SERMON: You Can't Fight Something With Nothing

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherd's Church podcast. This is our Morde's Day Sermon, and we pray that as we declare the Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

It's a great pleasure to be here once again. When Pastor Kendall was talking about the basic training, the breath motif, I was reminded of that when we just had this admonition, breathe on me breath of God.

When I talk to the children in the chapel, I tell them about how Adam was made of clay, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, okay, the breath idea again. And I would tell the children, God wants His breath back.

He wants us to sing with vigor and power. It's been a great week. I was able to see your pastor, Pastor Kendall, and Shannon, and the children, Haley, and Xander, Jackson, and Addison, all out of Tennessee.

We had a wonderful time at the CREC Council meeting. I'm sure you've heard about that from here as well. And the greatest thing is our denomination is growing. God has really got His hand on this CREC denomination, and it's a thrill to be a part of it.

The place could barely contain us this year, and it was just a wonderful time. Your pastor was elected at our presbytery meeting to be presiding minister pro tem, and our pastor at Tri-City, Pastor Harold Guptill, is the presiding minister again of our presbytery.

And when I first came into the CREC, I understood that the pastor pro tem was just kind of a backup guy to be there in case the presiding minister was ill or something like that. But what I've seen happen is they work together.

The presiding minister, which in this case is Pastor Guptill, and the presiding minister pro tem, which of course is Pastor Kendall. And they work together in a partnership that's very important. It's not easy doing what they do, and your pastor's going to have a number of challenges as he fulfills in this office coming up for the next three years.

But I'm confident that it'll be a glorious time. God has given us, He has given His church the Great Commission. We know the Great Commission. And that's truly an amazing in its scope. I mean, all nations?

Go ye therefore and teach all nations? That's a lot of nations. Maybe God really meant just some of them. Maybe just, maybe a large number of them. Oh no. He said all nations. We had a pastor one time years ago who had this statement, all means all.

And that's all all means. God meant all nations. At our church, we end every worship service, and this is true for our school's chapel services and our church covenant renewal worship services. We, right before the benediction, everybody kneels on their right knee, facing forward.

It's not a time of confession of sin, it's a time of receiving your commission. And as everybody kneels, looks up, face forward, Jesus said, Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them all things whatsoever I've commanded you.

And lo, I am with you until the end of this world. All nations. I mean, really? Well, were it not for the source of this commission, being our sovereign, omniscient, omnipresent, and most of all, omnipotent God, this great commission would surely seem utterly audacious, impossible to accomplish.

But our success is not only possible, it's inevitable. God doesn't give commissions to hear Himself talk. God has not left us without the means to accomplish His great commission. He's given us, His church, the all-sufficient power of His Holy Spirit.

And with that, He's given us a secret weapon. That's the title of my sermon today, Our Secret Weapon. Dr. Gary North once said, You can't fight something with nothing. Hmm, you can't fight something with nothing.

Think about that. God never expected us and He's not expecting us now to fight something with nothing. He commands us to fight a very formidable something with an even more formidable something else. Let us remember that our God is sovereign.

He is not bound by anyone or anything. When He gives a command, it's not for the purpose of Him merely hearing Himself talk, okay? Sometimes my father would give me an instruction and said, Paul, I didn't give you that instruction just to hear myself talk.

I wanted you to do it. Yes, Daddy. He expects His commission to be obeyed and He expects His commission to be fulfilled. And because He is sovereign, because we serve a sovereign God, our ultimate victory, the conversion of all the nations is assured.

Think about that. Even nations that we think are enemies like North Korea, other nations perhaps, we might even think of Iran today or something like that, maybe even Ireland. There's some creepy people there.

That's where I'm from, by the way. But because God is sovereign, the conversion of the nations is assured. Scripture says, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Loving Fellow Christians and Treating Enemies as Future Friends

The last time I spoke here, I gave some emphasis to two scriptures that Jesus gave us, which had a focus on how we are to treat our fellow Christian believers. One of them, Jesus gave a new commandment.

A new commandment I give unto you. What was that? That you love one another. Talking to the Christian community within the church, Jesus gave us a new commandment that we love one another so that all men would know that we are His disciples.

And then shortly after that, He prayed for the unity of His church, that we would love each other, that the world may believe that God the Father has sent His Son, Jesus. How to treat your friends. Jesus was talking about how to treat your friends.

When I was a kid, my father would tell me about World War II. I was born just a few years after World War II ended. My father served in World War II, and he would love to tell these stories. As a kid, I loved listening to them.

And he brought out this gunnery manual that when he went to gunnery school at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada before he went overseas to fight in World War II. And this book was amazing. And my father was telling me all about the details of this book, how to shoot the guns from the B -17 airplane that he was in.

And one thing I remember at the bottom of the page, it talked about friendly fire, accidental fire. When you're up there on a B -17, there's guns all over the place, and they're all pointing in different directions.

And if you're not careful, visibility being bad and all the turmoil of battle, it's easy to shoot at your friends. But on the bottom of this one page, I'll never forget it. It was just striking the way the print was.

It said, don't kill your friends. All right, I get it. And in the Christian church, don't kill your friends. Love one another. It's our command. In that way, the world will know that we're His disciples.

And also, the world will know that God the Father has sent God the Son. But our God has also given us a focus on how to treat our adversaries. Those who, at least presently, are non-believers. But hopefully, by our witness and the power of the Holy Spirit, will someday become our friends.

That's the amazing thing about our faith. We can confront our enemies, and everybody's a prospect. There's a strong possibility, given God's electing grace, that the people you're talking to, and right now they might be an enemy, they can become a friend.

Overcoming Evil with Good

Let's hear more about this secret weapon that God has given to us to accomplish this mission. And let's also remember, you can't fight something with nothing. Our scripture this morning is Romans 12, 17 through 21.

Here are the words of God. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if you are a man of faith, and you are a man of righteousness, Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him.

If he thirst, give him drink. For in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Let us pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, you have graciously given us, your church militant, a great commission, a commission to go to baptize and to disciple all nations. You have given us your Holy Spirit and revealed to us your laws to enable us to successfully fulfill this great commission.

We know that you have all power and that you do not commission your saints with an assignment destined for failure or one we are to complete only in part. For we know with the faith that you have given us that one day the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus the Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.

Bless us, guide us, protect us, grant us success as we serve you and as we obey your commands this day and always. For we offer our prayer in the name of Jesus, your only begotten Son, our gracious lawgiver, our sovereign King, and our eternal Judge.

Amen. As I mentioned, this sermon is entitled, Our Secret Weapon. God delights in using irony to accomplish His purposes. If you ever took a course in the Bible as literature, you'll find that oftentimes they mention the Bible was the first example of literature where the device of irony was used.

The Bible was the first literary work in the world to utilize irony. The Bible's filled with irony. Think of Haman's gallows in the book of Esther. Haman constructed those gallows for his enemy, Mordecai.

And we know the story. Haman himself was hanged on those same gallows that he had constructed. How ironic, how ironic. Who would have thought? The cross of Jesus. That's the ultimate irony. It was upon the cross that our suffering, bleeding Savior died.

That was really His first enthronement. He was lifted up. Our King, that broken, bleeding body became the King. And our Redeemer. How ironic. The Greeks never could process that. What do you mean? You got a Savior?

He's dead. That's a failure, right? Oh, no. God in His irony, He transforms defeat into victory. And He does it for us because we participate in that same irony as the story unfolds in our lives. I may have mentioned this movie last time I was here.

There's a movie that's not a happy movie, but yet it's a good movie. It's worth seeing. Probably not for children, but it's a movie called Nefarious. Maybe some of you have seen that. And it gives insight.

It's produced by Christians. It gives insight into just how the devil thinks. And this man that was in the movie possessed by a demon just said, yeah, that was our biggest mistake. Our biggest mistake was what?

Letting that carpenter, Jesus, go to the cross. They never would have thought that. Satan is not lacking in intelligence, but he was blindsided by that. Satan and his followers were totally blindsided by their evil.

They couldn't conceive that God could take such a terrible defeat and turn it into such a glorious victory. How ironic. God often chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. You know, like us.

Like modest little CREC churches, sometimes seeming to struggle for their very survival, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. How utterly ironic that Christians showing love and kindness towards their enemies and their persecutors, which we are commissioned to do, should eventually, with the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, convert their tormentors into friends.

Christ Reconciles the Divisions Between Enemies

The greatest divide that there ever was in human history was the divide between the Jew and the Gentile. When Adam fell, not only was he estranged from God and that relationship was broken, but also relationships among men were broken.

Cain and Abel being the first example. We know how that turned out. The worst divide ever was Jew-Gentile. That was a radical divide in humanity. But God has healed that divide through Christ. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

For as many as you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. That fracture has been healed by the gospel. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither bond nor free.

There is neither male nor female. For ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3, 26 through 28. God heals our brokenness, including the broken relationships, including that big one between Jew and Gentile.

But now in Christ Jesus, ye who were sometimes far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace who hath made both one, both Jew and Gentile, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.

We were divided. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of the commandments contained in ordinances were to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.

How ironic. Man's wisdom would have us amplify divisions between us and our enemies. I hate those Jews. And they would say, we hate those Gentiles. Oh, yeah. But in Christ, the divide has been overcome.

And this was to the astonishment of the watching world. The world noticed, hey, those Christians, some of them are Jews and some of them are Gentiles. And what are they doing? They're worshiping Jesus together.

To get there, that requires a special weapon. You know where I'm going with this. Maybe even a secret weapon, a weapon that our enemies would not expect us to use on them. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

Who would have ever thought that by loving our enemies, being not overcome of evil, but overcoming evil with good, that God would reconcile this divide? You know, there's a beautiful Scripture in the book of Acts.

As you read the book of Acts and see the story of the early church, one of the little nuggets in there is that the Christians in Jerusalem were suffering. They were having a famine. They were also having persecution.

These were Jewish Christians. You know, Jerusalem, they were Jews and they were suffering. The church was hurting. There was a famine going on. And guess who sent them an offering? The surrounding Gentiles.

Can you imagine that? Normally, it's a one-way street. You know, Jews are into money and so forth. Gentiles were giving the Jewish Christians charitable love. Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judea, which also they did and sent it by the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

That got noticed. That's the kind of thing that the world notices. Gentile Christians sending financial aid to Jewish Christians in Judea during a first-century famine. Who would have ever thought how ironic and how wonderful the reconciling work of God is?

Sadly, what a sad contrast that there's so many misguided people now bearing the name of Christ sometimes that show a hatred towards Jews. Come on. You show your strength by the size of your enemies. If we're afraid of the Jewish people persecuting us, oh, they're making it hard for Christians and so forth, that's small potatoes.

We're in a bigger game than that. Is that all it takes to stop us? Is that all it takes to threaten us? Is that all it takes to discourage us? We shouldn't be so preoccupied with our enemies. Instead, we should be converting them into friends.

Returning Good for Evil Instead of Fighting with Force

Remember, you can't fight something with nothing. One of the movies I like to quote from is the movie Ben-Hur. I highly recommend that. I'm sure many of you have seen it. It was a classic. I saw it in a theater with my parents in 1959 when it came out and won an Academy Award.

But in that movie, there was these two Roman soldiers, and the one Roman was frustrated with all of the trouble they were having bringing the Judea into peace. And the guy was frustrated, and he said, how do you fight an idea?

There's nothing you can put your finger on. How do you fight an idea with these people? And the answer was, I'll tell you how you fight an idea with another idea. You know, be not overcome of evil. But overcome evil with good.

You need a secret weapon. It's a stronger person who can forgive. It's a weak person who can't forgive. And in Christ, we can do all things. In Christ who strengthens us. I was amazed at the Erika Kirk about a year ago after her husband was assassinated, and she went on the…it was a national stage, and she said to Tyler Robinson, I forgive you.

She was sincere. There were people that mocked her for saying that, but that was sincere Christianity coming out. That is what Christianity looks like. Luke 12, 4 through 5,. And I say unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

Hey, all they can do is kill you. Small potatoes. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you of whom you shall fear. Fear him which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell.

Yea, I say unto you, fear him, meaning fear God. These earthly enemies love your enemies. Do good to them that despitefully use you. There's another movie line. I'm really into the movie lines today, I guess.

The Godfather. All of you, I hope, have seen it. It's good stuff. Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

So then death worketh in us, but life in you. Hey, our job is to get killed. Our job is to give our lives for the work of God. We having the same spirit of faith according as it is written, I believed and therefore have I spoken.

We also believe and therefore speak, knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up also us by Jesus and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

It's part of the program, folks. We present our bodies a living sacrifice. That's true in worship. That's true in life. We're counted as sheep for the slaughter. For which cause we faint not. But though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment. This was being addressed to the church at Corinth. What kind of affliction were they suffering? For our light affliction, you know, maybe a flat tire on the way to work, something like that.

They were being hauled off to the Colosseum to be murdered. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more and exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Our light affliction. Now thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place.

For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in him that are saved and in them that perish. We always triumph. We win every time. Even when we lose, we win. To the one we are the savor of death unto death.

And to the others, the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? Another Ben-Hur quote. I promise you this will be my last movie quote. Ben-Hur is a galley slave and the Roman general is talking to him and Ben-Hur says, I won't be here forever.

He says, what do you mean you won't be here forever? You're condemned. You're condemned to die on this ship. What do you mean you won't be here forever? Who's going to get you out of this? The God of my fathers.

And the guy replies, he said, it's a stubborn faith you people have. Yeah, that's us. It's a stubborn faith that we have. Even when we lose, we win. You have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.

That's normal. That's the way of the world, right? Hate your enemies. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you and do good to them that hate you. And pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven.

These are hard words, especially when you have a real face to that real enemy. You know, the person at work, the person in your neighborhood, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can use our secret weapon.

And what is that again? Returning good for evil. One of our church fathers, Tertullian, said these words and he was addressing heathen, the heathen people. You forget, Tertullian says to the heathen in his apology, that notwithstanding your persecutions, far from conspiring against you, as our numbers would perhaps furnish us with the means of doing, we could take you guys out if we wanted to, we pray for you and do good to you, that if we give nothing for your gods, we do give for your poor.

That charity spreads far more alms in your streets than the offerings presented by your religion in your temples. The early Christians were charitably giving to their enemies. C .H. Spurgeon once wrote, the Holy Spirit would never suffer the imputation to rest upon his holy name that he was not able to convert the world.

Yeah, it would be an insult to God. I gave them that commission, but they weren't up to it and I wasn't able to give them enough power from the Holy Spirit. Oh, no, that's not what it says. He will convert the world.

Our school song at Tri-City is Lead on, O King Eternal, and there's a verse in there, for not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but with deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.

Yeah, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, deeds of love and mercy. After the original 9 -1 -1 took place back in, really, 2001, I had a local newspaper reporter called us up and she said, Mr. Edgar, the schools, all the schools are doing something special to observe the tragedy that we've just experienced as a nation in 9 -1 -1.

She told me what the local schools were doing. And she said, are you guys doing anything special to observe 9 -1 -1? And it just happened that we were in the middle of taking a special offering for a missionary to the Muslims in Sudan, and I was able to tell her, yeah, we're doing something special to observe 9 -1 -1, to commemorate it.

We're taking a special offering for a missionary in the Muslim nation of Iran, I mean, Sudan. That's what we're doing. Remember, you can't fight something with nothing. Let's go out and show our enemies our something.

Suffering in Hope and the Final Triumph of Good

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. But the God of all grace, who has called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.

To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.