Joshua stood near Jericho, already fixed in his mind on the coming campaign, when he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword. His instinct was immediate and understandable. Are you for us, or for our enemies? It is the most natural question a commander could ask in that moment, and it is also, as we discover a verse later, exactly the wrong question. The figure's answer does not fit into either category Joshua offered. Neither, he says. But as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come.
This is one of the most theologically loaded encounters in the entire Old Testament, and it deserves careful attention. The figure Joshua meets identifies Himself not as an ally or an enemy but as the commander of the army of the Lord, and Joshua's response confirms that he understood exactly who was standing in front of him. He fell face down to the ground in reverence, not in the posture one takes before a fellow soldier, but in the posture reserved for worship. And then comes the final confirmation: take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy. There is only one being in all of creation whose presence renders ground holy simply by standing on it. This is not a created being, not an angelic messenger delivering a message on someone else's behalf. This is an appearance of God Himself, and we have good reason from later revelation in Scripture to understand this as a pre-incarnate appearance of the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, long before He would take on flesh and be born in Bethlehem.
The Hebrew name Joshua and the name Jesus are, in fact, the same name. Yeshua, rendered into English through Greek, becomes both Joshua and Jesus depending on the era of translation. There is something worth pausing over in the fact that this scene is essentially Jesus appearing to Joshua, two bearers of the same name, standing face to face at the entrance to the promised land. The connection is not merely linguistic curiosity. It is a reminder that the God who led Israel out of Egypt, who parted the Jordan, who now commands the very army that will bring down Jericho's walls, is the same eternal Son who would one day walk among us, and who told His disciples in the garden of Gethsemane that He could call down legions of angels to His defense if He so chose. The commander of the Lord's army in Joshua five and the commander of angel armies in the Gospels are not separate figures. They are the same eternal Person.
But the theological identity of this figure, as significant as it is, is not actually the center of the encounter. The center is the correction embedded in His answer. Joshua asked a binary question: are you with us, or against us? And the commander refuses to answer within those terms. He does not say yes, I am with you, though that would have been the comforting, expected response. He reframes the entire question. The issue was never in doubt as to whether God was on Israel's side in some general sense. God had already parted the water. God had already caused the surrounding kings to tremble. God had already committed Himself, by covenant, to bring His people into this land. What remained genuinely uncertain was not God's posture toward Israel, but Israel's posture toward God.
This is worth sitting with because it exposes something we do instinctively, and often without noticing. We come to God asking Him to bless the plans we have already made, to endorse the direction we have already chosen, to stand behind the outcome we have already decided we want. We ask Him to be with us in the sense of being useful to our purposes, rather than asking whether our purposes align with His. The commander's answer to Joshua strips that instinct bare. The question was never whether God would back Joshua's plan for Jericho. The question was whether Joshua was submitted to whatever plan God actually had.
There is a real difference between wanting God's favor on a life we have already designed and wanting God's design for the life we are living. It is entirely possible to pray fervently, to ask sincerely for God's blessing, and still be functioning entirely within the first category, treating God as a resource to be enlisted for outcomes we have already decided are good. The commander's reframing calls us out of that posture and into the second. Not are you with me, but am I with you. Not will you bless what I have chosen, but will I submit to what you have chosen.
Joshua fell on his face and removed his sandals, and in doing so, he modeled the only appropriate response to that correction. Before the first wall of Jericho ever fell, Joshua had to learn that the campaign was never his to direct. It belonged to the commander standing before him, and Joshua's role was to follow, not to lead. That posture, submission before strategy, worship before warfare, is the posture every believer is called to take before whatever battle lies ahead of us. The question is not whether God is with us. The question, always, is whether we are truly with Him.
Dr. William C.K. Yomes is the founding apologist of Faith Makes Sense and the Senior Pastor of Catalyst Community Church in Wilmington, Delaware. This article is part of his ongoing teaching ministry at Catalyst Community Church.