Yes, We're Still at War
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· 17 viewsAnother reminder that we are still at war and that we must take our enemy seriously at all times
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
6 For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:
7 In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
Body
Body
Talk briefly about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who he was, his arrest and his time in the Gulag.
Talk more specifically about the science behind the arrests
“Universal innocence also gave rise to the universal failure to act. Maybe they won’t take you? Maybe it will all blow over? A. I. Ladyzhensky was the chief teacher in a school in remote Kologriv. In 1937 a peasant approached him in an open market and passed him a message from a third person: “Aleksandr Ivanich, get out of town, you are on the list!” But he stayed: After all, the whole school rests on my shoulders, and their own children are pupils here. How can they arrest me? (Several days later he was arrested.) Not everyone was so fortunate as to understand at the age of fourteen, as did Vanya Levitsky: “Every honest man is sure to go to prison. Right now my papa is serving time, and when I grow up they’ll put me in too.” (They put him in when he was twenty-three years old.) The majority sit quietly and dare to hope. Since you aren’t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake! They are already dragging you along by the collar, and you still keep on exclaiming to yourself: “It’s a mistake! They’ll set things straight and let me out!” Others are being arrested en masse, and that’s a bothersome fact, but in those other cases there is always some dark area: “Maybe he was guilty…?” But as for you, you are obviously innocent! You still believe that the Organs are humanly logical institutions: they will set things straight and let you out.
Why, then, should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. And it isn’t just that you don’t put up any resistance; you even walk down the stairs on tiptoe, as you are ordered to do, so your neighbors won’t hear.
At what exact point, then, should one resist? When on’e belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one’ home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about any one of them individually … and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
FOOTNOTE: And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?…If…IF…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! … We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
The enemy continues to encroach on our territory, and we continue to give ground.
Neville Chamberlain - “peace in our time!”
Winston Churchill - “We will never surrender!”
We know there are Christians around the world already being called on to pay the ultimate price for their faith in Jesus Christ.
But that’s them, not us!
It’s unfortunate, but, well, that’s the reality of things over there. Thank God we’re not living under what they are!
That’s the whole point of this message: It’s coming here!!! We need to prepare ourselves for it!
“A person who is not inwardly prepared for the use of violence against him is always weaker than the person committing the violence.”
Why won’t we actively resist the enemy? Why won’t we go out and fight the enemy?
COVID - Stop letting fear dictate the will of God to you!
I’m tired of the government telling the church how to conduct business
I’m tired of the enemy speaking into our lives and dictating to us how we conduct kingdom business
Is God on the throne or is Satan? Does God get to speak to us and tell us how to proceed or does the enemy?
Stop acquiescing to the enemy! Stop surrendering to Stop submitting to the enemy and start submitting to God!
Stop thinking of the devil like he’s a clown, or a trickster, and all he’s trying to do is give you a bad day. Trying to pull pranks on you
He is to be treated with the utmost concern, focus, and respect!
He’s out to utterly destroy your life, your relationships, your finances, anything he’s allowed to touch he will!
Scripture text:
Because we’re dead to our old nature, we ought to then be alive to our new nature
Our affections are on spiritual things because we’ve been resurrected spiritually
Our affections are no longer on natural things because we’ve died to our old nature
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also
Our ultimate goal is to make it to heaven and spend eternity with Jesus
Nothing else is going to matter after that, either good or bad
When we keep Jesus in front of us, our vision and our direction remains clear
When we keep anything else in front of us, our vision gets muddied and out of focus
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”
Because of this, we ought to walk spiritually after our new man and not carnally after our old man
Put off ALL the works of the flesh
Fearing the wrong things, doubting the wrong voices, confusion, anger at the wrong things, acceptance of the wrong things, all of these disappear when we walk in the spirit, after our new nature.
28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
How many times in scripture does the Lord tell us to “fear not”?
How many times are we exhorted in scripture to “fear God”?
Seek to live after the new man
Draw close to Jesus
The fruit of the Spirit will manifest in our lives
We will get the mind of Christ and begin to think like Him and see things as He sees them
Both spiritually and carnality cannot manifest themselves simultaneously in our lives. It will be one or the other.
9 Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.
10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
12 Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.
The enemy wants you to focus on the natural, and be stuck in your old nature
He wants you focused on who you were. God wants you focused on who you are
The enemy wants you focused on your past. God wants you focused on your future
The enemy wants you focused on you. God wants you focused on Him
13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Conclusion
Conclusion
10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
God has given us victory over our enemy, but if we’re not careful our enemy will steal the victory back.
We cannot play around with him! Take him seriously!
Don’t listen to him!
He’s going to make perfect sense. Everything he says is going to seem true. It’s not!
He knows how to play each of us, manipulate us, lead us to where he wants us to go.
Stop listening to him and start listening to God!