The Warrior’s Prayer

The Scripture passage of interest today is Psalms 18. I call it "The Warrior’s Prayer. It is an excellent text to dwell on when we are in deep trouble.

(3/19/2006) As I prayed in my office this morning, Psalms 18 came to mind. I believe the last time I preached on this psalm was about two years ago.

As I pored over some of the familiar passages, I received the distinct impression that God was telling us to prepare for the future—that many of us will be going through deep waters indeed, and not to panic when we find ourselves in distressing circumstances.

The key to survival in our time of ordeal is to trust in the Lord as our strength. It is not just that He gives us strength, He Himself is our Strength, our Rock. We look to Him alone to bring us out of deep water.

As Christians we do not go through many crises such as David is describing here. We have our day to day problems, and always enough grace to keep our joy in the Lord.

But when God decides to make Himself known to us personally, we may find that all we have trusted in has been swept away. When we enter such a Gethsemane experience, we find we no longer have victorious faith. We are brought down to a naked trust in God’s faithfulness that we once again will see the light of day.

Then we are to call on the Lord. Today we have many formulas for spiritual victory, directions in which to exercise "faith" so we gain health, wealth, and happiness. Perhaps some of these work at times, but not when God begins to reveal Himself to us personally.

So we cry "Help!" We do not attempt to rebuke Satan, we fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus. We cease "saying our prayers" and begin to really call out to the Lord for deliverance from our troubles and pain. Psalms 18 describes what takes place in the spirit world as God begins to move on our behalf.

Everything in our life is shaken. The foundations of those "mountains," those previously unshakeable "rocks" we have trusted to save us, are shaken. They all are moved out of their place as the God of Jacob descends to help us and save us.

But why does He clothe Himself with darkness? Why is He covered with a canopy of darkness?

It is because He does not wish to reveal to the enemy or to us how He is going to deliver us. God will be God! He does not ask anyone’s permission to do what He chooses.

Sometimes God appears to be unfair. We proud Americans are prone to examine God’s works to see if He is fair. The truth is, God is the only One who is fair. It is just that His ways are so far above us we cannot see the whole picture. Some day we will. In the meantime we understand that He who gave His Son for us is "fair."

The Spirit seems to be saying that dreadful days are ahead for us in America. We are a proud, arrogant nation and are legalizing all kinds of filthy moral practices.

Our worst sin against God is abortion without sufficient cause, such as rape or the health of the mother. The idea that a mother is free to slay her offspring or permit it to live is manifestly wrong, except to minds corrupted by prevailing values. God is very displeased with this practice and our nation is going to suffer for it.

If we press into the Lord today, and become founded on the Rock, we will stand during the spiritually dark days on the horizon. Furthermore, we will be able to help other people survive, whether or not they are Christians.

But if we waste the present period of preparation, we will be swept away by the demonic power that is to be released, even though we make a profession of faith in Christ.

We continued at night with Psalms 18. We find David, in verse 20, claiming that God rewarded him according to the cleanness of his hands.

It is a wonder we got out of church by Monday morning, because the topic of righteous behavior is central to my thinking and teaching.

Our teaching today says that God does not reward us according to the cleanness of our behavior. All of our righteousness is as filthy rags. We are deemed righteous on the basis of our assent to the facts concerning the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved by "faith" alone. This is the prevailing understanding of the new covenant, and it has destroyed the moral strength of the Christian churches throughout the world.

There are three aspects that make us know the idea of being saved by "faith alone" is not what the Scripture means when it says we are saved by faith and not by works.

First, "faith," as defined by the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews means obedience to the revealed will of God.

Second, the Apostle Paul in several letter to the churches, informed the believers that if they continued to walk in the sinful nature they would not inherit the Kingdom of God; they would reap corruption.

Third, when Paul was contrasting works and faith, he was contrasting the works of the Law of Moses with a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a faith that causes us to interact at every moment with Christ as the new creation of righteous behavior is formed in us.

Remember, Paul went about teaching in Jewish synagogues. Paul was proving to Jews from the Scriptures that now that God has given Christ, we no longer obtain righteousness by practicing the works of the Law of Moses but by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

We Gentiles have interpreted Paul’s statements in the early chapters of the Book of Romans to mean that a belief in the facts relating to Christ relieves us from all necessity for living a godly life.

The truth is, genuine faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that interacts with the living Christ each day, always results in moral transformation. We become a new creation that chooses to do God’s will at each moment. Salvation is deliverance from the power of sin and the creation of a desire to live righteously. A careful reading of the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans will reveal that eternal life is the result of living a holy, righteous life.

How could such obvious truth be overlooked by the competent Christian scholars who are directing God’s people today? I do not know, unless God hides the truth from people until He is ready to bring individuals here and there to Christ, ignoring institutions and mass movements.

People write to me via E-mail. So often the message is: "All the churches we visit are preaching grace-rapture-Heaven-health-wealth-success in this present world. What should we do?"

This is not an isolated condition. Such preaching is heard every Sunday morning in the Christian churches of America. The result is immoral people. The result of immoral people is an immoral government. The end of this spiritual drought is chaos. The newspapers reveal the crime and destruction that abound. And all of this is due to the incorrect doctrine being advanced.

The blood-washed have been deceived royally.

It is my point of view that somehow the Lord God of Heaven will bring His ministers back to the clear truths of the Kingdom of God. I would guess this transition will take place during the next twenty or thirty years.

Until such a return to the original truths of the New Testament occurs, we can expect the deterioration of every aspect of the American culture.