A Call to Fight the Good Fight: Faith, Warfare, and Walking With God

Greg, and I'm recording you talk a little bit.

Oh dear.

You're building worldwide, or even America.

Oh dear.

Thanks for that piece of confident busting information.

I've got two readings for us today.

The first one is in Exodus chapter 13, 70 17 to 22.

Exodus 13 · chapter mention

You can turn on your Bibles, and if you don't have your Bibles with you, you can sit next to a Protestant.

Okay, right, I can see that went well.

But interestingly enough, we really do need to focus on the scriptures because what I'm about to say today will be challenging to some.

And it says here that then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had led the let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer.

For God's sake, least perhaps the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.

So God led them, led the people of God.

Who are the people?

We are the people.

That's a question.

No, you can talk to me.

Who are the people?

Are you people of God?

Of course we are.

If we're saved and born again in the Spirit, we are the people of God.

So Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, and because he had placed them with the children of Israel under a solemn oath, saying that God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you.

So they took their journey from Succath and camped at Ethan on the edge of the wilderness.

The next reading is from 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 12 to 16.

1 Timothy 6:12–16

And Timothy, oh, here we go.

Fight the good fight of faith.

Behold the eternal life to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus, who witnessed the good confessions before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless, on until the Lord Jesus Christ's appearance, when he will make manifest it in his own time he who is the blessed and only potentate King of kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, or whom be the honour and everlasting power.

Amen.

May God bless the reading of his holy word.

If I had to give a a title to the message, it would be like a call to war.

Sorry, can you hear me okay?

Yeah, you're right at the back.

I can turn the volume up if you yeah, that's good.

Um it's it's I know it's blatantly obvious, but I need to state this.

You and I in life, when we're going through A to B, we'll always have issues and problems.

Am I right?

We are I mean it doesn't matter whether they're financial or domestic, you know, but between husband and wife, like me getting the satinav right and getting the time wrong.

The sat nav kept us on the right road, and Margaret managed to get me just about in the right time.

But sometimes you have, you know, but we argue.

Would you believe that?

Me and Margaret argue sometimes.

Yeah, never, yeah, okay.

But it's true in life, there is always issues, and there's always problems.

Now, sometimes people say, Oh, give your life to Jesus and everything will be rosy.

And what happens is you discover when you get saved, born again in spirit, and you know, you're working with God, you still have the same problems, they don't disappear.

And if you take what we've just read in that first scripture, God's chosen people who were in servitude, in slavery, in bondage, although they'd been set free, Moses had done the business with Pharaoh.

It says here, and you might mind what had happened is the spies had been into the land.

You know the story of the spies?

They looked that ten of them come back with a bad report, but two, Joshua and Caleb, come back and say, Oh, the land's great, we can take it.

But God says, No, I'm taking you into the wilderness because if you see war, you might be faint.

You might bottle it, if you know what I mean by that.

And so, knowing their hearts that they might turn back to Egypt and go back to slavery and bondage rather than face the war, he led them into the wilderness.

Now, when we get saved, we're in a fight, whether you like it or whether you don't.

Now, our lives are in a fight before we get saved, but what happens is our eyes are opened.

There is a God and there's a Satan trying to take God's plan and purpose for your life away.

And so this was what was happening even away back then.

Forty years in the wilderness because they might not want to face the warfare.

I'm going to say something here that I think is quite profound.

If you don't face the fight that's ordained for your life, then God cannot fight for you.

You know, we turn when we pray and expect God to do everything.

And God's going, well, wait a minute.

Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

Because that's what it says in the scripture.

So God expects us to exercise our faith.

And when we exercise our faith believing it to be right, God comes and works with us.

So doing it on our own isn't always that easy.

So if you want to face the problems, then God will fight with you and for you, as long as you're in the will of God.

Don't be afraid of the issues, or you won't know the power of God.

In Hebrews chapter 10, verse 38, it says, Now the just will live by faith.

Hebrews 10:38

But if anybody draws back, my soul will have no pleasure in them.

Can you see where we're going now?

God's actually saying, Exercise your faith, face the problems, and you will be an overcomer.

But recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with suffering, partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproach and by tribulation, and partly while you became companions of those who were treated so.

For you had compassion on me in my chains, this is Paul speaking, of course, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and an enduring possession for yourselves in heaven.

What a reward.

Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which is a great reward.

Now the just shall live by faith, but if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in them.

Draws back.

I used to play football.

And uh played right up till I was 47.

Um but in these days we had halfbacks.

I was a left half.

Maybe I should have been a left back and was left back in the dressing room the way I played.

But uh so we had let we had halfbacks, we had full backs, and then as the game develops, we hear about wing backs, is that right?

You can talk to me, it's okay.

Yeah.

Now, in the church, I used to play in the church's leagues with St.

Brides in Edinburgh, the Church of Scotland, they had a Sunday league.

But now the Church of Scotland seems to have nothing but drawbacks and stereo these halfbacks and wing backs.

They don't want to fight anymore.

The devils actually won their minds over, blotted the truth of this word, changed this word to mean different things.

They don't know the difference between exegesis and eisegesis, if you like.

I don't know, these are complicated words, but exegesis means to extract the truth out of the word.

Isegesis is, oh, I've got a good idea, I'll try and make it fit the word.

And that's why we have so much apostasy in some of the churches today.

So, we need to go to war, is that right?

You know there's a war on for the destiny of our souls.

I want to sort of end up in heaven when we die.

But heaven isn't it just pie in the sky when we die.

It should be stake on the plate while we wait.

We should, yeah, we should.

You see, if we we we tackle the problems with God, we are destined to be overcomers.

So we can overcome our problems.

Um when when the churches have that kind of compromising um stake, they couldn't tackle a fifth supper, never mind the purposes of the last supper.

There is no fight left in them.

Exodus 13 and 17 says, Then it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God didn't lead them by way of the land, least perhaps the people change their minds, least they see war.

There's a constant fight goes on.

The Bible, for the Old Testament and the New Testament, is full of fights.

If you think back to the Genesis, you know the story of the two trees.

God gave Adam dominion in the garden, the tree of life, and in the tree, a good and evil knowledge of good and evil.

And God says, Don't touch the fruit of the tree, a good and evil.

And of course, Satan, who had fallen from heaven as an angel of light, now an angel of darkness, appears in the form of a serpent and beguiles Eve.

And what was perfect, what was good, what was in good order, become corrupt.

Eve was challenged.

Did God really say that?

That you shouldn't eat from this?

Is the word of God true?

When God speaks to you, is it real?

Is it right?

And of course, Eve went, well, you know, boom, boom, boom, she was one over.

She did not listen to the truth of the word of God, and so she took the fruit.

So we can blame the woman for that, can't we?

No, you're right, we can't.

Why?

Because God had given Adam dominion, and when you read the actual words, she turns around and then hands it to Adam, who's standing and presiding over the fall.

And the battle that we have is to regain what we lost in that battle.

Because we didn't listen to the word of God.

Instead, you walk in at ease with God, we become this at ease with God.

Sickness entered the world for the first time.

It was never God's plan.

The whole order of God had begun to be corrupt.

So we lost to the servant, and today we constantly fight for that basic thing to get it back.

And that's not the only fight, if you remember Abraham, he had to fight for Lot, remember?

Joseph had to fight for his own life and for his family's life when he became Pot of her servant, so as he could feed them grain when they came and realized that he was still alive.

Moses had to fight to get Israel, God's people, out of bondage.

And when he got them out of bondage and they went through their 40 years, you ought to remember that they were going to the promised land, which God had already promised them way back in Abraham's day.

But you must notice this.

By the time Joshua comes on the scene to lead them into the promised land, who's there?

Everybody and nobody.

Sorry, that's a Scottish expression.

Everybody.

All the wrong people, the Canaanites, the a whole pile of people who had taken possession of the land because Israel had vacated it.

If you go through the book of Judges, you'll see fight after fight after fight.

You see, God had promised it, but they still had to fight for it.

Is that right?

We all know it, but you didn't even realize sometimes that that is the way it's going to do.

And we have a passive mindset.

The church is the day turning, and I've been at prayer meetings.

And people want and desire the good things.

And then they go, get out, clause, here it comes.

If it's God's will, it'll happen.

Well, I think that's a bit of a compromise because if you read the word of God and you know what God is saying to you, then you should be claiming it and fighting for it.

God promised Israel the promised land, but it's not that they fight for it.

David had to fight Goliath.

Saul lost his kingdom because he wouldn't fight.

And presided on God and tried to do a prophet's job and then lost his kingdom.

You have to know who you are in Christ, and you have to face the battles and overcome them.

The weapons of our warfare are mighty to the pulling down a stronghold.

When Nehemiah had to fight, very interesting, Nehemiah had a real burden for Jerusalem after it had been sacked, and it was in some state, and he was in servitude, he was in slavery.

And the king pulled them aside and said, Whoa, why is your face so long?

Why are you struggling?

And he he shared this heart with the king.

He says, My nation, they're in some state.

Jerusalem's fallen, the gates are burnt to the ground.

I would love to see it or rebuilt.

I'd love to see my nation restored.

And in his honesty, because he was carrying that burden, the king turned around and went, you know what?

I'm going to let you go.

I'm not just going to let you go, I'm going to give you provisions.

You're going to take this fight on for God, I'll provide.

And God ends up using the people that he was in servitude to let them go back and rebuild the walls, to rebuild the gates.

And the interesting thing about Nehemiah is when they were laying the bricks, they laid them with a chowl in one hand and a spear or a sword in the other.

Why?

Because they were willing to fight for what God had asked them to do.

No passivity, no bottle merchants.

People of God who stood and the walls were rebuilt.

It's funny though, and amongst that, some of the Israelites that were still there moaned and groaned.

A man called Tobias.

Why are you doing this?

It'll never happen.

It's funny when we set out to build something good for God that sometimes people in the church moan and groan.

Is that right?

What about in our lodges when we're working hard to raise another lodger and everybody's working together, and all of a sudden somebody comes up with something sarcastic?

Oh, you're never going to manage that.

Oh, there's no enough people.

Do you know you and God's a majority?

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Well, all these fights are in the Old Testament.

But was there any fighting in the New Testament?

Well, what about Jesus?

One of his titles is a captain of our salvation.

Captains.

That's an army description.

And he fought, he fought the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the religious people of the day.

How to fight against traditions?

Goodness me, what traditions are in some of the churches today?

It looks to me as if they've come out of the second imagination.

That's no ideal book, by the way.

Paul says, I've fought the good fight.

Martin Luther had to fight the religious traditions of the Church of Rome and Europe.

Started the whole Reformation.

Something was said yesterday on the platform about what was new in the Reformation.

I want to tell you.

Rome never controlled the early dispersal of the disciples and the spread of the gospel.

Rome never come on the seat to the scene until Constantine's day, and they started to bring Christianity under an order.

So what we've done at the Reformation is rediscover what the true disciples of Christ were doing when they were sharing the gospel.

Battle zones.

What an expression.

If things are not changing for the better, and you're doing the same thing all the time, maybe you should get back to God in prayer and say, God, why is this not working?

Look for an answer in the reading of the word.

Let the Spirit of God speak to you through.

Do you know God does talk to us?

I say that in some churches and they look at me as if I'm stupid.

I said, Well, no, it's true.

God speaks.

Have you heard the voice of God?

I can see by the brows and the looks I'm getting here that they think I'm on danger.

Let me explain something.

I never got safety of a 33-year-old.

Now, has anybody read any look at the Bible for a second?

Anybody read a novel before?

A real novel.

I don't know, you know.

Oh I'm nodding now, we'll take confession later.

Um no, I shouldn't do that.

A good writer, this is true, mark my words here.

A good writer will write a story, and you know, at the early stages, Tom walked into the room.

He was tall, dark, and very handsome.

It's a different Tom, by the way.

Right?

And uh what happens to you when you're reading it?

Your mind goes, oh aye, and you form a picture of the person in your mind.

Am I right?

Yeah, tall dark man.

Then a lady walks into the room, and the writer will describe the lady.

She was beautiful.

Now you see, men are all in their image already in their head.

Then the inverted commas come into the script.

The man says, hello doll.

Right?

But you see, when you're reading this, you've got the picture, now you're putting a voice to what's getting said, am I right?

Well, I was never good at reading.

But when I got saved and I started to get my head on this, God started to talk to me.

Because when something was said that triggered my heart, I had to change.

When I got saved, I used to have quite a foul mouth.

I'd worked in the building sites, I'd been in prison for about 12 years at that time, and I was working there by the way, prison officer.

I can see you looking.

But you know, your diction is usually quite.

And so I'm reading the book one day, and in James it says how you have the power to bless and curse people with your tongue.

And it was almost as if God says to me, Tom, you need to take hold of that tongue and your thinking and speak blessings into people's lives instead of curses.

And I went, oh my goodness.

But once you have a testimony of God talking to you like that, weeks, days, months, I don't know, and you're reading, God will talk to you again.

And the more that happens, the more you become familiar with the voice of God in your head and in your heart.

And that's the challenge to change.

Because the Bible says God wants to renew your mind.

Emboided minds need renewing.

He wants you to move from one degree of glory to the next.

He wants you to conform to a likeness of Christ.

And that's what God wants for us.

But Satan wants something different.

So you realize you're in a fight.

One of the biggest examples of that fight was Tom and Jerry.

Anyone seen Tom and Jerry?

Come on.

Yeah?

The wee moose is in the corner.

Sorry, the little mouse is in the corner, right?

And the cat, Tom, is ready to hit it over the head with a frying pan.

Have you got the picture so far?

And all of a sudden, what pops up?

The devil on his shoulder.

Finish him off.

And then the angel pops up on the other side.

Don't do it, Thomas.

Hey, come on.

You must have seen it.

That's all, folks.

No.

That's the reality of how our minds work.

Reading the word, the revelation comes.

And that devil makes less appearance as you walk on with God.

But the wee angel that comes at the other side tends to talk a wee bit more into the mind.

You know?

That's the way it goes.

So God wants to talk to us.

We just need to recognize it.

We need to use it so as we can apply it in our everyday lives.

Are you with me so far?

Are you with me?

Huh?

Another wave and we're doing.

Brilliant.

Hey yeah.

Hello.

I got a wave, yes.

Anyway, fight the good fight the faith.

Sorry.

We've got another 25 minutes ago.

Okay.

2 Timothy again, 2 and 3.

Be strong in the grace.

Engage in warfare.

Verse 4 it says, No one engages in warfare and entangles himself with the affairs of this life.

That he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

You know, we're members of the institution, the orange institution.

The arms institution exists because Christ came and formed the church.

How do we get people and recruit them into the institution?

There's no other way other than talking to our neighbours, and I know we can have programmes and all the rest of it, but when we talk one-to-one to our family, our neighbours, and our friends, we have an opportunity to convince them that the values of this institution are worthwhile.

That are worth joining.

Because it's an institution that tends to fight, it stands up and doesn't compromise.

Am I right?

This is where the churches should be.

Now, some churches are, some churches are not.

But this is how we should be recruiting for the church as well.

Anyone that engages in this warfare doesn't want to focus on other nonsense that goes round about us.

Some people are concentrating football.

I have to put my hands up for this one.

I sometimes struggle with this because I like football.

But if God's called me to do certain things and football gets on the road, my football's become an idolatrous thing in my life.

And I need to put Christ first.

I like music.

If the music gets in the way of what God's calling me to do, I have to make a decision.

I need to follow Christ, what Christ asked me to do.

And anything else.

Magnet and I went through so many things in our past, and sometimes we've disagreed.

But when we get together and we agree, I discover that this Bible says the place of agreement is the place of power.

Hello?

And when you get to agree with the Word of God, you end up having the place of power to change your life and make progress.

So we're enlisting in an army, whether we like it or whether we don't.

We're enlisting in a war, whether we like it or whether we don't.

Anybody here got a forces background?

Yeah, one or two.

Do you still get the king's shilling?

How do you enlist?

Well, you go to enlistment.

You probably go through some form of induction nowadays, I would think.

Sensible stuff now.

Can we trust them with a gun?

Will they hold up a bank?

When we enlisted God's army, how do we enlist?

By getting saved, by realizing that we need to deal with a sinful nature.

Just like what happened away back in the garden, we need to get that back.

And the only way to do that is realize that we inherited a sinful nature for Adam.

There's a, I think, a theological thing.

Original sin.

Do you have that?

Okay.

Original sin is what we're the state we're in when we're born of the womb.

Because we've inherited that for Adam.

If you don't believe in original sin, has anybody had any kids here?

Yeah?

Mums and dads?

You ever needed to teach your kids to be bad?

No, you only need to teach them to be good.

Why is that?

Because they were born sinners.

They're not sinners because of the sin.

They sin because they're sinners.

And so we need to deal with that in life.

It took me, it was 33 before I got there.

Lord, I realize I'm a sinner.

Come in, please forgive me.

Come into my life and change me.

And that's how you enlist in God's army.

I'm going to stop there because I can see one or two people looking at their watches.

Is that alright?

Good carry off.

Right.

Okay, no, no.

I can go for another two hours if you want.

Okay.

England will play tonight, don't forget.

Alright, I see.

Okay.

No Escosi, no Fiesta.

I don't know if that translated, but no, no.

It does, I know.

No Scotland, no party.

Right, okay.

Okay.

How excellent is the spirit we have?

Have we enlisted in the army?

You know, that's what makes the difference.

I used to attend church.

I used to talk about God, but I never knew him.

But the day I got down on my knees and asked for God's forgiveness, come into my life and change me.

The next again day I picked this up and God started to talk to me through it.

My spiritual eyes had been open.

What does it say?

Born again in the Spirit of God, John.

But it's it's it makes the big difference.

And unbeknownst to myself, God's hand was on me.

This is at this time.

And then I realized that when I looked back the way, God's hand's always been on me.

And then I realized that God had called me to certain things.

Now he didn't call me into the ministry right away, but he called me to make a difference.

Challenge the people I worked with.

When I was a kid, I used to get called Tommy.

Nice name, no problem.

Later on, when I went to the building trade, I become Tam, probably because it rhymed with BAM.

In biblical times, your name had to do with your character.

Yeah, Muslim.

And uh later on, um with a fruit ball, I was called Tambo the Jambo.

But when I got saved, I got some different names.

Now, working in a prison, I had a lot of names, some of them I couldn't even mention.

Tam, Tom, Bible basher, Jesus freak.

And the people that used to slag me off in my workplace, not prisoners, I'm talking about staff.

When they had issues and had problems, guess where they used to come to?

Why?

Because I was able to deal with life issues because I knew the man that created life.

And we can be in that place for our families and our neighbours if we enlist on the fight and recognize the fight.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for sometimes opening our eyes to the reality of the struggles that we have in life.

I thank you that when we get saved and born again in the Spirit, we are actually dropped into the battlefield.

We're dropped into a field that we're already there, but we just never see it the same way.

Lord, I pray you would open our eyes to see the battles that we're in.

You've called us to establish the kingdom of God.

How can we do that other than sharing our faith with other people?

We're members of an institution.

How can we encourage its growth?

By sharing our faith with other people.

We're members of your church.

How do we get our churches to grow?

By sharing our faith with other people.

Bible says that they overcome by the blood of the Lamb, being saved, and by the word of their testimony.

Lord, I pray that you'd give each and every one of us a testimony to your saving grace and to you working in our lives so that we can become overcomers and share our testimony with others.

Encourage them to be drawn to Christ.

You say in your word, if Christ be lifted high, he will draw all men unto them.

Is our testimony strong enough to bring other people under conviction?

Lord, we pray that that would be the case in the days that lie ahead.

Lord, when we move into our latter years, do we know we're going to heaven?

Do we know our names are written on the Lamb's Book of Life?

Do we know that we've repented and asked Christ into our lives?

Do we have the blessed assurance that when we die we know where we're going?

Jesus defeated Satan, put death and hell in its proper place so that we might live a victorious life, knowing that there's a crown and a reward waiting for us in the final hours of existence.

Lord, give us that blessed assurance as we repent our sins and ask Christ into our lives for the days that lie ahead.

And I just pray that we'd all be in that place in Jesus' name.

And all God's people say, Amen.

Amen.

God bless you.