We Are At War and We Don’t Know It
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We Are At War and We Don’t Know It
Rev. Thomas A. West, Sr.
July 25, 2021
{{ INTRODUCTION}}
As I was laying in bed the other morning, just having a little talk with Jesus about the state of the world and especially the United States, I realized that our focus has shifted from being Christ Centered to world centered.
Our focus has changed and because of it families are divided, those that were once friend no longer speak to each other. This country is more divided today than it has been in all its history.
Our focus is on the pandemic. Should I wear a mask, should I get the shot, should I social distance, should I visit the sick and on and on.
Our focus is on Climate Change and its effects ... severe flooding in Germany, and a drought so bad in the US that it seems that the Western seaboard is a blaze.
Our focus is on an election that was over nine months ago. Evangelicals have put the Word of God aside to follow a man, that can’t even tell you his favorite verse.
Matthew 24: 11-14 says this … 11 Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.[1]
Our world is a world of secularism, materialism, moral breakdown, international chicanery and conflict. Our own nation knows immorality in the form of drunkenness, robbery, arson, sexual deviation, adultery, lewdness, unbelief.
These my friends are dangerous days. These are days when courts hand down decisions which protect the rights of criminals over the rights of society. These are the days when evangelicals have denied the Bible, denigrated the Lord, endorse sin and now wonder why conditions are as they are.
The Word of God is plain; Hosea 8:7 says “They sow the wind,
And reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; It shall never produce meal. If it should produce, Aliens would swallow it up.[2]
As my little talk with Jesus came to a close, This is what I heard Him say. IT’S ALL JUST A WELL PLAYED DISTRACTION.
{{TITLE}}
Our title for today is: “We Are At War and We Don’t Know It.”
Our Scripture is Taken from Ephesians 6:12
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Each and every day we find more and more injustice in the treatment of our brothers and sisters. We find that rates of crime continue to mount. There is a terrifying turning from just plain decency, not to mention the ethics and morals of Christianity.
Fear gripes a many hearts. People are afraid to leave their homes and with home invasions, you’re not even safe there. What are we supposed to do? How can we fight back and reclaim our lives?
Are we to:
· { Are we to } Demonstrate?
· { Are we to } Become a politician?
· { Are we to } Hire personal security personal?
I really don’t think that any of these are the answer. That’s like bringing a butter knife to a gun battle. We need real weapons of warfare.
First we need to remind ourselves that the leader of the opposition is not a man, and not a group of men either. Our opposition is not even human.
Some of you may be thinking the odds of winning this battle let alone the war are impossible, and they are, …. Well, if we try to do it alone. We don’t have the strength or power to do it alone. But we don’t have to. We have the ability to win, but we have to play our ace in the hole.
Ephesians 6:11 is our starting point: 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil[4]
{{Click}}
Let me stop for a moment to remind you what the whole armor looks like …
📷
Pieces Of The Armor Of God -- Ephesians 6:10-18
1. Belt of Truth. ... (14)
2. Breastplate of Righteousness. … (14)
3. Shoes of the Gospel. ... (15)
4. Shield of Faith. ... (16)
5. Helmet of Salvation. ... (17)
6. Sword of the Spirit (17)
But we can’t just stop there. We got to ask for the power needed.
Just as Jesus gave authority to those He sent out in In Luke chapter 10, He will give you the save authority if you ask and believe. Jesus stated this promise in Luke 10:19
19 Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
OK, so you have put on your full armor of God. You asked and received the authority, but what are our weapons of choice? What can we get hold of quickly?
Here is a list of six weapons at our disposal (many we have forgotten about):
1. The power of Prayer
2. The power of Godly living
3. The power of Faith
4. The power of Truth
5. The power of Love
6. The power of Hope
Walk with me for a few minutes this morning as we retrieve our weapons and begin retraining on their use and purpose.
First is….
The power of Prayer …
James 5:17-18 tells us: 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.[6]
In short Elijah prayed fervently that is he prayed with prayer. I think the translators have gained the idea of the repetition, prayed with prayer, for it denotes completion, it denotes fervency, it denotes earnestness it denotes a literal laying hold of God.
Dr. Reuben Torrey, a leader of the Moody Bible Institute wrote this about prayer “I believe that the devil stands and looks at the church today and laughs in his sleeve as he sees how its members depend upon their own scheming and powers of organization and skillfully devised machinery. Ha, ha, he laughs, you may have... You're costly church edifices and your $50,000 church organs and you're brilliant university bread preachers and your high-priced choirs. Your high priced Bible conferences and your Bible institutes and your special evangelistic services, you can have them all, all that you please it is not the least trouble to me if you will only leave out of them the power of the Lord God.
Acts 6:4 says 4 but we will give ourselves continually to prayer[7].
We will give ourselves continually to prayer, easier said than done. This is my friends takes a bit of doing it isn't something that comes automatically. We give ourselves with purpose of heart and with determination we give ourselves to prayer Ephesians 6:18 says 18 praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—[8]
A very wise person once said: we pray in the spirit when the Holy Spirit prays in us. Look prayer brings the power of God into our work. Can you say Amen, we cannot have too much prayer in our lives the problem is we have too little.
So let's look at our next weapon of choice:
The power of Godly living …
Let's turn in our bibles to Genesis chapter 18, here we find three men traveling in the Holy Land were approaching the city of Hebron. They came to the plains of Mamre where Abraham had set up his tent, and an incident occur after Abraham had fed them. Before they left, they said, shall we not share with Abraham the things that God is about to do? And they evidently told him of the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Abraham probably thought of lot in his family and began to speak to God. You know this story, Abraham begins to bargain with God, about the righteousness of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham bargained hard and finally got the Lord to lower the number from 50 righteous people to 10 people who lived righteously.
These passages are telling us that God will withhold judgment if there are those who are righteous within the place where judgment is to be poured out.
There are some days that many wonder whether the Day of Judgement may be coming very soon, for the nations of the earth. Certainly, when the Lord comes for his own, and those who know and love the Lord are caught up together in clouds to meet him in the air, the time of dire and awful judgment will begin (Thessalonians 4:13-18).
But until that day when in the purposes of God, it is in God's action to bring judgment without remedy, until then, the righteous are the salt of the earth.
Listen closely, Matthew 5:13 tells us “13 You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.[9]
The power of living for God, is a weapon that brings a sense of the presence of God and gives courage to the Christian.
Our next weapon is:
The Power of Faith
The Word says that without faith it is impossible be well pleasing to Him. Yes, we stand in a terrifying … BUT, that is no reason for us to be discouraged. That’s no reason to want to run and hide. Where you going to hide anyway? Just asking. Listen to what our Father is telling us in James 1:6-8...
6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
Mark 9:23 says:
23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Open your eyes, look all around you. No matter what is happening, you and I can absolutely trust in God. Do we dare to believe God? That He ill honor His Word, that He will vindicate His saints. Do you believe, I do.
The fourth weapon available to us is:
The Power of Truth.
Turn with me to John 8:32. Here we find the Words of Jesus as He spoke about truth …
32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Truth has the power to deliver us from the inaccuracies of this world, the inaccuracies about God, the inaccuracies about Satan, and the inaccuracies about ourselves.
In 2 Corinthians 13:8 Paul uses these striking words bout truth. He says …
8 For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.
Simply put, when all is said and done, truth will emerge victorious, and the Word of God will be vindicated.
Our fifth weapon is:
The Power of Love
Believe it or not, there is power in love. Galatians 5:6 speaks of faith working trough love and if we turn our attention to 1 Corinthians 13:13 we find these words ..
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Because of the bitterness of the times, have our hearts shriveled up in malice and hatred? Where is the love among us. We need to cherish our differences and before you say it, NO, I am not condoning sin. How can you tell anyone about the love of Jesus if you don’t know it for yourself? Love truly does conquer all.
Our final weapon is:
The Power of Hope
The power of hope, this is a great weapon God has given us for hope isn't a weak namby-pamby word. It's true meaning is not reflected in the way it has come to be used in the 20th century. It is a strong word. It means something that I expect with my whole heart. And not only do I expect it, it's what I desire above everything else. Hope! And God has given us hope. 13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.[15]Romans 15:13, so there is hope for us all.
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
{{Conclusion}}
So as I closed today, God has given us some very strong weapons which are not carnal, but which are mighty, which are able to pull down strongholds. And I believe that as you and I mean business with God and lay hold of prayer and consecration and faith and truth and love and hope we'll begin to wield the weapons that will count for God.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty to the casting down of strongholds, let us use them by the power of the Holy Spirit.
{{Closing word}}
My closing thought is this: Everyday, get up, put on the full armor of God, grab your mighty weapons of warfare before you head out to the battlefield of life.
This war will not be televised --- it is LIVE!!
{{PRAY}}
[1] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mt 24:11–14). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[2] The New King James Version. (1982). (Ho 8:7). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[3] The New King James Version. (1982). (Eph 6:12–Col 1:16). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[4] The New King James Version. (1982). (Eph 6:11). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[5] The New King James Version. (1982). (Lk 10:19). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[6] The New King James Version. (1982). (Jas 5:17–18). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[7] The New King James Version. (1982). (Ac 6:4). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[8] The New King James Version. (1982). (Eph 6:18). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[9] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mt 5:13). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[10] The New King James Version. (1982). (Jas 1:6–8). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[11] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mk 9:23). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[12] The New King James Version. (1982). (Jn 8:32). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[13] The New King James Version. (1982). (2 Co 13:8). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[14] The New King James Version. (1982). (1 Co 13:13). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[15] The New King James Version. (1982). (Ro 15:13). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.