Supernatural Warfare (Part One)

 You can watch this message here: https://youtu.be/kr9NTGyfE4o 

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, that 40-day period –let’s call it a 40-day journey – during which many Christians make a special effort to know Christ better than they have to this point known Him. And so this first Sunday – the first of seven which culminates on Resurrection Sunday – this is a good time to talk about our own journey toward the Celestial City, and how we can learn to know Jesus better than we have to this point.

 

We cannot journey successfully, effectively, and efficiently toward that Celestial kingdom unless we recognize the supernatural battle all around us AND we utilize the supernatural weapons God has given us for those battles.

 

I preached this series some 18 months ago, during the summer of 2019. I want to now revisit those messages, because I believe serious persecution is coming to the church in America. And I consider it my responsibility to you who consider me your pastor to help us prepare ourselves for whatever may come to us.

 

A few weeks ago, I told you the story of my encounter with a spider’s web. I’d have walked right into it if at the last moment the sunlight had not glistened off its nearly invisible strands.  I then made application to the supernatural web Satan creates to trap each one of us. And because his web is supernatural, we are easily caught in it because so he has deceived many of us to think if we can’t see it or touch it, then we don’t need to worry about it.

 

The analogy I am about to use is not perfect, I admit that. But I use it as an example of how we are surrounded by things we cannot see or feel with our natural senses. But those things nonetheless are real enough that we use them all the time. We only need some kind of instrumentation to make them knowable.

 

Most of us in this room own a cell phone. With it we can call anyone anywhere in the world by simply dialing the correct number. Our phones are unlike the old rotary phones with which we are all familiar. Our home phones were attached to a chord that were connected to wires in the wall. Those wires were themselves connected a pole not far from the house. From there our voice travelled along wires to a central switchboard and from there to another phone across the city, across the country, even (after cables were laid in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) across the world.

 

But now, without wires, without cables, without physical attachments, I tap the correct numbers onto my phone’s screen and invisible electronic waves transmit those numbers to a cell tower somewhere in the area, which then transmits those invisible electronic waves to a satellite in stationary orbit above the country until, ultimately, those invisible electronic waves cause the phone on the other end to ring.

 

What’s my point? You and I live day after day in a natural world surrounded by radio waves and solar rays and even molecular compounds like H2O that we can neither see nor feel unless we have the right equipment – like phones or televisions – to make visible or audible what is otherwise invisible and inaudible.

 

If that is what happens in the natural world around us, then why is it so inconceivable, so fairy tale-ish to believe an unseen and intangible supernatural world surrounds us – ESPECIALLY since evidence of it – especially evidence of supernatural evil – exists all around us.

 

And this is important: Since there is a supernatural evil, then it must logically follow that there is a supernatural evil ONE who orchestrates that evil.

 

The famous Chinese general and strategist, Sung Szu, wrote in his classic, The Art of War: Knowing the enemy enables you to take the offensive. Knowing yourself enables you to stand on the defensive.

 

My purpose today, at the beginning of my series of messages, is to remind us not only WHO is our enemy and what is at stake here – but to also remind us how to meet AND defeat him.

 

So, who is our enemy?

Perhaps one of the best-known passages of the New Testament dealing with supernatural warfare is in the sixth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. He could have just as easily written this letter to the church at our home. We will revisit this text many times over the next several weeks.

 

“For 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. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.”  (6:12ff)

Listen! This is important. I forget this principle far too often, and I need this message to remind MYSELF – our enemy is NOT other people, although in this supernatural battle, Satan uses people to do what he cannot do without human help. It is the devil and his supernatural minions that seduce and manipulate humans to murder, to ravage, to destroy, to ruin others. But they are not really the enemy. Satan and his minions are the enemy.

 

Listen to this warning in Revelation 12: “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him . . . . For this reason . . . woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.”

 

And we can expect such malevolent evil to grow steadily worse as we move toward the second coming of Christ. We should EXPECT the devil to seduce as many souls into the fiery hell as he can before his time runs out.

 

So, what evidence do we have before us in 2021 of the foul supernatural activities of Satan? Although like radio waves unseen by the natural eye, the eye focused on the supernatural can see Satan’s activities nearly everywhere – including in many churches.

 

As an example of his supernatural manipulation of people headed for hell, consider how many gravely serious cultural changes we have witnessed just in our lifetime, changes that always result in the destruction of homes, families, nations, and individual lives.

 

In the 1950s it would have been considered unthinkable by virtually every American that in 2021 we would so nonchalantly kill nearly 3,000 babies every day in American abortion clinics. And not just kill them, but then we permit them by law to sell their torn apart body parts for experimentation and research. 

 

Think of it!  None of us in the 1950s – just a few years from learning of the experiments the Nazis performed on men, women, and children in their concentration camps – none of us would have ever imagined Americans would do the same thing in our lifetime.

 

Since the murderous Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973 allowing women to kill their children in the womb (and now, in states like New York, even after they are born) America has killed more than 62 million pre-born children. Let that number sink in a moment. 62 million.

 

That’s more than the combined populations of New York State, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina! In your mind’s eye, wipe those states off the map. They no longer exist. We’ve slaughtered their populations in the womb.

 

Our deviant culture has become so upside down in our lifetime that if you mistreat a dog, you can go to jail. But if you kill a baby in an abortion clinic, you can get invited to a daytime television show to boast about it.

 

What else do we know of the supernatural carnage triggered by the devil in our lifetime? In 1950 would anyone have imagined the US Supreme Court would give same-sex marriages legal status in our country – and that a growing number of lower courts throughout the nation would consider it hate speech to argue against same-sex unions?

 

Of course, sexual sin has been with us even since forever, but in 1950 would anyone have thought that unmarried couples living and sleeping together would be the stuff of television sitcoms and Hollywood movies?

 

Yet the supernatural enemy of the family unit has convinced most Americans that living together outside of marriage is as innocent a thing as strolling through the park on a Saturday afternoon. Who would have thought that possible in 1950?

 

And if we still need evidence of a supernatural yet unseen enemy, only a few years after WW II when we defeated Nazism – NAZI, as some of you might know, is an acronym for the German phrase: National Socialist German Workers Party – in 1950, just after we defeated Nazism and were about to be embroiled in a decades-long cold war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR) would any of us believed it possible that in our lifetime we would actually VOTE socialists into our White House, congress and state houses?

 

I could go on and on with evidence of the supernatural blindness that has enveloped our great nation, our families – and many of those we interact with day by day – but my point is already made.  We are engaged in a fierce and deadly supernatural Satanic battle for our eternal souls.

 

We might not think we’re engaged in it. We might not want to be engaged in it. We might rather sit back and pretend none of it is happening. But to think that is to already be a casualty of that battle. To think that is to already be lulled to sleep so you can’t rescue anyone from Satan’s claws.

The battle – life itself – is all about the supernatural. The unseen. The intangible. But it is the very, very real foundation of life and death. That is why we will spend time over the next weeks reminding ourselves of the supernatural tools God has given us to be successful in that battle.

 

Please don’t miss these instructions, for – as Paul tells us in his second letter to the church at Corinth: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4)

So, what application can we make with what you’ve just read? Well, as a reminder, here are the main points of today’s message:

 

Point number one: Know your enemy. Paul tells us in that sixth chapter of his letter to the Christians at Ephesus, our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood, but against supernatural forces of wickedness. 

 

Number two. Know what is at stake in this ongoing battle – and that is the eternal destiny of our souls, and the souls of our families, and loved ones – an eternity in either a fiery hell, or an eternity in the very presence of our merciful and loving God whom we call Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

Next time we will turn our attention to what the Holy Spirit tells us through Paul about how to not only protect ourselves and those we love, but how to also defeat our supernatural enemy.

 

As I said at the beginning of this message, we have entered the season of Lent. Whether it is your intent to observe the season of Lent, or it is not your intent, we all must know this critical point: The time to draw closer to Jesus is upon us. As the Scripture tells us: Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.