Yahweh is a Man of War!
The Exodus event is the penultimate redemptive act of God in the Old Testament. It was also the inaugural act which brought the people of Israel into being. Prior to the Exodus event the people of Israel were a collection of tribes, all descendants of Jacob, who moved to Egypt at the request of his 11th son, Joseph -- then Prime Minister of the nation. But generations of slavery can do terrible things to the self-understanding of a people, and this is especially true of the peoples of the ancient world. In the ancient world the stronger people were believed to worship the stronger god. If your people were defeated in battle it was because your god was defeated by the god(s) of your attackers. For the people of the ancient world, self-image was directly connected to god-image; in other words the peoples of the ancient world tended to project upon their gods the images that constituted their own identity. This, of course, is the basic meaning of idolatry: creating a god in your own image and likeness and projecting upon him all of your personal strengths, weaknesses and desires! So for the people of Israel to be made slaves in Egypt meant that they were servants of a god who was inferior to the gods of Egypt.
The people of Israel had no doubt heard stories of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had heard that his name was Elohim, or El Shaddai, and that he had made covenant with their fathers... They had heard of him but had not yet heard from him! This is why God's number one priority before bringing them out of Egypt was to introduce himself to them as the victorious God, rather than the defeated god. In each of the ten plagues God judged one of the gods of Egypt. The Egyptians worshiped the Nile river; God turned it to blood as a sign that he had put to death the Nile god. The Egyptians worshiped the image of a frog; God sent a plague of frogs on the land as a sign that he was powerful than the frog god. The Egyptians worshiped the sun; God turned it to darkness. The Egyptians worshiped Pharaoh; God struck down his first born son. After each plague God made sure Pharaoh hardened his heart again because he was not yet finished introducing himself to his people. With each plague God was saying to his people, You think I'm weak because you're weak. You think I'm defeated because you're defeated. You think I'm a slave god because you're in slavery. Well I'm about to show you otherwise! By the time I bring you out of this land you will know who I am! You will know that I am greater and more powerful over all other gods! You will know that there is no one like me! I'm not done with Egypt until you know who I am!
By the time the people of Israel arrive at the other side of the Red Sea and the waters come crashing down upon Pharaoh's army, they are good and acquainted with the power of their God! They instantly break out in worship and rejoicing, and they have a Holy Ghost party! Listen to the new-found theology that flows from this moment of powerful worship:
"Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: 'I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.'" (Exodus 15:1)
When Moses and the Israelites sang about God's exalted status, they did not mean that he was somewhere on a throne in a cloud being worshiped by angels. That theology hadn't come around yet. Instead, they looked at the dead bodies of the Egyptian soldiers and said, this is what it means that God is highly exalted!
Now listen to the theological conclusion that flows out of this experience of deliverance: "The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name" (Exodus 15:3). First, we need to understand that the term 'Lord' is not in the Hebrew text. The text actually contains the name that he gave Moses at the burning bush: Yahweh, I Am. The reason the name has been replaced by the title 'Lord' is because the people of Israel who returned from the exile to Babylon in 539 took the third commandment ("You shall not misuse the name Yahweh your God") so seriously that they understood it to mean that the name Yahweh should never even be spoken! So they went throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and circumlocuted the title 'Lord' in every place where the name Yahweh appeared. The text literally says, "Yahweh is a man of war."
We often miss the significance of the Exodus event! God is introducing himself to his people and setting the paradigm for the way in which they are to relate to him. In this event he is communicating the essence of who he is, and the first thing he reveals to his people is that he is a God of war! Make no mistake, he is no pacifist or punk! He is not mocked and he ultimately will not tolerate opposition! He comes with vengeance and divine retribution! He is the God who kills! Yahweh is a man of war!
What does this mean for us? First, it means that we must do the opposite of what the ancients did in relation to their gods; instead of forming God in our own image, we must allow ourselves to be formed in his image. In other words, we can't be a punk people and serve a God of war! If he is a God of war, then we must be a people of war! We must come out of the civilian mentality and show up for battle! True warriors dream of victory in battle, but civilians dream of nice cars and houses and a quiet and peaceful life! Our God is a God of conquest, and he expects us to be a people of conquest. He is our King and our General, but he has so few warriors among us who are willing to ride with him into battle! We've been overtaken by civilian affairs, so much so that we neglect the call of kingdom warfare, and we are paying the price for it!
In 1 Samuel 11, Saul hears that the Ammonites had besieged the city of Jabesh Gilead. Everyone else who heard the news began to weep, but verse 6 tells us that Saul had a different experience: "When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came upon him in power, and he burned with anger." Did you know that when the Spirit of God comes on you in power you get pissed off? When the anointing of God's Spirit came on Saul, he burned with anger, and then he took a pair of oxen, "cut them into pieces, and sent the pieces by messengers throughout Israel, proclaiming, 'This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not follow Saul...'" The ox was the power of the harvest in Israel. Without an ox you could neither sow nor reap because you could not plow. Saul says, If you don't show up for war, the power of your harvest will be taken from you and you will become barren and unfruitful. What we are seeing in the body of Christ today is that the oxen of many believers are being cut to pieces because they are refusing to show up for war! We hear of what the devil is doing to our families, to our friends, to our fields and to our harvests, and like the people of Israel, we weep and mourn. But God is looking for some angry Christians! The problem is that we don't have enough believers who are burning with anger!
Now don't get me wrong, I do recognize that the church is filled with angry believers, but most of them have aimed their anger in the wrong direction! They are angry at the church because they've been hurt there, angry at their families because of what happened when they were young, angry at other believers because of something that happened, angry at their pastors for not spending enough time with them, and worst of all, angry at God for letting bad things happen to them! But we have forgotten that your church is not the enemy of your soul, and neither is your family or your pastor or God. Satan is the enemy of your soul! He is the thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy! He is the lion who prowls around looking for someone to devour! He is the accuser of the brothers, the author of confusion, your adversary, that ancient serpent...
There are all kinds of wars going on among Christians, but most of them are fools wars. David armed himself to the teeth to go kill Nabal, a fool (Nabal actually means 'fool') who simply said something disrespectful about him (1 Samuel 25)! David was ready to take the fool out! But thankfully, Abigail was there to remind David that his job was to fight the Lord's battles, not to engage in fools wars! Fools wars happen in church board rooms, in congregational meetings, behind closed doors where believers engage in gossip and slander. No spoils or plunder come from these wars because we're fighting the wrong enemy! My spiritual father always says that he sees high level men of God being taken out by low level demonic powers because they are engaging in fools wars. We must once again learn how to fight the Lord's battles and dispense with these fools wars!
So how do we do this?
We are in the middle of our 21 Days of Prayer campaign at Living Hope; every year we gather at the church for 21 nights to seek the face of God and press for new dimensions of his glory and power. Two nights ago (day 8) I received a phone call 30 minutes into our prayer meeting from the sitter who was watching our daughter, Alethia. She frantically explained to me that Alethia had tripped and face-planted against a hard surface. She had a huge knot on her forehead, a bloody nose, and a fat lip! Immediately I felt in my spirit that this was a distraction of the enemy. I asked her a few questions about Alethia's behavior (did she vomit, seem woosy, want to go to sleep, act strange in any way...?) and then instructed her to put an ice pack on her head and lip and call me if any of those symptoms appeared. Then my wife looked at me and said, "Now let's go beat up the devil!" We went to the front and I took the microphone, explained to the church what had just happened to my daughter, and said: "This is a distraction! Satan saw that we were making too much progress in the Spirit tonight, so he thought he'd distract us by messing with my family! But we're going to set a precedent tonight! If we were going to take a foot, we're going to take a mile now! If we expected break through in a year, we're going to have it in a week now! Tonight the kingdom suffers violence, and we are the violent who will take it by force!"
I can't tell you what happened in that prayer meeting next! The people rose up and just went after God with a passion, and went after the things of the Spirit with a vengeance! I was immediately reminded of my first trip to Indonesia in 2002. On Sunday morning I called my wife before heading to the church where I was scheduled to preach. She told me that the devil had attacked her all night long in her dreams. I was so angry that as I hung up the phone I prayed, Lord, the Scripture says that you were made manifest so that you might destroy the works of the devil! Today I am going out in your ministry: wherever I see the work of the devil today I'm going to destroy it! When I got to the church I ministered under an unusual anointing. At the close of the service a woman came forward for prayer saying that she had tongue cancer. She had been scheduled to have her tongue removed because they couldn't get the cancer out. I laid my hands on her and prayed, and later received the report that she had been completely healed!
It dawned on me that God allows things like this to happen sometimes so that we will get angry enough to do some damage to the kingdom of darkness! We've got to stop making treaties with the enemy and start making war! We can't stand by and watch him carry off our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds, our seed and harvest anymore! We've got to rise up and fight the Lord's battles, because Yahweh is a man of war!
The people of Israel had no doubt heard stories of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had heard that his name was Elohim, or El Shaddai, and that he had made covenant with their fathers... They had heard of him but had not yet heard from him! This is why God's number one priority before bringing them out of Egypt was to introduce himself to them as the victorious God, rather than the defeated god. In each of the ten plagues God judged one of the gods of Egypt. The Egyptians worshiped the Nile river; God turned it to blood as a sign that he had put to death the Nile god. The Egyptians worshiped the image of a frog; God sent a plague of frogs on the land as a sign that he was powerful than the frog god. The Egyptians worshiped the sun; God turned it to darkness. The Egyptians worshiped Pharaoh; God struck down his first born son. After each plague God made sure Pharaoh hardened his heart again because he was not yet finished introducing himself to his people. With each plague God was saying to his people, You think I'm weak because you're weak. You think I'm defeated because you're defeated. You think I'm a slave god because you're in slavery. Well I'm about to show you otherwise! By the time I bring you out of this land you will know who I am! You will know that I am greater and more powerful over all other gods! You will know that there is no one like me! I'm not done with Egypt until you know who I am!
By the time the people of Israel arrive at the other side of the Red Sea and the waters come crashing down upon Pharaoh's army, they are good and acquainted with the power of their God! They instantly break out in worship and rejoicing, and they have a Holy Ghost party! Listen to the new-found theology that flows from this moment of powerful worship:
"Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: 'I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.'" (Exodus 15:1)
When Moses and the Israelites sang about God's exalted status, they did not mean that he was somewhere on a throne in a cloud being worshiped by angels. That theology hadn't come around yet. Instead, they looked at the dead bodies of the Egyptian soldiers and said, this is what it means that God is highly exalted!
Now listen to the theological conclusion that flows out of this experience of deliverance: "The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name" (Exodus 15:3). First, we need to understand that the term 'Lord' is not in the Hebrew text. The text actually contains the name that he gave Moses at the burning bush: Yahweh, I Am. The reason the name has been replaced by the title 'Lord' is because the people of Israel who returned from the exile to Babylon in 539 took the third commandment ("You shall not misuse the name Yahweh your God") so seriously that they understood it to mean that the name Yahweh should never even be spoken! So they went throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and circumlocuted the title 'Lord' in every place where the name Yahweh appeared. The text literally says, "Yahweh is a man of war."
We often miss the significance of the Exodus event! God is introducing himself to his people and setting the paradigm for the way in which they are to relate to him. In this event he is communicating the essence of who he is, and the first thing he reveals to his people is that he is a God of war! Make no mistake, he is no pacifist or punk! He is not mocked and he ultimately will not tolerate opposition! He comes with vengeance and divine retribution! He is the God who kills! Yahweh is a man of war!
What does this mean for us? First, it means that we must do the opposite of what the ancients did in relation to their gods; instead of forming God in our own image, we must allow ourselves to be formed in his image. In other words, we can't be a punk people and serve a God of war! If he is a God of war, then we must be a people of war! We must come out of the civilian mentality and show up for battle! True warriors dream of victory in battle, but civilians dream of nice cars and houses and a quiet and peaceful life! Our God is a God of conquest, and he expects us to be a people of conquest. He is our King and our General, but he has so few warriors among us who are willing to ride with him into battle! We've been overtaken by civilian affairs, so much so that we neglect the call of kingdom warfare, and we are paying the price for it!
In 1 Samuel 11, Saul hears that the Ammonites had besieged the city of Jabesh Gilead. Everyone else who heard the news began to weep, but verse 6 tells us that Saul had a different experience: "When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came upon him in power, and he burned with anger." Did you know that when the Spirit of God comes on you in power you get pissed off? When the anointing of God's Spirit came on Saul, he burned with anger, and then he took a pair of oxen, "cut them into pieces, and sent the pieces by messengers throughout Israel, proclaiming, 'This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not follow Saul...'" The ox was the power of the harvest in Israel. Without an ox you could neither sow nor reap because you could not plow. Saul says, If you don't show up for war, the power of your harvest will be taken from you and you will become barren and unfruitful. What we are seeing in the body of Christ today is that the oxen of many believers are being cut to pieces because they are refusing to show up for war! We hear of what the devil is doing to our families, to our friends, to our fields and to our harvests, and like the people of Israel, we weep and mourn. But God is looking for some angry Christians! The problem is that we don't have enough believers who are burning with anger!
Now don't get me wrong, I do recognize that the church is filled with angry believers, but most of them have aimed their anger in the wrong direction! They are angry at the church because they've been hurt there, angry at their families because of what happened when they were young, angry at other believers because of something that happened, angry at their pastors for not spending enough time with them, and worst of all, angry at God for letting bad things happen to them! But we have forgotten that your church is not the enemy of your soul, and neither is your family or your pastor or God. Satan is the enemy of your soul! He is the thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy! He is the lion who prowls around looking for someone to devour! He is the accuser of the brothers, the author of confusion, your adversary, that ancient serpent...
There are all kinds of wars going on among Christians, but most of them are fools wars. David armed himself to the teeth to go kill Nabal, a fool (Nabal actually means 'fool') who simply said something disrespectful about him (1 Samuel 25)! David was ready to take the fool out! But thankfully, Abigail was there to remind David that his job was to fight the Lord's battles, not to engage in fools wars! Fools wars happen in church board rooms, in congregational meetings, behind closed doors where believers engage in gossip and slander. No spoils or plunder come from these wars because we're fighting the wrong enemy! My spiritual father always says that he sees high level men of God being taken out by low level demonic powers because they are engaging in fools wars. We must once again learn how to fight the Lord's battles and dispense with these fools wars!
So how do we do this?
We are in the middle of our 21 Days of Prayer campaign at Living Hope; every year we gather at the church for 21 nights to seek the face of God and press for new dimensions of his glory and power. Two nights ago (day 8) I received a phone call 30 minutes into our prayer meeting from the sitter who was watching our daughter, Alethia. She frantically explained to me that Alethia had tripped and face-planted against a hard surface. She had a huge knot on her forehead, a bloody nose, and a fat lip! Immediately I felt in my spirit that this was a distraction of the enemy. I asked her a few questions about Alethia's behavior (did she vomit, seem woosy, want to go to sleep, act strange in any way...?) and then instructed her to put an ice pack on her head and lip and call me if any of those symptoms appeared. Then my wife looked at me and said, "Now let's go beat up the devil!" We went to the front and I took the microphone, explained to the church what had just happened to my daughter, and said: "This is a distraction! Satan saw that we were making too much progress in the Spirit tonight, so he thought he'd distract us by messing with my family! But we're going to set a precedent tonight! If we were going to take a foot, we're going to take a mile now! If we expected break through in a year, we're going to have it in a week now! Tonight the kingdom suffers violence, and we are the violent who will take it by force!"
I can't tell you what happened in that prayer meeting next! The people rose up and just went after God with a passion, and went after the things of the Spirit with a vengeance! I was immediately reminded of my first trip to Indonesia in 2002. On Sunday morning I called my wife before heading to the church where I was scheduled to preach. She told me that the devil had attacked her all night long in her dreams. I was so angry that as I hung up the phone I prayed, Lord, the Scripture says that you were made manifest so that you might destroy the works of the devil! Today I am going out in your ministry: wherever I see the work of the devil today I'm going to destroy it! When I got to the church I ministered under an unusual anointing. At the close of the service a woman came forward for prayer saying that she had tongue cancer. She had been scheduled to have her tongue removed because they couldn't get the cancer out. I laid my hands on her and prayed, and later received the report that she had been completely healed!
It dawned on me that God allows things like this to happen sometimes so that we will get angry enough to do some damage to the kingdom of darkness! We've got to stop making treaties with the enemy and start making war! We can't stand by and watch him carry off our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds, our seed and harvest anymore! We've got to rise up and fight the Lord's battles, because Yahweh is a man of war!
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