Fight the Good Fight!

By:
Stan Moody

September 18, 2008

1Timothy 6:3-21

In the 6th chapter of 1st Timothy, the Apostle Paul picks up on the dangers that the fledgling 1st Century Christian community faces in attempting to avoid persecution from Rome. Timothy is a disciple of Paul’s and a leader in the church that Paul had established in Ephesus, Turkey.

Ephesus was a center of sea trade and one of the most influential cites in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Paul had ministered there for 3 years and was warning Timothy to guard against the tendency for the church to conform to their surroundings and fall victim to false teachers.

The church at Ephesus was credited by God in Revelation 2 for its good deeds, its hard work and its perseverance. It had successfully built into its culture an intolerance for “wicked men.” Somehow, unlike the church in America today, the church at Ephesus has successfully resisted false teachers:

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Yet, I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Remember the heights from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place.

Over a long period of time, the church at Ephesus had refused to tolerate sin among its members. They had resisted the widespread sexual practices of those who worshipped the goddess Artemis. In a world of tolerance such as that of the Roman Empire and the American Empire, it is popular to be open-minded toward sins, calling them personal choices or alternative lifestyles. That is all well and good. The church, however, must police itself.

When the church begins to tolerate an unrepentant spirit in its own congregations, it lowers its standards and compromises its witness. It is one thing to favor civil rights for everyone. It is another thing to favor civil rights within the church to the extent we become overly concerned with not offending anyone. The church is designed to police itself. Ephesus apparently had done a good job at policing itself morally and ethically, but it had fallen way short of the mission and goal of the Church of Jesus Christ.

I have often reminded you that “judgment begins,” not in the world in which we live and make our livings, but in the House of God. Repentance begins, not in evangelistic rallies but in the church among God’s people. We come here not to impress ourselves and each other with our righteousness but to live out our brokenness before God so that He may demonstrate His strength through our weaknesses.

Where the Ephesians were failing was that they had resisted sin out of their pride for their own righteous living. They had lost their zeal for God. They had become a busy church, doing much to benefit themselves and their community. Their work, however, was no longer motivated by their love for God.

We are going to explore this morning how fighting the fight against sin is apostasy if we are not fighting the “good fight of faith.”

Fighting seems to be a popular pastime in human history. We spend our lives fighting to gain a foothold in society. Not only do we lurch from war to war; we fight our parents while growing up; we fight our government; we fight against authority of any kind, and we fight to make a living and to ensure our comfort.

Young and old; high and low; rich and poor; educated and uneducated; we all have a very deep interest in fighting. You have only to take a look at the passion for sports in this country, and you can see the passion for fighting. The bloodier the sport, the more interest we have.

Our divorce courts are filled with fighting couples. People are suing each other over nothing. Sexual preferences are a cause for fighting among ourselves. This disgusting political season is just one more example of people fighting each other in order to become our Messiah-for-a-day. In the meantime, the Church of Jesus Christ is fighting for a piece of the power pie so that it might outlaw a short list of sins. It is fighting the fight of the damned rather than the good fight of faith.

I stand before you this morning as one who has been engaged in many fights over my lifetime. When I awaken in the middle of the night, I cringe over where some of those fights have taken me. Rather than the fight of faith, it often has been about fighting for a position at the top of the hill. I am reminded of that old saying, “too soon old and too late smart.” But then, I am energized by another saying, “It’s never too late!”

My time at the prison has made me aware that I had never taken Satan vey seriously. I have met him very up close and personal at the prison. I am inclined to lay all my past fighting at the feet of failing to take Satan seriously.

We as Christians and Americans have a hard time adhering to the words of Jesus, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” We have a hard time wrapping our minds and lives around this because, let’s face it, there is much about America to be loved. We tend too easily to engage not the good fight of faith but the bad fight of worldly passion and success, thinking that success is the mark of God’s blessing on a faithful people.

The news the Christians do not want to hear is that the good fight of faith is quietly carried out within human hearts in little groups of seekers of the Kingdom of God such as in the NMMH Church. It is then reflected through those hearts to a world that seeks contentment that only true godliness brings to the broken. You can pass all the laws you want. You can crusade for justice. You can give yourself to missions and good works. But the bottom line is that for most of us our final parting shot is a quarter of a column in the local newspaper, a loving epitaph by folks who will now spend our money and finally the eternal Judgment over whether we fought the good fight of faith.

We are told in the Scriptures to “Put on the whole armor of God.” That is the good fight of faith that has nothing to do with fighting against the laws that our pagan nation has put into place. By failing to take Satan seriously, we are failing to take up arms and therefore become complacent Christians with sloppy discipleship.

We may be good church members; we may be married in a Christian service; we may be buried as Christians when we die. But, have we fought the good fight of faith?

In 1 Timothy 6, Paul lays out the characteristics of waging a fight of faith within the church. Those who are under authority – employees and prisoners, for example – are to consider their masters worthy of full respect, whether Christians or not, so that God’s name will not be slandered (v. 1). Paul condemns false teachers who are conceited while understanding nothing (v. 2), those who quarrel over words and cause friction, who rob the truth and think that godliness is a path to financial success. That’s where we get all this frenetic business about the Second Coming and Armageddon and the health and wealth gospel. False teachers!

Paul reminds us that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (v. 6). How easy it is for any of us to worry about what is going to happen tomorrow. We spend our lives fighting and worrying, don’t we? The American financial system seems to be falling apart. We may be on the verge of another Great Depression. If not, we may be facing runaway inflation with all this debt we are accumulating - $5Trillion worth of national debt. With the bailout of AIG, we citizens of the US have assumed their $10 Trillion worth of debt. What if it all collapses? Where will we be then?

In all this chaos and confusion, we somehow are supposed to be content with food and clothing, for “we brought nothing into this world, and cannot take anything out of it” (v. 7). “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction” (v. 8). “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (v. 10).

As I was growing up, I came to the conclusion that the simple people with whom I worshipped were putting too much emphasis on faith and not enough on their own preparation. They had not fought to be in a position of power so that through their lifestyles they could be more effective witnesses. I was dead wrong! That was putting the cart before the horse. You don’t begin to fight the good fight of faith after you have gotten the credentials. The credentials may be helpful but are secondary to fighting the good fight of faith. The fight is not for credentials; the fight is for your own soul and the very soul of Christ’s church.

“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share” (vs. 17, 18).

The so-called American Dream makes it easy not to trust God, particularly when we assume as I did as a young person that the evidence of God’s blessing on a life was success. “If these people are so righteous,” I thought, “how come they are not successful?” That’s the health and wealth gospel that robs us of the truth and makes us believe that godliness is the path to financial success (v. 5).

John Piper ties all this wasted energy to the warning of the Scriptures against covetousness. When you think about it, every message in the Bible points to the danger of covetousness. The entire Ten Commandments are about covetousness – desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God and your deep and abiding compassion for your neighbor. You fail to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength because you want something else or someone else. You fail to love your neighbor because you are too busy grasping something for yourself. You take other people’s property, other people’s spouses and other people’s possessions because you want them for yourself. Paul counters with, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Covetousness is the breeding ground for a thousand other sins. The Church of Jesus Christ has turned away from its first love because it wants to be like other people – doesn’t want to be considered as a peculiar people and does not want to be unsuccessful or appear weak.

To fight the good fight of faith, then, is to run away from the trap of covetousness. When you see it coming in the guise of an opportunity for “making a difference,” evaluate it and run away from it with faith that God will help. When you see it coming in the form of a new experience from a brochure or a catalogue, run away from it with faith that God will help.

Biblical history tells us that even though Israel pursued the law in the same way the Christian Right is pursuing the law today, she did not attain it because she pursued it by works rather than by faith. “Works” attained by the law is the kind of warfare that is not by faith. It robs us of the contentment that is ours by true godliness. It is condemned in the Scriptures, and yet America is deeply engaged in that very kind of warfare. Christian worship, if it is not entertaining and condemning of what those evil non-Christians are doing out there, is not worship today.

How can we possibly fight if, at the same time, we are content? That’s a good question. What it suggests is that the fight is against our natures. Somehow, we cannot fight unless we are content. Caving into our natures may make us fighters in one sense, but it robs us of our contentment. In order for the church to be triumphant over sin in the world, every one of us must fight the good fight of faith within ourselves and within our communities of worship. Taking the fight to the legislature is the fight of works, not faith. The fight belongs within every one of us daily.

We are called to be soldiers and must arise in the morning ready to fight the trend within ourselves to make the world and its temporary benefits our true home. The fight within the daily life of every Christian is three-fold – the world, the flesh and the devil. Those are the enemies against whom we must put on the whole armor of God.

To fight the world is to resist daily the love of the world’s good things, to overcome fear of the world’s laughter or condemnation of belief, to squelch our desire to be accepted by the world, to stifle our secret wish not to be different and to empty us of our fear of being extreme in our views.

Christianity is an extreme religion. It is the religion of a peculiar people. It is a radical religion that flies in the face of every popular instinct. It is a religion that you should not accept unless and until you are ready to fight.

The flesh is the second fight we must engage. That requires that we face squarely our own weaknesses by struggling daily in prayer. Do you know your weaknesses, or are you assuming that you are disciplined enough to keep them hidden? They are not hidden from God. Paul cries out in Romans 7, “I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin in my nature. Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Paul, with all his education, training and 3-yrs of fellowship in the desert with the Spirit is decrying his own weaknesses and acknowledging his total dependence on Jesus Christ for deliverance. Are we merely putting a cover on our weaknesses, or are we bringing them to God in prayer daily?

The devil is the third fight we must engage daily. He is not dead. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, he has been restlessly walking to and fro on the earth working toward your ruin and mine. He never slumbers nor sleeps. While you and I work hard for our piece of the American Dream, Satan uses the American Dream to offer us a false contentment and to divert us from God. He is a murderer and a liar, sometimes suggesting superstition or luck; sometimes suggesting infidelity; always waging a campaign against our souls.

We make a mistake when we underestimate or underrate Satan. We make a mistake when we minimize Hell. We make a mistake when we view Heaven as a boring future. I know because I have made all those mistakes and continue to do so at one level or another. We are here to help each other engage in the good fight of faith.

We make a mistake when we fall into a comfortable religiosity. The overriding issue of whether or not we want to be Christians has nothing to do with making a personal choice among a myriad of religious choices open to us. It has to do with whether or not we are prepared to fight for our own souls and trust God in faith to be victorious.

We eat, we drink, we dress well, we work, we amuse ourselves, we get money, we spend money and we go through a round of formal religious services once a week. But the great spiritual warfare involves vigilance, agonies, anxieties, battles and contests within. The worst chains of slavery to the world and the things of the world are those lurid attractions of the world embellished by Satan and not felt by us as prisoners because we have been desensitized to their presence.

The Christian good fight of faith is totally unlike the conflicts with which we are accustomed in our daily living in the world. It does not depend on a strong arm, a quick eye or a swift foot. It is not waged with weapons of human goodness but with spiritual weapons unseen by the unfaithful. Success in the Kingdom of God is not reflected in our bank accounts or our resumes but, instead, depends entirely on believing, especially when there is no physical evidence of that success.

In the way of encouragement, I should hasten to say to you this morning that while this is a private fight, it also is a community fight. We are here to help each other arm ourselves for war. Do you find yourself falling short of the Kingdom of God? Do you find your flesh warring against your spirit and your spirit against your flesh? Are you conscience of two enemies at war contending for your allegiance? If so, that is a good thing. That says that you are no friend of Satan. That says that Satan, who does not assault his own people, has keyed on you because he wants to discourage you in your walk with his enemy, God.

Anything better than apathy, stagnation, deadness of spirit and indifference puts you in a better state than most Christians today, many of whom have no feeling at all except to fight against what their unbelieving neighbor is doing.

Do not be discouraged that you feel that you do not have enough faith or have less than that of others. Faith is a matter of degree in everyone. All people do not believe alike. Every Christian has ebbs and flows of faith and believes more at one time than at another. But fight according to the faith you have been given and pray for faith to wage the good fight. Those who have the most faith will always be the happiest, most content soldiers.

Worldly wars that are sometimes necessary are always evil. They usher into eternity those who are totally unprepared for Judgment. They bring out the worst passions of mankind. They destroy and waste property and bring out racism and bigotry even among Christians. They fill the peaceful hours of life with the mourning of widows and orphans. They spread poverty, taxation and national distress. They derange the order of society and interrupt the witness of the Gospel. They direct our energies toward killing and physical results rather than toward good deeds and spiritual results. Every Christian ought to be crying out, “Lord, give us peace in our time!”

The “good fight,” however is quite another thing. We have the best of generals – the Lord Jesus Christ. He cares for the weakest and the poorest among us. He guides and directs us daily. His eye is on His people. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He never rejects those who come to Him in faith. No soldiers of Christ are ever lost, missing in action or left dead on the battlefield.

It is a good fight because it does an enormous amount of good to the soul. It calls forth the best things of life. It promotes humility and charity. It lessens selfishness and worldliness. It encourages people to put their affection on things above. It does good in the world. Wherever true Christian’s live, they are a blessing. They raise the standard of religion and morality by their lives and their contentment while the world is falling apart around them.

Fighting the good fight of faith means to engage the struggle without seeing the end - taking on the campaign without seeing the reward; reaching for the cross without the crown. This is hard, thankless piece of work that leaves us not looking very righteous to others but being content.

The time is always short. The Kingdom is at hand. The Lord who has come will appear again. There is urgency about this fight of faith.

I need your help to engage this fight with courage not seen in the traditional church today. You need my help to fight and overcome complacency. We need each other’s help to be prepared to live as a peculiar people, aliens and strangers in this land but adopted children of the Most High God.

We need each other’s help to fight the good fight of faith and to lay hold of eternal life to which each of us has been called. We have been called; it is time to answer the call.