As we face a new year with new challenges, reality reminds us that we will face difficulties from within and from without. As we confront these internal and external challenges we may do so in full confidence that we are not alone – but there is One who is fighting for us!

<p>As we face a new year with new challenges, reality reminds us that we will face difficulties from within and from without. As we confront these internal and external challenges we may do so in full confidence that we are not alone – but there is One who is fighting for us!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

The Battle is the Lord’s

I'm so glad that we can come together and that we can spend time studying God's Word and fellowshipping and worshipping.

And I'm just so thankful for Jesus today.

Well, we're going to be talking about, I think, an important subject today, the battle is the Lord's.

As I was thinking about the beginning of the year and how we make New Year's resolutions, I was just contemplating once again, how is it that we can be successful in those New Year's resolutions?

I almost said revolutions, that's what some of us need, right?

We need complete changes in some of our habits and some of our choices and how are we successful in our resolutions.

And so I decided we would talk today about the battle is the Lord's facing giants in our lives.

And before we begin with this subject, I just want to remind you again, next week we're going to be looking at the secrets of ancient scrolls.

And I think that you will enjoy learning together with us how the Bible was inspired, how the Bible was preserved, and how the Bible is to be interpreted.

Don't just throw these little Bolton inserts away.

Give them to somebody, and let's study the Bible and about the Bible next week from not only the scriptures but also from history and archaeology.

You know, whenever we're facing danger, giants of some sort or threats of some sort, it's always good to be able to stand back and let someone else take care of them.

Have you ever felt like, you know, when you're a kid, you could always say, well, my daddy's going to take care of you, you know, I'm going to tell my dad, I'm going to tell my mommy, and you sort of hide behind the adults in our lives, and that's a good thing.

When we face dangers or giants, it's good to know that we're not alone.

And as we get older, we begin to realize that some of those giants, we've gotta face ourselves.

Some of those challenges, they're ours to take on.

And yet, and yet, Eve, as Christians, we don't have to fight them alone.

We have someone else that is there to fight with us and to fight for us.

I remember a story that took place some years ago, quite a few years ago.

I was younger and more foolish, and I was on a mission trip in Romania.

We were doing evangelistic meetings and health meetings and we had about 70 young people, high school and college age young people that were helping us.

So we were all staying in this school that we rented for the summer and We had a team that was about, I don't know, 75 or 80 or so altogether.

And the school where we were staying was about probably 3 or 4 miles from the town where we were working, where our meetings were held.

And the meetings were in what they call the culture house.

In the Soviet Union or the former Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain states, every city had a culture house and that was sort of like a big theater.

That's where the Russian culture or the culture of the nation was to be promulgated and to be taught through various arts and so forth.

And so we were using the Casa de Cultura of the town there in Slatina, Romania.

It was a hot summer day And we had a challenge because there was like 75 or 80 of us that would need to go into town to be able to work in the health meetings we were having in the afternoons, but we didn't have adequate transportation.

My friend and I who organized the meeting, we were poor and idealistic and we thought we could do anything with nothing and so all we had was 2 vehicles.

We had a Volkswagen Golf, like a pretty small car, and we had a Toyota minivan.

Now you can imagine 75 or 80 people being transported back and forth to town in a Volkswagen Golf and a Toyota minivan would take some time.

But of course in those days in Romania there wasn't a lot of, we didn't have to worry that much about the laws, the regulations, and the rules.

It was shortly after the fall of communism in the early 90s.

And we formed a habit pretty quickly with the kids' enthusiastic participation of piling as many people into those cars as we possibly could.

I don't remember what the golf record was.

I think it was like 12 or 14 people we got into that little car.

I was driving Toyota minivan, and I very well remember.

And we would put them in the 3 benches, or no, let's see, 2 benches behind the driver's row.

We'd cram as many people as we could side by side, and then we'd put some people on their laps, and then people would sort of launch across them, laying horizontal, And there was someone sitting on the console in the middle, in the front, and shifting the gears for me, because I couldn't reach it and I was squished all the way over here and driving.

And we were going down this really rough road, bumpity bump, a lot of potholes between the school and town.

And as we were going down the road, we came to this place where there was a dip in the road.

And, you know, I just wasn't thinking, because what happened is it just rained that day.

And the rain was, the rain had come down, and torrential rain, and then it had gone away, and it was just hot and muggy and sort of sunny now.

And as we came into this dip in the road, there was standing water down in that dip.

And I'm in a hurry because I have to drop off my 26 people and go back to the school to get another 26 people or however many we would fit in the van.

And so I'm just going to fly right on through that dip.

The only problem is there was a car that was going very cautiously through the dip, trying to...

And to make matters worse, the car's windows were down.

And so as I fly past this little car that's going carefully through the dip not to get muddy and not to get dirt on the car.

I spray water, muddy water, completely all over the car and into the windows and all over the occupants.

And immediately I realized what I had done.

And immediately I realized I was in trouble.

The driver of that car forgot about going slow through the water.

He punched the accelerator and came right up onto my bumper and followed me as I made my way to the Casa de Cultura in the middle of town and swung around in front of the van and jumped out and headed straight toward the driver's door.

As he's walking towards the van, probably 20 or 30 feet, he's coming towards me, obviously furious.

My passengers begin getting out of the van.

And 1 person gets out, and another person gets out, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, and a seventh, and an eighth, and a ninth, and a tenth, and an eleventh, and a twelfth, and he's walking a little slower now.

And a thirteenth, and a fourteenth, and a fifteenth, and a sixteenth, and a seventeenth, and an eighteenth, and he turned around and went back to his car.

You know, it was a terrible thing that I did, and I hated to laugh, but to see the look on his face as all of these people got out of that van was priceless.

Sometimes it's good not to have to fight your battles yourself.

Sometimes it's good to know that someone else has your back, that someone is there to fight for you.

And I believe that ultimately, this is something that each of us need in the battles of life.

Our Scripture today says, do not be afraid, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today.

The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace." You know, what are the dangers, what are the giants that you and I face in our lives?

There are challenges we face that we might call external challenges.

The circumstances we find ourselves in, the obstacles that we face in our career, in our life, in our relationships.

There are what I would call internal challenges as well.

They are the victories that we need to gain, the sins that we struggle with, the temptations that we too often fail and fall, and the challenges that we face in our own life, in our own hearts.

But today I want us to look at a Bible story that I believe illustrates, and it's actually the 1 that our title is taken from.

You grew up as boys and girls hearing this story.

But the Bible says that All these things are recorded for our example upon whom the ends of the world are come, right?

The stories in the Bible are not just good bedtime stories.

They are also good for all of us facing our challenges and our struggles, our challenges, our giants in life.

The story is the story of David and Goliath.

We find here in 1st Samuel chapter 17 that story and basically to summarize these first 25 or 30 verses you remember that the Philistines came up and they arrayed themselves against the Israelites right on the border, the sort of north-south border between the Philistines who were over next to the sea and the Israeli territory which was farther east.

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The Battle is the Lord’s

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