Spiritual Warfare - The Battle Series

The Christian life is a battle. There are those who will tell you that life will be peaches and roses, if you pray and keep a good attitude that you will have health, wealth, and prosperity. These are liars, they are false prophets. They are mostly “for profit” charlatans. Jesus and throughout the Scripture tells us that to follow Jesus will be a struggle.

Matthew 16:24 (CSB) Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

To deny oneself and to carry your cross does not sound much like health and wealth. We are to have our treasures in heaven. Jesus over and over again warns His disciples.

John 16:2–3 (CSB) They will ban you from the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God. 3 They will do these things because they haven’t known the Father or me.

When we look at the world around us and we see the evil and wickedness. Things that Bible calls bad are now being called good and things the Bible calls good, wholesome things are being called bad (ref. Isaiah 5:20ff). As Jesus said, these things happen because they do not know the father nor Himself.

When we address the causes of racial discourse and try to satisfy those that are rioting, we are only treating the symptoms, and not the root cause. The root cause for all these things is godlessness in our culture. This is nothing new, I’ve brought all this out just in the last few weeks. So what are we to do? That is the purpose of this series. Today’s message was are looking at what this struggle is, what the battle is about and where the battleground lies.

As we go through this series, we will be examining who are players in this battle, who are the soldiers, who are enemy we are going up against (the devil, the world, the flesh, and death). And we will consider our weapons of war (Ephesians 6:14-20) in the weeks ahead. Some of these things may surprise you as we examine them.

Ephesians 6:10–13

The story has been told of a mental hospital that many years ago devised an unusual test to determine when their patients were ready to go back into the world. They brought a candidate for release to a room where a water faucet was left on so that the sink overflowed and was pouring water all over the floor. Then they handed the patient a mop and told him to mop up the water. If the patient had enough sense to turn off the faucet before mopping up the water, he was ready to be released. But if, as in the case of many, the patient started mopping while the water was still flowing, they kept the patient for more treatment.

As Christians, all of us face the world in which we live and are confronted with the need to do battle with the evil that dominates it. But, like the patients in the mental hospital, until we realize where the source of that evil is, we will make no real contribution. [1]

Are we just mopping up water that continues to spill? Look at the rioting going on around the nation because of perceived racial injustices. Listen carefully, I am not saying there are not any social inequalities and prejudices out there, but what I am saying is that until hearts are change towards God in repentance, nothing will change.

It is with this in mind, I believe Paul wrote these words to the church in Ephesus. Paul concluded about our relationship with one another and within the family, and with working relationships in chapter 5 and the beginning of chapter 6. Now Paul turns his attention to our relationship with the world around us.

Ephesians 6:10–11 (CSB) Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil.

This spiritual warfare is not a matter of contending against godless philosophers, crafty priests, Christ-denying cultists, or infidel rulers. The battle is against demonic forces, against battalions of fallen angels, against evil spirits who wield tremendous power. Though we cannot see them, we are constantly surrounded by wicked spirit-beings. [2]

We will often say we are battling against the liberals, the democrats, and the godless politicians. We blame a lot on the LGBT/gay agenda. The fact of the matter is we keep lashing out and spinning our wheels on just the symptoms. We miss the root cause. We have a nation, a people, a culture, who has turned away from God. They deny the very existence of God. Simply put, in today’s culture cannot tolerate the notion of God because that would mean they would have to answer to a power greater than themselves, and that cannot be tolerated.