Scripture: Revelation 13:10
On the very first Independence Day, during the signing of the Declaration of Independence, each signer knew that he was putting his life on the line. It was like signing your own death warrant. It was Ben Franklin who put it this way, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together, or we will most assuredly hang separately.” We honor these men for their courage and commitment to the cause of freedom that we are celebrating today, having now enjoyed more than 200 years of religious and political liberty.
So why, on such an auspicious occasion, would I want to quote the ominous words of Rev 13:10? “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.” This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.”
Our text for today of course speaks of the terrible times that will come in the last days. And don’t all believing Christians believe that we are living in the last days even now? We have watched our own beloved country’s morals decline and decay. Politics is a power show. Even Church is not respected the way it used to be. Culture is in a tailspin and the culture war has a lot of people up in arms.
But even before all this, back when those brave men first signed the Declaration of Independence, that great historic moment called for endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people. And in fact, all of those great men suffered greatly for their commitment to national freedom. Five, of the fifty-six signers, were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds, or hardships, of the revolutionary war. They lost houses and estates and family members. They were imprisoned and some even died as a result of their belief in, and commitment to, national independence. And we thank God that they did.
Those brave men were willing to lay their very lives on the line for a national freedom that secured religious liberty too. They fought for the best kind of temporal existence here on earth. So, how much more ought we be ready to lay it all on the line for the cause of Christ, for the eternal Kingdom that cannot perish or fade? I want to bring a message of hope and the love of God for this nation without losing sight of the reality of our circumstances. So, in spite of that alarming beginning, this is not an alarmist message. It is a reality check.
Maybe another appropriate text here would have been 2 Tim. 4:3-5 where we read, “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” How many denominations are struggling against modern liberal interpretations of the gospel? How many have already caved in to the modern trend?
We face great challenges ahead, so as Paul warned young Timothy already 2000 years ago, the admonition is even more relevant today. “But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” He also said a little earlier, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”
But I chose to emphasize the text in the book of Revelation because the result of our 2 Timothy commitment to gospel truth may well be the kind of dangers that are mentioned in Revelation 13. If we just focus on the Timothy passage, we may be able to feel secure that we know the truth and so in that sense we are safe. But in the Revelation passage we learn that safe in the Truth does not necessarily equal safe from harm. And if you believe that all of the Christians are going to be raptured away before the tribulation, that could be true, but according to Rev. 13:10 the world is still going to be a lot harder for the faithful before the rapture. That’s why it says that the reality of swords and prisons calls for patient endurance and faithfulness—on the part of God’s people.
So, if you believe we’re living in the end times, get ready to get tough. This is the fourth of July! We’re celebrating the history of this great nation! We’re giving thanks to God for his blessings that make this the land of the free because of the brave, those men and women who fought and still fight to this day to secure that earthly freedom. And really that could be a very strengthening thing for the church to be aware of and ready for. I like this quote from a fellow pastor, Steve Simms, “I've never been content with repetitive religion that seems to stay at the same level every week. Give me ever increasing fire.”
Yes, Lord, that’s what we need, an ever increasing fire of zeal for the Lord and for the gospel. Pastor Dave Butts, who heads up Harvest Prayer Ministries, has written a book called, “With One Cry: A Renewed Challenge to Pray for America.” It contains many insights worth sharing with you for your benefit.
Dave talks in that book about growing up in Indiana and going to high school basketball games. He talks about the advantage of being the home team. Let me read a portion out of this book:
Home teams have the fans and the noise! Almost everyone in the stands was cheering on the home team. Often, there was a small band that played the school fight song. Every call by the officials was cheered or boo-ed by the crowd. It’s pretty intimidating to walk into your opponent’s gym as the away team!
For many years now, the church has been the home team in America. We’ve had the advantages that a home team enjoys. We were the culturally dominant force that had to be dealt with by everyone else. When national leaders talked about faith, everyone knew they were referring to the Christian faith. The home team advantage was enjoyed—and simply taken for granted—by the church. The church is no longer the home team in America. If we can understand that, we will pray differently—and more effectively—for our nation. So much of the conflict comes when we still act as though we’re the home team.
It would be pretty discouraging for a basketball team to come into a gym they believed to be their home, and be met with boos instead of cheers. But when you know you’re walking into an opponent’s gym, you expect a negative response. We need to embrace our role as the away team, which better fits who Jesus said we are. "Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man" (Luke 6:22 NIV).
An away team isn’t trying to be loved and honored. They want to do their best to bring about victory! All too often, we forget that as we pray for the United States. Our prayers are often more about returning the church to a place of privilege than about seeing the gospel preached with transforming power.
Isn’t that a helpful word picture?
Scripture puts it this way in 1 Peter 2:11, “[You are] as foreigners and exiles . . .” which in modern parlance would be, “You’re the away team.” You’re not the home team, here. We are in a foreign land! This is still a pretty great nation and the world’s best model of religious liberty and freedom, but that seems to be fading fast. Just about a week ago, on June 27, CBN news reported that “Assemblyman Evan Low and three dozen other lawmakers pushed the resolution in the state Assembly Judiciary Committee that's aimed at telling religious leaders in California what they should preach from their pulpits.”
That’s the present reality of the situation in our land these days. But as you know, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” So, we fight back only by prayer and by telling the truth. There is also some equipment of spiritual armor that I am going to start talking about next week, and we need that for our mission here in enemy territory.
Heaven is our true home, so as long as there is a devil and a spiritual battle on earth, we, the Church, are the away team. We’re away from home and on mission as Christ’s ambassadors. We are born as citizens of earth and of a nation. True, and right now we happen to be in the best nation left in the world. But as members of Christ’s Body, the Church, our true citizenship and greatest allegiance is to Christ the King!
As such we live in the midst of hostile enemies of the cross of Christ. There are social and political forces aligned with the devil’s world view, actively seeking to undermine our faith and destroy God’s church. Those are forces that are hostile to God, forces that are opposed to Christianity and Christ. And we’re seeing more and more of those forces in our day, aren’t we? Those who reject the ways of God, they reject God’s truth about anything—about gender, about sexuality, about right, about wrong, about good, about evil. There are external captors, tormentors. They own the land here, or think they do. And they torment the people of God.
That will not ultimately succeed but there have been, are now, and will be, many victims along the way who fall prey to that roaring lion. We must hang together in Christian unity and fellowship, or we risk losing many to those hostile forces. Our compassion for the lost ought to be as rigorous, as dedicated, and as determined, as any rescue mission ever was. Remember the 33 miners trapped for nearly 70 days in the cave in Chile back in 2010? Where would those survivors be if the people up above had not launched the rescue operation and kept at it until they succeeded? There would have been no survivors.
Those trapped below could not save themselves! Neither can anyone trapped in sin. But God has given us this assignment. We are on a search and rescue mission to find our brothers and sisters that are being held captive by the deceptions of spiritual forces. And we must never give up that fight. Lives are at stake!
But there can also be internal tormentors that keep us from doing the work that God has called us to: despair, fear, a past that haunts you and taunts you, sins that dog you, a feeling of inadequacy. These are tormentors; they’re captors. When you’re in pain, when you’re sad, when you’re discouraged,
All during the week, we face opposition—the barrage of the world’s arguments against us. All week long, we’re hearing it, we’re feeling it, we’re sensing it. We feel like we don’t fit, like we don’t belong. But then we come together, as we did this morning, and we sing and worship the Lord, reminding ourselves about the truth of the gospel and our position and authority in Christ. And what happens? Our faith is bolstered. We get courage to go out and face the world again, the next day.
We stand together and fight for freedom, spiritual freedom for souls trapped in sin. When we praise and worship the one true king and declare our allegiance to his Kingdom, something else happens. Not only is our faith bolstered, but we make the gospel believable to the people who are citizens of that foreign land.
When your tormentors, either external or internal try to rob you of faith open your mouth and pray. Speak words from the Bible that remind you who you really are. When you pray and praise and sing through your pain, through your captivity, through your torment—through that pain of a prodigal son or daughter or grandchild; through the physical pain—the diagnosis you’ve just been given that was not what you were hoping for, the financial pressure, the job you just lost, the spouse who does not love you as Christ commanded; through the pain and the torment of your own inner sin, indwelling sin, and you want to love God and you want to please Him, but you still find yourself going back to those sins. When you lift up your voice, when you sing the songs of the Kingdom—even while you’re living on this broken planet—your faith is going to be strengthened and the gospel witness will go out. Others will want to hear and to sing the songs of Zion as you lift up your heart and you worship Jehovah through your tears, through your pain.
Galatians 5:1 says, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” The Revolutionary War was a hard-fought battle, and many lives were lost in order to ensure the freedom of our country. There is always a price to pay for freedom, and the moment we take our freedom for granted, we run the risk of losing it.
Freedom in Christ from our sinful nature and the god of this world is the inheritance of every believer. Christ has set you free through His victory over sin and death on the cross. But if you have lost a measure of your freedom because you have failed to stand firm in the faith or you have disobeyed God, it is your responsibility to do whatever is necessary to maintain a right relationship with God. Your eternal destiny is not at stake; you are secure in Christ. But your daily victory in Him will be tenuous at best if you fail to assume your responsibility to maintain your freedom in Christ.
Remember: you are not the helpless victim of a tug-of-war between two nearly equal heavenly superpowers. Compared to Satan's limited attributes, God is immeasurable in His omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience--and you are united with Him! Sometimes the reality of sin and the presence of evil may seem more real than the reality and presence of God, but that's part of Satan's deception. He is a defeated foe, and we are in Christ, the eternal Victor. That's why we worship God: to keep His divine attributes constantly before us in order to counter Satan's lies.
So today, we are still freedom fighters as were our forefathers who founded this nation. But for us, we are standing and fighting for freedom in Christ. We preach the gospel of forgiveness for sin through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, our King, who makes us alive in Christ and calls us to join him on this holy battlefield. In that sense we can faithfully say, “Onward Christian soldiers!”
And to all who still think that your only hope of heaven is if you behave well enough to win God’s approval I tell you, No. Jesus Christ has won the victory and disarmed the devil to grant us salvation as a free gift of His grace. Believe that and rejoice!
On the very first Independence Day, during the signing of the Declaration of Independence, each signer knew that he was putting his life on the line. It was like signing your own death warrant. It was Ben Franklin who put it this way, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together, or we will most assuredly hang separately.” We honor these men for their courage and commitment to the cause of freedom that we are celebrating today, having now enjoyed more than 200 years of religious and political liberty.
So why, on such an auspicious occasion, would I want to quote the ominous words of Rev 13:10? “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.” This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.”
Our text for today of course speaks of the terrible times that will come in the last days. And don’t all believing Christians believe that we are living in the last days even now? We have watched our own beloved country’s morals decline and decay. Politics is a power show. Even Church is not respected the way it used to be. Culture is in a tailspin and the culture war has a lot of people up in arms.
But even before all this, back when those brave men first signed the Declaration of Independence, that great historic moment called for endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people. And in fact, all of those great men suffered greatly for their commitment to national freedom. Five, of the fifty-six signers, were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds, or hardships, of the revolutionary war. They lost houses and estates and family members. They were imprisoned and some even died as a result of their belief in, and commitment to, national independence. And we thank God that they did.
Those brave men were willing to lay their very lives on the line for a national freedom that secured religious liberty too. They fought for the best kind of temporal existence here on earth. So, how much more ought we be ready to lay it all on the line for the cause of Christ, for the eternal Kingdom that cannot perish or fade? I want to bring a message of hope and the love of God for this nation without losing sight of the reality of our circumstances. So, in spite of that alarming beginning, this is not an alarmist message. It is a reality check.
Maybe another appropriate text here would have been 2 Tim. 4:3-5 where we read, “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” How many denominations are struggling against modern liberal interpretations of the gospel? How many have already caved in to the modern trend?
We face great challenges ahead, so as Paul warned young Timothy already 2000 years ago, the admonition is even more relevant today. “But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” He also said a little earlier, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”
But I chose to emphasize the text in the book of Revelation because the result of our 2 Timothy commitment to gospel truth may well be the kind of dangers that are mentioned in Revelation 13. If we just focus on the Timothy passage, we may be able to feel secure that we know the truth and so in that sense we are safe. But in the Revelation passage we learn that safe in the Truth does not necessarily equal safe from harm. And if you believe that all of the Christians are going to be raptured away before the tribulation, that could be true, but according to Rev. 13:10 the world is still going to be a lot harder for the faithful before the rapture. That’s why it says that the reality of swords and prisons calls for patient endurance and faithfulness—on the part of God’s people.
So, if you believe we’re living in the end times, get ready to get tough. This is the fourth of July! We’re celebrating the history of this great nation! We’re giving thanks to God for his blessings that make this the land of the free because of the brave, those men and women who fought and still fight to this day to secure that earthly freedom. And really that could be a very strengthening thing for the church to be aware of and ready for. I like this quote from a fellow pastor, Steve Simms, “I've never been content with repetitive religion that seems to stay at the same level every week. Give me ever increasing fire.”
Yes, Lord, that’s what we need, an ever increasing fire of zeal for the Lord and for the gospel. Pastor Dave Butts, who heads up Harvest Prayer Ministries, has written a book called, “With One Cry: A Renewed Challenge to Pray for America.” It contains many insights worth sharing with you for your benefit.
Dave talks in that book about growing up in Indiana and going to high school basketball games. He talks about the advantage of being the home team. Let me read a portion out of this book:
Home teams have the fans and the noise! Almost everyone in the stands was cheering on the home team. Often, there was a small band that played the school fight song. Every call by the officials was cheered or boo-ed by the crowd. It’s pretty intimidating to walk into your opponent’s gym as the away team!
For many years now, the church has been the home team in America. We’ve had the advantages that a home team enjoys. We were the culturally dominant force that had to be dealt with by everyone else. When national leaders talked about faith, everyone knew they were referring to the Christian faith. The home team advantage was enjoyed—and simply taken for granted—by the church. The church is no longer the home team in America. If we can understand that, we will pray differently—and more effectively—for our nation. So much of the conflict comes when we still act as though we’re the home team.
It would be pretty discouraging for a basketball team to come into a gym they believed to be their home, and be met with boos instead of cheers. But when you know you’re walking into an opponent’s gym, you expect a negative response. We need to embrace our role as the away team, which better fits who Jesus said we are. "Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man" (Luke 6:22 NIV).
An away team isn’t trying to be loved and honored. They want to do their best to bring about victory! All too often, we forget that as we pray for the United States. Our prayers are often more about returning the church to a place of privilege than about seeing the gospel preached with transforming power.
Isn’t that a helpful word picture?
Scripture puts it this way in 1 Peter 2:11, “[You are] as foreigners and exiles . . .” which in modern parlance would be, “You’re the away team.” You’re not the home team, here. We are in a foreign land! This is still a pretty great nation and the world’s best model of religious liberty and freedom, but that seems to be fading fast. Just about a week ago, on June 27, CBN news reported that “Assemblyman Evan Low and three dozen other lawmakers pushed the resolution in the state Assembly Judiciary Committee that's aimed at telling religious leaders in California what they should preach from their pulpits.”
That’s the present reality of the situation in our land these days. But as you know, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” So, we fight back only by prayer and by telling the truth. There is also some equipment of spiritual armor that I am going to start talking about next week, and we need that for our mission here in enemy territory.
Heaven is our true home, so as long as there is a devil and a spiritual battle on earth, we, the Church, are the away team. We’re away from home and on mission as Christ’s ambassadors. We are born as citizens of earth and of a nation. True, and right now we happen to be in the best nation left in the world. But as members of Christ’s Body, the Church, our true citizenship and greatest allegiance is to Christ the King!
As such we live in the midst of hostile enemies of the cross of Christ. There are social and political forces aligned with the devil’s world view, actively seeking to undermine our faith and destroy God’s church. Those are forces that are hostile to God, forces that are opposed to Christianity and Christ. And we’re seeing more and more of those forces in our day, aren’t we? Those who reject the ways of God, they reject God’s truth about anything—about gender, about sexuality, about right, about wrong, about good, about evil. There are external captors, tormentors. They own the land here, or think they do. And they torment the people of God.
That will not ultimately succeed but there have been, are now, and will be, many victims along the way who fall prey to that roaring lion. We must hang together in Christian unity and fellowship, or we risk losing many to those hostile forces. Our compassion for the lost ought to be as rigorous, as dedicated, and as determined, as any rescue mission ever was. Remember the 33 miners trapped for nearly 70 days in the cave in Chile back in 2010? Where would those survivors be if the people up above had not launched the rescue operation and kept at it until they succeeded? There would have been no survivors.
Those trapped below could not save themselves! Neither can anyone trapped in sin. But God has given us this assignment. We are on a search and rescue mission to find our brothers and sisters that are being held captive by the deceptions of spiritual forces. And we must never give up that fight. Lives are at stake!
But there can also be internal tormentors that keep us from doing the work that God has called us to: despair, fear, a past that haunts you and taunts you, sins that dog you, a feeling of inadequacy. These are tormentors; they’re captors. When you’re in pain, when you’re sad, when you’re discouraged,
All during the week, we face opposition—the barrage of the world’s arguments against us. All week long, we’re hearing it, we’re feeling it, we’re sensing it. We feel like we don’t fit, like we don’t belong. But then we come together, as we did this morning, and we sing and worship the Lord, reminding ourselves about the truth of the gospel and our position and authority in Christ. And what happens? Our faith is bolstered. We get courage to go out and face the world again, the next day.
We stand together and fight for freedom, spiritual freedom for souls trapped in sin. When we praise and worship the one true king and declare our allegiance to his Kingdom, something else happens. Not only is our faith bolstered, but we make the gospel believable to the people who are citizens of that foreign land.
When your tormentors, either external or internal try to rob you of faith open your mouth and pray. Speak words from the Bible that remind you who you really are. When you pray and praise and sing through your pain, through your captivity, through your torment—through that pain of a prodigal son or daughter or grandchild; through the physical pain—the diagnosis you’ve just been given that was not what you were hoping for, the financial pressure, the job you just lost, the spouse who does not love you as Christ commanded; through the pain and the torment of your own inner sin, indwelling sin, and you want to love God and you want to please Him, but you still find yourself going back to those sins. When you lift up your voice, when you sing the songs of the Kingdom—even while you’re living on this broken planet—your faith is going to be strengthened and the gospel witness will go out. Others will want to hear and to sing the songs of Zion as you lift up your heart and you worship Jehovah through your tears, through your pain.
Galatians 5:1 says, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” The Revolutionary War was a hard-fought battle, and many lives were lost in order to ensure the freedom of our country. There is always a price to pay for freedom, and the moment we take our freedom for granted, we run the risk of losing it.
Freedom in Christ from our sinful nature and the god of this world is the inheritance of every believer. Christ has set you free through His victory over sin and death on the cross. But if you have lost a measure of your freedom because you have failed to stand firm in the faith or you have disobeyed God, it is your responsibility to do whatever is necessary to maintain a right relationship with God. Your eternal destiny is not at stake; you are secure in Christ. But your daily victory in Him will be tenuous at best if you fail to assume your responsibility to maintain your freedom in Christ.
Remember: you are not the helpless victim of a tug-of-war between two nearly equal heavenly superpowers. Compared to Satan's limited attributes, God is immeasurable in His omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience--and you are united with Him! Sometimes the reality of sin and the presence of evil may seem more real than the reality and presence of God, but that's part of Satan's deception. He is a defeated foe, and we are in Christ, the eternal Victor. That's why we worship God: to keep His divine attributes constantly before us in order to counter Satan's lies.
So today, we are still freedom fighters as were our forefathers who founded this nation. But for us, we are standing and fighting for freedom in Christ. We preach the gospel of forgiveness for sin through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, our King, who makes us alive in Christ and calls us to join him on this holy battlefield. In that sense we can faithfully say, “Onward Christian soldiers!”
And to all who still think that your only hope of heaven is if you behave well enough to win God’s approval I tell you, No. Jesus Christ has won the victory and disarmed the devil to grant us salvation as a free gift of His grace. Believe that and rejoice!
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