Walk to the Beat of a Different Drum

I remember watching an old Errol Flynn movie (The Sea Hawk, maybe?) where several captured men are brought aboard a ship, chained to the oars below decks, and forced to row in time to the beat of a drum, produced by the time-keeper, who sat at the front of the room. 

If the boat needed to pick up speed, say to outrun an enemy or to attack another ship, the time-keeper would pick up the pace of his drumbeat, and the oarsmen would correspondingly row faster.

Those men had no idea what time of day it was. The only glimpse they had of the outside was what light filtered through the holes in the sides of the ship where their oars rested. They couldn't glance at their watches and say "It's past five, I'm clocking out," and then let their oars hang slack. 

All they had was the time-keeper, and they adjusted the tempo of their oars to the time-keeper's tempo.

Joshua 10 tells us about the only recorded -- heh, time -- in all of history, when time, quite literally... stands still. Let me qualify that statement: there is one other instance in the Scriptures where time moves backward (2 Kings 20:11), but as far as time standing still: Joshua 10 takes the cake.

Joshua gets word from the Gibeonites -- the ones who are now servants to the Israelite nation, because of their deception -- that five kings have joined together to advance against them and attack them. "Gibeon was an important city, like one of the royal cities; it was larger than Ai, and all its men were good fighters" (Joshua 10:2). 

So -- because of the treaty Joshua has made with the people of Gibeon -- he takes the entire Israelite army and marches them from Gilgal where they're camped to Gibeon, which is now a protectorate of Israel. The Lord and Joshua are in communication with each other again, after that rather gigantic mistake where Joshua forgot to inquire of the Lord before he made an important decision. So the Lord tells Joshua, "Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you."

Here is yet another instance of a step of faith: Joshua faces a massive battle of five armies (sorry, Tolkien and Peter Jackson, this one was first before y'all ever put pen to paper), but before the Lord will fight the battle for him, Joshua is required to step up to the plate. Then the Lord will give him the victory.

Case in point? "After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took [the enemy] by surprise. The Lord threw them into confusion before Israel, who defeated them in a great victory at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah. As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites" (Joshua 10:9-11).

All Joshua had to do... was show up and put whatever muscle he had into the effort. The Lord took care of the rest.

But here's something: There are so many of the enemy that Joshua realizes that it will be nightfall before they finish conquering them. So "Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel (who are going to be eyewitnesses of the power of the Lord): 'Oh sun, stand still over Gibeon, oh moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.' 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. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!" (Joshua 10:12-14).

All right, I'm going to have another small soapbox moment, apologies in advance. I looked up this Scripture this morning online after reading through it in my Bible, and I found many different "explanations" about how this was likely a solar eclipse instead of a miracle.

And I'll say, okay, maybe it was a solar eclipse, but I don't think it was, and here's why: Because I believe that the same God Who created matter out of absolutely nothing, Who formed time itself and made a world that runs in complete obedience to it, Who blew the breath of life into the first set of lungs and made living mankind... is not stumped over a simple matter of what happens if the sun and moon stands still.

So when I see people publish articles about how the sun and moon couldn't have 'stood still,' because it's impossible -- I'm sorry, I've just got to laugh. The Scriptures are a set of historical and recorded miraculous events. Axheads float. Waters part and leave dry ground. Oil pours all day out of the same vessel and fills a multitude of vessels. A whole army is blinded suddenly and simultaneously. Fire falls from heaven and burns up a drenched altar. A man outruns chariots. The sun crawls backward instead of forward. A boy is brought back to life. A chariot of fire drops by and takes a prophet of God with it back into heaven. And we haven't even gotten to the life of Jesus yet.

So I'm going with the premise that the sun and the moon, literally, stood still because Joshua, in the presence of eye-witnesses, asked the Lord to do it.

And the Lord did. "There has never been a day like it before or since, when the Lord listened to a man. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!"

Here's the deal: Joshua didn't bother himself about the fact that time had never before stopped. He didn't care that there was no precedent already set for what he was asking. He looked past the rigid fact of time...

And he talked to the Time-Keeper.

And that... made all the difference. 

Back to those rowers below decks in Hollywood's rendition of a ship: they "kept time," but they only kept time according to the time-keeper. Whatever the time-keeper pounded out on his drum, those men did. It didn't matter if they rowed one stroke every ten seconds or every five seconds -- it only mattered what the time-keeper said.

So Joshua blew right by the rules of time and took up his problem with the Time-Keeper. And the Time-Keeper listened to him.

Okay, so please don't think I'm shoving forward this idea of Joshua rubbing the magic lamp in the sky and commanding the Time-Keeper to do his bidding like a giant cosmic genie. If God had not had this in mind already, if He had not already had a purpose mapped out for this result, He would not have responded to Joshua's request the way He did.

But He honored Joshua's request, because Joshua had the faith to step up to Him and ask Him for a miracle. Joshua had the faith to ask, in the presence of all of Israel, in the presence of eye-witnesses, for something that most people would consider just a bit crazy (see all those articles I glanced over this morning).

And the Lord, the Time-Keeper, shoved time out of the way... and fought the battle for Israel.

Listen, y'all, if you are a Christ-follower, if you have dedicated your life to serving Jesus, you have a close-knit, intimate relationship with the Time-Keeper, the very same One that Joshua appealed to when he fought this battle in Joshua 10. 

And I'm going to go all metaphorical on you here: Don't try to row your oars according to the tempo the world sets. There's a steady beat out there that says: Do things this way, believe things that way, you're wrong if you think this, you're irrelevant if you say that. Don't believe me? Check out your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed, your news sources. That message everywhere; that tempo is everywhere.

Have you ever read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle? There's a scene near the end where Meg and Charles, two of the main characters, are struggling to free themselves from this overwhelming tempo of "The IT" that resounds around them and inside them. If they give in and let themselves sink in to the tempo, they become -- essentially -- robots. Mindless and souless. Without heart or compunction of their own. Their only salvation lies in resisting, walking to the beat of their own tempo -- which must be different. It's the only way out.

Stop walking to the beat of the world's tempo and tune your ear to the tempo of the Time-Keeper instead. Doesn't matter what beat the world sets; your only job is to listen to the Time-Keeper's drum. When all the oars on that ship were in harmony with the time-keeper's drum... that's when the ship nearly lifted out of the water and flew with the wind.

Church, let's fly with the wind as we -- each one of us -- are so in-tempo with the Time-Keeper. Let's dare to be different.

Psalm 27:14 says: "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord."