Deuteronomy 20:1

Hey, Cross Connection! It's good to be with you online virtually right now as we pick up our studies in the book of Deuteronomy. We are going to be in chapter 20 this morning. If you have your Bibles or tablets with you, go ahead and turn there. I want to welcome you to Cross Connection Church. If you are new, visiting, or tuning in for the first time, it's great to have you with us.

We've been going through the study in the book of Deuteronomy for quite some time now, and we have finally reached Deuteronomy 20. We are chugging our way right through it. As we've seen in Deuteronomy, this is Moses's second reading of the law to the people of Israel, right before they are about to enter the promised land. It serves as another overview of the law of God and His expectations for His children.

Essentially, the way I look at it as a parent is that I have certain expectations for my child. I have a two-year-old daughter, and I have expectations for how she is going to act in public, at the store, at church, and at home. Oftentimes, those expectations are pretty much the same. She needs to be obedient, represent us well, and not throw fits.

We, as parents, no matter what household we grew up in, had some kind of expectations placed upon us while growing up. Just like we have expectations for our children, God has expectations for His children regarding how we are supposed to behave, govern ourselves, and live in this world. When we stray from those expectations, we become misaligned with God's law, and there are consequences.

In the first ten chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people of Israel of the mistakes that their parents made, the mistakes of previous generations. What Moses is trying to drill into their heads is that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 1 says, "Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it."

So, if you are a Christian tuning in right now, I want to encourage you to spend time in the Word.

The Word is essential; spend good time in the Word and make sure that you are learning from the mistakes of the people in the past. As you study the Scripture, it is different from any other ancient text in that the kings and the people of God are portrayed in a very realistic light. Their mistakes are right there in the open, and their good times and bad times are clearly written about throughout the Scriptures.

In contrast, when you look at other texts from different people groups, especially in the ancient Near East, those people are often portrayed as better than they actually were. However, God reminds us that His people, the Jews, the people of Israel, were very much like us. They made mistakes, wandered away from God, and He brought them back. The first ten chapters of Deuteronomy consist of Moses reminding the people not to make the same mistakes their parents made. I think that is good advice even today.

From chapter 11 onward, Moses instructs and prepares the people to enter the Promised Land. He gives them a blessing for obedience and instructs them on what worship should look like. He also addresses how God feels about false gods—little g gods—and the idols that the foreign nations around Israel were worshiping at that time. We will discuss that today, as well as how to live for God with all of your life, which is addressed in the chapters from 11 onward.

Of course, God talks about being the source of true wisdom, which is found in His Word. Last week in Deuteronomy 19, we looked at God's justice system. We examined how God wanted His people to operate justly and how they were to self-govern themselves. At the time Moses was giving the law in Deuteronomy, there was no standing police force. He was writing down the law of God and delivering it to the people, and they were responsible for governing themselves.

This self-governance was possible because there were strong family structures. Within the family, we govern ourselves. In society, there were also expectations that we could not steal, kill, lie, or cheat. There were many other things that you could not do, and if you did those things, there were consequences. The people were charged with self-governance.

It was really the first form of a republic, if you will. Last week, God instituted something that, if you hopefully remember, was discussed by Pastor Miles regarding the cities of refuge. The cities of refuge were places where, if you accidentally killed someone and their family was coming after you for vengeance, you could run to these cities and seek shelter. In these cities of refuge, they could not kill you.

As the people were moving into the Promised Land, these cities of refuge had to be established right away. It is such a great picture foreshadowing Jesus, who is always near to us. He is our place of safety and our refuge. We don't need to climb over mountains or wade through rivers to reach these cities of refuge because they had to be easily accessible. Jesus is easily accessible to you and to me today. He did all of the work; we simply need to turn to Him and go to Him.

Now, as we look at Deuteronomy 19, I want to provide some brief encouragement and an overview. Today, we are focusing on Deuteronomy chapter 20, where God shifts to instructing His people about how to deal with warfare. Previously, much of the focus was internal: how to deal with injustices within your own people. What are you supposed to do? What is the process? Now, the focus is on how to deal with conflict outside of your walls, outside of your people, and outside of your nation.

How do we respond when someone wants to wage war against us? When God commands them to go into the Promised Land, He says, "You are going to take all of this land," which means that the people currently living there cannot remain because He is giving this land to you. So, what were God's rules for warfare?

Our nation is one that is quite familiar with warfare. However, I encourage us this morning not to read into the Scriptures—especially those written in the ancient Near East close to 4,000 years ago—through our cultural lens, values, and beliefs. Often, we superimpose our expectations over what the Scripture has to say. When we open the Bible, we may look at the text through our values and expectations and wonder, "How could they possibly have lived like this? That was awful. How could God allow these things to happen?"

We have to remember that context is king when we are looking at scriptures. If you haven't already, Pastor Myles is going to be doing a "How to Study Your Bible" class here coming up, and I will just give it another plug right now because this is so important. When we study the scriptures, we really need to dig into the context: who the author is writing to, what kind of writing the author is doing, and the different types of narrative writing in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

We should also consider what times were like back then, what was normal, and why God's word was so essentially abnormal or different from the expectations of the culture at the time. Understanding what God was telling those people allows us to look at what that means for us today.

I think part of the reason we struggle so much in reading the scriptures, especially passages like Deuteronomy chapter 20, which talks about rules for warfare, is that we have our own expectations for what warfare should and shouldn't look like today. We also have to realize that there is a difference between our culture now, which is very individualistic in the West, and the culture then, which was very collective-minded.

In that time, when you saw yourself, you didn't just see yourself as an individual; you saw yourself as connected to a family, a tribe, or a nation. Your identity was much more collective, and you found your purpose and meaning in a collective sense rather than in an individual sense. For example, in the Old Testament, you would have been a king because your father was a king. In the case of the people of Israel, you would have been a priest because you were born into the tribe of Levi or into the priestly tribe. Being a descendant of Levi was the only reason you were a priest.

Today, however, we are very uncomfortable with what I would call unchosen obligations. In the culture of the Ancient Near East, if you were a man and went off to war, it was expected that you would fight. We will talk more about this as we dive into Deuteronomy 20. There were really only four good reasons that you couldn't go fight. War, priesthood, and kingship were all unchosen obligations, yet we are obligated to fulfill those roles.

Today, we might look at it and say, "Well, as a man, the scriptures do tell me that I have certain obligations that I may not have chosen because I did not choose to be a man." But God...

God has given to me, in my family and in society. Not everything is about you. I know it might hurt to say that, but I'm here to preach to you and to give you the good news of Jesus Christ. I want to tell you how God instructs His people and deals with them. Not everything is about you. In fact, when we look at this scripture, it's all about God. It's all about Jesus. Here at Cross Connection Church, it's all about Jesus. It's all about how we can get together to live life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus Christ. It's all about Jesus.

God wants to invite you today into something greater: His kingdom work on this earth. When we look at Deuteronomy chapter 20, the first instructions given are what I would call the heart for the battle. It instructs the soldiers to have the heart for the battle. It starts off like this: in verse 1, it says, "When you go out to war against your enemies." Notice this; it does not say "if." It does not say "if you go out to war against your enemy." It is a guarantee. God is guaranteeing to these young Jewish men, these soldiers, this nation, that they are going to encounter conflict. They are going to encounter wars.

"When you go out to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and armies larger than your own, you should not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." And when, again, not "if," but "when," you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people and say to them, "Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for the battle against your enemies. Let not your hearts be faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is He who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you the victory."

You see, before there can be any physical or practical preparation for a battle, it's important that God sees there is a greater need. That greater need for the soldier is spiritual preparation. Why is that? Because even today, soldiers know that when they go off to war, when they're deployed, they are facing a battle and facing death. If you're not ready to face death head-on, with confidence spiritually to know where you're at, then you are not going to...

Be a very good soldier. Now, what's interesting, though, is that it's the priest's job to encourage these soldiers before the battle. The priests are to remind these soldiers that God is for you, God is going to fight for you, and He is going to give you the victory. He is saying, "You might see that these armies are bigger than you, they're stronger than you, they have better tactics than you, they have more equipment than you, they have more chariots and horses than you, they are more prepared than you, they are faster than you; they're everything better than you." You're going to see that, and there's going to be a natural reaction to fear. These priests were given the job of encouraging the soldiers before the battle.

Now, I think that's actually really encouraging to me as a chaplain. Why do I say that? Because oftentimes in church ministries, we forget that chaplaincy is a very real ministry that's been performed throughout world wars and has played a significant role in encouraging troops in the middle of the battlefield. See, chaplains— and I do encourage you, church, Cross Connection— we should be praying for chaplains, not just chaplains like Miles and I who work with the fire and police departments, but also chaplains who are working with our armed forces. They're going out, they're deploying with our armed forces, and they're seeing the battle and the soldiers. They are the ones who are ministering in a place that we, the church, cannot go— behind a place that is behind lock and key, really. Special access is needed.

You see, not anybody can just go into the police station and start ministering to police officers or go into the fire stations and minister to firefighters. You need access to those places, and it's important that we pray for those who have access and are ministering specifically to those people. Why? Because it's a stressful job anytime you're going to war.

At the beginning of World War II, it was pretty well known that, as the Bible talks about here in Deuteronomy 20, there must be spiritual preparation and encouragement before going off to battle. Interestingly enough, at the beginning of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, in partnership with the Gideons, issued pocket New Testament Bibles to our troops. In these pocket New Testament Bibles, when you open up the first page, there is a preface.

From President Roosevelt, there is a message that states, "The White House." As Commander in Chief, I take great pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the sacred book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a foundation of strength and, now as always, an aid to attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul. This message is signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.

I think President Roosevelt knew his scriptures. In fact, I would encourage you to read his first inauguration address in 1933, where we might remember the famous line that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I believe he understood that there is a spiritual preparation needed for soldiers. Going into battle means facing death, and one needs to be spiritually prepared to be a good soldier.

The priests were to tell the troops, "Hear, O Israel." This phrase would have been very similar to the way the Shema starts in Deuteronomy: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength." In this case, it is, "Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for the battle against your enemies. Let not your heart be faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, because the Lord your God is with you." That is some incredible encouragement.

He is saying, do not look at them. Do not view this battle as a battle between man and man, but as a battle between God and man, and you are on God's side. As I was preparing for this message, I was actually pretty shocked. When you think about what it takes to go into battle and what troops really experience in war—the brutality of war, the evils of war, and even the politics of war—it can be overwhelming.

As a nation today, we can feel pretty on edge about where we are in the world. The world is in a shaky place right now. I want to encourage you, church: God is on our side. Do not fear. Do not be afraid. He is with us. He will fight for us.

The church has never died, and it never will. The mission of the church, the purpose of the church, has not stopped. In fact, it is even greater today that we get the good news of Jesus Christ out than at any other time in history.

Point number one, though, is this: the heart of the army is more important than its size. What do I mean by the heart? The priest's job was to turn the hearts of these soldiers to God. It was to remind them that God Himself was fighting for them. This means that nothing is impossible. This was to remind them that this is the God who brought them out of Egypt, who brought them out of the greatest nation and the greatest army ever. Then this nation was backed up to the Red Sea, and what did God do? God parted that Red Sea, and they passed through on dry land. Time and time again, God protected and saved His people. This is the God that fights for you. This is the God who wants a relationship with you.

The heart of the army is more important than its size. These soldiers who know God and trust in Him are going to be a fighting force that none can possibly match. Therefore, if God is for us, who can stand against us? We are never alone in the battles that we face.

However, right in the next couple of verses, it’s like, "Hey, okay, so now that you've encouraged all the troops, start sending some home." And you're like, "What? That's not a very great battle strategy. Let's send all of our troops home." Here's the reason: as we get into this, I think in James 1, verse 8, it says that a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. In 2 Timothy 2, verse 4, it says that no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

We have the encouragement from the priests, and that encouragement from the priests is, again, while chaplaincy is never directly mentioned in the Scriptures, the picture of chaplaincy is given by these priests encouraging the soldiers and ministering to them. Second Timothy 2, verse 4, reiterates that no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

Point number two on your outlines is that a good soldier is fearless, faithful, and focused on God's plan. In verse 5, it says, "Is there any man among you who has built a new house and has not dedicated it yet? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it."

You see, when you're off to war and you're on the battlefield, the last thing you want to be thinking about is, "Man, I didn't finish my roof." If it rains, my whole house is just going to fall down. The last thing you want to be thinking about is, "I can't believe it. I started this building project, but it wasn't finished." It's not just about the house; it's that my family needs to be protected and cared for while I'm away. Having a chance to live in a house and enjoy it is important.

God is saying to these young men, if you have started building a house but you haven't lived in it or enjoyed it yet, go home and take care of that first before you go to battle. Why? I would argue that our first ministry, scripturally and biblically, is our family. Keeping our priorities in order is of the utmost importance.

Our first priority should be God, focused on Him first, above all else. We are dedicated solely and completely to God, the one who has numbered our days, counted the hairs on our head, and knows our thoughts. Our focus and dedication need to be to Him. Our love needs to be directed to Him first.

Next, our priority should be our spouse, if you're married, and then your family and your kids. After that, it could be your job or your ministry. There has to be a hierarchy of priorities, and every single time those priorities get out of line, bad things happen. The consequences are devastating, not just to you, but to the ring of people around you who are all affected by that—your family, friends, job, and ministry.

If our home isn't in order, we have no business being in the battle. God is concerned about our home. The family needs this man more than the battle does.

Then the second one was if any man has planted a vineyard and has not yet enjoyed or tasted its fruits. This is the man who has done all of the work; he has planted the vineyard and tended to it, but he has not yet tasted the fruit of his labor. God is not only calling men, in this case, to be the spiritual head of the home, but also the provider for the home. If you're not providing food for your family, if you're not providing for your family, as men, you might say, "Well, I didn't choose that." However, God gave us that obligation, and we need to fulfill it. The Bible says that the man who does not provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever.

Now, just think about that for a minute. It's a blessing and a high calling to be these things. The obligations that we've been given by God are about blessing and a high calling to take care of our family and our spouse before we go off to battle. Is any man newly wed or engaged? Go home. If you just got engaged and took off for battle, God says to the young Jewish man, "No, take care of your family. Go home." You have a year to defer the battle. In a year, we'll talk about war, but right now you're going home because the more important battle is at home.

It's more important for you and for our nation that you, young man, go home and be with your new wife and start your family than it is for you to go off to battle. You have more important things to do.

Point number three on your outline is this, and this is an important one too: God wants us to enjoy the blessings of life, not just the battles. Over the last three years, I would say that we, you and I, have probably experienced some pretty turbulent times. Maybe we've experienced a little bit less of the blessings of life, or we feel guilty as Christians when we experience the blessings of life. We can feel guilty about enjoying things like playing on a softball team or going fishing.

God wants you and me to enjoy the blessings of life, not just the battles. He wants us to enjoy our homes, our spouses, and our occupations. I'll say that again: God wants you to enjoy your home, your spouse, your family, and your occupation.

God did not want these Jewish men to use military duty to neglect their families because their responsibility was to provide, protect, and be with them, and to enjoy them. These three things—home life, work life, and work ethic—are crucial. What kind of employee they are in their marriage also matters. If these aspects are out of order or if they are a mess, life can become very hard. Some of you might be in that position right now, and you need to get your life, your house, and your priorities in order.

What do I mean by that? When I applied to be a chaplain with the police department, I had to go through the same background check process that any police officer does. It's an extensive search where they don't just look at my moral character; they also examine my financial responsibility. They check whether I have unpaid debts. They consider how I am as an employee. Do my colleagues respect me? Do my bosses like me, or do they have complaints because I don't work very hard? These are all very important factors. When we get our lives out of order, everything is affected. You need to have your house in order—your job, your finances, and your marriage.

In verse 8, if you are afraid, you see an army that is bigger and stronger than you, equipped with better weapons, tactics, and training. You might think, "Oh, God, I am afraid." These soldiers are holding sharpened swords, ready to kill. If you're afraid, go home. Fear, I might add, is contagious. However, it is completely natural to feel fear, especially in the context of battle. Many of you have probably heard of the theory that when faced with tough situations,

You're either going to fight, you're going to flight, or you're going to freeze. Fear can either make a soldier incredibly focused and lethal in battle or completely incapacitated because they freeze when they need to be doing their job, to the point where they're useless in battle. But fear is also contagious, meaning that the fear of one man might start affecting the entire regiment, the entire troop, the entire army because they did not send that man home. God says if you're afraid, go home. I need people. I need men that are focused, faithful, and focused on God and His plan. It's incredibly important that we have men who are focused and faithful to God and His plan today.

Think about Gideon for a minute. This whole outline here in Deuteronomy 20 actually serves as an example that we can see in the Book of Judges later on. Gideon is hiding in basically a hole in the ground, a winepress, and he's trying to separate the grain from the chaff down there where there's no wind because he's fearful. A giant army called the Midianites is out there, and what would happen is every single time the Israelites would finish their harvest and go out to gather their food, the Midianites would come like locusts, tormenting Israel and taking all of their food, leaving them with nothing.

So, Gideon was scared, and God shows up to Gideon and says, "Mighty warrior." Gideon looks around in this cave, wondering who God is talking to. God says, "You, Gideon, mighty warrior, you're going to deliver My people." Gideon responds, "No, no, there's no possible way that I can."

Well, God ends up getting Gideon in charge of 32,000 men. They are going to go up against the Midianite army. God looks at these 32,000 men and says, "Okay, that's great that you've got these 32,000 young Jewish men, young and old, but that's still too many, Gideon. You need to minimize the army. Tell this army that if anyone is scared, they can go home." Twenty thousand men leave. All of a sudden, you're left with 12,000 men, and God continues to whittle down that number. He says, "Okay, why don't you go down to this stream and tell all the men to take a drink? Any man that bends down and puts his face in the water, in the stream, tell that man..."

Those guys all need to go home. But any man who scoops up the water and brings it up to his mouth, those are the men that I want. Three hundred men were left out of thirty-two thousand. You see, the point of these deferrals was, in fact, to reduce the number of troops so drastically that the victory in battle could only be attributed to God.

In verse 10, it says, "When you draw near to a city to fight it, offer terms of peace to it." If it responds to you peaceably and opens up to you, then all of the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you and makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the Lord your God gives it into your hands, you shall put all of its males to the sword. However, the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all of its spoils, you shall take as plunder for yourself. You shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord your God has given you.

Thus, you shall do with all of the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. But for the cities of the people that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes. You shall devote them to complete destruction: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded. This is so they might not teach you to do according to their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so that you do not sin against the Lord your God.

We can look at this text and think it sounds so barbaric. However, we have to look at this text in context. First, Jesus says to his fighting men, when you go to a city that I am giving to you, offer it peace first. You don't go with the heart that you are going to kill every single person in the city. You go with the heart that our God is extending peace to you. Will you take it? Yahweh Himself is extending peace to you, and He wants to know you. Here is an opportunity for you to get to know God. He is extending peace to you. Will you take it? Those who take the peace were saved.

You see, I think this is exactly a good picture of how God approaches us, me and you. Ultimately, what does God say about sin? Sin separates us from Him, and God came for us while we were yet sinners. He died for us. The picture there is that while we were holding up weapons, while we were in open rebellion—like armed rebellion against God—He sent His Son to die for us in that state. We had not laid down our arms yet. We had not surrendered to God yet, but we were in open rebellion against Him, in a battle against God, spiritually, because of our sin nature. God sent His Son to die for us even while we were in our sin. That's how God approaches us.

Sin is war with God, and He comes to us first, offering peace. If you reject Him, then there is judgment. If you accept the offering of peace, then you will live, and you will be spared. If you refuse peace, God said to His people, "Surround the city." Remember, like Jericho would be a great example: surround the city and lay siege to it. Jericho was a unique situation in which God commanded His people to march around the city a number of times and blow the trumpets, and then the walls of that city came tumbling down.

This type of warfare was new for the people of Israel—siege warfare. Some of these cities had giant walls, up to 30 feet tall, as history now tells us. You can see why, with a 30-foot tall rock wall and a moat around your city, you would feel rather protected. Some of these cities thought, "No, we don't really want you to take over us, your army. Why don't you guys just buzz off?" They rejected the offering of peace. God said, "You are going to surround that city, and you are going to wait until the Lord gives it into your hand."

Who gives it into your hand? The Lord. Remember, throughout this, God gets the glory for everything. When we go out to battle, it is not our strength, not our might, not our tactics, not our ability, not our wisdom; it is none of that. It is God, it is the Lord who is going to give this into your hand, lest any of you should boast.

Point number four on your outlines: God's people never get to the place where they can stand on their own.

God needs to get all of the glory. We are completely and wholly reliant on Him for life, for breath, for everything. You realize this is the God who created you and me and our mothers' wombs. We are made in His image because He formed us out of the dust of the earth as human beings and breathed life into us, different than any other creature in this world. He made us in His image and in His likeness because we are more than just meat puppets designed like animals; we are spiritual beings meant for eternity with God, with a heart and a soul, with feelings and emotions like God.

You see, God's people never get to the place where they can stand on their own; they are always wholly and completely reliant on Him. When we turn to self-reliance, when we become reliant on ourselves and say, "My own bank account, my own power, my own strength, my own wisdom, my own cunningness," can protect me, can save me, or is comforting to me, all of those things can fail, but God never will. He is the one who counted the number of hairs on your head, and He knows how many more breaths you have left before you go to see Him. He has numbered your days.

This is the God that we must be wholly and completely reliant on, and the mature Christian is, because they look at everything they have— all of their wealth, all of their possessions— and say, "God, this is all Yours. I want to do with it what You would have me do with it. I want to be a blessing and love those around me because You love those around You." You loved us while we were yet sinners, Lord, so help me to be a person of peace to the sinner like You were to me. We must be totally and completely reliant on God.

So then you might say, "Well, why did God say, 'Okay, if the city refused to surrender and God gives it into your hands in verse 13, kill all of the males by the sword'? Why all of the males?" Again, we have to look at this in context. In this day, the women of these cities would have had absolutely zero say in the choice that this city made to reject the offering of peace. These women would have had zero say because, in that culture, they were to submit to their husbands. They had a role in the family and in their lives, and they had zero say politically.

If there was a decision to accept peace, those women didn't have it, and God wanted to give those women the chance. The other reason would be that if they left all these enemy men alive, an enemy man alive is going to be an enemy forever. They had to kill the men because those men had made a decision; they had rejected the offering of peace, and they knew what they were doing. God only judges those responsible for making the decision. You and I will both be personally judged by all of the personal, individual decisions that we make. God gives everyone the opportunity to know the true and living God. That was His grace in this situation.

Here's something for you to consider: armies, especially in the ancient Near East 4,000 years ago, provide a great picture of how warfare was conducted back then and why God's method of warfare was so vastly different from any of the surrounding cultures and nations at the time. The Assyrian army was brutal, as were all other armies at the time. What they would do with their enemies, with the enemy soldiers they captured after a battle, was horrific. They would force those enemy soldiers to dig up the graves of their ancestors, pull all the bones out, and grind those bones to dust. That was just one of the things they would make them do.

Another thing they would do with the commanders of the enemy armies was to take them to a very public place. With very sharp knives, they would fillet these commanders, removing all of their skin, and then they would hang that skin up on pillars in public places. You might think that some of this is brutal, but God is actually putting vast limits on what the people of Israel were able to do with captives, with enemies, and especially with women and children. In this culture, at this time in the ancient Near East, women and children were often, if not every single time, going to be slaves and would have been basically prostituted around. There would have been absolutely no protection for women and children in an army that you defeated. They were the spoils of war, and God is saying, "Yes, they may be the spoils of war, but there are going to be rules now." If you take one of their women, you marry her, and that means you protect her. It means you put a roof over her head, you feed her, and you love her.

That was vastly different from any other army at the time. God put incredible restrictions on these men, which hopefully provides some perspective to help us see the bigger picture here. Those were God's rules for engaging enemies outside of the Promised Land, but there were different rules for engaging the enemy within the Promised Land. The Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites—all of the "ites" you can think of that were inside the Promised Land—had to be destroyed. Anything that breathed, even livestock, had to be destroyed.

We know that this did not actually happen because these people ended up plaguing the people of Israel for centuries to come. Why were these people commanded to be utterly destroyed? For a good reason. For hundreds of years, all of these people had opportunities to repent, and they did not. They had chances to turn from their wicked ways, but they chose not to. For hundreds of years, they rejected God and turned to idol worship, sorcery, idolatry, and paganism. As far as you can imagine, these people were absolutely ruthless.

God does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to a saving knowledge of Him. However, God's grace does not equal God's permission. What do I mean by that? Let's look at the context in Deuteronomy first. For hundreds of years, they got away with their behavior, and God didn't do anything. Doesn't that mean God was permissive of their behavior? He allowed it to happen.

Just because God allows wicked behavior to happen for a time does not mean He approves of it. It does not mean that He gives permission to do it. There is coming a judgment one day where we will be judged in the throne room of heaven for every single thing we did. We might say, "Well, God, with my family, You didn't judge my family even though I was doing X, Y, and Z and I wasn't really faithful to them or to my spouse." There is coming a judgment where God will evaluate every single thing you have done. Just because God was gracious with you for so long does not mean that God was giving you permission to commit those X, Y, and Z sins.

That's a great illustration: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites. All of the "ites" that were within the promised land were committed by God to total destruction because they had utterly rejected Him. Furthermore, God commanded their removal because He knew that the people of Israel would become just like them. If you start camping around a bunch of idol worshipers and living next to them, you're going to end up becoming an idol worshiper.

We are like sponges as human beings; we soak in the people around us. We become like those with whom we hang out. God knew His people were especially susceptible to this because, at Mount Sinai, when God was giving the law, it was just the people of Israel there. What did they do? All on their own, without any nation around them to influence them, they pooled together all of their gold jewelry and made a golden calf to worship, their own idol. It's no wonder that God made them grind that idol to dust and then eat it.

As Christians, we are called to do something. It's called putting to death the works of the flesh, removing anything within us that causes us to sin. Ultimately, we should know the truth of the saying that bad company corrupts good morals. Our standard for living today is not the standard of the culture; it's the Bible. I hope that this message is waking some of us up.

We need to put to death the works of the flesh in us and remove anything in our lives that causes us to sin. Are you looking at pornography? Are you cheating on someone? Whatever you're doing, why are you allowing yourself to continue in that practice? Put to death the works of the flesh that would cause you to sin. Surround yourself with Christians, join a connect group, get engaged in church, start serving, start showing up regularly, and start reading your Scriptures and praying like you mean it. Get your house in order.

In conclusion, as we draw a quick conclusion here, at the end of this section in Deuteronomy, our standard for living today is not the culture; it's the Bible.

It does talk about when you're besieging a city not to cut down trees that bear fruit. Now we're out of time, so I can't give you too much detail on that, but really what God is doing is giving more restrictions to the people of Israel. These restrictions would have been common practice back in the ancient Near East, where besieging armies would cut down every tree around them to make weapons of war, ladders, or whatever instruments they needed to defeat and besiege that city. They would cut down any tree in order to do that.

God is saying to leave up any tree that bears fruit because it's profitable. He had a longer-term picture of blessing people and feeding them. He is saying that His army does not need to do the same thing as the other cultures because they have Him. God's people do not need to rely on conventional means for victory because they have Him. God's people are to wage war differently; they are not to be utterly destructive. So, leave what is bearing fruit.

In conclusion, what do we need to do to prepare for war, for the battles that we face? We need to have a proper heart, faith, and focus. We need to have our homes, our marriages, our spouses, our lives, and our finances in order. We need to be 100% reliant on God for everything. We need to be people who come with peace to those who do not know God, sharing with them the love that God has to offer, the greatness of God, His great love, mercy, and grace, without being judgmental and self-righteous toward the world.

It can be easy to detach from this text and say, "Well, I'm not in warfare right now. I'm not a young Jewish man going off to war." I want you to remember that the very Gentile nations that these ancient Jews were fighting are you and me—those who were in direct rebellion against God. Yet, God chose to sacrifice His only Son to have a relationship with us so that we might live.

Because in God's grace, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. For those who were rebellious, He did this so that we should believe in Jesus and not perish but have everlasting life. I hope that you, today, can look death in the face and say, "I have everlasting life, and my God is for me, so who can be against me?" If you don't, I pray that you would really strongly believe in Jesus Christ. Turn to Him, repent of your sins, be forgiven, and follow Him the rest of your days.

Let's pray. Father God, I do thank You for this time in Your Word. Lord, for the rules of warfare that You gave Your people, for the restrictions You put in place so they didn't become the barbarians that the surrounding nations and culture accepted. You established protections for women and children, protections for livestock, and even for trees that bore fruit.

Father, the battles that we face today may be greatly different from the battles faced by these men thousands of years ago, but as Your Word says, nothing is new under the sun. I pray that for the battles we face today, You would help us to be good soldiers for You. We do not wage war against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of this dark age.

Until You come again, You have given us the great mission and job, the obligation and the joyous task of sharing Your good news with the lost, the dying, and the rebellious. Help us to be people of peace, Lord, and may our representation of You and our declaration of the gospel of Jesus Christ sway hearts and minds as Your Holy Spirit softens them.

That many should be saved, Lord, and that none should perish. This is our hope this morning; this is where we put our trust in You and our hope in You. I pray these things in Jesus' precious name, amen.

Well, God bless you guys. I'll see you next week.