There is another lesson Joshua needed to learn about partnership with God. By this time, the river had been crossed. But standing before Joshua and the people was a city to be conquered. Crossing a river is one thing; taking a city is another.
The city was Jericho, a walled city. It was fortified, built to resist siege. Taking it was not going to be simple. Jericho was not a large city. But it stood on high ground. From the River Jordan, the terrain rose quickly upwards into the steep hills. Joshua had to take Jericho to secure a strategic advantage. The task would not be easy.
One fundamental principle of warfare is this: he who fights outside the walls is disadvantaged against he who fights inside. To put another way: the attacker has to overcome to win; the defender needs only to stand his ground.
Joshua, a soldier, knew the odds. The night before the battle, something happened. We know what it is like on the eve of any great challenge—the night before a major examination, the night before an important interview, the night before a battle—we can't sleep, we keep playing over and over in our mind what is going to happen the next day. We ask ourselves all the "what if' questions: what if my assumptions were wrong, what if I have miscalculated, what if my opponents are stronger than I thought?
I believe Joshua was running all these through his mind as he approached Jericho. He had gone as far as he could to the arena of battle, no doubt to memorise the setting and rehearse in his mind what he and his men would do the next day. But someone had been there before him.
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?" 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?" 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.41
We can imagine Joshua drawing his own sword as he approached the stranger, ready to cut him down with a swift blow if necessary. "Are you for us or for our enemies?" Joshua demanded. The answer came: "Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come."
There must be something in the voice. Or the appearance— there was such a bearing of authority that Joshua found himself falling facedown to the ground. Students of the Bible believe the stranger is none other than Jesus himself—in his pre-incarnation appearance, before he came to earth as a man.
It could not have been simply an angel, because we know that angels would not accept worship. Here the stranger asked Joshua, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy."Joshua was experiencing what his predecessor Moses had experienced more than 40 years ago when God appeared to him and told him to take off his sandals. As God addressed the issue of ownership with Moses, he was doing the same here with Joshua. But more than ownership, God was addressing the issue of partnership.
Joshua's question: Are you for us or against us? Are you our partner or our enemy? The answer is "Neither." A surprising answer. We would have expected the stranger to answer: "I am for you'." Was not the man going to fight on the side of Joshua, and help him win the victory? Why did he say, I am neither for you nor against you?
One commentator expresses puzzlement:
The apparition... is evasive. Curiously, he refuses to declare his allegiance and simply identifies himself as the commander of the army of YHWH... His terse and noncommittal response is particularly strange in the light of YHWH's unambiguous promise to be with Israel... If the commander has appeared to give Israel assurance of divine presence and victory, why does he not do so, especially on the eve of the first conflict in Canaan?46
I believe the stranger did give Joshua an assurance, but not in the way Joshua expected it. God is telling Joshua something which we all need to hear. God had not come to fight alongside Joshua. He had not come to be Joshua's fighting partner. He had come to take over the command: "but as commander of the army of the Lord I have come."47 In the language of the corporate world today, it was a takeover.
Joshua was now second in command. He had relinquished his command to the divine Commander-in-Chief. The answer to Joshua's question "Are you for us or for our enemies?" was "Neither. I'm taking over command." Joshua was no longer giving orders. He had to stand down and take orders.
The first order that the stranger gave Joshua under this new command was: "Take off your sandals." One of the things I like about our Asian culture is the way we take off our shoes when we enter a home. We are more comfortable with our shoes off. On a visit to India, I noticed that when I went up to speak to people after a church service, they would quietly step out of their sandals as we talked. It was their way of showing respect for someone they considered to be a man of God. In India and other places, no one steps into a temple, a mosque or a burial place without removing his footwear. To take off our shoes is a mark of respect.
Thus Joshua demonstrated his respect by standing bare foot before the Lord. God had said earlier that every place where Joshua set his feet, God would give him. Soon after, God told Joshua to have the priests step into the river Jordan and wet their feet. Now God was asking Joshua to take off his sandals and stand bare foot before him. God was inviting Joshua into a partnership with him— but it would be a partnership where God is in charge.
On the eve of the battle for Jericho, Joshua had to know his place as the second in command before he was ready for battle. His victory the next day would begin with his surrender the night before. Thus the battle was fought on the inside before it was won on the outside.
How does all this apply to the way we live? We live our lives in partnership with God. He promises us many things. But we have to step out to claim those promises. We must get our feet wet. We need to do something. That is the lesson of wet feet.
But we do not have to do everything. That is the lesson of bare feet. Our God will step in and take over command. When we have done our part, we relinquish our control over to him. We may fight battles, but each victory in battle begins with surrender to his command. Partnership has two sides.
We take responsibility for all that God gives us. We are accountable for our abilities, our resources and our influence. We use them in partnership with God. Everything we have belongs to him. Everything we are ever going to have also belongs to him—even our very life itself. He places it all in our hands for us to use.
But we do not go it alone. We work in partnership with God. He promises us that if we do our part, he will do his. We take the risk, and he gives the reward. But first, we must remove our sandals and fall facedown before him and acknowledge him as Lord and God.
We must bare our feet in awe before God. We must wet our feet in faith to move ahead. Bare feet and wet feet—that was how Joshua marched into the Promised Land and claimed it. He had to do something, but he did not have to do everything. That is how we will cross our Jordan and take our Jericho.
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See you next post :-)
2 comments:
Dear David,
Great sermon! Thanks for sharing.
God bless,
Grace
I am very glad you like it, Grace. I benefited from it a lot. So well presented that I can remember it quite clearly many days after the sermon :-) David
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