MT 6:25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
MT 6:28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?’ or `What shall we drink?’ or `What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
The Christian life has often been compared to a battle or a war.
That seems a strange thing at first because isn’t the Christian faith a faith of love, kindness and compassion for each other?
Doesn’t our scripture today indicate that we are going to be cared for, loved and carressed through life.
Yes in a way it does - But friends also we are in a war.
what the scripture tilts towards is the fact that you will win becasuse god is on your side
But the New Testament makes it clear that the Christian is nonetheless involved in a battle of cosmic proportions.
1TI 1:18 Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, 19 holding on to faith and a good conscience.
The cosmic dimensions of that fight become clear in the book of Daniel as the angel Gabriel makes an incredible statement to Daniel:_
DA 10:12 Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come."
Likewise the apostle paul talks about a man who was in christ being caught up in the third heaven.
Gabriel turns up again – long after he appeared to Daniel he appears to Zechariah the Father of John the Baptist and we see that Zechariah on seeing him has a similar response as that of Daniel all those years before he is startled and gripped with fear.
2CO 12:1 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows. 3 And I know that this man--whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows-- 4 was caught up to paradise.
2CO 12:1 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows. 3 And I know that this man--whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows-- 4 was caught up to paradise.
LK 1:8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
LK 1:11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. 16 Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous--to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
LK 1:18 Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years."
LK 1:19 The angel answered, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time."
Six hundred years after he has spoken to Daniel the Angel Gabriel appears as large as life.
Why is this?
Because it is a great pivotal moment in the history of the world and God wants to ensure that his plan for salvation is well understood.
But we see that Gideon is in a Spiritual battle as he fights the spiritual world in order to come to Daniel.
His opponant is the prince of Persia and I understand what he encountered was evil spiritual forces that were brooding over what essentially is today
The Persian Empire was a series of historical empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the old Persian homeland, and beyond in Western Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Today the nation of Persia is known primarily as Iran.
The most widespread entity considered to have been a Persian Empire was the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) under Darius and Xerxes (or Xerkes) — famous in antiquity as the foe of the classical Greek states (See Greco-Persian Wars) —
Friends I found this in a secular source that deals with world history.
But this is what I found in the Bible
."
DA 8:27 I, Daniel, was exhausted and lay ill for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.
DA 9:1 In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom-- 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. 3 So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.
DA 9:4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed:
"O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, 5 we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. 6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
The reason that Daniel had to fight the prince over Persia is that there was a spiritual stronghold over Persia and it was not god it was something evil and resisting the will of God in the world.
The shocking conclusion we are left with is that if Gabriel is alive today – and we would expect that he would be under the protection of God – so are evil forces that are resisting the will of God.
I remember listening to a cassette tape many years ago from a christian speaker who talked of flying into and out of Bombay and he says that he felt as he lifted up in his plane out of bombay he felt a spiritual heaviness lift off him.
In the same way if we push the fast forward button and we find ourselves in a spiritual environment in the 21st century.
That we are in a spiritual battle can leave little doubt in our minds.
Here is a testimony from china from the book The heavenly man.
The next morning the guards opened the cell doors and took us out into the yard.
We were told You must clear the snow in the yard but this crazy ‘heavenly man’ will not have his handcuffs removed.
The chief guard waved his electric baton in front of my face and he said, “Now is the time for you to wake up.” He orcdered me to knneel down before him. I protested loudly, “I will not kneel before you I will only kneel down before my god.”
He arrogantly stated, “I am the Lord . I am your God! If you kneel before me I cvan release you immediately.”
I spoke angerily to him, “In the name of Jesus, you are not my God! You are just an earthly officer. My Lord is in heaven I am a heavenly man.”
He turned on a power switch on his baton and snarled, “If you are a heavenly man then you won’t be afraid of this electric baton. Come! Use your hands to take hold of it.
Several guards grabbed my arms and forced me to stretch out my hand. I was stung with hundreds of volts of electrical current, as if a thousand arrows had pierced my heart. Feeling I was about to pass out, I cried out, Lord have mercy on me!”Immediately the electic baton malfunctioned! They couldn’t get it to work!
I opened my eyes and stared at the guard who’d dared to call himself God. He was terrified, Despite the temperature, he was sweating! He turned and ran away as fast as he could!
This gives us a video clip of what happens when the heavenly battle workds out on earth.
Every day in a million different ways that battle is being worked out on earth.
This morning I would like to read a small exerpt from Jesus passion called his crucifiction:_
JN 19:8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. "Where do you come from?" he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. 10 "Do you refuse to speak to me?" Pilate said. "Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?"
JN 19:11 Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."
JN 19:12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, "If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar."
JN 19:13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.
"Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews.
JN 19:15 But they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"
"Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked.
"We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered.
JN 19:16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 Here they crucified him, and with him two others--one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
JN 19:19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, "Do not write `The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews."
The greatest spiritual battle on earth that ever happenned happenned in the crucifiction of Jesus.
There was so much at stake.
For us it can be a model of how to live through times of trial.
I would like to draw three things to your attention that will help each one of us live through times of trial.
The first thing I notice about Jesus is in the face of a tremendous spiritual trial he exhibits faith filled courage.
For example in his incredible answer to Pontius Pilate:-
JN 19:11 Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."
It takes courage to speak to the world in this way.
We see the same thing in the example of the heavenly man.
Courage is a great thing – probably the bravest man in New Zealand war history was Captain charles Upham who won two Victoria crosses.
Some say he was the brabvest man of the war – but I am not so sure about that.
Listen to this exerpt from his citation:_ Acknowledged widely as the outstanding soldier of the Second World War, Captain Charles Upham remains the only combatant soldier to have received the Victoria Cross and Bar (awarded to members of the armed forces of the Commonwealth for exceptional bravery). In Crete in May 1941, and the Western Desert in July 1942, Upham distinguished himself with displays of ‘nerveless competence’.
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1908 Upham was educated at Christ’s College and Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln. He was a farm manager and then farm valuer before enlisting in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (aged 30) in 1939, quietly citing his reason as a desire to fight for justice. Courage and Resource
Upham was renowned for combining controlled courage with quick-thinking resourcefulness. While most medals for bravery are awarded for a single act, Upham’s first citation was for nine days of skill, leadership and evident heroism. In March 1941, he was a Second Lieutenant in the 20th NZ Battalion in Crete. His display of courage included: destroying numerous enemy posts; rescuing a wounded man under fire; penetrating deep behind enemy lines and killing twenty-two German soldiers on the way to leading out an isolated platoon. This was all after being blown over by a mortar shell, and with a shrapnel wound in his shoulder and a bullet in his foot. The incident that exemplified Upham’s courage was when two German soldiers trapped him alone on the fringes of an olive grove. Upham (on his way to warning other troops that they were being cut off) was watched by his helpless platoon, who were some distance away as he was fired on by the Germans. With any movement potentially fatal, he feigned death and with calculated coolness waited for the enemy soldiers to approach. With one arm lame in a sling, he used the crook of a tree to support his rifle and shoot the first assailant, then reloaded with one hand, and shot the second (who was so close as to fall against the barrel of Upham’s rifle).
While that takes a particular kind of courage it takes a very different kind of courage to stand up for God in a spiritual depraved and broken world.
General Booth of the Salvation Army was such a battler
Booth’s income never topped £3 a week. Often his clothes were torn and bloody bandages would swathe his head where a stone or cudgel had struck. Despite the bitter uphill struggle, he gathered supporters, though some went off to pursue their own vision. A young medical student, Thomas Barnardo, who helped Booth at indoor meetings, departed to devote his life to the rescue of homeless children. ’You look after the children and I’ll look after the adults,’ was William’s farewell salutation.
The Booth children often bore the brunt of the crusade. Bramwell, the eldest son, was derided as ’Holy Willie’ at preparatory school and bullies banged him repeatedly against a tree ’to bang religion out of him.’ He later became the business manager of what he and his father called ’The Concern’.
Wealthy philanthropists came to his rescue. Among the first was Samuel Morley, a Nottingham textile manufacturer, and the Booths opened their Christian Missions in East London. William recruited his first shock troops - reformed alcoholics known as the ’Hallelujahs’ who were able to hold an audience spellbound. Typical was one man named ’Fiery Elijah’ Cadman who had been converted from a drunkard. A small, sturdy man with short legs and a strident voice, he caused uproar wherever he went, ringing a town crier’s bell before each inn, bawling: ’This is to give notice that 60,000 people are lost. Lost! Lost! Lost! Lost every year through accursed drink.’
Booth had the courage to address theissues of his days – so did Brother Yun the heavenl;y man and Jesus had the courage to face the timeless issue of sin.
If you feel you lack courage I want to encourage you that courage beyond yourself is available from the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 and 7 –
7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
We need to ask God to fill us a fresh with His Holy Spirit.
The second thing that we find in Jesus’ life is that he sticks to God’s plan.
17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).
Jesus always had a sense of God’s call and destiny over His own life.
Oh friends that we would understand who we are in Christ and what His plan is for our lives.
Jesus always knew that god’s plan was a painful and tortuous cross so he faced it without complaining with incredible courage and with a sense of destiny.
The founder of the Salvation Army General Booth discovered early on God’s destiny:-
The evangelist halted outside The Blind Beggar Tavern up the Mile End Road, East London. He was a tall figure in a frock coat and wide-brimmed hat and his piercing grey eyes looked out from a pale face. Drawing a book from beneath his arm, he gave out the verse of a hymn and faces pressed against the pub’s glass windows. ’There is a heaven in East London for everyone,’ he cried, ’for everyone who will stop and think and look to Christ as a personal saviour.’
From the pub came a volley of jeers and oaths, followed by a rotten egg. The preacher paused, egg running down his cheek, prayed, and turned west towards Hammersmith and his lodgings. He made his way through savage fighting men, ragged match-sellers, orange-women, and Irish flower girls clad only in soiled petticoats with their bare feet covered in dirt; children with wolfish faces gobbling up decaying food left by the street market, or swaying blind drunk in tap-room doorways. He strode past crowded tenements and stinking alleys where life was a just a struggle; and the dark alleys near the docks where the sick and dying lay side by side on bare boards of fireless rooms under tattered scraps of blanket.
’A large muckheap what the rich grows their mushrooms on,’ was how one pauper described East London. After thirteen years as a Methodist Circuit Minister, the preacher was no stranger to it. But as he walked home a conviction grew within him. Towards midnight when he arrived at his lodgings, he found his six children in bed. His wife, Catherine Booth, who worried over their precarious financial position, waited in the living room. Excitedly he burst out: ’Darling, I’ve found my destiny!’ Convinced that the churches had failed the people, William Booth would set out to save the world. The year was 1865.
There is an old saying plan the work and work the plan
In our case god has already a plan for us.
In Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11 it says:-
11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD,
The biggest problem for each one of us is deviating from god’s plan.
Juan Carlos Ortiz talks of our destiny and God’s ultimate plans for our lives:_
He talks like this:-
Once I asked a man, “Why do you work?”
“Well I work because I have to eat. If I don’t work, I don’t eat.”
“Well why do you eat.” I asked.
“So I will have the strength to work.”
“And why do you work again?”
“Well I work again to eat again to work to be able to eat..”
Ortiz says – That is not life. That’
S just breathing. There is no purpose to it.
He goes on to say:- The one day I understood. My purpose is to extend the Kingdom.
I don’t work at the Ford motor company to earn my livlihood. I work there because God needs that spot on this earth; He needs one of his soldiers to conquer it for Him. And Mr ford happens to support my conquest. But my real lord is Jesus Christ.
Or else I should stop using the name. Because jesus asks, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
So we need to be following God’s Plan.
The third point is Victory comes at a cost!!
For Jesus Christ to win the war against sin – He had to die a terrible and agonizing death.
For charles Upham to be the soldier that served God, King and country he had to be shot several times:_
For General Booth there was physical violence that left him bleeding.
In India where I was this year many of the people work under genuine threat and danger from militant Hindu’s in particular and sometimes Moslems as well.
War has it’s costs and its casualties.
But there is more than physical cost. Being a Christian may mean that certain behaviours and entertainments are not available to you.
Dave and Nikki McDonald were missionaries to Iraq. They were shot in pieces by mortar fire and AK-47’s while in Iraq working on a water-purification project and sharing the Gospel. Dave was shot destroying his spleen and breaking his back. Still, he managed to get a call out on his cell phone to an ambulance. He was concerned for his wife who also was hit. When the wife went in for surgery, she asked about Dave. They assured her he would be okay. It was only when she woke in a Hospital in Dallas, TX that they told her that he has died and was buried several days ago while she was still unconscious. Still, before she was released from the Hospital she was making plans to return to Iraq and continue their mission! His parents were asked if it was worth it, and they said that they would pray for Dave to do it all over again! Don’t depart from the path God put you in; finish like Dave McDonald, and you will have no regrets.
I want to finish with a few questions.
First question:
Are you a Christian – that is is Jesus your Lord.
Do you know His plan for your life.
How is it going for you fulfilling His plan?
What has it cost you so far.
It cost Jesus his life – What has God asked of you –
Possessions – time love kindness?
Are you prepared to pay the full price that the Lordship of Christ demands.
