{"id":19166,"date":"2016-10-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/the-bible-and-voting-part-14\/"},"modified":"2016-10-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T05:00:00","slug":"the-bible-and-voting-part-14","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/the-bible-and-voting-part-14\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible and Voting – Part 14"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[65],"series_event":[466],"sermon_service_type":[472],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-19166","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-proverbs","series_event-the-bible-and-voting-2016","sermon_service_type-main-service","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"The Bible and Voting - Part 14","sermon_date":"20161009","sermon_month":"10","sermon_year":"2016","sermon_notes":3989,"sermon_slides":3990,"sermon_mp3":3992,"sermon_id":"1091610628","series_or_event":466,"service_type":[472],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":65,"chapter_and_verse":"14:34","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nSUGAR LAND BIBLE CHURCH\n\nOctober 9, 2016 The Bible and Voting, Part 14\n\nProverbs 14:34\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 If we could take our Bibles and open them to the book of Genesis, chapter 9 and verse 6.\u00a0 Of course I\u2019m very excited that we\u2019re getting a chance to baptize fifteen people today.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got, actually, a whole family getting baptized.\u00a0 [clapping]\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Of course baptism as you probably know is something that takes place in the presence of witnesses so that means we need what?\u00a0 Witnesses.\u00a0 So if you have some time free this afternoon over at Wayne Pittman\u2019s house we\u2019re going to be baptizing there, a beautiful place for baptism, by the way, overlooking the lake and he\u2019s got a\u2026 I don\u2019t want to call it a Jacuzzi, it\u2019s kind of like a quasi-pool Jacuzzi, so it\u2019s going to be a lot of fun.\u00a0 We should have some maps and so forth on the name tag table for you to pick up.\n\nGenesis 9:6, the title of our message this morning is The Bible and Voting.\u00a0 Of course voting, now that we\u2019re very close, within a month or so to a national election, less than a month actually, the great maneuver is on again, the race for President, and you get a lot of polls, you get a lot of pundits, you get a lot of what they call October surprises, things like that.\u00a0 And so America today is thinking about elections; one of the great freedoms that we have is voting for our leaders.\u00a0 So in this series, which we\u2019ve entitled\u00a0 The Bible and Voting, which we\u2019ve been going through since Independence Day weekend actually, is not really to get into parties or names or candidates but it\u2019s really to get into principles.\u00a0 What does the Bible say about the great issues of the day?\n\nAnd we have looked at several principles that I think you can apply to any election, this one included, but any subsequent election, federal, state or local.\u00a0 We\u2019ve looked at a host of economic issues, about ten of them.\u00a0 These are things that the Bible speaks on, so this is not coming from a Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian viewpoint, it\u2019s coming from a Bible viewpoint.\n\nAnd from there we look at social issues, several of those the Bible speaks to.\u00a0 In fact the very issues that they\u2019re yelling about at each other on the cable shows, which have turned more into yelling matches lately than conversations, but you\u2019ll notice that the Bible actually speaks on most, if not all of these issues: abortion, same-sex marriage, those sort of things.\u00a0 And from there we moved into foreign affairs, as the United States interacts with other nations does the Bible deal with that topic at all.\u00a0 We\u2019ve looked at the fact that the Bible is against one-world government and it supports the sovereign of the nation-state, which is going to be very important today as we look at the subject of terrorism.\u00a0 The Bible has a lot to say about the morality of border enforcement.\u00a0 The Bible, and we spent probably about three weeks on this it\u2019s so important, it has a great deal to say about support for the modern state of Israel.\u00a0 And then the last issue that we\u2019re considering, I\u2019m not sure we\u2019re even going to finish it today (I thought we could but there may be a Part 15 next week), is the whole subject of peace through strength.\n\nAnd of course this subject becomes very important because one of the great issues that is happening in our time is something called terrorism.\u00a0 We have seen a number of terrorist attacks in places like 9\/11 of course, Fort Hood, the Boston marathon bomber, Orlando, Chelsea, New York, San Bernardino, these are all things that have happened in the last, actually many of them, very, very recent times.\u00a0 So terrorism and attacks on innocent civilians has almost become something that we expect and anticipate as we look at our newspaper.\u00a0 And of course terrorism is something that goes on worldwide.\u00a0 And the question is, does the Bible actually deal with this subject of terrorism?\u00a0 Nobody has learned more in this series than me; I have been astounded at how much of the Scripture deals with subjects that we wrestle with when we let is speak.\n\nSo to kind of condense our thoughts we have a six part outline that we\u2019re following.\u00a0 We looked at, number 1, Terrorism\u2019s false causes.\u00a0 You\u2019ll find that when unbelievers or people that don\u2019t have a biblical frame of mind, when they comment on terrorism they have to come up with some kind of explanation it\u2019s so grievous when it happens, so they attribute it to everything but what the Bible attributes it to.\u00a0 Some people blame it on poverty, or a lack of education, or American Imperialism; we in prior sermons have gone through each of those and explained why those aren\u2019t adequate explanations at all, which took us to number 2, what is the true cause of terrorism?\u00a0 The issue is depravity of man.\u00a0 We\u2019ve gone through several verses that indicate, particularly Mark 7:22-23 that indicates that murder is a natural emanation of the human heart and it\u2019s sinful condition.\u00a0 [Mark 7:33, \u201cdeeds of coveting and<\/em> wickedness, as well<\/em> as<\/em> deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and<\/em> foolishness. [23] All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.\u201d]\n\nAnd when that depraved nature comes in contact with what I like to call a radical ideology, we can think of Marxism, we\u2019ve talked about Islam, other types of radical ideologies which give the sin nature permission to do what it naturally wants to do and no longer acts as a restraint against the sinful impulses in a human being; you have the makings of a terrorist.\u00a0 And with every terrorist typically what you\u2019ll see, unless they\u2019re insane or something like that, you\u2019ll see that they\u2019re in contact with some radical ideology of some kind, giving their sin nature (which already exists in them) permission to vent itself in the name of a higher good.\n\nYou know, the Bible says, \u201cThere is a way that seems right\u2026 but the end thereof is\u201d what? Death.\u00a0 [Proverbs 14:12, \u201cThere is a pathway that seems right to a man, but in the end it's a road to death.\u201d Proverbs 16:25, \u201cThere is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.\u201d]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And that\u2019s the makings of a terrorist.\n\nAnd from there, since that is the true cause of terrorism we ask ourselves many times, well, what can be done to stop terrorism?\u00a0 And if you can\u2019t diagnose the problem accurately you\u2019ll never be able to come up with the right solution.\u00a0 And because there is such a lack of understanding of the depravity of man and radical ideologies what people do is they come up with strategies that do almost nothing to contain terrorism: military reduction, appeasement where you just let the bully do what it wants, dialogue, treaties, subsidies, sort of going around the world and apologizing for America.\u00a0 These are all things that have been tried and tested and what you\u2019ll discover is that they haven\u2019t curbed terrorism at all.\u00a0 In fact, terrorism is very much on the rise in spite of these things.\n\nSo then if all of this is true, and by the way, one of the reasons these other things that we\u2019ve mentioned really don\u2019t deter terrorism is because of what Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes 8:11, he says, \u201cBecause the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil.\u201d\u00a0 If a person is not going to be controlled, if their sin nature is not going to be controlled by the Scripture there has to be a greater power from without.\u00a0 You have to make people so afraid of punishment that they won\u2019t follow through with terrorist activities.\u00a0 And if the Bible itself, if an internal value system won\u2019t hold people back the only thing left is the force of the State, executing sentences rapidly, and that is the whole notion of peace through strength, allowing the governments of the world to root out terrorist activity; people knowing that if they commit such atrocities there\u2019s going to be a quick and swift and an immediate repercussion.\u00a0 That\u2019s what controls the sin nature.\u00a0 These other solutions are really not solutions at all, they miss the mark.\n\nSo that takes into now Roman numeral IV, effective deterrents to terrorism.\u00a0 Has God spoken on this subject?\u00a0 I believe He has and that\u2019s why I had you open up to the book of Genesis, chapter 9 and verse 6, which is the origin of human government.\u00a0 It\u2019s interesting that early America understood these concepts very well, and our generation, for whatever reason, we don\u2019t under\u00adstand them well.\u00a0 But Robert Charles Winthrop, who was the Speaker of the House from 1847-1849 spoke to the Massachusetts Bible Society and he made this tremendous statement: \u201cMen in a word must necessarily be controlled by a power within them or a power without them, either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or the bayonet.\u201d\n\nThere are many times that I am tempted to come into work about 85 miles an hour and I\u2019m not really thinking about people in the crosswalks\u2026 I\u2019m not in favor of running people down in crosswalks, they\u2019re just not on my mind.\u00a0 What I\u2019m interested in is getting through here or wherever as fast as I can possibly go because I\u2019m basically a self-centered person, which all of us are when we admit it.\u00a0 But what prevents me from doing such a thing and in the process of jeopardizing the lives of others is the police officer on the side of the road with the radar gun which clocks my speed.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want another speeding ticket, I don\u2019t want my insurance to go up and so consequently my hand is held back from evil which could hurt somebody because of a power from without.\n\nAnd when you understand this you begin to understand why God established the institution of human government.\u00a0 If you want to see what the world would be like without the institution of human government you look, really no further than Genesis 6:11.\u00a0 You might turn back there for just a moment.\u00a0 This is a description of what the world was like before the flood and it says this: \u201cNow the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with\u201d what? \u201cviolence.\u201d\u00a0 Bloodshed and murder existed in what I would call a \u201cwild, wild west mentality\u201d all over the earth prior to the global flood.\u00a0 God brought an end to the whole thing through the global deluge; He preserved Noah and his three sons and their respective wives in the ark. God, as you know from Sunday School, began to repopulate the earth after the flood had destroyed the earth and the world and the population at that time, but what never changed even through the environment was fixed, was the sin nature of man.\u00a0 The sin nature of man continues right on into the post-flood world.\n\nIn fact, you have a reference to it in the book of Genesis, chapter 8, notice that again, verse 21, it says, \u201cThe LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself \u2018I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his\u2019\u201d what?\u00a0 \u201cyouth; [and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.\u2019]\u201d\u00a0 Yes, the world has been changed through the flood but the sin nature of man continues on; it continues on into the post-flood population.\u00a0 So the question becomes well, what is going to prevent the world (as it repopulates) from becoming just like it was prior to the flood?\u00a0 And the answer to that equation is the institution of human government, which God Himself established.\n\nNow notice, if you will, Genesis 9:6, this is the beginning of human government in a covenant that God made with Noah.\u00a0 And God says this: \u201cWhoever sheds man's blood,\u201d now the next two words are VERY important, \u201cBy man\u201d, \u201cBy man \u00a0his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.\u201d God says what\u2019s going to happen is I\u2019m not going to directly intervene and through justice and retribution deal with every circumstance; I am delegating that authority to another institution, and this is called the institution of human government.\n\nHuman government has a responsibility to bring justice upon those who shed blood.\u00a0 Now why is that?\u00a0 Because that way people will be so afraid of the time, as we like to say, that they won\u2019t do the crime.\u00a0 That\u2019s a subject called deterrents; that literally becomes the only thing that will hold someone back from evil when they are not controlled by an internal value system called the Bible; the subject that the lawyers and the sociologists call deterrence.\u00a0 Why is God setting things up this way?\u00a0 Because man bears whose image?\u00a0 The image of God.\u00a0 An attack on another human being is actually an indirect attack on God because all human beings bear God\u2019s image.\u00a0 So God is trying to halt, He is trying to stop, He is trying to cease, if you will, the great bloodshed that existed prior to the flood and the only solution preventing the world from reverting to exactly what it was prior to the flood is the institution of human government.\u00a0 A strong government maintains peace; a government which punishes wrongdoing rapidly maintains peace.\n\nPeople say well, you\u2019re bringing the Old Testament into it, I thought we weren\u2019t under the Old Testament any more.\u00a0 Let me remind you of something very basic, and we\u2019ve covered this in prior sermons: what God said to Noah is NOT part of the Mosaic Law.\u00a0 The Mosaic Law would not be given until about 1446-1445 B.C.\u00a0 This covenant that God entered into with Noah precedes the Mosaic Law.\u00a0 It is true that the Mosaic Law was only given to the nation of Israel but not so the covenant with Noah where human government is rooted in; it was given to the whole human race.\u00a0 And just as\u00a0 you see the rainbow in the sky when it rains and we have moisture and things like that, that is a sign that the Noahic Covenant, the covenant with Noah, is still in operation; it\u2019s the origin of human government.\n\nIn other words, what I\u2019m trying to say is what God said to Noah is just as much a reality and is just as binding today as it was when God originally articulated the words to Noah in this particular covenant.\u00a0 And what you\u2019ll discover, let\u2019s go to the New Testament now, Romans 13:3-5, as Paul, now last time I checked Romans is in which testament?\u00a0 New Testament, Paul picks up on this.\u00a0 So all Paul is doing when he begins to get into the subject of government is just reiterating what God originally said to Noah.\n\nPaul writes, and in fact, I would encourage you to read verses 1-7 in their entirety on your own, we\u2019re just going to look at a few verses, verses 3-5.\u00a0 Paul says, \u201cFor rulers\u201d now he\u2019s talking there about the institution of human government, \u201care not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority?\u00a0 Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;\u00a0 [4] for it\u201d that\u2019s government, \u201cis a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword\u201d what do you do with a sword?\u00a0 You don\u2019t spank people with swords; it\u2019s an instrument of execution, \u201cfor it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.\u00a0 [5] Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake.\u201d\u00a0 The governments of the world are instituted to fulfill a basic function under God, to punish those who do evil and commend those who do right.\u00a0 That is exactly how God designed government, going back to His covenant with Noah back in Genesis 9.\u00a0 That\u2019s why those in government are called \u201cministers\u201d of God.\u00a0 Now the folks in government may not even be saved (do I get an \u201camen\u201d to that?) \u00a0But whether they know it or not they are fulfilling something that God designed for the human race as a preservative, rooted in the Noahic Covenant.\n\nAnd notice that Paul talks here about be afraid if you do wrong.\u00a0 The government\u2019s job is to make people that do wrong afraid and put them into fear because if they\u2019re not controlled by the Bible they will be controlled by a force outside.\u00a0 So it becomes almost a last resort to prevent humanity from regressing to what it was like prior to the flood.\n\nNow Paul is not the only one who talks about this.\u00a0 Notice 1 Peter 2 if you could, verses 13-14.\u00a0 Peter writes, \u201cSubmit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution,\u201d and then he starts mentioning a particular institution, this would be the institution of government, \u201cwhether to a king as the one in authority, [14] or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.\u201d\u00a0 Government exists to comment those who do right and to punish those who do evil.\u00a0 That\u2019s why government agents, those who work in government, are ministers of God; most of them probably don\u2019t even realize it.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we are to pray for governments of the world.\u00a0 We\u2019re specifically told that in 1 Timothy 2:1-4, so they can quickly and efficiently expedite their task, and the social order is maintained this way.\u00a0 [1 Timothy 2:1, \u201cFirst of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,\u00a0 [2] for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.\u00a0 [3] This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, [4] who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.\u201d]\n\nThis is the design of God.\u00a0 This is why we\u2019re called in Romans 13 to pay our taxes.\u00a0 See, as Christians we are not hostile to governments, we are not anti-government people, but we generally support the idea of government fulfilling what God says it ought to do.\u00a0 Now I realize that there are governments that abuse their power and when that happens Peter, who wrote these words, said something in Acts 5:29, \u201cWe must obey God rather than\u201d what? \u201cman.\u201d\u00a0 Should the government coerce me to do something against what God wants me to do or coerce me to do something God says stay away from, in a very narrow circumstance I\u2019m allowed in God to tell the government no although I have to pay the consequences for that.\u00a0 So the biblical position is not unlimited submission to government no matter what government says; that\u2019s not the biblical position.\u00a0 The biblical position is government has a very important role in maintaining society.\u00a0 When it functions the way God designed it, it prevents the world from progressing to what it was like prior to the flood.\n\nNow you may say well this subject of deterrence, people so afraid of a punishment that they will stay away from a crime; I mean, does this really work, all the lawyers and the sociologists and the academics, they deny that such a thing is a reality.\u00a0 Well, if you believe the Bible and you care about what the Bible says, which obviously you do or you wouldn\u2019t be here this morning, what you\u2019ll discover in the Bible is deterrence is biblical, it works.\u00a0 I would direct your attention to Deuteronomy 13:10-11.\u00a0 Now true, this is the Mosaic Law, but the Mosaic Law\u00a0 under Israel had punishments built into it and God says those punishments will keep the Israeli\u2019s away from certain horrible acts.\u00a0 It talks about one such sin, and God through Moses says, [Deuteronomy 13:10] \u201cSo you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.\u201d\u00a0 Notice this next sentence,\u00a0\u00a0 [11] \u201cThen all Israel will hear and\u201d what?\u00a0 \u201cbe afraid, [and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.\u201d]\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that what Paul said back in Romans 13, the government agent brings the sword for purposes of instilling fear.\u00a0 Why do I have to be motivated by fear?\u00a0 Because that\u2019s the only thing I\u2019ll listen to many times, given my depraved nature.\u00a0 I\u2019m so interested as a depraved person in self-preservation that I\u2019ll stay away from crime simply to preserve myself.\u00a0 That\u2019s the subject of deterrence which is a workable idea.\u00a0 Moses says that \u201call Israel and be afraid\u201d and will what? \u201cnever again do such a wicked thing\u201d among you.\n\nPunishment when executed swiftly, quickly, efficiently and fairly has a tremendous impact on the sin nature, keeping it under control, preventing another attack on an image bearer or God, preventing violence that was so freely wielded in the pre flood world.\u00a0 This is the biblical position, if you will, on the institution of human government.\u00a0 God has a lot to say, as you discover in His Word, about the institution of human government.\n\nWayne Grudem, in a wonderful book that I\u2019ve been using quite a bit, called Politics -- According to the Bible, [<\/em>Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture.]<\/em>\u00a0 Wayne Grudem, a conservative evangelical theologian writes this: \u201cNow if a government is commanded by God to protect its citizens from the robber or the thief who comes from within a country then certainly it also has an obligation\u00a0to protect its citizens against thousands of murderers and thieves who come as an army from\u201d somewhere\u2026 where? \u201coutside the nation, therefore a nation has a moral obligation to defend itself against foreign attackers who would come and kill and conquer and subjugate the people of that nation.\u201d\n\nSo what Grudem is saying is because God has authorized government through the threat of force to maintain the social order within its boundaries does it not also have the same right to hunt down and root out villains that come from the outside and threaten a nation?\u00a0 And this goes back to an earlier study we did about the nation\/state.\u00a0 God, as we saw at the tower of Babel, formed the independent nation\/state; His design was each would have its own sovereignty and freedom to fulfill its basic function.\n\nThere isn\u2019t any talk here about how a nation has to somehow go and genuflect before some kind of world body genuflect or world community before it acts to fulfill its basic functions and obligations.\u00a0 And this is what we call the whole doctrine of peace through strength.\u00a0 In fact, one of my favorite lines in American history comes from Teddy Roosevelt, who said \u201cSpeak softly but carry a\u201d what? \u201ca big stick.\u201d\u00a0 You want a strong and viable military, not for bloodshed but to prevent bloodshed.\u00a0\u00a0 And this begins to help shape and develop a proper perspective on what the role of government actually is.\u00a0 There is a big difference between a strong President and a weak President.\u00a0 A weak President, by and large, that does not understand what his role is has a tendency, with all sorts of glowing language of peace, has a tendency to create greater instability because the bad apples of the world know they can get away with an awful lot and the deterrent factor is gone.\u00a0 And simply moving around the world with all of these different strategies we talked about earlier, military reduction, appeasement, dialogue, treaties, subsidies to sworn enemies, apology tours, these don\u2019t create peace.\u00a0 They create a lack of peace.\u00a0 It is the strength of the arm of government as the design of God which brings forth greater peace.\n\nIf you want an example of this all you have to do is go back to 1979 where in Iran, as America\u2019s embassy there was attacked, American hostages were held for 444 days against their will.\u00a0 And it was during that time I would contend that we had a very weak President, in that case the President\u2019s name was Jimmy Carter.\u00a0 And he did all the negotiations and all the dialogue and all of the promises and the American people, rightfully so in my view, voted him out of office.\u00a0 And in came a different President with a completely different philosophy who argued from the position of peace through strength and the exact day that he was sworn into office, remember what happened?\u00a0 The Iranians released all of our hostages; it took less than a few hours.\n\nThat is the difference in the world that transpires when you have someone with a mindset of peace through strength and someone else who really doesn\u2019t understand human depravity.\u00a0 And oh how we need to go back to this simple idea of peace through strength and see it actually as a Bible-based idea.\u00a0 You may not have seen this since the news media did not pick this up; this very early on in this year, ten United States sailors were briefly detained by the American military last week (this is a January 18th<\/sup> article) and held at gunpoint, and had a verbal exchange with Iranian personnel before they were released, the U.S. military said Monday.\u00a0 The U.S. soldiers who were aboard two patrol craft were detained by Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard on January 12th<\/sup> when they inadvertently entered Iranian territorial waters.\u00a0 They were released the next day after being held for about fifteen hours.\n\nLook at how they were on their knees there, our people, at gunpoint.\u00a0 It\u2019s a shocking thing to see, especially when\u2026 it brings back memories, does it not, of the 444 days our hostages were held against their will back in 1979.\u00a0 This is the fruit or the product of a totalitarian regime that really has no fear of the United States of America or any other country for that matter because we\u2019re drifting away from a basic biblical concept of peace through strength.\u00a0 I would argue that the world today is more dangerous than it\u2019s ever been.\u00a0 When I was a college student, let me read to you about an event that happened in 1986, April 5, 1986, \u201cThree people were killed and 230 were injured at the Label Discoth\u00e8que was bombed in West Belin. \u00a0The entertainment venue was commonly frequented by United States<\/a> soldiers, and two of the dead and 79 of the injured were American servicemen. Libya<\/a>\u201d that should ring a bell, Libya, isn\u2019t that where we had the whole Bengasi fiasco not too long ago?\u00a0 \u201cLibya was accused of sponsoring the bombing, by the US and US President Ronald Reagan<\/a> ordered retaliatory strikes<\/a> on Tripoli<\/a> and Benghazi<\/a> in Libya ten days later. The strikes reportedly killed at least 15 people, including Colonel Kaddafi,\u201d the mastermind at the time behind this terrorist activity in the Berlin Discoth\u00e8que.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201c\u2026including Colonel Kaddafi\u2019s adopted daughter.\u00a0 A 2001 trial\u201d see, this is the problem here, we have a trial in 2001 and the incident happened when?\u00a0 1986.\u00a0 We\u2019re not seeing, may times, swift justice.\u00a0 \u201cA 2001 trial in the US found that the bombing had been \u2018planned by the Libyan secret service and the Libyan Embassy.\u2019\u00a0 Because of the consistent application of the United States President Reagan\u2019s peace through strength doctrine against sponsors of terrorism, Kaddafi largely remained silent and nonassertive in the subsequent decades.\u201d\n\nIsn\u2019t it interesting that when there was a rapid response to something that was clearly documented as terrorism that it had a tendency to shut the mastermind of this terrorist activity down for decades. In fact, Kaddafi was so quiet in the following decades I forgot all about this incident until he was murdered recently, because of an uprising in his own country.\u00a0 But peace through strength actually works.\u00a0 And I remember at the time, I was just a young na\u00efve college student, I remember in the university that I was in all of the protests, all of the anti-American protests that were happening because we dared to fight back against what Libya had done.\u00a0 And we went after terrorists with force.\u00a0 I remember everybody saying how un-Christian that is, how unloving it is.\u00a0 People liked to quote the Sermon on the Mount, I\u2019ll talk to you about that in just a minute, how they misused that.\n\nBut the fact of the matter is, I believe then and I believe now, that the government at that time was fulfilling its God-ordained function under the Noahic Covenant and it kept the world safer as evidenced by the fact that Kaddafi disappeared from the scene in terms of influence, not just for a year or two but for subsequent decades, more than two decades.\u00a0 Peace through strength!\u00a0 Speak softly and carry a big stick!\n\nI remember being in the office of my reader, Dr. Harold Hoehner, a brilliant man, he was my dissertation reader, one of the three, he was a very conservative gentleman, he\u2019s gone on to be with the Lord, I loved him dearly, but he was very liberal in his political beliefs; I was very conservative in my political beliefs and he figured that out, and one time he invited me into his office for a conversation which really wasn\u2019t a conversation at all, it was more like Andy in the lion\u2019s den, and he starts all of a sudden just going off on the cold war and how Reagan was completely wrong to build up the defenses during that time because we would have won the cold war anyway, because after all, the Soviet Union, as he talked about, was a paper tiger and it was getting ready to collapse anyway so the only thing we bankrupted was ourselves in the 1980\u2019s military buildup.\n\nThis is very common from many, many people.\u00a0 I was sort of surprised to hear this from Harold Hoehner, given his very strong views in the Bible, but listen to this; this is from Strobe Talbot, a very liberal individual.\u00a0 He says, \u201cThe Soviet Union collapsed\u2026, the cold war ended almost overwhelmingly because of the internal contradictions or pressures within the Soviet Union and the Soviet\u2019s system itself.\u00a0 And even if Jimmy Carter had been reelected and followed by Walter Mondale, something like what we have now seen would probably have happened anyway. \u201c\n\nIn other words, the peace through strength doctrine is something that\u2019s in our minds, it really doesn\u2019t effectively work.\u00a0 And many Americans listen to something like that, whether it\u2019s said on a talk show, an interview, sometimes over a pulpit, and they start to buy into that.\u00a0 Until you actually read what high ranking members of the Soviet Union said themselves about the military buildup in the 1980\u2019s.\u00a0 Here\u2019s some Russian names, I\u2019m not going to pronounce very well but bear with me:\u00a0 Oleg Kalugin, former KGB agent says this:\u00a0 \u201cAmerican policy in the 1980\u2019s was a catalyst for the clash of the Soviet Union.\u00a0 It caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.\u201d \u00a0In other words, Reagan, through peace through strength, won the cold war without firing a shot.\u00a0 That\u2019s the peace through strength idea.\n\nYegenny Novikov, Senior member of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, says this: The Reagan policies were a major factor in the demise of the Soviet Union.\u00a0 Alexander Bessmertnykhtold Princeton Conference attendees that programs like the strategic defense initiative accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union.\n\nThis is what I believe the Bible is talking about in terms of peace through strength.\u00a0 I am reluctant to bring up names of political figures because people may like a particular President, not like a particular President, and that really is not my point.\u00a0 It\u2019s to direct us back to a tried and tested formula that God Himself established.\u00a0 And if the bad apples of the world, who are wrapped up in some sort of ideological persuasion that tells them to do in the name of a higher good what they\u2019re sin nature always wants to do, then God has ordained human government itself for the purpose of deterrence.\u00a0 Without human government operating in this way the world becomes exactly like it was, filled with violence prior to the flood.\u00a0 And as we\u2019ve moved away from this principle, would you not agree that the world is less safe and less destabilized today than it\u2019s ever been.\n\nNow I know what many of you are thinking, wait a minute now, hold the phone, I\u2019ve been told from my denomination, or my pastor, or the book that I\u2019m reading that the Bible teaches pacifism.\u00a0 Pacifism is this idea that it is wrong to go to war for any circumstance, no matter what, because it\u2019s un-Christian.\n\nHere are some very common arguments that you will run into with pacifists.\u00a0 They\u2019ll say this: violence begets violence.\u00a0 And they talk about a cycle of violence; if one group is violent and another country responds with violence then that just creates a climate of violence.\u00a0 I don\u2019t find that to be true at all; I find that the wicked rulers of the world, whether it be Kadaffi or on a much larger scale, Adolf Hitler, their hands were actually held back from greater violence because of the concept of peace through strength.\n\nAnd people say well, why don\u2019t you just trust the Lord, I mean, why do you have to argue for a political point of view?\u00a0 Aren\u2019t\u00a0 you a Christian?\u00a0 You ought to just trust the Lord.\u00a0 Well, as my dad liked to tell me, trust the Lord but row away from the rocks.\u00a0 Of course we should trust the Lord but I want you to understand something, that the Lord Himself has ordained an institution.\u00a0 Trusting the Lord is allowing that institution to do what God has already established it to do.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a person that says you know\u2026 and there are people like this, all my bills are piling up, I\u2019m behind on my payments, finances are drifting low and I usually say well, have you ever tried to do something creative?\u00a0 And they say like what?\u00a0 Well, like get a job!\u00a0 Oh no, no, I\u2019m not going to do that, I\u2019m trusting the Lord.\u00a0 Well, the problem with that mindset is God Himself has ordained the institution of labor to provide for your family, so to simply say I\u2019m going to trust the Lord is to ignore how God has established things in our fallen world.\u00a0 To simply say I\u2019m going to trust the Lord is to ignore the institutions that He has given us to maintain peace.\n\nOne of the big arguments today, and this was very vociferous at the time of our response to 911 with the invasion of Iraq and then Afghanistan, people said all of the time, you have no right to invade those countries to root out terrorism.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Because you ought to get this issue resolved through a world court; there ought to be global opinion in that.\u00a0 So here are some words of Jim Wallace.\u00a0 Jim Wallace, I\u2019ve mentioned him before, is what you would call a member of the religious left.\u00a0 He wrote a book actually, called God\u2019s Politics<\/em>.\u00a0 He is, and the checking I\u2019ve done on him he is the number one spiritual advisor today to the current President of the United States.\u00a0 You see, as much as everybody today throws out his boogieman of the religious right and the power of the religious right, the fact of the matter is it\u2019s not the religious right that is in ascendency today; it is the religious left.\u00a0 The religious right would be people who would use the Bible to promote a conservative social agenda.\u00a0 The religious left is just as influential, perhaps even more influential in comparison to the right, using the Bible to promote a progress or a leftist or a liberal agenda.\n\nAnd this is what Wallace says in his book, God\u2019s Politics<\/em>.\u00a0 He says this is\u2026 now here\u2019s some commentary first by Gruden, he says \u201cThis is why pacifists such as Wallace are actually unbiblical when they say that nations like the United States should not act alone but\u201d (quote) \u201cnot use unilateral action to defend themselves.\u201d\u00a0 You ought to learn that phrase, \u201cunilateralism,\u201d because that is what\u2019s being denied and demonized today.\u00a0\u00a0 Unilateralism is a nation acting within its sovereignty to protect its own citizens.\u00a0 People today that have a globalist mindset don\u2019t want unilateralism; what they want is something called multilateralism where free countries don\u2019t even have a right to assert themselves and act to fulfill basic God-ordained functions unless they get some sort of stamp of approval from the world as a whole.\u00a0 That\u2019s called multilateralism.\n\nAnd what I\u2019m saying is the Bible doesn\u2019t teach multilateralism; it teaches unilateralism.\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0 \u00a0the more you drift into multilateralism the more you drift into something that man has already tried, called the tower of what? Babel, which one day the antichrist will reconstruct.\u00a0 Today the nations \u00a0of the earth are being told over and over again that they can\u2019t act within their own power and sovereignty to protect their own people, they have to genuflect to some global stamp of authority. I\u2019m trying to say that that is setting the stage for the antichrist, that mindset.\u00a0 That is the very thing that God disrupted at the tower of Babel, which many people today are seeking to reassert.\n\nWallace goes on and he says: \u201cThe United States should rather have gone to a world court to weigh facts and make judgments with effective multinational law enforcement.\u201d\u00a0 Elsewhere, Wallace wants to depend on a much more powerful (quote) \u201cinternational law and global force\u201d (close quote).\u00a0 Wallace says that \u201conly such a world court with effective power will be able to protect us.\u201d\n\nMay I just say something to you that God has spoken on this?\u00a0 When you study, as we have talked about, the authority that God has vested with the individual nation\/state, when people start talking like this you should automatically think that something is not right.\u00a0 This is contradicting the very nature of God\u2019s social order, which is through the independent nation\/state; this is the design of God.\n\nLet me let you in on a little secret about the world court, and we might as well throw the United Nations into the mix.\u00a0 I like what Israel calls the U.N., the United Nothing.\u00a0 The United Nations and the world court is filled with people that have a value system that\u2019s totally different than yours.\n\nWhy do I say that?\u00a0 Most of them are what we would call Islamic; in fact, they assert such authority within the United Nations that there\u2019s actually a name given to them, called Islamic Cooperation where they can get together and coalesce as nations and vote a certain way.\u00a0 That\u2019s why there are so many rulings in the United Nations that go against the state of Israel, Islam as we have talked about being an opponent or an enemy of the nation of Israel.\u00a0 Many nations in the United Nations or the World Court are what you would call Marxist nations, or recovering Marxist nations, where they\u2019ve tried the Marxist experiment and it\u2019s bankrupted them, so they don\u2019t believe in free markets; they don\u2019t believe in ownership of private property, they don\u2019t believe in a capitalistic system, all of which I believe, as I\u2019ve tried to defend, are biblical ideas.\n\nBeyond that, many of these nations are so poverty stricken that they look at the United States as the great Imperialist bully sheerly out of eyes of covetousness and jealousy.\u00a0 And so there is always a mindset in these other nations to somehow bring America down, to make what they would call the playing field level.\u00a0 Now if that\u2019s the way people in these international bodies think you can submit your decisions one after another to some sort of world body and you are never going to get a fair shake.\u00a0 In fact, one of our Presidents, recent Presidents, George W. Bush, our 43rd<\/sup> President, actually tried to go to the United Nations to secure the world\u2019s approval before invading Iraq and Afghanistan.\u00a0 And he found that body was so scandal ridden and there was so much pay for play going on that he actually began to call that body irrelevant, and he said I can\u2019t work with this body, I\u2019m going to have to act unilaterally.\n\nNow there were other nations that joined us but when you go into Europe, and I was in seminary at the time and I had some friends from Europe that would tell me about the climate in Europe and they would say I want you to understand something, you may like your President, George W. Bush but he is looked at like Adolf Hitler all over Europe, and all over Europe you can hear propaganda, one piece pf propaganda after another demonizing George Bush.\u00a0 In fact, there\u2019s an entire book written about this, if you have an interest in it, by John Gibson.\u00a0 The title of the book is Hating America, The New Global Sport<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a documentation of all of the inflammatory rhetoric happening internationally when George W. Bush was President.\n\nI realize that George W. Bush had problems and issues; I\u2019m not trying to defend every little nook and cranny of his administration.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to get you to understand that the man was hated by the globalists. What was his crime?\u00a0 In fact, George W. Bush can\u2019t travel anywhere he wants to go in the world.\u00a0 Did you know that?\u00a0 Because he knows that if he travels to certain locations in the world he will be immediately prosecuted for war crimes.\u00a0 That\u2019s why he\u2019s so comfortable (probably) in his ranch there in Crawford, Texas; he can\u2019t go too far from there.\n\nBut this is the globalist mindset.\u00a0 Why the hatred?\u00a0 Here\u2019s the hatred, here\u2019s what it boils down to: George W. Bush acted unilaterally and not multilaterally and he never secured the world\u2019s permission to do what he wanted.\u00a0 I find such an idea foreign to the pages of the Scripture.\u00a0 I believe that God has established the nation\/state, not a global government, the nation\/state to act within its own sovereignty and power to fulfill a God-ordained function.\n\nAnd by the way, this issue of globalists, you may notice, maybe you don\u2019t, we just turned over the internet, an American experiment, that has brought tremendous entrepreneurship, job creation, freedom of speech, just willy-nilly we turned the whole invention, created within these borders, to an international body of some kind, some murky international body filled with who?\u00a0 Filled with people who (A) are communists or Marxists or Third World poverty stricken nations, who don\u2019t know anything about free speech.\u00a0 In fact, if you gave them a test on free speech and the First Amendment they wouldn\u2019t think anything of it, they don\u2019t know anything about it.\u00a0 And how smart is it to turn the internet over to a group like that?\u00a0 This is the great conflict that is happening in our world between nationalism and the nation state and globalism.\n\nAnd by the way, if the political leaders of America are listening to some sort of global consensus in determining whether they\u2019re going to act or not, who are they not listening to?\u00a0 They\u2019re not listening to you, Mr. and Mrs. America.\u00a0 They are not listening to what Abraham Lincoln and The Declaration of Independence and The United States Constitution call \u201cWe the people.\u201d\u00a0 It is an acquiescence of authority away from the nation back to a world power.\u00a0 But many pacifists think this way.\n\nOthers use this argument: you need to love your neighbor.\u00a0 How can you support aggressive military intervention when Matthew 22:39 says \u201cyou shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d\u00a0 How can you support the bombing of Kaddafi\u2019s headquarters when the Bible is so clear that we ought to love our neighbor?\u00a0 Well, let me tell you something.\u00a0 The moment the United States intervened in World War II and liberated those in concentration camps, was that not an act of love?\u00a0 That was an act of liberation, and that\u2019s what the idea of peace through strength is.\u00a0 There is no such thing as perfection in a fallen world but there is a way that government is to operate to minimize death, to maintain the social order, to prevent the violence from reasserting itself that was reasserting itself just prior to the flood.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s an act of love, not destruction.\n\nNow the big issue people raise is Exodus 20:13, commandment number 6.\u00a0 Let\u2019s test the Bible literacy of the congregation here, shall we do that?\u00a0 You all fill in the blank: \u201cThou shalt not\u2026\u201d 25% of you got it right, 75% of you got it wrong.\u00a0 The commandment is \u201cThou shalt\u201d the commandment is not \u201cThou shalt not kill.\u201d\u00a0 The commandment is \u201cThou shalt not murder.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, the Hebrew word that\u2019s used there, ratsakh<\/em>, is the word \u201cmurder\u201d which is something completely different than killing.\u00a0 In fact, God sent out the Israelis many times in the Old Testament to do war and as that bloodshed is described in the Old Testament, not a single time, there\u2019s about 50 usages, where God sends out His people to do war; never is the word \u201cmurder\u201d used.\u00a0 Never is the same word used that\u2019s prohibited in Exodus 20:13.\u00a0 The command is not thou shalt not murder\u2026 I got it wrong, I flunked the test, [laughter]\u00a0 The commandment is not thou shalt not kill, rather the commandment is \u201cthou shalt not\u201d what? \u201cmurder, that\u2019s what the Hebrew actually says.\n\nIs there a difference between killing and murder?\u00a0 There\u2019s a world of difference.\u00a0 Murder involves evil motive; the lawyers call it malice of forethought.\u00a0 That\u2019s what Cain did to Abel, murder.\u00a0 But killing in the name of government to prevent greater evil is never in the Bible called murder; it\u2019s called killing.\u00a0 If somebody comes into my house and they threaten my wife and my daughter and I use reasonable self-defense to contain them to protect myself, my wife and my daughter and they lose their life in the process, that is not an act of murder; that\u2019s an act of killing.\u00a0 The Bible prevents murder, it does not prevent killing.\u00a0 How could the Bible speak against killing when God gave the Noahic Covenant, Genesis 9:6.\u00a0 [Genesis 9:6, \u201cWhoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.\u201d]\u00a0 How could He speak unilaterally or completely or comprehensively against killing when He gave the instructions to the Apostle Paul about government bearing its sword.\n\nAnd in fact, you ought to, and we\u2019ve covered this verse before, you ought to write down and circle in your Bible Luke 22:36; this is what sweet little Jesus said to the disciples; you ready!\u00a0 \u201cAnd He said to them, \u2018But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword\u201d what do you do with a sword?\u00a0 It\u2019s an instrument of death, \u201cwhoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 What He\u2019s telling His disciples as he sends them out into hostile circumstances is you need an instrument of self-defense.\u00a0 He is not preaching the doctrine that you find in Islam of conversion through the sword.\u00a0 What He is talking about is reasonable self-defense and having the means necessary for reasonable self-defense.\u00a0 That\u2019s a biblical idea.\u00a0 That whole command would make no sense if the Bible completely and comprehensively banned killing.\n\nOther people use his argument: Doesn\u2019t Matthew 5:39 talk about turning the other cheek?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t Matthew 5:39 say, \u201cBut I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on\u201d which cheek? This is very important, \u201cwhoever slaps you on\u201d which cheek \u201cyour right cheek, turn the other to him also.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And people say well, there it is in the Bible, don\u2019t resist an evil person, whoever slaps you, you\u2019re not allowed to retaliate.\u00a0 May I just say something; that that comes from the Sermon on the Mount.\u00a0 What is the Sermon on the Mount talking about? It\u2019s talking about the relationship of one human being to another; interpersonal relationship is what it is dealing with.\u00a0 It is not at all dealing with the relationship of the state to sinful humanity.\u00a0 To read into that some kind of pacifist argument that governments are not allowed to root out terrorism and to assume that the Sermon on the Mount speaks against it is to wrench out of context the Sermon on the Mount.\n\nIn other words, you\u2019re going to the wrong passage to prove your point.\u00a0 You need to instead interact with the Noahic Covenant, Romans 13; those become the important passages.\u00a0 And by the way, if I\u2019m going to slap you on the right cheek what does that mean?\u00a0 That means I\u2019m doing this (under handed slap), that\u2019s the only way I can hit you on the right cheek, right, if I do this. What is this?\u00a0 This is an idiom in Jewish culture for an insult.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t talk about being hit on the other cheek, which is like this (over handed punch), see that?\u00a0 This is an assault.\u00a0 You guys didn\u2019t know I was going to do visuals up here did you?\u00a0 (Laughter) This is an assault (over handed punch); this is an idiom for an insult (underhanded slap).\u00a0 When Jesus, in Matthew 5:39 says, \u201cBut I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also,\u201d He\u2019s not dealing with the issue of self-defense; He\u2019s not dealing with the issue of an assault.\u00a0 He\u2019s dealing with the issue of an insult.\u00a0 He\u2019s dealing with how we are to act as God\u2019s people when people insult us, NOT reasonable self-defense.\n\nAnd so I find Christians using the Bible all of the time to support a doctrine of pacifism where the Bible doesn\u2019t even support such an idea.\u00a0 Look at Luke 3:14 for a minute, and I know my time is almost up, we\u2019ll stop here because there are many people that will tell you that serving in the Armed Forces is anti-Christian; serving in the military is anti-Christian, serving as a police officer is anti-Christian.\u00a0 Those are occupations and professions the pacifists tell us that Christians should have no part in.\u00a0 In fact, one of the members of our youth group as Gabe was giving the presentation showed one of our graduates being sworn in to the Armed Forces in our business meeting and we were all so proud of that.\u00a0 And yet a pacifist would come along and say that person is in sin, and you as a church should not support that activity.\n\nNotice Luke 3:14, this is John the Baptist, John the Baptist is called the greatest prophet ever by Jesus.\u00a0 And this is what John the Baptist said, \u201cSome soldiers,\u201d see that, \u201cSome soldiers were questioning him, saying, \u2018And what about us, what shall we do?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 A lot of people under John the Baptist\u2019s ministry were repenting; some soldiers heard John the Baptist\u2019s message and they said what should we do.\u00a0 What does John the Baptist answer, Luke 3:14, \u201cAnd he said to them, \u2018Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Did you notice that John the Baptist never told these soldiers to drop out of the military, which obviously he would have done had those involved in the military been involved in some kind of inherent sin?\u00a0 What he says is don\u2019t abuse your position of power; that\u2019s what John the Baptist condemned.\u00a0 He never condemned service in the military itself.\u00a0 In fact, I think we need to elevate service in the military; we need to start seeing people that want to serve in the military and put their own lives into Harm\u2019s way and our police officers [clapping]. We need to start seeing them as ministers, not people to deprecate.\n\nOver in Acts 10, the first Gentile gets saved.\u00a0 The whole church is Jewish up to this point.\u00a0 Peter shares the gospel with the first Gentile convert.\u00a0 Anybody know the name of that convert?\u00a0 A guy named Cornelius.\u00a0 Who was Cornelius?\u00a0 He was a Roman what?\u00a0 Centurion.\u00a0 There were probably, and I\u2019ve looked at different commentators on this, there were probably about a hundred men under the command of Cornelius, a Roman Centurion.\u00a0 And yet what does Cornelius do?\u00a0 Peter leads him to Christ and never in the book of Acts, chapter 10, does Peter say to Cornelius, you know, you really ought to drop out of the military because it\u2019s just not the will of God to do such a thing.\n\nWell, what causes terrorism, depravity, coming into contact with a false ideology?\u00a0 What doesn\u2019t work with terrorism?\u00a0 It is moving away from peace through strength.\u00a0 What does deter terrorism?\u00a0 The consistent application of the peace through strength, doctrine, and you say now wait a minute Pastor, can\u2019t the government go too far in rooting out terrorism?\u00a0 And the answer is, you\u2019ll have to come back next week to find out.\u00a0 Let\u2019s pray.\n\nFather, we are grateful for Your truth, we\u2019re grateful for Your Word in this political season as we think about issues that confront us regularly.\u00a0 Father, I just pray if anybody is here within the sound of my voice and they have never trusted in Your provision, I pray even as I speak the Spirit would convict them, that today would be the day when they trust, which is what faith means, completely in Your provision, Jesus Christ. \u00a0We, Father, are so thankful that Jesus came into the world to do something which we could never do, pay our sin debt.\u00a0 And by believing or trusting in Him we have eternity with You forever and a relationship with You here and now.\u00a0 I ask, Father, if anybody is in that unsaved condition that even as I speak, within the sound of my voice that they would respond to Your gospel, trusting in You and You alone, not in raising a hand, joining a church, giving money, walking an aisle, vowing to do better, no human work but trusting exclusively in You.\u00a0 I pray that even as I speak, Father, You would convict men and women of that and they would do so.\u00a0 And for the rest of us Father I pray that we would continue to allow the Scripture to renew the way we think as we have so much to offer and say from Your Word in a culture that\u2019s obviously very confused and has wandered far from the light of Your truth.\u00a0 We ask that you\u2019ll do this great work in our midst.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said, Amen.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t