Wes Ruff
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The subject of today's podcast is going to be Jesus Christ, the Mighty Warrior. But I'd like to unpack this in a slightly different way than maybe we've thought of before. I think that there's a lot to be said about what it means for the LAMB of God to be a mighty warrior. I think we need to take a deeper look.
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May God influence our understanding with His truth. This is Wes Ruff, and you're listening to the Revival in 2020 podcast. Everybody here looking for revival in our own house and across America. So often I have sung songs in church calling out to the Lord as a mighty warrior, a being who fights for the oppressed and for the underdog in so many ways.
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I meant every word that I sang to him. Who among us hasn't longed for the to feel the strength of his protective embrace when the storms of the world fall on us. We're all alike in this. We've all longed for wrongs to be righted and for injustices to be addressed. We've often begged for God to do this on our behalf.
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Recently, I began a study on the original languages of the text of Scripture with renewed understanding. I have been amazed as the Scriptures have become more powerfully alive than before, with new meaning and context, bringing insight and increased order into who he is. If there's one thing that I've been left with, it's this I am in awe of Jesus Christ, more so today than ever before.
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With this in mind, let me share a story. I hope that it'll powerfully impact you in the same way it has impacted me. In the book of Joshua Chapter 12, verses four through five were introduced to OG King of Bashan, one of the remnant of the fam who lived at Ash to wrath and injury and ruled over Mount Hermon in the ancient Mesopotamian world.
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The territory of Bashan held a particular relevance to both the people of Israel and the surrounding nations. The word Bashan meant serpent. The ancients understood the territory of Bashan to be the place of the serpent. In addition to this, meaning, the ancient understanding was that Bashan was also a gate to hell or Hades. It was a place understood to be representative of evil particular early of an ancient evil.
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This understanding of the area of Bashan occupied the minds of both the Israeli and the surrounding nations. This begins to set the stage for one of the most profound statements that Christ Jesus uttered in his ministry. As time passed, Israel experiences heartbreak and devastation time and again. Then comes the Prophet Malachi. Roughly 400 years after Malachi with nary a word from the Lord during that time, Jesus Christ is born.
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It's important to recognize that the Messiah came into a world beset by war, both ancient and modern. He was going to launch his ministry in a land formerly inhabited by giants. He was going head to head with evil and he had no fear whatsoever in doing so. This routine, lack of concern for the forces arrayed against him characterized as daily preaching.
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The Lord enters into his ministry and we constantly see him being asked to prove his claims. The Pharisees were constantly attempting to entrap him to justify killing him. His identity and his claims about his identity were constantly challenged. The claims regarding who he was would reflect on his purpose, though, and his ultimate purpose was being withheld from the evil that was seeking to undo him.
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Jesus was in the middle of a sneak attack on darkness. In the midst of all of this, another drama is about to unfold. We're told in Matthew chapter 16, verses 17 to 18, that God the father revealed to Peter precisely who Jesus was. Blessed are you. Simon Barcelona, for Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. But my father, who is in heaven and I tell you that you are Peter.
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And on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. When Christ made this statement about the gates of Hell, he and His disciples were in the district of Caesarea Philippi. That location is powerful and poor and important. It's important because Caesarea Philip II was located in the territory of Bashan, formerly ruled again by OG King of Bashan.
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It is this area that the ancients believed to be near the gates of Hell and our Savior with no weapon, no army armed only with the word of his power, declares at the place of the serpent that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against his will for the church, for Jesus to go to that place, which was understood by the people of his time to be the location of an ancient evil.
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And then not even that place could prove would prevail against him. And his church is profound. Jesus being God, came with his spoken word, and in keeping with his entire ministry, He was doing what he always did, which is walking out the will of his father in heaven. And this means everything to us as Christians today. Jesus went to the place that was understood to be a domain of evil by the people of those times.
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And he walked into the heart of it and declared in the heart of the evil that he was the victor in the spiritual battle that has raged for millennia. He declared that his church would advance and that not even hell itself could stand against it. Jesus Christ is a warrior like no other. He walks with surety, with a powerful knowledge that he is correct and that how he sees the world is on point.
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He walks knowing that the gates of Hades, a very gates of the underworld and the evil that was represented there, would oppose him with all of its might. Yet he continues to walk up to the front door, disengage the gates, and for all practical purposes, storms on inside. He doesn't need an invitation. He needed no red carpet roll out.
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He simply did what he came to do. There is no one like him. He stands alone and unique in the world. He is the same God who will play with children in one moment and the next declares on the doorsteps of hell that evil has been served notice. Jesus Christ is compassionate. He is kind. He is tender and meek.
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Yet he is also at the same time, the bold and powerful lion of the tribe of Judah. One who fights for those whom he loves and who make no mistake, he loves the entire world and he is relentless in searching out those whom he will redeem as we pray for revival around the world, we must understand that we are praying not only for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives, churches and nations, but we're praying for that day when, as it says in Psalms Chapter 22, verse 27, all the ends of the Earth shall remember and return to the Lord and all the families of the nations will worship before you.
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When we agree with God in prayer, we are agreeing with the fact that the Lord has inherited the nations agreeing and prayer is asserting the authority of the Lord and His rightful ownership, that he and he alone one at the cross. We are looking for a revival in our day in time, and also for the ultimate promise for many places in the texts of Scripture that all the Earth will one day return to the Lord.
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And we can rest assured that this will happen. The same warrior who once stood at the gates of hell and declared that hell hath no fury that he can overcome is the same warrior who still fights for all of us, and for all of those who are looking for redemption and salvation, they will find it in our warrior king.
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There is no one like him. He is the way. May you walk in him and may God richly bless you. This is Wes Ruff and you're listening to the Revival in 2020 podcast. Everybody here looking for revival in our own house and across.
