The Real Enemy Series

Title: Who is the Enemy – 1?

“The REAL Enemy”

Text: I Peter 5:8

It seems pretty obvious from this Scripture who the enemy is. If I were to go around the room tonight with the microphone and ask each of you who is your enemy, most of you would respond the devil. However, some of our beliefs and words say otherwise. I want to teach on the subject of “Who is the Enemy?” and explore Scripture to make sure that we realize who our real enemy is.

Trouble seems to be as much of a part of life as breathing. Everyone has trouble at some point in their life. And human nature always wants to place the blame for its trouble on someone else. That started in the Garden of Eden. As soon as Adam had to explain his disobedience to God, he pointed the finger to his wife! When God said, “Adam, you have eaten from the forbidden tree?” Adam replied, “The woman you gave me, she gave me of the tree and I ate! It wasn’t my idea! It was hers!” That is my paraphrase, but that is pretty much what Adam said.

When trouble arises, the most natural thing to do is to place the blame on someone or something. Sadly, for the most part, many Christians have been falsely accusing God of being the cause of their troubles. The number one deception in the Church today is that our problems, trials and tribulations were sent by God to teach us something. I want to clear this up tonight because this lie says that trials and tribulations are God’s tools of developing and strengthening our character. The very extreme of this deception is that God Himself is the author of our troubles or that God is the One who makes us sick in order to teach us something. This is absolutely against the Word of God!

I am going to show you why this is against the basic foundation of Christianity. The very basic principle of the Christian life is to know that God put our sin, our sickness and disease, our sorrow, grief and poverty on Jesus at Calvary. For God to put any of this on us now to teach us or to strengthen our faith would be a miscarriage of justice. To believe that God has a purpose for your sickness would mean that Jesus bore your sickness in vain. What an insult to His love and care and compassion toward you!

James 1:6-8; “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

Luke 11:17; “But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house falls.”

From these Scriptures, if a man thinks, imagines, assumes or in any way has the idea that God is behind all his troubles, either by permission or commission, he will never resist it. And if he does not resist it, then he will certainly fail, because his hesitation will give Satan just the edge that he needs to defeat him. Jesus goes on to say that even Satan’s kingdom believes the same thing. We must know who our enemy is. If we say one moment that Jesus is behind this sickness, and then in the next breath we say that Jesus died for our sickness, that is a kingdom that is divided against itself and you will never receive victory as long as you keep speaking and believing both things. It doesn’t work!

In the world of the Spirit, there is a challenger, a counterfeit, an opponent of God and all His people and he knows his business well. But there is also the armour of God, the Word of God and the power to defeat this opponent. But we must know that the devil is the bad guy here!

James 4:7; “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

When we hesitate and wonder who is bringing the destruction in our life, then we are not opposing or resisting, but we are wondering. The devil then easily defeats us because we are sitting wondering if this sickness if from God, we are wondering if this financial struggle is coming from God. We are in the hospital bed saying, “Well, God is just trying to get my attention so I had to be put in this hospital bed so that I would have time for Him.” I have heard that with my own ears! We lay there thinking God is the One who put us there, when the Bible makes it very clear that the devil is the one that put us there. The Bible tells us that we must resist him, but we can’t resist him if we don’t know it is him. So, we must know that the devil is our enemy, not God! We have to start clearly distinguishing between what is coming from Satan and not blame God for something that is not His doing. This is why it is so important to understand who our enemy is.