Faith Amongst Grasshopper HeartsSample

 Chain of Command

This encounter is a critical moment in Joshua's personal development. He's standing alone, looking at Jericho. Maybe he's playing a dozen military strategies through his head. Maybe he's paralysed with fear. Maybe he's quietly humming a psalm of trust.

But in this moment God appears to him. It is an interesting encounter because it involves a physical appearance and it doesn't seem to be an angel. Joshua sees a man with a drawn sword who identifies himself as the "commander of the armies of the Lord" and Joshua falls down and worships and the man tells him that he is on holy ground. (An angel would never allow himself to be worshipped.)

This leaves us with two possibilities. The first is that God is appearing in human form and the second is that this is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ who, in the book of Revelation, is depicted as leading the army of the Lord in the final battle (Rev19:11-16).

This is a critical moment.

Joshua asks "Are you for us or our enemies?"

Jesus' answer shows us that Joshua's thinking is wrong.

It is not God who is with us, but us who are with God.

This fits in beautifully with view of Mission that David Bosch brought to the world's attention in the 1980's: It not us who take God to the peoples in the far corners of the earth, but we go to the far corners of the earth to discover what God is already doing.

We don't "take God to the world", God takes us to the world.

So often we're asking God to bless our plans.  

Like Joshua, we have to learn the chain of command.

We're not in a position to ask Him to join us.

We must join Him.

It's about surrender...