The Believer's Warfare, Part 1 B

You know when you're vulnerable?

When you think you're not. When you think, I've got all the information. I've mastered the book of Ephesians.

I've even memorized it. I have all the doctrinal data. I'm all right. I've got the principles. Or when you think you can handle Satan. I can handle that. I've got all the necessary equipment. The point is this, when you think you can do it, you can't. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You don't have to be a Christian to know that we live in a fallen world. Evil is present all the time. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, temptation isn't far away. It can show up on the job when you're driving, when you're reading, when you're watching TV, even when you're sitting in the pew on Sunday. Defending yourself against spiritual attack means putting on what the Bible calls the armor of God, and once you have it on, never taking it off.

So exactly how do you do that? How do you put on this amazing armor, and is the armor 100% effective? Consider that today as John MacArthur continues his study on Grace to You, called The Believer's Armor. John is helping you learn how to defend yourself against Satan's attack, effectively, decisively, and biblically. So now, with today's look at Ephesians chapter 6, here's John. We come to a brief kind of introduction, a look at the first section, verses 10 through 13.

Let me read it to you. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

In 1 Corinthians, I want you to notice the word of Paul in chapter 10 and verse 12. It says this, Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. You know when you're vulnerable? When you think you're not. When you think, I've got all the information. I've mastered the book of Ephesians.

I've even memorized it. I have all the doctrinal data. I'm all right. I know what to do. I've got the principles. Or when you think you can handle Satan. I can handle that.

I've got all the necessary equipment. The point is this, when you think you can do it, you can't. But on the other hand, when you depend upon God, there is nothing Satan can do to you that needs to cause you to lose the victory. Look at verse 13. On the other hand, there is no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man, but God is faithful. Now notice, this whole thing is dependent on the character of God, not just His power, but His faithfulness to make that power available. God is faithful who will not permit you to be tempted above that ye are able. God will never allow Satan any foothold in the life of a believer that is more than that believer can deal with, right? But will with the temptation also make the way to escape that you may be able to bear it.

There will never be a time in this warfare when you need to lose. There will never be a time when you cannot overcome in Christ if you depend on Him. In fact, the resource is going to be most available to you when you're the weakest. In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, Paul says, When I am weak, then I am strong. His strength is made perfect in my weakness. As long as you think you can handle it, you can't.

When you know you can't and depend on Him, He can. Listen, if you're a guard on duty, and let's say you're guarding and you're looking for the approach of an enemy army, all of a sudden the enemy army approaches your fort, what do you do? Do you run down from the parapet where you've been watching and run out there with your little gun and start fighting the enemy?

Not if you're smart you don't. Guards don't go and fight the war, they tell the commander. And the sooner you learn that in the Christian life, the better off. When Satan attacks, don't fight it, report to the commander. As David said to the Philistines, The battle is the Lord's. The battle is the Lord's. Let him fight it, he knows what he's doing.

Let him be the one who fights the battle. And so we simply need to face the reality that the power is there. Ephesians 6, 10 tells us, We can be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. There's no reason for feeling defeated. There's no reason to think that a believer is so inundated by Satan that he can't get out of it.

There's no bondage so great that there's not a way to escape if he takes the resources available. And they are one confidence in the power of God. Putting on the armor is the other one, and that must be done as well. So, the preparation. The Holy Spirit said to Jehoshaphat one time, The battle is not yours, it's God's.

Boy, what a great thing to know. Because I wouldn't want to get into this warfare which is something I can't even see, something spiritual, something far beyond me. I wouldn't want to get into that and fight without even being able to see the enemy or know how he operated. I'm so glad the battle belongs to the Lord. And when the temptation comes, Satan sends his confusions.

Then I report to the commander-in-chief. I ask him to purge my life and make me as righteous a vessel as can be. And in that righteousness I stand fearless, protected by him. From there we move to the armor because that is the second way we have to deal with the enemy. Verse 11, Put on the whole armor of God.

We'll stop right there. We're going to get into that in detail, but a believer needs to have the armor. It doesn't do a bit of good unless you put the armor on.

You can have people sitting around you calling demons out of you until they're blue in the face. And it won't do any good until the armor is on. And if the armor is on, you don't need all those people doing that. Because the dependence upon God's power and obedience to put on the available armor is the only resource the believer needs.

That's the only way the Bible ever deals with this problem in terms of the individual. The phrase put on, by the way, is interesting because in the original it means put on once and for all. This isn't like game uniforms, you know, where you just put it on on Saturday when it's game time. You put the armor on once and leave it on the rest of your life. You never lay your armor down until you meet the Lord. You put your armor on and keep it on.

And if you don't have it on, you become vulnerable at any point. And so Paul, probably chained to a Roman soldier as he wrote this, seized the whole of the Roman soldier's uniform and all the armor that went with it as a perfect illustration of how the believer is to be prepared to fight the enemy. Verse 14, he speaks of this armor. The loins are girt about with truthfulness, the breastplate of righteousness, the feet shot at the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. This is the basic necessity for the believer. Depend on the Lord and put the armor on and leave it on.

And that's why I'm saying, people, you know, we are so gullible sometimes because we think that because we have facts we're all right. We need to have the armor. The armor goes beyond the facts to the response of righteous living.

We're going to see that. If you want to win in the Christian life, get the armor on. Get your life right because it's going to be a battle till the day you die. That brings us thirdly to the enemy. Verse 11, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. In other words, we know we have the power of the Lord and His might.

We put on the whole armor. We're ready, obedient with our armor, depending on divine power and are able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Always the believer is to stand because Satan will attack him. You don't need to go find the devil. You know, I always worry about people who rush into situations and start calling on demons and calling out demons and talking to demons because you're really delving into an area where you have no information.

You just hang around long enough, they'll be there, and you really don't need to get involved with them. You deal with the power of God and you deal with the armor that you have and God through that will take care of the enemy. You stand firm.

Now, we're never told in the Bible to attack the devil either. We're just told to resist him and he'll flee. Stand firm. Hold your ground. And that's what he says here. And who is the enemy?

Easy to see. The devil. The devil. People say, oh, there's no devil. The devil is just a Halloween costume.

Horned tail and two little horns and all of that, pitchfork. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible tells us there's a real devil, that this is nothing but Lucifer, the greatest angel. Read Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. It talks about this angel, the anointed cherub, the one who sparkled with all the jewels of heaven, the highest being God ever made. This anointed angelic being wanted to be like God, and in the sin of pride he was thrown out of heaven. And Revelation 12 says, like a great dragon he fell and with his tail he swept a third of the angels with him. So Lucifer, this fallen angel, the highest of the angels, leads a host of one third of all the angels God ever created. And there are literally millions of them. And these then become the demonic enemy.

This is the devil. Jesus believed in him. He talked with him in Matthew 4. He talked about him in John 14, John 16 and elsewhere. The apostles believed in him. Paul talked about him. Peter talked about him. James talked about him.

If you look at history, you know there's a devil. He tempted Eve in Genesis 3. He tempted Christ in Matthew 4. He perverted God's Word in Matthew 4 and he opposed God's work in Zechariah 3. He hindered God's servant in 1 Thessalonians 2 and he hinders the gospel in 2 Corinthians 4. He snares the wicked in 1 Timothy 3. He desires the nations in Revelation 16. He's an angel of light in 2 Corinthians 11.

He fights with Michael and Jude. He brought sin into the world in Genesis 3. He now has the whole world lying in his lap in 1 John 5. He's been all through history.

He has personal titles. The Bible calls him in Ezekiel 28, the anointed cherub. In John 16, the prince of this world. In Ephesians 2, the prince of the power of the air. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, he's called the god of this age. And in Luke 11, 15, the prince of demons. Fifty-two times he's called Satan, which means adversary.

That is his most common title. Thirty-five times he's called devil, diabolos, which means slanderer. He is called the old serpent, the great dragon, the roaring lion, the evil one, Abaddon, Apollyon, tempter, accuser, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience. He is described by our Lord in John 8, 44 as a murderer and as a liar. He works overtly and covertly with flat out doctrines of devils and with seducing spirits. He is a sinner in 1 John 3, 8.

He is an imitator in 2 Corinthians 11, 13 to 15. He is some formidable enemy. Lucifer, fallen from heaven, the ruler of a vast host of demon beings who have been around for centuries and thousands of years since first they fell and first they were created.

They've been here a long time. They are wily, they are clever, they are subtle, they are cunning, they are invisible, they are superhuman and they are our enemy. And it says in verse 11 that they operate on the basis of the wiles of the devil, methodia, methods. And the word is used in Ephesians 4.14 and translated cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive us.

About what? Like children tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. The emphasis is that the wiles of the devil are lies, false doctrine, false religion, false teaching. He is a liar and the father of it. He is a deceiver. His whole system deceives subtly, supernaturally, cleverly, powerfully. He has deceived mankind the world over with false religious systems.

It's incredible how sophisticated they come. Can you believe that in the Old Testament Satan deceived Israel into worshiping idols and turning their back on the true God? Can you remember that in the New Testament Satan deceived Israel into murdering their own Messiah? Could you believe that in the future he will deceive Israel into thinking the Antichrist is Christ? He is a deceiver. He is subtle. His area is lies, heresies and false doctrine.

He will lie about everything, whether simple or sophisticated. And if I sometimes get upset about false doctrines and false cults and false teaching, the reason is because I believe all of that stuff, whether it's a denial of the truth of the Word of God, or whether it's Zoroastrianism, whether it's the new liberation that denies God's order for the family, whether it's homosexuality, the new morality, whether it's the cults and isms and schisms and spasms and the rest of that stuff, or whether it's old line religions of the world. If I get excited about that, it is because those things should be blasted with a fierceness equal to their hellish origins because they are from Satan.

They are the wiles of the devil. And he is clever. He moves into the world and prevents the Word from reaching the hearts of men. He snatches the Word, Luke 8 says.

He twists and perverts it. He has men stand in pulpits who deny the authority of Scripture, deny the deity of Christ, deny salvation by grace, deny the second coming, deny judgment, deny sin, deny everything. He teaches a lifestyle that damns. He involves himself in politics and governments and nations as well as individual lives. To Christians he comes and creates doubt in their minds as he did to Eve and did throughout the history of God's people. He creates persecutions against them.

He hinders their service. He infiltrates the church with his tears. He tempts us to self-reliance, to doubt, to lies, to immorality, to worldliness, to pride, to discouragement, and on and on and on. And this is subtle, really subtle. People might think the longer you're a Christian and the more mature you become, the easier it gets.

No, because the more you know, the more subtle the temptations become. And so this is a formidable enemy. But it isn't just the devil. Look at verse 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

And keep it in mind, people, our enemy is not the system, the world as we see it. You know, they may persecute us. And someday they may do to us what they did to Jesus. John 15, he said, don't be surprised if they persecute you and kill you and hate you. They hated me. They persecuted me. They killed me. You wouldn't expect them to treat the servants any different than they treated their Lord.

So don't be surprised. But the real enemy is not flesh and blood. The real weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies, those are all terms to describe demons. It is a demon empire that is the real enemy and we wrestle. And the word wrestle is not talking about a simple athletic game. In the Roman times when the wrestlers went into the ring to wrestle, the idea was to get two hands around the neck of the man in a stranglehold and press not only his shoulders but his head to the ground. And if his head was on the ground for a certain time, he died.

If only his shoulders touched and you didn't get his head down, he lived to fight again. And Satan wrestles with us through his demons and we with them and it is a life and death matter. They read the Bible.

They know the way it's charted to come out. They know there's a bottomless pit. They know there's an eternal place created for them and they will do everything they can to get a stranglehold on the things of God to change that. And so it is a warfare on a level unhuman and it is anything but a sport. In fact, humans are just duped into a supernatural war. They're just duped to fight Satan's causes. And so our enemy is a subtle enemy. You know, whenever I begin to think about how clever he is and then you see people, you know, who want to delve into this demon stuff, boy, you don't know what you're getting into.

You can't handle it. John Weldon, a friend of mine who has done so much research on the cults, is probably the most prolific cult researcher around today, sent me a report and in it he discusses something of this issue and this is what he says. God did not make us in such a way that we can function either safely or effectively in a demon environment, even if it's neutral, which it clearly isn't. Who knows what demons can do in their own environment and what interrelationships exist or can be manufactured between their world and ours? We weren't made to fly around in astral realms. Under the existence of the demonic, one is playing in an astral pig pen filled with evil and hostility. We were not made with the intellectual capacities to separate the good from the evil, the true from the false in the occult realm. For example, the prophet Daniel was a brilliant and godly young man. However, even he had to be given additional wisdom from God in a special way to be able to have discernment in occult matters.

False involvement in such will always produce faulty conclusions because man as a fallen creature does not have the necessary equipment or ability to sort out demonic matters. He's right. Report to the commander is all you need to do. Get the armor on. Don't mess with the dominion that you can't even comprehend. And so, this is a look at the enemy for whom we need the armor, for whom we need the preparation. And to understand the battle is important, people. It isn't going to be easy for you to live the Christian life.

It isn't easy for me either, but I'll tell you one thing. The only things that matter in life, the only things that taste sweet in life are the things you work hard to get, right? The things where you see real victory. The greatest joy day to day is to know that I've overcome Satan. Satan is around.

His demons are all over the place. They know me. I told you about that.

I walked in a room one time where a person was full of demons and the demons started screaming at me, get him out of here. They know who I am. They know me.

But you know something? That's the only time I ever got in a conversation with them. I don't even fool with them. You know why?

Because the Bible doesn't tell me to do that. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what kind of games they play. That's the domain I don't get in. I don't talk with them. I don't pay any attention to them.

I just get my armor on. I report to the commander and God has continued to bless the ministry here and we haven't paid any attention to that. Listen, they know we're here, but I don't care how many of them attack me, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, I don't care if they all gang up. I don't care if Satan stands against me himself.

You know something greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world? And I have a resource in Christ to deal with that domain. Listen, I'm convinced that they've been trying to stop what God's doing here, but they cannot succeed. They cannot succeed as long as we are faithful. To put the strength where it belongs in God, in humility to know we have no strength in our own, and to keep the armor on, to live a righteous life. I don't care what all hell amasses against us.

It is impotent, even if we had but a little strength as the church in Philadelphia. And so, the story ends with victory, verse 13. From the preparation, to the armor, to the enemy, to the battle, to the victory. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. What I love there is, you may be able to stand. You can stand. There is victory if the armor is on and the confidence is in the Lord.

Don't get caught with your armor off. You say, well, when is the evil day? You want to know when the evil day is?

Today, yesterday, tomorrow, any day. The evil day is the day when evil reigns in the world, and that's as long as Satan is the prince of the power of the air. Report to the commander that victory is yours. Resist the devil. He'll flee from you. The hymn writer said, Am I a soldier of the cross?

But that was the wrong question. Yes, we're all soldiers of the cross. The question is, what kind of a soldier am I? Do I win?

Do I lose? No reason to know anything but victory. And with victory comes joy, happiness, contentment, and peace, and that's the way God intended it.

That's the way He wants it for you. Let's pray. Oh God, may we be dependent on your strength, wearing the armor, knowing it's a warfare, but knowing that even the warfare is joyous because victory is ours every day, every moment as we count on you. May we know that the enemy can do nothing to us as long as our strength is in you, our armor is on. Help us to see what this means practically and to be equipped for the battle we've been in all along, but maybe getting even hotter now in these days in which we live as we approach the coming of Christ, in Christ's name, amen. You've been listening to John MacArthur, pastor, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and the Bible teacher here on Grace to You.

John's current study from Ephesians chapter 6 is titled The Believer's Armor. It's a series that's showing you how to stand strong against Satan's attacks. John, today you painted a vivid picture of just how real the battle is and how clever Satan is in his attempts to attack us and derail us. We're up against a formidable enemy, but what you said that caught my ear, and it's encouraging, is that Satan will flee if you know what to do, if you resist him.

So talk about that. Yeah, the Bible couldn't be more explicit, resist the devil and he'll flee from you. So the question is, how do you resist? Look, if you just take that one statement, resist the devil and he will flee from you, the immediate question should be, okay, how do I resist, right? I want the devil to flee. Luther threw an ink pot at him.

Yeah, I don't think that was very effective. So if the Bible says, resist the devil and he'll flee from you, I want to know how to resist the devil. And the answer to that is the believer's armor. That's how you resist the devil.

You're armed to resist. And that's what we're learning in this incredibly foundational and essential series on the believer's armor. And I just remind you that we have produced a study guide that goes with this lengthy series. If you don't have a copy of the believer's armor study guide, it's reasonably priced. It's a 200 page paperback book that goes along with every day's radio broadcast.

So you're following an outline and it's consistent with what you're hearing. It'll enrich your learning experience. We used to do this way back in the eighties and we're relaunching the study guides. We would love to get you started in using them because they really intensify your learning experience. You of course know you can order one from grace to you.

Yes, you can. And friend, the armor God provides is foundational to living a life that glorifies our Lord, overcomes sin, and fights off discouragement. So I encourage you to get this study guide and take a deep look at each piece of the armor and find out how that can equip you to deal with any spiritual attack. To pick up our new believers armor study guide, contact us today.

You can place your order at our website, gty.org, or call us at 800-55-grace. The believers armor study guide costs $11 and shipping is free. It's a great resource for personal devotions and group studies. Again, to get a copy for yourself or for a friend, call 800-55-grace or go to gty.org.

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That's gty.org. And now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and be here tomorrow when John looks at how you can stand strong even against the worst of Satan's attacks. Join us for the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.