The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on January 5, 1986. The title is, The Battle is Joined, and the scripture reference is Matthew chapter 2, verses 13 through 23. 

You might care to follow along as we look a little bit more carefully at that scripture that George just read to us, Matthew chapter 2. I believe you'll find it on page 836 of the Bibles in your pews. There are four things that literally leap out of this passage at me, perhaps at you as well, as we consider the spiritual warfare that I submit to you, every one of us is going to be involved in, at the very moment that we get serious about our commitment to Christ, you find that you are involved in battle.

If you were here on New Year's Eve, you may have heard Tom Skinner make the comment that the football player comes breathlessly back to the bench after the first play and says, Coach, it would be much easier to score touchdowns if I didn't have to contend with 11 guys in front of me. But that's the nature of the game. And the nature of our game is immediately we get serious about our Lord Jesus.

We find that there are not just eleven, there are many, many foes rising up in opposition. It's spiritual warfare. And I believe that in this familiar passage there are four things that we'd do well to take note of at the beginning of a new year.

The first is that when God gives a gift, Satan tries to snatch it away if he possibly can. I believe that's true whether we're talking about the very simple things of our life or the very most profound. Here we are literally one paragraph beyond the Christmas story.

And liturgically we celebrate this as part of the Christmas story. The wise men probably came about two years after the birth of Jesus, but liturgically we cannot separate them out. It's still the twelve days of Christmas.

We're in the Christmas season, and we're celebrating the greatest gift that God has ever given to the world. In one paragraph beyond the actual birth narratives, here we find we're involved in a life and death battle. Satan is trying to snatch it away.

snuff it out if he can stop the gift coming in the first place he will if he can't do that he'll try to snatch it away afterward and I want to submit to you that every inch of your life that is yielded to the Lord Jesus is going to be in a front to the evil one and he's going to do battle with you trying to get it back isn't it interesting that Jesus greatest temptations came immediately after he was anointed by the Holy Spirit and proclaimed by the Father, My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. You might have thought that that would be his least vulnerable moment. And yet that's the moment that Satan chose to attack him most viciously with temptation.

Because there was a new anointing, a new empowering, and that gets Satan's attention. It's an affront to Him. And He's going to rise up and fight back.

God has just publicly declared, This is My beloved Son. And the temptation, the first temptation begins, If you are the Son of God, are you? Are you sure?

Are you sure of what God has done in your life? It's immediately under attack. how many of you have made new year's resolutions come on put it let's see hold it up how many of you have already broken them most of you aren't even making them anymore right because immediately it becomes a matter of a resolution, a vow, a commitment, it's a challenge to the enemy and he's going to attack you on that very point.

I'm interested that so many of our resolutions are often about relatively trivial things. It wasn't all that important until we made it a matter of resolution and then it's under attack. Have you noticed that?

The book of Ecclesiastes gives a very sobering word on the subject. It says, it's better that you should not vow than that you vow and not keep it. It's better that you not vow than that you make a vow and not keep it.

Do not let your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say that your vow was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? That's sobering, isn't it?

Why should God be angry at your voice? For doing what? For making a vow that you then turn around and break.

I'll make you a promise this morning that if God does something lovely in your life, whatever he does, at whatever level, Satan is going to do his damnedest. to mess it up. Just be aware of that.

Forewarned is forearmed. Scripture says that we have an enemy. It says, be sober, be watchful.

Your enemy the devil prowls about like a ravening lion seeking someone to devour. And Paul says to the Ephesians, therefore put on the whole armor of God. You may not have realized it at the time, but when you signed up, you signed up for battle.

And whatever God does in your life or mine is going to come under attack. Some of you are very much aware that we've been experiencing something new on Friday evenings. We've been consciously trying to learn from John Wimber and from David Pitches a new way of praying for each other, a new openness to the Holy Spirit.

And God has been doing lovely things, especially on Fridays. If you haven't been recently, I really need to say you ought to come. But I've been fascinated to notice, as God has begun to move among us in new ways on Friday evenings, how many of us are under attack on Friday during the day.

Just to get us out of kilter, to get us off balance. you know something goes wrong so that you come rather than being all prepared in your spirit you come all upset and in the midst of a stew same thing happens on Sundays how many of you have already argued with your wife just don't raise your hand but isn't that true? I mean things go wrong when you're supposed to be getting ready to come and worship you know the prelude interrupts your argument you've got to kind of put it on hold until the service is over you can always tell around here when we're doing a life in the spirit seminar because everything goes wrong because when God begins to move in lovely ways the enemy sits up and takes notice and I just would remind us of that at the beginning of a new year but the second thing praise God is that when we find ourselves in the midst of conflict, when we find ourselves in the midst of spiritual warfare, the Lord doesn't leave us to our own resources to cope with it.

I think that's probably the most important thing in this passage. Over and over again, God warns folks how to deal with the crisis. He warns the wise men in a dream not to go back to Herod.

They go home another way. He warns Joseph in a dream to get out of Bethlehem. Disaster is coming.

He warns people. He gives them insight. He gives them guidance how to deal with the conflict which the enemy brings.

And the Word of God says that we're going to go through some tough things from time to time, but God is going to equip us either to get out of them before they begin happening or to do us with His grace to cope in the midst of them. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13. God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted, or that can equally well be translated tested or tried beyond your strength.

He will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. He doesn't abandon us to our own resources. He equips us by His Spirit.

He gives us guidance. He gives us grace. He gives us strength to cope.

The book of Proverbs says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.

Fear the Lord. Turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

So if the first principle is that in this year of our Lord, 1986, we can expect that there will be attacks, There will be battles in our lives. The second principle is that we can also expect that the Lord will equip us to deal with them if we'll look to Him rather than to our own wisdom and our own understanding. Aren't you glad?

Do you know that God still speaks to people through dreams? I heard a story just yesterday about one of our bishops in the Episcopal Church who's nearing the end of his ministry, and it's been a good ministry. He's been a faithful pastor.

He's been extremely involved socially. But he had a dream just about a month ago, and the Lord appeared to him in the dream and said, Bill, I have looked at your ministry, and I am not pleased. I'd like to be a bishop in the church and have a dream like that.

And I am giving you an opportunity to correct it. And I am calling you to major in one thing for the rest of your ministry. And that's Jesus.

How do we know that he had that dream? Because he called all of the clergy of his diocese together and told them so. May more of our bishops dream dreams.

and more of our clergy and more of our people. Don't lean to your own understanding, your own insight, your own gut reaction to a situation, your own figuring out of what's needed, but trust in the Lord with all your might, and He'll give you what's needed for the battle. Thirdly, I think it's remarkably timely, as during this month of January we focus on life and death issues, we concentrate on a number of pro-life ministries here in this church and we gear up for the March for Life in the district on January 22nd.

I think it's a remarkably timely reminder in the midst of this story that Satan is out not just to mess up our souls, but he's after our bodies. You do know that. He wants to destroy your body.

We just thank God that he moved among us by becoming one of us, that he gave his Son into human flesh. Satan wants to destroy human flesh. He'll do that in you if you let him through drugs, through alcohol, through immorality.

He'll mess you up through disease, through accident, through cigarettes. He will destroy your body if he possibly can. But I'm interested, I am horrified that from one end of the scripture to the other, there is abundant evidence that he has a particular bloodthirstiness for babies.

From the destruction of the firstborn in ancient Egypt, to the practice of child sacrifice in Canaan, to this slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem, to our own nation's unchecked, rampant abortion industry. Satan seeks to destroy that which is godly, and in particular has a bloodthirstiness for babies. Some of you really don't want to hear that again.

And I need to tell you, I really don't like talking about it again. But it's long past time that we made up our minds and made up our wills that we were going to do something about it. You do realize that between first light in New York City tomorrow morning and sundown in Honolulu, we'll put to death another 4,500 babies tomorrow.

about 50 of whom would make it in any hospital delivery ward in the country if they had been born at that same age prematurely. And I need to say again that either America will shut down the abortion industry or the abortion industry will shut down America. I'd invite you to step by the table and pick up some literature and sign up for the March for Life in Washington and decide that it's long enough, it's time to get involved.

That may be the most dramatic expression of the conflict. We need to see it's a life and death conflict on every level. Jesus said, I came to give life in all its fullness, and Satan came to destroy it.

just open your eyes friends we're surrounded with the battle but firstly praise God the Lord that we serve is able to take even the machinations of the evil one and even the scheming and plotting of the political authorities of this world and weave them into the pattern of his own good pleasure don't you love it over and over and over again Again, Satan tries to lash out against the baby Jesus. He uses the authorities of a godless empire to do so. And over and over again we read, this was in order to fulfill Scripture.

Augustus Caesar, one of the most vain and self-centered tyrants in the history of the world, decides that everybody in the Roman Empire has to participate in a census for the purposes of taxation hundreds of thousands of people are dislocated and have to return to their ancestral hometowns to be registered and one couple in particular in Galilee has to make the trek all the way to Bethlehem because that's where the husband's roots lie and they get there just in the nick of time for the young wife to give birth to her firstborn. And this was in order to fulfill Scripture. And Herod goes on a rampage and tries to destroy the baby Jesus and brings destruction against all the baby boys in the whole area.

And the holy family, tipped off in a dream, flees to Egypt and after the trouble is over, comes back out of there in order to fulfill Scripture. Out of Egypt have I called my son. And they go back home to Nazareth where they started in the first place.

Because scripture says that Messiah will be called a Nazarene. Do you see all the pieces here? Here's a couple living in Nazareth.

But they've got to get to Bethlehem in order to have their baby. Because Micah says that in Bethlehem of Rapha, am I going to bring forth one who is to be ruler of my people? They got to get him to Egypt in order to have Hosea fulfilled, which says out of Egypt have I called my son.

Yet he's got to get back to Nazareth because it says he's going to be a Nazarene. So God lets the kingdoms of this world fulminate and stew, and he weaves them into his pattern. You thought Mikhail Gorbachev was getting too powerful.

Actually, it nowhere says he should be called a Nazarene. what it does say over and over again is that Messiah will be called the branch Jeremiah 23 behold the days are coming when I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king in those days I will cause a righteous branch to spring forth for David Isaiah 11 there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Zechariah 6, Behold, the man whose name is the branch shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord.

You know what the word Nazareth means? The branch. The name Jesus was not all that uncommon a name.

Very, very frequently people were called Jesus or Joshua or Yehoshua. So they had to distinguish between them and they called this particular one Jesus of Nazareth. You realize every time they said that they were saying Jesus, the one whose name is the branch.

And this was done in order to fulfill Scripture. So I'd remind you, and I'd remind myself that this new year is beginning. That Satan plots and schemes, and it may appear that he wins a few skirmishes, but ultimately the Lord weaves it all into his pattern.

Of course, there's a devil, said Martin Luther, but he's God's devil. He's God's devil. we're going to face opposition, conflict, battles in our lives this year.

But the Lord says, if you would look to me and lean not on your own understanding, I'll provide you guidance how to cope, and I will not let you be tested above your strength. Mind you, it is a literally life and death struggle that we're talking about. But even that, God will weave into his pattern to the praise of his name.

Let's bow our heads together. Father in heaven, we would be those who look to you for all our need and for our guidance in this new year. And we'd ask you by your spirit to enable us to be faithful for your name's sake.

Amen. Amen.