I Need To Let God Fight The Battles That Come My Way Series

Introduction

Today we come to the end of our series: God has to win. Up to this point, in this series, we have looked at four areas of our life that God has to win if we are going to be the Christians we need to be. First, He has to win the choices that we make each day. Each day that we wake up, we are confronted with choices and we have to decide if God is going to win those choices or if the devil, the world, and Satan are going to win them.

Secondly, we saw that we all have areas of our life that we hold on to and try to manage on our own rather than giving them over to God. We have got to give those areas over to God and let Him take control of those areas. God needs to have control over all areas of my life not just the ones that I want to give Him.

Thirdly, we saw that when it comes to the discipline of the Lord in our lives, we can embrace it or reject it and get angry at God for His corrections to our lives. But the Bible is clear if you are His child, He is going to discipline you and you are going to benefit in the long run although right that moment it does not feel good but most importantly God wins.

And last week, we saw that we can serve God or serve money. If you serve God, a dollar is just but a dollar. But if you chose to serve money, it takes on a life of its own. By our nature, we are going to serve something, if we chose to serve God, life has the proper order. Serve money and your life will be out of wack.

Today, we come upon the last God has to win in our series. You know life is full of battles that we face. Some battles we go looking for and some battles come looking for us. It does not matter what type of battle you face whether it is a battle with a friend or a relative, a battle with an illness, a battle with a financial issue or some other type of battle, I need to let God fight that battle.

To see what we can learn about God fighting our battles, I found an interesting story in the Old Testament when Israel was about ready to leave Gilgal, cross the Jordan, and enter the Promised Land to have their first battle - the Battle of Jericho. It is only three verses in length, but it teaches us so much about letting God fight our battles. So, if you have your Bibles turn with me Joshua 5:13-15.

Scripture

Joshua 5:13–15 NKJV

And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”

So He said, “No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.”

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, “What does my Lord say to His servant?”

Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.

Body

Point #1

Nowhere in the Scriptures do I see God telling Joshua to go over and spy out Jericho and find their weak spots so that you can take advantage of their weaknesses. But Joshua being over there tells me that we would rather fight our own battles rather than giving them over to God.

If you read the entirety of Chapter 5, it is the story of God preparing the situation for the Israelites to take their Promised Land. It begins with God putting fear in the hearts of the Canaanite and Amorites kings that possessed the Promised Land. It then goes on to tells us how God prepared the Israelites to take the land by having all the Israelite males circumcised and starting back the Feast of the Passover. But nowhere, in that Scripture are we told that God sent Joshua over to the Promised Land at this point. This was something that he was doing on his own. So, what do you suppose that Joshua is doing there? He is probably gathering information about the enemy’s weak spots so that he can develop his plan of attack. He was thinking this is his battle; but he will later discover this is God’s battle.

Ok, God did not tell Joshua to go over to Jericho, but God did tell Joshua somethings that he needed to be reminded of: