‘I have fought a good fight’, says the Apostle Paul. Three times Paul uses this expression: ‘a good fight’. He does so in the first Epistle on two occasions: in the Epistle to Timothy, chapter 1 and again in chapter 6. So this appears to be a standard way in which the Apostle Paul describes the work of the Christian ministry and the Christian church’s testimony in this world. It is a ‘good fight’. It reminds us that the Christian must look at life as twofold. There is the ‘now’ and there is the ‘henceforth’.

There are two parts then to life as the Christian views it and sees it. There is the ‘now’ and there is the ‘hereafter’. There is the present life and the life which is to come. This is of course so different from the way in which the natural man thinks. The unconverted man thinks only of the here and now and of the present life. That is why his philosophy is ‘let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die’. On the other hand the Christian looks at this life as his being only in this world for a short time. He looks at the world to come as the eternity which is to come. He knows that eternity will be long.

This is the Christian way, I say, to look at life. It is taught by the Lord Jesus Christ in His wonderful Sermon on the Mount. I remind you briefly. He said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’. Why? ‘For they shall see God’ (Matthew 5:8). The pure in heart is what we are now; our seeing God is what we will have later. ‘Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5:5). Meekness refers to the present life of the converted and godly person. Inheriting the earth is what we shall have when the new heavens and the new earth appear.

Again, the Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted’ (Matthew 5:4). The mourning, the sorrow, the tears are of course just for this present short life. The comfort is when we wake up in the morning and see the glory of Christ. This was the beautiful expression used by Dr David Murray in a letter from America to Professor Hugh Cartwright just before he died a year or two ago. The very touching expression that David Murray used at the end of his letter was: ‘See you in the morning’.

The Apostle Paul also shares this same attitude to the Christian life. More than once he conveys the same view of our life as believers:

Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen (this life), but at the things which are not seen (the life which is to come): for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.2 Corinthians 4:17-18

This of course has very practical implications. We have set before us here our duty now. We are to fight the good fight of faith here and now in this life. That is the great challenge. But we do so with that certainty that there is another world in which the Lord’s people will sit down with the Saviour Himself and also with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of glory. There all fighting, all sorrow and all tears will be at an end.

I am speaking to many of you who are preachers. It is a very great privilege for me to do so. How much I respect you! How much the angels respect you! You are doing the greatest work you could possibly do on earth. I shall say a little more about that in a moment. But when you go back to your congregations be assured, whatever your situation, whatever your circumstances, you are doing a good work, you are fighting a good fight and the angels know very well that you are doing it for the glory of God and the love you have for Christ. So God Himself will certainly be with you.

I am perhaps speaking to one or two also who are active in politics. You are perhaps not engaged in pulpit work so much but in politics for the sake of God and of Christ. Well, I say, may God be with you and help you in your task because we need men to fight in the political arena also to withstand the evil tendencies and godless laws. May God help you in your fight in that arena also.

May I speak a special word also to young men who are on the threshold of your life’s work. I know things look bleak in the present church situation in our country but let me remind you of what somebody once said to me when I began my work as a minister, all those years ago. It was a godly lady who said it. With a smile she comforted me as a young man just beginning in the ministry of the gospel, ‘In the ministry, the pay is not great, but the reward is out of this world!’ That puts a smile on our face of course but it is not only something to smile at. It is something absolutely true. The reward is out of this world.

Were I to think of young men here perhaps who are not engaged in preparing for the ministry I would say, if you feel the call to serve Christ, if you feel a call to the ministry you could not do a better service that to devote your whole life in fighting the good fight of faith for Christ.

We have heard in recent days a good deal about Olympic Games and Paralympic Games — and what a lot of effort goes into preparing for them! Paul commented on the Olympic Games in his own day, you will remember. The athletes, he said, do it to obtain a corruptible crown but we an incorruptible.

That’s the difference. Their crown of leaves in the times of the ancient Games in Greece was fresh for a couple of weeks and then it faded. But the crown that Christ will place on your head if you are faithful to Him, will be forever. You will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the heavenly Father, like the brightness of the firmament forever and forever. That is the immense difference.

Don’t forget, though the day is dark that does not minimise the importance of the service that you do for Christ. We have an old expression: ‘The darker the night, the brighter the stars’. Your life will shine more brightly in a generation like this where so much wickedness abounds on every hand.

Could I step back for a moment and look at church history very briefly. May I suggest that it is useful to look at church history in four divisions, each of five hundred years. We are talking about rough, round, approximate figures here of course. In the first five hundred years or so there was a wonderful spreading of the gospel. How did it happen? What were they doing? The gospel went from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, to Greece, to Rome, to Britain and to other countries, very quickly. However did it happen? What caused it? It was preaching, preaching, preaching, witnessing, testifying and praying and suffering martyrdom for our blessed Lord.

Once the gospel had really got hold in the Roman Empire, one of the emperors — after the days of Constantine when Christianity became the official religion of the empire — Julian by name, tried to reverse the progress and influence of Christianity. Julian the Apostate, as he is called, did everything educationally to try to suppress the gospel and to keep the people of God back and not allow them to make advancement. Yet, as you well know, he died on the field of battle fighting against the Persians. As he did so, he was fatally wounded. Lying on the ground, soon to die, he exclaimed, ‘Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!’ Christ had conquered and he as Emperor had failed to stop it happening. That is what all the haters of Christ will have to say in the end. Christ will conquer. So the fight you are fighting, dear brethren, is good, very good, extremely good. And I want to give you a few reasons why it is good.

The Fight is Good⤒🔗

First, the fight is good because you who are the fighters are standing for God’s glory in this world. You cannot do anything more important to glorify God. That is number one priority in the life of everyone who serves the Lord — standing up for the glory of God. And He knows that, and the angels know that. Another reason why you are doing a good work and fighting a good fight is this. Because the truth you preach is not from man, it is God’s own truth. It is His own revelation. We are not advancing theories of our own; we are not promulgating philosophies of men. This is the truth of the living God, who has told us to preach our gospel to all mankind in order that He might save sinful men and women by His love and grace. A third reason we are fighting a good fight is because we are doing what Christ Himself did. Our blessed Lord was doing the same thing. What was His great work? It was preaching and teaching. The miracles He did of course we cannot do but He did those as evidences of His Godhood, and displays of His divinity and to give evidence of the truth of what He was preaching. But he preached so as to feed men’s precious souls. ‘Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep’. You are ‘fishers of men’, He said.

It was a wonderful story, was it not, when they were in the boat and the miraculous draught of fishes occurred. Peter and the others who were helping in the boat were astonished, because the night before they had toiled all night and caught nothing. Now, at the command of Christ, the nets were full which they dragged to land. What does Peter do? He falls on his knees: ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord’ (Luke 5:8). The divinity of this person, Jesus, is altogether obvious to Peter. And what was Jesus to say to him? ‘I will make you fishers of men’ (Matthew 4:19). So it is a good work and a good fight.

Years ago I was in London walking through the streets as a young Christian man and I saw a person in a wheelchair. He was only about twenty-five. He was being pushed along by an older fellow and they both stopped at a certain point. The older man took out a cigarette, stuck it between the lips of the frail man in the chair and away he went, slowly walking down the street, pushing the wheelchair. I said to the man who was doing the pushing, ‘I’m terribly sorry to see that fellow in the chair — so young, so disabled’. He said, ‘You see that man sitting in that chair, he was once a boxing champion and that is what has left him like that — so disabled’. I mention this experience of mine because it shows how sometimes people sadly waste their strength, waste their health, waste their time on the things of small value. But those who fight for Christ do not waste their strength or their energy. They are fighting what Paul calls here a ‘good fight’.

I mentioned a moment ago that the first five hundred years of the Christian church were a wonderful example of how the gospel goes forth in power and shakes nations. Would that had continued, but it did not. Take the next five hundred years, from roughly 400/500 to 1000 AD. What happened in that period? Well in that period there was a terrible decline. I mention it for this reason. Something fearful began to happen.

There was a group in North Africa called the Donatists. Without going into detail just now, the Donatists were more or less orthodox in theology but separatist in their views. They did not want to belong to the Roman Catholic Church. They were not heretics. They were separate from the Catholic Church and they wanted to remain separate from the Roman Catholic Church for reasons that I cannot go into now. What happened to these Donatists? Did the Roman Church say to them, ‘O well, you are entitled to believe what you wish. You have a good conscience. Get on with it. God bless you’. No. Even the great Augustine of Hippo, who was undoubtedly one of the most outstanding leaders and teachers in the history of the church, took the view that you cannot tolerate any kind of separation like this. He quoted a verse of Scripture to try to justify the use of force: ‘Compel them to come in’ (Luke 14:23). That was the verse he adopted to deal with these independent people who did not want to belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Of course you know the next word is ‘persecution’. That was the beginning of a terrible wave of change in that church.

Brutality←⤒🔗

Take the third of these five hundreds — from 1000 to 1500 AD. Here you have the church in its most brutal form. My dear friends, it is hard to imagine just how brutal it was, but I can tell you what they did. There arose a pope called Urban II. In 1095 he instituted a thing called the First Crusade. They did not go to fight with Bibles and gospel tracts but with swords and spears. They sailed from Europe to the Middle East where those of another religion were in power. The fight was over possession of the Holy Land. The method of fighting, sad to say, was to slay their opponents and fill the land with their blood. They were fighting a battle but it certainly was not a good battle. It was not the battle which Christ ordained. It was a very bad battle for which they had no Biblical warrant.

In the third of these Crusades in 1202, they were attacking not only those who lived in the Middle East but also Constantinople, which is the capital city of the Eastern Empire and therefore of the Eastern Church, the Greek Orthodox Church. It so weakened that population that the Greek Orthodox Church eventually crumbled and their civilisation was overthrown.

That was bad enough. But come now to the year 1229 and to Pope Gregory IX. He instituted the Inquisition in southern France against the Albigensians. These were southern French Christians. I believe they were humble and sincere Christians for the most part. Bad things have been said about them but most of what we know about the Albigensians arises from Roman Catholic sources. There may have been some unorthodox persons among them but many of these Albigensians were probably humble evangelical, Bible-believing Christians. But they were slaughtered by the thousand and wiped out. If any persons doubt what I here affirm of the Albigensians I would recommend that they read The History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses by George Stanley Faber. It puts right the all too common idea that the Albigensians were nothing better than heretics.

A little later another pope came along. What did he do? He instituted what we call the Spanish Inquisition. I don’t know if you realise how many people died through the Spanish Inquisition. It was set up to inquire into what you believed, what you did in secret. Were you conformable to the Catholic Church? If not, look out as we will torture you for a few days and see what you will do at the end of your torture. The number of people who died as a consequence of this fearful and inhuman organisation, known as the Spanish Inquisition, is reckoned to have been between fifty to sixty-eight million. I have this figure from Dr. Alan Cairns’ excellent book ‘Dictionary of Theological Terms’. He is a very careful and accurate writer.

Why do I mention the Inquisition? Because, my dear friends, it shows what men will do if they depart from the great fundamental principles upon which we are to conduct our fighting. Yes, they were fighting, but it was not the ‘good fight’ that you and I approve of.

The Reformation←⤒🔗

So I bring you now to the fourth period of church history. Let us see what John Knox so courageously said to Mary, Queen of Scots. We must remember that it was very much through the courage of men like Knox that you and I have our liberty in this country today. Knox said, ‘Madam, I offer myself to prove that the church of the Jews which crucified Christ Jesus was not so far degenerate ... as the Church of Rome declined, and more than five hundred years hath declined from the purity of religion which the apostles taught and planted’. You will find these words of Knox in his own wonderful book, The History of the Reformation in Scotland.

What did Queen Mary reply to that? She said, ‘My conscience is not so’. To which Knox replied, ‘Conscience, Madam, requireth knowledge and I fear that right knowledge you have none’. Blunt talking, wasn’t it? He risked his life of course in saying that. Let us not forget that he was fighting the good fight for Scotland and for you and me. He was risking his life for us. Mary Queen of Scots replied like this: ‘Ye interpret the Scriptures in one manner and they (the pope and cardinals) in another. Whom shall I believe?’ Now here is Knox’s point. Here is the great fundamental thing which shows you what our task is. John Knox replied to Queen Mary, ‘Ye shall believe God that plainly speaketh in His Word; and further than the Word teacheth you, shall believe neither the one nor the other. The Word of God is plain in itself. If there appear any obscurity in one place the Holy Ghost, who is never contrarious to Himself, explaineth the same more clearly in other places; so that there can remain no doubt, but unto such as obstinately will remain ignorant’.

I take the time to say these things because, my dear friends, all of this repeats itself again and again. There are two brilliant ways in which the devil turns away people in the church from the fight which we call the good fight of faith. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who explains it like this. He said to His disciples, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees’ (Matthew 16:6). What does our Lord mean? I will tell you. The leaven of the Pharisees is to add to the Word of God — adding tradition. That is what the Catholic Church has done. That is what the Jewish Rabbis did of old and were severely rebuked by Christ for doing so. The great fault of the Pharisees was that they added to the Scriptures their manmade traditions.

If you study the Roman Catholic documents today, right up to date, it has not changed. Here is what the Roman Catholic Church says: ‘God’s authority in matters of religion is found in two places: sacred Scripture and sacred tradition’. I am not saying that out of my own head. It is accurate. You can get it from their Catechism of the Catholic Church. My copy is dated 1995. Allow me to quote this Catechism which is of full authority as a document of the Catholic Church. Here it is:

As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.

That is exactly what Christ warns against: adding to the Word of God through the ‘leaven of the Pharisees’ as He terms it. At the Reformation this fatal mistake was put right. Martin Luther saw the principle when he said: ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’. The principle was the Bible, the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible as the infallible authority for faith and practice. That wonderful principle of course has brought our nation out of the darkness of the Middle Ages and it has changed our country and is changing other countries like China today as we have heard in this School in Theology a few days ago.

What now is this leaven of the Sadducees? It is the very opposite — it is taking away from Scripture. That is what the Sadducees did. They would not accept the whole of Scripture. How is this relevant to us? Well, extremely so because what so much damaged the Free Church of Scotland in the 19th Century is just this. It was the leaven of the Sadducees. The Free Church of Scotland in 1843 was undoubtedly a wonderful and a great church. I do not think it is too much to say that — a wonderful church. There was rich blessing all over the country and also on certain mission fields there was the beginning of a great work of God. But in the generation which followed the policy was to send young men to Germany to learn the Higher Criticism as part of their training for the ministry. They were coming back from Germany and teaching the people the ideas of Higher Criticism. As we all know the effects were disastrous.

What did the people in the churches learn to do? They voted with their feet. ‘If I can’t believe the man speaking out of the Bible, let me stay at home. I am wasting my time listening to some preacher preaching from a Book I cannot trust’. That is what people have done. That is why they are not coming to hear you in our country as once they did. People generally do not any more believe this Book to be the supreme authority of Almighty God.

My dear friends, look at what the Roman Catholic Church did with this principle of adding to Scripture. Albigensians slaughtered by Simon de Montfort — thousands of them. Waldensians in northern Italy – rolled down the mountain to their death — innocent men, women and children. The Hussites of Bohemia — killed. The Lollards, the followers of Wycliffe in England — severely treated. The poor Huguenots of France — again, tortured and killed. No Christians perhaps suffered more than the Huguenots of France.

The great mistake that Augustine made was to argue that the Judicial Law with its penalties from the Old Testament ought to be applied in New Testament times. The penalties of the Judicial Law are not to be applied in this Christian age. They got it terribly wrong and because of that, instead of fighting a good fight, they ruined the cause and it took the Reformation, in the fourth quarter of these four periods of five hundred years, to bring Christianity back to its true character as the religion of truth and love.

My text says, ‘I have fought a good fight’. That implies enemies. You do not fight except with your enemies. What then are the enemies against which we must fight? Of course we know very well: the world, the flesh and the devil.

The World←⤒🔗

The ‘world’ first — let us look at that. The world is society organised against God. The world is a hater of God. If mankind could make a rocket big enough and strong enough, they would send it right up to heaven and blast the Almighty off His throne. That is the spirit of sinful man. Man is by nature a hater of God and society is organised against God. That is the world we live in. ‘Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed’ (Psalm 2:1-2). This is why they put the prophets to death in Old Testament times. This is why they crucified the Lord of glory.

When you read history it is not simply that it is full of wars. Anyone who studies history quickly sees that wars have always occurred all through the history of mankind. But it is not wars of man against man. More terribly, it is man fundamentally at war against his Maker and his God. We must as Christians mortify this spirit of enmity to God in our own hearts. Listen to Christ, ‘Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold’ (Matthew 24:12). It is very hard to fight against the world; it creeps insidiously into the soul.

Now, what is this salt and what is this savour? The salt is godliness. You know, churches always decline in three generations. The first generation is spiritual: they have heart­ knowledge. The next generation is intellectual: they have head ­knowledge. The third generation is worldly. They have nothing more than a formal religion. It is always the same. You look at any church declension you want to name and that is the way it happens. So the best kind of religion is that which is in the soul and in the heart — the felt religion of godliness. That is why the Puritans set such excellent examples for us to follow.

If the salt loses its savour Jesus comes and He says this, ‘You are very busy doing many things but I have one thing against you, you have left your first love’. A terrible verse we get in the book of Revelation (2:4), isn’t it? ‘Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead’ (Revelation 3:1). What a word! What a terrible thing! Wouldn’t we shiver if that was said about us?

So real, genuine, Christianity is spiritual in the first instance. What we long to see is reviving of spiritual religion. This is what God does from time to time. When Whitefield (in the 18^th Century) was about to be an open air preacher, he went to Bristol. He started to preach to coalminers in the open air. The only indication he had they were listening was when he saw the tears running down their cheeks, washing away the coal dust on their faces. He knew then they really were listening. This is real heart religion.

I know that John Wesley was a good deal of an Arminian and we don’t make him an ideal theologian, but when he went to places like Cornwall and preached the gospel, the whole place was shaken. They lined the streets at the end of his ministry to praise God that he came and told them of Christ. Before that their religion consisted of praying for shipwrecks that they might get the spoils off the seas. The same was true in Lewis I am told before the great revival of 1828. That is the way society always is until the power of godliness comes.

O my dear friends, it is a good fight that we must fight against the world. And part of the spirit of the world is to be afraid to stand up for God. You all know the name of John G Paton. John G Paton was a missionary to the New Hebrides, or Vanuatu as we call it now. As a young man in the Reformed Presbyterian Church he felt called to go to Vanuatu to preach to these terrible ignorant savages. So he went to his professor in Glasgow. ‘Sir’, he said, ‘I feel called to go to Vanuatu and preach to these people of the New Hebrides’. His professor, Andrew Symington, said, ‘Young man, do you know they are cannibals? They will eat you!’ The young man said, ‘Sir, with respect, you are an old man and soon you will be in the grave and eaten by worms. I am happy enough to be eaten by cannibals’. It takes a bit more than ordinary courage to talk like that, doesn’t it? He went to the New Hebrides. Then he started to teach them God’s Word and the whole island was completely transformed. This pattern is reflected again and again in the faithful labours of missionary men and women.

The Irish missionary Columba came to Iona in 563 AD and then travelled to Inverness. He spoke to King Brude, the king of the Picts. King Brude made a profession of faith and in these days if the king said he was a Christian, everybody else had to agree with him. What difference did it make? Was it just a change mentally? No! The change was tremendous. Before that these Picts were always killing one another and fighting with one another. But now this message of Christ changed and utterly transformed them. To fight the good fight of faith is to bring society into a new condition of blessing, peace, love, well-being and harmony.

The Flesh←⤒🔗

That is one enemy. The second enemy is the ‘flesh’. That comes closer to home. It is an enemy within our own soul. We are all totally depraved, as we confess. Martin Luther dismissed the authority of the pope but he was well aware of the power of ‘pope-self’, as he put it. We are all proud and wicked creatures by nature. We would all love to rule the universe and dictate to everybody else. That spirit is in us all. ‘We are the rubbish of an Adam’, said Jonathan Edwards. Says Christ, ‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children...’ (Luke 11:13).

So then this indwelling sin is in us and the fight of faith, this good fight, is partly concerned with fighting what is in our own hearts. We must do so by looking at the five faculties of the soul. The soul has five faculties and if we want to make progress in the battle against sin in ourselves, we have to take account of these five faculties: the mind, the will, the emotions, the memory and the conscience. There are these five faculties in every human soul.

The mind, first of all, must be taught and instructed in theology. Theology is what shapes the Christian mind. The mind is the locomotive of the soul. As we think, so we are: ‘As he thinketh in his heart, so is he’ (Proverbs 23:7). So then the mind is first.

Secondly — the will. Our willpower must be subjected to the Ten Commandments. That is what we are to do. We are to study to keep these Ten Commandments. This is unpopular in some circles today. There is a movement associated with New Covenant Theology in which the Ten Commandments are not regarded as binding on the conscience without qualification. But Jesus makes it clear that the Ten Commandments are to be our rule of life in New Testament times. He says, ‘One jot or one title shall in no wise pass from the law (that means the Moral Law), till all be fulfilled’ (Matthew 5:18). So until the end of time the Moral Law will be binding on our conscience because it is a transcript of the very character of God.

The Moral Law is that level of holiness that God requires of every man and our willpower must seek to be subjected, by the grace of God, to those Ten Commandments. This is why the unconverted man cannot keep them: he has no love for God, but we do. Our love for God must be translated into a deliberate intention to subject our will to these Ten Commandments. I want to mention just one of the Commandments because a lot of good Christians, even Reformed Christians, go wrong I think, sadly, at this point.

Commandment number three: ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’ (Exodus 20:7). Some Christians fail to realise that this Commandment forbids the use of what we call Mild Oaths, or Minced Oaths, such things as ‘Gosh’, which is a minced form of ‘God’.‘Good Heavens’ and ‘Goodness me’ and similar exclamations are a breaking of this Third Commandment since they do not refer with reverence to Heaven where God lives, and they do not honour the God of Goodness. People often do not stop to think that Goodness is one of the great attributes of God and must only be referred to with respect and love. We must do our best to teach our people to get all of these improper exclamations out of our minds and mouths.

Then the emotions. The emotions of a minister and a servant of God are very important. You will hardly believe it but I am told by people who serve the Lord in America that they have to spend time sometimes counselling Christians these days against internet pornography. I am talking about professing Christians who are ensnared by watching internet pornography. Can you believe it? All they have to do is switch it off but people are not doing that. The reason why not is that their emotions are getting carried away with the seductions of Delilah. My friends, we dare not say we will never be guilty of this sin but we must by all means keep these things well out of our lives. Our emotions must be kept pure.

The memory has to be stored with the Word of God: ‘Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee’ (Psalm 119:11). It is a very practical thing, so that in every situation of life we ask ourselves what is right in any given situation. Should I speak or keep silent; should I do this or do that? It is only as we have memorised the Word of God and keep it in our memories, that we are able to apply it to ourselves in this way. This is what is called fighting the good fight within ourselves. And all this applies of course to conscience. We must keep a ‘conscience void of offence’, as the apostle says (Acts 24:16).

So mind, will, emotions, memory, conscience; all of these have to be looked after very carefully. We have to apply the Word of God to them as our duty in fighting the good fight of faith. An unholy minister is a great tragedy in this world. Many churches have declined and been pulled down by ministers who have not lived godly lives. A minister who does not live a godly life will not love the whole counsel of God — he cannot. That is how preachers drag churches down. They get caught up in sin and then they cover up their sin. The church tries to believe it was not there but the church is all the time feeling a drag on its spirituality. We must fight this good fight in ourselves.

The Devil←⤒🔗

A third great opponent of course is the devil:

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.Ephesians 6:12

We need to know a great deal about the devil. What does the Bible tell us about him? First of all he is a liar. He deceived Adam and Eve. He is a thorough liar. Never believe a word he says.

Second, the Bible tells us he is a murderer. He is the greatest murderer in the universe: he murdered the whole human race. We would all be going to hell today were it not for the blessed Jesus, the second Adam, who came to deliver us; but it is no thanks to the devil. The devil is very powerful like a lion. Can you imagine the wickedness of a spirit who would whisper into the mind of a person like Adolph Hitler — to wipe out all the Jews on the face of the earth? Was not that Hitler’s great scheme? He wanted to destroy every Jewish man, woman and child. He succeeded in killing six million of them. But the interesting thing is, within three years of shooting himself in his bunker in Berlin, Israel was back in its own country. The Lord confounded his wickedness. He was inspired by the devil, that old lion, who wishes to do great wickedness.

The devil is very crafty. There is nowadays the snare of the Ecumenical Movement. Many evangelical people are being drawn into the Ecumenical Movement. It is a most serious mistake to make. My beloved friends, if we mean business in fighting for God, one thing we must absolutely do, we must never associate with Rome. Let us pray in earnest for the beloved people of Southern Ireland as there is a new openness, it would appear, towards the gospel of Christ.

The depravity of the devil knows no bounds. How he deceives the unbeliever! Some unbelievers have been heard saying this when they have heard a good sermon about punishment and hell and judgment. Ignorant sinners and worldly people might be tempted to say, ‘I’m not worried about hell. In hell I shall have my old friends with me. We have been drinking in pubs for years. We can go on drinking and laughing our heads off in hell’. What such people do not understand is that in hell there is no such thing as fun. In hell nobody has the slightest love for anybody else. In hell everybody hates everybody else with perfect hatred. If a husband in hell were to see his wife in hell, he would rip her eyes out in hatred. In hell they are not only totally depraved they are absolutely depraved, like the devil himself. There is not the slightest spark of common grace restraining the wicked sinner in hell. That is the way the sinner is and that is what hell will be. We must not hesitate to warn people about hell, my brethren. I do not mean that we should talk endlessly about hell. We cannot conceal the truth of hell from people. The Lord Jesus Christ did not keep it from the people. We have to warn every man and teach every man the seriousness of hell. And then also show them the loveliness of Christ.

The Armour←⤒🔗

God has provided seven pieces of armour for us (Ephesians 6:10-17). First of all, the ‘girdle of truth’. Truth. This shows the immense importance of truth and doctrine. We are back again to what we said before — the very great importance of theology. That is why in training men for the ministry, Systematic Theology is crucially important. It is not enough just to know some Hebrew and Greek, and then some history. All that is useful but we have to know the system of theology God has given to us. That is why the great commentators like Matthew Henry and Matthew Poole are exceedingly good and better than so many modern commentators. They lived in an age when people were imbued with Systematic Theology — the theology of God’s Word.

The ‘breastplate of righteousness’. There are two aspects of justification: the active obedience of Christ and the passive obedience of Christ. We have to explain both aspects of this wonderful righteousness. The whole righteousness of the God-Man is imputed to the believer. What an unspeakable privilege! All sin pardoned and yet we are not simply in a negative situation. We are credited with all that Christ has done in keeping the Moral Law.

Then we are told about the ‘sandals of truth’ — or the footwear. That surely implies we should be ready to travel to spread the gospel. You put shoes on, not for comfort, but for going on a journey. May I say, dear friends, wherever we go as ministers and Christians, we should school ourselves to tell people who may be in conversation with us about Christ. If we are sitting next to someone on a bus, or a train, or a plane, a café or restaurant; try to turn the conversation to the gospel.

What encouragement have you and I got today? We know the state of society. What have we got to encourage us to fight the good fight? The answer is that we have God. And God can alter a situation for good in a moment. Let us remind ourselves of one great event in the history of the church of Christ in our own land.

The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland of 1860 in Edinburgh was able to give the following report. He said,

Two years ago our Assembly was deeply disturbed (aroused) by the intelligence of what God is doing in the United States of America (revival). One year ago the impression was deepened. The pregnant cloud (of God’s blessing) had swept on and was sending down upon Ireland a plenteous rain (that was especially Ulster). This year (1860) the same precious showers have been, and are even now, falling within the limits of our own beloved land of Scotland. We as a Free Church of Scotland accept the revival as a great and blessed fact. Numerous and explicit testimonies from ministers and members alike tell us of the gracious influence upon the people. Whole congregations have been seen bending before it like a mighty rushing wind.

That is what God can do. So we must never lose this hope and this vision.

I love what John J Murray has done in encouraging us all to pray. I try to do this myself from time-to-time, not every day of course. But I do recommend it in view of the situation; why not try it from time to time? Forget your breakfast for this morning. Go into your study and until lunchtime cry to God for two hours or so. Cry to God that He will help in the situation. Why not? Is not that what the great men of old did? Take Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel — they cried to God in the crucial situation in which they were.

You say that you do pray sometimes. Well let me say something else about prayer. We should try to pray in secret until we have tears running down our face. That is the way McCheyne was. He went from his vestry into the pulpit, we are told. He put his hands over his face while in his vestry before preaching and he prayed until the tears ran down his face.

I could add a further encouragement in this dark hour. The nation of Israel is now back in their own land and the hope we have from Scripture is that God will one day turn Israel back to Himself. But on this occasion I do not have time to elaborate on this wonderful subject.

But let us fight on. God’s purposes are ripening. In our sermons let us say something in every sermon which will help the sinner to Christ. Let us in all our sermons have something for the children. In all our sermons let us have something which indicates we love them and wish their highest good.

I wish you all rich and wonderful blessing and encouragement in coming days. I close with these words of the apostle Paul:

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.