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