The Walk of Enoch

Salvation belongs to the LORD; Your blessings be on Your people! Selah (Psalm 3:8)

The fact that God is our Savior is kind of a no brainer among Christians. After all, it’s sort of the main role that Jesus walked out during His earthly ministry, culminating with His death and resurrection. If I asked a group of Christians “what is Christ to you?” the Savior would probably be one of the first responses given. The new testament is dominated by Jesus’ work of salvation. Because of this, I’m actually going to avoid talking about the new testament in this article. The reason for this is that I want to show God as our Savior before the coming of Christ. I want to show you how this aspect of His character is found throughout the old testament and even beyond, so that you can see that the role of Savior is given to Him because of who He is and always has been. (This in no way diminishes what Christ did.)

God Scares Gideon

“The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand…”

So if you don’t know the story of Gideon, basically Israel has rebelled against God and He has allowed their enemies to afflict them. In this specific instance, the Midianites are ravaging the lands of Israel, stealing their crops and livestock. God calls Gideon to deliver the people of Israel from their oppressors. Gideon, however, is a little uncertain about his own abilities and tests God twice with a fleece. (Judges 6:36-40)

Now, once Gideon responds to the call God has on his life and has acquired an army of 32,000 men, God throws him a curve ball. He tells Gideon that he has too many men for God to give the enemy into their hands. Normally, this would be really bad logic. Because typically, the larger the army the easier it should be to overcome your opponent. But with God, well, what constitutes as logical doesn’t look the same to us. God tells Gideon to send home all who are afraid and just like that an army of 32,000 is reduced to only 10,000. Then he reduces the number again down to only 300!

But why does God say they are too many? “lest Israel boast over Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.'”(Judges 7:2) God taught a timid Gideon an extremely valuable lesson: bravery that is rooted in numbers or in one’s own might is foolish. True bravery is trusting in God to save you. As it says in Judges 7:7, “And the LORD said to Gideon, ‘With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand,…”. Take note that God says “I will save you”, not “they will save you”. Gideon was still scared at this point and entered the enemy camp only to find that they were afraid of him! He hadn’t even done anything yet but God had spoken to one of the Midianites in a dream which led to the people becoming afraid of Gideon.

God saved Gideon from his own fear and then saved all Israel from Midian through an emboldened Gideon. God revealed Himself to Gideon as a Savior on a personal level. Then through him, God revealed Himself as the Savior to the whole nation.

The Rock Throws Rocks

Now, lets go back a little further in history…

After leading Israel into the promised land and succeeding in the conquest of Jericho and Ai, and making peace with the city of Gibeon, Joshua was faced with his greatest test yet. Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, calls together an army made up of five kingdoms! Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Debir have all come out to war against Gibeon for making peace with Joshua and Israel.

As I mentioned before, with God logic and numbers really don’t mean that much. Joshua and the Israelite’s come upon the massive army suddenly, sending them into a great panic! Canaanite soldiers are running everywhere while Israel pursues them. There isn’t enough light in the day to catch all of them so Joshua commands “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” (Joshua 10:12) And amazingly, it happened! Israel destroyed the armies and killed the five kings. But while this “day” that was no ordinary day transpired, Israel was not the one who dealt the most damage to the enemy. As it says in verse 11, “And as they fled before Israel,… the LORD threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword.”

Gibeon may have used trickery and deception to make peace with Israel and convince them not to destroy them, contrary to God’s original command, but what is most amazing about this story is that Gibeon’s first encounter with Israel after making peace with them is that they are in need of their help. The five kings weren’t attacking Israel, they were attacking Gibeon. And while I’m sure most of us have seen this event as the Lord continuing the conquest of Canaan (which it is), I can’t help but see this as a great introduction for Gibeon to have with the God of Israel. Israel came to Gibeon’s aid and God got directly involved. He killed more of the enemy than Israel did and in doing so, showed Himself as being the one who saved Gibeon.

And so, just like with Gideon, God showed that Israel wasn’t able to save others or themselves on their own. They needed God to fight for them. The people of Gibeon were Canaanites and yet we also see the Lord coming to save them.

Name Change

And since we’re talking about Joshua, I would like to point out that his name was originally Hosea. But Moses called him Joshua instead and from that point on he is known as Joshua. Hosea in Hebrew means Salvation. While Joshua means He is Salvation or God is Salvation. Interestingly, Joshua’s first experience in leading Israel in battle was against the Amalekites. Moses stood on top of a hill, holding up his arms and as long as his arms were up, Joshua and Israel were succeeding but whenever he let his arms down, they began to lose. I believe this was first hand experience for Joshua, as the future leader of Israel, in understanding and living out the difference between salvation and salvation from God. It was the difference between Hosea – salvation acquired on your own and Joshua – salvation from the hand of God.

Before the Foundations

There are so many other stories I could pull from the old testament showing God’s role as Savior. The miracles He performed in Egypt, the work’s of Moses in the wilderness, all of the judges, and the striking down of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a day are just a few such stories. But for the sake of time I will end with this. Revelations 13:8 says, “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship Him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Yes, I know I’m using a new testament verse but I need it to make my final point)

The interesting thing about this verse is that it suggests the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. In other words, before God actually came to earth in the form of Jesus, even before the first man, Adam, walked on the earth, the Son was already the willing sacrificial Lamb. The crucifixion was not a band-aid. God knows everything and so He knew we would inevitably sin. If Adam and Eve hadn’t done it, then perhaps Cain or Abel or you or me. The point is that He was fully prepared and ready to save humanity before we ever even existed.

God is our Savior! God is The Savior! He has always been the Savior and will always continue being our Savior. God is continuing His salvation even now. Don’t just trust that God has saved you from your sins but trust in Him to save you even now from the enemy. Learn to let Him fight your battles for you.

I’ll end with this, one of my favorite chapters of scripture: Isaiah 43. I encourage you to read the whole chapter on your own but here I’ll simply leave some highlights of the chapter.

But now thus says the LORD, He Who created you, O Jacob, He Who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in My eyes, and honored, and I love you.

“You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me. I, I am the LORD, and besides Me there is no savior.