The Spiritual Warfare Sermon Dan Swaningson Hope Chapel

Transcription

1 1 The Spiritual Warfare Sermon Dan Swaningson Hope Chapel Turn to Ephesians 6 10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Eph Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:10-12 You want to be an expert in Spiritual warfare? Memorize and meditate on that. Everyone knows about the armor of God but so often we miss what it s for, we miss the whole point Paul is making here; it s not just about being good little Christian boys and girls, or having a really cool sounding array of armor symbolizing the basic tenants of our religion to help us memorize it, it s about how to stand against an enemy who really wants really bad, to destroy us, the devil, the spiritual forces of evil whom we will struggle against, and must, if we hope to standtoday and especially when that day of evil comes. Unfortunately we often miss the fact that this passage is about spiritual warfare because it does not fit into our image of what SPIRITUAL WARFARE is. First of all, you will not even find that phrase in the Bible. Like I told you last week, living for Jesus is spiritual warfare, it is not just something we do after we have had the right training and learn the magic words, we are in a battle every minute of every day. Unfortunately I think much of what Christians believe about Spiritual warfare is based on what they heard someone else say, who was repeating what they heard someone say and they have heard it so many times they accept it as fact when in fact much of it has little or no basis in scripture. For example, I have heard it said many times and I thought it must be true because it was put out there as fact, that the enemy cannot read our thoughts thus we must speak out loud in order to address him, yet those same people have no qualms at all saying that the devil can put thoughts in our minds. See a problem here? If the devil can be in our heads

2 2 influencing our thoughts, why can t he also know what we are thinking? I don t know the answer one way or the other here, I m just want to get you thinking. At this point in my walk with the Lord I have adopted the Jerry McGuire style of debatewhen someone espouses a theological viewpoint as though it were undisputed fact I say, show me the scripture. If they can t, well then it s just a theory isn t it? You all have the same Bible as every other so called scholar or expert has, don t always assume that there must just be some scriptures that you haven t read yet that someone else is getting there info from, dig in a search it out for yourselves, it s actually a lot of fun. It s kind of like Myth Busters on a spiritual level. Our ideas of spiritual warfare have been influenced by everything from mid-evil poetry to Hollywood; from Dante s inferno to the exorcist. Spiritual warfare has become something very confusing and very scary to most Christians and it shouldn t be, it is simply our daily walk with the Lord and our walk, our battle must be based and empowered by the word of God and the Spirit of our Lord. There are times when the devil manifest s himself in very concrete ways and it is only by being engaged in that battle every day that will give us the victory in those times as well. When we use our sword daily, it will be ready at hand and the same goes for the rest of the armor. And even then it s really not us doing the fighting, it s just us doing what we have or should be doing anyway- turning to the Lord for help, for deliverance, to be our strength, our shield and protector. The battle belongs to the Lord Let s flesh this out some; As most of you know I was the children s pastor at Hope Center Foursquare Church on the south side of Billings for several years before I was called to Red Lodge. Besides being in charge of the Kids program I also had the privilege of preaching once in a while, I also taught regularly at Celebrate Recovery and once in a while at the Montana Rescue Mission. Now just by virtue of the location of Hope Center and the nature of those ministries it was not usually your typical suburban white bread middle class church crowd I was talking too and I never pull any punches when I preach so I was never real surprised when there would be a disturbance in the middle of my talks. But it got too where it seemed that just about every time I preached someone would harass, heckle or disrupt me. It is really quite unnerving to be yelled at in the middle of preaching and though I usually just rolled with the punches it really bothered me. In one of the more memorable episodes, the one my friends like to remind me of; a woman decided she needed to keep correcting me as I was speaking, after about the third time I politely said; Mam, I have the stage and it is my turn to talk. A few minutes later in the course of my talk I said something about the devil and she stood up and said; The devil?- the devils on the stage, that s where the devil is. Of course she was sitting front and center so as she stormed out at this point she had the attention of the whole church.

3 3 I still have a recording of the whole incident thanks to the sound guy Dale who thought I might enjoy reminiscing about it someday. I don t. Shortly after this incident Pastor Grove said to me, I don t know why but something about the way you preach brings the demons out. Now, that could be seen as a bad thing but I know Grove meant it as a compliment; after all, demons couldn t stay hidden for long around Jesus either. I always say if I am having a hard time doing something the Lord wants me to do and everything that can go wrong goes wrong that the devil must really not like what I m doing so I must be doing it right. Well, I had never thought of it that way- that the enemy was the one who was really disrupting my sermons, I thought I was just the unlucky one who got the obnoxious drunks or that people just did not respect me. Well I decided to do something about it, I really did not enjoy dealing with the enemy every time I tried to teach God s word so from then on every time I was to teach I would gather with the team, whether it was Sunday morning or Saturday night at Celebrate, and we would pray for the service as we always did but we would make a point of all agreeing specifically that the enemy would not be allowed in the door. I would pray Lord, Let your Spirit be the only Spirit who is present here- that you alone will be heard and anyone who comes in here is free from the influences of any spirit that is not from you. We want everyone who is supposed to be here to be here, but the enemy has to stay outside. And it worked. The heckling stopped; people were still getting saved and delivered. I wasn t praying against people, as Paul said, our enemy is not flesh and blood, I was praying against demonic influences. In my prayer I wasn t talking to the devil, I was talking to God and asking to him stop the enemy, from coming in. I was praying in faith that God would take care of the enemy for me. I had to recognize what the enemy was doing so that I could pray, and I had to have the kind of relationship with God that allowed me to seek and receive his help and I had to invite him to move and be released in our presence at the services to accomplish what he purposed us to do. And all of this can only be done through Jesus Christ. He is our victory; he is our righteousness and defender. We draw near to Jesus and the enemy flees. That is our Spiritual warfare. Do we really need to address the Devil? In most cases we do not need to directly address the devil. I had actually decided that the next time I was harassed in church I was going to rebuke the Devil like Jesus did; Get behind me Satan! But I never got the chance- much to my relief. I did first what I believed I needed to do, what Paul actually tells us to do in order to stand against the Devils schemes:

4 4 10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph 6 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. I prayed, both with my understanding Lord help me, reign in me and in this place and in the Sprit, in my prayer language, allowing the Holy Spirit to pray the proper specific prayer that needed to be said in order to release the Lord to accomplish his purpose and to bind the enemy from foiling God s plans as they often are because of the weakness of people allowing themselves to be used by the devil. And like I said; the prayer worked. The Lord did the binding at our request, the Lord stopped the enemy at the gates and I never had to say a word to that weasel. It always bothers me when I am praying in a group and suddenly someone starts talking to the devil, like God and Satan are just kind of hanging around there together listening like old friends when all of a sudden everyone realizes that there is one too many people in the room and he is asked to leave. I don t think it works that way. The enemy no longer has access to the throne of God because of what Jesus did on the cross, he made a mockery of the devil, emptied him of his power to accuse and condemn us, thus if Jesus is in the room, how can the devil be also? God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Col 2:15: If we are entering into the presence of the Lord though our prayer and our worship, accessing the Holy of Holy s by the blood of the lamb, the enemy is not around to hear us, he has been cast from heaven like a lightning bolt to the ground, Jesus words, if you feel the need to shout at the devil at least wait until you are no longer standing before the throne. That s my opinion. Or, Think about this; Would you pray to the Devil? Of course not! I m sure you were offended that I would even ask the question. But something very sobering occurred to me as I was thinking about this message- what is prayer? Talking to God on a spiritual level, so while we are talking to God, in prayer and we suddenly shout out, Satan I rebuke you, you have no place here, you have no place in my family, in my life, etc. etc., are we not praying to the devil? I ve done it, and I never thought about it that way before, maybe that s why I ve always been so uncomfortable with that.

5 5 Besides that I think it s more than a little rude, have you ever been having a serious conversation with someone and all of a sudden they start yelling at someone else? Hey, Jonnie, stop pestering that cat! OK where were we? I am not saying there is never a time to rebuke the enemy, but I do believe those times are very rare and I do not think those rebukes should come in the middle of a conversation with our Father God. Our first line of attack and defense should be to release the Lord to do the rebuking, praying in the light always dispels the darkness. You can curse the darkness all night long to no avail but if you flip on the light it goes away instantly. Well, Jesus rebuked the devil! Jesus is God, I m not, so I ll let Jesus do it for me every chance I get. All I know is I am 50 years old and I have been involved in ministry, storming the gates of hell for over half of those years, often in places where even angels would fear to tread, as me and my Jail ministry partner used to joke. I have seen and heard the enemy wreak havoc both in disguise and out of disguise yet I have never had to speak directly to him with my own words. I have quoted scripture, called on the name of Jesus, and prayed to our God alone and God has never failed me and allowed the enemy to overpower me nor anyone I was praying for. My shield of faith can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one!..take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. What I took away from my study of this matter as I was preparing this message is that it s a matter of humility. I think we all have this barbarian mentality deep inside that wants to be the conquering hero, that all our problems can be solved if we just know the right place to start hacking with our swords. I ll run in there and take out the enemy cause I m the man, I m the woman, God has given me the power! -He has, but your power is found in humility, being humble enough to find your strength, your salvation, your victory in God. Finally getting to the main point- Main Point: The victory in our spiritual warfare is had by drawing near to God. Draw near to God I was tempted to call this the Draw near to God sermon but I wanted to make sure there was no mistake what we were talking about and have you going away still thinking that spiritual warfare is a big scary mystery that should be left to the big scary spiritual warriors- whoever they are. I discovered as I was studying what the apostles wrote the churches concerning this topic that they really don t say a lot specifically on the subject of fighting the enemy but what they do say is startingly similar. The combined census of the apostles Paul, James and Peter is

6 6 almost identical and that is that we defeat the enemies purposes by humbling ourselves and seeking the Lord, drawing near to him and acknowledging our need for his help, we have already heard from Paul, let s look at what James, the brother of Christ, says: 1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4 Now let s go to Peter: All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 5 This should be very familiar to those of you who have been here the last two weeks, purely coincidently, we sang Humble thyself, as I had the privilege of leading us in worship. It has been one of my favorite songs for many years. It is to me more than a song, it is prayer and a reminder to us of our need for God, that we are nothing without him, but in him, we are blessed beyond the curse, blessed beyond the reach of the enemy. If we are humble before our God we are seeking his grace, we are forgiven and we are in his care. In his arms we are safe and we have his ear as we ask him to care also for those we love, as we ask him to protect them also against the one who would devour them- but for the intervention of our Lord.

7 7 Hear what I just said; it is the Lord who protects us and ours from the devourer, not us. And he is a devourer, I don t know where this only toothless lions roar business came from but it is not what the scripture says, people do suffer, people do get devoured and the only hope we have is in donning the full armor of God and standing firm in him! Jesus taught us to pray, Lord deliver us from the evil one! That is how we resist him, standing firm in the faith, the faith that my God hears me, he answers my prayer, I have because I have asked and I have humbled myself and asked to be forgiven, to be cleansed from all unrighteousness, the only thing I need to tell the enemy is Jesus is Lord!, Jesus is my Lord and you are not going to even get the time of day from me! Nothing frustrates the enemy more than being ignored. It is not that we are ignorant of his schemes, it is that we are not worried about them because we have trusted our Savior to deal with the loser, and Satan is the biggest loser that has ever taken up space in the universe he has polluted with his arrogance. Pride was Satan s downfall, it was the sin which caused him to fall from his position of authority as an archangel in the Lords legions but he got arrogant and said in his heart, I will exalt myself above the Lord and he convinced a third of heavens angels to follow him in his illfated attempt to dethrone the creator. Let s not follow him in that arrogance by attempting unnecessarily to take him on one on one, he has been deceiving, tempting and destroying mankind for so long I don t even dare take a guess. Even Jesus when challenged head on by the devil himself didn t argue with him, he only quoted scripture in response. And let s not feed his delusions of importance by giving him credit for every ailment and calamity that befalls us, more often than not it is our own sinful flesh or the foolishness of others that has caused our misery. The scriptures focus much more on the importance of drawing near to God, living for the Sprit and overcoming the flesh, they really have very little to say about our fight against the enemy but what they do say about this is very clear, stand firm and resist the enemy by humbling ourselves, coming near to God, putting on the armor, all of which involves strengthening our relationship with God. I see nothing in scripture to indicate charging the enemy like a mad bull defending his pasture, rather we are to make sure we are staying close to the shepherd, being diligent and aware of the danger and from where it comes- but staying safe and ultimately overcoming the enemy s influence by staying close to the shepherd acknowledging our need of him in keeping us safe. God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Col 2:15: 13-16

8 8 This is a huge topic and certainly this sermon is not meant to be the final word on this subject, nor is it by any means exhaustive or authoritative. I simply want to encourage and caution you, know your enemy, know the scriptures and most importantly, know him whom you serve. Spiritual warfare is not a formulaic proposition we must learn and practice, it is a lifestyle of fostering a relationship with the one who has defeated our enemy. Jesus is our defender, Jesus is our victory, and he alone is Lord and worthy of our praise. That much we know for sure. Hip Shot- When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more! 26 Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, He is dead. 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, Why could we not cast it out? 29 So He said to them, This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. Mark 9 Prayer is drawing near to God, fasting is accentuating our prayer by putting down the flesh. This leaves no room for the enemy. So who s left to yell at?