The Battle Belongs To The Lord

The Battle Belongs to the Lord

A man had a dream where he saw two gated corrals and in one pen there were sheep – in the other goats. As he sat on top of the fence in between and he watched as Jesus came out and led the sheep out of the pen to their eternal reward. Then he watched as the devil forcibly dragged the goats through a great crack in the ground to their eternal punishment. He watched until the last one was taken and he was the only one left sitting on top of his fence, and he thought, “Well that was interesting. I avoided hell and never had to make a decision to follow God or anything weird like that” Just a few minutes later the devil reappears and comes over to the fence and begins to claw at the man and begins dragging him off to the pit. The man cries out, “Wait a minute. I don’t belong to you. I was on the fence.” And the devil replies, “I guess no one ever told you; I own the fence”.

This sermon is for Christians. Not for fence sitters. But I want you to understand something. Many Christians think that you can be a Christian and somehow find a safe place between the front lines of spiritual warfare and the command center. It doesn’t work that way. The minute you gave your heart to Jesu you were thrust into the battle.

Here is the good news.

Just as the Lord spoke to King Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20:15,

NKJV And he said, “Listen, all you of Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem, and you, King Jehoshaphat! Thus says the LORD to you: ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ

I want to look at three quick points from our passage to see what the Lord is trying to tell us here.

I. THE PLACE WHERE WE LIVE DOES NOT DETERMINE WHO WE ARE… In writing this section of his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul is addressing one thing – There is a group of “so called” apostles who have risen up against him. He is speaking in defense of himself. Their arguments against Paul’s ministry can be seen in the verses right before and after these. His enemies accused Paul of being “bold” in his letters, but “timid” in person. 7 You are looking only on the surface of things. If anyone is confident that he belongs to Christ, he should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as he.8 For even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than pulling you down, I will not be ashamed of it. Paul says, hey, don’t look at things the way that sin the natural. The complaints that are being raised against Paul are from a worldly point of view. 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does… The enemy of your soul will attack you from that same perspective. Your Christian life doesn’t make any difference. Your kids will never get saved… that disease will never be healed… You’ll never get past that roadblock in your life to become what God wants you to be… God doesn’t really care; if He did why didn’t He protect you? All of those things come from the natural realm. The enemy uses the things of the word to battle against you. So we fight back. But not as the world fights. We fight back standing in the power and authority given us as God’s kids. Sometimes we forget that.

When Christian Herter was governor of Massachusetts, he was running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes (and no lunch) he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and Herter was famished. As Herter moved down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

"Excuse me," Governor Herter said, "do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?"

"Sorry," the woman told him. "I'm supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person."