STAND UP FOR JESUS
Colin J Brien
Romans 10: 8, 9
Romans 8: 31-39
Ephesians 6: 10-18
We often use the scripture, “now is the well-accepted time” (2 Cor 6: 2), and that is true, because yesterday is already past and tomorrow has not come. It is a good time for the glad tidings to be preached and to be accepted. From the beginning of Scripture, we read of an opposition to God, Satan, an angel who lies and is against God entirely; and who lied to mankind, and brought in sin in the flesh. There is no way that God, if He is true, and is a God of love, and a God of righteousness, can ever allow the presence of evil to be near Him. He guards the way to life, the tree of life, so vehemently, with the flame of the flashing sword (Gen 3: 24), indicating that there is no way that any form of evil will be allowed in His presence; none. That is the reality of it. Although thousands of years have passed already, it is very clear that nothing has changed regarding God’s position in relation to sin. We have a foe, an enemy, who is against not only us, but especially against God; and who is determined to ruin everything that God has done and accomplished. He is determined. You might say that is a negative way to start the glad tidings, but it magnifies the greatness of God and His plan of salvation.
Almost every form of entertainment is about good and evil and they are battle against one another. I think the children probably know this because most of their stories are about good and evil. In the glad tidings, there is a solution because evil has already been conquered by good - or by righteousness. That is because God came in the form of a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He came in in the form of a babe. Every babe that has been born in this locality has reminded all of us of the preciousness of how the Lord Jesus Christ came in, a “holy thing”, Luke 1: 35. He grew up and fulfilled the will of God perfectly. He fulfilled the law, He fulfilled the love of God, and He fulfilled everything that the Father stands for, and thus has revealed the heart of God, which is love. God is love. He is absolutely different from the angel of hate and lying who is determined to deceive every single man on earth about the righteousness of God.
The Lord Jesus defied all that Satan attempted. There was no way that any taint of sin could fall upon the Man of righteousness, the One who stood here in flesh. The reality of it is that He walked here in perfection. It is hard to imagine, almost hard to comprehend, the One who should have been King – indeed, once they tried to make Him king (John 6: 15); yet the enemy came in, and the heart of man was revealed. They put the Lord Jesus up on that cross; they nailed His hands and His feet to that cross, and one stabbed that spear into His side, and the blood and the water came forth. He had said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”, Luke 23: 46. There were three hours of darkness when He bore God’s wrath. We cannot fathom what those three hours of darkness really were for the Lord Jesus. He took upon Himself upon the cross everything that stood between man and God so that we might be delivered.
When we think about our own pathway, we have a sense of the grace that we have been shown in the glad tidings. What a thrill that is! What does God require from us? That we might realise the sinfulness of our nature, and that we might respond to His call of love and His gift of salvation, which is available today, and perhaps only today. If we are here tomorrow, it might be available tomorrow, but we do not know that; today is the well accepted time for the glad tidings. Have you come before God in repentance for your sins? This is an important part of the gospel, because if I do not realise that I am a sinner before God then I cannot make any progress in my soul. I cannot come into His presence. I can have nothing to do with the God of righteousness because He is perfect, He is righteous. How attractive this is to the believer!
The scripture here in Romans 10 is so simple, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”. It is not pretending, not lying, but confessing; speaking it out that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is my Lord, Jesus is my Saviour! Have you put your faith and trust in Jesus, because He took care of everything for you. This is the wonder of the glad tidings; have you responded to that. You might say, ‘Yes, I have done that; I have confessed Jesus as Lord; yes, He is my Saviour. I love the Lord Jesus’. That is wonderful! The glad tidings has so much to offer. If you have confessed and you have believed in your heart that Jesus is Lord, then you are saved! Have you ever told somebody that you are saved? ‘Satan cannot touch me; he has no claim on me because Jesus is my Lord’. What a matter to confess Jesus as Lord. He is my Lord, He is my Saviour, and I rejoice in it each day I am alive because of the wonderful work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Ephesians 6 it says, “For the rest, brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the might of his strength. Put on the panoply of God”. I read this passage because there is one thing that I think is very striking. Satan desires to have the earth and all in it for himself; he desires to be god over us. What an enemy, to think that he would oppose God; he is the deceitful angel. Everything he does, everything he has told man, was a deception. In this passage it says “For the rest, brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the might of his strength. Put on the panoply of God”. Christ is risen; that is the wonder of the glad tidings; He is risen and ascended. He is not here on this earth, but He desires that you should stand here for Him. Are you standing here for the Lord? He desires that you will stand here, and that you would stake a claim for Him and His glory, because this earth is going to be all His, and there is no doubt about that. When He appears, we will not be here waiting for His appearing; we will be with Him; and He will come and He will take that claim. Does that thrill your heart? But does it magnify the awfulness of sin, and the awfulness of Satan when you think about this passage? We are to stand for Christ. What a matter that is to stand for Jesus, having on the panoply of God.
Think about people in Scripture who have stood for Jesus. Peter stood up and preached the glad tidings; he made a claim for Christ here. Think about Stephen; his face shone like an angel in the light of the glad tidings. He stood for Christ that there might be a testimony here, not in his own power. This is not my panoply; this is not my shield, not my sword, not my shoes. This is the panoply of God. He desires that we should put it on, and that we should stand for Jesus here, until His coming for us. Then we will be gone, and very quickly Satan will try to take over as much as possible, and then Christ will come with us and He will take His claim on the earth and He will be King and His enemies will be as the footstool of His feet, Acts 2: 35. That is guaranteed. You might say that was guaranteed with the blood of Christ. There is no other outcome except for that; but what does that mean to you? Have you said, ‘Well, I am saved, that is good enough for me I have a lot to do, I have a job to go to, I have to be occupied with these things and I need to get this and that done’. What about Christ’s claim here? What does it mean to you? Do you think it is important to Him? Yes, it is. His heart of love demonstrated perfectly everything that needed to be done. He fulfilled the will of the Father and He took all upon Himself that we might have an understanding and appreciation of the grace and the love of God.
Why should we have to put on the panoply of God? We are running towards Christ, “the leader and completer of faith” (Heb 12: 2), but who is seeking to stop us? That enemy, Satan, is determined to try to stop us in every moment on that pathway. And if we stand with that panoply of God we will withstand all attack. You think about the wonder of it, a girdle of truth! Satan is a liar. How do we know he is lying? We read the word of God and realise this is truth; God is love, and Satan is the enemy of God, the angel of deception. That is how we know truth, through the word of God and the power of Christ, by the Spirit. The Lord is “the way, and the truth, and the life”, John 14: 6. How wonderful! And He brings glad tidings of peace. We do not need to stand in fear. We do not need to stand wondering where the enemy is. If you look through all the history of wars, the best generals looked at the enemy and tried to figure out what the enemy was going to do. You cannot see Satan; you do not even know what he looks like! How are we going to be able to defend ourselves? We have the panoply of God. We have that “shield of faith”. What does that mean? I put my faith and trust in things I cannot see. I cannot see the Lord Jesus right now, but I know that He loves me and that His love is in the heart. There is no piece of armour that has the word love on it. Love is in the heart, because the heart of God is love and God is love. That love is there and that is what we use on one another, His love. We do not use the armour for fighting one another. The armour is against all of these wicked things, the principalities and the authorities and spiritual powers of wickedness. I used to read this scripture and it made me a little bit afraid, a bit intimidated. We cannot see these things. How do we know they are there? What are we going to do? How do we know if they crop up? That is why we have that “shield of faith”, to deflect the darts of the wicked one, the “inflamed darts of the wicked one”. He desires to maim and to wound the people of God to make sure that they do not worship God or stand here and keep the claim for Christ when He returns. Satan is against that.
Have you considered that God has provided everything that we need? The two-edged sword, the “sword of the Spirit” which is the word of God. We need that; it is two-edged? Do you have the Spirit? We need the Spirit and the word of God for ourselves and to defend. How important that sword is, to make sure that we know the word of God. When was the last time you read the word of God? Maybe you read it every day, many times a day, or maybe it has been a little while. Maybe you just read with your family when they read the word of God at the dinner table. Maybe you have not taken it up and made it your own. I have heard it said that you ought to read the scriptures as if they were written for you, personally, with your name there. Then you pray about it, you have faith, and you depend upon the Spirit for guidance and everything can be opened up suddenly to you. The Holy Spirit is the power by which we can stand here for Christ.
It is remarkable that we might read a certain scripture over and over and over, and then it might come up in a reading, and it will be opened up in a completely new way. What piece of literature is like that? And the Scriptures are not just a piece of literature; they are the word of God. They contain nearly every form of literature that is possible, and the word is living and it is operative; and it is to become living in us by the Spirit. Are you going to stand against the enemy for Christ and His rights here and for the glory of God, that God might have His way in the end? To think that we can do this together in love and in the power of the Spirit! You are not alone; there are others. Someone was remarking about one of the Old Testament prophets, he thought he was all by himself, all alone, 1 Kings 19: 10-18. Sometimes when we go through difficulty we might feel like we are all by ourselves but “The Lord is near” (Phil 4: 5), and the brethren are near. We need one another, and we use love on one another; we are to love one another. We can stand against the enemy and all that has been provided, but you have to take it on. I wish I could speak a bit more intelligently, but I do not know that I can really grasp how wonderful it is to just put on the panoply of God. Have you done that, have you read this passage and said, ‘Yes, I have faith in that, which means I have a shield. I am reading the word of God, I know I have the Spirit and the word of God is attractive to me. Then I have the sword’? And there are the glad tidings of peace. I can walk through this life even though I go through difficulties, I can have the peace of Christ, I can have shoes ready to walk. Am I going to walk towards the enemy? No, I am going to walk towards Christ and I am going to have everything that He has provided for protection so that I can continue running towards Christ “the leader and the completer of faith”.
When we come to Romans 8, that is exactly what we find. We find here a person who has the love of God in his heart. He says “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who against us?”. Look at the confidence of the writer here. Does that thrill your heart, to think you have so much confidence in the God of love that you can say this, “If God be for us, who against us? He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”? The glad tidings are of peace. “How shall he not also with him grant us all things?” Armour is for protection, “It is God who justifies: who is he that condemns?”. The enemy has been conquered. The work is finished. It is complete, whatever Satan may try. When we have God, there is no way that the enemy can overtake us. We need to pray daily for strength and the help of the Spirit.
The Lord taught His disciples to pray that the Father will keep them from evil and from temptation, Matt. 6: 13. What a prayer! I have not always thought to pray like that, but the Lord instructed his disciples to do so. Each day, we can pray that the Father will keep us from temptation, and that the He will save us from evil. That is simple faith of recognising that Christ is our Lord, but there is an enemy and we want to stay faithful and true to Christ and keep our eye on “the leader and completer of faith”. Then, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”. Love is described in many ways in 1 Corinthians 13, and yet it is so true because it becomes something that is so precious. It has been demonstrated. The Lord did not just tell us that here is what love is all about; He opened up to us the heart of the Father. Read through John 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17; all these aspects of the Father coming out in grace, the power of the Spirit, the love of the Father; the wonder of Christ and His perfect obedience, and how we have been given to Christ. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?”; all these things that are on the earth but, “Who shall separate us?”. Are you attached to Christ? Are you a lover of Jesus? Have you confessed His Name? “For thy sake we are put to death all the day long”.
There is nothing in this world that is more attractive to the writer of the epistle to the Romans than Christ himself: not one single thing. He has Christ, and He has all he needs; and he goes about doing his daily activities; you might say, working, loving the saints, ministering to the saints, but there is nothing in this world that is more attractive to him, nothing. How do we know that? Paul says, “we have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we more than conquer through him that has loved us”. Do we conquer? Christ is the Conqueror. Jesus, the Leader and Completer of faith, He has overcome death. I was so struck that He has gone “into the lower parts of the earth” (Eph 4:9); you might say He could not go lower, and He is raised and ascended to the highest height. There is nothing higher and nothing lower in a certain sense. I hope it is safe to say that; there can be nothing lower or higher than the pathway that Christ has gone.
Now Paul says, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Is He your Lord and your Saviour? There is nothing that can separate you from the love of the Lord Jesus. He is speaking not just about things on the earth, but these principalities and authorities and spiritual powers of darkness; there is nothing that will separate you from the love of Jesus. How much does Christ mean to you? Just the Name of Jesus impressed me this morning in our brother’s thanksgiving, as he brought in the many beautiful titles of the Lord; how precious and attractive each one of them is! Each name magnifies some wonderful aspect of His triumph, of Him being Lord, of Him being our King, of Him being our Saviour, of Him being the One who is love, of Him being “God with us”.
May the Lord bless the word.
Preaching of the glad tidings in Aberdeen, Idaho
2nd April 2017