Is Your God Able to Fight His Own Battles?

Gideon is a great person in the history presented in the Bible.  He was from a family that was the weakest in Manasseh, and he was the least in his family.  However, the angel of the Lord called him "mighty man of valor".  Gideon was instructed to pull down the idols made to the false gods in his area.  He followed the command at night.  

When the followers of the false gods saw what had been done, they were irate.  They demanded Gideon be executed for what they saw as his crime.  Here is that exchange as recorded in Judges 6:

When the men of the town rose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the Asherah beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built. ²⁹ And they said to one another, “Who has done this thing?” And after they had searched and inquired, they said, “Gideon the son of Joash has done this thing.” ³⁰ Then the men of the town said to Joash, “Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah beside it.” ³¹ But Joash said to all who stood against him, “Will you contend for Baal? Or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down.” ³² Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend against him,” because he broke down his altar. (Judges 6.28-32 ESV)

This is a great passage of Scripture.  It is a challenge only the One true God would be able to satisfy, because only He is real.  All other gods are false.

Sometimes I feel like going into battle for God when someone disrespects Him.  When someone opposes God it seems like we should fight for Him.  Let's have a crusade!  Not like Billy Graham, but like the crusaders of old!  Conquer and pillage, rape and murder.  Make them pay for dishonoring our God!  However, that is not what we are called to do.  What I described is Islam, not Biblical Christianity.  When popes ordered people to be killed they showed the evil of their hearts and the lack of true spiritual authority in their office.

If you think about it, the Gospel is most effective in places where there is persecution.  The saying goes, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."  The Gospel prospers not when we conquer, but when we allow God to conquer us and surrender our will to His.  When we do that we can realize that we do not need to fight His battles for Him, we just need to do His will.  The followers of Baal and Asherah (as well as those who follow allah and the papacy) have to fight on their gods' behalf.  That is because their gods are powerless.  The God of the Bible is all-powerful.  He does not need our defense.  If we stand bold, it is not to protect God, but to honor Him and to be a witness of His greatness.  

Surely, our God is able to fight His own battles; we, Christians, are the only ones who can truthfully say that.

Pete Garbacki is a minister with Time for Truth Ministries and Mission.Brasil.  Follow him on Twitter @mission_brasil or FaceBook at http://www.facebook.com/pete.garbacki.

First Love

First Love
By: Drew Taylor

Darkness. That is the best description of what I felt as I walked through the seven-story mall in downtown Bangkok, Thailand on a Saturday afternoon in mid-June. Off for the afternoon while serving on a mission trip, our team headed to the mall to experience big-city life in the Far East. In the MBK Center, hundreds of people crammed the walkways, millions of lights flickered across stores that advertised cellphones, videogames, clothes, candy, and much more. Despite all the business, all I felt was an overwhelming sense of darkness. Half-way across the world, in one of the most prominent cities in the eastern-half of planet earth, I encountered many, many people who did not have a first love. David, in 2^nd Samuel 22:29 acknowledges God with the praise, “You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.” In a spiritually dark place like Thailand, the feeling of darkness will pursue you aggressively. In America, the same darkness creeps in much more subtly.

We are living in a spiritually dark time in a spiritually dark country. The “already” of Jesus Christ’s inauguration of God’s kingdom through his life, death, and resurrection is over-shadowed by the “not-yet” of God’s kingdom on Earth failing to be fully present until Christ’s return. I am consistently guilty of falling on both sides of this pendulum. I’m either not accepting God’s grace while trying to righteously work for a righteous status with God through “ministry,” or I accept his grace cheaply, viewing it as license to sin and violate God’s holy law. Lately, it has been much of the former. While I have accepted the grace Paul talks about in Ephesians 2:8-9, I fail to accept the second half of the verse “not by works so that no man can boast.” Failing to live out of this grace and falling back into works based righteousness, I cheapen the work of Christ while attempting to increase my own feeble efforts. Maybe this is you… If so, you are not alone, you are merely hiding amongst the shadows of your own darkness rather than in the truth of God’s light provided by his daily grace. Jesus’ disciple, John, paints this picture beautifully in 1^st John 1:5-6, when he states that “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.”

For me, it’s about failing to hold on to my first love. By loving myself first rather than God, I worship the idol of self, much like the Israelites loved the idols they had created to worship instead of God. This is communicated in Hosea 2:7, which compares the Israelites to a cheating wife. The verse states- “She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.  Then she will say, I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.”

Those people in the mega-mall in Bangkok did not have the Lord as a lamp, and despite being surrounded by people, wealth, and entertainment, lived dependent on themselves and thus in utter darkness. Sadly, many of us who know Christ and have experienced his light will often revert back to the darkness of worshipping an idol, worshipping self. When living as dependent children of God, we live as we were created to live… In the light. Fully alive. In love with our first love.

Drew Taylor
RTS Orlando MDiv Student (3rd year)
Pastoral Intern at Willow Creek Church (PCA)