Video Transcript: Spiritual Warfare part 2
Last time we looked at getting to know Satan, and we looked at his names. And we saw that there's a background to him as, as a created, angelic being who rebelled against God, the Father almighty, and there was war in heaven. And he was cast down. Those are combination of Old Testament passages and one in Revelation that we considered last week. And then we looked at his names to try to get to know him a little bit better, because it's so important to know the strategies of the enemy to get to know him well. And to use Patton as an example, as an example of somebody who said about Rommel, I read your book, I got to know you, so I know what actions you're going to take. Today, we're going to continue that theme of spiritual warfare. And I've titled it, his strategies. Now, this is kind of a theme for the day here, this verse here, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, a church with whom he's had a rather rough relationship. In fact, there have been times when he rejected the Corinthians and was angry with them wrote an angry letter, which we don't have anymore. And then there's II Corinthians where he's trying to restore that relationship, and he's heard good things, and there's been good communication back and forth. But here's what he writes to them. After he says, I forgiven anyone he said, "and what I have forgiven if there's anything to forgive, I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us for we are not unaware of his schemes." Now, it's that last sentence that that struck me as a young adult who is understanding my relationship with Jesus Christ. For the first time I was examining scripture in new ways. I read that I thought, wait a minute, I'm really not aware of his scheme. What what is Satan do? Now let me be true for me more than it is for you and your particular culture. I think it was CS Lewis, who said, that we in the western world have two opposite and equally wrong ideas. When it comes to Satan. One, we ignore him entirely entirely, we, we kind of pretend that he doesn't exist. And on the other hand, we're too obsessed with what he does. Well, if there's a wrong in the western world that I know, it's this one, that we tend to ignore Satan and be unaware of his schemes. And so today, I want to do a little bit of an aside, just to say, you know, what is Satan capable of doing? And what are his schemes? What is he trying to accomplish? Now, again, this is important for you, as a leader in the church of Jesus Christ, to know where the enemy is, and what he's doing, you'll still have to have some gifts of discernment in order to figure out exactly which is him and which is something else, just the product of being people who inhabit a broken and, and fallen world. And so I want to begin today by looking at the extent of his power. What can Satan do? Now, before I go through this list, I just want to say something about the sovereignty of God, I believe fully in the sovereignty of God. In other words, there is nothing that happens that God does not have control in, there's nothing that's outside of his control. But, you know, we could spend a long time talking about why do bad things happen then in the world? Well, one of them is the providence of God is under his control in how he directs and allows evil to happen. No one should say when he is tempted, I'm tempted him God, that's from James 1. So we don't attribute temptation to God. Rather, he said, It's in us. But there are some things we can say, Okay, God allowed this. He maybe didn't cause it. But he allowed it. In my tradition, the reformed tradition, we have the Heidelberg Catechism, which has a question about the providence of God. And the answer goes like this "the providence of God is that Almighty, and ever present power of God by which he of upholds as with his hand, heaven and earth, and all things, so that" and then it lists, you know, good years and bad years, it lists harvest and drought and lists, etc, etc, etc, and good and bad things, including pain, and good times, said, all these come to us not by chance, but through his fatherly hand. And so we see in the book of Job, a book on suffering, and the reasons for suffering that God allowed Satan to test Job by first taking his possessions, and then secondly, in effect, affecting his health, his physical health. And so God is sovereign, but he does allow Satan certain latitude in this world because the world is a fallen place. It's a place where we looked at earlier where the the prince of this world dwells. And so within that context, then what are some of the things God allow Satan to do in certain situations in certain contexts? He allows pain and suffering. Acts 10:38 is from the sermon that Peter preached when he was at Cornelius's house and he was trying to demonstrate to Cornelius this Roman centurion, the truth of the gospel since an angel had called him there, a vision had called him there in order to tell Cornelius. The story about Jesus Christ. He said, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. And I want to tell you how he went around doing good and healing all who are under the power of the devil, because God was with him" at that phrase, healing all who are under the power of the devil because God was with him. The second one is maybe more powerful. Luke 13:16, in Luke 13, there's a story of Jesus in a synagogue on a Sabbath day. Now it was against the Jewish law to do any work on the Sabbath that was based on the 10 commandments. But the Jews had expanded that to 630 some commands about what you can't do, and one of them was healing. But there was a woman who was bent over who was afflicted, and Jesus notices her and decides to make a point about healing on the Sabbath day. And so he calls her forward and he heals her all of a sudden, she can straighten up for the first time in her life. And and when the Pharisees react negatively to that he responds, "Well why shouldn't I Heal this woman, this child of God, whom Satan has kept bound for 18 years" or some translations put it was afflicted by a spirit for 18 years. That passage just makes me wake up and pay attention because now my father was somebody who dealt with an illness of the spine, most of his adult life. He had spondylitis, which is a severe arthritis of the spine. in young adulthood. He was 5'11". He was a healthy, vigorous, he was played sports, in high school, worked hard at physical jobs after high school never went to college. But when he got spondylitis, he began to shrink, painfully shrink when he died, he was 4'10". And he was all crippled over and lived in pain almost every single day of his life under heavy medications. And I wonder, Oh, I never thought that that can be the enemy. Now I don't want to attribute everything to Satan. But I do want to say that when there's pain and suffering, one of the things we can look at is is Satan involved here? Do we pray spiritual warfare prayer in this situation? A second thing is the power of death. Here's how it is put by the writer of Hebrews,"since the children have flesh and blood he to shared in their humanity so that by his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death. That is the devil." Now the question here by commentators is this is this physical death, does Satan hold that power and in some senses, now you'd say, well, yes, World War II, 6 million Jews died because of the evil of the Nazis that was, you know, somehow demonic in its character and and that caused physical deaths? Was it physical death? Or is it symbolic of spiritual death or the death that happens because you're separated from God? Which is it? I don't know. But the reference here is that Satan has great power to bring us into death experiences, snares or traps. This is a section in I Timothy, I Timothy 3:7, where Paul is talking about the qualifications of elders as he's encouraging Timothy to establish elders in the church. And he says this, "he the elder must have a good reputation with outsiders so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap." Now that's an interesting statement, to have a devil's trap. I think as a kid, we used to build our own live traps, and we would trap animals. And what we'd do is we put a lure into this trap, some kind of very pungent food, usually peanut butter, because all kinds of animals, you know, raccoons, it turns out, we caught a couple of neighborhood dogs as well. But raccoons would come in, they'd smell this and go in, they were unaware that they were about to get caught, they would start pawing, or licking at the peanut butter and boom, the trap door would fall and they were caught. Or some translations talk about this as snares. Another thing I did is kids living out in the country. A snare of a rabbit, for instance, is a very thin piece of wire, and you tie this wire in a loop, and then you find a rabbit trail out in the woods and you put that wire on the rabbit trail, and then you tie it to a stick a stick of a tree so that it can't be easily broken. And then you wait. And you come back later. And if a rabbit has been running through there and doesn't see the wire, he goes in headfirst and he gets caught. He's caught in a snare. But then the reaction of the rabbit is to fight that snare. And the way it's designed is that the loop will close more and more the more they struggled by the time you find them they'll be dead. And so Satan's got these traps, these snares out there particularly for Christian leaders, these things that are enticing. You know, we've talked about the fact that if you are a Christian leader, you've got target on your back. He's got traps out there. That's one of the ways he acts. The next one, he injects wicked purposes into the hearts and minds of people. John 13:2 is the setting of the last supper with Jesus in the book of John. He has taken a towel, he's going to wash his disciples feet, he's going to act as a servant to them. And what happens there with Judas is instructive, I think, says, "The evening meal was being served. And the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus" had already prompted him to betray Jesus. And so he injects this evil purpose into Judas' heart. Now imagine if you're a leader in the church, thinking about the people in your church, and whose has been injected with an evil purpose. In the New Testament Acts 5:3 is the story of Ananias and Sapphira. You remember the story, Barnabas and others had probably given land to the church, or at least sold the land to give the money to the church for the purposes of the ministry of the church, and apparently got accolades for that. And so Ananias and Sapphira, decided to do something similar. And they decide to sell the property, but they don't want to give all the money. So they keep some of it back, but they tell the disciples that they're giving it all. And so what does Peter say to him? He says, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart, that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?" Now, picture this, this is in the church, this is post Pentecost. And yet Satan injected this evil purpose into the heart of somebody in that church. Now, we don't know why that was so important. I mean, how many people have done this in generations since done something similar, but it didn't result in their death. And yet God was making a point there, that Satan is there. And we've got to be aware of him. There's an old joke kind of story, which, you know, it's been around for a long time, but of a man who was on his way to a Halloween party. In the United States. Halloween is October 31, called All Saints Day, kids dress up like ghouls and goblins and other figures and go around and do trick or treat collecting candy. Well, on this particular night, according to the story, man was driving out to a Halloween party for adults. And he was dressed as Satan that he rented the costume was great, complete makeup, the goatee beard, the pointy tail, the Trident, that he was carrying everything we associate with some of the traditional views of Satan. And he was driving along the way. And he noticed that it started to rain just a little bit, just a few drops, it started there was a thunder storm coming in. And all of a sudden, his car quits. And he sees a light in the distance. So he makes his way through the trees to that light and finds it's a church. And there are cars around it. There are people worshipping inside this church on Halloween night, and he wonders what to do because he looks at himself, he said I can't walk into a church like this. So he sneaks up to the door of this old country church with just a couple of clapboard siding and a couple of wooden doors, and he peeks through and he sees the people there and they're singing, and all of a sudden a lightning bolt crashes behind him. And he shreaks and jumps into the church. And there's the picture of him as everybody turns around, and sees this image of Satan with a smoke rising behind him. And you can imagine the fear of everybody there. And all of a sudden they the room is clear, but there wasn't an extra door. So people are climbing out of the windows on the side, they've thrown them open until there's one lady who was a little bit large and isn't able to get out. And so he tries to approach her does the man dressed as Satan in order to calm her fears and and as he gets close to the woman backs into a corner, he says, I really want to tell you that I've been on your side all along all the time. Now, it's a joke story, kind of we use in sermons occasionally. But the reality is there are people within your body of believers who have been injected with evil purposes by the enemy. And later we're going to look at some of the bigger problems that they cause. So they cause us they cause wicked purposes. They also can enter and control a person. Later in John 13. We read "as soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him." Next session, we're going to look a little bit more at that idea of being demonized or demon possessed or demon controlled. But right now I just want to point out to you that some people can be controlled by Satan. And well, when we look at world events and world history, we can certainly say that's true. When we see starvation is when we see ethnic cleansings going on. You say wow, there's Satan is present in those kinds of situations. He can torment God servants, Luke 22:31 just before Jesus is going to begin that, that incredible passion of being arrested, beaten and tried and convicted and crucified, he turns to Peter and he says, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I've prayed for you. And when you turn, strengthen your brothers." Now the idea there is that sifting as wheat is a picture that they would take wheat, and they would beat the wheat, you know, and then they'd sift it through a siever In order to get the wheat kernels separated from the chaff and then the chaff they would throw up in the air and let the wind blow it away. So he's saying, You're Peter, you're going to go through a rough time. And Peter went through an incredibly, deeply spiritual difficult time that night, as his faith was challenged much as Job in the Old Testament had his faith in Jesus, faith in God challenged a great deal. So they can can torment God's servants. H, they can hinder God's servants. Paul is writing to the Thessalonians here, and he says, how we wanted to come to you certainly I Paul did time again and again. But Satan stopped us. He doesn't say how I would love to know that that's some of the questions I have to ask of Paul is, you know, how did you how did you hear that? Sometimes? He said, Satan stopped us and, and other times he says, You know, God didn't allow this to happen this direction, which wasn't here. How did that happen? Couldn't get tickets? You know, were there hotels available? What What stopped them from going back to Thessalonica? We don't know. But we do know that this was a hindrance to the plans that Paul had, and he identifies it with the enemy. Now think about that. For your leadership. You're somebody who has helped a group of people identify their culture, create a plan or a vision for a preferable future. And now you're working on the plans that are necessary to bring that into reality? Where is Satan going to hinder you? Think about that. When I look back to my experience pastoring in California, we went through as I've shared a very long period of relocation, and building a building. And there were so many times we were stopped the planning team, we have excellent people on this planning team, the building team, they were terrific, but we've come to a dead end and wonder, okay, is God saying here? Like we'd pray that? God if you're saying, Stop, help us to stop. You know, don't don't let us do it. But then if that's not you, make sure we find a different way to do it. I think of a church that I knew of, in Chino, when I've pastored in Chino, California. During that time, another church was going through a building program, they had a very effective preschool. And it was a Christian preschool. And they were impacting dozens of families, and they wanted to expand. And so they were in a building process as much as we were but trying to deal with the city. And during one of our meetings, as pastors in that area, when we met to pray for the city, I asked this guy, how's the building program going? He says, you know, it's rough. We just seem to come against one roadblock after another after another, especially with the city. So So we've scheduled next Friday night, a prayer night, we're gonna pray all night through and listen to God and see what he says. If this, if we're going to stop this, we'll stop it. So a couple of weeks later, I ran into him at the hospital. And we're both doing calls on people in the hospital. And I asked him, Dennis, so what happened with your prayer night? What did God say? He said, God said it wasn't. It wasn't him, that it was the city of Chino. Well, sometimes that felt like that with our building program. And yet every time we came to a dead end, we'd pray, Okay, God, we don't want to move where you aren't moving. If this is you will stop. If it's not, we got to keep forward. And every time all of a sudden, a new idea would come up. And lo and behold, we were able to move again. And today there's a large building, I've shared some of my own reaction to that in previous sessions, especially in the introductory course. But the the issue was that we found a way. And it turned out to be a hindrance from the enemy. And we were able to find a way around it. God can hinder God's servants from carrying out the plans that they have. Be aware of this, as you try to be someone who's living out your purpose, and your vision with your people. The last thing is, he can put people in prison, Revelation 2:10, "I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you and you WILL suffer persecution for 10 days, be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life." Now, commentators have difficulty of course Revelation is full of symbolism and how did you determine what's literal and what's symbolic is difficult. And so commentators come to this question this verse And they say, is this figurative? Is the the prison here figurative? In some senses, you could say that I've got a good friend who today is celebrating 13 years of sobriety, he was an alcoholic is an alcoholic, and his life was destroyed. He lost his family, his wife, his family, abandoned him he he ended up living On the street living in his car, he had felt himself was controlled by Satan. He felt, in fact, he called it his in prison experience. And yet today, he found freedom, thankfully in Jesus Christ, today he's a contributing member in church is a contributing member of the community. He's a powerful witness of what grace in his life did and does every day. So it couldn't be figurative, but it could be literal as well. My wife and I support a missionary in Azerbaijan, and she wrote recently asking for prayer for another pastor who was arrested on trumped charges. Now, in Azerbaijan, you cannot proselytize. In other words, you cannot share your faith with somebody with the intention of that person becoming a Christian. And this person who was in that country with her, working as she he did, she works in teaching. He was working in a university, and and along the way, trying to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ and begin the beginnings of a church. They had identified him as somebody dangerous, and so they were watching him and he tried to leave the country once but at the border, they found Christian literature, which he said was planted because he hadn't put it there. But they found it in his suitcase, and they put them in prison. So is that the enemy? Likely, hopefully, that won't do won't happen to you. So anyway, so that's the list the extent of his power, pain and suffering, power of death, snares or traps, inject wicked purposes into people enter and control a person, torment God's servants, hinder God's servants, and imprison them. Where have you seen him? As I've gone through this list, you've probably seen some of the same things, same kinds of things happening. So that's one part of his strategy is not being unaware of his plans. You're aware now that all of these things are possible. And the question is to have discernment. So I want to go on now and look at a bigger picture. All of those things happen in some respects to an individual at a particular time. But what about within the church? Here are some of the strategies of Satan when it comes to your church. One is subtlety. Genesis 3:1, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals, the Lord God had made." Or Ephesians 6:11, I "take the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." We looked at I Timothy 3:7, "elders must have a good reputation with outsiders, so they will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap." Subtlety means he doesn't come with a forefront attack. He doesn't come to somebody and say, You know what, I really want you to drink because once you're an alcoholic, life's gonna be great. No, he doesn't. He doesn't lie in that way. He comes suddenly, as he did in the Garden of Eden. And he comes suddenly appears as a serpent, which was an innocuous kind of animal back then. And he comes to Eve with the temptation "did God say, Did God really say that you shouldn't eat of this fruit?" And he comes, suddenly, he doesn't come with a forefront attack. And so you've got to be aware that you're looking for him. Part of it is to be aware in the sense of being somebody who is thinking about where he is as a watchman. You know, in the Old Testament, you hear occasionally about Watchmen, even in the New Testament, there's that expectation to to be watchful, when Jesus comes to the disciples and says, Could you not watch with me one hour watching is, is actively being aware of actively looking at looking for the presence of the enemy and enemy attacking a watchman on the walls would be looking out and if seeing a group of people coming would have to discern, are these people for me? Are they against me? Are they enemies, or are they friends? Well, this subtlety says, You've got to be a watchman. You've got to be somebody who's praying for discernment to figure out when Satan is going to come. And one person has likened it to guerrilla attacks. You know, when our troops in America were in Vietnam, they had to carefully go through the jungle because they never knew when an attack would come. It's that kind of subtlety. A schism is the next one, in other words, divisions within the body of Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 1:12, Paul is talking about divisions in that church and he says, "What I mean is this, one of you says, I follow Paul and another says, I follow Apollus and another says, I follow Peter Cephas and still another says, I follow Christ. He says, this is Christ divided?" Well, Satan can come and try to create divisions within the church and sometimes those divisions will be over personality. Sometimes they'll be over positions of honor. Sometimes it'll be over social status. Sometimes it'll be over doctrinal issues, even minor doctrinal issues. I think of a person in my first church who had come to church for the first time in years and years and years and years she had rebelled against God and now was coming back. And she came to our church where she knew some folks who received her graciously into the worshipping body, and I went and called on her. And when I did, I found her brother was there. Now her brother was a pastor, and another tradition which we have some theological differences, mostly minor. And when I was talking to this woman, he would constantly rebuff me to the point that she never came back to church. And as far as I know, never went to church again, it's that kind of division kind of stuff that can come in, and the enemy continues to take hostages, and to wound people, and even to kill the church. Siege is a scary one Ephesians 6:13, "therefore, Put on the whole armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you've done everything to stand, that there are days of evil, that's part of what he does." And I think back to a time in my first church, when we were going through a difficult time, we had one elder resigned because his business had failed. And he was under lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. And this came, I'm getting calls. I'm the pastor of the church, and I'm getting calls from these people who are suing him saying, Why doesn't he just pay us the money, and etc, etc, etc. The same time, my wife got pregnant with our second child, and she was so sick, she spent the next six months in and out of hospital being treated. And so I'm trying to take care of a baby, at that point, take care of my wife and yet be engaged in the church. And then to top it all off, a friend of mine was nominated as Deacon and so then the the day before installation, where he's officially charged with that role of deacon in the church. He calls and says, I'm not going to be there tomorrow morning. Well, why not? Well, his daughter, 17 year old daughter had gotten pregnant. I said, Well, you know, that doesn't necessarily disqualify you. He says, No, he says, we're getting an abortion for her. Oh, wait a minute, let's, let's talk about this. So that afternoon after leading service in the morning, and getting ready for choir practice, and evening service at that time that we had in youth group afterwards, I spent about an hour and a half at their house, just talking and praying with them. And it was such a contrast, because we were doing everything to save my child while they were aborting theirs. And so it was one of those days that went on for for months of evil, those kinds of things can happen that you feel like you're under siege, and then surprise Ephesians 6:16. In addition to this, the shield, the breastplate and the belt, we're going to look at that next time, "take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one". Now, arrows were something that were sent before the main attack. And they come and they're kind of a surprise, that gets you distracted so that the enemy can begin their advance against you. So here's some of the stuff of Satan. As one artist tried to convey it, you know, there's a war going on. You have to be aware from that of that if you're going to be a leader in any part of the Kingdom of God, that there's a war and now you are not unaware of his schemes. Next time we're going to look at what what do we have to do in this fight? What What weapons do we have that we can battle successfully and victoriously so see you next time