If This Wasn't Recorded You Would Never Believe It

We start with the Lord laughing, which again is pretty terrifying. I bring my armies and I'm ready to go to war. I've got huge army amassed and I'm ready to go to war. You ready to fight?

Why are you laughing? In our natural state, we love ourselves and we hate God. And when we're told that our lives belong to God, our natural inclination is to fight against this idea. To fight for our own autonomy and self-justification.

But of course, it's impossible to fight against God.

The nations rage against God. It's not as though they can ascend his holy hill and fight with him. When the nations rage against God, it's not as though they can lay hold of him. The old folks used to say, your arms are too short to box with God.

The World’s War Against God and His People

So instead of fighting against God directly, the human race fights against what it can fight against.

Christians. And says he should not be forced to use his artistry for something he says offends his religion. The couple took action. How do the nations fight God? The answer is they can't fight God per se.

So what they do is they fight God's people. They go to war with the church. If you are at war with God who is a spirit and doesn't have a body like men, all the catechized children said, amen.

The world is at war with God's people and vice versa. But do we ever hear this from popular pastors today? You will never hear Joel Osteen teach this because his message is all about lifting people up and helping them to live a great life.

It's just dreams and desires. I believe God puts those in our heart. And so that's why I feel passionate about encouraging people to follow your dreams.

You will never hear Stephen Furtick teach this because his message is all about human potential and God's unconditional love.

And the idea of human potential and a limitless God comes together in this text.

You will never hear T .D. Jakes teach this because he's good friends with Oprah who represents all that is in the world.

One of the things I saw you do in this sermon, Living on Purpose, where you came out and you actually sat on the speaker and you say that most people or many people are using their life as a speaker when in fact they're underusing their purpose.

You will never hear Joyce Meyer teach this because according to Joyce, God wants everyone to be healthy and prosperous.

Why would he want all the sinners in the world to have all the good stuff while we sit around and just have nothing all the time? God wants to bless us.

But the uncomfortable truth is that all non-Christians are at war with God and Christians until their eyes are opened by God to see the truth.

Then what do you do? You go to war with those who represent him. You go to war with those who speak his words. You go to war with those who bear the marks of identifying with him.

Now, it's easy to limit this war against God and Christians to those who explicitly fight against Christianity, such as atheists, Islamic nations, and the Chinese Communist Party.

And we see this, do we not? We see this war spiritually and ideologically. We see it even in our own surroundings. And when I talk about this, I'm not talking about in atheistic nations that were at war with the idea of Christianity.

That's not what I mean. I don't mean in Islamic nations that are obviously at war with the idea of Christianity or Hindu nations or Buddhist nations.

But more and more, the war against Christians comes from Western nations as a whole whose leaders hate biblical morality and advocate for all kinds of laws and lifestyles that directly contradict the Bible.

I'm talking about in the Christian West. We're seeing this war beginning to rage as the biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood and human sexuality is referred to in legislation as mythology.

Earlier this morning, our government introduced a bill to end conversion therapy in Canada. It's past time to put a stop to this unacceptable, discredited practice that has hurt far too many LGBTQ2 Canadians.

However, the extent of the war against God and Christians goes even beyond this. Every human being apart from Christ desires autonomy and independence from God. And so when people are confronted with the truth about their being a creator who created them to live a particular way, they will fight ferociously against this truth.

We are at war.

Our mission is also a direct affront to man's quest for independence and his own sovereignty.

But again, we rarely, if ever, hear from popular pastors today about people's enmity and hostility towards God, Christians, and the truth. What we do hear is people deep down desiring God and God loving all people in spite of their sin and rebellion against him.

God's yes is settled. God's yes is settled. So when God says yes, he doesn't say yes like you said yes.

So what am I saying? That when we share our hope with other people, what we have to offer people is exactly what everyone is looking for because we all have the same deep longings and life.

Psalm 2 and Humanity’s Rebellion

Psalm 2 is an uncomfortable psalm for these popular pastors who only ever teach about God's love and God's blessings.

In the first three verses, we see that sinful man is at war with God. Sinful man is at war with God.

Of course, this truth that people in their natural state hate God and are at war with God is extremely obvious.

And if you don't believe this, you are incredibly naive. If you think that sinful man can just coexist with God, if you think that sinful man can just wink and nod and watch God's people go and do and be who they are and proclaim the gospel and win and gain ground and be okay with it, you are sorely mistaken.

So why do most popular pastors today completely ignore this truth about humanity's war with God? The answer is simple. Because it doesn't attract as many numbers and they are all about showing off how many numbers they have.

I've had the privilege for 43 years of training 1 .1 million pastors. That, sorry friends, that's more than all the seminaries put together.

And over 500 people have given their lives to Jesus for the first time in this church in the last five months. That's over a hundred per month.

So many pastors today treat sin without any seriousness. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that so few of these pastors even teach about sin, much less about God's wrath and the consequence of sin, which is hell.

I believe there's enough pushing people down already. So when people leave one of our services or read one of my books, I want them to leave saying, you know what, I can be better. I can rise higher.

And you hear people say, you don't preach enough about sin. You don't preach enough about repentance. But you know, I actually think what they're saying is you don't beat people up enough. You don't have to remind people they're sinners.

They know.

But of course, teaching about sin should always be the starting point for pointing people towards the gospel and their need for a savior. Every single person outside of Christ is at war with God and will suffer judgment unless there is repentance and submission to God.

There is a sense in which the whole world, and yes, it is the whole world outside of this people of God is at war with God. Notice the word picture here. There's a picture of the peoples of the world assembling against God, amassing their armies, if you will, against God, preparing all the firepower they have to go to war against God and actually believing that if enough of them amass that they can stamp him out.

Of course, people's war against God is one that is completely impossible for them to win.

We see it all the time, don't we? You look at people's lives and sometimes I look at people's lives and I watch them war with God and you just want to look at him and say, stay down, man.

But despite this, people can't help but continue to wage this futile war against God because of their sinful nature, which loves darkness and hates the light. This is clearly what the Bible teaches. For example, John 3, 19.

John gives us a glimpse in John 3, 19. This is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. It can't help it. They love darkness and they're infuriated by light, by anything that exposes their darkness.

And they are enemies of God.

And Ephesians 2, 1 -3.

Ephesians 2, 1 -3. We know these verses, don't we? And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Enemies of God, children of wrath who love the darkness and hate the light, and therefore all we can do is continue to go to war with God.

Popular pastors today present people as being basically good, not enemies of God, who hate God.

The problem is in order to get the potential, its highest and best potential, you have to get beyond the peeling and all the things that have been placed on top of it. It's always been in you.

That teaching gift has always been in you. You just had to get past what you would put on yourself. The idea that I'm not a preacher, I'm just a little girl. I don't have anything to say.

That was always in you. But Voti presents an illustration that more accurately describes who people are apart from God's intervention. And of course, this illustration is not nearly as attractive to people.

It's kind of like the classic story about the frog and the scorpion. Y 'all know this story. Scorpion's trying to get across the river and he needs some help. He talks to the frog and says, man, why don't you give me a ride?

The frog says, I'm not going to do that. You'll sting me and kill us both. He said, no, I won't do that. I got to get to the other side. Just give a brother a ride. I promise. Halfway across, the frog feels the sting in his back.

And before he succumbs and sinks, he looks up to the scorpion and says, but why? To which the scorpion responds, it's just my nature.

The depth of human sin and people's natural hatred towards God and his commands may be an unpopular truth, but it's the truth that people need to hear. That's fallen man.

It's just his nature to be at war with God. And it will always be his nature until the bitter end. Sinful men go to war with God to the bitter end because it is in their very nature to do so.

But even more than this, people are not just at war with God. They are also at war with Jesus Christ and all that Christ represents.

Psalm 2 is about the Lord Jesus Christ. That ultimately in this war, it is a war against God. It is a war against Christ. And it is a war against the body of Christ.

Most popular pastors today present a picture of God as simply a friend and father who wants to gather all people to himself. They never tell people that they are enemies of God.

My, I'm sorry you don't want to receive it. I apologize that you hate the prosperity gospel, but that's still not going to stop his abounding provision. He's going to keep increasing his provision on you.

He's going to keep blessing you. He's going to keep turning things around for you. He's going to keep increasing you. He's going to keep healing you because he's Jehovah Jireh, a .k .a. Hippity. He's going to do it anyway.

But Psalm 2 presents a picture of God as one who has enemies and laughs at their helplessness against his sovereign power.

He who sits in the heaven laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, please don't miss this, okay? We start with the Lord laughing, which again is pretty terrifying.

I bring my armies and I'm ready to go to war. I've got a huge army amassed and I'm ready to go to war. You ready to fight?

Why are you laughing? And why does God laugh at his enemies? If you like this video, subscribe to help spread the truth. Because Christ is king and will certainly have victory over all his enemies.

Terrifying thing that God says to sinful man in his wrath. He says, I've set my king on Zion, my holy hill. There it is. That's the terrifying thing. We bring massive armies. We bring everything that man can think or imagine or invent to bring.

And we come to fight with God and he laughs and says, my king's on Zion. And that's it.

And it's terrifying. The end of this war between sinful humans and God has already been determined. All humans will either submit to Christ within their lifetime and be saved, or they will bow the knee to Christ in judgment.

It's folly because men will ultimately obey God either willingly or unwillingly. There is no winning this war, which is why God laughs and holds them in derision.

Christ’s Victory Through the Cross

Now, how exactly does Christ win this war against all his enemies? This is the amazing and counterintuitive part. By dying on the cross.

That's how the king wins this battle on Zion. It is through the cross. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 18, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

It makes no sense. We come to you to go to war with you and you win the war with us by your king dying on your hill. That's exactly right.

So what does this all mean? Well, it means that the very one whom sinful humans are at war against, Jesus Christ, is the one whom they need to run to for their salvation.

You have one hope and one hope only, and that is that God would be merciful to you. So you're actually running and hiding from the only one who can save you. And in this instance, in Psalm 2, the nations are actually amassing and going to war with the one who is their only hope.

And the only reason people continue warring against Christ instead of bowing the knee to him is because they are blind fools.

Again, it's a fool's errand, but it's appropriate because sinful man is a fool.

So as Christians, what's our answer to the world's war against us because it hates God? We certainly do not fight back against the world in the same way that it fights against us. Rather, our answer is simple.

We point the world to Christ, who not only has already won the victory against the world, but is also the world's only hope for salvation.

Our answer is the king who's on Zion's hill. That's our answer. That's always been our answer, and it will always be our answer. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're powerful. They destroy fortresses.

Everything already belongs to Christ. And as Christians, it's our job to simply preach the gospel through which enemies of God will be transferred from the kingdom of darkness to Christ's kingdom, the kingdom of light.

Jesus presented himself as the Messiah, the son of God. The nations are his birthright. They are his inheritance. And we are the means through which he claims this inheritance as we preach the gospel.

So, this war between Christ's people and the world is completely counterintuitive. As Christians, we win the war through the proclamation of the gospel, which is foolishness to the world. But for those who are called by God, it is the difference between life and death.

Imagine, here's the picture. The picture is that the armies of the world are amassed against God and against his anointed. And here's the king on his holy hill. And here's this massive army. And as the gospel is preached by the people of God, people lay down their weapons, leave their post and run to the king on his hill.

That's how we fight.

That's how we fight. Even though it often seems that the world is winning this war, especially when we look at its dominance in the culture and in politics, we as Christians should have absolute confidence that we are on the winning side of this war through Christ.

This is what gives us confidence in evangelism and missions. Amen. This is what gives us confidence because there's never a question and the outcome is never in doubt. God will have his victory. Christ will have the fullness of the reward for which he died.

We can know that.

We can rest assured. So again, our job as Christians in this war is simple. Preach the gospel. And when we do this, we will see enemies of God join us to the transformative power of the gospel.

And we can preach the gospel in faith, knowing that God will save his people through the foolishness of our preaching.

We must warn the world that is warring against Christ, that there is no hope of victory against Christ, but only wrath and judgment to come if they persist in their war.

But we also remind men of the judgment that is to come. That is just as much our duty.

The only way to save the enemies of God from the judgment, wrath, and hell they deserve is to proclaim to them the whole truth about who they are and what they deserve, which is a truth that they are not hearing from most popular pastors today.

That's what we do as the church militant. We preach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And part of that truth is warning men of the coming judgment.

And after we tell the world about the terrifying judgment that awaits them if it continues with its war against God, we present to it the only hope it has for salvation, Jesus Christ, the very king it is fighting against.

And the final movement is this. Sinful man has only one hope, and that is repentance. That's it, is repentance. He can't win the war with God. His war with God will end in him being smashed by a rod of iron.

There are only two choices. Either continue in this hopeless battle against the God who will ultimately judge you, or submit and flee to this God for your joy and salvation.

There's only two choices. We can amass ourselves with the armies that are at war with God, or we can take refuge in the king on this holy hill.

The great lie that we hear from popular pastors today is that non-Christians are not enemies of God, but rather neutral observers who simply need to make the right decision about God.

That's why some of us are miserable, because of unlived potential that's been sitting in the job, sitting on the shelf. I'm afraid to fail, so I won't try.

Because instinctively, they know that they were created to be in the water. What do you do instinctively? What is your sweet spot? And when you flow in it, it is natural to you. And the amazing truth of the gospel.

Is that we as Christians weren't saved from a state of neutrality, but rather we were saved from a state of hatred and enmity towards God.

No, you weren't neutral in this battle before you came to faith in Christ. You were driving a tank going to take the hill when the power of the gospel reached in and rescued you.