Sharing God's Victory

Transcript S2E5

Sharing God’s Victory

[00:00]

God is the Living God. 

He is the God who created the whole Universe.

He is the God who made all things – the material Universe – out of what was non-existent.

He created this world.

He took a place that was without form and void. It was nothing – no order in it at all – and by His Spirit He made the world that we know. He made it the place that we live on.

And He … His whole desire … was to be glorified in us … through us.

 [00:47] 

When He made man in His own image (now that's not like a fairy tale, that's not a myth, that's not a creation legend, that is the truth). But that same God – the God who created all things – is the Living God. The God who was before all things and lives forever.S

And it's easy for Christians to even talk about God in such a … in these kinds of wonderful high-sounding ways which actually push him off into the, into the distance somewhere unrelated to us and our own lives.

It's so wrong because it's not the truth at all. The truth is that we were created by Him for Him to share Eternity – to share the Universe – with Him!

We were not meant to be stumbling along as humanity so often does, and unfortunately many of God's people do – hoping and longing for a better world, for a better life for … even for Christians. 

So many Christians are afraid to sort of cut themselves loose and really believe that God is who He says He is. And because of that, so many Christians effectively live with one foot in this world, that is not a world that expresses God, and one foot (they hope) in God's kingdom. Or, if you like, one foot in man's world, one foot in God's world – because they're kind of hedging their bets.

 [02:21] 

Because, if you really cut yourself loose to live for God, how can you make it in this world? There was one saying I remember, years ago amongst Christians. They'd say, “Oh no, you’ve got to be careful because you could be too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good!”

Now maybe if someone's being living in some kind of unreal concept of God and godliness, that could be true. But it's also something that people would often use to sort of say, “Well, you’ve got to have your feet on the ground. You’ve got to be kind of realistic about the world we live in, let's face it … and, you know, God helps those who helps themselves,” and all that kind of thing. But you were created by the living God to live in relationship with the living God.

 [03:10] 

But I want to take it beyond that today and talk about God's total rule and dominion over all things.

 God, who created the universe – and I said in one of my earlier podcasts that he didn't just create everything and put it on autopilot and let it tick along by itself … that He's intricately involved. But I want to address the fact today that many Christians are afraid of so many things that you see going on in the world today. There's so much to be anxious about, because we see a world … you see many of our societies that once called themselves Christian societies who at least, you know, God was given his place. I mean, here in Australia where I live, the parliament that governs this country is still opened with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer, as it's called. And that prayer is spoken with absolutely no real meaning. It's just spoken because that's the tradition, I guess, of our parliamentary system. It doesn't really give God any place at all.

 [04:24]

But you were made to live in this world, not as someone who was on the back foot … someone who's always feeling that if you don't watch out, the devil will get you if you don't be careful, because you'll be lucky if you just try and make it through this life as one of God's people. And if you make it through, just hold onto what you’ve got, and then one day you'll go to Heaven, and finally you can breathe a sigh of relief and say: “Wow, I made it. But, gee, it wasn't easy!” 

It wasn't ever meant to be like that. When Christians see this world as a threat and not see our God as the living God who is the Lord of all the earth as well as the God of the whole universe, then they see their religion as something to hold onto, to help them survive through this hostile, challenging world. Now, yes, you might say to me, “Jesus did say that, “In this world, you'll have tribulation, but be of good cheer, because I've overcome the world”.  And that second part of his statement is the point. He said, “Yep, the world's not going to be friendly to you”. This world of godless men that our society, our human race predominantly is, is not going to be friendly to God and God's people.

 [06:09] 

I'm sure that there are many people of earlier generations, people of my generation, who look back longingly, you know, to the day when more people went to church – a lot of people went to church … and respect was given to religion and religious leaders and clergymen and so on – and say, oh, but it was really better back there. Well, I don't know if it was. 

 It was better on the surface, but, you know, predominantly this world from the time that Adam sinned against God and the human race became corrupted from being the expression of God that Adam and his race were meant to be. Ever since then, it hasn't always been a welcoming place or an easy place for truly godly people to live in.

 [07:01] 

But, you know, we're talking about a whole process that – well, I'm not sure I like calling it a process – a whole sequence, a whole era, that God has been working with humanity. And ever since Adam fell and then God had, you know, gathered a people to Himself … and so long as those people lived as His people, He blessed them in this hostile world. 

And then He sent Jesus into this hostile world. And even when Jesus came – I and, yep, He came and He died in this world – but never forget that when Jesus was looking ahead at the fact that He was going to suffer and die, He said, “No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord”.

 [07:52] 

Jesus was never a victim of the most hostile opposition. He was never a victim of even the awful things that were done to Him by men. He was never a victim because they had no power over Him, but the power that He chose to give them. He laid his life down, and you know that He did that for you.

But He also said, “I lay my life down that I may take it up again”. He knew that he was laying his life down. He knew He had to do it for your sake, to give God back this race, this human race that had turned its back on Him. But He also capped it all off by taking His life back, by rising from the dead so that we could have from God the gift of life that came from Jesus Himself.

 [08:56] 

Now Jesus sent His disciples out and He said, “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. He said, like, “I know that you're going to … I know what you're going to feel like. I know that when you are out there living for me and representing me, you're not going to feel, like, very safe, very strong. You're going to feel very vulnerable.” 

We know how God, and particularly Jesus, used references to sheep and lambs because they are such defenceless creatures and they are so vulnerable.That's why they always needed to be guided and protected. Like I was talking about in my last podcast about the sheep needing a shepherd and the shepherd looking after the sheep.

 [09:44]

But you were made by God to live for Him in this world. I'll just rephrase that a little bit, because what I'm really talking about here is not your essential creation and that you're being part of the human race. I'm really talking about the fact that when you … if you have opened your heart to God and you know that you know Him, and you know that you know Jesus and you know that you belong to God … then you, in this, you know, this world, you are sheep in the midst of wolves. But you are representing the God who is the Lord of all the earth, and when your life is in His hands, nothing can happen to you without God being involved, anymore than anything could have happened to Jesus.

 If you feel vulnerable and you feel a victim, or a potential victim, of the world that we live in … if you are looking around you at a world that's descending more and more into chaos – a world that is openly more and more anti-God, a world that in so many ways has viciously turned its back on everything that matters to God – and you feel like we're a minority … it's coming at us from all sides! And if you're praying, “Oh God, you know, change this world. Give us some leaders of our governments and our countries and society – people who are expressions of you, people who believe in you. And then pray that, and then someone you know gets into a position of power or authority or influence and they say, “I'm a born-again Christian”. You say, “Oh great. Maybe things will change”. 

 But you know, when God changes things, He doesn't just do a fix-up job. He changes things completely. 

 [11:58]

If you read the book of Revelation – that exciting final book in the Bible – you're going to read about a new Heaven and a new Earth. You're going to read about a time when Heaven and Earth become one. Like, everything is heading towards that.

It may look like the devil is winning. It may look like the world and the flesh and the devil – that evil threesome – are just overwhelming us and we do well to kind of just try and stem the tide a bit, and somehow keep surviving – then you're actually looking at things differently to what God is looking at. God is in control. Our God reigns! 

 [12:43]

I recently was reading through the book of Revelation again. The last few years I've, you know, roughly once a year I would say, I've read through that book. And each time I read it, I read it with an open heart to God – not wanting God to explain the kind of intricacies of it to me that people agonize over, trying to explain things. And I've known people who have drawn great big time charts of … “This is this point in history and that's that point in history, and where it is in the book of Revelation, or even in the book of Daniel too … which … the old Testament book that has a lot of similarities.

 That's not what God says. In fact, in the book of Revelation itself, God said: ‘Don't mess with this’. You know, ‘don't … don't add to it, don't take from it what it is’. And when I read that book with my heart open to God, I let the things touch me that God wants … wants to touch me with are things that … that fall into place for me. I don't try and, and comprehend my … you know… sort of get my mind around a lot of the … the graphic word pictures that are in there.

Not because they're, they're not real. But I know that God will make the things real to me that he wants to make real. 

 In fact, many years ago, when I was a much younger preacher, I once asked God if he would open … sort of … give me a key to open the book of Revelation. And God's reply to me was, “I will only ever show you the things that you need to know, either for your relationship with me or for the sake of the people that you're ministering to”. And ever since then, I've been very happy – whether it's the Book of Revelation or anything else. “God, I don't want to be a … a source of knowledge. I don't want to, sort of, know.”

Well, God showed me this, God showed me that. “God, you show me the things that I need to know to live for you and the things … and give me the things that I need to have, to feed the people who've got hearts hungry for you.”

 [14:51] 

I tell you, if you read the book of Revelation, it's very thrilling, because … you know … this revelation was given to Jesus … John the disciple – John who was then John the apostle of Jesus – when he was … they say he was a hundred years old … and he was in exile on a little rocky prison island. The island of Patmos. The Greek island of Patmos. And I guess, you know, it … it was not … it was not a very pleasant situation for him. But one day – when he says he was in the Spirit … he was just relating to God. He was, you know, experiencing God, worshiping God … whatever. And then God began to give him this revelation – the last thing he expected. 

 But I love it that very early in the book of Revelation, John sees Heaven … the heavens … opened and he sees God on His throne. And it's a mind-blowingly amazing sight! And there's lots and lots of, again, graphic language of what… what that looked like. But he sees God, and the power of God, and who God is, and the wonder of what the kingdom of God really looks like … or if you like, what God's world is really like.

 And then it runs through a whole sweep of history of events. And some of it, at some points, look pretty bad. And they really look like everything's not going the way that God wants them to. But things always end up the way God wants – until finally we get to a New Heaven, a New Earth. We get to the New Jerusalem, when everything is the way God always planned for it to become.

 [16:39] 

Now that's our God in … you know … in-between when God started … when God began, after the devil pulled the plug on God's Creation, and because He brought down Adam, who God made the crowning glory of Creation, then the Creation that God had created made this … Created this perfect Creation in this world … was brought down too. 

And that's the world of which the Bible calls Satan, the devil, “the prince of this world” – or sometimes, ‘the God of this world’. And he is. But he's a usurper. He got this world by bringing down the man who God created in His image to be the crowning glory of His creation. But he will not keep it. He cannot keep it. He is doomed to failure.

 A really good liar is the guy who believes his own lies. Jesus said that the devil is ‘the father of the lie’. He created lies – and he is a liar who believes his own lies.

He does not believe that he is doomed. But from the day that he brought down Adam and the Creation, he's been doomed.

 [18:08] 

But a lot of things have had to play out – including the centrepiece of Jesus coming and defeating death and hell. And from then, things have been moving towards God's triumph!

And you might say, well, it sure doesn't feel like it, because a couple of millennia have come and gone since then, and here are we – it seems like … like the world's in a … in a worse mess than it's been in a long time. And it looks like we Christians are living in a hostile environment.

 That's what you see, because you don't see what's really playing out. If you like … like John on the island of Patmos. This guy on this rocky, inhospitable little island that he was a prisoner on, suddenly has God pull back the curtains o, you know, open this view to see what really is happening in God's world. And God says, “I'm in charge. I'm having it my way.” 

 And believe me, the joy – the thrill – of you living for God, now in this world – if your eyes are on God, and you do not be distracted by what's happening in the world. Do not be distracted by the negatives. Do not be distracted by all the stuff. It's real, it's awfully real. But something is happening that you don't normally see in God's world – in the Spirit World, if you like to call it that – the things that we don't usually see … that John didn't see until God showed them to him. There, the real things are happening. 

 [19:54]

That's why Paul wrote about the fact that we Christians … we're not fighting against flesh and blood. Our enemies are principalities and powers. Spiritual wickedness. The battle is a spiritual battle. The forces against us are spiritual. You can look at the things that are against you as Christians, even people that may oppose you – even Jesus knew that the people that were opposing Him were just purely puppets of the devil who wanted to bring Him down.

 You know, unless God happens to bless you with a vision like he blessed John, you're not going to see them with these eyes that are in your head, but you can see them and know them in your heart.

 Believe God. It's inconceivable that we can have a defeatist view of things if we are walking with God.

Paul, who suffered lots of things … the apostle Paul … he gave God thanks for the victory that he had. And he knew that he lived in victory even when it looked like he was being defeated because he was living in God's world, while he lived in this world.

[20:58] 

I encourage you, if you live for God. I don't only encourage you. I urge you. You must not allow yourself to be distracted, depressed, concerned in any way other than to say, “I am going to live for God”.

 The Bible talks about us being lights in the midst of darkness. You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. Live for God. Never see the world, the flesh and the devil, never see the society of this world (humanity), never see the worst expressions of it – the most anti-God expressions – as a threat to what God wants to do.

God will win. God is going to win. God is the God who has the victory. 

The question is, will your life be in His hands? Will you be a part of God's victory? Or will you be always cringing – you know, sort of hiding, in the background, hoping that nothing gets too bad or uncomfortable.

 [22:04] 

Just let your life be lived for God. Or better for me to say, actually: you live your life for God … like you live it, you believe God. Always open your heart to God every day – but every moment of every day!

And when you're … when you're tempted to be depressed or distracted or to become anxious, just make sure that you are living by every word that God speaks to you. Just be sure that you're living by the truth that you know in your heart. The truth that comes from the living God.

 And then, no matter what's going on around you, you'll be able to say, with Paul: thanks be to God who gives me the victory!