Settle It in Your Heart: Will You Let God Be Your Defender? (Luke 21:14-15)

The Lord Jesus is sitting with His disciples and telling them how the world is going to come apart. Nations rising against nations. Earthquakes. Famines. Fearful sights in the sky. And then, before any of that, He tells them about something much closer to home. They are going to be arrested.

“Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. And it shall turn to you for a testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.” (Luke 21:10-15)

Look at what He tells them to do about it. Do not rehearse. Do not lie awake drafting your defense. Settle it therefore in your hearts.

That is a strange thing to tell a man who is about to stand before a king.

It is a strange thing to tell me, too. I like to plan ahead. If they say this, then I’ll say that. And if it turns out to be that, then I’ll say this.

You will be accused of something. Everybody is, sooner or later. Some of the accusations are true and some are false, and they all wear you down. The real question in this passage is who answers for you when they come.

Am I willing to let God be my defender?

I rehearsed every scenario for three and a half hours

Here is how unsettled I can get.

I met a young lady at a preachers’ meeting. I knew almost nothing about her. I didn’t know if she was seeing anybody. I didn’t know anything, really. But I got in the car and drove to Lighthouse Baptist Church in Iowa to ask her father, Brother Davis, whether I could talk to his daughter.

It is about a three and a half hour drive. For the entire drive I played out every scenario in my head. Everything that could possibly go wrong, and exactly how I would handle it. I was, to say the least, unsettled.

When I got there, everything went wonderfully. The Lord was all over it. Every speech I had prepared was wasted breath.

That drive makes me ask a harder question. How often am I unsettled like that in my walk with God? How often do I take my defense into my own hands, because simply trusting the Lord feels like doing nothing?

There is no greater defender than God

When somebody is coming at you, it is a comfort to have someone standing beside you. Someone who will speak up for you. You know how much that means.

Now think about who has offered to do that for you.

“I will love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.” (Psalms 18:1-3)

Rock. Fortress. Deliverer. Buckler, which is a shield. High tower. David runs out of words trying to describe it.

And notice why he says God is worthy to be praised. It is not only that God is all-powerful. It is that He is willing. He is willing to stand next to you and be your shield. If He did nothing else for us but that, if we stopped with salvation and went no further, He would still be worthy of all the praise we could ever give Him.

God will not defend you in your sin

I want to be clear about something before we go further.

“If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.” (1 Peter 4:14-16)

God does not condone sin. He is not going to run to your rescue when you have done wrong against Him. That is not what this passage promises.

But when the accusation is about your soul, your standing before God and your relationship with Him, then you can have God as your defender. He is your fortress and your security there.

Three voices will accuse you

The first voice is other people.

“Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.” (Psalms 3:1-2)

People will try to discourage you. They will try to discredit you. And sometimes they will come straight at your soul and say, God isn’t going to help somebody like you.

The second voice is the devil.

“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” (Revelation 12:10) “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” (1 Peter 5:8)

Saying the devil is no friend of yours is an understatement. He will point out every flaw you have, and he is quick about it. He is not all-knowing the way God is, but he sees what you do, and he does not miss much. He goes before God and says, See? Look what they did. He hates God and anything that belongs to God. He will do everything in his power to show you how unworthy and ungodly you really are.

But here is the thing. The devil doesn’t have to make you do anything. All he has to do is point out what you already do.

Which brings us to the third voice: yourself.

“If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.” (Job 9:20)

The devil does not need to trip me up. I do a good enough job of that on my own. Who I am is not his fault. It is my own doing.

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalms 51:5)

You were born with a sin nature, and so was I. Nobody had to teach us how to do wrong.

The hardest thing: the accusations are true

When all three of those voices start in on me, my natural reaction is to say, Well, I’m not that bad.

But if I want God to be my defender, I have to listen to what God says.

“Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:19-20)

The hardest thing to hear is that God says the accusations are true.

When the devil points out how sinful you are and you go running to God expecting Him to say, “Oh, you’re not that bad,” He is not going to say it. He is going to say, “It’s true. You are sinful.”

God had to show me that. I couldn’t run to Him and expect Him to tell me I was okay, because I wasn’t okay. In my sin I have a serious problem. Every ungodly accusation that could be railed against me, I cannot refute. I may not have done all the things some other people have done, but in my heart I am as much a sinner as anybody who ever lived.

This is true whether you have been born again or not. If you are lost, God is by no means your defender yet. There has to come a moment when you repent of your sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. In that moment He saves you, and He becomes your defender.

But even after salvation, how often do I just assume God will back me up, without once thinking that there are things in my life He wants me to submit to Him?

You cannot wash yourself clean

“If I say, I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness, and comfort myself: I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent. If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain? If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.” (Job 9:27-31)

Job is saying, I could spend all my effort cleaning up my life. I could fix every wrong thing I can see. I could make my hands as clean as they have ever been. Surely that ought to count for something.

And then God plunges him in the ditch. Nothing has changed on the inside. I cannot change who I am. I cannot cleanse myself.

“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:” (Romans 3:10-13)

Here is what God sees when we try to justify ourselves anyway:

“Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:” (Isaiah 29:13)

You can say all the right things and do all the right things and still be standing there trying to justify yourself before God. He sees it. And He is not there to defend that.

“Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.” (Romans 2:1-2)

God does everything according to truth, and His Word is truth (John 17:17). He does not measure you against somebody else. He measures you against His Word.

If I am trying to justify myself, God can never be my justifier. If I am trying to defend myself, God cannot be my defender.

Defending yourself is a troubled sea

“I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” (Isaiah 57:18-21)

If your goal in life is to make sure you always defend yourself, always come out on top, always turn out to be right, you are going to be miserable. It is an endless loop of despair and constant searching for a peace that never comes. Peace is not merely hard to find on your own. You cannot have it on your own.

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.” (Proverbs 14:12-13)

The saddest part is how often we cover it up. We put on a face and say, “I’m okay.” We try to overcome whatever we’re going through, whether it’s the discouragement or the sin, all by ourselves.

God never intended it to be that way. On our own we fall horribly short.

What keeps God from defending you

So far this is bleak, and on our own it really is bleak. But go back to the words of Jesus: Settle it therefore in your hearts… For I will give you a mouth and wisdom.

By myself there is nothing but unrest. But God says, I can give you security. I can give you a peace that holds no matter what you are facing. He has said it plainly: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

Notice that the settling happens in your heart. That is the key. Anybody can be skilled at talking to people. Anybody can learn to debate. God is talking about something far deeper, an inner peace with Him. Whatever peace shows up in your conversations is only the by-product of that.

What keeps God from being your defender is that you are still willing to defend yourself.

And God says plainly: Stop it.

“The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” (Exodus 14:14)

So many times God has had to remind me. Stop worrying about it. Stop defending yourself. Let Me take over.

Your Advocate took the blame

We have seen that the accusations against your soul are true. Spiritually, you are dead in sin. We have all heard the phrase “too good to be true.” By any earthly standard, what God offers really is too good to be true. Yet He offers it freely.

“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5)

The Lord Jesus Christ took the blame and the hurt of my sin on Himself. He took its judgment. My sin caused God real hurt. I was not one of the men driving the nails, but my sin put Him on that cross just as surely as their hands did. Nothing has changed.

He didn’t have to do it. That is what is so incredible. He chose to. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. He was punished so that I could have peace.

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)

Propitiation means the appeasement, the payment that satisfies God for our sin. An advocate is a defender. The same One who paid for your sin now goes before the Father and makes intercession for you. He presents you cleansed by His blood.

“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” (Romans 8:33-34)

Take away the filthy garments

There is a courtroom scene in Zechariah that I love.

“And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.” (Zechariah 3:1-4)

Satan is standing right there to accuse. Joshua is standing there in filthy garments, and that is exactly how you and I stand before God.

And Joshua does not say one word in his own defense. The Lord rebukes Satan. Then He says, Take away the filthy garments from him.

“I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” (Isaiah 61:10)

You cannot get that robe on your own. You won’t find it scrounging around in some hidden secret of this world. God offers it to you through His Word and through the blood He shed on the cross.

Before I got saved, when the Lord was working in my heart, I felt so lost and undone and filthy before God. After salvation I felt so clean. So light. It is amazing what God does.

Do you have His robe of righteousness today?

The Lord will cause righteousness to spring forth

“For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” (Isaiah 61:11)

The Lord God will cause. I can’t cause it. He will.

The way I live doesn’t decide whether I’m saved. But if I am saved, my life will change. That is a by-product of salvation.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

There is no greater honor than to be able to give God praise. Solomon reached the same conclusion at the end of his search:

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

Fear God more than you fear people, and more than you fear what you think of yourself. Keep His commandments, and the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before the nations.

You don’t know where He will put you. I believe God places each of us in the assembly where He wants us, and He does that on purpose. But He can also move you. I never thought I would live in a big city, and that is exactly where God moved me. He can upend everything you’re comfortable with and put you somewhere He gets the glory. Wherever He sends you, He goes with you.

“He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38)

Try to picture that literally and it is a strange picture. But the Lord is showing you the kind of life He gives. He said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). He does not give a life that merely gets by. He gives a life that is fruitful, overflowing, and full, and He is its source.

Settle it in your heart

I spent three and a half hours in a car arguing with people who weren’t there. That is how a lot of us live. We rehearse our defense against other people, against the devil, and against our own consciences. We wash our hands in snow water and wonder why we never feel clean.

If you have never been born again, repent of your sin. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and receive Him as your personal Lord and Savior. He will save you today, and He will become your defender.

If you are already His child, you know the voice I mean, because He has used it with me so many times. Stop defending yourself. Surrender to Me. Let Me produce in you what I want in you.

Jesus said to settle it in your heart.

Have you settled it?

Will you stop defending yourself?

Will you let God be your defender?

Adapted from a message preached from Luke 21:10-15.