Whose Side is God on?

Joshua 5:13-15 ESV

13 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” 14 And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” 15 And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

The epoch of the Bible is something that I’m coming to find more and more amazing all the time as God continues to reveal more and more of it to me and continues to cause me to properly understand it.

You open the Bible and all throughout it, you see the wonderful redemptive plan of God that He sets in place for His own glory. It’s a plan that is peculiar, and most glorious, and that causes me to be more and more amazed the more that I learn about it.

You see, before the foundations of the world, from all eternity, God chose to create the heavens and earth for His own glory. Yet before God ever actually created the heavens and the earth, He already had redemption in His mind.

Therefore, after God created the heavens and the earth, He then created the plan for redeeming the heavens and earth from sin, and all for His own glory.

In His act of creation, God made a man, his name was Adam. And God willed for Adam to rule over what He had created. But then Adam fell into sin, and when Adam fell into sin, all of creation fell into sin with him.

And when Adam fell into sin, the power that he had over God’s creation passed from Adam to Satan.

In God’s plan of redemption, He allowed Satan to hold power over what He had created and thus Satan became what Paul calls over in his 2nd epistle to the Corinthians, “the god of this world”.

When Paul says this, he is saying that God, in His unsearchable wisdom, for His own glory, has allowed Satan to exert influence in the world to such a degree that being born in sin, we naturally follow after Satan.

But then we see God begin to do something truly amazing and awe inspiring when He decided to take a people for Himself out of this dark world, that they may be His very own. And it was through this people that He had chosen to be His very own possession that God would begin the process of establishing a new Eden on earth.

The man that God chose to do this through was a man named Abraham. God chose Abraham out of the mass of humanity and through Abraham and his descendants came the people of Israel.

Now, for anyone who has read the New Testament, you know that God chose to bring about the Messiah, His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus through the people of Israel. And as the prophet Isaiah says, it is through Christ that the Gentiles, that people all over the world, though being influenced by Satan, are called out of darkness and into light.

Well, here in our reading for today, we see God personally going forward and fighting for the people that He had chosen and beginning to give them the land that He had promised them through Abraham their ancestor. And this promised land is the land from where God would send out His Gospel call to all creation.

And as God went forward, we see how He promised to the one who was leading Israel at that time, Joshua, of how He would fight for them and fulfill His good promise to them, and the confidence that this must have brought to Joshua.

So, let’s go ahead and break this passage down in order to see how exactly God made Joshua confident of His presence among the people of Israel.

First, let’s look at the location in which this narrative took place:

*Joshua 5:13a ESV

13a When Joshua was by Jericho

Joshua was by Jericho. Now, what we know about Jericho is that it was the city that God had commanded Joshua and Israel to strike first as they entered the land of Canaan.

And so, standing outside of Jericho ready for battle, we see that Joshua was obedient to the command of God and was going to trust Him throughout this process as Joshua’s presence there shows his willingness to do exactly as God commanded.

Now, Joshua knew that because God commanded and commissioned him to attack Jericho, that God would indeed be with him and fight for Israel. But the way that God gave Joshua this assurance was extraordinary.

Let’s look at what happened:

*Joshua 5:13b

13b he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand.

As Joshua is near Jericho, willing to go forward with God’s command to attack the city, he lifts up his eyes and he sees standing before him a Man.

This Man was standing all by Himself on neither side, appearing to be wholly neutral to the conflict. And as He stands, He has sword drawn in His hand.

Now, having your sword drawn means that you’re not messing around, but that you have your weapon in hand and you’re ready to fight and go to battle. It would be like having a loaded pistol drawn. You’re not shooting it, and you’re not pointing it at anyone, but you have it out of its holster and are holding it with both hands, with your finger on the trigger, ready to put a bullet in someone if necessary.

So, there is a Man here, Who appears to be absolutely neutral, yet ready to fight. So, Joshua, being the commander that he is, approaches this Man to see just what His intentions are.

We see this next in our reading, where we see:

*Joshua 5:13c

13c And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?”

Now, as we’ve been saying, Joshua and the people of Israel are about to go into battle, and because there is this mysterious Man standing there with sword drawn, ready for battle, it naturally causes Joshua to come to Him and ask Him, “Whose side are You on?” “Are You for us? Or for our adversaries?”

He’s pretty blunt, brief, and to the point about it. He says, “I don’t have time to mess around, we’re about to go into battle, You’re at my mercy, I’ll decide what happens to You, so tell me, whose side are You on?”

But the response that Joshua received from this mysterious Man was surprising to say the least.

Here is what this Man says:

*Joshua 5:14a ESV

14a And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.”

This is the commander of the army of the Lord! Now, Who is that anyway? Who is it Who could possibly be powerful enough to command God’s will and cause His desires to come to pass? There is only One Who is that powerful, and that is God Himself!

So, this Man with drawn sword, Who Joshua is interrogating is God Himself.

But look at His response. Joshua asks in the previous verse, “Are You on our side? Or their side?” And God responds by saying, “No”.

That’s kind of a strange response to the question that Joshua put forth. “Are you on our side? Or their side?” … “No!”

What does that mean?

What it means is that God is not on the side of the Canaanites. He’s not even on the side of the Israelites. No, God is on His own side!

What that means is that in all things, God accomplishes His will. God does not exist so that my will is done and so that I will be glorified. Rather, God ensures that His own will be done and that He is glorified.

So, we shouldn’t ever say, “God is on my side!” no, God is always on His own side. And if God being on His own side means that I receive greater fellowship with Him, a closer walk with Him, and the advancement of His glory, then praise God!

And we as the people of God today have the promise that God is always for us, never against us, that He causes all things to work together for our good, because He has caused us to love Him.

So, for the people of God, God being on His own side means blessings for us and all-around glorification of Himself.

That’s the wonderful reality of our God: He’s always in control, and His control is ultimately always for the good of His people, and for His glory.

Now, how we ought to take this in as the people of God ought to mirror the way that Joshua took this great fact in himself.

How Joshua took this great fact in was twofold, as the rest of this verse tells us, when it first says:

*Joshua 5:14b ESV

14b And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped

Think about this for a moment, Joshua didn’t say, “What do You mean?! You should be on OUR side!”

You know, we may laugh at that, but that’s the way that all of us act sometimes.

We say, “God ought to see things my way! He ought to see how I am suffering and come make things right!” Sometimes we even go so far as to say, “I don’t even think God loves me!”

And why do we say this? Because we’re not getting what we want, what we think we need.

We all act like that sometimes, but Joshua shows us how we ought to act when it says that he fell to the earth and worshipped.

What this shows is that Joshua forfeited any kind of claim that he knew what was best for him. And as he forfeited claiming to know what’s best for him, he humbly and devoutly showed that God is the One in charge here, that God is the One Who is right.

So, Joshua worshiped, but he also followed that up with a question, when he asked:

*Joshua 5:14c ESV

14c “What does my lord say to his servant?”

Here is Joshua, the commander of the army of Israel, the leader of Israel, a man with seemingly unlimited authority within Israel, and as he worshipped, he asked, “What would You my Lord and my God have me, Your servantto do?”

This was a posture of obedience to the will of God as he recognized his own weakness and God’s superiority.

And in the same way, regardless of any situation that we may find ourselves in, we need to accept the situation that we are in. Now notice that I didn’t say that we need to like the situation, because chances are we won’t, but we do have to accept it.

And what we have to accept is that in God’s unlimited wisdom, He has allowed this situation to come our way. And we must humbly recognize that God is God, and we are who we are, creatures dependent on God, and say “What does my Lord say to His servant?”

Not say, “Why me?! Why this?!” But rather, to say, “Since I am in this, what would You have me do now God?

And when Joshua asked this question, this is how God responded:

*Joshua 5:15a ESV

15a And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.”

God tells Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.”

Now this is an interesting command. But in ancient cultures a man’s sandal was the symbol of that man’s strength and power. So, God telling Joshua to remove his sandals meant for Joshua to humbly and reverently recognize that he is under God’s authority.

And to pronounce that the place where he is standing is holy, to proclaim that the land in which Joshua stood, not only the city of Jericho, but all of Canaan belongs to the Lord.

What God told Joshua was that Joshua was indeed going to fight, but he was going to fight not for himself, or for his countrymen, but for the glory of God.

And the response of Joshua?

*Joshua 5:15b ESV

15b And Joshua did so.

Joshua thought not of himself or his countrymen or what any of them could gain from this, he thought only of serving the Lord. And this is what he humbly did.

There are indeed many blessings attached to serving God. Many, many blessings, some indescribable. But even if there were absolutely no blessings attached to it whatsoever, we ought to do so for two reasons: Because God commands it and also, because it is any honor like no other.

To think that God, in His most infinite wisdom chooses to use people like you and I to advance His own glory is incomprehensible. It’s an honor that nobody deserves.

So, whose side is God on? His own side! Beloved, let our hearts long to always be on His side!

Amen?