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Preached in Markham Baptist Church, November 20, 2005
Ephesians 6:10-18
BECOME WHAT YOU ARE! PART 9a:
WALKING IN VICTORY OVER SATAN
When you became a Christian you joined a battle. You signed up as a soldier
in God’s army - it is a truth that is emphasized again and again in
Scripture and particularly in our text this morning. You are involved in a
battle of cosmic proportions. You are not pawns in the battle, you are not
spectators of the battle - you are in God’s army and called to fight the
foe.
And this morning I want to give you a history lesson. I want to describe for
you the enemy and the reason for this battle. I want to make it clear for
you who we are battling. One of the key principles of warfare is “know your
enemy.” Don’t underestimate your enemy, don’t be ignorant about the one you
are battling. And quiet simply our foe is the devil.
Now when Christians speak of the devil, there are two extreme attitudes of
which we must be aware. One extreme is to deny that the devil exists, but
the Bible clearly teaches the devil is a real personality who is out to
deceive, accuse and destroy all that gives glory to God.
Paul, Peter, James, John and the writer of
Hebrews all speak of the devil as a personal being. He is one who is able to
think, and feel and will. (see Romans 16:20; 2 Corinthians 2:11; Hebrews
2:14; James 4:7; I Peter 5:8; Revelation 12:9). In Scripture we see him
opposing God’s work (Zechariah 3:1), perverting God’s Word
(Matthew 4:6), hindering God’s servant (1 Thessalonians 2:18),
hindering the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4), snaring the wicked (1
Timothy 3:7) appearing as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14),
just to name a few of his activities.
In our passage we are encouraged in verse 11 to
“Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against
the devil’s schemes.”
That word scheme – in Greek is methodia
from which we get the word “method.” It carries with it the idea of
craftiness, cunning and deception. The term was often used of a wild animal
who cunningly stalked and then unexpectedly pounced on its prey. Satan’s
evil schemes are built around stealth and deception.
And I can tell you that one of Satan’s cleverest
tricks is to persuade people that he doesn’t exist. He says, “I don’t exist
why should you tremble before non-existence? You don’t have to worry about
me. I am nobody. I don’t exist.” The problem with this thinking is that when
we don’t believe in him, we’re caught off guard and easy prey to his
schemes.
Someone visited Dr. Samuel Johnston some years
ago and loudly declared in his presence that they did not believe in the
devil. So that afternoon Samuel Johnston sought to change the man’s opinion
and do you know where he took him to prove the existence of the devil? To
the house of Commons!
I don’t know if he made his point or not with
the man, but certainly we don’t need to look to far in our world – at the
suffering, the disease, the abuse, the squalour, the lies and the hatred –
to prove that the devil is indeed alive and well and working on planet
earth.
And we need to realize that if we are walking a
walk worthy of our calling, in humility rather than pride, in unity rather
than divisiveness, in the new self rather than the old, in love rather than
lust, in light rather than darkness, in the harmony of mutual submission
rather than self-serving independence, then we can be absolutely certain
that we will face Satanic opposition and conflict. And to deny his existence
is to be naïve.
As Biblically literate Christians we need to
realize that Satan is real and as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:11, we should
not be unaware of his schemes.
Well if one extreme is to deny his existence,
the other extreme is to give to much credit to the devil, to credit all the
battles we fight in this world to the devil. It is true as our text says at
verse 12 we are fighting spiritual forces, but it is not always the devil
that we fight. The Bible speaks of three spiritual battles in which we
Christians are involved.
If you will turn to James 4 you will notice that
we battle three enemies. The first enemy is the flesh, our old natural
selves. The self life. So we read at James 4:1 “What causes fights and
quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within
you?” The old comedian Flip Wilson popularized a phrase – do you
remember it – ‘The devil made me do it.!”
Do you know that in the four gospels and the
book of Acts there are 32 references to demon possession? As you read
through those instances you will discover that demons have all sorts of
physical powers. They can make a man mute, they can make a man deaf, they
can cause convulsions, they can bring severe pain, they can bring physical
suffering, they can make a man act as though he were mad, they can give
unusual strength, they can make a man weak and infirm, they can throw a man
violently to the ground, they can drive pigs into the sea, they can predict
the future, they can teach false doctrine. Those are some of the things
which are attributed to demons. But they are never once credited with moral
power. No one in the New Testament commits adultery because of demon
possession. No one tells a lie because a demon made them to do it.
Charles Price1 tells of a colleague
who at the end of a meeting in which he was preaching a woman approached him
and said, “Will you pray for me?”
He said, "Certainly, what is your need?” She
said, "I suffer from demon possession." He said, "Tell me more."
She said, "I am bothered all the time by a
number of demons. I have a demon of greed, I have a demon of pride, I have a
demon of lies, I have a demon of envy, and I have a demon of lust.” And she
gave a whole list of these demons with which she was struggling.
Charles Price’s friend said to her, "Do you mean
to tell me that you have a demon of greed, and a demon of pride, and a demon
of jealousy, and a demon of lust?" She said, "Yes"
He said, "That's incredible." She said, "Why?”
He said, "Because I can do all those things all by myself. I don't have a
single demon and I have trouble with every one of those things. He said,
“Your need is not exorcism but repentance!”
That is not to say that there is no such thing
as demon possession. There is, but they are never credited with moral power
because sin comes from within. It's me who is corrupt. If the devil were to
die tonight we would just as surely fall into sin tomorrow. We don’t need
the devil to sin.
“Nothing good lives in me, that is, in my
sinful nature.” (Romans 7:17) That’s the bad news of the gospel, we have
an old nature that is corrupt. But the good news is that Jesus Christ has
made us new creations. So there is this battle going on between our old
nature and our new nature.
Our other battle is with the world. We
read in James 4:4, “You adulterous people, don’t
you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?”
Now we need to understand that the Bible speaks
of the world in two ways. There is the world God has created, beautiful,
filled with the glory of God. It is a world created by God and loved by God
– so much so that He would send His one and only Son to die for it. But the
Bible speaks also of a spirit of worldliness – it is that attitude that is
so absorbed by creation, to be so in love with the things of this created
world that you forget the Creator. And James says that is like adultery. Our
true love belongs to the Creator, and when we fall in love with the things
that we can see and touch and feel you’ve broken that love bond and
committed adultery. And so there is a need for balance – to love the world
as God loves the world, having our heart break by its sin, darkness and
lostness, and longing for it to know the truth of a loving Saviour, and at
the same time being aware of worldliness, not giving it our adoration and
worship which only belong to God.
So those are two enemies which we fight. But
enemy number one is the devil. So James exhorts us at 4:7 – “Resist the
devil and he will flee from you.”
And in our text Ephesians 6:11-12, “Put on
the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s
schemes. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against, against
the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Now I have told you that we have three areas of
conflict. There is the flesh - that is our sinful nature. There is the world
– that is the desire for the things of this world. And the devil - the
spiritual forces that are situated in the heavenly realms. And indeed the
devil can use the world and the flesh against us, but we fight three
spiritual battles.
Did you notice who is not our enemy? One
another. You are not my enemy, I am not your enemy, the person sitting on
the other side of the sanctuary is not your enemy, your next door neighbour
is not your enemy. Your mother-in-law is not your enemy. Our primary battle
is against the devil and it is one of his tricks, to get us focused on
fighting one another so that we are distracted from our primary battle which
is with him.
Now I will speak some more about this verse next
week, but this week I want to give you some history. Where does the devil
come from?
Before we go to much further though I want you
to realize that I give it to you with some hesitation, I don’t want you
thinking that I’ve got the whole angelic conflict all sewn up and I have all
the answers. We need to leave room for mystery in our faith. We need to
approach these truths with humility and understanding that God is control.
He has all the answers and we need to trust Him. At the same time, I give
this lesson to you but with a deep desire for you to know that while we need
to leave room for mystery in our faith, we also need to realize that God has
not left us to live in a theological haze - that there is truth in Scripture
and it has been revealed to us and we need to read it, trust it, live it and
proclaim it. There is truth that we can know. So I give it to you with these
two attitudes, primarily because I believe it rooted in Scripture and it
enables you to know your enemy, and you can fight your battle from a
position of victory, rather than fighting for victory.
Where does the devil come from? Well, as we read
scripture it is clear that God did not create an evil devil. No, He created
a beautiful angel. We learn this from two passages of Scripture in Ezekiel
28 and Isaiah 14. These two passages give us the origins of Satan. Both of
these passages begin by speaking of someone other than Satan. Ezekiel 28,
for instance, speaks of the King of Tyre – a city north of Israel. But as it
speaks of the king of Tyre, clearly someone else is being spoken of, saying
at verse 12, “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and
perfect in beauty. You were in Eden the garden of God,” and then verse
14 – “You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You
were on the holy mount of God.”
What we have here is clearly someone else other
than the king of Tyre. Billy Graham, in his book entitled Angels,
suggests that the King of Tyre is an earthly symbol of Satan.2
And similarly in Isaiah 14 the King of Babylon is referred to but as the
passage continues clearly someone else is being spoken of. And that someone
else is Satan. And these two passages give us his origin.
What do they say? Well, eons ago, before the
creation of the world, God created angels. They were created to reflect back
to God His own glory. It appears that God created the angels hierarchically
– that is there is a chain of command, and one angel was appointed above
them all as “guardian of the cherub, for so I ordained you.” (Ezekiel
28:14) He is named the shining one, the morning star is what
he is called in Isaiah 14:12. That name is loosely translated from the
Hebrew, Lucifer. “The morning star, the most brilliant star in the
sky.”
And he was beautiful. Ezekiel 28:12 says, “You
were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.”
And one day Lucifer while looking in the mirror asked, “Mirror, mirror on
the wall, who’s the fairest of them all.” But he never waited for the mirror
to answer and he concluded that he was.
Isaiah 14 tells us that pride wells up in
Lucifer’s heart and beginning at verse 13 he says five “I wills” - it is an
ambition that builds upon ambition, upon ambition so that we read them, “I
will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will
sit enthroned on the mount of assembly on the utmost heights of the sacred
mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds …” And all of it
culminating in the last “I will” at verse 14 - “I will be like God.”
Satan has a twofold agenda – the first is to be
like God. He said to Eve – if you eat of the fruit you will be like God.
Satan’s agenda is to give people an ambition to be like God. That is his
agenda. He wants to replace God’s role.
How wonderfully different Jesus Christ is from
Satan. If you compare Isaiah 14 with Philippians 2 you will discover that
God’s son Jesus Christ works exactly opposite from Satan. Satan seeks to go
up, up, up, while our Lord emptied Himself, made Himself nothing, a servant,
and then God exalted Him to the highest place.
Satan’s other agenda is to have the independence
of God and independence from God - and he wants us to be
independent of God.
The history lesson continues - desiring
independence, Satan leads a rebellion against God. But his evil plot is
discovered and God throws him down (Isaiah 14:12). And according to
Revelation 12:4 one third of the angelic host followed him in his rebellion,
and Satan and all his followers are expelled from the mount of God
(Ezekiel 28:16).
And where is he sent? He is sent to earth. In
Luke 10:18 Jesus says that He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
That verse tells us that Jesus was there when it happened and it tells us
that Satan got a name change, when he was cast out from heaven. And whenever
God changes a name it is to reflect your character. Satan’s name was changed
from Lucifer, the shining one – to Satan meaning “the adversary of
God.”
Now we do not believe that God and Satan are
equal. God is eternal, no beginning and no end. Satan has a very clear
beginning. God is all powerful, Satan is not all powerful. In fact, his
power is limited by God. God is all knowing, Satan, being an angel is not
all knowing – otherwise he would have figured out that the cross would not
bring him victory, but defeat. God is omnipresent, can be in all places at
all times, Satan is not - he is limited. When God asks him where he has been
in the book of Job 1:7, Satan says “I have been roaming through the earth.”
God and Satan are not two equal forces.
Now there is much we don’t know about Satan and
his preexistence. But I would like to offer you one theory that I heard Tony
Evans give in 1998 and I’ve lived with it for some time. It is biblically
sound and answers a lot of questions for me. I encourage you not to dismiss
it quickly, if at all. The sequence of events goes like this.
Satan rebels and is called to trial for his
rebellion. He and all his cohorts were found guilty of treason. They are
sentenced and according to Matthew 25:41 they are to be imprisoned in
eternal fire forever. That’s what Jesus says - that the eternal fire has
been reserved for Satan and his demons.
He’s not there yet - it will be his end, but
he’s not there yet. Why? Satan appeals the sentence and God decides that
instead of sentencing him immediately it would be an opportunity for God to
demonstrate his greater glory. So God sends Satan out to a holding cell,
where he would have to stay until his sentence is carried out. And that
holding cell is earth. So when we open up our Bibles at Genesis we read that
the earth was formless and empty, darkness is over the surface of the deep –
it’s like a cosmic soup. This is where Satan lives.
God seeking to demonstrate His glory stands over
His expanse and says, “let there be”. And in six days He renovates planet
earth, changing a formless darkness into an oasis. And in the middle of that
oasis He creates humankind. Why?
God creates humanity, David says in Psalm 8:5
and 6 a little lower than the heavenly beings, that is angels. To rule over
the works of God’s hand (Psalm 8:6).
Now listen carefully - God created mankind in
order to create a lesser creature, who did not have the supernatural ability
did not have the natural beauty, did not have the spiritual essence of an
angel to demonstrate that God could do more with less that was committed to
Him than He could do with more (angels), who were in rebellion against Him.
This is why the book of Hebrews chapter 1 has so
much to say about angels. And why he goes in Hebrews 2 to talk about the
fact that God created man lower the angels to rule over His works. God
created man to be the answer to the angelic conflict. To demonstrate that He
could do more with less when less was dependent on Him than He could
do with more when more was independent of Him.
And that’s the way God always operates.
Small Israel would be greater than the nations around it when it was
dependent on God. Little David would be greater than Goliath when he was
dependent on Him. God will use the lesser to overshoot the greater when the
lesser is dependent upon Him. It is the outworking of this angelic
conflict.”3
The appeal of this idea – not the least of which
is that I feel is rooted in Scripture - is that it answers the question that
people often ask, “If God is greater than Satan, why does God allow Satan to
do what Satan does?”
Part of the answer is that there is no glory to
God to just snuff out a weaker being. He would rather use a weaker being,
empowering the weakest being so that the weakest being overcomes the greater
being for God’s greater glory. That’s why He does what He does.
So God creates man and Satan knows he’s got to
move quickly and gets Adam and Eve to rebel against the rule of God. They
effectively give sovereignty which rightfully belongs to humanity to rule
over the works of creation and they give that sovereignty to Satan. So Jesus
calls him prince of this world (John 12:31). Satan now rules death
row. And history is the working out of this cosmic conflict. You and I are
involved in a battle.
But what Satan doesn’t know is that God would
become man. He didn’t count on the fact that God would enter history and the
weakness of humanity, apart from sin, in order to bring victory to mankind.
He didn’t count on the fact of God’s love that He would so love His creation
that He would step into the muck and mire of this world and go to the cross
for you and for me.
Satan didn’t count on the fact of God’s power.
That He would actually walk this earth and go to the cross, a symbol of
cursedness, a symbol of shame, and that He would actually go to the cross
and endure all the sin of this world. Satan never counted on the fact that
after the tomb was closed with that huge rock and sealed with the Roman seal
and guards posted around it, that on the third day Christ would rise again
in victory. Up from the grave He arose, with a mighty triumph over His
foes.
He never counted on the fact of God’s love,
God’s power or God’s grace, that those who would believe in Him would
actually be transformed from their lives of sin, and darkness and death and
decay, to live lives of righteousness, light and life.
He never counted on the fact of God’s grace,
that God would actually forgive us and then actually clothe us with robes of
righteousness and seat us in the heavenly realms so that we actually become
heirs of the kingdom. Satan never counted on that!
And you need to know that Satan is a defeated
personality. So if there is one application that I give you this morning it
is this. You do not fight for victory over Satan. You fight from
victory. Jesus Christ has won the victory and we now, Paul says, just need
to stand firm. Stand firm in the victory that Christ has won. You don’t need
to win new territory, Christ has won it all - simply stand firm in the
victory that Christ has already won!
As Satan comes and tempts
you and tries to prod you into sin and immorality, stand firm, Christ has
made you into a new creation – so live like it. Stand firm for He has won
the victory, for His glory!
Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - November 2005
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Charles Price, in a sermon
delivered at People’s Church, the Toronto Spiritual Life Convention, 2000
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Billy Graham, Angels,
(U.S.A.: Word Publishing, 1975): pg. 73.
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Tony Evans, in a sermon
entitled, “The Battle is The Lord’s”, delivered at Moody Bible
Institute Pastor’s Conference, May 1998.
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