Choosing Your Army

 Those of you who have been with us for the last couple of weeks will know that we are in the midst of a series called “Facing Your Enemy.” The New Testament uses military analogies in several places to describe our life of faith. We have looked at several of them already: fighting the good fight, wanting to please our commanding officer. Last Sunday, John talked about the gear that we need as spiritual soldiers, in particular the armor of God as described in Ephesians. Today’s topic is Choosing Your Army. In what sense do we choose our army? Clearly there are choices to be made. There is no middle ground, as our cartoon friend is realizing, as he attempts to keep a foot in both camps – or is it a hand?

Certainly our most important choice is our fundamental decision to follow Jesus, to submit to his authority and leadership. In this sense we choose to be a part of the Army of Light rather than the Army of Darkness. Ephesians 5:8 says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” This isn’t a one-time decision, and therefore this is one place where the military analogy runs into difficulties. If you were to join the U.S. Army you would raise your hand in front of the flag and swear to defend the Constitution of the United States and to obey the orders of the President and the officers over you. Once you make that commitment, you don’t get out of it! Of course you only enlist for a certain number of years, but during that time you are expected to do as you are told. If you don’t follow orders, whether you agree with them or not, then you will be punished.

Serving in the Lord’s army, however, requires an ongoing commitment on our part. Jesus says that we have to take our cross daily to follow him. Many people enthusiastically enlist, but when life gets busy, or they get lazy, or when the battle heats up, they head for the sidelines. Jesus invites us every day to fight alongside him, but he doesn’t force us to. Satan is very effective at taking us out of the battle and unless we are alert to his tactics we may easily become ineffective soldiers. One of his favorite tricks, by the way, is to tell us that we are useless: You’re not good enough to be a soldier! Look at how sinful and weak you are! What do you think you could ever do, compared to all those other super Christians who are doing such amazing things? Why don’t you just give up and let someone else do the fighting? Before we know it, we are slouching away from the battlefield, discouraged and defeated. If we believe that we are useless then we will be useless. But if we believe that God has a part for every single one of us in his battle plan and that he has equipped us by his Holy Spirit with everything we need for the battle, then we will do whatever we can for the war effort, even if it is just striking a single blow.

I have just been studying the Revolutionary War with my kids, and one of the things that we learned was very demoralizing for the British soldiers was that American women and children were actively taking part in the war effort. They weren’t allowed to fight on the front lines (although a number of women pretended to be men and did), but in many cases they were right behind the lines doing whatever they could to help the Continental Army. It’s that level of tenacious commitment that eventually won the war for the Americans. You might think, What could a child do to help win a war? Jesus has a role for every single one of us. You have probably heard this saying before: It’s not our ability that matters, it’s our availability.

Okay, so we enlist in the Army of Light – and we renew that commitment every day, asking God to use us for his purposes, wielding the sword of the Spirit and looking for every opportunity to push back the darkness in some way. We choose our army, and we keep choosing to be on active duty. In this sense we are part of God’s universal army, millions of people around the world who are taking a stand for him against the forces of the Evil One, the principalities and powers that John mentioned last week, the “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” However, from that perspective it can seem a bit impersonal, like we could get lost in a huge crowd of marching infantry. I know that some people join the U.S. Army and feel like they become just a number. Either that, or some people develop a “Lone Ranger” mentality, “going it alone” against the enemy. But God has intended for us to live in relationship and battle alongside each other. And this is the second aspect of choosing one’s army that I would like us to consider this morning.

From Ecclesiastes 4:

⁹Two are better than one,

because they have a good return for their labor:

¹⁰If either of them falls down,

one can help the other up.

But pity anyone who falls

and has no one to help them up.

¹¹Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.

But how can one keep warm alone?

¹²Though one may be overpowered,

two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

You can think of the three strands as you, your brother or sister, and the Lord, working as a team, much stronger in resisting an attack. The concept of choosing one’s team may give a different perspective than choosing one’s army. The word “team” gives a sense of the people who are right around us, that we are personally involved with, that we help and who help us. Large armies have to be broken down into manageable units, down to squads of soldiers who get to know and depend on each other and who can be assigned a specific task to accomplish together. In a physical army, you usually don’t get to choose who you are teamed up with. You may be able to volunteer for certain assignments, but working relationships with other soldiers are largely predetermined.

As Christian soldiers, however, we have more freedom to choose our team – or at least the level of relationship that we will develop with other believers. As I said, some people would prefer not to have to deal with messy relationships. They would like their faith to be a private thing, just between them and God. Or they may be so strongly convinced about what they should do that they don’t want anyone telling them differently. You see that on the mission field quite often: strong-minded missionaries are so convinced of God’s calling that they refuse to submit to anyone. They insist on doing things their way, often straining relationships with other missionaries.

From the very beginning, God intended for us to live in relationship. He looked at Adam and said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” We easily get off track when we are alone. We all have blind spots that we need other people to point out, rough spots for others to smooth. I heard one missionary speaker suggest that rather than singing, “Bind us together, Lord,” it might be more appropriate to sing, “Grind us together, Lord.” And although we have the Holy Spirit to comfort and exhort and encourage, sometimes we just seem to need “Jesus with skin on,” as someone else has said. We need physical arms around us when we are sad or discouraged. We need someone to look us in the eye and lovingly confront us when we are about to go astray. And we definitely need others in the body to confirm and support us in what we sense God leading us to do.

I decided to look up how many times the phrases “each other” and “one another” appear in the New Testament: 99 times. Now not all of those refer to edifying relationships with other believers, but many of them do. Here is a sampling:

·         Be at peace with each other (Mk 9:50)

·         Love each other as I have loved you (Jn 15:12)

·         Honor one another above yourselves (Ro 12:10)

·         Live in harmony with each other (Ro 12:16)

·         Stop passing judgment on one another (Ro 14:13)

·         Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you (Ro 15:7)

·         Agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you (1 Co 1:10)

·         Serve one another in love (Ga 5:13)

·         Be patient, bearing with one another in love (Ep 4:2)

·         Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (Ep 4:32)

·         Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ep 5:19)

·         Submit to one another, out of reverence for Christ (Ep 5:21)

·         Do not lie to each other (Col 3:9)

·         Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom (Col 3:16)

·         Encourage one another and build each other up (1 Th 5:11)

·         Consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Heb 10:24)

·         Do not slander one another (Jas 4:11)

·         Don’t grumble against each other (Jas 5:9)

·         Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed (Jas 5:16)

·         Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling (1 Pe 4:9)

·         Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another (1 Pe 5:5)

All of these “one another” or “each other” commands require that we live in relationship with other Christians, and they define the quality of those relationships. They refer to mutual or reciprocal attitudes and actions; they are not intended to be just “one way” relationships. They ought to characterize the army or team that we choose to be a part of. By their nature, they are the responsibility of each person in the group. As it says in 1 Cor 12:27: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

So each of us finds our identity and role in being part of the body. This is also where we are loved and encouraged and taught and built up and all the other things that we have just listed. However, these shouldn’t be our only relationships. We can’t be the salt of the earth if we just stay in the salt shaker. We are nurtured in the fellowship of believers so that we can be a witness in the world. The way we fight the good fight in the world is to go where the enemy is. Of course we need to remember that we are not fighting people. As John pointed out last week from Ephesians, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Jesus certainly engaged the enemy at every opportunity, whether in an encounter with a demon-possessed man or in condemning the pride of the Pharisees. We know that Jesus was criticized for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners, but He wasn’t just socializing for the fun of it. He was entering the enemy’s territory to take him on directly. If Jesus appeared again on earth today, He probably wouldn’t be too interested in spending much time in a church, I’m afraid. He would be visiting the bars and the brothels and the casinos and the prisons, as well as the universities and the hospitals and the legislatures, fighting where the enemy is the strongest. We can follow Him into those battles with confidence, because He has given us the power and protection of the Holy Spirit. We do need to make sure our armor is secure and our orders are clear.

So we need to choose our army and make sure that we are ready for the battle, taking seriously all the “each other” and “one another” commands that I listed. As we go into sharing time and communion, I am wondering if we can add one more “body” activity. Could each of you turn to someone next to you and share just one thing that they could pray for. If you have trouble thinking of something, pray for greater effectiveness in one of these areas listed. And then briefly pray for each other. Sharing in the big group is wonderful, but I know that not everyone gets to or maybe wants to share. I am hoping that doing something one-on-one like this might also help to strength us as a body, as a team, as an army.