SPIRITUAL WARFARE
Ehp. 6:12
Jeff Seaman
Intro.
There was once a boxer who was being pummeled in the ring by his opponent. Blow after blow by his adversary left him with a bloody nose, swollen eyes, and an enormous amount of pain.
The battered boxer’s trainer, trying to encourage his man between rounds, kept telling him, “You’re doing great, Fred. That bum is barely touching you.”
To which the boxer responded, “Then you better keep your eye on that referee, because somebody is killing me!
No amount of smooth talk could camouflage the reality of the bloody battle in which this fighter was engaged. Psychologically correct talk and personal encouragement could not mask the pain he was suffering.
In the same way, you and I are engaged in a real battle, one of cosmic proportions. We know we are facing a real opponent because this world bears the bloody, painful scars of this conflict: war among nations, shattered lives, broken homes, suicide, rape, abuse, and immorality of every kind.
My goal is to help you see that this battle in which you and I are engaged is first and foremost the Lord’s battle, not ours. Only when we see this will we be able to wage victorious spiritual warfare.
I have a declaration to make. You and I are at war! In fact, we are engaged right now in the mother of all battles. No war in history can compare with the battle you and I fighting. It can be either the cause of your greatest joy as a Christian, or of your deepest pain.
The war I am talking about is the spiritual warfare that you became a part of the day you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.
This war affects every area of your life. There is no way you can avoid the conflict. There is no bunker of foxhole you can crawl into that will shield you from the effects of this battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan.
A lot of Christians don’t even know they’re at war. But others can see the results of the battle in their lives, because they have become casualties of spiritual warfare. They are discouraged, depressed, downtrodden, and defeated. Others are marital and family casualties. Divorce, conflict, and abuse are some of the battle scars these believers bear.
Since we are at war, and since there is so much at stake both here on earth and in eternity, we’d better find out what spiritual warfare is about and how to fight the battle successfully.
THE ESSENCE OF THE BATTLE
Let me begin by stating the obvious. The essence of the war we are talking about is spiritual.
A DEFINITION
Spiritual warfare is that conflict being waged in the invisible, spiritual realm that is being manifest in the visible, physical realm.
In other words, spiritual warfare is a battle between invisible, angelic forces that affect you and me the cause of the war is something you and I can’t see. But the effects are very visible in the kind of problems I mentioned earlier in the day-to-day stuff you and I face all the time.
It’s hard enough to fight an enemy you can see. It’s much harder to fight someone you can’t see. In his classic statement on spiritual warfare, Paul wrote: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places”(Eph 6:12).
This verse identifies the enemy, Satan and his demons. We’ll develop all of this as we go along, but the point I want to you to see here is that we make a bid mistake if we think people are the real problem.
People can be bad, no doubt. But as bad as people can be, they are merely conduits for this greater battle. Satan has been successful in getting us to fight people rather than fighting that which is causing people to be the way they are.
All of us have tried to change people who are not doing right. What we need to understand is that what happens through people, including you and me, has its roots in something much larger. This fact does not excuse the wrong things people do. They are still responsible. But it helps us focus on the real enemy.
A FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE FOR SPIRITUAL WARFARE
Everything we see in the visible, physical realm is caused, provoked, or at least influenced by something in the invisible, spiritual realm.
TWO WORLDVIEWS
Your worldview is simply the lens through which you perceive reality.
There are really only two categories of worldviews.
One is a natural or materialist worldview, what people today call the scientific worldview. This view says that man by his reason can figure out how the world works.
People who hold this view seek life’s answers in the natural realm. If you can put it in a test tube, examine it under a microscope, or explain it through natural processes, that’s all you need.
The naturalistic view is not sufficient because it is limited to the physical realm. Therefore , it doesn’t answer the ultimate question: who you are, where you came from, why are you here.
The naturalistic worldview also doesn’t explain things like why teenagers are killing each other and why the moral standards of mankind are being eroded. This view does not address the invisible part of human beings, the soul, and spirit.
The second category of worldviews is the spiritual worldview, which says there is a realm outside of the physical.
A spiritual worldview is very popular right now, but unfortunately it is often not a biblically based. Instead, it is a man-centered view that believers in any form of spirituality that seem to pay off. This is the world of horoscopes, and palm readers, and all sorts of New Age teaching.
Obviously, this is not the worldview of the Bible. It is possible to have a spiritual worldview that is plugged into the wrong spirit.
Your worldview affects your approach to spiritual warfare because it colors the way you see the nonmaterial world—and it determines whether you even believe in a spiritual realm.
In order to understand spiritual warfare, we have to address it through the lens of the spirit, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
THE IMPACT OF THE BATTLE
Even though the battle we are talking about is spiritual in nature, it has very definite effects in the visible, physical realm. You know you are in a battle when you get shot and start bleeding. We are seeing the “bleeding,” the result, of spiritual warfare in at least four areas of life today.
Four areas of life this battle effects
1. This Battle Effect your Personal Life
Many believers are seeing the wounds of spiritual warfare in their personal lives. This doesn’t mean these people are doing something really bad. It could be that they have a problem such as uncontrolled anger.
Our emotions can give the devil an entry into our lives. To see the relationship between your emotions and spiritual warfare, look at several familiar verses in Ephesians:
“Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be anger, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity” (Eph. 4:25-27)
Please notice that failing to control anger grants the devil an opportunity to get a foothold in your life. Then he can use it as a base of operations to launch more spiritual attacks against you.
Many Christians are suffering today because of anger that was not resolved yesterday—and anger is just one of an assortment of human emotions. If Satan can seize our emotions, he can destroy our to function by crippling us emotionally or leading us into all manner of destructive and addictive behavior.
2. This Battle Effects Your Family
Many believers are also feeling the effects of spiritual warfare In their families. The devil messed up the first family in the Garden of Eden, and we have been dealing with the effects of Adam’s and Eve’s sin ever since.
Let me give you an example of family relationships and spiritual warfare.
Paul wrote to husbands and wives in 1 Cor. 7:5, “Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourself to prayer, and come together again lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
Paul is saying that when a husband and wife don’t have a fulfilling sexual relationship, the devil sees that lack as an opportunity to come in and bring about moral destruction in the family. So this thing of spiritual warfare gets right down to the nitty-gritty aspects of everyday life.
3. This Battle Effects Life
Spiritual warfare also has an impact on church life. Paul told Timothy to watch out for “doctrines of demons” that will infiltrate the church (1 Tim. 4:1). The church is being undermined in many places today by teachers who claim to teach the Bible, but are teaching doctrines from hell.
Anyone can quote the Bible. But we need to be like the Bereans, who checked out what Paul and Silas were teaching them to see whether their teachings agreed with Scriptures (Acts. 17:11)
4. This Battle Effect Culture
Finally, spiritual warfare affects the life of a nation, the culture in which we live.
According to passages like Daniel 10, entire nations are influenced by the invisible battle in the angelic realm. Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air” with good reason (Eph. 2:2)
There is no place we can go to escape the effect of spiritual warfare. We need to learn how to fight. Our ability to deal with the spiritual realm will determine whether we win or lose in the physical realm.
Satan’s job is to get us to ignore the spiritual realm or give it low value. If he can divert us from the spiritual realm, he can divert us from finding spiritual solutions.
THE LOCATION OF THE BATTLE
Where in the universe is this great battle called spiritual warfare being fought?
Paul tells us it is “in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12), which means the spiritual realm.
THE HEAVENLY PLACES
In the Bible, the word heaven describes three levels of existence (see 2 Cor. 12:2).
The first heaven is the atmosphere that surrounds the earth, the environment in which we live.
The second heaven is what we commonly refer to as outer space, the heavens where the stars and planet exist. This is also a realm in which angels operate, because in the Bible angels are often called stars. (Job. 38:7)
The third heaven is the throne room of God, the place we normally think of when we here the word heaven. It is about this heaven that the Bible has the most to say.
In the book of Ephesians alone, we find numerous reference to heavenly places in addition to the reference in 6:12.
Ephesians 1:3 tells us:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”
This verses tells us that God resides in the heavenly places, and so do all of our spiritual blessings.
This is important because if you are engaged in a spiritual battle and need help to win, the help you need is with God the Father, who is in the heavenly places. But if you don’t know how to get to the heavenly places, you won’t know how to get to the heavenly help you need to win the battle in earthly places.
According to Ephesians 1:20, when God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead, He seated His Son “at His right hand in the heavenly places.”
Ephesians 2:6 says; that God also raised us up with [Christ], “and seated us with Him in the heavenly places”
Ephesians 3:10 tells us that spiritual rulers and authorities are there. This is important from the standpoint of spiritual warfare, because it takes an angel to beat an angel.
Remember, Satan and his demons are also “in the heavenly place.” Eph 6:12
THE ENEMY IN THE BATTLE
Rev. 12 depicts a day when the invisible warfare in the heavenly places will break out in a very visible form
Vs. 7 shows us the enemy in this conflict called spiritual warfare: “And there was war in the heavenly, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. And the dragon and his angels waged war.”
The archangel Michael and the holy angels are fighting Satan and the angels who rebelled with him. The battle is angelic.
The Enemy’s Goal
We are surrounded by our spiritual enemy, but the battle is not for land or anything physical. This battle is for glory. The issue is, who is going to get the glory in the universe? Who is going to be worshiped?
Satan said to God, “You cannot have all the glory in creation. I want some of the glory for myself.”
God’s response was, “My glory I will not give to another.” (Is. 48:11)
Satan said, “You are going to share glory with me. Let’s go to war.”
The battle is for glory, for the thrown of creation. Praise God the outcome has never been in doubt, but the battle goes on every day in our personal, family, church, and community lives as to who will get the glory by what we do.
That’s why Paul told us, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1Cor 10:31)
THE ENEMY’S STRATEGY
What is Satan’s battle strategy in spiritual warfare?
Paul outlined the strategy of the devil. Speaking to this carnal church, the apostle wrote, “I am afraid, least as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” 2 Cor 11:3
Satan’s battle strategy is simple. He is out to deceive us, to trick us into buying his lies and temptations. He’s been at his plan for countless years, and he’s good at it.
Paul even said that Satan can disguise himself as an “angel of light” 2 Cor. 11:14
