Time for War — Glenn Meldrum

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The Church’s Call to Spiritual Warfare

Turn with me to Psalms 144. Whether we like it or not, we're called to war. Now we can be a POW and just be some captive, and so I'm a Christian, I'm just a POW, and so I'm stuck here, and I'm not going to do anything because I can't, because I'm just a POW.

Or you can be in the hospital and you were wounded in action, and you know what's so strange is you have Christians that have been wounded in action, and they've been in the same hospital for the last 10, 20 years, and in that same hospital won't get out of it because they think it's comfortable, and so they've got stuck in that situation, they don't want out of it.

Or you can be somebody on the front lines or whatever. There's a whole host of situations, but what I really see is going on is the majority of the church is checking out of the battle. They don't want to battle because the lies of secular world has crept into the church that life is about personal happiness and personal fulfillment, and you know what happens?

If war's going on and life's about personal happiness, you want to go some other place. You don't want to be where the war is, so you go to some other situation. What we're going to do is we're going to look at a little bit of what David has to say about war.

David was a man of war. David knew war. He understood this, so he is speaking from experience, from knowledge as a warrior, and he's speaking some things that is very interesting as we begin to look at this, and we're going to look at just the first five verses of Psalms 144.

We're going to see that he says some things that do not make sense from a natural standpoint, so we must understand that what he's saying is he's referring to warfare on a spiritual standpoint, on the reality of what goes on inside of us, and he makes some very profound pointsets here.

And so let's begin in the first verse. Praise be to the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God, my fortress, my stronghold, and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge, who subdues people under me.

O Lord, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath, his days are like a fleeing shadow. Part your heavens, O Lord, and come down, touch the mountains so that they smoke.

The Reality of Spiritual War

And so let's look at this. I'm just going to take a couple of minutes, and I want to say something that's not necessarily going to convince you, but I pray that maybe it might make you think a little bit for a few minutes, and I want to touch on the reality that a war is taking place.

A war is happening right now. Whether you like it or not, it is taking place. And what we do so often, we think that we're in this battle and the devil's all out just for us, and so we become self-absorbed with our problems and look at ourselves and say, poor me, I've been in such battles.

And really, you know, I'm just going to be honest with this, is the majority of time what we're going through has nothing to do with the devil. We blame him for almost everything that's going on, and maybe when we become a threat to the devil, then we'll have to concern about some real serious attacks from him.

The majority of what's going on in our life is just we live in a fallen world, and we're facing the pain that people go through, whether Christian or non-Christian. May God bring us to the place that we become a threat to the devil, that we have to have some real spiritual warfare and be able to really stand up and fight the devil.

But if I'm just whining over the little struggles I go through from day to day, am I really in this place that I could ever face a true spiritual battle for the souls of men, women, and children? And so we have to see there's a battle raging.

It's raging seriously. In Revelation 12, I'll just read a couple of verses to you, but in the 17th verse, it says,. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring, those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Let me read that with a little commentary. Then the devil, the dragon, was enraged at the woman, referring to Israel, and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring, referring to the church, those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Why was the devil out after the church? Because ultimately the devil hates God, and his hatred for God is so complete and so absolute, and he knows that he can't hurt God. There is no competition between God and the devil, none.

I'm not going to get into that issue, but it's a wonderful thing to look at on how God is so superior, infinitely superior. There is nothing of a competition, nothing, not in any way, shape, or form. And we have done great damage to ourselves to think as if there was some form of competition.

When Jesus went to hell, there was no battle that was there. He went to hell, he preached to those that were in bondage, he goes up to the devil, and the devil could do nothing. There was no arm wrestling.

There were no words. He just says, give me those keys, it's over. We have to understand, hell knows who Jesus is. They know who he is. There is no competition, none. And so the devil goes out after the church, that which is made ultimately all of mankind, because we're made in the image of God, but uniquely the church, because we've been transformed by the power of God.

We have now come, and through the working of the Spirit of God, are being shaped into his image more and more all the time. And so there is a real battle that's raging, for every human being on this planet, but also to try and weaken the church and bring the church down.

Jesus’ Storm and the Purpose of Suffering

Matthew 14, 22. Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. And this is the situation after Jesus fed the 5 ,000. And I want to upset our theology a little bit here, and I'm not going to take time to try and present a lot of arguments with this, but this here can upset our American concepts of Christianity.

Listen to what it said again. Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side. What happened when they got in the boat and started going to the other side?

Anybody, you know what happened? They went right into a storm. Do you understand that it was absolutely Jesus' will for them to go into the storm? It was his will. It was his perfect will to go right into a raging storm.

So what would it have done if they stood up there and started rebuking the storm? I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. It was Jesus that gave it. The devil's not going to leave. As a result, he had no part of it.

It was God that put them in the middle of that storm because he wanted to do something that could only be done in that situation. And you know what that situation was? It was only there, when they were in the middle of the storm, would they say, Jesus, walk on water.

Would they get a revelation of his divinity that they would have not seen in any other way. Imagine if some of the apostles went and said, well, I'm not doing this. That's ridiculous. We go in that storm, we're going to die.

It was irrelevant. Do you know what it comes down to be in Jesus' day and age, of what it was if you became a disciple of a master like that? You obeyed him no matter what he said. So Jesus would get in the boat, go to the other side.

Some of the fishermen responded, says, we'll die out there. A storm's coming. Jesus says, get in. Guess what they did? They got in and they went. Today, our concept is, I don't think so, God. I have my rights.

I'm going to do what I want. But it was only when they obeyed and they got in that boat that they saw Jesus walk on the water. Only in that situation. Do you know, Jesus was never more in the will of the Father than when he hung on the cross?

When his back was being ripped open? When a crown of thorns was put upon his head? When he walked along the road and they ripped the beard out of his face and they spat upon him? He was never more in the will of the Father than in that situation.

We have a concept that the struggles and the pain we go through is all the devil not understanding that God is wanting to take the pain and suffering we go through and transform us through it, that we might become more godly people and people more aggressive for the kingdom of heaven.

Instead, we've done the total opposite. Pain comes into our life. We build walls. Struggles come. We get out of things. We start moving back. We say, I don't want responsibility. Look what's going on here.

And we check out of things rather than understanding that I've been called to battle. I've been called to war. And wouldn't it be absolutely madness, absolute insanity as this guy goes and then he enters the military, he goes in the army or the marines and all of a sudden they're called to war and while they're in war he goes, this isn't what I planned for.

Bombs are dropping. I want out of here. It'd be ridiculous in the middle of war. Guess what? Bombs drop, bullets fly. That's the reality of what it is to expect anything else would be sheer madness. To expect to walk down the battle lines and they're going to throw flowers at you would just be insanity, right?

I mean, the enemy's out to kill you. To think anything else is the end of your life. And what we've done in the church today, we think life is about happiness. So we want to walk down the battlefield lines and just have the enemy throw blessings at us.

Bless me. Give me stuff. Make me happy. Don't take my joy away. Don't go and make life difficult for me now. Not understanding he's called us to the middle of the battle. He's called us to the place where the bombs are to be dropping and the bullets are flying.

He didn't call us to a lazy boy. He's never called one person yet that's one of his own children to a lazy boy. Never, ever, ever has he ever done that. But he has called us to the front lines, even to the front lines to the point where we die for the sake of Christ because there's something greater than even the continuing of our life and that's the glory of God.

But you know what we think? We think the ultimate thing is our life, me. I'm the prize. I'm what it's all about. Matthew 11, verse 12. Jesus, from the days of John the Baptist until now, the king of heaven, suffers violence and the violent take it by force.

Suffers violence. We don't like that word. They don't translate it like that in other translations but I think this is a very accurate rendering of what the words are meaning. There's two ways this verse can be taken.

One way is that the violence of people wanting to get in, they want to get in the kingdom of God and those who want to get in the kingdom of God they'll be pressing and pushing in to get it. But ultimately what I believe it means, it means those who are in the kingdom are wanting to take a city.

So what the image is, is let's go back in time and let's go back into the days of Israel and Babylon when the Babylonians came to take Jerusalem. Well, what do they do? They surround the city. They lay siege to the city.

They totally surround the city. They don't let anybody in and anybody out. They start to starve the city. If they can cut off the water supply, they cut off the water supply so that they'll die sooner.

So either they'll surrender or they'll die. And in the midst of that, they're still trying to build ramparts to get up into the city. So what they'll do is they'll take their own people from around the city and make them as the slaves that will build these earthen banks going up the walls.

They're not going to kill their sons and their daughters and their fathers that are out there. And so they build the ramps. They watch the ramps coming up as they know that eventually when they're at the top, those armies are going to be rushing over the top of it and take them and kill them and slaughter them.

And that is the image presented that we are to lay siege to the city and that we are willing to do it until it falls, until it bows its knee to the king of kings. The very concept of what we are called to do is not this tame little Christian thing.

It's this aggressive thing through the love of God to conquer the world through that love. And where is that today? He's calling us to the violence of biblical Christianity which has nothing to do with the violence of what Islam does, of the taking of lives, but the violence of wanting to overcome the hordes of hell and the strongholds of hell that men and women might come to Christ, even to the laying down of our lives and the giving up of our possessions.

Then in Luke, the 12th chapter and the 49th verse, Jesus says, I have come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it were already kindled. Do you know what Jesus was saying there? He says, I came not to give everybody a happy life.

I came to set a fire. I came to set a fire. I came to divide houses. Now, you know, Jesus is the creator of the family because he's the creator. So he created the family. He loves the family. He loves the family being intact.

He loves a father and a mother walking with him and knowing God and the children being raised up under them and the fear of God. Now, that's his ideal. But you want to know what? He'll destroy a family if only one or two will be saved out of it.

He'll have a family torn to shreds if need be that one might be saved, that a father might be saved or a mother might be saved or a son might be saved. Then he'll have it even that they have to flee for their lives as a result of that because he loves so much that he will even allow that thing he created, the family, to be destroyed for the sake of the kingdom of God.

He says, how I wish a fire had come, was burning through humanity. How I wish it had come and was already being kindled. And ultimately that would come after he died and rose again from the dead and what was to be made manifest through the church as the church would go in the power of God to touch a hurting, dying world.

And so there's a war on. The question is, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it in your own life? Are you going to design your life in such a way that you live in peace and ease and comfort that it's about you?

Or are you going to begin to design your life in such a way saying, we are at war and I am out to take the land for my king and whatever it costs me, whether it costs me money, whether it costs me time, whether it costs me my own blood, I will do whatever it takes to advance his kingdom for his glory.

And it really comes down to be that question, what will we do? Now let's begin to look at what David had to say. David gives some interesting statements and some thought that we can glean from this that he speaks about warfare.

God as the Unchanging Rock

And so he says, Praise be to the Lord my rock. This is an interesting statement to begin everything that's going to be there. Praise be to the Lord my rock. David understood kingdoms. He was a king. And you know what this king did every spring?

The king went to war to defend his lands. He would go to the outlying areas of his kingdom and make sure that there was peace and where invaders had come, he would conquer them and take back his lands and defend them and so on.

It was a time where kings went and defended their realms. He saw kingdoms rise and he saw kingdoms fall. Not just that, David being a warrior, and before he was a warrior, he was a general. Before he was a general, he was just a guy in the army.

And before he was a guy in the army, he was a shepherd. And so he went through the ranks of what it was to come to the place to be king. And so he knew what it was to have comrades and to have those that were under him to die, to have great men of battle to die, to see them fall in battle.

He saw the literal reality that life changes before us, that in this world there is nothing, absolutely nothing that is stable, nothing that stays the same, nothing at all. Everything changes whether we like it or not.

David saw that kingdoms fall, kingdoms rise, kings rise up and a king be taken. One after another saw it as a reality and he comes to this place, you know what he says? Praise be to the Lord my rock. He came to comprehend one thing and the only thing that was stable and consistent in all of creation and it wasn't creation itself, it was the God of creation.

Do you know what it's like when we start feeling our world out of control? When we start feeling things are going on that we can't handle? When life is not doing what we want it to do and we feel like we're losing that grip on it?

But yet when that feeling is there we have to understand that there is one that is greater than the experience that we are in, than the pain, than the change, than the struggles that we're going through, that there is a changeless God that is the only stable force and if I will sink my life into Him, if I will put my roots deep in Him, I will have a stability even when the world changes, even if my life is facing the difficulties of change all around me.

He understood that the only hope was not in His ability, not in His wisdom, not in His talents as a king, as a warrior king. He understood there was no strength in Himself, that the only hope He had was that place of knowing God is His rock and sinking His life deep into that because nothing else was sure.

Have you felt that insecurity of this world? Have you felt the motions and the movement of it? I've never been in an earthquake. I can imagine it to be a very disconcerting feeling. You're standing there and you start feeling the earth shake under you and if it's a little tremor it's one thing but imagine something that is just literally breaking the ground before you.

You feel that motion, you feel it, you feel the instability of it but yet to know that in the midst of the chaos, of the madness that can take place, that there is a God that is absolutely stable if my life is truly fixed in Him.

And so he began with saying, before he gets into warfare, he begins with the statement, he says, Praise be to the Lord my rock, my changeless God. Then he brings out the idea that is so interesting here, he says, He is my loving God.

This is really basic and especially it should be something that the church should grab hold of today because the love of God is preached in such an extensive way, in a way beyond what it should ultimately be preached because we've gone overboard with it where we preach the love of God, love of God, love of God, love of God to the neglect of other character traits of God and other dimensions of the Word of God.

So really, we should have a knowledge that God loves me but you know how many Christians, and I don't want you to raise your hand, but how many of you in your own life within the last year have questioned whether or not God loved you?

Yet this very basic thing with this love of God teaching that is sweeping the country and filling books, you know, I don't want to get off onto it but it's a humanistic, much of it is a humanistic underpinning to what it is but yet still you have a church that does not understand the love of God nor embraces it in a personal way and they're still questioning does He love me?

Does He love me? Why do we question that? If you're prospering, guess what, you don't question it. If your bills are paid and there's no aches and pains in your body and everything's fine and dandy and the marriage is good, you're not questioning whether God loves you.

When do you question Him whether He loves you or not? When pain comes, when change comes, when the earth is shifting under your feet, when you're feeling the struggles of life happen and Jesus goes and says get into the boat and you may not understand or fully obeying that as you understand it but you're in the storm of life and then you go and say oh God, do you still love me?

Now this is such an important thing. How am I ever going to go to battle and war for the souls of men, women and children if I'm still at the basics of Christianity wondering if He loves me? Do you hear what I'm saying?

How am I going to battle for the souls of men if I'm still in a place of self-absorption and questioning oh God, oh God, do you love me? Do you care? There are some truths that we have to grab hold of.

We have to let it sink into our hearts. Let the reality of this changeless God that His love does not change sink into my life. That I might become a man or you might become a woman of God that knows the love of God and you stop the questioning of it.

That you rest in its reality because He said it. That's all that matters. Whether you feel it or not is irrelevant. It's the reality that He said it. He has made it to be a reality in your life that you have tasted of it.

Now you must come to that place to believe. How are you going to fight for the souls of men, women and children if you are still questioning this basic thing? You know how we change that? Let me be real honest.

How would we change that? That every time we question His love we repent. We say, God forgive me for that. Change me. Help me to rest in what you promised me of what your love truly is. And that's how we overcome it.

That's how we deal with it. And if you have to pray that a hundred times a day when you're in the midst of your suffering then you pray it a hundred times a day while you're going through that. And then He says He is my fortress.

My stronghold. My refuge. I want you to think about this. Why would a soldier say that God is his stronghold and His refuge? Well you want to know what? When the bombs are falling and the bullets are flying sometimes the army is advancing.

Sometimes the invading army is bigger than we can deal with it. And so we're retreating. And we're running to a place of stronghold. A place of security. And you know this is something so phenomenal about this God.

He understands that we are frail. He understands our humanity. Our weakness. And He understands that life can sometimes be overwhelming. So He says, I will be your refuge. I will be this place that you can run into and have a place of security.

A place of safety for a time. That is such a wonderful thing. David understood that. There was times you face the enemy head on and you battle and you fight and you fight and you find yourself victorious.

There's other times you look at it and say, I'm not going to win this battle. If I don't regroup we're never going to have another battle. And so to run back to the stronghold and regroup and get everything ready that you might make a fresh assault.

There's wisdom. And so there's that place. He is a refuge. When life is hard I can go to Him. And when I hurt I can weep at His feet and know this God will hear my prayer. And He is moved by my tears because even in Revelation it says that He takes and stores our tears in a bottle because He's moved by them.

And so here's this God that has made a place of escape for us. But you know what goes on so often is we've made that place of escape not a vacation, not a place to get ourselves back together. We have made it our permanent residence.

Do you hear what I'm saying with that? We got hurt. And I have seen it so many times people hurt and what do they do? They go to the place of refuge they start crying out to God Oh heal my wounds I hurt so bad.

And then they stay there. They stay in that place. It's one thing that a soldier gets hurt. It's no shame a soldier being hurt. When a man goes into battle he's going to face the reality that he might die and he might get wounded.

And if you get a man that's wounded there's no disgrace. You don't go up to that man and say you stupid man what did you get shot for? You know the reality is when you're in battle you're going to face those things.

The problem is is we go into that hospital and we stay there. And here the healing has taken place and we're all done and we're nice and well and we stay in the hospital bed because it's easier to check out of the kingdom of God than what it is to go on the front lines.

But you know there's no glory in hospital beds. There's no glory in lazy boys. The glory is found on the front lines where we battle for the kingdom of God. When we stand before Him it's not going to matter all the nice stuff you had the house, the possessions the vacations all the things you did that's going to be irrelevant.

You know what will matter? Is what you did for the kingdom of God. And then he goes on and he says that the Lord was his deliverer. Now why would a soldier say that he needed a deliverer? Well, basically because sometimes we get ourselves caught.

Sometimes we get ourselves caught. Now usually when a man gets himself caught he doesn't do it deliberately. Sometimes it's in a battle situation and they don't have enough force to stand against them and they're taken captive.

Sometimes it can be a foolish act of the individual. The soldier did something he shouldn't have done and brought himself in a place where he became vulnerable and was taken captive. And this is really where I think that's going on with David.

Whether it was unintentional or intentional we get ourselves occasionally caught in sin. Caught in attitudes. Caught in things that shouldn't be there. And so somebody says something to us at church and we cop an attitude at it.

We get bitter and we start getting this bitterness into us and it starts grabbing hold of us. And I'm glad that God will deliver us even when we foolishly get ourselves in things we shouldn't. Isn't that wonderful?

That even when we do that which is foolish that which is contrary we get ourselves in trouble and now we're bound in this particular sin. And you want to know why I say bound? Because we have to grab hold of a reality here about sin.

You know what that is? That all sin is addictive. We think that rehabs are about men and women that are strung out on drugs. But you want to know what? Pride is more addictive than any drug ever was. Pride is more addictive.

It gets into our character so deeply that we don't even understand it. Because before a person is ever addicted to drugs there's pride already working and operating in their life. Gossip is just as addictive as crack cocaine.

Pornography, every sin you name every single sin I could go through and list every single sin is addictive to the human fallen nature. And so what do we do? We open up the doors. We get ourselves caught.

We become enslaved to a particular sin. And what do we have to do in the midst of that slavery? Begin to cry out and say Oh God deliver me. I foolishly got myself caught in bitterness. This person hurt me but instead of forgiving them like you told me to I copped attitudes at them.

I justified my anger and I let it brew inside of me and I just built it and I said things and one thing after another. God I was foolish. I took a wrong turn. I did a wrong thing. I got myself caught.

Isn't it wonderful that David understood that in the midst of war that there's a deliverer there? And then he said that he's my shield and my victory. Here's the idea of what he's referring to he is shield and victory.

Here's the idea of the strength that goes in and conquers. And he says who subdues people under him. In that situation David was literally looking at the subduing of his enemies. But you know how I think of this spiritually?

I think of this as the subduing of in one sense the enemies of God. And you know what that is? That's revival. The subduing of the people through the power of God. That there is a God that can give us the power to overcome the obstacles that keep men and women from Christ.

Training for Battle and Spiritual Courage

Now let's look at a few of the thoughts where he says that the Lord is the one who trained his hands for battle and his fingers for war. And that began with David when he was a shepherd. And so here is the shepherd being put into the test.

We have to understand that I believe the situations that David faced even as a shepherd was ordained of God in ways that he didn't understand just like it's ordained in ways in our lives that we don't comprehend because God is bigger than what we can imagine and working in our lives in ways we can't even understand even through the pain and even through the orchestrating of some of the trials we go through.

And so here's David out there and a big old bear comes and tries to take one of his lambs. And what does the Scripture say? He went and he beat up the bear in essence. And then a lion comes. What did he do?

He beat up the lion. Right from the beginning as a young man God was teaching that young man how to war. Teaching him how to have courage and stand in the face of it so that in a little bit of time he would face Goliath.

And what a phenomenal story. We all know the story of Goliath. I love that story and how it refers this young boy when all the men were cowering when all of them had no faith in this God and no faith in a God that could use them and defend them and protect them in the midst of that battle.

They're all cowering and here's this young ruddy good looking man that goes out there and he goes not with a sword and a shield and all the things of typical warfare goes with a sling. And in that situation as this big old Goliath mocks him and says what?

Do you send out dogs to me? And he says this day I will have your head. And he runs at the man. He runs at him. He doesn't go and say well let's talk about this later and negotiate or whatever. He runs at him and he says God's given you into my hands and he goes after that man.

What would happen if that was the heart of the church today to say you are going to fall before my king. We are going to take this city for Christ and not through arrogance and not through self will and being obnoxious but through the love of God and through radical acts of kindness and trying to win a perishing world.

What would happen? What God could do is if that heart came into the church. If that heart came into the church and so he teaches our hands to war. I want to look at some practical aspects about warfare and I must say here I'm speaking much out of ignorance because I was never in the military.

I got saved when I was 18. Just after I turned 18 the draft was done away with and so I didn't have to go into the draft and I was saved in this revival and I just had no idea or desire of going in the military being in the midst of this move of God so I never even considered it.

But my brother, my oldest brother, he was a Marine loved the Marines. He wanted to go to Nam. I'm not going to go through the whole story but they wouldn't let him go because he just got married and then he wanted to go again.

He signed up to go and he just had a child so his commanding officer was being very nice to him and didn't send him. So some things I'm saying I have gleaned from my brother which is not a believer but still there were truths about it that were very important and one thing I remember that he told me and he ended up sending me this picture while he was in boot camp a picture that they took of him and what they did is they went on a 24 hour run and then when they were all done with the run you know what they did?

They took their pictures. I mean he was one miserable puppy man. He has all of his gear on and everything and here he is his eyes barely open and taking his picture. There was no smile on his face. You could tell he was so miserable and so he sent me the picture and while I was talking to him once he spoke of what the purpose of boot camp is.

He says, you know what the whole purpose of boot camp was? And as a kid I had no idea. I said, I don't know what it's all about. And basically what he said it's all about setting the person free from his individualism so that you come to a place and you work as a unit.

That you are so dependent upon those other men and that they are so dependent upon you that whatever goes on you will do it and that you are in such a place of obedience that your commanding officer can go to you and says, take that hill and you say, sir, yes sir!

And you do it because you have come to that place to be delivered from this individualism that says, I don't have to. I don't want to. Now imagine that you have this guy go in the military and war is raging and the sergeant goes to a group of people and says, you take that city!