Imagine that you just graduated high school and decided to join the military.
After a few years our country is attacked. There is a nation threatening our freedom and our peace so we have to go to battle. You join the armed forces that are heading out to the battlefield and you are ready to go. This is what you have been training for. You are ready to defend your country, whatever it takes.
You make it to the basecamp in that enemy nation and you are getting ready to attack the very next day. Your general comes up to you and tells you that you will be leading the charge. You start getting all your weapons ready to go when your general says something weird. He says, “You won’t be needing those. In fact, I have got some instruments here for you to take instead. Now when you go out to the battlefield, I don’t want you to sneak up on them or attack, I want you to worship. I want you to take these instruments and just sing and praise God as you go into battle”
Would you take your generals orders? Would you grab a guitar or some cymbals and start marching towards an enemy who wants you dead? Would you go into battle with nothing to defend yourself? I don’t know about you guys but I think I would have a hard time getting on board with that one.
I didn’t just make that up, it actually happened. There are multiple occasions in scripture where people worship in war. Check out 2 Chronicles chapter 20.
In this story the people of Judah, some of God’s people, were under attack. Two nations had joined together and were coming to attack Jehoshaphat and the people of Israel so Jehoshaphat gathered all the people of Judah to pray and seek the Lord’s help. In response God tells them to go to battle and to stand strong and he will give them victory. So that’s what they do.
Look at 2 Chronicles 20:20-21
"Early in the morning they left for the Desert of Tekoa. As they set out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, Judah and the people of Jerusalem! Have faith in the Lord your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful.” After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying:“Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”
Isn’t that so interesting? Not only does he have people in his army set aside solely to worship God, but he puts those people at the very frontlines. The first thing the enemy is going to see is a bunch of people praising their God. If I were in charge I don’t know if I would be that bold but the crazy thing is, it works, look at this. 2 Chronicles 2:22-24
"As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated. The Ammonites and Moabites rose up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. After they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another. When the men of Judah came to the place that overlooks the desert and looked toward the vast army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground; no one had escaped."
Imagine if you were being bullied and you decided to fight back by bringing your guitar and singing a worship song. People would think you were a fool. But in reality Jehoshaphat and his men weren’t foolish, they were actually incredibly wise. They recognized that they were in a serious situation with a serious enemy, and they needed the Lord to fight on their behalf. They weren’t singing to goof off, they were singing because they knew what we need to understand, that
Worship is an act of war.
The Bible teaches very clearly that we have an enemy. An enemy that wants to destroy us and everything we believe in. We are surrounded by people every day who are anti-God and anti-Christian. On top of that every day our enemy is throwing temptations at us trying to get us to screw up our lives.
Every single day we are at war and our enemy has a lot of weapons in his artillery. He will use weapons like:
All of these things can get in our way, slow us down, hurt us and stop us from being the people God created us to be. The reality is on our own we don’t have what it takes to fight against all of this stuff. We don’t have what we need to defend ourselves against those weapons.
But when we worship everything is different. When we worship our enemy runs in fear. When we worship, we honor God and give Him permission to fight on our behalf. Sin loses its power over us; fear doesn’t stand a chance.
When we worship, we are putting our battles into the hands of God. And when God goes to battle, He doesn’t lose. When we come together and we really truly worship God for who He is and all He has done for us, our enemy doesn’t stand a chance.
The bummer is, a lot of us are missing out on this. We don’t put our battles in God’s hands. We don’t use worship as a weapon. We think of worship as a way to waste time. It’s just a part of a church service instead of an essential part of our faith so we goof off and talk to our friends and we tune out completely until it’s over and then we wonder why we are missing out on the benefits of worship. We have a weapon to use and we are wasting it.
So, next time you get an opportunity to worship, don’t waste it. Sing with your whole heart and know that as you do that the God of the universe is going to war with your enemy. In fact, you can sing knowing that the God of the universe is fighting for you and if he is fighting for you then you can sing celebrating the victories He has won and will win in your life and the lives around you because not only is worship a weapon, but
Worship is a celebration of victory.
Look at what Jehoshaphat and his army do after the battle is won. 2 Chronicles 20:27-28
"Then, led by Jehoshaphat, all the men of Judah and Jerusalem returned joyfully to Jerusalem, for the Lord had given them cause to rejoice over their enemies. They entered Jerusalem and went to the temple of the Lord with harps and lyres and trumpets."
They went straight to the temple to praise God. They knew where their victory came from and they went to praise Him and thank Him for it.
God has given us so many victories to celebrate.
Think about all the good things God has done for you and worship Him because of it. Worship to celebrate all the people getting baptized and growing in their faith here.
God has given us so much to celebrate.
Some of you might be listening to me talk about all the victories we have to celebrate and all you can think about is the losses, and the pains in your life. You think about the friend that hurt you, or the family member that is still sick, or your parents’ divorce. You might be wondering “How can I worship when I don’t have any victories to celebrate?”
I know sometimes when you are in pain it can be really hard to want to worship and talk about how good God is but let me remind you what we talked about two weeks ago. Worship is also an act of trust. When we raise our hands and our voices and praise God, we are saying we trust you. We trust that even in the most painful situations, He is with us and He is fighting our battles in ways we don't even see so when you don’t feel like you have a victory to celebrate, praise Him anyway, put your trust in Him and believe that He is fighting for you even when we can’t see it right away.
And even when you don’t feel like it if you are a follower of Jesus, there is always something to celebrate. In fact, every day we can celebrate the biggest victory of all time. The victory that we find in the most quoted verse in the Bible.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16
God looked at us in the mess we were in, knowing that because of our sin we deserved to die. And instead of leaving us to deal with our sin. He sent His only Son, to live a perfect life on this earth, be arrested and put on trial, and murdered. Jesus died to pay the cost of all of our sins so we could be free to have a relationship with God the Father. And three days later He proved His power over death when He rose from the grave. Setting us free from sin and death and shame for eternity.
We deserve to be completely separate from God but because of what Jesus did we don’t have to be. No, all we have to do is admit that we are sinners, believe that Christ really did die for us and rise from the grave, and commit our lives to following Him, and we can have a relationship with God forever. We can have something to celebrate for all of eternity.
If you aren’t a Christian but you want that kind of relationship with God, make sure to talk to me or a leader after service. If you want a reason to have joy no matter what you face, if you want to know that the God of the universe is fighting for you, talk to someone today about giving your life to Christ and you will be able to celebrate that victory for the rest of your life.
©2024 Sagebrush Church
