[0:00] But Judges chapter 11, we're going to pick up in verse 12. If you remember, we have transitioned into the 11th chapter this past Wednesday.
[0:11] We kind of put ourselves in the right context here, right? Judges chapter 10 kind of ends with the sons of Ammon coming in to Gleed, the regions of Gleed, and really battling against the descendants of Israel.
[0:25] And that 10th chapter, remember that 10th chapter, that closing kind of line in the 10th chapter, it's really kind of captivated me. Who is the man that would go before us?
[0:35] Who's the one that would begin to fight against the sons of Ammon? And they couldn't find anybody. The leaders of Gleed couldn't find anybody that would go and fight who would be the man, who would be the one who would stand up.
[0:47] But then we're introducing the 11th chapter, here's Jephthah. Jephthah is a descendant of Gleed. His mother is a prostitute. By being a descendant of Gleed means we don't even know the name of his dad, right?
[0:57] He's just from that region. He's been rejected by his brothers because he's a half-brother. He's not really even a full brother. So they cast him out. He goes and lives in the land of Tob. And he's a valiant warrior, though.
[1:09] He's got a lot that goes against him. He's got a lot for him. So rather than waiting upon the Lord, the leaders of Gleed, they approach Jephthah. They say, hey, you're going to be that man, or will you be the man?
[1:20] Come back and be the leader. And they invite him to come back. And that's kind of where we're at, right? So they made a deal. They cut a deal with Jephthah, the one that they wanted nothing to do with. Now when they need him, they want everything to do with.
[1:33] And he's not just going to be their military leader. He's going to be their regional leader. One thing we need to understand around the book of Judges is that there are regional judges, right?
[1:47] It's not necessarily ruling over all of the people of Israel. We get that when Saul shows up. So we have regional. Go back to the 10th chapter, and you'll see that when the nation of Israel had sinned, there were two people that they brought against them, the Ammonites and the Philistines.
[2:03] Jephthah deals with Ammonites and sons of Ammon. Samson will deal with the Philistines, right? So there's kind of our introduction to both. There's some little minor judges that we mention in there.
[2:16] So that gets us here to the 11th chapter, and we're in the 12th verse. They've just made the deal with him. If you come back and you fight, you will be our head. You will be our leader. So let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for just allowing us to gather together tonight.
[2:31] Lord, we thank you for being a God who knows, who knows every circumstance, every concern, every weight that rests upon us.
[2:43] Lord, you give us an opportunity of coming and looking at the word of God, asking that you would speak to our hearts and minds. And God, we ask that you would take these Old Testament passages and you would show us who you are.
[2:56] You would reveal to us who we are. Lord, that you would shape and transform our lives accordingly. Lord, help us not to ask you to be conformed to us, but rather would we be conformed to you.
[3:09] God, we thank you for the word of God. We thank you for an opportunity of study. And Lord, we pray that you will lead us tonight as we look at this passage of Scripture and speak to us.
[3:21] We ask it all in Christ's name. Amen. Judges chapter 11, starting in verse 12, and I'll read down to verse 28. Now, Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the sons of Ammon, saying, What is between you and me that you have come to fight, or you have come to me to fight against my land?
[3:42] The king of the sons of Ammon sent to the messengers of Jephthah, because Israel took away my land when they came up from Egypt, from the Arnon, as far as the Jabbok and the Jordan. Therefore, return them peaceably now.
[3:54] Now, you need to understand that the Arnon, the Jabbok, and the Jordan are all rivers, right? Geographical notations of rivers of that Transjordan, the eastern side of the Jordan River. He says, But now return them peaceably.
[4:07] Verse 14, But Jephthah sent messengers again to the king of the sons of Ammon and said to them, Thus says Jephthah, Israel did not take away the land of Moab, nor the land of the sons of Ammon. For when they came up from Egypt, and Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh, then Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, Please let us pass through your land, but the king of Edom would not listen.
[4:29] And they also sent to the king of Moab, but he would not consent, so Israel remained at Kadesh. Then they went through the wilderness and around the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came to the east side of the land of Moab, and they camped beyond the Arnon.
[4:42] But they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the border of Moab. And Israel sent messengers to Sihon, king of the Amorites and the king of Heshbon.
[4:53] And Israel said to him, Please let us pass through your land to our place. But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory, so Sihon gathered all his people and camped in Jahaz and fought against Israel or fought with Israel.
[5:07] The Lord, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they defeated them. So Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country. So they possessed all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok, and from the wilderness as far as the Jordan.
[5:22] Since now the Lord, the God of Israel, drove out the Amorites from before his people Israel, are you then to possess it? Do you not possess what Chemosh, your God, gives you to possess?
[5:32] So whatever the Lord our God has driven out before us, we will possess it. Now are you any better than Balaat, the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever strive with Israel, or did he ever fight against them?
[5:46] While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages and in the Aurora and its villages, and all the cities that are in the banks of the Arnon 300 years, why did you not recover them within that time?
[5:57] I therefore have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me. May the Lord, the judge, judge today between the sons of Israel and the sons of Amon.
[6:09] But the king of the sons of Amon disregarded the message which Jephthah sent him. And we'll stop right there. Now we know, we can go a little further into this, and we know kind of the account that waits before us.
[6:22] Jephthah makes a rash vow. He will end up fulfilling that vow. We'll get into the particulars of that as the Lord allows us to tarry. We also know that getting into the 12th chapter, there begins to be a civil war in which 42,000 men of Ephraim are slain because of the civil war with the descendants of Gilead.
[6:42] Now Gilead would be kind of the half-tribe of that region of Manasseh that is over there that is on the other side, the eastern side of the Jordan.
[6:55] So that's why you end up with a civil war between Ephraim and Manasseh, kind of this jealousy because they're the half-tribe of Manasseh. Gilead is not necessarily a family name. It's a regional name.
[7:05] But if we look at the distribution of the land, we understand it is the half-tribe of Manasseh which inhabits that land. We're introduced to a lot of geography here. We're introduced to a lot of things that kind of, just to be honest with you, we kind of scratch our heads and have to do a little bit of thinking with because you have the sons of Ammon, you have the Amorites, you have all of the things that are going on and you have this discussion.
[7:26] But we need just to kind of pause and hopefully see the truth of the scripture and then see the application that it has to our life because we know that the people of Israel have sinned and rebelled, as is the case in the book of Judges, this downward spiral.
[7:41] They have cried out to God at the end of the 10th chapter. They've asked for deliverance and God says, I'm not going to deliver you. Why don't you cry out to those gods you've been worshiping and see if they would deliver you? So they cast aside their idols.
[7:53] They commit themselves to the Lord. They, what we would say, rededicate their lives. They renew their faith. And God couldn't stand it any longer. It says he could bear the groaning and the misery of Israel no longer.
[8:05] So he brought out the sons of Ammon because often for God to deliver us from the enemy, he brings us to confront the enemy. So he called the sons of Ammon into the land of Israel so that not necessarily they could be avoided because they can confront it because the best way to overcome that which ensnares us is not to avoid it, though there are times to avoid it, but it is to confront it.
[8:27] So he brings them and he appoints a time and a place and they're there and they're looking for someone who will come and lead them. Now we know that it is the leaders of Gilead who seek out Jephthah.
[8:37] It seems to be that he alone is one of the judges that it does not say that the Lord God raised him up. But hey, this surprises us. When you turn to Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11, 32 recounts Jephthah as being one of the heroes of the faith.
[8:55] Now when you know what transpires after this, that even confounds us even more. The author of Hebrews says, time fails him to speak of the victories of Jephthah and Samson and Saul, or not Saul, David and Samuel.
[9:16] He just mentions his name as being those who subdued the enemies through faith, turned back the battles by faith. So we see at least according to scripture, there is the faith of Jephthah.
[9:33] So before we get into his failings and we will find them, which by the way, let's be honest, every individual we meet in scripture apart from Christ has failings.
[9:47] There are shortcomings. And one thing the book of Judges shows us is that we do not need deliverance by man, no matter how good he may be. We need deliverance by a perfect redeemer, and there is only one that that can be.
[10:02] But I want you to see this evening from this portion of scripture, the faith to fight the battle. The faith to fight the battle. What it takes to have the faith to fight the battle.
[10:12] Jephthah is a tested, tried, and proven warrior. It tells us at the beginning of the 11th chapter that he was a valiant warrior, that while living in the land of Tob, he would go out.
[10:26] Now, we know there are worthless fellows around him, so he doesn't have the greatest of armies. There are worthless fellows around him who just have this bloodthirst for battle. And since he is one that would go out and do raid parties and go fight in these regions, he seems to be the right man for the job.
[10:44] The leaders of Gilead go and get him, thinking they've got this tested and tried warrior who will come and fight the battle. And rather than being one who would rush to the battle, Jephthah pauses and tries to maintain and attain peace without a battle.
[11:01] Now, he's not fearful or dreadful of the sons of Ammon. He is not scared to be the man who will go begin the fight, but he also realizes that the answer is not always to fight, right?
[11:12] He tries what we would call a diplomatic approach first. He reaches out to them and he asks them a question. Why are you coming into our land? Because remember, it was the sons of Ammon who were making radial advances into the land of Israel.
[11:27] It was not Israel seeking to expand. This is something you need to understand now. It's that the nation of Israel was having a hard time inhabiting their own land. They weren't going out seeking more lands.
[11:38] Now, we know that when Saul comes, they begin to fight militaristic battles. When David comes, the kingdom expands even more. If you open up the back of your Bible, if you have very detailed maps, you can see the kingdom according to David.
[11:52] And then you see a little bit greater color of the kingdom according to Solomon, how the battle, the kingdom continues to grow and expand because of the militaristic campaigns. You keep all that stuff in mind because Solomon did some things he shouldn't have done in that he began to raise up chariots and horses and getting his horses from Egypt.
[12:13] And I know he was wise, but he also did some very unwise things, right? He did some things he shouldn't have done. God had told him not to have horses. God had told him not to trust in chariots. God had told him not to do that, yet he does it.
[12:26] And then that kingdom expands based upon their own strength. And then right after his death, the kingdom begins to crumble. Surprise, surprise. But we're not at that time of kingdom expansion yet in the book of Judges.
[12:39] We're at that time of trying to inhabit the land that God had given them. And they have compromised and failed. They have not fully driven out their enemies. And yet there's still this battle. So Jephthah comes in, but he has the faith to fight the battle.
[12:52] And we want to see what is the foundation of that faith. Because while faith is the assurance of things not seen, it is the assurance of things unseen.
[13:04] Faith is not blind. It stands on something, right? It's confident. It has an assurance about it. It is resting and standing on something.
[13:17] So we want to see what, because he will win. We'll go a couple of chapters, I mean a couple of verses into this, and he wins. He captures 20 cities. He's the undefeated one, if you will.
[13:30] But we want to see what is the faith that allowed him to move forward in that battle with the application of how do we stand in a faith to fight our battles.
[13:42] The first thing we see is it rests upon a clear conscience. It rests upon a clear conscience. Because Jephthah writes to the king of Ammon. We don't know who he is.
[13:54] We're never given his name. And he writes to the king of Ammon and he says, what have I done that you've come to fight against me? Why is it that you're coming? Now, Jephthah begins to, he doesn't speak of coming against Galid.
[14:08] He doesn't speak of coming against these people. He says, why are you coming against me? He begins to identify with those whom he has now called to lead. So he writes to the king of Ammon and he says, why are you coming against me?
[14:21] And the king of Ammon has this short reply. Now, you need to know your Bible history. If you're going to accurately interpret this and it takes a lot of digging and finding and hopefully we'll kind of work it out a little bit.
[14:31] Because the king of Ammon says, I've come to fight against you because you took my land. You came and you took my land and you took it when you came out of Egypt. Now, he is speaking in particular to the eastern side of the Jordan River.
[14:46] Remember that? The eastern side of the Jordan River, the Transjordan area. Not necessarily everything between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Remember, this is why he's speaking of Gilead.
[14:57] That's that upper region you have. If you have the land of Israel over here and the Jordan River running down the middle. So you have the Sea of Galilee or the Sea of Chinaroth in the Old Testament. And the Dead Sea at the bottom. You see it, right?
[15:07] You've got it pictured. And you have the half tribe of Manasseh. And you have, this is the Gilead region up here. So in that northern region. And then if you go a little bit further west.
[15:18] Like if you're going towards what would be referred to as Babylon. So if you're going further east. I said west. If you're going further east and you see the sons of Ammon. And he says, the reason I'm coming into you is because you took my land.
[15:30] Now, right there, we have to pump the brakes. And the reason we have to pump the brakes is because we need to know who the sons of Ammon are. Who are the sons of Ammon? Who are the Ammonites? Anybody remember?
[15:40] Remember, the Ammonites are directly related to the Moabites. The Ammonites and the Moabites descend from the same individual.
[15:51] The Ammonites and the Moabites descend from Lot. They're the descendants of Lot. Remember Abraham and his nephew Lot. Deuteronomy chapter 2 tells us.
[16:05] God says, you will not take the land of the Moabites or the Ammonites. God commanded the nation of Israel. When you go to the promised land, leave Moab alone and leave Ammon alone.
[16:19] Because I have given their land to the descendants of Lot. Remember, Lot was blessed because of his association with Abraham. Remember that? It's amazing. When you hang around the people of God, blessings fall upon you.
[16:32] It just happens. You see it all throughout scripture. People are blessed because of their assimilation with the people of God. So, God says, don't bother the land of Moab.
[16:43] And don't bother the land of Ammon. But the accusation is, you took our land. Now we have to reconcile this thing.
[16:55] Did the nation of Israel sin in the past? Because if there's sin in the past, there's no confidence to face the battle. Because if their sin got them into the problem, then only their confession and repentance will get them out of the problem.
[17:11] And if they have done wrong, not in sinning against Ammon, but in sinning against the clear command of God. Which we see them doing over and over and over again. But we're looking at this confidence, this faith that fights the battle as a clear conscience.
[17:23] So, thankfully, Jephthah goes back and he recounts for us the history. He says, when we came out, we came to Kadesh. Now that's Kadesh Barnea. And he says, we're there and we want to go through the land.
[17:34] Remember, God told them to go through. And he says, so we came to the descendants of Moab and we asked, can we pass through your land? They said, no. And remember when we were looking at the book of Deuteronomy and looking at all their wonderings in the wilderness there.
[17:45] Moab said, you can't go through. So rather than argue with them, rather than fighting, they started going south towards the Salt Sea. And they went all the way down into the Negev region, that kind of wasteland region. And took the long way around and they came to the eastern side and said, now we're over here on this eastern side.
[17:59] It's backwards to you, but it's right on my way. So we come over here and we camped. And they're in the plains of Moab there. They're not trying to take anybody's land. Remember that? This is where Balaam and Balak get together and all these supposed to be curses.
[18:13] But they become praises and they become promises. And he blesses them and said, he curses them. And then they have this, this. But they didn't take any of their land. They were just camped out there. And they're waiting. And they're waiting.
[18:23] And they're waiting. And they're not taking anything because God had said, this is not your land. You're not going to take it. So then Jephthah says, so we want to go take possession of our land.
[18:34] So we ask the king, Sihon. Now, Sihon is not king of the Ammonites. He is the king of the Ammonites. Remember that, right?
[18:45] So he says, so we ask the king, Sihon, of the Ammonites. Can we pass through? What did they ask? Can we pass through? And the king, Sihon, didn't trust him.
[18:57] So Sihon decided he wanted to fight him. Now, they weren't going to take his land, but he decided to fight him. And when he fought him, God defeated him. So the clear conscience is this. The land we live in, we never took from you.
[19:13] Because we never sought it. As a matter of fact, when we came to it, Ammon wasn't possessing it. The Ammonites were. Remember, we did not fail to obey God.
[19:28] The land of Moab, we didn't touch. They defeated Balak and Balaam, but didn't take their land. After their failings with the women of the Moab, in the plain of Moab, remember that?
[19:43] Where a great multitude of them fell that day because of their sin. They didn't take their land. We didn't touch the land of Ammon, which is right there, a little bit north of the land of Moab. Rather, God gave us the land of the Amorites.
[19:59] So the first foundation of his faith was the clear conscience that they had not sinned against what God had told them. God said, leave the land of Moab and the land of Ammon alone.
[20:13] And they did. And understanding that they had been faithful to the commands of God, emboldened him to move forward to fight the battles that were there.
[20:25] The accusation was, you took our land. The command of God was, do not take their land. And when he goes back and he recounts the history, he says, we didn't take your land.
[20:36] The land we possessed when we got here belonged to the Amorites. We never took land from Ammon. Now, there was a time in history where the sons of Ammon had possessed the land prior to the Amorites.
[20:53] But they weren't there when the nation of Israel got there. So we understand this. There is a clear conscience. Because, my friend, listen to me. A clear conscience does wonders for us in giving us faith to fight the battles.
[21:09] A clear conscience of our faithfulness to what God has commanded us does wonders to embolden us to fight the battles of what holds us back. Most often, people will not fight the battle of faith simply because their conscience is not clear.
[21:27] And we see this. Jephthah could say, we did not take your land. And he does so. He writes back to the king of Ammon and says, we didn't take your land.
[21:37] And he recounts the history, which leads us to the second thing. A surrendered concern. There was a clear conscience. Here's a surrendered concern. And it was surrendered to the point that they weren't seeking additional land.
[21:51] We need to understand the history again. They did not necessarily want the land of Og and Sihon. Now, once God defeated them, they said, hey, this is a pretty good land.
[22:03] Which is why the half-tribe of Manasseh decided to stay over there. They had a lot of livestock in the region of Galid. Even the Decapolis, when Jesus, in the time of Christ, the Decapolis was in that region of Galid.
[22:15] That's when he crosses the Sea of Galilee and he goes into Decapolis, a very fertile region. There's a lot of people from that region later on. Decapolis means ten cities. It's just a very, very fertile region over there.
[22:26] And sure, they took it. But listen to this. This is a surrendered concern because he makes this comment. He says, when Sihon waged war against us, the Lord, the God of Israel, defeated him.
[22:36] And then he makes this statement. He says, since now the Lord, the God of Israel, acknowledges that the battle was not fought on their efforts.
[22:49] Since now, in verse 23, the Lord, the God of Israel, drove out the Amorites from before his people Israel. Are you then to possess the land? Since Sihon fought against us, God saw fit to defeat him in battle.
[23:04] It is the Lord our God who defeated him in battle. And the Lord our God therefore delivered all that he owned over to us. We will possess all that God has given us.
[23:17] Here's a surrendered concern. We will possess all that the Lord our God has given us. We're not seeking more than that.
[23:28] And we're not going to be content with less than that. It is as the psalmist cries out, Lord, give me neither riches nor poverty. Lest in my riches I forget you.
[23:40] Or in my poverty I blaspheme you. Give me what I need. That's a surrendered concern. God, I will possess what you give me.
[23:52] I will not seek more than that. And I will not be content with less than that. And what Jephthah declares here is that the people of Israel are of such surrendered concern that they will possess whatever the Lord their God gives them.
[24:12] But they will not allow anyone else to possess whatever the Lord their God gives them. By faith he has concerned himself with if God gives it, we possess it.
[24:26] And he had surrendered to that point. And we need to understand this. He does not declare here, we went into the land of Sihon and we went and picked a battle with Sihon. We went and picked a battle with Og.
[24:37] He does not declare that. He says they opposed us. God defeated them and he gave us the land. Again, that's a lot different. Again, we're not speaking. You say, well, pastor, when we get into the land of Canaan, there is this military campaign.
[24:51] And there is this expansion. No, there is this declaration that these people were to be accounted as accursed. And since they were accursed, God declared that the nation of Israel would be his instruments of judgment for their sin.
[25:03] And it's not a military expansion campaign. It is a declaration that the sins of the land of Canaan had come before God. And it was a day of reckoning. Big difference there, right? God had declared that his people, the land of Israel, would be his tool for judgment for their sins.
[25:18] They were not simply expanding. I began to watch a series last night. I don't know how much longer I will continue on. And it's about the town of Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem. Carrie and I began to watch it. And it's all about how Jerusalem is so divided.
[25:30] And even today, I mean, you know, it is very, very divided. And it really centers around this reality that Jerusalem has just been this stronghold that people have been fighting over military campaigns. And while that is true, and you can look at it historically like that, you need to also understand that God had appointed that for the sin.
[25:45] And so if you separate their campaigns from the sin that led to the judgment, then you're missing the point. Right? The nation of Israel didn't just come in to take some land. The nation of Israel came in to be the instruments of judgment of God for the inhabitants' sins.
[26:03] And that's important. And the concern is surrendered here because they're saying we're not looking for more than what God has gave us. We're also not going to be content with less than that.
[26:16] This is where God's people need to stand today is a surrendered concern. I will not seek more than what the Lord our God has given us. But I will not be content with less.
[26:26] Unfortunately, I think many believers today are content with less than what God has given us, just to be honest. We are content with less when God has declared a victory over so much more.
[26:40] And we need to be to this point of surrendered concern. The third thing we see, and it's the final thing, it gives faith to fight the battles. There's a clear conscience of we know we've walked faithfully in the past.
[26:52] There's this surrendered concern that if God has given it to us, we're going to inhabit it. But there's, third, a settled conviction. A settled conviction. And it is directly connected to the concern.
[27:04] And it is this conviction that Jephthah has. We possess this land because the Lord our God has given us this land. Not because we've won it. Not because we fought for it.
[27:15] But we possess it because he gave it to us. And we see this conviction when he says to the king of Ammon, Do you not possess what Chemosh, your God, has given you?
[27:25] Now, some see this as saying that Jephthah's theology was completely messed up because he was here declaring a multitude of gods. While we can follow that line of thought, sure we can, but he's also speaking very politically in that the regions of that land, every tribe believed, not tribe, every people group, being the sons of Ammon, the Amorites, the Moabites, declared that they would possess all that their God, lowercase g, gave them.
[27:55] And it's really kind of a mockery in that the reason you don't have this land is because your God is not the God of Israel. Now, we're also confronted with this reality that most times, Chemosh is not the God of Ammon.
[28:09] He is the God of the Amorites. Chemosh, their God is of a different name, but we need to understand that there's this kind of this intertwining of worship and this mingling of a multitude of gods, much like we see in Hinduism today.
[28:25] Hinduism has no problem whatsoever with other gods. They just want to assimilate them into their worship, so they bring them in, right? So you kind of have this meshing, and Chemosh is seen as the God of this region or this territory when Sihon and Og fight the battle.
[28:41] Remember that song of mockery that Chemosh couldn't deliver the land from the land of Israel, which is found in the book of Numbers. But there is this conviction that the God you claim to serve is not strong enough to give you this land, and therefore we're not going to give it back.
[28:56] And he moves forward with this settled conviction that God had won the battle, God had given them the land, therefore they would inhabit the land.
[29:07] And then he says, So when you come against me, essentially, the sons of Ammon are not here to fight against the people of Gilead. Since God gave it to us, their battle is actually with the Lord our God.
[29:24] It's this settled conviction, because he says, Then may the Lord God, the Judge, capital J, judge between you and I.
[29:36] May the judge of all be the judge between us, because you're making this bold declaration against us, you're here to wage a battle towards us, and may the judge rightly settle the case, because when you fight against us, you're not really fighting me, you're fighting the God who gave it to us.
[30:02] This is the faith that fights the battle, because listen, friends, where's the application to us? And we've said it over and over again. If our salvation is dependent upon us, if we have earned our salvation, if we have attained our salvation, if salvation is a result of our works, if it is man attained, then what does it say?
[30:25] Then it is man maintained. Right? If I am saved because of something I did, then when the battle that Satan wages against me begins, it is up to me to maintain my position.
[30:41] If I am saved because of what I have done, or my goodness, or my works, or my efforts, then when I go to battle against the enemy of my soul, then it is up to me to maintain it, and he is fighting me.
[30:56] But when salvation is a direct result of his work, if I am saved and declared righteous because of what he has done, then when the enemy wages war against me, he is not fighting against something I've done.
[31:11] He's fighting against something the Lord has done for me. And his battle is not with me. His battle is actually against the Lord. And the reality is, is that by faith, I know that my Lord is victorious.
[31:25] And that by faith, I know that greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. And by faith, I know that I can fight this battle that in the flesh, I will undoubtedly lose. But by faith, I know that I will win because he's not fighting against me.
[31:40] He's fighting against the one who's given it to me. And when he chooses to fight the battle, and when he comes to attack me, when he comes into territory that the Lord, my God, has given me, then he's really declaring war against my God, not against me.
[31:59] And that gives me the faith to fight the battle because it's not against me anyway. I didn't look for it. I didn't attain it. I didn't go out.
[32:12] Listen, the Bible tells me that while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me. When I wasn't looking for a Redeemer, the Redeemer was looking for me. That before I was born, before the foundations of the world were laid, Christ died for me.
[32:31] See, God declared me righteous even before I had lived unrighteously. That's amazing to me. I don't understand that. That in Christ, the work of salvation was finished.
[32:43] And therefore, when the battle wages and the enemy tries to come into my land and declare war on me, he's really not fighting me.
[32:54] He's fighting the one who's already done it for me. And last time I checked, he's a defeated foe. That at the cross of Calvary, Jesus took the keys away from him.
[33:08] And he went in there and he unlocked the greatest tool that Satan ever had and that was the grave. And he came out more than victorious. See, there is a faith to fight the battle because there's a settled conviction.
[33:21] I didn't win it to begin with, so I can't lose it. Because as Paul says in Romans chapter 8, there's nothing that can take me out of the hand of God.
[33:33] No, nothing. Neither death, nor life, nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities. Nothing. Because he's already won the victory.
[33:44] And that settled conviction enables us to live with faith to fight the battles on a daily basis. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Lord God, for the testimony of the Old Testament.
[33:58] Lord, we thank you that your truthfulness in their failings, but Lord, we thank you for the faith that can have application in our life. Lord, may we be men and women of faith to fight the battles, realizing that each and every day, Lord, it is a day of struggle.
[34:17] Lord, it's a day of victory in Christ. May we stand in that victory, and may it be for your glory and yours alone. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.
[34:28] Well, now we can take...