I like winning. I do not like to lose. If I am going to compete, I want to be the winner. Number two is not good enough. Silver medals are not good enough. Almost is not good enough. I like winning. I do not like to lose.
Grantland Rice may be more deeply Christian than I, as he wrote, “When that one great scorer comes to write against your name, it matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.” Mr. Rice, I’m sorry, but I don’t feel that way. I want to win. I do not like to lose. My mentor is the legendary Vince Lombardi, who blurted out, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing!” Amen to that!
I am so addicted to winning that when my children were little, and my daughter would get upset when she was losing some simple family game, I would ignore my wife’s hint that we should throw the game. Throw the game? Give it away? I don’t care if she is only four years old, I want to win. When our teenage nephew visits with us, he always asks to play caroms with Uncle Joe. And I always happily oblige. I love playing caroms with Michael. Do you know why? Because I have a very mean caroms shot, and … and … this part is important … and Michael doesn’t seem to mind losing. Uncle Joe wants to win. Uncle Joe needs to win. I like winning. I’ve tried losing. And I don’t like it. I want to win.
And who doesn’t? Who doesn’t thrill to the ecstasy of victory?! All of us do. All of us want to be on the winning side. And if life is aptly described as a battlefield, we know that it’s more than just wanting to be winners. We need to be winners. The stakes are high, and we need to be winners. To lose in the battle of life is unthinkable. To lose our souls, our identities, our hearts – that’s too much. We can’t do that. We hunger and thirst for victorious lives. If there’s any one theme that I hear in the people that I counsel with, week after week, it is that they do not want to be defeated. They do not want the things they have worked for to be lost. They do not want their families, their achievements, their dreams to be crushed and forgotten. All of us want to be victorious.
Sunday by Sunday over the last several weeks we have been singing a line that holds out such promise. In our theme hymn, “Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus”, we have sung, “this day the noise of battle, the next the victor’s song.” And I have found myself feeling motivated, pumped up, by that line – “this day the noise of battle, the next the victor’s song.” And the more we have sung it, the more I have wanted victory. The more the song has promised that victory is coming, after the battle, the more I have thirsted after victory. I have wanted to see victory, spiritual victory, in you, in the church, in my life.
Men and women, I believe that the day of victory is here. I believe that spiritual victory is upon us. Not tomorrow, not next month, not pie-in-the-sky, by-and-by, when-you-die, but now. Victory. “This day the noise of battle, the next the victor’s song.”? Oh, I think it’s better than that. I feel it: “This day the victor’s song.” This day is God’s day. This day. And I feel ready to sing the victor’s song.
Victory? Now? Let’s look at the evidence. Go with me in your imaginations, back to banks of the Reed Sea. Egypt lies behind and Sinai lies ahead. Pharaoh and his army lie mired in the mud, and the wide open spaces lie ahead. Years, generations, of servitude under oppression lie far behind, and the sweet fresh air of freedom lies ahead. It’s a great moment of victory for Israel and for Moses. It’s a great victory for God. So much work, so much prayer, so much struggle, so much effort, but it’s finally happened. And God’s people are free. They have won. They are victors and they sing! “This day the victor’s song”.
I
One thing that made that victory so sweet was that it was a victory over long-entrenched, well-established evil. Egypt was the superpower of its day. No one could defeat Egypt. Pharaoh on his throne was supreme. His authority extended over every living thing from the upper cataracts of the Nile to the sands of the Arabian desert. Egypt’s power was well established. Nobody dared challenge the system. It was well established, entrenched.
But that system was defeated! Entrenched oppression was overthrown! What everyone said could not be done was done! And Israel saw that a great work had been done. Whose work? Whose work was it? Israel’s work? Moses’ work? No. The Lord’s work. Listen to the text:
Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians.
I submit to you that as long as you and I think we have to take on the world all by ourselves, we will never sing the victor’s song. As long as we think we can somehow muster up all that it will take to defeat the forces of evil, we are doomed to disappointment. Listen, the stuff we are up against is bigger than that. It’s more sophisticated than that. Somebody pointed out that we may win people one by one, but that there are forces out there demoralizing them twenty by twenty. For every sermon that is preached to two hundred people, an R-rated movie is playing to two thousand people. For every Bible lesson taught to a dozen teenagers, there is a drug-soaked rave packing in a dozen dozen. There is no way in the world that you or I can possibly beat down evil or defeat the corrosive elements in society on our own. Just as even if you could put a policeman on every corner, you would not stop crime. We, on our own, are not strong enough, capable enough, rich enough, smart enough, to win the spiritual battles that must be fought. We cannot.
But we are not alone. We do not fight alone. We are soldiers in the army of the King. We are on the battlefield for and with the Lord. And I believe that God wants to do great things, right here, among us. I believe that God is on the way to creating, right here in Washington, right here in Takoma, right here on this corner, a ministry of redemption that will change lives. I can feel it coming. God at work. Not us. Not I. Not one or two of us. But God in and through and with all of us.
Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. And Takoma will see the great work that the Lord is to do right here. This day the victor’s song. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
II
But, you know, it was not only Egypt that had to be defeated before Israel could sing the victor’s song. It was also the Egypt within Israel that had to be defeated! It was not only the enemy out there that had to be whipped; it was also the enemy within. You see, oppression is not only what other people do to you. It is also what you do to yourself. Slavery is not just a physical condition. Slavery is a state of mind. It is a condition of the heart. It is a way of thinking about yourself. And Israel had fallen into that. The people of God had grown, over more than four hundred years, a slave mentality. Their chains were nothing; the chains around their minds were the real issue.
But Moses stood before them in faith and pointed the way forward. When they got behind their visionary leader, they not only gained their freedom. They also gained free spirits.
The text says:
So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.
Oh, I wish I knew how to persuade every man, every woman, who feels defeated today that the enemy is not just something out there. The enemy to fear is the enemy within. The enemy to be afraid of is the enemy who whispers, “You’re a loser. You’ll never be anything. You’ll never make it.” The enemy that can truly destroy is the one who seduces and says, “You’re nothing. Might as well act like it. You’ll never be anything. Face it.” That’s the enemy to fear.
I wish I knew how to persuade Takoma Park Baptist Church that the only enemy we have to fear is the enemy within our own consciousness. The enemy who whispers, “Your best days are over. Forget it. You’re stuck and you’re going to stay stuck.” The enemy that can truly destroy is the one who seduces and says, “You can’t. You won’t. You will do what you’ve always done with the limited resources you’ve always had. Face it.” That is the church’s enemy. Not paganism, not secularism, not indifference. We know what to do about those things. The thing that will destroy us is believing that we cannot be used by God. And if that’s where we are, folks, we had better lock the doors and throw away the key. That would be the end.
But here I take my stand. I can do nothing else but believe that God has victory in His heart for us as a church. I know He does! I have seen too many signs of it. I can taste it. “This day the victor’s song.”
You know, there’s a certain delicious irony in the idea that Moses would be the agent of victory. Moses, if you remember, was full of self-doubt. He didn’t think he had it in him to do what had to be done. “I am not eloquent. I’ll never be able to persuade Pharaoh.”. And worse than that, “I have killed somebody in a fit of rage. I’m a fugitive from justice.” And the deepest slave mentality of all, “I’ve settled down with a wife and kids and a job and I don’t want to change, so, Lord, put out your burning bush and leave me alone.” Moses never asked for this job, and didn’t believe he could do it even after he got started with it!
But, I tell you, when God goes to work in your life, He makes victory possible, even when you don’t believe in yourself. When God goes to work in your life, He goes deep. And He gets rid of that defeated, depressed, down, down, down mentality. That slave mentality. And people come to believe not only in God but also in you! Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t it wonderful to think that the victory God is winning, right here, right now, among us, He is winning by empowering broken and defeated people?
If you’ve made a mess of everything, the day is coming when God will take care of that mess, and people will believe both in God and in you. Alcohol, drugs, job loss, divorce, incarceration, you name it. God is nevertheless able to get a victory for Himself and for you. God is able!
I once met a man who had worked for organized crime. He had been a part of the Mafia empire. He had stolen, he had embezzled, he had cracked a few heads, he had shaken down a few politicians. But one day Jim Vaus wandered into a Billy Graham crusade and heard something he had never heard before – that by the power of God he could be made new. That he could be as fresh and new as an innocent baby. Before that crusade was over Jim Vaus had given his heart to Christ, and when it was all over, yes, there was prison time to be done, but Jim Vaus did it with his head held high, with the respect of hundreds of people, and, most of all, with a song of victory in his heart. The Egypt in Jim had been defeated.
This day the victor’s song. I know it can be real for somebody here today. I know there is somebody here today ready to cry out with Paul, ”I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” I know somebody is desperate to sing the victor’s song, today.
So I tell you, victory has been won. It has been won. The issue is settled. The battle is done. The battlefield was Calvary. The cross was the weapon. A life was given there, one day, for you, for me. Blood was shed there, for every sin and for every wrong that ever was or ever will be. The battlefield was Calvary; the victory parade was at the empty tomb. For out of the worst defeat we can imagine, out of death itself, God brought forth life in Jesus Christ. And now that life can be ours. That victory can be ours. The past is past. Today is what matters. And I want to sing today.
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD: "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.
I like being a winner, don’t you? I don’t like losing. Never have, never will.
I like being a part of a winning church, don’t you? I don’t like being a part of a losing team. Never have, never will.
But it’s settled. It is settled, over. Because “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” I hear the music now. “This day the victor’s song.”
