Designed for Goodness: Spiritual Warfare
Focus: Spiritual warfare is real and we need to learn to recognize and resist it to keep in step with Jesus.
Recognize
Resist
Redeem
Recognize
Spiritual warfare is real whether we like it or not.
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
-Keyser Soze in the Usual Suspects (paraphrasing a previous quote by James Baudelaire 😆)
“The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy.”
—Ken Ammi
We need to learn to recognize the spiritual tactics of the enemy if we are to overcome the devil and glorify God in our lives.
Genesis 3:1-6 ESV
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
Resist
Once we recognize the tactics of the enemy, we have the ability to resist and overcome his schemes.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Names of the devil and their meaning -
Deceiver
Accuser
Adversary
Satan
Father of Lies
The devil’s main tactics - ACCUSATION and DECEPTION.
These accusations and deceptions are aimed at your relationship with God and other God-ordained relationships in your life.
But more than anything else, the devil will always attempt to undermine God’s word.
If the devil can either keep you away from God’s word or distort it in your mind and heart, everything else begins to break down because we are deviating from God’s good design.
For example:
God is not a cosmic killjoy.
He put Adam and Eve in the garden and said they could eat from any of the trees except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This is what God actually commanded:
Genesis 2:16-17 ESV
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
We will all be tempted.
We begin to go astray when we:
Like Eve, add to God’s commands.
Take away from God’s commands, choosing to pick and choose what is both preferable and convenient for us.
Ignore the promises of God that speak to benefits of trust in him and the detrimental consequences of disobedience.
All sin has its root in the hubris of thinking ourselves wiser than God, attempting to identify ourselves in manners that we think better than his own good design.
Biblical literacy is on the decline.
We will have no foundation for trials and challenges if we do not have God’s word filling us (Matthew 13).
Redeem
We will know Jesus and experience his redemption in our lives when we learn and submit to God’s whole counsel.
“Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have ...A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.”
-Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Reading the Bible Well (Ask these questions):
What does it say (in context)? (Literacy - Know what God has done)
What does it say about God? (Theology - understanding of who God is)
What does it say about me? (Sanctification - understanding who God has created you to be and what he has created you to do - setting you apart to God)
What does it say about the world around me? (God’s Biblical Worldview - how God has ordered the world - what has happened, what is happening and what is to come)
A prayer that you can pray as you engage God with his Word each day:
Lord, I thank you for this time in your word today. I pray that you would open it to me so that I might know you better. Please give me your wisdom and revelation, your understanding and insight that I might see how all of your words apply today, the world around me and my situations in life that I might please and obey you in everything. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
The more you understand the Word of God, the more you will know Jesus and understand the Father’s heart, expressed through the Holy Spirit.
John 1:1-18 ESV
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”
This is because the gospel tells us that:
