Whose Side Is God On?

0:01 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good morning everyone. It is Friday, June the twenty first, twenty twenty four. It is currently eleven nineteen am Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. And I did say good morning, right, I didn't say good afternoon, right, So good morning everyone. It is Friday, June the twenty first, twenty twenty four. It is currently eleven nineteen am Central Time, and I'm still coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, I had to offer a little correction there just to ensure that I was very clear, right, just to ensure that I gave you the right date in the right time, and that every everything was right. Everything was correct. So I had to just do a little extra there to make sure that there was clarity, to make sure I was understood. Well, let me do that right here in my introduction. So for those who are new to this podcast, I want to make it very clear before you, before I'm done with this episode, there's a high probability you're going to start typing out an email or a comment, and it's going to be very negative, and you may attack me.

1:32 But before you attack me, let me just lay down some very important information. I served in the United States Military for nineteen years, almost nineteen years active duty. My career came to an end, not by my choice, but because, well, something happened to me in the military. I almost died. I was medically retired, and then I declared one hundred percent disabled. So I'm a disabled vet. All right. I have my military retirement. They retired me medically, and then I have my disability. I'm very grateful for all the things that I do have. But I served my country for nineteen years active duty. I wore the uniform, I was deployed.

2:21 We could go to all the things that I did in the United States Military. I want to lay that down, not because I want any credit and I don't want to thank you. What I simply want it to be said is don't attack me. Is oh, you don't care about this country. You've never sacrificed anything for this country. You hate America. Why don't you use pack your bags and leave. Why don't you just get out and all the crazy things people will say to you if you offer any criticism at all, or anything that's even perceived to be critical. Well, let me make it very clear, this is a theology podcast. I do not look at this at the from a patriotic point of view. I look at it from a thiological point of view. I don't look at things from a nationalistic point of view. I look at it from a theological point of view. So I say all of that to ask a very important question. Why is it that many American Christians perceive that anytime America is involved in a military conflict, Revolutionary war, civil War, Nom Korea, Desert Storm, World War one, World War two, or World War two, world War one, and anything that we were involved in, any conflict that we were involved. I know I wouldn't go in chronological order in all of those, but you get the idea, any military conflict that we're involved in. Why is it that many Americans have this mindset that God is on our side? God hey worked

4:00 out, because God worked it out in such a way that we that we would be victorious and that the landing would work. The currents were right, the weather it was, it was a divine intervention, God worked it that way. Well, if you say it was divine intervention and God worked it that way, why didn't God intervene much earlier? I don't know, to stop the you know, the killing of six million Jews? Why did millions of people have if God was intervening? And why do you believe God was intervening on our side or on their side or that? And how do you determine whose side God is on in a military conflict? Well, if we win, God is on our side. Well, what if they won fifteen battles? Well, it's determined by who wins a war? Is that how it's determined? Do we perceive God is on our side simply because well it's our side, so therefore God is on our side? Because the other side may perceive God is on their side. Whose side was God on of on September of the eleventh, two thousand and one? Whose side was God on during the Oklahoma Oklahoma City bombing? Whose side was God on during Sandy Hook or or Columbine or any other mass shooting? Whose side was God on the shooters? Whose side? We have this kind of mentality that God is always

5:39 on And I don't know why how we get to declare which side God is on? We just say God is on our side. And even in the military sometimes it would bother me greatly when we were getting ready if there was a military situation where people being deployed, it's almost like God is on our side. Are our cause is just? God is defending us? God will protect Well? Who said God is on we invaded a rock under the pretense that there were weapons of mass destruction. They weren't there, So God was on our side. If God was on our side, I wish she would have intervened and let someone know, Hey, there's no weapons of mass destruction there. Maybe we shouldn't be going whose side is God on? Everyone thinks God is on their side, which bothers me because that turns God not into the eternal creator of heaven and earth, the sovereign one over all things.

6:33 It turns God into nothing more than a tool for propaganda. We use God as a tool to promote our own agenda, or to give us idea that our cause, our agenda is the righteous one and the correct one. We're simply using God for propaganda, for motivation, for you know, to to inspire we're going to fight this war because God is on our side. I do not like that. Now we know, as a Christian, God is on our side, and God is on our side in the sense of our justification. Right, if God is for me, who can be against me?

7:15 Who can lay a charge at God's a leg? Because God is the one who justifies. God is on my side and justifying because by faith, the righteousness of His son is imputed to my account. So I stand in Christ Jesus. But when it comes to military combat, when it comes to national war, when it comes to conflict, everyone thinks God is on their side. That's what is so bizarre to me. God they you know, everyone believes God is on side. The Ukrainians will believe God is on their side, Russians will believe God is on their side. I guess maybe if you're an atheistic nation, then a fully atheistic nation, then you wouldn't believe God is on your side. I guess maybe in that particular case. So I really get kind of bothered or disturbed by that, because it's almost as if we speak for God, and who are we to speak for God?

8:16 Now? If I open my Bible, If I open my Bible and I read something that seems to imply God is on the side of a specific nation. Then okay, well, the one nation God was ever on a clear side of that would be the nation of Israel, right and not the United States of America. But there's this kind of mentality within American Christians that, hey, God is on our side. God is on our side right now, my daughter is not on my side by calling my iPad during a live broadcast. But okay, you get the idea. But I mean, seriously, though, I think it's something to consider. And I know that bothers people, and I know people get very upset by that and get very irritated by that, But I think it's a it's a worthy discussion to have.

9:09 And the reason I'm having this discussion is because I don't know what time it was, But I grabbed this sermons two point oh app remember twenty twenty four. This is the Sermon's two point oh app sermon challenge, And I found a sermon that says, you'd you'd better I don't even know how to say it that way, you'd better know your history, you better know your history, you had better know your history, you better know your history. And so I thought, well, that's an interesting title. You'd better know your history. Okay, all right, Okay, sounds like something you know, someone older would say, you'd better know your history. I don't know if i'd ever Yeah, sounds weird saying you'd better know your well, you should know your history. You you better know your history. I don't know.

9:56 We could talk about the title, but okay, so I I saw it, But the idea of that I should know my history caught my attention because I love history. I love history. I love church history. I love history about theology. I love history about philosophy. I love history about the great Country of Texas almost said state. I love history about the United States of America. I love history about so many specific places. Everyone knows. I love Salem, Massachusetts. Everybody knows I love that city. I love it, love it, love it and the history there. I've talked about how the history of the Alamo has impacted me. Some places I just walk into and I just feel like I'm there, like I just am transported there, and I'm just I just very become impacted by history. So when I saw You'd Better Know your History as a title, I was like, Oh, I wonder if this is going to be about church history. Ah, that could be interesting. So I had no idea where it went. But as I started playing it, I made it about five minutes and he made a comment. Now I don't think this is not the thesis of his sermon, but he made a comment that seems to imply that God was on a specific side during a specific military conflict. And it just brought these issues up, like why do we think that? Why do we think that? Why do we always believe that whatever conflict we get in as a nation, that

11:26 God happened just happens to be a you know, a American flag wearing supporter. I just I don't. I don't understand that. I just don't. I just don't. I just don't. I just don't get that. I know, we always want to believe that our cause is just and our cause is righteous. But even if we believe our cause is just and righteous, does that mean God is on our side? And if God is on our side, why don't we imply that God is intervening at different times? Well, if God is intervening, he could intervene and stopped the entire war and conflict that slaughtered who knows hundreds of thousands of millions of people depending on which war military conflicts you're referring to. So it's always weird, like, well, God intervened here, Well how come he didn't intervene in the fifteen battles before it that cost a million people a million people's eyes. But all of a sudden he intervened at this point. Well why did he intervene at this point? Because it turned out the way you wanted or we were victorious, so then God intervened there, but he didn't intervene and all of these other battles that we lost, Like the whole thing is so subjective and weird, and when you're starting and when you try to talk to people, the logical consistency just falls to the wayside and it just becomes this mumbled like it just almost becomes like mindless propaganda. But I want you to at least hear the part that sparked my thinking about this today. And again, there's all these

13:00 military conflicts happening around the world, and you know, it's just I just sometimes don't understand American Christian's perspective and and but listen, don't say that I'm not patriotic, don't say I didn't serve my country. That would be utter fault. It makes me mad when people attack me that way. I'm like, no, I serve my country for nineteen years wearing the uniform. Okay, I'm a disabled vet because of what happened to me, so don't don't go after me. And it's not even an attack upon our country. It's an attack upon people's weird philological approach when they're nationalism and their patriotism overrides philological concerns. That's my issue. So let's hear this and you can tell me if you agree or disagree. Are you ready? Here we go? Just turned to Ezekiel. Wow, where did that come from? The getting me esther? Sorry? And exodus? Wow. I have been in camp for two weeks, so your kids are getting to me. I love them.

14:11 I love them dearly. It's been a blast. And as you notice, I don't have much of a voice, so my five year old son is trying to make that. I think I'm not going to preach long. Sorry, Bud, I don't know. Got my water. We'll see what happens. But as far as camp goes, if I if I accidentally start humming a song, tonight while I'm preaching forgive me. Let's just say we've sung this song so many times in camp that my five year old son Joshua, who hasn't even been in camp, knows it. So if it starts coming out, sorry Now. Of course you're hearing this in a lot of churches, summer camp, summer camp, summer camp, summer camp, summer camp, some aer camp, summer camp. This is like the more sermons you're listening to right now. On the sermons S two point oh, app, you're hearing vacation Bible school and camp. Vacation Bible, cool school, and camp. Now. I have a very obviously different view on church camps.

15:20 You know my view on church camps my church. My view on church camps are kids are taken, they're isolated, and they're indoctrinated, in many cases, emotionally manipulated. I'm not a fan of church camps. I'm just not. I just like, hey, we're gonna remove you from this situation. Now, we're gonna take We're gonna isolate you many cases, put away your phones. You're cut off from this and this and this and this. Now we're gonna indoctrinate you because you don't have nothing where to go. You got to listen to us. And in many cases of strong emotional manipulation occurs, and this other kids crying and they're getting emotional, and then you know, they they will make all like we're gonna I'm gonna rush hell with a water gun, and then they go back home and then we're life happens and within a month it's all gone, and then they probably feel foolish or embarrassed or think maybe it wasn't real. And I just think that there's a lot of emotional negativity that comes from church camps. Your experience. You may have absolutely loved and adored church camp. I hear some people love it and it goes great for them. I just have always seen the fallout. They go, they come back, they're all emotional, and then it all just seems to fall apart, and then they repeat the cycle, repeat the cycle, and then at some point it just seems to fall apart. So I'm not a fan of that, But there's probably ways to do church camp that's actually fun and beneficial and helpful. I'm much maybe when I was younger, I was just I was just negative over it all. I never went I had opportunities as a teenager, and I'm like, I'm not going because I kept watching all the team. I was a teenager watching the teenagers go, come back

16:51 and and watch them crumble into a million pieces. The church wasn't ever there to pick up the pieces. I don't think the church or the parents ever saw the piece. But as a teenager talking to the other teenagers, I witnessed it and I'm like, no, not doing this. And then my best friend at the time, his girl, he couldn't go to church camp that year. His girlfriend went to church camp and she came back from church camp pregnant. So something was going on at church camp that wasn't so it's such a good thing. Okay, she got pregnant at church camp. Yes, okay, And you say, well that must have been a little No, it was a very conservative church camp. It was a very conservative church camp with lots of rules, and it did not matter. So yeah, I'm not necessarily a fan of that. But you hear lots of churches talking about it right now, so you know, and you can draw your own conclusions about it. Right. How it works. The money, It takes all the money, time and effort to get the kids there, you know, And what's weird is like all these kids go to church camp year after year after year after year. Some kids go to church camp almost every year of their growing up, you know, five, six, seven, eight times. But then we hear all of these studies like, oh, the kids when they get to college, they're losing their faith. Their faith is falling apart because we've got to do better at preparing these kids for the for the secular university and for the secular world. So we need a conference for apologetics and helping prepare kids for the universe. And I'm like, they went

18:22 to church camp fifteen times. Church camp didn't prepare them for anything. What was church camp doing that? A youth group? What was youth group doing? They had vacation, Bible school, they had Sunday school. How come none of those things the church does prepares them. And so then you have to have parachurch ministries come along saying now we've got to do this to help prepare the kids for college. What is the church doing other than sending them off for fun food and activities during the summer. Like I sometimes it's like the kids who go to church camp are more philologically illiterate than the kids who don't. Well, at least that was what I witnessed. I could be wrong, maybe there's probably I'm not painting with a wide brush. I'm just saying, if the shoe fits, then wear it. I mean, some of these church camps, the kids come back and they learn a little bit of moralism and don't listen to rock and roll, and don't you know, you do better in their dating practices, but you know, don't look at porn. That maybe a lot of morality, but typically they're just still logically illiterate as they were when they are when they took off. And so that now the morality may be a good thing in some ways, but I just I don't know. I don't know. So but so he obviously has been at church camp and so, but that's not what we want to hear.

19:36 Let's see what happens if I start yelling at kids. Forgive me. I tell the kids first day at camp, I said, my job here is to run you so ragged that you fall asleep on the way home. And if I've done my job well, I will fall asleep on the way home. I've already got one almost asleep over here, so I was effective. Today apparently I'm going to do something I don't know if it's ever been done here before. I'm going to read out of a history book that's not the Bible, which, by the way, the Bible is full of history, real, actual, believable history. But as a form of introduction, my title tonight is going to be You'd better know your history, okay. Winston Churchill is kind of known for making the phrases famous. The further back you can look into history is the further forward you can look into history, and you will repeat history if you don't learn from it. I'm not quoting those exactly, but these ideas. And I was teaching my seventh and eighth Bible class this year on Pharaoh, and this just hit me pretty hard. So I figured, let's look at God's word about this tonight. I just wanted to give one quick example of history, how history repeats itself, and then get into God's word. In eighteen nineteen, you may have heard of what's

21:07 called the Panic of eighteen nineteen. It started because after the War of eighteen twelve, farmers started to earn higher prices for their crops, so many people were going West and purchasing farmland. Soon, so many farms were producing crops there was a surplus of crops. This has played out multiple times throughout history. The prices of farm products began to drop. The problem is a whole bunch of people had bought these farms with loans from banks out east that they could not pay back. And I'm oversimplifying it, I know. But as the economy titans down and the national bank titans up, banks fall, people lose their farms, and it creates a panic of eighteen nineteen and a general distrust of banks and suspicion of rapid economic growth, specifically in this area of borrowing money that you don't have to put into risky investments. Okay, let's go through a half page flip one hundred years the Great Depression. In the late nineteen twenties, newspapers carried accounts of people who had profited from get rich quick schemes, often motivated by greed. Spect You laters brought bought real estate or stocks at low prices, hoping to sell them quickly for a much higher price. And I'm not going to go into it, but basically they borrowed

22:37 money so they could get rich, and when the economy had a rough spot, a lot of people lost everything, the exact same thing that happened about one hundred and tennis years before. That history will repeat itself if you don't learn from it. I'm gonna put the history book away. The other thing. So, a couple of weeks ago, my family and I went to the Great Historic Triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown. Okay, So he reads from a history book, basically trying to show if you don't learn from history, you will repeat it. Okay, Now I don't. I guess maybe that's part of his thesis here, But his thesis is obviously the importance of history and if you don't know it, you will repeat it. Now now that I'm not so much focused on the history part of it, what, there's something I think he's about to say it right here. It's very quick, it's not his major point, it's not his major emphasis. But when I hear it, it made me think about what I talked about in my introduction. Why do we always think God is on our side? See if you can catch it. And we're doing a little audio tour of Yorktown and we're standing on the banks of the river. Yorktown is where the war, the revolution would for our purposes end, as the British would surrender and as the Americans, with the Allied French now at their aid, are pushing

24:11 back, trying to trap the British in Yorktown. I stood on the banks there by Redoubts nine and ten, looking over the York River, thinking what is wrong with these British? Why didn't they just go across the river? How hard can it be? It's a couple of miles. Well, as we're going through the audio tour, it says they and they couldn't go across the river because there was a storm and there was big waves, and they couldn't make it across the river. And so we go back to mister Brady loved, loved his little history miracles. Throughout history, God was fighting for them, and that right there is played over multiple times throughout the American Revolution.

25:02 God was fighting for them. So just dogmatically asserted God was fighting for them. God was on America's side. Now are you basing that simply on? So God literally intervened so America would win. Well, why didn't he intervene to stop the war from the first in the first place, like, why did he allow all these people to die? But no, because we won, then God was on our side. Is that the way it works? If you win a war, then automatically God is on your side go throughout history. Now, so does that mean you have to ultimately win the So if you lose fifteen battles, that's okay. God is still on your side. He just wants you to lose all of these battles. But then if you win the ultimate war, God is on your side. What makes us think God was on our side? What made our cause in the Revolutionary War so just and so right? Well? What made us the good guys and the story? What made what made America's conquest of the New World right?

26:08 Taking land from Native Americans and the slave trade, and what made us the good guys and the story? Why do we always believe God is on our side? Now? The issue is from a theological standpoint, is not, oh, I love America. It's not oh I'm an American. America is the greatest land in the world. We're not here. I'm not here to get into an argument about your love for this country. I'm here to say, how can you so dogmatically assert and speak for God when God has not revealed that in his word. And if you can just dogmatically state that, then why can't someone else state it? That is what I want you to consider. And that's what I want you to think about. Now There's more I could say, but I'm just gonna leave it right there. Now you can go find the sermon. You why owe you you D? Why O you D? You'd better know your history. You should be able to find it. You'd better know your history now you can. If you can't find it, I can send it to you. You can email me NEWSI Yahoo dot com. But I just want you to consider that mentality that we speak for God telling God which side he is or isn't on. I don't know if we're allowed to do that, because I don't know if God has

27:41 given us enough revelation for us to determine that. Because if I look up the try to find verses about the Revolutionary War my Bible, I'm not going to find it. So it means I'm drawing a conclusion that God did this, or God did this, or God did this or God did this on the basis of something other than scripture, meaning scripture than is not my final thor because now my opinion and just judging how a war turns out, I get to determine whose side God is on. Now I know I'm placing theology above patriotism. I'm placing theology above nationalism, which makes people uncomfortable, but I think it's something to consider. So I'd love to get your thoughts news.

28:26 I eff at Yahoo dot com Newsif at Yahoo dot com, I would say more, but I'll leave it there, just a spark, hopefully a conversation and a discussion and give you something to think about. Thank you for listening. Everyone, have a great day. God bless