Please turn in your Bibles to 2 Samuel 12, verse 26. Here are the inerrant inspired word of God, which was written for your prophet. Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the people of Amman and took the royal city. And Joab sent messengers to David and said, I have fought against Rabbah and I have taken the city's water supply. Now therefore, gather the rest of the people together and encamp against the city and take it lest I take the city and it be called after my name. So David gathered all the people together and went to Rabbah, fought against it and took it. Then he took their king's crown from his head. Its weight was a talent of gold with precious stones, and it was set on David's head. Also, he brought out the spoil of the city in great abundance. And he brought out the people who were in it and put them to work with saws and iron picks and iron axes and made them cross over to the brickworks. So he did to all the cities of the people of Ammon. then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We pray that as we dig into it that Your anointing would be on my preaching and that You would also quicken the Word to our hearts with faith that we might understand it and know how to apply it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well over the past several weeks we have been looking at many different facets of the David and Bathsheba story because there are just so many wonderful applications for family life, for abortion, for so many different areas of life. We're going to be making a pretty radical switch today. We're going to be looking at the principles of war and of military that this passage at least illustrates. And lest you think that a theology of war is utterly irrelevant to your life, lest you be tempted to tune out, I want to encourage you to think a little bit differently. The very fact that there are so many passages that God has inspired dealing with the military and war shows that God thinks it's important. And he's inspired it for your edification. And honestly, it does relate to your life every single day. And I think by the end of this sermon, you're going to be convinced that that is absolutely true. For example, based on 2009 statistics, which you can look at with a little bit of a grain of salt, but it depends on which department of the government you're looking at, but I downloaded the Analytical Perspectives book from the President's page, and he said 54% of the budget goes to the military. Then I looked at the Congress's page, and they said, no, no, no, it's 20% of the budget. In some years, it's 17% of the budget. But it doesn't matter. Either way, there is a lot of your money, your tax dollars are going to the military, and I think you have a vested interest in understanding it and how it is being used. Just as a side note, the very fact that there's such incredibly diverse perspectives of how much is going to the military, I think is a beautiful illustration. 20% and 54%? Give me a break. It's an illustration that statistics lie and liars use statistics. And I sometimes wonder if we really know at all how much is being spent in Washington, D.C. I mean, you remember when that initial, just very preliminary audit, a partial audit took place, and they discovered there were $16 trillion that nobody knew about that had been given to foreign banks. That didn't even appear on these books. And it just illustrates we got a lot of problems going on, major integrity issues in the government. But the subject I'm going to be talking about today is relevant, secondly, because, not because it just impacts your pocketbook, but because our country's views on the military impact the families that we love, families in this congregation that we need to be voting for, praying for. Well, you can vote for them too. Trevor ought to run for office, I guess. But we need to be praying for them. It is tough to be in the military as our top brass become more and more unbiblical over time. And so I'm so grateful that there are Christians who are willing to be salt and light in the military. But it helps to inform our prayer life. It's relevant thirdly because war always tends to impact our liberties, and maybe more appropriately, the diminishing of our liberties. Founding father James Madison said in 1795, of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. And then he lists a number of other bad things that can result, don't have to, but can result from a permanent army and permanent wars. And then he says, he concludes, no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. And I want you to take note of that last phrase because we have been in a state of perpetual war during my entire lifetime and long before that. And so this is very relevant. Madison said no. Nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. No nation. And I think his fears have certainly come true. Many analysts have demonstrated that a lot of the centralizing of government that we abhor today has arisen during time of war and precisely because of those wars. And let me give you a quote along these lines, this one from Alexis de Tocqueville. Very famous book, if you've never read his book on American culture, it's a must reading, it's an incredible book. But he said, all men of military genius are fond of centralization, which increases their strength, and all men of centralizing genius are fond of war, which compels nations to combine all their powers in the hands of the government. Thus, the democratic tendency that leads men unceasingly to multiply the privileges of the state and to circumscribe the rights of private individuals is much more rapid and constant among those democratic nations that are exposed by their position to great and frequent wars than among all others. So he's saying if you hate centralization of government, you don't have a choice. You need to understand a philosophy of war and you need to understand what's a good biblical theological basis for the military because it does impact your liberties. And by the way, Robert a Nisbet the friend of Ronald Reagan. He points out that this he agreed with The Tocqueville and he demonstrated it's it's gonna be hard in this sermon to condense everything down into a small space But he said this principle that the Tocqueville talks about was perfectly perfectly illustrated in the presidencies of Jackson and I know some of you guys really think Jackson's a hero because of his stances on banks and he was but his Centralizing principles were pretty bad. Okay, but anyway, he says perfectly illustrated in the presidencies of Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and his own friend, Ronald Reagan. So if you're interested in liberty, You should be interested in understanding a theology of war. It's a very, very relevant topic. Fourth, this is a pro-life issue. A strong military is declared by the Bible to be a pro-life issue. And I really believe that. Do not allow the fact that there are some abuses in the military that we're going to be looking at today. to make you think that the military can't ever be pro-life. It can be. In fact, God set it up precisely to defend the lives and the liberties of our sons and our daughters and our wives within a nation. On the other hand, an interventionist, empire-building culture is said by Scripture to love death. And Psalm 68 says that God destroys a people who delight in war or who love war, as the way the new King James translates it. So your views of war are either going to make you pro-life or they're going to make you pro-death. Okay? It has grieved me that some of my friends have taken such a cavalier attitude toward the people who have died, non-combatants who have died through collateral damage. And the Bible indicates that collateral damage is going to happen. It's always going to happen in a war. But some of these people, when this brought up, you know, that there has been the wrong people killed. Oh, well, who cares? They're ragheads. That is such a wrong attitude. In fact, I had to rebuke a friend down south who said, man, I can hardly wait to get to Iraq so I can kill some ragheads. That is not consistent with a biblical theology of war. And those are people, the collateral damage, men and women and children who are made in the image of God. And even though collateral damage is unavoidable in war, and the scripture is quite clear on that, we still ought to grieve over it. It still ought to bother us that that happens. So this is really a pro-life issue or a pro-death issue, depending on whether your view on war is biblical or not. 5th, it is my belief that many of America's wars are not wars for our liberties. They are wars designed to enrich the pockets of special interests and international bankers. And this has certainly been true down through European history. I don't think there's anybody that questions the fact that this has gone on in European history. They tend to be skeptical about American wars. tend to have a blind eye to the economic incentives to war. But since these big corporations that push for war impact your lives, you need to understand the subject. And then lastly, the trajectory that America has been on since the Militia Act of 1903 that changed the control of militias from local to national, to the Act the National Defense Act of 1916 and the Overman Act of 1918, which basically gave President Wilson unbelievable expansion of his powers over every aspect of American life to a number of different other acts that have followed since then. There has been a trajectory away from local authority and self-reliance to national authority and total dependence. Away from self-protection within our neighborhoods to a police state that says, you don't need to protect yourself, that's what we're here for. You know, they want to take away your arms, okay? It's been a trajectory. away from limited government to expansive government, from liberty to tyranny. And all of those things have in some way been related to war. Virtually everything that you've grown over in our nation was in some way connected to war. And emergencies and threats and wars are always what tyrants use to take away liberties. And they say, you know, it's just temporary while we're dealing with this problem, but we never seem to get those liberties back again. And so I have to demonstrate these and other things this morning by linking Psalm 21, which was written right during this period of time, together with this passage. This passage illustrates it. Psalm 21 teaches it. In fact, you could just write in your margins of your Bible Psalm 21. But in any case, you just simply cannot ignore this subject. And if you want a fantastic introduction, it's probably the best little introductory book I've seen to a biblical theology of war. It's Joel McDermott's book, The Bible and War in America, A Biblical View of an American Obsession. I think it's absolutely must reading. Now, as a background to this passage, Let me just mention that the first 25 verses of this chapter and Psalm 21 both indicate how important it is for the nation's leadership to be in a right relationship with God or things can get messed up and for the people themselves to not be trusting the state but to be putting their trust in God. Now just think about it this way. If a Christian like David can use the military to do away with people that he does not want, like Uriah, and if a military officer like Joab could go along with David's unconstitutional requests, it's not a far stretch to say that it can happen in pagan America that has drifted so far away from God. Those who think we just need to trust our elected officials to govern wisely need to read history. Whether you're talking about ancient history or modern history, there is not a trace of evidence that we should trust the civil government to always act appropriately. Over and over, militaries have been used to support selfish, tyrannical causes, and that's why David says, do not put your trust in princes. It's just an absolute statement, and it's an absolute statement that all of our founding fathers took very seriously, even in the way that they constructed the Constitution. Instead, in Psalm 21, verse 8, David said, for the king trusts in the Lord. So even though I'm going to be not talking a lot about this first point, it is absolutely foundational. Too many Christians blindly believe that if America has gone to war, it's automatically a good war and we ought to support it and we ought to cheer for it. And that is putting far too much trust in men. The more pagan our nation becomes, the tougher it is going to be for our military Christians to be able to, without trouble, serve in the military. Praise God that they do and Jesus and the Apostles both said that he authorized people to serve in Imperialistic Roman army, okay, so it's possible to do but if you read the early church history you discover those guys were up against more and more moral dilemmas and it became harder and harder for them to serve now I will admit that our money still claims in God we trust but our policy says otherwise and Why was it that our country was set up without a standing army and with the militias being much more controlled at the local level? Well, it was in part because they simply did not trust the national government. And that was when the national government was pretty good. I mean, we'd be delighted to have the kind of national government that they had back then. We'll look more at that under a later point. But the further away from the God of Scripture that our nation trusts, the less we should be trusting it, the less we should trust it. And yet, what do we evangelicals do? They trust the national government, almost have turned it into a messianic God to save them from almost every problem that's out there. A tornado strikes, where do you look? You look to the national government. You've got roads. You've got education. Just about everything that we solved at a local level now has gone to a national level. And so when a country is not right with God, you should have the least trust in its services. And this applies even more to the deadly service of the military. Now, the second principle is a just war principle that was first articulated by Augustine in the fourth century. And in your outline, I word it this way. Make sure that our own country has truly been in danger and that the attacks are not the result of our own warmongering. Historically, here's how it's been worded. A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause. Further, a just war can only be fought with right intentions, the only Permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury. And then Murray Rothbard summarized the principle this way. A just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people or to overthrow an already existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them. Now, any of those three definitions, it doesn't matter. David's war was a just war. We saw that this war started in chapter 10. Actually, there was an initial stage to it. It started in in chapter 8. And Ammon had hired King Hadadezer of Syria to annihilate Israel. And it seems like Ammon was motivated by hatred, but Hadadezer seems initially totally motivated by economics. This war would give the Syrians new land, open up new trade routes, and provide other economic incentives. It would be sort of like declaring war on Iraq to maintain our oil interests. Okay, kind of an economic principle. It's not a just war principle. And when David successfully beat off the aggression of Hadadizr, there were a lot of Syrians who were killed. And Hadadezer now was able to round up all of his empire and say, hey, look at how bad David is. Look at all of our soldiers that he has killed. Never mind that he was the aggressor, that he was the warmonger. He was able to appeal to the sympathies of his empire. But because he was the aggressor, Scripture would say this is not a just war principle. Certainly for Ammon it was not a just war principle since their intent was to destroy Israel. Psalm 21, verse 11 says that the Ammonites had devised a plot or a conspiracy that they were not able to fulfill but it was a plot really to destroy Israel, to annihilate them. And since I've already dealt with the genocide in chapter 10 I won't deal with it today. But I bring it up because even though Joab was now taking the war into another country over the borders just like General Douglas MacArthur wanted to take it into China it is still considered a defensive warfare according to Deuteronomy chapter 20. When Ammon sought to invade Israel it is perfectly justifiable for David to go after Ammon until the king was dead, until Ammon was in a position where they were no longer a threat to David. But most of the countries we have invaded in my lifetime would not fit into the Bible's description of a just war just on that principle alone. 0.3. I think I've demonstrated in a previous sermon that our current Commander-in-Chief is not a natural-born citizen like both Constitution and Bible say that he should be. Joab and David were, and let's read verses 26 and 27. Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the people of Ammon and took the royal city. And Joab sent messengers to David and said, I have fought against Rabbah and I have taken the city's water supply. And we'll look at some of the other details in a bit. But Joab and David, whatever faults Joab may have had, and he had plenty, His loyalties were not divided. He was very loyal to David. He was very loyal to Israel. And whatever sins that David had, and we looked at those in chapter 11 through 12, he too was loyal to Israel. And I believe that David, for the most part, fulfilled the obligations that Deuteronomy 17 put upon him. First of all, that the top commanders, which would be David and Joab, had to be In other words, they had to be natural-born citizens. And then Deuteronomy 20 adds that all officers and chaplains had to at least, even if they weren't natural-born citizens, they had to at least be committed to the Scriptures. But there were three other provisions in Deuteronomy 17 that David only partially fulfilled. Deuteronomy 17 said, those kings could not multiply to themselves horses, wives, or gold. And you might think, well, those are quite widely separated things. But they really all dealt with the same issue, that it's so easy for all three of those things to make for divided loyalties. And I think the horses are pretty obvious. because in the ancient world those were used for going into enemy territory, for expanding the empire. For the most part I think David was perfectly in fulfillment of this. His son Solomon was not, but he was. And then the next one was wives. Wives were often multiplied in order to build alliances with a pagan nation. And This too could divide the loyalties of the country because you could ask is he going to be more loyal to our country or is he going to be more loyal to the country of his wife? Now David only messed up with one wife. It was Ma'akah who was the daughter of the king of Geshur. But Solomon was a total fail on that principle. And then massive amounts of money could make a king think globally and independently of his own country. As Cicero worded it, the sinews of war are infinite money. And later we're going to be seeing that David perfectly followed the law of God and the way in which he distributed all of the reparations of money. He did not hoard them to himself. But the point is, there is always a danger if there are divided loyalties to the commander in chief. And because I preached on that, I won't deal with it anymore. Fourth principle. Make sure that you attack the true source of the trouble rather than constantly responding to attacks on the periphery. Obviously, there were a lot of cities that were involved in this war and David's going to deal with them in chapter 31. But David was not intent at simply holding the line at his border. Some people misinterpret defensive warfare as if it means, and I've heard so many people say this, that you only have your armies within your borders. That's absolutely nuts. In fact, it's the exact opposite of what our founding fathers believed the army was for. and taking the war to others. You don't want to police your own nation. So the law of God was quite clear that you could take the war way beyond your borders. Deuteronomy 20 said, when you engage in war with a city very far from you. Okay, so they're taking their armies to nations that aren't even on the borders of Israel. So my point is that David and Joab were perfectly justified when Joab was being sent deep into enemy territory. In fact, take a look at chapter 11 just so you can see that David authorized this. Chapter 11, verse 1, it happened in the spring of the year at the time when the kings go out to battle that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. Well, That war has been going on for two years now. If you take this chapter 12 as if it's in sequence, which I do, I think it's perfectly in sequence. And Joab has been commissioned to go deep into enemy territory. And General Douglas MacArthur says you absolutely have to be willing to do that to deal effectively with aggressor nations. You can't perpetually hold the line at your border or at some artificial line like we did in Korea or in Vietnam. He wanted to drop bombs on China because China was the real troublemaker behind all of the messes in Korea and Vietnam. Now if David had taken that stance, That some people take you can't go into into other countries Then he'd still be at war with the the Empire of Syria It was because he was willing to take the war to them that that that they were willing to back off in chapter 10 and The war was over fairly quickly. And that's how you deal with ants. You don't just constantly be dealing, killing one ant after another. You go after the queen ant in the nest. And sometimes we have done that, sometimes we have not. You know, sometimes all we've done is messed around with the ants and got the ants angry, right? But it's going after the enemy that some defensive war people say, no, you can't do that. And I say, no, absolutely you can. You're going to hand tie the army if you don't. And you'll have to keep in mind the distinctions I made in a previous sermon between preemptive warfare, which the Bible allows, and preventive warfare, which the Bible does not allow for. Just war theory keeps both of those distinctions in mind. Now you could argue whether we should have even been in Korea and Vietnam in the first place. I personally don't think we had any business there whatsoever. But if we were going to fight those wars, the president should have authorized us to go after the Chinese who are behind all the warfare. And I think that strategy of General Douglas MacArthur would have saved all kinds of American lives. And that's exactly what Psalm 21 authorized David to do by God's inspiration. Let me read verses 8 through 12 of that Psalm. Your hand will find all your enemies. Your right hand will find those who hate you. You shall make them as a fiery oven in the time of your anger. The Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath and the fire shall devour them. Their offspring you shall destroy from the earth and their descendants from among the sons of men. For they intended evil against you. They devised a plot which they are not able to perform. Therefore you will make them turn their back. You will make ready your arrows on your string toward their faces Now modern Americans a lot of them. Anyway, don't like either points two or point four point two Basically is saying you ought to try to avoid War if at all possible you ought to hate war and we've seen in In previous chapters that david did not glorify in war and i've mentioned before that some of the best generals in american history hated war Okay, psalm 68 verse 30 says god scatters people who love war So we shouldn't love war And we shouldn't love violence. That's point number two, but you gotta balance that with point four. If they're coming after you, you are perfectly authorized in going into their country and laying waste to their country. God allows an offensive war in that situation. In fact, the best defense sometimes is an aggressive offense where it makes sure that they do not have another chance to attack us. Point five. is closely related to this and it says to make sure to be strategic and to use the best means of bringing surrender. And sometimes that can be a rather devastating means. I'm not one of those who believes that nuclear warfare is automatically disqualified by just war principles. There are people on both sides of that question. I happen to believe that nuclear war can be the most efficient and take the least number of lives. I think it can be perfectly justified on a just war principle. But when rightly used, and we'll get at that in a bit, but let's read verse 27. And Joab sent messengers to David and said, I have fought against Rabbah and I have taken the city's water supply. Without water the city would not be able to last for more than a couple of days. And so if David was going to be on the scene he needed to get there very quickly. Capturing the water supply put a quick end to the war because all of the people would start dying from lack of water. All of the people would. And that's where people say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not a just war. Innocents are going to be suffering. Children are going to be suffering. You cannot allow that kind of inactivity. And I say, no, Deuteronomy 20 is quite clear that that can be a just war principle. There are some people who have used the same logic to oppose the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because so many innocent people were killed. Now that one is a bit more sticky. I think there's lots of room for disagreement on that point. But interestingly, there have been some Japanese who strongly disagree with the idea that that bomb should never have been dropped. I read a Japanese historian who said that was the best thing to happen to Japan because if they had not dropped those bombs they probably would have kept on fighting to the last man and there would have been far, far more Japanese who would have died as a result of that. I'm not going to debate here whether we should have dropped it on those two cities or dropped it elsewhere. I just want to point out that just war principles speak of using the least amount of force to win the victory. But that could be a devastating amount of force right to be strategic. In some passages and judges it meant assassinating the leader of that country. That could be a very efficient very speedy way of stopping of that country's attacks. In other scriptures, like here, it can mean not just destroying the army at your border, but then going after the capital city. And the bottom line is that it's biblical to be efficient rather than dragging wars out forever, as has sometimes been done because of the political restrictions. But you can disagree with me. I can certainly understand disagreements on this point. Sixth, make sure that this war is truly in the interests of the whole nation. Now that was implied in point number two. But if you look at verses 28 through 29, it allows the whole people the opportunity to join or to vote with their feet and to not join in this battle. Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city, and take it, lest I take the city, and it be called after my name." So David gathered all the people together and went to Rabbah, fought against it, and took it. Now we've already seen in a previous sermon the how of how David consistently gathered all the people when he went to war. David got the consent of the tribal leaders in this war. And that was not hard on this particular war. With the attempt at annihilation through the coalition of Moab, Ammon, and Syria in chapter 8. And then the Ammonite-Syrian coalition in chapter 10. Man, all of the people were for this war. It wasn't hard for David to gather the people together on that. But the point I'm making is that every time David called all Israel together, he got the approval of the leaders of each tribe and the leaders of each of the local militias. The Bible allowed local militias to opt out. And more to the point, numbers mandated that when you called all the people together for war, they had to each fight under the standard of their family, which would be the county level, and those militias would fight under the standard of their tribe, which would be on the state level. This was kind of a check and balance that kept the war machine from simply being a war machine to serve the interests of the king. So there's a lot that's implied in the phrase, the rest of the people in verse 28, all the people in verse 29. All the way up through the war between the states, America did something similar. But Lincoln and those who followed after him used the draft and they more and more began to try to move things toward an amalgamation to disintegrate the loyalties of soldiers to their local jurisdictions. They tried to evaporate those loyalties and make the loyalties simply to the national government. And that centralization of the military has been so successful that the states have zero say in wars. Now the Constitution says they should, but really effectively they don't. And it's not a good sign when that happens. I believe that a return to the decentralized army that Numbers 1 through 2 speaks about and that pre-Civil War America had is an absolute must if we are to rein in the misuse of the military by the national government. The seventh principle that our founding fathers held to that you can see in verse 28 is to make sure that it isn't simply the professional soldiers who are armed and ready for battle. Now the Bible assumes there's going to be some professionals always. But I want you to notice in verse 28 that David does not have to arm the people. He does not have to train the people. He simply has to gather the people, okay? So just like our Constitution, there's a balance between national and local interests. National interests say, hey, we need to be able to mobilize an army very quickly for the defense of the nation. Local interests say that this army is made up of local militias, that they're already armed, thank you. David doesn't have to arm us. The king or president does have a role as commander-in-chief, but the militias also had a say-so. And I should remind you from a previous sermon that the militias, the way they were set up in early America was quite different from the way they are now. The whole people was the militia in a biblical state and the whole people was the militia in constitutional America. All males 20 years old and above in the Bible and all males 18 years old and above in America. And if America would return to having no standing army, have local militias that drill from time to time under local leaders, 32. Ready themselves for combat. I think it would be a perfect check and balance to the Marxists in our nation who want to disarm the citizens and who want the professionals to police the nation. And that may actually not be too far off if Obama gets his way. Carl W. Eikenberry, a retired Lieutenant General who commanded the U.S. Army from 2005 through 2007 in Afghanistan, he recognizes the problems with the current way of doing things. And I have my own issues with Eikenberry, but I think he's correct that the military really could be headed toward dangerous waters. In a New York Times opinion piece, he pointed to three developments that have happened, he says, since 1973. I think they started happening way earlier, but we'll stick with this 1973 figure. He says, the first problem is that we have moved away, quote, from the tradition of the citizen soldier to a large professional force. And it's the same difference that we see here between all the people being armed and ready to constitute the army and the professional army that Saul had that was so unbiblical. Now, I don't agree with Eichenberry's solution. He believes in an absolute mandated draft of everybody, but I think he is correct that there's a growing distance between military and people. Eikenberry goes on to say, in 1776, Samuel Adams warned of the dangers inherent in such an arrangement. A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens, and that's the key phrase. And he rightly points out that's a problem. The second development that Lieutenant General Eikenberry is nervous about is how easy it is for the president to use drones without accountability and with very few need-to-know people. You no longer have to have a military presence and all of the checks and balances that go into that. All he has to have is a few experts in a room and off you go. You can start using those drones. The third development he mentions is that the military's function is being expanded way beyond the traditional battlefield functions, training functions, administrative functions they used to have. And now it's being used for all kinds of things like nation building, you know, rebuilding the infrastructure, ensuring that women get the vote in these countries that we've conquered, and all kinds of things that have no bearing whatsoever on the military. And he pointed out that these could easily be expanded to using the military to police our own nation. He went on to say, here are the makings of a self-perpetuating military caste sharply segregated from the larger society and with its enlisted ranks disproportionately recruited from the disadvantaged. History suggests that such scenarios don't end well. The modern force presents presidents with a moral hazard, making it easier for them to resort to arms with little concern for the economic consequences or political accountability. Now, it's hard for me in the little time that I have to really emphasize how important it is that citizens become informed and they get involved in understanding what's going on with the military. But Lieutenant General Eikenberry gave two quotes from founding fathers that I think sum it up rather well. First, a quote from Adams. Where there is a necessity of the military power, a wise and prudent people will always have a watchful and a jealous eye over it. For the maxims and rules of the army are essentially different from the genius of free people and the laws of a free government." And the next, a quote from George Washington, when we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen. So that phrase, all the people, is really important. And noting they were already armed and they were already trained. I think that's important as well. It was one of the checks and balances in Israel's wars. So to reiterate point seven, make sure that it isn't simply the professional soldiers who are armed and ready for battle. But point eight is yet another principle of war that our nation has been violating. We engage in unconstitutional wars, and then we engage in rebuilding up what we have torn down, and then we police the nation forever. And all three phases of those wars are enormously costly to America. We're the ones who have to pay for that. In biblical wars, the enemy paid for it all, every bit of it. That is, if you won the war. If you didn't win the war, then you're really toast. But Israel's citizens, they didn't have taxation that could pay for endless wars. Instead, verse 30 speaks of spoil, and verse 31 speaks of ongoing indentured servitude until that war debt is paid off. First of all, the spoil. Take a look at verse 30. Then he took their king's crown from his head. Its weight was a talent of gold with precious stones, and it was set on David's head. Also he brought out the spoil of the city in great abundance." Now in a previous sermon that I dealt with I pointed out that David followed the law of God to the T in how he distributed the reparations money. And that passage said it was his permanent policy, so I'm assuming he's using that permanent policy here. Psalm 21 refers to the crown and to the other spoil. So here's the point. War cost David personally, so he got remuneration. War cost the soldiers so they had an extra amount because of the dangers they faced. They got an extra amount of remuneration and war cost the country. And so there needed to be remuneration for the damages that had been done and inflicted by the enemy. And notice that this is not a redistribution of Israel's wealth. Not at all. This is not socialism. This was war reparations for damages that were done. It was a kind of restitution. The second part of that restitution is in point B, indentured servitude. Verse 31 follows the principles laid out in Deuteronomy 20, which basically allowed you to put the enemy soldiers, well, the whole citizenry actually, into indentured servitude until fourfold restitution was exacted. It says, And He brought out the people who were in it, and put them to work with saws and iron picks and iron axes, and made them cross over to the brickworks. So He did to all the cities of the people of Ammon. Now where is the flow of money in this situation? It's not from Israel to the enemy. It's from the enemy to Israel. We've done the exact opposite in America. We pay for the war. We pay for the rebuilding. We pay for the policing. It's we citizens who end up paying for everything. There is no restitution on our policies to America, if indeed America's been hurt. On some wars, I'm just totally skeptical America's been hurt at all, that there need to be reparations. But the flow of the money in our country is often to the enemy, but also it's to the big corporations that are making a killing from all three stages of every recent war. And this is what is known as the military-industrial complex, and it's something I think you need to become aware of. It's a massive money-making venture for private corporations. There's nothing wrong with making money on war, but when you see how it's set up, I think it is wrong. Their connection to the Iron Triangle in Washington, D.C. almost guarantees that America will always be in a perpetual state of war, almost guarantees it. Business demands it. The whole way the Iron Triangle works demands it. Huge motivation for them to promote endless war. And so this principle is simply insisting, hey, if we're going to pay for a war, make sure that the enemy pays restitution. Principle nine is to make sure you press for full victory. Verse 31 was not just satisfied with defeating one city and showing we can do it. You know, flexing your muscles and say, boy, don't try that again. We can show that we can do it. It says, so he did to all the cities of the people of Ammon. He made sure Ammon would never be a threat again. It was a full victory that he pressed for. So you're not just teaching a lesson. You're not just defending some arbitrary line. As General Douglas MacArthur said, there is no substitute for victory. 10th point is don't become a perpetual war machine with a standing army. Verse 31 ends by saying, then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem. What happened after that? Well, after the debriefings, the division of plunder, other administrative functions, they went back to their farms. You keep reading in chapters 13 and 14, you see even Joab went back to his farm. Why? Because there was no standing army. Numbers did not allow for a standing army. Okay, and this principle was built right into our Constitution. While the Navy was a standing Navy, and it had to be just by the nature of the Navy, and the same was true in the ancient world, The army was not because it was feared that unlike the Navy, the army could be used to police the nation's own citizens. The Navy wasn't as much of a threat to your own nation, but the army definitely could be. And we saw in 1 Samuel that Tyrant Saul did exactly that. He had far more spies amongst his own people than he had in other countries. He had his army engaging in work within his own country that basically 1 Samuel 8 says was unconstitutional, was tyrannical. So Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12 of our Constitution says this. The Congress shall have power to raise and support armies but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years. Now, obviously, this has had different interpretations, but historically, this ability to occasionally raise an army and the funding for two years has been interpreted to mean no standing army. In the Heritage Guide to the Constitution, which was edited by Edwin Meese III, he was the former Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, The first comments under this section of the Constitution say this. For most Americans after the Revolution, a standing army was one of the most dangerous threats to liberty. In thinking about the potential dangers of a standing army, the founding generation had before them the precedence of Rome and England. In the first case, Julius Caesar marched his provincial army into Rome, overthrowing the power of the Senate, destroying the Republic, and laying the foundation of empire. In the second, Cromwell used the army to abolish Parliament and to rule as dictator. In addition, in the period leading up to the revolution, the British crown had forced the American colonists to quarter and otherwise support its troops, which the colonists saw as nothing more than an army of occupation. So they hated the idea of a standing army. But we in the 21st century, we have swum so long and so continuously in the waters of a war state, it just seems natural to us. And our founding fathers' concerns don't compute in our heads. We think, man, they must have been paranoid back then. And, you know, the attitude of Americans seems to be, you know, of course our government's not going to abuse the army like that. Are you paranoid? Are you a conspiratorialist? And my response is, no, I'm not a conspiratorialist. I'm a constitutionalist. And if you study the Constitution at all, you will see that they did not have a trust in a national central government. And there was a good reason for it. Even the unbelievers amongst them believed in total depravity. Answering a question of why our founding fathers had so many checks and balances, why they didn't trust the central government, Federalist paper number 55 says, depravity in mankind requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust. There you have it. Once the war is over, the army needs to go back to Jerusalem and disband. Why? Because we don't trust a permanent army. But nowadays, Americans don't understand why an army needs to disband or why localities should be the ones officering and training the militias. That's not efficient. We're all into trust and efficiency. But our founding fathers knew from experience that it's dangerous to let wars go on too long because it's dangerous to allow an army to become a professional, centralized, permanent army. A standing army was almost universally despised, not just disagreed with, despised by both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. I should have reversed the two. The Anti-Federalists especially despised them. But it was despised by both of them. During the Virginia ratifying convention, George Mason exclaimed, what havoc, desolation and destruction have been perpetrated by standing armies? And actually I've got a boatload of quotes from our founding fathers where they just did not want one. After their experience with Saul, Israel didn't trust a standing army. After their experience with Britain, our founding fathers did not trust a standing army. Now, the Anti-Federalists would have preferred that 100% of our defense come from just state militias, have the federal government out of it altogether. They didn't get their way, but at least we had the kind of checks and balances and that time limit of the army as well. It wasn't supposed to function for longer than two years after a congressionally called for war was over. But after World War I, we started the process of slowly turning our nation into a permanent war machine. And you'll get just a tiny hint of the change in philosophy if you keep these figures in your mind. Prior to the Civil War, the army never exceeded 16,000 soldiers during peacetime. And after the Civil War, it was immediately reduced back down a little bit higher, but down to 25,000, much to Sherman's disgust. I think Sherman wanted to have a large standing army. But it stayed small. That was no longer true after World War I. Once the war was done, there was no downsizing like David did. The size of the army remained at 298,000 active soldiers and 400,000 reserves in the National Guard. Now that's a rather startling change. And it shows a complete reversal of the old constitutional principles. Now here's the problem. You've got a war state all of a sudden. When you add a welfare state to a war state, you've got a huge recipe for the kind of robbing of our liberties that's been going on. A slogan that was popularized by George Sewell in the 1920s was, We planned for war, why not in peace? And so what it was, it was a cry to replace local sovereignty with national central planning through elitist experts. Now think about that. If your planning during time of peace is as thorough as your planning during time of war, You're not going to have a lot of liberties. It's going to be a pretty complete, I mean, just ask military people if they're free. You know, they've sold themselves into indentured servitude. You know, they can't just do anything that they want. There are limits. But if you've got that kind of planning during time of peace, you can see the problem that arises. And I think that they have largely succeeded in making the transition complete. Where did all of that start? It started with a standing army that did not disband as soon as the conflict was over. And it was not just here in America. British historian A.J.P. Taylor says the same thing happened after World War I in Britain. And these are remarkable words. Just imagine if America had these kind of liberties that I'm going to read about. They did before World War I. But listen to this. This is just amazing. Until August 1914, A sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policemen. He could travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms that he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in the country without permit and without informing the police. All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The state established a hold over its citizens, which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed, and which the Second World War was again to increase. The history of the English people and the English state merged for the first time." Now, if this all seems foreign to you, you just need to read more history and read the right history books, right? When you start reading history, you're going to be amazed at what we have put up with, all the liberties that we have lost. When you read just a few of the Founding Fathers' public writings, you're going to begin longing for the liberties they took for granted in our nation and that were protected by the Constitution and by the Bill of Rights, which actually is probably more appropriately called a Bill of Restrictions on the National Government. That's what it was intended to be. and it'll perhaps motivate you to pray for our country, to pray for our military men. Now, let me give you a couple more quotes to illustrate this last point. James Berg said in 1774, a standing army in times of peace is one of the most hurtful and most dangerous of abuses. Now, if you've been brainwashed by our modern media, you're gonna be skeptical about that statement. You say, that just can't possibly be true. But it was the universal viewpoint in 1776. It was the universal viewpoint amongst Americans. Let me repeat that quote from 1774. in times of peace is one of the most hurtful and most dangerous of abuses. Sam Adams said that a standing army, quote, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. And I want to read the full context of that quote, because I think it illustrates point six, seven and ten so well. In 1776, letter to James Warren, Sam Adams said this. A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens. They have their arms always in their hands. Their rules and their discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit obedience to their commands. Such a power should be watched with a jealous eye. I have a good opinion of the principal officers of our army. I esteem them as patriots as well as soldiers. But if this war continues, as it may for years to come, we know not who may succeed them. Men who have been long subject to military laws and inured to military customs and habits may lose the spirit and feeling of citizens. And even citizens, having been used to admire the heroism which the commanders of their own army have displayed, and to look up to them as their saviors, may be prevailed upon to surrender to them those rights for the protection of which, against invaders, they've employed and paid them. We have seen too much of this disposition among some of our countrymen. The militia is composed of free citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their power to the destruction of their own rights or suffering others to invade them. And if you're interested in more details of the relationship biblically between those local militias and the state and the national ones and the checks and balances and what are the limits to which we can resist tyranny and what are the permissions that we have, there was two sermons, I think it was on 1 Samuel chapter 23, you can take a look at that. The last principle of war that we see illustrated in this passage is that we should be ready to give God the glory for victory and really for everything. Armies returned to Jerusalem, why? Just look in the law. Why did they return to Jerusalem? That's where the temple was. They returned to Jerusalem to give praise to God and to acknowledge God's sovereignty by worshiping before Him at the temple. And Psalm 21 teaches on this so, so well. David gave glory to God for the crown that was put upon his head. He said, You set a crown of pure gold upon his head. In fact, ultimately, Psalm is pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ as the ultimate David, the King of kings and Lord of lords. And I think we do a disservice to Christ and the gospel when we think that the gospel only applies individually, that it has no application to culture. The hymn Joy to the World indicates quite correctly that God's grace goes far as the curse is found. It has implications for all of life. And we need to be applying it to all of life. Eventually it's going to make a new heavens and a new earth. Isn't it? Even the dirt is going to be redeemed by Christ in a new heavens and a new earth. So it's not truncated. But anyway, the psalm shows that this war was not just a war for survival. It was a war to preserve Christian culture to preserve God's law and ultimately to passionately fight for God's glory. And so he ends the psalm by saying, Be exalted, O Lord, in your own strength. We will sing and praise your power. And ultimately, that should be our desire as well. We should praise God's power, not state power. Rather than the rights of America all over the world, it needs to be the crown rights of King Jesus. Amen? Rather than American pride, it should be lifting up the glory of God. Rather than America first, it should be Jesus first. Rather than seeing the Constitution and the treaties as the highest law of the land, written right into, though, the Constitution, Article 7, of the Bill of Rights and the implication of the last article of the Constitution says, what's the first governing document? It's the Declaration of Independence. You take those two together, it's quite clear that the Constitution says God's law is the highest law of the land and it nullifies all contradictory laws to the contrary, which means Roe v. Wade is nullified and should be considered nullified by all national and local magistrates. If one of you gets elected to be mayor of the city, you should do everything in your power to shut down abortion right now. You don't wait. You say, well, there is a law that says abortion is legal. No. Judges cannot make laws. That is null and void right from the start. Even constitutionally, it's null and void. But from a biblical law, it certainly is. Rather than itching to start another war, we should be like David and long for peace and work for peace. But on the other hand, if the enemy truly attacks us, then we should be willing to fight and to lay down our lives to defend the liberties of our families and of our fellow citizens. We need to be willing to be as tough as Deuteronomy 20 says that we're allowed to be tough on another nation. We can't have this wimpy approach to warfare. And I believe, by the way, this is why God put men as chief magistrates, you know, as the king of a nation, as the president of a nation. This is why God has allowed only men to fight in battle. Women weren't designed to do that. They were designed to be nurturers. They weren't designed to take the kind of aggressive actions that biblical theology of war requires men to take during times of war. Tough decisions that need to be made. And our denomination has taken a strong stand of not having women in combat. By the way, we're taking, we've already had that stand, but we're strengthening that stand because the draft is something that could be looming, a draft of women. And so if our whole denomination takes the stand that we believe that this is contrary to the law of God, you've got something to say to the government, sorry, it's against our religion, and it's been against our religion long before this draft came up, okay? So that's the whole purpose. of that. But in conclusion, I would say don't ignore what the Bible says about war. It's a critical subject. And I think this little passage, even though it doesn't illustrate all of the principles of just war, I think it beautifully illustrates at least some of the key ones. So may each of us use the information that we have gained this morning to promote liberty and to downsize government. Amen. Father God, we come to You thankful that You are indeed King of kings and Lord of lords and that Kingdoms and nations cannot get away with violating your laws. And we're seeing the fruits of the violations of your laws over the last hundred years. We pray, Father, that you would raise up people who would point to the liberties that we could have, that would point to the unconstitutional things that are happening, and, Father, who would restore this nation. Right now, Satan is doing everything he can to get leaders to cast off the bonds of Christ, even the last remnants of those. Father, bring it about that our nation would not hypocritically but in reality be able to say we're a nation under God, that in God we trust. I pray, Father, that the principles of Your Word would thoroughly transform our nation from the bottom up and from the top down, sideways, east, west, north, south. Father, may in every way Your law be characterized and Your gospel be characterized as a part of this nation. For the sake of your Son Jesus whom you have given the nations. And we pray that this nation would be given to Christ. That even the military would function under the lordship of King Jesus. We pray against some of these decisions that are trying to limit the ability of military people to a share of their faith. And we know that they backtracked on this some. But Father, I pray that there would be a thorough exposure of the evil plots that are going on in our nation and that these people would be humiliated and thrown out of influence and that in place of them, you would raise up people with stainless steel backbones and with golden hearts. And we pray all of these things in Christ's name. Amen.