 31,700 people walk away.

Subtraction can be painful.

But in it is one of life's greatest gifts.

Subtraction brings the full force of focus to your life.

And if you really believe that you were created on purpose, that it matters that you're here on earth.

If you really believe that you were created with a purpose, that God wants to use all that you are and all that you have to make a difference in this world, finding that life will require focus.

We live in a world of addition by addition by addition, getting more and more and more.

And so we get busier and busier schedules, and we get more and more voices speaking into our life, and there's more and more distractions coming into our families, and there's more and more temptation that is trying to get us off course.

The heroic life requires subtraction.

It requires speaking truth to the false narratives in your mind that are holding you back from the step of faith you need to take.

It requires subtracting the false idols, the false Gods, anything you're giving your worship to that isn't the one true God, it requires subtraction and who you are allowing the most influence in your life and in your social circle.

Subtraction can be incredibly painful.

The hero's journey was never promised to be easy.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

And although it is painful, it is the path to the life you were created to live.

And if we can trust God with the subtraction, we know we have faith, we believe that He will bring the addition, the addition of your actual purpose that goes right to the core of your being, the addition of peace.

Can you imagine peace in this chaotic world we're living in?

The addition of hope, even when everything is falling apart, the addition of victory and legacy that lasts not just beyond this life, but beyond this world.

Bring the addition of the heroic life that you were created to live.

Addition by subtraction.

This is the heroic path.

Gideon was left with only 300 men.

Everything had been subtracted out of his life.

At least he thought.

Finally, it was time to go to battle.

In verse 16, it says, dividing the 300 into three companies, Gideon placed trumpets and empty jars in all of their hands with torches inside another subtraction.

You're going to battle.

It's like I want at a minimum swords, better spears, better slingshots, better bows and arrows.

You're going to war.

You want more and more and more.

And yet they lay down their arms and they pick up trumpets and jars.

And so here's what Gideon did.

Under the Lord's command, he put the company all around the hills, surrounding the valley that Midian was camping in.

They went up at night when it was pitch black outside.

And in verse 20 we read, The three companies blew the trumpets and smashed the jars, grasping their torches in their left hands and holding in their right hands the trumpets they were to blow, and they shouted a sword for the Lord and for Gideon.

And while each man held his position around the camp, all of the Midianites ran, crying out as they fled.

And when the three hundred trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords.

The Midianites killed each other without Israel ever having to lift a weapon.

God did more with the 300 than Gideon could have ever done with the 32,000.

Gideon trusted God with the subtraction, and God does what he always does.

He brings an addition that we just can't imagine.

In the last 18 months, we have lived in forced subtraction.

This pandemic has taken something from all of us.

For many of you, you lost your job, your income.

Many of you lost loved ones in the last 18 months.

For some of you, you just lost some of your space.

You lost the schedule that you were used to, you lost comfort, you lost some freedom.

We all lost.

And it can be so difficult to understand seasons of subtraction.

But if you can believe that the heroic journey requires addition by subtraction, you can trust God with it.

We were just like up and to the right.

The entire time Metachurch had existed.

As a matter of fact, March 1st, 2020, we began a campaign to fund a permanent space for us, where we have room more than one day a week, where we can run programs seven days a week, where we can have real space, a kids' area that actually holds all the kids, all the things we've been dreaming about.

And then, you know, March 9th hit, and the world closes down, and it was 15 days, and then it was 30 days, and then it was 90 days, and then it was six months, and it's like, God, I just don't understand.

We have faith of what you're wanting to do through this movement, but we're just in a season of subtraction.

And here's what I know I know I can't control a global pandemic.

And I know I can't control the divisive actions of the culture that we're living in.

But God has given us many things we can control and we can get our minds right.

Whatever God has for you and whatever purpose He wants to unleash through you, you can start by battling the false narratives that are holding you back.

You can take steps to get your house in order.

You can put your life under the illuminating light of God's word and see all the areas where you are not lined up to his truths.

You can handle your money in a godly manner, you can manage your relationships in a godly manner, you can take care of your well-being in a godly manner, you can parent in a godly manner, you can get your house in order, you can get your circle straight.

You can be intentional, not just about who you're spending time with, but how much influence you are giving the people around you.

If you can begin to embrace the subtraction, you will put yourself in position and you can have faith that God will bring an addition.

Probably an addition that you can't imagine.

Would you pray with me?

God, this is a tough one.

Naturally, I think we're all averse to subtraction.

We don't like it.

And yet we see over and over again that there are seasons where we must give up, where we must have faith that with less you can do more.

That if we will lower the quantity of our expectation, that you will increase the quality of our life and well-being, our purpose and potential.

God, I pray that we would speak your truth to the broken records in our minds, that we would line our lives up to how you've called us to live.

God, that you would show us.

God, as obvious as an altar to Baal in our front yard, you would show us the idols in our life.

Even right now, you would bring to mind the false gods we are giving our worship to.

We would get our house in order, God.

We would take honest inventory of our social circle.

There are people that we may think we are influencing, but if we are honest, it is them influencing us.

And through your power, we believe that we can be engaged in the battle, not against anybody, but for the sake of the world.

We love you, God.

We thank you for how you love us, how you teach us.

And we pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.