Preparing for War - #1 Objective

This may not be all that exciting blog, but I thought I would post my sermon notes in a 9 part series entitled PREPARING FOR WAR.

One military battle, one sports battle, and one spiritual battle for each……and a little known fact

9 weeks lesson – never did this before – WHY? God told me to I guess.

9 points (one each week) – we hope for a conclusion each week…..and the theme will piece itself together with each lesson.

New King James Version

1.      Objective – purpose is ultimate destruction of enemy forces… and the will to take every thought captive to Christ. –

a : something toward which effort is directed : an aim, goal, or end of action

b : a strategic position to be attained or a purpose to be achieved by a military operation

a.      One of the first things we look for in preparing for war is a reason or an OBJECTIVE.

                                                              i.      There must be a rational reason for contemplating this war. The objective comes after the reason. It could be to concur a land (that doesn’t happen often anymore – at least by friendly nations). That land might have minerals or oil or access to a port critical for the delivery or export of goods.

                                                            ii.      It could be for the rescue of a nation under attack by others.  Either that country or an adjoining neighbor.

                                                          iii.      9 times out of 10 it is related to money. Revolutionary War was about tax dollars for England (Taxation without representation); Civil war was about slavery…(the south wanted the workers for harvesting the crops and working).

2 Cor 10:5-6 ³ For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, ⁵ casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, ⁶ and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

b.      The Peloponnesian War, GREEDY  from Athens 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese attempting to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the utter destruction of the entire force, in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from Persia, supported rebellions in Athens' subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens' empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The utter destruction of Athens' fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year.

The Peloponnesian War reshaped the Ancient Greek world. On the level of international relations, Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war's beginning, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece. The economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece; poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens found itself utterly devastated, and never regained its pre-war prosperity.^[1][2] The war also wrought subtler changes to Greek society; the conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states, made civil war a common occurrence in the Greek world.

Greek warfare, meanwhile, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth-century-B.C. golden age of Greece.^[3]

2 Cor 10:5-6 ⁵ casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, ⁶ and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

c.       I have never been in the military so my lesson will not have a whole lot of “personal references” to the services but more outward looking in. The closest thing that I can say that I have been that relates to War is Football = Football is War. (Someone tell Jackie Thomas Eugene is preaching on football again).

d.      It is understandable there are objectives in preparing for a war just as there are objectives in preparing for a football game. The prime objective is to WIN. Now there is the question of how you go about doing just that.

1.      When you play football, you want to utterly destroy them. I am not talking about injuries….but in score! You want to get ahead of the other team, YOU DON’T STOP. More score, more defense.

a.      What happens if you don’t…..punishment for disobedience or as what happens like Giants against Eagles a few weeks ago. 4 touchdowns in 7 minutes…..28 points.

b.      PUNISHMENT

e.    “There are several differences between a football game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also, there are usually more casualties in a football game. The objective of the game is to move a ball past the other team's goal line. This counts as six points. No points are given for lacerations, contusions, or abrasions, but then no points are deducted, either.
-Alfred Hitchcock

4. ⁵ casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, ⁶ and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

f.        Bible Battle with Objectives

                                                              i.      Deuteronomy 7 ¹ “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them.

                                                            ii.      Deuteronomy 20:16 ¹⁶ “But of the cities of these peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the LORD your God has commanded you, 

                                                          iii.      Joshua chapter 10 and 11 talks much about the command God gave him to “utterly destroy”

                                                           iv.      1 Samuel 15 ¹ Samuel also said to Saul, “The LORD sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the LORD. ² Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. ³ Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”

6. ⁵ casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, ⁶ and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

g.    Football

                                          i.    To God losing to the enemy was not acceptable. Utterly destroy was what he said.  However we know that so many times this didn’t happen. Saul didn’t kill King Agag and Samuel went in and did it. God turned his back from Saul after that.

                                        ii.    I don't like to lose, and that isn't so much because it is just a football game, but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective. I don't want a football player who doesn't take defeat to heart, who laughs it off with the thought, 'Oh, well, there's another Saturday.' The trouble in American life today, in business as well as in sports, is that too many people are afraid of competition. The result is that in some circles people have come to sneer at success if it costs hard work and training and sacrifice.    
-Knute Kenneth Rockne

h.   This is our objective. This is our war.  Everything that is against God. Or specifically everything that exalts itself above the knowledge of God.

1.   We are to utterly destroy the evil thoughts that exist in order to bring ourselves into obedience.

2.      Against all things exalting above the knowledge of God

3.      Thoughts into captivity

a.      Have you ever had stuff just fall out of your face? Out of your mouth? Say something that you really didn’t give thought before you let it spew from your mouth. James 1:26 “tight reign on your tongue.”

                                                          iii.      Punish disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

i.        Little known fact

                                      iv.    There are rules to war….some that we are not even aware of.  There are even rules to memorials for those that are remembered from war.

                                       v.    If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.