“Yahweh Sabaoth” –The Lord of Hosts

“The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.  Selah.” –Psalm 46:7.  “When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand.  And Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you for us, or for our adversaries?’  And he said, ‘No, but I am commander of the army of the Lord.  Now I have come.’  And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” –Joshua 5:13-15.  “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse!  The One sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.”-Revelation 19:11 (ESV).

This “I Am” of the Lord allows us to consider God in the light of the battles He wages for us.  “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice, the earth melts”--so wrote the Psalmist in 46:6.  The Hebrew ‘Sabaoth’ and the Greek ‘saba’ come from a military term.  The word in relationship to Almighty God appears about 280 times as part of a significant and exalted title for God.  “Who is the King of glory?  The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory!” (Psalm 24:10) the Psalmist asks an important question and answers it himself.  When Isaiah received his call to be a prophet, the seraphim he saw in the temple were proclaiming:  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3).  Encountering the Lord of hosts made Isaiah cry out in repentance and adulation:  “And he said, ‘Woe is me!  For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5).  Before Joshua led the Israelite army in the battle of Jericho, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joshua to assure him that the hosts of the Lord’s army were with him.  It just took following the Lord’s command to march around the city seven days, and as the little chorus we learned as children states, “the walls came tumbling down.”  One of the most powerful accounts of the host of the Lord’s army is the account in Revelation of the Lord Himself riding on a white horse and returning to earth to judge and to make war.  This promise is yet to be fulfilled, but signs of His coming abound in our time.

The Lord of hosts fights our battles.  It’s not a matter of whether the Lord is on our side; rather we should be on the Lord’s side.  Not what I will but what He wills.  Think of Jesus on the cross as He bore the penalty for our sin and separation from God.  He could have called a host of angels to come to His rescue (ten thousand angels could have been at His beck and call).  But He bore the cross, enduring its shame, because He was here to fulfill His purpose in coming to earth.  At that agonizing, crucial moment, Jesus did not call upon the hosts of heaven to rescue Him.  When He returns, however, it will be in victory and power, and with a mighty demonstration of what ‘Yahweh Sabaoth’ really means: the Lord of hosts!  Praise be to God!