I think it’s not too much to see one of the implications here. You could put it like this – God’s priority is worship before warfare. This is an act of worship, corporate worship before the Lord. Before you go and fight, a higher priority is worship.
I don’t think it’s too much to relate this to our own day. There are people, Christians sometimes, and they may even mean well. They’re eager for war. They may even have their sights set on something very good. These Israelites, they wanted to get the Promised Land. God had told them about that. They wanted Jericho. They were right to want it.
But before they go to the warfare, they needed to worship. There are some people, now it happens in particular with the young but not only the young, it may happen particularly with men but not only with men, they are eager to fight more so than they are to fall on their face before God. The cause may even be right. You may say it’s the cause of America, or the cause of Western civilization, or it’s the cause of reforming the Church. God wants to make us warriors perhaps, but first He wants to make us worshippers.
One of the most important things you can do, parents, for your children is to establish by your actions even more powerfully than your words, that the most important thing you do as a family each week, you have to do and you get to do, is the corporate worship of God’s people.
This clip is part of the sermon “Signs and Seals” delivered by Dr. Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC on September 15, 2024.