Joshua 10:42

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"... the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel." Jos 10:42

Israel was an undivided name betokening a complete whole. The Israelite, as an individual, had no existence from Israel, the whole number. If one man wandered away from Israel, the whole body felt itself in a state of incompleteness, and was inspired by a spirit of solicitude and yearning after the absent one. There is a nationality as well as a personality. We miss a good deal by supposing that life is wholly a question of individualities. In a very important sense it is so, but in another equally important sense it is not so. England has a character as well as every Englishman. We speak of the health of a country and say it is good, at the very moment when thousands of persons are lying without ability to walk or work: we speak of the wealth of a country, and call it exceedingly abundant, at the very moment that workhouses are crowded with inmates; we speak of the intelligence of a country, and may describe some countries as the most intelligent in the whole world, notwithstanding the fact that there are within them uncounted numbers of illiterate persons. Thus there is another life beside the merely personal. God is here represented as fighting for nations. God never fights for any nation simply because it is a nation, but because as a nation it is on the right side of the controversy. God has no partiality for any land, except in the degree in which that land is marked by righteousness of purpose and action. Patriotism is folly unless it be based upon moral considerations as well as upon kindred and sentiment. Throughout the whole Bible the Lord has always shown himself as ready to give up one nation as another when moral fidelity was impaired or perverted. Men cannot be permitted to unite themselves with Israel on the ground that God always fights for that particular denomination. This would be selfishness, not piety. God searches the heart, and judges absolutely by the motive. No nation then must pride itself upon being a particular favourite of Heaven: God hath made of one blood all nations of men: God is the Father of the whole world: God is only on the side of the righteous man, be that man black or white, great in wealth or mean in poverty.