Important Life Lessons - #1

I've learned a lot over the past few months. Some of it's made it into big long posts here, and a lot of it hasn't. The stuff that hasn't probably isn't going to, either, right now. So, I'm gonna try shorter posts.

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I used to think that being patient meant twiddling one's thumbs until whatever it is that one is waiting for happens. I was mistaken. What I have discovered is that it really means putting the one thing on hold, and instead doing something else that's important. Sometimes the thing you think has to be first and foremost really doesn't, and something else that's less obvious does. It may not makes sense, and it may not seem nearly as important or opportune as whatever it is you want to do, but later on you discover that God really did have a plan and agenda, and it worked out even better than you could have imagined.

So, if you find yourself frustrated by the brick wall you keep running into, check and see if God isn't actually giving you opportunity to do something else you might never have been able to do otherwise, and, if He is, exercise patience by leaving he first thing in His hands and going and doing the second one. You'll discover, as I did, that His plans are as amazing as they are unexpected.

"No" - Joshua 5:14

“And he said, 'No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord.'” - Joshua 5:14

OK, back to Jericho. But this time more briefly. I chose the title for this little thought mainly because it's a use of the word that doesn't fit with the stock “When God Says No” message. It's actually kind of cool.

The key verse comes on the eve of the Battle of Jericho. Israel had entered Canaan and gotten the preparations underway for conquest. In true God-following fashion, they'd focused their energies on God and His commandments, but even so Joshua was understandably nervous. After all, he was the untested leader of a people already known for being troublesome, now dwelling in the midst of enemy territory. So, when he spotted a man a ways off and in a rather threatening posture, he thought it best to exercise caution. Hence his question of greeting in 5:13: “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?”

There were probably a couple responses Joshua was ready for. One would have been “your adversaries,” in which case defense and/or retreat would have had to be effected. Another one would have been “you”, which would have been welcome news of reinforcement. Imagine his surprise, then, when the man said, as the NIV translates it, “Neither”, or, by the ESV, “No”.

The next sentence, where the person identified himself, made it clear who he was: the commander of the army of the Lord. It's apparent that this was to fully answer Joshua's question. And, in fact, it did, just not as Joshua had anticipated.

You see, Joshua made a critical mistake in his question. He asked “Are you for us...”, identifying the important distinguishing point as the person's relation to Israel. And this idea needed to be corrected. Because in his work and desire to lead well, Joshua had lost track of Who the real leader was. The Israelite enterprise was God's doing, not his or even Israel's. As such, it wasn't God's job to be for or against Israel – it was their job to be supporting Him.

In our lives, we face the same trap. It's a question of who's going to set our agenda. Are you making your plans and asking God to support you, or are you following His lead and then trusting Him to work it all out? And, when you see others, are you looking for allies in your own self-centered goals, asking “Are you for me?”, or are you searching out partners in ministry: “Are you for God?”

When the Commander came to Joshua, Joshua stopped, bowed before Him, and waited for His instructions. And, not surprisingly, the walls came tumbling down. Coincidence? I think not!

Joshua 6 & 7 - Making a Choice

I embarked a few months ago on a rather large, though admittedly uncreative, project, that of reading through the Bible from cover to cover. I've done a lot of Bible study, but haven't attempted going through the whole thing since I was a kid, and that endeavor wasn't particularly successful. It's pretty interesting, when you do that, what you notice. I thought I would share one of those things.

The story of the Battle of Jericho is pretty well-known. It's the first battle the Israelites fought in their conquest of Canaan proper. They marched around the walls for a week, the walls fell down, and the Israelites ran in and destroyed the place. It's a well-covered story, and a good one, but what caught my interest was a pair of events that happened immediately after it, the end of Joshua 6 and then Joshua 7.

The first event is easy to overlook. Before the battle, Joshua sent spies into Jericho to check things out. They stayed at the house of a prostitute named Rahab. The rulers of the city got wind of this, and they told Rahab to give them up. Instead of doing this, Rahab helped them escape, and they in turn promised to save her and her family. And so, after the battle, the former spies went to her house and brought out her and her family, and they joined the train of the Israelites. “And she has lived in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.” (6:25b)

The second is better-known. After Jericho, Israel went out to take down a rinky-dink little town called Ai. It was so little, they couldn't even afford a third letter in their name. And the Aiites walloped Israel. In searching for a cause for this, it turned out that a man named Achan, of the tribe of Judah, hadn't quite listened to God back at Jericho. Rather than destroy everything, like God commanded, Achan grabbed some nice-looking items for himself, and hid them in his tent. He was thus punished, by death for him, his family, and his livestock. “And all Israel stoned him with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day.” (7:25b-26a)

What do these two stories have in common? They demonstrate an important principle about the people of God. In Joshua, as begun in Exodus and as ultimately consummated at the Cross, God is forming and establishing His people. And He makes it explicit what it is that is to define them: “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.” (Lev. 21:14) In other words, they were to be a separate (the literal meaning of “holy”) people, belonging to, and living in line with, Him.

Rahab was a prostitute. According to footnotes, the Hebrew term can also be used as “innkeeper”, but that's an unlikely translation. Achan was an Israelite who seemed so good that he had to be outed by God Himself. Funny, then, that in His shaping of His people, God showed favor to the first by grafting her in (she's even in Jesus' ancestry) and had the nice pew-sitter stoned.

The difference was in the heart. Rahab understood that God was at work, and chose to obey and then trust Him, in defiance of the world. Her choice showed a heart in line with the purpose of Israel, and she was welcomed into the fold as one who truly belonged. Achan heard that God was at work, but saw what he wanted, and decided to grasp it while he could. God removed him from the body like you'd remove a cancerous tumor, because his heart made him precisely that.

Every person, “Christian” or not, is presented with a similar grand choice: What will he value most? Will he put God first, and abandon himself completely to God's cause and provision, or will he instead obey his own lusts for trifles and idols in the here and now? Either option is valid, but make no mistake: there is no middle ground, and both choices have prices and consequences. God knows your heart, and looks on that more than even your actions. Choose your leader wisely.


“For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but 'Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.' This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” - Romans 9:6b-8