I want to tell you the story of Farmer Joe who had an accident. When the accident first took place, Farmer Joe decided not to sue the trucking company responsible for the accident. Later he reconsidered.
In court, the trucking company’s fancy lawyer was questioning farmer Joe. "Didn’t you say, at the scene of the accident, ’I’m fine’?" questioned the lawyer.
Farmer Joe responded, "Well I’ll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule Bessie into the..."
"I didn’t ask for any details," the lawyer interrupted, "just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, ’I’m fine’!"
Farmer Joe said, "Well I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road..."
The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."
By this time, the Judge was interested in Farmer Joe’s answer and said to the lawyer, "I’d like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule Bessie."
Joe thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting real bad and didn’t want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans. Shortly after the accident, a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road with his gun in his hand and looked at me. He said, "Your mule was in such bad shape I had to shoot her. How are you feeling?" It was then that I said, "I’m fine."
Passing the buck, we have all done it. It means to shift the blame to someone else.
Let me begin today with a little history lesson for you. Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States serving from 1945–53. As the final running mate of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, Truman succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when Roosevelt died after months of declining health. Under Truman, the Allies successfully concluded World War II, which included the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan resulting in the death of 280,000 men, women, and children.
On his desk sat a plaque that read “The Buck Stops Here.”
On more than one occasion, President Truman referred to the desk sign in public statements. For example, in an address at the National War College on December 19, 1952 Mr. Truman said, "You know, it's easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you -- and on my desk I have a motto which says ‘The Buck Stops Here' -- the decision has to be made."
In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that, "The President--whoever he is--has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.”
Today we are going to begin a study on spiritual warfare.
The key concept is that spiritual warfare is a battle in which one must wrestle with "spiritual" wickedness and this "warfare" is not one of flesh and blood. Indeed, this is a battle against the "dark side", no matter where it lies.
Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. He wrote in his book “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
If you know the enemy and yourself you will not be put at risk of being harmed, injured, or destroyed. To not know the enemy will insure a life mixed with victories and defeats. But to know neither your enemy nor yourself will lead to the certainty of being harmed, injured, and possibly destroyed. So as we begin to understand spiritual warfare we must learn truths not only about the enemy but about ourselves also.
We cannot deny the presence of evil in this world. People are shot while watching a movie at a theatre. This week a man gets angry with his wife, shoots and kills his two and 4 year old sons. Many times, I am asked how people can carry out such horrifying actions. The answer is simple. An evil is present in this world. This evil is the first shot fired at us in this spiritual warfare.
I have questioned others as to where this evil began. Some say it was brought to us by the devil in the Garden. Some say it was Adam’s sin in the Garden. But the Bible declares evil existed long before then.
Ezekiel 28: 12 -14 “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and exquisite in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Your clothing was adorned with every precious stone—
red carnelian, pale-green peridot, white moonstone,
blue-green beryl, onyx, green jasper, blue lapis lazuli, turquoise, and emerald— all beautifully crafted for you
and set in the finest gold. They were given to you
on the day you were created. I ordained and anointed you
as the mighty angelic guardian. You had access to the holy mountain of God and walked among the stones of fire.
15 “You were blameless in all you did from the day you were created until the day evil was found in you.” There is a hint here that perhaps this angelic being was created by God to guard over the Garden of Eden. He was an angel of extraordinary beauty who had the ability to go into the presence of God at his desire. But inside was an evil that would eventually show itself.
Isaiah 14:12-14 “How you are fallen from heaven,
O shining star, son of the morning!
You have been thrown down to the earth,
you who destroyed the nations of the world.
For you said to yourself,
‘I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars.
I will preside on the mountain of the gods
far away in the north.
I will climb to the highest heavens
and be like the Most High.’”
Shining star is interpreted in Hebrew as Lucifer. He has many other names; Satan and the devil are a few. Lucifer decided to attempt to overthrow the creator and place himself on God’s throne. This attempt was fruitless and resulted in his banishment from heaven.
Revelation 12 tells us of a great battle that took place in heaven between the arch angel Michael along with those who continued in their faithfulness to God and Satan, along with one third of the angels who chose to rebel because they also had evil hidden inside. Satan and that third were banished from heaven and cast down to the earth.
But that leaves us with a question to ponder. Where did the evil that was found in Satan come from? We will have to ponder that question a bit longer.
Our next stop is in the Garden of Eden. On the sixth day of creation, we are told that God created man. Look at the psalmist description of man. Psalm 8:4-5 “what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor.” Just as the angelic beings were made to be close to God’s image of holiness so was man. So one must ask this question. If evil was found in the created angelic beings, could evil also lie hidden in the created man?
Let’s read Genesis 2:9 “The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
It was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was the fruit from this tree that would unlock man’s ability to understand good from evil. Like the angelic beings, man had evil in him from creation. What he lacked was the understanding of what evil was. In the same sense, he also did not understand what good was. He did not have to face what we face which is the balancing act between good and evil that each of us fights everyday. That is until he ate from the fruit. Than he clearly understood good and evil.
Jeremiah 17:9 states, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” This is the very of man that was created by God.
So now, we ponder this question. Where did the evil that was found in man come from?
Remember at the beginning we talked about Harry Truman and his plaque “The Buck Stops Here”? Well, God declares the same thing. Isaiah 45:7 “I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the Lord, am the one who does these things.”
The word for bad times in Hebrew is ra’. It is interpreted as evil. The word preceding it is bara. It meant to create. God declares in this verse “I ra bara” “I create evil. The buck stops here.”
I must confess when I discovered this element of truth I almost erased this whole sermon and thought about going in a different direction. The idea that God could create within his creation an element of evil was totally foreign to every aspect I had been taught about God. Rather than run I decided to dig farther down and try to understand why God would make that choice.
On the first day of creation, there was darkness. Then God created light. Without light, the recognition of darkness would not exist and without darkness, the recognition of light would not exist. On the third day of creation, the world was covered with water. He gathered the water into one place and land appeared. Without water, the recognition of land would not exist and without land, the recognition of water would not exist. On the sixth day, He created man and woman. They were nude but not ashamed. They did not have the knowledge necessary to determine whether nudity was good or evil. But once they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil their eyes were opened. Suddenly they understood what was good and what was evil. Suddenly they realized their nudity was evil and needed to be covered. Where did this sudden knowledge come from? It was engrained within them at creation.
Here is how Paul explained it in Romans 7:7 “Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” Paul’s desire to covet was part of his personality. He had no knowledge of whether it was good or bad until God’s law revealed it to him. It was then that he knew it was evil.
What was his response to this knowledge? Romans 7:8-9 “But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, (and I died).
Without darkness, we could not appreciate the light. Without the waters of the earth, we could not appreciate the dry land. In addition, without the knowledge of evil we could not appreciate the knowledge of good.
It was God’s desire to offer us redemption in order to fully understand his love for us. But their had to be a foe for us to be redeemed from. It was necessary to place evil within Satan for him to become our advisory. It was necessary to place evil within humankind in order for us to understand the difference between good and evil so that we could make a choice.
John Lennon wrote a song called “Imagine”. In the song, he portrayed a perfect world. But think a moment of what we would not get to experience if we lived in a perfect world. We would never experience compassion to someone in need or the joy from meeting that need. We would never experience comfort from others in our moments of sadness. Most importantly, we would never experience the grace and mercy of a loving God.
We will be spending several weeks on the subject of spiritual warfare. But before we come to understand the enemy, we must first come to understand ourselves and our role in the battle. I believe in spiritual warfare. I expect some resistance while I do this teaching over the next few weeks. I ask that you will cover me in prayer. There will be some hard teaching at times, the type that stomps on toes. But it is my desire to see that each of you lives a life free of spiritual bindings and strong in the faith.
