Grace Church
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Burlington, WI 53105

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Who’s in charge? Joshua 5:13-6:5 Promised Land Living in Problematic World Sermon #8 Shortly after joining the Navy, the new recruit asked his officer for a pass so he could attend a wedding. The officer gave him the pass, but informed the young man he would have to be back by 7:00 p.m. Sunday. “You don’t understand, sir,” said the recruit. “I’m in the wedding.” “No, you don’t understand,” the officer shot back. “You’re in the Navy!”   That new recruit struggled with something we all struggle with, “Who’s in charge?” He’d forgotten that when he’d enlisted, he gave up personal sovereignty. In every company there needs to be a president; each class needs a teacher; teams need a coach. Every government needs a leader, someone who’s desk has this motto plastered all over it, “the buck stops here.” And an army needs a general. Joshua 5:13-6:5 is about Who’s in charge? Before Joshua could conquer Jericho he had to first conquer himself. If God was going to give Israel the Land then God had to be in charge.    Israel has crossed over Jordan; re-committed themselves to the covenant and celebrated the Passover again. Everything on their “to do list” has been done. Now that everything is prepared for the conquest of the land, the next scene opens with Joshua on a scouting trip. Apparently, he is gathering information about Jericho, (it’s fortifications, points of weakness), in preparation to launch his attack. Like any good general Joshua is surveying the situation.   I’m sure Joshua wondered how they were going to do it. Joshua is a seasoned military leader. He knows his army has no experience in this type of warfare nor do they have the equipment. Israel does not have catapults or battering rams, scaling ladder or moving towers. Swords, arrows, slings and spears would be totally ineffective. Israel also cannot retreat. Jordan is behind them, there is no place to retreat to. Then, they cannot bypass Jericho, that would leave their women, children, goods and livestock exposed to enemy attack in their absence. Israel has no choice but to attack and conquer Jericho.      While Joshua’s mind is absorbed with the tremendous task before him and feeling the full weight of the responsibility on his shoulders, he looks up and see a man standing in his path with his sword drawn. The drawn sword suggests he is there to either fight for or against Israel. So Joshua asks Him, “Who’s side are you on?” The man responds, "Neither but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” This unidentified man is informing Joshua that He’s in command. Joshua must choose to either submit to him or fight his leadership.   That’s the choice all of us must make, Who’s in charge? Jesus Christ cannot just be your Savior, He must also be your Lord. It demands complete obedience and loyalty. We must join Abraham Kuyper who said, “There is not an inch of any sphere of life of which Jesus Christ the Lord does not say, ‘Mine’.” This is a make-it or break-it point for Joshua. His fate and the fate of the nation hung in the balance with his response. This mystic encounter was Joshua’s final spiritual preparation for the challenge ahead. For Joshua it was a more critical moment than the crossing of the Jordan.   While our situations are much less dramatic, we need to settle the same issue: Who’s in charge? If we are going to be spiritually victorious, there are certain requirements we must meet. What are the requirements we need to meet to be spiritually victorious? Requirement #1: We must see the Lord. A personal revelation of God is indispensable for the victorious Christian life. You will not have a victorious life with a textbook knowledge of God. You must personally experience Him.  God is the very source of our being and our lives must be grounded in Him to have meaning. Spiritual vitality flows out of a relationship with Him because He is both the answer to people’s problems and the ultimate meaning that they are searching for. Joshua could not lead before he submitted to his Leader.   a) Who is the “commander of the army of the LORD”? This is what theologians call a “Christophany,” an appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ in the form of an angel, messenger or man. The purpose is usually twofold: to encourage God’s people at a particular time (Joshua needed encouraging before he attacked Jericho), and to foreshadow the most glorious appearance of all, when Jesus not only takes on a human body but also a human nature.   Though there is some debate amongst scholars on what this is, let me suggest three reasons why I believe that this is a Christophany. First, Joshua was told to take off his shoes. The language of this command duplicates the very same command given to Moses by God from the burning bush, Exodus 3:5, 6. Note that phrase, “At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” Joshua is to realize, through this command, that the One who speaks is the same God who spoke to Moses. Though this was a heathen land defiled by idolatrous people, the place where the Lord stood was holy, sanctified by the presence of a Holy God. Second, there is no distinction between  the “commander of the army of the LORD” who speaks to Joshua here and the Lord who gives the instructions in chapter 6:2‑5. Joshua 6:2 begins “Then the LORD said to Joshua.” Third, Joshua falls down and worships this “man,” who accepts His worship. If this was not a manifestation of the divine presence, it would be a violation of the Decalogue, “You shall have no other gods before me...You shall not bow down to them or worship them” (Ex. 20:3, 5). As Origen the church father said in his Sixth Homily on Joshua, “Joshua knew not only that he was of God, but that he was God. For he would not have worshiped him, had he not recognized Him to be.” These three points convince me that the “commander of the army of the LORD” was the pre-incarnate Christ in an angelic form, “the angel of the Lord.”   b) God’s presence encourages dependence on God’s power. This appearance dovetails with the continual theme of this book, “Be strong and courageous.” This personal encounter with God would strengthen Joshua for what was ahead. We know that was the case from the chapters that follow and from similar events in the lives of other Biblical models.   While Moses had tried to be a leader, he was impotent until he met the angel of the Lord and God appeared to him in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2‑6). After that he became a pillar of spiritual strength. A profound sense of God’s presence revolutionized his life. Moses’ understanding was again enhanced when he asked God for a further revelation of Himself, praying, “Now show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18). The Lord’s response, hiding Moses in the cleft of the rock and covering him with His hand while His glory passed by (Ex. 33:20‑24), further strengthened Moses for his unparalleled leadership. His unique awareness of God set him apart from the rest of Israel.   The same is true of Paul. It began with the Lord’s appearance to him on the Damascus road. Later, however, Paul had an experience equal to that of Moses, 2 Corinthians 12:2-4. This experience made Paul the invincible brick he remained throughout the incessant persecutions of his life. Paul never wavered thanks to the revelation he had of God and his resulting sense of God’s presence. This deep awareness of God’s presence is what set Paul above the rest of his fellow apostles. For Paul, God was real. He was always present. Paul believed it with all his being.                                          When you and I are truly aware of God’s presence, it makes all the difference in our lives. This awareness of God’s presence is a primary work of the Holy Spirit. In John 14:16-17 Jesus promises He will send “another Comforter.” The word for “another” is allos which means “another of the same kind.” He will send, through the Holy Spirit, a Comforter who will be just like Him. This is exciting! Through the work of the Spirit, you and I sense the presence of God. One of the great ministries of the Holy Spirit is to bring this divine reality to our lives, to make it so real it is virtually tangible, that it’s almost like Joshua’s experience with a man standing before him with a drawn sword. God always reveal Himself to those who love Him and walk with Him.   c) God meets us where we are. Notice something else exciting about this divine encounter, God appeared to Joshua the soldier as another soldier. Warren Wiersbe notes, “To Abraham the pilgrim, the Lord came as a traveler to share in a friendly meal (Gen. 18:1‑8). To Jacob the schemer, He came as a wrestler to bring him to the place of submission (32:24‑32). The three Hebrew men met Him as their companion in the furnace of fire (Dan. 3:25), and Joshua met Him as the Captain of the Lord’s armies. Our Lord always comes to us when we need Him and in the way we need Him.” God meets us where we are.   This truth powerfully came home to me recently as I was reading about an incident some years ago when the distinguished southern churchman and theologian, Albert Mollegen, was lecturing to a group of lay people in Virginia on the topic of “Revelation.” His lecture was loaded with technical distinctions and sophisticated analysis. At the end, the professor entertained questions from the audience, and a bewildered and slightly defeated woman arose and said, “Dr. Mollegen, how does God speak to you?” The great man thought about that for a moment, and then abandoned his professorial demeanor, “In English, ma’am. With a Tidewater accent.” God meets us where we are.   What an encouragement it must have been to Joshua to realize that he was not alone. There is a loneliness to leadership that can be disturbing and even depressing. “To be President of the United States is to be lonely,” said Harry  Truman, “very lonely at times of great decisions.” Joshua surely must have been feeling some of that loneliness. Yet God had promised to be with Joshua (Josh. 1:5, 9) and the people had prayed that the Lord would be with him (vss. 16‑17). The enemy knew that God was with Israel (2:8), and Joshua had encouraged his people with this promise (3:9). In the scene before us Joshua is now experiencing the reality of that promise! The Lord met him as Commander-in-Chief of the Lord’s armies, both in heaven and on earth.   We all will face difficulties. We each have Jerichos that we must face. But if we have a transcending sense of our Lord’s presence, we will be steeled for those difficulties and emerge victorious. How sanctifying, how edifying, how reassuring is this sense of the presence of God! He is more fully real than anything we can see with our natural eyes, for our eyes look only on the temporal, but He is eternal and the unseen things are eternal (2 Cor. 3:18).     Because this is so necessary, let me encourage you to make it part of your own personal devotional life, make it a priority to focus on the daily presence of God. When His presence becomes our reality, then regardless of the Jerichos that come our way, we will triumph. Pray for it, seek it, make it a part of your life. Ask the Holy Spirit. It is His job to give it to you. Requirement #2: We must make certain that we are on the Lord’s side, rather than asking if He is on our side. “Joshua...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’.” Because I believe that we need to be careful to not violate the commandment of taking the Lord’s name in vain, I’m cautious  about using God’s name in a humorous context, so I hesitate to share this illustration. But it makes the point.   The story is told of a black man and white man arguing about whether God was black or white. It was a very intense argument. Somehow they both died at the same time and faced God. As God greets them He says, “Buenos Dias.”   Our tendency is to make God “in our own image.”  Each nation believes that God fights on their side because they are the side of right. Every political party believes that God supports their cause. Every denomination believes that God blesses them because they are the only ones that have a handle on His truth. Local churches too often believe that their church is the only church endorsed by God. This scenario with Joshua rebukes such foolish reasoning.    Joshua had the order of things confused, at least as it related to God. It was not for Joshua to claim God’s allegiance for his cause no matter how right and holy it might appear to be. Rather, the need was for Joshua to acknowledge God’s claim over Joshua and his army for God’s purposes.   Our tendency is to approach our battles and causes backwards. We turn things around and try to marshal God to support us, rather than to submit and follow Him. Certainly, the battle was a joint venture, God and the people of Israel under Joshua’s leadership as appointed by the Lord (1:1‑9). But Joshua, like the rest of us in the army of the King, must follow the Lord, submit to His authority, take our orders from Him, and rest the battle in His hands because we realize it is really His battle because He is the Supreme Commander.   Joshua finally understood this as evidenced by his question, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?” When Joshua realizes his mistake, he corrects himself and asks the Lord for orders. It was then that he received the directions for taking Jericho.   It is critical that we remember that God is sovereign, not partisan. And it is more important to recognize His position as sovereign than to know His plans.    This commander had not come to offer His sword to one side or the other, but to take charge – He was the commander of the army. He did not come to offer Joshua help but to take command.   Ignorance as to whom He was dealing with led Joshua to put this commander into a convenient category – them or us. It seems that those who act in the name of “religion” are most prone to this mistake. The Crusades are a tragic example from Church History of those who believed that God was on their side and that they acted on the behalf of God.   Too often believers make their plans and then ask God to rubber stamp them. Then, we convince ourselves that we are doing God’s will and are on His side. But what we have is a forged signature. God is not on our side. That’s the wrong question. The right question is; Are we on His?   In a meeting with a small group of missionaries in China, J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission reminded them that there were three ways to do God’s work: “One is to make the best plans we can, and carry them out to the best of our ability..., or, having carefully laid our plans and determined to carry them through, we may ask God to help us, and to prosper us in connection with them. Yet another way of working is to begin with God; to ask His plans, and to offer ourselves to Him to carry out His purposes.”   We must never think of our Lord as merely an ally on Whom we can call for help, although He is that. But He must first be recognized and consulted as our Commander in Chief, and He will accept no other role. And when we are on God’s side, He will fight for us. When we are on God’s side and have battles to fight, He stands with us, His sword bare and His hosts encircling our enemies. What do we learn from this? Just this: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Rom. 8:31). We also learn that we do not fight with conventional weapons. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:3-4). Requirement #3: We must submissively worship before the Lord, “Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence.” This is the way we are to respond, with worship and submission. Joshua quickly got the picture. He had been thinking of a conflict between the Israelites and the Canaanite armies. Perhaps he had been thinking of this as his war. Certainly he felt the load of responsibility on his shoulders. But after being confronted by the divine Commander, he was reminded of a truth he had heard Moses declare many years earlier when they stood on the banks of the Red Sea, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Ex. 14:14). Joshua learned afresh the truth that David too had learned and would later declare when facing Goliath, “the battle is the Lord’s” (1 Sam. 17:47).   But that’s not all. As an outworking of his worship and submission, we also see Joshua’s inquiry, the inquiry of a servant looking to his Commander for direction with his words, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?” “Lord, just say it and I’ll do it!”   Joshua here is a living illustration of what Paul urges in Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.” The root idea of “spiritual” or “reasonable” lies in the Greek  word logikos, which carries the idea of logical. Joshua’s example and Paul’s words tell us that total commitment is the only rational, logical course to take when we really see who God is. Nothing else makes any sense at all. To utterly, worshipfully submit is the only rational thing to do.   This reverent submission made Joshua spiritually usable. Because of it, he became the dread of the inhabitants of the land. The history of Israel reveals that every time they gave implicit, complete obedience to God, they were victorious. The lesson of that night outside of Jericho is clear for all of us: if we are to fight the battles of life successfully, we must be completely, worshipfully submitted. Sam Shoemaker said it perfectly, “To be a Christian means to give as much of myself as I can to as much of God as I know.” Worshipful submission and commitment can transform us into contemporary  Joshuas! Requirement #4: We must receive our orders from the Lord, Josh. 6:2-5. No battle plan appeared more unreasonable than this one. For six days, once a day, all of the soldiers of Israel were to march around Jericho without making a sound, not even a war cry. Seven priest holding seven trumpets were to precede the Ark of the Covenant.   This battle plan would test Israel’s obedience to the will of God. A march like this would bring ridicule from the enemy. Israel would have to humble herself and remain in complete submission to God’s proposals, a very important lesson in this stage of the conquest of Canaan. Marching around the city like this would also expose them to a murderous attack. Remaining silent meant that they would hear every jeer from the top of Jericho’s wall. It was a plan that didn’t make any sense.   This plan is a reminder of God’s words in Isaiah 55 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is. 55:8-9).   It took great faith for Joshua and the army of Israel to be willing to take a risk of attack from the walls and look absurd. It takes faith for us as well to do things God’s way, to follow His directions. It takes faith not to “not wage war as the world does” (2 Cor. 10:3). Following God’s directions always takes faith, and it always pays off!   What Jerichos does God ask us to walk around: God asks us to be givers, not takers; to be servants, not masters or those who demand to be served. It takes faith to return good for evil; to be kind when you are treated unkindly. It takes faith to be ethical when others around us gain financially by being unethical.   The deepest message of this story is that God is teaching us to trust Him instead of our own cleverness. “Our Lord’s commands sometimes appeared strange,” wrote J. Hudson Taylor, “Faith, however laughs, at the impossibilities and obedience raises no questions.”   Probably, none of us will ever experience the kind of pressure that Joshua felt as he meditated under the ramparts of Jericho but all of us have our personal Jerichos, which are more than we can handle. It might be a financial problem, a work situation, perhaps a difficult marriage or even a parent-child relationship that seems unconquerable and unbearable. Like Joshua, we must learn that victory over our “Jerichos” will come only as we learn to “trust and obey.” While we may not understand God’s methods and plans, if we want to overcome our Jerichos, we must follow His plan and submit to His ways.  Jerichos walls will fall but we must first obey. God must be in charge! Conclusion: Some of you own a Scofield Bible. That reference Bible was put together by an alcoholic attorney who came to Christ and later became a preacher, Dr. C. I. Scofield.   While Dr. Scofield was the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Dallas, there was a time when the burdens of the ministry seemed heavier than he could bear. All but crushed by the weight of the frustrations and problems of the work, he knelt one day in his office. In deep agony of spirit, he opened the Scriptures, looking for some message of comfort and strength. He came upon these closing verses of Joshua 5 and he saw at once that he was trying to carry the responsibilities alone. That day he turned his ministry over to the Lord, assured that it was His work and that He could accomplish it. In accepting God’s leadership, Dr. Scofield allied himself with God’s power.   What can we learn from this narrative? What are the take home truths?   First, we need the revelation and realization that God is always with us. We need to believe vividly that Christ is here. Our inner, spiritual eyes need to see Him.   Second, we need to realize that He bares the sword for  His people, that He goes before. He will send legions of angels if it is necessary for His people.   Third, we must submit ourselves before Him in humble worship, for in submission lies elevation and power. He must be our Commander-in-Chief.   Finally, we must implicitly follow the orders God gives, even if it means being thought foolish.    Joshua learned what we must learn to rest in His presence. Believe it. See His sword bared for us. Fall in worshipful submission before Him and do what He says. And on the seventh day (the day of God’s choice) the walls will come tumbling down.