Deuteronomy chapter 20, when you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you do not be afraid of them. For the Lord, your God is with you who brought you up from the land of Egypt, so it shall be when you are on the verge of battle that the priest shall approach and speak to the people and he shall say to them here, oh, Israel, today you are on the verge of battle with your enemies. Do not let your heart faint. Do not be afraid and do not tremble or be terrified because of them. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you. Then the officer shall speak to the people saying, What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. Also, what man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not eaten of it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. And what man is there who is betrothed to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man marry her. The officers shall speak further to the people and say, What man is there who is 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. When you go near a city to fight against them, then proclaim an offer of peace to it. And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you and serve you. Now if the city will not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And when the Lord your God delivers it into your hands, you shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword. But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself. And you shall eat the enemy's plunder, which the Lord your God gives you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations, but of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite. and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations, which they have done for their gods, when you sin against the Lord your God. When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. If you can eat of them, do not cut them down to use in the siege, for the tree of the field is man's food. Only the trees which you know are not trees for food, you may destroy and cut down to build siege works against the city that makes war with you until it is subdued. Lord, as we open your word, we just confess to you, Father, it's beautiful. And so help us in our understanding today as Dan brings it. I pray that you would bless him, Lord, that you would use his words mightily to communicate your truth and that you would just reach down into our hearts and remove the dross. and do the work that only you can do, Father. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. In this passage that he's defining, this goes for a long time, right? It starts at chapter 19 and it goes through the first part of chapter 22, that he's defining what it means, thou shalt not murder. So why does he have to take that long to describe it? The reality is the word that's sometimes translated to kill and sometimes translated murder, it's not easy for us to know when it's killing and when it's murder. So Moses is going through a series of statements and a series of descriptions of events that says, this is murder, this is not murder. So we can know when we're in violation of the Sixth Commandment. And the specific area that he talks about in Deuteronomy 20 is in warfare. When is warfare murder and when is warfare just killing? We've, in going through 19, right, we've seen that if it's murder, even if it looks like an accident, that it may or may not be murder so that they have to flee to a city. If they're caught outside the city, the man's blood is, the avenger of blood, he's innocent for having killed them. That for him to kill that man before he reaches the city of refuge, that's not murder. To lie in wait for a man, that's always murder. To It's also murder if the court kills somebody or puts somebody to death without having two or three witnesses. But if the civil magistrates put somebody to death on the witness of two or three men, it's not murder. And so Moses is going through various situations and saying what's murder and what's not. Later we'll find out, right, it's murder if you don't take basic precautions. If on your roof you don't put a parapet, if you don't put a railing on your roof and somebody falls off and dies, that's murder. If you have an ox that's been goring people before and he gores people again, that's murder. But if he's never gored people before, it's not murder. And so we can look at this and say, thou shalt not murder, and say, this is easy to understand. But the reality is, it's very difficult to understand. And in this passage, we're going to find out, in times of war, there is just war, but not all war is just. So the question is, when a nation goes to war, is it murder or is it just killing? And now, many professing Christians are pacifists that say there is never a case for war. There is never a case to take up arms. But clearly in this passage, God is saying there is a time for war. There is a time where it is just and valid and merciful, and I repeat that, it is merciful to have war. There's a time for peace, there's a time for war, as it says in Ecclesiastes. But what are the conditions necessary for the killing of another nation's people to not be murder, but rather to be justified killing? And it's important because in Genesis 9, 5 and 6, it says, Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man From the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God, he made man." God will demand a reckoning. And right as we sit in a nation where 50 million, 65 million babies, something like that, have been murdered, this didn't pass away with Christ. God demands a reckoning. There will still be a reckoning. If we go and do an unjust war where we invade another country, God will demand a reckoning. These things, Jesus Christ didn't wipe out the things that God has promised in the past that he would do. Nothing that Jesus said, Christ said, was ever in contradiction to what God said, for he is God. So God will demand a reckoning for unjust wars. But there are, at the same time we see in this passage, there are wars where God goes before you. And so as we read this passage, as with all the Deuteronomy passages, we need to ask ourselves a series of questions. I've gone through that in the last couple of sermons that I've preached, so I'm not going to talk about that in specific, or excuse me, in general. But we do always need to ask ourselves, is this just for Israel? Is this ceremonial? Is this moral? What part applies to us? How do we take this forward into the New Testament era? And so they are about to enter into a country that they've been commanded to conquer. But if you look at the context for these verses, this is not just the context of them going into the promised land and conquering that land. The context of this is far broader. And I would argue that these contexts are moral commands, most of them, except for the verses about the Hittites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Those aren't moral in terms of being applicable to us directly. But for most of the other commands, this is how we're supposed to conduct war. A couple of reasons. One is that if you look at Scripture, and Scripture is sufficient for every good work, and yes, constraining the evil that another nation does is a good work. And so therefore, if you say there has to be commands in Scripture because God promised us that He will teach us from Scripture how to do things like even conduct war, these are the passages that you go to. This is one of the clearest passages, if not the clearest passage, about how war should be conducted. And so I think it applies because if you, right, God says His Word is sufficient and that sufficiency demands that He's actually revealed to us in His Word. But the other thing is, they're going into a land in the verses that we memorize in Deuteronomy about how you'll receive what? Cities that you did not build. Houses full of all good things which you did not fill. Vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. The context of these verses is not that they've just gone in and they've taken over these cities that have all these things. The context of these verses are when you have built a house, when you have planted a vineyard, when you have done these things that God's saying when they conquer the promised land, they don't need to do because they'll be given all these things. So this context, I don't think, is just specific to the promised land. It's much broader than that. These are the principles of warfare, the moral principles about how war should be conducted. And so that gives us to the theory of just war. And before I get to the just war theory, we have to first understand that all wars are religious wars. All wars are the idea of what they did was immoral, and so we're going to respond to it. There is never a war, regardless of what the atheists say, where even if it's a war for things, that's because you're materialist in your view and you say it's worthwhile to kill a man in order to get things. So even if the people who say the Second Iraqi War was just about oil, if they're right, it is still a religious war. It's materialism as the religion. So every war is religious. So Christian just war theory, how we should think about war, was developed, the first person who spoke of it specifically was Augustine. And he gave three requirements originally for just war. And the first was proper authority. To quote Augustine, the natural order which is suited to the peace of moral things requires that authority and deliberation for undertaking war be under the control of a leader. To put that in other terms, if you go to war and reject all authority, it is never just. If you do not have a leader when you go to war, when you do not have a legally appointed leader when you go to war, it is never just. It is always unjust. To overthrow, to put in anarchy is always immoral. Proper cause is the next one. Again, to quote Augustine. must not be for the, quote, the desire for harming, the cruelty of revenge, the restless and implacable mind, the savageness of revolting, and the lust for dominating. In other words, if the cause of it is to promote yourself, if the cause of it is to get things from the other person, it's immoral as well. It is not just. And the last one that he had was the goal. The goal for all wars needs to be to establish peace. We do not go to war to further war. If you look at Hitler, Hitler was just going to war to conquer one area so he can move on and conquer the other area. He had no view for peace. Just war always requires that the reason you're going for war is to establish peace. Augustine again, we do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. to be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against and bring them prosperity of peace. So the idea, right, the Psalm 72, when Jesus Christ, when all nations are paying tribute to Jesus Christ, when they've all been conquered, what happens? Everybody has abundance. There's the abundance of peace. This is what the goal of war is, to move us towards that situation and not just say, we're just trying to destroy these people because we're looking for vengeance. were trying to constrain evil. The sword was given to the state with the desire to constrain evil. But now, since Augustine, there's been two more that have been added, mostly by Thomas Aquinas. And I'm going to quote Chuck Colson here, because in the first Iraqi war, he did a lot of writing on just war theory. And he described these last two that were added. And just to put them in context, Aquinas was one of the scholastics. The scholastics were very Arminian in their theology. They did not believe in total depravity. They believed in partial depravity. As we've been going through Calvin's Institutes, he frequently writes against the scholastics. There's a good reason for that. And Thomas Aquinas is the leading scholastic, or one of the leading scholastics. So here's the two things that he added. One is a reasonable chance of success. To quote Colson on that. Even if you have good reason to attack, you cannot simply send young men out to die. Human life is too precious, too sacred to waste. So that's the idea. That's the fifth one that's been added, or fourth one that's been added. Reasonable chance of success. And the fifth one is proportionality. To quote Colson again, in waging war, authorities must make sure that the harm caused by their response to aggression does not exceed the harm caused by the aggression itself. Annihilating the enemy in response to an attack on one of your cities is an example of disproportion. Similarly, proportionality has also come to mean that non-combatants must be shielded from harm. They can never, for any reason whatsoever, be the targets of an attack. So as we go through this passage, Because this is kind of the doctrine of just war, this is the passage that we should consider, how biblical this is, whether these five things are all biblical, or some of them are and some of them aren't. Not in our view, but what does God say is just? What does God say are the things where going to war is not murder, going to war is justified killing? So verse 1, the commandment for warfare. So as we consider this passage, I wanted to be a little bit more specific about, is it ever just to go to war? God has created three primary jurisdictions beyond the individual. Those three primary jurisdictions are the church, the state, and the family. Each one of these has a means for cursing. In other words, if you disobey, if you break the rules, God has given each one of these a means for cursing. For the church, it has the keys, right? Which is the picture of excommunication, that you lock them out of the church, or you open it to them by preaching the gospel. They have the keys. The family has the rod, and the church has the sword. So even the fact that it's called the sword, a lot of times we can look at the sword and say, well, this is about chasing down criminals. The reality is, the sword's not necessarily the best weapon for that. The reality, the sword is the best weapon to fight other nations. And so even the fact that it's the sword points to the idea of war. Think about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, when his disciples came and he said, do you have swords? And they said, we have two. And he said, that's sufficient in Luke 22. So he's even indicating that there is a proper time to lift the sword. We also have to understand, right, the civil magistrate was given the sword to constrain evil. When we say, and you see this with the religions that are pure pacifists, right? The Quakers who said, never raise the sword. The reality is, that's let evil run rampant. If you're in a society where you say that this society can come and do whatever they want to you, and you're not going to do anything. They can rape, they can murder, they can steal, they can kidnap, they can do whatever they want. You are not showing the mercy of God. You are showing hatred. pure pacifism is extreme hatred towards the people that are under its protection because it gives no protection. It says there is nothing to protect you. The reality is God has put these authorities. God has blessed us with authorities even as we complain about things that are happening in our government. Do not kid yourself. We have been tremendously blessed by the government that we have. The government that we currently have, yes, it has problems. Yes, it's doing things that are contrary to scripture. But do not deny that the blessing that we received, you do not have to worry, except in very few places in this country, if you walked by yourself, that you'd be murdered. That's untrue in most places in the earth. And the reality is, is because the U.S. understands that its purpose is to constrain evil. So, war is not evil. War is an act that, rightly used, will reduce evil. So, this verse now, as we start to walk through the text, where it's actually saying, go out to battle against your enemies. And in this passage, he's not talking about how you become an enemy. But it is clear that it is against a defined enemy. And it's also proper, if you have a rightly defined enemy that is a true enemy, this is going out to them. All war does not need to be, or all battles in war do not need to be purely defensive. And approaching those more numerous. So, as we read that, we have to understand that the context of this passage and the context of the whole Bible is God's sovereignty. God is sovereign. We, our responsibility, our commandment is to do what's right in the eyes of God. Our commandment is not to fear man. So if they have horses and chariots and you see a huge army arrayed in front of you, we are supposed to say, what does God say is the right thing to do and do it, irrespective of the odds. Our responsibility is always to act righteously. Proverbs 14, 34, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. When we are doing what we're supposed to do, we're never supposed to sit back and say, but they are more numerous than I. They're better equipped. There's no way we can win. These are not scriptural terms. These are rejecting the sovereignty of God. What we're supposed to say is things like Romans 8, 31. What then shall we say to these things if God is with us, who can be against us? Or Psalm 20, verse 7. Some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. And we can't just leave this in the framework of war. This is crucial that we live all our lives with this principle. This is a basic principle of Scripture. This is what Jonathan says before he goes into battle, where it's just him and his armor-bearer against the garrison of the Philistines. Then Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few. In whatever situation that we're in, we should not look and say they are more numerous than I am. I can't go witness in that crowd because they're all pagans. That is not the right way to look at it. If God is with you, no one can stand against you. We don't say, this just isn't going to work. What we say is it's the right thing to do. You don't say, but they've got so much more funding than we have. It doesn't matter. God doesn't need the funding. It doesn't matter if they're smarter than you are. God has all the wisdom in the world. We only need to ask one question. What is the righteous thing to do? Isaiah 31, 1 through 3. Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but who do not look to the Holy One of Israel nor seek the Lord. Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and will not call back His words, but will arise against the house of evildoers, against the help of those who work iniquity. Now the Egyptians are men and not God. And their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the Lord stretches out His hand, both he who helps will fall and he who has helped will fall down. They will all perish together." Do you realize that we're quick in our circumstances to run to Egypt for help? And here's what I mean to run to Egypt for help. We go back and we say, well, I don't see how this will work out. So we go back to the old man, the man of sin, and say, Well, I don't see how I can get out of this situation, so I'll just tell a little white lie. That'll get me out of the situation. That's fleeing back to Egypt. When we say... When we go and say we're with our parents, and our parents are saying, well, let's have the grandchildren watch this movie, and you know that the movie Blaspheme's gone, and we say, oh, we'll let them watch it anyway, you recognize that's going back to Egypt. This is when we say it's easier for us to trust in the things of this world. It's easier. We don't want to offend our parents, so we'll just compromise. We don't want to have to deal with the situation, and so we'll just lie. We take these shortcuts. Every time we take a shortcut, this is where we're going back to the old man, where we're going back to Egypt and thinking that this will deliver us from the situation. That won't deliver us from the situation. What will deliver us from the situation is walking righteously before God. Not bowing to Baal, but bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ. Not seeking to get out of it by our own wisdom, by our own sight, but doing those things that are good and right in God's sight. And we're in a nation that's had a 250-year reprieve from true persecution. But we seem to be very much headed in the direction where there could be persecution. And you understand, parents, every one of you in this room, there is a good chance that if your children are faithful, that they will suffer severe persecution. And I don't mean persecution where you tell somebody the gospel and they sneer at you. I mean, you tell them the gospel and they say you broke hate crime legislation, so we're going to put you to death. This is where we're headed. And unless we show to our children that we don't flee to Egypt, we don't take the shortcuts, how are they going to stand when it's hard, when we don't stand when it's easy? When we won't say the gospel to somebody because they'll give us a mean look. When we lie to our boss to get out of a problem. When we stand and we compromise things that we know that we have clearly expressed to our children, but we walk into our parents' house and we let them be compromised. Think they'll stand in the day of adversity? Or have we trained them that Egypt is where safety is? We're not a people who have resisted to bloodshed, but we may be headed that way. Parents, are you preparing your children? Are you modeling what you need to do for your children to be able to stand in that day? Or do you flee to Egypt? And the reason we don't flee to Egypt is we trust that God's power is sufficient. All authority is God's. We just remember the history of what God's done. He took the most powerful nation on the earth at the time, Egypt, and He put it in ruins. Their army, their pharaoh was destroyed, their firstborn sons were killed. He put the nation in ruins. But that's not the only one that we can look to and say, does God deliver those who walk righteously before Him? And does God punish those who work in equity? How about Egypt? I said Egypt already. What about Israel? He punished Israel. Assyria, Judah, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union. The pattern time after time after time is when man rises up against God, God squashes him like a bug. Only that's giving man too much credit. It's easier for God than it is for us to crush a bug. It's easier for God to tear down one of these empires. But yet, what do we do? We say our safety is in doing the things of this world. Where we're delivered is by doing the things of God. Every one of these empires, most of them disappeared in a day. The Soviet Union, they thought that we were doing a major military buildup against the Soviet Union because they're the number one superpower. And what happens in a day? Yeltsin's standing on a tank and the whole nation collapses. Do not fear horses and chariots. The pattern of history is that God raises up nations and God destroys them. It's not changed. We need to be serving God and not man. And so, looking at the things that were added by the scholastics suggest war theory. about that there has to be a reasonable chance of success that came straight from their Arminian theology, the belief that man is sovereign over God. The reality is, is that no, God is sovereign over all things. So we do not say whether there's chance of success or not. That is not a biblical principle. The biblical principle is, did God say this is what we should be doing? Have we searched the scripture and said this is righteous? And if it is, we do that without looking. We are not to walk by sight. We're to walk by faith. And that doesn't mean that you act rashly. It doesn't mean that you don't prepare. When David talks about how God will deliver his enemies into his hand, he goes and works with a sword. He goes and raises an army. I'm not saying that you don't do those things, but you don't look and say they're more numerous than I am. We can't fight against them. We're not to trust in the power of our weapons and our numbers. Rather, we're to trust in God who is able to deliver us. Judges 7-2, And the Lord said to Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against me, saying, My own hand has saved me. This is a picture where there are so many people that they can't even be counted for. They're as the sands on the shore of multitude, is what it's told. And God lowers them to 300 people, and he says, I'll deliver them into your hand. How often do we say that God doesn't exist today? He does exist today. Those who are righteous, He still blesses. Those who are righteous and are walking righteously before Him, doing those things He commanded, He still blesses. We don't need 100,000 to fight an army of 50,000. And if we're professing Christ, and if we're relying on Christ, when is God glorified? When we have 100,000 and they have 50,000, or when we have 300 and they have a multitude that's as numerous as the sands on the seashore. So moving on to verses 2 through 4. And now we see the responsibility of the priest at the time of war. And it's interesting because as we read this, we usually think of the priest, right, you gather everybody together, the chaplain and the military, and what he does is he prays for the people. He prays that God protect them. That's not what the priest is commanded to do here. He's commanded to declare that they should not fear because God is with them. The specific commandments that he's to give. Do not let your heart faint. And literally the word faint there means soft or tender. Do not become tender hearted during this. Those who are tender hearted are not ready for war. Battles are horrific things. They're going to see people slain to the right of them, slain to the left of them, and it's easy for them to look and go, oh, no, and to pause, even show mercy to them. Instead, they need to have their focus on the battle. Their hearts should not grow tender. It's not the time to focus on mercy. It's the time to focus on warring. The next thing they're commanded, do not be afraid. They've already been told, you know, if God is with you, who can stand against you? If these men are crossing them, you're not to fear them. They were to fear God and not man. Going into battle, the natural man's position is going to be, I should fear those who are standing across from me. And the priest is supposed to remind them, you should not fear them. They can do nothing unless God allows them to. Do not tremble. In the word that's translated, tremble here, actually means move suddenly. So it's not like trembling out of fear. It's trembling like, don't sit there and hastily attack when you shouldn't attack, excuse me, bide your time, and do not tremble and hastily run away, that what you should do is be deliberate about going to war. No hasty attack, no hasty retreat. Keep control over yourself. That's do not tremble. Do not be terrified. And the idea here is the word that's usually, you know, fear the Lord. It's the idea of not just fearing what they can do, but having awe, having worship towards them. Do not be awestruck by the enemies that are standing across from you. Do not think that you can not stand against them. You can stand against them. God can strengthen you. So, as we hear those six things, those four things, how does that apply to us today? Most of us in this room, most of us, especially adults, will never be in war. So does this have any application today? And the answer is yes, we are all called to be at war. Good soldiers, I've called you as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. This is every Christian's calling is to be at war for Jesus Christ. And this isn't a war where we're supposed to be out shedding blood. This isn't a war with physical swords, but this is a war that we're supposed to be fighting for the kingdom of God. Second Corinthians 10, 3 through 5, for though we walk in flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. So when we denounce sin, when we witness to unbelievers, when we fight against the strongholds, when we fight against the vain traditions and empty philosophies of our age, when we walk in our daily lives and make choices that are offensive to the people around us. In many cases, this includes our own extended families. When you're thinking about how you might offend somebody by telling them the gospel, do not let your heart faint. Do not be afraid. Do not tremble. Do not be terrified because of them, for the Lord your God is He who goes with you. This is a commandment for us as we walk through our daily lives. This is what it should look like. We should not tremble because this nation is being filled with pagans. Instead, we should be bolder in our pronunciation of the gospel. We should be bolder in our holiness and our desire to seek holiness as a witness to those around us. We should not fear. We should not tremble. If God is with us, if we are walking righteously with God, we have nothing to fear from them. It doesn't matter how numerous they are. We have nothing to fear from them. So the priest was to declare that God was with them. And now, you know, we've gotten this position now in the American church where there's this view that if it's Israel, God was always with them. But that's contrary to the testimony of Scripture. This is the driving factor of our policy, our current political policy towards Israel, is that God is with Israel, so he who blesses Israel will be blessed, so therefore we bless Israel. Many times in Scripture, God was not with Israel. Every time they were defeated in battle, God was not with them. If God is with them, you win. Let's just make sure everybody understands that. If God is with you, he is sovereign God. If he desires for you to win, you win. Whenever you lose, it's because God was not with you. Sometimes he may not be with the victor either. But whenever you lose, it's because God is not with you. And so we can read this and since there are times when the priest is not here being commanded to violate the ninth commandment and bear false witness to the people. The reality is, before they get out to the field, the priest is supposed to be saying, is this righteous or not? So that when they're in the field, when they're standing before the enemies, he can say, the Lord is with you. There are many times where they were not fighting a righteous war, and then the priest's responsibility was to denounce it as an unrighteous war and say, God is not in this. You also see the testimony of that in Scripture as well. The priests are not to rubber stamp the expedition. They're not supposed to say, oh, the civil magistrates said we're supposed to go attack this city, so we're going to stand in front and say, God is with you. No, what they're supposed to say is, is this righteous in the eyes of God or not? Here's what Malachi 3.18 says, then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. This is their responsibility. Is this war in the service of God? there to proclaim before they go up whether this is righteous according to the commandments of God. Here's what Joshua 1 says, verses 7 through 9. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. The Lord your God is with you whenever you go. If you're being careful to observe the commandments that he has given. That's what's said in Joshua. That's what said, you know, this is the love of God to obey his commandments, our desire to obey God's commandments. This is where God blesses us. This is where we have victory. This is where we can say God is with us. If we are doing these things, then we can say God is with us wherever we go. So how does this apply today? As a Christian church, we have a responsibility to proclaim when our nation is going to war, whether it's righteous or not. They may not listen. We don't have the authority to stop them, but we have the responsibility. Every war is religious. We have the responsibility to declare whether it's moral or not. If the church doesn't declare that it's moral, we should not expect. God bless America. If it's immoral, the answer is God is not going with us into our battles. A nation should only go to war if the church is confirming that it is not a fight against God, but it is a fight in line with God's will. We see this pattern in scripture too. Now in America we don't do this anymore, but this is the scriptural pattern. When the kings are saying, should I go up here, who do they go to? They go to the prophets and they say, will God deliver them into our hands. And the priests are also to declare the reason that God is fighting for you. And the reason is to save you. And the picture here isn't the idea that God will be with you to save you. Just go into that war, and then when you're about to be killed, God's going to save you. That's not the point. The point here is that this is a broader thing. The point of the war is to save them. The picture is, in that save, we think of salvation. Salvation is being set free. And so, to save you means that they are trying to fight to not be enslaved. That's just war. You can't just go up for any reason. You have to go up for a reason where you're being saved, where your enemy is truly strong enough that they can enslave you. And it cannot be because you want to plunder them. Later in this passage, you find out that it is right to plunder them. But if you're set up to plunder, then that's always unjust. Here's what Isaiah 33 says. Woe to you who plunder, though you have not been plundered, and you who deal treacherously, though they have not dealt treacherously with you. When you cease plundering, you will be plundered. When you make an end of dealing treacherously, they will deal treacherously with you. So the idea is it's just war if you're going out to rescue yourself or to be preserved from an enemy. This very much matches the just war doctrine of that the goal of it has to be peace. This is about going out against them, so this is taking offensive acts, but you're taking an offensive act to deliver yourself from oppression. When people are at war with you, it's valid to go out and attack their cities. If they attack you, you're allowed to respond and attack their cities. But it has to always be to deliver yourself. There always has to be an idea of saving. So if you look at American history, Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Iraqi War, the war in Afghanistan, and the Second Iraqi War, do any of them meet that criteria? Now, that doesn't mean that there haven't been wars that met that criteria, but let's be serious. Did anybody really think Saddam Hussein was going to enslave us? Did we really have to be saved from Saddam Hussein? But we have had wars that have met this criteria. The War for American Independence met this criteria. The War of 1812. Probably the World Wars met this criteria. But for most of our wars, we have not proclaimed the biblical doctrine of just wars. And we haven't won a war for what? Since 1950. For 60 years. God has not been going up with us. They've been very unjust wars. The standard of war is very, very high. It has to be to constrain and to destroy evil. It's not intended to be a first resort. It's intended to be the last resort to constrain evil. So, moving on to verses 5 through 9. So then, after the priests speak, the next group that speak is the officers. And you understand that this is a picture, right? When we look at the American Constitution, where we have different branches, this is the same concept here. This isn't that the king says, we're going to war. This is that the priest has to say, we're going to war. The officers, who are the civil magistrates, say that we have to go to war. And then the people have to say, we want to go out to war. So every system of this world is corrupted by fallen men. So every system that's righteous is going to do things to constrain the unrighteous men that will always be a part of it. So in addition to the priest declaring that war is righteous, the officers do. Now the officers here are not military officers. When we hear the term officer, we usually think of military officer. This word could actually be translated scribe, but what it really means is the ideal of the civil magistrate. In this, the civil magistrate comes out, and he's the one that organizes the army. And so there's two basic reasons why you're not to go up to war. And so the first reason is because There are certain situations that you just build a new house, that you've planted a vineyard, that you're betrothed to be married. And when I read this, I don't think of this automatically as an exclusive list, that if you've planted an olive grove rather than planted a vineyard, I would say that probably still qualifies. But the point here is, if you are about doing the things that are building society, building for the next generation, war should never be all-consuming that destroys everything. There always has to be an idea that you're continuing society. If the war ends up destroying your society for the war, then your war hasn't been righteous, because it hasn't been to save you. It hasn't been to deliver you, because there's nothing left to deliver. Somebody who just planted a barley field, they don't get to stick around and not go to war, because the reality is they need to plant the barley field the next year again. They need to plant these annual crops. But the idea is, if you're doing something that has a long-term benefit to society, a major long-term, getting married, building a new house, these things that are used to build civilizations, that I think that those are the things that excuse you from war. When we make war all-consuming, then war starts to become the goal. rather than peace, rather than restoring peace. We always need to maintain ourselves in times of war that the goal is peace and have a picture that peace is important. Notice also, and it's not in this passage, but it's many passages in the Old Testament, it's 20 and older. And one of the reasons that I think it's 20 and older, right now about 10% of the US military is 17 through 19 years of age. In Israel, it was clearly 20 and older. One of that is that they didn't want to slaughter their next generation. These are the ones that will be building the culture once the war's over. If you read the writings of Jeff Davis in the Confederate States of America and the debates about why to lower the age, that was what the debate was about. Should we be sacrificing the leaders of the next generation for the war that's happening now? And if you have a longer term view, the answer is no. So the second reason is lack of faith. It's easy to read this and just say that it's cowardice, right? That they're going to tremble and they're going to fear. But if you're going and saying, this is an unrighteous war, this is unjust for us to go attack those people, you should tremble. It is righteous to tremble. It is righteous to fear. Those who disagree that this war is not righteous, what they're supposed to do is leave. It does not mean that it is always cowardice and it takes bravery to walk away. But it could be cowardice as well. And there is the idea that the cowardice, if somebody is actually afraid, if somebody is actually looking and saying, this is not going to go well with us. There is no way that God is in this. There is no way that God's going to bless this. That will affect the army. So you're supposed to put those people out from you. So the officers are given a specific command to say, leave. Leave if you're going to tremble. Leave if you're going to spread this fear to the rest of the people. So biblically. And this is when you go out, right? This is all in the context of when you go out. So biblically, when you go out, it's always a volunteer force. Now, we may not recognize that, but the founding fathers recognized that. Constitutionally, you are never allowed to call forth a draft if it's to have people serve on foreign property. The Constitution is very specific. It's to provide for the calling forth of militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. The draft in World War I, the draft in World War II, those were both blatantly unconstitutional because they were to draft people to send them overseas. The Constitution only allows drafting in the case where they are going to serve on the property within the borders of the United States. And I think that that probably is the biblical pattern. When you go out, it has to be volunteer. If you are staying in your borders, every man has a responsibility to defend his home. He's not allowed to say, I'm afraid. I'm not going to be there. He's not allowed to say, I'm not going to participate. Every man has that responsibility. So constitutionally, I think they very much understood this. But we've forgotten this. We think it's okay to force people to go fight wars on other property. The only place that they have a responsibility before God to fight a war is to defend their own home, to defend their own nation. And you see, as we look at this, the priest has to say something, the officers have to say something, the people have to agree. You understand that this picture is all these things we can say, but we want to be quick. We want to be able to get out there and go to war. All these things are to slow down how quickly you go to war. It's to make it hard. It's to make the standard very difficult to go to war. There is a time for war, but it should come very slowly, very deliberately. Right. As James says and he is using this inside the church and difficulties inside the church. He talks about he uses metaphorical language that he says that that in James 4 verses 2 and 3 you lust and do not have you murder and covenant cannot obtain you fight in war yet you do not have because you do not ask you ask and you do not receive because you ask a mess that you may spend it on your pleasures. So whenever our nation goes to war, we need to be asking ourselves, is that the reason we're going to war? Are we going to war really to free ourselves? So to constrain evil, are we really going to war because we want to spend it on our own loss? Then the last thing that they're to do is to make captains. And so after they reduce the force, after they reduce the number of people that are supposed to stand and fight this enemy that they can see, because they can see how numerous they are, after that they appoint military leaders. And we have this idea now that we should have this whole military leaders in place, so if we want to go to war we can just institute the draft and fill up this structure. That's completely contrary to the scriptural model. The scriptural model is that you don't have the leaders in place. You fill up the people and then you appoint the leaders. And we might say, this just can't work. Who would have ever thought of this idea? Again, the U.S. Constitution actually has it biblically correct. We refer to the president as the commander in chief. You know, that's not true. he is not the Commander-in-Chief, except to quote, the President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy of the United States and the militia of the several states when called into actual service of the United States. In other words, he's not the Commander-in-Chief unless we're at war. He becomes a commander of chief of the military when we go to war. He's not always. So they understood that what you're supposed to do is you appoint the military and then you say we're at war. So then we'll appoint the captain. And they pre-appointed who it would be. But he's not appointed the captain until we're actually at war. They understood what Scripture says. They understood Deuteronomy 20. When you appoint the captains the other time and create a standing army, what you're pointing to is your desire for war. If you don't have a standing army, what you're pointing to is your desire for peace. Verses 10 through 15. Just to continue that, even in your war, right, so the first thing they're supposed to do is make an offer of peace because even in war, the desire of war or the purpose of war, the goal of war should be to reestablish peace. If you go up to a city, how's the best way to reestablish peace? Ask them to submit. And so that's what they're commanded to do. So when you're the aggressor, you must offer peace before you fight the city. And we see the example in Scripture, again, of many unrighteous nations that do this. When Babylon comes up, they do this. When other nations come up, they do this. This is a normal thing that we're to do. Here's what, when the Assyrians come up to Judah in 2 Kings 18, thus says the king, do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you from his hand, nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, the Lord will surely deliver us. This city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. So this is what the Babylonians did. This is what the Roman Empire did. This is the righteous thing to do. But now we have a military theory. And part of it is because of our misunderstanding of cultures and a rewriting of the history of World War I, that what you do is you don't go in and destroy a nation. What you go in is you go in and fight them enough so that they submit to you, and then you pay them and build them back up. That's not what we're to do. That is a really bad idea. What you're doing is, we're surprised that we keep funding our enemies that then rise up against us. If we actually follow the biblical pattern, the biblical pattern is to fight cultures, to destroy cultures, so that the culture is different when you leave than when you came. That is what the goal of war should be, because other than that, you will not have peace. We think if we just cut off Saddam Hussein, that somehow Iraq will now be a peaceful country. That's because we don't believe as a nation in the doctrine of total depravity. We think the men in Iraq, if they just didn't have Saddam Hussein misleading them, they would go and do the right thing. No, men do not do the right thing unless they have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what you need to do is you need to constrain their evil. And even in peace, what you're to do is constrain their evil. How do you constrain their evil? You make them pay tribute and you make them serve you. That's what the passage says. And that's what Psalm 72 says, right? In the end, that's what it looks like when Jesus Christ rules. Every nation, some of these have leaders that are not righteous, but every nation bows down before Him. Every nation pays tribute to Him. Every nation serves Him. So as you go and say we're going to make peace, the idea is that you're moving them closer to what the kingdom of heaven is supposed to look like. Because this is what every nation will do. The biblical plan is not just to say we're going to change your top leader and the rest of your culture stays the same. The biblical plan is you change the culture. You make them pay tribute to your culture. First Kings 4, 21. So Solomon reigned over all the kingdoms from the river to the land of the Philistines. As far as the border of Egypt, they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. Solomon is the type of the son of God. This is what the picture is. This is what we're supposed to do as a nation. And we are talking about nations. When you read Psalm 72, you're not talking about individuals. You're talking about that nations will pay tribute. Individuals are saved, but nations are supposed to submit. It's not for evil. What's the rest of Psalm 72 say? When you force these nations to submit to you because God was with you, what happens? They have an abundance of grain. The picture of Solomon is that all the nations of the earth prospered because Solomon, standing in that role of king of kings, standing as that type of king of kings, had physical blessings to everybody in the world. When we constrain evil, it's not for the harm of the city that we're attacking. If they submit to us, it's for their blessing. We are to bring peace to those who are our enemies. Psalm 72, 10 through 11, the kings of Tarshish and of the isles will bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts. Yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him. That's the picture of Christ. That is a messianic psalm. And so when we think of going to war, is that what our goal is? Is our goal to have them bow down and obey the law of God? Psalm 2 is about how civil magistrates are to kiss the sun. This is one of the ways they kiss the sun. The kiss the sun does not mean that they are all believers. What it means is they show respect to the law of God. What it means is that they recognize he is their king of kings. What we do now is we defeat a nation and then we build it back up so that we can go to war with them again 10 years later. This is our pattern. This is contrary to scripture. This is because we have the wrong view of culture and the wrong view of man. There are evil cultures and evil cultures are to be wiped out. Not the men that make up those evil cultures, not the women and children that make up those evil cultures, but the culture. Right. When we talked about slavery, it was the same thing. The purpose of slavery is to wipe out evil cultures, to take these people and move them from being in paganism and move them so that they're in a home that worships the true God. And that's the same thing that we should happen when we go to war. So what happens when you just say, well, we're going to build them up? What we're testifying is instead of war being horrific, instead of war being the thing that you avoid at all costs, what we're testifying and what we've been as a nation testifying to since World War II is war's not that bad. Let me tell you, we should ramp up how bad war is so that we avoid them more often. Maybe we wouldn't be in constant wars pretty much for the last hundred years if we and we're going to find out how bad we're supposed to make it biblically. But what we think is that we can just not take dominion, not take responsibility for them. Instead, we'll just prop up the same thing and they won't attack us again. Of course, they'll attack us again. The culture is the problem. If you leave that culture in place, they will be your enemy. So what happens if the city will not acquiesce? Then you besiege, and the word besiege literally means that you surround it. So if God is truly with you when you do this, then God will deliver it into your hands. And so when God delivers it into your hands, so this is God has said, I'm giving you this city, you're to put every male to death. And we look at that and we say, that's horrible. How can you be so merciless? And I just want to say, whenever you say that, recognize what you're saying. You're saying that you're more merciful than God. And let me tell you, you are not. God is the God of mercy. Anything you know about mercy is from God. And so if God says to put every male to death, do not stand back and look at him and judge him and say, we need to be more merciful than that. If you think you're being more merciful than that, you're wrong. God is the God of mercy. When we show mercy, we are supposed to be reflecting God, and we will never do it as perfectly as God does. So when we read a commandment like that, and they can be hard commandments in the Old Testament to read, where you say, put them all to death. But when we read a commandment like that, do not blaspheme, and that is the proper term for it, do not blaspheme the name of God by saying we should be more merciful than that. Because what you're saying is you're better than God, and you're not. This is true mercy, to put every male to death. So how can it be true mercy? That needs to be the question we ask, not, oh, we're going to be more merciful because that's absurd. But we read this and we say, how is this merciful? And this is probably, we do have the exception of the little ones, so it's probably the children, which probably is, and I don't think it's just those that go to battle, I think you kill all males, even up to their 90s, and you kill probably down to 12 or 13. This is probably, young children are the only males that you leave alive. So why would they do that? This is cultural extermination. The way that one culture gets passed on to the other culture. And this is true even of matriarchal cultures. We don't think that it is, right? The people who have cultures that say the woman is in charge. The reality is it doesn't matter. God said the man is the head of the family. And the men are the ones that are passing that culture on to the next generation. God says if you have this city that stands up against you and they will not acquiesce, they will not accept your terms for peace, you put every male to death, you wipe out their culture, it is now gone. You take all their stuff. It is gone. That should be the goal of war. Not to kill the people. You don't look at them and you say, oh, we don't like that we get to put all these males to death. But you do look at them and say, this culture no longer exists. and you take them and you bring them all, right? The women and children, you don't just leave them there. We're going to find out you take them captives. They're part of the plunder. You now have a responsibility. The slave master has a responsibility to feed the slave and to protect the slave and to care for the slave. You now take these people that were in this different culture and you bring them in and you make them part of Israel. You make them part of your household. Do you see that God's plan is to wipe this culture off the face of the earth? And so when we think we're going to be merciful, we're not. Because what's going to happen to those children otherwise? What's going to happen to those children otherwise is they're going to grow up as pagans. They're not going to hear the word of God. They're not going to hear the grace of God. They're not going to hear the mercy of God. Instead, what they're going to do is perpetuate their paganism for another generation. How is that being merciful to them? We're supposed to wipe that culture off the face of the earth. That's just war. Stonewall Jackson in the American Civil War at the first battle of Manassas. There was a total of, between both sides, there was a total of 5,000 people that were captured and killed. And what he said is, based on Deuteronomy 20, you should never take a prisoner in war. They should all be put to death. And we can look and we can say, well, that, and this is what people said, no, that will just make things worse. Really? What's going to happen to that army the next week when they're thinking about fighting again? If you say we captured, because I think they captured like 1,600 men, if you put every single prisoner of war to death, this war no longer becomes a game. This war no longer becomes, you know, this is just something, and I don't mean it as a game because there were people dying, but they're only half playing it. This now becomes either I die or you die. Do you really think that there would have been 660,000 dead in the American Civil War if they would have obeyed this commandment? We think it's merciful. What it does is it makes war half-hearted. When you put every male to death, war is for keeps. And both sides recognize it, and both sides are much more likely not to go to war in the first place. In the 14th and 15th century, there was a 100-year war between France and England. Do you really think it would have gone on for 100 years if they would have obeyed this? There was a 30-year war in Germany in the 17th century. Do you really think that there would have been a war for 30 years if they would have done this? This is God's mercy. This is God's plan that you move people from being at war to peace as quickly as possible. The goal of war is peace. If you show mercy to them, what you end up doing is perpetuating the war. And you have people that their whole lives they spent and the war was never over in France. That's not mercy. That's cruelty. Mercy is to put every male to death. Mercy is to wipe out the culture. versus 16 through 18. And so, just because there's a lot of context here, so I'm not going to develop this section very far. But this is one of the reasons that I would argue that the rest of this is general warfare principles, is because now we're getting the exception. God has given the Israelites a land. There are seven tribes. Six of them are listed here. There's the Gergesites that were also not listed here, probably because they actually fled out of the Promised Land before they went in and went to the east side of the Jordan. But they're to wipe those out completely. Man, woman, child, just completely gone. This is God pouring out His wrath on a people. These are the people that God told Abraham their iniquity was not yet full, and so that the Israelites would be enslaved, and at the end of 400 years, they would be delivered, and then they would get this land. And so they're told to put everyone to death. So how does this apply to us? Does this apply to us? First of all, we don't have any commission to take the sword and put man, woman, and child to death physically. But this very much is Jesus Christ King Solomon is a type of Christ, and Jesus Christ has given us a land, and he has given us a commandment where we're to put every man, woman, and child to death, but not physically. This is a parallel with the Great Commission. This is the Great Commission. Do you see that? There is not a man, woman, or child that we're not to put to death. so they can be resurrection to eternal life. There's not a man, woman, or child that you're not supposed to take the sword to, not the physical sword, not the metal sword, but that you're not supposed to take the sword of the word to. You are supposed to give the sword of the word to every single living being on this planet. We have been given the world, we have been promised a land, and we are supposed to wipe out the tribe of the first Adam. And through that, they'll be resurrected with the second Adam. Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the ends of the age. Amen. There is no one that is accepted from that. Verses 19 and 20. So now Moses relates how a siege is actually supposed to take place when you besiege that city because they refuse to acquiesce. And when you read this, right, they're supposed to put every male to death, but then God turns around and says, but there's constraints on how you're supposed to do this. We look and say, well, so we're supposed to not cut down an apple tree, but we're supposed to kill a 13-year-old. And we say this doesn't seem proportional, but God once again is pointing out that war is about peace. You can cut down all the trees that you want. Whenever you besiege, it requires lots of trees. You build siege engines so that you can build them up so that you can reach over their wall. You undermine the walls by digging tunnels, and you need to shore those up with wood. It takes a lot of wood to besiege a city. And Moses is telling them, you can go cut every tree unless it's a tree for food, unless you just think it might be a tree for food. If you think it might be a tree for food, you're not allowed to use that either. So implicit in this command is that war is not supposed to be a continuing thing. War is supposed to be short, sweet, you get it over with, and then, not sweet, but short, horrific, and then you get it over with, and then once it's over with, you restore peace, and you care about life. That war still needs to be about the caring of and protecting of life. Pagan nations, when they waged war, they would go in and they would destroy a city and then they would put salt in the fields around it. That is not what God's people do. Pagan nations hate life. General Sherman in the Civil War, he bragged that he had made a swath of destruction 50 miles broad across the state of Mississippi that the present generation will not forget. He's saying there won't be an end of this war. You'll be reminded of this year after year after it's over. That's evil. That's not how godly men do war. We firebombed Germany. We firebombed Japan. We dropped Vietnam. We dropped atomic bombs on Japan. We killed innocents. We killed people that were not the males in the cities. This is not biblical warfare. This is the things that cause scars that last for generations. It's a form of warfare. Why did they drop the atomic bombs? They dropped the atomic bombs because they said that if we go on to Japan, that they will kill everybody in the POW camp. Why did we drop the atomic bombs? Is it because we fear man or fear God? God says he'll punish a nation that destroys innocents. There's murder when you drop the atomic bomb. We murder people when we drop it, and we're responsible for it as citizens of this nation. We murder people when we drop the atomic bomb. It was not killing. Killing is when you do it righteously. Murder is when you do it unrighteously. We did it because we lacked fear of God. We read and say that putting every man to the sword in a besieged city is merciless. But the truth is, true mercy is making the war short. True mercy is not leaving these wounds open for generations. True mercy is not cutting down the trees that are to provide food for these people and the people around them. true mercy is to make the land able to move back to the commandment that God gave us to take dominion and not to make it uninhabitable. Here's what Matthew Henry said about this. God's law, which we are apt to complain of, is a heavy yoke, consults our interests and comforts, while our own appetites and passions, of which we are so indulgent, are really enemies to our welfare. As we think of these things and as we look at God's commandments, we think it'll be better off if we disobey them. It won't. It's better off when we obey God. Okay, so some applications here. First application is we are responsible as a nation. God does judge nations. God does curse nations. We receive the cursings of nations when our nation does things that are unjust. We have a responsibility as Christians to speak out against unjust wars, to go to scripture and say, is this war biblical? Let me walk through the just war theory again. The first is, do you have proper authority? I hope you see from this passage, right, the priest had to speak, the officers had to speak, there were captains. This is a picture that you always must have proper authority in war. Proper cause. This has to be out of defense so that God can save you. goal, right? The goal is peace. The goal is not eternal destruction. To destroy this so that nobody ever comes back here, the goal is to restore peace to this as quickly as possible. All those are very biblical. Reasonable chance of success was added by the scholastics. That's not biblical. That is not the standard by which we judge. It was added because of people who did not trust in the sovereignty of God. If it is just to wage war, you are to wage the war. The case must be serious enough that it's worth both dying for and to be killed for. But you do not just say, well, am I going to die if I go out this? This is to not trust God, to not believe that God can deliver with few as with many. God is a God who can deliver with few as easily as with many. He doesn't need our help. He just allows us to help. Proportionality. Partly this is biblical and partly it's not. Because most of the people that would hold the view of proportionality would look and they would say, there is no way you should kill every male in the city. That's not proportional. But the reality is, yes, that is just. That is righteous. If the war is not serious enough to do it, don't go to war. If you're not willing to walk and kill every male in that city, don't go to war. And you might say, but some of them are in rebellion to the people that are waging this war. It doesn't matter. They all get put to death, is what God says. But another aspect of disproportional is that you don't war against innocence. And that's also true. We're not even supposed to cut down the trees that they'll need for food in the next year. It is not biblical to target women and children. Next application. God goes with us if we're walking righteously before him. Psalm 14, 4 and 5 said, Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on the Lord. There they are in great fear, for God is with the generation of the righteous. The priests, when they say, Go up, God is with you. We need to understand that and walk that way in our lives. We do not need to tremble before men. We do not need to tremble because we see the people who who are. Whatever you want to say that they're better funded that they're smarter that they've spent a lot more money defending things like homosexual marriage. We need to go out and denounce it. We need to denounce it. If it's if there's hate crime legislation if any of these things it does not matter. God can deliver by few as easily as with many. We need to trust that if we are walking righteously, which means that we examine ourselves and we look to ourselves and say, is God with us? Because we are doing those things God commanded and we are in line with God's revealed will. But God is with the righteous. God is with the righteous. We should not question that unless we are acting unrighteously. And it's his battles that we're supposed to fight. And so we need to determine which are foremost or first and foremost, we need to decide which are righteous and which are not. But we are called to be warriors. We are called to be good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the terminology of the New Testament. When we think that, oh, we're just supposed to stand back, that's not the biblical position. We will be judged according to his peering and according to his kingdom. The question is, what are you doing for the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ? Another application is we need to be grateful for the blessings that God has given us in this country. It is easy for us to forget. It's easy for us to look and write. I've said specific things where the country I think was very unjust in its dealings. But we also need to look and we should be marvel at the U.S. Constitution and how biblical it was. Even if we're denying it in many ways, it was very biblical in its approach. And what we should be doing is calling people back to the Constitution and back and explaining why it is biblical and it matters. God judges nations. We are a nation under judgment, but we should still be grateful for what God has done in the history that we have that we can point back to and call people back to. We have separation of powers. We have about the appointing of captains, we have compulsory military service, all these things are great blessings, or the laws against compulsory military service, all these are great blessings that we've had, and that we have on the books that we need to be calling people back to. And then the last one, right, we're called to be warriors for Christ, but we're also promised a victory, and we can't forget that. I want to close with Romans 8, 35 through 39. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let me close this in prayer. Oh Lord God, we do thank you that you give us victory. You give us spiritual victory through the blood of your Son. Oh, Lord, let us act like we're warriors for you. You are the victorious King of Kings. Let us walk righteously before you. Let us be obedient soldiers. Let us put aside the things of this world and let us fight your fights. Not that you need us, Lord, but by your grace and your mercy, you use us and you allow us to participate with our Father in heaven. Oh, Lord God, we thank you. We praise you. We thank you that the victory was won on the cross of Calvary. In your son's name we pray. Amen.