When Obedience Leads to Temporary Defeat

What do you do when you obey God, certain that you’ve done what He’s asked you to do, and the result is defeat? When this happens, the temptation is to think that God must not be in this, that we must have missed His leading, or this cannot be His will. As a result, we often quit and quickly change direction. But God reveals in Scripture that this is often not the case, and that instead of giving up or coming under condemnation, thinking that our disobedience caused the defeat, He wants us to come to Him with our weeping while at the same time calling out to Him for further wisdom about how to move forward.

Many of us believe that if God has called us to something, the path should be straightforward and easy. But Judges 20 provides a sobering reminder that it is often just the opposite. We can be right in the center of God’s will and still experience painful defeat. 

When the tribes of Israel heard the report of the evil done among the Benjamites to a fellow Levite and his concubine, who were traveling through their town, they were greatly disturbed. They first appealed to their brothers to release the men who had committed the crime of rape and murder, but the Benjamites refused. As a result, Israel gathered four hundred thousand soldiers and then went before the Lord to ask who was to first go and fight their enemy. The Lord responded that Judah was to take the lead, so they followed His command and went to battle the next morning expecting victory. But to their surprise, they lost 22,000 men. In shock and despair, they “wept before the Lord until evening” and then prayed again, this time asking Him if they were to go back into battle. Again, God responded positively: “Go up against them” (Judges 20:23).

The Lord’s “yes” seemed again to be His guarantee that they would succeed. But instead, they experienced another huge loss of 18,000 men on the second day, leaving them more perplexed and discouraged than before. So once again, they went before the Lord, weeping and praying, but this time also offering sacrifices to Him. When they asked if they should keep fighting, the Lord gave them an even more hopeful promise: “Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands” (Judges 20:28).

The missing assurance from the Lord the first two times they inquired of Him became significant when it was present the third time when he said: “I will give them into your hands.” God was moving his counsel from the general to the very specific assurance that He was going to fight this battle for them. Yet they never would have heard this message if they had assumed He was not with them or for them and had given up praying and seeking the Lord. He was testing their faith to see if they would listen to, trust and obey Him.

In His sovereign wisdom, God determined that the loss of Israel’s 40,000 soldiers was necessary before they could defeat the Benjamites. By allowing them to face such a significant loss, they likely saw their own sinfulness, their inability to fight in their own strength and their great need for the Lord’s help. God wanted them to know that He was the righteous judge and that this battle, along with all others, was His. In fact, in Judges 20:35, we read that it was “the Lord [who] defeated Benjamin before Israel.” He gave them wisdom to devise an ambush, and when they counterattacked, He caused the Benjamites to become terrified and flee.

Israel could have easily assumed after the first and second losses that they were completely out of God’s will. They could have stopped praying, and given up on the battle, or they could have determined to do it in their own strength without Lord’s help. Either way, they would have missed God’s blessings and His best—which can only be experienced through a life of dependence on Him and His presence. Instead, they poured out their hearts, weeping and lamenting over their losses, while looking up to fix their gaze on the Lord, who they knew could help and comfort them.

Their story reminds me of the importance of seeking God’s will and also staying the path He has called me to until He shows me to move in a different direction. This means refusing to give in to despair when my circumstances do not go as I have planned. Recently, God has used defeat to teach me greater dependence on Him, allowing losses and suffering to press me into more intense times of prayer and lament—not to win his favor, but to realign my heart to better understand, desire, and obey His will.

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12).

A Planting of the Lord for the Display of His Splendor

God chose an interesting metaphor in Isaiah 61:3 to describe redeemed and restored Israel. He refers to them as “oaks of righteousness, planted by the Lord for the display of his splendor.” Like a mighty oak, they will become strong as they’re rooted in his covenantal love. This beautiful word picture greatly contrasts with the earlier description of Israel as a fruitless vine and a bruised reed, which is swayed and broken by the winds of suffering (Isaiah 5:1–7; 42:3). Through this promise, God points Israel and us forward to the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, who by his Spirit transforms his people for his glory.

As I’ve been meditating on this passage, I’ve been reminded of God’s supreme wisdom and power in fulfilling this once-mysterious promise through the person and work of Jesus Christ, the God-Man. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus stood in the synagogue and read Isaiah 61:1–2:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18–19; Isaiah 61:1–2)

And after reading this passage, he asserted his identity, saying, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Jesus revealed that he was the long-awaited Messiah who fulfilled Isaiah’s promise.

Planting of the Lord

By declaring himself to be the fulfillment of Isaiah 61, Christ gives a clearer picture of the lives we are created to live as his beloved, redeemed children, made in his image. In 61:1, we see the state of humanity before the heralding of the Gospel—we are poor, brokenhearted, and captive to sin and shame. But the message the Anointed One brings is one of hope and liberation, announcing the Lord’s favor and comfort for all who grieve. The prognosis is dire, but the healing reveals the sovereign work of God, who has begun to build his kingdom and reverse the curse.

Then in verse 3, we see that this change God promises not only brings blessings but involves the removal of the curse of sin and death. In place of the ashes, God promises through Christ and his Gospel to “bestow on them a crown of beauty” (Isaiah 61:3). Mourning is exchanged for the “oil of joy,” and despair for a “garment of praise” (Isaiah 61:3). Finally, those who receive the Messiah’s message of salvation are given a new identity: “They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor” (Isaiah 61:3).

Like a tree that cannot plant itself or cause its own growth, our planting and flourishing is all of God. He makes “righteousness and praise spring up before all the nations” (Isaiah 61:11) by clothing us with his salvation and giving us his “robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10). As a result, everyone who sees us recognizes that we are people blessed by the Lord (Isaiah 61:9). 

A New Testament passage that beautifully summarizes this divine exchange outlined in Isaiah 61:3, declares, “He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Through Christ’s redeeming work on the cross and his resurrection, he takes our sin, guilt, and shame, and in their place gives his own glorious righteousness, crediting it to our account as we put our trust in him.

This work of whole-life transformation is done by the same Spirit that anointed Christ and raised him from the dead (Isaiah 61:1). His supernatural power and presence in our lives bring about radical regeneration from darkness and prison to light and freedom, and he then begins the work of strengthening and growing us as his very own oaks of righteousness.

For the Display of His Splendor

Because we’ve been regenerated and established by God, we’re made to flourish for his glory and not our own. When looking at a massive oak, its beauty and splendor reveal God’s wisdom and power and point us to worship the Creator and not the creation itself. In the same way, as our lives are transformed by the Good News, the glory we reveal is meant to point to the One who has made and established us in his image so that we worship him.

The oak tree imagery of Isaiah, which follows the description of the divine exchange, reveals God’s design to not only renew us but to give us a new identity in union with Christ. He begins by restoring what sin has broken and then transforms our identity, remaking us into “oaks of righteousness for the display of his splendor.” As Paul proclaims, we become a new creation in Christ—the old is gone, and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). In Christ, we become beloved children of God (1 John 3:2).

When it seems God’s kindness toward us has reached its climax, he commissions us to join in the work of our Master. Just as he came to bind up the brokenhearted, heal those crushed in spirit, and proclaim freedom for the captives (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18), so he now sends us out as priests and ministers—a people set apart to declare his goodness and participate in his work of restoration (Isaiah 61:5–6). 

Like the Lord, we’re now equipped to rebuild and restore what has been ruined and “devastated for generations” (Isaiah 61:4). We come with a message of Gospel hope and transformation, fulfilling the age-old prophecy of Isaiah and echoing the words and ministry of Jesus, so that through us the world may see the splendor of the Lord and turn to worship him. 

“For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations" (Isaiah 61:11)

The Warrior King and the Spiritual Battle

We are engaged in a real war—a spiritual battle for our souls and for the souls of all of humanity. Yet the comforting news is that this epic battle is not ours but the Lord's. Our victory is certain as we stand in the armor He has given us, fully persuaded that He has already defeated our enemy at the cross and continues to fight for us until the war is over.

To stand strong in this battle, we need to look back to where it all started to witness how the Warrior King has been fighting for His people from the very beginning. Battle and spiritual warfare imagery find their origin in the Old Testament, beginning with the first Gospel in Genesis 3:15. 

After the Fall, God promises that the Serpent will strike the heel of the Seed of the Woman, Jesus Christ, but that Christ will ultimately prevail by crushing the Serpent's head. From that first promise, Scripture unfolds the conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness throughout the history of Israel. 

As we walk through the Old Testament, from the Law through the Prophets, we see God revealing Himself not only as the Lord of all creation but also as the Commander of the armies of Israel and of heaven, who goes before them to fight their battles. The visible battles Israel fought revealed the invisible conflict that had been raging since the Garden of Eden.

One of the clearest demonstrations of God's role as Warrior King comes in His deliverance of Israel from Egypt as He sends the plagues and repeatedly commands Pharaoh to let His people go. This shows He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and that every knee must bow before Him and confess Him as Lord. At the waters of the Red Sea just before splitting them apart, He makes a declaration of His role as the sovereign Commander declaring: "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still" (Exodus 14:14). 

In the book of Deuteronomy (1:30, 3:22, 20:4), we witness Him telling Israel not to fear because He is fighting for them. We not only see passages testifying that "the Lord fought for Israel" (Joshua 10:14), but also that He always won the battle: "Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands" (Joshua 21:44).

In the book of Isaiah, we get a prophetic glimpse of the Divine Warrior Himself suiting up for battle. The veil is pulled back, and we see the preincarnate Christ clothing Himself in armor before going to judge His enemies. "The Lord goes out like a mighty man, like a man of war He stirs up His zeal; He cries out, He shouts aloud, He shows Himself mighty against His foes" (Isaiah 42:13). 

Again, Isaiah declares, "He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped Himself in zeal as a cloak" (Isaiah 59:17). In Isaiah 11:4–5, we find another example that echoes the warfare imagery of Ephesians 6: "Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist, and faithfulness the belt of His loins."

As we transition to the New Testament, we witness Paul intentionally repeating this  imagery when he commands believers to "put on the whole armor of God," the armor of light, and calls believers soldiers who are to be prepared for battle (Ephesians 6:10–18; 2 Timothy 2:3–4). 

We are given spiritual weapons that are not of this world (2 Corinthians 10:3–5) and are shown that, like Israel, this is primarily a fight of faith—a battle to remain fully persuaded in our trust that the Lord will save and deliver us from the enemy. Paul is not creating a new metaphor but reminding believers that the armor we are to wear is God's own armor. In fact, Jesus now clothes us with the same armor that He used against His enemies when He won the victory.

When we read Scripture as a collective whole, we realize that the physical battles of the Old Testament pointed to the greater spiritual war Christ would ultimately win through His life, death, and resurrection. In the New Testament, Paul reminds us that our fight, regardless of how physical it may appear, "is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). 

Israel’s battles were written by the Lord Himself to teach us where victory is truly found (Isaiah 6:1–3). Every one reminds us that He fights for us, keeps every promise, and never loses a war. As we witness Him commanding the armies and winning against all enemies, our faith is strengthened so that we, too, can declare with confidence that "the battle is not [ours], but God's" (2 Chronicles 20:15). The same Warrior King who fought for Israel now fights for us, clothing us in His own armor until the final victory is won.

"Give us aid against the enemy, for human help is worthless. With God we will gain the victory, and He will trample down our enemies." (Psalm 108:12–13)