Bible Commentaries

Faintheartedness

Deuteronomy 20:8

In order to see the full beauty and meaning of this charge we must read the words which lead up to it. Arrangements are being made in view of possible battle. It is well in life always to be prepared for war even whilst we are praying for peace. The question might arise in the minds of the children of Israel,—What shall we do in the day of battle? Instructions having distinct reference to that inquiry are given in this chapter.

"When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" ( Deuteronomy 20:1).

There is an exhortation:—"Be not afraid of them." Following the exhortation is the reason upon which it is founded: "For the Lord thy God is with thee." No matter what the number of the enemy; it is of no consequence how many horses he has, and how their necks are clothed with thunder: there is One who maketh the mountains smoke before him; thy God is the Almighty and Eternal God, and he will see that the battle ends on the side of right. This verse calls us to take the religious view of every engagement in life. We must be sure that we start aright,—that is to say, that our cause is good at the core—just, wise, reasonable, and generous. The cause being right, everything in the universe that is right is of necessity on its side: the stars of heaven fight for righteousness. Whatever may be the nature of accidental or temporary circumstances, the issue is perfectly certain:—he shall come and reign, whose right it is. Ever the right comes uppermost. Acting upon this conviction, how calm is the man whose conscience approves him! He knows that the waves can only come to a certain line; he says, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" "The Lord reigneth;" the God of heaven is the God who battles on the side of right. This exhortation does not apply only to national wars, but to all the controversies which constitute the action and the tragedy of life. Every man is called to battle in some way, at some place, at some time. Life itself is a battle: we wrestle not against flesh and blood, it may be, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world—the invisible host banded in a common oath to destroy the kingdom of truth. "Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." This is the foundation upon which all further instruction given in this chapter is based. The battle puts our religion to the test: we do not know whether we are religious or not, in the profound sense of the term, until we come to battle. It is easy to sing at midsummer, when all visible nature challenges us in gracious tones to lift up our voice in solemn praise. There is no strain upon a man to thank God when he sits under his own blossoming trees and hears the birds trilling their incoherent hymn. That is not piety: it is selfishness of the vilest kind—the selfishness which electroplates itself with piety: the mean, personal consideration which cloaks itself with a sentiment thin as a morning cloud. See what men are when they are under stress—when the storm pours upon the roof, when the enemy thunders at the door, when death takes away the delight of the eyes, when every room in the house is a sick-chamber, when business is unprosperous, and all things seem to conspire in a desperate confederacy against the progress of life;—it is then we know whether our religion is solid, healthy, rational, and built upon eternal foundations.

The officers were commanded to order off certain people:—

"What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it" ( Deuteronomy 20:5).

"And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten of it? let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it" ( Deuteronomy 20:6).

"And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her" ( Deuteronomy 20:7).

Having ordered off all these people, the officers proceeded still further to weed the army:—

"What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart" ( Deuteronomy 20:8).

The army might thus be greatly reduced; we must remember, however, that reduction may mean increase. We do not conquer by number but by quality. One hero is worth ten thousand cowards. Caesar is in himself more than all his legions. Quality counts for everything in the greatest battles and the most strenuous moments of life. Given the right quality, and the issue is certain. Quality never gives in: quality is never beaten; quality flutters a challenge in its dying moments, and seems to say, I will rise again and continue the fight from the other side. So the army was reduced, and yet the army was increased in the very process of reduction. To-day the great speech is made over again:—"What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart."

We cannot deny the fact that most Christian professors are fainthearted; they are not heroic souls. The great proportion of Christian professors are people who are "not well." The number of invalids in the Church would surprise the imagination of the most audacious dreamer. This is not a world for the fainthearted it is a world of strife, wear and tear, conflict, tumult, trial by fire, and temptation by the chief intellect of hell; it is a rough world; it has well been described as being out of joint. Those who would take hold of the world aright must be inured to hardship: they must "endure hardship as good soldiers of Christ." We are not speaking of the weak, but of the fainthearted; not of men inflicted with an infirmity, but of hearts that have lost—if ever they had—the heroic nerve. The Church is now the most timid of all influences in the world. Granting that there are sections of the great Christian Church marked by marvellous energy—for which we thank God—yet, speaking of the Church as a whole, it is suffering from faintheartedness, timidity, fear: that spirit which cannot live in the society of love, that gruesome, dark-faced thing that dare not look at love: for love would slay it with light. What is the explanation of faintheartedness? Want of conviction. Given a convinced Church, and a heroic Church is the consequence; given a Church uncertain, unconvinced, and you have a Church that any atmosphere can affect and any charlatan can impose upon. We must, therefore, return to foundations, to central principles, to primary realities; and having made sure of these the rest will arrange itself. Where is conviction? There may be a good deal of concession: there may be a strong indisposition to object to, or to deny, or to bring into discredit, theological problems and religious usages, but what is needed is something more: clear, well-reasoned, strongly-grounded conviction; and where this rules the mind every faculty is called into service, and the battle of life is conducted with heroic decision and chivalrous self-forgetfulness.

It was well understood in Israel that the fainthearted man does more harm than he supposes he does. It is the same all the world over and all time through. The timid man says,—I will sit behind. Does his retirement behind mean simply one man has gone from the front? It means infinitely more: it is a loss of influence, a loss of sympathy, a loss of leadership. A Christian professor is not at liberty to say he will abide in the shade: he will allow the claims of others: any place, how obscure soever, will do for him. Have no patience with men who tell such lies! They have no right to be behind: their mission should be to find the best place, and to wake up every energy—to stir up the gift that is in them; and every man should feel that the battle depends upon him. The discouraging influence of faintheartedness it is impossible to describe in words. Better have a congregation of six souls of light, and fire, and love, than have a great crowd without conviction, easy-going, flaccid in sentiment and thought,—without central realities and foundations that can be relied upon. "What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go"—he is not a loss: his going is the gain of all who are left behind: he made other people cold, he discouraged the young, he threw a gloom and a frown upon all that was proceeding in the Church: he disliked passion and music and beauty and brightness; no genial word ever came out of his lips; his hands never grasped the hand of soldier with heroic firmness;—he must go, and we will send no blessing after him, for he would have no capacity to receive it. The great work of weeding the Church army must be carried out. It must be carried out in the ministry. There are men, unquestionably, in every ministry who have no right to be there—respectable, pedantic, literal, self-considering, afraid of giving offence, so prudent as to be imprudent, so wise as to become foolish. The ministry must be rid of them: they are not created in heaven, and they have no right to be in this position upon earth. So with all ranks, classes, and stations in the Church. The one man we must get rid of is the fainthearted man—the timid, cowering, self-considering professor, who is thankful when all is over without any accident having occurred,—a fear-ridden soul, a fear-darkened mind; he must be exhorted—unhappily for his destination—to return to his own house, probably because no other house would receive him. Let him go: the pulpit will be the better for his absence, the Church will be the warmer for his retirement, the young will then lift up their voices and be glad. Who has not seen the saddest of all pictures—a child beginning to dance and sing the moment the father has left the house? That is a scene to make the soul sad. The child should never dance and sing so much as when his father comes back: and the father should dance and sing with the child, and be the child, and thus gladness should sound in every room of the house.

How marvellously faintheartedness shows itself! In one case it is fear of heresy. We hear of certain young people throwing off old habits and ways, and thereupon we become fainthearted, forgetting that there is a time in life when cleverness is the little imp that tempts men to their own destruction,—forgetting that there is a very critical period in life when the boy is too tall for a jacket and too young for a coat! We should bring into our view all the intermediate periods of life, and all transitional processes, assured that outside the Church there is nothing but a mighty famine, swine-feeding, and the bitterness of soul will send the young wanderer back again. In another case it is fear of criticism. What will the people next door say? What will the adjoining Church think? What will other men declare their judgment? The false and cowardly speech runs thus:—I have no wish myself about the matter: personally I should say nothing to obstruct the suggestion; but I am afraid it will be misunderstood, and that others will form an improper or inaccurate opinion about it. A man talking so representing other people! A man assuming a penetration like that ought to have had a courage equal to his genius. In another case it is fear of sensation. Our ministry has been wrecked in many instances by cold-hearted and mean-spirited men who ought never to have had the influence associated with official promotion. We must not advertise, because some people might misunderstand it; we must not have too much music, because there are persons unable to follow the mystery of praise; we must not have anything unusual. To have such fainthearted men in the Church is the bitterest trial that Christ has now to undergo. As for his enemies, he will rule them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel; but the fainthearted and the timid—those who have no conviction or daring or chivalry—they wear out the life of the true minister, and they curse the home where they live. There is another faintness which is rather to the credit of the man who experiences it—a faintness arising from great service, long-continued effort, and noble sacrificial consecration. When a man pours out his life for the cause he may well be faint now and then. A beautiful sentiment in Scripture describes his condition:—"faint, yet pursuing"—putting out the arm in the right direction, looking along the right road, and saying in mute eloquence,—Give me breathing time, and I will join you again; let me rest awhile; do not take my sword away: in a day or two at most I will be at the front of the fight. That is a faintness which may be the beginning of great strength. So God is gracious to us: having no sympathy with timidity and fear and cowardliness, he has infinite compassion upon those who, having worn themselves out in service, need space and time for breathing. This exhortation comes back in a great trumpet-blast:—"What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return into his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart." It is difficult to stand against discouragement: it is awfully, awfully hard to keep warm in the presence of an iceberg. Not only is the man himself a coward: he is making cowards of others. So with regard to the pulpit and to every department of Christian service, this word must sound out more and more clearly: if any man wants money, let him go and return unto his house;—if any man wants ease; if any man would be exempt from criticism and hardship; if any man is seeking to abound with the decaying and withering tributes of life; if any man is ambitious for mere applause, let him go and return unto his own house. Christ can do without him: he is hindered by him.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou spreadest our table in the sight of our enemies; our cup runneth over; goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our life. When we went into a far country and there felt the pains of hunger, we were moved to return again, saying,—In our Father's house there is bread enough and to spare. Lord, evermore give us this bread! This is the true bread that cometh down from heaven, of which, if a man eat, he shall hunger no more. Lord, evermore give us this bread! We have thought to satisfy ourselves with the stones of the field, and, behold, we have become more and more an hungered. Give us the true bread which cometh down from heaven. May we eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ thy Deuteronomy 20:19

It will be observed that this instruction is given to the Jews in the event of their going to war against any city. No question of mere horticulture arises in connection with this injunction. It is wantonness that is forbidden; it is not art that is decried. Trees that did not bear fruit were of course available for war, but trees that could be used for purposes of sustaining human life were to be regarded as in a sense sacred and inviolable.

A prohibition of this kind is charged with lofty moral significance. When men go to war they are in hot blood; everything seems to go down before the determination to repulse the enemy and establish a great victory. But here men in their keenest excitement are to discriminate between one thing and another, and are not to permit themselves to turn the exigencies of war into an excuse for wantonness or for the destruction of property that bears an intimate relation to human sustenance. It would be easy in times of calmness to admire and preserve beautiful fruit-trees, but imagine an army of soldiers rushing up to an orchard, and standing still before it as if they had suddenly come upon an altar—a god! surely that were a severe trial of human patience. If one of the trees could have been cut down the victory might have been won, or certainly the enemy might have been baffled; but even under such circumstances law was to be religiously respected. Dropping all that is merely incidental in the instruction, the moral appeal to ourselves is perfect in completeness and dignity. Civilisation has turned human life into a daily war. We live in the midst of contentions, rivalries, oppositions, and fierce conflicts of every kind, and God puts down his law in the very midst of our life and calls upon us to regulate everything by its sacredness. God has not left human life in a state of chaos; his boundaries are round about it; his written and unwritten laws constitute its restraints, its rewards and its penalties; and even war in its most violent form is not to blind our eyes to the claims of God. Men say that all is fair in love and war, but this proverbial morality has no sanction in holy scripture. We are too apt to plead the exigency of circumstances in extenuation of acts that would not have otherwise been committed. It is evident that there are points in life at which circumstances must triumph or law must be maintained. Thus an appeal is made to reason and conscience in nearly every day. When the human or the divine must go down, the Christian ought to have no hesitation as to his choice.

Victories may be bought at too high a price. He who gives fruit-bearing trees in exchange for his triumphs may be said to have paid his soul for the prizes of this world. "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" What is a warrior profited if he gain the province, and cut down every fruit-tree, and burn up every harvest-field, and dry all the wells and fountains of the land? Thus again and again comes upon us the certainty of the law that a man may purchase even his victories at too high a price. This applies to all kinds of victories,—victories, for example, which relate to property, influence, social position, and all the vanities of life. This is the danger which Christ was constantly pointing out. "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" "Fear him who hath power to destroy both body and soul in hell." "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." A wonderful foresight is discovered in the injunction of the text. The speaker is endeavouring to show that the present victory may be overborne by future suffering. We shall require the fruit-trees after the victory has been established: but if we have cut down the fruit-trees to achieve the victory, where then is our reward and what is its value? We may get our own way in life, but we may have burnt down all life's fruitful orchards in gaining the worthless prize. A whole philosophy of life is involved in this text. The fruit-tree is symbolical and not literal. God sometimes gives men the desire of their hearts, and sends leanness into their souls. What if a man shall come back from the field of learning, having won his honours, if, in doing Deuteronomy 20:20, we read: "Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down." There must be no mistake about the fruit. Leaves are not enough. Shapeliness is not enough. Abundance of wood is not enough: "That which heareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned."

Prayer

Almighty God, our hands are withered; bid us now stretch them forth. Thou art the Healer, O Christ of God! Thou dost live to heal; thou hast no pleasure in disease, or death, or the grave: thy joy is in health and life and heaven. May we rise into the spirit of thy joy, and respond to all the ministries thou hast set in motion for the preservation of the soul's health and the opening out of great views concerning the soul's destiny. We bless thee for thine house, its comfort, its security, its peace; it is a place of calm: the storm is outside: the high wind blows over the roof but does not come within. Thou hast hidden thy people as in the cleft of a rock until the calamity be overpast, and thou hast spoken comfortably unto them and assured them of deliverance and liberty. We bless thee for thy Book; it is in our native tongue: we understand most of it; when we most need it, it is most to us—so comforting in sorrow, so inspiring in dejection, and so enriching when the mind realises its true capacity. May we read thy Book with attentive eyes, with hearts eager to learn the meaning of the message; and may we retire from our perusal of holy pages stronger, purer, wiser, more resolute in the cause of good, and more resigned to all the mysteries of thy rule. Thou hast a word for every one: the old man trembling on his staff and looking into his grave; the little child to whom life is a cloud full of stars, or a night full of voices, or a day bright with hope;—send a message to each of us: let each feel that this is the Father's house, and as for bread, there is enough and to spare. Dry our tears; lift our burdens awhile that we may recover breath and strength; attemper the wind to the shorn lamb; speak to those who have little, and who live in backward places and positions, in the shadow and in the cold, and so reveal thyself to them that the spirit may triumph over the flesh, and that even in unexpected places there may be a sense of thy presence. The Lord grant unto us light, peace, pardon, comfort,—all we need, to do the remainder of this day's work with both hands, and to enter on to-morrow's labour with Christian hope.

We pray at the Cross: we name the Name that is above every name; we cannot understand the mystery which it represents, but we feel its redeeming love. Amen.