We are starting a two part study today. I had meant these studies to just be about the Armour of god, and it will be about that, but it's also about the battle, the enemy, his tactics that he uses against us and a few suggestions on how we can be victorious over him. This will be the first part of the study, then in the second part we will look at the armour of god in detail.
Ephesians 6, verses 10 to 14a says:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of
the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm ..."
I guess the first question that needs to be asked is: why do we need armour in the first place? We're not at war are we? Yes, we are. Notice who our foes are:
".... against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present
darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." [v12]
wow! How can we possibly fight all those dark forces on our own? Well actually we don't. On our own and in our own strength we wouldn't have a hope, but Jesus is with us and god gives us the strength to fight the battles. it should also be remembered that our enemies have been defeated by Jesus when he died on the cross. if they are defeated why are they still so powerful that we need to defend against them? I have a couple of examples that might clarify this:
Imagine two children playing together. One of them points his finger at his playmate and says "bang bang! You're dead!" the other child doesn't move or react so her playmate says indignantly "You're supposed to be dead so why won't you fall down?"
The enemies are defeated and one day they will be judged and dealt with but for now although they are dead they haven't fallen down. here's another example I got from a bible study i was listening to:
when a country holds elections and a new party is voted in, the new leader doesn't take over straight away, there is usually a period of a few weeks before the old administration are out and the new leader is inaugurated. now, in this scenario Jesus is the new leader and Satan knows his time is short before Jesus takes over, so he is determined to do as much damage, to reek as much havoc as possible in the time that's left.
So we are at war with these dark forces but we are not left defenceless. Firstly, Jesus has already defeated them, secondly, we have the holy Spirit to help us and thirdly, God gives us a set of armour to put on, not physically but spiritually. Think of the old times when a knight would ride out to battle, he wouldn't even think of going without putting on some armour and taking his sword. We shouldn't think of trying to live the Christian life without taking up our armour and our sword.
Let's talk about the battle for a bit. You might be imagining an old-style war when each side would line up in battle array, facing each other. Our battle is not like that. Our enemy is much too subtle for that. His favourite tactic is to sneak up on us unawares and trap us, so we need to be warned, but we can take comfort, god's word says that:
he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
[1 John 4:4b]
But what is the cause of the battle? what is the objective? Human souls. Jesus would love nothing better than to see every single person on the earth come to salvation, the bible says:
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should
reach repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
The enemy, on the other hand, wants to keep as many souls out of God's kingdom as possible. The bible says that:
the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers,
to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
[1 Corinthians 4:4]
If we are saved then we have entered the battle and our enemy will do all he can to keep us from being all that we can be, from growing strong in our faith and being someone god can use. He loves to see us weak, lukewarm and indifferent. He is overjoyed if he can trap us into habitual sin. He wants us to abandon our faith and he will do all he can to achieve that end. We don't have to give into that though, God provides us with weapons and armour to defend ourselves and, besides that, Jesus is on our side, helping us. . The bible says:
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
[2 Corinthians 10:3-5]
So how do we fight back against the Enemy's attacks?
1. Prayer. We should bring the whole situation to God in prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to help and advise us, giving us strategies that will help us have the victory.
2. We need to ask god for the gift of discernment. The following quote is taken from wikipedia:
""Discernment of spirits" is the term given to the judgment whereby to determine from what spirit the impulses
of the soul emanate, and it is easy to understand the importance of this judgment both for self-direction and the direction of others. Now this judgment
may be formed in two ways. In the first case the discernment is made by means of an intuitive light which infallibly discovers the quality of the movement;
it is then a gift of God. 'Second, discernment of spirits may be obtained through studying of the Bible, dependence on God, and being sensitive to God’s
leading.' It is then not just an acquired human knowledge; it is a spiritual gift. It is procured, always, of course, through a right walking with God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discernment#Christianity
I think we can see how this would be helpful to us. if a voice is speaking in our mind we need to know if it's from God, from one of the Devil's minions, or from our flesh nature. when we ask god for help we need to be sure it's His voice we hear. Discernment will help us with that.
3. We will see in the second study that God's word is our sword, the sword of the Spirit. We need to memorise and meditate on scripture. If you're like me memorisation is a challenge. I can remember useless facts of trivia, I can remember scenes from books I read years ago but memorising Scripture? I found it so hard i gave up on it, you can tell that laziness is one of my faults can't you? Anyway the Lord is prodding me about it so it's something I am going to work at and I encourage you to as well. We should ask the Father that the Holy Spirit would empower us to be able to memorise and call to mind scriptures when we need them. The enemy wants us to forget what we have learned in the Word of god but the Holy Spirit will remind us and he will help us to learn.
4. we need to allow god to sanctify us through and through. What that means is that we let him into every area of our lives, our hearts, our minds, the hidden things we hoped noone would ever see. The bible says this:
And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you through and through [separate you from profane things, make you pure and wholly consecrated to God]; and
may your spirit and soul and body be preserved sound and complete [and found] blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah).
Faithful is He Who is calling you [to Himself] and utterly trustworthy, and He will also do it [fulfill His call by hallowing and keeping you].
[1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 AMP]
We should allow god to shine his light into every area of our lives, remembering that he sees everything anyway, he knows us better than we know ourselves. We all have places where we are vulnerable, it might be our past or it might be a sin that we find hard to keep away from. If we let god into those areas he will build a wall around them so that the enemy can't get in and attack us in those areas. to know more about this i would thoroughly recommend a book from Beth Moore called "when godly people do ungodly things" she goes into a lot of detail about being sanctified through and through and how we can fortify our lives against the Enemy's wiles.
We have seen that we are at war but not against humans we are at war against principalities and powers in the kingdom of darkness. Jesus has defeated these dark forces and he will help us to get through our battles.
But where do these battles take place? How can we have a battle without a battleground? Well we do and it is called the human mind. People believe that the heart is stronger than the mind, sometimes feelings can be so hard to fight against! The thing is though, if we can fill our minds with the word of god and let those scriptures renew our mind , then that will change our feelings as well. if the enemy can develop strong holds in our mind then he can not only affect our mind but our hearts too. That is why we have to be so careful about what thoughts we allow in our minds. Remember the verse we looked at in 2 Corinthians 10??
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
[2 Corinthians 10:3-5]
If we want to have the victory we need to be diligent in dealing with bad thoughts. here’s an example.
A young man found a wallet on the floor of a shop and picked it up. Idly he opened it and flipped through it, there was a fair bit of money inside.
“How cool is that?” he thought, “finders keepers, this is mine now.” his conscience nudged him and said
“You know better than that, the bible says "you shall not steal,””
“I didn't’ steal it,” the young man argued, “i found it, it’s mine.”. The enemy whispers into his mind
“Go on take it, noone will know or care. You're a fool if you don't keep it. Maybe this is God’s way of helping you save the money to buy that bicycle you want.”
“no, god wouldn't want me to do that,” he realised, “Jesus wouldn't do it so i guess i shouldn't either.” so he went over to the check-out and handed it in .
That’s a fairly basic example but that’s the way the battle goes on, we are confronted with a situation and we have 2 options, we can do what we know is right or we can do what we know is wrong. the enemy wants us to do what is wrong of course and we know god wants us to do what is right. Even our minds can fight on the wrong side because we may really want to make the wrong decision, we justify ourselves that it’s not so bad after all. Sometimes it can be hard to be sure which way is the right way and we have to ask god and wait for him to show us. here's an example of that:
Mary was the only Christian in her family. She loved going to youth group and to Church on Sunday, where she sang in the choir. One Saturday night her mother said to her,
"Mary I don't want you to go to church tomorrow, your Aunt and Uncle are coming over and we are going for a picnic." Now Mary felt pulled in two directions, she knew the Bible teaches "honour your father and your mother", and besides she was excited at the thought of her Aunt an Uncle's visit. A picnic would be wonderful, but she would have to miss Church and that made her feel bad. What should she do? Didn't the bible say something about the importance of meeting together regularly? She was very confused.
Again a rather simple example, life can get very complicated and knowing what is right can be hard, we need to trust God and ask him to show us what he wants us to do. it can be hard to hear from god when the enemy and our own minds are demanding a certain course of action and our conscience is bothering us and prompting us to go another direction. That's when we need to spend a lot of time in prayer and even fasting so we can know the will of god.
But the question may be asked, why do we have to have battles at all? what is the purpose in them. if the devil is defeated why can't God stop him and his servants from attacking us?
well, of course god could stop it right now. The fact that he doesn't means his plans haven't been fulfilled yet - plans for us and our lives. Remember that god sees the bigger picture. He sees things clearer than we do. sometimes he will allow things that he would prefer not to allow because they will eventually be for our good and bring in the fulfillment of God's plans.
As we saw before, the enemy wants to stop us from being all that we can be, from growing in our faith and from being a person God can use to do his work. The moment we start witnessing to our friends about Jesus, or the moment we start trying to deal with a bad habit we have, or the moment we resolve to spend more time in prayer or anything that will make us stronger in our faith or bring us closer to God,then we are entering the battleground. We may not notice it straight away but if we continue in our forward progress we are likely to find opposition.
So why does god allow the enemy to attack us? because that causes us to rely on god instead of doing things on our own and because trials test our faith and make it stronger. god wants us to grow as much as possible here on earth and if things were easy all the time we would get complacent and we would stop making an effort. Trials are not fun, battles are not fun, but we can look back and see how God used this or that situation for good in our lives.
the enemy may think he is doing what he wants but God can use him to fulfill God's own plans. An example of that would be in 1 Samuel 16-17 where god allowed an evil spirit to attack king Saul who had been disobedient and had not done all that god wanted him to do. Because David was skillful at the harp and because it was determined that harp playing might sooth the King when the evil spirit came on him, David went from being an unknown shepherd in the wilderness to a person of importance at court. God was behind the whole thing. god brought David and Jonathan together in a close sincere friendship and Jonathan helped David on more than one occasion. There are other stories in the bible and I could say a lot more about this, maybe I will at another point. The thing we need to realise is that god doesn't allow anything to happen to us unless he has a good reason for allowing it, something we may not comprehend till heaven but we have to trust that he knows what is best for us. Like any parent he knows that discipline, though it may be unpleasant, will help the child to know what is right and wrong and will help them see that their choices have consequences. God lovingly disciplines us as well. .
Now to finish up this section of our study I would like to look at two scenes from the early chapters of the book of job. In each of these scenes god and the Devil have a conversation about Job. here's the first scene:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the LORD and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face." And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
[Job 1:6-12]
God and his angels had a meeting and satan, the enemy, gate-crashed it. God allowed it because he had a purpose in mind. satan used to be an angel called Lucifer but he became proud and sinned against God, which is a discussion for another time, this is just a little background.
notice that God asked satan two questions:
1. From where have you come?
and
2. have you observed my servant Job?"
Of course God knew the answer to both of those questions. He also knew he was going to allow satan to test Job and prove his loyalty to god. Job would also learn some lessons along the way.
See how satan answers god? he basically says to god "Sure Job worships you why not? you have blessed everything he does and he has grown wealthy, anyone might trust you in those circumstances." satan had his own agenda here, he wanted to attack job but god had him protected so satan couldn't do much against him until God gave him permission,. this is very important: God allows satan a certain amount of leeway, but if he wants to go beyond that point he has to get God's permission and God will only give it if he sees it is in the best interests of the believer. god has full authority in the universe an if god had said no to satan, the book of Job would probably not have been written. i find this very comforting. My loving heavenly father is on the throne and he will only allow things to happen to me that are for my own good even if it may not seem so at the time.
the second scene from the book of job is found in chapter 2:
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. And the LORD said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the LORD and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason." Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life."
[Job 2:1-6]
Notice the similarities between this passage and the other one we looked at. the angels gathered before the Lord again and there satan was among them. god asked him the same question and got the same answer. Then God speaks about Job, saying much the same things except that he adds this:
He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason."
God wasn't too happy with satan can you tell?
what was satan's response?
"Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face."
he is at his old games again. Had Job actually cursed God then satan would be the first to accuse him before god.
then God gives satan his instructions and sets the boundaries:
"Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life."
notice that satan still had to get god's permission to step up his attacks against job?
One more thing I want to point out here. Notice who wasn't present at these meetings ... Job himself. Job had no idea what was happening in the heavenly realm. He knew that very bad things were happening to him, he had lost everything and everyone that mattered, even his wife told him to curse god and die. He had his 3 friends but with friends like that who needs enemies? their idea was, all this bad stuff is happening to Job therefore Job must be guilty of some sin.
When we are tempted or face trials and battles we may not understand why god allows these things in our lives but we have to trust him because he knows what is best for us. god's word will not send us to where god's hand cannot protect us. If we are going through a battle, know that God knows exactly what is happening and he is working out his plan in this situation. Let us keep these things in mind!
Questions:
1. think of any spiritual battles you have faced lately.
a. do you know what the cause of the battle was?
B. How did you cope with the situation?
c. were you victorious in the battle? with god's help of course, or were you defeated?
d. how do you think you might handle things differently next time?
2. a. Have you found yourself in a situation where you weren't sure what god's will was and what you should do?
B. How do you think you might handle this differently next time?
I pray this study has helped you. Part two of the study will be uploaded soon. Thanks. god bless you.
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