Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

There's No Escaping the Conflict

The Bible uses a lot of different word pictures to describe the Christian life. For instance, the Bible compares the Christian life to biological growth. Christian growth is a maturing process, beginning with drinking milk and culminating with eating of meat. We progress through various stages of maturity as Christians, from infancy to becoming young men and ultimately to fathers. The Christian life is also compared to farming. The Word of God is sowed into our hearts. We wait for the spring and the autumn rains. We bear fruit. The time of harvest comes when the wheat is separated from the chaff. The Bible also describes the Christian life is that of a race. We run with perseverance the race that is set before us, keeping our eyes on the prize.

These are all familiar word pictures which the Bible uses to describe the Christian life. But the most common word picture of Christian life is warfare. You see it over and over again. We are involved in a great war between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. We are soldiers in the Lord’s army, fighting against sin. We’ve been given weapons for this fight, and orders to follow. Christ is our captain and he is leading us into battle.

There is no escaping the conflict. We are in conflict with the values of the world. The world places value on sinful pleasures. As Christians, sinful pleasures are not things we value, but there’s no denying their appeal—so there is a battle that rages within us. We are constantly battling against the desires of the flesh. But the warfare is even more intense because we are in conflict with the devil. The devil tempts you to sin. He assaults you with such weapons as lies and discouragement. As a result of doing battle with the devil, you struggle with doubt, fear, and guilt. Fighting against these things is hard. But it is an accurate picture of the Christian life.

Hebrews 11 gives us the key: “By faith the saints of old became strong in battle, and routed foreign armies, and conquered kingdoms.” In other words, when the saints of old went into battle—it was a fight of faith. It was spiritual warfare that required the same trust and obedience that your own fight against sin and temptation requires.

So we can look at battles, like the one we find in the ninth chapter of Esther, and see parallels to our own experience. The Christian life is a battle. We’re always fighting against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The battle in the ninth chapter of Esther provides some tremendous help in our fight of faith.