In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing the potential for a life of victory in the next 35 minutes. He encourages the audience to listen to God's servant and receive the enabling grace and power of the Holy Spirit. The speaker highlights how Jesus has the ability to overcome long-standing complaints and bring deliverance and victory over the power of sin. He emphasizes the need to watch, pray, and inquire of the Lord, as His sovereignty is communicated through His Word and the Holy Spirit's empowerment. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of submitting to the Lord's strategy for victory, which may vary in different situations.

Now will you please open your Bibles with me this evening to the 2nd book of Samuel and the 5th chapter. At our time I would read most of this chapter to you, but to save time I must just ask you please to have your Bible open at this portion of Scripture. The 2nd book of Samuel and the 5th chapter. This chapter records for us some of the events which took place in David's life immediately following his coronation day. And in Old Testament picture form it records exactly the same events which take place in the life of a child of God when the Lord Jesus Christ has had a coronation day in our hearts. I do trust that as I speak to you this evening in each one of your lives the Lord has stepped onto his rightful place and that he is undisputed King. Maybe only yesterday, last evening in this tent, he stepped upon the throne of your heart and you were able for the first time in your life to say, it is no longer I but Christ. Oh blessed happy day when the Lord Jesus takes his rightful place and he is undisputed Lord. But this is only the gateway into life. It is of course the essential gateway. It is the only gateway into blessing. It is the only step into fullness that is ours in Jesus Christ. But it is only the gateway. Does Keswick teach let go and let God? No it doesn't. Because the New Testament doesn't teach that. At least that is only part of the teaching. And the act of submission in totality to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ is but the beginning of a new regime in your heart where no longer the puppet king of self is upon the throne, but the great king of kings and the Lord of lords has stepped in to take control. If that revolutionary change takes place in a man's life, surely then there ought to be some evidences of it. And there certainly are. And that which I wish to consider with you for a few moments this evening in the opening message of this, the closing service of the convention, is what happens when Jesus is king? Looking at our text for a moment, what happens when David was king? In the first place, the sovereignty of David was immediately confirmed. And it was confirmed in two ways. If you look for a moment at the seventh verse of this fifth chapter of 2 Samuel, you will see that it tells us that David took the stronghold of Zion. You, I am sure, most of you, know the history of the people of God in the land of Canaan well enough to remember that the city of Jerusalem was always a thorn in the flesh. In spite of the fact that the whole land had been given to them, they were never, until David was king, able to possess it all. And the most strategic city from which God's appointed king was to reign was, alas, a city in which the enemy was deeply entrenched. The Jebusites were far too much for the children of Israel, and they could not cast them out. The fifteenth chapter of Joshua and the sixty-third verse, the first chapter of Judges and the eighth verse tells us this, that they could not cast out the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And at this particular time, we discover that the Benjaminites had settled down in Jerusalem on the basis of a peaceful coexistence with the enemy. This could not possibly be allowed to continue, and so when David becomes king of all Israel, we are told, he took the stronghold of Zion. That which had battled them through their whole history became amazingly easy when David was king. And one of the first evidences of the enthronement of Jesus Christ in our lives will be that deeply entrenched habits of evil will be put under subjection, and under the feet of our risen Lord, inhabiting the temple of the Holy Spirit, your body and mine. That which has defied our best efforts, that which has caused us many a heartache and many a tear, many a sense of remorse and defeat and frustration, that which has often made us almost give up the fight altogether, how wonderful, when Jesus is king it is put under his feet, and he comes into our lives to establish his kingdom and to celebrate it by giving us the first taste of deliverance and victory over the power of inbred sin. Have you ever noticed in your New Testament how the Lord Jesus delights to deal with long-standing complaints? Oh, how many instances there are of men and women in the word of God who for years had been bound by infirmity and sin and were crippled and helpless and hopeless till the risen Lord came. I think of just one instance, that's all we have time to recollect, in the Acts of the Apostles when Peter and John came together to the temple to worship, and there they found at the gate of the temple a man lame from his birth over forty years, absolutely helpless and absolutely unable to do a thing about it. But Peter looked at him and said, silver and gold have I none. The church boasted in its bankruptcy in those days. Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And immediately the man leaped to his feet and was praising God, delivered in the power of a risen Christ. And I want to say to you in the name of the Lord Jesus, and may it bring comfort and encouragement to some heart here this evening, there is no habit that has gone so deep that the power of the blood of Jesus can go deeper. And there is no entrenchment of sin that has gone so far that the power of a risen Lord by his Holy Spirit can go further. And the first mark of the sovereignty of Christ in the life, that is, that the habits of years which have baffled all our efforts and all our struggles, and have brought us in shame and confession of failure time and time again, to the throne in contrition and in repentance, the power of them is broken when he is upon the throne. And furthermore, the sovereignty of David was not only confirmed in that way, but it was also confirmed because we read in the tenth verse, reading the marginal rendering of this verse, that David went going and growing. I love that. In other words, the sovereignty of David was expressed in an ever-increasing area of the kingdom. And what is true in David's life is true in the life of the Christians. Jesus Christ upon the throne, as I said a few moments ago, is but the initial step to a lifetime in which you will discover that his sovereignty is an ever-growing and ever-extending and ever more blessed experience. Do you remember that when the angel announced to the Virgin Mary the birth of our blessed Lord, she said to her, The Lord shall give unto him the throne of his father David. He shall rule over Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. And what is true prophetically, my dear friend, is true experimentally. Of the kingdom of Jesus Christ in your life there is no end. It is impossible to be a Christian unless Jesus Christ is your Lord. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, Romans 10.9. You cannot be a Christian unless he is crowned as Lord in your life. But the initial coronation day of the Lord Jesus is immediately followed by a succession of increasing and expanding coronations when he becomes Lord over an ever-increasing area of your personality. I would bear humble testimony to the fact that when the Lord Jesus came into my life at that moment, up to the limit of my understanding, he was Lord of all I had and all I possessed. But I did not know then what would be involved in surrender to his sovereignty and how thankful I am that I didn't. I do not always like the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. After the last I have disputed it, and every time I have disputed it, that act of resistance to his sovereignty has been followed by weeks and months of spiritual stagnation and failure when, though I did not lose my relationship with my wonderful Lord, I lost something almost as wonderful, the sense of his presence and the reality of his fellowship, and I live for weeks and months. Alas, sometimes, possibly even for over a year in darkness, because I had raised again myself and said no at one point to the sovereignty of my Lord, and at any point in life you can resist his sovereignty, and at that moment God puts you on the shelf, you are useless to him. Or you can carry on preaching sermons, teaching a Sunday school class, using the same shibboleth and singing the same hymns, but the unction has gone, and the utterance has gone, and the liberty of the Holy Ghost has gone, and reality has gone. The Lord is in your heart, but you have transistence. But I would always also bear testimony to this, that every step in my life of faith and obedience has immediately been marked by a new demand made by my sovereign Lord for his sovereignty to be displayed in another area of my life. A mark of the sovereignty of Christ in a man's life is that deeply entrenched habits are overthrown at last, and there's freedom, glorious freedom. And another mark of his sovereignty is that every step of faith and obedience is followed by the increasing demands of our risen Christ, that he may occupy a new area of your personality. Listen friends, do you find yourself putting the label spin somewhere in your life tonight where you didn't put it five years ago? Do you find the Holy Spirit gently but firmly and lovingly putting his finger upon something today and this week and saying, Now listen, you've been a Christian too long to have that, that's got to stop. Never thought about it five years ago. But as you've sought to go on and grow up, the Lord Jesus has lovingly and gently and firmly led you on to an increasing experience of his sovereignty and of his kingdom. There is no end. His sovereignty is confirmed. Is it being confirmed in your heart? Is there someone here who in the last 24 hours has had the first taste of deliverance from sin? If there is, I tell you, you can hardly sit quiet tonight and you just love to stand up and say hallelujah. Just rejoicing. Oh, rejoicing in liberty, freedom under the sovereignty of the Savior. Are you finding that's an increasing, expanding experience? Praise the Lord. You're in apostolic success. May I say a second thing quickly? The sovereignty of David was not only confirmed, but listen, the sovereignty of David was immediately challenged. Will you please notice in the 17th verse of this chapter that the Philistines gathered themselves all together and they all came up to attack him and, and they spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. And you will find that verse 22 says exactly the same thing. Once again, the Philistines came up and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. They hadn't been unduly concerned as long as David was satisfied to be king over Judah. But now he was king over the whole kingdom and this concerned the enemy greatly. And so they set up an immediate counterattack and they persisted in it. And may I say that immediately Jesus Christ is Lord. That act of submission is followed by a massive counterattack from the powers of darkness. And will you notice how pointed was this attack? They spread themselves. Isn't that typical of the devil? How I hate it when he spreads himself all over the place. And they spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. Where is that? That's around Jerusalem. Ah, Christian, will you mark this very carefully? They spread themselves upon a focal point where for years they had been penitents, though they had no business to be penitents. They had been in occupation and defied all attempts of the people of God to throw them out. But once they'd been thrown out from there, there's an immediate counterattack to get back into occupation. I want to be careful not to be misunderstood on this point, but to say this very quickly. I don't think it concerns the enemy unduly when a Christian signs a doctrinal statement to join a church in which he said, I no longer smoke and I no longer drink and I no longer play cards and I no longer gamble. Oh, don't misunderstand me. I do not advocate any of those things, and think it would be a great pity if you do. But the travesty of a definition of worldliness and sin, which enables a man to say, because I do not do these things, therefore I am now a consecrated Christian, is so utterly, completely superficial. But when a child of God begins to understand the meaning of the words of the Lord Jesus when he said, It is not from without, but from within, that there comes from a man blasphemy and adultery and fornication and uncleanness and deceit and lasciviousness and lying words. And when a man really gets concerned about the state of his own heart, and he begins to cry with the language of Charles Wesley, Oh, that in me the sacred fire might now begin to glow, burn up the dross of base desire and make the mountains grow. Oh, thou who at Pentecost did fall, do thou my spirit my sins consume. Oh, Holy Ghost, on thee I call, Spirit of burning calm. And when a man gets desperate, and he can never go on as he's been living, and he cries out to God with all the hunger of his soul, Lord Jesus, set me free, cleanse my heart from secret sin, at that point the devil launches everything in. Satan counterattacks pointedly, and he counterattacks persistently. He will never admit defeat. And, my friend, if you have crowned Jesus Christ as Lord, let me tell you, you are in for a life of constant battle and warfare. The devil didn't have to bother about you before too much. But if you are concerned never to agree for a peaceful existence with the enemy on any point in your life, if you're concerned that the Lord, to use the language of the book, might create in you a clean heart and renew a right spirit within you, might give you a blessed experience of deliverance by the power of the indwelling Christ, then I say to you that such life is a menace to the powers of darkness, and the church desperately needs in this twentieth century men who have so submitted to the Lord that they have a testimony of deliverance from sin. The sovereignty of Christ is counterattacked on every point persistently and relentlessly. But one other word, the sovereignty of Christ is communicated. What am I to do in the midst of the battle? How am I to face an enemy who is too powerful for me? How am I to deal with him in all his besetting temptation upon my life? And may I just say a word that may help somebody. I hope you understand that temptation is not sin. The Lord Jesus was tempted in every point, I think we are, yet without sin. And may I go a step further in definition and say that sinful thoughts are not sin either. Have you ever heard people say in conversation with each other, you know the other day this thought passed through my mind. That's wonderful, just let it pass right through. That's what it is. Satan has no other way of attacking except by eye gate and ear gate and eye and thought and mind. And as he flings his poison into the heart of a child of God, and he'll do it consistently and continuously and persistently. What am I to do about this? Oh, let me tell you this with such a glow and thrill in my soul. The sovereignty of Jesus Christ is communicated. How? Look at the story again. It was communicated in the first place by prayer. David inquired of the Lord, verse 23 and verse 18. On both occasions of which this chapter gives us the record of the attack of the enemy, David, as he faced the enemy, he got straight onto his knees and said, Now Lord, it's up to you. My friend, it's just as well he did so on both occasions. For do you notice that the divine strategy for victory in the first instance was totally different to the strategy in the next? In the first instance it was go and attack him. In the second instance it was sit still and wait. And if David had followed the strategy of yesterday in the battle of today, he would have missed all divine resources, and he would have been humiliated and defeated. What do I do in the face of the enemy's counterattack? When Jesus Christ is in the Lord, I get on my knees. Or if I'm not in a place where I can do that, I lift up my heart and say, Now Lord, it's up to you. I have no might and I have no power, and I know not what to do, but my eyes are upon thee. I look up to him. And in that moment, in that moment, I discover, I discover that the victory of yesterday has not put into me any strength for today. I discover as I go on in life that the flesh is totally corrupt. I discover that the flesh profiteth nothing. And I begin to understand the language of the Apostle Paul who said, In me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. That's not the language of a backslider. That's the language of a man illuminated by the Holy Spirit, who's discovered, who's discovered that God expects nothing from him but total failure, and he can never be any different. I've been along the road thirty years as a Christian now, and every experience of the grace of God and the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus has only made me understand more deeply than ever before the corruption of my own heart. Basically, Alan Redcar has no difference from what he was when he was saved, probably a lot worse by nature, potentially worse. But I know this, that the fight is not mine, but it's God's, and therefore every moment of every time of testing, first, first he communicates power through prayer. Watch and pray, lest thou enter into temptation. You'll always be faced with it, but there's no need to run your head into it. Watch and pray, inquire of the Lord, for his sovereignty will be communicated. And listen, it is communicated in answer to prayer always. Sometimes it is communicated by the word that says, But more often it is as communicated by the word that says, What's that sound of a going? Surely it's what happened one day to a hundred and twenty disciples in an upper room as they had waited and prayed for ten days. Suddenly there was this sound as if a rushing mighty wind. And God, by the Holy Spirit, came down upon them and empowered them and set them out to blaze a trail for him. That's how God communicates to my poor heart and needy heart, constantly, his sovereignty. He communicates that sovereignty in the person and in the power of his Holy Spirit in answer to the man whose acknowledge is bankruptly and who has submitted to the Lord arbitrarily and who waits upon him for the outpouring of his Spirit. But let me say this. We do not move away from the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Oh no. He said to his disciples, The Spirit of truth shall come to you. He shall dwell in you. I will come to you. I am in my Father. Ye in me and I in you. And the sovereignty of Jesus Christ is communicated to the poor, beaten, bankrupt, defeated heart and yet the heart that has turned in simplicity and utter sincerity to the Lord. That sovereignty is communicated by the imparting of the life of the risen, victorious Christ into my heart and into my soul. I do not go on away from Christ to the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit points in my heart upward to the throne and from that throne there is communicated the victorious resurrection life of our precious Lord. Oh, my beloved friend, let me say this to you. That you are no match for the counter-attacks of the enemy. I've been on the road long enough to know that the devil is far too cute and far too clever and far too powerful for me. But oh, hallelujah, the devil's no match for my Lord Jesus. He's no match for the Holy Spirit. And in my heart today and in your heart, if there's submission to Christ, then there is throne life, sovereign life. The life of the throne in heaven has been sent back to you to enable you to live. Oh, the enabling that you will ever need in every situation is in the power of God the Holy Spirit. As I chose tonight, listen, is there a sound of a going? Oh, has there been a sound of a going this week? The spirit of conviction been abroad? You've trembled under the sound of the word, under the sense of conviction of your failure and defeat? Has the message of sin just broken and penetrated and battered into your soul? Until you've trembled on it, has there been that deep sense of conviction? And has there been the indication that there's a balm in Gilead? Have you begun to see the answer that you need in the Holy Spirit? Is he moving upon you today in conviction? Has this message been something more than theory to you? Has it been life? Has it been victory? Has it been power? Then listen, what does the Bible say? Disturb yourself. And I'll hear the sound of a going. Disturb yourself. I don't want to say this to be dramatic, but I want to say it because I believe it with all my soul. The next thirty-five minutes may well be the most crucial minutes in all your life. Disturb yourself, beloved. Only thirty-five more minutes of this convention. What are you going to do about the tremendous potential of a life of victory? Are you going to discard it because you don't understand it? Or are you going to listen to God's servants as he speaks to it and just drink in all that the Lord Jesus has for you in the enabling grace and power of his Holy Spirit? And disturb yourself. Oh, that Jesus may fill now every heart who full surrender knows that through that heart there may come the life-giving rhythm, the power of a risen Christ in his Holy Spirit.