~Prepare for War~
Mark 9:14-29
(New King James Version)
14 And when He came to the disciples, He saw a great multitude around them, and scribes disputing with them. 15 Immediately, when they saw Him, all the people were greatly amazed, and running to Him, greeted Him. 16 And He asked the scribes, “What are you discussing with them?”
17 Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. 18 And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.”
19 He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.” 20 Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.
21 So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”
And he said, “From childhood. 22 And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” 26 Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
28 And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”
29 So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”
I want you to listen to this sound.
http://www.policeinterceptor.com/sounds/gqold.wav
Insert:"Audio sound of a Battle Ships call to Battle Stations"
That is the sound of a “call to battle stations” aboard a Navel Battle Ship. Its sound is haunting, and it strikes fear and emotion in the heart of anyone who hears it. It’s purpose is to alert the crew that the time for battle has arrived and they are to immediately man their prepared battle station for the ensuing war.
Brothers & Sisters there needs to be a battle cry going forth from all the churches in the world today. And it must originate in the hearts of the Pastors, and it must be sounded aloud from the pulpits across this land! We must prepare the battle stations for the ensuing war! However I am afraid we are falling asleep on our watch. And instead of Sounding the battle cry, we are preaching and teaching a social gospel, a feel good gospel, and an itchy ear gospel. Listen my friends, time is short and our days are numbered. Sin is ever increasing, what was unheard of 50 years ago is common place and the norm in today’s society, lawlessness and idolatry abound. Character and ethics are a thing of the past and have been replaced with materialism and Post Modernism, where today’s generation believes that there are no absolute truths and you are to get what belongs to you at any cost and by any means. No I am sorry to say that as “The Church” we have not sounded the call to battle stations but we have retreated to a safe place. My friends God can’t stand safe places, He abhors safe places, listen to the words of John the Revelator in Revelation 3
13He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
14And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
15I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
We have been the Laodicean church for far too long! We need to sound the alarm, man the battle stations, and
PREPARE FOR WAR! For too long we have been in retreat. We need to start living out what is says in Proverbs 28:1
The wicked flee when no man pursues: but the righteous are bold as a lion.
Its time that the Church found its voice in this wayward society. Its time we rose up and take a stand like never before.
Does what I say bother you? Are you getting offended? If so then you need to ask yourself one question “what does the battle cry of the church sound like?” If you couldn’t answer then you are just like me. We recognize right away when we hear the Naval Call to Battle Stations but yet the Church’s Battle cry goes unheard, unrecognizable, undefined and undermanned . If this concerns you as much it does me, then great, we are in the same mindset. Lets figure out what to do.
From our scripture text ,we see Jesus, preparing for war. When an army prepares for war the first objective of the war is to identify your enemy. First and foremost you have to know whom you are fighting against, because things are not always as they seem. You have to be able to identify the enemy and destroy him. Listen to me for a second here, the enemy is not socialism, the enemy is not materialism, the enemy is not Post Modernism, the enemy is not the Muslim Religion and Osama Bin Ladin, these all may be tactics the enemy deploys but the real enemy of our war as a Child of God is Satan. The old devil himself, Lucifer. And once you have figured out who your real enemy is then you can determine what are the enemies’ tactics, what type of battle tactics is he using. For example, you wouldn’t send Naval Destroyers to the dessert and you don’t use tanks in the ocean. Before we sound the call to battle stations we must understand what type of battle we are fighting,. If we don’t understand what type of war we are in then we will make the mistakes of sending ships to the dessert and tanks to the ocean and we will find ourselves in the situation we are in currently, in a position of retreat, rather than a position of advance, we will find ourselves acting like goats instead of lions. This is what Jesus is trying to teach His disciples in Mark chapter 9. He is trying to teach them the principle found in Ephesians 6:12
12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Church, we are in a spiritual war! This war is not fought with Ships and tanks and artillery and mortars and its not fought in the desserts and the oceans and the mountain tops and the jungles but it’s a war that takes place in a dimension that we cannot see “The Spirit” and its fought with weapons that are not of this world. We are called to wage war in the Heavenlies, tearing down principalities, against everything that exalts itself against the power and knowledge of God! A spiritual war fought with spiritual weapons against a spiritual enemy. You can’t fight this war with strength or military prowess; no man made weapons are effective on this adversary. Satan is wiser and stronger than any army the world has every seen. His battle tactics are unlike anything the world has known. Notice I said the world, not the Church! Because for those of us who call Jesus God and read the Bible and believe it to be the authoritative word of God inspired and God breathed, we understand the tactics deployed by the enemy of our souls, Let me share some of his favorite weapons.
1. To control you without you knowing it- he puts vices and temptations in our path that just seem to appear by chance, but there not by chance they are strategically deployed from Satan himself.
2. Make crooked the straight- He is the father of all lies, he wants to turn the truth in a lie and he will always choose the crooked path and try to distort the truth and the Word of God. He is the accuser of the brethren and he will use this tactic as often as he can
3. To snare you or trap you and bind you making you ineffective for kingdom work- He wants to steal your testimony, he wants to throw it back in your face, His primary goal is to render the Christian ineffective in the Kingdom of God, in a state of retreat rather than advance.
4. To make you behave like him-He wants to make as many disciples as possible to carry out his work, He is and always has been a mocker of Christ.
5. To lead you into greater levels of darkness-He uses the trick of making the sin you partake in seem to be insignificant and small at the time but his ultimate goal is to entice you with a small sin to entrap you into a life of great darkness.
So now we know who the enemy is and what type of war we are fighting and we understand the tactics Satan deploys. So let me ask you another question. Do you think the disciples knew who the enemy was and what type of battle they were in? Was this what Jesus was trying to teach them? I don’t think so. I think they are much like us in a way. We understand who the enemy is and we understand what type of battle we are fighting, but I think where we fall short is that same place the disciples fell short and that is understanding what the weapons of our warfare consist of.
I want to give you what I consider to be the most powerful weapons of spiritual warfare in the arsenal of the Christian.
1. Admit there is a fight- the fist thing the Christian must do in preparing for war is to admit there is a war. Stop letting the enemy lull you to sleep thinking that this war is just for the pastors and the preachers and the teachers. We must get out of denial and come to realize that we are in a war whether we want it or not. Satan is waging war on your soul and he doesn’t ask you beforehand he just declares war on you period. So lets declare war on Him! How do we declare war on Satan how do we fight against his tactics what weapon should I use First? Make a personal declaration of war in your life. How do we do this? Its not as you might think. We don’t run around shouting at the top of our lungs I am at war with the enemy, I am at war with Satan, No we find this weapon in
James 4:7 (King James Version)
7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
So we find the weapon to use in making a declaration of war is to SUBMIT TO GOD.. That’s where it all starts my friends; complete and utter submission to God is the fist weapon of the Christian. To surrender your will and your way to His will and His way. And when we can get out of denial and admit that there is a fight and we can submit to God, that gives us a Heavenly Armor that empowers us to resist the Devil and we will reap the benefit of watching him flee from our lives.
2. Put On The Armor-Now that we know we are in a war we must prepare for war and we do that by putting on the armor of God. This also is not as you may think. There is no chainmale here no metal nor leather no Kevlar or bulletproof vest. This is a spiritual armor. Remember we in a spiritual war and there is a spiritual armor.
Eph.6: 13-16
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
The spiritual armor of God is fitted with weaponry of our Lord Jesus Christ and it is what we are to deploy in fighting the Tactics of the Enemy. Here are the weapons:
A) Truth
B) Righteousness
C) The Gospel Of Peace
D) Faith
E) Salvation
F) Praying In The Spirit
Learn these weapons well, know them inside and out, like a soldier who knows his rifle, he knows every part and he knows how to put it together in the worst of situations and circumstances because he knows his life may depend on it! So it is with the Christian, we must know our weapons inside and out we must know how to speak the truth, we must live righteous, we must shed the Gospel of Peace, we must live a life of Faith, We must cling to our salvation and work it out daily in our life, and we must we must pray in the Spirit at all times. Because our lives and the lives of our loved ones depend on it!
3. Prayer & Fasting- From our scripture text. This use of this weapon is what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples. This is the lesson that Jesus is trying to get across to His disciples. Prayer and fasting is the most powerful weapon of the Christian, and its the most underutilized and least taught. Prayer and fasting, fasting and prayer. Our lord Jesus was always involved in the two most powerful weapons in his arsenal. Prayer and fasting unleash the full power of heaven in our lives and the Enemy feels s the full brunt of the Hand of God.
28 And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”
29 So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”
Listen my friends there are some areas and attacks in your life that are only going to be defeated through prayer and fasting, fasting and prayer, seeking god and denying ourselves. Killing our flesh and feeding our spiritual man. Notice the type of spirit that this man had, and please pay attention here this is very important. He had a deaf and mute spirit.
17 Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit.
In my opinion the greats tactic of the Devil is to keep the Church deaf and mute! Keep us in a state where we aren’t willing or capable to sound the call to battle stations. And we have to ask ourselves why? Why, because we are falling asleep on our watch and we are not praying and fasting. Notice it took prayer and fasting to rebuke the deaf and mute spirit of the young boy. Oh my friends if the Church would begin to pray and if the church would begin to fast then the deaf and mute spirit would be lifted off the church and we would be able rise and take a stand like never before. We would find our voice in this wayward generation and the lost would come ruining to our churches and to the cross. But listen don’t let the enemy blind you to the fact that it’s not going to happen if we just sit around on our blessed assurance. We must sound the alarm, and prepare for war and MUST PRAY AND FAST. Don’t wait until tomorrow because people lives are at stake. Prepare for War……..
