Video Transcript: Spiritual Warfare part 1

Welcome back. As I said last time, the session today is about spiritual warfare. It's such a  powerful topic that we're going to look at it very closely over the next three sessions. Now,  just reminder about where we are, in the process of this class. We've been looking at this  model for a long time, a leader, coming to understand the culture of where he is working. And that is defined as the way we do things here, and interacts with that culture to define a vision  of a preferable future. And then provides the impetus for the planning that needs to take  place, or here's how we've been doing it with words, a leader with all of his pluses and  minuses, all of his strengths and weaknesses interacts with a group of people to define the  culture, which is the way we do things here, in order to develop a vision for a preferable  future and then provides the impetus for doing the actions necessary to bring about that  future with plans and prayer. Now, I've got to tell you, I have not thought most of my life of  spiritual warfare in the context of leadership, like my understanding of that was fairly simple. I grew up in the Western United States, those of you who are in places like Africa, or maybe  Latin America, maybe have a heightened sense of the work of the enemy. I know that I did not fact I remember as a teenager, reading The Screwtape Letters CS Lewis, great English  theologian, philosopher, wrote a book back then called The Screwtape Letters, and it was the  letters that a were exchanged between a minor devil named named Screwtape, and his  superior named Wormwood. And the idea is, how are they going to get his subject Screwtape  has this person he's been assigned to, to keep them out of the kingdom of heaven and get  them into the kingdom of hell. And so there's all this advice flowing back and forth. Now,  Lewis wrote that I'm sure because as somebody came to faith later in his life. And he began to see how all the ways that the enemy had worked in his life. And so he wrote this book, and it  was a marvelous thing to read even devotionally because you get insights into how the  enemy might be working. So that was really my first sense of yeah Satan's really at work. And I can see that he's at work in me. Later on, as I began to deepen my experience with the  Bible, myself and read it myself, I remember reading and reflecting on Ephesians, chapter six, chapter six, verse 10, Paul says, "our struggle is not against flesh and blood." In other words,  our struggle is not the people, but it's and then he lists all of these spiritual powers, these  forces in the heavenly places, etc, etc, etc. And then he gives the armor of God as the ways  way to overcome that attack of these people who are our enemy, and began to pray and put  on the armor of God for a period of time, daily, as I sensed the the approach and the at the  action of the enemy in my own life. Now, interestingly, in seminary, I don't remember one  single reference to the work of Satan, in the church, or in my own life, or in the world, for that  matter. That to me, I'm just astounded by that. And then as I read books of leadership, on  leadership, and I've read many, many, many books on leadership, and I've listened to many  people on leadership, no one talks about it in terms of spiritual warfare, as if that's an entirely separate topic. Well, for this class today, I want to bring the two together today and for the  next two sessions after that, because when we're talking about leading an organization, that  it has, as its goal, the glory of God of the building of his kingdom, establishing his kingdom  here on earth, to the extent that we can until he comes again, and establishes it fully, we are  engaged in that have to know that there's an enemy, and the enemy is not flesh and blood.  The enemy is about destroying the things of God. And so we're going to get to know Satan  intimately, hopefully, during these next few weeks. Not just know him as far as knowing that,  that he is a figure, but get to know who he is, and how he acts in order to bring about the  destruction of the Church of Jesus Christ, and the people who are the people of Jesus Christ.  And one of the people who's inspired me in this is George C. Scott, playing Patton in the  movie Patton. It's a 1970s movie. So it goes back a long, long time. But the story is of General George Patton. During World War II, he was considered an incredibly effective general. In fact,  he was the general who first defeated Rommel. Now Rommel, you remember was the Nazi's  the Germany's probably most effective general. He was somebody who constantly won  battles. You put him there, he was incredible stret able to strategize able to tactician for for  battle in tank battles in particular. And so there came this moment in the movie and it was in  reality when Now George C. Scott or Patton has had to confront Rommel for the first time on  the battlefield. And George C. Scott is looking through his binoculars and sees that, you know, the American side is winning. And he says, I won't quote him directly because he uses a 

swear word. But he says Rommel, you blankety blank he said, I read your book. In other  words, he said, I read, Rommel had written a well known tank battle guide. Before World War  II started, and Patton knowing that he was going to at some point face Rommel read that,  studied it, read it over again, studied it. talked with his leaders, his other other officers about  it, because he said, you know, you've got to know your enemy, if you're going to going to  defeat them. And so he made it a point to know Rommel well, so in that spirit, in this session,  we're going to get to know Satan. Well, the first thing to look at is who is he? There are a  couple of Old Testament passages that are tough to interpret. But one of the interpretations of these passages is that this is a description of Satan. And I'll read them to you didn't have  room on the slides put all these words up there. But Ezekiel 28:12-17, "son of man, take up a  lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him, this is what the Sovereign Lord says. You  are the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden the garden of God, every precious stone adorn you, Ruby, topaz, emerald, chrysolite, onyx and Jasper,  Safra, Sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountains were made of gold. On the  day you were created, they were prepared. You are anointed as a guardian cherub for us. So I  ordained you. You are on the Holy Mountain of God, you walked among the fiery stones, you  are blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.  Through your widespread trade, you were filled with violence and you sinned. So I drove you  in disgrace from the mouth of God and I expelled you or guardian chair from the fiery stones.  Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth. I made a spectacle of you before kings." Now  Bible scholars look at that and say, okay, is this about a king in Tyre? It sounds like something  far greater than that. And so I've said, this sounds like what we hear about in connection with  these other two passages Isaiah 14 listen in "how you have fallen from heaven oh Morning  Star, son of the dawn, you have been cast down to earth you who once laid low the nation's,  you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of God, I  will sit enthroned on the Mount of assembly on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain, I  will ascend above the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High, but you are  brought down to the grave to the depths of the pit." Now there's some more information the  sounds again, like Satan, what we know of him right? He was part of heaven. Apparently he  was a created being God created him with great beauty. God created him and gave him a  position of authority. And he wanted more. He wanted to throw God off his throne. And so the  next passage, Revelation 12, tells us a little bit about what happened. "And there was war in  heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon and his angels  fought back. But he was not strong enough. And they lost their place in heaven. The great  dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the Devil or Satan, who leads the whole  world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him." So who is he? He's an  angel. And he's somebody who is a proud Angel, somebody who did. Who saw himself as  greater than God himself, and tried to take over heaven. And as a result, he was cast down in  this case to the earth. And if you see all of that as a prelude to what happened in Genesis 3,  you say, Wow, the temptation of the serpent there is kind of a fulfillment of this right? And so  who is he is a powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful, being created by God for something  great in the kingdom of God, at least the Heavenly Kingdom of God. And yet, because of his  pride, and because he tried to overthrow God, he was thrown out. He and the angels with him One estimate I heard was 1/3 of the angels, however you get that, but anyway, they lost their  place in heaven. So who do they become? If you look throughout Scripture, you find various  indications of that. First of all, he's called Satan. Now, the word Satan means adversary, or the one who resists. And so he is called Satan. He is an adversary, he's somebody who is resisting the things of God. He's somebody who is opposed to the things of God, in fact Jesus, when it  comes says he he's around to, to lie, to steal and to destroy. So picture him as the adversary.  Think of that when you're making a strategic plan that's going to make an impact in the  kingdom, kingdom of God, it's going to make a change in the lives of people who are  hopeless, that they might find hope in Jesus Christ, or people who have been lost, and now  they're going to be found. And and if there's somebody who's an adversary to that he's  certainly going to be engaged at some point, don't you think? And so don't think you can 

make your your wonderful visionary plans and not have the enemy, pay attention. In fact, the  more successful you are, the more you have to be aware of him personally, and in your  organization. So he's called Satan. He's called the accuser. Revelation 12:10, "then I heard a  loud voice in heaven, say, now have come to salvation and the power and the kingdom of our  God and the authority of his Christ, for the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before  God day and night has been hurled down." So what is he like? He's an accuser. Now, I still see  this happening. You know, there's maybe an example of that, in the early part of Job, where  we read in this kind of chapters one and two of Satan showing up in heaven before God and  God saying, where'd you come from? And he says, I've been wandering to and fro on the  earth. And, and God says, have you see my servant Job, and and Satan says, Well, of course,  you know, of course, he's faithful to you. Why, because you protect him so much, take away  some of your protection. And he'll curse you. And so then the rest of the book of Job is how he loses everything. How his friends come, and it's a, it's a book on suffering and how suffering is not always directly related to somebody's sin, because there's this adversary. And there's this  accuser of the brothers. Now, I've seen that happen today, in a very great sense and far as  this time in which I live, that people feel accused, or they feel guilty. And sometimes it  happens to people, people will walk a saintly life. And yet, at the last moment, they'll start  experiencing doubts. I think of a dear man who had a gift of evangelism. He's an immigrant  from the Netherlands. He spoke with a huge brogue. And yet he would go to people and his  first question is of them was, do you know my Jesus? Now, as he was dying, he had lung  cancer, and they operated, they did treatment, but he was dying. And I remember going to  him and he was so fearful. Because he had been an alcohol. He was an alcoholic, a recovering alcoholic. He hadn't had a drink. In years he had written, he had grown a family of a lot of  kids. He had been a key person in the church I was serving. And at that last moment, that sin  was brought back to his mind, and he wondered if God could receive him. Or I think of my  own mother, well, saintly woman, she had eight kids, seven of them boys, I hope she's in a  wonderfully quiet room in heaven. One that's not full of the cacophony that we caused and  the destruction we caused in our home. She was somebody who led me to faith. She was a  model of faith for me. And yet, when she was dying, she had kidney failure. It was inoperable. There was nothing they could do. She was dying. I flew from California and was sitting by her  bedside one night when she woke up with this horrible dream. She woke up weeping. And she  had this dream of Jesus receiving sheep, and checking each of them, you know, rubbing his  hand over their wool, and she looked at her own wool in the dream, and it was full of birds  and it was dirty and it was full of sticks and, and she just knew that Jesus was going to reject  her. Mom was pregnant with my sister, when she got married, and lived with that guilt but  experienced God's forgiveness. She was an evangelist, she was a person of grace but the last  moments of her life. The accuser came back to accuse to try to make her rebel. That's just the adversary. Be aware that the accuser will be around. He might use people but he'll accuse you of wrong motives. He'll accuse you through people accuse you of wrong motives. He'll accuse  you of of improprieties on occasion, be aware that he's going to be looking for that moment,  we're going to look at his strategy next time. He's called Lucifer or light bearer that's in that  passage in Isaiah where it's oh, morning star. Now, the idea there is that he's light. The same  thing is true in the II Corinthians passage, where he is called an angel of light. Paul says, no  wonder for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It's not surprising, then if his  servants masquerade as servants of righteousness, their end will be what their action  deserves. In other words, what Satan. presents looks so very good. It looks like this is this is  exactly what I want. This is what I'm missing for happiness. In fact, I've heard some people  describe it that way. Think of the young man who had been hooked on drugs for years and  years and years and was struggling for sobriety from alcohol, but also from heroin use. And he described that first time he shot up with heroin, he said, it was like the light dawned in my  life, this is what I had been looking for. You see, that's the way Satan works. And sometimes  they as the angel of life, he'll present things that are so good, I remember reading the story of a social worker who went into a man's house, and he had this stack of books, including The  Book of Mormon, the Qur'an, the Watchtower publication, there was a book on some odd  Asian philosophy, and and on the top of it was the Bible. And then on the top of that was a 

book about how to how to win over worry. In other words, you know what's truth? Well, Satan  will come with falsehood and make it be truth. It's called the Devil. The word means slanderer. In other words, he's somebody who's going to slander people. And that's how he will come  against the things of God and come against the people of God. And this can be incredibly  destructive. If you've ever been slandered by someone, you know what that's like, I've had  that experience in my life where somebody attributed false motives to me, or I think of the  old story, it used to be a sermon illustration, you know, where a pastor was visiting a woman  in his church, and somebody in the church saw his car parked there on a regular basis  seemed like week after week, and it felt like, you know, began talking to other people said,  Why don't you think something inappropriate is going on there anyway? Well, it turns out that, you know, the rumor started to spread of this. He was having an affair with this woman. Well,  the truth came out later that she was dying of cancer, and he was there to comfort her. And  the person who had begun the rumor came to him and said, What can I do to make things  right? And, you know, according to the illustration, again, I'm not sure the story is true. But I  said, I want you to take this pillow game of feather pillow, and take it outside and tear it open  and throw the feathers up in the air. And of course, it was a windy day, and the feathers blew  all over it. The guy came back in and said, Okay, I did it. They said, Okay, now the pastor said, go out and collect every one of those feathers, and you'll make it, right. And the idea is, is  that gossip that is spread, slanderous gossip that is spread, keeps spreading, and can be so  destructive. That's one of the things the devil does. And we're going to look more at his  strategies next session. But here's some insight into how he acts. He's called the deceiver.  Revelation 20:10. "And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of burning  sulfur." In other words, he's out there to try to convince people that everything about the  truth, Jesus Christ is the WAY the TRUTH and the LIFE but the truth about God, as we read it in the scriptures, is a lie. And that's what he does. We go on, he is called the prince of this world. Notice he's not the king of this world. He's a prince of this world. Jesus describes it this way in  John 12:31, "now is the time for judgment on this world now the prince of this world will be  driven out." In other words, he's got some authority. God has not driven out evil in the world  entirely. It's a fallen creation that we're with or that we live in. And it's a fallen people among  whom we live people are all have tendencies towards sinfulness in their life. And the prince of this world is somebody who is given ruler, this, this comes in the context of temptation of  Jesus. Or this comes in the context of the temptation of Jesus when He says, When Satan  offers him the whole world that the kings would bow down to him. This passage comes to the  context of the Ministry of people. Jesus sent out disciples to minister various places and he  says, you know, now we see it, it's happening. Truth is winning out but know that the prince of this world is at work, and he has power here. He is called the prince of the power of the air,  excuse me, the prince of the power of the air. Now, that's a rather confusing one. What does  that mean? Anyway, here's Ephesians 2, "you follow the ways of this world and the prince of  the power of the air, the spirit who does now at work and those who are disobedient." I don't  know exactly what that means. And people struggle with that. Some say, well look at all the  stuff that happens in the air around us all the time, right? I mean, I, I talked to my wife on my  cell phone on the way here. And that's, oh, y'all somehow that voice has beamed through the  air by these various cell towers, right? Television, you have a satellite, and you receive all of  these things. And they're, they're in the air, they're communications that are going on in the  air all the time. And so some have found this a reference to all that stuff that's going on, that  there's a prince of the power of the air. Now, he is not the king again. But he's a prince, he's  been given some responsibility, he has been given some authority within the area of the air  and and who can doubt that that has had influence in the kingdom of God here in the United  States. At the very least, may we've seen the church become marginalized over a period of  time, because there's more deception, on television on in movies than there is truth. In fact, I  remember I took a group of young couples on a retreat once just to talk about, you know, how are they doing? They've been married one or two years? And how are things going in their  adjustment to married life? And one of the questions I asked was, do you do see on television  anywhere, one model of a healthy marriage. And we began naming all the television  programs that they could think of that, and I'm putting them on a piece of paper while we're 

talking. There were like eight or nine television programs that dealt with families and  marriages. And every single one of them was a dysfunctional family family. It was one where  the parents were constantly sniping at each other, were talking about each other behind their  backs where were critical, where they were yelling at kids where kids were growing up  dysfunctional. That was the norm. Now, in that sense, wow, there's been great power to  destroy the things of God, given to the prince of the power of the air. Be aware that this is his  name, this is who he is, is called the god of this age. II Corinthians 4:4 "the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." So they're unable to sense there's, there's a darkness that's  over them. Sometimes you see this in people when you present the gospel to them, and they  just can't grasp it. It just makes no sense to them whatsoever. You know, I can think of several people who eventually came to faith, they said, You know, I, it was all fairy tale to me, until all of a sudden eyes were opened and I could see truth. Well, that's one of the things the enemy  is doing with his, with his angels is trying to keep us deceive trying to keep us unaware of the  love that God has for us. He's called a murderer and a liar. These are words of Jesus, again,  you belong to your father, the devil, he's referring to religious leaders, and you want to carry  out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth for  this, there is no truth in him. When he lies. He speaks his native language, for he is a liar and  the father of lies. That's a description of the devil. He's a murderer, and he's a liar. When you  find untruth in various places, that is the presence of the work of the enemy. When you find it  within a church, you'll find that that's where the enemy is working. When there's a lack of  forthrightness about what's happening or what is true. That's where the enemy is at work. He  is called the tempter. It's Matthew 4:3, "the tempter came to him during the temptation and  said, If you are the Son of God, tell the stones to become bread." You've got to be aware that  the enemy knows what will tempt you. I know what my temptations are, I've shared with you  shared those with you a bit in those early sessions in the introductory class, but know that  Satan knows what's going to tempt you his power. Is it passion? Is it a person is it a program  what what's gonna tempt you? And then he's called a roaring lion by Peter, be controlled, self  controlled and alert "your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for  someone to devour. Resist him standing firm in the faith, because you know that your  brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering." Now, the roaring  lion seeking somebody to devour what a powerful picture that is just picture the roar of a lion. Now, a lion usually roars not when he's stalking his prey, but he's to strike fear into the hearts of possible prey to keep possible enemies away. So he'll roar in order to strike fear into your  hearts, but he's also looking to devour you so it might be a distracting roar. Just know that this enemy has as his goal to kill To steal, and destroy, to do that about the followers of Jesus  Christ, to do that in his church, to do that among organizations that are seeking to bring  peace and shalom of the kingdom of God to this earth. Know it it's real. In your leadership,  don't believe don't believe for a moment that you can make a great vision, come out of your  examination of the culture and interaction with it and create a great strategic plan and not  think that the enemy is going to come up against that in some way, shape, or form. So next  time, we're going to look at his strategies and then we're going to look at the weapons we  fight with. So come back next time as we continue considering the devil. A very real enemy