fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which he now see and hear, For David is not ascended into the heavens, but he said himself, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made the same Jesus whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Let us pray. Father, it is an amazing thing to behold your son. We desire that you would give us greater sight, greater vision, and greater knowledge, and greater eyes of faith to see Him. Pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts would be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, our strength, our rock, and our Redeemer. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We've been looking for several weeks at doctrines or teachings of the Bible and how they should affect the way we live our lives. This week we come to the doctrine that simply states Jesus is Lord, the Lordship of Christ. Peter said in Acts chapter 2 that God the Father has made Jesus, in verse 36, both Lord and Christ. Let's look at what these two titles mean. First of all, a lot of people think that the term Christ is just Jesus' last name. But that would not be correct. Christ is a title. It means anointed one. So Jesus is the anointed or chosen one of God that came to save his people. It was predicted that he would come in the prophets and it was fulfilled in him. Now we know that this is the case by looking again at the passages that Peter quotes. In the passage that we read, Acts chapter 2, starting in verse 29 to 36, Peter quotes both from Psalm 16, verse 10, and also from Psalm 110. And Peter said that Jesus, or excuse me, that David, who wrote the Psalms, was speaking prophetically of Jesus. So let's look first at Psalm 16 and verse 10. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither will I suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." He said that again, Peter quoted that later. So David said that God would not allow the soul of Jesus to remain in hell, meaning the grave. Many times that term hell is translated the grave. So Peter went on to say that this was a prophecy of Jesus' resurrection, that he would not be left after he was crucified, he would not be left in the grave, but that after three days he would be resurrected. But the resurrection is not only showing that Jesus is alive, which he is, the resurrection also shows that Jesus is the promised one of God. That is Peter's argument throughout Acts chapter 2. Remember who he's preaching to. He's preaching to a group of Jews. Many of them, because this is the Feast of Pentecost, many of them had been there weeks earlier when Jesus was crucified. They were there for the Feast of the Passover. So there were quite likely many of the same people who were in Jerusalem and Peter's preaching to them and saying, you killed him, but God resurrected him. And in resurrecting him, he is showing to the whole world that Jesus is the promised one of God. Jesus would be the first one ever resurrected with a new and glorified body. Lazarus was raised from the dead, but he kept his same body. We read in another place of a young girl who was being carried. She was dead, and she was being carried by a group, and Jesus raised her up. But she had the same body. Jesus had a new, a glorified body. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that it's the same body that we will have if we are found in him. Jesus is the anointed one. He is the promised one. He is the one who would bear our sins upon himself. But then there is the term Lord. The Greek word for Lord is Kyrios. That means supreme master. In other words, Jesus is King over all. But how did God the Father establish Jesus? How did He show that Jesus is the King? And He did so in three ways. First of all, He raised Him from the dead. Acts chapter 2 and verse 32. This Jesus hath God raised up whereof we are all witnesses. But He also, in addition to raising Him up, He exalted Him. God the Father brought Jesus and sat Him at His right hand. Verse 33, Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which we now see and hear. Now this prophecy is found also in the book of Daniel chapter 7. Daniel chapter 7. verses 13 and 14, "'And I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that shall not be destroyed.' So Jesus, when He ascended He went up to his father and God the Father sat him. He established Jesus at his right hand. The right hand of God is a place of power. It's a place of authority. And it's the place where our Lord sits. Third though, he also, Jesus, sent the Holy Spirit, which was promised by the Father. God the Father in the Old Testament. You remember in the book of Joel and Isaiah and other places He promised to pour out His Spirit from on high. So Jesus' first act as the ascended Christ was to send the Spirit on His disciples. So we read that in the last part of verse 33. It said, "...having received the promise receiving of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost. He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." Remember, the people at Pentecost, they were witnessing the first evidences of the Holy Spirit, that they were observing people speak in a language that everyone could hear, everyone could understand. It would be like convening a council at the United Nations and then someone being, who's a prophet from God, would go and speak to all those leaders of the nations of the world and speak in his language, yet everyone here in their own language without an interpreter. That was what was going on in Acts chapter 2 and Peter saying the Holy Spirit is coming. These are the marks of the one who is Lord. And again we read that even though David spoke of this in the Psalms, David is speaking of one who is going to come later, that one being Jesus. So how do we see Jesus, though, displayed as Lord? Well, we know that he is currently making his enemies his footstool, and we observe that by the fact that there are people who were formerly walking opposed to him who are now submitted to him. He's taking those who are by nature children of wrath, and he's making them children of light. And I know we may not see as much of that here in our country right now as we would like, but our country is not the only one in existence. Our state is not the only one in existence. There are places where mass revival is going on right now. For example, when you think of, and this is just one example of meaning we could cite, when you think of an Anglican, someone from the Church of England, most of us would think of someone with a pointy hat and white and speaks with a British accent. The average Anglican in the world is a Nigerian mother of six. That is where the Anglican Church is growing the fastest in Africa. But we could also look at examples in Indian, not just among those that we have supported, but also from across denominational barriers, many others who are coming to faith. So the word of the Lord is going out. The spirit is moving. But currently, we in the United States are walking in more pride then is acceptable to Almighty God. And until there is repentance, there will not be mighty moving. But what does it mean for us individually that Jesus is Lord? What does Jesus do as our King? And I want to give us this morning four different things that He does or that He has done for us as King. And first of all, He redeemed us. He redeemed us. Acts chapter 2. verses 23 and 24. Him, that's referring to Jesus, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loose the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. The crucifixion, again, it was fresh on the minds of the people. Many of them probably witnessed the crucifixion that Peter is preaching to. Some of them even supported it. The rumor was flying across Jerusalem that Jesus had been resurrected. We know how quickly gossip moves today. They did not have Facebook and they did not have Twitter, but they had the marketplace. The marketplace was where everyone would go to get their food every day. They did not have refrigerators and freezers. You'd have to buy your bread and your fruits and vegetables every day. So people would go to the marketplace and they would hear, and one of the topics very likely was that this Jewish rabbi who said he was going to be resurrected, his body's missing. What's going on with that? We have two stories. His followers say that he was resurrected, that he was brought back to life, but the main religious leaders say that they stole his body, even though that is quite implausible. Well, here Peter ties David's prophecies in the Psalms to Jesus. Peter said, look, the Psalms said this was going to happen. David said that he was going to be resurrected, that his soul would not be left in hell, and he would not see corruption. So you're witnessing the promise of God coming into effect. The people of Israel, those who were here at Pentecost, they understood redemption. Redemption means to purchase someone back. It is like when a person is a slave and someone goes and buys that slave and then frees them. That is redeeming someone. So, the people of Israel, they understood this not only individually but as a people. They knew that redemption took place in the book of Exodus when Israel was enslaved in Egypt. And God, He told them, I've redeemed you, I've brought you out of the land of Egypt. So they had seen redemption there. In the book of Judges, we read about God's people disobeying Him over and over. They would disobey, He would give them into bondage. And then He would raise up a judge who would free them. Then, in the time of the exile, When they disobeyed God, He sold them into Babylon. So they were carried away captive. They longed for the time when they would be restored out of Babylon, when they would be freed. And finally they were. They knew that there was a promise of redemption and they were looking for it. You see, the Roman Empire was strong. The Empire was over the Jews. Now they had relative freedom within the empire, but they did not want to serve a pagan Roman king. They wanted to serve the true Lord. They wanted to serve the one who is prophesied about in the Old Testament. So they're looking for this redemption. And Peter is telling them, brothers and sisters, the redemption's here. It has come. You don't look for someone else. Jesus is the one who would free them from bondage. And this was a twist. In order to be freed, you have to give up everything. See, they had held firmly to the fact, I have circumcision, I have a name that is Hebrew, I have the temple. These were all the intricacies of being a Jew. This was their identity. And now when Jesus comes, He said, your former identity is scratched. It doesn't get you anything. You have to let go of it. That was why it was so hard for many of the Jews to submit to Jesus. Because they had to let go of everything that they had known. It's not that they had to, they didn't have to quit their food laws. They did not quit going to the synagogue or quit going to the temple, but they had to stop taking pride in that. They couldn't say, this is who I am, who they are now. If you're going to be a member of the true kingdom, the kingdom of God, you have to submit to Jesus and you have to let go of your hope of getting in the old way. They could no longer claim that having the right parents for performing the right actions would make them a child of God. Paul talks about this in Philippians chapter 3. He just expresses a little tidbit of his struggle and what he had to do. Philippians 3 verses 7 and 8, But what things were gained for me, I counted loss for Christ. He had just talked about all the elements that he had to his name. This was the best resume a Jew could have. But all those things that would have made me look good in the Old Covenant, 8. Yea, doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but done, that I may win Christ. The best you can do on your own, not worth a pile of manure. They would no longer be able to claim what they had in the past. So, let me ask you, what do you claim as your status before God? Are your hands clean and is your heart pure? You say, well, you know, no one's perfect, but it's only the perfect who can enter into the presence of God, as we read in Psalm 24. He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, this is the one who shall receive the blessing of the Lord. So if you are not clean, if you are not free from sin, you are in bondage and you need redemption. It doesn't mean I've said a prayer. It doesn't mean I've been baptized or I've joined the church. If you don't have Christ, those things are empty. It's all the grandeur of a coffin that looks really great on the outside, but has dead bones on the inside. Have you been delivered from your sin? Have you been freed? As Jesus said, He would make those who honor and who obey Him free indeed. What is this deliverance like? Well, if you'll allow me, let me read a passage from C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And to give you a brief background, one of the characters named Eustace Scrub had been turned into a dragon because of his greed. He tried to get the dragon scales off. He had taken his claws and tried to get the scales off, but he was not successful. But then he met Aslan, the lion who in Lewis's allegory represents Jesus. So here, let me take up the passage. Then the lion said, but I don't know if he spoke, you will have to let me undress you. This is Eustace speaking. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat on my back and let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right to my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off." Goes on to say, well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off, just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt. And there it was lying on the grass, only ever much thicker and darker and more knobbly looking than the others had been. And there was I, smooth and soft as a peeled switch, and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me. I didn't like that much, for I was very tender underneath now, that I had no skin on, and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything, but only for a moment. After that, it became perfectly delicious, and I soon started swimming and splashing. I found that all the pain had gone from my arm, and then I saw why. I'd been turned into a boy again." The movie does not nearly do justice to that scene, among many that it doesn't nearly do justice to. This is a powerful scene where the lion jumps in and rips the scales off. Well, this is what the Spirit of God does when He cleanses you from your sin. If you've never known what it means to be cleansed, then you need to come to Jesus, who is greater than any lion. And it might and very likely will be painful because you will not be able to retain what you have. We all have things that we do to cover ourselves, to make ourselves look good, to keep ourselves from thinking, maybe I don't measure up, so we find ways to hide it. Jesus ripped all of that off, so you have nothing to cover. But His freedom is worth any pain you have to endure. The second element of the Lordship of Christ is that all creation belongs to him. All creation belongs to him. Book of Luke, chapter four, when Jesus is being tempted by Satan, verses six through eight. And the devil said unto him, all this power will I give thee and all the glory of them. Well, let me excuse me. I started reading too late. Verse four. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written thou shalt not live by bread alone, but by every word. of God. And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will give it. Verse 7 and 8 If thou wilt worship me, it shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. We know God the Father has always been ruler of the world. He created the world. Everything that happens is by His hand. It is under His governance. But He also gave to Adam, the first man, dominion over the earth. And Adam gave that dominion up. He gave it to the serpent. He gave it to Satan. The temptation to Jesus was a real temptation. Would Jesus try to take dominion by serving the Prince, the power of the air, just as Adam did? Would he try to get true life the false way, or would he take it through sacrifice? And we can say, praise God, that Jesus gained the world by sacrifice. Because he redeemed the world, he now exercises dominion. He, Jesus, exercises dominion over it, as Paul writes in Philippians chapter 2, verses 9 and 10. He said that he has given him a name above every name. and He has exalted Him, and that at the name of Jesus Christ every knee should bow, whether in heaven or on earth or under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. By the way, when it says in heaven and in earth and under the earth, that means there's no part of the created order that is excused. All are under His Lordship and His dominion. To be more specific though, if you have trusted in Him, He is your Lord. He is your King and your Master. You belong to Him and to Him alone. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 11 says, As such were some of you, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Then verses 18 through 20, Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that commiteth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." Because Jesus is your Lord, this means you cannot do what you want to do anymore. You don't get to decide whether or not you obey. You don't have the option of saying, I don't think I'm going to do it today. Or, I'm going to obey in these areas, because it's easy, but there's a few areas that I'm going to keep to myself. You either submit to Him in everything, or you are not submitting. Paul makes the same point in Romans chapter 6, verses 13 through 16. He says, neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. That means your body. where he says your members don't yield your body as instruments of unrighteousness, but yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or obedience unto righteousness? You are somebody's slave. You can say, no I'm not, I'm my own boss. That's the worst type of slavery in the world. You're a slave either to your sinful passions, and I know you may not act as bad as you want, but you're either a slave to your sinful passions or you're a slave to Christ. The scripture makes no in-between gray area. You are either submitting yourself to God to obey Him and defying sin, standing against it, or you are engaging in sin and maybe you're putting on a pretense of loving God. But either way, you're someone's slave. You belong to the Lord and Paul says that there is a battle and you have to yield yourselves unto Christ. Even though you desire to do things that are wrong, Even though you desire to say things that are wrong, you've got to stop. So, what does this look like? Well, it means you can't smart off to your parents because you belong to Christ and He says, honor them. Now, whether you smart off verbally or maybe you smart off by underhandedly disobeying, saying, well, they probably won't find out. Same thing. You can't look at porn on the internet anymore. Even if you say, well, it's just for a little bit. No. You're a slave to God or you're a slave to sin. You can't be both. So that means you have to stop what your body is telling you to do because you don't belong to you anymore. You belong to Christ and to Him alone. Whatever, if you yield yourself, and Paul makes this point, it's not me just saying it. If you yield yourself to sin, then to sin you will go. and you'll receive a judgment that comes with sin. But if you yield yourselves to God, to God you will go. It means you can't necessarily dress the way you want to anymore. It means you have to submit to God and to His standards, as He says, to dress beautifully and modestly. You can't hold someone's sin over their heads just ready to remind them at whatever is a convenient time for you, whether it was something they did to you yesterday, or two days ago, or two weeks ago, or two years ago, or twenty years ago. You can't just hold that ready to cut their feet out from under them if they ever challenge you. Because you belong to God. His standards are high. I realize that. But He's empowered you with something greater than you can even comprehend. That is the Holy Spirit. Because you belong to Jesus, you must obey Him. It is not a choice. If you think that being a Christian means just being baptized, or going to church, or taking communion, and that makes you a Christian, you are badly mistaken. Because if you do these things, apart from faith, apart from obedience, all you're doing is just laying up damnation for yourself in the future. You are called to glorify God in your body and spirit. which Paul says both belong to God. And if you participate in those activities that we did not read that Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 and 10, he makes a list of sins and he said the people that walk in these will not inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, you must submit to the right master. This is what it means when I say all creation belongs to him. It's real easy to say everything out there belongs to him. What gets hard is saying everything in here belongs to Him. Number three, an element of His Lordship is that He is glorious above all. He is glorious above all. In Psalm 97, one of any number of passages we could look at in the Psalms, verses 1 through 9, it says, The Lord reigneth. Let the earth rejoice. let the multitude of isles be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about him. Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. A fire goeth before him and burneth up his enemies round about. His lightnings enlightened the world. The earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declare his righteousness and all the people see his glory. Confounded be all they that serve graven images that boast themselves of idols. Worship Him, all ye gods. Zion heard and was glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgment, O Lord. For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth. Thou art exalted far above all gods." It's hard for us to understand glory. We have no concept in the U.S. of royalty or of nobility. If you'll allow me, let me try to describe this in a similar way that the psalmist does. For Jesus to come into your presence physically, it would begin with a fog coming down around you that would absolutely block anything else from your vision. You know how you feel in fog? It's really thick, so thick that you can't even see when you're driving, and you know that you're totally vulnerable. and you could easily be in a wreck and die right then. Then immediately the fog is burned off and a light brighter than the sun settles in front of you. You don't want to look at this light, but you cannot help it. It's the most wonderful, the most beautiful sight you've ever seen, but you feel like you are crushed under a weight. Your stomach is in your throat. You realize that you have not been breathing and you are afraid that you'd be disrespectful if you did. You can see nothing, no other person, no objects, and frankly, you don't even care if you ever did see another person or another object because your gaze, your entire focus of being is on the face in front of you. You feel like if you died right here, it would be fine. It wouldn't matter. Because you know that even if you live, you'll never be able to express what you've seen. You see the image of a face, like it's a far distance away, but you know it's right in front of you. And this face is shining. It is more beautiful than any you've ever seen. And it stirs a fullness of emotion in you that totally defies words. You long to embrace this face, but you know you dare not do that. You know that you must be about to die. No person can see what you're seeing and live. Your physical strength is gone, and so you do the only thing that your body is capable of doing, and that is that you fall on your face in front of this One. And He comes closer to you, and you can feel almost, even though you're not looking up, you can feel His majesty and His beauty changing your very being. And He says to you, belong to me." And when you hear that, those words fill every core of your heart and your body, and you know what He said is accurate and will always be true. If that stirred anything in you that is not the barest whiff of the glory of Jesus Christ, many of us think, would it not be wonderful to see Him in His fullness If you saw Him in His fullness right now, you would die. And I would also. It's greater than any human living can imagine. And we were made for this very glory. You were made not only to behold this glory, you were made to be a partaker in this glory. Not only did He free you from your sin, not only does He rule over everything, but He has made you for His pleasure, as He said in Revelation 4. He has made you to be a partaker of His divine nature. And so when we scoff at that, when we live so far below His majesty and His beauty and the calling that we have, we are displaying the highest form of disrespect possible. In Matthew 13, verse 44, Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that a man found and with joy he sold everything that he had so he could buy the field where this treasure was. Jesus is that treasure. And once you've seen Him, you are willing to put down anything and everything to follow Him and to embrace Him. I heard one minister recently say, it's like walking into a cave and you have several empty cartons in your backpack. You have a thermos, doesn't have any more water in it. and you turn on your flashlight and you see diamonds all over. Not just small diamonds, very large, beautiful diamonds. You're not going to wonder, should I get rid of these empty cartons in my backpack? Or should I hold on to them because they might be valuable for storing something in my house? That's not going to be in your mind. You're immediately going to pick up what is there. You're going to drop everything else, and this is what it is like to see Jesus. We don't understand real beauty or real glory because we've been playing with junk the world calls beautiful. It's not that serving Christ is a bore or a drudgery. If it is a bore and a drudgery, something's wrong. Because Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a treasure. He went on to say in the next few verses, it's like a pearl, greater than any pearl that had ever been found. When you see Jesus as who He is, your desires for other pleasures melt into nothing. If you are a part of the Bride of Christ, He will totally awe you. He will make you think of nothing else when you know Him. As we read earlier in Psalm 45 verses 2-4, Thou art fairer than the children of men. Grace is poured into thy lips. Therefore God hath blessed thee forever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O Most Mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty, and in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness, and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. This is a warrior bridegroom, one whom the bride is overjoyed by, as Lord to see him is to not be able to resist him. Lastly, we read that as Lord, we see that He is our leader in battle. He is our leader in battle. Still in Psalm 45 verse 5, Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall under thee. Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter. As your Lord Jesus has freed you, But it's not only that He is your new Master. As your new Master, He actively works on your behalf to rescue you and to deliver you from the enemies that would still come at you. And we do still have enemies. Even though we are freed from sin, we still have enemies. But He fights for us. Psalm 1834 says, He maketh my hands to war, so that a bowl of steel is broken in mine arms. Jesus is victorious over his enemies and he leads us in that same victory. So who are the enemies? Well, one enemy is sin. In Romans chapter 8 verse 13, we read that those who are led by the Spirit of God, this part is not a quote from Romans 8 verse 13, but he says, talking about those who are led by the Spirit of God, he said, mortify the deeds of the body. They put to death those sins that we naturally desire to commit. In Galatians 5 verse 17, says the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. So the Spirit of God is making war with our fleshly, with our carnal sinful desires. But in addition to sin being an enemy, another enemy is Satan himself, Satan for real. He exists and he desires to destroy us. But we read in 1 John 3 verse 8 that Jesus was manifest to destroy the works of the devil. We read in Revelation that Jesus has come and that Satan is bound. Again in 1 John he says, greater is he that is in me, greater is he that is in us, referring to God himself, than he that is in the world. You are not to fight on your own. You don't have to fight on your own. You may say, I can't do this. Good start. You can't do this. But the Spirit of God has empowered you to go to war with sin and to go to war with those forces who would come against you. Ephesians chapter 6, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age and spiritual weakness in high places. So you are doing battle with those enemies that Jesus is working in you and through you. But then, God's enemies are also those who are not submitted to Him. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 3 said that there are some who are children of God's wrath. God's wrath is upon them. They're not submitted to Him. We read through the Psalms. He's talking all the time in the Psalms about my enemies. He said in Psalm 45 verse 5 that thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies. No, we're not going to take guns or arrows or any other type of weapon and go against those who we think are God's enemies. That's not the way we fight. The way we fight is with spiritual weapons. We have a greater weapon than a shotgun, or a rifle, or a tank, or a rocket launcher. We have the gospel. You say, that's not very clever. Give someone the gospel who's about to shoot you. Well, you tell me. What has, or who, has been victorious over more enemies than those that have better weapons. God. He's overcome many more of His enemies than we would, regardless of what weapons we have. He's given us the sword, particularly of the Spirit. That is our offensive weapon. We are soldiers in this war, and this war is not easy. The fight is tough, and the temptations will be difficult. That's a guarantee. He has given us the weapon of the Gospel, His Word, to engage the enemy. But you say, I don't know how to use it. Learn. Memorize the Word. Meditate on the Word. Study the Word. Surround yourself with the Word of God and you will be able to fight in ways that you did not know you could. When your faith is challenged, though, don't take it as a sign that you're losing. Just because you're walking and you're having a difficult time and you're struggling with something, don't think, well, this must mean that I'm not a believer or that I'm struggling. No. It means you're not dead. Spiritually. If you think that the Christian life means going through and not having troubles, not having struggles or difficulties, you're wrong. It's during the time that you are struggling the most is when you are to be fighting the hardest. It means that the enemies find you worth attacking. So get to work. When you don't think you have the strength to go any further, remember that Jesus was crucified for you and has made you a partaker of new life. So what do we do with this? We submit to it. We don't try to hide any area from Him. He is the Lord over all. And that means if you try to run or hide, He will find you. Jonah tried that. And he went as low as one could go in the belly of a fish, in the heart of the water. God will find you. So delight in Him. as your glorious king, obey him and trust him. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have made our Lord Jesus, both Lord and Christ, that we are always cared for and that you never leave us or forsake us. And I pray that you would work in us godliness, righteousness, holiness, peace, love, joy, long-suffering, and all the other fruits of the Spirit. And may we submit to Jesus as our Lord. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.