“I am sending you out like lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3)

I re-read passages from ”Two Seconds to Midnight” sometimes, to remind myself of the things that I wrote so that I keep walking in them. I read this passage on God’s protection this morning: I think it’s a timely reminder in uncertain times that the best way to know God protection is simply to stay in His presence…

God provides for us because He is our Father, and also to ensure that we have the means to accomplish the purposes to which we are called and appointed. And to accomplish these purposes, He sends us out as “lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). It would seem strange if our loving Shepherd set the prey loose amongst the hunters to fend for themselves, so I think it’s worth reminding ourselves why He has done it this way, and what He has put in place to keep us from being torn apart. Because if His yoke is easy we are going to live in the truth of Psalm 23, walking by quiet streams, feasting at God’s table while the wolves look on and slaver, and walking fearlessly through the valley of the shadow of death.

In 1978 a book appeared called The Upside Down Kingdom by Donald Kraybill. I’ll say now that I haven’t read it, but I heard of it years ago and the title has stuck with me ever since because it seems so true of the King who wins by apparently losing and leads by serving. The kingdom of God certainly turns the world’s wisdom upside down, and it has continued to turn the world upside down for the last 2,000 years. I used to be reminded of it often when I had a plain leather Bible cover with no marking to show the front or the back, and it seemed that every time I opened my Bible I opened it upside down. Maybe I needed a lot of reminding.

Going as lambs into the wolf-pack to take their land is definitely an upside-down idea, but it’s no more upside down than the “grasshoppers” going into Canaan to defeat the giants. Because it’s not the lambs who overcome the wolves any more than it was to be the puny Israelites who would overcome the giants: in both cases, the battle is the Lord’s. And if the battle is to be His, because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50) it is imperative that we do not attempt it any other way: it is only as lambs that we will see the wolves defeated.

The key to our protection is of course the fact that God does not ask His lambs to go out alone. He is with us, and He is the only protection we need. Our first stop for a “protection” scripture has to be Psalm 91, and indeed we need look no further if we want to discover exactly how the Shepherd has established protection for His lambs. The psalm is full of wonderful promises for protection, but they are summed up well in verses 9-10:

“Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling.”

No evil. No plague. Thank you, Lord; I’ll take that! But there is a condition; a “because”. The condition is that we make the Most High our “dwelling place”. Our dwelling place is where we live; it’s our habitation, our home. It’s the place where we dwell intimately with our spouse and family. It’s the word used most frequently in the Old Testament for the Lord’s “holy habitation”, whether on earth, in His sanctuary, or in heaven where He has His eternal home. The opening verse of the psalm says: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” These verses don’t mean that when we are threatened we run to Him from wherever we have gone and remind Him of His promise by quoting verses of Scripture in His face; they mean that if we dwell with Him and He is our home, we dwell under His protection, we abide in His shadow. As parents we might play shadow games with our children: we walk around outside in the sunshine, and they have to stay in our shadow as we move. To stay in our shadow, they will have to stay close. To stay in God’s shadow, His Word says that we must dwell with Him. We stay close. We don’t go running to Him from the other end of the garden when next door’s big dog suddenly barks close by.

Jesus will have it no other way. Our protection is nothing other than our yoke to Him. Moses said to the Lord, “Unless You go with us, I’m not going anywhere!” (see Exodus 33:15). Jesus turns this round, and says, “Unless you go with Me, you’re not going anywhere!” This isn’t just for our benefit, because our souls are fragile; it’s for the purpose of the kingdom, in our lives and in the lives of those to whom we are sent, because under His yoke not only do we find protection but we are also able to walk in His ways, “not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9).