Who's side is God on?

I have to begin by saying I woke up at 5:30 this morning with abdominal pains. I have to say that in case I die when everyone thinks I'm healthy again.

But I did say I would talk about what J.D. Vance said about God being on the side of the Americans. If you know your Bible like I do, when you heard him say that you would immediately think of Joshua and Cyrus.

Joshua first. Moses has died on Mount Nebo and Joshua has to get the Israelites across the Jordan and then fight against the military compound that is Jericho. Inside Jericho's walls are well-trained soldiers (and some prostitutes!). Joshua has second-generation freed slaves! How will he cope? And as he is out for a walk thinking about this he encounters someone. Here is Joshua 5: 13-14, "Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’

‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’"

God wanted Israel to be established in the Promised Land. That didn't mean He was on Israel's side. He was fulfilling his own purposes and using Israel to fulfil those purposes. They were to be a witness to the nations around them and so the military strategy was to walk around the city and eventually blow some trumpets and shout, demonstrating that it was God who won the battle, not "the best warriors in the world".

And then Cyrus. He was the Persian Emperor (Persia = Iran). The kingdom of Israel had been divided. The northern tribes were eventually defeated by the Assyrians who took captives into exile. A few centuries later the Babylonians defeated the southern tribes and took captives into exile. God had promised, through Jeremiah, that the southern tribes (who became known as Jews) would only be captive for 70 years. How was He going to rescue them? By sending in the Americans? No! Isaiah tells us:

I am the Lord,

the Maker of all things,

who stretches out the heavens,

who spreads out the earth by myself,

...

who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd

and will accomplish all that I please;

he will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’

and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid.’” (Isaiah 44: 24, 28)

God wasn't on Cyrus' side. He was using Cyrus to fulfil his purposes. To release Israel so they could rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, paving the way for Jesus.

And so, in the Second World War, God wasn't fighting for one side against the other. There were Germans like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who were fighting against the Nazis. The Germans weren't bad/evil. They weren't the enemy. Fascism and Nazism were the enemy. The British and the Americans were used by God to bring liberation to the captives. God wasn't on their side. They were being used by God to fulfil his purposes.

This is God's world. He doesn't favour one nation above another. Before the Americans started killing them Iran had the fastest growing Christian church in the world. I'm not sure I could agree that God is helping the Americans to wipe out a civilisation that has the potential to become a light in the Middle East. After all, America was founded on the principle that the country would be secular, not Christian. They even voted God out of their schools in 1962 when they banned prayer and Bible reading in all schools. Is God on their side? Are they on God's side?

I like what Jesus said to his disciples in Mathew 5: 12-14, ‘You are the salt of the earth ... You are the light of the world.'

I have a ministry of being salt, and I think there are times in our troubled world that salt, infiltrating everywhere, influencing, bringing flavour, occasionally stinging, is more useful than light. We tend to notice light where we don't notice salt, but I think there is a lot of salt out there. I think God has sprinkled plenty of us over this world to make a difference.

So instead of asking if God is on our side, maybe we should be asking if we can be used by God, not to kill and destroy, but to heal and build up.