Ephesians 6:12
So let’s hear from God’s holy
word. This is Ephesians chapter 6 verse 12 and the apostle Paul
says to the church, he says, 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. Amen. This is God’s word. The
other week when we came back from the beach, I was sitting
at my little corner desk in the living room and a battle ensued. The battle that ensued was an
ant problem. We had come home after leaving
the house, and I noticed a trail of ants. And so my way to victory
was to mash them one at a time. And you know if you’ve ever had
an ant problem, that is not the way to get rid of ants. You’ve
got to go to the source. And so after a little while, I went
under the house to see if they were coming from there. Couldn’t
find them. You know, you think about water, couldn’t find them.
What I found out is they were hiding in a plant. And so what
do you think you have to do? Well, you got to get the plant
out of the house, get the ants out of it. And that took care
of that. And the victory was won. We have become ant free
in my little corner of the house. And mashing them one by one was
not the solution. And now Mandy’s mad that I’ve
told you we had ants in the house because she probably thinks she’s
not a good housekeeper. But it was in my part of the house,
so don’t worry. I probably had a hamburger in my briefcase or
something. Who knows? No, it wasn’t that. But anyway, you
have to know your enemy. You have to know the enemy. You
have to know their ways. And in the sense of ants, you
have to make your way to Lowe’s and you have to buy the little
things where they go in. get a little poison, and they
take it back and kill the queen, and whatever else it is. I was
thinking about that. It’s kind of like those little
ant things. You get them to go in the little
house. They get a little poison. They
go back to their little hidey hole. It’s almost like strapping
a bomb on the enemy and sending them back into their barracks.
That’s kind of the idea I had, at least with these ants, and
it seemed to work. They have been gone. The battle
has been won. But it drove me crazy for at
least a day or two. We have to think about our battle
with the unseen powers of this world in that same way. We have to know that these powers
exist and that they have a plan and a purpose. And there is a
way to defeat them. There is a way to fight against
them. Our enemy, this little verse tells us, is not against
blood. It’s not against flesh. It’s not against humanity. But
we do have humanity as an enemy. Here specifically, though, we’re
speaking of the powers of Satan, the powers of the demonic. Now,
we do struggle in life against the world and its systems. We
struggle against the flesh, our remaining sin. We do struggle
against other human beings in the church. But in this particular
case, our battle for which we need the full armor of God, it’s
not blood, it’s not flesh, it’s not human. It is demonic. And we have to understand that
the church exists under hostility. We are not up against a frail
or a weak enemy, but we are in a fight. We’re in a fight where
we have God’s strength, but we must fight. We must take up the
magazine, the weaponry of this battle, and we must fight it.
Now, what are we to understand when we look at verse 12 about
of those we are up against. I think we’ve mentioned this
in the last couple weeks. We don’t wrestle against flesh. There’s that word
again. We don’t wrestle against rulers,
but it’s against, or no, we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood,
but we do wrestle against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers over this present darkness and against
the spiritual forces of evil. What are we to understand? Is
there a series of ranks and, you know, sergeants and lieutenants
and captains and whatever else, or is this just an array of spiritual
forces that we are up against? I think the latter is what we
have to understand. We have before us, in Paul’s language, an array
of non-human, bad, malevolent, demonic enemies. Now today in the church, if you
look around the modern evangelical church in America, who do we
think our enemies are or what do we think our enemies are?
We really think our enemies are poverty. And that’s a problem. We think our enemies are Democrats. And that may be a problem, who
knows? Sometimes we think our enemies are the injustices in
the world. And so you see largely in America,
the church is very interested in changing the world by politics.
It’s interested in changing the world and bringing peace and
justice and eradicating social or societal issues like poverty
or injustice. And while those are difficult
things, they need to be dealt with. And while we live in a
sin-filled world, those will be things people are against. We really have to understand
that there is a bigger battle, a bigger fight. And this was
in no era better displayed than under the ministry of Christ.
You think about his ministry and the demonic forces. Remember Legion. Legion was a
man who was tormented by the demonic. He was so tormented
that he You know, he injured himself. He went through all
kinds of hardships. He was ostracized. He was cast
out. He was chained. And what did
Jesus do? He spoke his name. And he brought
him from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And
he went back home through his town and people said, is that
Legion? and Legion was not recognized because of what Christ had done
for him. And we see over and over and
over in the Gospels that the seed of the woman, Christ, and
the seed of the serpent, or the serpent himself, were battling
maybe the greatest fever pitch the world stage has ever seen. And so we read of it in the Gospels.
But what are we to think as Christians here in 2018? What are we up
against? What are we up against as Christians?
Well, there’s four against four oppositions here. We have rulers,
we have authorities, we have cosmic powers, and we have spiritual
forces. We’ll just kind of take a peek
at them one by one as we look at this array of powers of the
evil that is against us. Rulers, you have rulers who are,
rulers are principalities. They, they rule regions. And
they can take over a pocket of an area. Now, we don’t want to
ruin any chamber of commerce efforts for cities. But if I
were to list various cities, what would come to your mind?
If I were to list Chicago, you would probably think about murder.
If I was to mention to you Las Vegas, you would think it’s Sin
City. Gambling. If I were to list Philadelphia or Baltimore or
New York City, things come to mind. If I mentioned to you,
on the other hand, you should know this from our church history
lessons this past fall, studying the Reformation. If I were to
mention to you Calvin’s Geneva, you would think of a city set
upon a hill. Or if I mentioned to you early Puritan colonies
here in America, you would think of a place or places where righteousness
ruled. People desired to worship God
and to live according to his holy and righteous law. And so
sometimes we can think of places that are ruled by rulers of darkness
and others that are ruled by rulers of light. And that’s,
in a sense, what we have to think of here with this first mention
of rulers. The next phrase he uses, the
next title he gives, authorities. You might could also identify
it as powers or values or society. Think about people in this life
who are influencers. Oprah. Oprah is a big influencer. I mean, she has a TV show. She
has a magazine. She has a channel. She has a
diet plan. She funds and propagates schools
all over the world. She’s an influencer. Or how about
Mother Teresa? She was a powerful force, a humble
woman, a lowly woman, a servant of a lady. But she was an authority. She was one. Think about our
last president, Obama. He was able to captivate the
American public in a very powerful way. And so we are up against
rulers. We are up against authorities,
value systems, society. The third thing that’s mentioned
here is cosmic powers over this present world. darkness. The
word that’s literally used in the Greek New Testament is cosmocrats. And I thought, what a good way
to think about wicked rulers, a cosmocrat. He’s a cosmocrat.
He’s a cosmocrat. I was thinking of Kim, thinking
a rocket man, although I don’t think he got called rocket man
during these recent summits. Of course, we don’t know what
they talked about because they kept it to themselves. But he’s a cosmocrat. He’s a
national or a cosmic power. He is a world ruling God who
holds tyranny over people. And we have to believe that Satan,
that the devil is behind every evil act and atrocity in his
regime. Sometimes we see sin and sickness
and darkness succeed in a particular way. We’ve seen it in Saddam
Hussein’s regime. You’ve seen it in Hitler’s era.
You’ve seen it in all sorts of places. You just go back through
history, back through history, and you see how darkness is at
work. thing that we’re up against is
the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Now,
we have to understand it’s probably not speaking all the way up into
heaven where God is, but up in the sky, up in the battlefield,
up in the battlefield where these battles do take place, there
is wickedness, there is wicked spirituality in the air. Now, how do we see ourselves
fighting against these four things. Do we see ourselves floating
up in the air and fighting these cosmic battles with zinging and
zanging and darts and bullets and spears and whatever else?
No, we don’t. But how is Satan and how are
his forces described in the Bible? Well, we’re told in some places
he roars like a lion. And so Satan very often can rule
us by fear. We fear, we shake, we fear that
we can’t make it on our own and we forget to look to Christ and
we are like those Early Israelites who said we can’t go into the
promised land. We can’t take it. The Giants are too big They’re
too hairy and they’re too scary and we are not going in that
place at all And so unlike Joshua and Caleb our fear causes us
to falter sometimes the Battle with Satan is subtle some of
you many of you have probably read CS Lewis The lion the witch
in the wardrobe, but a bunch of you have seen it and if you
ever see the modern version that was put out maybe 10-12 years
ago. The White Witch who offers Edmund Turkish delight. She’s
a beautiful lady. She’s subtle in her ways and
he’s attracted not only to her but her Turkish delight which
she can offer to him. And before long, what happens
when Edmund eats the Turkish delight? He’s frozen. He’s stuck like a statue and
is under her power and her spell. And so the kingdom of this air,
the kingdom of this world, the kingdom of darkness, Satan’s
kingdom can take us in many ways. Now, where are the battlefronts?
Where are the battlefields? Well, first, think about faith.
If you have a child who’s going to go to the college campus,
what’s the thing you should worry about the most? It’s not about
whether or not they can do their own laundry and separate the
lights and the darks. It’s not about whether they’ll
make it to the cafeteria to eat. It may be a little bit about
whether they’ll go to class and succeed and not waste your money. What’s
the real thing you should worry about when a child nowadays goes
to a secular, humanist, enlightened campus? You have to wonder, will
they get out of there with their faith intact? That’s a battlefield,
isn’t it? That’s a battlefield where our
faith, the children’s faith, can be taken because of the worldviews
that are espoused. And don’t you think Satan is
having a heyday on college campuses, taking well-trained children
and stealing their minds and captivating their hearts? Or
how about worship? How about worship in the modern
America, in the modern evangelical church? Do you ever read the
story in Exodus where Moses was up on the mountain and he heard
that whooping and hollering and he decides to go down the mountain
and see what it is. He thought it was a war cry. And what does
he do? He goes to the bottom of the hill and there they are
dancing around a golden cow that who made? Aaron. And they’re
dancing around this golden calf, and what are they’re saying?
This is our God who brought us up out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery. And they have invented a worship
that is pleasing in their sight, but is not pleasing in the sight
of Almighty God. I think worship, I think the
purity of the church is a big battlefield. And I think so many
churches are just floating along and going with culture. And you
really think about it, it’s only been in about the last 75 years.
It’s not been that long since we have taken church and made
it less God-centered and way more man-centered. Now it may
have been wacky through the history of the church in other ways,
but it’s really been in the last not too many years where worship
has taken a big hit because the people of God have fashioned
idols. How about marriage and family?
Think about the promise that God made to Adam and Eve. There
will be perpetual cosmic war between your offspring and the
offspring of Satan. Satan wants your children. Satan
wants your marriage. Satan wants your grandchildren.
Satan wants nothing more than to keep another generation from
knowing the Lord. Something we have to keep in
mind is this. When you and your family walk with the Lord, when
you and your family walk in the Christian faith, what is Satan
always thinking about? He’s thinking, I had them, but
Christ ransomed them. Christ bought them and I’d love
to get them back. I mean, think about these cops
and robbers movies you watch or these books you read where,
you know, some bad guys kidnap somebody or they take a hostage
and the hostage gets freed. What’s their number one goal?
They want their hostage back. And that’s what we have to think
about with Satan. He wants you back. I think another area where
this battlefront takes place or where it is a battlefront
is discipleship. You know, if you go into a Christian
bookstore, Oh, it’s a pitiful thing. It really is. And I say
that with fear and trepidation because a lot of Christians go
into the bookstore and they eat up what’s on those shelves. Most
of the Christian bookstores I walk into, there’s not a whole lot
worth reading. You have to have good sources. You have to have
good resources that are biblical and faithful to the scriptures.
But even you get into the local church. We mentioned this morning
this idea of moralistic, therapeutic deism. The American church eats
it up and licks the spoon and the bowl afterwards. Moralism,
be good. Therapeutic, feel good. Deism,
there’s a God, and if you need him, he’s the divine bellhop,
and you just yank the rope, and he comes running, and he just
might serve you in the ways that you need. But Christian discipleship,
both in the home and in the church, have to take people to the cross,
it has to take people to the Bible, and it has to take every
thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. And you know, this
day and time, it is not popular to say, this is truth, And this
is falsehood. But we as a church have to be
faithful. We as families have to be faithful to stick to the
scriptures once and for all handed down to us from the apostles.
Where else might some of these battles take place against rulers
and authorities, cosmic powers and spiritual forces? Well, it
may come in our hardships. It may come in our affliction.
Think of Job. Who was Job tormented by? He
was tormented by Satan. It was under God’s sovereignty,
but he was tormented by the devil. Think about another battlefront,
our idleness. Maybe you’re out of discipline.
Maybe it’s summertime and you’re not as orderly as you are during
the school year or another period of routine in your life, and
so you’re idle. What is that we like to say?
Idle hands are the devil’s playground or workshop. Yeah, something
like that. Either one sounds pretty good. And if you have
idle hands and it’s the devil’s workshop, you’re probably going
to hell in a handbasket. You know, we have all these wonderful
little sayings, but it’s very true. If you’re idle, if you’re
not disciplined, if you’re not alert, if you’re not awake, the
devil can gain a foothold. How about isolation? So many
people today, they want to hide. They want to be by themselves.
They don’t want the church. They don’t feel like they need
fellowship. And so these are places where the devil can wage
war. And so we might be in a position
where if our minds and our hearts think about all this, we could
lose hope and say, well, it’s just a losing battle. Or we might
do what a lot of American churches do, and we put our hopes in politics
and legislation. If we just get the right president,
If we just get the moral majority, if we just get the Christian
right in power, things will go well. Well, friends, God’s kingdom
is bigger and better than that. It’s not of this earth. And this
is not a battle of politics. This is not a battle of legislation,
though those things do have their place. We need to remember that
these evil forces are submissive to God’s control. We will win
some battles, we will lose some battles. The tide will turn,
the tide will change. We’ll experience periods of light
and other periods of darkness. But we must remember that God
has put Satan on notice. That at the cross of Christ,
that death blow was dealt. that Satan knows his doom is
sure. I love to think of a couple passages
where we are encouraged to think about the doom of Satan and these
powers. One is at the end of Romans,
and it’s a little bitty obscure verse right at the end. It’s
Romans chapter 16, verse 20. And the apostle Paul simply says
this, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you. And then we think in earlier
section of our book of Ephesians, where we’re looking at the whole
armor of God, Ephesians chapter one, verse 21, where it speaks
of Christ. It says, he is far above all rule. He’s far above
all authority. He’s far above all power. He’s
far above all dominion. He’s far above every name that
is named. not only in this age, but in
the one to come. And he put all things under his
feet. God has put all things under
Christ’s feet and has given him his head over all things to the
church, which is his body, the fullness, who fills all in all. And then one last passage that
I think is quite encouraging is 1 Peter 3, verse 22, it says, of the Lord Jesus Christ who’s
been raised. It says, he has gone into the
heavenly places. He is at the right hand of God
with angels and authorities and powers, having been subjected
to sin. to him. So there’s a lot to fear
with these enemies. But thanks be to God, we have
our eyes, our eyes of faith on the one who rules over them all
and is sovereign over them. Let’s pause together and pray.
Lord, we thank you that the word tells us how formidable are our
enemies. We thank you that the word tells
us what we are up against. It is a big, dark, evil, scary
thing. But thanks be to God for Christ
who has conquered and who has given us the victory, who has
promised victory, and who’s also given us the tools and weapons
of warfare that we may stand. And we pray, Father, in these
areas we’ve mentioned, in our faith, in our worship, in our
marriages, in our family, in our Christian discipleship, in
our hardships, In the way we manage our time, in the way we
live with others, that you would use these things to keep us strong
and that you would not allow the devil to have a foothold
in these parts of our life and our faith and our worship. We
pray that you keep us safe by the power of God and it’s in
his name we pray, amen.