Josh 5:13-15 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” 14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?” 15 The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. NIV
In Joshua, chapter 5, Joshua is about to cross over Jordan with the people of Israel. They have by that time been tested, tried and trained in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses, the patriarch is dead, and Joshua is the new leader of the army of Israel. They are now finally crossing into the Promised Land to capture it for the Lord’s purposes. They have not yet fought the battle of Jericho, but it is next on the agenda given them by God.
As the priests step into the Jordan River, it parts for them allowing a dry pathway for the people to cross over, highly reminiscent of the parting of the Red Sea. On that day, the manna ceases and they become reliant on the providence of God delivered through the prosperity of the Promised Land.
They have entered into their future home, a country delivered to them by the hand of God Himself. They have circumcised all the men of Israel, the first time this generation has been so dedicated to the Lord. They have celebrated Passover for the first time in the Promised Land. They are ready to proceed.
Suddenly they are confronted by “a man with a drawn sword.” His presence is awesome and obviously supernatural. Joshua goes forward to address this extraordinary being, and in doing so, asks him a question that is as old as man and as relevant as our modern times, “Are you for us or are you for our adversaries?”
The answer as given in the scripture above is equally relevant to us as it was to Joshua. The supernatural warrior is neither for them nor for their enemies, but rather He commands the angelic armies of God. Quickly He reveals to Joshua and the people
that He is indeed God Himself (Jesus to be specific). This is clearly understood in His call for them to worship Him.
Supernatural beings or messengers (angelos in Latin) from God often appear to people in the Old Testament, such as to Adam, Eve, Abraham (several times), Sarah, Hagar, Jacob,
Samson’s parents, Moses, the prophets, etc., and also to people in the New Testament, such as Zachary, Mary, Joseph, Paul on the Damascus Road, Cornelius, and many others.
Sometimes these supernatural beings are angels and sometimes they are Theophanes (appearances of God in bodily form) or Christophanes (appearance of the 2nd person of the Trinity in bodily form). One clear way to tell is whether or not they accept worship. If they say, “Do not worship me,” they are angels, but if they allow or require worship, they are appearances of God. Joshua’s “messenger” (angelos) above is clearly divine, specifically the 2nd person of the Trinity.
For our purposes here, it is not as important to know exactly who the “angel” is as it is to understand exactly what He is saying to us. It is common to us all to want God to be on our side in any matter, but God is never on our side nor is He ever on the side of our enemies.
God is always on His own side. It is incumbent upon us to align ourselves with Him. He is not our vassal, our servant or the tool of our desires. In the angel’s response to Joshua,
we can hear the words of Jesus who said, “I do the things that please My Father,” “I and the Father are one,” “I do nothing on My own accord,” and many similar sayings.
Jesus came to serve the Father, not to be served. If Jesus was clear that it was the will of God and not His own that He should learn and perform, how can we possibly think any differently? It is only hubris that we think otherwise.
I often joke with my highly conservative group of students that God is not a Democrat. It is true, but it is equally true that God is not a Republican or a libertarian or a socialist or a capitalist nor is He aligned with any other political ideology. God does not side with us. He expects us to side with Him.
No political party or ideology has it right. All groups are partially right and partially wrong. God is not a Baptist or a Catholic or a Buddhist or a Mormon. All of these groups hold some of the truth, but no denomination or theological camp fully represents God and His thinking. We will all sit around the campfire in heaven and talk about why we got a “D” on our term paper.
God wants us to believe the scriptures concerning its doctrinal teachings, but He is equally or more adamant that we take care of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the alien and the marginalized. God values the first great commandment to “love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul and mind, but He equally values the second great commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Says Walter Brueggemann, one of my most influential professors, “Orthodoxy (right belief) is invalid without orthopraxy (right practice).” James tells us that true faith is evidenced by good works (see below).
James 2:14-26 What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. 18 But someone may well say, “You have faith, and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” 19 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. 20 But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works, when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. NASB
So let us not fall into the trap of thinking that God is on our side. Let us come to understand that God will support our efforts when we are on His side and as long as we are doing His will.
Rom 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. NASB
Too long we have been co-opted by the political parties trying to control our votes using the Bible to deceive us. In the 1970’s the religious right through men like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly and many others, appealed to our evangelical beliefs to persuade us to vote Republican.
Little by little they began to equate the Bible and the Republican Party platform. They tried to tell us that God was on their side, and all too often they succeeded. May God forgive them, and us for listening to them.
As a young enthusiastic pastor, I jumped on the bandwagon with both feet. I wrote an Action Newsletter to my people and joined the board of the Kentucky Chapter of the Right to Life. That was not all wrong, but it was not all right either. I eventually found myself abandoning my calling as a teacher of God’s word to become a shill, a mouthpiece for Republican Party thinking.
Eventually, I found myself at odds with the scriptures and the nature of Jesus in some very important areas. To be Pro-life made biblical sense to me (still does),but why did that mean I also had to hate homosexuals as the party rhetoric suggested? To be against quotas seemed right to me (still does) but why did that mean I must be against social justice?
The same problem cropped up in the area of denominational Christianity. To believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Second Coming and the Millennial Reign seemed right to me (still does), but did that mean I should not emphasize feeding the poor and compassion towards sinners?
All too often I encountered leaders and Christian thinkers who stated unequivocally, “You are either for us or against us!” There was something tearing at my conscience in all of this, so I backed up and took a deeper look at the scriptures. What did Jesus really say? What does the Bible really teach? What I found is that God’s truth is reflected in many places and “truth does not care who has it.” Paul told the Corinthians that even the gentiles had truth as well as error.
Rom 2:11-16 For there is no partiality with God. 12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law; and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; 13 for not the hearers of the Law are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. NASB
Ultimately truth is found in God’s word, God’s Torah and God’s behaviors. It is to this standard that we must cling at all times regardless of how it lines up with any political party or any theological camp. Many groups are anxious to comment on the Bible, to tell us what it means or how it supports their thinking, but I have found that the Bible sheds a lot of light on the commentaries.
The place where this usually shows up is in the tension between right doctrine and right practice. One group emphasizes that we must believe their teachings to be approved while the other group says we must do their works to be approved. They are both right and both wrong, and it is only the Bible that can sort it all out.
Wars have been fought, deadly prolonged wars, over religious doctrine to the shame of those of us who have called ourselves Christian. Culture wars are also the direct result of the misappropriation of the scripture to leverage societal control. The Nazis fanned a culture war against the Jews into a holocaust while Heaven wept. They justified it using or misusing the Bible and the teachings of certain church fathers. In our own day we see other devastating culture wars tearing the fabric of our democracy apart, all in the name of God.
So what does God say in the Bible that we should be most concerned about? Let’s use the homosexuality debate as an example. There are few cities in the Bible that are more cursed than Sodom and Gomorrah. They were blasted off the face of the earth by God personally. When God wanted to rebuke Israel and Jerusalem severely, He compared them to Sodom and Gomorrah, and they got the message.
Jesus made this unfavorable comparison to Chorazin and Bethsaida. The prophets were particularly fond of quoting God in this manner. In the end, God flattened Jerusalem in the same manner as He did Sodom and Gomorrah leaving not one stone standing on another. And He did it for the same reasons.
But wait a minute, you say! Didn’t God punish Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexual sin? It is true that homosexual rape was practiced there and that this was an indication of how far the culture had sunk. But that was not the main reason God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It was for another more basic reason, if you believe the prophets.
Ezek 16:49-50 “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. 50 “Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore, I removed them when I saw it.
The sin of Sodom for which they were removed is that they lived a life of ease in an abundance of good things and failed to care for the poor and needy. Judah and Israel both had sexual sins associated with pagan worship. Fornication and adultery were rampant in both cultures as they had been in Sodom and Gomorrah. But it was the failure to care for the poor and the needy in their midst that caused them ultimate punishment; i.e., the destruction of their city and their nation.
The entire third chapter of Isaiah makes this same point. It was failure to care for the poor and needy while living a life of consumerism that caused God to destroy their nation and haul the people off into captivity.
In Genesis we are told that the men and women of Sodom were “exceedingly wicked and sinners against the Lord.” In 2nd Peter we are told that they were guilty of “indulging the flesh,” “corrupt desires,” and “reviling God” and one another. Peter goes on to clarify that they went after the sin of Balaam, whose sin was to seek to be rich and at the expense of his “neighbor,” rather than to obey God. There is nothing to suggest that Balaam was sexually perverse, but he is the biblical poster child for love of money.
Jude says they went after “strange flesh,” a term that includes adultery and bestiality as well as homosexuality. There was sexual sin in Sodom and Gomorrah, but that was not its main issue. Its main issue was that it focused on wealth and pleasure, and that abuse of strangers and “neighbors” was rampant.
Lot’s wife did not “look back” because she was concerned about a gay lover. She looked back because she was concerned about her “stuff.” She was close enough to be turned into basalt by the firestorm because she did not run away fast enough from her possessions.
Be careful when the political right misquotes the scriptures in support of its culture wars (and then months later are themselves caught in hidden, ongoing sexual perversion.) Be careful when television preachers and evangelical leaders vociferously decry sexual sin
and then weep publicly when exposed for practicing the same sin.
Be careful when they decry sexual sin but actively preach, practice and flaunt their conspicuous consumption and encourage you that it is your right and calling to do so also in the face of clear biblical teaching to the contrary.
There are two great commandments according to both the Old and New Testaments. They are: to love the Lord with your whole heart, soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. From these two commandments flow all other laws and the teaching of the prophets. The violation of the first great commandment is idolatry; i.e., to love anything more than God. The penalty for the violation of the first great commandment is that “you will have eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear.”
According to Romans 1, we will be given over to a depraved mind. We will become spiritually, morally and intellectually confused. In Romans 1:26 we see that homosexual behavior is a late stage downstream result of the confusion that comes upon those who abandon obedience to God. It is a result of idolatry, not the cause of it.
The violation of the second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, is the failure to care for your fellow man and/or the outright abuse of them. The penalty for this is that “whatever you do to others will be done to you.” It is this second commandment violation that results in the destruction of a city, a nation or a people. It is our failure to properly care for our neighbor that leads to economic ruin and exile.
One political party or theological camp says we should be for homosexuality while the other political party or theological camp says we should be against it. They both claim that God is “for us.” But God says that He is for neither of them, but rather He is for love The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Zealots all tried to co-opt Jesus for their causes, but Jesus resisted them all. “I serve My Father’s will,” He said. “I do not even serve My own will.” The true will of God is to Love God and to Love People.
The Pharisees and others castigated Jesus because He was friendly with sinners. Jesus told them He was for the Father and the Father’s will. He told them He came to set the captives free, to liberate the people bound up in their sin. Since the Pharisees admitted no personal sin, Jesus was of no use to them, but the people who knew they were sinners flocked first to the Baptist and then to Jesus so that they might be washed from their sins and set free to fellowship with God.
It is a mistake to align ourselves entirely with any political party or any denominational group. They are both flawed in some of their thinking and some of their goals. The Democrats are neither better nor worse than the Republicans. The conservative Baptists are neither better nor worse than the liberal Presbyterians. They both have some truth and some error.
Evangelicals are no better or worse than biblical liberals. One emphasizes “Love God” and the other emphasizes “Love People.” They are both right. We need to be following God and His scriptures.
Some have asked me how does God want us to vote? I tell them I do not know how they should vote. God will have to tell them, but whoever wins will be neither the savior of the nation nor the death of it. We may choose to vote in support of certain economic policies
or cultural policies or whatever, but in any case, we must figure out how to take care of the poor, the needy, the alien and the marginalized, or God will destroy our economy for good and reduce us the same impoverished state as those we ignore.
Prior to WWII, all charity, all education and all health care were done by the people of God in America out of their own pockets. After WWII, consumerism captured our nation and we forgot the poor and the needy and let the government handle it. The government was only too ready to secure its position over us by taking responsibility for these duties and they began a systematic campaign to expand control by taking from us our money to do our job. So instead of us spending 20-30% of our money to care for others, the government taxed it from us, theoretically to do the very duties that we had abandoned.
But the government has neither the calling nor the skills to do the job that God has assigned to each of us, so they do it very badly, or not at all. They want increasing amounts of our money to do the jobs we abandoned, but all too often it is misspent, misdirected and just plain wasted. Graft and corruption abound and still we have multitudes of people without food, shelter and healthcare.
We get the government we deserve because we abandoned our responsibilities to care for our neighbor. And what do we have? Too much government, bad government, unwise government, inept government, regardless of the party in power. One of my mentors used to say that if you gave the government control of the Sahara Desert, within 10 years there would be a worldwide shortage of sand. It is hard to argue with that logic.
As we pray for our country, acknowledging the abandonment of our duties before the Lord and to our fellow man, maybe we should pray that whoever wins will figure out how to do it right. Better still, maybe we should start doing it ourselves in hopes that God will give us back our country (and our money) and our culture. This is a decision that can and must be made one household at a time. I cannot be worried about what you are doing. I must be concerned about what God wants me to do.
In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, they had the enormous task of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem and the temple both of which had lain in ruins for 70+ years. At first they got discouraged by the size of the task and were distracted by their enemies who wanted to debate the best way to accomplish the task (but only so they could forestall its completion).
God showed them what to do. He told each man, woman and family to rebuild the area just in front of their house. Just concentrate on doing what they were supposed to do. When they understood and followed this approach, the task was finished in record time.
We should quit arguing about whose side is God on and get ourselves on God’s side. We should improve our own relationship with Lord and obey His directions in our lives about how to respond. Then we should trust Him to fix our land. Remember: All salvation is based in relationship with God and all relationship is based in trust or faith in God. And true faith is demonstrated in obedience, not in words.