Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Spiritual Warfare

by Dave Wilkinson

Ephesians 6:10-12

January 16, 2000

There is a story that comes from the time when telegrams were much more common than they are today. Actually, I’m not sure if telegrams still exist at all today outside of old scrapbooks. In any case, a boy goes to the employment office of Western Union to ask for a job delivering telegrams. The manager tells him he can start at once. "But," says the boy, "there is one thing I should warn you about. I can’t stand any scenes of unhappiness. I will deliver all of the telegrams that tell of fortunes being made, of congratulations for success, of acceptance for marriage -- anything that brings joy and happiness. But I won’t deliver any telegrams about sickness or loss or death."

It wouldn’t take the manager long to realize that there is no place for such a messenger in the company. The duty of the delivery boy is to take all of the messages to the persons to whom they are addressed. He’s to do it by the shortest route and in the quickest time. That’s the function of the preacher. That’s my function today.

Not everyone wants this bluntness. Yet there are many here today who want to hear the word of God. It may be painful and it may be abrasive. Yet we want to know how things really are -- not just how we’d like them to be.

What I have to say today may not be particularly pleasant. But the message doesn’t originate in me. It originates in the Word. Ours is a biblical faith. It’s not based on what you and I want to hear or want to believe. It’s based on how things are and what God has chosen to tell us about Himself, about us, and about the enemy we face.

Listen to God’s word to us from the letter to the Ephesians Chapter 6:10-12

Ephesians 6:10-12

My wife, Carol once said that she’d never believed in the Devil until she met me. I’m not sure how she meant that. But I choose to believe that she was one of many people who find it difficult to believe in the existence of a horned guy in a red union suit who carries a pitchfork and sits on your shoulder and whispers bad advice into your ear. Well I have some good news for you. The Bible doesn’t expect you to believe that.

I suspect that the dude with the red suit and the pitchfork is a straw man people set up in order to obscure the true issue of the demonic. They can knock down the straw man -- discard the ludicrous image they have made -- and thereby pretend that they have dealt with the real issue. (People do the same thing with God. When someone tells you he doesn’t believe in God it’s a good idea to find out what kind of God he or she doesn’t believe in. There’s a good possibility that you don’t believe in the kind of God that they describe either. But with the straw man out of the way, you can begin to deal with the real issues.)

What are the real issues as we face the possibility of the demonic? Paul writes that we are not fighting against flesh and blood but against the principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual forces of wickedness. In other words, our enemies are not all human.

Paul’s Ephesian readers were well aware of this fact. They doubtless remembered -- or would have heard about -- the incident of the Jewish exorcists in Ephesus who were rash enough to try to expel an evil spirit in the name of Jesus without themselves knowing the Jesus whose name they used. Instead of succeeding in their attempt, they were overpowered by the demonic. They fled in panic, naked and battered. This kind of happening may have been common. For Paul’s Ephesian converts had previously dabbled in the occult and then made a public bonfire of their valuable books of magic. It was a direct challenge to the forces of evil in a stronghold of evil -- which may explain why Paul is so specific about the nature of the fight in this Ephesian letter.

But it is not only in Ephesians that we confront the demonic. The thought of a personal devil is found in every part of the New Testament. Jesus certainly dealt with the demonic as reality --not just as a quaint belief of His age.

Certainly we have increased knowledge of many things over the first century. But our knowledge of the physical universe has not necessarily increased and may in fact have dulled, our sense of the spiritual. And, we should be hesitant to regard ourselves as wiser than Jesus Christ concerning the unseen world.

When we talk about Satan the adversary, we mean the one who is totally opposed to us because we are for God. It is a rather frightening prospect and Christians respond in various ways. Some become obsessed with Satan and see him behind every bush. Others work hard at discounting him and ignoring him as much as possible.

C.S. Lewis, in the preface to The Screwtape Letters, warns that these are "two equal and opposite errors." Satan should be taken seriously because he is powerful, subtle and evil -- but not too seriously because he has been defeated and will ultimately perish. But until that battle is concluded, to underestimate the power of an opponent is one of the worst mistakes a soldier, a wrestler or a Christian can make.

What Paul calls "the wiles of the devil" may take many forms. But he is at his wiliest when he succeeds in persuading people that he does not exist. To deny his reality is to expose ourselves the more to his subtlety. A writer named Dr. Lloyd-Jones wrote: "I am convinced that one of the main causes of the ill-state of the church today is the fact that the devil is being forgotten. All is attributed to us; we have all become so psychological in our attitude and thinking. We are ignorant of this great objective fact, the being, and the existence of the devil, the adversary, the accuser, and his "fiery darts."

We must know that there are forces of evil in this world that go beyond what is apparent. To say that a man of Charles Manson’s character and control over others is merely psychologically disturbed is, I think, not facing the extent of his insanity. The forces of evil are committed to the ruin of humanity. They are clever. They are able to disguise themselves in various ways. Do you think that the wickedness we see in the world is only human? Do you think that the financial empire of the porn-kings is the result of human lust only? Is it only greed that makes grown men get kids hooked on drugs? Do you think that the growth and influence of the cults is a product of mere human rhetoric? Remember Littleton? What happened? Did some kids walk off the deep end by themselves. Or did they, in a lust for power, open themselves to the offer of supposed power from another realm? I’m just asking. People say, "Let’s be realistic." Yes indeed! Biblically realistic! Let’s include that part of the equation, which, if left out, leads us inevitably to the wrong answer.

Paul tells us that we cannot adequately explain life on the material level. We must look further and deeper than that. The battle is not only against flesh and blood. The whole race is opposed by the principalities and powers, the world rulers of the present darkness.

Martin Luther wrote of this enemy in the first stanza of his "A Mighty Fortress"

"For still our ancient foe

Does seek to work us woe

His craft and power are great

And, armed with cruel hate

On earth is not his equal."

That describes the battle well. But we need to realize that though Satan is armed with cruel hate, the cruel hate is not ultimately hatred for us. It is hatred for God. I doubt that Satan much cares about the human race one way or another. But since God loves us, Satan can attempt to hurt God by hurting us. We are but convenient pawns in which he can attempt to efface the image of the God he hates. Incidentally, one of the chief tools in this effacing is distortion by drugs and alcohol. It is significant that the Greek word for sorcery is "pharmaceia."

We are of no ultimate concern to Satan. His human agents are only tools to be used, broken and discarded. But we are of immense value to God. He has made us His sons and daughters. And, as such, we are under attack by the one who hates our Father.

It is significant that Paul shifts from a military analogy in verse 10 and 11 to a much more personal analogy of conflict in verse 12. The fight here is not a long distance exchange of artillery. It is, instead, a wrestling -- a personal, individual, hand to hand encounter. The devil here is pictured as in command of spirit forces which are characterized as evil and which rule in the sphere of the world’s moral darkness.

The Bible does not say that these dark forces are all-powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present. Let’s not make them what they aren’t. These are attributes of God and not of any created being. Satan is in no sense the opposite of God. If he has an opposite, it would be the Archangel Gabriel. But that does not mean that he is without power. He is very dangerous. We need to recognize the danger.

Paul tells us that our opponents are the "rulers" who continue to exercise limited authority over the affairs of the fallen world in opposing the purposes of God. They are the "authorities." They are called the "world rulers of this present darkness." Over them is the "kosmokratores" --the world ruler. Jesus called Satan "the ruler of the world" and John states that "the whole world is in the power of the evil one"-- not the created world of rocks and flowers and trees but the world system that continues apart from the plans and purposes of God.

The fight we fight takes place on two levels. On the one hand, it takes place in "the heavenlies" where we are already seated with Christ. There it is a very spiritual battle in which prayer becomes our most potent weapon. Satan is in battle with Christ for the souls of men and women. We participate in this battle as we seek to spread the good news of the gospel -- which makes it imperative that we prepare our sharing with our prayer. If we don’t, we are going in unarmed.

The battle also takes place on a very physical level -- in every place where decisions that effect the welfare of people are made. It takes place in the courts, in the military, in the boardroom, in the chambers or government and in the classroom. This is why it is appropriate for the church of Jesus Christ to seek a voice in all of the places where decisions are make. The battle is spiritual but it takes physical forms where people are badly hurt. This is why the church needs to be involved in the political and economic structures of our world like the World Trade Organization that impact so many lives. Such involvement does not come in place of Christian ministry but as a valid part of Christian ministry because such places are a battlefield.

Now we must never assume that every structure of society is demonic. Paul writes in Romans 13, that they are "ordained of God" for human good. But we must recognize that they can become twisted by demonic agencies and that a part of our warfare is to prevent the twisting so that human structures can fulfill their God-ordained purposes. I do not believe that it was by happenstance that the Germany of Luther, Goethe and Beethoven became the Germany of Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. We must fight to see that such a twisting does not happen again.

The question we must ask in the face of the denial of the demonic is, "If there is no demonic evil is the world, then why is the sum of evil in the world greater than the sum of all the individual evils added together?" What’s missing from the equation? How do you explain the entrenched evil in human affairs?

There is a story about a newly elected representative who arrived in Washington and was getting acquainted. He was visiting in the home of one of the ranking senators that was trying to interpret the life of the capital. As they stood on his balcony overlooking the Potomac River, an old, rotten, deteriorating log floated by. The old timer said, "This city is like that log out there. There are probably over 100,000 grubs, ants, bugs and critters on that old log as it floats down the river. And I imagine that every one of them thinks he is steering it."

That describes our world. Our politicians think they are steering history. But they are in fact often caught in currents over which they have no control and of which, in fact, they may know nothing. Only occasionally do they suspect their pretense.

Psychologist Carl Jung alluded to their presence when he wrote: "We stand perplexed and stupefied before the phenomena of Marxism and Bolshevism because we know nothing about man or, at any rate, have only a lop-sided and distorted picture of him. We stand face-to-face with the terrible problem of evil and do not even know what is before us, let alone what to pit against it. And even if we did know, we still could not understand how it could happen here."

U Thant, when he was Secretary General of the United Nations spoke about the requirements of world peace and asked.:

"What element is lacking so that with all of our skill and all of our knowledge we still find ourselves in the dark valley of discord and enmity? What is it that inhibits us from going forward together to enjoy the fruits of human endeavor and to reap the harvest of human experience? Why is it, that for all our professed ideals, our hopes, our skills, peace on earth is still a distant objective seen only dimly through the storms and turmoils of our present difficulties?"

C.S. Lewis gives the answer as to why we make the same mistakes in history over and over again. "There is a demonic rotteness at the center", he writes, and "no clever arrangement of bad eggs will make a good omelet!"

So what is the answer? Where is the hope for us and for our world? Only in Jesus Christ. Evil does not have the last word. Jesus Christ does.

Earlier I read the words of the first stanza of Martin Luther’s great hymn "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." This is a hymn that cannot be stopped at certain stanzas. It’s a hymn in which all four stanzas must be sung. It’s a hymn about you; about Jesus Christ; and guess who’s the third part of the hymn…the devil. Listen to it.

"A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;

Our helper, He amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing."

To this point Luther has talked about the sins that we know about from our own lives. Then he goes on to raise it to the next level --the cosmic level.

"For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great,

And, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal."

Now you see why all four stanzas need to be included. If you stop at verse 1, it becomes a hymn of praise to the devil. "On earth is not his equal." There is no equal for Darth Vader on the Death Star. It’s a chilling way to conclude. But Luther goes on:

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,

Were not the right man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing,

"Dost ask who that may be?"

(Now Luther gives us the name)

"Christ Jesus it is He; Lord Sabaoth His name."

That’s a phrase out of Isaiah. Lord Sabaoth literally means "the shepherd who doesn’t lose any of his sheep." That’s who Jesus is and that’s why we can trust Him and His provision for us even in the midst of the battle and in the face of the enemy.

Now, the third stanza:

"And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God has willed His truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim—we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo! His doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him."

The early church was not preoccupied with the devil. They had no extensive rites of exorcism. They didn’t haul in the relics of the saints. They simply recited the Apostles Creed. If you run into a troublesome demon, here’s how to get rid of it. Tell him what you believe about Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord of the demons. He’s conquered every one of them and He’s on our side. If we are made strong in and by Him, and if we wear His armor, as we will talk about beginning next week, we cannot lose. The only way we can lose is if we try to do it on our own hook. Jesus is the Word. In the words of the last stanza:

"That Word above all earthly powers…no thanks to them …abideth.

The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth.

Let good and kindred go This mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

His kingly reign…in the world and in us…lasts forever."