Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - When Life Gets Hard | Torah | Deuteronomy 20

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Do you expect an easy life? How do you react when things don’t go your way? Should following Jesus be easy? In today’s episode, Tanya uses Deuteronomy 20 to share the hope you can have in the midst of hardship. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Deuteronomy 20

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Did you know that life gets harder? Are you shocked? I know, I was too. I thought maybe when I finished college, things would get easier. Or when I had more money, it would be easier.

Or when my kids started sleeping through the night. Or when they weren't pre-teens, or when they moved out, is that when I sleep well again? Not so far. but I sat across from a friend whose life should have gotten easier. Her son was grown and he was kind. She was retired. She had time to actually read the book she checked out at the library. She had friends.

She had influence. So why was she telling me life just gets harder? Probably because it's true. Unless you're listening right now and you're three years old, your life is probably going to get harder. Even if you're in college and you think, think it can't possibly get any harder it will. I don't think we should be discouraged, but I do think it's true.

There's an entire industry, after all, devoted to making our lives easier. Why would they do that if life isn't hard? I have podcasts by the lazy genius and the next right thing in my playlist as we speak. I don't think we should be discouraged because we know people who have gone through really hard things and have genuine joy and contentment. Moses doesn't let the Israelites fool themselves into thinking life will be easier in the promised land. It would be different and it would be in the presence of God and it would be the fulfillment

of his promise, but it wasn't going to be easy. When Moses gave his final sermon before the Israelites crossed over into the new land, he confirmed what they'd been thinking about for the last 38 years. Remember when the spies came back across the Jordan to report what they saw in the promised land? They said the enemy was huge. They said the enemy had weapons of mass destruction. They said the soldiers looked like giants.

Now, if anyone thought things had changed since then, Moses set them straight about where they were going. He didn't minimize anything about the enemy. Listen in to Deuteronomy 20 for a truth bomb. Moses says, When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you. Did you hear that?

The enemies were more advanced. The Israelites didn't yet have modern war technology like horses and chariots. They also didn't have a large, well-organized army. aside from the Lord, they were the underdog by at least 10 touchdowns. That's how it would have looked and how it would have felt if they didn't believe what Moses was preaching to them and if they didn't have faith in the power and presence of the Lord. This was the Lord who parted the sea and then closed it back over Pharaoh and his army.

Moses says, Hear me, O Israel. Today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies, but don't be in panic or draw. against them. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight against your enemies and give you the victory. I think what we consistently learn from the Bible is that even when we are following God's plan and fighting God's battles, there is hard stuff. There's always going to be difficulty in this life. I wonder, though, do you think you deserve an easier life? What if you could overcome your flaws and make better decisions.

Then your life would be better, right? What is someone who's making your life difficult? What if they would overcome their flaws and make better decisions? Would your life be easier then? Maybe, but I don't think we're promised an easy life as followers of Jesus. At least not like that. The Bible shows us the one who always made good decisions and who always loved people perfectly.

And his life went pretty terribly. No one ever looked at Jesus' life and thought, I wish I had a life like that. But it's critical to our faith that we understand the truth about Jesus' life because that's how the Bible says he can relate to you and me. Jesus was tempted, poor, misunderstood, betrayed, mocked, disbelieved, rejected, and crucified. As believers, we aren't on an exempt list from hardship.

In fact, often hardships are part of God's mysterious plan to turn us into something better. We tend to think, though, that when we're not suffering, it's because we did something right. And we like to categorize the suffering of others by what they're doing wrong. But the Israelites were following God's plan to go into the land of Canaan, and they were walking into a battlefield. Moses was honest. He didn't minimize the size or scope of the enemy. It wasn't just a physical battle but a spiritual one to claim the land the Lord their God had promised

and to walk in obedience to their heavenly calling. We have an enemy that wants to keep us from believing that Jesus really is the Son of God, sent to rescue us from our unbelief. The enemy wants us to slide back into placing our trust in morality, performance, and effort. I have a friend who is Mr. Prepared. He's the one you'd want to be on the sink. Titanic with or a hiking trip when an unexpected blizzard blew in. He is decisive, wise, and well prepared. He's so prepared that even when he went on an overnight float trip this

past summer in Missouri, he managed to have ice cream and wine. I don't know if you've been on a float trip in Missouri, but this is not typical. Nothing, though, could have prepared him for what happened on the float trip. It started with a positive COVID test the week before, and then lingering fatigue, and then the river was low, and they had to portage over about a 10-mile stretch. Then when they got back in the canoe, they heard a low, whoosh, and realized the bear spray he packed in the dry bag with his food and cell phone had opened, and was slowly drenching everything in the bag. Then a high wind thunderstorm moved in and hovered over them. And then finally, the place to get the canoe out of the water was overgrown, and it was an uphill trek back to the car.

They didn't even get to enjoy the wine and ice cream because it was covered with the bear spray he'd packed just in case they ran into rabid dogs on the river. We should be prepared for hardship. An excellent defense is a rehearsal of truth. Jesus showed us this because he used scripture every time he was tempted. And Colossians tells us this when it says, Let the message of Christ dwell in you richly. We have another resource. Jesus himself. He is our high priest who empathizes with our weaknesses and gives us grace and mercy in our time of need.

We are strengthened not only with His word and his power, but by his experience. We can come through the battle because we have Jesus who has experienced the battles with us. Do you see this is essentially what Moses is teaching the Israelites about God's presence? they are going into battle and they will have victory because the Lord, who part of the Red Sea is going with them. But they still had to go into battle. So if life with God isn't easy, what is it? Well, we also learned from Deuteronomy that God is very concerned with the way we enjoy our life. They were exemptions when it came to God's battle plan.

And the exemptions were not only to reduce the number of war casualties, but they were, were also given to enjoy the good gifts of life, like a new marriage, a new home, and new wine from the vineyard. Soldiers were given time away from battle to enjoy those things. Sometimes when we think about the new heaven and the new earth and what it will be like to live forever with God, we picture floating clouds and harps, and for me, naked baby angels for some reason, and to be honest, none of this sounds very appealing. If some of our greatest pleasures come from working our fields and spending time with family and other believers, then will I be satisfied floating on a cloud?

But the Bible encourages us with a better answer. To the question, what is the chief end of man? It answers, to glorify and enjoy God forever. To glorify God is to reflect his glory, his love, his knowledge, and power. It is to image God so the world can see God in us. And God also made us to enjoy him forever. This isn't in a self-centered pleasure that's never really actualized, but a God-centered pleasure, where He is our source of power and our delight.

Jesus said he came to give us life and life abundantly. And Paul tells us in Romans that we rejoice even in our sufferings because they produce endurance. Peter tells us that believing in God fills us with a joy that is inexpressible. My guess is that if you've gone through, anything hard, you have experienced God's presence more deeply during that time, especially if you've leaned into his presence for comfort, power, wisdom, or forgiveness. The Bible doesn't tell us to look for an easy life, but it does tell us to rejoice, to make a joyful noise to the Lord, to shout with Thanksgiving, to draw near, to encourage one another, to persevere, and to finish the race. We can do all

of this because the one who commands is faithful and he is with us. We are never left to navigate our battles on our own. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.