Christians are not called to spread their faith on the battlefield anymore, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have enemies. Today, the world faces many invisible foes – the COVID-19 virus immediately comes to mind – but we must also stand against the fear, the lack of trust, the isolation, the drug use and depression that have only become worse in its wake.

So, how do we face our problems, problems that are every bit as dangerous as those armies that faced God’s Old Testament people (Joshua 11:4)? By the same sort of radical trust in God that they demonstrated. For even as God enabled them to destroy their enemies on the battlefield, He insisted that they not put their faith in their armaments or their military prowess.

For why else would God tell them to destroy the horses and chariots of their enemies (Joshua 11:6)? In the days before the invention of the stirrup, those were the most fearsome weapons known to man: they allowed the speed and power of a horse to be combined with the strength and skill of a soldier. But God wanted His people to rely on Him alone for their safety and success. And so they obeyed Him by doing the ancient equivalent of smashing all the tanks and planes and automatic rifles they had just captured.

In the same way, Christians must never adopt the tactics and tools of God’s enemies. We must never use fear or force to impose God’s will on those who do not yet trust in Him. Instead, as our Lord Jesus showed us, we are called to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to pray for those who hurt us (Matthew 5:44). We are to do good and lend, expecting nothing in return (Luke 6:35) – for that’s the only way to emulate our Father in Heaven, Who gave His only Son to an ungrateful, undeserving world full of sinners like us.

The darker the world becomes, the more the light of truth, kindness, generosity, and self-sacrificial love becomes visible. May we use these, God’s weapons, to fight against the tide of loneliness, isolation and fear that is rising all around us.

Joshua 11:6-9 (NASB)

6 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid because of them, for tomorrow at this time I will deliver all of them slain before Israel; you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire.”
7 So Joshua and all the people of war with him came upon them suddenly by the waters of Merom, and attacked them.
8 And the LORD delivered them into the hand of Israel, so that they defeated them, and pursued them as far as Great Sidon and Misrephoth-maim and the valley of Mizpeh to the east; and they struck them until no survivor was left to them.
9 And Joshua did to them as the LORD had told him; he hamstrung their horses, and burned their chariots with fire.