And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now
come-Joshua 5:14.
The army of Israel was just beginning a hard conflict under an untried
leader. Behind them Jordan barred their retreat, in front of them Jericho
forbade their advance. Most of them had never seen a fortified city, and had
no experience nor engines for a siege.
So we may well suppose that many doubts and fears shook the courage of the
host as it drew around the doomed city. Their chief had his own heavy
burden. He seems to have gone apart to meditate on what his next step was to
be. Absorbed in thought, he lifts up his eyes mechanically, as brooding men
will, not expecting to see anything, and is startled by the silent figure of
"a man . . . with his sword drawn" [5:13] in His hand, close beside him.
There is nothing supernatural in His appearance; and the immediate thought
of the leader is, "Is this one of the enemy that has stolen upon my
solitude?" So, promptly and boldly, he strides right up to Him with the
quick challenge: "Whose side are you on? Are you one of us, or from the
enemy's camp" [see v. 13]? And then the silent lips open: "Upon neither the
one nor the other. I am not on your side, you are on Mine, for as Captain of
the Lord's host am I come up."
And then Joshua falls on his face, recognizes his Commander-in-Chief, owns
himself a subordinate, and asks for orders. "What saith my Lord unto His
servant?" [v. 14]. The Captain of the Lord's host-He Himself takes part in
the fight. He is not like a general who, on some safe knoll behind the army,
sends his soldiers to death, and keeps his own skin whole; but He has fought
and He is fighting. Do you remember that wonderful picture in two halves, at
the end of one of the Gospels, "the Lord was received up into Heaven and sat
on the right hand of God . . . they went forth and preached everywhere"
[Mark 16:19, 20]?
Strange contrasts between the repose of the seated Christ and the toils of
His peripatetic servants: Yes: Strange contrast; but the next words
harmonize the two halves of it: "The Lord working with them, and confirming
the word with signs following" [Mark 16:21] The Leader does not so rest as
that He does not fight; and the servants do not need so to fight as that
they cannot rest.
Thus the old legends of many a land and tongue have a glorious truth in them
to the eye of faith; and at the head of all the armies that are charging
against any form of the world's misery and sin there moves the form of the
Son of Man, whose aid we have to invoke, even from His crowned repose at the
right hand of God. "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty . . . and
in thy majesty ride forth prosperously . . . and thy right hand shall teach
thee terrible things" [Ps. 45:3, 4].
In Celebration of Life in Him,
Dr.Jim DeBruhl, gembeaux@bellsouth.net
" Everything is wrong until God makes it right."
