Most all of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves embarrassed by God. He Who has all perfections perfectly doesn’t always fit into our scheme of things. He doesn’t always do things the way we who are altogether imperfect think they should be done. We weep with Aaron as God destroys his two sons for merely toying with strange fire. Many of us even shed a tear for the soldiers of Pharaoh as we watch the Red Sea crash down upon them. We nurse a secret grudge as we watch God destroy Uzzah, for touching the Ark of the Covenant.
Nothing, however, assaults our sensibilities more than the execution of God’s holy war against the people of Canaan. We tell our children about Joshua’s march around Jericho. We don’t tell them that every person in the city, men, women, and children, with the exception of Rahab’s family, was put to death. That is the pattern for the taking of the Promised Land, to kill every person there. Joshua made Sherman’s march to the sea look like a walk on the beach.
Our temptation is to focus our attention on the New Testament. There we see no mass executions. There we see Him who would not harm a bruised reed. We find a kinder, gentler vision of the Almighty in the tender grace of Jesus. We find not a list of rules a mile long covering how we are to wash, what we may and may not eat, nor a detailed exposition of just how the stoning of the unfaithful is supposed to look. Instead we find Jesus preaching to the multitudes, casting aside the “You have heard it saids…” and giving in its place an ethic of love.
We see His call that we be not mighty warriors like Joshua or Samson, but those who are poor in spirit. We are to be merciful, peacemakers. We are to be pure in heart. We summarize the message of Joshua as this, that we are to be warmongers, mean spirited and bloodthirsty. Now Jesus tells us we not only may, but must be nice.
If we succeed, He tells us that we shall have the kingdom of heaven. If we stop beating our chests like crazed warriors, and instead mourn, we will be comforted. If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we will have our desires met. We will be satisfied. If we will stop destroying the wicked, and would instead show them mercy, then we will receive mercy. If we would keep a pure heart, then we will see God. If we become peacemakers we will be called the Sons of God. And if our unconditional love is rejected by men, and we are instead persecuted, again, we inherit the kingdom of heaven.
I skipped one. Jesus also calls us to be meek, hardly the picture we have of Joshua as he leads his troops into battle. But if we are meek, what do we receive? The meek shall inherit the earth. Here is perhaps the biggest change, and the greatest similarity. The similarity is that like the children of Israel, we too have a promise of a promised land. The difference is that our promise is not limited to a small strip of land in the Middle East. We’re going to inherit that entire world. All of it has been promised to us.
Of course this too has changed, that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. The only sword we carry into battle is the sword of the Word, the gospel of the kingdom. But this too is the more shocking. We are not merely cutting down the bodies of pagans; we are, in the Holy Spirit, ripping their hearts of stone out of their chests, and replacing them with hearts of flesh. We are not merely removing the pagans; we are remaking them, just as we have been remade.
What hasn’t changed is that we are at war. It is a constant. The war did not begin with the conquest of Canaan. Nor did it end in 1967. It began in Genesis 3, when God promised that He would put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. That was the declaration of war, and the institution of God’s regenerative draft- He put the enmity there, moving the woman, and her seed from the forces of darkness to the forces of light, enlisting them with His effectual call. And the war will continue until our Captain, the true Joshua, has put all things under His feet.
That is the greatest change. We are no longer fighting in ourselves. If we were, there would be nothing but defeat. But in Christ we are poor in spirit. In Christ we are rich in the Spirit, who indwells us. In Christ we do mourn. In Christ we rejoice, for He has overcome the world. In Christ we are meek, and in His meekness we inherit His reward, the entire world. In Christ we are bold and strong, for He is with us wherever we go. And when that great and final day comes, in Christ we will be pure in heart, and so we shall see God.
Today He sees us. We live our lives in this context of warfare, coram Deo, before the face of God. He is watching, guiding, directing us. We are not looking for a place at the world’s table, for recognition of our value in the grand scheme of things. We are not looking to merely keep the world from crashing down around us. We are fighting for our God-given right to the world. We are called to total world conquest, beneath His gaze, under His authority, and unto His glory. And we, in Him, shall have it, for the King has come, and He will come again.
