Onward Christian Soldier

I would like to build upon what Jared Esser spoke on last week. He was speaking on Isaiah chapter 40. And I would like to take the last few verses out of Isaiah chapter 40 this morning, and then also look at Romans chapter 8, and the last portion of Romans chapter 8. As we’re coming to a new year, and we’re only five days into the new year, many people across our country have made New Year’s resolutions.

The only problem is most people will not keep their New Year’s resolutions. Some of them will last a few days, some of them a few weeks, some of them may even make it through the year. But the problem is, if you’re trying to keep a New Year’s resolution, you’re doing it in your own strength.

The Bible tells us that our focus, even as the hymns that we’ve been singing on this morning, should be in the service of the Lord, and seeking to do His will. And so I’d like to challenge you, in the year ahead, that each one of us would seek to honor and glorify the Lord, and that we’d seek to do God’s will, walking in God’s power and in God’s strength to accomplish God’s purposes, that He has set before us in the next year. And I want to tell you that God has something for each one of you, in the year ahead.

God didn’t save you just to escape hell, but He saved you to bring glory to Him as long as He allows you to live on this earth, and that you’d be used by Him to take the gifts and the responsibilities that He has laid in your trust and use them for His purpose. As Jared shared with you last week, he gave you a little history of what had been going on in Israel when Isaiah was called to bring these prophecies and these challenging words to the nation. Israel had always been a nation that was up and down.

They would have revivals under certain kings and under certain leadership, and then when those kings died, oftentimes the nation collapsed. Because you see, what happened is, the people were looking to a man and not to God. And as long as the man was there to give them direction and guidance and keep challenging them to turn to God and to follow Him, they would walk in obedience.

But when the man died, unless their heart was tuned to the things of the Lord, they often slid backwards and began to accommodate the things of the world. And such it is can be with us as Christians when we take our eyes off Jesus. Some of the songs that we sang this morning, Onward Christian Soldiers, a hymn that was written for a Sunday school gathering as they were going to be gathering together for a Sunday school conference, and they wanted to challenge the young people.

And the author of the song wrote this song, Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war. And we are in a great spiritual war. The Apostle Paul revealed that to us as we looked at Ephesians chapter 6 on various times.

We’ve seen that as we’ve examined, as Paul challenges Christians in his letters to the church, as we’ve looked at those. And to keep our eyes on Jesus, the hope, author, and finisher of our salvation, and the one who gives us strength, purpose, and meaning to life. We also looked at the hymn, Who is on the Lord’s Side? And we’re to remember which side we’re on.

We have an adversary that is extremely cunning, an adversary that is extremely deceitful, an adversary that is extremely intelligent, and an adversary that, given our ability in and of ourselves, we cannot stand against. But, God has defeated Satan. And God is greater than our adversary.

And so when we wage this spiritual war, it’s a war that we can’t do in and of ourselves. We need to be on God’s side. We then sang the hymn, Trust and Obey.

One of the hardest things, often times, it is for us to do, is to walk in obedience and trusting God on a daily basis. Satan constantly wants to undermine our trust, and he wants to get us to disobey God. And he wants to place before us things that would cause us to lack our ability to keep our focus on the Lord.

But we are called to trust and obey. No matter what the circumstance is in life, trusting God that He is the truth, and acknowledging that He is the one that gives the power to enable us to walk in that truth, and then to walk in it through obedience. And the last song that we sang, Give of Your Best to the Master.

A lot of times, we want to give the leftovers. But God wants the best. He wants the best of your service.

He wants the best of your obedience. He wants the best of your courage. He wants the best of all that you have.

One of the things this morning, and a lot of the younger people that are sometimes here, aren’t here today, but one of the verses in that song, I wish that someone would have emphasized it to me. When I was younger. Give of the best to your Master.

Give of the strength of your youth. But I want to tell you, some of you are still young. You’re not old like I am.

Give of the best to your Master. Give of the strength of your youth. You know, there comes a day where you won’t have strength.

Physically, your body will begin to wear down. Mentally, you won’t be as sharp. Give of the best to the Master when you have the best to give.

When you’re able to function in the strength that He’s given to you, even as a young person. Another song that we could have sung, and I thought about singing, was Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. So how do we do this? How do we accomplish this? That’s what I want to look at these verses this morning.

Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?

22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

23 That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.

24 Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.

25 To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.

26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?

28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isa 40:21-31

Romans chapter 8

If you go back to the chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah was facing a nation that had really turned their backs on God. They got caught up in worshiping false gods and following the ways of the world and not believing in the promises of God and not fulfilling their calling. You see, the Jewish nation had been called out of Egypt.

They went in as a people and they came out as a nation. And when they came out, they were a great people. Most Bible scholars and historians believe that the number of Jewish people that came out, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that came out of Egypt was over a million.

They’d gone in as 70 souls and came out as a million. God had miraculously provided for them time and time again, delivering them from the hand of Pharaoh through 10 great judgments upon Egypt and really upon their gods. If you want to look historically and see what the judgments were that God brought against Pharaoh in Egypt, you will see that they come against the gods of Egypt, showing they were no gods because they couldn’t withstand the hand of the Lord.

He miraculously brought them across the Red Sea. They went on dry land where Pharaoh’s army drowned. He provided for them in the wilderness.

He gave them manna from heaven. And I want you to understand, this food from heaven was miraculous. They had nothing else to eat but manna.

Yet it had all the vitamins, it had all the nutrition, it had all the protein, everything in it that these people’s bodies needed so they were not sick as they walked in the wilderness. He provided for them water supernaturally, bringing it forth from rocks. And if you want to just stop and think, this would literally have to be rivers of water coming forth from rocks to meet the needs of over a million people and their animals.

And He did that. Yet, they lacked faith. When they came into the Promised Land, those that came into the Promised Land had seen their grandparents and some of them their parents die in the wilderness because of their unbelief.

When they came into the Promised Land, they walked across the Jordan River on dry ground. Why did God do that? Do you ever stop to think about that? The Jordan River, if you go to Israel today, the Jordan River is not that big, it’s not that deep. Even at the time of the floods in the spring, why would God cause the river to separate that they could walk across on dry land? To show them that He was God and it wasn’t Moses.

And that He was with Joshua the same way He had been with Moses. Joshua was now their leader. Joshua took them in to the Promised Land.

And once again, you can see this up and down-ness of their faith and trust. They have a supernatural victory immediately coming into the Promised Land, defeating Jericho in a city that was impossible to destroy. But God destroyed it.

And they defeated it. Yet, He preserved the life of Rahab and her family as He promised. Because she trusted in God and not the God she’d served before she knew Him.

They saw all this. As a matter of fact, Rahab married one of the princes of Israel. But right away, they also have defeats at Ai, where God allows a little outpost to defeat Israel, that it defeated the greatest city on the western bank of the Jordan.

Because they didn’t look to God. They tried to do it in their own strength. And they allowed Satan to enter into the camp.

And God judged them for it. Throughout the history, under Joshua’s leadership, they had campaigns over a number of years to drive out the Canaanites, as they were told by the Lord. They were told to utterly destroy them.

I remember talking to a man who’s actually Jewish. His family had been converted to Christianity. And he was now attending the Lutheran church.

I don’t know if he’s born again or not. He attends the Lutheran church. But I don’t know what his personal relationship with Christ is.

But he said he’d been committed to read the Bible because he’d never really read the Old Testament. And so he’s going to read the Bible through. And he said, as I began to read the Old Testament and I got to the nation of Israel coming into the land, he said, I struggled with this where they’d just go in and wipe out whole cities and they’d wipe out whole cultures.

But he wasn’t understanding. God had given them more opportunity to receive Him and accept Him. As a matter of fact, there was a 450 year period from the time Israel left to go to Egypt and when they came back, prior to their leaving, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been in the land.

Some of the kings of the land had seen how God had supernaturally provided for them and the promises He had given to them. They had heard the truth. Prior to that, and sometimes when you look at the earth being billions of years old, you don’t realize that it’s not.

And it’s a young earth, maybe 6,000 to 10,000 years old. And if you look at the fact that the earth is young, even at the time of Abraham, all the nations of the world would have had remembrances of Noah’s flood. And even today you have around the world from various people groups accounts of a great flood that came and wiped out all the earth, but just a small group of people lived and they lived in a boat.

They had known the truth, but they willfully chose to rebel against the truth, and not only rebel against it, but to do it in the most disgusting, despicable ways that they could and deny everything that God held sacred and worship everything that He abhorred. And they’d done it for over 400 years while Israel was being prepared to come back into the land. And when they came back, there were those who believed, but they were the great minority.

Rahab, a tribe of Canaanite people that deceived Joshua, but believed that God was going to destroy them for their sin. And God made that group of people the ones who would be the bearers of wood for the sacrifices at the temple. Canaanites were placed with a responsibility of worshiping God.

So you could believe and come and be saved, but the vast majority didn’t. They continued in their wicked, evil ways and God told them, go in and destroy them. And God judged them. But what happened is, the nation of Israel was told by the Lord through Joshua to go in and destroy these people. And He says, if you go in and do not destroy them, they will become a burden to you.

And not only will they become a burden to you, but they will lead to your destruction. And that’s exactly what happened. You can read in the book of Joshua, and you’ll see that the various tribes that go in there too, Joshua gives them their inheritance.
It’s been given by the Lord. It was prophesied way back in Egypt by Jacob to his sons. And what their inheritance would be.

He gives them their inheritance. They go in. They get their inheritance.
But you know what some of the tribes say? We’re not strong enough. So we’re going to let the Canaanites stay. And we’ll put them to servitude.

We’ll make them our servants. And we’ll charge them taxes. But you know what happened? God said that may be your great plan, but it’s not mine.

And what they’re going to do is they are going to influence you for evil. And you will not worship me. That’s exactly what happened.

And it happened at various degrees of unfaithfulness at various times. But for those of you who’ve been studying with us on Wednesday and Sunday nights, looking at the kings of Judah and Israel, you will understand that it became very, very much like the Canaanite culture that they were to destroy. Especially the northern kingdom of Israel.

But all worship. Worshipping the golden calves. The golden calves went all the way back to coming out of Egypt and being in the desert and there and building a golden calf, which went back to the worship of the gods of Egypt.

And trusting in the gods of Egypt that God delivered them from, that they were to do the Passover to remember why He delivered them. And now they’re back worshipping them. We will do the same thing if we take our eyes off Christ.

Now why did they take their eyes off Jesus? Why did they fall into these things at various times? And what did God do to cause revival to come to the nation of Israel? What does God do to cause us to walk with Him? Well, God raised up godly kings and then He also revealed His power and authority to them. Now I want to tell you something. What’s happening in the public schools today is not by chance.

It’s a way by which Satan gets people to deny the power and the authority of God. What’s taught in the public schools? Well, let’s see what’s not taught in the public schools. Verse 21, Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.

They’re talking, this is the Lord speaking. No, they haven’t been told. They’ve been told that grasshoppers are in control.

They’ve been told that grasshoppers are God. They’re told you can be a god unto yourself and you set the rules, you set the standards, you set the direction. There is no higher power in the form of the God of the Bible.

That’s what they’re taught in the public schools. And it’s done through various means and ways all the way from denying God as creator and introducing evolution to introducing eastern religions which introduce pagan gods. But they don’t call them pagan gods.

And they do all of this to destroy the understanding in the hearts of young people of the reality of God. If you can destroy the reality of God in the hearts of a generation, what you have done is you’ve turned them from understanding to judgment. Isaiah is bringing this to the minds