Video Transcript: Spiritual Warfare

As we've seen previously, Satan masquerading as someone concerned for  Adam and Eve's enlightenment and happiness, had a hand in unleashing sin on  the world. And since that first work of deception, he has continued to war against Almighty God attempting to frustrate His purposes. The New Testament is more  explicit about this ongoing spiritual warfare than is the Old Testament, but it is  often implied and sometimes depicted outright there as well. And we're going to  take a look at a few of the scriptural accounts of spiritual warfare in the Old  Testament. Although Satan is not mentioned in the biblical record of life in the  time leading up to the worldwide flood, he is clearly at work in the increase of  wickedness there. The differences between the godly line of Seth and the  ungodly line of Cain reflect the continuing tension that began in the Garden of  Eden between God's way and the Serpent's way. Seth's fifth generation  descendant Enoch offers a best example of the sort of service God desired.  Enoch was said to have walked with God. By contrast, Cain's fifth generation  descendant was Lamech, who is singled out in the scripture for his reckless  disregard for what God wanted. Lamech insisted on having his own way on  being his own god, he exemplifies the attitude to which the serpent exhorted  Adam and Eve. But eventually, even the godly lines succumb to Satan's  temptation as evidenced by the intermarriage between the sons of God and the  daughters of humans and the rise of the Nephilim and their progeny. Which  Genesis 6:2-5 makes clear excelled in wickedness. We know little of the  specifics of what the Nephilim did, but who can doubt the spiritual warfare being  waged against the creator and sovereign of the universe. Things got so bad that  God decided to start over with Noah and his family. And even after that, it wasn't long before another supernatural act of God became necessary to frustrate the  godless intentions of the builders of the Tower of Babel. A few centuries later, the continuing spiritual warfare became especially pronounced in the conflict  between the Lord and Egypt's Pharaoh, over the right to the allegiance and  worship of Abraham's descendants. The plagues upon Egypt showed God's  sovereignty over the whole natural world as well as the world of humanity. The  plagues progressively destroyed life in Egypt. What God had spoken into  existence he spoke out of existence. Pharaoh's magicians and search sorcerers  eventually concluded this is the finger of God. Pharaoh came to that conclusion  more reluctantly. It took so long because he had such a hard heart, and in the  end, he yielded only because he had no alternative. His heart remained as  stubborn and resistant as ever, is evidenced by his pursuit after Israel after he  had let them go. Neither Moses or Pharaoh acted on their own. Moses was a  representative of God who was behind the scenes, coordinating everything, that  Pharaoh was also a representative. He represented all those before and after  him who claimed independence from the Creator, and King of heaven and earth. And he was a representative preeminently of the Great Deceiver, who has  supported every such rebellion against God. The spiritual warfare continued in 

Israel's wilderness experience. One series of events in particular illustrates the  spiritual warfare in and behind Israel struggles on the way to the promised land.  And I'm speaking about the encounters between Israel and King Balak on the  plains of Moab. This is detailed in Numbers 22-24. Balak and Moab were very  worried at this time over the presence of the Israelites in their neighborhood.  They had heard accounts of what God was doing for Israel. Of course,  everybody had gods, but it seems that the God of Israel was somewhat stronger than the others. Moab had heard for example of how the Lord had arranged  Israel's escape from the mighty Pharaoh, and also more recently how Israel had  handily defeated the Amorites and taken over Heshbon and the rest of their  cities, a mere 10 miles away. So it became apparent to Balak that ordinary  means would not be strong enough for preserving his people's land, life and  possessions. He would need help from the spirit world, some sort of curse to  stop the advance of these Hebrews through the wilderness. And as luck would  have it, there was a famous and powerful sorcerer in the region, his spells were  known to have worked, and so they like sent His messengers to Balaam, this  false prophet, armed with a large fee for for such sinister work. Balaam had  some respect for the Lord, but he was also intrigued and tempted by Balak's  offer in fact he coveted the rewards Balak offered, and he asked for permission  to earn them. In his heart Balaam was willful, a man who preferred money to  serving God. Nor was he dissuaded from his intention to fulfill Balak's requests  even in the supernatural events that accompanied his journey to the plains of  Moab. There's something both humorous and tragic in the story of Balaam and  his donkey, it's ironic that a dumb animal was able to see more clearly than  Balaam a man made an image of God and a Prophet to boot. Balaam finally  was made to understand that he couldn't play around with sorcery and curses  against the chosen people, the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth, not that he  was totally dissuaded from trying to please Balak, but he became more careful  in how he proceeded in what was obviously a spiritual warfare. What was  happening in these chapters is made clear and other scriptures, notably  Revelation 12, which depicts a dragon standing before a woman about to give  birth, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. That woman of  Revelation 12 is faithful Israel, the child is the Promised Messiah, the time  appears to be just before Jesus was born. But it seems clear that the dragon  has been doing his best to prevent this birth all along throughout the pregnancy  of the woman, which corresponds to the whole time of redemptive history prior  to Jesus's birth. All of these like all of those like Egypt, Midian, Edom, and now  Balak in Moab, who fiercely hated Israel and oppose their advance from Egypt  and through the wilderness toward the promised land can be seen as agents of  the dragon, working overtime to destroy God's faithful, they all hope for Israel's  destruction, as much as God worked for their salvation. What this means is that  this was much more than a local squabble was temporary significance. This was

God's plan against the devil's plan. This was God's people, against the devil's  people. Who would prevail? To use the imagery from Revelation 12. Would the  woman and her unborn child be destroyed here? Or would God actually be able  to fulfill his promise to bring the children of Abraham Isaac and Jacob into a land where they can dwell together with their God? According to what came out of  Balaam's mouth later in the story, God would indeed prevail. For what Balaam  found was that no matter how hard he tried to fulfill Balak's demand to curse  Israel, only blessings could come out of his mouth. Words put into his mouth by  God, telling of God's care for his people and the wonderful future he had in mind for them. Balaam's Oracle's ended up being a kick in the teeth to Balak but more than that, a kick in the teeth to Satan who stood with Balak. The next significant  phase in the spiritual war happened after the death of Moses, as Joshua was  contemplating how to proceed against Jericho which was Canaan's first line of  defense against Israel. We read this in Joshua 5:13-15. Now, when Joshua was  near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn  sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, Are you for us or for our  enemies? Neither, he replied. But as commander of the army of the Lord, I have  now come. Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence and asked  him, What message does my lord have for a servant? The commander of the  Lord's army replied, take off your sandals for the place where you were standing is holy. And Joshua did so. It was this messenger's answer to his question that  made Joshua realize that this man was from God. For He identified himself as  the one who would carry out God's judgment on the Canaanites. The early  Christian church speculated that this man was the second person of the Trinity  Jesus before he became human, we cannot know but this was important  business, important enough that the Lord Himself would attend to it. God wanted to make sure that Israel would never make the mistake of thinking that they had  done something in their own strength. The first battle was not only important for  strategic reasons, it was to be the model for all Israel's battles, not a model for  battle techniques, but a model for showing that it was the Lord God who is to be  in charge of every single venture. God's personal involvement in the  preservation and redemption of his people is repeatedly emphasized and later  chapters of Joshua, too. God used such things as confusion of the enemy, large  hailstones from heaven, the delay of the setting of the sun for about a full day,  and other things to can to guarantee Israel successes against a coalition of five  Amorite kings in the southern part of Canaan. There were similar results in  Israel's campaign against a northern coalition led by the king of Hazor. Although  Scripture describes Hazor's soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore,  the Lord handed him over to Israel. One other very significant victory for Israel  was over the Anakites the spies that Moses had sent out 40 years earlier had  said this about them and remember Numbers 13:32-33. All the people we saw  there are of great size we seem like grasshoppers in our own eyes. And we look

the same to them. They were speaking of the Anakites. Well, the Anakites had  not gotten smaller, but they were not too big or powerful for the Lord. They too  were conquered by the divinely enabled people of God all except for a few,  including the ancestors of Goliath who are unfortunately, left alive. In the end, it  was clear that all of Israel's success was due to the power of the Lord. Israel  soldiers fought and died to be sure but their victories as Joshua 10:42 says of  the Southern Campaign, were because the Lord the God of Israel, fought for  Israel. God also advanced His purposes off the battlefield by incorporating some strangers into Israel, strangers, like some Egyptians who join the Israelites on  their exodus from Egypt and like Rahab from Jericho and Ruth, the Moabite,  who also believed in the Lord and staked their future on his success, but every  bit of what happened in connection with God's installation of his people into the  Promised Land, whether it took place on or off the physical battlefields was part  of the spiritual warfare, of which scriptures first record is a struggle in the  Garden of Eden between the creator and the serpent over Adam and Eve's  allegiance. Each advance in the struggle, although largely unseen by human  eyes, was part of the sequence of events by which God would fulfill his promise  that an offspring of Eve would one day strike the serpent immortal bow. One of  God's instructions for the whole endeavor to establish his people in the  Promised Land highlights this, that the Canaanites were not just to be  conquered or displaced from the land, but destroyed. Under the rules of this so  called ban, there were only two alternatives. Everything and everyone was to  serve the Lord or be totally destroyed. In the matter of Jericho, for example, only Rahab and her family were to escape the ban and of things only those articles  set apart for the Lord's treasury. The Canaanites had made their choice. For  many years they had flaunted their worship of false gods instead of giving God  the allegiance he demanded, and now was a day of judgment, in which they  would reap the reward for their sin. This helps us understand the radical  response to Achan's disobedience to God's command, Achan's sin was not an  ordinary act of selfishness and theft. It actually constituted rebellion against  God's plan to recapture something of his original intentions for his whole  creation by installing his people in the Promised Land to live under his rule.  Other stories from Israel's history could be used to illustrate the ongoing spiritual warfare, too. But one of the clearest is that of one we mentioned earlier of the  encounter between the Lord's prophet Elijah and the false prophets of Baal and  Asherah on Mount Carmel, during the reign of Ahab remember that the prelude  to this encounter was three years of drought, which is Elijah had told Ahab was  because the king and Israel had forsaken the worship of the Lord to serve false  gods. The penalty of drought was particularly appropriate to demonstrate the  powerlessness of Israel's fertility gods to bring the rains that were signs of the  Lord's blessing. Elijah proposed that contest on Mount Carmel, both he and the  prophets of Baal and Asherah, would construct altars for sacrifice to their 

respective gods, then they would pray for fire from heaven to light to sacrifice.  Elijah said, and the others agreed to God who answers by fire he is God. And of  course, the gods of the false prophets failed to answer they were not real,  unless you count this spiritual agents of Satan who stood behind them. But the  Lord did answer Elijah's prayer, even after he made the request more difficult by  drenching his altar with water. And as a result, the people of Israel again put  their faith in the Lord, however, temporarily. The first sign that Israel's trouble  was not yet over, came when Jezebel heard what had happened to her favorite  prophets. She got the news from Ahab. The Bible doesn't say what side Ahab  took, he didn't seem to kind of come out strongly on either side. He had just  been addressed in the strongest terms by the actions of God, but he apparently  remained lukewarm. Evidently, Jezebel didn't even feel the need to conceal her  blatant attempts to continue to fight against the Lord God. Rather than  submitting to the revelation of the Lord's justice on Mount Carmel, she resisted it invented an unholy hatred against the Lord's anointed spokesman. It should not  surprise us that there's a similarity between the description of Jezebel Elijah's  fierce opponent, and the description in Revelation 17 of the full grown anti  Christian powers in the image of the harlot, who tries to waylay the bride, the  Church. That harlot of Revelation 17 is Jezebel writ large. The same powers of  hell are operative in both. However, Jezebel was apparently not strong enough  to carry out her evil intentions immediately. If she had been, she wouldn't have  wasted time sending a messenger to tell Elijah her plans. Most likely she was  waging psychological warfare, trying to strike fear into Elijah's heart. It worked.  Elijah ran for his life. But through another remarkable series of events, God  recalled him to service sending him back into the battle. God's people soon  returned to their unfaithful ways. And although God would always preserve a  faithful remnant, Israel, the northern half of the kingdom and Judah the southern half, continued in their disobedient ways until God exiled both nations from the  promised land that was seen as the ultimate catastrophe to the remnant who  remain faithful to God. Indeed, it represented a return to the situation Israel had  been in during the period of Egyptian slavery, before God had given his law and  before he had given his people homeland in a special city and in a temple in  which to worship Him. And that's why the name of Judah's captors, Babylon  became like the name of its original enslaver Egypt, a euphemism for all that  was detestable to all who continue to love God. There is no doubt that Satan  was particularly jubilant and hopeful about the subjugation of God's people by  Egypt's spiritual sibling Babylon. But if he celebrated he did so prematurely as  the book of Daniel makes clear, for Daniel and his friends had the uncommon  wisdom to realize the nature of the warfare into which circumstances had thrust  them and then test after Test, they refuse to compromise their faith in spite of the odds against them. God encouraged Daniel, as well as those who have since  read his story by giving him insight into the eventual defeat of every one of 

God's opposers. Even to Daniel, however, it must have been clear that this  would not happen quickly or without considerable distress for God's people.  There remains an opposition to God's rule, an opposition that often appears to  be very powerful and even unstoppable. Indeed, this is one of the things that  most troubled Daniel about his visions of the future. But all the time, God  revealed he would be in control. Even when his opponents seem most  successful. God's kingdom would eventually fill the earth and it would be an  eternal kingdom. Daniel 7:18, states the truth of what's coming as clearly as any  text of Scripture where it says the holy people of the Most High will receive the  kingdom and will possess it forever. Yes, forever and ever. A significant  milestone in the ascendancy of God's Kingdom has now been reached in the life death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. But the culmination of that  kingdom is still to come. In a way it's Christ's return to judge the living and the  dead. It is this matter of God's righteous judgment against sin that is necessary  to bring an end to all rebellion against God and all who live according to the  principles of his kingdom. What the Old Testament says about that judgment is  the focus of our next lecture.