October 21, 2013
FOREIGN POLICY
Deuteronomy 20:10-20
Joy Blocker
Central Truth
The Lord your God is always with you and goes before you in "battle."
Key Verse | Deuteronomy 20:10
"When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace." (Deuteronomy 20:10)
Deuteronomy 20:10-20
10 When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. 11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, 14 but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction, 1 20:17 That is, set apart (devote) as an offering to the Lord (for destruction) the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded, 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God.
19 When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you? 20 Only the trees that you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.
Dive Deeper | Deuteronomy 20:10-20
I really don't know too much about the foreign policy of my country. I like Pinterest, not CNN.com. I like watching the Food Network, not ABC World News tonight. If I pick up a newspaper, I am doing so to get coupons. Now I will know when big events happen internationally from the media or friends, but as far as being able to initiate an intelligent conversation about the United States' dealings in foreign countries, I'll have to admit, I am lost.
It was interesting to read in Deuteronomy 20 and not only see God's foreign policy for His people, but also His heart behind it. As God led the Israelites to take the land that He had promised to Abraham, He promised that He would not only protect them physically, but also protect them spiritually. God did this by giving them guidelines to follow.
The cities that were "very far" (verse 15) were Aramean people. They were known to be more peaceable people and more open to knowing Israel's God. The cities that were closer were the Canaanites (verse 17). This group of people was known to woo God's people away from Him and cause corruption. You see this in Genesis 24 when Abraham made his servant promise that he would find Abraham's son a wife that was not Canaanite. Also, one of Israel's kings, King Ahab, took for himself a Canaanite wife, Jezebel, in 1 Kings 16 and turned his heart from God.
This foreign policy still influences us today. As believers, we are to engage with those far from God so that they might come to believe in Him, but we are to beware of those whom might persuade us to forsake the God that we love. We are called to be in the world, but not of it (John 17:15-16, Romans 12:1-2). We must be strategic in the way we "wage war" today. Whether you like Pinterest or CNN, this is a foreign policy that cannot be ignored.
Discussion Questions
1. How are you doing to engage those around you who are far from God?
2. How can you improve how you are living "in the world" but not "of the world"?
3. What can you do differently this week to engage with those around you who need Jesus?