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As neo-paganism moves deeper into the mainstream of Middle America, disciples of Jesus need Paul's reminder that we are in battle against spiritual evil — "principalities and powers" that are intent on diverting, deceiving, and ultimately destroying our life with God. We cannot stand against such an enemy in our won strength. But God's power is sufficient, especially as we consider the ways that Jesus utterly defeated Satan on the cross.

 

Glenn's message was preceded by a Financial Update by Elder and Finance Team member Bob Bierwagen. Watch Bob's message:

 

Following is the text of Glenn's message:

Chinese evangelist Watchman Nee is the one who proposed that the book of Ephesians can be divided into three simple parts: Sit, Walk, and Stand. If you haven’t done so before, you might take your own Bible and actually make marks where those divisions occur. The first section, called Sit, is comprised of chapters one, two, and three. Here the apostle Paul essentially says, “Sit down. Don’t move. If you trust Jesus, then stop trying to be somebody and just take in the fact that God has already done everything necessary in heaven and on earth to make you somebody. You are his called, chosen, forgiven, and deeply loved child. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

In the next two and half chapters, Paul says, “Now get up on your feet and start walking. Live the way God wants you to live. Since you are God’s called, chosen, forgiven, and deeply loved child, then there can’t be any more lying. And no more fighting or anger or bitterness. And no more sexual line-crossing. Be a spiritual grown-up, and let that change everything about your marriage, your parenting, and how you do your work.”

Today we come to the final section of Paul’s letter, the part that’s embodied by the word “stand.” The first word of Ephesians 6:10 provides the threshold. Paul says, “Finally…” You might remember that Dr. Martin-Lloyd Jones, the famous British preacher of the last century, took six years to preach through the six chapters of Ephesians. When he reached this point he preached six consecutive sermons just on the word “finally.” Mercifully, we’re going to go somewhat faster than that.

The word “finally” tells us that it’s time to gather up everything we have learned and face our last big challenge. We’ve learned that Jesus rules everything. There’s not a molecule in the cosmos that is not under his supervision. We are utterly and completely secure. Economists, politicians, and news commentators keep telling us that there is a lot to worry about, and we should worry all the time. Jesus assures us there is nothing to worry about at all. We have been given everything we need to grow up into spiritual maturity.

But there does remain an obstacle on our path. We are facing a spiritual opponent who wants to wreck all our plans and spoil all our dreams for growing up in Christ. His strategy is simple: He wants us to take our eyes off Jesus. He wants us to doubt – or, better yet, to completely forget – who we are in Christ. Let’s turn together to Ephesians 6:10-12. Whether reading from your own copy of Scripture, looking up here at the screens, or reciting these words from memory, let’s stand together and speak aloud this part of the Word of God:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Two important questions arise from this text: What exactly are we facing? And what specifically should we do? The answer to the first question is that every follower of Jesus, every day, is facing opposition from personal spiritual evil. Paul minces no words in describing what that looks like and what’s at stake.  

Unfortunately, the associations that most Americans have with spiritual evil have been formed to a greater degree by Hollywood than by Scripture. Every year, as Halloween approaches, the film industry adds at least three new contributions to its ever-growing inventory of movies that depict the paranormal, the occult, jaw-dropping monsters, or Satanic evil. Most of these films get one thing right and another thing wrong.  

What Hollywood gets right is that there is a lot more to reality than meets the eye. The late astronomer Carl Sagan, who devoted most of his life to teaching that there is no such thing as an unseen world, could not get over the fact that the more America has been exposed to the findings of modern science, the more our culture has openly rebelled against the conclusions of modern science. Americans seem more ready than ever to believe in the existence of a spirit world – a notion that is clearly affirmed on the pages of the Bible.

What Hollywood gets wrong is who or what happens to rule that spirit world. The Bible says it is Jesus. Hollywood refuses to be tied down. Most movies about spiritual darkness have ambiguous endings, no final resolution, and feature bad things happening to Jamie Lee Curtis. In one of her numerous horror movie roles Curtis is a babysitter who has seemingly stopped her demonically-driven attacker. She says to the children, "It's OK. I killed the bogeyman" – to which one of the children replies, "But you can't kill the bogeyman." That is Hollywood's bottom line when it comes to the spirit world.

Christian experience, however, confirms what we find in the Word: There is a king who rules both the seen and unseen worlds, and he has not been overthrown. Several decades ago theologian Os Guinness traveled from his home in Switzerland to present a series of talks in England. The first night he noticed in the crowd a woman with a very odd expression on her face. Os felt prompted to pray silently that this woman would not create some kind of scene.  

As soon as he finished his presentation she was on her feet, approaching him. "What kind of spell did you cast on me tonight?" she asked. Os answered that he had no idea what she was talking about. She responded that she had been dispatched by a local coven of witches to disrupt his teaching, but had felt powerless throughout the evening. Later, when Guinness returned to Switzerland, he was approached by a young lady in his church. "I was thinking about you the other day," she said. "As I stopped to pray about the talk I knew you were giving in England, I saw in my mind's eye a woman with a very odd look on her face. I didn't know what to make of it, so I just prayed that God would make everything all right."

John G. Paton, a missionary last century in the New Hebrides Islands, reported that hostile natives surrounded his small mission house one night, intent on burning Paton and his wife to death. The couple prayed intently. When morning came they were surprised to see the attackers walk away. They thanked God for deliverance.

About a year later one of the tribal chiefs became a believer in Jesus. Paton, remembering what had happened, asked the chief what had kept him and his men from torching the mission house. The chief replied in surprise, "We didn’t attack because of all those men you had with you." The missionary answered, "We had no men; there were only two of us." The chief argued that that wasn't so. He and his warriors had seen many men standing guard – hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords in their hands. They had circled the mission station and made it impossible for the natives to attack. Paton thanked God for his angels.

The Bible presents a thoroughly supernatural picture of reality. It’s really not a surprise when followers of Jesus learn that through personal experience. What exactly is it then that Paul says Christians will have to face? He writes in verse 11 that we must take our stand “against the devil’s schemes.” Then he goes on, in what is commonly regarded as the most important verse on spiritual warfare anywhere in Scripture, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the power of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

The King James Version of the Bible calls these “principalities and powers.” Life’s most important assignment is choosing to follow Jesus, and then building on that decision by choosing to grow up in him as a fully mature disciple. The principalities and powers are forces of evil that want us to flunk that assignment. From both their perspective and ours, this is war.

Paul makes it clear that he’s not talking about human opposition, even though we may experience plenty of that. He’s calling out personal spiritual beings, including the devil – entities that are committed to disrupting our life with God. Behind difficulties, hardships, temptations, and distractions – and perhaps just as likely, behind our greatest earthly honors, pleasures, and achievements – there is a Satanic plot to keep our eyes on something other than Jesus. That’s the only thing that evil powers are trying to accomplish – because keeping our eyes on Jesus is the only thing that ultimately matters.  

A number of Bible commentators go a step farther. They suggest that “principalities and powers” may refer to institutionalized evil. How are we to explain that Germany – which was the theological center of Western Christianity in the first half of the 20^th century – became the source of the Holocaust, an act of evil so great that it seems to have been much more than the sum of its human parts? Global corporations that keep developing nations in poverty; political movements, whether liberal or conservative, that become idolatrous sources of false hope for their many followers; entrenched atheism in our universities; and systemic injustice in our prisons and court systems – is it not likely that spiritual forces of darkness are working in and through such broken human institutions?

Such speculation, however, can get us into considerable trouble. The Bible actually says almost nothing about the devil and his demonic spirit world allies. That’s probably just as well. We might soon be seeing a demon behind every cup of coffee. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that when it comes to the devil, we can fall into one of two equal and opposite traps. We either can think about Satan constantly, or not think about him at all.  

That leads us to the second question that emerges from this text. If we know what we facing – personal forces of evil that are bent on tripping us up spiritually – what precisely should we do? Paul answers that simply and directly: “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”  

Our country has invested trillions of dollars in trying to protect its citizens from every possible means of attack. Every 24 hours we spend 100 million dollars just to keep our nuclear ICBM’s in good working condition. But we are clueless about protecting ourselves from spiritual evil. Next Sunday Pat Smith is going to talk in detail about putting on the full armor of God. Until then, in a more general sense, what are four ways to respond to spiritual evil that spring from this text and other parts of the New Testament?  

First, we must take our stand. Every moment of every day we are either living for or against the purposes of God. There is no neutral ground. We really do have to choose.  

Discipleship is not passive. Following Jesus is not a ticket to a cushy life. We don’t check the little box that says we get to go to heaven and then take the path of least resistance until we die. Being strong in the Lord means to rely on his strength and to put on our new life in Christ every moment. There are no neutral days. There are no neutral decisions.  

Following Jesus requires lifelong intentionality in pursuing Worship, the Word, and the World as the three primary arenas of spiritual growth. Worship is the practice of turning our attention away from ourselves and toward God. We give our full attention to God in hour-long services like this one so we can learn to do that during every other hour of the week. We get into the Word for the express purpose of letting the Word get into us. And we go into the world to serve in Jesus’ name, so that God’s kingdom or God’s reign might happen here on earth as it is in heaven. When we give ourselves to Worship, the Word, and the World, we’re taking a stand for Christ. The principalities and powers will do everything they can to distract us from pursuing those ends.  

Second, we must be alert. We read in the book of I Peter: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…” (I Peter 5:8-9).

The plain truth is that if you have devoted yourself to being God’s person, and if you are willing to take your stand for the Lord, then you will face spiritual opposition. We must stay alert to the subtle ways that our opponent will try to discourage and distract us. We need to take responsibility for the evil and the foolishness that clearly comes from our own sin. Do you remember the signature line of comedian Flip Wilson? “The devil made me do it.” But it’s ludicrous to assign responsibility to Satan for the never-ending stream of dumb things that we ourselves say, do, and think. The devil may use our sin…but it’s still our sin! In fact, the principalities and powers would love it if we would spin our wheels blaming them for everything that’s going wrong, instead of seeking a clean start by turning to the Lord in confession and repentance.

But what about this graphic language that Peter uses – that Satan is like a roaring lion prowling around in search of a Christian meal? Are demons an actual threat to our eternal spiritual security in Christ? The answer is absolutely not. Satan cannot take away what God has given to us forever. As Jesus said concerning his disciples of every age, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)

The front cover of a recent Christian novel included these sensational words: Fear no evil is no longer an option. I agree with Bible scholar Klyne Snodgrass, who suggests that that line borders on blasphemy. The Bible instructs us to fear God, not demons. We are to be alert, not afraid. John tells us, “You have overcome them, because greater is he who is in you” (that’s Jesus) “than he who is in the world” (that’s our enemy). There is no reason to fear, and there is no reason to worry. (I John 4:4)

In John Bunyan's literary classic, Pilgrim's Progress, Pilgrim, the aspiring disciple of Jesus, encounters a frightening moment. Timorous and Mistrust come running down a hill, terrified. "There are lions! There are lions!" they shout. Pilgrim goes ahead anyway...and discovers that while there truly are lions, they are held fast by chains. We know who has the real power in the universe. It is Christ. Satan may be able to roar, but he’s stuck on a chain. We must never forget that the devil was dealt a mortal blow by what Jesus accomplished on the cross. His days are numbered.

That brings us to our third and most surprising point. How should a follower of Jesus respond to the devil? Should we run from him? No, our call is to resist him. As James 4:7 puts it, “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Resistance is our basic response to personal evil. The Bible tells us to run away from temptation, but to stand up to the devil – at which point he will run away from us. This is perhaps the most underrated bit of teaching in the New Testament. The devil is intimidated by us. If Christ lives in you, then you can go toe to toe with evil. Why don’t they make Hollywood movies about that?

How exactly do we take our stand? Our faith is not in crosses (even big gold ones) or strands of garlic or silver bullets. We resist evil not by focusing on evil itself – that is always a mistake – but by giving our full attention to Christ.

Satan’s chief weapons are intimidation, seduction, and deception. He wants us to believe what is patently untrue. Therefore it is imperative that we know God’s Word. Our enemy's goal is to make us feel hopeless, uncertain, afraid and unworthy – to live our lives as if God does not exist, or to conclude that God is powerless to help someone who happens to be in our present pathetic condition. This is why we have held up the value of memorizing all of Ephesians. Taking this book into our minds and hearts is akin to pulling on our spiritual armor, for in this book God assures us that in Christ we are his called, chosen, forgiven, and completely loved children. We don’t have to listen to any voice that is saying otherwise.  

What do we do if we find ourselves overwhelmed by difficult thoughts or circumstances? Resist the devil and he will flee from you. How? Fix your attention on Jesus, not on that person who just hurt you. Stop gazing at your empty bank account or that frightening date that is approaching on the calendar. The devil wants us to stare into our own wounds and lose heart. Jesus wants us to lift up our eyes and look at him as an act of faith – even if not a single circumstance has yet changed. Things do in fact change as soon as we give our attention to Christ. Praise him. Thank him. Join with others in a small group or a one-2-one relationship in which you are earnestly seeking him. That’s what it means to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Fourth, and finally, we must pray. Nothing scares the devil more than the weakest member of the kingdom of God – the youngest child – sincerely and prayerfully trusting that God will not fail him. The safest place in the universe is on our knees. It just also happens to be place where spiritual strongholds are pulled down so that God’s kingdom purposes might prevail.  

Back in the 1990s the Billy Graham Association held a crusade in the Arco Arena in Sacramento, California. During the week before the crusade the many members of the combined choir came to rehearse. One night they sang until it was very late. As he headed home after the rehearsal, one of the volunteer tenors found himself caught up in the meaning and the beauty of what he had been singing. Driving through the eerie darkness of downtown Sacramento, he resolved again that he wanted to live as God's person.

Just then he looked up and saw the crumpled figure of a man, hunched over on the steps of one of the big municipal buildings. He wasn't in the habit of reaching out to homeless people, so he kept driving. Immediately his conscience seized him. "What does commitment to Christ mean if I'm not willing to stop and see if somebody needs some help?" He turned his car around. The man was still there on the steps. He approached him cautiously and put his hand on his shoulder. "Sir," he said, "are you all right?" The man looked up. It was Billy Graham – praying, in the middle of the night, for the city of Sacramento…praying that whatever principalities and powers might be binding human hearts would be shattered by the grace of God.

We have a chance to make this a Halloween to remember. Make this the Halloween where you take your stand for the Lord, where you go toe to toe with evil. Make a choice. Choose to give your loyalty to Christ and Christ alone.  

Look to him. And then never look back.