Welcome! Today we begin a new series
entitled Facing Your Enemy. I hope
you enjoy the illustrations; Isaac has made one for each message in the series.
The character in the illustrations in one from a comic strip Isaac has been
developing that he calls Iggleton.
I am really excited about this series and
where it will take us. We will have multiple speakers as we go through this
topical series, but our approach is not to micromanage what each person will
speak on. Each speaker is given the title, just as you can see the list of
titles in your bulletin, and that is really all they are given! We don’t plan
out the details but instead pray and trust that the Spirit will direct each
speaker and, combined with each speaker’s own gifts and life experiences, we
pray that the Spirit will weave together the messages into a powerful unified
whole.
I mention this because this series is
really about the question, “What am I supposed to do?” Well, God is not a
micromanager, either. We don’t wake up each morning with a to-do list magically
appearing on our nightstand. It might be nice if it did – what do you think?
Imagine you woke up, put on your glasses (if necessary) and started reading. 8am get up. Wow! It’s only 7:30! I can
stay in bed for another 30 minutes! 8:01am
take a shower, get ready for the day. Remember to only use hot water for 5
minutes so others will still have some. How thoughtful! I always forget
about that. When you finish using the
toilet, put the lid down. Yeah, I forget about that too. What’s next? Get breakfast, but first take the dishes out
of the dishwasher and put them away. Sure! That will make everyone happy. Eat breakfast, but first pray, thanking Me
for all I give you (including this list) and ask Me to help you to follow the
list all day long. Will do!
And so on… Imagine if the list was
super-detailed, all day long. Life would be great, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Listen to your co-worker complain about her
marriage for 18 minutes and then offer to pray for her right then and there. 18
minutes? That’s an awfully long time! And then, asking to pray for her? That
sounds really hard. And scary! Maybe I’ll just skip that one. After all, I’ve
done at least 90% of what’s on the list today! That’s pretty good, right?
The truth is that even if we had such a
list, what would be on it wouldn’t necessarily be easy. Not only that, even if we had such a list, would we really want
to do everything that the list said to do? I truly believe that once we got
over the novelty of having a list, most of us would be back to being “our old
selves,” fighting the same temptations and weaknesses in our character that we
have always fought.
And how many of us, over time, even if we
did many of the things on the list, would develop attitude problems about some
of the things on the list we did? Probably most of us! While saving the hot
water for the others yet again, some
of us would be thinking, “It doesn’t seem fair that my list says to take five
minutes but my sister’s or my roommate’s doesn’t say anything about saving hot water! (Yes, I snuck a look at her
list.)” Or while putting the dishes away yet again, some of us are thinking, “I
slave around this house and nobody notices what I do! I wish God would make
others do more acts of kindness around here.” Or while praying, some of us
might use the same sequence of words every day, so that we actually manage to
think about something else while praying!
Or while listening to that co-worker, we actually don’t listen at all but
instead go into our own little world in our heads. We are surprised when the
person doesn’t stick around for as long as the list said to listen. “Must be
something wrong with my list,” we might think.
I think another thing that would happen to
many of us if we had these daily lists from God is that we would become a
little, I don’t know, bored isn’t
quite the right word, but something inside of us would cease to be as alive as it once used to be. The truth
is that although there is a part of us that enjoys being told what to do, there
is another part of us that is creative, inventive, that yearns for the freedom
of just trying things (within certain parameters) and creating. A life totally
governed by lists would not be a life that would experience this.
But God is not a micromanager. When we wake
up in the morning there is no list on our nightstand (unless our spouse put one
there). Each day we are given freedom – freedom to follow God, to love Him, to
serve Him, to do the kinds of things He desires that we do, as well as freedom
to not follow Him, to ignore Him, to
not give Him thanks, to not seek Him, to do our own thing, to do one or more of
a million ways to sin. Each day He gives us this choice. His desire is that
each day we would draw a little closer to Him, that each day we would get to
know Him and trust Him a little more, that each day we would take steps of
faith in loving others and doing other things that He desires that we would do,
but He doesn’t tell us exactly what to do and He doesn’t force us.
Now, this series uses military images and
terminology to represent our position as Christians in this world. Like all
symbolism, it is an imperfect analogy and can be taken too far or stretched to
mean things that Scripture does not say. For example, you may have the image in
your head of a commanding officer who barks out orders, demands perfect
obedience, and is generally mean and shows no grace. Of course, this is as far
as you can get from our actual situation as Christians if the commanding
officer is supposed to represent Christ. Also, you may picture the soldier’s
life as highly regimented, even micromanaged, and as we have already said, God
is not a micromanager.
Nevertheless, I like the military symbolism
because, first of all, military symbolism is used repeatedly in Scripture.
Today I want to look at how Paul, inspired by God, uses this symbolism to impart powerful truth in
2 Timothy. And in doing this, I think we will find some pretty powerful
insights in how to “choose your battles.” In 2 Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy, a younger believer that Paul
has raised up and who is now leading the church body in Ephesus. Paul begins by
thanking God for Timothy and his sincere faith. He then says this:
For
this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you
through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,
but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not
be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join
with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. – 2 Tim. 1:6-8
Although not specifically military in
imagery, the picture of someone powerful and self-disciplined is certainly
consistent with a soldier. And the picture of such a person going into a place
where you are likely to suffer is certainly what we picture of a soldier. One
of the interesting points here is that we are to be “soldierlike” not in our own
strength, but that we are to be encourage (fan into flame) the work of the Holy
Spirit in our lives, because He is the one who makes us “soldierlike.”
In my personal life, this verse is talking
about a key place I have chosen to battle. What is my battle? It is a battle
over what I truly believe. Do I believe that my weaknesses, my tendencies to
fail, my frailty, my fears – all of these could also describe the word
translated here as timid, deilia – do
I believe that these things are just “how it is” and that I will never rise
above them, OR do I believe that the Holy Spirit is real, that the Holy Spirit
is available to me, that the Holy Spirit is willing to give me dunamis power, TNT-dynamite-like power,
power for boldness, for completing hard things, for persevering? Do I really
believe that the Holy Spirit is willing to fill me supernaturally with agape love, love that naturally thinks
of others first and overcomes my selfishness, love that is eager to worship God
and give Him my life? And do I really believe that the Holy Spirit is willing
to give me sophronismos discipline,
so that I don’t waste my life but use it to further God’s kingdom, sharing the
gospel, helping younger believers grow in Christ, serving others, that I use my
time for Him, not just zoning out watching TV?
What exactly is this battle? It is whether
I really trust and believe God enough to, in faith, pray that the Holy Spirit
would provide these things, things that are not “me” (not the old “me,” anyway)
in my life. You see, there are alternatives to this battleground; I could
instead choose to pray that I not sin, or I could just pray repentantly after I
sin – and we should pray these things, don’t get me wrong – but I have found in
my life that if this the only places I pray, I have already lost. The
battleground is earlier, upstream, here in what I believe about His Spirit and
in what I ask God to do in my life through His Spirit. For me, when I successfully engage in this
battle, the later “downstream” battles are mostly already won.
And so, as Paul calls Timothy to avail
himself of the Holy Spirit, he then calls Timothy to join him in suffering for
the gospel. And this speaks to a second battleground I think we should engage.
This is the battleground for men’s and women’s souls. This is the one area where what
we do in this life has a clear impact on eternity. Now we are unlikely to
literally be arrested or physically suffer for the gospel here in America, but
we are called to serve, to fight. How do we do this? We labor in prayer for
those who don’t know Christ and for those who are reaching out to others. We
labor to make new friendships with people who don’t know Christ. We labor to
put a spiritual dimension into our existing friendships with those who don’t
know Christ, and we keep at it, even though it is hard or awkward, even though
we don’t first see fruit. And again, we seek to do this only with the help and
power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul talks to Timothy about “soldiering”
even more directly a few verses later:
What
you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love
in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the
help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. – 2 Tim. 1:13-14
We are to be as military guards,
protecting something with our lives, for that is what guards do. What is it
that Paul is telling Timothy to guard? The teachings passed on to him from
Paul, accompanied by faith and love in Christ. And he is not to guard it alone,
in his own strength, but with the company and power of the Holy Spirit. This is
a third battleground for me.
What does this battleground look like?
First of all, it is a battle for my own mind. I want to hold fast to the truths
of Scripture; I want them to permeate my being, to be leaking out of my pores.
Why? Because apart from them, I may be led astray by the world or by just
moving away from a “love the Lord with your whole heart, soul, mind, strength,
and might” into a “say that you love the Lord but really only give Him your
leftovers of time and energy and belief.”
Secondly, this battleground is a battle
for my loved ones. We are each, individually, ultimately responsible for our
relationship with God. But we also have a responsibility to guard one another.
Our enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to
devour. So with the Holy Spirit’s help,
I am to guard – I am to keep up with them, make sure they are continually being
supplied themselves by God through prayer and spending time in the Word, that
they are staying encouraged in the Lord, that they are outward focused, eager
to reach a lost world with the gospel – and when I see that they aren’t, I
fight! I fight for them in prayer. I fight for them through redoubling my
efforts to encourage and help them. In these ways I can “guard the good
deposit.”
Paul takes the military analogy to the
forefront as he continues in his letter to Timothy in chapter 2:
Join with me
in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled
in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. – 2 Timothy
2:3-4
These are powerful and uncomfortable
verses. You are a soldier. We are at war. We are at war not against people, but
against principalities, against powers, against spiritual forces of darkness
that desire that none turn to Christ, that, instead, all perish apart from
knowing His saving love.
When you pray for someone, you enter the
battle. When you spend time in the Word to build yourself up, you enter the
battle. When you encourage a believer or share spiritual truths with an
unbeliever, you enter the battle. When you die a little to self and allow the
Holy Spirit to direct your steps, you enter the battle. And in this battle you
will meet opposition.
Paul calls us, as he calls Timothy, “Join
with me. Come with me, get your battle wounds with me, suffer with me.” Come be
a good soldier, one who enters into battle. What does it mean to be wounded in
this battle? It means we can become disappointed, discouraged, as some betray
us. It means that we suffer through the pain of watching some people fall away.
It means that Satan will put people and circumstances in our life that are
hard, emotionally draining, and that we have to continue on soldiering.
I need to point out how different this is
from a lot of false teachings out there that say that once you come to Christ
He will eliminate all problems from your life, that if you pray all your trials
will disappear, etc. If you have no trials in your life it means that you have
not entered the war; you have not entered into battle. Like the verse implies,
if you have life free of suffering, you have probably become entangled in
civilian affairs.
I recently did a little historical
research on the Titanic for one of
the courses I teach at Clemson. What I read about were the radio operators.
After the Titanic struck the iceberg,
the radio operators continually sent out a message asking for help. And they
continued to do so until the very end; they went down with the ship still
sending out those messages. These men were warriors. They entered the battle.
They were not entangled in civilian affairs. You may have heard the saying
“rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
It’s a powerful saying because the picture of moving chairs around,
accomplishing nothing, while the ship is sinking is a powerful image. Do you want to rearrange deck chairs or do
you want to do something that counts? For us, radioing for help is praying for
people. For us, helping people get into lifeboats is sharing the gospel,
building them up in the faith, encouraging them in the Lord. What is
rearranging deck chairs? Only talking with friends about unimportant things.
Getting overly caught up in entertainment or sports to the point that you are
neglecting important things. Reading the
newspaper (does anyone do that anymore?) or the Internet instead of reading
God’s Word in the morning. Watching a movie late at night and falling behind in
sleep instead of choosing to pray. It means getting addicted to games on your
iphone. There are countless ways to become entangled in civilian affairs.
That word for “entangled,” by the way, in
Greek is empleko; it is used to
describe a sheep whose wool is caught in thorns or of rabbits who are caught
and stuck in bushes of thorns. Perhaps a more fitting image for those of us
that are Lord of the Rings aficionados
is that of Frodo in the web. An activity becomes an entanglement when it
becomes hard to let go of, or when it becomes a key part of our life. Note
that, like addictions and addicts, the one who is entangled will be quick to
deny the degree of their entanglement. If you think you might be entangled in
something, try quitting it for a week to see what happens.
What’s so terrible about an entanglement?
It is that it keeps you off the battlefield. And if it becomes entrenched, then
as you try to separate yourself from it, it
will become your battle, rather than the things that we have talked about
earlier – building others up, sharing the gospel, and so on. To paraphrase a
portion of what Paul says in I Cor. 7:29-31: What I mean, brothers and sisters,
is that time is short. From now on, those … who use the things of the world
[should live] as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form
is passing away.
I don’t care how young or old you are,
how long you have been a Christian or how short, you can still find ways to
become newly entangled in the world. I encourage you – choose your battles!
Don’t let yourself become newly entangled! And if you are currently working to
rid yourself of an entanglement, understand that you are especially susceptible
to replacing it with another entanglement, unless you deal with your heart.
Entanglements and addictions are a result of desiring to find our joy or
comfort or even just a stress release in something other than God. Unless you
radically improve your relationship with God so that He is your joy, so that He
is your comfort, so that, in Him, you find relief from your stress, unless you
do this, quitting your entanglement or addiction will leave a giant hole in
your heart that will not be filled except by another such entanglement or
addiction. Don’t become one who
constantly fights against the hole in your heart – you are choosing the wrong
battle!
I want to focus also on the last part of
the verse – No one
serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to
please his commanding officer. The word translated “commanding officer” in
Greek is stratologeo, a composite
word from stratos which means warfare
and lego which means to choose or
select or gather. Together we could say stratologeo
means warrior-chooser. This gets
into purpose – why do we battle? If you battle for the wrong reasons, you are
certain to fail and likely to choose the wrong battles. What do I mean by this?
Well, when someone becomes a Christian, they experience a new birth – I don’t
have time to go into what all this means, but there is a very real sense in which a
new “you” is born, a “you” that is in Christ, that seeks to serve Him, that is
empowered by the Holy Spirit, and when the old “you” tries to continue in its
selfish and sinful pursuits, the new “you” makes the “complete” you feel
absolutely miserable. This is the tension described so vividly in Romans 7.
I do not
understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I
agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I
myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I
know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I
have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to
do—this I keep on doing. – Rom. 7:15-19
And jumping to verse 21:
So I find
this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s
law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war
against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work
within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me
from this body that is subject to death?
- Rom. 7:21-24
And so believers experience this tension.
And unfortunately, for many, the goal is simply to be out of pain. I know this
was true for me early in my Christian walk. I didn’t think about pleasing my
commanding officer specifically; I only wanted to stop feeling miserable! But
the unfortunate irony is that if you only want to stop feeling miserable, you
are likely to fail, because our motivation for how we live is essential in our
personal battles against sin. To be blunt, simply wanting to stop feeling
miserable is a pretty selfish motive. And if our motives are selfish, our
methods tend to be selfish too. That is, we will see our battle as “me” versus
“me” rather than “me with God” against “old me without God.” I remember over
and over reading Romans 7:21-24 and also reading the next verse:
Who will
rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through
Jesus Christ our Lord! – Rom. 7:24-25
I remember reading this verse and feeling
absolutely empty. I would look around to the surrounding verses, read them
again, and wonder just what I was missing. I remember wondering why God didn’t
seem to deliver me?!
Motivation matters! The more you reflect
on what Jesus has done for you, the
more you enter into a real relationship with Him and thank Him for saving you,
the more you really get to know Him, the more you will want to “please your
commanding officer.” As this happens you will understand more and more that He
has to change you, so more and more you will get with Him regularly in prayer
over this sin area, and more and more you will see the bigger picture of how God
wants to use you as His soldier in the world, to help other Christians grow, to
bring others to Christ, to help your local body of believers really be Christ’s body on earth. And you will find yourself beginning to grow, to
mature, and you will find that God is truly empowering you to break away from
your old entanglements, and you will be able to say with Paul, “Thanks be to
God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
If you are battling your old self in a
particular sin area and it is making you miserable, I would encourage you to
see your battle as not about that sin, but about your overall intimacy with
Christ. Choose your battle!
I want to pick up in Paul’s letter to
Timothy in Chapter 4. Paul in Chapter 3 warns Timothy against proud people who
claim to follow God but in reality only serve themselves. And then, we come to
this:
In the presence of God
and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his
appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared
in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience
and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up
with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather
around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to
hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. –
2 Tim. 4:1-4
Although
it is true that Paul is writing specifically to Timothy, who is serving as a
pastor in this local church, I think there is something for all of us here as
well. Paul’s message of being a soldier is not what many want to hear. Even
here in the middle of the Bible belt there are countless people who don’t
attend any church at all yet say they are Christian despite the fact that the
way they live as well as the various things they believe seems to indicate the
opposite.
In
this age of the Internet it is easier than ever to find exactly what your
itching ears want to hear. We are a culture, more than at any other time in
history, that is hungry to be entertained; that is, we have terribly itchy ears
and have come to expect instant gratification in this as well as in so many
other areas.
More
and more, whole areas of “sound doctrine” are becoming politically incorrect,
so much so that it is viewed as being hateful and bigoted to simply believe in
faith that what the Bible says is true. Where is this heading? I am worried
that more and more we will be dragged into battles not of our own choosing
where we are forced to “battle” simply to defend our ability to gather together
and preach the Bible as truth. But in the midst of this, Paul has advice for
Timothy (and for us):
But you, keep your head
in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all
the duties of your ministry. For I am already being poured out like a drink
offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me
the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to
me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His
appearing. – 2 Tim. 4:5-8
What
was it like for Timothy to read these verses? Paul was dying! Paul, Timothy’s
mentor, would soon be gone, leaving Timothy behind! But this is the nature of
being a soldier. Soldiers die. And other soldiers take their place. If you
think about the 2000-year history of the church, it has always been so.
I
don’t know about you, but when I get close to the end of my
life I want to be able to say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished
the race, I have kept the faith.” I don’t want to have to say, “I fought OK, sometimes.
I made it mostly around the race. I have some faith left, but I’m not sure
exactly how much.” What a tragedy! And yet, if we are failing as soldiers now,
why do we think it will automatically change later?
To be a
successful soldier requires a certain seriousness, a certain earnestness. What
about you? Are you willing to “face your enemy”? I would encourage you to
prayerfully consider the following questions this week:
1. Am I going to choose my battles or
let battles choose me?
2. Am I going to battle to have faith
that God’s Spirit can empower me to serve Him?
3. In my battle against sin, will my
goal to be to get out of pain or to choose to please my commanding Officer?
No comments:
Post a Comment