In my freshman year of high school I went out for tennis. I wasn’t very good. The coach never took me to even one away meet because most everybody was better than I was. But I had a lot of fun. It was great being outside with my friends in the springtime. And tennis wasn’t near as much work as most other sports. And I even learned some things about tennis.
One day I challenged one of my friends, who wasn’t on the team, to a match. I could beat him. One thing I learned was how to put a spin on the ball. Chop down on it and it goes off with a nasty spin. And every once in a while, I would hit these easy lobs towards my friend. He would see them coming and figure it would be easy to calculate where the ball was going to bounce and he could return it easily. He’d be in place for it and ready for his return. But because of the spin I put on it, it would never bounce straight ahead like he expected it, but always went over to the side. And most of the time he never got to it. And he just couldn’t figure it out. He got very frustrated. He never figured it out. And I don’t think I ever told him. And I had a lot of fun from just learning that one little trick.
Do you ever feel like things in your life don’t bounce the way they should? Challenges come towards every one of us every day. That’s normal. We figure we should be able to handle them. But every once in a while there is something more, something irrational, something sneaky. Sometimes it just seems that everything is more complicated or scarier or stirs up some argument or conflict that’s totally unnecessary. You set out to play it straight and then it bounces crooked.
We’ve been working our way through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. I summarized chapter 1, as “You’ve Got a Lot Going For You,” because there Paul describes this incredibly wise and powerful and loving God, one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But it isn’t that simple. Paul starts out chapter two with warnings that we’ve also got a lot going against us. And he forewarns us so that we can be forearmed. And with that I’ll ask Sylvia to come and read our text for us, Ephesians 2:1-10. But we’ll mostly focus on verse 2.
1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved-- 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Last week we talked about what Paul and Jesus called ‘the world.’ That’s the accumulation of distorted, often sick ways that people interact, the pressure that we feel to go along with destructive, foolish things. It’s very close to the ‘peer pressure’ that we warn junior highs about. The world is something that can really pull us down.
Today we come to another deadly threat against our souls: the devil. There is something more in this world than just human stupidity or human meanness. How can you explain the hold that came upon the German people that gave us the slaughter of 5 million Jews and plunged most of the world into an inconceivably horrendous war? Add to that the atrocities of the Communists in Russia and China against their own people, genocide in Armenia, Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, Darfur, and on and on. How do you explain Arabs who go to a fellow Arabic nation and blow up markets and busses and shoot police officers, people who blow up a whole federal office building with a preschool inside or crash airplanes into giant office buildings just filled with human beings? Do you think the devil might have a hand in such things? Sometimes the ball bounces really crooked.
How do you explain when a bunch of good Christian people come to church to worship God and end up really hurting each other? Sometimes the ball bounces really crooked. Do you think the devil might have a hand in that?
How do you explain some of the crazy ideas that people get in their heads? How do you explain the hold that bad habits have on so many people, enslaving them, destroying their lives?
Of course every one of those questions requires a complex answer. You can’t just blame it all on the devil. There are many factors. But the Bible warns us that there are spiritual forces of evil around us. And if the ball keeps bouncing crooked for us and we don’t understand what’s happening, we’ll have no defense. If you think that the problems of the world will all be solved with just a bit more education and more patience and good will, you’ll be caught by surprise again and again. The problem is worse than that.
In verse 2 of our text, the Apostle Paul refers to ‘the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.’ What in the world is that? If you suspect that Paul is using words from a long time ago that are hard for us to understand today, you’re right. He is. It’s hard to understand.
But we can figure it out. Look at the words that Paul uses. What words did Paul pick to describe the devil?
He uses the words “ruler” and “power”. We’re caught in a power struggle. God is God and anybody with any sense ought to recognize that and be thankful that he is in charge, not one of us. But there’s somebody else out there who wants to rule and wants to wield power. And if you think about that for about ten seconds you ought to say it’s not very bright to get into a power struggle against God. We’re caught in a power struggle.
And does he say one ruler or many? Singular or plural? It’s one. That’s why we say this refers to the devil. In other parts of Ephesians he talks about principalities and powers and those are others in league with the devil. But he leaves the details pretty hazy.
Paul calls him a ‘spirit.’ That’s a word for things that are really hard to put your finger on. You can’t measure them or control them. People who are spiritually blind are totally oblivious to them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t real. It doesn’t mean that people who are spiritually alive can’t learn to deal with them.
And he finds his power greatest among those who are disobedient. It’s easy for him to have his way with those who distance themselves from God. They don’t have a chance.
And what impact does the devil have in human lives? When Paul first arrived in Ephesus the devil had many of the people wrapped around his little finger. The book of Acts tells us that he found there a number of people whose humanity had been so diminished that their lives had been taken over by demonic spirits and in the power of the name of Jesus, Paul cast those spirits out and set the people free. And people were so amazed at the power of Jesus working through Paul that there was this mass movement of people turning from occult practices through which they tried to use magic to manipulate the demonic powers. And one day they started bringing out the books that gave the magic incantations to pray and the magical ceremonies and ingredients of magical brews and such and they were so determined to turn away from those principalities and powers that they burned books that were worth 50 thousand silver coins. You can read about that in Acts 19. And in reading those books who knows what distorted ideas about God they had accepted, who knows how much they had personally sacrificed from their lives by trying to get ahead through magic rather than learning the lessons of hard work and loving, faithful relationships and walking with an open heart before God. The devil had been feeding them cheap shortcuts and they realized it was all a waste. It was all a bondage. And they turned to Christ and he set them free.
Do we have anybody today looking to get power or advantages or inside knowledge through horoscopes, magic crystals, summoning earth forces, Ouija boards, fortune tellers, séances, tarot cards or charms? The Ephesian Christians tried all that stuff centuries ago. And they saw that it was a dead end.
The Bible tells us a lot about the devil, but let me just pull out what we learn from Ephesians today. In a few months we’ll comes to Ephesians 6:11. “Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”
What do we hear in that? If you have to have God’s armor on to stand against him, Paul takes the devil as a serious threat. We’ll talk about that armor when we get to it. This is not a light matter. Our only hope is to put ourselves under God’s protection.
Here Paul names him as the devil. The literal meaning of that name is ‘slanderer.’ He accuses. He criticizes. And he doesn’t do it fair, he distorts to go beyond what is true and he does it to hurt. He slanders God. He slanders God’s people and God’s church. The devil is a slanderer.
Do you ever hear a little voice in your head that says something like, “you’re no good”? Or, “you’ll never amount to anything.” “You might as well not bother trying. It will never work.” Or do you have mean thoughts towards others sometimes and you say to yourself, “where did that come from?” Well, of course there are a lot of possible answers to that question. But I believe that the devil, the slanderer, is just out to usurp God’s beautiful creation and hurt his favorite children and will whisper garbage like that in your ear. And if you accept it and make it part of your life it will poison you. But if you just say, “I refuse to accept that thought. I choose to love myself and my brothers and sisters; they’ll quiet down in time.”
Somebody said you can’t keep the birds from flying over your head. But you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. Everybody has wrong thoughts floating into their minds sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. Just choose to think what you know is right.
There’s a children’s story about the little tailor. One day he was working at his bench and he swatted at a swarm of flies and killed seven of them with one blow. He was so taken with himself that he sewed a message on his belt, “I killed seven with one blow,” and went out to wander the world seeking more adventures.
One of those adventures happened when he saw two giants coming. He climbed a tree to escape them. But they proceeded to sit in the grass right under his tree and talk and talk, and finally nap. And he was stuck up there in the tree. He decided to have some fun. He dropped a pebble on one of the giants. That giant thought the other one was pestering him and grumbled some threat. They both went back to sleep. Then he dropped another pebble and this time there was more of a reaction. And pretty soon he had these two giants beating on each other. The little tailor got two giants battered and they didn’t even know he was there.
Do you think the devil might sneak into church one day and start whispering in ears? “Who does she think she is, acting like that?” “I feel like he really doesn’t like me.” “Well, isn’t he a hypocrite to be talking about his faith like that. I remember what he did 18 years ago.”
Could the devil just walk in and drop a few pebbles like that and then watch a church tear itself apart with a grin on his face?
Ephesians 6:11 talks about “the wiles of the devil.” He has no real power. He has no authority. He is an imposter, a destroyer and a liar. But he’s real good with tricks, craftiness, cunning and deception. But that’s about it. He does nothing constructive. He only destroys.
There’s another children’s story about the foolish king who was hoodwinked by his tailors. They told him they would make him a suit of clothes that was so magically wonderful that only people who were truly worthy of the offices they held could see them. They proceeded to weave nothing at all, collected their payment from the king for providing nothing at all, and went home. And the king put on this outfit, which was nothing at all, afraid to tell the truth because he thought it would show that he was unworthy of his office. And all his aides pretended to see it too. And the fantasy went to the point of the king parading down the street for all to see this amazing outfit which was really nothing at all. And it was a little child who saw through it all and called out, “the king is in his underwear.” And the hoax was exposed. The little child was the only one whose thinking hadn’t been corrupted by the game of ‘deny the truth if it will get you ahead.’ It’s that kind of thinking that can make us blind to God and turns God’s wonderful creation into something ugly. And then the devil’s happy.
We’d better respect the devil. I’m so glad that Paul laid out for us the full armor of God so that we can stand strong. You can read about that in Ephesians, chapter 6. But we don’t have to be afraid. And we don’t have to let him mess with our minds. Those who are in Christ, who fill their minds with his word, who choose to love their brothers and sisters no matter what, who choose to trust in God’s love no matter what, who open their hearts to walk with the Holy Spirit of truth every day, can be set free.
But the goal is more than escape. One of the main themes of the gospels is that Jesus Christ plundered the kingdom of the devil, travelling through Galilee, setting people free of distorted thinking, free of hopelessness, free of divisive and destructive behaviors.
And in Ephesians 3:9-10 Paul tells us that we have an important part in completing that ministry. Paul said he had been given the gift of revealing God’s plan for the ages to the world, “so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
We are living in a battle ground. And its not a battle fought on the way to another objective. The church is the objective. The devil says that God’s plans for the church won’t work. The church will divide. It will become self centered and ingrown and self-indulgent.
God says that love can conquer and his church can stand together and move beyond themselves and move out of the building to bring love and light, justice, hope and truth to the world. When we stay close to our God, when we refuse the divisive and fearful and lazy lies of the devil we are doing a powerful thing. And we can do it because we serve a powerful God. AMEN
