Alan Dunn

It is my pleasure to be with you, once again, this year, and to see many familiar faces, to see some new faces, all of them getting older every year. It’s always an encouragement when you see brothers and sisters who are continuing in the way, and they are continuing, as the years past, to follow Jesus Christ, to be faithful, and to serve Him. Serving Christ in our culture, even as Pastor Martinez prayed, is becoming more and more challenging. I hope that the message today will be used by The Holy Spirit to strengthen you, especially you young people who are with us for these meetings. I believe that the days that are before us are growing increasingly challenging for us, to become Bible-believing, Bible-obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. As Paul brings His epistle to the church in Romans to a conclusion, he tries to give them words that will encourage them, and put everything into perspective. We read in Romans chapter 16, at verse 19 and verse 20, “For the report of your obedience has reached to all; therefore I am rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.”

In verse 19, Paul is encouraged by the reputation that the church of Rome has gained for itself, he is rejoicing that they are walking in the way of wisdom. He encourages them to pursue what is good, and to be innocent, untaught, naive in what is evil. If you live a life of innocence in what is evil, Paul says then in verse 20, that God is going to bring you into conflict with pure evil itself, isn’t that strange? You be innocent in what is evil, as you walk in the way of wisdom, the God of peace is going to take your foot, and put it down in the head of evil itself: Satan. That’s all by the grace of God, and that’s by The God of peace, who says, “You follow the way of wisdom, and I’m going to bring you into conflict, I’m going to bring you into conflict with Satan himself.” What is Paul thinking? Where does he get this idea of putting your foot down on top of Satan’s head? And why would such a picture be something that would encourage Christians? Well, Paul is making an illusion to something that is way back in the beginning of our Bibles in Genesis chapter 3. There on the occasion of the fall of Adam and Eve, through sin unto death, God now has the serpent, Satan, and the woman and the man, and is asking them questions. He’s arraigning them in His court, and in chapter 3, verse 15, He speaks to the serpent and says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” We understand this to be the foundational, prophetic word of the Gospel. Here is the beginning of the light of the Gospel, the dawn’s right at the start of history, and here we understand Jesus to be the promised seed of the woman who would be victorious over Satan. But notice His victory will come through suffering. His heel will be bruised in the midst of crushing the serpent’s head.

It is the hope that mankind will be given a second Adam, a new man who will rectify and make right the things that the original Adam disobeyed, and in which he brought all things into a curse and into the Fall. So, in this age, we are to understand that we, as Christians and followers of Jesus Christ, are also seen as the seed of the woman; that we are brought into this ancient conflict that has been going on since the beginning of man. Genesis 3:16 gives to us this picture of this war. Satan here is seen as a snake, a serpent, and Paul says if you walk down the path of obedience –Jesus said it’s a straight and it’s a narrow path, it’s the way of faith, it’s the way of obedience– you walk down that path, and you discover that the path is not paved with gold. The path turns out to be nothing other than the very head of Satan himself. I want you to picture what’s happening here. You’ve got a snake, it’s not one of those little Garter snakes, it’s a sizable serpent. In fact, by the time you get to Revelation chapter 12, this snake has grown into a big dragon, but here it is a snake. There you are in your bare feet, you don’t kick the snake away, but you come upon the serpent and you begin to put your foot down on the serpent’s head, and he senses that your foot is near him; so he turns his head around, opens his mouth and shows his fangs and begins to hiss. That’s snake language for saying, “If you touch me, I am going to bite you!” You continue to put your foot down into his open mouth, and as you do that his fangs immediately go into your heels. You cry out because it’s painful! The fangs penetrate into your skin, and you look down and immediately see your blood coming out of your heel, and running down over the snake’s face, but you continue to press your heel down through the pain. Now the snake coils itself around your calf, while you have its head pinned against the ground, and the harder you press, the more the fangs go into your heel. But the harder you press you begin to feel that beneath your heel the bones of that snake’s head start to crack, and you begin to realize that his skull is breaking! When you look down, now you see his blood, pressure coming out of his eyes, out of his mouth, and you continue to put your heel down. You hear the snapping sound of bones being crushed, and you see the blood of your heel and the blood coming out of the serpent’s head. Now the fangs are penetrated, and actually rubbing against the bone of your heel. That’s not a very pretty picture, is it?

You suffer immensely, but you realize that the serpent is killed, the serpent is dying. The serpent is being defeated, the serpent is being crushed, and that’s the picture of this warfare, that’s the picture that Paul brings to the church at the end of his epistle to the Romans. And he says, “Here is the way of wisdom, here is the way of Gospel peace.” The God of peace will put your feet down on this path, it’s not a nice walk on a summer beach. It’s not one of the beaches in the Dominican Republic that you’re walking on. You’re walking on top of the snake itself, and it’s a conflict, and it’s a warfare. I want us to recognize today that we are brought into conflict, and we are told to learn how to fight this warfare in a very peculiar way. We’re to learn how to fight like slaughtered lambs, to fight like Jesus Christ, who overcame by being “obedient unto death, even the death on the cross.” We will see, I believe, times in the life of the church when our witness, our verbal testimony, will no longer be tolerated. We will not be given a platform to speak, but we are yet to be witnesses, we are yet to testify. I don’t want us to see tonight that on occasions such as those- that suffering for Jesus Christ is itself a witness, it is itself testifying, and I want you to see that tonight, as we look at what it means to walk through life on fang-pierced heels.

First of all, consider Christian suffering as a demonstration of the Gospel. Now, I could begin here by directing your attention to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Essential teachings of discipleship, in which we are called to deny ourselves to take up our cross -that’s an implement of crucifixion, it’s an instrument of death- to take up our cross and to follow Christ as He is on His way to Calvary. He tells us in several places in the Gospels that the world will hate us, there will be opposition, that even from our own immediate family. But I want us to see the example of the Apostle Paul. So, I ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me tonight to Acts chapter 9. We’re going to be looking at several passages in our topical sermon today. Acts chapter 9 is asking the question, “What did serving Jesus Christ mean for Paul?” He tells us in Acts chapter 9, “The Lord said to him,” –Ananias is told of The Lord’s words to Paul– “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.”

Bearing of the name of Christ is simultaneous to the suffering for Christ. They’re not two things, it’s not bearing the name of Christ as one thing and then suffering as another thing, but they’re both seen together. The call to be an apostle for Paul was also a call to suffering for Christ, suffering for righteousness, suffering for Christ’s sake, is an essential component of Paul’s apostleship. In fact, suffering for Christ validated Paul’s apostleship. You remember his ministry at the church in Corinth? There were false apostles that penetrated into that church, and they did not give credibility to the Apostle Paul. They tried to discredit him, and so there are places in Paul’s writings to that church where he has to demonstrate the validity of his apostleship. He tells them in 2 Corinthians 6: 4-10, in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 12-33, he lists all if the ways in which he has suffered, and he’s saying to us much more than simply, “I’m so committed to Jesus, that I’m willing to suffer for Him.” He’s saying something much more than that! He’s saying that the suffering for righteousness is a validation of his apostleship. He’s telling the Corinthians, “Do you want to know whether or not I’m a true apostle? See how much I’ve suffered for Christ. It gives validation, because when He called me to be an apostle, He also called me to suffer for His name’s sake.”

Let me draw your attention to what he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, because he uses a very interesting word here that is helpful to us to understand that suffering for Christ is itself a demonstration of the Gospel. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4 we read from verse 7, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.” Now, the word that attracts our attention here is a word in verse 10 and verse 11 translated “manifested”; it means “to make something known,” “to make something evident,” “to cause something to be clearly seen.” It’s used in the Gospels to speak of Jesus’ deity, that His glory is manifested, His divine nature is evidenced and seen by the things that He does and the things that He says. And Paul is telling us here that through his suffering for Christ there is a manifestation of Gospel victory, of the life, of resurrection power that is made evident and manifested.

Robert Plummer, in his book Paul’s Understanding of the Church’s Mission writes, “Paul thinks suffering not only accompanies the proclamation of the Gospel, but is a proclamation of the Gospel.” It just doesn’t accompany the proclamation, it is itself a manifestation, a disclosing, a making-known of the Gospel of Christ. So that when you heard Paul preach, you heard the Gospel, and when you saw Paul suffer, you saw the Gospel. You see, Paul was the media to which the Gospel was communicated, not only through his words, but through his life of obedience, suffering for righteousness. You see, the messenger of the Gospel is himself to be a picture of the message; he is to be a manifestation of that which he proclaims. The message concerns the cross and the resurrection of life over death. The messenger must be a replication of that message. The Corinthians absolutely despised that, that was definitely uncool, definitely un-corinthian! You see children, if you were raised in Corinth, they didn’t have DVDs or televisions, they didn’t have video games, they didn’t have movie theaters; so what would you do of you wanted to take your family out and have a nice night out somewhere? Well, one of the things you would do is you would go down to the theater area where there were these wonderful speech-makers, orators who were trained and skilled in rhetoric and in speech, and as a Corinthian you would have been taught these things in school, you would have been well-trained how to be able to judge the competition of one speaker and another speaker. Remember, Paul didn’t like them doing that, “I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of–” he said, “What are we, we’re servants of Christ,” but you see, they were looking at the preachers as though they were these orators, these great speakers. And the great speakers– these guys were buff, they were really handsome, they had big voices, they were very dramatic, and they had all of these speaking techniques that is part of classical rhetoric training. Then here comes the Apostle Paul, now, by this time he’d been beat up by more times than you can think, he’s one ugly, little man, and probably very limited, because his back has been torn open and beaten for Christ so many times. He’s been left for dead a couple of times, he’s been shipwrecked, he has endured immense suffering. We gather from the book of Galatians it’s very likely that he had very bad eyes, and he couldn’t see. How impressive is that, this little man coming up and trying to look to preach? And he would get so excited, that he would begin, “First of all–” and then he’d go off on another thought, and he’d never get to second of all. Everybody in the audience would say, “That is just so uncool, he doesn’t even know how to go from a first point to a second point”; but when he preached the power of The Spirit fell upon people and their eyes would open to see the glories of Jesus Christ not only from the things that he said, but from the man himself as they saw him as the media through which the Gospel was proclaimed. You see, Paul refused to accommodate his method of communication to the demands of the Corinthian culture. He refused to put away the foolishness of preaching and to learn how to be more culturally-relevant. He said, “No, the manner in which the Gospel is preached has to be itself a testimony of the message.” The Gospel appears foolish as a message, and the preaching appears foolish as a method, and the man who preaches it does not impress you at all! It’s a demonstration of weakness, it’s a demonstration of the cross being the vehicle through which life is communicated.

In Colossians chapter 1, in verse 24, Paul, again, speaks about his suffering, he says, “Now, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” This tells us that Paul suffered for others, not in the same way that Christ suffered, as though his sufferings were making atonement for sin, but he is indeed suffering for the sake of the church, many of whom, most of whom, in fact, all of whom in Colossae, did not see Jesus die on the cross. Paul, by his own suffering, will give to them a visual aid, he will help to fill the afflictions of Christ, if you will, to be himself a demonstration of the afflictions of Jesus Christ, so that when they saw the man and understood his sufferings, they were given a picture of the Gospel: an innocent, Godly preacher who’s suffering hardship for the sake of righteousness; so that the man himself pointed people to Jesus Christ by the way in which he suffered for righteousness. You know, in our day of overheads and videos and dramas and pageantry and elaborate productions, let me suggest to you brother, and my preacher brethren especially, that the most powerful visual aid that you can give to your people is you. You are the most powerful visual aid that you can give to your people.

What is God’s method for missions? What is God’s strategy for the Gospel? John chapter 1, verse 6, “There came a man sent by God, whose name was John.” “There came a man.” The man himself is the media, he is the visual aid, he is the manifestation. He is the demonstration, not only in what he proclaims, but also in the way in which he conducts spiritual warfare in the midst of persecution, opposition, and hatred of the world. You see brethren, we, in our very persons, in the lives that we live, in our pursuits of Christ and His righteousness, in our doing of good deeds and acts of kindness and benevolence, in our words of Gospel truths, we are the media! We are the way in which the Gospel is communicated to other men. We are to manifest the reality of this Gospel, this Gospel that speaks of victory through death into resurrection. We are the ones who follow the suffering servant of The Lord, and like Paul, who’s apostleship involved suffering, so to our discipleship involves suffering. Look at what Paul says to the church in Philippi. Philippians 1 and verse 29, “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” Robert Plummer says that Christians suffer because they are identified with Jesus Christ, and the world hates Jesus Christ. Also because the Gospel message comes to the world as a Word of conviction, a Word of rebuke, where it identifies sin and calls sinners to repentance, and the world does not like that! Keep that in mind, the voice that speaks to the conscience is the voice of Christ through the preaching of the church, and the world does not like that voice.

In 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 12, Paul says, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Now, here we don’t have suffering as an option. We don’t have suffering as something that’s just for the elite Christians –you know, those who are contracting for an A– and the rest of us who are as satisfied with Cs will just believe in Jesus and have other people suffer. No, you’ve been called not only to believe, but also to suffer for Christ. Now, back in Romans chapter 8 –perhaps one of the most marvelous chapters of the Bible. I’ve heard it said, “If I had just one chapter of the Bible to be stranded on a desert island with, it would be Romans chapter 8.” In verse 17, Paul pivots, he turns into a new subject, and notice what he pivots on, notice what he says, moving from our adoption as children of God by the gift of the Spirit he says, “And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we also may be glorified with Him.” He pivots from suffering with Him, to be glorified with Him, to enter then from verse 18, all the way to the end of the chapter in verse 39, to talk about the prospect of our being glorified with Him,and the glory of the coming new heavens and the new earth; and the glory of the resurrection, the redemption of the body of the sons of God, and how the earth is groaning and waiting for the resurrection of the dead. He says, “This is our inheritance, as the sons of God.” We have a land that is our inheritance, which is the new heavens and the new earth.

Now, I believe what Paul is doing here, is he is presenting with us a pattern, a paradigm, a structure, by which we are to understand living the Christian life, especially as that life is lived on the threshold of the resurrection, and the eternal state. He tells us that the Christian life is going to be a life that is threatened by everything Satan and the world can throw at you. Look at verse 35, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced 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 created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To live the Christian life is to experience things that threaten to separate you from Christ, opposition that threaten to pull you away from Christ: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword; things that are immense: life, death, angelic powers and principalities, height, depth, width, breadth, immensity. Go to the largest expanse of the universe, and you face the prospect of being separated from Christ, but I want you to notice something here. Paul tells us that it is in the midst of that conflict that we overwhelmingly conquer, because it’s in the midst of suffering for righteousness that we experience something. We experience something. We experience being loved by Jesus Christ.

Notice verse 35, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Notice verse 37, “…through Him who loved us,”notice verse 39, “…will separate us from the love of Christ.” Paul has structured those references to love at the beginning and in the middle and at the end, so that you would understand that by the way in which he has structured those words, that being loved by Jesus Christ is the foundational message of this paragraph. He’s telling us there’s nothing that can stop Christ from loving us, and it’s in the midst of suffering for Christ that you’ll experience something that is absolutely, overwhelmingly wonderful, and that is the experience of being loved by Jesus.

Some of you know that in 2007 I had the wonderful privilege of being with Arif and Kathy Khan up until the morning of their martyrdom in Islamabad. This was the text that we had worked through the previous day in our personal devotions, and I had attempted to minister to these dear servants of Christ and to encourage them from this very passage of Scripture. On the morning that I left them was the last time that I saw them, because that night they were assassinated, and I consider it one of the greatest privileges of my Christian ministry to have been sent by Christ to minister to those two, dear servants just hours before they were martyred and to assure them, just hours before their death, there’s nothing that can separate you from Christ’s love. There’s nothing that can separate you from Christ’s love. They were living in a very dangerous place, and brethren, we live in a very dangerous place. Life here, in this Babylonian culture, in the great whore-embrace of this sensual culture, is no less lethal to our souls than those dear brethren who are living in Islamic cultures. It is a battle, and it is a warfare. I remember getting the news of their martyrdom, and it was so disorienting, it was so confusing, it was so painful, it was like slaughtered lambs, and I also remember in the midst of that bewilderment, in the midst of that pain, that there was an experience of something that was far more foundational, more subterranean, more real, more solid; and that was the confident experience of Christ’s love, that He loves us, and there’s nothing that can separate us from His love. And I believe that’s what Paul is looking at, you see, he’s bringing this section of Romans to a conclusion. He’s going to enter now in chapter 9 through 11 on the subject of God’s electing grace for His people, and he’s concluding this part of Romans that brings together his teachings on justification and sanctification and the work of The Spirit. I believe that he’s telling us as he sees the church coming to that time near to the resurrection, coming to the end of this present age, that he doesn’t see the church sitting in positions of civil authority, he doesn’t see the church having been raptured and she’s no longer here anymore; he sees the church suffering, he sees the church going the way of the cross. He sees the church being conformed to Jesus Christ, just as he has taught us there in verse 28 through verse 30 that we will be conformed to Christ, and we will do that as we learn how to fight this battle as slaughtered lambs. So that when men hear the message, they hear the Gospel, and when they see us live the Christian life, they see the Gospel by the way in which we are willing to continue to be obedient to Christ, even when faced with tribulation and persecution and famine and sword and principalities and powers, any created thing, we continue to be obedient, even at the cost of our lives. That’s a demonstration of the Gospel.

Secondly, Christian suffering is a strategy, a strategy for spiritual victory. In Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 10, Paul speaks about the ministry of the church, and he tells us that, “The manifold wisdom of God might now be known through the church through the rulers and authorities in heavenly places.” He’s speaking about demonic forces. He’s speaking about the work of Satan and his deceptive lies, and he calls us later in chapter 6 and verse 12, to stand in this fight, because: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God.” We are proclaiming the Gospel, Paul says, not only to men, but also to angels, to forces and powers in the heavenly places. We fight against forces of wickedness, and we do that by simply being obedient to the cross of Christ, being obedient to the Gospel of Christ. As Paul said in Romans, “Walking in the way of wisdom, being innocent of evil, and God putting your feet down on Satan’s head.” What has Paul been describing here in chapters preceding chapter 6? He’s been talking about the way you speak to one another in chapter 4, right? He’s been talking in chapter 5, again, about the way we worship together as a church. Then he’s talking about our marriages for the rest of chapter 5, and then in chapter 6 he begins to talk about parents and children. Then he also talks about how we relate to our employers in a workplace. He says in order to be Christ-glorifying in that Christian life, in your church life, in your work life, in your family life, you’re going to have to wear the armor of God, because your life is a battlefield, and you’re fighting against forces.

You’re fighting against deceptive lies that are launched against you to try to separate you from the love of Jesus Christ, and you need to learn how to be strong in The Lord, that’s what he begin Ephesians, praying for us in chapter 1 and verse 18, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness.” Now, notice the words that have to do with military things, have to do with fighting: “To know the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet.”

As we heard in our previous message, “The earth is my footstool,” it’s a symbol for subjection, it’s a symbol for rule. “And he’s put everything under Christ’s feet and has given Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Notice the vocabulary. He says, “I hope that you understand what victory is yours in the resurrection of Christ, what strength is yours, what power is yours, what might is yours.” This is all yours in the working of the God who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, because as you follow this Christ as a suffering servant, as a cross-bearing disciple, you not only experience the tribulation and the pain of the persecution, you also experience crushing that snake’s head, and the power to do that is the power of the resurrection! You begin to experience resurrection power as you go the way of the cross, as you learn to fight like a slaughtered lamb, as you learn to walk on fang-pierced heels, as you learn to suffer for the sake of righteousness and for the name of Christ. And what will that look like? It will look like weakness.

Look at 2 Corinthians 12. Many of us refer to this passage to get encouragement, for it’s one of those passages where Paul expresses a truth, an axiom, a principled truth that we, as children of God, immediately recognize is relevant to each of us. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12, looking at verse 9 –remember Paul has now asked that this messenger of Satan stop tormenting him in verse 7, that he has implored The Lord three times to take this away– verse 9, “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may be in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” How does it look for someone to overcome? What does it look like? Paul says if it looks like a form of weakness, which is, in fact, the strength of God being manifest in you.

Marva Dawn, in her book Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God, makes a very compelling case, that Paul is saying something like this in his text: he’s saying, “When my strength, when my power is brought to its end, when it’s perfected, when it’s completed, I am without strength, I am weak. It is then that I experience the power of Christ dwelling with me.” Right? Isn’t that what he says? “So, the power of Christ might dwell with me.” Now, that word “dwell,” in the original, it literally could be translated “tabernacling.” “Tabernacling.” It’s the same word that John uses in John 1, verse 14, “Where the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”; “The Word became flesh and tabernacled with us.” It’s the word– it’s a language of worship. It’s the language of the presence of God among His worshipping people, and Paul says that it’s in the presence of God and His tabernacling power, that my weakness becomes a stage upon which His strength is made known and made obvious.

So, he becomes, in his weakness, the temple of God. He becomes the focal point of worship, he becomes a place where God is pleased to tabernacle with men, and so, in the midst of his weakness and his insults and the distresses and the persecutions and the difficulties, what does that do? It drives you to Christ, and when you go to Christ in the midst of your weaknesses, in the midst of your distresses, in the midst of your complete depletions, He fills you with His own tabernacling presence. His power is made evident on the stage of your weakness, and you commune with Him in ways that are far –as I mentioned before– profound and significant, in ways that are mysterious. I’ve heard accounts of martyrs in the Counter-Reformation, who were being stretched out on the racks –Christians– and then they began to release the pressure. And the Christians say, “What are you doing, stop that, don’t release that! I was experiencing the presence of Christ that was so wonderful!” It’s in the crucible of the suffering, it’s in all these things that we overwhelmingly conquer, and Paul is telling us that the way to conquer is to become the center of worship. A tabernacling presence where Christ is dwelling with you in worship. He is your Fortress, he is your Victor, He is The Warrior-God who defeats all your enemies, and He does that in the midst of your weakness, while you just but simply worship and become the place of His tabernacling presence.

So that’s why, when we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1, we immediately recognize ourselves. Look at each other! Look at us! Chapter 1, verse 26 of 1 Corinthians, “Consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.” We are weak! We don’t just look weak, we are weak, despised, nobodies, but we’re chosen of God, and we are the place of God’s dwelling, His tabernacling presence. It’s in that dwelling of God, that our strength is derived, and that our victory is obtained. It’s in a people who have purity and simplicity in their devotion to Christ. Remember what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11? “I’m concerned for you, lest you’re going to be deceived the way Eve was deceived by the serpent.” So, what’s your best strategy? Simplicity and purity of your devotion to Christ. The same thing, a walk of wisdom, a walk of faith, a walk of obedience, a walk of innocence, and you are defeating the Evil One in your simple commitment to the worship of God. In your pursuit of God’s presence among you, you are victors, you are overcomers. You who are nobodies, you who are the despised, you who are the weak, you who are the world’s refuge, garbage, you are the people of God among whom God dwells, and His presence in your life and in your church is your victory in the midst of that opposition, the persecution, and the suffering.

The Old Testament gives us a picture of Christ’s presence with His church. Remember, as the Israelites were going across the wilderness? They had the pillar of cloud during the day. You imagine being one of the Amorites or the Hittites or the other -ites that were there, wanting to come and fight against Israel? They come up over a little ledge and say, “Ok, their camp is just on the valley on the other side. Let’s go get them,” and as they get to the site of Israel they see this big cloud goes all the way up into heaven. They look at one another and go, “I’m not going there, forget that. What is that? That’s the presence of their God! Ohh, gives me the willies, let’s come back tonight.” They come back tonight, they come over the ridge, ready to attack at nighttime and what’s there? This big pillar of fire that goes all the way up, and they go, “So, are you going to attack that? I’m not going to attack that!” What are the Israelites doing? They’re giving sacrifice, they’re singing praises, they’re worshipping God, and their enemies are running away, because God is with them. In their weakness, God is with them. As the world hates them, God is with them. As they experience the pain of putting their heels down on Satan’s head, God is with them.

Brethren, let me encourage you to embrace your call for suffering for Christ’s sake. Embrace your call for suffering. Paul tells us in Philippians 3, verse 7 through 9, that he has embraced, having all things he’s lost, all things for the glory of Christ, for the sake of Jesus Christ. The things that were once valuable to him, he says, “I’ve lost them , I’ve counted them lost. I’ve suffered the loss of them for the sake of Christ.” And if you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ here today, you’ve lost something, you’ve suffered the loss of something in order to follow Jesus Christ. If you’ve been following Jesus Christ for any length of time, surely you can look at yourself in someway and say, “You know what? If I wasn’t a Christian, if I wasn’t committed to these values of the kingdom, I probably could have made much more money than I have. I probably could have been much more popular. I probably could have enjoyed things that I gave up. Sports, politics, but I’ve counted them as loss for Christ’s sake. If it wasn’t for my being a Christian, I wouldn’t have lost the affection of my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my extended family. I could have been popular with the people that I really love, but I’ve suffered the loss. I could have cultivated some of my latent interests and talents and skills, but I didn’t put time into studying how to be a better musician or a better artist, because I needed that time to study Christ and His Word. And I’ve suffered the loss of good things.”

If you’re following Christ, you’ve embraced the call to relinquish even things that are good, and to suffer the loss. This is the way of suffering that Paul says in verse 10, “That I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Paul says, “I want, more than anything else, to experience resurrecting power in my life, and to do that I have to have fellowship with Christ in His sufferings, because I’m called to follow Him and to be His witness.” You know that when you transliterate, not translate, but transliterate the Greek word for witness, you get the English word for martyr? I am called to be a martyr, and I’m called to be His witness, both by my lip, and by my life. If you’re articulating the Gospel, if you’re telling your family, your friends, your workmates, your schoolmates, that you’re a Christian, and you’re expressing with your lips the words of the Gospel, but you’re living a life of indulgence, then your words are nullified by your deeds. You see, you yourself, your character, your personal relationships, your lifestyle patterns, your decisions, your choices, your use of your time, use of your money, everything about you is to be done for the glory of God; “whether you eat, whether you drink, do it all to the glory of God.” You are a medium, you are a message, you yourself are the message!

People should be able to put what you say together with the way you live, and say, “I see it, I hear it, it makes sense! You’re talking about this weakness of a crucified King. You’re talking about the suffering of evil, and the victory of faith, and the triumph of the resurrection. You not only say it, but you demonstrate it, and I see it.” We have to embrace that, so that when we come to glory, and there’s a little group of angels that are gathered around us who might say, “How did Christ fulfill His purposes in your day? What did He do?” One of the brothers will come up and point at us and say, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was…” and he’ll say your name. You’re the strategy, my friend. You’re the method, you’re the message, you’re the media. You, in your life, in your witness, both with your lip and with your life. And then, brethren, as we come back to where we started in Romans 16, we need to get better at crushing the head of the serpent. Reflect in these words: “I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil, and The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of The Lord Jesus be with you.”

I want you to understand that you’re fighting a spiritual war. You’re fighting every lofty thought, every speculation that’s raised up against the true knowledge of God. There are voices that are coming into your ears from pulpits of all shapes and sizes; messages that come across from the television, messages that come across on the radio, messages that come across from education curriculum, messages that come across from movies and novels and books and magazines and neighbors and friends. All part of the way which we gain a common mindset, a common value system of how we think about things and what we judge to be good and bad, and what does it mean to live the life that we’re living. We all gain that information from all of these voices surrounded about us, and Paul says many of those voices articulate the doctrines of demons. You’re confronting speculations and lofty thoughts that are raised up against the knowledge of God; and when you are in that kind of spiritual battle, you need to be willing to suffer the pain of standing for the truth in the midst of the deception.

You need to be willing to put your head down on that snake that’s hissing his deceptive lies against you, attempting to skew your judgement, attempting to tell you, “Get your foot off of my face, cause I’ll bite you if you step on me, you know; and you say, well, you know, you’re right. I really don’t like this pain aspect. I’m going to pull back, and I’m not going to stand for the truth, and I’ll compromise.” That battle meets us in the most unusual places, sometimes in the most surprising people. If you’re committed to be a Biblical churchman in this place and in the churches where you serve, you’re going to experience the fang-pierced heels. If you’re determined to live a Godly life of purity, if you’re determined to be knowledgeable in the Word of God, if you’re determined to be a prayer warrior, if you’re determined to be a consistent witness for Christ, you better embrace the fact that you are going to suffer for His sake and see beyond it, see through it, and understand it as the way of victory.