God is a Warrior? (Hebrews 11:29-31)

This sermon was preached on August 10th, 2025.

I grew up in church, and there are a few kids’ songs that I can still sing from memory, even though I haven’t actually sang them in years and years. My favorite went like this: “I may never march in the infantry, ride in the calvary, shoot the artillery. I may never fly over the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army.” 

The Lord’s Army. It’s an idea you don’t just find in a kid’s song. It’s carried weight throughout history. Much of European history is armies many times fighting in the name of Jesus with crosses emblazoned on their shields (sometimes fighting other armies who also have crosses on their shields, fighting in the name of Jesus). I remember years ago when I read about the French theologian Bernard of Clairvaux, whose work I only knew from his writings about God’s love and its effects on us—and I read these words from when he was trying to stir up support for the 2nd Crusade in the 1140s: “Hasten…to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels…Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood!”

Or the KKK—who presented themselves as warriors for Christ, defenders of the faith. I remember watching a documentary about the Klan in North Carolina, and being shocked to see footage of rallies and the Klan folks singing songs like “The Old Rugged Cross” and hymns I knew from church. 

I can tell you today that Jesus has nothing to do with the KKK or any of their goals, and that those medieval armies of crusaders were not marching forward empowered by the Spirit of God. 

But what about this army of the Lord idea? The truth is that this idea of God being a warrior who has an army is one we find in Scripture. Of course that doesn’t mean we say “army of the Lord!” and it means whatever we want it to mean. No, like with everything we take our words to God, allowing him to define what those words mean. 

This morning we’re doing just that by looking at some of the most pivotal moments in OT history—when the Israelites were redeemed from slavery in Egypt and brought to the Promised Land as God’s holy army. And as we explore the history and speak about how to view it through the lens of Jesus, I believe we’ll get a larger view of God’s justice and mercy, and we’ll get our marching orders. 

11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for…

29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days. 31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

As open our Bible to any passage, it’s important for us to remember that we are popping in the middle of one large story. The Bible is not just a collection of books, like a library. It’s God’s inspired account of his works unfolding over time. An organic whole that testifies to how God’s work began, has continued, and grown. 

And in the same way that we can’t go back in time and relive our childhood, God will not repeat these things because they were stages leading up to the definitive statement of God’s purposes in Jesus Christ.

God isn’t going to find another Abraham and promise to through him to bless all the nations of the earth. He isn’t going to call another Moses from a burning bush to go to Egypt and demand slaves be set free. He isn’t going to raise up another king like David and promise that he will have a descendent that will reign over God’s kingdom forever. 

That doesn’t mean that these stories have nothing to do with us. But it’s to say that we have to take Scripture as it presents itself: this unfolding story that finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And it’s only when we have read passages through the lens of Jesus when we can understand what it means for us. 

So, for instance, our passage this morning mentions God bringing the Israelites through the Red Sea, and when the walls of Jericho fell as they were inheriting the promised land. We aren’t meant to read these stories and think “I need to go to the Cape Fear River and hold my staff up to part the waters and walk over on dry land.” Or “I need to walk around this place seven times and the walls will fall down.” Or “we need to rally together as God’s holy army and use force to take over.” 

No, these are God-breathed witnesses to us of God at work at an earlier stage. The family memory of a past that has everything to do with us that forms who we are but we shouldn’t expect to repeat. 

These stories of God at work throughout history in the OT lead us to see and appreciate Jesus. And it is only when we see how it led to him and was fulfilled in him that we can gain our understanding on what it means for us. More on that to come. 

The Israelites had been freed from Egyptian slavery. God had, in a sense, gone to war against the false gods of Egypt and the king, Pharaoh until Pharaoh would relent and let them go. Eventually Pharaoh gave in and declared God the winner but quickly regretted his decision and sent his army to pursue the Israelites and enslave them again. That’s the situation at the Red Sea. The Israelites, a group that is not an army—it’s men, women, and children traveling out of Egypt—facing the Egyptian army, which was the most powerful army that human history had ever known at this point. 

That’s when what is mentioned in v29 happens. By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. On the other side of the Red Sea, the Egyptians broke out in song, led by Moses and his sister Miriam, “I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.”

The song continues: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.”

The Lord is a warrior. He fights for his people. And the Israelites saw that in a remarkable way—they saw the Egyptian army ruined in a moment. God caused the water that had been split for the Israelites to cross through, to collapse in on the Egyptian army. In that moment, all their supposed power was overcome, and the former slaves walked forward free. 

A generation later, the children of these people stood, with the same promises but with a different leader—Joshua—at entrance to a land called Canaan. Canaan was a culture full of violence and abuse of the most vulnerable, and it had been that way for hundred of years. Their religious practices included bodily mutilation and even child sacrifice. Rampant abuse. 

At the border of Canaan was a city called Jericho. It was a heavily armed military base to protect against armies coming in. It wasn’t a very large place at the time, 6 acres—just larger than the Walmart here in town. And like most military bases, there’s an economy that has built up around it—including brothels and taverns, which is where we find a woman named Rahab.

Two spies are sent into Jericho to spy it out. They arrive at a brothel that Rahab owns and operates. It seems like she owns the place and may be the only woman working there. It also seems like she’s responsible for her wider family, and this is how she’s found a way to make ends meet. 

The spies are noticed, but Rahab decides to do something remarkable—to hide the spies. She speaks to them about their God, the true and living God, and turns to that God in faith, finding that his grace is available to all. That what he has for her is not wrath, but mercy. 

The spies return and give their report, then the plans get underway. God gives them instructions that make no sense from a military perspective. For a week they are to march around the city once per day. Then on the 7th day, march around the city 7 times with priests at the head of the line blowing trumpets. Then the walls of the city will collapse and the Israelites can march straight in. 

I think God was trying to tire them out, actually, to make a grand point. That he isn’t just giving them victories so they can boast in themselves. In fact, he forbids them from taking riches and wealth. This is not war like we tend to know in the world. It’s a different thing all together. 

The oddness of the battle is all over the place when we read about it. Maybe the strangest moment is right before they are going to Jericho, Joshua—the leader of the Israelites—encounters a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword. But this is no ordinary man. We’re told his an angel who calls himself the “Commander of the Army of the Lord.” Joshua asks him point blank: “Are you for us or for our enemies?” 

And the angel says this: “Neither. But as the commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” This is actually a call back to us to the very beginning of Genesis, when Adam and Eve are banished from the garden of Eden and God placed an angel with a sword to keep them from returning. The Israelites coming to the Promised Land is, in a sense, God at work to reverse the power of sin. God establishing a place from which to launch his greater work of bringing grace through Jesus. 

Again, all of this is pointing us to the fact that this isn’t just God taking the side of one group of people and giving them a blank check to do whatever they want in his name. In fact, he gives them clear instructions that before they engage in battle, they are to offer peace terms to their enemies, an offer to come to the true God, too. There was an offer for a place in Israel for anyone who came to God by faith, and the choice in front of the people of Canaan was either life by grace, or the death that characterized their society in every way. 

That’s what Rahab found. When God gives the Israelites victory, the spies promise to protect her and all who are in her household. After which, Rahab and her family are welcomed into the nation of Israel. She was a woman who lived in a society who thought the only way for her to care for her family was to sell her body and the bodies of others—and now a new kind of society has found her. She has been brought into the people of God. 

All of this points forward to something that only becomes much clearer 1,400 years later with the arrival of Jesus Christ, who was a great, great grandson of Rahab. When God showed himself as a warrior in the clearest sense—by warring against the power of sin at work in our world. 

In Jesus, God went to war—yet in a way we would not expect. How did Jesus war agains the wrong of this world? The only time we see anything close to physical violence was when he drove the moneychangers from the temple—the people who had driven out the poor and foreigners from worship to make money. 

Yet walk through the gospel. Jesus was a warrior in facing the hypocrisy of religious leaders who spiritually abused and lorded over people. He didn’t fight them, he challenged with them on the authority of who he was and the authority of the Scriptures. 

He faced disease, healing the sick. 

He faced hunger by providing for the hungry. 

He faced spiritual darkness by casting it out by prayer and the word of God.  

He faced the ridiculousness of social classes by welcoming the poor and the sinner and those who had been shamed and pushed away. 

And he faced the wrath of God against sin by bearing the justice against sin for those who will come to him in faith. In doing that he was going to war against sin like he did at the Red Sea, but instead of throwing us to the waters in condemnation for our disobedience, he was doing the greater work of throwing of treading our sins underfoot (not us!) And hurling our inquiries into the depths of the sea, where they will rise up to condemn us no longer. 

Jesus warred in this way because he knew that our greatest need was not a military leader to win one battle or even a war, but that our greatest enemies need to be toppled at its root. For unless the power and penalty of sin was dealt with, all possible victories would only be temporary and we would, ultimately, wind up as enemies of God—through our participation in sin. 

But praise be to God that he did not raise up another general, but that he fulfilled the promises he had made—not simply to give a group of people a land and a kingdom, but to overcome the evil one and to win for us an eternal kingdom of goodness and righteousness that will never end. 

And so Jesus comes to us with a sword, but not a physical one. He comes with the sword of God’s Spirit—his Word for us to repent and believe the good news. He comes to us with the offer of new creation, and he puts to death the sinful nature within us so that something different can come to life. He exposes the false power of sin and death in his resurrection, so that we can have hope that death and judgment are not the final word about us. 

And so we can find ourselves called into the ranks of the army of King Jesus—not with swords or guns or missiles or calvary but as we sang earlier: “with deeds and love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.” These are the “weapons” we take up—kindness. Mercy. Compassion. Service. The fruit of the Holy Spirit. And it is through these things that we will conquer our enemies—not to destroy them, but that they may find life in our King Jesus. 

This is our marching orders. To obey the voice of the Father and for love of God and love of others make war against the spiritual darkness of this world. To wage peace in this world of war. And to swing open wide the recruiting office for this army as wide as Jesus swings it, to invite the lost, rebellious children of God to come home.