God Is Sovereign Over All The Universe

12 On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
¹³ So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on its enemies,

as it is written in the Book of Jashar.

The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!

Celestial Commotion

In these latter days, it takes a lot to get our attention.  We are constantly surrounded by the miraculous with technology.  People are so overwhelmed, they often fail to react when something truly amazing happens.  Each new iteration of technology brings awe and wonder to us as we are dazzled by the seemingly impossibility of it.  Robots performing automated surgery?  That was the stuff of science fiction 30 years ago.  How about cars that drive themselves?  That again was Sci-Fi relegated to movies like “Minority Report“.  Smart bombs, drones, gene therapy, missions to mars – just fifty years ago, these were mere dreams.  But now they assault us every day, as we wait for the next great thing to happen.

So what if the Sun and the Moon stopped in their tracks in the sky?  Would that capture your attention?  It should.  This type of thing just doesn’t happen every day.  It would cause people to fear for their lives that the end of the world was at hand.  People would flock to churches, hoping that God’s wrath was not upon them.  And those who were on the other side of Planet Earth, would be plunged into a much longer darkness than before, wondering if the Sun would every shine again.  Our concept of how the Universe worked would be severely shaken.  What we have taken for granted for generations -millennia – would be thrown out the window.

Powerful Prayer

It is recorded here that this was the only time, EVER, in the Old Testament, that the Lord God Almighty listened to the command of a man.  Joshua, in the power of the Holy Spirit of God, in the presence of God and man, commanded the Sun and Moon to stop until Israel had avenged itself on its enemies.  Never before, nor after, had God listened to the command of a man.  Until Jesus:

He [Jesus] replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” [Caption added for clarification]

We must remember that faith is closely tied to submission and obedience.  Submission and obedience is the outward sign of our faith.  For if we did not believe, we would not be foolish enough to wait upon God for action.

God would not honor a person who desired to be fabulously wealthy and who said to a pile of rocks, “turn into gold!” for personal gain.  It is the power of God in faith through submission and obedience that would cause these things to happen.  Greed, envy, and every other base and vile attitude of the heart would prevent such a thing from happening.  However, if it is the will of God, for His glory, and for  His purposes, surely it would come to pass.  We are not to abuse the wonderful gift that we have been given:

¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Intervention for Israel

God, in causing the heavenly bodies to behave in a nature contrary to what the laws of physics would dictate, would certainly have caused fear and horror in the eyes of Israel’s enemies.  God surely fought for Israel that day.  God surely fights for Israel today.  And God will surely fight for Israel for all eternity, for Israel is the chosen people of God.  He will not abandon them, or allow them to be scattered ever again to the four winds.

God has fulfilled His prophesy, and no one and nothing will ever prevail against her again.  And when she turns her heart fully towards God, those who seek to rob her of her land, her sovereignty, and her lifeblood, will surely be punished in a manner that will strike fear into the heart of every human being alive.  Centuries ago, it might have taken months or years for the world to know what happened in lands far away.  But now, technology gives us instant access to events that transpire in real-time and vividly, soon to be with live 3D visual effects and perhaps even 4D realism.  The destruction of the enemies of Israel will be available to be watched by nearly everyone on this planet with access to a television or the Internet.

A Qualifying Question

Let’s ask a question:  Am I trusting in the sovereignty of God?

A short prayer of preparation:

Father in Heaven, You have shown us Your mercy and grace, and provided us with these wonderful accounts of what You have done in the past so that we may know who You are.  Give me the strength to wait upon You for Your timing in all my circumstances.  Help me to remain faithful in affliction and times of difficulty.  Uphold me and carry me when my body and spirit are too weak to continue.  Help me to always look to You for my help.  Father, You have done miraculous things for Your people in the past, and You are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  You have adopted me into Your family, and I pray dear God that You would help me.  Amen.

Want more?  Why not try A. B. Simpson or A. W. Tozer?