Let us look to the Lord for one minute in prayer.
Father, we thank You for this time. I thank You for the brothers and sisters who are gathered, who truly want to hear You speak to their hearts. Lord, may we enjoy Your presence here today in the opening of Your Word. So we commit this time to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen.
Let us read one verse in Revelation 11:15.
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet,
and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah,
and He will reign forever and ever.”
I tried to point out the last time I shared that this is the ultimate purpose of the Lord. We use the term quite often in this fellowship: the eternal purpose of God. I think that is the eternal purpose of God—that the Lord may reign forever and ever with His people.
Sometimes we use that phrase, “the eternal purpose of God,” quite often in this fellowship, or some of the speakers who come around use it. Sometimes we get a gloss over our eyes, and it kind of goes over our heads as we try to understand and pinpoint what this eternal purpose of God is.
For me, the simplest way to put it is that it is an attribute of God. It has to be an attribute. If it is eternal, then it is an attribute of God. According to Tozer, an attribute is something that never changes; it is always the same.
So God’s purpose for His Son to reign forever and ever is not something that God does or is going to try to complete. It is already accomplished in God in eternity. It is His attribute. It will never change. No enemy—even the sins of man—will prevent the Lord from reigning forever and ever in the heavens and the earth. It is eternal and unchanging, unaltered by anything.
For us on the earth, it is a matter of time before it takes place. But with God, it has already taken place.
Last time, I tried to juxtapose that with God’s methods of working with men. I said that the methods of God are always changing. We find that in the Old Testament over and over again, and you find it in church history also. God is always moving from one emphasis to another, always with the thought in mind that His presence is with His people.
I used the example of when Moses received the commandments concerning the tabernacle, the ark, and all the vessels of the tabernacle. It was for the purpose, not that Israel would be gathered to it, but that God would be able to manifest His presence on the earth with His people.
But then it changed, and the ark had lost its significance for Israel. So God raised up a prophet in the land. Before that, there were seers in the land—those who had a special gift to be able to see what God was saying. But when the Lord shifted His method, it went from the ark to the prophet.
I want to read a couple of verses in 1 Samuel 3:19-21 to emphasize this.
As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.
And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.
The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.
So we find the Lord’s method shifting to the prophet. Then it shifted again. Samuel lived to be about ninety-five years old, we think, but at the very end of his life the Lord was going to raise up another light to Israel.
We find this in 1 Samuel 13. I want to read verses 13 and 14.
Actually, I am sorry—those are not the verses. Hold on.
Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. The Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom will not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after His own heart, and the Lord has appointed him to be ruler over His people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”
Another word there for “ruler” is “prince.” Then the Lord’s method with Israel was through the kings, through David. After that, He reestablished the temple as the place of His presence after David’s and Solomon’s reigns on this earth.
So the question that remains in my mind, and I hope in your heart, is: What is God’s method today? What is He saying today?
We find this echoed in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, when we see the churches. Whether they represented individual churches at that time, or whether each church represented a church era or church age, one thing is repeated over and over. The Lord Jesus says to the churches:
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
What is the Spirit saying to the church today on this earth, and especially in this country? That is where we live.
It seems to me—and you can argue many different ideas about this—that in the last two hundred years, the Lord, the Spirit, has been saying to the church: a recovery, a recovery of the church as Christ’s body on this earth.
This is a reestablishing of the fact that Christ literally is the Head of His body, and that the members—we are members of that body, attached to that Head—have to listen to the Head and obey what the Head says.
That came across with great revelation to a number of brothers during the Brethren movement. We find it in other believers such as T. Austin-Sparks, Watchman Nee, and our brother Stephen. This was originally a revelation of a rediscovered truth that had always been in the Scriptures. It became a matter of illumination. Teachers and prophets followed, illuminating this fact and trying to convey this idea to the church.
I think in these last days—and many of us think we are literally in the last days—it is a matter of the practical working out of this truth, the effectiveness of it. It is not only for the benefit of the individual who is related to the Head, but for the body itself, for the whole church.
There are benefits when we know Christ as our Head and are related to Him on such an intimate level as the members of our physical body are related to our head, or our brain.
This is all for the purpose that the kingdom shall be revealed, that the kingdom shall come. The kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ shall reign forever and ever on this earth and in the new heavens and the new earth.
My emphasis in sharing is on the life of David. We are going to get to that in just a second, but there is one aspect of David and God’s purpose with his life that I want to share with us.
David, like Elijah, was a man of like nature with ourselves. Let us always keep that in mind, because he did some very extraordinary things that seem far beyond our capacity ever to live up to that standard. But he was a man of like nature with ourselves. What was possible in his life is certainly possible in our own lives.
David serves as a type. That is what we want to look at: David as a type. For the sake of argument right now, we want to look at David as a type of an overcomer.
Again, “overcomer” is a word that is much used and has been much written about by brothers and sisters we know. It is something that can become glossed over and go over our heads when we are talking about this whole idea of an overcomer and what it means.
I want to try to define it a little bit and put it in different words. What is an overcomer? I want to use the Apostle Paul.
He says in Ephesians 4 that we are to grow up in every way into Him, who is the Head, Christ. We are to grow up.
Then Paul says in Colossians 1, “Christ we proclaim, that we may present every man mature in Christ.”
James echoes the same sentiment in the first chapter:
Count it all joy when you meet various trials,
for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
And let steadfastness have its full effect,
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
The word perfect there—and I will plagiarize a brother I used to meet with, who probably plagiarized it from somebody else, who plagiarized it from somebody else—does not mean complete sanctification or sinless perfection.
Perfect means that in your tool case you may have a hammer that you have owned for twenty or thirty years. The handle is scratched up, you have your prints all over it, and the head is a little warped. But that hammer is perfect for your grip and for driving in a nail. It is a perfect hammer, although it is terribly marred and scarred.
It is the same way with us. In God’s eyes, we are perfect, and yet we are marred and scarred and have all kinds of things all over us. But in God’s eyes, we are a perfect instrument for His hand. I think that is what James means by perfect.
We have these three terms: growing up, mature, and perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. These are other words that describe what an overcomer is—somebody mature, somebody who is in the process of growing up and knowing Christ as their Head.
So “overcomer” is not some lofty idea. It is a very practical thing in God’s sight and God’s view.
All of this, that we might become overcomers, is also expressed in the term a man of God, which we find in the Scriptures over and over again—that you might be a man of God. Of course, when I say that, I am using it generically. You could say it just as easily: a woman of God.
God is after a man or a woman who is there for His practical usage, for the practical outworking of bringing Christ to His throne.
But this man that God is after in these last days is something that I would like us to think of not necessarily as you, as an individual. In these last days, I think He is looking for a corporate man, a corporate man of God.
Jerry shared with us earlier this year about John the Baptist as an example of a man who was prepared for the Lord’s first return. God is looking for a John the Baptist in these last days when He returns, but this time it is a corporate man.
It means individual members like you and I, joined together with other members of like mind and like heart, who are hearing what the Spirit is saying today and are joined for one purpose.
The one thing about this that is a little different is that we are not necessarily talking about a physical location. It does not have to be a physical place. It does not have to be this fellowship that God is after, as a group of men and women of God who are overcomers.
He may have a few overcomers here, but in God’s sight and in God’s view, it is a spiritual reality. He can have a believer here, a believer in Pakistan, and a believer in China who are not physically related on this earth, and yet, in God’s view, they are one body. They are one man. They are a corporate man of God on this earth.
I think that is what God is after—not necessarily a physical location. You are never going to get a physical location on this earth in these last days where you can gather all the overcomers together in prayer and function as that body. But spiritually, we can do that.
It takes faith to see that, to understand that, and to function that way. You get a sense that there are believers all over this earth who are standing up for this final accomplishment of God’s purpose on this earth.
We have to live by faith in this, and it does not come by sight. We so want to see something, hear something, and feel something around us, but this comes by faith.
I wonder if this might be part of what Jesus meant when He said that one will be in the field, one is taken and one is left; one is grinding at the mill, one is taken and one is left; one is in bed. They are all doing different things, and yet they are that one body.
The question remains: How do we become an overcomer? What practically can be said about our becoming an overcomer?
I am going to quote something Oswald Chambers said. I think it is very apropos:
God does not give us overcoming life.
He gives us life as we overcome.
Meaning that when the crisis comes during the last days, whatever the pressures may be and whatever is happening, God is not simply looking to get you through the crisis. He gives us life so that we can overcome in that crisis.
Today, before these times come and before we experience some of these crises—we may not perceive all the crises going on—God has given us life day by day. In living out that life today in our circumstances, He may produce in us something of what it is to overcome, bit by bit and little by little.
It is a process by which we become overcomers. You do not instantly become an overcomer because God has given something to you. In most, if not all, cases, it is a matter of Him giving life today so that we may learn to become an overcomer.
When I say today’s circumstances and the things we go through produce this overcoming life, there is a far more important aspect of it. Again, we find this in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3. When the Lord Jesus speaks to the churches throughout this church age, He is always talking about an overcomer, or overcomers, in each of these churches—whether individually or in an era of the church age.
What are they overcoming in each of these instances? It has something to do with fellowship life in the church. Whether it is evil men who call themselves apostles, the teaching of Balaam, the teaching of the Nicolaitans, or the prophecies of a Jezebel, these are things that must be overcome.
In each instance, we find this religious aspect to overcoming. It is not just our physical circumstances of everyday life, but it is a matter of the church that we must overcome.
A very wise brother once pointed out to us that in this age in which we live, in this country, when we look at the churches, we are finding, for the most part, a crossless Christianity.
We attended fellowships in Atlanta, wannabe megachurches, a MacArthurite church, and various other churches. I think on two occasions in nine years, I heard somebody preaching about the cross from the pulpit—on two occasions in nine years.
I think that much of what is going on in Christianity today is basically a crossless Christianity. It is a matter of ethics, morality, doing the right thing, and making life better for yourself.
This brother pointed out to us that not only does it begin as a crossless Christianity, but you even have groups today that call themselves Christians who have a Christless Christianity. They will speak of a Christ spirit, or they will speak of Christ as equal to the other great teachers of the world, and so forth.
But it will come down to that day when basically the church—not only in this country, but across the world—will want a Christless Christianity.
That is what believers were to overcome in each of the church ages: what was going on within the church itself. That is the greatest place where we overcome, that we always remain with the good news of the message of the cross of Jesus Christ and what it has done for us.
As you all know in your own hearts, our only life is through the cross of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. He has brought the mystery to us.
Then Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2, gives us a great and mysterious phrase that is not well understood:
The mystery of lawlessness is already at work;
only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way.
There is this mystery of lawlessness at work in this earth and in the churches. But there is One who restrains it, who holds it back. That One will be taken away.
I think when the church has lost the message of the cross and has lost Christ Himself, there is no longer restraint to lawlessness. Lawlessness is rampant in the world, and it will be rampant in the church also. Lawlessness is not necessarily in the way we always think of it, but nevertheless, in God’s sight, it is lawlessness. It is without restraint.
Finally, why is it so important to be an overcomer? Revelation 3:21 tells us.
To the church of Laodicea, He who overcomes, I will grant him to sit on My throne with Me,
as I Myself overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
The Lord Jesus overcame all the opposition, and the Father granted Him to sit on His throne. So with us, if we overcome—if we are hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches today and obeying what the Spirit is saying to us—we shall be fit to sit on the throne with Jesus.
It is a matter of fitness and character, I think, for us truly to reign with Christ.
I want to reiterate this with something Paul said in Romans 5:
Having received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness, reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Then in Hebrews 4—A.A., right, Kenny? Anonymous and anointed—it says that we approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need.
You notice the two different verbs there. We receive mercy, but we need to find grace in the time of need. The Lord has given us, as a free gift, the abundance of grace. But in our daily life, as we battle among the churches and as there is battle in the churches, we need to find grace.
That grace may produce within us this character and this fitness to be able to reign with Christ for a thousand years, and then, as Revelation 22 says, forever and ever we shall reign with Christ.
Again, I have heard good brothers say that it is not necessarily for all believers, but only for those whose hearts are exercised to overcome and to be a man or woman of God.
The way the Lord does this is through time, through trials, and through our travailing through trials. It produces in us, again, this character and fitness to be able to reign with Christ. That is what He is after. That is what He wants. That is what His heart longs for: brothers and sisters, members of His body, able to reign with Him.
He wants every believer to be in that position, not merely satisfied with, “Well, my sins are forgiven by the blood, and I am going to heaven.” That is not the fullness of the message that Jesus has given to us.
I want to read another quote from Oswald Chambers about being an overcomer in these last days:
In the early stages of our Christian life, we watch for Christ’s return.
But now we watch with Christ for His return.
There is a great difference between watching for and watching with. A mature Christian, an overcomer, watches with Christ for His return.
I heard Stephen say at one of the conferences many years ago that Christ is already in the clouds. The first stage of His return has already taken place. He is in the clouds now, waiting to emerge onto the earth.
Is the Spirit prompting us and saying that to our hearts? Are we with Christ, waiting for that return? Or are we still just looking for His return?
Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3 that our lives should be lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God. So we wait, and we watch. We are waiting and watching with Christ for His return.
This whole idea of hastening His return can have two meanings. Either it is somehow through our participation with Christ on this earth today that we quicken His return to this earth, or it has the thought that we are earnestly desiring it and looking for it. That is all our longing is.
In that, I want to look at some practical things in the history of David. We will get to two of them this morning: David the overcomer, and his history.
First, I want to read a verse in 1 Samuel 16, at the very start of David’s public ministry. Samuel comes to Bethlehem because God has sent him there and says, “There you will see the man. You will see the prince that I have raised up. There you shall anoint him to be king.”
In 1 Samuel 16:12-13, the latter part of verse 12, it says:
The Lord said to Samuel, “Rise and anoint him, for this is the one.”
Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers;
and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
There is an interesting little phrase there: Samuel immediately set out for Ramah. He did not even, according to the Scriptures, tell David what he was doing.
With Saul, he said, “I can explain. You are going to be a king,” and so on and so forth. “This is what it is going to be like.” David did not even receive instructions, probably because Samuel was scared for his life and was fleeing from the wrath of Saul. So he took off immediately.
But the point is that David was filled with the Spirit of God from that day forward. He had that Spirit upon him. He began his public ministry with the Spirit of God with him.
Paul tells us in Acts 13 about David. Very interestingly, he adds some words that we never find in the Old Testament about David. Paul says that the Lord said about David:
“I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.”
You do not find that latter phrase, “who will do all My will,” anywhere in the Old Testament.
These words of the Lord, “a man after My own heart,” were spoken thirty years before David was anointed and the Spirit came upon him. David was not even born yet. We think David was probably twenty-three years old when he was anointed, so he was not even born yet.
Yet there we find the purpose of God, the intention of God, His method in effect, even before the birth of David. God was going to instill in David, this man He would raise up, a heart after His own heart.
We find David’s youthful desire and the purpose of his life: to serve the Lord and serve the Lord only in all that he did. God did that. Only God can do that in a man’s heart. Man cannot do that for himself.
It also speaks of what David would become after time, trials, and travailing—that he truly would become a man after God’s own heart. It is one thing to have the promise of it, but it is another thing to have the fulfillment of it.
There are so many promises given to us in the Scriptures of what Christ has done for us and given us. But are we finding through time, trials, and travailing that they become real in our own life, and that others who rub shoulders with us see that this has been produced in our life?
It is not good enough just to have it in our brains that God has done these things for us—to have knowledge. There has to be a practical outworking of His life in His saints.
That is what the Lord did with David. He produced something until, at the very end of David’s life, he really was a man who did all God’s will. Not perfectly—he was a marred hammer in God’s hand—but he was perfect for God’s usage.
According to God, he was a man who did all His will. He was the one who captured and established Jerusalem as his capital and set his throne there. He was the one who brought the ark and the tabernacle back into prominence, so that the Lord’s presence was again conveyed to Israel, not only through the king and the kingdom, but through the ark and the tabernacle.
He was also the one who prepared everything for the temple. God denied him the privilege of building the temple himself, saying that his son would build it, but David prepared everything and did everything he could to get that temple ready.
All of this was for the ultimate purpose that Messiah shall return. That is the only reason for Jerusalem, the only reason for the temple, and the only reason for all of this: Messiah shall come, and He shall reign on earth and in the heavens forever.
David began with the Spirit of God. It is a type of our beginnings and our service to the Lord. There is no other way we can serve the Lord except through the Spirit.
You cannot, as Paul said to the Galatians, begin with the Spirit and then end with the works of the flesh. Christians are so apt to do that—to adopt rules or regulations. Christ plus something else equals salvation for us: “I do not dance, I do not smoke, I do not go to movies, I do not hang out with girls who do those kinds of things.”
But no, it is Christ alone in our lives that allows us to maintain this truth: the Spirit alone is the Person in our hearts who is doing this work, never the works of the flesh. Never anything else. I use ridiculous examples, but there are all kinds of things we add to Christ that we think give us salvation.
There is something I want to add as a point, something that really touched my heart. I read something in Watchman Nee recently that opened my eyes to a new reality about the Spirit.
I became a Christian, was baptized in the Holy Spirit, and became part of the charismatic movement. I thought I knew who the Person of the Holy Spirit was, and I knew about the gifts of the Spirit and their functioning.
But something Watchman Nee said that I read very recently opened my eyes to a new reality about the Spirit:
The Spirit is the life of the Father and the life of the Son.
That really, for me, elevates who the Holy Spirit is. God has no life without the Holy Spirit, without the Spirit. Jesus has no life and no function without the Spirit. How vital the Spirit is.
He is not merely an influence. He is not merely a thought. How important He is as part of the Trinity. It is amazing what God has done for us, as He did for David, to give us the Spirit.
David was brought into Saul’s court in the city of Gibeah. It was quite a lofty thing for a young believer to be newly anointed and ready for service, and then almost immediately to be brought into the king’s court. It was a marvelous thing that happened.
He was brought in because Saul was having some problems. Some Scriptures say that Saul had an evil spirit; others would like to think of it as a spirit of evil that Saul had.
There was something Saul produced in himself over a period of thirty years that alienated him from God’s Spirit. This evil took over in Saul’s life. Something was needed to assuage this evil when it came upon Saul, for it seemed to come in fits. So they brought David in.
David was the one able to quiet this evil that was in Saul’s spirit, the only one able to do that. Of course, the instrument was the lyre, but it is a marvelous sense of what David was given: he could bring peace into a situation that was so chaotic and full of evil intent.
I think of some instances in my own life in which I use the term heaven touches earth. I will mention one instance from my own life. Maybe you have had instances like this also.
Michael and Shirley Woods invited me to come out to Richmond, and they drove me up to Harvey Cedars for the conference. Of course, I took them up on it, and we drove up there.
At the end of the conference, we went to visit Thornton and Pat Stearns in their beach house at Harvey Cedars. We sat around having fellowship with Mike and Shirley, Pat and Thornton, and another couple who were there.
As a younger believer, it was like heaven on earth. It was just the presence of the Lord in the conversations, their perceptions of things, and the way they communicated. It was a delight to my heart, like a salve, like the bloom on a rose that you smell in the morning. What a fragrance it was.
That is what David was like in Saul’s court. He was a fragrance of life in the midst of chaos and horror.
I want to end on this last instance of David’s life. I will read one verse that characterizes this in 1 Samuel 17. This is the instance, of course, when David meets Goliath.
The words David used describe this confrontation and this man of opposition. In 1 Samuel 17:26, David said to the men who stood by:
“What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
That is David’s victory. David’s victory was not the five smooth stones he took, the sling he took with him, his bravery, or anything like that. It was the living God whom he knew he had on his side.
He spoke of this man as an uncircumcised Philistine. According to some commentators, this man was nine feet tall. Some speak of him as being nine feet nine inches tall. Certainly, he was a giant in the land.
Our brother William, whom we saw on Zoom this morning, would look like a little person compared to this giant. I mean, this was no slouch David was going to confront. It was a very real enemy. According to the weights of that time, his armor weighed 125 pounds. This was a colossus of an enemy that David was going to meet.
But David met him not in the bravery of his own heart, but because he knew the living God. So the question I ask us is: What is Goliath to us?
I think the common answer is that Goliath is a type of the world. We all have to face the world at some point after becoming believers. Whether it is right when we become believers or later on, we have to deal with this whole issue of the world.
It is a colossus. It is no weak sister that we come up against. So what is our relationship with the world?
The first thing we have to remember is what Jesus said in John 16:
“In the world you have tribulation;
but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
That is the first thing. Jesus has overcome. He has conquered the world through the cross, and we stand on that foundation.
But then Paul goes a step further. He says in Galatians 6:
“Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
We stand in the accomplished fact of Christ on the cross as our victory over the world also. We are crucified. We are not being crucified to it; it is a done fact. We are crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to us.
But as with David, David fought the Philistines four or five times after this. He had battles and skirmishes with them. So with us, though the victory has been won and we stand in the victory won against the world, we are fighting skirmishes all the time. They will always be there.
I am going to quote something from A. W. Tozer. You all know that it has been mentioned to me by a couple of believers: every time I talk about A. W. Tozer, they say Stephen Kaung said that whenever he heard that name, he said, “That man was a prophet.” So, these are the words of a prophet.
The Christian is called to separation from the world. But we must be sure we know what God means by the world. What is God’s definition of the world?
We are likely to make it mean something external only, and thus miss its real meaning. The theater, cards, liquor, gambling—these are not the world. These are merely an external manifestation of the world. Our warfare is not against worldly ways, but against the spirit of the world.
Tozer was using items from the 1950s that were common in that day, which may seem to us almost a little trifling. Cards, theater, liquor, gambling—what equivalencies can we use seventy-two years later?
I might step on some toes here, but so be it. We can insert, instead of cards, theater, liquor, and such things: abortion, same-sex marriage, gender identity, and the teaching of critical race theory.
As bad as they are, these are mere symptoms or external manifestations of the world. They are not our enemy. Those who do these things are not our enemy.
As Tozer said, our battle is against the spirit of the world that is behind these things. So as we come to prayer about lawlessness, abortion, and all these things, keep in mind that our battle is not against people, not against flesh and blood.
It is against the spirit that has caused these things: the spirit of lawlessness that is rampant in this country especially.
I want to read something Paul said to remind us of what he exhorted us in Ephesians 6:
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we are not contending against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness,
against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.
Lest we pick up on the idea of “world rulers” in this present darkness, world rulers here has the idea of spiritual forces. There are world rulers in this earth who are spirits from the enemy. They are the motivation, power, and authority behind what is going on in the world today.
It is not presidents, legislatures, or school boards that we are trying to battle. It is the spirit behind all these things that is our real enemy.
So let us fight the good fight, as David did. Let us overcome Goliath, the world. Let us fight against our real enemy, the spirit of the world, as we come together especially in prayer.
Even as we gather on a Sunday morning, there is a battle going on. But we are standing for something. We are standing against the spirit of this world.
There are various other things in David’s life that I would like to speak on, but perhaps I will do that at another time.
And, to really get myself in trouble, I will leave you with one other thought. Remember that political parties—Republicans, Democrats, Independents, whatever they may be—they are all of the world, okay? They are not spiritual. They are not spiritual forces.
I will use a paraphrase of a parable Jesus used. You can put pearls on a pig, but a pig, though it may have pearls, is still going to go back to wallow in the mire.
Political parties are, I am sorry to put it like this, pigs. They are going to feed at whatever trough will keep them in power. So they are not the forces that we should be praying for. They are not the source of power.
Let us pray truly against the spirit of this world. Let us really be the overcoming warriors the Lord wants us to be in these last days, and have our eyes focused on who the enemy is and what He wants us to be in this age.
Let us end with a word of prayer.
I am sorry, Lord, that things have to come across as an exhortation, or harshly. But Lord, thank You that You do, with all of us, wake us up to realities as they are.
Thank You that Your heart is for every believer, whether in this fellowship, believers in megachurches, or believers all over this earth—those who are men and women of God, striving in their circumstances to be overcomers and useful to You in these last days.
Thank You that You have given us this privilege. Thank You that where there is privilege given, there is enablement to be. Thank You that we can draw on You, on Your life, to enable us to be Your overcomers and to hasten the day of Your return.
Thank You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I encourage you, brothers and sisters, this morning, and we ask that You teach us how to wait with You.
In this world, you may have trouble, but take heart: He has overcome the world.