Neutrality Is Not a Choice (Luke 11; Judges 4-5)

I have been fighting a battle against neutrality this week. Several ninth graders I have been teaching for the past month have fought me against taking a stance in their writing. They crave neutrality. It’s comfortable. It requires no effort. At first glance (or second) on an issue they can see positives and negatives but have no clear picture. They waver back and forth in their writing. Their untenable desire to maintain neutrality when arguing a point accomplishes nothing. A failure to take a stance is simply a waste of the valuable and limited time we have on this earth. This truth holds in the spiritual realm as well.

In Luke 11:23 Jesus makes the point to the Pharisees he is speaking with that if a person is not with Him, he is against Him, and if that person chooses not to gather with Him, he is is scattering. Our Bible study group discussed this Thursday night in the context of people’s desire for neutrality. However well one might balance on the fence in the world, when it comes to God, people do not have the option of being neutral, as much as some might desire that stance. We are to be on His side regardless of the cost as the gospels clearly indicate. 

As usual, it never fails to amaze me how the Bible connects seamlessly, the Spirit at work through the ages and forevermore. In my reading the last few days, I’ve been in Judges, specifically chapters 4-5, which relate Deborah’s time as judge of Israel. As usual, Israel has been up to its old tricks “doing evil in God’s sight” (4:1), oppressed by the powerful King Jabin and harassed by his military commander Sisera because of their own sin. After the water starts boiling under them, as is human nature, they cry out to God for rescue. As is His nature, He hears them, and out of His love and mercy sends word of His plan to rescue.  All they have to do is obey the word God has given to His judge Deborah, but Barak is hesitant to take the 10,000 men God has commanded him to take and he wishes for support from Deborah before committing to lead this fight. To make a longer story short, Deborah goes with him, the LORD fights for them and routes the enemy, and then the LORD gives the glory of victory to a woman (Jael) instead of Barak, the commander of the army. (Really, in what world does any man placed in command of any army desire not only the input from but the assistance of a mother when he has ten thousand at his command? It sounds absurd, but Barak, at a time when men led, deferred to a woman’s judgment even with the assurance of victory if he simply obeyed.) 

Deborah’s story is not one of neutrality. This mother who judged chooses God’s side against overwhelming human odds (900 chariots and all the people with Sisera pitted against a rag-tag army of a few leaders and the people were not good odds the world would place a bet upon), and she leads willingly. Her heart is for her God and “the rulers of Israel who offer themselves willingly with the people” in the battle against Sisera and King Jabin’s army.

Jael’s story is not one of neutrality. Her husband has allied himself with Sisera’s king. When God routes his army, Sisera chooses to flee on foot toward Jael’s tent, knowing he is at peace with her husband, thus her household. She does not choose neutrality when she goes out to meet Sisera, urging him into her tent, calming him, and causing him to rest peacefully, trusting in her ability to warn him of approaching danger. She does not choose neutrality when she picks up a tent peg and a hammer and drives it into Sisera’s temple while he sleeps exhausted. Jael chooses the God of another nation whose fame has gone before Him and whose power is undeniable. She chooses God at all costs and risks to her person and life as she knows it, just as another pagan woman, Rahab, had done before her when the two spies from the children of Israel entered her city and she hid them to do good for the LORD and preserve her family.

God is not neutral. He is for His children: “The LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak” (4:15). Deborah sings in her song after the battle: “The LORD came down for me against the mighty” (5:13). Knowing God is on her side allows Deborah to say to herself in the midst of the battle, “O my soul, march on in strength!” (5:21). Her song ends in a plea for victory for the LORD against all His enemies, and once again she trusts that God is not neutral, ending with this powerful cry: “But let those who love Him be like the sun when it comes out in full strength!” 

The God I know who “gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16), the God who sent Jesus “that the world through Him might be saved” (Jn. 3:17), this God is not neutral. Neither can we be neutral when that salvation comes through believing, as John 3:18 makes clear: “He who believes in Him in not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

As Deborah says in beginning her song in chapter 5: “When leaders lead in Israel, when the people willingly offer themselves, bless the LORD!” 

May your heart today be anything but neutral, and may it lead you to following Jesus willingly, to offering yourself to the One who is anything but neutral in the tender care and loving mercy He has already exhibited toward you. It is worth the risk of putting your foot down on one side of the fence and never ever even considering climbing back over because this same God is holy and righteous and victorious in all things. Praise Him!