Well, I’d like to begin with just a word of prayer this morning.
Lord, this song says not to lean on the flesh. And Lord, this morning, we certainly do not want to lean on the flesh as we come to share and look into Your Word. As we come to listen, Lord, our heart is that we might hear You.
As our brother Jim shared this morning, he just got that direct word from You, and how it so set our brother free and so empowered him with Your life and freshness. Lord, we pray that as we come today, we would encounter You and Your words to our hearts.
Now, Lord, we ask for the anointing to be able to share, to be able to hear and see what You are saying to us. Lord, how we depend on You so much. Otherwise, we will just be here and then we will leave. Lord, how tragic. May Your words always plant things in our hearts to grow.
Now, Lord, just be with us this morning. We do thank You for that precious blood, and we know that it is effective even against our adversary. So we take up that ground of the blood this morning and say, Lord, there is no other way by which a man can be redeemed.
And Lord, there is one thing the enemy cannot touch, and that is what the blood has achieved. It can never be undone or overthrown. For that we thank You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I have been talking—and these messages, actually more than just these ones—on fighting the good fight. It started out with this matter, really, as I discovered as I went into it, that in this day, in this hour, there needs to be a passion in our hearts, brothers and sisters.
Passion comes from the Latin word to suffer. In other words, we need to be so passionate for our Lord Jesus Christ, for God’s purpose through our Lord Jesus Christ, so passionate that we, as having a part in that great purpose, might give ourselves fully to it.
Today, brothers and sisters, there is so much lethargy in the Christian world, and we find it even in our own lives at times. May the Lord deliver us from lethargy. May the passion once again grip our hearts.
This message today, I guess, will be part three: a passion for the good fight. There is no need to consider having a real passion to fight, to respond to the trumpet call, as this song says, unless first of all, in our hearts there is a real passion for our Lord Jesus.
Because it is only Him. He is the only Victor. He is the only One who can bring us into His eternal purpose and enable us to be a great part of it. It is Christ.
Of course, I talked about having a passion to finish the course. We all have a divine charge from the Lord Jesus Christ, and it involves finishing the race, as it says in Hebrews, or completing the course.
If we complete the course, it should end up in serving, reigning, and ruling with our Lord Jesus Christ at the throne. That is the end of the course we are looking for—not the grave, but the throne, brothers and sisters. From Calvary’s cross to the throne: that should be our Christian life.
Of course, it requires an overcoming life, brothers and sisters, to complete this course. And in this overcoming life, there is a fight—a spiritual fight—which we have been called into.
Now, this morning as I came, I said, “Lord, I do not want to share without burden.” And what is this burden? Are we really aware of the fight? Are we really aware of this great fight that we are in, brothers and sisters—this great battle?
Boy, it is like somehow we miss it. I think one of the great deceptions of Satan is to convince people that he does not exist. And he has done that for a great part of the world. A great part of the people in this world really do not believe in Satan. They do not believe in God.
Brothers and sisters, I cannot understand how we cannot believe in Satan and evil, since we have so much of it surrounding us in this world and being manifested even this very day and hour in the United States, in the Middle East, and all over the world.
Anyway, my burden is that we would be awakened to this fight that we are in. As I shared previously, the nature of this fight is spiritual. It is not a physical fight; it is spiritual, and it is really between Satan and God.
It began in eternity past, when Satan began to become self-aware and was no longer satisfied with the position he held as the high-ranking angel before God. He desired the place that Christ had, and he became very self-centered and obsessed with this, to the point that God had to cast him out of the mountain of God.
Not only was he cast out, but a third of the angels were cast out as well, we believe from what we can see in the Word of God. His home now is in the atmosphere around this earth, but he has affected the whole solar system we are in.
When he was cast out, really what he did was bring darkness and chaos upon this earth. That is the way we find it in Genesis after it has been created. All of a sudden, in the second verse, we find that there is great chaos and darkness upon this earth.
And so the Lord begins to restore it. He raises up a man: Adam. He creates Adam and Eve, and in His charge to Adam and Eve, He said, “You need to multiply, subdue, and have dominion over the earth.”
In other words, He took the authority and dominion of this earth back from the enemy, from Satan, and gave it to Adam. But Satan immediately began his attack, and he deceived Eve in the garden.
What do you think God is doing, trying to keep you from eating this tree
of the knowledge of good and evil?
He is holding something back from you.
The doubt—the seeds he put into her mind. Eventually she succumbed to the wiles of the devil. And Adam, in his own self-desire to save himself and his wife, ate too. So he was not deceived, but he was disobedient to God in this. And man fell.
This self-centered nature that began in Satan, we find in man. If you remember, the first thing Adam said was, “The woman gave me this thing. It was her fault.”
This self-centeredness—this poison of Satan, the very essence of Satan: self-centeredness, self-desire, self-promotion, and pride—came into the very nature of man.
Every son of Adam, of which we all were born in the flesh out of the lineage of Adam, is born with this sin nature. Because we are born with this sin nature, we find out something else from the Word of God: brothers and sisters, we are in the kingdom of darkness when we are born.
You are already born not only in sin, but in the kingdom of darkness, under the control and power of the evil forces of darkness. Now, we are charmed by these forces into thinking that probably we are doing pretty well. They give us all the pleasures of the world to entice us and keep us in their realm and dominion.
But thank the Lord, Christ invaded this dark kingdom. He came to this earth, and brothers and sisters, through His victory on Calvary’s cross over sin, death, and Satan, He freed the slaves of darkness.
He delivered us out of the kingdom of darkness and put us into His kingdom. That is Colossians. We have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God. That is the great deliverance that has been made.
Now, brothers and sisters, the Lord wants to use the redeemed ones—His church—to once again subdue and take dominion in the spiritual realm over the things that happen in this universe, bringing it all back to the feet of Jesus. That is our calling as the church.
As soon as you are born in Christ, you become a soldier and you enter this warfare. You are immediately a part of the warfare. You are in a warfare whether you realize it or not.
In the beginning of our Christian life, the warfare we find mostly is within. It is the warfare of your flesh, your self-centered nature, against the Spirit. For the flesh fights against the Spirit, and the Spirit fights against the flesh.
We talked about how we are delivered in this fight. It says, “If you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh.” Hallelujah.
But that is a simple word, yet how is it done? Well, brothers and sisters, it says we must walk in the Spirit.
Last time I shared that in this battle of flesh and Spirit, our place is not to try to win a victory. Our place is just to stay hooked up to Christ.
Remember last time? I said that the Spirit is like a locomotive, and we are to be like a railcar. We just have to hook on. We just have to be attached. It has all the power. The Spirit has all the power.
All we need to do is stay attached, and we will follow along behind the Spirit and be set free from the desires of the flesh.
Also, walking in the Spirit means that you need to stay satisfied in Christ. Your satisfaction has to be found in Christ. If you do not find yourself being joyful, happy, and satisfied in Christ, you are going to look for other things.
You are going to try to find your happiness and desires in the world, and you will once again be drawn back into the realm of selfish desire, self-seeking, and self-centeredness instead of God-centeredness. So it is critical that we keep ourselves in the Lord and abide in Him.
The second stage of this warfare is indeed the battle with principalities and powers of darkness. It says we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness. It is a spiritual battle that we are in.
Brothers and sisters, it involves dispossessing the enemy and possessing the ground for Christ. Now, what does that mean? Probably the best example is the battle of Jericho.
They had had a battle on the other side of the river against the Amalekites, which really is the battle of flesh and Spirit. That is what it represents, because the Amalekites represent the flesh.
Remember, as long as Moses held his hands up, Joshua prevailed in the battle. If he dropped his hands, they would begin to lose. So it was a spiritual battle, and it was a matter of keeping your eyes fixed on Christ, lifting up those hands, praising the Lord, and looking to Him to win the battle.
Now we come to Jericho. It is quite different. Joshua is trying to figure out how he is going to assault this impregnable fortress of Jericho, and the Captain of the host meets him.
Joshua is surprised, but he kneels. He recognizes that indeed this is the Captain of the army, and he yields to Him. And He says, “Now, what I want you to do is, you are not going to assault this wall at all. You are not going to take it on yourself.”
What you are going to do is by faith march around
this wall once each day for six days.
And on the seventh day, march around it seven times.
All the time they are marching around, the ram’s horns are blowing, announcing the presence of the ark—the presence of the Lord, the presence of Christ the Victor. That is what it is announcing.
In the end, on the seventh day after the seventh trip, the faith in God’s people is so strong that all they have to do is shout, and the walls come down. It is a spiritual battle.
What they are doing is dispossessing the enemy from his ground, and now they are taking it for themselves. It is really Christ. The enemy does not want you to possess all your possessions in Christ.
He does not want you to come into the fullness that Christ has—to come into a sonship where you are full of the Son of God, where His fullness is manifested in your life. He is trying to keep you back from that. And so that is a battle which we enter into.
Not I, but Christ.
In this dispossessing and possessing, this battle that we are in is the negative side. The positive side is that Christ, through the warfare, is being formed in you.
You are being transformed into the image of Christ, and He is using this warfare as a part of your development. We are actually built up in the character of Christ.
After all, Christ was Victor, and it is important that His victory becomes our victory, brothers and sisters—that He be the Victor in our lives.
So we see that this process, on one hand, seems so negative, so fraught with many trials, tribulations, testings, and temptations. But, brothers and sisters, all of these are intended by God in order that you might grow in Jesus Christ and be transformed into His image.
I mentioned that if there is a temptation in your life that you are dealing with, God has allowed it—not that He has tempted you; the enemy has—but He has allowed it because He is trying to show you that there is an issue in your life that has to be brought under Christ and subdued to Him.
If you are tested by the Lord, that means He has dealt with you in such a way that faith has come into your life, and the test is to secure that faith in your life, that you might grow in Christ Jesus.
The example—one of the best—is Abraham. You know, Abraham started out. He went out not knowing where he went, but he did not fully obey, did he? He had his family that he took with him, though the Lord had said, “No, you just leave your family and your nation and go out.”
So he was not a perfect person when he was called out. But in the end, the great test was when God told him to offer up his son on the altar—Isaac on the altar.
Abraham, by then, had such great faith in God that he willingly did that, brothers and sisters. Faith had grown. He had grown. So this is God’s way.
The Word of God says, do not be so discouraged when you come under trials and temptations. It is God who is working in you.
So, brothers and sisters, we need to think about this matter of warfare, this matter of the enemy working in our lives and dealing with us. It is God’s heart that we would overcome—overcome by taking Him as the Overcomer in our lives and triumphant in victory, in order that we might grow into the image of the Son of God.
What a great calling. This is God’s way. And brothers and sisters, I just want to say this morning: the warfare is necessary. It is not something we should run from. But, brothers and sisters, by faith in Christ, overcome.
Well, boy, I always get caught up in those trying to review, do I not? This morning, I would like to talk about some principles of this warfare.
I mentioned—we will not take time to read all these—that in 2 Timothy 4:6-7, Paul, at the end of his life, was trying to encourage Timothy. He says, “I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, and I have fought the good fight.”
Thank God, Paul had fought the good fight. But earlier, in 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul had encouraged Timothy to fight the good fight, but he adds a couple more words: “Fight the good fight of faith.”
Always remember: this fight in the spiritual realm is a fight of faith, not of flesh and blood. It is fought in the spirit. It is fought in the unseen, and fought mostly through prayer. Prayer is your real weapon in this warfare.
Faith is not faith in yourself, not faith in your spiritual knowledge, not faith in what you feel is your spiritual stature. It is faith in Christ.
In other words, our confidence cannot be in ourselves, in our flesh, or in our spiritual knowledge. Our only confidence can be in Jesus Christ and His victory that He has won.
Faith is only effective when faith rests upon what is secure, what is solid. That means our faith must rest on the foundation of Jesus Christ and His work at Calvary.
Brothers and sisters, let us read Hebrews 11:6.
But without faith it is impossible to please Him:
for he that cometh to God must believe that He is,
and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. I would also say, without faith it is impossible to have victory.
Now, brothers and sisters, it says we must believe that He is. All of the people in this room will probably say, “Of course I believe He is.” But in the situation you are in, do you really believe He is in those difficult circumstances?
In that testing, in that trial, at that point, do you still really believe He is? You say, “Of course I do.” Well, let me say it this way: the Lord Jesus says, “I am.” God is the great I AM, is He not?
That means for any situation that you come into, any circumstance, any trial, any temptation, He is the I AM. Do you believe that? In that circumstance, do you believe that God is the I AM for that situation?
That is believing Him. That is having faith. You say, “Lord, I see no way through this situation. It has completely baffled me. I am under it. I do not know how to deal with it. I kind of pray, and I cannot seem to pray.”
God says to you, “I AM.” Do you believe that? In other words, if you believe that God is the I AM, you have to believe that there is a way.
Believe in Him, and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. He will answer you. Do you believe that?
Do you believe that God really loves you enough and takes care of you enough that He is going to answer you? Now, He may not give you the answer you like, but you have to believe that God is going to work, that God is going to do something.
He might do it in a way that you never thought of before. That has happened to me numerous times in my life, when I was in situations and wondered how in the world we were going to get through this, and the Lord did something entirely outside of my thoughts. Because He is the way.
Well, we must believe, brothers and sisters. It is a battle of faith.
You know, when the enemy comes at you, often you have the roaring lion in your life. The Bible says the enemy is like a roaring lion. Boy, I know I have, and I would suggest that most of you probably have had this roaring lion in your life.
Well, what do you do? Do you recoil from the roaring lion? Do you kind of back off?
Let me tell you what. The Word of God says that Christ has defeated him, and he is only a roaring lion.
Does your faith, at that point, say, “He is roaring, but he is a defeated foe”? Does your faith lay hold of the fact that Christ has already had victory over this foe of yours?
If you do rise up in faith, the enemy has no choice but to shut his mouth, close his fangs, and walk away.
Faith. It is faith. Faith has to believe in Christ, has to believe He is the I AM for every situation, has to believe that He has the victory, and that the enemy has been defeated in Christ.
So the first principle I wanted to share is that this warfare is a warfare by faith and not by sight.
I like the example, I think Steven has given before, of the little girl who had come to the Lord Jesus. She was sharing with this older man that she loved the Lord Jesus, that the Lord Jesus was hers, and that He protected her and kept her.
The older man, who was not a believer, said to her, “Well, little girl, what are you going to do when Satan comes and faces you?”
And she said, “Well, sir, I am just going to step aside and introduce him to Jesus.”
Now, is that not what we should be doing with our enemy? I like that. I think it is a great illustration.
The second principle is very closely knit with the first one of having faith. By faith, you must secure and maintain the high ground.
Those who study history, of course, know about the Civil War in the United States. Bobby, you can correct me if I say anything, but wait until we are over and then you can correct me. He knows a lot about the Battle of Gettysburg.
It was a three-day battle with 160,000 troops at the Battle of Gettysburg. Can you imagine that? If you have ever been to Gettysburg, you realize it is just a small place, but 160,000 troops total, both Union and Confederate armies.
It has been estimated that around 50,000 of those troops were wounded or perished in the battle—over a third, or close to a third.
Now, the point I want to make is that this battle was a decisive battle in the Civil War. The Confederate army had invaded northern territory and was looking toward taking the capital. But at this battle, they were turned back.
Actually, the Civil War went on for two more years, but the Confederate army was always in retreat. Eventually it was ended with Sherman’s trip to the South.
The reason most strategists say that the Union Army won that battle was that, as it began, there were only a small number of Union troops there and an advanced party of Confederates. But immediately the Union troops took the high ground.
Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, and Little Round Top. They positioned themselves on those little hills, and they set up their ranks, or their line, between these hills.
Now, why is that important? It is because from this high position they could protect the flanks.
The flank is basically the end of that line. If you are strung out in a long line in a battle, what the adversary likes to do is get a large group of men—forty, fifty, a hundred—and they go around and attack the end of the line.
Basically, they are only facing a few soldiers at a time, and they just run right up the line and take it. So they attack the flank, rather than a head-on assault where it is basically one on one. That is the strategy of warfare.
But the Union Army had taken these hills and set their line up between them. Therefore, they could protect their flanks. The Confederate forces assaulted these hills a number of times and were never able to take them because the Union Army had the high ground.
Brothers and sisters, in the battle, just remember this: we need to take our high ground. Now, what is it? Let us look at Ephesians 6:10.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord,
and in the power of His might.
What is our high ground? “Finally, my brethren, be strong”—in yourself and in the power of your own strength? It does not say that, of course. “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.”
The power of His might, His strength—strong in the Lord. Brothers and sisters, Christ is your high ground. You need to maintain the high ground in your life. Christ needs to be first place in this battle.
You need to take your stand in Christ, not in yourself. You cannot face the enemy outside of Christ.
It says that of God are we in Christ. We have been put in Christ. That is a spiritual fact. It is done. But, brothers and sisters, we can live our lives like we are not in Christ.
We can live as though we are still in the flesh—self-centered, looking out for ourselves, wanting our desires instead of God’s. That is not abiding in Christ.
We are in Christ, but we need to abide there. That is the point I want to make. Christ is the victory. He has secured the victory, and it means that you must abide in the One who has the victory, the triumphant One.
You must live in Christ, make your home in Christ, and He will become your spiritual high ground in this warfare.
Let me put it another way. The enemy can attack you, but he cannot deal with Christ. Christ has already won. So as long as you are abiding in Christ, you are secure in Him.
That does not mean you will not be in the battle. You will. But your high ground is Christ.
Standing with Christ, standing with Christ for Christ’s will to be done in your life, for Christ’s victory to come into that situation that is so difficult that you seem unable to handle or cope with.
Brothers and sisters, there are a lot of things in life where we get to the point that we just cannot cope with it. You have to say, “Lord, I trust You. Lord, I can cope because of You, not because of me.”
It says, “Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” So the sooner we recognize that we do not have the power and the might, the better off we are. But, on the other hand, we have to have positive faith that Christ’s power and life can work in our lives.
The enemy’s tactic is always to try to get you off that high ground. He wants to get you back to thinking self-centered thoughts and self-centered desires. Once he gets you back onto that level, you are no longer on the high ground.
You are back on the ground of self-serving and the flesh. And then he can take you down, and he will.
That is why it is so important that the things of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, and the self-centered things in our lives—we need to go to the Lord with them and allow the cross to do its work.
The cross simply means, “Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done.” “Lord, I want to do this. I have pleasure in this. But Lord, not my will—Your will be done in my life.”
“Lord, I want to stay on the high ground in safety with You. I do not want to be drawn off that high ground. I do not want to be drawn back into drugs. I do not want to be drawn back into fulfilling sexual desires. I do not want to be drawn into all of these traps of the enemy. I want to stay on my high ground.”
I guess one of the great failures of us, even after we become Christians, is pride. That pride is so strong in us, brothers and sisters. Particularly after you learn a little bit of God’s Word, it becomes spiritual pride, which is so dangerous.
But if we will just stay in Christ, He will remind us of these things. Listen now: the enemy is always trying to draw you off that high ground.
He is trying to deceive you, saying, “It is okay. It is okay. It is all right. You can have this thing that you desire, that you think is going to mean so much in your life.”
On the other hand, you know that the unction of the Spirit inside is saying, “No. This thing is not good for you.” But somehow the enemy keeps whispering in you to deceive you, like he did Eve in the garden.
He may try to distract you, to get your attention on something else besides Christ—even good things. There are a lot of good things happening in the world that people do who are not even Christians, and he can get you wrapped up in those things and away from Christ.
One of the great deceptive works of the enemy is to deceive you into thinking that your problem is other people or the circumstance you are in, instead of the enemy that is behind it.
In other words, Satan loves to hide himself. He does not want to be the target of your prayer. So he hides himself behind the circumstances, behind things.
So often in our spiritual life, we can say, “Lord, I have this terrible situation in my life overwhelming me. I just hate what is happening to me, what people are doing to me. I am being misrepresented. It is just terrible. I hate these people.”
The enemy is hiding himself behind the situation.
You might be in financial trouble, and some of it may be your own fault. You get into this deep pit, and you can say, “That is my problem. Boy, if I just had a better job, if I had more money, this would not be any problem at all.”
The enemy is working behind that, but you are trying to deal with it on the flesh-and-blood level.
Probably more close to home is, “Lord, if I did not have this husband of mine, I could really be spiritual. I could do okay. He is my problem.”
Brothers and sisters, remember this, young people: it flips the same way. A husband could say the same thing: “Lord, this wife of mine is holding me back. Every time I want to do something, she is against it.”
So often the enemy uses people as shields. He is trying to hide himself. If you get on the level of trying to wrestle with flesh and blood—your wife, your husband—you are going to lose that battle because your own flesh will become offended.
Once that happens, you have lost the battle, because you are working on the ground of the flesh, flesh and blood. Your battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness.
Brothers and sisters, when you have these kinds of situations in your lives, you need to be very careful about how you approach these things. Otherwise, you will find yourselves hating these people or hating the situation.
It may be your boss at work. You say, “Lord, my boss is just totally unreasonable,” and he may be. But how are you dealing with that? Are you just getting angry with him and frustrated with your boss?
No, you need to see that there might be something behind this and deal with that rather than your boss.
That is one of his great tricks: hiding behind people and trying to get you on the level of fighting with flesh and blood instead of with what is behind it.
We can do that in world situations too. Even in this nation, some of the things that are going on and the new laws that are trying to be passed are totally opposed to the Christian way. Brothers and sisters, they are so disturbing.
It is not going to do us any good to get angry with our judges, our representatives, and our president. We have got to really stand in the Lord against the principalities and powers of darkness over America that are doing their best to destroy the testimony of Jesus in this nation.
As far as I can tell, we are the last nation to really hold the testimony of Jesus, and it is quickly being overwhelmed at this point. So, just to say that: flesh and blood—we are not fighting flesh and blood.
Third principle: you are not a lone ranger in the battle, but you are a disciplined soldier in the army of Jesus Christ, His church.
Let me read Joshua 6:18.
And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing,
lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing,
and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.
This is the word of the Lord before they took Jericho. In other words, He is saying that in the warfare, when they took Jericho, they were not supposed to take anything for themselves. He was saying, “Now, the gold and silver you can keep, but that is for Me.”
Let us go to Joshua 7:1.
But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing:
for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah,
of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing:
and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel.
And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai,
which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-el,
and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country.
And the men went up and viewed Ai.
And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him,
Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men
go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither;
for they are but few.
So they went up there, about three thousand men, and they fled before the men of Ai.
Let us go to Joshua 7:8.
O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies!
For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it,
and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth:
and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?
And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up;
wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?
Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant.
This is the battle after Jericho—that great, terrific, tremendous victory. They go to this little place called Ai. There are so few people there that they say, “We only need a few thousand men.” In the end, they run before their enemy. What has happened?
It is because Achan, in the battle of Jericho, took a Babylonian garment and some jewelry and some gold and silver and kept it for himself. He was one of the people fighting in this battle, and he took it for himself.
Now, in Joshua 7:9, we need to see that Joshua said, “They will cut off our name from the earth. What wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?” The real issue, and Joshua saw it, was that it was a battle over the testimony of God.
He knew that in running before the enemy, their testimony of the greatness of God and His victory would be lost. He was concerned about that.
The real attack today on you and me personally is not so much about us, even though we carry the testimony of Jesus individually. It is the testimony in the church, because that is where the fullness of the testimony lies—in God’s church.
No one individual can in any way bring out the fullness of the testimony of Jesus. So the whole attack here, the whole issue, is that the testimony of God on this earth through the nation of Israel is being defeated and destroyed.
In Joshua 7:3, it said, “Make not all the people to labour there, for they are few.” What is that? That is spiritual pride, brothers and sisters.
They did not stand together in oneness as one nation. They just sent out a few from their number. Brothers and sisters, in this battle, it is the entire church. You cannot say that you have no part in this battle, that you are going to stay home, that you are not going to pray.
Brothers and sisters, we all have responsibility in this battle, and we are one unit. We are soldiers fighting as a unit, not soldiers fighting individually. This matter of unity in prayer is so important.
I remember—I may have shared this before—that scientists took the heart from a chicken embryo, took the cells from it, put them in a Petri dish, and observed them.
They observed, amazingly, that all the cells from the heart had a beat. All those cells were beating, but they were beating in different rhythms and different ways.
After—I forget how many hours it was, but I do not think it was more than two days—when they observed it again, all those cells had moved together as one unit, and they all were beating with one heartbeat. Amazing.
What the life of Christ is in His people. Now, brothers and sisters, may all of our hearts come together and pray with one heartbeat.
The last point I wanted to make in this is that what you do, brothers and sisters, in your life affects the entire assembly—infects the entire assembly.
A lot of times we think, “If I sin, or if I am not following the Lord’s ways, it only hurts me.” That is not true. The whole nation of Israel was stopped and unable to fight—indeed, they lost the battle—because of Achan’s sin.
But listen to Joshua 7:1: “The children of Israel committed a trespass.” The whole nation was considered in sin and trespass because of one man’s sin.
Brothers and sisters, we are closely united in the body of Jesus Christ. What happens in our lives, whether it is seen or not, affects the other brothers and sisters in our midst. It is just that simple.
So we do need to be triumphant, and we do need to lean upon one another. We need one another in the body of Jesus Christ.
Fourth principle: you must put on the whole armour of God.
Let us look at Ephesians 6:10 again.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord,
and in the power of His might.
The word finally is a key word. He talks about putting on the whole armour of God, so why does he say, “Finally, my brethren”? In other words, he is wanting to make a point—a final point, an important point that we should not forget.
Previously in Ephesians, what he is doing is revealing this great mystery of God: Christ and His church, the body of Jesus Christ.
Now, brothers and sisters, this is critical, because what he is really saying here is not only that the church is the body of Jesus Christ; it is the army of Jesus Christ. And it needs the full armour for the battle that it is going into.
In other words, the church is in a battle over the testimony of Jesus.
Now, I can make that very clear out of Matthew 16. When Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Christ responded, “Blessed art thou.”
Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,
but My Father which is in heaven.
Then He goes on and says, “That is a great revelation for you, Peter. That is the foundation. I am the foundation—this revelation of Jesus Christ.”
A lot of people knew Jesus Christ in His day when He was on this earth, but very few of them really saw who He was. Is that not true? That is why He said, “Blessed art thou,” because God Himself has revealed Me to you, and you believe in Me.
That is the foundation of the Christian faith. Then He goes on to say, “I want to reveal something else to you.”
Upon this rock, upon this confession—not upon Peter himself,
but upon the confession of Peter—
Thou art the Christ, the Son of God.
Upon this I will build My church.
He is the Rock. Christ is the Rock on which the church is built. In fact, the rock comes out of Christ, who is the Head of the body.
Brothers and sisters, I want to be very clear about this matter of the body of Jesus Christ, if I can. It takes revelation to see how significant it is that Christ has a body today. He may be the Head in heaven, but He has a spiritual body on earth.
When He says, “You are the body of Christ,” that is not an analogy. We are the body of Christ. We are not like a body; we are the body of Jesus Christ. The church is a living organism, the body of Christ. It is not man’s organization.
This spiritual body has some analogies to the physical. One is that, just as our physical body has a cardiovascular system, the body of Christ has a cardiovascular system, and it is the blood of Christ that runs through it.
The blood of Christ is upon every brother and sister who knows Him and has accepted Him as Lord and Savior. That blood is one blood. It makes us one family.
Not only that, but this spiritual body has a nervous system. It is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in all of us, and that Holy Spirit is one. It is united. It is not many spirits. It is not a spirit in you and a spirit in me. It is one Spirit, but it is in all of us.
We all have this inward anointing, this inward unction through the Holy Spirit, and it unites us all into one. So it is one body, brothers and sisters.
Paul is saying this is so precious—so precious—to the Father and to the Son: His body. Now, why is it so precious?
Because we know that one day this church, in maturity, will become what? The bride of Jesus Christ, the helpmate of Jesus Christ, one with Him in union life, one in purpose, one in desire, one, brothers and sisters, in the glory of Christ.
What an amazing thing this church is. And he is saying, “Finally, there is a great battle over this.”
The enemy is out to destroy the church. The gates of Hades—now, God has promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail. He did not say the gates of Hades would not attack it; He just said they would not prevail.
So there is a great warfare over this testimony of Jesus and the church being the body of Jesus Christ. He is saying, “Brethren, you need to stand together as one man. You are an army in Jesus Christ, and you need to put on the whole armour of God.”
Now, brothers and sisters, I am sorry. I am not going to be able to complete this, or we will be here another thirty minutes. So, if you do not mind, brothers, next week—maybe, maybe we will finish. We will see.
But may the Lord show us today that we are in this army of Jesus Christ. You are in a battle. Thank the Lord, you have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness and put into the kingdom of His light. Therefore, you are under attack. You are a soldier.
I said it last time, and I would like to reiterate it: there are no civilians in God’s church. We are all warriors. We are all soldiers in Jesus Christ. No civilians.
You cannot send your brother off to warfare and say, “He will take care of it.” No, it is not that way. We are one people, one heart, one Spirit.
Lord, we just come to You today. I just feel like that we live in this age of Laodicea, when there is so much lethargy and thinking that we are okay spiritually. Lord, we in fact are blind to the great battle that we are in.
Lord, the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ is that He is the Victor. Lord Jesus, You do need to build Your church.
We are thankful that all of this battle is not negative, but, Lord, it is a part of Your building Your church, maturing the body to be Your matured, tested bride.
Lord, I just pray that we would not lose sight of what we are about, what You have called us to. In Jesus’ name. Amen.