War in the Gulf: A Biblical Perspective, Part 1

Selected Scriptures

     This morning, as I share with you a Biblical perspective on the War in the Gulf, I want to hasten to say that I'm not going to give you any rhetoric.  We have perhaps enough and more of that than we care to have.  I'm not here to give you any kind of poll or any kind of consensus, or the opinions of any experts.  I'm not here to play upon your patriotic emotions.

     I'm here basically to endeavor to have you understand war and this war from God's perspective.  It is more of a lesson, more of a Bible study, in some ways, than a sermon.  And it really comes as a result of a question that I have been asked throughout this week, how should a church respond to what is going on in the Gulf?  How should a Christian respond?

     A few days ago I received a phone call, and the man on the other end of the line said, "All across America, religious leaders are taking their stand with the antiwar protests.  And we're calling you because we want to do an interview with you to play on our syndicated radio system, and we want you to tell us where you stand on this, because we believe you perhaps may take another view."

     And he asked the question, "What is the church to do in response to this?  What is a Christian's proper response?  And are all religious leaders unilaterally committed to an antiwar position?"  Well, if you're watching the news and listening at all, it does seem that all across America, religious leaders are marching and protesting and sitting in and crying out for peace, and demanding the end of American involvement in Iraq. 

     It's a time when people are looking at the church and saying, "Can you help?  How am I to understand this?  How am I to cope with this?"  And, as I said, I don't want to give you rhetoric and I don't want to play on your emotion.  I want to give you an understanding out of the Scripture so that you can perceive this scenario from the viewpoint of the Lord as much as is possible.

     I believe, first of all, that evangelical, Bible-believing Christians are not antiwar necessarily.  I think everybody is antiwar in the sense of the tragedy and the pain and the suffering and the death that is involved.  But I think Christians who understand the Word of God look at war, and even this war, differently, because they look at it from a Biblical viewpoint.

     While war is tragic and painful in a myriad of ways, and while we have every reason to hate war, we must understand what God says about it, because there are times when war is not avoidable.  Many people are praying for the war to end, and that's fine.  But if we're praying that way, our prayers must be based upon understanding.

     Now, there was in my mind earlier in the week some prompting to consider some of these issues and reflect upon the Word of God.  By Wednesday, I spoke in the chapel at the Master's College, and I spoke to the students on a perspective from God's Word about the war.  And following that message I began to think more deeply about it and realized that perhaps I should widen the things I said and bring more Biblical insight together and share it with you this Sunday and next Sunday, at least, for sure.

     And as I was thinking through what I would want to talk about and how I'd want to divide it down in manageable bites so you could comprehend it, I came up with four questions that I think I need to answer for you and help you to see in the Scripture.

     Question number one, why does war happen?  Question number two, can war be just, or moral?  Question number three, how are we to understand the present war in the Gulf?  Question number four, is this a sign of the coming of Christ?  Today and next Lord 's Day, I want to endeavor to answer those questions.

     Let's begin with the first one, why does war happen?  There is a certain amount of frustration in our culture about the fact that war even exists.  There are certain people who just can't imagine that it's happening when we're so far along the evolutionary chain.  We have come so far.  We are so advanced.  We are so educated.

     Not only is everyone exposed to education via schools, but certainly everyone is exposed to education via media.  We are so advanced, and there's so much talk of peace, and there's so much talk of love.  And we have so much technology, sociology, psychology and theology, why are we still killing each other? 

     Isn't man basically far enough up the evolutionary ladder that it is true of him that he is a noble being, that his deepest desires are for love and peace?  Isn't he good at heart?  If left to himself, won't he find that which is the best?  Isn't he the noblest beast?  Sociologists and philosophers and psychologists and theologians tell us he is.  And thus there is a lot of confusion about how can this be happening in a modern world.

     But all of that is a lie.  Man is not a noble beast.  The heart of man is wicked, rebellious, proud, selfish, deceitful, violent, destructive, murderous.  Not every man acts on the outside like he is on the inside, because there are built into culture some restraints, by God's mercy. 

     But man left to himself is a vile being, not at all the apex of an evolutionary chain, but the bottom, as it were, of a declining morality that started down in the Garden.  And evil men, in fact, are getting worse and worse.  It always interests me that even the peace lovers appear hostile and violent when they don't get what they want. 

     And so we ask the question, why is there war?  How are we to explain war in such an advanced society?  After all, we're not running around in loincloths with spears in our hands.  And somebody might say, "Well, there are as many reasons for war as there are wars."  That's a rather generic statement, and perhaps not at all correct.

     Why are there wars?  Let me suggest to you there are three components, three components.  Number one, evil aggression.  Evil aggression.  Not all men are as wicked as they could be.  Not all men are as wicked on the outside as they are on the inside.  Some are better at constraining their internal wickedness because of trained consciences, because of wanting peer approval, because of some kind of religious expectation, because of police and government control and a myriad of other things.

     Not everybody's as bad as he could be.  But there are some people who are as bad as they can be.  And some of the people who are as wretched as human beings can possibly be are in positions to enact unbelievably horrendous acts.  Evil aggression.  Whether you kill one person or whether you are a mass murderer of 30, or whether you massacre millions, that kind of hostility is generated from a wicked, wretched, evil heart that has gone to the extremes of evil and knows no compunctions.

     War happens because of evil aggression in the heart of man unrestrained.  And every one of us, because we are fallen and sinful, and particularly those who are without the redemption and transformation of Jesus Christ, have the capacity to effect crimes of heinous character, were it not for restraints of one kind or another.

     A good insight into this evil aggression cause of war is found in James chapter 4.  Let's look together at this chapter and the first two verses, because I think the principle that James gives here is directly applicable.  In James chapter 4, in verse 1, James writes profoundly, "What is the source of," and the Greek words, "wars and battles among you?"  What is the source of them?  Where do they come from?

     And then he answers the question most interestingly.  "Is not the source your pleasures, your lusts, your desires?"  That word there is the word hedonae, from which the word hedonism comes, which is a word that means self-gratification.  The word actually means the yearnings of self-gratification, to fulfill your own hedonistic desire for personal gratification.  That's where war comes from.

     "Is not the source your hedonistic, self-gratifying passions that wage war in your members?"  Now, notice this, please.  Before the war ever gets on the outside, it starts where?  On the inside.  You say, "What is this war?"  This is a war between self-gratification and conscience.  That's right.  Self-gratification and conscience.  Conscience is battling self-gratification.

     The desire for what is forbidden and what is known to be wrong and what is visceral and what is lustful and what is passionately wanted for the sake of self-pleasure, self-promotion, self-prestige, self-plunder, self-power or whatever else, that wages war against the conscience.  And everyone has a conscience which functions to one degree or another.

     And according to Romans chapter 2, every man knows something of the law of God written in his heart, right?  There is a moral sense in human beings that even a Saddam Hussein or an Adolf Hitler possesses.  What happens is, war breaks out on the inside, between the yearnings for self-gratification and moral conscience. 

     And some people win the war in terms of conscience.  Conscience is assisted by religion, and I'm not even talking about Christian people, by religion, by expectations, by habits that they've been trained with since they were children, by the fear of retaliation from governmental force.  And so they're not as bad as they could be.

     Other people, conscience becomes the victim of self-gratification.  They become the criminals, the mass murderers, the demagogues, the dictators, the rulers who massacre whole populations of people, all the way up the ladder.  So the desire for what is forbidden and wrong wages war against what is right.  You could say morality battles gratification.

     James says that's where war starts.  And when the hedonistic's desire for self-gratification dominates, the war goes from the inside to the outside.  Because now, in order to gratify himself, there have to be some victims.  To get what he wants, he's got to rape somebody or plunder somebody or kill somebody or steal something or destroy something.

     And so in verse 2 he says, "You lust and you don't have.  So what do you do?  Your self-gratification has won.  You want it, but you don't have it.  So you kill to get it."  That's it.  You're envious.  You want what somebody else has.  You can't get it.  So you fight and you make war.  That's the war of self-gratification, going from the inside to the outside.

     You ask yourself why a man like Hussein does what he does.  The answer is because self-gratification lusts have overpowered conscience.  I don't know anything about the man's background to know whether his conscience was exercised at any point in his life to a noble point, but it seems to me that it was not.  And you put a man in a position of ultimate authority where he answers to absolutely no one, and you will find conscience having a very difficult time winning its victories.

     What happens is, lust leads to passion.  Passion leads to war.  Whether they want pleasure, power, prestige, wealth, it drives men to kill.  It drives them to destructive behavior.  It drives them to deadly aggression.  And if they don't get it, they're unfulfilled, and they'll make war.

     Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was such a war.  Revenge, hatred, lust for money, lust for oil, lust for power, and, believe me, he is not through.  He doesn't want just Kuwait.  He wants the world.  He's an evil aggressor, classic, absolutely classic.

     There's a second component that creates war, second element, and that is what we'll call just protection, just protection.  There are wars and elements within war caused by the desire to defend, protect, liberate and free the victim of the evil aggressor. 

     Paul spoke about this.  Look at Romans 13.  No one can understand how to view war without understanding Romans 13.  It is one of many New Testament Scriptures.  We'll look more deeply at it next Lord's Day and at a number of other New Testament Scriptures.  But for this morning I want to read it to you and make a few comments.

     Romans 13:1 and following, "Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those who exist are established by God." Make this general note in your mind.  Government is a God-given mercy.  Did you hear that?  Government is a God-given mercy. 

     Government is given its primary task, to protect innocent people from evil aggressors.  That is the primary role of government.  Government has overstepped the bounds of its Biblical responsibility, its God-given responsibility in many, many ways, but this is it, initially and substantially. 

     "Therefore," verse 2 says, "he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves."  God puts government in place to control sinful man.  Otherwise, sinful man will run amok.  It is government and the institutions of government, law, police, the courts, jails, the right of capital punishment, all of that, that restrains man and gives conscience some help in winning the war.

     That's God-given, or sinful men would run amok in the world, to the destruction of everyone.  And so if you resist the authority, you're resisting the God who gave the authority for the preservation of society. 

     And then in verse 3 he puts some leverage in the hand of authority, and some power, "For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil."  In other words, the government exists to make people who do wrong afraid.  And if government can't make them afraid, then they're going to continue to do wrong.  Very simple.

     If they do not live under the fear of just and swift punishment, then conscience cannot win against passion, the passion of the fallen heart.  So he says in verse 3, "Do you want to have no fear of authority?  Do what is good.  You'll have praise from the same."  You don't have to live under fear if you just do what the law says, and God has given the law for the preservation of mankind.

     And then in verse 4 he says, "Look, the authority is a minister of God to you for good."  Whether on a local level, with the police, on a national/international level with the armies of nations, they are there to protect you from evil aggressors.  "If you do what is evil, be afraid," look at this, "for it doesn't bear the sword for nothing."  Why does it bear the sword, to do what?  To use it.

     Government is not symbolic.  Government is not a pageant.  Government has real power, and its power is in its sword.  Now, what do you do with a sword?  Rap people's knuckles?  No.  Spank them?  No.  You kill them.  That's what you do with it.  You take their life away.

     What restrains ultimately the evil aggressor is the power of the sword, the deadly force that government can bring against ultimate acts of evil.  That's God-ordained.  In fact, he says, "not only does it not bear the sword for nothing, it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil."  Never does government act in a more God-intended way than when it takes the life of an evil-doer to protect the innocent, to preserve life in a society.

     I personally am convinced that based upon the Word of God America and the allies' response to Hussein is a noble war.  It is a just war of protection, motivated by the noble cause to deliver an embattled people victimized by an evil aggressor.  It is even an unselfish war.  For they are not us.  They are a people of a very different culture than we are.

     You say, "Now, wait a minute?  Aren't we really motivated by oil?  Aren't we really motivated by prosperity?  Aren't we really motivated by economics?"  Certainly we are a grossly materialistic culture, and there might be some people along the path whose only compulsions in life are financial gain. 

     But if the United States of America was a nation motivated by those things, we would simply destroy all the Middle East nations and claim all the oil for ourselves, plunder all the oil and control the world.  Then we could drive the market down as far down as we wanted. 

     We don't attack.  We never have.  We have never been the evil aggressor in a war.  You see, down below the footings of this country, as far away from God as it has become, there are the notions of nobility in terms of what government is all about, showed up in our Bill of Rights and Constitution. 

     We're there to ensure the freedom of Kuwait, which the prosperity of Kuwait depends upon, and which prosperity per capita is probably greater than our own.  We are there to keep Kuwait a free-market participant, to operate on their own in the world market and reap their own wealth.  We don't even need their oil.  We're still moved by the morality of defending nations against vicious destroyers.

     That's what government's supposed to do.  Whether you're talking about local police or national force, we exist to protect people from evil aggressors.

     By the way, down in verses 6 and 7, he says, "Pay your taxes."  Why does he say that?  Because it takes a lot of money to support this government enterprise.

     There's a third component, and I'm going to say more about Romans 13 next time, a lot more.  There's a third component that we have to put into war.  This is more mysterious, less discernable, just as real.  That is that war is divine judgment.  War is divine judgment.

     The reality is, my friends, that the wages of sin is what?  Death.  That is a divine principle.  All war, I believe, all war, to some degree or another, expresses God's wrath on man's sin, directly or indirectly.  What do I mean by that?

     Some wars in history have been commanded by God.  In other words, there were times in the Old Testament when God said to Israel, "Go to war.  Go over here, wipe that people out."  God also said, "Not only do I want you to go, I'm going to lead you.  I'm going to lead you."  And so there are wars in which God was the commander in chief, and God directly commanded those wars to be fought.

     And then there are the other wars, which are indirectly used by God to enact His judgment on nations.  To give you another perspective, one which you must have about God, because everybody today is talking about the fact that these religious leaders are saying, "God is love and God is kindness and God is peaceful and this should never be a reflection of God," and so forth and so on, let me give you another perspective, if I might.

     In Exodus 15:3, God Himself is called a man of war, a man of war.  In Numbers 21:14, there's the mention of a fascinating piece of literature which is not available to us now, but it is called, listen to this, the Book of the Wars of the Lord.  Numbers 21:14, the Book of the Wars of the Lord. 

     Apparently, the ancient people of God kept a book which consisted of victory songs written to be sung in celebration of the triumphs of the Lord in the conquest of Canaan.  And whenever there would be another battle won, they would write another song and sing it to the glory of the God of war, who had won a victory.

     Several times in the Old Testament, wars that God commanded are called Yahweh wars, God wars, Yahweh being the old Hebrew name for God.  I Samuel 18:17, for example, I Samuel 25:28, God wars.  Scripture even speaks about God warring.  Psalm 68:21, "God will shatter the head of His enemies."

     Isaiah 42:13 says, "The Lord will go forth like a warrior.  He will arouse His zeal like a man of war.  He will utter a shout.  Yes, he will raise a war cry.  He will prevail against his enemies."

     There were times when God told Israel to defend herself against attack, such as in Ezekiel 17, verses 18 and following, Numbers chapter 21, God says, "You defend yourself against attack."  That's what government's for, to protect these people from an evil aggressor.

     There were times when God said, "You fight against wickedness."  Numbers 31:7, "You go against that nation and remove them, because they are a cancer, and while they may not be directly attacking you militarily, they are destroying you through the cancer of their ideology and idolatry."

     And God told Joshua, when you go to the land of Canaan, Joshua chapter 1 and again in chapter 6, "Take that land by military force."  You say, "Isn't Joshua and the people of God the evil aggressor?"  No.  Again, they are the just protectors.  You say, "Why?"  Because the life, behavior, conduct of the Canaanites was a cancer on human society.  And God says they must be removed.

     In David's Song of Praise in II Samuel 22:35, he says this, "The Lord trains my hands for battle so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze."  That's repeated, by the way, in Psalm 18:34.  Later, in Psalm 144, verse 1, David said, "Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle."  And in Numbers 32:20, the people of Israel were told, "Arm yourselves before the Lord for war." 

     A very significant chapter on war is Deuteronomy chapter 20, and, while I don't want to take time to read the whole chapter, I do want to mention the first few verses.  Deuteronomy 20, it goes like this, verse 1, "When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you. 

     "Now it shall come about that when you are approaching the battle the priest shall come near and speak to the people, and he shall say to them, 'Hear, oh, Israel, you are approaching the battle against your enemies today.  Do not be fainthearted.  Do not be afraid or panic or tremble before them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you.'"

     And so what am I saying?  That during God's particular time of setting Israel in the land as His people and preserving the righteous seed, He sent them to war.  There are times when God is a man of war.  By the way, the rest of the chapter, chapter 20 of Deuteronomy, gives the rules for war, what to do with captives, what to do to the people, what to do with the spoils, what to do with the trees and shrubbery, who should and who should not serve.  God laid out some very clear directions for war.

     So under God's leadership, either by direct command to defend yourself or to go and cut out, as it were, the cancer of that society, there were times when God sent His people, Israel, to war, to protect themselves or their allies, or to cut out some destructive culture.  And so they fought battles and they fought wars with God's help.

     And if you look at the history of Israel, for example, take the time of the conquest of Canaan and the settling, there are many, many wars.  During that period, they destroyed the wicked Canaanites, they had to fight continually battle after battle after battle against the Philistines. 

     And then not only were those people who really lived in the territory and really possessed the land, such as the Canaanites or the Philistines, but there were nomadic tribes, nomadic tribes moving around all the time, threatening the life of Israel.  And, of course, you know, behind all of this is the great orchestrator of the death of Israel, namely Satan, who seeks to destroy Israel at all times.  And so they had to battle these nomadic tribes, like the Amalekites and the Midianites and the Ammonites and the Arameans, for self-preservation. 

     And then when you get out of the settlement period, you move into the period of the monarchies, where they had the kings, the wars continue, with some of the same people, particularly the Philistines.  And then you add wars with the Moabites.  But, beyond that, the powerful, destructive forces of the Assyrians and the Babylonians that came and would've literally swallowed them up, in fact, were victorious, on occasion. 

     And when you study their history between the Old and the New Testament, history not recorded in Scripture, the time of the Romans and the Greeks, you read, like Flavius Josephus' writing of that time, who talks about endless wars with Greeks and Romans, the last and worst of which occurred in the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by the Romans.

     Now, it needs to be said, then, that through all of the history of Israel, for the sake of the preservation of that people, to be a witness nation to the world and through whom the Messiah would come, and to whom ultimately God would give a kingdom in the future, for the sake of the preservation of that nation, which Satan wanted to obliterate from the face of the earth in order to thwart the plan of God, wars had to be fought, wars of defense and wars of surgical purification, just wars, to protect themselves.

     It also needs to be said, and I hasten to say this, that when Israel forgot God, and when they became wicked, they lost the wars.  And there were many of those wars.  In fact, you could say perhaps in all of those wars, judgment was a two-edged sword, because many of the Jewish people died as well.  And God was continually reminding them of their own wickedness.  And sometimes they were slaughtered greatly as God turned the wicked nation on them to be the executioner of His judgment to them.

     So we could say God has used wicked, destructive nations to judge the less wicked, such as Assyria, who is called an axe in God's hand in Isaiah 10:5, such as the Chaldeans.  You remember when Habakkuk was saying, "Lord, work in your people.  Work in their hearts.  Turn them around.  Revive them."  And God says, "I'm going to do something."  And he says, "What are you going to do?"  "I'm going to bring the Chaldeans to wipe them out."  And Habakkuk, he says, "How can you do that?  How can you use a worse people, the Chaldeans, pagan, wretched, bitter and hasty nation, how can you use them to judge your own people, who aren't as bad?"  Sometimes God does that.  Sometimes God does that.

     Furthermore, sometimes the Jews were used to execute their own people in civil war.  One of the most shocking accounts in Scripture is in the 32^nd chapter of Exodus, in verse 25.  After the terrible sin of the people in making the golden calf, Moses comes down.  He saw the people were, verse 25, "out of control."  Out of control.  What does that mean?  That means that selfish gratification had conquered conscience.  And they were gratifying themselves. 

     And Aaron had let them get out of control.  What do you mean by that?  Aaron was supposed to be government.  Aaron was supposed to rule.  Aaron was supposed to bear a sword, keep order.  He didn't do it.  "So Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, 'Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.' 

     "And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him, and he said to them, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "Every man of you put his sword on his thigh and go back forth from gate to gate in the camp and kill every man his brother and every man his friend and every man his neighbor."'  So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about 3,000 men of the people fell that day."  They killed their own people, their own relatives, their own family members.  That was an act of God.

     We can say, well, yes, God used Israel as a tool of judgment against evil, aggressive nations who polluted the human stream and culture and who defied His holiness.  Yes, that's true.  But sometimes God turned the tables and used those pagan nations as tools of judgment on Israel, and sometimes God turned Israel on itself in its own judgment.

     I believe in all wars God is directly involved.  It is mysterious to try to assess all the components of what He might be doing.  But I'll tell you one thing.  While on the one hand, we may think America is the just protector of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, et al, and we may think that America is the execution sword used by God against Iraq, and there's a sense in which that is true, that does not at all protect us from the judgment of God being turned on us for our sin as well.

     And, if anything, this war should be a wakeup call to America.  Because as we lose our own young we have to take stock of the reality of the fact that this nation has every right to feel the judgment of God, and, sad as it is to say, the young generation now over there in the armed forces fighting this battle is the most hedonistic, desolute generation this nation has ever known in its history.  They are not a holy people. 

     And whatever comes against America should awaken us to the reality, the only reason we haven't suffered the wholesale judgment of God through some war is because God is presently merciful.  <