Now 2 Samuel 21 verse 15 starts
out, Moreover, the Philistines had yet war again with Israel. Now, we're going to look at this
as it should be looked at, which is as an allegory. If it's not
an allegory, it just won't do us any good. If this is not an
allegory of how God saves sinners in Christ, then all we have here
is a history of David and his servants fighting a bunch of
giants. What good does that do you? What
good is that going to do you where you're sitting right here
today? The word is spirit. It has to
be looked at in spirit and in truth. The believer can enter
into that and the Philistine won't. We're going to look at
this as an allegory of the believer's warfare and how we're triumphant
by Christ. Now the Philistines represent
the believer's enemy. and Israel represents God's people,
the believer, our brethren. God put a difference between
the nations. Before God drew a line between
the nations and gave them different languages, there was no such
thing as a Philistine or Israel. We were all just sons of Adam,
born, conceived in sin, come forth, speak in lies, and that's
what we still are. But God providentially worked
these things and He shows us these histories of fighting to
show us a foreshadowing of what Christ would do when He came.
And the warfare spiritually that the believer endures as we walk
through this life. Just like the Lord created a
difference between the nations, the Lord creates a difference
in His people when He gives us a heart to believe on Him. He
makes the difference. He creates the difference by
giving us a heart to know that He's loved us and chose us and
put us in Christ and where He is. And when He teaches us that,
He tells us, He teaches us in the heart, our warfare is accomplished
by what Christ has done. It's accomplished. I showed you
Hebrews 9, 26 this morning. By the sacrifice of Himself,
He put away sin. Hebrews 10.10 says, by His will,
coming to do God's will, by the will of the Lord Jesus Christ,
we're sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once. We're not made holy by our will,
we're made holy by His will. We're not separated by our will,
we're separated by God's will. and were made so in that one
offering He did by Himself. He was manifest to take away
our sins and in Him is no sin. Those who were born of Him, called
of Him, who were in Him when He died, there is no sin. He's
washed us from our sins in His own blood. Our warfare is accomplished. As long as we're in this body
of death and walking through this world, we're in a constant
warfare. The believer is in a continual
warfare between the spirit and the flesh. Between that which
is spiritual and that which is fleshly. Look here in 2 Samuel
21 verse 15. Moreover, the Philistines had
yet war again with Israel. Look at verse 18. And it came
to pass after this that there was again a battle with the Philistines
at Gab. Look at verse 19. And there was
again a battle with Gab with the Philistines. Look at verse
20. And there was yet a battle in
Gath. The Philistines just kept coming. They just kept coming back up.
Every believer is enlisted as a soldier serving under Christ
Jesus the Lord. We've entered into a warfare. Our banner, our flag is Christ
Jesus under whom we rally. The captain of our warfare under
whose direction and leadership we march through this world is
Christ Jesus, the captain of our warfare. But there's no furlough
in this war. You don't get to You don't get
to go home or go to a sunny beach somewhere in this warfare. This
continual warfare is constant from the time we're called by
God till we leave this life. There's a constant battle between
flesh and spirit. Our enemies are mighty and they're
well armed. Look at verse 16. Esbenanab was
one of the sons of the giant. There's one giant. Satan, he's
the one who is our chief enemy, but he's got a lot of sons. He's
got some sons, and they're well-armed. Sons of the giant, the weight
of whose spear weighed 300 shekels of brass in weight, keep being
girded with a new. He's always girded with something
new. Our enemies always have something new, and that appeals
to our flesh, something new. And it's a war, they fight against
us with that. Look at verse 20. It speaks of
a man of great stature. He had on every hand six fingers,
on every foot six toes, 24 in number. He was also born to the
giant. Who and what is the giant? What's
this? It's the giant. The giant is
Satan. The giant is the devil himself.
And He has a lot of sons, a lot of that are well equipped and
well armed. When sin entered the world, our
sins became a giant. Our own sin, our sin, my sin
and your sin is a giant that we can't overcome. This world,
sin entered this world and death by sin so that everything in
this world are the giants coming up against us with all their
new armor and all their new weapons of war and all the new things
that are carnal. That word philistine means foreigner,
it means immigrant. That's what Satan entered this
world as, a foreigner into God's world, into the Garden of Eden. And when sin entered in, that's
what sin is to us, it's a foreigner. that entered in to this world
and into our flesh. And this world, we're called,
the believers are called, we're dead to this world and this world's
dead to us, Paul said. And as we journey through this
world, we're a foreigner in this world. This world's foreign to
us like we're in a strange land, a foreign country. And we're
foreigners to this land and to this country. And look at first,
John. I want you to see this. We're
going to try to have a message on this soon, but I want you
to look at this. Let's just put some of these
giants in perspective. 1 John 2 verse 15. This is what God says, Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, This is what God says the world
is. All that is in the world, the
lust of the flesh, has us wanting to, we want the easiest thing
for this flesh, the most comfortable thing for this flesh. And not
only comfort for it, we want luxury for it. We want it to
be in luxury. The lust of the eyes. I asked
the kids one day, what appeals to you more, to you ladies more,
a quarter-carat diamond engagement ring or a two-carat diamond engagement
ring? That's the lust of the eye is
what that is. And the pride of life. We want
honor from this world. We want this world's applause.
We want to be known by everybody in this world. We want everybody
to come to our funeral and everybody to be singing our praises. But
all of that, he says, is not of the Father, but is of the
world. It's of the world. But these things pose as giants
to us. Giants to us. Look at Mark 4,
verse 19. We were watching a message on
television yesterday on some videos I have from this passage,
and this just stood out to me. This is what chokes the Word.
This is what the Lord Jesus Christ says chokes the Word away. Mark 4, 19, the cares of this
world. We all got to eat, don't we?
We all got to live somewhere. We have cares of this world.
cares of this world will choke the word. And the deceitfulness
of riches and the lust of other things entering in choke the
word and it becomes unfruitful. So what's the believer's strength
in this warfare? How are we going to enter into
this warfare and overcome in these things? Are we going to
use carnal weapons? That's what we see in this text
in 2 Samuel. It's verse 16. He had a spear
that weighed 300 shekels of brass in weight. He was girded with
something new. Maybe it was a new sword, maybe
it was new armor, whatever it was. He had all these great weapons,
carnal weapons. Is that what we're going to fight
with? Is that how we're going to wage war in this life? The
Scripture says, though we walk in the flesh, we don't war after
the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are
not carnal. They're mighty through God. They're
mighty through God. Pulling down strongholds. Destroying
our enemies before us. What is it described as? Let
me just give you what is described as in Ephesians 6.13. Our weapons. Our armor. It's called the armor
of God. It's called having your loins
girt about with truth. That means what's in you, working
in you, protecting you, is truth. The truth of God. It's having
on the breastplate of righteousness. Hear the description of armor
here? The breastplate of Christ's righteousness. Of being made
righteous in Him. Knowing that it covers our heart,
our righteousness being of Him. Having our feet covered with
the preparation of the gospel. Our feet, instead of having on
big armor, boots, and mighty boots to walk in, the believer
has our feet walking by the truth of the gospel, the good news
of the gospel. We have the shield of faith, believing God, trusting
God, which is able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked,
all of these giants that come in to battle us. We have the
helmet of salvation. So we're covered from head to
toe with the helmet being called the sword of the spirit, which
is the word of God. And all of this armor that we're
talking about, it's the word. It's the word. It's the gospel
from head to foot. It's the good news of what Christ
has done. This is our strength. This is our armor. This is what
we do battle with. against the sin in our own flesh
and against the enemies in this world, against the giants in
this land called our body and against the giants in this land
we live in, in this world. Praying always with all prayer
and supplication in the Spirit, watching with all perseverance
and supplication for all things. Always praying for one another,
always looking out for one another, bringing one another up to God.
persevering in prayer to God for one another, for our own
well-being. Now that doesn't sound like much
armor and much of weapons compared to what these giants had, does
it? These giants came up with some big giant, they were giants
themselves. This one guy had 24 toes and
24 fingers. They were giants and they were
bigger than the ones they came up against. They had these giant
swords. And here's David and his army,
and they're a lot smaller than them. All right, let's try to
see what we can learn from this. We're going to look at this probably
first just looking at it literally of David and what his people
were doing and how we walk through this world. But then I want you
to see something here that has really got me excited. First
of all, we see that the believer takes courage in this warfare. We have courage in this warfare.
Look at verse 15. And David went down. David went
down. Now, this is probably sometime
towards the end of David's life, or at least in the overall end
of David's life, but David was in this warfare still. He went
down and went into this warfare. Now, we can't win this battle,
the least of this battle, by our own strength. But this battle,
as I said, it's going to go from the time we begin to the end.
David started out, remember, when he was young, he just fought
one giant, Goliath. Now here we have David old, and
he's fighting four giants. And he went down, he went down,
he went into this battle. He took no ease from the fight,
and he wasn't given any ease from the fight. He fought for
the good of his kingdom. He went down with his servants
to fight. This is what he said in Psalm
71, 18. He said, Now also when I am old and gray-headed, O God,
forsake me not, until I have showed thy strength unto this
generation, and thy power to everyone that is to come. Now
here's what we're seeing. We're going to look here first
at David and his servants. But what we're going to see here
is God's power and God's strength. That's where the strength of
our weapons come from. And then we see here brethren
need brethren in this fight. Look at verse 15. And David went
down and his servants with him. Brethren, we're in this fight
together. We're in this fight together. A man starts thinking
he can stand on his own, that's pride. That's pride for a man
to think he can stand on his own. David needed his brethren
and his brethren needed David. In Philippians 1.27, Paul said,
Let your conduct be as become of the gospel of Christ, that
whether I come and see you or else be absent, I may hear of
your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, striving
together for the faith of the gospel. Together. And then we
see that this fight of faith is a real fight. It's a real
fight. Look at verse 15. They went down,
David went down and his servants with him and fought against the
Philistines. We're not complacent in this
warfare. We fight in this warfare. The warfare against our sin and
the charism of this world is one we must fight against with
all our might. We have to fight against it with
everything we have as we're strengthened by our Lord. But we do fight. Paul told Timothy, war a good
warfare. He's told him, he said, fight
the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life whereunto
you're called and has professed a good profession before many
witnesses. Fight the good fight. He said, endure hardness as a
good soldier of Jesus Christ. Fight, endure, wage war. This is what, it's a real fight. He said to Timothy, stir up the
gift that is within you. We get discouraged, don't we?
It's easy to get discouraged. Coppola wrote, you fearful saints,
fresh courage take. The clouds you so much dread
are big with mercy and shall break with blessings on your
head. Courage, we have to have courage in this battle. Now let's
look secondly here and see what the strength for this battle
is. Where's our strength for this battle? Look at verse 15. The Philistines yet wore again
with Israel and David went down and his servants with him and
fought against the Philistines and David waxed faint. He waxed faint. David's desire
was to fight. His desire was to be strong.
But his body couldn't keep up with what his desire was. Do
you remember when the Lord was in the Garden of Gethsemane?
And the Lord said to His disciples, you watch and pray that you enter
not into temptation. And he came back, and they were
sleeping. And he went again, and he came
back again, and they were sleeping. And he said, the spirit indeed
is willing, but the flesh is weak. That's what we see with
David. He waxed faint. So did the Lord
say, so turn around and run? Turn around and run. No, the
Lord said, Watch and pray. That's what the Lord said. And
David here waxed faint, but he held his ground. David waxed
faint. He ran out of strength. He had
no strength. But our weapons in Ephesians 6.18 is to pray
always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto
with all perseverance. I'll show you what David's heart
was. Look at Psalm 73.26. Psalm 73.26. My flesh and my heart faileth,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
That was what was in his heart. God is my strength and my portion
forever. David fainted and we fainted,
but our God doesn't faint. Look at Isaiah 40. Look at Isaiah
40, verse 28. Hast thou not known? Hast thou
not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of
the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There
is no searching of His understanding. He gives power to the faint,
and to them that have no might, He increases strength. He gives
power to the faint, and to them that have no might, that's what
it is to be faint, to have no might, He gives strength. Even the strongest shall faint
and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they
that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall
mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not faint." Now, we do faint. And when we
faint, the enemy seeks to take advantage of us. But no enemy
is going to take advantage of God's people. Look at verse 16.
This giant, I can't pronounce his name, he was of the sons
of the giant. He had this big spear and he
weighed 300 shekels of brass. Well, he turned and he thought
he would slay David when David waxed faint. He was aware he
had an advantage. He was strong and he was well
armed, so he turned to slay David. But did he slay David? He didn't. The enemies of God's people,
they appear to us very sure of success sometimes. All our enemies
look like they're sure of success, look like they're against us,
but nothing's going to separate God's people from our Savior.
It's he that giveth salvation unto kings who delivereth David
his servant from the hurtful sword. It's he that giveth salvation
unto kings who delivereth David his servant from the hurtful
sword. Then this is the same promise to you and me brethren.
He says no weapon that is formed against you shall hurt you. No
weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. The heritage
and the righteousness of the servants of the Lord is of the
Lord. It's of the Lord. Now this is what we see next here. He was strengthened. David was strengthened. Look
at verse 17. But Abishai, the son of Zerui, succored him, comforted
him. This one came to David while
he fainted. And here's this giant pressing
down upon David. He's turning, he's going to slay
David. And here comes this young servant. And he runs and he starts
helping David. He starts comforting him. Maybe
he had some water. I don't know. Maybe he had some
food or something. But he comes to David's aid and
he gives David some comfort. And David was strengthened and
he smoked the Philistine. I know it's kind of complicated
there in the reading. It says, but Abishai the son
of Zeruih comforted him and smoked the Philistine and killed him.
You know how I know that David is the one who killed him? You
know how I know that when David was comforted, it's David who
killed this giant? I know it because this is all
my hope. I know it because this is where I get all my strength.
I know it because this is how I'm comforted and how I'm strengthened.
You see, just like David went down with his servants to fight
this battle, Christ Jesus, who is the Ancient of Days, God the
Son, came down to where we are. He came down to where we live.
made of a woman, made under the law, he came down to fight that
giant and defeat him, to deliver them who through fear of death
had all their lifetime been subject to bondage, to crush Satan's
head, to deliver his people from him. And when he came down to
fight this fight, do you recall how that when he went to the Garden of
Gethsemane, And he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, touched
with all the feeling of our infirmities, facing going to that cross and
bearing the sin of his people to defeat that giant that was
our enemy. When he did that in the Garden
of Gethsemane, he sweat, as it were, great, great drops of blood.
He was faint. He said, now is my soul exceedingly
heavy. It's sorrowful even unto death. And do you remember, an angel
came to him. An angel came to him of God. He cried unto the Lord. Just
like David, I just read that scripture, David crying unto
the Lord saying, God you are my strength. Hebrews said he
cried unto him that was able to save him from death. He's
God, and as God, He has all power. He's God Almighty, but in the
form of a servant, serving for His people. As the King over
Israel, like David, He's serving for His kingdom. He's serving
for His servants. And He's faint, and He's weak,
and He's pressed sore down by what He's about to enter into.
And God, He cried out unto the Father. He looked to His children
and said, pray with me. But we were willing, but the
flesh was weak and we couldn't. But God sent forth an angel to
Him and strengthened Him. And the angel didn't get up and
go to the cross and defeat the enemy. The angel strengthened
him, and our David, Christ the Lord, got up and went and smoked
the enemy. That's how I know David got up
and went and smoked that enemy, after Abishai comforted him. Don't you want to be like this,
Abishai? Here he is. He's just a servant. He's just like a believer here.
And here's David. And he's faint, and he can't
move on. And there's this giant barreling
down on him, and a buy shot goes to him, and he comforts him.
He goes to him, and he pours in wine and oil, and he comforts
him. He stood between David and this
giant. He stood there in the gap between
them and comforted him. It takes great courage to go
to a believer, a fellow believer, and stand with him in the face
of these giants, and stand with him in the face of our enemies.
How do we do that? We do it because Christ knows
what we are. Christ knows the feeling of our
infirmities. Christ knows what it is to be faint. He knows what
it is to be cast down because He's served for His people in
the flesh. And He was comforted of God and
He's now given the reins. Amen. who is God. God, who is man, is seated in
the heavens and He has to reign over this whole thing. And He
knows when you're faint. He knows when one of His child
is weary. And He comes and He's able to
send forth the Spirit to comfort us. He's able to strengthen one
brother, like Abishai, and send him forth to stand with you and
to comfort you even when everybody else is against you and all the
rest of the world has turned against you and got all their
new weapons that they would try to strike you down with. And He knows how to comfort us.
And so this is what we see then thirdly. Our assurance is a victory. It's certain. It's absolutely
certain. Look at verse 17. And let me
remind you this, when you look at a type in Scripture, it doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to be chronological. It doesn't
necessarily mean everything's going to fall right into the
order that pictures Christ and all of that. But it all together
ties in and shows you something about Christ. Look at this next
verse, verse 17. Here's our assurance that this
is so. Here's our assurance for the
believer that Christ is going to do this. Verse 17, Then the
men of David swear unto him, after they did this, and David
went and smoked this enemy, they said unto him, Thou shalt go
no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light
of Israel. He can understand that. Here's
David, he's the king. Here's David, he's the leader.
Here's David, he's the one who leads them into victory. And
they don't want him going out there and getting killed. They
won't have a leader anymore. They won't have anybody to direct
them and show them where to go and lead them into battle and
make the big decisions that need to be made and all that. They
won't have that. We can understand that. But do you remember whenever
The Lord was going to the cross and he told Peter and the rest
of his apostles what he was about to do and what he was about to
bear. He's the light. Christ is the
light. And they said to him, Lord, it
can't be so. You can't go to the cross and
we won't have light. We won't have the light anymore.
You can't go into this battle like that. Peter, even after
the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter drew the sword and he cut off
that soldier's ear. And Peter was determined, my
Lord's not going into this battle. I'm going to protect him. And
the Lord said, get behind me, Satan. Get behind me. If I don't go into this battle,
if Christ don't go to the cross, if He doesn't go and bear the
sin of His people, if He doesn't go and bear all the hell that
the serpent can throw at Him and all the giants and our enemies
are throwing at Him, if He doesn't bear it and put it away, we have
no captain. We have no light. We have not
one who is the victor over all our enemies that will assure
us that we have the victory in Him. And so, the Lord, we want
as believers, we want Christ the light. That's
what we want. We can understand what they wanted
here. They wanted the light. They didn't want the light of
God to be gone from them. But that was a necessity, brethren,
And Christ go to the cross and bear the sin of His people so
that He remains the light. He remains the light. We can fight the good fight so
long as we have the light. We can fight this warfare so
long as we have the strength for the battle. We can fight
this warfare so long as we know our enemies are already conquered.
Our enemies are already conquered before we ever enter into the
battle. But without that light, without Christ, that light, we
can't do anything. And that's the feeling they had
here concerning David. You can't go into this battle
or we won't have the light. But notice where it was this
battle took place. Christ went in. He didn't listen
to Peter, and he didn't listen to those others. He said, I've
got to go in and fight this battle. I'm the king. I've got to go
in. I'm the light. I've got to go in and do it.
And that's what he did. Look at where this battle took
place. Verse 18, it says, it came to
pass after this there was again a battle with the Philistines
at Gob. You know what that means? It means pit. Pit or cistern. It means pit. That's where this
city was. Verse 20 says, and there was
a battle at Goth. You know what Goth means? It
means wine press. Wine press. We were in Gob. We were in the
pit. We were spiritually dead in sin.
We were drinking of the broken cisterns of our own will and
our own works. We were on our way to the everlasting
pit of corruption. But God in eternity past found
a ransom for our souls in our surety Christ Jesus. And He said,
deliver him from going down to the pit. I found a ransom. But
in order to defeat the giants, in order for our sin to be conquered,
and Satan to be conquered, and all our sin to be put away at
Gob, Christ had to pay the ransom price by going to Goth, the wine
press. He had to go to Goth. He had
to go and endure the giant called the holy law and the giant called
the wrath of God. He had to endure that giant in
place of his people because God says the soul that sinneth shall
surely die. And he went forth into that battle.
He went to the cross and like wine is pressed out of a crushed
grape, like the juice is just crushed out of a grape. He was
crushed before God's fury. Revelation 19.15 says, He treadeth
the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. But
by paying that ransom that we owe, sin's put away. Justice
is satisfied. We're righteous in Christ. All
the giants have been conquered. They're all conquered. He comes
to each of His children in the season of His love, through the
Holy Spirit, like Abishai came there and comforted him that
was faint. He comes like that in the Spirit.
This is what He teaches us. I just looked this up. Made us. I looked up this word. Made us. And look at this. Galatians 5.1.
This is what He did. By going into this battle. Our David going into this battle. This is what He comes and He
ditches us in the beginning and this is what He continually comes
and how He refreshes us and comforts our fainting souls when we're
facing this warfare in our flesh. Galatians 5.1. Stand fast therefore
in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. He's made us free. Be not entangled
again with the yoke of bondage. Look at Ephesians 1.6. to the praise of the glory of
His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved."
Look at chapter 2 and verse 6. He's raised us up together and
made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Look
at Colossians 1-12. Colossians 1-12. giving thanks unto the Father
which hath made us meet fit to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light. Look at Revelations 1 verse 6. And hath made us kings and priests
unto God and His Father. To Him be glory and dominion
forever and ever. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, we've
been made the righteousness of God in Him. Christ is our victory. Christ is our strength so that
we can sing, O Lord, Thou has brought my soul from the grave.
Thou has kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit. And so
when Christ comes in and He pours in this oil of His Spirit and
this blessing of His Spirit and reveals to us again what He's
done in the midst of this battle, in the midst of all these giants.
Look back at 2 Samuel. In the midst of all this warfare
that we're engaged in, when He tells us all this again in our
hearts and makes us to realize that He's made us complete in
Christ, He's made us victors in Him, that He's accomplished
this warfare for us, this is what He makes us to do. This
is our strength. This is what He makes us to do.
Look at verse 18. And it came to pass after this,
there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gab, and then
one of these children of Israel, he slew a giant, which was sons
of giants. He went in there and slew him.
Defeated him. And verse 19, and there was again
a battle in Gab with the Philistines where Eleanan, the son of Jehoiagim,
a Bethlehemite, he slew the brother of Goliath, the Gittite. Strengthened
with his strength, Christ our strength, we can conquer these
giants. Look at verse 20. There was yet
another battle in Gath. There was a man of great stature
that had on every hand six fingers and every foot six toes, four
and twenty in number. He also was born to the giant.
And when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimei, the brother
of David, slew him. You see all these servants of
David? They're all strengthened now. They're all strengthened.
David probably didn't go back into battle anymore with them
because he was an old man and he couldn't do it anymore. But
Christ went into the battle and He's the light that comes and
pours into all so that you and I can wage this warfare and fight
this battle because He's conquered the Giants for us. Look at verse
22. These four were born to the giant
in Gath and fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his
servants. You know, our enemies all fell by the hand
of Christ our King. And because we were in Christ,
His hand is our hand. And when our enemies fell by
the hand of Christ, it's the same as them falling by our hand.
All these giants were felled by the hand of David and by the
hand of his servants. By Christ doing it on our behalf,
all these giants fell. And these enemies then, when
they sent them forth then, these servants, now look at it like
this too. When these servants actually went in and they had
to wage this warfare, you and I are in a real warfare, and
it's a real fight. And it's a real waging war against
our enemy, within and without. But all of these men who went
in and fought against these enemies, they are weaker than those giants. The giants are described in its
magnificence and its stature and with these giant weapons
and all of this. And yet these men conquered those giants. Just
like David did, they conquered all. God's chosen the weak things
of the world to confound the wise. He said, my strength is
made known through weakness. Those that are completely weak
to conquer the giant. That's where I'm going to show
you, God said, that I'm the one that's conquering the giant.
for you that don't have strength to do it. Are you faint? Are
you faint? Do you get weary trying to fight
sin and trying to fight in this world and at our jobs and everything
else that we do? I feel lonesome sometimes. I feel like my sin is just so,
it's a giant. It's a giant. I just can't defeat
it. And the mortification of the
flesh comes whenever I see Christ, when I see that He has conquered
my sin, that He has put away my sin. That's when, for a little
while, I can walk. For a little while, I can, as
it were, overcome the giant, for a little while. Live upon
the fullness of Christ. Live upon His promises. They're
all yea and amen in Him. Depend upon Christ in every word
that He's promised. He'll fulfill it. He'll fulfill
it. Look over at Romans 8, 37. Here's some of these giants we
face. Romans 8, 837. I'm sorry, 838. Death, that's a giant. Life,
that's a giant. The principalities and powers,
those are giants. Things present, things to come,
giants. There's heights and there's depths.
There's creatures that we can't see and know. Are any of those
going to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord? Look back at Romans 16, 20. I
mean Romans 8, 37, I'm sorry. No. In all these things, we're
more than conquerors through Him that loves. Well, what about
it? I thought he had conquered Satan
already, bruised his head. Look at Romans 16. He has. He has. But he's left us in this
world for a little while. You know why he's left us here?
You know why he left us in this body of death with these enemies?
And why he left us here in this world like this? Man, it takes the Spirit of God
to teach us this. He left us here in this body
And in this world, to teach us, we have absolutely zero strength
to save ourselves. None. None. Our strength is Christ. Our strength is Christ. And He's
teaching us this. He tells us to fight. When I
tell you to fight, you know what I'm telling you to do? Fight the temptation not to pick
up this book and read it. Fight it. Pick the book up and
read it. Fight the temptation not to sit
down and look at his word and ask God to praying with all supplication
before him and for all the saints. Fight the temptation not to do
that. Fight the temptation to take
matters into our own hands and think, well, I thought the word
was going to be enough. I guess it's not. I'm going to
have to Do this or that. Fight it. Fight it. That won't
do anything but mess things up worse. Fight it. Fight the temptation
to do anything other than lay down at Christ's feet and trust
that He's the victor and He's won the victory. Fight. Fight
every temptation to do otherwise. See, Satan wants us to fight
him. He wants us to come out with
a carnal weapon. Our weapons aren't carnal. They aren't carnal.
But this is what he promises us. Romans 16, 20. It's what Paul said. Let's read
verse 19. For your obedience has come abroad
unto all, and I'm glad, therefore, on your behalf. But yet I would
have you wise unto that which is good and simple concerning
evil. When it comes to evil, be a child
dependent on Christ completely. And the God of peace shall brew
Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you. Amen.