“The Holy Spirit's Bugle Call”

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

The gospel calls for our obedience with a broad range of emotional and intellectual appeals. It calls us to obey out of fear (Rom. 11:22), out of love (John 14:15), out of feelings guilt (Rom. 5:6-8), and out of a sense of duty (Rom. 13:11-14, discussed below). I believe this broad appeal is partly due to God's unsurpassed understanding of the human mind and his desire to call everyone to repentance. But I believe the main reason we find so many varied types of appeals is that the gospel fulfills all of our deepest needs, and consequently, it can call to us on all of our deepest emotional and psychological levels.

In Romans 13:11-14, the Holy Spirit calls us to get up and get ready. It is His "bugle call" rousing us from our lazy oversleeping in our tents. He calls us to put on our armor and get into the battle against the evil one! Our spiritual battle is happening now, and we must charge into the fray!

Notice the phrases he uses throughout to paint this picture:

"the hour has come for you to wake from sleep" (v. 11)
• Every soldier and every emergency responder understands that intense situations do not come at our conveniences, and so we must wake up—take action in the present—to fight for the Lord's glory and overcome.

"the night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness... Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy." (vv. 12, 13)
• When it comes time to fight the enemy (in the present), don't go AWOL and be carousing and drunk with the pleasures & ease of life or caught up in brawls caused by your own arrogance so that you can't respond to the enemy. A good soldier can enjoy himself, but he stays sober-minded & dressed for battle.

"and put on the armor of light" (v. 12)
• Again, a godly soldier is dressed for battle. Ready to defend himself against the enemy and ready to make offensive advances for the cause of his God.

"put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires" (v. 14)
• Our enemy is the temptations of the flesh. And while we must make some battle provisions before marching in, it simply does no good to provide the enemy an opportunity to overcome us. So we dress ourselves with the armor of light—put on the Lord Jesus Christ—and we carry the necessary tools to fight against the devil. But we carry nothing that might slow us down or give our enemy the upper hand over us.

The fight for the gospel is an urgent one. The bugle call is sounding now. Are you going to sleep lazily in your tent? Or are you going to get moving right away and do what needs to be done?!

"So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." (James 4:17)

- Dan Lankford, minister

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