CONQUERORS

 

Imagine what it would be like if one evening you go to the movies to see a gripping picture about some people living through a war. The film ends, you dry your tears, shove the empty popcorn box under the seat and head for home.

 

Just as you step out into the night the sky lights up with a blinding flash ... the earth starts trembling under your feet ... a shook wave knocks you on your face.

 

People are screaming ... Broken glass is flying everywhere.

 

- How you're not watching a war from a theater seat –

 

you're in a war.

 

We Christians love to talk about spiritual warfare in our Bible studies and prayer meetings. But when it comes to walking through the battle zone, as we do every day, our posture is all too often, not that of a con­queror, but of a whipped dog.

 

-  The long face,

-  The timid heart,

- The conditioned reflex which automatically avoids any path that threatens to bring us into   conflict.

 

And yet to follow Jesus in this world is to be in­volved in conflict all our lives ... and to conquer. The Christian life is more than being good and staying out of trouble. Jesus went about doing good but he was always in trouble. His whole life was a battle ... a conquest of evil.

 

And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, "Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."                    Revelation 5:3-5

 

He is worthy to open the scroll and break the seals because he conquered. And those who believe in him, who follow him, are expected to conquer just as he did.

 

To him who conquers I will grant to eat

of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

                                          

He who conquers shall not be hurt by the second death.

 

To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him who receives it.

 

He who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him power over the nations.

 

He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life; I will con­fess his name before my Father and before his angels.

 

He who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God; never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

 

He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.                                                   Revelation 2 and 3

 

 

Our Lord teaches us to look at life in this world in two ways ... two ways which at first seem to conflict.

 

On the one hand he teaches us to look at life in this world in terms of peace.

 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Matthew 5:9

 

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

                                              Matthew 6:26

 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

                                                      Matthew-6:28-29

 

.....a picture of peace.

 

On the other hand, Jesus teaches us to look at life in this world in terms of war.

 

"When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace; but when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters."        Luke 11:21-23

 

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."        Matthew 10:34

 

"I have come to cast fire upon the earth..."

                                                Luke 12:49

 

Yes, we do have a heavenly Father, and he does see the sparrow fall, and he does care about us and watch over us and love us. But we also happen to be living in a world which is a battle field. Even while the sun shines and the flowers bloom and the birds sing, there is a war going on. And the life we live is going to serve the cause of one side or the other. And when the war in over our eternal destiny will be deter­mined by which side we served.

 

Ever since our father and mother ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil our race has been in the battle.        

 

"Ah, but Jesus won the battle," we say.

 

Yes, but the power of Jesus' death on the cross to overcome evil becomes a victory for us only if we line ourselves up with the Lamb of God, and by his power we conquer evil.

 

Either we conquer evil by the power of his indwelling good, or evil conquers us. At the end of the line each of us will either be perfected in the image of the Lamb of God, exactly like Jesus,

            in freedom,

            in glory, 

            in mercy and peace,

 

or we will be perfected in the image of Satan, exactly like Satan,

            in self-idolatry,

            in deceit, and unquenchable bitterness of soul.

 

The reason so many of us are so ineffective so much of the time is either because we've been lulled into thinking that there is no war or because we've allowed ourselves to be sucked into a war which is irrelevant to the real battle, spending our strength fighting a crusade in which both sides belong to Satan anyway.

 

There are two things we have to get clear in our minds.

 

First, we have to be clear about who the enemy really is.

 

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are. not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present dark­ness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:10-12

 

Our enemy is not the boss at work,

                           our husband or our wife,

                           the criminal element,

                           the revolutionaries, the oil companies,

                           the Japanese,

                           or Internal Revenue.

 

Our enemy is not flesh and blood at all, but spirit ... a deceiving spirit who has no doubt manipulated the boss, our mate, the criminals, the revolutionaries, the oil companies, the T.V. networks. But he has also manipulated us too many times into serving him in his all-out war of rebellion against the living God.

 

We have worshipped his idols of money, power, pride. We have trembled at his threats that we might become failures, or starve to death, or be looked upon as fools. We've lusted after the satisfaction he dangled in front of us like fish going for a worm on a hook. We've wasted years of our lives crusading against enemies he inspired us to hate ... who aren't our en­emies at all.

 

We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the satanic kingdom and the spirit of delusion,

mercilessness, unforgiveness, pride, hatred, by which the satanic kingdom rules.

 

God help its to quit fighting those who are not our enemy and to recognize who our adversary really is.

 

"Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have all of you that he might sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren....                                  Luke 22:31-32

 

Instead of being sifted as wheat by Satan, you're going to conquer Satan, Peter."

 

Second, we have to understand that by the Power of our Lord we can conquer Satan in this world.

 

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses. them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death...."                                       Revelation 12:10-11

 

"They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony."

 

We conquer the Accuser inwardly by the blood of the Lamb....

 

- his grip on our mind,

- his hold on our conscience,

- his control over us through fear of-death.

 

All this is conquered by the blood of the Lamb. There is power in the blood when we put our confidence in that blood. When we put our confidence in the-blood of his cross, in a mystery it purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. It sets us free from the fear of death.

 

- The blood of the Lamb makes us bold to stand before the throne of the Father absolutely confident that he hears us and receives us.

 

We conquer the Accuser inwardly by the blood of the Lamb.

 

We conquer the Accuser outwardly by the word of our testimony ... loving not our lives even unto death.

 

The word of our testimony is simply that we tell the world, without shame and without fear, that Jesus is Lord. And we do it not only with our mouths but with our actions. When we welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, we're telling them that Jesus, not Satan, is Lord. When we spend time with the discouraged and give them hope ... when we stand side-by-side with the oppressed, sharing their shame --- we're telling them that Jesus, not Satan, is Lord.

 

By our testimony that Jesus is Lord we set people free from their bondage to Satan.

 

- We expose his lies.

- We bind his hands.

- We conquer Satan.

 

We open a path through the battlefield so that others can find their way to God.

 

When Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," peaceful .as those words may sound, he is in fact preparing us for battle. For when we are poor in spirit, God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. And by that strength flood­ing and filling our poverty we go forth to conquer.­

 

To be poor in spirit is not to be slinking through this world like a whipped dog. To be poor in spirit is to follow the Lamb who by being poor in spirit con­quered Satan.

 

For each one of us as individuals and for all of us as a body it's either conquer Satan or be conquered by him.

 

God help us to conquer the one and only enemy we have by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony, loving not our lives even unto death.