The Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible, are filled with the stories of God creating a nation for Himself. From Adam and Eve through Moses, we read about His desire for fellowship with a people, His laws that enable them to enjoy that fellowship, their apparent inability to keep those laws, and His reactions and actions to bring them back.
We read about wars and slavery. Redemption…and destruction. We read about provision, disobedience, love, hatred, obedience, miracles, and a God who is very forthright in His expectations of His people.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob…called to be a people set apart. Following the leading of God in their journeys. Imperfect people following a perfect God. A perfect God who continually speaks into their imperfection, ever drawing them onward and closer to Him.
We read about Jacob, or Israel, settling in Egypt to survive a famine and becoming slaves to the government, which feared the size of this nation living among them.
And then comes Moses, who leads this people out of Egypt, into what would become their freedom, their home, and their country.
Through their own unbelief in the ability of their God to save them and to deliver this land to them, they end up walking in the wilderness for forty years. Forty years of learning more about God. Forty years of becoming.
We read about this people that God is concerned about. That He loves. That He has called out among the nations to be His representative peoples on this earth.
Finally, it comes time for them to take the land that they had been promised. They have miraculously crossed the Jordan River on dry land and have come to Jericho. Here, the troops are deployed around the city, and they are finally ready to attack.
When Joshua sees a Man standing before him with sword drawn. Somehow, Joshua recognizes that this is not just a man, and he approaches him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” Joshua 5:13
I know what my expectation in that moment would be. Joshua standing there, anointed by God to lead this people into the promised land. Told by Moses that they would take the land and none would stand against them. On the eve of their first battle to do what God had said as a nation. I would expect this man to say, “On your side, of course…”
But that’s not what he said. His answer gives me pause today. His answer makes me step back from all of the noise in our country. From all of the fighting, and all of the political jangling, and all of the ‘Republicans are right. No Democrats are.’ From all of the ‘We are the people of God, of course God fights for us.’
The man replied, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”
‘I haven’t come to fight for you. And I haven’t come to fight for them. I have come to fight for God.’
Even when this people, the called of God, the anointed by God, the ones who God had brought through the wilderness and called His own, even when this people went to war to take the land that He had promised them, even then, God did not take sides. He fought for His own glory. He fought for His own promise. His armies came to represent Him.
Not a faction. Not a political group. Not even a country.
‘But, He did fight for Israel,’ you might say. Yes, He did. In this instance He did. Because it served God’s purpose. There are many stories where He fought against Israel as well. Because the Lord’s armies fight for God.
When we stand up and say…no matter who we are…that God fights for us (In the larger sense), we are not backed up by Scripture.
God stands for right and holy. Not America. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not even Baptists, or Episcopalians, or Catholics, or Non-Denominational, or what have you.
God is not a spectator, and life is not a spectator sport. He is not cheering one side or another. God is love. His battle for His people took place on the cross, where He once and for all purchased our salvation. For the joy that was sent before Him, Christ endured the cross. (Heb 12:2) The joy of fellowship with me, with you.
When God rises up in battle now, He rises up for the individual. He prepares us for warfare (Gal 6) and tells us very plainly that we no longer fight against flesh and blood, but against spiritual strongholds.
God desires that none should perish (2 Pet 3:9) but that all should come to repentance. How does this fit into a Theology that calls on His Name to win wars, or to pass political legislation, or even to say you must think this way, walk this way, look this way to be a Chsitian? That we are America and our way is the right way, and God will give us victory no matter what we do? (Or we are Israel, for that matter?). We are the political party that God has chosen. We are the church that God has chosen. And so He will fight for us…
God wants you. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOEVER believes in Him would not perish.” (Greek word pas, meaning each, all in the individual sense of the word. Each and every person.) You, He wants you.
I started writing this blog to talk about my struggles in this current political climate in America. How I pray, and what I do, and where I land. And it may seem sometimes that I am coming down hard on one political party’s side. That I am saying, obviously, God supports this party over that. What I am trying to say, what I am trying to do, is to discern what God’s will is through all of this. Not what party I should belong to. Or what country I should be rooting for in a war. Because if I’m ‘in the Lord’s Army…Yes, sir!’ then I need to know what to fight for.
Because when the captain of the Lord’s armies comes to fight, he doesn’t come to fight for a nation or a group. He comes to fight for God. And God wants you.
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