WAR AND PEACE

Psalm 33:16

Just prior to the start of hostilities in Iraq, I was prepared to preach on The Power of the Tongue in a morning service. But God directed me to speak about “War and Peace” instead. So on March 23 I delivered the message at the two services here at Scullville Bible Church. Although I knew I was doing what the Lord directed, and although I had a desire to keep our casualties to a minimum through a quick victory, I was still afraid the war would be over before I had a chance to share the message. God was faithful to extend it until I spoke and He protected our troops at the same time. The Tape with both morning services is available from our tape library with a more complete presentation than I am able to give in this article.

Our text tells us that “There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength.” How are we to understand this verse in the light of our overpowering numbers and might in the modern United States military? Let us take our verse in the context of the complete psalm.

First, I believe it is vitally important for us to get a grip on the Biblical concept of God’s plan for the ages and the certainty that He will bring it to pass. Right off the bat, we need to see what our text does not say. It does not say that God cannot and will not use the numbers and might of any nation to fulfill His purposes. It only says that no nation is safe from defeat just because they have such an army. Likewise, in verse 17 it talks about the horse being useless to save a man. We must again see that a horse is indeed a powerful weapon, especially in the time before fuel powered machines and long range projectiles. But the message again is that the horse is useless if God’s purpose is for the defeat of a man or a nation that is depending upon it to save them.

Starting with verse one, the psalm encourages us to praise God for who He is, and to do it with everything we have, our voices, our musical instruments and our mortal bodies. Beginning in verse two we learn the reason; because God is Right, and His Word is Truth, and His Works follow His Word. He loves us and always does Righteousness and Judgment towards us. The Earth is full of His Goodness.

Verses three through nine remind us that God has every right to everything and everyone by virtue of creation. He is the Creator! In verses ten and eleven we begin to get closer to our main point today, i.e. War and Peace Then we learn that God is aware of all the plans that man makes. We may need to “bug” Baghdad in order to find out what they are up to, but God knows their every thought even before they do. He also has the power to bring their counsel to nothing, and make evil devices of no effect. Contrariwise, His thoughts and plans cannot be thwarted.

Verses thirteen through fifteen cause us to stagger when we consider that God is able to view the entire scene at one glance! I suppose it should be clear to us by this time that the One who is able to count the hairs of our head (Mat. 10:30) is also able to know what thoughts are in the brain under that hair (Or lack thereof in my case).

And so we come to our base texts, verses sixteen and seventeen. If we have paid close attention to what preceded, we should have little difficulty now. We do not need to spend precious ink and paper to prove that God’s purposes cannot be altered by the will of man. Oh to be sure, God can alter His own plan when He beholds men behaving for good or bad. And we certainly want to show that truth now.

Turn to Jeremiah 18:7-10 and see how our loving Father tells us ahead of time how important it is that nations submit to His will or perish. Let me summarize: when in God’s good judgment He has determined to destroy any nation because their evil has come before Him, if that nation’s leaders take action along with the prayers of the saints living there, then God will change His mind about the situation and turn away from the destruction He was about to do. Nineveh is a good example of this side of the coin. Here the praying people were not “Saints”, but “Aints” who believed Jonah’s warning that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days. The King inquired of the people with the question: “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” And everyone but Jonah will rejoice that: “… God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.” (Jonah 3:9-10) The key words for the entire destiny of Nineveh are contained in the question in verse 9; Who Can Tell? (followed by appropriate repentance and humility).

Conversely, Jeremiah 18:9 shows us that just because God has chosen to bless and build up a nation does not mean they can disregard Him even though that blessing has been in effect for long periods of time. Evil conduct on the part of a people has definite consequences. We could present numerous examples of this “tail” side of the coin merely by rehearsing the history of Israel. Look at the fateful spy report of Numbers 13:32 or examine 32:13 of the same book. At least 7 times in the first 13 chapters of the book of Judges we read that: the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD. In spite of all this forewarning (I Cor. 10:6, 11 et.al) modern day Christians seem to have trouble recognizing that the same principles apply to twenty first century America. As with Israel, our present blessings are most likely based more upon our forefathers faithfulness than upon that of the existing citizenry. A century of preaching against the evils of our society and the ever growing ungodliness, along with the warning that God must take action against us unless we repent, has had little effect towards revival thus far. Thank God that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man (still) avails much” (James 5:16)

The worse case scenario is recorded in this very chapter of Jeremiah 18, at verse 12 which is the response that the House of Israel gives to the warning from the great prophet. “And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart”. Sound familiar? Why this is the very declaration coming from the high and low courts in this land, those who are responsible for the right judgment and applied mercy. Once you state plainly that God has no part in your governance, you also say that there is no opening for Him to help you, and you leave yourself with no hope.

There are several other ramifications to Psalm 33 that would take much longer to adequately deal with than I have space in this article. For instance we should study the case history of the invasion of Jerusalem by a powerful force in II Kings 18 and 19 (repeated almost word for word in Isaiah 36 and 37). King Hezekiah was less equipped to deal with the invaders than Saddam Hussein was this year. But read the “rest of the story” in II Kings 19:35 were the Angel of The Lord smote – I like that word! – yes, smote the Assyrians and killed 185,000 in a single night with absolutely no help from the Israelis.

Also relevant to the question of “Whom or what do we trust?” is II Chronicles 25 were something equivalent to our “Coalition of the Willing” that we were banking on in the Iraqi conflict is formed when King Amaziah hired 100,000 soldiers of fortune from the Northern tribes of Israel to help fight against the Edomites. But God was not pleased with this mixture. These folks from the North were not right with God. The LORD was not with them. Read the entire chapter to see how this King who began with doing “that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect heart” (v. 2) ends up with “and he fled to Lachish: but they sent to Lachish after him, and slew him there”(v.27).

The moral of the passage is that Amaziah failed to trust totally in the Lord. Check Mark 9:7 where Peter, James and John are rebuked by God Himself with a voice out of a cloud because they desired to share the Glory of Jesus, albeit with godly and good men such as Moses and Elijah, without consulting the will of the Father.

Another moral to the story is that we are indeed to “Put all our eggs in one basket”, realizing that God’s provision is sufficient even when it is only “He and Thee”. Let me conclude back in Psalm 33:18 where we are told to “Look! The eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy.” He is there in order that He might “deliver their soul from death, and keep them alive in famine.”

Since I made comparisons, I suppose I should end with contrasts between the situation with Old Testament Israel and America in 2003. They were a Theocracy, a people governed directly by God. We are a Representative Republic, operating on semi-democratic principles. We have a great variety of religious diversity in government and every other field of endeavor, including the military. There are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Witches and Atheists in every area. We are to be compared more with Rome of the first century than to Israel under the Theocracy. Our armies are comprised of a mixture of the “good the bad and the ugly”. We are back where we started …

There is no king saved by the multitude of an host

A mighty man is not delivered by much strength.

Isaac Watts wrote of our Helper and Hope through all the ages:

O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come

Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home!

Under the shadow of Thy throne still may we dwell secure

Sufficient is Thine arm alone, and our defense is sure

Our duty is to pray for our country, our leaders, our soldiers and for peace to be granted by God on the basis of His Grace towards His people that dwell here in America and in remembrance of those of our forefathers before us who were His.

Pastor Hayden