Strength in the Lord

This morning's reading is taken from 1st Samuel, chapter 17. But David said to Saul, Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth.

When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it, and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.

The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. Saul said to David, Go, and the Lord be with you. Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic.

He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around because he was not used to them. I cannot go in these, he said to Saul, because I am not used to them.

So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag, and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine. Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield-bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David.

He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, Am I a dog that you come at me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. Come here, he said, and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.

David said to the Philistine, You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.

All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands. As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead.

The stone sank into his forehead and he fell face down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone. Without a sword in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and killed him.

This is the word of the Lord. We do thank the Lord for Jeff and Mary and Matthew and Claire, and now they've brought God's newest gift to them, Louise Michel, and I just want to put one or two questions to them. Jeff and Mary, is it your desire this morning to give thanks to God for the enlargement of your family? Of course it is.

And do you promise as best you can to bring Louise Michel up in a Christian environment, thus encouraging her to put her trust in the Lord Jesus as Savior? We do. And do you request the prayers of your brothers and sisters here at the Tabernacle to help you to fulfill this ministry? Yes, please. Now, we're going to pray in a moment or two, but let me just break off, because it may well be that there are those who are visiting our churches, as is generally the case on a Sunday, and I want to emphasize what we believe here in regard to being parents.

Being a parent is a ministry that the Lord grants to some people. It's a very important ministry, and the responsibility is to bring your children up ultimately so that they might know the Lord Jesus as Savior. That's a tremendous goal to try to achieve.

And to that end, we ask for the prayers of people. So this isn't just a superficial act. It's not just a pleasant thing that we're doing this morning, though it is that.

Very pleasant indeed. But we're asking not only for your prayers now, but in the days to come, for the poor family. So would you just bow your heads in prayer, please? Our loving God and Father, we bring Louise-Michelle to you.

We thank you for this little life, for its obvious health, and we just bring this little girl before you, and we ask your blessings to be upon her physically and spiritually. And then we bring our dear brother Jeff and sister Mary to you. We thank you for them, for their knowledge of you over the years of their married life.

Thank you for the families from which they come. We thank you for the son and the daughter that you've already granted to them. And as we commit mum and dad to you, and Matthew and Claire, so once again we ask that your unqualified blessing may be upon their family circle, and particularly this morning, on this grand new baby girl.

Be with her, and may she know the hand of God upon her young life, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Well, she's well prepared, you see, for the chill.

She nearly went to sleep already, but it's not 11.30 yet, so she's no need to. I'd like to give her back to you, and God bless you. And a little verse that I've got for you on the dedication certificate.

The Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children. May you find that worked out in your life. God bless you.

... Let's join in the words of the Lord's Prayer, and then prayerfully, quietly, take our seats. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. ...chapter 6, and I read to you just a couple of verses from the 10th onwards.

Ephesians 6.10 Finally be strong in the Lord, and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For 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.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. I don't know whether you have ever thought of the story of David and Goliath as in one sense, though I don't push the word too far, having prophetic meaning. What I am trying to assert is this, that from the Old Testament, we are given a very dramatic portrayal of the sort of situation that confronts righteous men and women in every age, and particularly in the centuries following the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus.

And so I put up this opening challenge to you, and I ask you to forget everyone else who is in the tabernacle this morning, and just listen to what I have to try to say from what I believe is the Lord's mind to you as a person, for that's the important thing, that you respond yourself to what is shared. How do you think of your Christian life here on this earth? Do you think of it in terms of something that's so glad and so happy that you will never be frustrated, you'll never have any problem, you'll be victorious in every situation, and God has guaranteed you absolute happiness, absolute wealth, and absolute health. Well, if those are your expectations, then I think that your optimism does not have the New Testament to support it.

Rather, it seems to me that that picture of David going down the valley of Eloth and confronting Goliath more represents the sort of situation to which you and I are called as followers of the Lord Jesus. Now think through the incident, it's easy for us all to recall, that's why I've taken it as an opening illustration. Here is this overgrown Philistine, and he seems to have the power not only to challenge and to strike terror into the hearts of the Israelites, but to make mincemeat out of David.

Here's this shepherd boy with all the brush enthusiasm of youth, and what has he said to Saul? Well, you can keep your armor. I don't want what you've got. I'm quite prepared to go down the valley and tackle Goliath, but not in, with respect, your armor.

And so what does he do? Well, he moves down the mountain, and he's got his trusty sling with him, and he carefully selects with his skillful eye five pebbles, which will be his missiles ultimately to be used in the felling of Goliath. Now the whole thing is ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, if lab brooks were around at that time, then where would they have placed the odds if I dare make such an analogy in this place? You see, there is no possibility at the human level that Goliath will ever be felled by David. Why not? Well, David doesn't have the resources, not at least at the human level.

And here I say, taking this into the New Testament and translating the whole picture and seeing not so much David but the church, not so much the church but myself. Here I am confronted with the Goliath, confronted with Philistia, confronted with the enemies of God and the enemies of the church and the enemies of the individual Christian. What are the odds on my being successful over against such a formidable opposition? And the answer is they're very small at the human level.

Now our hymn writer, somewhat dramatically in that hymn that we pushed our way through, describes the scene that confronts us, as Christian dost thou see them on the holy ground, how the powers of darkness compass thee around. And in the second tune to this, with the sort of low repetitive beat, you can almost see these hostile forces, these enemies of the Christian crawling along the ground, not only just in terms of soldiers but in terms perhaps of unclean animals, of serpents, rattlesnakes, coming along and endeavouring to frighten the Christian and inject their poisonous venom into him, into her. And it's that sort of picture it seems to me that the Apostle Paul has in mind when he's writing this epistle to the Ephesians.

You see he's speaking to people who are confirmed in the Christian faith. We've discovered that in the many long weeks that we've been looking at this letter. And yet as I tried to show in my introduction to these final verses of Ephesians 6, as I tried to show you when Paul summons up, when he summarises rather, all that he has gone before and all that he now wants to suggest, he does so by bringing us a picture of conflict.

And this is, it seems to me, is one of the missing notes by and large in the church of the 20th century, a failure to remind Christian people, sometimes even evangelicals are responsible for this, a failure to remind Christian people of the reality of the warfare into which we find ourselves. David going down the valley, the Christian as a soldier confronted by the diabolical strategy of the devil and all who work for him. You see, there is that teaching within evangelicalism and to some extent it's right, but if it's pressed too far then it goes wrong, which sees the church as a clinic.

You come to the church with all your depressions, with all your needs of inner healing and inward at the moment. And you take counsel and you have therapy and so on and so forth and in some measure this is good, but the church is not basically a clinic to deal with depressed people. Nor is it, to put it at the other extreme, a palace in which there is a constant banquet, in which we're all enjoying ourselves and having a good time.

Now it is right, as I mentioned last week, to have a good time in our worship as we meet together and we enjoy the presence of God speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. But when the apostle Paul summarizes all that he shared with these Ephesians, he does not use the language of the clinic, the language of the hospital, nor indeed the language of the palace, of the banquet, of the celebration, as he rounds off his argument. Rather he takes the church to the barracks and he says, that's where you are.

Near the armory, near the arsenal. This is how you are to see yourself. You're in a world that is hostile.

You're out there on the Jericho Road and the powers of darkness are looming against you and the odds are incredibly stacked against you. And what are you to do? Well, you Ephesians, this is what you are to do. Recognize, recognize indeed the actuality of Satan's forces, but also appreciate this, the reality of the Savior's resources.

The devil has perpetrated on the 20th century and upon a large section of the established church is to demonstrate his non-existence. And this is a delusion which is, I feel, creating a great deal of problem today. The idea that the concept of the devil was just something that was built into the New Testament for a more primitive era than ourselves.

But now we can think in terms of psychology. We can think in terms of philosophy. We can analyze and somehow place evil into a different category than the Bible does.

And this notion of evil having a headquarters and Satan being the commander-in-chief, it's all a nonsense. That is what basically is being taught in many of our pulpits today, as well as in many of our schools and our colleges. And I say that the Apostle Paul is here bringing us back in Ephesians 6 to the actuality of Satan's forces, to recognizing that they do indeed exist.

Finally, he says, in his concluding comments to these Christian people, finally be strong in the Lord. Put on the full armor of God. And then he goes on, for our struggle, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world.

In other words, he's referring to, verse 11, the devil's schemes, the wiles of the evil one. Now, you may feel that the Apostle has summed all this up or kept all this right into the end of the chapter, into the end of the epistle. But that would show that you have given a careless reading to what he has previously argued.

For as early as in the second chapter, he makes reference to the world in which Ephesian Christians and we in the 20th century find ourselves. Now, how do you understand our world? As you read through your newspapers, as you listen to the variety of media presenting the pictures of circumstances in various parts of our globe, how do you understand it? How do you read it? How do you account for some of the awful things that happen? Well, the Apostle Paul says, the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient, he is the one responsible for some of these grotesque things that are happening in our world. And later on in the fourth chapter, speaking to the Christians who have moved out from the domain that he calls the domain of darkness into the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ, Paul puts some advice to them.

Verse 27, do not give the devil a foothold. Or as the authorized version puts it, don't give place, don't give room to the devil. You see, far from denying the devil's existence, Paul warns that the world is under his control.

And what is more, that he directs his attention towards Christian people. And in the 16th verse of the fifth chapter, before he leads out on this tremendous teaching on worshipping in the spirit, what does Paul remind the Christians about? The world outside the church, life outside the church. Well, he says in that 16th verse, the days are evil.

The days are evil. So here is the apostle, and he's written this glorious letter to these Christians, and yet he is fully aware that despite all the blessings that he has pinpointed for them to enjoy, and all the things that they should be engaged in performing, there is a context of unsavory, uh, gloom, and evil, in which the Christian has to live his life. You see, he's in the valley of Elah.

He's moving towards his Goliath. And there are the hordes of Philistia reigned against him. You know how the apostle sometimes puts it.

He says that the Christian has to fight against the flesh, or rather the world, and the flesh, and the devil. That really sums up all that he's saying in these subsequent verses. The world.

Well, the world is hostile to the church, by and large. Controlled by the power of the prince of this earth. Even the devil himself.

Here is the war outside. The war without. And you find that, don't you? You read your literature, your secular literature.

You put on your television. You listen to your radio. You go to London.

You go through the underground, and constantly you are placarded with thoughts, or rather with pictures that stimulate thoughts which are alien to the gospel. It's the world, you see. And the world is basically opposed to the gospel of Christ.

The world without. It brings its pressures. Ah yes, says the apostle, but it's not just the world without.

If it was just that, then maybe there are certain things that we could do that would help to offset its attack upon our lives. But the reality of the devil is seen not only in the forces that exist in the world without, but in human nature within. And so reference is made, particularly in Romans 8, to the flesh.

Described in the NIV as the sinful nature. Now you know what Paul is referring to there. Not so much the war without, but the war within.

That bias that you have towards evil. Paul sums it up in Romans 7. The good that I would, I don't do. Why not? Well, because there is this evil principle that when evil comes into my life, I am more prone at the natural level to follow its inclinations than to resist it.

And you know it's true, don't you? I could demonstrate this to you quite clearly from Freudian psychology, I won't. But even the great secular minds have come to this conclusion that there is an evil within the psyche. What Freud called the id.

The repressed longings. The animal passions and desires. All these things.

Well, when the Bible deals with them, it does so realistically. There is the world without. There is evil within.

And what's more, there is the devil with all. And whether it's in the world or within human nature, he endeavors to work out his particular strategy towards the damnation of men and women. Well, what can you do about this? What can you do when you recognize something of the actuality of Satan's forces? Well, you can attempt to do what a man who actually bears my name did in the third century.

A man by the name of Antony who started a monastic movement in Egypt. He recognized something of the awful nature of life in Egypt. So what did he do? Well, he became an anchorite.

He became a hermit. Many unusual things he did. My namesake, which I haven't copied.

He never had his hair cut. I do occasionally. He never bathed.

I do quite regularly. He cut himself off from society. He only had two decent meals a year.

And only drank water. Well, what was the idea? Well, you see, he recognized the world was hostile. As indeed it is to the Christian gospel.

So he thought, let's escape from the world. But you can go behind the cloistered confines of a monastery. You can be in your cell with walls two feet thick.

And the problem is this. Although you might keep the influence of the world outside, the world without, from you, there is the devil within. And in the very monastic movement of the 5th century, it spread throughout Europe.

They eventually had to bring in their rules. Benedict, one of the great founders of monasticism here in Europe, he brought out the famous Benedictine rule. Why did he do this? Well, because when the monks came out from the world, they discovered that within the monasteries some even more terrible things that were taking place in the world were being allowed expression in monasteries.

You see, it's impossible wherever you are to flee from the wiles of the devil, from his evil schemes. He's there outside in the world. He's there within the human heart.

Wherever you look, you'll find the devil with awe. And so the apostle here says, recognize this, the actuality of Satan's forces. But when you recognize this, appreciate too the adequacy of the Savior's resources.

Put on the full armor of God. Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. What were the odds of David ever following Goliath? Well, to the secular person, they were highly stacked against David.

But to those who had spiritual perception, they knew that Goliath was doomed from the moment that David vowed to the king that he'd go down that valley and take on this overgrown Philistine. Because David recognized a resource that Saul knew very little about. So he eschews the armor of the king.

I don't want that. He takes his stones. He takes his sling.

And when he moves towards David, when he moves towards Goliath, he mocks him. You come to me with your penalty of armor. You come to me with all your strength.

I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts. What is David doing? Well, he's rightly diagnosing the nature of the battle. And this, my friend, is precisely what Paul does here in Ephesians 6. He appreciates that this battle in which he finds himself involved is really a battle between the Lord and the devil.

And he is in between. And yet with a basic human bias towards the latter. So how can Paul withstand the assaults of the enemy? Well, he says, I do this.

And I advise you so to do by being strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. As the authorized version richly puts, verse 10. The power of his might.

Now who is he speaking of? Well, he's speaking of none other than the Lord Jesus. Who is the savior? Well, he is the Samson of the New Testament. He is the one with great power.

Great might. What is the distinction between might and power? Have you ever worked that out? Well, might is something that is inherent within you. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is prophetically described in Isaiah's prophecy as one who will bear the name of wonderful counselor the mighty God.

Mightiness. Part of the attributes of the savior. And you see this might, this inherent strength that he has displayed time and time again.

Manifestations of it. The power, the cause and the effect. The might and the power.

Now, says Paul, here are you Christians and you're moving towards your Goliath. You're moving towards your Philistia. And the odds are so stacked against you.

If you dare to oppose these forces on your own then you don't stand a chance. So what are you to do? Well, you're to do exactly what David did. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

In other words, recognize you Christian people. You who have been receiving instruction about being filled with the spirit. That these things are indeed not just emotional.

They are not just experiences to make you feel good when you're together in community, in worship. But they are there for you. This power of the Holy Spirit.

The endowment of his gifts. They're there for you to use. In the evil hour.

In the evil day when Satan assaults you. In the same way as Satan assaulted him. Now this is a remarkable thing about the Lord Jesus.

Read his life in the Gospels. You can never read the Gospels sufficiently enough. And what do you discover? Well, he's a soldier, is he not? He is constantly under threat.

Constantly under stress. How is this stress worked out? Well, I say it's worked out in at least three different fashions. He's born in the likeness of sinful flesh.

And the great pressure that's placed upon him is for that likeness to become actual. For him to be sin. Sinfully disposed like you and me.

And yet the amazing thing is this. Though he lived 32 or 33 years, there is no one who could put a finger at him and say, you did that wrong. You buckled under that pressure.

Here is our Lord Jesus. And sometimes he's in a strained condition. He's fatigued.

He's hungry. He's got all the pressures of the sins of the world on his mind as he endeavors to deal with them. He's got the problems of disciples who are sometimes so immature they're like children in a playground.

All these things. And yet when Pilate's wife sends a telegram to her husband about Jesus, she talks of him in terms of that just man. I said last Sunday evening that Jesus went through this world as unsolid as a lily in a dung heap.

And that is so. He put on the armor of God. He was strong in his holiness.

But there is another area where it seems to me the strength, the power, the mightiness of the Christ is seen. The way that he resists temptation. Again, I made passing allusion to it last week so I've no need to keep you.

But here he was in the desert forty days. He's been without food. He's been without drink.

And the devil comes along, the rattlesnake. And he hears the noise but the fangs never inject their venom into him. The devil, repulsed for a while, leaves him but just for a season.

And he comes back again and again. He stalks the Savior during the three years of his public ministry. At every end and turn there is a devil rearing up against the Savior.

And each time the Savior confronts him with the word of God and repulses him. He remains strong, you see. Take this business of the miracles of Christ, particularly the miracles of exorcism, which in effect are a cameo, a little picture of the final victory of the Lord Jesus over the powers of evil.

Take this poor, demented lad at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration. You remember the story? Here are the disciples. They've been brought face to face with this family need and this broken-hearted father can get no help from Jesus' men whatsoever.

And so Jesus comes on the scene and he dismisses the demons from this lad. He's no longer writhing around on the ground in convulsions, no longer behaving like an animal. Why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ has released his power.

And he says to the disciples, this thing comes out only after much prayer and much fasting on your part if you are to behave in the same way as I am behaving and manifesting my almighty power. But I say that the power, the strength, the mightiness of Christ, it comes out most in his crucifixion. Now this is my argument with those who deny the doctrine of the devil, whether it's the Bishop of Durham or whoever, higher or lower, if you can get any higher, I don't know, in the Church of England.

But this is my argument. What happened at Calvary? If the devil is not real, if these forces of evil to which I make reference are just some fanciful idea in my mind having got an old-fashioned notion from the New Testament, then what did happen at Calvary? Because when the Lord Jesus Christ was anticipating Calvary, he does so, speaking of the devil in terms of his hour having come. He says in John's Gospel in chapter 12, verse 31, Now is the time for judgment on this world.

Now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. In John 14 and verse 30, he makes almost the same reference.

I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me. But the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

Now what happened then? Well, Jesus is pinned to the cross. It's an awful business, is it not? The Jews, they feel that this is the greatest failure in the life of Christ. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.

It seems as though the shaft has been pushed in to the power of Jesus and it's been broken forever. But you know full well what happened on the cross. The apostle makes it very plain as he writes his letter to the Colossians and as he evaluates Calvary.

He speaks of the Lord Jesus and he says he forgave us all our sins. And in chapter 2, verse 15, having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. What did the Lord Jesus Christ do at Calvary? He broke the power of cancel sin and set the captive free.

This was the greatest demonstration of the mightiness of Christ. You see it then? Here is this David going down into the battle. Here is Goliath.

Here are Philistia with all their hosts. And the apostle Paul says that when that happens, putting it through into New Testament language, you Christians, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the armor of Jesus Christ.

Recognize that the strength which kept Him is the strength that can keep you. Now here is a challenge for your strength of concentration to keep with me as this band plays its melody going outside the church. I'm nearly through.

Look, here is Ephesians and chapter 1 with Paul writing a prayer. And what does he have to say in the 17th verse? I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of the glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. Did you get the point? If you didn't write, we'll turn to the third chapter for it's plainer here. Paul praying again.

He's praying for these Christians at Ephesus. He's praying by extension for you and for me. Verse 14, Ephesians 3. For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through the Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. You see the point, my friend? Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. The adequacy of the resources of Christ they're greater than the actuality of the forces of the devil and you can withstand not in your strength but in His.

The arm of flesh will fail you but the arm of Jesus Christ and the armor of Jesus Christ that's what will give you success. One more of that next week. Let's turn to 372.

Soldiers, soldier fighting in the world's great strife on yourself relying battling for your life trust yourself no longer trust the Christ, He's stronger I can all things, all things do through Christ which strengthens me. Verse 3, 372. Amen.