Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: July 9th

THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD’S HOST

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 a sword drawn " 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?" 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, recognises his Commander-in-Chief, owns himself a subordinate, and asks for orders. "What saith my Lord unto His servant? "

" 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 went up into Heaven and sat at the right hand of God, . . . they went forth everywhere preaching the word? " Strange contrasts between the repose of the seated Christ and the toils of His peripatetic servants! Yes! Strange contrast; but the next words harmonise the two halves of it: " The Lord also working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." 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."