Are We Really in a War? | Dr. David Jeremiah | Ephesians 6:10-18

Message Description:

In our culture of comfort, the Christian life can feel more like a playground than a battleground. in this introductory message to his series on spiritual warfare, Dr. David Jeremiah explains from God’s Word that the believer’s earthly life isn’t about comfort, but combat.

What I am preaching to you in these weeks is not something god wants to do for you, it is something god has told you to do for yourself.
He has told you to get the armor and put it on. It is your job to do that.
If you get defeated in the warfare, if you were shot in an unprotected place, because you are without armor, it is not god’s fault.
The armor is sitting there waiting for you to put it on.
He has asked you to do it. It is your personal duty. It is your primary duty.
It is your paramount duty, and it is your perpetual duty to put on the armor of god.
Many people today don’t believe in the devil or spiritual warfare anymore.
I’ve seen all of the surveys as you have, Uh, they think this is kind of old hat stuff that modern Christians, even modern intellectuals would never believe in anything that bizarre.
Others vaguely recognize the presence of a struggle, but they don’t give it too much thought.
I mean, yes, they think we find it difficult from time to time to practice our Christianity.
We find it hard to forgive people.
We find it hard to pray regularly to resist temptation, to learn more about the faith.
Yes, it’s hard, but but as far as they’re concerned, that’s it.
However, the Bible, this book that we study and that we cherish, the Bible takes Satan and his minions very seriously.
Declaring that our ultimate battle is a spiritual battle.
And for this reason, nothing will be more practical or relevant to your life than the verses we will study over these next few weeks.
What we need and what our passage provides is a realistic assessment of both the struggle we are engaged in and the weapons that we possess in order for us to be victorious.
These are indeed the terms of engagement.
Chapter 6 verse 10 begins with a call to battle In order for you to understand that this is not just David Jeremiah talking up here, I thought I would run some of these scriptures by you and just let you read them with me from the screen.
I’ll read them and you you follow along, verses like 1st Timothy 612, fight the good fight of faith lay hold on eternal life.
Second Timothy, 23, you therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
Second Timothy 24, no one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him, who has enlisted him as a soldier.
1st Corinthians, 1613. Watch, stand fast in the faith. Be brave. Be strong.
And first Timothy, this charge, I commit to you Timothy, that you may wage the good warfare.
Now words like these appear to me to be clear, plain, and unmistakable.
They teach us this same lesson, if we’re willing to receive it, that lesson is that true Christianity is a struggle, a fight and a warfare.
The apostle Paul begins this section in the book of Ephesians, like any war general would begin his speech.
He motivates his troops by instilling confidence in their hearts. For centuries, members of military units have done that.
Don’t you know? For instance, uh, the crusaders screamed heaven at last, the French soldiers yelled for the king and for France, and Paul’s cry here is be strong, be strong.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the lord and in the power of his might.
This is Paul’s word of encouragement, as he reminds his readers that our power is a gift from god.
We are not as to go into this battle by ourselves without any strength.
It says my brethren in this war, which we fight, Be strong in the lord and in the power of his might.
The Phillips translation puts it this way.
Be strong, not in yourselves, but in the lord, in the power of his boundless resource.
The Christian is not commanded to be courageous in his own strength but to be emboldened by the power of another, and that another is Jesus Christ.
The strength and the power for the battle is the gift from the lord.
And that is a great encouragement to me.
Once you understand you’re in a battle, the first thing that will come to your mind is I am not capable of fighting in this war.
This is a tough war.
And if all we had was the instruction to walk into the battle without any encouraged from the lord, this would not be a very positive lesson.
2nd Timothy 17 tells us that god has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power.
And Paul uses the same Greek phrase translated as the power of his might early in the book of Ephesians, we are told that this power is the power which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heavenly places.
This power is great. Not even death can overcome it. It is resurrection power.
Ladies and gentlemen, I wanna tell you some things about this war we’re fighting.
Sometimes it’s hard to find where the enemy really is.
They stalk us, and they come against us when we’re least expecting it in the spiritual warfare is more like that than it is a conventional war.
But I don’t want to tell you about this without, first of all, telling you you are not ever going to asked to fight this war in your own strength.
You do not have to be afraid.
God almighty has promised that as you are his soldiers, He will protect you and keep you strong.
And, ultimately, you will be victorious.
Not only is the power of the lords, but in this passage, we also learn that there is an armor that we are to put on.
Put on the whole armor of god says the scripture.
The armor is god’s, and the armor we are to wear is the armor god himself has worn in victorious battles.
I remember some years ago, we were having a debate in our community about whether or not the Christian should ever be involved in war.
And, you know, some of our friends believe that war is ungodly and that you should never be involved in war at all.
They’re what we call pacifists. And I was asked to present the the scriptures that teach that sometimes war, though not something we want, sometimes it’s necessary.
And what are the greatest evidences of that?
And for all you soldiers and marines and all the rest of us, is the fact that god himself was a warrior.
In fact, in the Bible, we have many places where that is taught to us, Isaiah 11, 45 says, but with righteousness, he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips, he shall slay the wicked.
Rightsness shall be the belt of his loins and faithfulness the belt of his waist kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
It’s sort of like a precursor to what we’re gonna study in the book of Ephesians.
Later on in Isaiah in the 59th chapter, we read, for he put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and he was clad with zeal as a cloak.
The Bible tells us that what we are going to be asked to do and put on the whole armor of god is exactly what god himself does when he goes into the battle.
He is giving us his own armor for this struggle, and we need not ever be discouraged, we have god on our side, and we have his armor that we are to put on for the warfare.
And the call here is to be strong in the midst of a battle, and this is a word also that comes to us throughout the scripture I’m reminded of one of my favorite passages in the book of Joshua, where we are told 3 times within 5 verses to be strong.
Joshua was told, be strong and courageous, be strong and very courageous, have not I commanded you, be strong and very courageous.
Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged.
And Joshua was about ready to leave the people of Israel against the unknown enemies of Kaden, and he was fearful.
The call to be strong is not new.
Every Christian in every era, regardless of age or maturity is called by god’s word to be fearless.
Letting fear or your own inadequacies keep you from the battle is not acceptable according to the Bible.
God promises to strengthen you with his might. It is a gift, and you’re commanded to use it.
This is part of the blessing of being a soldier and following the lord.
Your power is a gift from god, and your perseverance is guaranteed notice what it says in verse 11, put on the whole armor of god that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Now, we are doing battle in life today against the wiles of the devil.
That’s not a word we use a lot in our culture, let me tell you what it means.
The word wiles means organized conduct, plans of war, or strategy, or methodology.
And the Bible teaches us that Satan is attacking the lives and causes that would defeat his plans And that is why all of us who are Christians feel so much of the effect of Satan’s presence.
He is not after those who belong to him, he is after those who want to defeat him.
Satan’s not gonna bother the churches where they don’t preach the word of god.
Satan’s not gonna bother the people that he’s already got on his side those who don’t know Christ.
But Satan concentrates his efforts on people like you and me. That’s his purpose.
He does not want to do anything to upset those he already has on his team.
His goal is to drown the influence of men and women who claim to know Jesus Christ.
And the Bible says he has a strategy to do it.
He has a method for doing it The word wiles means that he has already strategized how he’s gonna pull this off.
I personally believe that Satan has a strategy for every one of us.
He knows our weaknesses, he knows our strengths, and he will stop at nothing.
If he thinks, he can victimize us. For his own purposes.
The Bible says that we are to put on the whole armor of god We are not told to win the war because Christ has already defeated Satan on the cross, but we are told to stand firm in the battle.
Look down at your bibles again in the 6th chapter, and I want you to notice something.
Ephesians 611, that you may be able to stand, ephesians 613, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.
Ephesians 613, having done all to stand, ephesians 614, stand therefore.
1, 2, 3, 4 times we are told to stand.
Paul wants Christians to be strong and stable and robust.
So even though the enemy is a frightening prospect, This paragraph should not give us an attitude of fear.
The entire passage is filled with a spirit of confidence and hope as the reader is left not with a feeling of despair, but with the sense that Satan can be defeated.
One of the things that some people struggle with when they read a passage like this is it says, are we not supposed to be fighting against Satan?
Should we not be taking the fight to him? The bottom line is that Christ has already won that battle.
That battle has already been won, but Satan is trying to discourage us And god has not called us to go and do warfare with Satan, although we have to have the armaments to do that, and as we’ll see in a short time, most of the armaments are for a defensive purpose, and only prayer in the word of god are used offensively.
But this whole matter of standing, oh, that’s a hard thing, isn’t stand firm, dig in your heels, be the person god wants you to be.
You say, Pastor Jeremiah, how do we give ground to the enemy?
I don’t think I need to explain that, but let me just mention it to you.
When we know what is right, And we compromise that in our minds in order to indulge something we want to do, we have given ground to the enemy.
And for reasons of our own comfort, or perhaps even out of fear, we postpone our obedience.
We open up the door for the enemy to make an attack upon us.
The Bible says we are to stand strong, stand firm and stand against him. We don’t have to defeat him.
He’s already defeated, but we need to stand against his attempts to make us a laughing stock among others.
The Bible says we’re to prepare for the devil because he’s like a roaring lion, going about seeking whom he may, and the word is devour.
What do you think Satan’s desire for you and for me? What do you think it is?
I’ll tell you what it is.
He wants to devour us he wants primarily to devour our influence for Christ.
He wants to so change who we are so that we no longer have any power of commitment or testimony.
He wants us to fall into fleshly things that destroy our ability to stand for the lord.
That’s what he’s seeking to do.
If we understood that as we should understand it, we would not let him get one little toe in the door of our lives.
A word of encouragement. Then there’s a word of explanation in verse 12.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood.
The Bible says that we are in a war, but notice the text says that we are wrestling.
We wrestle, not flesh and blood. But on the contrary, we wrestle with the enemy.
It doesn’t say we box. It doesn’t say we play ball with. It says we wrestle.
The term is one of great intensity.
It pictures a man with a grip on another man pressing hard, straining every muscle to pin him to the ground.
He is using every ounce of energy to resist.
And for the child of god, it is the straining of every moral muscle, the testing of every spiritual sinew, we are not called to a time of relaxation in the summer sun.
We are called to a grim struggle with unseen forces, and the fight is real.
The picture that Paul paints is intriguing.
Restlers wear very little armor, just a thin tight jumpsuit, and yet the Christian is described as one who wrestles while wearing full armor against an enemy who has already been disarmed and defeated.
Colashians 2 15 says having disarmed principalities and powers, Christ made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Note carefully how Paul describes this one against whom we are fighting.
Our enemies are not people, and you may think they are, but they are not.
The Bible says, for we do not wrestle against what’s the rest of the class, flesh and blood.
Our enemies are not people. You say, oh, pastor, I could get the Christian life together if it weren’t for and give me the names of the five people who are standing in your way.
But those are not your enemies.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, we must see beyond people, Satan may use people to persecute us to lie to us or cheat us or hurt us sometimes even uses people to kill us.
But our real enemy lurks in the shadows of the unseen world moving people as pawns on a chessboard of time, as long as we see people as enemies and wrestle against them, we will spend our strength in vain, we will have nothing left for the real war.
And then there’s a cosmic struggle that is declared in verse 12 we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers against the rulers of the darkness of this age against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
The great welsh minister, Doctor David Martin Lloyd Jones wrote The great trouble with the world today and with the church unfortunate is that they know so little about the devil and his principalities and powers.
Much teaching concerning holiness and sanctification never even mentions the devil, and these powers at all.
The problem is regarded solely as something confined to ourselves.
Here we learn about our truest enemies and the ultimate cause of our world situation.
Here is a presentation of the domain of Satan the forces of evil in this world are led by Satan.
He is possessed of a power that we poor mortals can never understand It is clear in scripture that he is in control of and commands a great army of fallen angels.
In this force of evil that is described here in Ephesians, we are told that his effort, his army, is organized.
There is a hierarchy in the domain of Satan.
The principalities in the Greek language means the first or the head officers the power that is here referred to has to do with staff officers.
The rulers are divisional commanders with the rank and file is the spiritual hosts of wickedness.
In other words, there is an organized effort on the part of Satan to do his work in this world.
He has charted this world and organized it, and we are part of his organized plan.
We fall onto his chart someplace.
I have to believe that because we have Christian schools and radio and television that reaches all over the world, we get some extra attention from him on occasion.
Paul’s point here is that the Christian life as a whole is a profound spiritual warfare of cosmic propositions in which the ultimate opposition to the advance of the gospel and moral integrity springs from evil.
Supernatural powers under the control of the god of this world. We’re in this battle.
I’m in this battle. And during this series, we’re gonna talk about how we get prepared so that we can stand.
We’re gonna talk about every one of the implements of this armor and and what it means to us.
This is the covering in the battle.
In 13th through 18th verse, the word of god tells us that this warfare one for which we may prepare.
This warfare is not one that we have to go into unprotected.
And that is why this series of messages is so critical It can help us if we will listen carefully and apply these truths.
It can help us to walk out into a hostile environment and to do warfare for god and be defeated all the time.
For our commander and chief has already won the war, and he wants us to get in on the victory every day that we live.
But you can’t win unless you’re well armed.
You can’t win unless you sense the provisions that are before you, and that is why Paul said to the Ephesians, take unto you the whole armor of god.
Men and women, I want you to understand that he did not tell us that if we prayed right, god would give this to us.
He did not say that we should look around and see if we could find it, and maybe we could buy it somewhere.
He said, it is the Christian’s personal responsibility to appropriate the armor of god in his own life.
What I am preaching to you in these weeks is not something god wants to do for you.
It is something god has told you to do for yourself.
He has told you to get the armor and put it on. It is your job to do that.
If you get defeated in the warfare, if you were shot in an unprotected place, because you are without armor, it is not god’s fault.
The armor is sitting there waiting for you to put it on.
He has asked you to do it. It is your personal duty. It is your primary duty.
It is your paramount duty, and it is your perpetual duty to put on the armor of god.
Our supreme commander generously equips us with the belt of truth the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, sort of the spirit, but it’s up to us to put these on to appropriate them.
Ephesians 613 says, therefore, take the whole armor of god that you may be able to withstand and in the evil day having done all to stand.
So in these next weeks, we’re going to talk about how you put on the armor of god.
My friend, Warren Wirsbee, writes in one of his books about how every morning when he gets out of bed.
First thing he does, he puts on the armor of god, and he tells us how he does it.
A really intriguing story. Before we’re finished with this series, I hope we can learn how to do that because I have to tell you friends, I don’t know how is it with you, but the battle is heating up and the challengers are getting greater.
And the testing time is here. And if it isn’t, it’s just around the corner.
And if we are not prepared, it’s not the fault of our commander in chief.
He’s given us everything we need in this manual to do battle victoriously.
And that’s the joy of this whole thing.
We are in this battle, but we’re not in doubt as to how it’s gonna turn out.
And just like we said today, we need to be what we are. We’re Victor already.
We need to start acting like that.
The devil has no right to you or to me or to any of the other people of god.
We are god’s people. He he does not have any right to us unless we give it to him.
And the way we keep that from happening is we put on the whole armor of god so that we be able to stand against
here is Doctor Jeremiah.
Sometimes in war, soldiers don’t have everything they need for victory.
But that is not the case when it comes to spiritual warfare.
In the weeks ahead, I’ll be explaining why Jesus Christ himself is our spiritual armor, our shield, our helmet, our breastplate, everything we need for victory.
If you don’t want torious in every spiritual battle he ever faced.
To encourage you in your relationship with Christ.
I would love to send you 2 free resources, a booklet called Your Greatest Turning Point, and our monthly devotional magazine called turning points.
We’ll gladly send them to you free of charge. If you will contact us here at Turning Point,
Next time on Turning Point.
He tries to do everything god does. He wants to be like god.
Remember, he said, I will be like the most high god.
So when you watch Satan in his work today in the world, you shouldn’t be surprised at this.
Everything that Christ has done. Everything the lord has done, Satan tries to do it.
Thank you for being with us today. Join Doctor Jeremiah next time for his message identifying the enemy.
Here on turning point.