God's Battle: Trusting in His Strength

Chapter 20, Moses is giving this instruction because he was preparing the people for going into the land of promise and what would take place there. And one of the things they would have to do was battle for the land that had been promised to them by God. So here there is a chapter in which he begins to talk about how they're to do this battle, how they're to fight, the rules of war for them. They're not particular, a lot of them, not a detailed description as there are in other places, but here he gives us some insight as to what he considers proper for the conquest that they're going to have in the land. Chapter 20, verse 1, when you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours, do not be afraid of them because the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt will go with you. When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward, address the army. He shall say, Hear, O Israel, today you are going into battle against your enemy. Do not be faint-hearted or afraid. Do not be terrified or give away panic before them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you the victory. What God does is he begins the instructions about how they are to live, and when you think of this in our setting, it's more about our individual lives and the nature of the church than it is about the government. Because in the Old Testament, this idea of the people of Israel was really the church. And this land of promise they were to go into was a place where they were to establish the people of God, the family of God. And as they go in, they have two things that they're doing. One is that the war that they fight is a battle of justice in which God is settling scores with the sinfulness of the people who possess that land. So they were tools of punishment for the people who were in that land because of their wickedness. That was one side of the battle. The other side of the battle was God that was fulfilling a part of the covenant that he had made with Abraham that he would give him this land. So there were two things that were taking place. One of them had to do with God's justice, and the other one had to do with the fulfillment of his covenant. Now, we're not necessarily responsible for the one side of that. That is, we're not responsible for bringing about the judgment of God on people around us, either individually or in the church. So that part is sort of removed from us. What we are responsible for is establishing the rule of God over our own lives and being a witness in the place where we are about the nature and character of God. That is, establishing God's rule and communicating who God is to the people that are around us. So when he starts this, he says, as they go to war against the enemies that they face, they are never to be afraid of the opposition that's in front of them. He uses a term that would not be necessarily awesome to us. He said, you should never be worried about the horses or chariots or an army that's greater than yours. Do not be afraid of them. So when he talks about their tasks that they have ahead of them, he uses what they would see as the most powerful military force in the world of that time. The horse and chariot was the most awesome and forceful weapon of war available to anyone in the time that Moses was talking. So whenever the people of Israel went to war, they had no chariots at this time. They were only infantry. And when they were faced with a bunch of chariots with horses coming at them, these horses, as large as horses are, greater than a human, could just mow down infantry with the greatest of ease. So when they went to battle, they were like people with knives fighting an army of people with guns. That's the way it looked. You're going to go into battle without the weapons that your enemy has. You are not to be afraid because of this, nor are you to be discouraged. Remember the two things I talked about what they were doing. They were bringing judgment on the people who lived in this land who had sinned against God. So this was God's issue. They were also fulfilling the prophecy he'd made to Abraham, which was God's issue. This whole thing was God's battle. So they were to be conscious that this was not a battle between them and the people of Canaan. This was a battle between God, their God, and the God of Canaan. And they were to see in this that the soldiers and the weaponry was insignificant because it was a battle between God and the God of Canaan. Now when we come to the New Testament, and the people of Israel are told, or God's people are told what this is about, he said to us, when he asked Peter who he was, Peter said, you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. And he said, Peter, upon this rock I will build my church. Your trust in me is the foundation stone of the kingdom of God. Flesh and blood cannot compete against what you're going to be doing because it is my fight and my war. And the greatest enemy that you face, death, cannot stand against me. The gates of Hades, or of death, will not prevail. What he told us is the life of living in obedience to God and the work of the church is really not ours to do. It is spiritual work. And the spiritual enemies that face us are the enemies that God himself deals with. So whenever we talk about reaching people for Christ or seeing people come to know Christ, this is God's battle. We're tempted to think of the church in terms of our assets, our abilities, and our skills. And when you look at that, you see every one of us is inadequate to the situation we've been placed in. If you think about, okay, you're supposed to go to work, you're supposed to live in the community neighborhood where you are, and you're to be an influence to lead people to Christ. And whenever people are confronted with the responsibility of being a witness to Christ, I've not met very many people who said, I am competent to do this. And they feel since they're not competent to do it, they're excused from it. What God tells us is, this is not your battle, it's mine. Don't look for your competency. Don't look for your ability or your skill. This is my job. What I want you to do is exactly what I tell you to do. The victory is mine to win. So people say, well, I would talk to people about Christ, but I don't know what to say. You're right, you don't know what to say. But if God has given you the responsibility to talk to someone, He will give you the words to say. I hear people say, well, I would talk to God, but I'm afraid I'll mess it up, I'll make a mistake. God has the capacity to take your words as you say them and filter out the things you say wrong so only the truth gets through. Haven't you been around people who listen selectively? They hear what they want to hear. God has the capacity to make people hear what He wants them to hear and to overlook what He wants them to overlook. It's His battle, you see. When you teach a Sunday school class, or when you preach, or when you witness, or when you talk to people about God, and you know that this is what He asks you to do, He's saying to you, this is not your job to do. It is my job to make this work. Now we're not to be concerned whether or not what we do results in what we thought ought to happen. It is God's battle, and God wins the battle His own way. God may know in the life of someone that it's going to take, say, 156 times before that person one day suddenly wakes up and says, wow, I know what I need to do. It's not the first time they've heard it. If you look at your own life, you'll discover that oftentimes you become aware of what you should be doing, not the first time you hear it, but many, many other times when you've heard it. Because all of a sudden one day, it becomes real and personal to you. How does that happen? It's what God does. He works inside of us until that comes to the place. And so you are one of the people that God asks to do this, and you don't look at results, you look at faithfulness. He's told us that this victory that we get is not based on our ability or our strength because we don't win this battle. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, when God told the people of Israel that they were to go into the promised land and fight this war, He said to them, chapter 7, verse 17, You may say to yourselves, these nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out? But do not be afraid of them. Remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh in Egypt. You saw with your own eyes the great trials and the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the people you now fear. Moreover, the Lord your God will send a hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. Do not be terrified by them, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you, but the Lord your God will deliver them over to you and throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. God promised the people of Israel that the victory in all of this would be theirs, because the power that he had was greater than the power of any of these enemies that they faced, and his strength was greater, but most of all because it was his battle. He is the one that is able to do what he needs to do to conquer those people who stood against him. All of us are familiar, if you've been to church very much, you've heard of Philippians chapter 4, verse 13. It's a favorite for many people. And it focuses on this very idea of the provision that God gives. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. It can be translated also, I can face every circumstance through Christ who gives me the strength. What Paul discovered on his own was wherever he was, whatever he was doing, if he lived in faithfulness to God, nothing stood in the way of him doing what God asked him to do. That doesn't mean that you have the victory over everything the way you think it's going to be, but it means that in every situation he was able to do what God asked him to do. In every circumstance I've found that God's strength enables me to do what I'm supposed to do. What God was teaching in the Old Testament and teaching to us in the New Testament is the task I've given you is my job. What I've asked you to do is come and join me. And when you join me, I give you a part of the job I am trying to accomplish in the world. And when you take that job and you go out and do the job I've given you, good, positive, concrete results will come for that. We don't always know them. We don't always see them. I was struck by when these kids came from Amarillo here to work in our community. They were on a faith trip. And I got a letter from one of the mothers of one of the sons, and she said, it's amazing to me, when we were in Great Bend, we used to live in Great Bend, at 19th and Harrison, house right over on the corner. And my son that came there came to your Bible school. No one in that Bible school knew they were training a young person to come here and do mission work. We don't have any idea the number of people that we've had impact on in the years through this church. No idea. But what God promises is, what you do in obedience to me will be effective. The greatest difficulty we have is our human nature. He said, you're going to come in contact with armies that are bigger than you. Do you know what your human nature says? If you have ten soldiers and I have one, I'm going to lose. That's what your human nature says. Your human nature says, if you come in contact with people who are smarter than you are, and you have to witness to them, you're going to lose. Our human nature says, if my ability is limited, I'm not going to be able to do the things that God asked me to do. And that's true when you gauge it in terms of human nature against human nature. What he says is, please don't do that. It's human beings against me that you ought to understand. You will never find yourself anywhere where you're the majority. Every battle and every war that the Israelites fought, they always were the smallest army and the least well-equipped army. However, they tried to change that. For example, in Judges chapter 7, when Gideon was going out to battle, the Lord said to Gideon, you've got too many soldiers. Now I don't know any time in history of the world that an army has ever felt that way. You want more soldiers, not less. And so he gave him some plans whereby to reduce the army by some. They did that and he said, you still have too many. He kept paring away and paring away the soldiers until finally it was to a very small group that would guarantee Israel's defeat. And then when he had them down to the group that would be impossible to win, he sent that group into battle and they won. That story is in the Bible to let us know something very important. We do not fight God's battle by our human nature, by our skill, by our wisdom, or by our power. But our most effective time is when we're completely dependent on God. What God wants us to understand is what he's called his people to do is follow him. What he's called them to do is to participate in his kingdom work. But what he wants us never to forget is that it's his work. I don't know if you remember the story of David and he decided one time he would count his soldiers. And so he sent out people to take a survey, find out how many soldiers he had. God came to him and said, I'm sure mad about this. I'm going to give you a choice. I'm going to have a plague in your land or I'm going to cause some problems for you as judgment because of you taking a census to see how many soldiers you had. You know what he was angry with David about? You're trying to decide if you can win your battles based on people, not on me. Now here's the warning. So when you're asked to teach a class or when you're asked to witness or when you're asked to do something and you stop and take census of your human abilities, you're exactly in the same place David is. When you take an essay of yourself and say, am I qualified to do this job and to win this victory, you're saying to God, I'm depending on myself to do this. God takes great offense at this. If he says to you, I have a job for you to do, he intends you to trust him for the outcome. All the way through the Bible, over and over again, God says to us, this is not your fight. It's mine. I want you to take the sword and go out there, but I will direct it so that I will win the battle with your sword, but you have to have it in your hand. You have to do your part, but the victory will always be mine. Now when you look at the work of the church, what's it based on? Our money? No. The skill of our teachers or preachers? No. It's based on the faithfulness of the people who are doing what God asks of them. And the less competent you are when God asks you to do this, the greater the glory that comes to God. That's what he wants. He wants the world to know his power and his might. Anybody can win a war if they have an atom bomb, and the enemy doesn't. But what if you have a stick, and your enemy has an atom bomb, and you win? And what God wants the world to see is his power so that they will say, I want this person to be my Lord. God wants to be glorified in all these things that take place, and that's why he does this. So he begins this discussion of war saying, don't be counting yourself and deciding whether or not you can win this. You can't. You're not supposed to. It is my battle. I am the one who wins this victory. Depend on me. And then he says, there is in this war a humane nature in what we're trying to do. The officers shall say to the army, has anyone built a new house and not dedicated it? Let him go home. He may die in battle, and someone else may dedicate it. Has anyone planted a vineyard and not enjoyed it? A vineyard is planted, and it was the third or fourth year before the crop was available for the person who planted it to begin to profit from it. First year it all went to God, and then the next year after the second crop, that was all to the owner of the vineyard. So if you've planted the vineyard, it takes a couple of years for it to get up. The third crop belongs to God. The fourth crop is yours. And I want to make sure that if you've gone to all this trouble, you're able to be able to have the harvest from it. So anyone's planted a vineyard or fruit trees and has not been able to enjoy it, let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else enjoy it. Has anyone become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else marry her. Then the officer shall add, is any man afraid or fainthearted? Now when you come to battle, you have an opportunity to say to the soldiers, if any of you are concerned about this and afraid of what might take place, you can go home. Not a mark against you, we'd just prefer you to go home if you're afraid, or if you feel like when you get out there you're going to have to run, let him go home so that his brothers will not become disheartened too. When the officers had finished speaking to the army, they shall appoint commanders over it. God in His grace and mercy allows people to be able to participate in His kingdom work. Not so that it ruins their lives, but so it enhances it. He doesn't want someone to participate in what He's asked them to do if you're fainthearted and lack courage and you're not willing to do what He's asked. He needs you when He says, this is what I want you to do, to say, God, if you ask me, I'll go do it, I'll try it. If you don't trust God enough to take care of you, then when you get in the middle of it, you're going to fail because you become dependent on yourself instead of on God. And God doesn't want you to be able to ruin your life to do His kingdom's work. If you have family responsibilities and things you need to do, He'll give you freedom to take care of unless He says to you, I want you to do it anyway. Now He has the prerogative to do that, but we should never feel just consequently that God wants us to do His kingdom work at the expense of our family and our lives. Now what God is interested in is building godly homes. Now take care of that. He doesn't mean that every time you want to go to the lake or you want to take a weekend off and just fool around, that that's acceptable to God if He's told you to be at church or take a work job teaching a Sunday school class, that has to take a priority for you. But He doesn't want you to ruin your home or your marriage because of your overzealous activity at church. There is a fine line there, you see, and it looks like you might make a mistake by it except for one thing, God will tell you what He wants you to do. You're not to say to God, well, I don't want to do that. You're not to say to God, I don't like doing that. You're to say to God, I will do this if it's what you want me to do. And God will never ask you to do something that will destroy your family or your home life. He just doesn't do that. God's grace and His mercy is sufficient for every circumstance and His power is adequate for every single person. You see, what God was saying to the people of Israel, you don't amass the largest number of people that you can in this job. You get every one of them out there that I tell you to get there. And they do the work and I will give you the victory. The victory comes from me. And then in verse 10, when you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace, they engage you in battle, lay siege to the city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, you are to put to the sword all men in it. As for the women, children, livestock, and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves, and you must use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. So when they went to battle, fighting was not the foremost thing for them. If the enemy was to listen and say, yes, we're willing to surrender to you, then give them the freedom to do that. God was not interested in simply destroying all the people. What he wanted them to do was to be able to recognize the authority that God had and surrender and submit to that. If they refused to do that, they were violating the first two of the commandments that were given to Israel. And then in that way, these people were enemies and resistant to God, and they must be removed from the land, but only the soldiers. The families of the people were to be able to remain. The women and the children were to be able to remain. Only the soldiers were to be killed. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God. The Canaanites, who were resident in the land, who were being punished by God, were to be completely destroyed. He had marked them for judgment because of their own nature and character. So when they came to those, they were not to give them the option, but they were to destroy them. When you laid siege to a city for a long time, fighting against its captor, do not destroy the trees, its trees, by putting an ax to them, because you can't eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people that you should besiege them? However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls. This is one of the few times in the Bible where God shows his environmental concerns. When you come to a place, don't simply lay bare everything that you find there. The trees that are there are not your enemies, and so don't act like you simply destroy everything in the community. Leave the fruit trees and the fields that produce them, and they will be fruit for you and for the people that are living in that area. You can cut down the trees, but only those that are necessary in use in the battle. Don't simply cut down every tree and leave the land absolutely barren of vegetation. God has an environmental concern because the world is his, and the way he made it, he wants us to preserve it. In chapter 8 of the book of Romans, Paul talks a great deal about how the sin of Adam has impacted the natural order and that the natural order is groaning for the day of God's redemption, so that somehow or other the sin of Adam has had an impact in the world, and God is at work to restore and reestablish all of the natural order. And here he makes a part of their war effort to remember that the trees are not their enemies. They are to see these instead as things they should preserve and care for. That the battle is to be fought only to the enemies of the people and not to the natural order so that they would destroy it. One of the things that's effective for war, you know, when Sherman marched to the sea, he left devastation everywhere he went, burned all the crops, all the fields, everything that he could to be able to destroy the south. The Israelites were refrained from that. It is not your responsibility to destroy the trees. They don't worship idols. Don't destroy the trees. They're not my enemies. It is only the people who've turned away from me that are enemies of mine. And so you're to make sure that in your battle, you're doing the work that I've given you for the purpose that I've given you to do it. What God is giving them is clear, plain instructions about how to engage in the great war that he has for them. Now, the same is true for us. When we're placed in the middle of a community and we know that it is God's desire for this community to become followers of his, he gives us the tools to do it. He gives us the calling to do it, and he tells us how to do it. His instruction to us is clear. You pray for the people around you at work or your neighbors, and as you do that, suddenly one or two of them begin to stand out to you, and you know that this is an assignment you have. This is God's task for you. You can come and tell me about this if you want to, but it's probably your job. God has placed it on your mind because he has a victory to win there through you. And if you think it's more than you can do, you're right, but you have to ask yourself, is it more than God can do? If you think that you have to destroy your own life and your family and your home to be able to do it, you're mistaken. There's a different way to do that. You're to make sure that all of the things you do in the kingdom of God are within the boundaries that God gives us to do them. When we restrict ourselves to those boundaries and we do it the way God tells us, then the victory is always his. We may not see that, but it is always his. And whenever you've done something that you know God wants you to do, it's sometimes discouraging if it doesn't have the effect you thought it would. Well, I went out and talked to people and they didn't turn their life over to Christ. Don't worry about that part. It's like laying one brick in a building. Well, I went out there and laid the brick and, boy, there's a whole lot of it not finished. Maybe it just wasted my time. No, you didn't. You did one part of the big job. And whenever you do your part, you walk away saying, I've done what God's asked me to do. The building will be completed. It's God's plan. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? So what all of us have to ask ourselves is, what part of God's plan has he shown me is mine? Every one of you should have a plan that you know God has for you. Some people for whom you're praying, some people with whom you're building relationships, some people with whom you're sharing what God has done in your life, some people you're asking, would you like to come with me to Sunday school, to church, small groups? Some people who are ready to hear you say, here's what God has done for me. Somewhere along that line, if you belong to God, he'll be asking you to do one of those things. Father, help us not to be afraid or discouraged, but to be faithful in doing what you've asked, and to be confident that your ability and your power will make the difference. In the name of Jesus, we ask it. Amen.