Today introduces a final fall
for Paul in Ephesians chapter six. And he purposes that by saying,
finally, many of us are saying, finally, we're out of here. I'll tell you, I don't like finishing
a letter except that we have gone through it. It's it'd be
really, really good if we were in the practice of teaching through
a letter. And then when we get through, we started over because
then we would probably begin to get it. And so the reason
for teaching Ephesians is because it is the constitution of the
church. It is the established instruction to the people of
God through the apostles. who are the divine authority
over the scripture, who have divine authority over the church,
her establishment, her practice, her doctrine, her covenant, the
apostles whom Christ appointed and to whom he gave his words
to teach to his people. There is no authority apart from
the Word of God through the teachings of the apostles. For it is through
them that Jesus Christ holds sovereign authority over His
church. And that's why we have taught
Ephesians. We have learned who we are. We
have learned whose we are. We have learned that which God
has done in Christ and how He has reconciled us to Himself
and adopted us as His own. And in covenant, He has brought
us together for the single purpose of praising His glorious grace. There is no other mission of
the church except to praise the glorious grace of God through
Jesus Christ. There is no other option. There's no other course. There's no other action that
supersedes that. And I would say it is the sole
purpose of the church, which is seen in Ephesians 3, to display
the meaningful wisdom of God to the powers, the principalities
of the cosmos, of the heavens, so that the world and the devils
in it, and Satan himself sees that because the church exists,
you'll probably remember me saying this months ago, because the
church exists, Satan knows he's lost. We've seen practical instruction.
Doctrine, which is teaching out of right theology, produces right
living. Good doctrine produces right
living. Friends, it is not our thoughts
and our culture and what we've been taught that governs our
lives as Christians. It is that which the Bible teaches. And we can be taught the Bible
incorrectly. We can't go to the Word of God
and we can squeeze into the margins the culture in which we are accustomed
to. And in doing so, we would be
wrong. We've been given great commands
here in this letter, and it's not by mistake or just out of
pure joy of being able to go through something for a church
plant to know what the church ought to look like. It's absolutely
divinely intentional that we have been learning this letter. And as those of you who were
here Tuesday night, I spoke specifically for about an hour about our mission
and our vision and our focus and our essence and our being
and how that everything we have as our covenant comes straight
from the letter of Ephesians to the Ephesians. Every bit of
it. Every breath mark comes from there. So that we know that being
a church has nothing to do with coming to church. We know that
being a church has nothing to do with enjoying each other.
We know that being in church has nothing to do with agreeing
on everything, but that being the church has everything to
do with what God has divinely accomplished in Christ. And we are to walk in this way.
We are to walk worthy of the calling to which we've been called
with the fullness of the power of God with no excuse. But I
just know that's gone. There is no excuse for not walking
the power of God, except that I rebel against it. That's the
excuse, and it's not a reason. It's not an excuse that holds
muster. It will not work. Because as the body functions,
those who rebel are under discipline by the body. That they are either
reconciled unto obedience or they are dismissed as unbelievers
that through the destruction of their flesh, they may be saved
from the grasps of the devil. We've seen the family. And how
the family blooms and blossoms out of the home into the church. That the temporal vision and
focus of the family, which is a picture of the gospel, is to
work interwovenly as the power of the gospel works in the home.
And then that temporal family unit works eternally in the body. The family is not that which
the church is supposed to establish. The family is supposed to point
to the eternal, which is the church of Jesus Christ. So that
we who are in Christ as children, brothers and sisters, as one
body, that body is over in authority and in significance, the body
that we call family in the home. But at the same time, that home
that is not managed and ministered to is not going to bring health
to the body of Christ. So it is a both and, but marriage
is not forever and parenting is not forever and husbands and
wives die because after they die, there is no more reason
for them to be married, for they have attained that which they
point to, the bridegroom of heaven. And parents no longer are parents
governing the authority of their children, for their children
leave their father and mother and become one flesh. And they
cleave to one another. And then the whole thing starts
over again until they die. And then their children do that
until they die. But friends, we as a church never
die. It's forever. And so that which
we work toward in maturity and in worship and in forbearing
with one another. If the gospel's not powerful
enough for you to forbear with sin, with weakness and immaturity,
you are the one immature. You see, that's what we've learned
here. We forbear one another. We grow one another. We mature
together knowing fully that we are Jesus and so we're still
a baby too in some areas of our lives. And all of these things that
we've learned in the last year or so have been amazing to our
hearts and souls and minds. But therein lies the problem
of putting it out in our feet, in our hands, in our hearts.
How do we live out effectively the commands of God as the church?
Well, first, we put the body of Christ above ourselves. Through the authority of the
Word of God, we do not hold that which we want above that which
the church needs. Just review. We do not seclude ourselves in
our homes and say, well, this is my business. There is no business
that's your business. It's God's business. And God's
business is to make sure that you as a person and as a family,
the home is the church. From the rats to the dead. Your faith is personal, but it
is not private. So we remember that we also understand
that the feeling of the Spirit of God is required for us to
live in obedience and it's commanded by God for us to be filled by
a spirit. So therefore, we are able to
be filled the Spirit of God. We don't call down the spirit.
We meditate, focus, pray and ask God to fill us. But we don't
ask God to fill us as we flander around like fish out of water,
hoping just by through osmosis and some supernatural divine
providence that God's going to thump us back in the water. We
pray while pursuing righteousness. You know, the will of God is
easy. Obey the Word. It's simple. When
I've been praying for the will of God, you need to get up from
praying and do it. And pray that God will hold you
in it. and keep you in it. Well, one day, and when I know
God's will for my life, then I'll obey. You're disobedient
now, and where God puts you tomorrow will be for your discipline,
not your joy. But it will come out of discipline. You want to go through the ringer?
That's what we do. We go, we see it and we see it
come and go, oh, it's going to be for my good. Well, friends,
it is for our good and God restores us in. But why would we willingly
go there? And then today, as we start,
we look. How are we to walk in this as
a people? And Paul says in Ephesians 6,
10, look, I'm going to read all this and then we're going to
talk about it. He says, finally, finally, be strong in the Lord
and in the strength of His might. Some translations say power of
His might. Be strong in the Lord and the
strength of His might. So, our strength. We are told
to be strong and in order to be strong, we've got to know
where our strength lies and our strength is not our strength,
just like our holiness is not our holiness and our righteousness
is not our righteousness and our affection is not our affection
and our good works is not our good works. But we are Christ's
workmanship created in him. We are God's workmanship created
in Christ to do good works which have been prepared beforehand
that we should walk in. We are the creation of God. And God will purpose and effectively
produce Christians who live in a covenant way with each other. Now, not tomorrow. Now, the greatest One of the
greatest lies of Satan is that, well, you know what? Starting
tomorrow, I'm gonna... You know what starting tomorrow
is? Disobeying today. Why do we do that? Because we've
been lied to. How come I can't see the lie?
Because we don't study! We don't eat the bread of life
through the Word of God. We don't drink the living water
of Christ. We just float along, listen to
YouTube clips, listen to what the preacher has to say, do a
little meditation or maybe a memory verse every day, and then that's
it. Don't stop those things. We had a wedding yesterday. And
after the wedding, there was a bunch of food, but there was
no food. Just things to eat. It wasn't
food. Little bitty sandwiches. Little
bitty noodles. Cake that didn't get cut on time,
so I had to leave, didn't get any upset. I like cake. Lollipops we take on them. Candies
that you can put in a bag and carry with you and eat. But it's
no sustenance. Now you could fill up on it.
You could get enough of it. You could get enough of those
barbeque sandwiches to make a whole pound of barbeque, but you look
bad. You've got 17 sandwiches on the plate. And people laugh. They look at
that. What is this guy doing? He's a pig. Oh, maybe he's serving
people. And they say, you sit down and
put your face in it. So you don't do that. And the point is, it's
irrelevant. The point is, It's that we eat
like that in the Word of God. We go and we get the little finger
food here. Oh, that looks nice. And so we have, I have jelly
beans and M&M's and cupcakes and macaroni. And it's a pretty
good flavor together. You know, you want to get a little
bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of that.
Oh, look at that. Oh, there's lemon squares and peanut butter
bars and asparagus. And we just go and we eat and
it's nice tastes, but there's no meal there. Don't eat the word that way.
Because what what you're about to hear will not be effective
in your life. Finally, be strong in the Lord
and the strength of his mind. Put on the whole armor of God
that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers and against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over
this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil
in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole
armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil
day and having done all to stand firm. Stand, therefore, having
fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate
of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on
the readiness given by the gospel of peace in all circumstances,
take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all
the flaming darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation. and the sword of the Spirit,
which is the Word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with
all prayer and supplication to that end, keep alert with all
perseverance, making supplication for all the saints and also for
me that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly
to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I'm an ambassador
and change that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. Eight more sermons after today. And I'll share it with you this
way. For the Spirit-filled, born-again believer who is healthy and healthily
pursuing the righteousness of Christ, desperately desiring
to walk without sin and worship, this text causes an anxiety that's
good. That Christian is excited and
sitting inside, not necessarily now, everybody's going to lean
up, oh, I've got to get on the edge of my seat, but sitting in the spirit
of their mind on the edge of their seat going, yes, finally,
finally, I'm going to get what is needed for the battle. Well,
you've got it. Now Paul's going to tell us how
to use it. Now, there's some thoughts here.
When you hear the Word, The phrase, the term spiritual warfare. A lot of things take place in
our hearts. A lot of things come. It's like
the chocolate cake analogy that I gave a few weeks ago. We see
the cake. We taste the cake. It doesn't
taste like chocolate cake. Something's wrong. We have an
expectation of spiritual warfare. And I would say that all of us
in the room, if we got together and we wrote down what we thought
about spiritual warfare, we'd have some similarities, but we
would also have some differences and we'd have some truths, but
we'd have some errors. And I'm here to tell you that
we all have truth and we all have error. But I'm more concerned
about the error being eradicated rather than taught about. One
of the another great deceit of Satan is to keep us focused on
that which is not so that we never put in that which is. Church
shouldn't be like this. Gospel isn't that. Worship isn't
that. Living like Christ isn't that. These people aren't Christians. Those people aren't Christians.
That thing ain't Christians. Those aren't the church. This isn't the thing.
This isn't right. Those aren't good. That's ugly. That's bitter.
That's dark. OK, good. Then where's the gospel?
The gospel is always the proclamation of that which is good. And so
the goodness of Christ and the power of God is the goodness
in us which overcomes the darkness. And there's some faults I want
you to see. And I'm not going to sit here and say, what is wrong?
Because that would take two or three more sermons and we'd all
be out here going, well, I'm wrong. And there'd be no resolution
to it. So I want to tell you some things that you should know
about spiritual warfare and plug them into that belief system. And anything that doesn't fit,
plug it out, unplug it, throw it away. Don't even consider
it anymore. Except in a good debate on maybe
if you like to philosophize or theorize on how it got there
in the first place. That is fun and interesting to do, but it
is not studying God's Word. The first thing I want you to
see is that spiritual warfare is real. It's real. This is not a fairy tale in a
book. This is not Grimm's Tales. These are not myths and legends
that come through Walt Disney. This is not the once upon a time
and happily ever after. I would suppose to you that the
absolute supernatural reality of spiritual warfare between
the powers of God and the powers of Satan... I say that and I
almost laugh. Anyway, the darkness, the dominion
of darkness and the power of light, the Kingdom of God, is
real. It is real. And what happens
in the church today, Satan cannot have us, so he blinds us. And I say that very carefully
because I'm not talking about salvific blindness. I'm not talking about
blindness and that we fall into this rebelliousness and then
we're the Hebrew six people. I'm not talking about that. That
is the work of Satan. But as Christians, we close our
eyes to the reality of spiritual warfare. And I'll get to that
in a minute of why I believe that happens. But I want you
to know today, number one, that spiritual warfare is real. It
is real. Secondly, I want you to understand
that everyone under the sound of my voice that lives or has
lived or will live in this world, whether they hear what I'm saying
or not, is in one of two places. They are either children of Satan
or children of God. There is no neutrality. And if you want to argue that,
argue from that which is the authority of all truth and is
truth, who is God, and how do we know God through the Word
of God? So if you want to argue with God that that's not true,
you go right ahead. I will not give time to that
argument for it is throwing pearls before swine. But if you'd like
to discuss it intellectually, I'll be glad to set up a time
for you, and I will quote Dr. Votie Bauckham, and I will let
you in this argument so that I might beat you like a tied
up goat. Not very kind, I should say,
but it sure does make me laugh. And I have been that tied-up
goat before. And friends, sometimes the Word of God beats us like
a tied-up goat. But really what we are is a shackled sheep that
we're clung to the cross of Jesus by His mighty hand and no one
can snatch us out. And the enemy pulls and he pulls and he tugs
and he blows all over the place and he cannot take us out of
the hand of God. Praise be His name. So we are in one of two
places, the domain of darkness or the kingdom of Christ. You
are the son of God or the sons and daughters of God, the children
of God, or you're the children of your father as what he what
Jesus says, the Pharisees, your father, the devil. Just as Dave
has read for us today, for he who practices lawlessness is
lawless, and he who does that does the works of the devil.
But Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Friends,
don't forget that. Something else you need to understand
is that people go to one extreme or the other. People go to an
obsessive extreme on spiritual warfare or they go to an apathetic
ignorance of it and they just ignore it. And I'm not dare going
to say we need a balance and we don't need a balance. We need
a biblical perspective on it. And the biblical perspective
says you're in one camp or the other and it's really happening.
And here's the third thing I want you to see. just in observation,
is that spiritual warfare is that there is a kingdom of God
and a kingdom of Satan and they are in conflict. In 1 John 5, 19, we know that
we are from God. And the whole world lies in the
power of the evil one. We are from God and everyone
else lies in the power of the evil one. Except Corinthians
4. For we do not lose heart. We
do not practice cunning and underhanded ways, tampering with the Word
of God, but by direct statement of the truth, we proclaim with
our consciousness before you and before God, the truth. That's
what Paul says. And if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled only to those who are perishing. For in their case,
the God of this world has blinded the eyes of unbelievers to keep
them from seeing the power of God to keep them from seeing
the face of Jesus. What does Jesus teach us in Mark?
When we see the parable of the sower, we see the soil. What
happens? It says the birds come and take
away the seed. And they receive it with joy.
And they mature a little bit. Then all of a sudden, the birds
come and they snatch it away and then they wither and die.
And Jesus says that the birds are Satan who comes and takes
the Word of God away from those. Takes it from their heart. Takes
it from their minds. And John also says in chapter
two of his first epistle that we are commanded not to love
the world for the world and everything in it. He produces this list.
The lust of what we see, we want with our eyes, we lust after
that, we want these things. The pride of life, power, prestige,
the pride of possessions. The stuff we have, the stuff
we've obtained, the stuff we've achieved. is of the world and
everything in the world, these things and all in it is passing
away. And if you love that, the love of the Father is not in
you. So whose love is in you? The love of the devil is in you.
And that's oxymoronic anyway, because the devil has no love
in him. So the world and everything in
it lies in the power of the evil one. The world and everything
in it lies in the domain of darkness. And all who lie in the domain
of darkness are lost without hope in the world, except through
the graciousness of God and his love for them. With a great love
for them, he reaches into the darkness and he snatches them
out and he carries them over into the kingdom of Christ. But why are they there to begin
with, you might ask, because they're desperately wicked. They're
desperately, desperately, desperately wicked, but here's some good
news. We, as the church, aren't fearful of the darkness. We're
not fearful of the God of darkness. We're not fearful of the devil.
We're not fearful of demonic control. We're not fearful of
the things that haunt and destroy and seek to kill because we have
authority over these things. Little children, you are from
God. and have overcome them. For greater
is He who is in you than he who is in the world." 1 John 4, 4. Crazily, John in his first epistle,
he deals primarily with the intrinsic worthiness of God and His holiness
and the absolute reflection of that holiness in the light of
Christ and the people who belong to God. And therefore, we are
belonging to God. And as we belong to God, we practice
righteousness, which is manifested perfectly in our righteous acts
and pursuit of righteousness and then succinctly in our love
and affection and dine to ourselves for the sake of our brothers
and sisters in Christ. And then he talks about the Antichrist.
You heard the Antichrist. You heard Antichrist was coming
and is now in the world. And many Antichrists have come
and will come. So the battle is here. It's real
and you're a part of it and you're either on God's side or you're
against God. And as a child of God, you're
victorious in the battle already, but it doesn't mean we sit on
our hands and wait. And I believe it's necessary
for us to consider the Old Testament reality of when this battle began
for us. We know in the book of Job, it
teaches about the fall of Satan and Satan's sin was that he wanted
to not take God's place, but to stand equal with him. Even
Satan wasn't such a fool to think he could dethrone God. But he
said, I will be like You. I will sit with You. And I will
ascend to where You are. And God, the Creator of this
angelic, magnificent being, went, yeah, right, and threw Him out
of heaven. And where did He throw Him? To
wander the earth. There's a mistake in the mythology
of doctrine when people think that Satan is in hell. He does
not want to go there, for hell is the presence of the fullness
of God's judgment. Satan is not experiencing the
judgment of God. In Genesis chapter three, turn
there with me, if you can. This all began then for us at
creation. God created all that He created
in six days and then He created man and out of man He created
woman and He gave her to Him and set forth the picture of
the gospel. And unbeknownst to them that
they needed the gospel and here it comes. And then in Ephesians,
excuse me, and then in Genesis 3, God had commanded Adam not
to eat of the trees. the middle of the garden or the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. And I don't care what kind of criticism you bring or what
kind of scholarship you bring, whether you believe it was a
real tree or a metaphorical tree, either way, God told them not
to eat off of it and they ate off of it. We don't know what
kind of fruit it was. It doesn't matter. It could have
been a plum tree, just like the one in our backyard. But God
said not to eat from it, so it was the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. We're not going to spiritualize that which the
Scripture doesn't teach. We're going to take it for what
it says, understand the genre of historical narrative, and
then apply it accordingly. But in this Genesis chapter 3, It teaches us, verse 1, the serpent
was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord
God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say
you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? How interesting. No, God did not say that. What does the woman say? We may
eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you
shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst
of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. Now,
you must know something about Eve. Eve was not told by God
about this. Eve was told by Adam about this,
and Adam instructed Eve. Eve, God, when He created me,
put me in the garden before you were made out of me, He said,
You shall not eat of that tree, nor shall you touch it lest you
die. But the serpent said, verse four,
to the woman, you will not surely die about that negative positive
there. You will not surely die. For
God knows, you see what he says, he's he's telling us what God
knows. He tells us what God is, who
God is, how God acts. And he, the Satan, the enemy
of God, is saying to Eve, the daughter of God, this is who
God is. And God knows that when you eat
of it, See, those of you who know psychology
much, especially the psychology of sales, oh, it's an opening
line. It's almost like making people do it. When you drive
this car home, your neighbor is going to love it. Not, well,
if you take it home, what do you think your neighbor will
think? That's cheap. That's easy. All right, I'm not taking it
home. I don't care what my neighbor thinks. When you drive this home, your neighbor,
he will lust over it. Well, by golly, I've always wanted
to get Charles upset. That old ragged-up, hooptie sled
he drives. I'll take it. Satan assumed and
presumed, Eve, when you eat this fruit, your eyes will be opened
and he was not lying there. And you will be like God. He
was not lying there. And you'll be like God in the
way. God knows good and evil. You too will know good and evil.
But she didn't know evil, so she had no idea what that meant. That meant she would surely die. So when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, that's 1 John
2. She took of its fruit and ate
it. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her
and poured it. Standing right there or in earshot
or watching. And he ate. Then the eyes of
both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they
sewed big leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And
they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in
the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees
of the garden. But the Lord God called to the
man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the
sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked
and I hid myself. And then the Lord God said, Who
told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree
which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, the woman
whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.
And then the Lord God said to the woman, what is it that you
have done? And the woman said, the serpent, he deceived me and
he gave me and I ate. And the Lord God said to the
serpent, because Because you have done this, cursed are you
above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. And
on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days
of your life. I will put enmity between you
and the woman and between your offspring, Satan, and hers and
he. Plural, singular, there's an
importance there. Not today. He will bruise or crush or strike
your head and you will strike or bruise his heel. So this is what happened. Now,
out of that, I want you to see in this spiritual battle what
took place here, because what Paul is teaching in Ephesians
6 is playing itself out in Eve and Adam's life right now. And
what happens here is there are several things I want you to
know about the beginning of the battle. And it's how it is working
now. First, is that Satan has knowledge
of God's commands. Satan knows the word of God.
No one went and saw the serpent and said, Serpent, did you know
we aren't supposed to eat of that? He knew it already. Satan
has knowledge of the commands of God and he doesn't come to
us as an angel of darkness. He comes to us as an angel of
light. He didn't show up and try to
scare Eve. He didn't say, I'm the devil.
I mean, he just he showed up as a creature, a created thing
that God made and was good and was beautiful. And he spoke to
her through him, much like Satan did not show up with the twelve.
And with Jesus, when he says, you surely do not have to die.
And Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. Satan showed up as Peter. That wasn't Satan in the form
of Peter, it was Peter as a puppet. And the words of God was, I must
go and die. And the words of the devil were,
you don't have to. He hides his true desire. The
true desire of Satan is to be self-exalted to the position
of God. In some sense, to climb the ladder
of glory. And what he wants us to do, what
he wanted Eve to do, is first to listen to him. Just listen. And how does he do that? He inquires.
He asks questions. He wants us to listen to him.
And then he wants us to believe him by thinking that we have
come up with that which we think is right. And then he wants us to respond
to him. And he wants us to honor him. At this place, Eve was thinking
pretty highly of herself and wondering, and that little serpent,
man, he is really helping me out. Thank you, little serpent. You're so sweet. I'll take you
home to Adam. So he hides his true desires.
Fortunately, Satan debates the truth of God. And he uses God's
own character and words against him. Five, he diverts God's commands
by asking questions about them. The Socratic method. Did God
say you could not eat of any tree? Knowing full well God said
they could eat of any tree except the one. Satan says, did God
say you couldn't eat? How dare God say you couldn't
eat of any tree? For had he come straight at it,
Eve would have been smart enough to go, how did he know that? So the devil schemes and the
devil lies. The devil lied to Eve and he
got her to begin to question that which God had done. To get
the answer that he wanted, he proclaimed a question about what
God had permitted. It's sort of like the way we
do sometimes. Does the Bible say that I can
blank? Does the Bible say that I should,
knowing full well all we're doing is trying to find someone, the
nine out of ten dentists that can approve that this is the
best toothpaste? And after 4,000 interviews, we find nine who
say yes, and one of those 3,089, 800 and whatever, you know, do
the math, that we don't need the rest of you, we just want
the one. So we have ten dentists in front of us, and we rightly
say nine out of ten dentists say Crest is the best. And that's what we do. We go
to the Word of God and we ask the questions in our mind. Is
it really wrong to do this if it's this way? If it's that way? Friends, let me tell you what
happens when we go to the Word of God to see how close to gray we can
get. We're near death. And the sixth way that Satan
began the battle is that he suggests that Eve is outwitted by God. And God is trying to hide something
from her that she deserves. You know, I call that entitlement.
Eve, you are entitled to know the fullness of that which God
knows. That's your right. How dare God not tell you the
truth? You're missing out, Eve! Take it! Well, that's the beginning of
the battle, and right there in that same text in Genesis 3 is the end
of the battle. And I don't want to spiritualize too much there,
and I don't want to get into explaining it because it's very,
very, very difficult. It's not as easy as what we've
been told. Oh, this means that, and this
means that, and this means that, and this means that. You've got to
be careful. But what I will say is that the end of the battle
is there at the beginning, because the battle that Satan started
brought him zero victories. Do you know that Satan has never
had a victory ever here this church? The devil has never been
victorious ever, ever, ever. He tricked Eve. He tricked Adam. They ate. They died. And he thought,
ah, I got them. God cursed him. And God created Adam and Eve.
And the full purpose of His creation was to redeem them. Because His
foreknowledge and His absolute divine providence, He knew that
Satan would do that. And so Satan, after thinking
he's won, is cursed. And I'm not going to say that
God cursed the snake. Snakes don't eat dirt. Snakes
don't crawl on their bellies. But their position is low. There
is enmity there, but the full overarching, just like when Jesus
spoke to Peter, he spoke to Satan. It's taught him, Satan. So it's
pretty obvious who's talking. As God curses Satan, he says
on your belly, you want to be exalted. You tempt and trick
and deceive that which I created out of the dust. So guess what?
You're lower than they are. Crawl around that which was their
being. You want to be high? I'll show
you how high you are. You're at the low. And you'll always
be at the low, devil. You are under me. And you are
under that which I created. You are the lowest of all things
that I've ever made. You are beneath everything that
ever lived. And they will all hate you. Because
Satan wants to be glorified and God told him he would forever
be hated. And he says, and you will eat
that very dust. And then he says, so goes your offspring for the
offspring of the woman, whether it be the church or specifically
how I believe when he says he, the pre-incarnate Christ, Jesus,
the Messiah, shall crush your head, but you will strike their
heel. So you'll hit him in the foot and he'll stomp on your
face, which is the worst flow. We don't want to impose that,
but it sure sounds good to me. You could take it and study it
as you want. So what in the world is God saying here? God is saying
that the battle is on and you've already lost. So therefore, the
doctrine of spiritual warfare teaches us that God has established
spiritual warfare and ordained it. He says the war is on and
you will be at enmity with my children. You will be at enmity
with my son. You will be at enmity with my
bride and you will lose. You are done! So God says, I'm
victorious, devil. Therefore, finally, back to Ephesians
6. Be strong in the Lord, in the
power of His might. And next week, I will pull that
apart really well for you and lay it out to show you what the
power of the strength of the might of God looks like. But the battle looks like this.
It's either an attempt to stand strong in our power or stand
strong in God's power. Which one yields victory? God's
power. What does our power look like?
Let's talk about it. The ploy of Satan imposes the
power that we think we have. He told Eve, you shall not surely
die. You will be like God in knowing
good and evil. He gave Eve power. Power is the
ultimate essence of wickedness. It is what we want. We get power
when we purchase stuff and we feel good about that which we
hold in our hand. We're in power. We get power when we look good
and when we smell good. We get power when we find the
right person to love us and that we can love them. We get power
when we have a position of authority and people care. We get power
when we can rule over people as bullies. and they can shudder
beneath us. We get power when we accomplish
something that we can pump ourselves up and we start to create a name
for ourselves and say, look at me, look at what I've done and
what I've accomplished. We get power. We get power when
we think that it's going to have pleasure in our life. So we do
it. We eat it. We touch it. We see it. We listen
to it. We embrace it. We feel it. We
do everything that we can do so that we can be empowered in
our flesh. And every bit of that power stands
in absolute opposition to the powerful might and the strength
of the might of God. So the ploy of Satan to stop
us from resting in the power of God is this. Several things. It's not inclusive,
but it will get us thinking. The first one is this. The power
of pride. The power of pride. And here's
what it looks like. I don't have to explain it. Well, I know.
I got it. I see. Don't worry about it.
Not me. It's power of pride. Church,
we know better. We've got it. We're not bothered
by it. There's no spiritual warfare
in my life. We're not having to deal with this. There ain't no worry
about it. We got it. We've got it. We're more spiritual
than that. We're mature than that. We're
wiser than that. You're already deceived. You're
already a baby. And you're tripping over your
own feet. The power of pride. The second
thing that I believe Satan uses to keep us from standing strong
in the power and the might and the strength of God is fear.
First is the power of pride. The second is the power of fear.
Fear. We shudder. We think, oh, I'm not going to
deal with spiritual warfare because I might become one of those kooks
that always looks for the devil in every cushion and the devil
under every tire. And I rebuke him before I crank
up my car and I pray over my gas so it doesn't tear up my
engine. And I look under a rock and I don't touch a penny if
it's face down. Sometimes we're scared so we don't engage in
the reality of spiritual warfare because we're scared. We've just
believed the lie of the devil that it's too far-fetched. And a fear of thinking that we're
going to jump off a cliff and become a kook. We stay away from
it. Another fear is that all people
think I'm weird if I start talking about the devil. Yeah, they probably
will. But I bet they'll think you're
weirder if you start talking about Jesus. And some people fear that if
they just ignore the spiritual things, that the devil won't
notice them, and they won't bother them, and they won't have any
problems. I'm not even going to say the word that must not
be named. I'm not going to say the D word, the S word. I'll call him the ugly guy with
a pitchfork. The power of fear. Satan puts
that fear in us and we don't want to engage it. The third
thing I think Satan uses to depower us is the power of apathy. I just do nothing. I ain't worried
about that. That stuff ain't happening. That's
for those foreign countries where everybody's smoking weed and
all that kind of stuff and walking around naked and drinking things. That's for those drug dealers
and those potheads down in those meth labs and all those crack
houses down in those big cities. They're the ones that the devil
is messing with. I ain't worried about nothing. Don't worry about
the devil. Or worse, we're apathetic because
we're so excited about the cross of Jesus. Oh, Jesus is victorious. Jesus is victorious. Don't worry
about that. Don't think about that. Don't
read that. Don't even read Revelation. Don't read Ephesians 6. Just
quit. You think, who does that? I've heard people have told me
that. Pastor, I don't want to give them a book on spiritual
warfare. I'm not going to read this. I'll bring the devil in
my life. He's in your life, honey. And he's got you good. We've mystified spiritual warfare
to be like the exorcist. You know, that's obvious. Somebody's
floating six feet off the ground and fire's coming out of their
ears, and they go... and their head's spinning around. You know,
that isn't what happens, folks. They sit there in their house
comfortably in their American dream with their white fence,
and their neighbors go to hell, and their families go into hell,
and they're good moral people. That's spiritual warfare. That's
what it looks like. The devil's not going to actually
be a 9,000 headed beast breathing fire coming out of the sea. I
mean, we'll all run from that. Maybe half of us will stand on
our iPhones and get stepped on. Try to put it on YouTube. Or
there's the devil. I think I'm going to try. Yes.
Sorry. Or maybe we're so apathetic we
think, oh, there's some other types of people that deal with
that. Not me. I have no spiritual warfare issues going on. And
then there's the type of apathy that think that only spiritual
warfare happens to people who delve into the cults or the magic
or the... No, folks. It's all of us. The fourth way I think the devil
keeps us depowered is ignorance. Ignorance. There's one more after
this. Ignorance of what? Ignorance of the Word of God
that tells us that we're in a battle, not against flesh and blood,
the principalities, the powers of darkness. Look at that list!
The present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil
and the heavenly places. The cosmic powers over this present
darkness. The rules and authorities against the cosmic powers over
this present darkness. This is not just a blur. It's
not a footnote. It's a big list of a bunch of
wicked stuff! And then Paul says in Ephesians
3, verse 10, for the purpose of the church is to display the
manifold wisdom of God. To who? The devil. The powers of the heavens. Where are they listed? Right
there. And then again in John's other writings. That's where
they're listed. It's always talking about the powers of the devil.
The powers of demons. The powers of the devil and all
his minions. They're at work against you, church. The devil
works against you. He's working against you right
now. And ignorance of that is one of the greatest ways in which
he works. Ignorance of the Word of God. And most significantly,
ignorance of the authority and the power of the Word of God.
To fill up our lives with joy. To fill us with the Spirit. To
walk effectively as submissive Christians to the Scripture.
To walk as good wives and good husbands and good children and
good parents. To walk as obedient, affectionate church. It's spiritual
warfare. All these squirrely little things
that we think that we make all the most magnificent issues out
of that are absolutely benign nothings. And then we just we wonder. We
wonder. And we think we're being discerning
and wise and we're being stupid and ignorant. That's it. We just
Oh, I've got this down. I've got that down. The Bible
says to seek wisdom and walk in it. Fickleness is of Satan. Fickleness of doctrine. Well,
I thought I believed this and I thought I believed that. Well,
I made a decision to do this and I made that. And I'm not
saying you can't change your mind, but you know what it's all about.
On spiritual matters, you're always flipping back and to and
to and fro. Well, the devil's in that church.
Hallelujah. What good is anything if it's
not counterfeited? Ignorance of the will of God.
Ignorance of the fact that we're always at war. And ignorance
of the fact that some people think, well, only pastors and
missionaries have the spiritual battle. No, it's not. I would
say that most pastors and missionaries are better equipped to overcome
this than the average church person. Why? Because they're
in the Word of God and they're scared to death. And they pray. And they pray. And they lunge
themselves into the significant grace of God and say, oh, can't
do it? Just jump. While everybody else just sits
around and analyzes it all. thinking that everything's fine.
And one of the greatest things that ignorance has done to the
church is they think that Christians are off-limits by the devil. We are not. Trans-Christians can be demonized.
Quit Hollywoodin' once you think about that. Nobody said a thing
about being possessed. But if you don't think the devil
can give you thoughts and bother you and trouble you, read the
Bible. For Pete's sake, Job is a righteous
man and God suggests to Satan when he says, where are you coming
from, Satan? And he says, you know, to and
fro from the earth. And we know from the Scripture,
what does the devil do? He looks to see who he might devour. He's
not a prankster burning our toast. He's not causing our brakes to
go bad. He's not causing our electricity to go out in the
storm. We're in the middle of gone with the wind. It's too
long anyway. He's not causing our children
to drop a glass of milk in the middle of the night. He's trying to drag us to hell
with Him. Drag Himself to be exalted and
obeyed. For God to be disobeyed and despised. And finally, Satan employs the power of false
worship in the life of the church. Now, I want you to pay attention
here. Because what I don't want you
to do is confuse false worship with unregenerate worship. It just sort of fits. False worship
is thinking we know God and we worship Him for something and
what we're actually doing is not worshipping God at all, but
we're worshipping that which the enemy has taught us. Eve
could have very easily, after being tempted, before she took
that fruit, she could have said, oh, thank You, God, that You
sent the serpent to tell me that this was for me. Like the Pharisee. Thank You, God, I'm not like
him. Thank You, God, that You've given
me a heart to obey You. Thank You, God, that You empower
me to give my tithe. And Jesus says that man went
home condemned. But the man who dared not look
to heaven and tore his clothes and beat his chest and he bowed
down and said, Dear God, have mercy on me, a sinner. That man
went home justified. So we worship sometimes falsely
a worldly God and the God of this world is the devil. We ascribe
things to God when God isn't the author of them. The remedy
of that is found here, the spirit of truth. Primarily. The helmet of truth, I mean. Secondly, we have false worship,
the power of false worship comes through cultural truths rather
than biblical truth. We can break it down and talk
about a biblical worldview versus a cultural or secular worldview. For instance, there's two worldviews.
There's the view of the world from God and the view of the
world from everybody else. Period. Well, what if there's
15 million people over here that view the world differently? They're
all in the same ding-dang bag. Sons of Satan. And the world
cannot define who God is, cannot define that which God has ordained
and created, and they cannot define that which God does. God
defines that through his word. That's why sola scriptura is
the most foundational thing that we can understand as Christians.
We can do it all for the glory of God, but what if our God's
wrong? How do we know? From the Word of God alone. We
can do it by faith. It's all about faith. Through
Christ alone. Great. Who's Jesus? How is faith
exercised? Through the Word of God alone. The Word of God. Sometimes we
false worship through Christ-like idolatry, so-called. In other
words, we see something, we do things, we're active in what
we think is being done for Jesus when it's actually a manipulative
vehicle to take us away from right worship and right learning
and right covenant life together. That's why so many practicing
churches could care less about one another. That's why when you see a baptism
of some stranger, it gives you joy because you love your sister,
brother in Christ, and you may weep or you may get excited or
you may passively just thank God all day long. That's why when you hear about
churches turning upside down and splitting and people leaving
because they just can't get along, it grieves you. You don't even
know them. We have false worship when we
have a passive mind and heart and focus on the Word of God. And so how do we do that? We've
got to be in the battle. We've got to put on the whole
armor of God. We're not just to sit there. The words that
we'll talk about next week are put on the whole armor of God
so that you may be able to stand against the devil's scheme. See,
God didn't say anything about sitting. Stand up in the power
of the gospel, in the power of God, in the strength of His might
against the devil and be prepared and you will stand against his
schemes. Because ultimately what we need
to understand is that what we've seen here and what we're about
to see is that the victory is God's. That the purpose is God's
and the plans are God's. The devil belongs to God and
the people who he harasses belong to him. And God is the one who provides
the power to overcome it. And I believe that God's work
in us produces, instead of being demonized and defeated, we worship
and we practice righteousness and we pursue ministry. We meditate
on the Word of God and we're able to recognize Romans 12,
1 and 2 and discern that which is true and that which is right. We can see. 1 John talks about
testing the spirits. So what do you have to lose? You've got this life of Christ
with joy. I came that you may have life,
that you may live it abundantly. The abundant life in Christ is
the fullness of joy when your property is being seized and
repossessed. The abundant life of Christ is
the fullness of life and joy knowing that life reigns when
your children die. The fullness of life and joy
in Christ is when everything you ever dreamt of is taken away
and you have everything you could ever want. Spiritual warfare is real and
you're in it. And you're either in the battle
as an enemy of God or as a child of God. And if you think you haven't
experienced it yet, watch. Watch, because the enemy has
taught many Christians how to deal with spiritual warfare,
and it puts all the emphasis on dealing with the devil, which
is what he wants. God puts the emphasis on the
damnation of the devil and the death of death and the death
of Christ. And when we see and the peace
of the new kingdom as Christ hurls Satan into the lake of
fire. And all the church worships.
Glory and honor and majesty and power is yours forever. And every angel of darkness is
hurled into the lake of fire. And every enemy of God after
giving ample season to see or hurled
into the lake of fire. All things will be known to us. We will see how God sees truly
good and evil in its place. And we will worship him. But
until that day, church, we are in a battle and we would be fools
not to know it and to see it. Do your best. to pray as we go
through these next eight weeks. It's one thing to go through
doctrine. It's another thing to learn how to fight for it. Let's pray. God our Father, as You sit in majesty above all
things in the heavens that You created with Your Word, And you see the work of those
creatures that rebelled against you, whom you hurled out of your
presence, who await your wrath. And Lord, as the whole world
lies in the power of the evil one, you in your love toward
us, you have saved us out of that. And you've brought us out And
you rule your kingdom in heaven and you rule your kingdom in
earth. So God, as we stand here, we praise you for that and we
cry out for that. Lord, we thank You that You give
us that which we need to live in our bodies and our lives.
And most importantly, that You give us that daily bread of the
Word and that You fill us with Your Spirit. Lord, protect us
from not the battle, but from the deception. We can't be out
of the battle. We're in it. You can't move from
it. So Lord, help us to not be led
into temptation. But Lord, deliver us from evil. For finally, we stand strong
in the strength and the power of Your might. In Jesus' name, Amen.