Sermon Tone Analysis

“*PREPARED FOR BATTLE*”

(Foundations Discipleship Series)

 

Session #4                                                        Westgate Chapel                        

 

PROPOSITION:  The Christian life is a life of faith, empowered by the Holy Spirit, but clearly lived in a battle zone with an outcome dependent on our active engagement in the war.

!

i.    introduction

!! -     LOOKING back on it from the perspective we now have, the cost of World War II was tremendous.

!! -     MILLIONS of lives were lost.

!! -     SOME nations lost their independence, their national spirit, and with that their productivity, that have never been regained.

!! -     6 MILLION Jews were humiliated, starved, persecuted, and eventually murdered in one of the worst atrocities in human history.

!! -     INDUSTRIAL, medical and technological advances in non-military services stopped while the free world frantically tried to supply the war front with the needed materiel.

!! -     MANY who survived carry to this day the scars in their bodies or emotions from that war.

!! -     AND the tragedy of it all is that  from 1932 to the day that England finally declared war against Nazi Germany (Fall of 1939) there were numerous times and ways in which the aggression of Hitler could have been stopped and the tremendous pain and losses to the whole world avoided.

!! -     WITH public sentiment in support only of appeasing Hitler, the politicians in England would not listen to Winston Churchill's constant pleas to refortify the Royal Navy, Air Force, or Army.

!! -     FRANCE had a chance to stop Hitler when he made his first move and retook the demilitarized Rhineland region between Germany and France… with a small rag-tag army that lacked training and supplies.

!!! ~*     The entire French army was marshaled on the border and had the training, materiel, and force to wipe out the Nazi army in a day, but the history books record that "there was no Bonaparte" in leadership to rally the French nation and steel them for the battle.

So Hitler took the Rhineland uncontested.

!! -     IN one year, in 1938, England and France who, combined, could still easily have stopped Hitler's aggression, allowed him to humiliate, intimidate, and finally subjugate the people of Austria and Czechoslovakia.......even though England and France had bound themselves by treaty to defend them.

!! -     BY 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, England didn't have the troops or the military hardware to stop him even though they had over nine months warning that he was getting ready to attack.

!! -     POLAND was convinced that their battle tactics and equipment from 20 years prior was adequate against Hitler.

So when he attacked with his new Panzer tanks, they rushed down the hills at him on horses with lances against the armor plating.

The massacre was incredible.

!! -     THE French were complacent because they thought that their defensive line (A system of barricades and bunkers) was strong enough to keep them out of the war.

Their army was not ready for battle and the Maginot line had a huge gap which is exactly where Hitler planned to come through....and did.

!! -     IT wasn't long before all of Europe was overrun by the Nazi army and England left standing alone, ill-prepared to try and stop him from taking over the world.

!! -     NOW, one of Churchill's speeches to his countrymen, given years before the declaration of war, takes on special meaning.

He said,

!!!       "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win.

If you cannot fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly....you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a precarious chance of survival.

There may even be a worse case; you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

!! -     CAN you see the parallels between this little bit of history and the spiritual warfare that is of far greater consequence than even World War II?

!! -     LET'S go back through the history listed above and see how many similarities we can identify.

!!! ~*     Appeasement of enemy, in the hopes of being neutral.

!!! ~*     Neglect of arsenal and preparation for war.

!!! ~*     Dependence on stationary defensive position.

!!! ~*     Vulnerability of gaps in defenses.

!!! ~*     Complacency leading to morale and discipline problems.

!!! ~*     Lack of aggressive leadership in attacking the enemy.

!!! ~*     Trying to buy off the enemy with calculated losses, sometimes at others expense.

!!! ~*     Using out-dated weapons.

!! -     THE fourth and final session on the Foundations of the Christian life, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, is spiritual warfare.

!! -     AND the Christian life is lived in the vortex of this battle.

!! -     IN 2 Timothy 2 the apostle Paul is instructing his protégé, Pastor Timothy, in pastoral priorities, and concerning unbelievers who oppose the work of God, Paul says,

!!!       “*Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth,* (26) *and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.*”

!! -     IN 1 Timothy 5, Paul is instructing Pastor Timothy concerning young widows in the congregation in Ephesus whose “sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ” (vs.

11).

In verse 15 Paul says,

!!!       “*Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.*”

!! -     SO, whether unbeliever or Christian, satan’s objective and strategy in all of our lives. . . is to trap us and take us captive to do his will.

!! -     THAT is the reason this message is one of the foundational lessons of the Christian life . . . on spiritual warfare.

!

ii.   what is spiritual warfare?

!! -     WHO is it exactly that we are fighting and where did the battle start?

!! -     WELL, to answer that we have to go back to Genesis 3, where Satan enticed Adam and Eve to sin against God.

!! -     AND as a consequence of satan’s role in this sin, God says to satan, in Genesis 3:15,

!!!       “*I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel*.”

!! -     THAT enmity, or hostility is the essence of spiritual warfare from then until now.

!! -     THE “seed” of the woman is all humanity, you and me, created in God’s likeness and image for the purpose of glorifying Him.

!! -     THE “seed” of Satan is includes demons and anyone serving his kingdom of darkness, those whose “father” is the devil (John 8:44).[1]

!! -     THIS is the center of the age old conflict.......God crushing satan's head through the seed of the woman (ultimately Jesus) and satan striking at the heel of humankind.

!! -     LUKE 10:18 teaches us that satan is a created angelic being whose original home was heaven, and that he was thrown out when he rebelled against God.

!! -     SATAN’S rebellion against heaven is recorded in Revelation 12.

!!! ~*     Archangel, Michael, is the leader of the hosts of the Lord, and that he throws satan out of heaven (it didn’t even require God’s direct action).

!!! ~*     A third of the angels who followed satan in his rebellion in heaven, and are also cast down to the earth with him (12:4).

!!! ~*     These are the ones who are behind the pressures and attacks against believers, the Church, and the plans of God on earth.

!! -     EZEKIEL 28:11-19 gives us a poetic description of the "king of Tyre" that most Bible scholars believe is a secondary reference to satan and his fall.

Verse 12 says,

!!!       "*You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty* . . .

(13) *every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl.

Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared.*

(14) *You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you.

You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.*

(15) *You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.*

(16) *Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.

So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones*.”

!! -     PRIDE was at the heart of satan’s fall and is at the heart of what he does in the world today.

!! -     HOW bad is he?

!! -     IN his book on spiritual warfare, Dean Sherman writes,

!!!       "Think of the most evil, grotesque things people do to one another.

Think of the ovens in Nazi concentration camps, or lamp shades made of human skin.

Think how many horrible ways men have conceived of torturing and murdering one another....tying people atop a pile of logs and watching them burn, or binding arms and legs to four horses, which gallop in four directions, tearing the victim apart.

Remember the Gulag  Archipelago, or the bombing of black churches in the South, killing little girls in their Sunday best.

Think how some parents can rape their four month old baby or pour scalding water on their children.

Every day in prisons around the world, eyes and fingernails are plucked out and people are forced to eat their own excrement.

In witches' covens, babies are killed and eaten." 4

!! -     THESE are things that satan inspired, but he is far worse than anything we could imagine or comprehend.

!! -     HE is a destroyer, a liar, a thief, a cheat, a deceiver, and a murderer (John 10:10) . . .

who can even disguise himself as a messenger of light.

!! -     HE can't attack God directly.

That would be like trying to carry Mnt.

Rainier off in a tinker toy truck.

!! -     SO he attacks God's children.

We are more vulnerable.

He wants to get at God through us.

!! -     HIS main objective is to draw us into sin that will defeat us, destroy us, and ultimately discredit God.

The fact that we live our lives "to God's glory" drives satan crazy.

That is the very glory that he wants for himself . . .

and since he knows now he will never get it his goal is to steal it from our lives.

!! -     THAT is our enemy, and all the fallen angels who scurry around to do his bidding.

!! -     THE battlefields in which the fight takes place are:

!!! 1.

The world in all of its rebellion against God.

!!! 2.   The flesh in all of its selfish cravings and desires.

!! -     LET'S not pass off satan’s attacks with "natural" explanations and let him hide in our lives any longer.