War & Peace | Week 1 | Pastor Micah Sutton | Five Lakes Church

We are beginning our new series called war and peace.

And I cannot, I think of a better day to begin that series.

Then on July the fourth independence day, the day when we celebrate the move of independence for the United States of America from great Britain, amen.

Praise God, the colonies desired freedom and Britain didn't want to let them go.

England said no.

And the colony said yes.

And when you have that kind of a moment, you want peace.

You hope for peace.

You pray for peace, but there's a famous Latin phrase that says, if you want peace, prepare for war that colonies said, we want peace.

And we'll separate in peace.

And Britain said, no, we're not going to let you go.

It costs too much just to let you go.

And so the colony set, all right, in order for us to live in peace, we must then go to war.

And I think it's the best day to celebrate this because in the spiritual realm, that's exactly what you did.

When you said, I am ready to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and my savior.

You said, I am going, I am not okay with being the slave of sin any longer.

I want to be free.

And the enemy said, no, I'm not going to let you be free because it costs too much for you to be free.

It costs me too much for you to be free.

And so he said, no, I'm not going to let you go.

And so you came to Jesus and you said, Hey, I want to be free, but I can't be free all by myself.

I need your help.

Will you be my savior?

And Jesus said, yes, I'll be your savior.

And from that moment forward, when you let him be your Lord and savior, all of a sudden sin had no more.

Hold on you, you were free.

Yes.

Free indeed.

Praise the name of the Lord, praise God.

And as the colonies fought, they won.

And here's the reality spiritually in your life.

And in mine.

As long as you keep fighting, you will win.

You cannot lose when God is on your side.

It has a fundamental impossibility that of God has for you.

Nothing can stand against you and win praise God.

But around the church, you might've heard this phrase, the phrase being spirit warfare, spiritual warfare.

Now the phrase spiritual warfare isn't used in scripture, but it is a very biblical concept.

And, and that's, I know what this series is about.

It's unpacking this idea of spiritual warfare.

It's, it's used to, to express the engagement of believers with forces outside of our ability to see or interact with on a physical plane.

But they do matter NFS themselves on a physical plane and see them, but we can see the response to them.

We can feel response to them.

In fact, we can sometimes tell when we're in a time of spiritual warfare, by what we are sensing, what we are feeling, what we are going through in our own lives, we can, sometimes it can be a feeling of, of being down or depressed when actually everything kind of looks good around.

I've had that experience myself.

I've said to my wife, bye, all indications.

Things should be are going really well.

Well, but I just feel down.

I feel depressed when I, there's no reason for me to feel depressed.

Or maybe, maybe it's not that with you.

Maybe it's dreading negative things in positive moments where you're everything around you is positive.

People are singing your praises, but now you just immediately begin dreading the negative that's anybody ever waited for the other shoe to drop things are just going so well.

I know it's going to be terrible in a moment.

Think about how sad that is.

Yes.

I've been in

Years before my grandfather ever passed away, I grieved his death.

I would wake up in the middle of the night, crying about my grandfather's death.

He died in his eighties.

I started we're doing this when he was in his fifties, of course in my world.

I thought that was a really old man at the time.

It's younger and younger by the day.

I'm just telling you.

And so, but, but things are good, but I'm feeling bad.

Maybe having anxiety or fear without any reason to have anxiety and fear.

Sometimes it's just being tired.

You slept enough.

You're medically healthy.

You drank 47 gallons of coffee and you need to lay down and take a nap.

Anybody ever been there?

All of these things can potentially be signs of spiritual warfare.

And I'm trying to be careful with diagnosing this because, because, uh, how all of this affects you is going to be different than it affects other people.

Ultimately, here's when I know when I know in my own life, I know I'm dealing with a spiritual battle when I have unreasonable responses to stimuli.

And if you're a note taker, I really encourage you to take some notes today.

Cause I'm a say a lot of stuff, and I hope that some of it will help you in your own life.

But when I have unreasonable responses to stimuli, Christie says, Hey, what are you doing right now?

And I'm like, what's wrong?

What's the matter with you?

I don't have any why you have to question me all the time.

Okay, I'm human.

So are you when the little thing occurs and I go ballistic over it, sometimes that's when I know that I'm dealing with spiritual warfare.

These things are not physical

And they're often illogical, but they're real.

So intensifies the negative situations.

So if things are going poorly, instead of being able to see your way out of it, it just crushes you down to the bottom of the pit it's oppression on top of natural situation, because how many know things don't always go well, right now we have a situation going on in the church at large, not in our church, but the church at large, they're telling, they're telling us that more pastors are resigning and leaving ministry at a greater rate right now than has been seen in modern history.

And a lot of it is through the pandemic.

Pastors were saying, I'm not going to quit.

I'm going to be there for the church.

I'm going to be there for our faith family.

But a lot of older pastors are saying, but as soon as we get out of this, I'm retiring.

That was the last straw.

I don't want to ever do this again.

Younger pastors in the, in the process of the pandemic, making bad decisions and poor life choices and needing to step out of ministry for moral reasons and for failure reasons.

And for all kinds of other reasons, a good friend of mine that I've known since.

I mean, we're both incredibly young, uh, had the close his church down just because of situations with the pandemic and the church has been going for more than 20 years.

Just sad things happen in tough things happening what's happening, it's natural situation.

And then oppression on top of that spiritual warfare.

And here's our big idea today.

Spiritual warfare is intentionally engaging in the war that believers are in your, in it, whether you like it or not know it or not think it or not, you're in it.

Spiritual warfare is intentionally engaging

In that war.

There's a scriptural precedent for it.

Scripture uses military analogies to describe the kitchen, the Christian life regularly, but Ephesians chapter six is probably the more, most well-known.

It says a final word.

That means I've set all of this stuff.

And now to really bring it home, understand this, I'm making a note of it.

This is, this is the writer say, Hey, listen up right now.

I've said all this.

Now this is my final words on the subject.

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power put on all of God's armor so that you'll be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.

The devil has strategies and you want to be firm against them.

You want to be able to stand against them.

You want to be able to refuse whatever strategy he has devised for your life.

And verse 12 for we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly places, therefore put on every piece of God's armor.

So you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil.

Then after the battle, you will still be standing firm.

How many want to be standing from after the battles over amen.

And the battle will be over.

You cannot lose.

If you're in Christ, Jesus, don't quit fighting.

This is the armor that God has placed in our life.

Now I want to be careful on the use of the armor and we may get into this in another lesson, but, but when you start looking at this, this is an an analogy.

And if you look throughout scripture, for instance, he uses the shield of faith will a shield or faith is used for a number of different things throughout scripture.

So don't tie, faith, speak too closely with the shield.

He is right.

It is real.

It is what he's saying, but, but I want to understand that.

I want us to understand that that he's not, um, this is an analogy.

This isn't a direct correlation on every single level.

But what he's saying is there is a hierarchy of things that we're dealing with.

There is principalities or powers, and next week, we're going to break this out, break this down quite a bit.

And he's saying, as these things are coming against your life, intentionally engage in the battle against them intentionally, uh, be engaged.

God has given you tools to utilize so that you can win the war.

That when all is said and done, you may have fought the battle, but you will still be standing when it's all done, amen to that.

And you fight.

I fight by allowing God's power to work in our life and through our life.

And I have three thoughts for us today and thought, number one is this, that spiritual warfare is all about power.

It's all about power.

Spiritual warfare is all about power.

In fact, every war ever fought is all about power, economic power, dealing with finance and money and wealth, social power, dealing with the power over people or power within people, regional power, the idea to acquire land and have regional power and, and expand that regional power.

The war of independence was all of that.

It was, it was a war for all of those particular things, but whether it be an internal family, squabble to nations at war, it's always about power.

The family squabble is about one person's idea.

Over another person's idea.

Who's going to say the final word on how that's done, who really does have the best bread pudding and will they bring it to the next family gathering?

And if you make them mad, they won't.

So your best make them happy.

If you want the bread pudding at the next family gathering, that's just about power.

It's not about pudding or bread or bread pudding.

It's just about power.

We want power to control wealth, to control people, to control land for various reasons.

And it said that more wars are fought over religion than anything else.

Anybody ever heard that read that might think that.

And I would agree that religion has been the greatest excuse for war throughout history, but I would disagree entirely that religion was the reason for war throughout history.

The two are very different.

It's never truly been about religion.

It's been about power, the ability to control land.

And in fact, it was about power all the way back from the beginning, Satan desired to take power from the all powerful God.

Satan was an angel in heaven and he said, I am going to ascend to power in heaven.

And he gave it a shot and he lost.

He was cast out.

Now I'm doing something in this series that I've never done in any series before.

And that is I'm going to be offering additional information that I don't have time to teach on because we're trying to not keep you here for three hours, but we've got a lot of information.

[email protected], at the end of every Sunday, there's going to be a release of a video.

And in this case, I'm going to, I did a video of this week called who is Satan.

And if you want to have more information on who Satan is, go to Micah sutton.com.

I'm 90% sure it be put out on the Facebook stuff and all that jazz.

I don't know.

I'm not in charge of that, but I do know it's been shot.

I do know what's going up and it will be released today after service.

And so I encourage you to check that out.

If you're saying, I don't know the story of Satan or who he is or so on, we'll walk through that in, in the video today.

But, but he Satan at, he just can't touch God.

So because he can't touch God, he fights you.

He hates God, but he can't defeat God.

So he wants to affect the one that God loves.

And that's you and that's me.

So first and foremost, as we set this table of spiritual warfare, we understand it's always about power and thought.

Number two is this faith connects all of you to all of God, all of you to all of God.

And this is why Satan hates you.

The enemy hates you because all of you is connected to all of God.

Through faith, through faith.

Satan was an angel that rebelled against God and lost the battle.

And so now his ability to connect with God is, has been ended forever, no ability to come back to God, no ability to regain his place in heaven, no ability to be saved.

And so you and I come to God in faith and all of us is connected to all of God in faith and Satan hates you for it.

He hates me for it.

But faith is, is the critical factor.

I'm going to walk through some things here that faith does that faith is.

And I encourage you either take quick notes or take pictures of the screen either.

One's fine, but, but it's, it's important for us to understand.

We use the term faith all the time.

Well, let's look biblically at what faith really is and what faith really does.

The first thing is faith connects you to God connects you to God.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse number six says it is impossible to please God, without faith.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists.

And that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

So we have to first believe that he exists and that if we seek him in faith, he will respond.

In fact, he tells us that no one will ever be turned away from him if they seek him.

So coming to God, meaning means that he is, if you did not believe that he was, why would you come to him?

Why would you approach him?

But even if there is just a modicum of faith, just a little bit of faith, something that says, God, I don't know if you exist or not, but, but I want to know you.

I want to know you.

Some of my family started out tell my dad began and has been living in men, doing ministry all around the world.

For many years afterwards, he, he came just in fact, he, he said he went into the front of a service in a Pentecostal church and he lifted his hands.

He said, okay, God, if you're real, do whatever you're going to do.

That's how my dad is.

He's still does that periodically.

Not to God, but to other folks, one time he thought he was having a heart attack.

So his response to that was to run up and down the stairs.

I said, what are you doing?

He said, well, I think I might be having a heart attack.

I said, why he rubbed it downstairs?

He said, well, I'm going to see if it's a heart attack or not.

[inaudible] We have a few doctors in the room.

I don't know if any of them would say that's medically advisable[inaudible] So I'm just saying, that's how he approaches stuff.

So if you, if you think he exists, come to him with just a little bit of faith and know that he will reward those who seek him, faith, his salvation channel, Ephesians two eight for by grace.

You have been saved through faith.

Through faith.

Grace have been saved through faith.

This is you.

You're pretty.

And you need to be saved.

So you are, you are reaching out to God in faith and grace is being poured out through the channel of grace, just like that.

I faith right there.

So faith is the channel and grace here's the channels is multicolored situation.

This is, this is high tech stuff we're dealing with right now.

And so gray faith is the channel.

And grace is the response.

Whenever you have, when you have faith going up, grace can be poured out into your life.

And mine it's the channel through which salvation is poured into our lives.

Faith sets us apart.

Speaking to Paul, Jesus said this in acts 26, he said, Gentiles will receive forgiveness for their sins.

This was a mind blowing concept for a Jew.

They'll receive forgiveness of their sins and be given a place among God's people.

What's the difference between the God's people and the not God's people.

Those who are set apart by faith in me.

So those who have faith in me, they are set apart from those who do not know me, who are not in me.

How about faith helps the believer navigate life?

I need to navigate life.

I don't always see the end from the beginning.

And second Corinthians says for, we walk by faith, not by sight.

So the way I navigate life is utilizing this thing called faith.

This thing called faith, faith equals act faith without works is dead.

So take steps without necessarily seeing the outcome of what those steps will lead to because we have faith that God's lead is in the right direction.

How about faith allows believers to encourage and be encouraged?

So we encourage others because of the faith that we have in our life.

And we can be encouraged because of faith.

Check it out.

Romans one 12, that we've made be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.

That's why it's important that you share the testimonies of what God's doing in your life.

Because, because when I share that testimony and it encourages you, and when you share that testimony and encourages me it uplifts one, another faith is the differentiator between righteous and unrighteousness, Romans one 17 for in it, the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

So, so those who are righteous are walking according to faith, those who are not righteous, not right with God are not walking and living.

According to faith, the writer just gain abundance in life and in this world and everlasting life in the next world, by living out the righteousness of God, originating in faith.

So, so it originates in us, in faith.

Faith is right here, that's in our belly, okay.

That's kind of an odd chord belly for the skinny person.

But anyway, the so faith is within us.

And because the thing that's in here is it's producing its faith and it's producing a lifestyle of righteousness in our lives.

It's producing from us something that's different than what's produced in the rest of the world, the rest of the world, without this thing, inside that originates within us, that that as the grace of God is poured in the grace continues to grow and develop.

And all of a sudden, we go from, from the unrighteous to the righteous, and now we are saved by grace through faith.

And now we begin to walk in faith and as our faith grows, our life changes.

That's why, if you've been saved for 15 minutes, your life will be one way.

But if once you've been saved for 15 years, your life should look substantially different between 15 years and 15 minutes and 15 years as this thing called faith in you continues to grow and produces a lifestyle out of you of righteousness.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So he begins with faith to believe that we've received the righteousness of God and it ends by making heaven our home because we've lived in the righteousness of God that we did not deserve.

We could not earn.

And yet it was given to us why?

Because of faith, we were qualified by faith.

Faith also moves God to perform the miraculous.

And there are too many scriptures for me to name in this.

But faith in Jesus' words brought the 120 to receive a, an interaction with the holy spirit, like had never been experienced before.

And it opened the doors to healings and miracles and deliverance, and it opened the doors to believing in the impossible.

And I would say to you today that without faith, the Christian walk is absolutely impossible to live out.

How has faith received and built Romans chapter 10 says then, so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

So faith is built.

This thing that does all this stuff that we just described, it's built when God's word is spoken and received into our lives.

Whether it's spoken through reading the word, reading scripture and devotion, or a spoken hearing, sermons and messages.

If it's spoken by a friend that speaking the word of God into our lives, or we're speaking into theirs any time, the word of God is spoken.

It's building and developing faith.

Hearing what God has said.

Inevitably builds our faith.

And as faith grows, the miraculous becomes possible.

The righteous are defined.

Encouragement flows out of life.

Life is navigated based upon truth.

The believer is made holy and the faithful are saved and connected to their father.

God, all of this is all of this is done or an accomplished by faith built on what God has spoken.

And if you don't catch anything else I've said today, catch

This.

Every expression

Of spiritual warfare is designed to create doubt in the heart of the believer concerning what God has said.

Every expression of spiritual warfare is designed to create doubt in your heart, over what God has said.

From the very beginning, he said, the first temptation ever Satan says to Eve has God really said, now he starts quoting scripture.

And let me just tell you, Satan knows scripture better than you do.

He's had a long time to study what the Lord has said.

And so he says, has God said this?

And he begins to quote scripture out of context, in the Gar in the, uh, in the wilderness.

He used this scripture against Jesus.

He's trying

To use the word against the word, made flesh and quote the scripture out of context to Jesus.

He's constantly questioning what God has said, but today we were wearing an OD.

In fact, I'm going to be dealing with that again in another lesson, in, in the coming weeks.

And let me say this too.

If Satan can't defeat it, he'll make it a mockery.

You think about what's going on with fatherhood in our world right now, try to find a television show where a father is a strong standup honorable person versus a ridiculous person.

He'll make a mockery out of it.

If he can't defeat, it he'll make a mockery.

He tried to make a mockery out of Jesus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got to move on from there, but, but today faith is a tough topic because it's been misused.

It's been stretched.

It's been abused by so many people.

So sometimes people say, well, I just don't want to be.

I don't, I don't talk to me about the faith stuff.

Don't be so afraid of being connected to wrong faith, teaching that you avoid faith teaching all together.

That's a Micah Sutton quote right there.

I put it on the wall just in case you didn't know, but it's a big deal to cause some, uh, over the years of, of ministry.

So many people have said to me, I ju you know, because I don't want to get into that whole faith world and, and that faith stuff and, and that whole, you know, unseen stuff and whatever, you know, I just, I just don't want to be a part of that because you know, that can be misused or abused or, or what have you.

Yes, it can.

I agree with you, but without faith, it's impossible to please God.

So don't be so afraid of the one that you don't connect with the other.

And I've thought number three for us today, and that is faith in God's word results in aligning with God's will faith in God's word results in aligning with God's will Romans chapter 10 verses eight through 10 are very famous.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Number one, and number two, critical to the Christian life.

The Bible says, but what does it say?

The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith, which we preach that if you confess, everybody say confess,

Confess with your mouth

And believe in your heart, that Jesus Christ.

If you confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, I was quoting one version and have another one up here, sorry.

And believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead.

You will be saved.

Verse

Number 10 for, with the heart.

One believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

So with the heart, we believe unto righteousness.

Remember that whole thing.

Faith is within us and it's pushing us to righteousness.

And with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

And I want us to look at this word, confess the mouth, confesses, the word that is in our heart.

The word that we hear is it comes to our mind.

It comes to our heart.

And then when we believe that word, we begin to confess that word.

We begin to speak that word.

And when it says confessing the Lord, Jesus, it means uttering or confessing what Jesus has said because of your faith in his word, your faith in his promise ha causes you to be able to confess what Jesus has said.

Now, when it says confession is made unto salvation, salvation means to be rescued

Or delivered.

And

We use this in the context of salvation of our soul from eternal hell.

And it is absolutely about that.

But salvation is about far more than just that there's can be a salvation of a relationship, salvation of finances, salvation of a marriage, salvation of children, salvation of all kinds of things, a career, a lot of things need saving in this world.

Can we say amen to that?

So he's saying here with the heart, one believes that to righteousness.

So when, when faith is within me and it's pushing me the right things in my career, in my family, in my home, in my life, in my community,

Then it,

Then, then that moves us in the right direction and our auction and the confession of our mouth is made into salvation.

So what we say matters,

But that word there confess yes, it's the Greek word.

Homologeo same word.

It's a derivative

Of the, of the Greek word logos,

Which is word.

So what

He is saying is when we say the same

Word, as what Jesus said, salvation

Comes into our lives.

So the battle that we fight, the battle that we fight in our, in life, in our career for our soul, the battle that we fight is the battle to say the same

Word that Jesus has said.

And that is the essence of spiritual war warfare.

The whole thing of spiritual warfare, the essence of spiritual warfare, the, the nitty gritty of spiritual warfare is that Jesus, the word of God made flesh has said some stuff from the beginning, all the way into right now, he has declared some things.

And what he's saying to you and I is, Hey, say the same thing that I'm saying, that's the same thing that I'm saying about you.

I confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and savior.

I confess there is no savior outside of him.

I confess that he has rulership over all things.

I confess that he is all powerful.

There is none like him.

There is none but him.

I confess that there is no battle that I can face that he cannot overcome.

I confess that there is no enemy that can stand against me and prosper.

I confess these things, not because I get to make up whatever I want to become.

And it becomes, but when I confess, he has said it already is.

And now I'm standing in authority, not standing on my own will.

In fact, spiritual warfare, isn't about confessing what you want, but confessing what God said, what he said, I don't have time to finish the rest of my notes, but God said this, that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that, which is lost and maybe your family is lost right now.

Maybe your career is lost right now.

Maybe your relationships are lost right now.

Maybe your finances are lost right now saying what God said in any of those areas.

We'll redeem

Them and

Saying what God has said.

If your soul is lost today, say what God has said, who redeem your soul from hell and make heaven your home.

If our eternity, praise

God, thank.

And so bow

Your heads with me right now.

And if you're in this house and you've never allowed Jesus Christ to be Lord and savior of your life, if you're online with us right now, and you've never made that step, then I want to encourage you today to make that step.

Let's pray together.

Everybody pray together.

And we're simply going to say what God has said.

So repeat after me, Lord, I love you.

I believe that you live, that you die

And that you rose again.

I repent of all my sin.

Anything I've done that has displeased you, I'm sorry for it.

And I turn away.

And you said that if anyone come to me that I will go to them and I will save them.

So from this moment on you are my savior.

I am your child.

You are my God.

I am your child in Jesus name.

And let everybody say, Hey man, can we give God praise today?

Thank you, Jesus.

Let's stand on our feet.