STANDING FOR JESUS
DR. JIM DIXON
EPHESIANS 6:10-14
MAY 22, 1994
Stephan King has written many books and almost every one of those books deals with the theme of evil. He has been called the King of Horror, and he delivers it in demonic doses. Yet Stephen King tells us that he believes in God. He tells us that he believes in the ultimate triumph of good over evil. He was reared in the Christian church, in the United Methodist Church. Every once in a while a Christian theme surfaces in some of Stephen King’s works. I have not read a Stephen King book. I had never seen a Stephen King movie until a couple of weeks ago when I saw part of that four-part made-for-television miniseries called The Stand.
This four-part miniseries is an apocalyptic movie. It describes a world after a devastating deadly plague that was pandemic—99.3% of the people in the United States were killed by this plague. Those who survived began to have visionary dreams. In those visionary dreams God and the devil summoned them. The devil summoned people to Las Vegas. I thought that was a nice touch. There the devil was represented by this guy named Randall Flagg, who, on the surface, when he was in a good mood, seemed like a pretty charismatic guy. But when he got mad, his true demonic nature came out, and he was kind of an incarnation of the devil. God summoned people to a little farmhouse in Nebraska by a cornfield. God was represented by a 106-year-old Black woman named Abigail. She loved Jesus Christ. As you approached her through the cornfield, you would hear songs like “What a Friend We Have In Jesus.” She called Jesus “Lord.” As people had these visionary dreams, they could choose to go to God or to go to the devil. They could go to Christ or to Satan. They could go to Abigail or to Randall Flagg. Abigail told her people three things. She said they should love one another, obey God, and stand against the devil. That is why the four-part miniseries was called The Stand. It is likely that Stephen King took that title from Ephesians 6, our passage of Scripture for today.
The Bible says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Ephesians 6:11-13). That is a lot of standing. God wants Christians to stand. He wants us to stand. This morning, as we think about living in this fallen world, I want us to examine biblically what God means by telling us to stand.
First of all, God wants us to stand off with respect to sin, with respect to evil. Sometimes God just wants us to stand off. Dr. Roger Matay is a geneticist who lives in Antwerp, Belgium. He says every day thousands of people are killed by handguns and many of them are young children. He says there is no hope that handguns will ever be removed from the streets of the world. He is concerned, and what this geneticist wants to do is to help create bulletproof people. Incredibly, this doctor believes that it is possible, chemically, to alter the genetic structure of the developing fetus. He says there are chemicals now being used experimentally on animals and within five years will be used on humans to create skin that is thicker and tougher and yet still flexible. Thus, more or less bulletproof. It is safe to say that the scientific community is not convinced. People will never be bulletproof, physically nor spiritually; and I think most of you agree with that.
God wants us to know we are living in a fallen world. We are living in a dangerous world, a world where sin and evil abound. Spiritually speaking, God wants us to understand that we are not bulletproof. When it comes to sin, we need to stand off. If you are a Christian, if you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you have been called to holiness. The Bible says, “You shall be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). The word holy is the Greek word hagios. The word means “separate.” We are to be separate from sin. The word also means “set apart.” We are to be set apart for God. That is what it means to be holy.
That is why the temple was called holy. In the Old Testament the temple and the tabernacle were called holy. They were set apart for God. In the temple, in the tabernacle, there was a place called the Holy of Holies. This place was set apart for God. Only God could dwell there, could reside there. It was believed that the Shekinah, the very presence of God, hovered over the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant and the Holy of Holies. No human being could go into the Holy of Holies except for the high priest, and he but once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when he sought to atone for the sin of the people. When he went into the Holy of Holies, he always had a rope tied around his waist. Why was that? He had a rope tied around his waist because he might die in the Holy of Holies. If he died in the Holy of Holies, how would people get him out as nobody apart from the high priest could go in there. So a rope was tied around the high priest’s waist; if he died there people could drag him out.
Today in Israel, even though the Temple Mount is now covered by the Islamic Dome of the Rock, the Hassidic Jews still believe the Temple Mount is holy, set apart for God. They refuse to walk on the Temple Mount as they are afraid they might step on the place where once the Holy of Holies was. They are afraid that they might desecrate or defile that which is holy.
The temple is no more. The tabernacle is no more. The Bible tells us in the New Testament that if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you have been set apart for God and God’s presence, His Spirit, has come to reside and dwell in you. You are holy, set apart for God, indwelt by God. God does not want you to defile, to desecrate the temple. We desecrate it through sin. This is serious. As we go into this fallen world—as graduating students, as working men and women, as believers in Jesus Christ—we are to stand off with respect to sin. God does not want us to be standoffish with respect to people, but standoffish with respect to sin. “You shall be holy for I am holy.”
Genesis 39 tells us that “Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man.” If you read the scriptures regularly, you know that you do not often read words like that. Generally, the Bible does not tell us how people look, how they are built. Not even for the greatest people in the scriptures. Even our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Bible does not tell us what he looks like. We do not know how he combed his hair, whether he parted it on the right or left. We do not know the color of his hair. We do not know what his nose looked like. We do not know whether he had a hooknose or a ski nose, although I think ski noses have always been rather rare in Israel. We do not know whether his chin was strong or weak. We do not know whether he was an ectomorph, mesomorph, or endomorph—whether he was chiseled or chubby. We don’t know. Biblically, God wants us to understand that kind of stuff does not matter. That is why the Bible stresses inward beauty.
But the Bible does acknowledge that with respect to sexual attraction, outward beauty is important. That is why it tells us that Joseph was good looking and well built. Potiphar’s wife found him attractive because he was good looking and well built. Potiphar’s wife, therefore, tried to lure him into relationship, lure him into sin. But Joseph stood off. For the sake of God, he stood off. In fact, the Bible tells us he ran. He fled. He did not want to disobey God. He knew he had been set apart for God. Sometimes God just wants us to run. He wants us to flee from sin. He always wants us to stand off.
God also wants us to stand out as we live life in this fallen world. As Christians, God wants us to stand out. With respect to sin and evil, we are to stand off. But with respect to love, God wants us to stand out. A number of us recently returned from Israel. We spent eight days in Israel. Sixty-five of us also took a three-day cruise in the Aegean Sea. We went to the coast of Turkey to see the town of Ephesus where the Apostle Paul lived for three years. We also went to the island of Patmos where the Apostle John received the revelation. Some people on the cruise had been on other cruises before, on large luxury ships. They were kind of disappointed in this cruise. Our boat was described as a giant Winnebago. That may be a little cruel, but there is no doubt it was not a great cruise liner.
On the first day the winds blew around sixty miles an hour. Nobody could go outside. The ship was really moving. A lot of people went to their rooms. A lot of people were sick. I was one of them. I remember saying to Barb that first afternoon, “This could be the trip from hell. I mean this could be a three-day torture chamber.” By the grace of God, the winds stopped, and things were pretty good. We had a life jacket drill where the alarms went off. We were foretold that this was just a drill. We all put on our life jackets and went out on the deck. Everyone lined up, and the captain and crew did an inspection.
That took me back to a prior trip I had taken when I graduated from high school. A buddy and I went to Alaska on a freighter. They had a drill on that freighter that was like that. My buddy and I, however, did not know it was a drill. We did not pay a whole lot of attention to things. It was late in the morning, and we were sleeping in. The alarms went off. We woke up in a panic. We scrambled to find our life jackets. The loud speakers were blaring instructions for everyone to come to the deck with their life jackets. We put on our life jackets. We went down the hall and out onto the deck. Out on the deck everybody was lined up, just rows and rows of people. We stood there. As the captain and crew walked by to inspect us, it was then we realized that we only had on our boxer shorts and life jackets. As the captain and the crew walked down and looked at us all, I think it is safe to say that we stood out.
Sometimes people stand out as buffoons. Is that not true? Some people stand out as buffoons. That was my buddy and me that day. The tragedy is we live in a world where Christians sometimes stand out as buffoons. That is not how we are to stand out. We are to stand out, but we are to stand out, the Bible tells us, because of our love. That is what makes us so different. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.” That is what the song says. Our Lord Jesus says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). With respect to love, we are meant to stand out.
In the year 1862, a man was dying on an American battlefield. It was the Civil War. This man was horribly injured. He knew that unless he got help quickly, he would die. As he lay there in his pain, he began to think about his wife. In his mind he could see her face clearly. She was beautiful. He remembered her with tears on her face as he went off to war. He loved her. He did not want to leave. “I’ll be back soon.” That is what he had said to her, but he knew now that it was a lie. He would never be back. They had a one-month-old boy, the first of many children he had hoped to have. Now he knew they were children he would never have. In his pain he tried to roll over just a little bit to try to find some comfort. He felt a touch, a gentle touch. He looked up and saw a woman kneeling over him. He knew it was not possible. This was the Civil War. There were no women on the battlefields. They were not allowed on the battlefields, and yet there she was kneeling over him, bandaging his wounds, and speaking words of encouragement. Then with two assistants, she helped lift him into the back of a horse-drawn cart. She saved his life, and he returned to his family. The soldier’s name does not matter. He was one of thousands of soldiers during the Civil War who lay wounded and hurt on an American battlefield, who looked up and saw that same woman ministering to them. That woman was called the angel of the battlefields. That woman was Clara Barton. If you know history, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. In the midst of the battlefields, in the midst of the war, in the midst of the pain, in the midst of the suffering, she stood out. She was an angel of mercy.
This world is still a battlefield. There is a war going on. People are suffering, and there is a lot of pain. We need angels of mercy. If you are a Christian, if you belong to Jesus Christ, you have been called to stand out as a person of mercy, a person of compassion, a person of love. That is God’s call for us. Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself'” (Matthew 22:37-39). When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” He told the story of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite did not stand out. It was the Samaritan who stood out as he manifested the love and compassion that is found in Christ. We are called to be good Samaritans.
With respect to sin and evil, we are to stand off. With respect to love, we are to stand out. Finally, with respect to the gospel, we are to stand up. The Denver Nuggets lost yesterday, yet they had a great playoff run. They had a great series against Seattle. They had a great series against Utah. Thursday night they won the sixth game of the Utah playoff series. Over half of the players on the Nuggets team attend chapel before each game. There are a lot of Christians on the Nuggets team. Dan Issel is a committed believer in Jesus Christ. Bo Mitchell is the Nuggets chaplain. Bo is one of the founders of this church. Thursday night before that sixth playoff game, Bo told the Nuggets players, “If you believe in Jesus Christ, you need to be cool in the midst of the heat. You can have faith. I know you’re nervous, but you can have faith in the midst of the fire.” He told them the story of the fiery furnace and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego out of Daniel 3.
The story of the fiery furnace and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego has to do with faith in the midst of a fire. It also has to do with standing up for your faith. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Babylonian Empire, had erected a massive gold statue on the plain of Dura outside the royal city of Babylon. He had commanded all people everywhere to worship and bow down to the statue. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said, “No way.” They said, “We worship Yahweh Elohim. We worship the one true God, and we serve him alone.” They stood up. They were in the fiery furnaces because they stood up.
Throughout history, men and women of God have stood up. In the Roman world, when emperor worship was so popular, particularly during the reign of Domitian, Christians were sometimes brought into Roman temples and told to say, “Caesar is Lord.” Time and again they said, “Jesus alone is Lord.” When they said, sometimes they paid with their lives. In the Jewish world, often when people accepted Christ, they were afraid to tell their family because they might be banished from their home and community. They might lose their jobs. Yet in almost every case they stood up. They confessed Christ. Christ wants you to stand up today. If you belong to Him, if you take His name, if you call yourself a Christian, He wants you to confess your faith. He wants you to stand up.
Jesus has given us the Great Commission. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). You are called to stand up.
Sometimes people say to me, “Jim, it must be hard to preach each week.” But it is not hard. You come here, and you expect me to preach; or you expect someone like me to preach. I am paid to preach. It is not hard. What is hard is going out into the world and standing up in the world. What is hard is what you are called to do. You are living on the cutting edge. You are living where the kingdom of God meets the kingdoms of the world. You have been called to stand, and that is hard. I know it is. There needs to be a kind of boldness that is rooted in the Holy Spirit. You have been called to stand for Christ. The Apostle Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” (Romans 1:16).
Perhaps you have heard the story of the Texas millionaire who invited his church group to come to his home. This Texas millionaire was somewhat of a crazy guy. He had a large shark pool. He said to his church group, “If anyone is willing to jump in and swim across this pool, you can have your choice. I’ll give you an oil well, some primo land, or $50,000.” Suddenly there was a splash. The pastor was swimming across the pool. He quickly reached the other side and jumped out. Everybody was stunned. They was a loud applause. The millionaire said, “I didn’t think anybody would jump in the pool, but least of all you!” He said, “Do you want the oil well?” The pastor said “No.” He said, “Do you want the primo land?” The pastor said, “No.” He said, “Do you want the $50,000 in cash?” The pastor said, “No.” The millionaire said, “I don’t understand. What do you want?” The pastor said, “I want one thing. I want to know who pushed me into the pool!” Jesus said, “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matthew 10:16). Sometimes we need a little push if we are going to go into ministry.
You may have heard of Pheidippides. Pheidippides was the man from which the marathon in track and field is derived. It was Pheidippides who in 490 BC, by command of his superior officers, ran approximately 26 miles from the plain of Marathon to the city of Athens. He ran to bring good news to the Greeks that the Athenian armies, on the plain of Marathon, had defeated the Persian armies. According to legend, Pheidippides died just after bringing the good news to the people of Athens.
The Bible says we have been entrusted with the gospel. The Greek word for gospel is the word evangélio. It means “good news.” You have been called to deliver good news. You have been sent forth in the world to deliver the good news of Jesus Christ. It is not easy. Jesus said, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). We have been called to daily lose our lives for the gospel.
When it comes to sin, when it comes to evil, stand off. When it comes to love, stand out. Be people of mercy and compassion. When it comes to the gospel, stand up. No matter what the cost, be faithful to Christ. Let’s close with a word of prayer.