The fragility of our enemies.

I was talking to my Dad yesterday about going to jail. He was showing me some mockups for a web site that he is involved with and how he is moving the rhetoric there to dealing with purity and sanctification among those with same-sex attraction. And how it may soon by that because of equality, that such things will be shut down — as they have in every professional body, where these things are deemed unethical.

He is getting more pessimistic. Paradoxically I am getting more hopeful: it might be the way I’m wired but the less public praise the church gets the stronger our witness and ministry. Besides, I’m more worried about heterosexual impurity than homosexual: I am not gay and I know what my temptations are, and I see a tolerance for fornication (or serial monogamy) within the church, and that we need to repent of.

Many are going to fold under pressure from the state to tolerate such sins — and not only sexual sins, but oppression, injustice. Some will even kill and lie for what they think are the goals of the LORD.

We forget that the battles of this generation belong to the LORD, as does the church. The enemy only appears powerful, but within they are fragile.

NUMBERS 13:31-14:25

³¹Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.” ³²So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. ³³There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

¹Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. ²And all the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron; the whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! ³Why is the LORD bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become booty; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” ⁴So they said to one another, “Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt.”

⁵Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the Israelites. ⁶And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes ⁷and said to all the congregation of the Israelites, “The land that we went through as spies is an exceedingly good land. ⁸If the LORD is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. ⁹Only, do not rebel against the LORD; and do not fear the people of the land, for they are no more than bread for us; their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.” ¹⁰But the whole congregation threatened to stone them.

Then the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. ¹¹And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? ¹²I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”

¹³But Moses said to the LORD, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for in your might you brought up this people from among them, ¹⁴and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O LORD, are in the midst of this people; for you, O LORD, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go in front of them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. ¹⁵Now if you kill this people all at one time, then the nations who have heard about you will say, ¹⁶‘It is because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them that he has slaughtered them in the wilderness.’ ¹⁷And now, therefore, let the power of the LORD be great in the way that you promised when you spoke, saying, ¹⁸‘The LORD is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and the fourth generation.’ ¹⁹Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have pardoned this people, from Egypt even until now.”

²⁰Then the LORD said, “I do forgive, just as you have asked; ²¹nevertheless – as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD – ²²none of the people who have seen my glory and the signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tested me these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, ²³shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors; none of those who despised me shall see it. ²⁴But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me wholeheartedly, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. ²⁵Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.”

It is worthwhile remembering that the Amekalites are no more. They died: the inquity of the Amorites and Canaanites was such that their society was destroyed, root and branch. So that they did not continue to infect the neighbouring nations. And when Israel did not complete that task they were left in their land, sacrificing babes to Topeth, the innocence of their daughters to Asherah, and have religious ecstasy as their means of worshipping Ba’al. Leading many astray. Including having their royal power structure subverted by Cannanite wives, of whom Jezebel is the most famous, instating as a state religion the very pagan cults that Joshua was mandated to destroy.

But this society died. The Jews remain.

So it is now. The Liberals allow abortion, debate if we should kill the inconvenient (but in fear use euphemistic language) and want us to allow licence, as if by preventing sexual diseases and pregnancy we have somehow dealt with the issues of the human heart. I see my daughter’s generation inventing more and more elaborate means of committal to each other from locks on bridges to tattoos because marriage has lost the power of a covenant.

I see a pagan flood, and it looks mighty. But it is mighty fragile. In this time, being a Christian, and in particular having a marriage that is Christian in structure, is profoundly countercultural.

So it is, and let this be. This culture will soon be one with the Amekalites. But the church will be the bride of Christ.