God's Battle Plan

GOD’S BATTLE PLAN

Joshua 5:13-15

During World War II the United States and Great Britain achieved a great deal of success in cryptography. The German army and the Luftwaffe were wreaking havoc on allied forces and nations in Europe while the Japanese were doing the same thing in the Pacific. Hitler’s henchmen had developed some powerful and almost irresistible battle plans and they were nearly successful in their plans to dominate the entire world.

The transmitting of their battle plans and messages to all the commanders in the field was a challenge because if the Americans or the British were to intercept those messages, all of their planning would amount to nothing, so they began to think of ways to disguise the messages that were being transmitted.

German researchers created a cipher machine known as Enigma that converted ordinary messages into a code that seemed to be nothing more than gibberish to anyone who intercepted it. Because the interpretation of those messages was vastly important to the war effort and the liberty of free men everywhere, the Allies worked very feverishly to break the code used by their enemies. It was a daunting task and it seemed almost impossible. the need to , a British team of code breakers, including the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing, managed to crack the Enigma code against staggering odds.

The British code breakers, including Alan Turing, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, worked on the project, code-named Ultra, and were based at Bletchley Park, 65 miles north of London. They not only built a machine to crack the enigma code, they also built Colossus, one of the world’s first computers, to crack the Lorenz coder, which was another German secret code.

On the other side of the globe, the Japanese were doing the same thing. They were trying to hide their battle plans using secret codes as well but it didn’t take the United States long to break their code and that led to a number of Allied victories in the Pacific.

The amazing thing is that the U. S. Marines came up with their own code to transmit our battle plans. The army and navy had codes as well, but the Japanese were often able to break those codes, but not the one that the Marines used.

The reason was that the U.S. Marines used Native Americans Indians speaking in Navajo to communicate between units. Navajo was a dead language that very few people other than Navajos could understand or speak. No Japanese had ever learned that language and so the code was never broken.

Now, as we look as the Book of Joshua, I want us to understand that God has a battle plan too. Israel is across the Jordan now and marching into the Land of Canaan. They have finally reached that land that had been promised to Abraham and his seed so many years before. It had been 40 years, to the day, from the time that the Children of Israel had left Egypt, until they finally crossed over Jordan to take possession of the land. But, the battle was not over for them, it was just beginning.

Many of you have fought the battle of the wilderness and have already crossed over Jordan. You have said goodbye to Egypt, the world of sin, and committed your life to Jesus through repentance and you have been washed in the Blood of the Lamb. You have been through your 40 years in sin. I don’t mean that all of you were 40 years old before you came to Jesus. That term, “40 years”, is shown a number of times in the Bible to mean God’s fullness of time for testing and judgment.

Examples:

The rains fell for 40 days and 40 nights while Noah and his family rested in the ark of safety.

Moses was with God for 40 days on Mount Sinai when God was giving Moses the 10 Commandment.

The 12 spies were sent into Canaan when Moses and Israel first came to the Jordan River and they spied the land for 40 days.

40 stripes were the maximum number of stripes that could be given in a Jewish court for criminals. The Sanhedrin Council always gave 39 just to be safe in case they lost count.

Goliath came forth to taught the Army of Israel under King Saul for 40 days before David came along and killed him.

Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, fasted for 40 days and nights, and then was present in the earth bodily for 40 days after his resurrection.

All of these point to the fact that 40 represents a number of the fullness of God’s testing of the faithfulness of his people, and the fullness of God’s judgment poured out upon his enemies.