Who are the enemies we are fighting? Who or what
is it that is aiming at the destruction of our
faith?
1. Gal.
5: 16-17 (p. 826) & Heb. 3: 12-13 (847): The
default setting in our lives is to prefer sin to
Christ. If we do nothing we will believe the promises
of sin and develop a hard, unbelieving heart towards
God. In almost thirty years of talking with people
about the condition of their spiritual life I have
never had anyone say to me, “I don’t understand
myself. I cannot stop reading God’s word, praying
and loving others. I have to find someway to stop
denying myself and loving people.”
2. I
John 2: 14-15 (p. 862)& 5:
3-5 & 19: A world system that is opposed to
God and his ways. We live in a world that is continually
telling us that we can be happy without God. Every
commercial you have ever seen has said this to
you. Our friends, our families, our coworkers,
our neighbors communicate to us by how they live
and what they say, that happiness can be found
without Christ.
3. I
Peter 5:8-9 (859) & John 8: 42-44 (p.758) & 1
Timothy 4: 1-4 (p. 840): Satan, his demons and
the false teaching and persecution that they inspire
The U.S. does
not seem to be a place that is at war. For this
reason, the U.S. is
a dangerous place to live. It is so easy for us
to become comfortable in our affluence and polite
Christian company and forget that we are at war. When America was
at war in WWII, everyone knew it and lived differently. The
progress of the war was the main topic of conversation. Prayers
for loved ones who were on the front lines were
daily offered. There was rationing of gasoline
and other resources that could be used by the troops. Those
at home lived differently because they too were
in the war, though not on the front lines. Like America in
WWII we who belong to Christ’s church are in a
war to maintain faith and arrive safely in heaven.
Just as certainly as Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan sought
to destroy the U.S. and
its allies, so Satan seeks to destroy Christ’s
church. Satan, through the world of men, which
is opposed to God, seeks to influence our sinful
nature to destroy our confidence that to have Christ
is to have everything. Our enemies are bent on
destroying our faith, our love for God and His
ways. The evil bents within me are continually
being stimulated by the world’s thinking and Satan’s
lies to seek to find life and satisfaction in other
things, in ways of living that are contrary to
God’s ways.
Our real problems are not primarily psychological,
but rather problems of faith. It is our faith
that is continually under assault. By this I don’t
mean primarily the intellectual doubts that sometimes
arise in our mind, though creating doubt is part
of the strategy of our enemies. Faith is being
satisfied with all that God promises to be for
me in Jesus. It is being absolutely persuaded
that to know and love and obey Christ is the most
certain way to happiness. It is to know that all
other promises for joy are but a sham and a deception. My
biggest problem and your biggest problem is your
natural propensity to believe the lies of Satan
and the world that you can be happy without God. Every
day we are under attack by our enemies who are
seeking to destroy our faith.
My faith is continually under
assault by the world, my own sinful desires and
Satan himself, so I need to join the army of God’s
people. But I also need to join the army of God’s
people because…..
II. I am weak
and easily overcome
Are you ever amazed at how excited you are to
go shopping or watch a sporting event or work at
your hobby but how little excitement you feel at
the prospect of coming to church? Really, when
you stop and think about it, it doesn’t make a
lot of sense. Coming to church is a response to
the great facts of the gospel of Christ. The
God who made the world and who holds it together
and who is perfectly just and who has every right
to kill me and throw me into hell has killed his
Son in my place and through him given me a living
faith and a certain hope of heaven. There
is nothing in the whole universe as astounding
as that sentence I just spoke. Yet our hearts
don’t thrill to it.
Are you ever amazed at how easily you lie or get
angry or give in to lust for food or sex or sleep
or whatever and how difficult it is to love people,
to worship God or to restrain yourself from doing
evil? Are you ever appalled at how proud you feel
after or even while you are doing a kind act? Do
you ever feel like the psalmist when he said, “For
troubles without number surround me; my sins have
overtaken me, and I cannot see. They
are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart
fails within me.”
There is an enormous tension in the Christian
life. On one hand, Christ has saved me from my
sins. Not simply from the penalty of my sins,
but from the rule of sin in my life. Prior to
becoming a Christian, everything I did was sin
because nothing I did was from a heart of faith
in Christ and for the glory of God. But when I
became a Christian, I was given a new heart, new
motivations and new loves. Listen to how the NT
describes this in these three places:
1. Romans
8: 12-14 (p. 800)
2. Titus
2:11-14 (p. 844)
3. 1
John 3:9 (p. 863)
The evidence that I belong to Christ is that I
am in a fight against sin. I want to do what God
wants me to do. I love to trust and obey Christ. I
hate sinning. Pleasing him is the great yearning
of my life. The certain mark that I belong to Christ
is that I have these new yearnings that yield new
actions. Whereas before I found no joy in pursuing
God and all my joy in pursuing my own agenda, now
I hate it when I seek to fill my life apart from
God. I find joy in knowing and obeying Him. But,
because I still live on this fallen planet and
still live in this fallen humanity, I still sin. Listen
to this description of the struggle that the Christian
experiences in Romans 7.
· Rom
7: 14-25 (p. 800)
· Psalm
38:1-4 & 17-18 (p. 399)
· I
John 1: 8-10 (p. 862)
I have a good friend named Bill. He stands about
6’3” and is a superb athlete. He is excellent
at golf, basketball, baseball and tennis. He is
a natural leader. Men love to hang around with
Bill. Bill is the epitome of strength. Currently
he is the chaplain for the Colorado Rockies baseball
team and the Denver Broncos. I will never forget
the first time I met Bill. I was working with
Campus Crusade for Christ and I was in charge of
the team of staff assigned to share the gospel
with students at UW-LaCrosse. Bill
was assigned to serve on my team and I met him
the summer he found out that he would be joining
us in LaCrosse. I asked
him why it was that he had joined the staff of
CCC. Most people when asked that question would
have said, “Because I want to help reach lost students
for Christ.” Not Bill, he said, “I need to be
with people who love Christ because I know that
if I went out in the world right now I wouldn’t
make it as a Christian.” At the time, I thought
Bill was rather immature for answering like that. However,
as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to see the wisdom
in that answer. Bill knew he was weak and that
it wouldn’t take much for sin and the world and
the devil to do him in.
Do you view yourself as weak, vulnerable and susceptible
to doing all manner of evil? Do you feel how precarious
is your condition spiritually? You will not survive
the onslaught of your sin, the world and the devil
by yourself. You need fellow soldiers in the fight
of faith to make it safely to your heavenly home.
I have fierce enemies and I
am easily overcome by them, therefore I need to
be connected to God’s army if I am going to make
it to heaven and because…
III. God supplies His strength through the
encouragement of faithful comrades
When do we most need encouragement? We are most
in need of encouragement when we are in danger
of quitting, of turning aside from a course of
action. When the course is tougher or longer than
we had anticipated is when we most need help to
keep going. A number of years ago I ran a half
marathon, that’s 13.1 miles. The only reason I
was able to train for it and to finish it was because
a good friend was committed to running it with
me. Regularly we would need to urge each other
to do the training runs in bad weather and when
we just didn’t feel like going. In the race itself
I would have walked the last mile if it wasn’t
for Paul running next to me and telling me I couldn’t
walk, that we were almost there and needed to keep
going.
The Greek word that means, “to encourage” is
used over 100 times in the NT. It is translated
with a number of different English words: encourage,
comfort, urge, appeal, exhort are the main ones. In
the book of 1 Thess. it is used 8 times. Please
turn with me to this book so you can see how it
is used (p. 835).
What I want
you to notice is the goal and the means of encouragement
in this book. Paul spent a month with these
people and then was driven out of town by influential
unbelievers who did not like what Paul was saying. These
unbelievers continued to persecute the new believers
in the town.
Ø 1
Thess. 2:11-12 Paul encouraged
them. Notice that encouragement is something
a father does and its goal is so people will
live a life worthy of God.
Ø 1
Thess. 3:1-5 Paul sent Timothy to encourage them. Timothy’s
encouragement was for the purpose of strengthening
their faith. Notice v. 5, Paul sees that Satan
may have deceived them. Without Timothy’s encouragement
they won’t make it to heaven. Let me just pause
here to make a comment about the relationship
between the security of the Christian and the
necessity of persevering. If you’ll look back
at 1:4 Paul makes a very strong statement about
his certainty that these men and women have been
born again of God’s Spirit. He knows that God
chose them and gave them life because of how
they responded to the gospel and to the persecution
that came because of the gospel. However, Paul
also knows that the only saving faith is a persevering
faith. The only people who will make it to heaven
are those who believe the promises of God to
the end of their lives. Paul also knows that
God uses means to maintain faith. The way God
works in our lives is not some mystical, magical
thing. Rather, God gives us faith and strengthens
our faith through a variety of means. One of
those means is the encouragement of other Christians. True
Christians will not be deceived by Satan because
true believers always seek to place themselves
under the teaching of God’s word and welcome
the encouragement of other Christians.
Ø 1
Thess. 3:7 In turn, when Paul heard that they
were continuing to trust Christ in spite of their
trials, he was encouraged to persevere in his
trials. If they can persist so can I. I can’t
tell you how often I have said that to myself,
especially in the last year. There is enormous
power when you see a person live by faith in
the midst of great suffering. I have been so
helped by thinking about John Patton, the missionary
to the people of New Hebrides whose wife and infant son died one year after
arriving on the island. His ongoing faith and
faithfulness have encouraged me to press on. The
story of Steve Saint, the son of the martyred
missionary, Nate Saint,
whose 22-year-old daughter, the night she returned
from a yearlong missions trip
suddenly and unexpectedly died is a source of
encouragement. It’s not only these “big” stories
of persevering faith that help me but also just
being with Christians who are beset by all the
same troubles I am beset with and then to see
them faithfully follow Christ is a great encouragement
to my own faith.
Ø 1
Thess. 4:18 They are to tell each other about the coming
of Christ in order to encourage each other
Ø 1
Thess. 5:11 They are to “encourage each other” because Jesus
is coming back to save us
When we encourage
others we are aiming at building their faith
so they will live lives of glad obedience to
God. Encouragement isn’t simply offering emotional
support to someone who is depressed. It may
include that but it is always most concerned
that the other person trusts God more and lives
a life that reflects that trust. Encouragement
is God centered, Scripture saturated conversation. It
takes serious the pressures that a person faces
that are causing them to want to quit but it
doesn’t lament those conditions as much as it
points the person to Christ and his amazing salvation. Encouragement:
Ø Comes
out of a heart of compassion, like a dad
Ø Is
very passionate, it cares whether or not the
other person responds
Ø Is
aimed at getting the other person to pursue Christ
more, to obey God more fervently
Ø You
cannot encourage someone if you don’t believe
the best thing for him is to do what you are
encouraging him to do. You must be in the process
of experiencing these things yourself.
Ø Those
who encourage are encouraged in turn by the perseverance
of those they encourage
When you are involved in encouraging another person
you are taking serious the ferocity of our enemies
and the weakness of humans to trust Christ. Any
person sitting in this room could forsake Christ
and bring great harm to themselves and those they
love. This is what Paul is saying in 1 Thess.
3:5. He fears that the devil, through the persecution
that he has inspired, may have persuaded these
men and women to abandon Christ. Satan, he fears,
may have persuaded them that if being a Christian
means suffering like this, then it’s better to
not be a Christian. Paul sees the work of Timothy
in strengthening this church in their faith as
absolutely essential to their persevering in faith.
It is God’s intention and plan that Christians,
through the work of encouragement, restore those
who have fallen, preserve one another from falling
and move one another forward in a glad obedience
to God. Through our words and our work we
are to aim at counteracting and overcoming the
work of Satan, the world, and sin in the lives
of other Christians.
Now, the question is, when you get together with
other believers, is this the goal of your meeting? Do
you ever intentionally meet with other Christians
for the purpose of encouraging one another’s faith? This
is a difficult thing to do, but if you are going
to make it to heaven, it is absolutely essential. We
need to give each other permission to talk about
Christ and the things we are struggling with and
the ways we are overcoming sin. We need to develop
the discipline of “spiritual conversation”. Not
just my job as the pastor.
In January of 1995, I sinned in a very public
way. I was at a basketball game that my two oldest
sons were playing in and I became very angry and
verbally abusive of the refs and the other team. I
was out of control. My sons played for a Christian
high school and we were playing a public high school
in their gym. When I left the gym, I was numb
with the wickedness I had just engaged in. I was
dismayed with my own evil. I didn’t know what
to do. I had humiliated my wife, my sons, the
parents of the other players and their school. But
mostly I was distraught at how my angry display
had dishonored Christ. I was an elder in our church
and I went to my fellow elders and confessed my
great sin to them and asked them what I should
do. I was sure that I was not a Christian. They
helped me to deal with God and then they helped
me to put together a plan to make sure that never
happened again. Before the next basketball game
I called together the parents of all the other
players and many of the other fans of the school
and apologized to them and asked their forgiveness. Then
I told them that I wanted to spend time before
every game praying for ourselves that we would
honor Christ in our cheering and that our sons
would honor Christ in how they played the game. During
the next two seasons a group of us met before every
game to pray together that we would believe the
promises of God more than the promise of fair referees
or winning the game. The joy that we had in those
years was great because we never got angry again. We
enthusiastically cheered for our boys but we did
not complain at bad calls or criticize the other
team. We kept our attention on cheering. This
is what is supposed to happen when we are engaged
in fighting the fight of faith with one another. My
fellow elders helped me and then we Christian parents
helped one another. You will not be successful
in fighting against sin and for faith without the
regular encouragement of other believers.