A lot of people think that God's grace does not really fit with the subject that we're going to be looking at. And yet as the hymn, Joy to the World, says, God's grace goes far as the curse is found. And there's definitely the curse's effect upon politics, isn't there? And so we're going to be looking at that and our approach to tyranny. And we're going to be looking at 1 Samuel chapter 23. hear God's inerrant word. Then they told David, saying, Look, the Philistines are fighting against Calah, and they are robbing the threshing floors. Therefore David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go and attack these Philistines? And the Lord said to David, Go and attack the Philistines and save Calah. But David's men said to him, Look, we're afraid here in Judah. How much more, then, if we go to Calah against the armies of the Philistines? then David inquired of the Lord once again. And the Lord answered him and said, Arise, go down to Calah, for I will deliver the Philistines into your hand. And David and his men went to Calah and fought with the Philistines, struck them with a mighty blow in front of a Himalic, fled to David at Calah, that he went down with an ephod in his hand. And Saul was told that David had gone to Calah. So Saul said, God has delivered him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars. Then Saul called all the people together for war to go down to Calah to besiege David and his men. When David knew that Saul plotted evil against him, he said to Abiathar the priest, bring the ephod here. Then David said, O Lord God of Israel, your servant has certainly heard that Saul seeks to come to Calah to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Calah deliver me into his hand? Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? O LORD God of Israel, I pray, tell your servant.' And the LORD said, He will come down. Then David said, Will the men of Calah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver you. So David and his men, about six hundred, arose and departed from Calah and went wherever they could go. Then it was told Saul that David had escaped from Calah, so he halted the expedition. Thank You, Father, for this, Your Word. It is our desire to not only understand it, but to live it out and to have our worldview shaped by Your Scripture and not at all by human tradition. We ask that You would bless this, the preaching of Your Word, and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, the title for today's sermon is Self-Control Under Tyranny, the Reform Doctrine of Resistance. Sounds a little bit like a heavy title, doesn't it? And with 11 pages of outline, you're probably thinking, wow, we're going to be here for 11 hours. I'm only going to deal with the first two points, maybe touch on a couple of others, but I wanted you to have at least more material. This is just going to be an introduction. And the reason I wanted you to have more material is because this is a critically important topic for people to understand in light of all of the tyranny that we're seeing all over the world. Too many people make huge mistakes. because they've not thought through a biblical theology of resistance. In fact, some people say, ah, you know, we don't want to talk about that. That's controversial. I don't even want to think about it. But if you don't think about it, you're automatically going to be making mistakes, mistakes of omission as well as mistakes of commission. And if you study the reactions just in America, that people have had, the increasing tyranny over the last decade, you see freedom-loving people all over the map. Some people look to the local government as being the solution. Others look to the federal government. Other people say, forget government. We're bailing out of the system altogether. We're just going to ignore the tyranny. And there are others who get involved in government, and they say, we're going to try to help. But because they've not studied through a theology of civics, They end up adding to the problems because they're overstepping their own jurisdictions. And then there are people like Paul Hill who say, since the government's not doing their job, we're going to take these governmental jurisdictions ourselves. And they have way overstepped their jurisdictions as citizens. And then there's other people who are really passive. They're so disgusted with the way things go on. They say, I'm not even voting. I could care less what's happening. Others have become so passive. that they allow child protection agency people to come into their home, or maybe some other agency, simply because some public bureaucrat has asked or insisted that they can come into their home, and they don't understand what their constitutional rights are. And we need to use those rights, just like the Apostle Paul used his rights as a Roman citizen when people were abusing him. And so people are all over the map, and there are many ways in which ignorance of this subject can do us damage. Now, if you lived back in colonial days, I would guess that most of you would know this doctrine inside and out. Now, most people back then were Calvinists, and even the ones who weren't Calvinists were reading some of the same documents. Our second president, John Adams, said that in the first many, many years of our nation, there was a book that was incredibly influential. And it was probably the most quoted book during the discussions for the Declaration of Independence. It was a book by a French Reformed writer who used a pen name. Figure out why he didn't want to be killed right off the bat But his name was Junius Brutus and he was he wrote the book a defense of liberty against tyrants and that book is a masterful Exposition of the reform doctrine of resistance. What are the limits? You know, where do we say you can't go to the left? You can't go to the right, but here's the things that we can do there was another book That he John Adams said was very very influential in those early years in America and that was by a Puritan writer by the name of Samuel Rutherford. And it was a book called Lex Rex. And it was in opposition to a statement made by the king that the king is law, Rex Lex. And he said, no way. God's law is king. Lex Rex and Anyway, it goes through the doctrine of the reformed doctrine of resistance as well now today. I just want to give you a brief Sneak introduction to this theology next week. We're gonna try to dig into these verses a little bit deeper But just to give you a bit of a heads up on what's happening. Let me look at it this way What would you do if you lived on a border? in a border town along the border of Texas, and you have Mexican drug gangs that are coming over the border and decimating the countryside. That's exactly what was happening in verse 1. The Philistines were coming over the border and they were killing people, looting the territory, taking over towns. And if you were in that situation, would you just wait for the central government to kind of fix things and bail you out? Well, apparently the central government here wasn't too interested in helping Kayla. They were too insignificant and a little bit too distant for them to really mess around with. And so if Kayla was going to survive, they had to be thinking about other possible means of protecting themselves and always looking to Washington, D.C. Well, Washington, D.C. wasn't around back then, but I think you get the point. What do you do when Americans are more afraid of the central government than they are of these drug gangs? That's what's going on in verse 3. Exactly what's going on. What do you do if a local sheriff or mayor of a city or a governor of a state calls its citizens to arms to protect the liberties of that state or that region against some tyrant. Do you just ignore it and say, boy, this guy's a nutcase. I'm not even going to think about it. Or do you think about it seriously like David did? David went to arms against all odds because he loved the liberties of his nation. And here was a magistrate who loved those liberties as well. and was calling for help. And if he had not been already gathering friends who knew how to fight, they wouldn't have been of any use to that government. They didn't have time to start training them or going through that. And that brings up another question. What are we to think about David's militia? Is David's militia even lawful? That seems a little bit odd that this group of people is going around armed and protecting themselves. Why was David allowed to use this militia in these verses against King Saul? But just a few verses later, he's not allowed to use that militia against King Saul. What's going on there? There's all kinds of interesting questions that directly relate to civic questions that are circulating today. Should Christians just be passive sheeple being herded into slaughterhouses in Cambodia, which is exactly what happened, or can they resist? You know, a lot of these people were herded in by just a small contingent of soldiers You got, you know, 500 people being herded by five or six soldiers, they could overrun them easily. And yet, like sheeple, they just, okay, go in there and they get slaughtered. So what are you to do in situations like that? Well, Jesus said, for sure, you don't just passively obey what they're doing, you flee. He says in Matthew, Matthew 10, verse 23, he commands his disciples to flee from Jewish authorities. And Mark 13, verse 14, to flee from Roman authorities. So it's not being passive. It's one of many forms of resistance that God has authorized people to engage in. So when David and Abiathar, and actually all of these 600 men, fled from King Saul's tyranny, They are engaging in a form of resistance that is perfectly lawful. There is nothing wrong with it at all. They completely bailed out of the system and formed an underground resistance. But that's not the only approach that God says is legitimate. He sometimes will call Jonathans to resist tyranny within the system. And Jonathan did that, very faithful. In fact, in later verses in chapter 23, he comes out to David and he says, I'm with you. I'm for you. He's trying to do something to get David into kingship. And he wants to be second in command to David. And so here is a guy who's resisting from within the system. There are times where God calls us to resist verbally. Bringing rebuke to tyrants even if it means our death and that was what John the Baptist was called to do now I'm not going to deal with probably more than about four of the points in your outline, and the first two more heavily, and the others I'm just going to start very briefly touching on, and I probably won't even bring them up that much next week. So there won't be another outline like this next week. We're going to be diving into the verses. But take a look at the first point on your outline. It says here that as long as David was not a magistrate or was not authorized by a magistrate to resist with the sword, he was utterly unwilling to raise his sword against Saul. So this is speaking of the limits of resistance. Yes, we are allowed to resist, but there are limits that God puts in place. And if we don't understand those limits, we're going to get ourselves deeply into trouble. He was willing to resist in other ways, and I've listed those in your outline there, just six of them. Well, actually, there's probably about seven. He was willing to flee and unwilling to turn himself in to the authorities. Secondly, he was willing to disobey Saul's commands with respect to weapon ownership. Thirdly, he was willing to harbor refugees from Saul's tyranny. The numbers had swelled to about 600 men. He was willing to plan a future government in verses 16 through 18 with Jonathan. Jonathan is in effect saying, I believe God has called you to be king. I've already told everybody by exchanging clothes with you, you're going to be king. And so let's talk about this. I want to be the second in command underneath you. They're strategizing about a replacement government. Now, Saul would have considered that to be treason. It was not. It was not. In chapters 25 through 30, we see David engaging in a black market underground economy. Now, the reason I say that it was black market is because Saul had told the people, don't you help David at all. They were supposed to only turn David in. So if anybody's buying and selling and trading and helping David, automatically he's engaged in the underground economy, in a black market economy. And of course, there are several psalms that David wrote during this time, and these psalms are giving public rebuke to Saul for his tyranny. They're very bold. When you read through those, it outlines the things that Saul was instituting laws that were not in the law of God. statutes that were not lawful, that were ungodly. And he talks about the various forms of tyranny. And then, of course, he could add one more point, that those Psalms themselves were calling for God's curses to come upon King Saul. And so those are many different ways in which David was engaging in appropriate forms of resistance. But now I want you to flip forward to chapter 24, And we're going to be looking at some scriptures where David considered raising the sword against Saul to be wicked. And it wasn't because David didn't have the opportunity in this chapter. What's going on is Saul was seeking David's life and David and his men had hidden in a cave. King Saul went in into the cave to go to the bathroom. And while he's in there, David's men say, hey, this is a perfect opportunity. Let's kill him. Now, here's David's response in verse six. And he said to his men, the Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. And people say, now wait a sec, God had rejected Saul. How could you call Saul the Lord's anointed? Hadn't God anointed David to replace King Saul? And the answer is yes, but you need to understand that the call to office, whether it's a church office, a civil office, any kind of office, it has two parts to it. The first part is an inward call. David was inwardly called to be the king, but until the people called him and recognized God's call upon his life, He didn't have the office. He was not a king. Well, the reverse is also true. King Saul was God's anointed, he was there in office, and God had inwardly removed his spirit, removed his blessing, and removed his call from Saul's life. But until the people kicked him out of office, which they really should have done, until they did that, he continued to function as the Lord's anointed. And the Lord's anointed is an office, okay? It's a position. Now take a look at what David said to Saul in chapter 24 and verse 10. Look, this day your eyes have seen that the Lord delivered you today into my hand in the cave, and someone urged me to kill you. But my eyes spared you, and I said, I will not stretch out my hand against my Lord, for he is the Lord's anointed." You see an authority relationship there, and David considered it direct rebellion to God if he were to have killed Saul. Now that ought to seem a little bit strange to you because David's already been disobeying Saul. Now what's going on here? Why can't David just go one step further and get rid of Saul and do everybody a big favor? But even though God allowed David to form a militia, God did not allow David to kill Saul or to engage in any violent overthrow of the government, at least until he was a magistrate. And even though David is only an illustration here, we're going to be looking at some direct commands of God. So don't get impatient with me and say, OK, David, you can't get Ought from is I know that I know that but there are direct commands, but i'm using david as an illustration And if you look over at chapter 26, we're going to continue looking at this principle now in chapter 26 god had put all of Saul's soldiers into a deep sleep, and Abishai and David, they crept up to King Saul, and Abishai wants to kill Saul, and David says, no, you cannot do that. Now, from Abishai's perspective, hey, pragmatically, this'll work. This is great, it's gonna save everybody a lot of time. But David is not about pragmatics. He wants to be under God's law, under God's authority, under God's blessing. And he knows he cannot kill Saul at this point and have God's blessing. What is it that David knows that a Paul Hill does not know? Paul Hill, you may not, back in 19, I think it was 1994, he was a PCA pastor who killed an abortionist and killed the security guard of an abortionist. He got excommunicated prior to that, but here was a guy who thought, I need to, because the state's not engaging in the vengeance that needs to be taken, I'm going to do it. Now, all of the Reformed books down through history that have dealt with the subject of resistance, Lex Rex, Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants, other books have said what Paul Hill did was murder. He had no authorization to do that. And those same books would have said what David did, if David were in chapter 26 to have killed Saul, it would have been murder. But it would not have been murder if David had killed Saul in chapter 23. if Kayla, the magistrate, had been willing to stand behind him. Now, let's take a look at David's response in verse 9. That's chapter 26 and verse 9. But David said to Abishai, do not destroy him, for who can stretch out his hand against the Lord's anointed and be guiltless? David said furthermore, as the Lord lives, the Lord shall strike him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall go out to battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should stretch out my hand against the Lord's anointed, but please take now the spear and the jug of water that are by his head and let us go. I don't think you could get stronger words to indicate that a non-magistrate may not lift his hand against a magistrate to kill him. I'll be quoting Jesus to that effect in a little bit, but David believes here this would be an overthrow of God's order. And people say, yeah, yeah, but Saul's the one who's really overthrowing God's order. That's true, but you cannot correct wrong with wrong. Revolutionary methods always lead to civil disrespect for civil order. They lead to perpetual assassinations and revolutions. And if you want to do a study of this for yourself sometime, read through 1st and 2nd Kings with this in mind and think about the northern tribes. This is after the separation with Rehoboam. Once the first assassination and revolution happened, and they had a number of revolutions, it's just like perpetual. It's just like one after another. And this is the way it's been in Africa and in other places where revolutions have taken place. It's just one revolution after another. It destroys civil order. The Reformed Church has always believed that revolution leads to anarchy, like it did in France, and that tyranny is preferable to anarchy because anarchy eventually leads to far worse forms of tyranny than what they had under King George. So they would say, much better to live under the tyranny of King George, which they were trying to throw off, right? Much better to live under that. than to allow for anarchy. And I think it's a biblical position, and certainly much better than living under a France under Robespierre. That revolution was truly a revolution, and they despised it. It had nothing to do with our revolution. So there are other ways of overthrowing tyrants. You can do it through secession, through civil war, through voting them out of office. There's a number of other ways as well, such as what Jonathan, King Saul's son, was hoping for. But revolution overthrows God's civil order and leads to disrespect of authority, anarchy, and chaos. And so until the people unelected Saul, Saul still functions as God's anointed. And then the second thing, David says, is he would be guilty of murder. And the reason for this is that only God can authorize any exceptions to the sixth commandment. If you take human life where God has not authorized you to do so, you're guilty of murder. This is why all revolutions are by definition wars of murder. They are murderous wars because God has not authorized them. The American Revolution was not a revolution. Don't call it a revolution. I think, you know, people down through history have called it a war for independence. That's a proper term. And they've sometimes called it a revolution. But that's a loose usage of terms. What it was, was it was a secession of colonies from England. And it was a fight against England's tyranny authorized by lawful magistrates. It was a lawful war. It was not a revolution. And those are the kinds of distinctions we've got to keep in our mind. Because in the discussions that are going around in America, and for sure, do not believe, what was the first anti-federalist president in, Thomas Jefferson. He said, you know, we need to have a revolution every, what was it, every 20 years or something like that, something ridiculous. That is so unbiblical, such an ungodly concept, it would destroy social order in America if people had followed that, and they did not. Now take a look at chapter 20, let's see here, 26 and verse 16. Now this is David speaking to the commander of Saul's armies. Remember, they had all been sleeping and they had managed to get in there, take away the jug and the spear and everything, proving that they had been right by his side. And David says that this commander of the armies was worthy, had committed a crime worthy of punishment. See, if you slept on the job when it was your job to be on guard, there was severe punishment. It could be even all the way up to capital punishment. So David tells the commander, this thing that you have done is not good. As the Lord lives, you deserve to die because you have not guarded your master, the Lord's anointed. And now see where the king's spear is in the jug of water that was by his head. Now, Saul hears this and he realizes what a wretch he is. He repents. And part of David's response to him is in verse 23. May the Lord repay every man for his righteousness and his faithfulness, for the Lord delivered you into my hand today, but I would not stretch out my hand against the Lord's anointed. Now, I think you're getting the point that unauthorized fighting against magistrates was considered to be a horrible, horrible thing by David. In fact, it's so horrible that when a noncombatant claimed to have killed Saul, when Saul was a wounded noncombatant, David put him to death. And that's in 2 Samuel chapter 1. And you might think, now that's not consistent. If David's not allowed to put Saul to death, how can he put the Samalekite to death? Well, the reason he can put him to death is by that time he was a magistrate. He was the king of Calah. He was the mayor of Calah. Not Calah, the mayor of Ziklag. at that particular juncture. And once he became a magistrate, he not only had permission to resist tyranny with the sword, he had a responsibility. He had a duty to resist with everything that was in him as well as to avenge murder. And you might think, OK, well, if David was a magistrate in 2 Samuel chapter 1 and he is going to battle against Saul, that's what he was intending to do. God killed Saul before that happened. But he was going to battle against Saul. If that's the case, why would he be upset with this Amalekite killing Saul? That's what David would have done as a magistrate. So what's going on there? Is that not another inconsistency? Not inconsistent at all. This Amalekite, number one, was a civilian. He was not part of the army. He had not been called to war. Thirdly, he was killing a wounded soldier who at that point was a non-combatant. I mean, he was out of the battle. It was cold-blooded murder on his part. In any case, between this chapter and chapter 30, David couldn't raise the sword against Saul, and he wouldn't. And you might respond, well, why is David fighting against these Philistines then? I mean, that's using the sword against magistrates, isn't it? What authorizes him to do that? He's not a magistrate. Well, that's true, but he is operating under a magistrate. Okay, he's been deputized, as it were, by this magistrate, this mayor of the city of Cala. In fact, Lord willing, next week I'm going to be going through this passage verse by verse and show how this was going to be David's base of operations to fight against the tyranny of Saul. And until he discovers by divine revelation, hey, this city's not willing to fight against Saul. So David really is totally 100% consistent on all of these reform principles. Now in this chapter, He was operating under lawful governmental oversight. But under point two, I wanna show how strongly this first point of no revolution carries. Point two says you can't be a revolutionary simply because you are dissatisfied with government or even because God is dissatisfied with government. And God was very dissatisfied with Saul's government. In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel told Saul, the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. Now, if there was any good reason for David or anybody else to raise the sword against Saul, this would have been the time because God's rejected him, right? And yet he was not authorized to do so. Why? Because he's not a magistrate. Later it says that the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. In chapter 16, God told Samuel, quit mourning over Saul. Go anoint David to be the king over Israel. And yet until the people are willing to follow God's lead and remove Saul from office by lawful means, David could not privately raise the sword against him. And when I have vigorously opposed some of the revolutionary methods that pro-life people and others have engaged in, people will often ask me, well, what are lawful means of resistance then? Well, I've already listed six or seven of them in David's life. Let me list a few more. In chapter 15, Samuel delivered the message to Saul that God had removed him from office, but he did it privately. If he had given that message to all of the other officers that were around, I think very likely there would have been a change of office. Very likely Saul would have been put out. But what happens is Saul begs him, he says, please, please worship with me in front of the people here. He wants Samuel's endorsement and Samuel must have felt sorry for him. So he goes, he worships with him, he blesses Saul and he completely misses a fabulous opportunity for overthrowing Saul, which he had the opportunity to do. And it is disaster, because what happens is Saul starts consolidating his power to make sure he never gets deposed from office. Now, that's what he was fearful of in 1 Samuel, chapter 15. In chapter 16, the elders have a great opportunity to put David into power, but it says they're so scared they're trembling. Okay, these magistrates don't have the kind of courage that they need to have In chapter 17, there's a beautiful opportunity for at least a few states to secede from israel But they don't do it. They don't take that opportunity in chapter 18 Jonathan publicly declared his acceptance of david As the king over against his father and it's visible He takes off all of his clothes exchanges clothes with david and is in effect even gives a sword and all of the the insignia of his princehood, he gives it to David. Now, that would have been a beautiful opportunity for all of the people to say, long live King David, long live Prince Jonathan. They don't do so. And because magistrates were not doing their job, the whole country suffered for quite a number more years. In chapter 22, when Saul ordered the killing of all of the priests of Nob, the military refused to go along with it. Remember, it was Doeg who did it. They just refused to kill. Now, it was good that they refused to kill, but they could have used their power to unseat Saul at that point. Now, they're already in trouble by refusing to obey his orders, but they don't go all the way. They weren't going to kill the priests themselves, but they don't stop Doeg. Now, this would have been a beautiful opportunity for people who are in power and could use their sword to defend the defenseless. Because remember, all of the men, women, and children in Nob were killed by Doeg at Saul's command. So they could have protected innocent citizens from this bloodshed if they had had the boldness to do so. They don't do it. And if magistrates are not willing to stand against tyranny to protect the killing off of an entire town, they're missing out on the whole purpose of their being in office. Any magistrate who does not do all in his power, including using the sword to defend innocent babies against abortion, is not fit for office, is not worthy of office. And of course, in this chapter, the city of Calah had a perfect opportunity to begin a national resistance against Saul's tyranny. David hoped that they would do that, but out of fear, they refused. So you can see that there are options that are out there, a whole bunch that I've listed. Now take a look at chapter 23 in our text here and verses 10 through 12. Then David said, O Lord God of Israel, your servant has certainly heard that Saul seeks to come to Calah to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Calah deliver me into his hand? Why does he ask that? He asks it because if they were not going to deliver him into the hands of Saul, he was willing to stay and fight. Even against all odds, he was willing to stay there and fight. But if the magistrates themselves were not willing to fight, he had no authorization to fight Saul himself. And so David says, will the men of Calah deliver me into his hand? Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? O Lord God of Israel, I pray, tell your servant. And the Lord said, he will come down. Then David said, will the men of Calah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, they will deliver you. And so based on the principle that we've already looked at, David had no choice but to flee. His presence, I'm sorry, his preference would have been to stay there and fight against tyrants. In fact, if he had at this moment been a civil magistrate, he would have had no choice. He would have been called in some way to resist and to fight. And I'll give you just one scripture to demonstrate this. Jesus said, if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from there. So if Jesus had come as a civil magistrate instead of as a Savior, praise Jesus he didn't, but if he'd come as a civil magistrate instead of as a Savior, he would have been required to put the full weight of his office to fight tyranny, even the tyranny of Pilate. Now that's incredibly significant. He's willing to resist the Jews. He's willing to resist the Romans in order, I mean, if he was a civil magistrate, that's exactly what he said. If my kingdom were not of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. So this is a huge rebuke to Pilate. who is not engaging in what a magistrate must engage in protecting the innocent from unlawful attack and death. Pilate's kingdom was of this world. So Jesus' statement means that if Jesus had been the mayor of Cala, He would have been obligated to fight to deliver David from Saul's hands. Does that make sense? That's exactly what Jesus was saying. So it's not as if David is passive when he says that he will not lift his hand against God's anointed. When he was in Calah, he was quite willing to do so. When he was later the mayor of Calah, not only was he willing to do so, he started marching his armies to fight against Saul. And it was only because the Philistines said, you know what, we shouldn't really have him here that he didn't. Fulfill that and when he became the king of the two southern provinces states actually tribes When he became the the king of the two southern tribes He not only was willing to fight against the tyranny of the north He engaged in battle any time that the north attacked them. He went after them and so again, David was being a very very very very consistent and But when magistrates were not willing to do their duty, God made Israel suffer for their cowardice by giving them more years of tyranny. And I think you're beginning to get a little bit of a sense for the different ways that this principle would apply in different situations. And it really didn't matter that the people hated Saul. And point B, I give several verses that show the increasing dislike that the people had for Saul. But because they weren't willing to vote him out of office Or they weren't willing at least to put the feet of their local magistrates to the fire and say, you need to resist the tyranny of Saul. God let them suffer. Without a magistrate's authorization, they did not have the right to kill Saul nor to David. Now, points three through six of your outline really are just stronger reiterations of what I've said, so I'm not going to really cover them. But let me just give a quick, quick summary of each point, working backwards from point six. Point six says that the fact that Saul's government had murdered every pastor, every man, woman, and child in Nob did not authorize David to engage in any revolutionary means. which by application would mean just because our government has authorized the murder of millions of babies through abortion does not give us authorization to engage in revolution. There's other forms of resistance, yes, but that in itself is not sufficient. Point five gives some scriptures proving the right to organize a militia and to belong to it does not give the militia the right to overthrow the government unless, of course, it is led by a magistrate. Point four, gives verses proving that despite the fact that God allows private citizens to have the right to bear and use arms, does not give an unlimited use to those arms. Those arms should be ready, should a magistrate call us to resist, but as a private citizen resisting the government with arms, no. He says you can't do it. Now, why do I bring this up? Why did I give a long outline on this? I mean, for most of us, I think this is a no-brainer. Of course we're not going to raise the sword against the civil magistrate. But I bring this up because not everybody in America thinks this way. There are people in America who have been endorsing bombing abortion clinics, killing abortionists, killing any public official who supports abortion. They're a tiny minority, but I think it's critical that we answer their theological questions. Because if you look on the web very long, you'll realize all of the pro-aborts They'll point to these guys. They'll say, look, they're appealing to the Bible. This is the biblical position. And it's a slander that needs to be answered. It does need to be answered. I mentioned earlier the name Paul Hill. I just watched a video yesterday. His legacy is continuing. They're having memorials of him in front of abortion clinics and burning flags and announcing they're going to continue to do the very things that Paul Hill did. And so this is an ongoing thing. I hope I did mention the PCA excommunicated him before he engaged in that. It was precisely because he was saying from the pulpit that when the civil magistrate does not avenge people for murder, then private citizens may take vengeance into their own hands. And he believed that God had called him to do what the civil magistrate was not willing to do. And his book, it's still being printed. It's still being circulated. In fact, I talked with a guy in Sarpy County. He was in their county jail. because he held to exactly these principles. And thankfully, I was able to talk him out of that and straighten out his theology on that. Gary North wrote a book called Lone Gunners for Jesus, showing how the Reformed Church has never taken the position of Paul Hill. And that Paul Hill is guilty of murder. Now, unfortunately, North didn't give very much exegetical basis for what he's doing. That's why I'm giving you this outline. I want you to have more exegetical basis for what North was saying. Anyway, let me just respond to one point made by Paul Hill. He said, well, how can you argue with my call? God has called me to do what the civil magistrate is unwilling to do. My answer is, David did not become a king the moment he was called to be a king. He became a king when the people elected him to office. They recognized God's call upon his life. You cannot appoint yourself. You cannot appoint yourself to be a judge and a jury like one little group of patriots are doing. They're judging President Obama and all kinds of other people. They're setting up a judge and a court. You can't do that. You cannot appoint yourself to be a magistrate. David was patient and waiting for God's timing. And unfortunately, some, like Paul Hill, do not have the self-control and patience to be able to effect godly change in government. What they do is they push the government to even more tyranny. It's counterproductive. And when frustrations begin to develop, what happens is people are tempted to, every man do what is right in his own eyes. and to throw off the government, to opt for the lone gunner mentality. By the way, that phrase, every man did that which was right in his own eyes, is a perfect description of anarchy. Okay? Every man did that which was right in his own eyes, and it does not praise that. It excoriates that. It says that that is a bad thing to happen. Now, as much as I like Murray Rothbard's economics, it's brilliant, His anarchist politics is unbiblical. Okay, I want to make that very clear. It is unbiblical, totally unbiblical. And I can show you why. It's not his logic that is wrong. His logic is meticulous. It's perfect. What is wrong is that he has started with some unbiblical premises. His premises for economics, perfect. There's other premises that led him off into anarchism that are wrong. But I'm hoping by the end of today you're going to be convinced Murray Rothbard is wrong. I love his book on economics, but I think his economics will lead in a very bad direction. Even David, who was so careful on this policy, was tempted to take justice into his own hands one time. And I want you to turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 25. This was a time when David was tempted to do exactly what Paul Hill did and was rescued from that murder by Abigail. And if David could be tempted, we could be tempted. And I think you know the story, at least you should know the story. I'm just going to give you the relevant scriptures there. David was extremely upset with this wicked, wicked man, Nabal. And he said, strap on your swords. And they were going to go in there and kill Nabal and all of the other people. Abigail comes to intervene, tries to convince him, don't sin against God in this way. He listens to her, and she was successful. I want to start with verse 39, which occurs 10 days later. God had struck down Nabal in his own timing. By the way, I believe God struck down Nabal because David was praying imprecatory prayers against him. Those are powerful. Those are means that we ought to use. We're going to be singing one that David wrote right around this time at the end of the service. But anyway, he struck down and verse 39 says, So when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the Lord, who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal and has kept his servant from evil. Now, what is the evil that David was kept from? He told Abigail 10 days earlier in verse 33, and blessed is your advice and blessed are you because you have kept me this day from coming to bloodshed and from avenging myself with my own hand. That's the key phrase, avenging myself with my own hand. That's the evil. It's a great evil to avenge yourself or avenge anyone else with your own hand. That's the whole point of Matthew chapter five, when Jesus talks about not returning evil for evil, whether it's a backhanded slap. Now, if he's pummeling you, you can protect yourself. If somebody is about to shoot you, you can shoot them. There's plenty of scriptures that talk about that. But if somebody has taken vengeance against you, you may not go back and not vengeance, you know, done something bad. You cannot go back and take vengeance against them. This was the whole point of the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12, where he says, Do not avenge yourselves, for vengeance is mine, says the Lord. Now he doesn't contradict himself when in the very next chapter he says, the government is God's instrument of vengeance. The magistrate is God's instrument of vengeance. You may never avenge yourselves, but the government may. So take the person to the government. That's what chapter 12, chapter 13 is talking about. That means if somebody robs you, you don't go to his house the next day and rob him back. That means if somebody runs his vehicle, his truck over your yard and digs big ruts, you can't go the next day and run your vehicle over his yard and get him back. That's vengeance, right? It's different than protecting your property or protecting yourself. That's legitimate. But vengeance is a retaliation. If somebody picks a fight with you, of course you can fight back. Now, let's say that you're not a very good fighter and he's knocked your tooth out and he won the battle and he took your radio away from you. You don't take a bunch of your buddies to his house the next day and rough him up, knock his tooth out and take his radio. That's the place of the state. Now, if they're attacking you and you've got your buddies together, yeah, go at it. You know, you can defend yourself. But he's saying you may not ever take vengeance into your own hands. Matthew 5, Romans 12. We've got to keep these distinctions in our mind or we're going to go down wrong trails. And so many modern movies that make the hero take vengeance into their own hands. You constantly see it. He's killing people and he's robbing. He's doing different things. And you're rooting for him. What you're doing is you're glorifying evil. You're glorifying murder. You may not ever take vengeance into your own hands. Now, perhaps I can wind this all down by looking at two passages from Christ and then one from Hebrews. And if you'd turn with me to Luke chapter 22, We're gonna look at verses 35 through 38. Now, I thought I would pick this verse because I quoted it earlier as authorizing the ownership of swords, but it's not an unlimited use of swords. Beginning at verse 35, Luke 22, verse 35. And he said to them, when I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything? So they said, nothing. Now he had been teaching them a principle of faith. He says, even when you don't have a knapsack, you don't have a shirt, you don't have a dollar to your name, you can trust the Lord implicitly. Now he's not saying that you should be what's it called, presumptuous, and say, oh, well, God's going to provide for me, so I'm not going to store anything up. No, we should be storing up. But let's say that you stored up for a rainy day, you know, a Y2K or a Y something else. and your house burns down. You say, oh, all that work for waste. No, you trust God. He can provide for you even though everything that you've saved up has gone. So that's what he was teaching them in that verse. But then in verse 36, he gives the abiding principle that he leaves them with. Then he said to them, but now he who has a money bag, let him take it and likewise a knapsack. So he says, you don't go on a mission trip with no money. You take it if you have it. You don't just presume upon the Lord. He who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. And so he says, very important that you're able to protect yourself. Now, this time of night, the disciples couldn't sell their shirts and buy a sword, but they do come up with two. Take a look at verse 38. Then they said, Lord, look, here are two swords. And he said to them, it is enough. And so Christ reaffirms the Old Testament right to keep and bear arms. But several verses later, Christ makes it clear they cannot use that sword against the civil magistrate. Peter slices off the ear of a man who was sent by the civil magistrate. He's a representative of the civil magistrate, unlawfully so, but still, he slices off the ear. And in Matthew, it says this. put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." Now, that's a very interesting phrase because it's taken from the Old Testament. And it's a phrase that means that those who use the sword against the government must receive capital punishment. And you can see it in Job 36, Genesis 27, Judges 9. Revelation 13 actually says exactly the same thing, even with the beast, Rome. Let me read that. He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints. Yes, it takes patience. It takes faith to not go after a sickle like Nero. And that's exactly what it's saying here. This doctrine says you cannot even raise your sword as a private citizen against the civil magistrate Nero, the sickest man alive. Now, other magistrates should have resisted him. That's the lawful way to unseat him. And yet in Revelation 13, it says those other magistrates didn't have any hair on their chest. They were not willing to do what they were called to do. Instead, they bow down to Nero, Caesar, the beast, which means they are bestial themselves. They don't have the character that God wanted them to have. But. Revelation 13 says they should have done that, in effect. Now, there is a place to use the sword, and anybody who lives along the Texas border will be encouraged by next week's sermon, but I wanted to clearly lay this principle in place, okay? Many people do not have the kind of patience with God's timing for government to keep the sword in its place when it needs to be there and to pull it out when it needs to be there. Both of those take great self-control, knowing when to use it and how to use it. Jesus did not tell Peter to throw away his sword. That wouldn't take any self-control. Throw away your sword, David. Okay, I don't even have to think about it now. No, there was going to be a time when Peter would need to use that sword, but now was not the time to do so. And it takes clear thinking theology to have that kind of a balance. Let me give you another example in Christ's life that is not in your outline. It's John 18 and verse 36. And actually, I did refer to this earlier in the sermon, John 18, verse 36. Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I would not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. So Christ makes no bones about it. He would fight if his position at that time was that of a civil magistrate and all of his servants would be obliged to fight. And I've already commented on that. I think it stands as a rebuke to most civil magistrates in America. But let's look at the reverse lesson that I haven't brought up yet, the reverse lesson in John 18, 38. Because Jesus did not have a political kingdom of this world, because His kingdom was from heaven, the only option He had when He was in their custody was to use the court system, maybe passive resistance, or faithfully being willing to be persecuted and to suffer. And it is this wonderful ability to suffer under tyranny that probably takes the most self-control. It takes self-control to resist with the sword properly, obviously, but it takes even more self-control to suffer persecution without violating God's laws, without letting God down. And I want to end by reading from a passage in Hebrews that looks at both sides of that coin of self-control. It's Hebrews chapter 11. and verses 32 through 38. Now he first of all deals with how faith ought to be expressed by magistrates who oppose tyranny and persecution and all who bear the sword under a magistrate. That's his first one beginning at verse 32. What more shall I say for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Beric and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. So Hebrews is telling magistrates how they must live by faith, trusting in their savior and Whether they die or whether they live they have a responsibility before God But now comes a listing of non magistrates who had to show equal self-control by not resorting to the sword beginning at verse 15 Women received their dead raised to life again and others were tortured not accepting deliverance This means they could have accepted deliverance, but they refused they didn't take the easy way out and And listen to their testimonies of faith. It says, Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth." And I love that phrase, of whom the world was not worthy. It indicates this is not the only world we ought to be thinking about. We're engaging in self-control under tyranny. Why? Because we want to please God. This is one of the reasons why David, constantly praying, constantly seeking God's guidance, Lord, I don't want to go to the right hand or the left hand of what you are guiding me to do. And as a result, he had a wonderful, wonderful testimony. Let's make sure that the testimony we leave is the clear testimony of Scripture, not some humanistic substitute. Amen. Father, we thank You for this, Your Word, a strange subject to be bringing up, and yet it's a very relevant subject. And it is our desire to live out Your Scriptures completely. Help us, Father, to be more and more consistent in our ability to apply your word to life and help us to honor the faith of people who have gone before us for the last couple thousand years. So many times we go off on our own tangent, never studying what the theologians of the past have given to us. And Father, they are teachers that you have granted to your church. And I pray that we would learn from them, that we would be made to be stable through them. And I pray that the church of Jesus Christ today I would learn both how to resist in a godly way and the times where we ought not to. And I pray, Father, that you would be glorified even through this message, not just in this church, but wherever it is disseminated. We love you, we bless you, and we give ourselves unreservedly to you. In Christ's name, amen.