Deuteronomy 20:8-9 Bible Study | Episode 919

April 17, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy 20:8-9 Bible Study | Episode #919

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name. Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in The Deuteronomy chapter 20, verses 8 through 9. Deuteronomy, chapter 20, verses 8 through 9. And we are, we are dealing with, we're dealing with a passage that, that for me reminds me of my favorite. It reminds me of my favorite movie. If you ask Kathleen, my wife, what is, what is Chad's favorite movie? What's his favorite video? If you, if he could take video with him somewhere to watch and it was the only one he was ever going to be watch, able to watch again, she would say Band of Brothers. And in that, that really is my favorite, my favorite video. I love the movie. I love the, the story that it tells. I love the interaction, the human interaction of the men of Easy Company who are part of three major drops in Europe, the first one being the, the invasion of Normandy. It is, it is a great, great movie. It's a great opportunity when you're, when you're studying and when you're, when you're thinking about humanity to, to think about, to think about how humans react when they're put in terrible, awful situations. Their reactions are important. This passage deals with the officers and the army. But we, we also know that we can, we can make a, a one to one comparison with, with this passage, this whole chapter about going to warfare and the spiritual warfare that we face in the, in the New Testament. And so we know that this is a, this is a corollary. There's, there's things that are, are definite, definite things to correlate to the New Testament. And so one of the things that, one of the instructions that he, Moses gives the people when he is instructing them on how to fight battles is he instructs them about how to deal with someone who is fearful or fainthearted. He says, the officer shall speak further to the people and say what man is there who is fearful? Or what man fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart. And so it shall be when the officers have finished speaking to the people that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people. Now this verse nine tells us that this is a leadership, this is a leadership principle, he's saying. So when the officers have finished speaking to the people, they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people. Meaning there needs to be a leadership structure. And so the leadership structure needs to be cognizant of one thing, and that is what man is there fearful and faint hearted among you? Now, in Band of Brothers, one of the episodes deals with Easy Company being a part of the Battle of the Bulge. And obviously they are part of the 101st Airborne Division. And the 101st Airborne Division was surrounded during the Battle of the Bulge and they had to dig in. And so when Easy Company dug in because they had been overrun around them by the German army, when they dug in, the Germans began to heavily bombard them. And that bombardment was, well, you know, the artillery fire was intense and it was terrible. And oftentimes even dating back to the Civil War, but especially During World War I, this understanding of being shell shocked, we now call it post Traumatic stress disorder. But what it is, it's having faced a very, very terrible situation, one that might also be a sensory overwhelm, meaning the sound of the bombs, the visuals of someone, a bunch of people that you care about being dead, those, all those things, not just, not just being shell shocked by the, by the pounding of the bombs. But you might, you might have been many times riding in a convoy and seen buddies or friends blown up on the side of the road, maybe in Fallujah or Afghanistan or somewhere like that. That sensory overload that causes a person to, to react in such a way that it wouldn't be common to their thought process. It's just a natural reaction. It's a natural physical response to sensory overload. That, that response makes a person, makes a person act in a way that they might not normally act. And if it happens over a long period of time, it may cause them to have problems with it for, you know, for, for a long time after the battle of the war is over. And so we, we have a lot of people who have, who have those issues in our midst. We have a lot of people who deal with that kind of stuff because we have for some reason decided that we were going to be involved in wars all over the world. A never ending string of wars all the way dating back to World War II. Very few times have we spent a long period of time not sending soldiers somewhere to fight in battles or to be a part of those things. And so therefore we've got a lot of people who are dealing with that now. It's not making the, it's not making the assessment here that these people are in some ways defective. It's not making that assessment for the people who are fearful and faint hearted. What it's what, what it's saying about them is you can't have them in the midst of the battle. You got to let them go home. And, and that teaches us something. Scripturally, whenever you deal with spiritual issues and whenever you deal with spiritual battles, there is going to be an element of the people who are fearful and faint hearted. Fear is the opposite of faith. And everybody has lived in, live their life in such a way where they have been, they have been fearful, spiritually fearful, physically fearful, they have been taught fear in their life. Everyone has a level of fear in them that, that comes from their sin nature. Now when you have not learned to overcome that, spiritually speaking, when you've not learned to be bold in your faith, to be bold in, in your trust in God, to allow God to teach you to trust him rather than to give in to the emotional and, and sometimes the very real aspects of fear, the cognitive thoughts of what could happen, which are reality. They are things that actually could happen. They're, they're just beyond some unknown emotional trouble that you might be having. But they're real, they're. You're dealing with real issues of what, what could actually happen. When, when you've not learned to trust God beyond those things, you're not going to act in a boldness that is the hallmark of a faith in God and who he is and his purposes and his will for your life. That is a sign of immaturity. When I say a sign of immaturity, I'm talking about spiritual immaturity, meaning you just haven't learned how to trust God through some of these things. And we're all going to experience fear. And by the way, even the greatest people in scripture, God has to teach and lead them through those things. He has to teach and lead Moses through those things. He has to teach and lead Joshua through those things. He has to walk David sometimes even through those things. Even King David who killed the giant as a teenager at times deals with the struggle of fear. There was a time where they went off to fight a battle, and a raiding party from the Midianites came and took their families. And David was fearful. He was fearful of the men he led. All these things are natural to the human condition, to our sin nature, and we have to learn to walk outside of those things. So what's the point of this passage, Pastor? That's what you're asking. Why am I talking about this? Well, there's an important part of this passage that needs to be understood. And what that is that we can't place people in leadership positions who are not people of faith, who are not people of mature faith that don't react to the enemy, but they react to God's will, and they search out God's will, and they walk in it boldly without fear. When God says over and over in Scripture, fear not. Do not be afraid. He's teaching us over and over to not be afraid of the things that we perceive to be true, the things that we know to be true, and yet be against God's. God's will. And, and then, and then we must learn how to trust God's will above those things. That's a learned. That's. That's a learned condition. That's not something that you just naturally do. It's something that you have to learn to do with God to walk in faith. Well, when they're going to battle, back then, he didn't want that contagion of fear. He don't want that contagion of fear. That, that, that. That causes people to get afraid. He didn't want that to be a part of it. And when, when Easy Company was in the middle of that bombardment, there was a man that was trying to dig a hole with his hands. He's trying to dig a hole with his. With his fingernails. He ripped his fingernails off trying to dig a hole because he was so afraid that he wasn't acting rationally. And, and, and Major Winters, who is. Who is the. Who is the narrator of the story? He basically goes through a treatise and says that fear is contagious and that you have to get people away from the soldiers who are fearful, who are. Who have totally given into their fear. You got to get them away from the soldiers. They can't be in leadership positions. They can't be around the people who God's leading to walk boldly by faith in front of him. And that's true spiritually. That's. That's true spiritually. We can't give a voice or we can't give a. Give A platform to those who are innately fearful of spiritual things or unwilling to entertain what God has said for us to do. You can't give them a platform for speaking. You can't give them a place of leadership. You can't put them in a. In a place that. That will have influence because it is contagious. And it says here, let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint, like his heart, meaning it's a contagion. And I always think of Major Winters talking about that and that guy digging the hole and somebody coming in and grabbing him by the shoulders and telling him to stop and leave him looking up and not even realizing that he was doing what he was doing. And that's true of people who are spiritually fearful. They have to be taught to be bold in their faith. Faith. But while they're learning to be bold in their faith, they don't need to be put in a position where the contagion of their spiritual fear is contracted by others around them. And so, as you're thinking through this passage, it is a direct corollary. You can see that it's important that you learn to walk in bold faith and do not give over to that which is the opposite of faith, fear. And you need to not place around you people who are spiritually fearful or who are spiritually doubting what God has clearly said. That's contagious, and it'll be contagious to you. You have to stay away from those type of people. Now if I'm discipling one of them, I'm helping them walk in faith, then, then I'm leading them forward. But you can't, you can't just let a person like that be, be a regular part of your life and speak into your life, because they're going to speak fear and doubt into your life, which is going to be contagious to you. So what a. What a good passage. Just to think about. Consider am I, am I teaching? Am I walking in faith? Am I exuding faith to others? Not fear, but faith. And am I allowing. Is the reason maybe that I'm struggling with my faith is because I'm allowing people who are maybe born again, but spiritually are people that are immature or people that are given toward fate, lack of faith, fearfulness. And I'm allowing them to, to, to influence my life and to influence my walk with God, if that's the case, need to get away from, need to remove yourself from those people. And you put yourself in a position where you're only here for God as you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.