Bill Johnson - God Is Fighting Your Battles As You Praise Him
So you’re driving down the street and you get hit with fear about the doctor’s report or an issue at work. But instead of yielding to the fear, you take what’s been thrown at you and use it as fuel, and you begin to sing the new song that brings about the new day. Because in that new song, God himself comes and destroys the powers set against you for your destruction. Thank you, thank you, thank you, love you. I love you too! We still need to do that group hug one of these days. An old guy was working out at the gym when he spotted a young lady who walked in.
He asked his trainer standing next to him, «What machine should I use to impress that girl over there?» The trainer looked him up and down and said, «I’d recommend the ATM machine in the lobby.» That’s funny! Someone talked this week about Mark chapter 6, where Jesus had his disciples and wanted to take them to a deserted place. If I were to water my yard and water was all over the place, you would look at it and say it’s been watered because I put water on it. So what is a deserted place? It has desserts! Do you not see that in the word? I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what the scripture says; it’s a deserted place. Amen! I’m sticking with it; that’s my interpretation right there. Open your Bibles to Isaiah—that’s the revised Passion Translation. I’ll have to tell Brian tonight when he comes.
Open your Bibles to, uh, Psalms—excuse me, to Isaiah 42. I was blessed this morning with the passage that Eric opened the meeting with. While it’s not verbatim in this lesson, it sets the stage. Eric read this morning from Psalms 24, where the question is, «Who is this King of Glory?» The statement made is, «Lift up your heads, O you gates, and the King of Glory will come in. Lift up your heads, O you gates.» It’s a strange metaphor because we don’t see heads on top of gates, yet there’s this unusual picture. You can’t always use the same wording or subject throughout scripture, as it doesn’t always fit. Sometimes, you actually bend the real intention of scripture, but I think this is a consistent theme throughout scripture.
So I’m going to play off it for a moment. It says, «Lift up your heads, O you gates.» In Isaiah 60, gates were praise. In Revelation, the gates were made out of pearls. Pearls are formed through irritation. The gates of praise are formed in our lives when we go against circumstances and glorify Jesus anyway; something is shaped in us. So here’s this unusual picture: it says, «Lift up your heads.» The lifting of the head has everything to do with our countenance. The Bible says he is the glory and the lifter of our head. The lifting of the head is not to give us some kind of psychological edge; lifting of the head changes what we see. Jesus wanted his disciples to see the harvest fields, so he told them, «Lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white unto harvest.» Lift up; look up before you look down, and you will see things differently. There’s something about changing the countenance, lifting our heads. It’s a look of anticipation where we set our eyes on the Lord, and there’s something about setting the eyes of our heart on heavenly things—in attitude, in countenance, in conduct.
So here’s this unusual passage: «Lift up your heads, O you gates, and the King of Glory will come in.» The word «gate"—the subject of the gate, I should say—in the Psalms, God says the gates of Zion are his eternal dwelling place. He lives in a gate! That makes no sense unless you see the gate as praise, and he inhabits the praises of his people. Do you see the connections here? This invitation is like this: lift up your countenance before you get the answer you need. You’re not lifting your countenance because you got the breakthrough; you’re lifting your countenance and giving him thanks and praise in spite of circumstances. You’re willing to let the gate be formed in you that says, «I will praise him continuously regardless of circumstances.» And so we lift up the countenance as a lifestyle of anticipation of grace, and in that place, we give him praise. What does it say? That is the gate that he comes through. Anyone can lift their head after the King of Glory has come.
Now I understand he’s the merciful one. He is the one who comes in; he wipes away our tears and brings comfort and healing to the broken. That’s the merciful God who comes to serve. But in this passage, he comes as the King of Glory. When he shows up as the King of Glory, he comes as the triumphant one. He doesn’t come to minister to the broken toenail; he doesn’t come to fix the disappointment. He comes because victory is established and is at hand. So when we see this, «Lift up your heads, O you gates,» he is the glory; he is the lifter of my head. In that context, regardless of circumstances, I will give him praise. In fact, I will use the circumstances to fuel my praise, and what happens? That becomes the very gate that he comes through as the King of Glory.
Now, Isaiah 42 is personally a favorite passage. I’ve taught on it many times, but it’s been a long, long time. It was just in my heart this week, and I wanted to share it with you. So Isaiah 42, we’ll start with verse 10 and read through verse 13. «Sing to the Lord a new song, and his praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea and all that is in it, you coastlands and inhabitants of them. Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voices, the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sila sing; let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory to the Lord and his praise to the coastlands.» Now here’s God’s response: «The Lord will go forth like a mighty man; he will stir up his zeal like a man of war; he shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; he shall prevail against his enemies.» I think it’s probably obvious why I love this portion so much, and maybe many of you have it underlined already in your Bible. Here’s this incredible moment in time where the people of God are exhorted to sing loudly to the Lord, and the result is God himself stirs himself up as a man of war to go forth and do exploits on our behalf.
How many of you know God and the devil are not at war with each other? The devil doesn’t stand a chance. That’s not a war; that’s not a contest. I mean, the Lord only has to blink, and poof! You know, the devil’s a crispy critter. There’s no contest whatsoever. It’s not as though God is perfect good, and the devil is perfect evil, and there’s this yin and yang war. That’s not true. God is God, period. The devil and the powers of darkness were defeated through a man, Jesus, the Son of God, who became a man and defeated him on our behalf because we missed our chance. That is the truth. But so Jesus came, the Son of Man, and brought an end to the power of death, disease, torment, etc.
Back to the subject—here’s this great passage of scripture that says, «Sing a new song to the Lord,» and then he responds in a military fashion and brings about victory on our behalf. I’ve always been fascinated by the thought that you and I could sit here in the middle of this room and just enjoy the peace of God and his presence, not caring in the world. Whatever I brought in is no longer with me. You know the issues, the baggage, whatever—I’m just here in his presence, and I just love him so much, and I give him praise and thanks; all the while, I’m just enjoying his presence while he’s knocking the snot out of the powers of darkness. When it’s all over, he comes back and calls me a mighty man of war. I go, «When was I in war?» Oh, that praise thing you did! «I just kicked the devil around for a while on your behalf.» You know, I love that picture! It may not do anything for you, but it does a lot for me.
Warfare makes me nervous. Warfare could easily become the reason for people’s praise. It cannot be that way; it’s just a wonderful side benefit. It’s not the reason we give God honor. The reason we give God honor is his worth; that is the entire basis of praise—who he is. Here’s this phrase: «Sing to the Lord a new song.» I love the new songs! I love the songs our teams write for us and the songs we learn around the world. But when it says a «new song,» it’s not talking about sitting down, writing a nice song, and then we’ll sing it. It’s more about a spontaneous response to the Lord. In the book of Ephesians, there’s a verse where Paul talks about singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. He uses the phrase «psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.» Psalms are scripture songs. Hymns are songs we write. They don’t have to be 100 years old to qualify as hymns. There are songs that we write that can be written today.
John and Charles Wesley, the great Methodist leaders—John was the great preacher, and Charles was the hymn writer. The whole basis for the writing of hymns was to teach theology so that the people would sing truth. I met with some of our worship team years ago, and I asked them the question, «What do you want the church to look like in 10 years? Write songs about it now, and we’ll sing our way into it.» Something happens when we capture the heart of God, the theme of God, in a song. So when it talks about psalms, that’s out of the scripture; hymns, that’s something we write; spiritual songs are the spontaneous ones. We don’t sing them to be recorded; we don’t sing them to show how good we can do. It’s not a song for anyone else; it’s for the audience of one. It’s honest, it’s raw, it doesn’t have to rhyme, and it doesn’t even have to carry a tune. It’s beautiful! God likes the way you sing. Your neighbor may not, but God likes the way you sing, and that’s all that matters. It’s for the audience of one, and that spontaneous song is an important part of our life as believers.
The spontaneous song is either a praise song to him or it includes intercessory prayer, as you’ll see in scripture. It’s a spontaneous song of praise to him or it’s what we refer to in scripture as the song of the Lord—that’s where the Lord himself is singing over people, and that would take on more of a prophetic type song where a message is given to a group of people. The reason I mention this spontaneous song is that most of us have a great desire to increase in our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, to be ready to do whatever he’s doing. I want to sense the heart of God in a matter. I want to move easily with him; I don’t want him to have to hit me over the head with a 2×4 to get my attention. I don’t want to portray him that way, but you get my point. Some days, at the end of the day, I look back and think, «Man, I was so caught up in my agenda today that I missed all these opportunities you opened up for me, and I didn’t even see them.»
I don’t like that; I want that continuous sensitivity to the voice of God, to the presence of God, so that he can just breathe slightly, and I catch what he’s saying and doing. How do you stay in tune with that lifestyle? I think there are two things you can do proactively to build that sense of awareness. The first one is to pray in tongues—pray a lot! Paul said he prayed more than all, and he used the word saying, «I pray more than all of you combined.» In other words, he was saying, «Listen, if you knew what I was going through, you’d understand why I pray in tongues all the time.» That’s really the case. Spiritual language is learning to stay connected to the Holy Spirit; it’s not something that’s taking over our body. It’s a willful use of a prayer language that God gives us. If you don’t have it, just ask him, because he’s really generous with this gift. It goes to anyone who wants it; it’s much easier to get it.
This gift of praying in the Spirit is a huge part of our life; it’s supposed to be a huge part of our life because it’s the one gift that edifies and strengthens us. What does it do? It connects me to the spontaneous because it bypasses my understanding. I don’t know what I’m praying. After a while, you start to pick up—praying in the Spirit, you start picking up on areas that God is moving your heart in; you start discerning things. What’s happening is the Lord is training us how to live in the spontaneous—not so that we avoid reason or understanding or an intellectual approach to things. I think that’s vital; we’re supposed to understand things.
But it doesn’t do me much good to have great understanding if I can’t hear his voice or be moved with the presence and spirit of God. So that’s one thing. The second way is this: spontaneous song—say you drive down the street and just spontaneously sing out of whatever season you’re in, whatever moment you’re in. Maybe there’s a crisis you’re dealing with, maybe you received a bad doctor’s report. You don’t sing the report; you sing the answer to the report. You sing the solution; you sing praises to God in the middle of it. Years ago, Dick Mills told us a story once about an extreme season in his life when the devil harassed him. So, he went into a room, got two chairs, had them face each other, and sat in one, saying, «Satan, sit down! I’m going to praise God, and you’re going to watch.» I love that!
In the middle of whatever is going on, I have determined to take what the enemy has meant for evil and use that as the fuel to exalt him in his greatness because there’s not one problem I am facing in life or could ever face that he has not already purchased the answer for. I don’t come to God begging for breakthrough as though he needed to do something. He already took care of it; all I’m doing is aligning my heart to receive what he’s already purchased and put in my account. So, this idea of singing a new song is huge!
I love this portion of scripture, but it’s possible for us to miss the context. So, I want you to go to verse 9 of Isaiah 42. Verse 9 says, «Behold, the former things have come to pass; the new things I declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them.» Look at that verse again: «Behold, the former things have come to pass; the new things I declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them.» Why is that important? Well, first of all, if you look at the previous chapter, Israel is in a mess again. They have this bad habit of worshiping God one day and worshiping some false god another day. They have this spirit of dumb all over them, doing the confused thing. There’s this cry, I think it’s in there if I remember right—if I recall correctly—there’s, I think, a couple of times in chapter 41 where they are basically asking the Lord to please do a new thing. Please, do something new! «We’re ready for you to do something new!»
So here the Lord, in the first part of Isaiah 42, sends the Messiah—the answer with breakthrough. If you read through the chapter, you see he’s opening blind eyes. Jesus comes in the spirit of God and brings about breakthrough. Now the Lord stands before the people and says, «All right, the old things are over; new things begin.» His very next phrase? «Sing to the Lord a new song!» Yes, the new song brings the new day! It’s not hard to write an inspirational piece after you win the lottery, you win the Super Bowl, or some great dream of yours is fulfilled—you finally found the man or woman of your dreams—you were finally able to have a child after struggling to conceive. Those are wonderful! Write those songs. They need to be sung. Sit in your living room and sing those songs! But this one’s different; this is Israel coming through hell asking for a new day, and Jesus says, «All right, the past is over; new things begin.» He says, «Alright, sing a new song!»
It’s interesting—Psalm 40, I think—it says, «Sing to the Lord a new song.» In the very next phrase, it says, «And the earth will fear the Lord.» That’s a strange connection in subjects: «Sing to the Lord a new song, and there’s going to be a whole bunch of people saved.» It’s not like, «Let’s fill a stadium with 100,000 people, and then we’ll have Chris come up here and sing a new song, and lots of people will get saved.» It’s not saying that. It’s not saying, «Let’s get the worship team up here to sing some brand new prophetic song; a lot of people will get saved.» He isn’t saying that. He’s talking about lifestyle—in the living room, in your bathroom, driving your car. It’s the song that nobody hears. But what’s happening? Did you see what happens in response to verse 10? The Lord arouses himself as a man of war.
So you’re driving down the street, and you get hit with fear about the doctor’s report or some issue at work. They’re laying off people. Oh no! What if I lose my job? You start having that stuff go on. But instead of yielding to fear, you take what’s been thrown at you and use it as fuel, and it becomes the lyrics of a song. You begin to sing the new song that brings about the new day. Why does it bring about the new day? Because in that new song, God himself stirs himself up as a man of war, and he comes to destroy the powers that have been set against you for your destruction. That’s why things change!
How does that affect your neighbor? How does that affect the city? How does that affect the nation? It’s easy! The Lord wreaks havoc on the powers of darkness that influence the thought life and value system of a community. Picture this: here we are as the people of God spread throughout the community just lifting up the new song, the spontaneous song, «God, we give you thanks! We give you thanks that you’re turning this into a city of great prosperity! We bless you for what you’re doing. God, we thank you, Lord, that unemployment will be a thing of the past! We praise you, God, as the God of abundance! That you bring healing and cancer is being destroyed from our city!» You just take these things and begin to sing them. What happens? The Lord starts wreaking havoc on those powers of darkness that have influence over the thought life. What happens? The people around you start having clear thoughts for the first time in their lives. That’s why people turn to the Lord because they can see this is obvious! This is obvious! This one who gave himself for me is the only one with the right to rule my life!
I had this little bout with sickness here recently, and I talked about it last Sunday night. I don’t like replaying the story, but I think it’s available online somewhere if you want to hear it. I got to where I couldn’t eat. I was sick, sick, sick! I ended up having a surgical procedure, and I’m doing really well. My health is returning; I’m eating meat, which is really the main thing. The main testimony is that things have died to keep me alive and I’m okay with that. I’m all right with that. Totally over it! In fact, more things are going to die so my strength is returning. This is my first Sunday back in the morning to actually speak, and I’m doing all three services. We’ll see how I do that!
In being sick and doing poorly, it was a gift to sit at home in my recliner, read, and review the promises of God—reviewing the prophetic words over my life. It’s a regular part of my life, but I had extra time for it. Benny and I would take communion most every day together, giving thanks for divine health. It wasn’t forced; it wasn’t like, «No, I don’t want to, but I’m going to grit it up by faith.» No! There was something so rich in the presence of God, the peace that passes understanding, that comes when we don’t demand to understand. That peace comes upon you; there’s such grace in it to do right things and good things. We would share in communion; I’d pray over one of the elements, Benny would pray over the other, and this was a regular part of our life.
There came a point where I could no longer eat anything! In fact, I went ten days without drinking water. I couldn’t drink anything; they just kept me plugged into intravenous feeding, which works well for a while. I couldn’t take communion, but she would take it for me. She would come next to the bed, take it, and we would pray together. What we gave thanks for the most was divine health, the life that God had given us—the victory he had given us. You don’t have to beg him for what he already bought and paid for and put in your account. You just want to condition your heart to celebrate what’s there!
I have more questions than I’ve ever had, but as I’ve stated before, I will never sacrifice what I know about the goodness of God on the altar of human reasoning so that I have an explanation for why something happened. I don’t need an explanation; I have a person who is with me. There’s something about facing difficulty and not losing your peace that annoys the devil to pieces! There’s something about even experiencing loss or having things happen that you can’t explain. You don’t need a slot for it. I don’t need a slot for it; I have a person that I get to walk with.
There’s something about becoming a people that have simply said, «This is the way I’m going to live in any and every situation. I will give him thanks. I will give him praise! I will take the very weapons the enemy uses against me. Much like David took Goliath’s sword and cut off Goliath’s head, I will take the very things the enemy has thrown my way and use them as lyrics of my offering of praise to God. God, I give you thanks for divine health! I give you thanks for abundance and breakthrough.» We would delight to together in our family. You know, in those moments, many of you have gone through worse things than I’ve ever gone through; I get that. But this was a pretty challenging situation for me. I remember you don’t lay there, not being able to eat or drink or function, thinking, «Oh, I wish I had written another book.» You don’t lay there saying, «I should have preached in one more city,» or «I should have gone to this nation.» All you think about is family, friends—that’s it.
It’s people! It’s the gift of being able to serve Jesus with friends and family. It’s looking at my kids, my grandkids. It’s seeing the rich, rich life in God. It’s real tough to get depressed when you see blessing everywhere you look. You can look at some things that are unsettled and unanswered, but they don’t fuel me because I’m a singer of new songs. A singer of new songs simply takes the information that comes and gives it as an offering, celebrates, and declares his greatness.
I’ve honestly tried to live that for as long as I can remember, but there are moments—there are things that happen that are really tough and challenge you at a new level. The Lord just kind of peels back the layer of that onion at another level. That’s what happened for me this last couple of months. I’d like to say that the cool thing about this verse is that all my job was was to give him praise, and he’s the one who fought the battle. It’s the most beautiful thing! Sometimes, the Lord has you in a position where you rest. Sometimes, he has you in a position where you fight. I talked about this more clearly last Sunday night. I believe the kingdom suffers violence; the violent take it by force. I believe in that! The prayer, the fasting, the yelling, the shouting, waving flags, pouring out oil, whatever you’ve got—any Christian toy you have that you think will work. Let’s use it, let’s get that thing going, and let’s apprehend what’s wrong and get it turned around. I’m good with all of it!
You know, get the trumpets blaring! I mean, we’ve marched all over this property, marched up and down the street, waved the flags, had the horns, pulled oil. I go to my backdoor to my office and find oil dripping down the door. Somebody’s been here praying over it. I don’t know, it’s just there. It’s one of the things we do! Use everything you have! But there are times when there’s not a thing you can use that will bring about a change; the only thing you can do is sit down and give thanks. Let him do this one for you. And this is one of those verses—this is one of those moments where he says it’s the Lord who becomes the warrior, and all he did was respond to the brand new song of a yielded heart that says, «I’m going to take this and put it in praise.»
Why don’t you stand? The most amazing thing happened! Jesus was perfect—no sin, no sin in thought or attitude, nothing. And yet he took upon himself the punishment that I deserve, that you deserve. Because everybody here, we all have sinned; we all have fallen short of the glory of God. The mercy of Jesus comes, and Jesus had you in mind—he had me in mind—and he bore punishment in his own flesh so that we could actually receive what he deserved, which is life forever. I know that anytime we have this many people in a room, there’s a high chance—high probability—that we have people here who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus. You may attend church every week; I don’t know. Maybe it’s your first time in a church; it matters not to me. The whole point is I believe the stage has been set for you to know what it is to be forgiven of sin and to step into eternal life—to know what it is to have God as your Father and to be changed from the inside.
You can’t—we can’t make ourselves worthy; I can’t jump through enough hoops to become clean before God. It’s an impossible task! That’s why Jesus died. If there was another way to get right before God, then he was cruel to require the death of his son! If there was another way, the only way Jesus died is because there was no other way—there’s no other way! And that offer, his offering to you and to me, is present right here, right now. I want to make sure that everybody in this place is able to leave today with the absolute confidence that, number one, I’ve been born again; I’ve been forgiven of sin; and God receives me into his family, and I want to start life all over again—brand new—because Jesus has forgiven me and come into my life.
If that’s you, if you’ve never surrendered your life—surrendered is a term we use where we give ourselves to the only one who has a right to rule our lives—that’s Jesus. You know, the crazy thing is, he rules my life, and there’s more freedom being ruled by him than ever was doing what I wanted. That doesn’t make sense, but it does! And that’s the point! I want to give the opportunity for everybody here to leave with certainty that Jesus really is your heavenly Father. He becomes the one who forgives you and receives you into the family, and you will be born again. If that’s you, just put your hand up, and I want to see where you are. I want to make an agreement with you.
Right over here, I want to make that agreement with you that Jesus will come into your life. Yeah, beautiful! Anyone else? Put your hand up real quick; I’m going to wait just a minute. I’m not going to prolong this, but if there’s anybody else, put your hand up real quick. I think we had four people in the first service this morning. It was wonderful! People coming to Christ. I say, «I don’t want to leave until I know that I’m right with God.» Anyone else? Just real quick. Okay, we’ve got a freedom banner. If you would come down here, I’ve got people I know and trust who will love on you and pray for you. This is going to be the change of the rest of your life, and it starts today. Amen! Beautiful!
If there’s anyone else that wants to join, come on down! Freedom banner people, come on down! Alright, you still owe me five minutes, so don’t get real antsy now. That’s the time right up there; you owe me five. That’s the way I look at it! So, if you didn’t know you owed me, I’m letting you know! I’m just telling you I want to pray over you because I believe there’s a grace for a new song. I believe there’s a grace; I really want to emphasize this strongly. Eric shared this bizarre story again this week of a girl who quit singing as a child until she became a young adult—never sang at all because of a comment made about her voice when she was small.
It may be that we want certain quality on the CDs we buy and the radios we listen to and the worship team, but that you sing to the Lord is priceless to him in whatever form you bring it! I want to pray for an anointing—literally an anointing on thought, an anointing on our lives to bring the new song. You know why? I want to see you in a new day. It’s the new song that brings the new day. Come on! It’s the new song that’s given as a continual offering to the Lord that spontaneity develops in our life, to be enhanced and strengthened for every single person. I want to hear more and more stories about people unusually led to do something—not outside of their character, and yet they just believed God, and God provided that miracle. That’s the lifestyle of a Holy Spirit-led believer; it’s not apart from reason; it’s just according to his reason. Yes! Amen!
Alright, put your hands in front of you, and let me just pray over you. Father, I do pray for a grace—a gift to be given for the new song—that even those who are not in any way musically inclined would have a musical anointing, a grace, a presence to sing new songs to you that shape the history of our lives and actually impact and affect the city around us. Bring almost like a volcanic eruption from within us—prophetically new songs creating new days. We ask this for the honor of the name Jesus. Amen! Amen!