Covenantal Victory Exodus 23 Vs 20 33

Well, good morning. Good morning and welcome to Faith Bible Church. If you're here for the first time, we're pleased that you're here and just pray that the

Lord would bless you with the word and lifting our voices and also fellowshipping and just being together.

It's a gift that God has given us as a body and we thank the Lord for that.

Announcement -wise, there's a prayer meeting this evening at six o 'clock. Pastors continuing is a

Bible study on Fridays at 530 through the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. I hear that's a very rich and wonderful Bible study.

So that's 530 on Fridays. There will be no men's Bible study this coming

Saturday due to the baby shower and that is next

Saturday, this coming Saturday, July 30th at one o 'clock and that's Pastor Ilgen and Lauren's baby shower.

So as we've shared before, please RSVP that if you haven't already and it's just going to be a blessed time of celebration and being together and to celebrate a new birth, new life.

There's a whole bunch of birthdays, boys and girls out there, so I'm just going to say happy birthday to all of you because if I got most of them,

I'd miss a couple. So I'm not going to do that, so I don't offend anybody, but happy birthday and we trust you've enjoyed your birthday past or if it's coming up, we just wish you the best.

Thank you to Pastor Ilgen this morning. He went through 2 Samuel 11 and there's a trend in modern evangelical churches to allow our current modern culture to interpret

Scripture versus Scripture interpreting Scripture, and it's kind of a almost a hard left turn to try to make the

Scriptures fit into a social agenda and it's not good and it's coming from folks that you would ordinarily trust and rely upon and you just have to be discerning.

Even with the way he put it, celebrity theologians, you know, they're still men and they're still fallible and we still have to hold on to this to know what is the truth, and so study for yourselves, but Pastor's got a

PDF of what he shared this morning, kind of an outline talking about it's the story of David and Bathsheba and what

Scripture says it is and then applying other aspects to that, and if you want to hear more about it,

Pastor would be happy to share with you after the service today. So I think that's it for announcements.

I was thinking this morning about how we can stand on a mountaintop and we can look out and see the valleys and see

God's glory all around us. The heavens declare the glory of God and it's so evident to our eyes and what we see.

We're doing that really when we come to gather together as believers at church, that we are proclaiming

His Word, we are glorifying God and declaring that to Him and to one another, but before that, in order to do that, we have to be looking at our own hearts, that we have to make sure that we're not the ones sitting on the throne looking down at God, but God is on the throne and we're looking up at Him.

We have to get that perspective right because if we're the ones sitting on the throne, we don't have the blessing of really magnifying

Jesus and commuting with Him. Revelation 19, 6 -8, it's a beautiful picture of heaven at the marriage supper of the

Lamb, and I'd like to read that, 19, 6 -8, And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of mighty thundering, saying,

Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice and give

Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteousness, righteous acts of the saints.

So one day, all of creation will see God for who He is, and in the meantime, we can give

Him glory now as we worship Him. So let's, please join with me as we go to hymn and prayer.

Lord God, we thank you that you have gathered us together, Lord, when we can lift our voices,

Father, in proclamation of the mighty God that you are, full of grace, full of love, full of righteousness,

Lord. God, may we be impacted by the truths of your word today, Father, as we hear the truth of maybe things that we've heard over and over again,

Lord, but that we would allow the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, to guide us, and to show us,

Lord, what we need in our own lives. Father, we pray for those today that are, that may be hurting, that have, or have challenges, that are just having difficulties in life,

Lord. May they find rest and peace in you, Lord, that you would allow others to come alongside those folks to, to help to, for them to bear the load and bear the burden of life's trials.

But God, we know that ultimately you are the Lord over all, that you give rest and peace, that you have victory over the circumstances that we're involved in, so God, we thank you that we can rest, rest in you.

So God, be with us today, bless pastor as he shares from the word, and Lord, we thank you that we have the musicians that are, that are here to, to help us in our worship of you.

So God, bless our time, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. David.

Ah, good morning. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless

I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the

Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. And let's stand and sing to our Lord.

Thank you, please be seated at this time, now scripture reading.

Morning, everyone. Today's scripture reading is going to be on Galatians chapter 3, 10 through 14.

Galatians chapter 3, verses 10 through 14. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, curse be everyone who does not abide by all, all things written in the book of the law, and do them.

Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.

But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the

Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.

By grace you are saved through faith, not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any boast.

And let's stand and sing to our Lord. Children are dismissed to Children's Church and please be seated.

I hand it over to Pastor Iljin Cho. I really like the last hymn because the melody is actually the same as the

German National Anthem. So if you normally sing the German National Anthem, you'd be familiar with that hymn.

Please turn with me to Exodus 23, verse 20 to verse 33.

Exodus chapter 23, verse 20 to verse 33.

Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and bring you into the place which

I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.

But if you indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to the enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites and the

Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I will cut them off.

You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.

So you shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from the midst of you.

No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days.

I will send my fear before you. I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.

And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the

Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of your field become too numerous for you.

Little by little, I will drive them out before you until you have increased and you inherit the land.

And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the Sea Philistia and from the desert to the river, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.

You shall make no covenant with them nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me.

For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you." This is the word of the

Lord. Let us pray. Father, we are thankful for your word and how your word applies to us so well, even thousands of years later.

Father, we pray that you would prepare our hearts to humbly listen to what you have to say to us this morning.

We pray that you would break down any barriers, break down any preconceived notions that we may have, but that we would silently and humbly listen to your word and be willing to be changed by it.

In Jesus name. Today we get to the end of a major section in Exodus, which is the covenant giving from chapter 20 through 23.

From 20 to last text, last week's text, we have learned what is expected of God's people, what

God's people must do, what they're required to obey, how they're required to obey.

This text, we actually get a glimpse of what God will do for his people in the covenant relationship.

In both sections, they are divided really nicely from 20 to verse 26 and 27 to verse 33, because they both start with God sending in advance to prepare the land for his people.

It is God's prerogative to prepare his promised land for his people, to keep his promise with his people.

And this text is to encourage, encourage Israel as they are geographically nearing the promised land.

Of course, we know that Israel will rebel. So the journey will actually extend for 40 extra years.

But at this point of the journey, Israel was getting very close to the promised land and they expected to arrive soon.

And they were about to face some very strong enemies, yet they were still weak.

Remember at this point in the journey, Israel were just former slaves. They didn't have military training.

They didn't have military weapons, but yet they were going to face the Canaanites who had hundreds of years to prepare in the land.

And they were strong nations. So what the Lord does is he encourages his covenant people by sharing with them how he will deliver them into the promised land and warns them what is required of them.

And this is important. God graciously fulfills his promise to his people, but his people are responsible still to obey.

It's not just one way or the other, right? I think we do a disservice when we just focus on, oh, this is what

God will do and what God has done. And yes, we need to focus on that, but we totally don't talk about the human responsibility, what is expected of God's covenant people.

And this is important for Christians today, although we're not headed to a literal physical promised land, this is an important lesson for us because we are

God's promised covenant people whom God is leading and delivering away from sin and to life, to himself.

And as you know, just as Israelites, the ancient Israelites faced great difficult challenges of enemies and even natural disasters,

Christian life is difficult and is full of challenges. Anyone who's telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something here.

Christian life is hard. Every day, there is your personal sinfulness. You make choices in your words or in your attitude, in your mind, or in your action that is just so self -centered and self -focused.

There's grappling with that. And then over time, it bogs you down. It's overwhelming.

Then there's also the world. And it seems like media and social media, they're only too happy to attack

Christian beliefs and Christians. For some reason, they let other religions who are just as conservative, they let them go, they get a pass.

Then there's the spiritual evil, Satan and his angels, and they personally want to see you stumble in your faith and will put obstacles in your lives so that you turn away from Christ.

There's a huge amount of difficulty there. And the important question for us this morning is, how will

God deliver his covenant people, the promised people, through all of this, all of the difficulties?

The question this text asks this morning is, what are the implications of having a covenant relationship with the

Lord? What are the implications of having a covenant relationship with the

Lord? Israel at this point have learned what they're required to do, how they are to obey.

And the question is, what does that covenant relationship with the Lord look like? What will the

Lord do? First, if God's people exclusively trust the

Lord, he will deliver his people to an Edenic blessing. If God's people exclusively trust the

Lord, he will deliver his people to an Edenic blessing. After commanding

Israel that how they must keep the covenant through the law, the

Lord starts out with what he will do for his people. The Lord doesn't just require his people to obey, but he graciously delivers.

Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which

I have prepared. God will send his representative, that's his angel, for Israel.

And the angel has two purposes, to keep and bring Israel to the promised land.

To keep means to guard, to protect. God intends to protect his people through the journey.

Not only that, the Lord will see to it that the journey will be completed.

Israel will be brought to the place that God has graciously prepared beforehand. When Israel was freed from the enslavement of Egypt, they weren't just on their own.

They didn't have to figure it out themselves. God, like a loving, caring parent, was looking after them the whole time.

And he promised to see that fulfilled. And verse 21 states the conditions for God's people.

Beware of him, the angel, and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.

God's people must be careful to obey his messenger. Obey every word that God has to say through him.

And they're not to provoke him. They're not to rebel against him, because the name is in him.

The Lord's name represents who the Lord is. So, God's divine will and presence dwelt and were manifested through the angel of the

Lord. So, if Israel ever had a problem with the order of the angel, well, they actually had a problem with the

Lord. So, if Israel ever rebelled against the angel of the

Lord who was guiding them, they're effectively rebelling against the Lord himself.

The Lord's covenant deliverance is dependent on the devotion and trust of his people.

And verses 22 to 23 share the result of Israel's obedience. But if you indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then

I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. If God's people obey him, then

God will personally battle against your enemies. Any adversary of God's people will have a bigger problem to deal with.

It's not just Israel, but God himself. And verse 23 specifies what that entails.

For my angel will go before you and bring you into the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the

Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I will cut them off.

God will not depend on Israel, but his angel will go before them as God's presence goes before them and he,

God himself, will cut them off. This verse clarifies that the angel of the

Lord represents the very presence of God. All of a sudden, the pronoun switches from he to I.

Whatever the angel does, God will do. The covenant Lord will not only be with his people, but will go before his people.

He is a king who leads not from the safety of his throne, but charges ahead for his people's sake.

He is that kind of general, not leading from the back, but charging ahead so that his people would be delivered.

And verses 24 to the first part of 25 share Israel's obligation to the

Lord. This does not mean Israel is passive. This does not mean

Israel does nothing. You shall not worship their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds.

The first requirement of God's covenant people was exclusive worship of the

Lord. God's people were forbidden to have anything to do with false gods or any of the pagan worship.

The second half of verse 24 goes further, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their memorial stones in pieces.

It was not sufficient for Israel to not associate with the pagan religions, but rather to eliminate any remnant of idolatry in God's land.

The memorial stones were giant pillars of stone that pagans believed that their gods were residing in.

And in God's land, such a vile reminder had to be destroyed. How can the false gods be dwelling in those stones in God's land when it is specifically the land of the

Lord? God will not compete against any other. And this may sound harsh to the modern minds that are taught tolerance and postmodernism from cradle to grave.

You may have heard something like this, well all cultures are equal. Why would you destroy a cultural heritage like that?

However, for Christians, we have to accept the fact that not every culture is equally righteous. In history, there have been, and currently there are, cultures that are, that align better and closer to the biblical worldview, biblical morality.

And not every culture is equally good. For example, a nation that lawfully murders the disabled, the mentally ill, and the unborn is not morally equal to a nation that protects them and views them as people made in the image of God.

There's an inherent difference in those two cultures. One is more righteous than the other.

The latter is much better than the former objectively and biblically. And on the judgment that God will judge the wicked culture more harshly than the culture that is more righteous.

And in a similar sense, God was using Israel to eliminate and judge any evil cultural remnants that remained in the promised land.

God was using Israel as an instrument of judgment against the false gods and the pagan religions.

And before a holy God, those idols were not acceptable.

They were vile and disgusting. And God used His people to remove them.

And verse 25a tells us what Israel must do instead. It is not okay just to get rid of the evil things, but rather they also have to serve the

Lord your God. And you shall serve the Lord your God, right? It is not enough to eliminate the false gods, but God's covenant people are marked by whom they trust.

Israel was not created to be a secular nation, but a nation under the true

God. And what will be the result with Israel met these obligations?

The rest of verse 25 to 26 tell us a series of blessings. And he will bless your bread and your water, and I will remove sickness from your midst.

There will be no more miscarrying or unable to have children in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days.

First, it is important to note that these verses cannot be used to promise

Christians of our days that they will be healthy and wealthy.

The, this promise was conditional to Israel upon their faithful obedience, which we know they failed.

This promise does not carry to the church and we cannot read the church back into the nation of Israel.

That causes a lot of problems. This is why many

Christians falsely believe when they get a terminal illness, they start to question their faith. And that's spiritually abusive.

When you're living in a fallen, sinful world, if you get cancer, that's not because your lack of faith in Christ, it's the result of living in a sinful world.

And if any church or pastors make you question, it's because I've done something wrong, or my faith was not strong enough that I'm not healed.

You have to flee from those false teachers. And that goes the same way for wealth.

Poverty exists because of the fallenness of the world. It's not a direct result of your lack of faith in Christ.

Now let's go over what would have occurred if Israel had faithfully fulfilled their covenant obligations, right?

It shows that God will bless them. And this is not just any blessing, right?

The word for blessing and blessing in the Old Testament has an impactful meaning than the modern use today.

For one thing, it wasn't used for an Instagram post for a daily coffee with the cream of heart.

Blessing came from God. And it hearkened back to Genesis 1 after God created all things, right?

He blessed them to be fruitful and multiply. God's blessing represented the wholeness of good.

There was no lack. There was only abundance of good things. And of course,

Adam and Eve's rebellion shattered all of that when it brought the curse upon the world.

Instead of life, there was death. Instead of health, there was illness.

Instead of fruitfulness, there was futility. However, for Israel, if they exclusively worshipped the

Lord, they would get another glimpse, not a total return to the

Eden, but another glimpse, a sample of the Garden of Eden, the paradise that was lost.

Of course, sin would not be completely gone, but the effects of sin would be greatly reduced among God's covenant people if they obeyed

God. And we read the series of blessing with that mindset.

The Jews, the ancient Jews, were longing to go back to what they lost from the garden.

When God blesses his people in the promised land, he will dramatically reduce the futility and toil to bless them with bread and water.

Right? After sin, there was toil. There were thorns and thistles. But in the promised land, if God's people obeyed, they would have bread and water.

When God blesses his people in the promised land, he will remove illnesses that hasten death.

When God blesses his people in the promised land, he will eliminate any obstacles against being fruitful and multiplying.

Right? No miscarriage, no barrenness. That was not intended in the Garden of Eden.

When God blesses his people in the promised land, he will eliminate premature deaths.

And premature deaths bother us a lot because that's the result of sin.

No parent were to experience loss of his or her child.

That is not normal. That's why it shakes us.

It shakes the whole community. And if God's people remained exclusively faithful to the

Lord, they would experience a taste of the

Garden of Eden. A taste, a sample. And that enough would, that would have been a tremendous blessing indeed.

Because America doesn't have that blessing. America has never had that blessing. Although we are blessed by God for all the freedom we have.

But man, Israel was promised with that blessing. A whole nation with no miscarriage, no barrenness, no illness, people living to their full days.

Wow. Now, although the church is not the recipient of the promise, the principle of this text still applies.

God's covenant people, even under the new covenant under Christ, must only trust the

Lord for deliverance to an Edenic blessing. Edenic, of course, means related to the

Garden of Eden. How is this so? Did you not just say that this promise does not apply to us?

Well, it does not directly apply to us because the church is not delivered into the promised land.

We're not all headed to the land of Israel. However, we still worship the same

God who undoes the effects of sin for his covenant people.

For Christians, we have a greater promise than the ancient Jews did in the wilderness. While the ancient

Jews were promised a blessing of undoing the effects of sin, Christians are promised with the blessing of the undoing of sin itself.

And God nullified the power of sin over us by bearing our sin on the cross.

When Jesus lived a perfect life in full obedience to God, fully trusting

God the Father, and died on the cross and faced the wrath that we deserved, he cancelled the power of sin over his people.

Not only that, death, the sting of sin, was conquered by Jesus when he resurrected on the third day.

In Christ, we see not a sample of Edenic blessing, but the fullness of it, the fulfillment of the

Edenic blessing. For those who are in Christ, death is not delayed, as this text in the old covenant shows, but death is destroyed.

When we physically die, we actually live to God. We're actually freed completely from the bondage of sin.

All those nights you stay awake, regretting and thinking how sinful you are, the sins you've committed, that will be no more when you physically die, because you'll be living in Christ fully.

Sin will be just a distant memory, no longer a reality. And for those who are in Christ, sin's grip is not loosened as promised in the old covenant, but completely unraveled.

We're no longer enslaved by sin, we're freed in Christ. The apostle

Paul in 1 Corinthians did not look back to the old covenant promise of Edenic blessing in the promised land, but rather he looked forward to the

Edenic blessing fulfilled in Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15, he has this triumphant song.

He says, when the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true, death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God he gives us the victory through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Only Christians can mock sin and death because we are in Christ, because we trust

Christ. Not in our own strength, not in our own good deeds, but in Christ's perfect righteousness.

Second, how will the Lord deliver his people from their enemies? If God's people rely on the

Lord only, he will win the battle for his people. If God's people rely on the

Lord only, he will win the battle for his people. The following seven verses describe how

God will deliver his people despite such great enemies. Remember that Israel was not a military superpower.

They were former slaves. They had no training. They had no advanced weaponry, nor tactics.

They did not even have the boldness even when the Pharaoh's army came after them. In order to encourage his weak, fragile people,

God shares his battle plan, and it does not depend on his people's strength at all.

Verse 27, I will send my fear before you, and I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all the enemies turn their backs to you.

First, God himself will go before them to divinely overwhelm

Israel's enemies. For those who have served in the military, warfare is more than just physical.

It's psychological. In fact, World War III probably will show the prevalence of that.

For Israel, they don't need to overwhelm their enemies with a show of strength.

God will do it. They don't need to show off their weapons and skills.

They have God on their side. That is enough. Israel did not need an intelligence agency to create a psychological warfare.

God was enough. They did not have to trust in their own strength whatsoever.

Second, God will recruit his creation to fulfill his deliverance of Israel.

Verse 28 is rather curious because it says, and I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the

Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittite from before you. Hornets usually are not used in warfare, modern or ancient, but God was willing to use that.

And when viewed from another angle, we can see that even God's creation will wage war against a godless nation who stands in the way of his will.

That's powerful. And now this is not a war propaganda that Israel believed in, but never saw the hornets.

It was actually fulfilled in Joshua 24, 12. I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, also the two kings of the

Amorites, but not with your sword or with your bow. In this case,

Israel did not have to use their sword or their bow because the hornets did it. The hornets were sufficient.

God's creation under God's command was more powerful than any nation that stood against his people.

They only had to rely on God and his methods, no matter how different it is.

Now, after sharing his battle strategies, God informs Israel of his timing. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.

Little by little, I will drive them out before you until you have increased and you inherit the land.

For the sake of weak Israel, God will drive the sinful nations out gradually because God compassionately takes into account that Israel was not even strong enough to protect themselves against the fierce wild animals that would repopulate the emptied land.

It was not because God couldn't do it in one year. Oh, he could have, but it was for Israel's sake.

They would not be able to tame the land in a year. And verse 31 shares the goal of the battle plan.

And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the river, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand and you shall drive them out before you.

The Red Sea here is the Gulf of Aqaba, which is on the east side of the

Sinai Peninsula or the west side of the Saudi Peninsula. And the desert would encompass the vast land of the wilderness that they're going through.

And the river is the Euphrates River. And we can get that from the promise

God made to Abraham in Genesis 15. The boundaries are shown there as well. The sea of the

Philistines would be the Mediterranean Sea along the west coast of Israel.

This was a vast amount of land. In fact,

Israel never occupied all of this land. Even to this day, they don't.

And this is because they failed to obey the requirements of the covenant in the following two verses.

Verses 32 to 33 say, You shall make no covenant with them, the pagan nations, nor with their gods.

Here, God forbade Israel from making covenant treaties with the pagan nations and their gods.

And He also prohibited pagans from living in His land because they would lead

Israel astray from God. If Israel made a covenant with any powerful nations,

God's people would not solely be trusting in the Lord, but rather, in addition, they would be trusting in the powerful pagan nations.

Translation would be, God is not completely trustworthy to us, so we have to make other political alliances.

Thus, God's people were mandated, ordered to rely on the

Lord only, no other beings, no other religions, by not making any covenants with any political forces or spiritual forces.

And furthermore, verse 33 warns against the practicality, relying on practicality.

They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

This presumes the conquest of the promised land is indeed successful. Now, after such a military success, the temptation would rise just to let the pagan people who surrender live in the land.

Right? Why do the extra work? They're no longer threats to us, right?

Why kick them out? That's more work for us. We will let them stay, and maybe they can even serve us, right?

They can be our slaves. That's added benefit. That's extremely practical.

But God, in his divine wisdom, knew that in the end, their pagan influence will actually compromise

Israel's faith in the Lord. And because of that, no pagans may stay in the promised land.

Now, this is not to say no foreigners could stay in the promised land. After all, we just went over many laws protecting the rights of the strangers and foreigners.

It's that those strangers and foreigners better worship the Lord. That was presumed.

And in fact, we have great examples of Ruth and Rahab, foreign women who became

Jews, right? And serve the Lord, both of whom are mentioned in Christ's genealogy.

Here, God did not allow practicality from leading Israel astray.

If God's people had the utmost loyalty toward the Lord, God will defeat all their enemies himself.

All they had to do was trust in the Lord. Just trust. Not anything else.

Just trust in the Lord. And this is extremely important for us today because in the church, people like to rely on other things than the

Lord for ministry. Ministry does get hard. There's sin.

There's personal sin. There's sin caused by, done by other people, committed by other people.

And there's Satan who would love to see churches fall. And there's the world that just hates the church.

And what many churches try to do is to rely on practicality. Well, if we offer this after -school daycare programs, you know, maybe they would like us.

And one day they could hear the gospel, right? Maybe if we offer political donations through this political candidate, maybe there would be more

Christian influence in the world, right? Practicality. But what does

God command? God commands faith in him alone.

One professor of a seminary, Owen Strand, tweeted this recently.

We Christians don't have to create and lead movements. You hear movements a lot, and they ask for funding all the time.

That's what the world does. Scheming and strategizing and hatching plans against human enemies.

By the grace of God, we just have to be faithful. That's it. For Christians, we do not fight our battles.

We surrender that to God. All we have to do is trust the fighter.

All we have to do is trust the general who is in front of you, not behind you.

That's the Christian's duty. No one's telling you to fight against Satan.

No one. Despite what people claim of rebuking Satan, don't do that.

That's not your job. God rebukes Satan. That's his job. No one's telling you to gain world influence.

God's not telling you to gain world influence so that they may hear the gospel. No. Your personal influence is enough to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, who died for your sin and is risen.

That message is powerful enough to convert a dead soul into a living one.

That's how Christians battle, totally depending on what

Christ has done, not what we do. When enough people are saved, that's when the culture changes.

Our role here is not to fight against the culture by protesting every chance we get and by getting political influence.

It would be nice to have a Christian governor, but our battle doesn't depend on it.

That's because the war was won on the cross when Christ died for our sin.

The victory was completely sealed for us on the Calvary, and we have to just trust in the

King who won the war for us. Let us pray. Father, we're thankful that the victory does not depend on our works, but it depends on what

Christ has done. Thank you that the battle has been won.

It does not depend on us. We pray that we would trust in what

Christ has done only, not in our own strength, not in our own strategies, not in our own results, but that we would surrender all things to you.

In Jesus' name, amen. Please stand, and we'll be closing our service with this final song.

That any perish, but that all come to repentance. He does not delight in the death of the wicked. Jesus Christ is

Lord. He has said, I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.