This mission is not yet complete. Our oaths are not yet fulfilled. Not all of God’s elect have their inheritance. Our conquest is not yet total — we remain on the wrong side of the Jordan. “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war” are the lyrics bequeathed to us from calloused hands. But the reposed nature of too many men in churches makes one think we were told, “Sit still Christian soldiers, till your seat is sore.”

I have often failed to recognize, let alone withstand, the temptation of loving my life in this world. This shows itself not in the great acts of sin I commit, but in the good I do not do. I have been guilty of what Charles Spurgeon called “the sin of doing nothing.”

Sin, as classically understood, is not just the doing of bad (commission) but also the failure of doing good (omission). I tend to care more about the first than the second. In a culture still sailing under the semblance of a theistic morality, we tend to judge ourselves by what we do instead of what we leave undone. But wars are not won on defense alone.

And what glorious battlelines to excuse oneself from. Is it not our utmost privilege to participate? To watch behind fortress walls would have been enough; to blow the trumpets and attend the banners, an honor. But to be summoned in by the King himself, to be fitted in his armor, given a family to march forth with, and lost souls to win — how can we resist? The conqueror, the King, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, stands in the thick of the battle. Does your blood not stir to join him?

For those of us who have settled down and grown pudgy, we have much to learn from the men of Reuben and Gad, two Israelite tribes who wavered on the brink of the Promised Land. They were tempted with the sin of omission, “the sin of doing nothing,” the sin of laying down their weapons before the warfare had ended and God’s people possessed the land. While inactivity in God’s mission may be treated as harmless, God treats it as a serious sin, and so should we.

Tribes of Stand-Still

These two tribes, the men of Reuben and Gad, were of the twelve that marched behind Moses toward the Promised Land. As children, these men left Egypt through bloody doorposts and a parted sea. As they came of age, they fought against Sihon and Og in the wilderness. Their generation, unlike their fathers, proved faithful in God’s campaign to go forth into the Promised Land.

But now, they arrived at some pleasant land suitable to their needs and would be tempted to not continue in their mission. These men did not want the city on the hill, the land flowing with milk and honey; they wanted land for pasture. So they asked Moses to be relieved of their duties:

The land that the Lord struck down before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock. If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession. Do not take us across the Jordan. (Numbers 32:4–5)

A simple request. A polite enough inquiry. But God and Moses did not see it this way. And God’s men today, settled down in suitable lands like America, need to hear their reply.

Sin of Doing Nothing

Moses responds to the people of Gad and Reuben,

Shall your brothers go to the war while you sit here? Why will you discourage the heart of the people of Israel from going over into the land that the Lord has given them?

Your fathers did this, when I sent them from Kadesh-barnea to see the land. . . . And behold, you have risen in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the Lord against Israel! For if you turn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all this people. (Numbers 32:6–8, 14–15)

Notice three charges laid against them.

You abandoned your mission.

While the ten tribes would go forth to battle, Gad and Reuben are described as being those who would just “sit there.” “Shall your brothers go to the war while you sit here?” These warriors were not intending to just “sit there.” On the contrary, they would be busy pasturing flocks, building houses, fortifying their city, and developing the land into a suitable dwelling place.

They were not the kind of lazy or cowardly men to just sit around and watch while their brothers charged forth into combat. Yet by retiring from the great commission at hand to shepherd their sheep, that is precisely what Moses depicts them as. He portrays them as wasting their time because they were misusing their time.

No matter how busy they were with other things, respectable things, the painting of them in God’s holy Scripture would be the mere squatting together doing nothing important as long as they remained withdrawn.

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