The Real War - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, October 21st. Most people live their lives unaware of the conflict that rages all around them. Today's podcast focuses on spiritual warfare to help believers be more discerning. When a nation is at war, the minds of the people are focused on that war, captivates their minds, stirs their emotions, but threatens their security.

And when there is war, there is always a threat of the loss of life physically, broken relationships, and of course, disaster when it comes to material possessions. But there's another war that I want to talk about. It is a war that the Bible calls a spiritual war.

It is one that every single one of us are involved in. And the tragedy is that most people do not even have any idea they're even in a war. They don't even realize there's an enemy, that there's anything going on except what they see. Because you see, their idea is seeing is believing. But that is totally unscriptural. Seeing is not necessarily believing.

Because there are some things that cannot be seen that are very, very, very real. And the spiritual warfare that all of us have to be involved in is a real war. And if you'll turn to 1 Peter chapter 5, I want us to read two verses in this short epistle. 1 Peter chapter 5. And then I want to refer to many other passages, and I want to encourage you to keep your Bible open and a pencil and piece of paper, because I want you to jot down some things that I think will be very helpful.

There's one area of this whole warfare that I want to emphasize primarily, but I want to give you a little background. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8 and 9 says, Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. The Scripture says that our enemy is not simply one singular person by whom we know as the devil or Satan, but rather a whole confederacy of evil spirits. Because you'll recall that Jesus referred to the kingdom of Satan, that is, that he is the ruler over a kingdom. And you'll recall that Jesus gave his apostles authority over evil spirits when he sent them out in their commission. So that our enemy is not only Satan, but our enemy includes all those demonic spirits, all those evil spirits that make up the spirit world.

And so we're not talking about something that is an illusion, we're talking about something that is very real. And if you'll turn back to Ephesians for just a moment, chapter 6, and you hear Paul describe these and give them different names. Ephesians chapter 6, beginning in verse 10. Because here's his challenge in this warfare and he says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Then he says, put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. And then listen, for our struggle, that is our warfare, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. We're talking about a whole array of enemy. We're talking about a whole kingdom, a rulership of those that are opposed to everything that God stands for and everything that you and I believe in. And so when you think about the fact that Jesus gave his apostles authority, he said to them in the 10th chapter of Matthew, he says, I give you authority over these spirits.

And when they came back, they were absolutely amazed at what happened when they exercised the authority Jesus gave them over these evil spirits. So when somebody says, well, if we're in a warfare, where's the enemy? I'm here to tell you the enemy is all around you. Now, the Bible says concerning the key ruler and the general of all of our enemy, his name is Satan, the devil. He's called a dragon. He's called a murderer. He's called the father of all lies.

He has many names in the scriptures. His evil spirits are said to be foul. They're said to be evil. They're said to be unclean. They're deceiving spirits. And the key one of those spirits is Beelzebub, which means God of flies.

That's a good name for him, of course. And so we face this kind of warfare. Now, I want to say again, the tragedy is most folks say, war? What warfare?

Now, when you're already a captive, after a while you sort of forget what's going on. And when you do not realize that, you will be defeated over and over and over again. And here's what will happen.

You will look for somebody to blame or some circumstance to blame your defeat on. And Satan, of course, very camouflaged through it all, takes advantage of that kind of a response. Now, I want to say this about our enemy.

Our enemy, if you think about their nature, they are invisible, which makes it very difficult to battle an enemy you cannot see. They are intelligent beings. Jesus spoke to them as intelligent beings and they spoke back to him. It's interesting when you think about the evil kingdom, the evil realm, that Satan would confront Jesus and attack him and tempt him. But nowhere in the Bible does it give us any evidence that these demonic powers would do that. When Jesus comes upon a scene, demonic powers, the evil spirits submit. They yield. They cry out to him. Don't send us to the abyss. Release us.

Let us go. But Satan would attack the Lord Jesus Christ and oftentimes attack him through other people. And people are used by demonic powers. Satan is alive.

He is very real. And if you think about how successful he's been. And I believe how desperate he's becoming because the devil has decided in our nation to just come out in the open and say, here I am and I am at work.

Now, one of the good things about that is this, if anything good can be about it. The good thing is that Satan must be getting desperate because he's coming out in the open. He must know that his time is coming to an end because he's just coming out and saying it like it is, telling it like it is. He is the devil. He is Satan and people who are intellectual, who have all kinds of degrees, who would rationalize or who would reason most anything. Now bowing down to a spirit, a godless, evil, wicked, demonic spirit and worshiping him.

They have given themselves totally over to the devil, worshiping him and have become totally depraved in their nature. So we do have a very, very strong, dangerous enemy that every single one of us has to face every day. Now when you think about this enemy, let me just remind you that he does have certain limitations. The devil, nor any of his angels, nor any of his demonic powers, not a single one of them is omnipresent. They can't be everywhere at the same time. They're not omnipotent. They don't have all power. They're not omniscient. They don't know everything. Their limitations and those limitations ultimately will bring them to the Bible. What the Bible says is the pit where they will burn, where they will be tormented day and night forever and ever and ever. That is their ultimate destination.

They know that. And Satan attempting to destroy the kingdom of God is working day and night everywhere all over the world. That's why he epitomizes himself in rulers of nations to bring about war.

They become demonically controlled, absolutely depraved in their mind. And the only thing that matters is power, power, power, power, control. That's the way the devil wants to operate because you remember that his reason for falling as an angel was he wanted to be equal with God.

He wanted the same power that God himself has. That's the kind of enemy we have. And if you'll think about it, you just think about all the great saints of God who've been defeated by him.

So the very idea that you and I could be a part of this warfare day after day and never even think about preparing to live our life day by day, then we are indeed in for trouble. Now, so that's who the enemy is in brief. Well, what, if you think about the enemy, what as you consider who he is and his power and how he operates in the human life, what would you say, for example, would be his objective? Well, his objective is fourfold.

I want you to jot them down because I'm here to tell you he's victorious over and over and over again. When you think about his objective, his first objective is this, and that is to get us to doubt the word of God. If he can get us doubting the word of God, then he knows he has a foothold in a person's life. Now, I'm going to come in just a moment to the idea of who can be defeated by the devil and so forth. But first of all, his idea is to get us to doubt the word of God.

When a person begins to doubt the scriptures, they open themselves up to major problems. And if you'll recall, this is exactly the way Satan operated with Eve. The first thing he said to her, he said, Now, wait a minute. He said, Is that really what God said? And if you'll recall later on, the Bible says that Eve said that Satan had deceived her. And how he did it was by getting her to question the word of God. People who attempt to be intellectually honest, as they say, and that they're too smart and too intelligent to believe this old book that was written all these years ago and that is full of errors, they say.

I'm here to tell you, my friend, when a person says, I know I don't believe all the Bible. Here's what they're doing. It's like a soldier being on the battlefield on the front line and the enemy is coming. And he's standing there unloading his weapon.

There is absolutely no way to win in that kind of a battle. And people who doubt the word of God are defeated by the devil, his angelic host over and over and over again, and will give some rational physical material explanation for that problem and never understand what's going on. So the first thing he does is to get us to doubt the word of God. The second thing he does is to distract us from spiritual things.

And how does he do that? He does it by majoring on that which is material, majoring on things that are sensual, majoring on things that are our personal desires or ambitions and goals that are not spiritual things at all. And so what he does is to distract us by things that appear to be alluring and helpful or attractive to us. And so what he does is he gets us busy.

Now watch this. He gets us busy. He gets us schedules real full, real busy so that we have little or no time for anything spiritual. When is the last time you said, well, you know, I know I should meditate upon the word of God, but I just don't have time. I know I should read the Bible, but somehow I just get so busy. I know I should pray, but I'm telling you, there are just so many things that crowd into my life. I just don't seem to have time to pray and read the Bible like I should. I'm going to tell you, Satan is winning a victory in your life because that is one of his objectives to distract you from spiritual things. And that is to get us busy thinking about doing so many other things that we really have little or no time for God. Now, if you just stop and think for a minute, you mean no time for God who created all of this, who controls my every heartbeat, who could snap me out of this life just that instant, no time for him. Well, but you see, man, I'm busy. Look at all the things I've got to do. That is Satan's objective.

And if you're one of those persons who's been saying in order to read the Bible more, in order to give more, in order to spend more time with God, in order to be more faithful in church, in order to serve the Lord. But I'm telling you, he has won his objective in your life. You can raise and rationalize all you want to. But the truth is, he is winning in your life. That is one of his objectives. His third objective.

Get this one down. His third objective is to disable us in the Lord's service. To disable us in the Lord's service.

So how does he do that? Well, he gets us, he leads us to a point of temptation, gets us to sin in some area. And sometimes that sin will indeed disable us for the Lord's service because it so fouls up our life and so distorts and distresses our life.

And oftentimes so positions us that we cannot serve God because we have heard our testimony. And then another way he disables us by getting us to sin. And then what does he do? Isn't this amazing how he operates? He tempts us with something that he says that you really ought to have this.

You really need this. And so we we take the bait. And you know what he does?

He turns right around and says, look at you. You have sinned against God. You are no Christian. You are no good. You are full of guilt. You're unworthy and you're unfit.

It's exactly what he does. And so what happens? We get to feeling guilty. We get to feeling unfit and unworthy and therefore incapable. We say, well, you know, I really just can't do that because I just don't feel worthy of serving God and I don't feel capable.

And you know what's happening? Satan's objective is to disable you in the Lord's service. And so he begins to harass you about your your inability and harass you about your sense of self-worth and your sense of self-esteem.

And you're not good enough. And look at your past guilt and look at your past sin until finally you just give in. And what happens is he's won his objective again. Then the fourth way he reaches out to get his objective accomplished is in destroying us physically.

So what does he use? Alcohol, drugs or physical harm in some fashion or mentally and emotionally. A person can become so emotionally damaged that they cannot do what God would have them to do. His objective is very clear. And as we said here, simply four things he's trying to do. And that is to destroy us in every way he possibly can.

But he does that. He does that in a simple way. First of all, by getting us to doubt the word of God, distracting us with other things, disabling us in the in the Lord's work in some fashion, then ultimately destroy us. Now, he cannot destroy a child of God, but friend, he can put you in such a position.

So disabled you, you become absolutely worthless. Now, if you and I could talk about his primary strategy for just a moment and there are two words I want you to notice before we get to this passage. Well, let's begin with it. Verse eight. He says, be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil prowls about. That is, his strategy is the prowl about. That is looking, seeking. That does not mean he's looking for somebody because there are enough demonic spirits out there and the devil is active enough and has all them active enough.

When he's prowling about, what he really means is he's prowling about or they are prowling about your life and my life, just waiting for the right opportunity to attack, waiting to viciously attack us. But there's another word I want you to turn back to Ephesians chapter six, if you will. Remember this word in chapter six when he's speaking of the devil, he says in verse eleven, he says, put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the what? The schemes of the devil. Now, what are the schemes of the devil? The schemes of the devil or the devil's methods or the devil's system, that is, how does he operate?

We said now that one of the ways he operates, he decides what his objective is and his objective is fourfold. To doubt the word of God, to become distracted with material, sensual things, personal desires that we have, to disable us in the Lord's work and ultimately to destroy us. And when you think about what he says about these schemes, I want you to go back to second Corinthians chapter two and look, if you will, in verse eleven. In verse eleven, he says, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes. That is, if we don't know his schemes, the devil is going to get the best of us and we're going to get defeated.

If we don't know his wiles, his schemes, his methods, the way he operates, he says we are going to be defeated. And then if you'll look in chapter eleven of the same book, chapter eleven and verse fourteen, the way he operates here, he says in verse fourteen, and no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. If you and I could wrap up Satan's primary strategy in one word, here's the word, and the word is deception. Deception is to tell someone something that is not true in order to get them to do something they otherwise would not do. So we tell them a falsehood in order to persuade them that something is right when it is not.

Or they should do this when they should not do it. Deception is his key. And if you'll go back to the book of Genesis and you'll recall that this was the problem with Eve, and you know this one by heart, don't have to turn to this one. But in the thirteenth verse of Genesis chapter three, Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate. Now how did he deceive her? He misled her. He gave her some false information and she took it. He said to her, Well, if you eat this, you'll be like God.

You'll know good and evil. Part of that was true, but she was not like God. And he deceived her by misleading her. And the devil has been using that tactic and that form of strategy all down through the years. And the truth is, every single time you and I are tempted by the devil, Satan is misleading us by telling us something that is not true. Now you really need this when we don't.

Well, if you had this, you would really feel content and complete when we would not. And so over and over and over again, Satan's tactic is always that of deception, bringing us to believe something that is not true. Thank you for listening to The Real War. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24 seven station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.