Asymmetric Spiritual Warfare

Scorched earth tactics and cruel
hatred are the characteristics of your
spiritual enemy. Protect yourself
against Satan’s plan to
destroy your life
Asymmetric Spiritual Warfare
Sermon Notes
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Table of Contents
Asymmetric Spiritual Warfare…….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……6
The Enemy’s Goal: Divide and Discourage ............................................................................................................. 6
Satan Doesn’t Fight Fair .......................................................................................................................................... 7
1) Adopt a Warfare Mentality................................................................................................................................. 8
2) Raise the Spiritual Alert Level. ............................................................................................................................ 9
3) Practice Forward-Leaning Defense. .................................................................................................................. 10
4) Present a United Front. .................................................................................................................................... 10
5) Settle in for the Long Haul. ............................................................................................................................... 11
One Little Word..................................................................................................................................................... 12
What Chairman Mao Can Teach Us About Spiritual Warfare…………………………………………………………………………..16
How to Win Against a Superior Force ................................................................................................................... 17
One Friday in Jerusalem ........................................................................................................................................ 18
Trapped! ................................................................................................................................................................ 19
The Devil’s Hounds Run In Packs .......................................................................................................................... 20
Peter’s Seven Great Mistakes ............................................................................................................................... 20
Attacking Our Strong Points.................................................................................................................................. 22
Snake Eyes Studying the Enemy’s Tactics ............................................................................................................. 24
Stage 1: The Approach is Subtle & Unexpected. .................................................................................................. 25
Stage 2: The Strategy Involves Conversation & Controversy. .............................................................................. 26
Stage 3: The Conversation Leads to Doubt & Desire. ........................................................................................... 28
The Danger of Self-Pity ......................................................................................................................................... 29
Stage 4: The Result is Collaboration & Catastrophe. ............................................................................................ 30
Where Was Adam? ............................................................................................................................................... 31
Little Steps in the Wrong Direction....................................................................................................................... 32
Who’s Going to be God Today? ............................................................................................................................ 33
When Life Tumbles In, What Then? –Job 1 .......................................................................................................... 35
The Question Of The Ages .................................................................................................................................... 35
The Man Who Had It All ........................................................................................................................................ 36
Enter Satan ............................................................................................................................................................ 37
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Satan Is Not The Issue ........................................................................................................................................... 38
“Does Job Serve God For Nothing?” ..................................................................................................................... 39
Four Messengers Of Misfortune ........................................................................................................................... 40
370 And Rising....................................................................................................................................................... 40
From Weeping To Worship ................................................................................................................................... 41
Naked I Came, Naked I Go .................................................................................................................................... 42
Four Simple Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 43
“What Alternative Do You Propose?” ................................................................................................................... 44
Cords Stronger Than Steel .................................................................................................................................... 45
Singing your way to Victory…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….46
Christ-Centered, Team-Oriented, Battle-Focused ................................................................................................ 47
Go to the Gorge .................................................................................................................................................... 48
Singing … Loudly! .................................................................................................................................................. 48
Invading the Devil’s Territory................................................................................................................................ 49
The Doxology and the Devil .................................................................................................................................. 50
“I’ve never seen anything like it” .......................................................................................................................... 51
Let the Pastors Sing! ............................................................................................................................................. 52
Take It to the Streets............................................................................................................................................. 54
Forward-Leaning Defense ..................................................................................................................................... 56
It’s Not a Sin to Be Tempted ................................................................................................................................. 57
The Danger Within ................................................................................................................................................ 58
Positive Uses of Temptation ................................................................................................................................. 58
Unseen Battles ...................................................................................................................................................... 59
“I’m Trying Not To” ............................................................................................................................................... 62
Our Real Battle ...................................................................................................................................................... 66
Two Key Questions................................................................................................................................................ 68
God’s Intention for Every Christian....................................................................................................................... 69
We Face a Defeated Foe ....................................................................................................................................... 70
The Devil is Real .................................................................................................................................................... 73
Satan Doesn’t Fight Fair ........................................................................................................................................ 74
1. The Belt of Truth ............................................................................................................................................... 76
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2. The Breastplate of Righteousness .................................................................................................................... 77
3. The Shoes of Gospel Peace ............................................................................................................................... 78
4. The Shield of Faith............................................................................................................................................. 79
5. The Helmet of Salvation .................................................................................................................................... 80
6. The Sword of the Spirit .................................................................................................................................... 81
The Real Battlefield ............................................................................................................................................... 81
What If – Ephesians 6:18-20 ................................................................................................................................. 84
I. There are many ways to pray and they are all valid. ......................................................................................... 85
II. The best time to prayer is when you feel the need to pray. ............................................................................ 86
III. Effective prayer requires sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. ................................................................................... 87
IV. If you want your prayers answered, stay awake and keep on praying. .......................................................... 88
V. The Wider Our Circle of Concern, the Wider the Results. ................................................................................ 90
Two Take-Home Truths......................................................................................................................................... 92
1. No one ever outgrows the need for prayer. ..................................................................................................... 92
2. No one ever outgrows the need to pray for others. ....................................................................................... 93
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Asymmetric Spiritual Warfare
Are you familiar with term asymmetric warfare? It’s a concept that has received lots of news coverage
in the recent years as a result of the war on terrorism. The word asymmetric refers to something that
is out of balance. In warfare it describes a situation where the combatants are not equal. Here’s a
working definition:
Asymmetric warfare is a military term to describe warfare in which the two belligerents are
mismatched in their military capabilities or accustomed methods of engagement such that the
militarily disadvantaged power must press its special advantages or effectively exploit its
enemy’s particular weaknesses if they are to have any hope of prevailing.
Asymmetric warfare happens when a large army goes to war against a much smaller force. From the
American point of view, most of our wars have been examples of symmetric warfare. In World War II
you had the Allied armies on one side and the German, Italian and Japanese armies on the other side.
They fought traditional battles for territory across the islands of the Pacific and across North Africa
and Europe.
In the 21st century, a new sort of warfare has come to the forefront in which conventional armies
face loosely-organized terrorist cells. Here are three clear examples of asymmetric warfare. On
October 3, 2000, the USS Cole, an American battleship equipped with the latest and most
sophisticated technology, came to the harbor of Aden, Yemen, for what was meant to a routine fuel
stop. At 11:18 AM two men in a rubber boat approached the ship. They blew a 40-by-40 foot hole in
the side of the ship, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39 others. The irony was that this
battleship, designed to protect a carrier battle group against all threats, was powerless to stop two
men in a rubber boat.
Let us suppose that you are Osama bin Laden, and you wish to strike a blow against the heart of what
you regard as the visible symbol of corrupt Western capitalism. Let us further suppose that you have a
handful of men at your disposal. How will you attack the World Trade Center? You could launch some
sort of frontal assault, but a few armed men would never make it very far. It just can’t be done. So
what do you do? You train the men to commandeer commercial aircraft and fly them into the Twin
Towers. And you even plan it so that the attacks are staggered, with the shock of the first tower being
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hit guaranteeing that the whole world will be watching when the second tower is struck. It worked
even better than Osama bin Laden could have dreamed. And almost 3000 people died that day.
We saw another example this week when ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff and his cameraman were
seriously injured in Iraq by an IED, an Improvised Explosive Device. These deadly homemade roadside
bombs have accounted for nearly one-third of all US battlefield deaths in Iraq.
Asymmetric warfare comes in many varieties. Here are a few examples:
Hit and run attacks
Suicide bombing
Guerrilla warfare
Fighting selectively
Kidnapping
Disinformation
Radiological/biological/chemical attacks
“Dirty” nuclear weapons
Cyber-attacks on computer networks
It should be noted that today’s terrorists operate in small, loosely-organized cells that spread across
many nations. They may be “sleeper cells” that spring into action after years of dormancy.
Osama bin Laden has grasped the vulnerabilities of free and open societies today. Their technological
networks are very complex, highly integrated, and easy to disrupt with precise acts of violence. Tall
buildings like the skyscrapers of New York are manifestly vulnerable. The same is true of great
suspension bridges, nuclear power plants, water reservoirs, communications hubs, even the virusprone internet. (Michael Novak, Global Liberty)
Michael Novak goes on to say that Osama bin Laden “demonstrated how relatively easy it is for a
small, disciplined, highly trained cadre of warriors willing to die in the attempt to wreak horrific
damage, and to terrorize entire nations (as in Spain recently).”
The Enemy’s Goal: Divide and Discourage
When the president reminds us that “the terrorists cannot defeat us,” he is certainly correct in the
traditional military sense of the world. We saw what happened in 1991 and again in 2003 in the two
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gulf wars. No nation on earth can match the US in sheer military might. And yet capturing Baghdad
was not like capturing Berlin in 1945. Asymmetric warfare continues, and the end is not yet in sight.
In all of this, it helps to remember that the goal of the lesser power is not to utterly defeat the larger
power. Rarely will that happen. Instead, the lesser power intends to harass the larger power until,
wearied by an opponent he cannot seem to find, the greater power gives up the struggle. Time in that
sense is on the side of the lesser power. Few of us have the stomach for a war that never seems to
end. If the lesser power can wreak enough havoc to divide and dishearten the greater power, the
lesser power can win even though he is badly outnumbered. One writer summarized the matter this
way:
The ideal war is one which no one realizes war is being waged, which is mostly invisible, not because
its actions are camouflaged, but because they look like something else. War need never be declared
again because we are always at war.
I thought of all these things and realized that this is a true picture of our everyday spiritual warfare.
Satan rarely attacks us head-on because we are ready for such things. But he comes at us from
unusual angles, playing on our minds, slowing us down, throwing one roadblock after another in our
way, causing us to doubt and then to fear and finally to give in to discouragement. There are seasons
in life for all of us when nothing comes easy. During these periods, even the tiniest routines of life
don’t work as well they ought to. The dishwasher breaks, the car won’t start, our expenses mount up,
our friends seem suddenly too busy to talk to us, a project at work misfires, a cherished friend grows
distant, our children frustrate us, and our spouse seems impatient and uncaring. In those moments
we are facing true asymmetric spiritual warfare because we are being hit in many places at once, and
as things pile up, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain our spiritual equilibrium.
Satan Doesn’t Fight Fair
Most of the battles we face will not present us with enormous, life-changing choices, or at least they
won’t seem that way at the time. Either we get angry or we don’t. You stay up late to finish your
homework or you make up a creative excuse. When you visit the department store you pay cash or
you break your promise not to use your credit card. You repeat the unkind story you heard or you
decide to keep it to yourself. You pass by the magazine rack in the airport terminal or you stop and
begin to browse. You get up early to exercise or you roll over for another 30 minutes of sleep.
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No one will know whether you exercised or not. And no one will know (at least not till the end of the
month) if you used your credit card or not. And no one will know (unless you are audited) whether or
not you lied on your tax return. God has ordained that our spiritual progress should be measured not
by huge battles won or lost but by a thousand daily skirmishes no one else knows about. We can say it
another way. You wouldn’t commit adultery, but you don’t mind looking at certain Internet sites. You
wouldn’t lie but you do make excuses. You wouldn’t steal but you use your credit card foolishly. You
wouldn’t deliberately hurt someone, but you do pass along gossip because it seems harmful. The
whole point of asymmetric warfare (from Satan’s point of view) is to discourage us to the point that
we feel hopeless about our own spiritual progress. When that happens, he has won the battle even
though all the resources of heaven are on our side.
In thinking about spiritual warfare from this perspective, keep two things in mind:
1) Satan’s goal is to discourage you so that you feel like giving up.
2) Satan doesn’t fight fair.
He does not observe the traditional rules of warfare. He uses anything and everything that he can to
bring us down. This is part of what Paul meant when he spoke about the “schemes of the devil” in
Ephesians 6:11. The word “schemes” might also be translated as “traps” or “tricks” or “tactics.” I am
reminded of a certain Texas politician who was asked by a certain candidate had lost an election. “It
happened because he forgot the first rule of knife fighting. There are no rules.” Satan doesn’t fight
fair. He’s not going to give you an even break. He is a liar, a deceiver, a diabolical “angel of light” who
comes to you in a thousand guises, tempting you to disobey the Lord. And he’s a lot smarter than you
are. He knows your weak points better than you do. And because he is invisible, he can attack you any
time of the day or night.
How can we fight back against the devil as he wages asymmetric warfare against us? Here are five
practical suggestions.
1) Adopt a Warfare Mentality.
No picture of the Christian life is more frequently cited than that of a soldier engaging in mortal
combat. The idea of Christians standing clothed in full armor has captured the mind and heart of every
generation. All believers instinctively understand that they are called to fight–to be good soldiers, to
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put on their armor, to take up their weapons of righteousness, to enter the fray unafraid, to stand
against the fierce assault of evil, and having done all, to stand victorious at the end of the day.
Adopting a warfare mentality means understanding that we are always at war, that a battle is raging
all around us, and that we ourselves are frontline soldiers. In the old days soldiers saw the enemy.
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” But in modern warfare you rarely see the person on
the other side. In the spiritual battle we fight a foe that is invisible to us, and for that reason it is easy
to forget that there is a battle at all until the attack suddenly comes.
2) Raise the Spiritual Alert Level.
Since 9/11 those of us living in the United States have become very familiar with the color-coded
terror alert system. For a long time, whenever there was a new threat, the level was raised from
yellow to orange. Now it seems to be more or less permanently stuck on yellow. Of course, the
problem with an alert level that never changes is like asking about the weather in Tahiti–sunny and
mild, with a chance of afternoon showers, high temperature in the low 80s. If you get the same
forecast for forty years in a row, you stop asking about the weather eventually. In the case of Tahiti,
that’s alright because the weather is almost always beautiful. But that’s no good when we’re talking
about potential threats to our national security. Mao Tse-Tung remarked that the guerilla “swims like
a fish in the sea of the people.” Thus the suicide bomber seems like a normal traveler until he
detonates himself.
The same thing is true in the spiritual realm. We’re not safe just because we think we are. Anything
can become a weapon. An ashtray becomes a blackjack. A natural gas pipeline becomes a weapon of
mass destruction. The ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote a classic treatise called The Art of
War. In it he advised warriors never to go to battle unless the battle was already won in the mind of
the enemy. Overconfidence leads us to many crushing mistakes, something Peter found out the hard
way when he denied Christ less than five hours after he had pledged that his loyalty (Luke 22:31-34).
Beware of thinking that you have conquered some sin or that you are beyond certain temptations.
Red flag! You never know what you might do under pressure. According to J. C. Ryle, the great
Anglican theologian: “He who would make great strides in holiness must first consider the greatness
of sin.” Anselm of Canterbury famously remarked that, “You have not yet considered the gravity of
sin.” Scotch Presbyterian Robert Murray McCheyne said it even more pointedly, “I have begun to
realize that the seeds of every known sin still linger in my heart.” This is a point of great spiritual
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advance. Beware of spiritual presumption. The traditional reading of 1 Corinthians 10:12 offers this
warning: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Here is a more
colorful rendering of the same verse: “Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You
could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate
God-confidence” (The Message).
3) Practice Forward-Leaning Defense.
This means building up your spiritual defenses so you are ready when an attack suddenly comes. This
in part involves the traditional spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, meditation, worship and
Scripture memory. It also demands a thorough self-reflection so that you identify the weak areas in
your own life. Such self-reflection ought to lead you to habits of life and patterns of behavior that
expose you to unnecessary temptation. It may be as simple as being willing to say, “I have a temper,”
something most men don’t want to say, or “I get easily irritated,” or “I’m struggling with internal
sexual temptation and I don’t know what to do about it.” It could be as specific as realizing that some
friendships are not good for you, some books won’t help you, and there are some places you
personally shouldn’t go because they play on your weakness. I am not here supposing that rulekeeping will prevent Satan’s attacks, but I do believe that knowing your weaknesses makes it possible
to forestall some attacks before they ever come.
As a corollary, we’re learning in the international arena that since terrorists work across traditional
national boundaries, nations must work together to coordinate their intelligence-gathering and their
military responses. You can’t go it alone and hope to win against the elusive terror cells that spread
across many countries. In the same way, you face a spiritual foe whom you will not defeat on your
own. You need the support of close friends who can stand with you, and if necessary, fight with you.
That leads me to the fourth point.
4) Present a United Front.
This is always important, but never more so than when we face asymmetric spiritual warfare. We are
stronger together than we are alone. We can stand strong when we stand together. The Greeks
understood this principle when they developed the phalanx in 700 BC. By massing armed soldiers
closely together, they multiplied their effectiveness as a fighting force. Standing shoulder to shoulder
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with shields raised provided protection from enemy attack. Yet if one of those soldiers was separated
from the phalanx, he became an easy target.
Solomon reminds us of this truth in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (The Message):
It’s better to have a partner than go it alone.
Share the work, share the wealth.
And if one falls down, the other helps,
But if there’s no one to help, tough!
Two in a bed warm each other.
Alone, you shiver all night.
By yourself you’re unprotected.
With a friend you can face the worst.
Can you round up a third?
We need each other more than we know. When we are suddenly attacked, if we are alone, it is easy
to be discouraged and feel like giving up. But if we know that others are cheering for us and are there
to help us, we can find the strength to keep on going even in the worst of times.
We need to pray for one another. As we pray together, we find strength in shared sorrows and joys.
As we pray for each other, God sends his angels to help those for whom we pray. Our words uttered
in secret move the heart of God, and friends in the battle are made strong once again.
5) Settle in for the Long Haul.
This may be the most important principle of all. Shortly after 9/11, the president told us that the war
against terror would not be won easily or quickly. It would take years of determination and the
willingness to endure setbacks and further attacks. So far those words have proven 100% true. A few
days ago the terrorist organization Hamas came to power in Palestine, and Osama bin Laden remains
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at large. Iran looms as an even larger threat than Iraq. It happens that at this moment, I am listening
to President Bush deliver the State of the Union message. He just uttered these words: “We are
engaged in a long war against a determined foe.” It may take ten more years or twenty years or even
longer to win the war against terror. Perhaps it will never totally be won. There aren’t many final
victories in asymmetric warfare.
This is equally true in the spiritual realm. We are told that our enemies cannot defeat us. But they can
discourage so much that we put down our weapons and leave the battlefield. Satan is a defeated foe,
yet he is also a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8). Because we are joined to Jesus Christ, he cannot finally
defeat us, and eventually he himself will be vanquished once and for all. But that day has not yet
come. Between now and then there will be more battles, more struggles, some bitter defeats and
some stupendous victories. But mostly the spiritual struggle will rage on a thousand fronts at once.
Therefore, we must not be surprised at sudden attacks, or discouraging events, or personal
disappointments, or financial setbacks, or friends who let us down, or days when nothing seems to go
right. And there will be some days when things truly seem to fall apart. All of this is part and parcel of
asymmetric spiritual warfare. That does not mean that we should understand that everything bad
that happens to us is caused by Satan directly. But it is certainly true that Satan uses all the adversities
of life to discourage us and to tempt us to turn away from the Lord.
Life is tough. Life is hard. I personally am skeptical of any theory of the spiritual life that promises
victory without struggle. If you think about it, victory without struggle is self-contradictory. Victory
implies a triumph reached in the face of unrelenting difficulties. Football coaches like to say, “No pain,
no gain,” but that is equally true of the spiritual life.
One Little Word
As I thought about this concept of asymmetric spiritual warfare, it occurred to me that Martin Luther
understood the concept even though he never heard the term. Think about these famous words from
the hymn A Mighty Fortress:
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
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His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
The whole truth can found in those words. This world is indeed “with devils filled” who would undo us
if they could. We are attacked on every side by spiritual forces that strike us in our weak points and
come to us in unexpected ways. Though they cannot utterly defeat us, they can wear us down until
we feel like giving up. None of this should surprise us or discourage us. “The Christian life is not a
playground; it is a battleground” (Warren Wiersbe).
The power of Christ is more than enough to defeat the devil, but victory will not come easily or without
or without a heavy cost. When faced with temptation, we must take the “way of escape” God
provides for us (1 Corinthians 10:13) which includes fleeing sinful situations (2 Timothy 2:22),
confessing Christ openly (Matthew 10:32, Hebrews 10:32, Revelation 12:11), putting to death the
deeds of the flesh (Romans 8:13), yielding our bodies to God (Romans 6:13), relying on the power of
the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16), and choosing the path of costly obedience (Luke 9:52).
Luther says that when we face the devil, “one little word” will fell him. Jesus is that “one little word.”
The cross proved that our Lord is the victor over the devil for time and eternity. That’s where our
study of asymmetric warfare comes to an end–on a note of triumphant victory. We’re in a battle
whose outcome has been determined since the beginning of the universe. From our standpoint we
fight against an enemy who attacks without warning. Sometimes we fall under the crushing blows of
the enemy. More often Satan attacks in smaller ways in order to cause us to despair. We stumble in
the battle - not from direct hits or large mortar fire - but from strategically placed boulders. We
stumble again and again until we leave the battle field, weary and discouraged.
1 Corinthians 10
Satan is already defeated! God has promised victory against the crushing blows of the enemy and the
indirect hits that discourage us and cause us to despair.
Here is a prayer taken from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions by
Arthur Bennett. I offer it as the conclusion of the sermon and with the hope that this prayer will bring
the truth home to your heart. I encourage you to say the prayer out loud so its words will be tattooed
on your soul.
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O Lord,
I bless thee that the issue of the battle between thyself and Satan
has never been uncertain,
and will end in victory.
Calvary broke the dragon’s head,
and I contend with a vanquished foe,
who with all his subtlety and strength
has already been overcome.
When I feel the serpent at my heel
may I remember him whose heel was bruised,
but who, when bruised, broke the devil’s head.
My soul with inward joy extols the mighty conqueror.
Heal me of any wounds received in the great conflict;
if I have gathered defilement,
if my faith has suffered damage,
if my hope is less than bright,
if my love is not fervent,
if some creature-comfort occupies my heart,
if my soul sinks under the pressure of the fight.
O thou whose every promise is balm,
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every touch life,
draw near to thy weary warrior,
refresh me, that I may rise again to wage the strife,
and never tire until my enemy is trodden down.
Give me such fellowship with thee that I may defy Satan,
unbelief, the flesh, the world,
with delight that comes not from a creature,
and which a creature cannot mar.
Give me a draught of the eternal fountain
that lieth in thy immutable, everlasting love and decree.
Then shall my hand never weaken,
my feet never stumble,
my sword never rest,
my shield never rust,
my helmet never shatter,
my breastplate never fall,
As my strength rests in the power of thy might. Amen.
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What Chairman Mao Can Teach Us About Spiritual Warfare
Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” is the second bestselling book of all time. We all know that the
Bible is the bestselling book in history, with at least six billon copies in print. But the “Little Red Book”
has sold over 900 million copies. For that alone, it deserves to be read and studied.
70 Million
A recent biography called Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday begins with this
sentence:
Mao Tse-Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s
population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other
twentieth-century leader (p. 3).
Mao was one of the greatest killers of all time. As I perused the “Little Red Book,” I ran across one of
his more famous sayings where he puts it very plainly:
Every Communist must grasp the truth, ’Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’ (p. 121).
He speaks forcefully of the brutality necessary for a revolution to succeed:
Everything reactionary is the same; if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall (p. 21).
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it
cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and
magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows
another (p. 23).
Then he adds this word to the fearful:
If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes? (p. 131).
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How to Win Against a Superior Force
He speaks at one point of the importance of not going into battle unless you have overwhelming
numerical superiority. This matters because in the beginning, the Communists were a minority on the
battlefield. The only hope was to pick those spots where they could win one battle at a time.
In this way, though inferior as a whole (in terms of numbers), we shall be absolutely superior in every
part and every specific campaign, and this assures victory in the campaign (pp. 185 & 187).
This he immediately follows with two other pieces of battle advice:
Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not assured of winning (p. 187).
Give full play to our style of fighting–courage in battle, no fear of sacrifice, no fear of fatigue, and
continuous fighting (that is, fighting successive battles in a short time without rest) (p. 187).
A few pages later I found this intriguing thought:
Without preparedness superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either. Having
grasped this point, a force which is inferior but prepared can often defeat a superior enemy by
surprise attack (p. 191).
This comes from an article called, appropriately enough, “Protracted War,” published in 1938, in the
midst of the war with Japan, before World War II, and eleven years before the Communists would win
in China. This final quote deserves mention because it is the ultimate statement of asymmetric
warfare. Preparation matters more than anything else in warfare, especially a war that drags on and
on. Today’s terrorists understand this principle better than we do. The terrorists cannot win a headon confrontation with the United States or with any other major power. But they can fly planes into
buildings, blow up trains, incite people to riot over cartoons in a Danish newspaper, and kill soldiers
and civilians with roadside bombs. When Mao wrote these words, he led an army that fought against
both the Nationalist army and the Japanese army. It would not have seemed likely that one day he
would become the icon and demigod of all of China. It was by no means certain in 1938 that the
Japanese or the Nationalists either one would ever be defeated. Many things had to happen in order
for Mao’s army to win. But he understood the fundamental axiom of asymmetric warfare. Find out
where your enemy is unprepared and hit him hard when he least expects it.
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One Friday in Jerusalem
It happened one Friday morning in Jerusalem. The rooster crowed, and Peter never forgot it. As long
as he lived, he never forgot it, and he never tired of telling the story. In fact, he told the story so often
that it was written down four different times–once by Matthew, once by Mark, once by Luke, and
once by John. The story itself was repeated over and over again by the first generation of Christians.
They never forgot it and they never tired of telling it. It became one of the most familiar and bestloved parts of the gospel story. Wherever the story of Jesus’ arrest is told, the story of Peter and the
rooster is sure to be told as well. Few Bible stories speak to us as this one does.
It is late on Thursday night in Jerusalem. Jesus has just been arrested and taken away to the house of
the high priest. Most of the disciples are nowhere to be found. They are gone, scattered, drifted off
into the darkness, too shocked and too angry by the actions of Judas to do anything else. When the
crowd of soldiers led Jesus away, Peter decided to follow them. He had promised never to desert
Jesus, and he wasn’t going to start now. In the confusion it was easy to tag along behind the crowd.
No one seemed to notice him. Certainly no one recognized him as one of Jesus’ top men.
He followed the crowd to the house of the high priest. The house opened onto a courtyard which
could only be entered through a gate near the alley. By the time Peter got there, the soldiers had
taken Jesus inside to meet the high priest. The crowd had partly dispersed, it being late and the major
excitement over for the time being. Some had gone home, others were warming themselves by a fire
in the courtyard. It was early April and the temperature had dropped into the upper forties.
It was hard for Peter to tell exactly how many people were there. Fifty maybe, or maybe more. There
were soldiers milling about and servant girls running errands. Plus there were hangers-on and
passers-by (exactly the category Peter himself fit into) who were waiting to see what would happen to
this fellow Jesus.
In order to understand what happens next, it helps to remember that it is now sometime after
midnight. In the darkness Peter comes to the gate and waits to be admitted. No one there knows who
he is (he thinks), so it should be perfectly safe for him to go in. True, he is now in enemy territory but
it’s the middle of the night, and there’s no reason for them to suspect him. Armed with that thought,
he brushes past the servant girl on his way to stand by the fire in the courtyard.
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Just as he was getting to the fire, the servant girl spoke up and said, “You were with that Nazarene,
Jesus from Galilee.” The words hit Peter like an electric shock. Somehow she recognized him. How did
she know him? No one knows. It really didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that she didn’t know his
name. What mattered was that somehow she had connected him with Jesus. Peter had to think fast.
Instinctively, he muttered out the oldest dodge in the world, “I don’t know what you are talking
about.” That’s right. Just play dumb. Act like you don’t know what she’s talking about. It worked. Or at
least Peter thought it worked. But as he stood around the fire talking to the soldiers, he noticed two
or three people looking at him closely. Too closely. Too carefully. One or two were nodding in his
direction and whispering. Minutes passed and Peter turned to walk out of the courtyard. Things were
getting a little dicey. As he did, a second servant girl (a friend of the first), suddenly spoke up: “This
fellow is one of them.” Peter tried to act calm but he felt his heart pounding in his chest. Quick now,
you’ve got to say something. Think. Think. Don’t just stand there. So he said, “I don’t know the man.”
But when he said it, his face was flushed and he could tell the girl didn’t believe him.
Trapped!
Peter knew he was in real trouble. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s in the
enemy camp warming himself around the enemy’s fire. If he tried to leave now, that would arouse
even more suspicion. But if he stayed, they might find him out. More time passed, with more looks
and whispers directed at him. After about an hour, it appeared that Jesus’ interview with the high
priest was about over. The guards were going to and from the house and the tempo in the courtyard
picked up. Peter breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he would get out of this after all. It was just at that
moment that a man spoke up from the other side of the fire. He sounded more sure of himself and
definitely more hostile than the servant girls. “Didn’t I see you with him in the olive grove?” Peter
looked up at him and tried to play dumb. This time it didn’t work. Evidently this fellow had gone with
the crowd to arrest Jesus. Worse, he was a relative of Malchus, the man whose ear Peter had
impulsively cut off.
Peter was trapped and he knew it. This fellow had seen him with Jesus. Plus, he was plenty ticked off
about what Peter had done. When a man is backed into a corner, he will do almost anything to save
himself. In this case, Peter began to curse and swear. “I don’t know him. Why don’t you leave me
alone? May God strike me dead if I have ever heard of this man Jesus.” The words just came tumbling
out, old words born of fear and exhaustion. Words Peter hadn’t used since his days as a fisherman.
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At the very instant the words flew from his mouth, a rooster began to crow.
The Devil’s Hounds Run In Packs
Now that the story is laid before us, we should begin to ask some questions, chief among them being
what possessed Peter to deny knowing Jesus. The answer is not difficult to find. Peter was scared and
he was tired. That doesn’t excuse his conduct, but it does make it understandable. After all that had
happened, Peter finally ran out of strength. Consider the matter from his point of view. Jesus’ case
appeared to be hopeless. The had him at last, and they would not let go until he was dead. That much
was clear. What point would there be in sticking your neck out?
Besides that, Peter is tired and lonely and cold and a little bit disoriented. Plus–and this is a big factor–
he never expected to be questioned by a servant girl. Her question caught him totally off-guard, and
he blurted out an answer almost without thinking. But once he denied knowing Jesus there was no
turning back. He had to play out the string. That’s part of the irony of this story. Peter denied Christ to
a servant girl. Not to the high priest. Not to a soldier. Not to anyone important. He denied Christ to a
menial maid. But one sin leads to another. Peter was a like a confused sheep surrounded by a pack of
wolves. His lack of courage when questioned by the servant girl made him more susceptible to the
other questions that were soon to come. His confidence eroded, he became easy prey. Soon he
denied his Lord three times.
I think Peter was ready to die for Christ that night. A few hours earlier he was whacking off
somebody’s ear. No, Peter was no coward. And he knew the risk involved in going to the courtyard of
the high priest. And I think (though I cannot prove this) that if Peter had been brought before the high
priest he would have said, “Yes, I am a follower of Jesus” and with a smile on his face, he would have
followed his Master to the cross. That’s the kind of man he was. What happened? He was totally
unprepared to be questioned by a servant girl. She caught him off guard and he lied about knowing
Jesus. But one lie leads on to another. As Alexander Maclaren put it, “One sin makes many. The
Devil’s hounds run in packs.”
Peter’s Seven Great Mistakes
What happened to Peter was no fluke. He set himself up by a long string of bad decisions. Here are
the seven great mistakes he made that night:
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1. He talked when he should have been listening. At the Last Supper, when Jesus said that all his
disciples would desert him, Peter impulsively blurted out, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I never
will” (Matthew 26:33 NLT). Within 6 hours Peter would come to regret those brave words.
2. He didn’t appreciate his own weakness.
3. He ignored Jesus’ warning.
4. He followed afar off. He followed Jesus, but at a distance, when he should have been at his elbow.
In this case, following Jesus afar off only got him in more trouble.
5. He warmed himself at the wrong fire. Peter had no business warming himself in the company of
the enemies of the Lord. As one writer put it, “If his faith had not already frozen, he would not have
needed to warm himself by the fire.” By consorting with those who had arrested Jesus, Peter was
placing himself in a position where he would almost certainly be exposed. Peter warmed himself by
the wrong fire until things got too hot for him.
6. He was unprepared when the attack came.
7. He compounded his sin by first deceiving, then denying and finally swearing. But this was
inevitable. Peter set himself up for a fall and when it came, it was a big one. “O what a tangled web
we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” It is interesting to note that Peter fooled only himself.
The others never really believed him. They sensed he was lying. Something in his face and the tone of
his voice gave him away.
And so it was that Peter–the “Rock"–crumbled in the critical moment. He had denied his Lord not
once, but three times. It was a failure he would remember for the rest of his days. As we think of it,
let us take to heart the words of I Corinthians 10:12, “So, if you think you are standing firm, be
careful that you don’t fall.”
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Attacking Our Strong Points
Satan often attacks us at the point of our strength, not the point of our weakness. A few hours earlier
Peter boldly declared he would never desert the Lord. If you had asked Peter at that moment to name
his strong points, no doubt he would have listed boldness and courage right at the top. He would have
said, “Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth, but at least I’m not afraid to speak up. Jesus knows that
I’ll always be there when he needs me.” But when Satan attacked, it came so suddenly, so swiftly, so
unexpectedly that the bold apostle turned to butter. By himself Peter is helpless. In the moment of
crisis, Peter fails in the very point where he pledged to be eternally faithful.
Should this surprise us? After all, why should Satan attack only in the point of your self-perceived
weakness? If you know you have a weakness, that’s the very area you will guard most carefully. If you
know you have a problem with anger or with laziness or with lust or with gluttony, will you not be on
your guard lest you fall?
But it is not so with your strengths. You take those areas for granted. You say, “That’s not a problem
for me. I have other problems, but that area is not really a temptation at all.”
Watch out! Put up the red flag! There is danger ahead. When a person takes any area of life for
granted, that’s the one area Satan is most likely to attack. Why? Because that’s the one area where
you aren’t watching for his attack.
It happened to Peter. It will happen to you and to me sooner or later.
Chairman Mao understood this point perfectly. Let me repeat that final quote one more time:
Without preparedness superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either. Having
grasped this point, a force which is inferior but prepared can often defeat a superior enemy by
surprise attack (p. 191).
That perfectly describes what happened to Peter. He meant well, but he wasn’t prepared for what
was about to hit him. He wasn’t a coward, but he overestimated his own strength, and in a weak
moment he was brought down a teenage girl. He never got over the humiliation of what happened
that night. Two thousand years later, we still remember that Peter under pressure caved in and
denied the Lord. It’s not surprising that many years later, Peter wrote these words: “Be careful!
Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion,
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looking for some victim to devour” (1 Peter 5:8 NLT). Lions are fearful not only for their roar and their
fearsome appearance. They are to be feared because they lie in wait, sometimes for hours, until an
unsuspecting victim comes too close. By then it’s too late. There is no escape. For Peter, the “roaring
lion” came in the form a servant girl who asked him a question he wasn’t prepared to answer.
It was a classic case of asymmetric warfare, and it utterly defeated Peter.
There are many lessons here if we care to take them:
1. The Devil doesn’t fight fair.
2. He attacks when we least expect it.
3. He attacks our strengths because we take them for granted.
4. He attacks repeatedly from different angles.
5. Any ground left unguarded becomes open territory for the Devil.
6. Be alert!
7. Pay attention!
8. Keep your eyes open!
9. Don’t brag!
10. Stay close to Christ!
11. Lean on your Christian friends!
12. Put on the armor of God!
13. Take up the Sword of the Spirit!
14. Pray like crazy!
The battle has been joined, the enemy doesn’t fight fair, and every believer is on the front lines. Be
prepared, lest you too should become a casualty in the battle. It’s not always the big things that bring
us down. Sometimes it’s just the small things that do it because we weren’t prepared when the
enemy made his move.
There is a warning in this sermon about presumptuous faith that doesn’t take seriously the dangers all
around us. But there is also good news for the children of God. The Devil fights unfairly because that’s
the only way he can bring us down. He is Ultimate Loser for time and eternity because our Lord is the
Ultimate Champion and the Captain of our Salvation. We stand on the victory side when we stand
with the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Snake Eyes – Genesis 3:1-7
“The literal Genesis record of supernatural creation is the foundation of the true gospel, the true
doctrine of Christ, true evangelism, genuine saving faith, and of all the key aspects of biblical
Christianity.”
“All truth–in every area of life–finds its beginning in the Genesis record of creation and the other
events of primeval history. That’s why God placed it first in the Bible.”
“Our vital goal … has always been to urge Christians to get back to Genesis and begin there. The word
Genesis means “beginning” and we need to begin there.”
The Bible makes no sense unless we understand the first few chapters of Genesis. These chapters
answer a very crucial question: Where did we come from and how did we get from where we started
to where we are today? The way that question is worded suggests that somewhere along the way, a
massive change has occurred in the universe. Genesis 1 tells us that when God finished with creation,
he declared it “very good.” On that day there was no crime, no poverty, no sickness, and no death.
There were no broken homes, no latchkey children, no abusive husbands, no drug pushers, no
murderers, and no child molesters. What God created was pure, perfect, and pristine in its beauty.
The whole earth was a place of peace and tranquility. In short, the world as it came from the hand of
God was paradise.
Obviously something has gone wrong with that same world because all those things that were not
there then are found in abundance today. Now the roses have thorns and we have made bombs
powerful enough to kill 10 or 20 million people at a time. What happened to the paradise God
created? The Bible answers that question with the little word sin. Sin has happened to the world and
nothing has been right or worked ever since.
Studying the Enemy’s Tactics
The Bible does not tell us everything we might like to know about sin. For example, we are not clearly
told where sin came from in the beginning. The serpent suddenly shows up in Genesis 3 with no
introduction at all. He’s simply there, in the Garden, going about his diabolical work.
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As we approach our text, it’s useful to keep two things in mind. First, this is history, not myth or
legend or saga or poetry. There really was a serpent that really could talk. There really was a woman
named Eve who really ate the fruit and gave some to Adam who also ate. And that is the true account
of the first temptation and the first human sin.Second, this story also teaches us an important truth
about how the devil tempts us today. Though these events took place thousands of years ago, they
have an amazing relevance to the 21st-century. We ought to study this story of the first temptation in
the same way that a general studies his enemy. Before committing his force to battle, a good leader
studies his opponent carefully. Where does he like to attack? How? When? How often? And under
what conditions? If you go into battle armed with that information, your chances of victory are much
stronger. In the movie Patton, there is a scene where Patton ambushes the tanks of German general
Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox.” After the battle, Patton says to himself, “Rommel, you magnificent
so-and-so, I read your book!” Reading Genesis 3 is like reading the devil’s playbook. With that in mind,
let’s look carefully at the story of the first temptation and watch as the various stages unfold before
us, one by one.
Stage 1: The Approach is Subtle & Unexpected.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made” (Genesis
3:1a).
There are some things we know and some things we don’t know about this story. We know that the
serpent is the devil (see Revelation 12:9). But where did the serpent come from? How did the devil
gain entry into paradise? What did the serpent look like? Did he look like a snake or did he take some
other form? How could a serpent talk? And while we’re on the subject, does that mean all the animals
could talk before the Fall? The answer to all those questions is the same: I don’t know. The Bible
simply doesn’t give us enough information to answer those questions with certainty. Evidently they
don’t matter or God would have told us.
I think it’s clear from what follows that Eve has no idea what is about to happen. Why should she?
She’s quite literally in paradise. It’s not as if she got up that day and thought to herself, “I’d better
have my Quiet Time today because a talking serpent is going to tempt me to sin and if I give in, I’ll
bring heartache, misery, sadness, despair, loneliness, trouble, murder, mayhem, hatred, and every
form of evil to billions of people for thousands of years to come.” No, it wasn’t like that at all. She
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wasn’t expecting to encounter a talking serpent or to be tempted to commit the first sin. She wasn’t
looking for the serpent but the serpent was definitely looking for her.
In my mind’s eye I picture her walking along the banks of the river that ran through the Garden of
Eden. It’s a sunny day and she enjoys the breeze blowing through her hair and the soft feel of fresh
grass beneath her feet. The flowers are in full bloom and she can hear the birds calling to each other
from the trees of the forest. It is the sort of day that we all dream about, a perfect day in paradise.
Then she spots the serpent. She doesn’t recoil in fear. Why should she? What is there to fear in
paradise? The creature before her is stunningly beautiful. When he speaks, his voice is captivating.
The serpent was truly cunning in his approach. But temptation generally comes when we least expect
it. After all, if temptation gave us a warning call, we’d be much better prepared. And the fact that the
serpent shows up in paradise leads me to this suggestion:When everything is going well in your life,
Beware! You are a prime candidate for satanic attack. Our instincts tell us that temptation tends to
come when we are down on our luck, and sometimes it happens that way. But we are just as likely to
be tempted when our bills are paid, our job is going well, the boss likes us, our spouse loves us, our
children are reasonably well behaved, the folks at church are glad to see us, and the doctor says we
are in perfect health. Be warned. When everything is going well, buckle up! You are likely to be
attacked because when the good times roll, our guard is down and we are prime candidates for the
“fiery darts” of the devil.
Stage 2: The Strategy Involves Conversation & Controversy.
“He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?"’ The
woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You
must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or
you will die"’” (Genesis 3:1b-3).
The serpent’s first move is brilliant. In essence, he challenges Eve to a game of Bible Trivia. What
happens next is a three-part conversation in which the serpent speaks, Eve responds, and the serpent
speaks again. The whole exchange could have been over in less than a minute. The serpent’s Bible
Trivia question is this: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” That’s a
clever query. After all, Eve was not present when God spoke to Adam. She had to rely on her
husband’s explanation. The question itself turns on the word “really.” One translation even begins
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with that word: “Really? Did God really say …” The question boils down to this: How well does Eve
know the Word of God? As we shall see, she knows it pretty well, but not well enough. Because she
has a general idea of what God said but is hazy on the details, the serpent will pounce on her lack of
specific knowledge.
In her response Eve makes three mistakes. First, she downplays the permission. God had said they
could eat from any tree of the garden (Genesis 2:16). Eve lessens the impact of God’s permission from
“any tree” to “the trees,” a subtle but important shift in emphasis. Second, she added to the
prohibition. God had forbidden them to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But Eve
added the phrase, “you must not touch it.” Finally, she downplayed the judgment for disobedience.
God had said, “You will surely die,” while Eve says, “You will die.” Again, this is a subtle difference.
Eve had to get her information from Adam, which means that either Adam incorrectly relayed what
God had said or Eve misunderstood it or perhaps she changed it on her own. In a sense, Eve’s
“paraphrase” of God’s Word in and of itself is not especially objectionable. To use a common term,
she is “in the neighborhood” of the truth. She is quoting God’s Word, sort of. And where did that part
about not touching the tree come from? Perhaps Adam suggested it as a logical way to stay out of
trouble. If so, he was simply being a wise husband and showing proper care for his wife. But if Adam
said, “God said, ‘Don’t touch the tree,’” then Adam was adding to God’s Word. And if Eve interpreted
it that way, she was adding to God’s Word. Either way, the net effect is to make God sound more
restrictive than he really is.
But there is a greater point that must not be missed. If you are going to talk to the devil, make sure
you quote God’s Word accurately. As we shall see, he knows what God really said. When we are
tempted, we will never be delivered by a “general” knowledge of the Word. It won’t help us to “sort
of” know the truth. We must know and stand upon what God has actually said.
So why did Eve get in trouble? First, she didn’t know the truth of the Word of God. Second, she
shouldn’t have been discussing God’s Word with the serpent in the first place. Third, she should have
asked Adam to help her in this situation instead of going it alone. Those who think they are an equal
match for the devil will soon find out they were sadly mistaken.
When you are tempted, don’t stop to talk it over. When Potiphar’s wife is pulling you down into the
bed, don’t stop to pray with her. Run for your life! Leave your jacket and run for safety. Don’t
negotiate with the devil. And don’t talk it over with his representatives. And remember that his
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representative could be your best friend or a family member, a co-worker or someone else you know
very well. The devil sometimes uses those we love in order to lead us astray. Your best defense
against temptation will always be an accurate knowledge of the Word. Know it! Read it! Memorize it!
Quote it when the devil knocks at your door.
Stage 3: The Conversation Leads to Doubt & Desire.
“‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw
that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining
wisdom, she took some and ate it” (Genesis 3:4-6a).
At this point the serpent openly denies what God has said. In the Hebrew the expression is very
strong. Literally it reads, “Not, you shall surely die.” The serpent took the very phrase God used and
put the word “not” in front of it. Which means, by the way, that in this instance the devil knew the
Word of God better than Eve did. That’s why you’d better know your Bible before you start arguing
with Satan. He’s not only smarter than you, he knows God’s Word through and through. He just
doesn’t believe it.
The first doctrine that is denied by the devil is the doctrine of God’s judgment. God said, “You will
certainly die.” Satan said, “You will not certainly die.” Why did he deny this doctrine and not
something like the existence of God or the deity of Christ or Christ’s resurrection? The answer is
simple: If you are convinced that you can get away with sin, sooner or later you’re going to do it. If you
think that no one will know, no one will notice, no one will ever call you to account for your actions,
you’ll eventually give in. Why not commit adultery if you think you can get away with it? Why not
steal or kill or sleep around? If there are no consequences for sin, there is no reason not to indulge
your wild desires.
Then the serpent questions God’s goodness. He implies that God is holding back something from Eve
that would make her happy. “You will be like God.” What an incentive that is. Why not? Who wouldn’t
want to “be like God?” The serpent’s words were designed to cause Eve to feel deprived and cheated
by God.
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Now the downward spiral has started. First, Eve listened when she shouldn’t have listened. She talked
when she shouldn’t have talked. She thought about what the devil said when she should have ignored
it. Now she is about to fall right into his trap.
Her response reveals how clever the devil is. He’s got her on three different levels.
1) The Practical Level. The fruit was good to eat. That’s the lust of the flesh.
2) The Emotional Level. It looked beautiful to her. That’s the lust of the eyes.
3) The Spiritual Level. It would make her wise. That’s the pride of life.
The devil has now got her hook, line and sinker. She’s already a goner and she doesn’t even know it.
And I’m sure the fruit did look good. She probably took it in her hands, felt it, and even enjoyed the
pleasant fragrance. But please remember this: When you start fondling Forbidden Fruit, you’re already
in the pit. You’ve committed the sin in your heart long before you take that first bite. If you don’t
want to get trapped, don’t stop to inspect the fruit. Don’t spend time thinking about how nice it
would be, how good it would feel, or how much you deserve it.
The Danger of Self-Pity
We play this game so many ways. “I know God says adultery is wrong, but I really do love him and
God wants me to be happy.” “I know God says he hates divorce, but my marriage is the pits.” “I know
God calls me to purity, but I’m single and so lonely.” “I know God says stealing is wrong, but everyone
else does it. Why can’t I?” On and on we go, offering one rationalization after another. Mark it down,
Christian friend. When you start saying, “I know what God says, but I think he’ll make an exception for
me,” you are on the verge of spiritual disaster.
There are several crucial lessons here:
1) When we doubt God’s goodness, sin won’t seem so sinful.
2) Satan wants you to feel deprived by God!
3) We can always justify disobedience if we try hard enough.
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Self-pity is a dangerous emotion that leads to many wrong decisions. A friend wrote in an e-mail that
she was going through a particularly bad day. The details don’t matter but she realized that she was
wallowing in a sea of self-pity and she knew from experience that she had to get out of it quickly.
From her days in AA, she knows how dangerous those “pity parties” can be. “This is when drinkers
drink. This is when smokers smoke. This is when eaters eat. This is when gamblers gamble.” And I
would add, this is when cheaters cheat, liars lie, angry people lose their temper, and adulterers
commit adultery. You will never grow spiritually as long as you listen to the devil’s lie that says, “Go
ahead. You deserve it. It won’t matter. You’ve been cheated in life and now it’s time to live a little.” If
you listen carefully, you can hear the hiss of hell in those evil words.
The downward spiral is almost complete.
First, you talk with the devil.
Second, you believe the devil.
Third, you obey the devil.
And fourth, you are conquered by the devil. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. What the
serpent did to Eve, he still does today because the strategy still works.
Stage 4: The Result is Collaboration & Catastrophe.
“She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of
them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made
coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:6b-7).
The end comes very quickly. Notice the verbs in verse 6: saw … took … gave … ate. Evidently she
doesn’t hesitate and neither does he. Eve has now joined the serpent’s team. By giving the fruit to
Adam, she is doing the serpent’s dirty work for him, and she is dragging her husband down with her.
But that’s what happens when we yield to temptation. We never fall alone; others are always hurt by
our rebellion and disobedience. We stand together, we fall together, and in the end, we suffer
together.
Notice how ordinary the first sin is. It’s just a bite of fruit. Nothing special about it. Like eating a cold
peach on a hot summer’s day. Or taking a bite from an apple. Or enjoying a fresh pear or an orange.
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No big deal. The first sin was not murder or some terrible sexual sin. No, it’s something very ordinary,
something we all have done, just a bite of fruit. And I can imagine that when she ate the fruit, Eve said
to herself, “This is really good.” And perhaps she said to Adam, “Honey, have a bite. I touched it and
nothing happened to me. This is the best fruit I’ve ever had.”
Where Was Adam?
And by the way, where was Adam when all this was going down? The text says he was “with her.”
That sounds like he was standing right by her side while she was talking to the serpent. What a total
doofus! Maybe he was grinning to himself and enjoying the intellectual sparring that took place
between the serpent and his wife. Perhaps he thought it was just some cute parlor game. If Adam had
been a true spiritual leader, he would have taken a hoe and hacked off the serpent’s head. The world
would have been a better place if he had taken leadership. First Timothy 2:14 draws an important
conclusion from this verse: “And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was
deceived and became a sinner.” Eve was tricked by the devil. Perhaps he came to her because he
knew he could appeal to her emotions. But Adam was not deceived. He had heard the original
command from God and he knew it was wrong to eat the fruit. He wasn’t tricked at all. And as the
head of his family (and the “federal head” of the whole human race), he is held morally culpable for
the first sin. It wasn’t Eve’s fault. She sinned first but Adam is to blame. That’s why Romans 5 says that
sin entered through Adam. He should have known better, he should have exercised leadership to
protect his wife, and he should have killed the serpent when he had the chance. But he didn’t. And
the rest is history. Men, learn this lesson. When you fail to exercise spiritual leadership, your wife and
your children will always pay the price.
Eve never dreamed what would happen next. She truly thought that she would gain enlightenment.
But her eyes were opened and she suddenly knew she was naked. And Adam’s eyes were opened and
he knew he was naked. Innocence was gone forever. Now the full impact of their disobedience begins
to hit home. Now they are ashamed to see each other naked. Quickly they make a pitiful covering of
fig leaves. But sinners can never adequately cover up their own sin. The fig leaves keep falling off. And
you can never replace them fast enough.
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Little Steps in the Wrong Direction
How did Adam and Eve end up like this? It was a series of little steps in the wrong direction. She
should never have listened. She had no business stopping to talk with the serpent. She should have
known God’s Word accurately. And she should never have spent time thinking about how wonderful
the fruit looked and how much fun it would be to have a bite. Finally, she should never have given the
fruit to her husband. And he should have intervened to protect her. But all those small steps added up
to one huge catastrophe that still haunts the world today.
From the standpoint of thousands of years later, we see Satan’s strategy clearly. He came to Eve in a
moment of weakness and he began with an “innocent” question. Little by little, he led her to the
place where she was willing to do what she had previously never even dreamed of doing. He even coopted her onto his team so she was doing his work for him. The devil uses that same strategy today
because it still works. And notice his ultimate lie. He said, “God knows … you will know.” He took a
truth and twisted it violently. When they sinned, their eyes were opened and they truly did know,
only they now know evil on a personal basis. The “wisdom” they sought could never be found through
rebellion. The enlightenment they dreamed of turned out to be deep moral darkness. No wonder they
were ashamed.
Satan promised liberation through rebellion. What they got was slavery, sin, shame and death. Let us
learn one overarching truth from this passage: Every temptation is a lie wrapped in a promise of
freedom. Satan is the father of lies. He lies consistently. He lies because it is his nature to lie. He is the
first and greater deceiver. All Satan’s apples have worms.
What really happened that day in the Garden of Eden? Theologians call it “the fall.” They mean that
Adam and Eve fell from a state of innocence into a state of sin, shame, slavery and death. And what
they did has been passed down across the generations so that all of us inherit a nature that causes us
to rebel against God. That day in Eden, man declared his independence from God. As a result all of us
are born with a clinched fist daring God to tell us what to do. Human nature is now thoroughly
corrupt. All are sinners. We are born that way, we live that way, and we will die that way. Sin is now
the environment in which we live. Every relationship is corrupted because sin always separates us
from each other and from God.
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Who’s Going to be God Today?
Satan gives people what they want so that they will eventually get what he wants them to have. And
he never shows us the consequences of sin. We have to discover on our own, when it is too late to do
anything about it. The serpent repeated the lie that now rules the word–Man can be like God. This
was the original sin, and it is at the heart of every bad choice you’ve ever made. The first rule of the
spiritual life goes like this: He’s God and We’re Not. Everything Satan does is intended to make us
forget that fundamental reality. But when we do, we repeat the mistake Adam and Eve made so long
ago. Every mistake you’ve made has come because you forgot who’s God and who’s not. That’s why
the central question of life boils down to this: Who’s going to be God today?
Will you be God or will God be God? Our basic problem is that we have allowed God to be everywhere
but on his throne. No wonder we are unhappy and frustrated and unfulfilled. No wonder life doesn’t
work right. How much better to say with the psalmist, “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us
kneel before the Lord our Maker!” (Psalm 95:6). There is coming a day when “every knee shall bow
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (see Philippians
2:9-11). If that day is coming, then why not get a head start and bow your knee and confess that God
is God and Jesus Christ is your Lord? You aren’t God, you never were, and you never will be. The
sooner we all realize that fact, the better off we’ll be. And here’s the good news. If you really mean it,
then you can take a deep breath. Now go and rip that big G off your sweatshirt. You don’t have to be
God anymore. Let God be God and all will be well. Perhaps some of us need to say, “Oh God, you win.
The battle is over. I’m going to stop fighting you.”
Everything in this sermon so far has been bad news. It is also true news because this passage tells the
truth about why the human race is so messed up today. There is a direct connection between what
happened in the Garden that day and the pain, sorrow, sadness, despair, hatred, and rampant evil we
see all around us, and the sin we see inside us. We are the way we are because of what Adam and Eve
did.
I can sum up the rest of the Bible in one paragraph. After the fall, God moved to re-establish a
relationship with fallen men and women. Thousands of years later he made the ultimate move when
his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, came to earth to die for us. The first sin came from tasting forbidden
fruit. The evil of that day would not be overcome until Christ tasted death for all of us on the cross. It
took the bloody death of the Son of God to reverse the impact of what happened in Eden.
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The good news is that through Christ all our sins can now be forgiven. In a true sense we are all like
Adam and Eve. If we had been there, no doubt we would have done exactly as they did. If we think
otherwise, we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. They failed, we would have failed, and
left to ourselves we fail every day. Apart from the grace of God, we are capable of committing all sorts
of evil. And through the cross of Christ, even our worst sins can be forgiven. Adam, come home. Eve,
come home. God still loves you. He has never stopped loving you and he never will. The lights are on
and the door is open in the Father’s house. He is standing at the door waiting for you to come in.
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When Life Tumbles In, What Then? –Job 1
When his wife died, he didn’t know at first how he would survive. Although he was a minister and had
helped many others through times of crisis, now he faced his own personal moment of truth. How
would he reconcile his own loss with the Christian faith he claimed to believe? What would he say to
his own grieving congregation?
The year was 1927. The place: Aberdeen, Scotland. The man was Arthur John Gossip, pastor of the
Beechgrove Church. He was 54 years old and at the height of his power.
Historians tell us that he was a humble and sincere man, possessing a keen wit and deeply devoted to
his family and friends. A bit of an eccentric, he sometimes scandalized his staid Scottish congregation
by appearing in public with a floppy fisherman’s hat perched on his head. He is remembered as a man
of strong opinions who never held back from expressing them to any and all who cared to listen. And,
finally, history tells us that he was beloved as a pastor and as a preacher.
In fact, he is remembered as a preacher primarily for one particular sermon he preached in 1927.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest ever preached, it was the first sermon he delivered after the
sudden death of his wife. He titled his message “But When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” In it, he
struggles to reconcile his Christian faith with the loss of a loved one.
These are his words:
I do not understand this life of ours. But still less can I comprehend how people in trouble and loss
and bereavement can fling away peevishly from the Christian faith. In God’s name, fling to what?
Have we not lost enough without losing that too?
As Pastor Gossip says, “So many people’s religion is a fair-weather affair. A little rain, and it runs and
crumbles; a touch of strain, and it snaps.” But if we turn from faith in the time of trouble, what shall
we turn to? Have we not lost enough without losing that too?
The Question Of The Ages
Let’s begin our journey together by spending some time in the book of Job, chapter one. It’s not the
only place we could begin, but it makes sense to start here, because this book deals with the timeless
questions of suffering and loss. Even though this story is 4,000 years old, it could have been written
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yesterday. Most of the book of Job is poetry and has been properly called the greatest poem in all
human history. As one writer said, it “bears the stamp of uncommon genius.”
The book abounds with mysteries—Who wrote it? When? Where? Why? But the greatest mystery is
found in the subject matter itself—the mystery of undeserved suffering. Why do bad things happen to
good people? For centuries thoughtful people have pondered that question. Why do babies die? Why
are innocent people held hostage by madmen? Why are the righteous passed over for promotion
while the wicked seem to get away with murder?
The book does not answer those questions with theory; it answers them with a story. We are invited
to examine one man whose life tumbled in around him. Why did it happen and what did he do about
it?
The Man Who Had It All
The book of Job has a terse, direct, simple beginning. It unfolds likes film running at hyperspeed. The
frames zip by one after the other as an entire life is squeezed into a handful of sentences.
The first five verses tell us three things about Job:
1. He was a righteous man. “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was
blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (1). You could talk for hours about those
four phrases—-blameless, upright, fearing God, shunning evil. But suffice it to say that Job was as
good a man as you will find in all the Bible.
2. He was a rich man. “He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand
sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a
large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East” (2-3). It’s hard
to know how to translate this into today’s terms. I thought of Donald Trump or Bill Gates but they
don’t seem to fit the image. Maybe I could say it this way. By spelling out the details about the sheep
and camels and oxen and donkeys, our text is telling us that if a list of the world’s richest people had
been printed 4,000 years ago, Job would have been at the top.
3. He was a religious man. “His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they
would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its
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course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt
offering for each of them, thinking, ’Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their
hearts.’ This was Job’s regular custom” (4-5). Here is that rarest of all rare creatures: A truly wealthy
man who loves God more than he loves his money. Not only that, but a father who takes
responsibility for the spiritual welfare of his own family.
The point of these first few verses is very clear: By the world’s standards Job was successful; by God’s
standards he was righteous. Here is a man who truly had it all. He was wealthy and godly and popular.
You couldn’t find a person who would say a bad word about Job. I repeat what I said earlier—-He is as
good a man as you will find in all the Bible.
That fact is absolutely crucial to understanding his story. Let me say it carefully: What happened to
him happened because he was a good man! Nothing in the book of Job makes sense unless that is
true. Job is a case study in the suffering of the righteous. As hard as it may be to understand, it is his
righteousness and his prosperity that bring on his enormous suffering. And yet the suffering is
undeserved in the truest sense of the word.
Enter Satan
While you ponder that, consider what happens next. The story suddenly shifts to Job’s first test. The
scene changes from earth to heaven. Job never knew about this part. While he is on the earth tending
to his vast holdings, Satan has a conversation with God:
One day the angels (the Hebrew calls them “the sons of God") came to present themselves before
the Lord, and Satan (the name means “accuser” and Satan will now live up to his name) came with
them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From
roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it” (7-8).
This passage answers a prevailing misconception about Satan. If you ask the average Christian,
“Where is Satan today?”, most will answer that Satan is in Hell. But the Bible does not teach that. If
Satan were in Hell today, we would have no problems at all. As Hal Lindsey put it a few years ago,
Satan is alive and well on planet earth. In this age, the earth is under his power and domination.
Thank God, the day will come when Satan and all his hordes will be cast into the Lake of Fire forever
(Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10). But that won’t happen until Jesus returns to the earth. Between
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now and then, Satan roams about on the earth like a roaring lion, seeking men and women he can
devour (I Peter 5:8).
Since that is true, I take with utter seriousness the rising tide of Satanism in America today. It is one
more sign that we are living in the Last Days.
Let us be perfectly clear about it. There is a personal being called Satan who once was an angel of God
but who rebelled and fell from heaven to earth. In that rebellion he led one-third of the angels with
him. Those fallen angels became the demons. From the day of his fall until now, Satan has had but
one purpose: To frustrate God’s plan by seeking to destroy men and women on the earth. After all
these thousands of years, Satan is still at it.
I say all of that to make the point that Satan was behind what happened to Job. Job never knew that
and God never told him, but the writer of the book lets us peek behind the heavenly curtain to see
the unfolding drama.
Satan Is Not The Issue
That brings us to the key passage. Notice in verse 8 that it is God who brings Job’s name up. “Have
you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him.” That’s the other side of the coin.
Satan was behind Job’s trials but God was behind Satan. It’s not Satan who brings Job up. It’s God.
It’s as if God says, “All right, Satan, you’re looking for a good man. Let me tell you about Job. He’s the
best man I’ve got. I don’t think you can break him down.”
What an insight that is. Behind the suffering is Satan and behind Satan is God. That’s why, when you
read on in the book, you find that Job is complaining bitterly against God. He never brings Satan up.
Satan is not the issue. God is.
You see, even though Satan is the one who causes the calamity, he does it with God’s permission. And
if God didn’t give his permission, Satan couldn’t touch a hair on Job’s head.
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“Does Job Serve God For Nothing?”
In verse 9, we come to the key question in the entire book: “Does Job serve God for nothing?” Satan
is accusing God of bribing Job into worshipping him. After all, Job has it all—a huge, loving family,
enormous wealth, a great reputation, everything in this world a man could want. No wonder he
worships God. Who wouldn’t?
That’s what Satan means when he says, “You put a hedge around him.” You gave him all of that and
then you protect him from anything that could harm him. He’s living on easy street, he doesn’t have a
worry in the world. Big deal. Of course he’s your best man. He’s also your richest man. You do take
care of your own, don’t you?
Behind it all is a not-so-subtle message. “You’ve bribed him with prosperity. You dangle riches in front
of him like a carrot on a stick.” Satan is accusing God of rigging the system. It’s as if there is a contract
between Job and God that goes like this:
“I’ll be good and you bless me.”
“I’ll be pious and you give me prosperity.”
Satan is attacking Job’s motive and God’s integrity. Here is the real question of the book of Job: Will
anyone serve God for no personal gain?
Satan says the answer is no. Job will worship God only when things are going his way. Thus he says in
verse 11: “But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to
your face.”
Satan’s question echoes across the ages. Will anyone serve God for no personal gain? That is the
supreme question of life, isn’t it? You served God in the sunshine, will you now serve him in the
shadows? You believed in the light of day, will you still believe at midnight? You sang his praises when
all was going well, will you still sing through your tears? You came to church and declared “The Lord is
my Shepherd. I shall not want.” Is he still your shepherd in the valley of the shadow of death?
He was good enough for you when you had money in the bank. Is he good enough for you when you
have no money at all? He was good enough for you when you had your health. Is he good enough
when the doctor says, “You have six months to live."? He was good enough when you were married.
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Is he good enough when the one you love walks out on you? He was good enough when your family
was all together. Is he good enough when you stand around an open grave?
It’s not hard to believe in God when everything is going your way. Anyone can do that. But when life
tumbles in, what then?
Four Messengers Of Misfortune
Now the scene shifts back from heaven to earth. Satan has received God’s permission to put Job to
the test. Notice that it happens on a “day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking
wine at the oldest brother’s house” (13). In a moment of great happiness, at a family reunion, when
you would least expect it, Satan strikes.
First, the Sabeans steal Job’s livestock and kill his servants (15).
Second, a “fire from God” destroys his sheep and kills his servants (16).
Third, the Chaldeans steal his camels and kill his servants (17).
Fourth, a great wind hits the house where his children are feasting and kills them all (18-19).
The four messengers of misfortune come to Job one right after another. Three times the text says,
“While he was still speaking” (16,17,18). In the space of a few minutes, Job lost everything that was
dear to him. His vast wealth—vanished. His empire—crumbled. His workers—murdered. His
children—killed.
That’s the worst of it. When tragedy strikes, it often comes again and again. And we think to
ourselves, “This must be the worst of it.” And then comes another knock at the door. Just when it
seems that things can’t get any worse, the bottom falls out all over again.
370 And Rising
Have you ever taken one of those tests designed to measure the stress in your life? Typically, the test
lists about 50 stress-producing events and assigns a numerical score to each event. Some events have
a relatively low point value:
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“Moving to a new home"—20 points
“Trouble with in-laws"—29 points
Others produce much more stress:
“Divorce"—73 points
“Death of a spouse"—100 points
You simply check off the events that have happened to you in the last 12 months and then total up
the points. According to the test, if your total score for a year is between 0-150, you have only a 37%
chance of undergoing a severe mental or emotional crisis in the next two years. If you score is
between 150-300, the probability rises to 51%. But if your score is over 300, there is an 80%
probability that you will face a severe mental or emotional crisis. The stress level in your life is simply
too high.
Something like that happened to me in 1974. That was the year the bottom fell out of my life. Within
a period of less than six months, I got engaged, graduated from college, got a new job, took a long
trip, got married, moved to a new state, started seminary, and then two months later my father died.
My score on the stress scale was up around 370 and rising. By the end of the year I was a basket case.
Everything good was bitter to me. I hated life. It had been too much to take.
But Job lost it all—not in a year or in six months or in a couple of weeks. He lost it all in one afternoon.
It teaches us a solemn lesson–That tragedy is no respecter of persons. You can be on top of the world
and lose it all in the twinkling of an eye. Tragedy can come to the same house over and over again and
there is nothing you can do to stop it.
From Weeping To Worship
The only thing that is left is to see Job’s response. First, there is genuine sorrow. “At this, Job got up
and tore his robe and shaved his head” (20). These are the actions of a man whose heart has been
torn apart. They were public symbols of inner pain, like wearing black to a funeral.
Sometimes Christians feel it is wrong to grieve over a great loss. Some people think that tears
somehow show a lack of faith in God. As if we were made of steel and had no emotions at all. And
even in a great loss, they think it is somehow holy to put up a good front and never show your pain.
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And they have a hard time dealing with anyone who shows great emotion after a great loss. I
remember discussing this with a friend who told me that when his father died, he never cried, not
even one time. He simply called the undertaker and that was that. When I told him that I had cried
many times in thinking about my father’s death, he simply could not understand that. To him tears
were a sign of weakness.
But the Bible never says that. We are told instead that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Abraham and David
and Jeremiah were real flesh-and-blood men who weren’t afraid to weep and cry and cover
themselves with mourning. No one believed in God more than they did; and yet they weren’t
ashamed to let others see their pain.
The truth is, we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with our weaknesses. Jesus knows
what we’re going through because he was here with us. He knows what it’s like to die of a broken
heart. f our Lord was not ashamed of his tears, we shouldn’t be ashamed of ours.
Second, he worshiped God. “Then he fell to the ground in worship” (20). Here is the ultimate
response of the man of faith in the face of unexplainable tragedy. He weeps and then he worships.
This is what differentiates the Christian from the rest of the world. They weep, we weep. They get
angry, we worship. Our sorrow is just as real as theirs, but their sorrow leads only to despair; our
sorrow leads on to worship.
Naked I Came, Naked I Go
Verse 21 records Job’s great statement of faith. He says three things:
1. Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. This is literally true, as every
husband who has ever been present in the delivery room can testify. All babies are born naked. We
have a phrase for that. A naked person is wearing his “birthday suit.” But it’s just as true at the end of
life. We leave just the way we enter. We bring nothing with us and we take nothing with us.
Sometimes when a person dies we ask, “How much did he leave?” The answer is always the same—
"He left it all.” The old Italian proverb says, “The last robe has no pockets.” In the words of Billy
Graham, You’ll never see a Brinks truck following a hearse. When you die, you leave it all behind.
Job is expressing the great truth that all we have is given to us on temporary loan. And no matter how
much you have in this life, you can’t keep it. In the end, you have to give it back.
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2. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. This is the man of faith speaking. This statement rises
above the first one. It’s true that we leave it all behind. But the man of faith understands that all we
have is given to us by God. He can take what is rightfully his any time he wants. Because he is God, he
doesn’t have to ask our permission before he takes it back and he doesn’t have to explain himself
afterward.
3. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job’s faith now rises to its highest level. He’s lost it all—-his
wealth, his workers, his children. All that he counted dear in life has been ripped from his grasp. And
in the midst of his pain, Job praises God.
Here is the great point: Job draws his argument for praise from the bitterness of suffering. His loss
drives him back to the goodness of God. Every pain is a reminder of how good God has been to him.
Someone has said that “the magnitude of the loss determines the size of the gift.” The greater the
sorrow, the greater the joy must have been. Every tear is a way of saying, “Thank you, Lord, for what
you gave me.” In Job’s case, the more he grieves the more he blesses the name of the Lord.
Four Simple Conclusions
Our text ends with these amazing words: “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with
wrongdoing” (22). He didn’t ask why, he didn’t accuse God of not loving him, he didn’t claim his
rights, he didn’t curse God and he didn’t give up his faith. He simply says to himself, “If God takes
something away from me, I will thank him that I had it to enjoy for just a little while.”
As I ponder this remarkable story, four conclusions come to mind:
1. Undeserved suffering often comes to righteous men and women. This is surely an obvious lesson,
and although we have heard it before, we need to hear it again. Three times the text emphasizes that
Job was a righteous man. What happened to him did not happen because of any moral fault or any
hidden sin in his life. It is a human tendency when tragedy strikes to believe that if we had only lived a
better life, the tragedy would never have happened to us. Sometimes that is true, but more often it is
not true. If the story of Job teaches us anything, it is that sometimes the most godly people will suffer
the most unexplainable losses. We will come back to this point again and again in later chapters, but
let us nail it down in our thinking. Terrible things sometimes happen to good people.
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2. God is the ultimate source of all that you have and he has the absolute right to take that which
belongs to him. Your house? It’s his. Your job? It’s his. Your future? It’s his. Your health? It’s his. Your
children? Yes, even your children. They belonged to him before they ever belonged to you. Your
husband or your wife? Yes, even your husband or your wife. All that you have belongs to him and in
the end, you will give it all back to him. Sometimes he will take back something sooner than you
would like to give it. But that is his absolute right because he is God.
3. Your personal trials can never be caused by blind fate or bad luck. They all somehow relate to
God’s purpose for your life. If this is not true, then the Bible is not true. And if you don’t come to
believe this, you will eventually give up your faith. When tragedy strikes, our tendency is to search for
a cause, a reason, an explanation, a chain of events stretching back into the past that would explain
the catastrophe we now face. But as you search for causes, you go back… back … back … back … and
at last you come to God. As I say, if you don’t eventually conclude that what happens to you somehow
flows from God’s loving purpose for your life, you will sooner or later give up your faith altogether.
4. The one great biblical purpose for trials is to draw you near to God. The question is not, “Why did
this happen to me?” The deeper question is, “Now that this has happened, will I remain loyal to
God?”
“What Alternative Do You Propose?”
And that brings us back to A. J. Gossip and the great question, When life tumbles in, what then? If we
turn away from faith in trouble, what shall we turn to? Have we not lost enough without losing that
too? When life crashes in against us, and all that we value most is taken from us, if we then give up
our faith, where will we go and what will we do?
In his famous sermon, Pastor Gossip said these words, “You people in the sunshine may believe the
faith, but we in the shadow must believe it. We have nothing else.”
Stephen Brown tells about a seminar one of his associate pastors was leading. During one session, his
associate said because God is love, no matter how bad things get, Christians should praise him.
Afterwards, a man came up to him in great agitation. “Dave, I can’t buy it. I can’t buy what you say
about praising God in the midst of evil and hurt.” Then he went on to say what many people secretly
feel, “I do not believe that when you lose someone you love through death, or you have cancer, or
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you lose your job, that you ought to praise God.” After a moment’s silence, his associate replied very
simply, “What alternative do you propose?”
We do not gain if we turn away from God in the time of trouble. If we turn away from God, we lose
our only ground of hope.
Cords Stronger Than Steel
As A. J. Gossip came to the end of his famous sermon he said, “I don’t think you need to be afraid of
life. Our hearts are very frail; and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely. But
we have a wonderful God.”
Indeed we do. And as the Apostle Paul puts it, what can separate us from his love? Nothing at all. Not
life or death or tragedy or heartbreak or suffering. We are forever connected to his love with cords a
thousand times stronger than steel.
The question remains. When life tumbles in, what then? Through our tears, we go on believing. We
rest our confidence in one great truth. He who brought us this far will take us safely home
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Singing Your Way to Victory – 2 Chronicles 20
"I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil
and makes people gay; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after
theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.” Martin Luther.
“After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the LORD and to praise him for
the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: ’Give thanks to the
LORD, for his love endures forever’” (2 Chronicles 20:21).
This must be the most unusual battle plan in history.
The year: 850 BC. The place: Jerusalem. The king: a godly man named Jehoshaphat. He was a good
king, and he reigned during a period of prosperity and happiness for the people of Judah. God smiled
upon him because he was a man of the Book. He honored God’s Word, and God honored him in
return.
All of that changed when word came that a vast enemy army was approaching from the southeast.
They came from Edom on the other side of the Dead Sea. When the king got the news, the advancing
army was only 40 miles away and closing rapidly. Obviously the Moabites, the Ammonites and the
Meunites had planned their attack for many weeks. The danger was very real.
When the messengers gave the king the bad news, they told him that the army was coming “against
you” (v. 2), meaning Jehoshaphat now faced a very personal crisis. The army he faced was far larger
than the army he commanded. In a straightforward battle, the men of Judah would lose badly. This
wasn’t a fair fight.
What will Jehoshaphat do?
A man’s response in the time of crisis tells a great deal about his character. Our first reaction reveals
our deepest values. We may cover up a problem, we may deny it, we may panic and throw in the
towel, or we may decide to turn to the Lord.
Jehoshaphat responded in three ways (v. 3):
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First, he took the threat seriously.
Second, he prayed to the Lord.
Third, he called for a fast.
Christ-Centered, Team-Oriented, Battle-Focused
Verse 4 says that from all over Judah people came to Jerusalem to seek the Lord together. Because
their leader felt the burden, the people shared the burden with him. Everything in this story turns on
this simple point. When the king issued a call, the people came to seek the Lord together. Recently I
ran across a website for an organization called Battle-Focused Ministries. Their model for spiritual
warfare is “Christ-centered, team-oriented, and battle-focused.” They explain the second principle
this way:
Most popular spiritual warfare instruction focuses on the individual Christian’s struggle against his
own weaknesses and his personal fight against evil spirits… in order to be delivered from the
weariness of battle. That is in stark contrast to the training a soldier receives in our nation’s armed
forces. Although each individual soldier must be trained to survive on a battlefield, the vast majority
of his training concerns accomplishing the mission, defeating an enemy, by fighting as a member of a
team under the orders of his chain of command.
Jehoshaphat understood that by himself, he could not defeat the mighty Ammonite army, but united
together, they could multiply their prayers to the Lord of Hosts.
With the people assembled around him, and the enemy army advancing hour by hour, Jehoshaphat
offers one of the greatest prayers in the Bible. He begins by declaring God’s greatness: “O LORD, God
of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations.
Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you” (v. 6). Next he reminds God of
the promises he made to take care of his people when they were in trouble. Then he tells God,
“We’re in big trouble now!” He freely admits, “We have no power to face this vast army that is
attacking us” (v. 12). And he concludes with this simple confession: “We do not know what to do, but
our eyes are upon you” (v. 12).
We tend to get all mixed up about prayer, don’t we? We look at the externals–the form, the words
and the length. But God looks at the internals–faith, sincerity, honesty and humility. Jehoshaphat’s
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prayer proves that in a moment of crisis, a short prayer often means much more than a long prayer.
Because his prayer came from a heart of faith, it got God’s attention in a big way.
Go to the Gorge
When the prayer was over, the Holy Spirit prompted a man named Jahaziel to stand up and announce
the battle plan:
This is what the LORD says to you: “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For
the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them. They will be climbing up by
the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the Desert of Jeruel. You will not
have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will
give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them
tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you.” (vv. 15-17).
God gave them three specific details:
1) A time: Tomorrow
2) A place: March to the end of the gorge
3) A plan: Stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.
And he said it very plainly: “You will not have to fight this battle.” It doesn’t get any clearer than that.
Go out, take your positions, and then don’t move a muscle. Stand still and watch God do the work.
Singing … Loudly!
Satan’s greatest weapon against us is discouragement. If he can cause us to give up, he wins before
the battle even starts. The real question becomes, Will you go in your own strength or in the strength
of the Lord?
If the battle is yours, you are in big trouble.
If the battle is ours, we are in big trouble.
If the battle is the Lord’s, we are going to be okay.
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At that moment the Levites began to worship the Lord loudly (v. 19). These were the trained temple
singers who had been appointed in David’s day. Across the generations they had led the people of
God in public worship.
Now they begin to sing … loudly!
This is not a small point.
Remember the situation. The bad guys are closing fast on Jerusalem. The odds don’t favor the men of
Judah. The king has just proclaimed, “We do know what to do.” Jahaziel has just said, “Stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord.” What happens next?
The singers begin to sing … loudly!
Luther said it very plainly: “Music drives away the Devil and makes people gay; they forget thereby all
wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like.” Do you believe music drives the devil away? I do.
Preaching is one thing.
Prayer is one thing.
But music is something else.
It touches the heart and soul at a level too deep for words. Music is not better than preaching or
better than prayer, but music takes the words of the sermon and brings them home to the heart, and
music lifts our spirit to believe the words we bravely utter in prayer.
Invading the Devil’s Territory
Music is a weapon of spiritual warfare. And the devil hates it when we sing. He hates our music
because our singing rouses our souls, gives us courage, lifts our hearts, restores our faith, builds our
confidence, unites our voices, and lifts up the name of the Lord like a mighty banner.
Music is not just preparation for warfare. Music is spiritual warfare. When God’s people sing together,
we invade the devil’s territory.
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What happens the next day is actually very simple. Jehoshaphat sends his army out to do battle with
the enemy. We all know that a wise general puts his best troops at the front so they will bear the
brunt of the battle. So this is what the king did: “After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed
men to sing to the LORD and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the
head of the army, saying: ’Give thanks to the LORD, for his love endures forever’” (v. 21).
He put the male singers at the front of the army and had them lead the way to the battlefront. And he
had them sing as the army marched along, thus giving up the element of surprise.
As they began to sing and praise, the LORD set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and
Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated. The men of Ammon and Moab rose
up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. After they finished
slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another(vv. 22-23).
Note the key phrase, “As they began to sing and praise.” It was their singing that unleashed the
ambush that led to the rout of the enemy army. The slaughter was so great that it took three days to
collect the plunder from the battlefield. When that was done, the people gathered in the Valley of
Beracah for a praise service. Then they returned to Jerusalem, singing and praising as they went to
the temple.
The Doxology and the Devil
You can’t escape the real meaning of the text. Music played a vital role in this amazing victory. Music
is not just a means of praising God. It is also a means of throwing the devil and his cohorts into
confusion. John Piper points out that “God has appointed the use of spiritual songs as an effective
weapon against his arch enemy Satan.”
Mary Schlosser worked for years as a missionary in China. She used to say, “I sing the doxology and
dismiss the devil.” Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, said, “ I believe truly that Satan cannot
endure it and so slips out of the room – more or less – when there is a true song.”
I’ve never been much of a singer, but I love to sing. It must have started very early, because I can
hardly remember a time when I didn’t love to sing. I can remember being part of a children’s choir at
the church where I grew up. Later I joined the youth choir and tried my best to fit in. Once or twice
many years ago, I even led the music for revival services. And I can remember singing a solo at least
once, something I have not seen fit to repeat, nor has anyone asked me to.
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In my pastoral ministry, there have been many occasions when I came to church on Sunday morning
feeling weak and tired. Perhaps it was because of a busy week or perhaps I was carrying a particular
burden. Sometimes my mind would be going in a thousand different directions. And then the worship
service would begin. It might be with the mighty pipe organ playing “Come, Thou Almighty King,” or it
might be with the worship band leading “Lord, We Lift Your Name on High.” Or it might be singing
“Like a River Glorious” or “Down at the Cross” or “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” or perhaps it
was a new worship chorus I was learning for the first time. I have had this amazing experience over
and over again. As the congregation worshiped, my mind cleared, my doubts departed, my worries
receded, my faith swelled, my heart was lifted to heaven, and when the time came to preach, the
Holy Spirit came in great power. This has happened so many times that I cannot believe it was by
chance.
“I’ve never seen anything like it”
I also believe there is something powerful when men sing together. I believe God smiles from heaven
when men, who are supposed to be the spiritual leaders, do what the Levites did. When men lead the
way in singing, the whole congregation becomes stronger. No movement in the last 50 years has done
more for the men of America than Promise Keepers. In June 1994 I joined 62,000 men at the Hoosier
Dome in Indianapolis for a life-changing weekend. I jotted down a few notes after I got back home to
Oak Park:
“The Hoosier Dome fills up to overflowing… .Hallways jammed with men. Every seat taken and more
coming in … 62,000 men praising Jesus together … Believe it or not, they turned away 18,000 men
because they didn’t have enough room … “Gentlemen, prepare for landing. Fasten your seat belts.” …
“Welcome to Promise Keepers.” … Singing “O Worship the King,” “Crown Him With Many Crowns,”
one song after another, feeling the momentum build as we sing … God is in this place tonight … A sea
of hands uplifted in worship… ."Some of you men didn’t want to come. I saw heel marks out in the
parking lot.” … 3000 men going forward to rededicate themselves to Jesus Christ… . Clapping,
cheering, raising our hands in worship … “Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty” … The wave… . The
Double wave… . “Purify my heart” … Bill Bright calling us to be filled with the Spirit …
The final session… . “We’re pumped!” … Joe Stowell’s awesome message on being the light of the
world… . “We Christians don’t have enough acceptable hand signals when we get mad.” … Steve
Green and Steven Curtis Chapman—accountability partners… . Nothing like this has ever happened
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before … Singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” with 62,000 men… . “This is what heaven will be like.” … “God
must love this.” … Joining hands overhead, 62,000 strong, and singing “Brother, Let me be your
servant.” … Swaying to the music… . “Shoulder to Shoulder and Back to Back."… Clapping, cheering,
raising our hands in praise to Jesus… . “America is going to be different because thousands of men
have decided to become Promise Keepers.” … Share your personal commitment with a friend… . Don’t
take off your wristband until you keep that commitment… . One final song. “Rise up, Oh Men of God,
have done with lesser things. Give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of Kings.
Rise up, the Lord is calling. Rise up, this is the day. Rise up and seize the moment. Rise up, O men of
faith!” … Final good-byes … Christian men hugging each other—strong men, brave men, unafraid to
say “I love you, brother.” … Thousands of men going home changed forever… . Driving back in the
darkness. Arriving home at 3 AM. So excited I can’t go to sleep… . “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Twelve years have passed since that weekend in Indianapolis. A lot of water has gone under the
bridge, and I have still never seen anything like it. There is something very powerful and God-glorifying
about men singing together.
It was true in Jehoshaphat’s day. It is true in our day as well. Let the men be men and lead in the
singing, and we will see more victories for Christ and his kingdom.
Let the Pastors Sing!
If we want spiritual victory over the devil, one way to get it is to sing our way there. I find it
noteworthy that the people of God were singing before, during and after the battle. They ambushed
the enemy with music. We should do the same thing.
Let the pastors sing!
Let the elders sing!
Let the deacons sing!
Let the old folks sing!
Let the young people sing!
Let the children sing!
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Fill your heart will God-honoring music all day long. C. J. Mahaney says that we ought to listen every
day to music that focuses on the cross of Christ. I think that’s a wonderful idea. Given today’s
resources, there is no reason why every Christian cannot go through each day listening to Godcentered, Christ-exalting music.
You can find it on the Internet.
You can play it on a CD.
You can play it on your iPod.
You can play it on a cassette tape.
You can listen on your Walkman.
You can listen to Christian music on the radio.
You can buy a DVD of Christian music.
You can write your own music.
You can buy a hymnbook.
When you are discouraged, sing “Shout to the Lord.”
When you feel like quitting, sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
When you feel empty, sing “Come Thou Fount.”
When you are tempted, sing “How Great Thou Art.”
When you feel overwhelmed with guilt, sing “Wonderful, Merciful Savior.”
When you are hungry to know God better, sing “As the Deer.”
Parents, sing to your children … and to your grandchildren.
Make sure they hear you singing in church.
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Teach your children and grandchildren to sing hymns, gospel songs and choruses.
Sing while you are in the shower.
Sing while you ride your bike.
Sing along while you listen to the radio.
Sing while you work out.
Men, sing together … loudly!
Women, sing together … joyfully!
Children, sing together … spontaneously!
Take It to the Streets
Here’s something else I’ve been thinking about. If we want to take on the devil, we need to take our
music outside the four walls of the church. We’ve heard about “Prayer Walks.” How about some
Praise Walks where the body of Christ comes together to sing publicly? How about churches meeting
in parks for public praise services? If the devil gets his music played everywhere, why shouldn’t we be
at least as bold about taking our music to the streets? A little creative thought will suggest dozens of
ways we can sing the Lord’s praises out where the people are.
I am writing the end of this sermon on Friday night. In 36 hours many of us will gather in church to
worship the Lord. Take time to prepare your heart by listening to God-honoring music. Ask God to
enable you to worship fully this Sunday morning. When the time comes, when the congregation
stands and the organ plays, the band starts, the words flash on the screen or you pick up a hymnbook,
don’t hold back. Sing with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.
Go ahead.
Drive the devil nuts.
Keep on singing and drive him away.
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He hates the music God loves.
Satan hates a singing church.
So sing out and make the devil mad.
One final word. I add this because we live in a day when music has become a contentious issue in
many churches. For the last fifteen years we’ve heard a great deal about “worship wars” that have
torn apart many local congregations. Instead of using music to fight the devil, we’ve used music as a
weapon to fight each other. How sad. How tragic. How Satan must crow over our divisive attitudes.
Ask God to deliver you from musical smugness. As I have traveled the world, I have learned that God’s
people worship him in a bewildering variety of styles, languages, accents and rhythms. When we look
down on others whose musical tastes differ from our own, we run the risk of destroying the unity of
the body of Christ. We don’t all worship the same way, and that’s okay. But we do worship the same
Lord. And it’s in his name that we will win our battle with the devil. Keep the main thing the main
thing and all will be well.
Singing will bring new strength to your spiritual walk.
Singing will bring new power to your spiritual warfare.
Singing will build up your faith.
Singing will strengthen the whole church of God.
God loves it and the devil hates it when you sing for the glory of God.
Sing out … and you will see the salvation of the Lord. Amen.
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Forward-Leaning Defense
“There is no victory at bargain basement prices.” General Dwight Eisenhower
“World War IV began in a long string of terrorist attacks, whose real nature went unrecognized until
on September 11, 2001, huge billows of black smoke curled above New York City, Washington, D.C.,
and a field near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.” So begins a speech by Michael Novak, former U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. While some will argue about the Roman
numerals, everyone agrees that the 9/11 attacks changed the strategic picture of the world. For the
first time, terms like asymmetric warfare, rogue nuclear states, bioterrorism, Anthrax attacks and
sleeper cells entered the common vocabulary. Soon we were to learn about IED (Improvised Explosive
Devices) that would take many American lives in Iraq. Later the world would be introduced to suicide
subway bombers and explosives hidden in shoes. Not long ago we added liquid explosives to the list.
Michael Novak points out that this new kind of warfare calls for new ideas. The strategy of Mutually
Assured Destruction that worked for years during the Cold War doesn’t work in the 21st-century.
Osama bin Laden explained the fundamental difference between the Islamic terrorists and the
nations of the West this way: “We love death. The U.S. loves life. This is the difference between us.”
How do you fight against a shadowy enemy you can’t even see, who doesn’t play by the normal rules
of warfare, whose deepest values run counter to those taken for granted by civilized people
everywhere? Novak argues for what he calls “forward-leaning defense.” That’s a new name for an old
concept. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. As the president has often pointed out, either
we fight them “over there” or we will end up fighting them “over here.” Perhaps a football analogy
will help. Some teams play a “bend but don’t break defense.” That means you give up yards in the
middle of the field, and either play for a turnover or hope the offense makes a mistake or you stiffen
inside your own twenty yard line. That may be a good defense on a football, but it is disastrous when
facing an enemy who views his own violent death as the pathway to paradise.
Living as we do in an age of terror, what does it mean for the Christian to practice forward-leaning
defense? Satan fights his dirty war using many different weapons. Temptation comes in a thousand
different varieties. Consider the following. “Pastor Ray, what do I do when those thoughts come to
me?” the young man asked. He is in his late thirties, a rising young executive, by all outward
appearances the very image of success. Almost ten years ago he took his MBA degree and parlayed it
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into a profitable career as a stockbroker. He has a good job, is well-respected by his peers, and seems
to have no trouble mixing his faith and his work. What could be wrong?
As a single man in a high-powered business environment, he faces numerous temptations, many
coming from the sexual arena. “I’ve asked God to give me a Christian wife, but he hasn’t answered
that prayer yet. Sometimes my mind is filled with thoughts that embarrass me. And sometimes I give
in to the temptation I feel.” I was not surprised. If you change the name or a few details, it was a story
I had heard many times before. In fact, it was a story that is as old as the Bible itself. Temptation is not
new in any sense. Temptation is the same for us as it was for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Satan tempts us today in the same way he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. From the very beginning a
battle has raged for the souls of men and women, a battle that touches all of us sooner or later.
It’s Not a Sin to Be Tempted
Perhaps the place to begin is with the important truth that it is not a sin to be tempted. Many
Christians feel needless guilt because they have equated temptation with sin. Yet we know that our
Lord was tempted and was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Was the temptation real? The answer must be
yes. But if the sinless Son of God could be tempted, then temptation itself cannot be sinful.
Let’s suppose a young man and woman start dating. After a few weeks he confesses to his pastor that
he is experiencing sexual temptation. “Why are you surprised?” the pastor replies, “It would be more
surprising if you weren’t being tempted.” Temptation is a sign that we still live in a fallen world. It’s
not the temptation that matters; it’s how you respond to it.
Think how many temptations you and I face in an ordinary day. Staying in bed late—the temptation to
laziness. Dressing carelessly—.the temptation to sloppiness. Growling at the breakfast table—the
temptation to unkindness. Arguing over who should change the baby this time—the temptation to
selfishness. Starting work ten minutes late—the temptation to slothfulness. Losing your temper when
a co-worker crashes your computer— the temptation to impatience. Flirting with that good looking
woman, taking a second look at that good looking man—the temptation to lust. Refusing to speak to a
person who has hurt you—the temptation to malice. Repeating a juicy story of your neighbor’s
misfortune—the temptation to gossip. Taking a secret drink at a party—the temptation to
drunkenness. Lying awake at night thinking sensual thoughts—the temptation to impurity. Taking
your anger out on the children after a hard day—the temptation to cruelty. Going out to eat when
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you can’t afford it—the temptation to self-indulgence. Having a second helping and then a third—the
temptation to gluttony. Firing off a hasty letter to a friend who hurt you—the temptation to revenge.
The Danger Within
That list could be expanded almost infinitely. We do well to remember that these things are never
remote but are a part of every one of us. James 1:14 reminds us that “temptation comes from the
lure of our own evil desires. Those evil desires lead to evil actions, and evil actions lead to death”
(New Living Translation). Even though you are a Christian, there is a principle of sin within you that
will remain till the day you die. It doesn’t really help to say, “The devil made me do it,” even though
no one doubts that he is the diabolical mastermind working behind the scenes. Temptation is not
merely something external, something “out there” that lures us into sin. Temptation arises from
within us as our evil desires produce evil actions that lead to spiritual death.
One major problem we face is that temptation comes when we least expect it. If we could schedule
our temptations, we’d do much better. “I’ve decided to fight temptation next Saturday afternoon at 4
PM,” we would say. Unfortunately temptation often shows up unannounced at 9:30 Wednesday
morning. It comes when our guard is down and we are most prone to give in.
That leads to a second important truth. While temptation itself is not sinful, yielding to temptation is.
We are born with a tendency to sin. The Bible itself bears witness that the best men and women faced
temptation and often fell. Eve ate the fruit and then gave it to Adam who joined her in rebellion
against God. Abraham lied about his wife. Sarah lied to God. Lot compromised in Sodom and
Gomorrah. Jacob was born cheating. Moses struck the rock in defiant anger. Elijah complained against
God. David committed adultery and then had a man murdered to cover it up. Jonah ran way from
God. Peter denied the Lord. John Mark deserted Paul. The Bible is filled with stories of men and
women who faced temptation and were defeated by it. These facts should not discourage us, but
rather cause us to seriously consider our own spiritual condition. What happened to them may
happen to us.
Positive Uses of Temptation
It’s important to remember that the issue is not the particular temptation we face but how we respond
to it. God is able to use even the worst temptation to bring us to the place where we will begin to
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grow spiritually. When Joseph ran away from Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39), he ended up in jail, but the
whole experience produced in him the strength of character that prepared him to become the second
most important ruler in Egypt. Lest we miss the point, let’s remember that temptation itself is not
evil, only the act of yielding is sinful. When we resist, we actually grow stronger.
Not long ago a friend commented that during a tense exchange with her teenage daughter, she “bit
her tongue” instead of blowing her top. Every temptation—whether large or small—requires a
moment-by-moment decision. When your boss asks you to fudge the figures on the monthly financial
report, you only have a few seconds to decide how to respond. When you are surfing the Internet and
happen to run across a site filled with pornography, you must choose immediately whether or not
you’ll click the mouse button. Sometimes you truly will have to bite your tongue, and then bite it
again to keep from sinning.
Or you’ll just have to learn how to say no.
The lady is single, attractive, and in her late 50s. She has been a widow for almost 15 years. When a
male friend began showing interest in her, she was both flattered and pleased. After several months
he suggested that they take a trip together to a seaside resort. Of course, he said, we’ll have to sleep
in the same room in order to save money. He was offended when she politely told him No thanks.
Soon after that the budding relationship came to end. Does she have any regrets? A few, mostly
because she enjoyed his company and felt they shared many common interests. But she says she has
no doubts about her decision to say no. But what if his intentions were entirely honorable? Her
answer was simple: “If you begin to compromise in small areas, soon you’ll compromise in big ones.”
Unseen Battles
Her comment brings up another point to consider. Most of the battles we face will not be enormous,
life-changing decisions, or at least they won’t seem that way at the time. Either we get angry or we
don’t. You stay up late to finish your homework or you make up a creative excuse. When you visit the
department store you pay cash or you break your promise not to use your credit card. You repeat the
unkind story you heard or you decide to keep it to yourself. You pass by the magazine rack in the
airport terminal or you stop and begin to browse. You get up early to exercise or you roll over for
another 30 minutes of sleep.
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Either way no one else will know whether you exercised or not. And no one will know (at least not till
the end of the month) if you used your credit card or not. And no one will know (unless you are
audited) whether or not you lied on your tax return. God has ordained that our spiritual progress
should be measured not by huge battles won or lost but by a thousand daily skirmishes no one else
knows about.
What practical steps can we take to win those skirmishes one by one? James 4:7 commands us to
submit to God and to resist the devil. What does forward-leaning defense look like on a daily basis?
First, It helps enormously to live by a schedule. 1 Timothy 4:7 says, “Train yourself to be godly.” The
word “train” is a Greek word from which we get the English word “gymnasium.” It suggests sweaty
shoes, worn-out jerseys, scarred helmets, callused hands, and aching muscles. No one becomes godly
by accident. You can’t sleep late and lounge around like a coach potato if you want to win the prize of
a godly life. And you can’t indulge yourself physically, mentally or spiritually. You’re going to have to
get in shape in every sense of the word. Discipline builds spiritual muscles that arm you against
temptation. They make the battle winnable, but not easy.
For me personally that means getting up early so I can spend some time in the Word. It also means
keeping a journal on my computer where I record my weight, my goals for the day, my observations
on what God is teaching me, and a prayer for the day. I haven’t always done this, and I confess there
are days when I don’t keep this schedule, but it seems that I have extra strength when start I the day
with the Lord.
Second, look at the pattern of sin in your life. Analyze your life. When are you most likely to
experience temptation? Where? Why? What triggers it? What comes before? After? What kind of
mood are you in? For some it may be during a lunch break, for others it may occur on a business trip.
Or it might happen when you are extremely tired or when you are at home alone, or during the 45
minutes before dinner when the children are cranky, or when your neighbor calls to complain about
the noise your dog makes. It might happen on the weekend or while you are watching a particular TV
program. For some, it may happen immediately after successfully completing a major project.
Having done that kind of analysis, it’s important to cut off the feeding factors. Be ruthless. Romans
8:13 speaks of putting to death the deeds of the flesh.You must be brutal in your attack against your
own tendency to sin. Many Christians fail precisely at this point because they are not tough enough
on themselves. Martin Luther commented that you can’t stop the birds from flying over your head,
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but you don’t have to let them build a nest in your hair. This may mean a total re-orientation of your
life. For one man it meant breaking off a relationship with a young woman who was not a Christian.
He found he could not date her and speak openly about his faith at the same time. After some mental
agony he decided to end the relationship. “It was hard, but I’m glad I did it because that’s when I
started growing spiritually,” he declared.
SCRIPTURES REFERENCED
Psalms 119
1 Timothy 4
1 Corinthians 6
Third, don’t be ashamed to admit your weakness. God never meant for you to struggle against sin by
yourself. James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may
be healed.” Satan loves to keep Christians away from each other. He convinces us not to confess our
sins because it will cause others to think less of us. But the opposite is almost always true. I know a
man who told a joke that seemed funny to him but was offensive to a close friend. When he called to
apologize, he admitted that he often spoke quickly without thinking of the consequences. His friend
not only forgave him but also asked to be held accountable because he has the same problem in
dealing with his children.
It helps to have a friend who knows your weaknesses. That friend can hold you accountable by asking
hard questions and refusing to accept easy answers. Sometimes we need a kick in the pants and
sometimes we need a pat on the back. A good friend will know which is appropriate.
Fourth, pray for deliverance. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from the evil one”(Matthew 6:13) That prayer means something like this, “O Lord, there
are enemies on every hand and temptations without and within. Don’t let me fall into the devil’s trap
but deliver me from his power. Give me eyes to the see “way of escape” and a heart ready to choose
what it right.” If you can’t remember those words in a moment of crisis, cry out, “Help, Lord!” and he
will surely answer you. I find that if I pray immediately when I have evil thoughts, confessing to God
that these thoughts are wrong, and ask Him to take them captive and make my thoughts obedient to
Christ, I have victory each time.
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“I’m Trying Not To”
Fifth, take the “way of escape” God gives you. 1 Corinthians 10:13 promises us God will never allow
us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. “But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way
out so that you can stand up under it.” While that verse is most encouraging, it must not be taken for
granted. The way of escape is always there, but if not taken, it may disappear. In most situations it will
not be an angel’s voice but just a fleeting thought, “This is wrong. Don’t do it.” Every sin is a choice to
do wrong. Before you make that choice, you always have another choice. That other choice is your
“way of escape.”
Perhaps you’ve heard about the little boy who was lying under an apple tree. The farmer asked,
‘What are you trying to do? Steal an apple? “No, sir, I’m trying not to,” he replied. Many of are trying
not to, but we fail because we lie down under the apple tree.
In sexual temptation, the “way of escape” may only last a moment. The sad story of Samson reminds
us of what happens a man keeps making the wrong choices. It’s too late to decide to do right when
you wake up with your head in Delilah’s lap. At that point his doom was sealed. The same thing
happens to any of us when we let our emotions drive our decisions. But for a moment, before you put
the pedal to the metal and go wild, the way of escape is always there. That’s why the Bible tells us to
“flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18) and “flee the evil desires of youth” (2 Timothy
2:22).
When we repeatedly give in to temptation, something deadly begins to happen. Sin builds a certain
force in your life that is difficult to overcome. The Bible speaks of a seared conscience (1 Timothy 4:2).
When that happens the choice to do wrong becomes progressively easier. The “way of escape” is
always there; you simply do not see it any longer. That is the danger of saying yes when you ought to
say no. An ingrained pattern of wrong-doing cannot easily be changed. That’s why it’s crucial to say
“No” to temptation the very first time.
Sixth, memorize the Word of God. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I
might not sin against you.” Jesus prayed, “Make them pure and holy by teaching them your words
of truth” (John 17:17 New Living Translation). The Word of God not only tells us how to live, it also
provides the power we need to make the right choices. A young man came to see me because he had
been struggling to keep his thought life pure. Though he was bold about his faith on the job, he felt
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utterly defeated because of his ongoing struggles in the area of moral purity. “I want to be married
someday, but how can I be a Christian husband when I’m not the man I want to be right now?” As I
talked to him, I sensed two things that gave me hope–his utter honesty and a deep-seated desire to
do whatever it took to put his life on a new course. I challenged him to begin memorizing Scripture.
He seemed skeptical that it would make any difference, and I told him that his life would not change
overnight. Where should he begin? I suggested starting with Psalm 119. For those who don’t know,
that’s the longest chapter in the Bible–176 verses. And it’s all about the power of God’s Word. Not
very many people would have the courage to tackle such a huge project, and fewer still would finish.
Almost everyone would burn out after ten or twenty or maybe thirty verses. But I suspected that this
young man was different. He left my office with a promise that he would start and that he would
check in with me from time to time. Over the next few weeks, whenever I saw him in church, I would
ask him how he was doing. That was during the spring. When summer came, he volunteered to serve
at a Christian camp. To my surprise, he told me that he planned to continue memorizing. I think it
took him ten full months to memorize of all Psalm 119. Finally the day came when he sat in my office
and said, “Check me out.” I sat and followed along in my Bible as he recited all 176 verses. It was an
amazing experience for me to hear this young man recite God’s Word with so much confidence and
so much joy. Something had clearly happened inside his heart as the Word had taken root. From time
to time, he would stop and comment on how powerful this verse was or how much that verse meant
to me or what amazing truth this verse contained. Clearly he had memorized more than words on
paper. The life-giving Word of God had entered his soul. And all that Psalm 119 promises had come
true in his life. He quite simply was not the defeated man who walked into my office ten months
earlier. The Word had done its work. That was a few years ago. He continued to memorize Scripture.
Today he is married to a wonderful Christian woman and together they are raising their family for the
Lord. He would say that memorizing Scripture changed his life.
Seventh, remember that the Holy Spirit lives with you. If Jesus were visibly beside us, how would we
act? What would we say? What would we watch? Where would we not go? The problem is that he is
not visibly with us, so we feel free to do what we want without visible restraint. But we need to
realize that the Holy Spirit is inside us, indwelling us. We are his home, his temple. (1 Corinthians
6:19-20) So wherever we go, we are taking him along with us; what we watch, we watch through the
eyes of his dwelling place; what we say issues from his home; when we are rude and obnoxious, he is
suffering the indignity of such action coming from where he lives.
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There is one final thought that will help us in the hour of temptation. Hebrews 12:2 tells us to “fix our
eyes on Jesus.” Take a long look at the Son of God who struggled in the wilderness and won the
victory over the devil. If he won the battle, so can we because his divine power is available to us
today.
As we wrap up this study, let’s end where we began, with a reminder that we are in a war against an
enemy who is far stronger than we are. He stops at nothing, he lies, he cheats, he deceives, he looks
for every opportunity to throw temptation in our way. If we defeat him today, he’ll be back again
tomorrow morning. In fact, he probably won’t wait until tomorrow morning. Satan comes to us in a
thousand guises, most of them hard to spot, all of them deadly to our soul. If we think we can ignore
him, he has already won the battle. If we think we can wait passively for his next attack, we are
already backed into a corner. Our only hope is to take up the armor of God, pick up the Sword of the
Spirit, pray like crazy, link arms with our brothers and sisters, and advance into the enemy’s territory,
taking the battle to him. Our best hope against the devil to practice forward-leaning defense.
As I have shared these principles with many people, they have discovered that God is indeed as good
as his Word. He will never allow us to be tempted beyond our limits. I have seen the weakest
Christians triumph over the Goliaths of life through his power. Temptation is the common experience
of the people of God. We will never escape it as long as we live in a fallen world. But God has given us
everything we need to win the battle every time.
Stand and fight, child of God. The Lord is on your side.
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Who is the Real Enemy? – Ephesians 6:12
Not long ago I received the following email:
I am studying Ephesians 6 about the Armor of God & and there is one verse that I’m afraid I don’t get
the full meaning of. It’s verse 12
“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.”
A couple of questions I had...
1. What does this verse mean?
2. What does it mean when it says “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms"? Does it mean
in Heaven? Or does it mean in all the earth?
3. When it talks about the rulers and authorities is it talking about literally those that rule our
countries, nations, etc? Or is it talking about those rulers who are not Christian who have been put in
a position of power?
In order to get our hands around this verse, let’s look at it in several other versions:
“We are not fighting against humans. We are fighting against forces and authorities and against
rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world” (CEV).
“For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of
the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly
places” (NLT).
Here are four facts about our satanic opponents:
1. They are numerous. Note the various expressions in verse 12. They are principalities and
powers. They are rulers. They are authorities. These different expressions describe the many
different ranks and categories of evil spirit beings.
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2. They are powerful. Don’t think of Casper the Friendly Ghost or of some nice spirit beings who
like to play tricks on you. The demons are real and they aren’t on your side. J. B. Phillips calls
them “spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.”
3. They are wicked. They follow no moral code. They live only to do the devil’s bidding. They are
opposed to all that is good and holy and right.
4. They are clever. Paul speaks of schemes and diabolical plans. Do not be deceived into thinking
the demons are stupid. They are morally corrupt but as spirit beings, they possess enormous
intelligence. Like spies working for some lethal enemy, the demons know the weak spots in our
armor. They lie in wait, looking for a chance to pounce.
Our Real Battle
What should we learn from Ephesians 6:12?
First, it reminds us that our battle is not against other humans. We do not struggle against flesh and
blood. Sometimes we focus on the abortionists, the pornographers, the godless politicians, the
corrupt business leaders, the drug dealers, and the purveyors of filth, as if they were the source of our
problems. Yet those people are unwitting dupes of powerful spiritual forces that they know nothing
about. They are morally culpable for their choices, yet they are also in the service of evil beings that
influence them in ways they do not realize. Or we could make it more personal. When someone has
hurt us deeply, it’s easy to say, “That person is the source of all my problems.” But our struggle is not
with flesh and blood-even though it seems that way most of the time.
Our struggle is not with flesh and blood even though it seems that way
most of the time.
Second, this verse teaches us that there are various kinds of demonic powers. All those phrases are
roughly equivalent in that they all refer to the spiritual powers arrayed against us. They teach us that
there are various kinds of demonic powers. There are “rulers,” “authorities,” “powers of this dark
world,” and “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” It’s not clear how we should differentiate
between them. Perhaps it is enough to know that just as there are various types of angels so the
demons are organized and serve different purposes in Satan’s service. The word “rulers” doesn’t refer
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to mayors or governors or presidents. It’s not about Obama or Osama or Bush or Putin. It’s not about
people you work with or your boss on a bad day or anyone else who gets under your skin. On those
days when people treat you badly, you may feel like they are the enemy. But they aren’t, not in the
deepest sense.
We are all foot soldiers in a vast invisible war that stretches across the
cosmos.
Finally, this verse explains why we must “put on the whole armor of God.” Our godly character (or
lack of it) actually does make a day-to-day difference. Not only for us but also in the great struggle
between good and evil. We are all foot soldiers in a vast invisible war that stretches across the
cosmos. I picked up a newsletter from LoveINC, headed by Robert Odom, a man whom I know well
and admire greatly. LoveINC (the name means “Love In the Name of Christ) does groundbreaking
work in uniting churches to work together to meet the needs of the poor in cities and in depressed
rural areas. Robert wrote the lead article called, “The Depth of the Call” based on a conversation he
had with one of his community directors who had gone through a series of very hard trials that
included the suicide of her husband, eventual remarriage, divorce, major surgery, and bankruptcy. In
talking with this woman, Robert said that and he and his wife had recently returned from a whirlwind
trip to visit the LoveINC affiliates in Alaska. They visited six affiliates in six cities in 12 days, which
meant taking ten flights, staying in eight hotels and making 15 speeches. In one city, Robert spoke at
an open community meeting. During the question and answer time, a woman said that ninety percent
of the people in that community don’t go to church, and what could they do about it? Robert replied
that he didn’t have an answer for the ninety percent. Why, he wondered, aren’t the ten percent living
such godly, joyful, selfless, egoless, loving, compassionate lives that the ninety percent are drawn to
them and ultimately to Christ. That’s a good question. “There is no shortage of people talking about
Christ, but there is a shortage of people living like Christ.” I couldn’t get this sentence out of my mind:
When God brings someone out of the deep, not coming out of the deep wiser, more selfless, more
committed, more Christ-like is dishonoring to God and dishonoring to them and all that they’ve gone
through.
Our godly character really does matter. It matters in our struggle with “principalities and powers,” it
matters in our Christian walk, and it matters greatly to the watching world. Life is a struggle that will
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continue till the day we die. There is no release from the battle. If we go AWOL, we simply find a
bigger battle on the other side of the hill.
Take up your armor, Christian, because all hell will soon break loose
against you.
Two Key Questions
This leads us to two key questions:
1. What is Satan trying to do in your life? He wants to frustrate God’s plan for you. He wants to
get you off the track of doing God’s will.
2. How does Satan attack us? He attacks us when we least expect it. Rarely does he approach us
with an overt invitation to evil. After all, if the devil came up wearing a name tag that said,
“Hello! My name is Satan,” we would recognize him immediately. If he said, “I’ve come to
destroy everything that is good in your life. I plan to destroy your family, your marriage, your
reputation, your integrity and everything that is good in your life, and when I am finished, you
will end up in hell forever,” if the devil came to us talking like that, we would say, “Get lost!”
But he doesn’t appear that way. He comes to us like the serpent came to Eve in the Garden,
with a simple question that causes us to doubt God’s goodness. He comes as an angel of light
talking about tolerance and telling us not to be so uptight and judgmental in our morality. He
comes with an insinuation that we have been mistreated and we’re right to be angry and hurt.
He whispers to us, “Go ahead! Say what you’re thinking.” And when we do, he laughs because
now we’ve destroyed a friendship-and we may have destroyed our own future. Or he
convinces us that a little pornography doesn’t matter. Or he seduces us into thinking that the
truth is in the eye of the beholder. Or he encourages us to take the low road. Or he nurses
within us a grudge that becomes a root of bitterness that leads to outbreaks of anger.
Though I don’t have time to develop it here, I have often thought that Satan’s greatest tool is
discouragement. If he can’t get us with lust, if he can’t trap us with anger, if he can’t induce us to
dishonesty, if he can’t lure us into profanity, if he can’t lead us into compromise, if all those things
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don’t work, he still has the tool of discouragement. That often works against us when nothing else
will.
Satan comes as an angel of light talking about tolerance and telling us not
to be so uptight and judgmental in our morality.
In light of all this we need to heed Paul’s words in verse 13: “Therefore put on the full armor of God,
so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done
everything, to stand.” The command “put on” is a military term. It’s the last step you take before
going into battle. It’s like cleaning your rifle, checking you ammo, putting on your flak jacket, and
grabbing your helmet. Take up your armor, Christian, because all hell will soon break loose against
you. The “day of evil” refers to those moments of special temptation we all face. Not every day is an
“evil day” in the precise sense Paul uses the term because not every day to do we feel great pressure
from the enemy. Some people have faced several “evil days” this week. You never know in advance
when one is coming your way.
God’s Intention for Every Christian
The end of the verse gives us God’s intention for every Christian. “After you have done everything, to
stand.” The battle now over, the Christian stands victorious on the battlefield. This is not only possible
but practical. Nothing I have said about Satan indicates that he should win the day. You have
enormous resources available to you at every moment. We need to remind ourselves of several key
passages:
“Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4 KJV).
“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
“And they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony”
(Revelation 12:11).
When you know who your enemy is, you will not take him lightly.
When you take up God’s armor, you are ready to enter the battle.
When you fight in God’s strength, you will not be defeated.
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You may be severely tempted and the people closest to you may be
completely unaware of your struggle.
This victory is not easy or instantaneous nor does it come without struggle, sweat, sacrifice and blood.
Nor does one victory assure another. You cannot live on the strength of yesterday because your
enemy comes against you again and again. Furthermore, the battle is not the same for any two
people. What tempts you may not bother me. What trips me up may not trouble you at all. Satan
tailors his assaults to each person’s weak points. The battles you face may all be unseen, but they are
nonetheless real.
We Face a Defeated Foe
Some who read these words have faced enormous temptation this week even though others may not
know about it. You may be severely tempted and the people closest to you may be completely
unaware of your struggle. Some have faced discouragement because of a battle that seems never to
end. Some, no doubt, have lived in Satan’s domain for a long, long time. He’s held you captive
through fear because you’ve never known a way out. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and
kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). 1 John 3:8
says, “The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (NLT).
There is no need for any Christian to live in fear of the devil.
He is real.
He is powerful.
He is wicked.
He is clever.
He is defeated.
Calvary dealt a death-blow to the devil and his legions of demons.
At the cross Satan thought he had defeated Jesus, but he only bruised his heel. Instead it was Satan
who was defeated when Jesus crushed his head. Calvary dealt a death-blow to the devil and his
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legions of demons. The cross mortally wounded the enemy of our souls. Someday he will be cast into
the Lake of Fire. Between now and then, he fights on, defeated but not destroyed, using every
weapon in his arsenal to convince us that he has power to overcome us.
While preparing this message I came upon a slim volume in my library called The Christian Warrior by
Isaac Ambrose, a reprint of a book first published in 1660. Very early in the book Ambrose gives a long
exhortation for the Christian warrior to be brave with many reasons given, among them that when
you were baptized, you took a “military sacrament” to fight against the devil (that’s probably news to
most of us, but it is true–at least if we understand what baptism really means). Here are a few choice
morsels from the book:
“God is on the side of all true wresters, and, if God is for them, who can prosper against them?” (p.
14)
“The Lord Jesus not only feels deeply, but prays earnestly for his children when they wrestle with their
grand adversary. No sooner does Satan run in upon you but Christ runs into the bosom of the Father
to intercede for you” (P. 15).
“Christians, be not afraid of Satan; he is only a creature of limited power. Is he potent? Your Captain is
omnipotent” (p. 17).
Let me make one final point before I close. Many well-meaning people assume that once they come
to Christ, their temptations will end. The opposite is closer to the truth. Temptations increase once
you become a follower of Christ. Why should the devil attack one of his own? He fights against those
who follow Christ. That’s why some people can honestly say, “I gave my heart to Jesus, and things are
harder than they were before.” Welcome to the battlefield. It’s been like that for 2000 years.
If you are looking for an escape from your problems, Jesus is not for you.
Christianity is not a religion for sissies or for those who want an easy road. If you are looking for an
escape from your problems, Jesus is not for you. Christianity is for strong men and women who will
not flee from the struggle. We need some valiant soldiers willing to enter the field of battle.
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My appeal is Paul’s appeal. Name your trouble, your trial, your temptation. And then enter the battle
in the strength of the Lord and find out for yourself whether it is possible, “having done all, to stand.”
Here is my contention. Christ cannot fail. I may struggle, but he cannot fail. I may waver under the
attack, but he cannot fail. If Christ is in me and I am in him, then weak though I may feel, Christ cannot
fail.
It’s not about me.
It’s about him.
You do not need to take my word for it. Try it for yourself. Put the Lord to the test this week. Give God
his fair chance. Name your personal battleground and then go in the strength that God provides. Take
up the divine armor and march forward into battle.
I challenge you.
God invites you.
See for yourself what the Lord will do.
“Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.”
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How to Meet the Enemy – Ephesians 6:14-17
It is commonplace in our day to doubt the existence of the devil. Many who believe in God believe not
at all in the devil. When people say, “The devil made me do it,” they mean the exact opposite. When
someone says, “Oh, you devil,” it’s meant as a kind of compliment. And if someone means to seriously
bring the devil into a polite discussion, the response is likely to be, “You’re not serious, are you?”
The reasons why this should be are not hard to discover. Living as we do in a scientific age where
technology reigns supreme, medieval visions of the devil dressed in red with horns and carrying a
pitchfork seem, well, very medieval. Sometimes the debate can get very passionate. A few weeks ago
the ABC program Nightline sponsored a debate on the topic “Does Satan Exist?” in which New Age
author Deepak Chopra asserted that “healthy people do not have any need for Satan.” That sentence
more or less expresses the modern point of view. Science and psychology have relegated the devil to
the pages of ancient mythology.
Satan’s greatest triumph may be in causing people not to take him seriously. If people don’t believe
you exist, they won’t try to stop you. That may be one cause of the church’s weakness today. We fail
to take the devil seriously. As a result, we rarely hear Satan talked about or preached about. And as a
result, we are ignorant of his strategy, his power, his vast army, and his infernal plans. Most of our
failure can be traced to a foolish self-confidence that overestimates our own abilities and
underestimates the power of our spiritual enemies.
The Devil is Real
It is amazing how much the Bible says about the devil. He appears the first time in Genesis 3 and the
last time in Revelation 20. Among his many titles, he is called Satan, the devil, the serpent, the
deceiver, the evil one, and the accuser of the brethren. Every New Testament writer mentions him.
Jesus encountered him at the beginning and end of his ministry and spoke often of him.
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It is amazing how much the Bible says about the devil.
There is much we do not know but this much is certain. The devil is a real being. In the beginning he
was an angel of God. Lifted up with pride, he attempted to overthrow the Lord himself. Being cast out
of heaven, one-third of the angels followed him. Those fallen angels we call demons.
Where is the devil’s domain today? Not hell. He’s not in hell yet. According to 1 Peter 5:8, the devil
prowls around the world looking for someone to devour. Ephesians 2:2 calls him the “ruler of the
kingdom of the air.” The NLT calls him “the commander of the powers of the unseen world.”
We live on a rebel planet controlled by the devil himself. As followers of Jesus Christ, we have been
thrown into a spiritual conflict that rages all around us. In that conflict, every believer is on the front
lines. All have been called to active duty.
Satan Doesn’t Fight Fair
In thinking about spiritual warfare from this perspective, keep two things in mind:
1) Satan’s goal is to discourage you so that you feel like giving up.
2) Satan doesn’t fight fair.
He does not observe the traditional rules of warfare. He uses anything and everything that he can to
bring us down. This is part of what Paul meant when he spoke about the “schemes of the devil” in
Ephesians 6:11. The word “schemes” might also be translated as “traps” or “tricks” or “tactics.” I am
reminded of a Texas politician who was asked why a certain candidate had lost an election. “It
happened because he forgot the first rule of knife fighting. There are no rules.” Satan doesn’t fight
fair. He’s not going to give you an even break. He is a liar, a deceiver, a diabolical “angel of light” who
comes to you in a thousand guises, tempting you to disobey the Lord. And he’s a lot smarter than you
are. He knows your weak points better than you do. And he can attack you any time of the day or
night.
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Satan doesn’t fight fair.
What is the mark of his diabolical work? We face opposition from the devil when there are . . .
Unusual or repeated temptations,
Attacks from an unexpected quarter,
Delays that hinder us from obeying God,
Inducements to doubt God’s Word,
Circumstances that produce unusual pressure upon us,
Temptations to sin in areas that never troubled us before,
Prolonged bouts of discouragement,
Worries that seem to consume us,
Seductive appeals to sinful compromise,
Bitterness toward others,
Desires to give up on the Christian life,
Enticements to turn away from the means of grace,
Excuses made for lack of spiritual growth,
Critical comments about other believers,
Attempts to hide your behavior from others.
When we face these temptations, we may be sure that the evil one has us in his cross-hairs. That’s
exactly the moment when we need the message of Ephesians 6:14-17. This text tells us how we should
fight back against the devil:
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of
righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of
peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the
flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the
word of God.
Paul paints a picture of the Christian in complete armor, ready to go into battle with the devil. He
describes six parts of the soldier’s uniform:
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The belt
The breastplate
The shoes
The shield
The helmet
The sword
He lists them in the exact order a soldier would put them on. The belt comes first because it covered
the most vulnerable organs and held other pieces of armor in place. The breastplate covers the chest
and upper abdomen. The shoes (sandals with spikes driven through the soles) give the soldier a firm
foundation. The shield covers most of the soldier’s body. When soldiers stood side by side with
shields raised, it formed a solid wall against the flaming arrows of the enemy. The helmet protects his
head and face. Made of heavy metal with a visor, nothing short of an axe or hammer could pierce it.
The sword is his only offensive weapon. It was a short, double-edged weapon, almost like a dagger,
used in close combat to cut and thrust against the enemy. Razor sharp, the soldier’s sword was a
deadly weapon.
Each piece of armor describes a particular quality of life that the believer needs to survive the attacks
of the devil.
1. The Belt of Truth
The belt held the soldier’s uniform in place. Without the belt he could not move quickly, and if he
could not move, he could not fight. The “belt of truth” refers to the truth God has revealed in his
Word. When we are discouraged and under attack, we must go back to the things we know to be
true. We must go back to what the theologians call the First Principles:
God is holy.
God is righteous.
God is perfect.
All his ways are right.
His mercy endures forever.
Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
We are kept forever by his love.
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The Holy Spirit has sealed us.
The Lord Jesus died and rose again.
He now intercedes for us in heaven.
All things are working together for our good.
When I said “we must go back,” I meant that literally. In those moments of temptation, we ought to
recall and even speak out loud those things that we know to be true. As a practical matter, I find it
helpful to sing out loud great hymns and gospel songs that build my faith. I may sing “Great Is Thy
Faithfulness” or “Thou Art Worthy” or “In Christ Alone” or “A Mighty Fortress.” Often I have
withstood the attacks of the devil by singing “Crown Him With Many Crowns.” When I am feeling a bit
overwhelmed, I’ll stop my work, take a bike ride, turn on my iPod and listen to Christian music. It may
be something as simple as “Every Time I Feel the Spirit” or “Jesus Loves Me” or a grand hymn like
“Immortal, Invisible” or “How Deep the Father’s Love.”
This is the practical meaning of putting on the belt of truth. God has already provided the truth. It’s
my job to “put it on” by reminding myself of what I already know to be true.
God has already provided the truth. It’s my job to “put it on” by reminding
myself of what I already know to be true.
2. The Breastplate of Righteousness
The breastplate covered the vital organs of the chest, especially the heart. It was like an ancient
bulletproof vest. The righteousness Paul has in mind comes to us by virtue of our right standing with
God. Having been declared righteous (justified) by God (Romans 5:1), we now pursue righteousness in
the choices we make (1 Timothy 6:11). Nothing gives us more courage than knowing we are right with
God and with others. Down in Texas they have an elite law enforcement group called the Texas
Rangers. The Rangers have saying that goes like this: “You can’t stop a man in the right who just keeps
on coming.” When we are conscious of wrongdoing, our guilt makes us cowards. But a man who
knows he is right can face a multitude without fear. Proverbs 28:1 describes this man perfectly. “The
wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”
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When we compromise morally or spiritually, it’s like a soldier standing uncovered before the enemy.
The life we live either fortifies us against Satan or makes us easy prey for him.
3. The Shoes of Gospel Peace
For 37 years David Guralnik served as editor of Webster’s New World Dictionary. When he retired in
1985, he was asked to name the most significant word in the English language. “Peace,” he replied. “It
strikes my ear with greater force than any other.”
The life we live either fortifies us against Satan or makes us easy prey for
him.
In battle the soldier must have good shoes so he can fight without slipping. The shoes give him a solid
foundation. When Paul speaks of the “gospel of peace,” he means that the gospel itself is the only
true source of peace. Because of Jesus Christ, we now have peace with God (Romans 5:1) and we
have the peace of God (Philippians 4:7). And we have peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
That’s why Paul speaks of keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3).
Everyone who belongs to Jesus belongs to me. There exists in the body of Christ a true and deep unity
that transcends the normal barriers of age, class, language, skin color, ethnic group, culture, political
ideology, and all the other things that keep us separate and divided into our different tribes.
I may be Irish and you may be Italian.
Or you may be young and I may be old.
Or you may be Bengali and I may be Chilean.
Or you may be Lutheran and I may be Baptist.
Or you may be rich and I may be poor.
We could make a long list of all the differences that separate us on the earth. We all naturally like to
be around PLU-People Like Us. That’s natural and understandable, and it’s not necessarily wrong. But
if you are a Christian and I am a Christian, then there exists a bond between us greater than language
or culture and stronger than social class or age or race. We are brothers in Christ and therefore there
should be peace between us.
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In a world torn by strife, this may be our greatest evangelistic tool. Two thousand years ago as
Christianity spread across the Mediterranean world, unbelievers said of those early disciples, “Behold,
how they love one another.” They will still say that today when we wear the gospel shoes of peace
with God and with each other.
4. The Shield of Faith
The shield of faith describes what we might call dependent living. It means calling on the Lord for help
in the time of trouble. Dependent living is the opposite of doing it your own way.
What are the “fiery darts” that the devil launches against us? The phrase suggests a sudden attack
that causes us to be seized with strong emotions. It’s something that may begin small but becomes
almost overwhelming to us. These “darts” may come from anywhere at any time and in any situation.
That’s what makes this so tricky-and it’s why we must take up the shield of faith proactively.
We all have experienced this sort of thing many times. When the day begins, we feel strong and
confident and we’re just sailing along, checking things off our list, doing what needs to be done,
handling the problems as they arise, and then Bam! out of nowhere something happens and suddenly
your mind begins to slide in the wrong direction. The temptation may be to anger, lust, bitterness,
greed, doubt, despair, or any of a hundred negative emotions. We may be sailing along when
“something” happens–an unkind word, an unplanned interruption, a difficult person intrudes, a
subtle seduction, a careless comment, a crass invitation. The devil’s inventions come in a thousand
varieties. And we are caught off guard, hit unawares, and thrown off balance. One writer called it a
“violent temptation in which the soul is set on fire of hell.”
The devil’s inventions come in a thousand varieties.
So husbands and wives may fight about the tiniest troubles. Parents may blow up at their children for
the slightest provocation. There may be a strong desire toward immorality, or an appeal to festering
anger, or a reminder of hidden unforgiveness. It could be envy that eats away like a canker or fear
that saps your strength.
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Remember what Jesus said . . .
Behind adultery lies lust.
Behind murder lies anger.
SCRIPTURES REFERENCED
Romans 8
Romans 5
It’s the heart that is the problem-and it is in the heart that the battle must be waged. I think these
sudden attacks cannot be accounted for by any other means except the “fiery darts” of the enemy of
our souls. They stick like burning arrows on the inside.
What do we do in the moment of attack? We must then and there and in that very moment call on
God for help. We must cry out, “Lord, I can’t handle this alone. Help me!” We must not be afraid to go
to God again and again and again.
Living dependently means having unwavering confidence in God in the moment of temptation.
5. The Helmet of Salvation
Then there is the helmet of salvation. The helmet protects the soldier’s head. Woe to the soldier who
goes into battle without his helmet. He won’t last long when the enemy begins firing from the other
side. The helmet of salvation speaks of the assurance of salvation. It is the calm confidence that
comes from knowing that because we have been purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ, we now belong
to him past, present and future. It is what Paul meant when he said that nothing in all creation can
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). When the soldier knows
that the Captain of his salvation watches over him, he will not fear to enter the fiercest battle. We
must not downplay the danger we face every day in our warfare against the devil. He can attack us
from any direction at once. No one gets a free pass from that conflict. We can survive if we know that
we are truly the children of God. The helmet of salvation is just another way of saying, “We are more
than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
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It’s the heart that is the problem-and it is in the heart that the battle must
be waged.
6. The Sword of the Spirit
Finally, the Bible tells us to take up the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. That’s the only weapon
the soldier of Christ carries. All the other armor is meant to protect him. The Word of God cuts like a
double-edged sword, laying everything bare so that nothing is hidden (Hebrews 4:12-13). That’s why,
when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he responded to the devil by quoting Scripture (Luke 4:113). Nothing defeats the devil like the Word of God. Our clever arguments mean nothing to him. He
brushes aside our self-confidence because our reputation means nothing to him. But when we stand
on the Word, we strike a decisive blow he cannot answer.
What does the church of Jesus Christ have to say to all the attacks made against it? One thing only. In
answer to all error, all worldly philosophy, all the seductions of Hollywood, and all the suggestions of
the devil, we have one sole, simple and sufficient answer.
The Word of God.
The believer who arms himself with it will never lack for a weapon in the battle. It answers all our
doubts and all our discouragement. This is all we have and this is all we need. The church marches
triumphantly when it relies upon God’s Word.
The Real Battlefield
Put it all together and you have a picture of the Christian soldier fully armed for combat. The various
pieces of armor describe a quality of life and a commitment to a standard. Here is the whole armor of
God. We are called to live . . .
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The believer who arms himself with the Word of God will never lack for a
weapon in the battle.
Truthfully,
Righteously,
Peacefully,
Dependently,
Confidently,
Biblically.
Our greatest problems are spiritual, not financial or personal or intellectual or emotional. Our real
enemies are unseen because the real battlefield lies within the human heart. That’s why a change of
scenery, a change of job, a change of circumstances, a change of lifestyle, a change of appearance, or
a change of relationship so often accomplishes nothing. We’re the same people because we face the
same enemies and fight the same battles even if things on the outside change. You can move from
Miami to Beijing to Wichita to Lisbon and nothing will change unless you change on the inside. Our
one hope-our only hope-is to put on the whole armor of God and so prove that what the Bible says is
really true.
Now we can understand verse 13 in a clear light: “Put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be
able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm”
(NLT). I love that last phrase: “You will still be standing firm.” That’s God’s intention for every believer.
No believer is safe who faces Satan in his own strength. No believer is more secure than he who goes
into battle wearing the whole armor of God.
You can move from Miami to Beijing to Wichita to Lisbon and nothing will
change unless you change on the inside.
My final word to you is this. Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God. It is God’s armor, not ours.
He does not say, “Put on your own armor” because that’s a good way to get clobbered in the head.
Everything Christians need we already have in Jesus Christ. I just finished reading one expositor who
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said that as Paul wrote about the Roman soldier, he was also thinking about Jesus Christ, God’s
Warrior, who clad in heavenly armor fights on our behalf. And I think that is a right connection.
We are to fight–but we do not fight alone.
We are to fight–but we do not fight in our own strength.
We are to fight–but we do not fight in our own wisdom.
Christ is our armor!
We are to fight in the name of Jesus.
We are to fight with the name of Jesus.
We are to fight for the name of Jesus.
Christ is our armor!
He fights with us and through us and for us so that we are not left alone on the battlefield. We must
still go into battle but God provides the armor. He gives us whatever we need whenever we need it so
that no believer ever need be defeated by the devil.
Martin Luther said it so well in his famous hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:
Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He!
Lord Sabaoth is His Name,
From age to age the same;
And he must win the battle.
Stand and fight, child of God. The Lord is on your side.
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What If – Ephesians 6:18-20
Years ago I read a book by Charlie Shedd called “The Exciting Church: Where People Really Pray.” I
have forgotten everything in the book except the story of a young man who was newly elected to the
board of the church where Charlie Shedd served as pastor. That young man asked a very simple
question:
“What do you think Christ wants this church to be?”
From that question came a second one:
“What would happen in our congregation if every member was prayed for every single day by
someone?”
Charlie Shedd said, “That night he stopped us in our tracks.” The rest of the book is the answer to that
question.
And what a question. We all believe in prayer, don’t we? Even if we don’t pray very much, we still
believe in prayer. So what would happen in our churches if every day every member was prayed for
by someone?
What would it do to our worship?
What would it do to our preaching?
What would it do to our ministries?
What would it do to our evangelism?
What would it do to our relationships?
Our churches wouldn’t be the same if we made sure every person was prayed for every day by
someone.
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Our churches wouldn’t be the same if we made sure every person was
prayed for every day by someone.
What if we started to pray like that?
So what would happen in your church if we prayed like that? Hold that thought and we’ll come back
to it later. In the meantime we need to see what was on Paul’s mind in Ephesians 6. As he nears the
end of his magnificent letter, he calls Christians to put on the whole armor of God so that we can fight
and win the spiritual battles we face every day (vv. 10-17). Then without any break he says, “And pray
in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (v. 18). In the School of Christian
Living, this is Prayer 101. This is the “how to” not the “why” of prayer. There is nothing difficult to
understand in what he writes.
It’s easy to see how this fits in the context. Prayer is our ultimate weapon in spiritual warfare. It is not
part of the armor; it is that which makes the armor effective. In verse 18 Paul gives five fundamental
facts about Christian prayer.
I. There are many ways to pray and they are all valid.
Paul says we should pray “with all kinds of prayers and requests.” We can analyze prayer from many
angles.
We can talk about the content of prayer, such as adoration, thanksgiving, meditation, confession and
petition.
We can talk about the posture of prayer, such as sitting, standing, hands uplifted, eyes open, eyes
closed, walking, kneeling, and stretched out before the Lord.
We can talk about the associations of prayer, which means we can pray alone or in a small group or in
a worship service or in a concert of prayer or over the Internet or over the phone or by email or in a
handwritten letter.
We can talk about the style of prayer. It may be formal, informal, liturgical, written, recited,
conversational, antiphonal, sentence prayers, “Thank you” prayers, “Lord, have mercy” prayers, short
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prayers, long prayers, prayers sung, prayers spoken, prayers written, prayers chanted, prayers offered
spontaneously or prayers memorized.
We can talk about the places of prayer, such as in the morning, during your devotions, around the
dinner table, in the car, on the phone, during a worship service, in the street, sitting in the pew, or at
a ball game.
We can talk about the objects of prayer, such as confession and restoration, for physical or spiritual or
emotional healing, for a financial need, for a broken relationship to be healed, for salvation, for
spiritual growth, for the spread of the gospel, for a friend in need, for the leaders of our church, for
the leaders of our nation, for our friends and, yes, for our enemies.
Prayer may be as varied as the needs of the heart. The true measure of prayer is not its form or
content or style or location or length or beauty of expression. The real question is, Does it come from
the heart? Is it sincere? Are we truly seeking the Lord? If so, then we may claim the promise of James
5:16 that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective.
Prayer may be as varied as the needs of the heart.
There are myriad ways to pray. If we pray from the heart in Jesus’ name, then the Father is pleased
and he inclines his heart to hear us when we call on him.
II. The best time to prayer is when you feel the need to pray.
That’s simple, isn’t it? Paul instructs us to pray “on all occasions.” The Greek word is kairos, which
means a particular moment when we feel our need for God. It speaks of coming to a crossroads, a
time of need, a sense of our own weakness, and crying out to the Lord in prayer.
Sometimes we approach prayer superstitiously, as if we should only pray about “big things.” We don’t
want to bother God with the “small stuff.” How foolish we are. He’s God! It’s all “small stuff” to him.
Or perhaps we should say it another way, because he cares so much for us, even our “small stuff”
matters to him. I think of our own three sons who are now grown. Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. It
happened that none of our boys live nearby so we didn’t see any of them. But on Monday I heard
Marlene remark that Mother’s Day had been a good day because we heard from all our family. Josh
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and Leah and Mark and Vanessa called from Dallas. Nick called from Birmingham. I’m sitting here
smiling as I write this because we got to talk to our family on Sunday. Nothing could be better than
that. No gift could be better than hearing from them. But if we are so glad to hear from our children,
how much more is our Heavenly Father glad to hear from us. When our kids are in trouble and need
our help, we want them to call and let us know. It’s the same with the Lord. He waits to hear from his
children. And because we are his children, he will never turn us away.
The Lord waits to hear from his children. And because we are his children,
he will never turn us away.
Many years ago when Marlene taught the little children in Sunday School, the lesson was about the
truth that “God is always with us.” So she had the children draw a picture to illustrate that truth. One
child drew a picture of a boy in bed, raindrops over the bed, and outside the window a sinisterlooking creature. “Where is God with you?” Marlene asked. “He’s with me,” the boy replied, “when
I’m in bed, in the dark, and it’s raining inside, and there’s a monster outside."
We’ve all had a few moments like that, when it’s raining inside and there’s a monster outside. The
little boy is right. God is with us even then so go ahead and pray. God is near us when we need him
most.
III. Effective prayer requires sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.
Paul says we are to pray “in the Spirit.” That means “under the influence of the Holy Spirit.” It helps
me to think about it this way. Praying in the Spirit means following the Spirit’s guidance as to when to
pray. Because prayer itself is the language of heaven, the impulse to pray comes from the Holy Spirit.
He not only invites us to pray, he also incites us to pray. Sometimes you will think, “I should pray about
that.” Don’t ever brush that thought away. Do it. Go ahead and pray right then. Sometimes people
may say, “I wish we could pray about that.” Take that as a message from the Holy Spirit and go ahead
and pray. These impulses to pray may come at any time . . .
When we are on the phone . . .
When we are talking with a friend . . .
When we are listening to the radio . . .
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When we are sitting in church . . .
When we are taking a deposition . . .
When we are having a sleepless night . . .
When we are getting ready for surgery . . .
If you think about praying, go ahead and pray. You don’t have to pray out loud. You can pray to the
Lord without speaking any words at all, and the Lord will hear you from heaven. When the Lord
speaks to you and says, “Pray,” don’t say “No.” Go ahead and pray.
When the Lord speaks to you and says, “Pray,” don’t say “No.” Go ahead
and pray.
And pray about the things the Lord lays on your heart. Don’t be ashamed or worried that you won’t
say the right thing. The Holy Spirit knows your heart and intercedes for us with wordless groaning
(Romans 8:26-27). He comes alongside to help us when we pray so that our feeble prayers rise with
power and enter the courts of heaven to be carried to the Throne of Grace. As an old gospel song
says, sometimes we just need to “have a little talk with Jesus.” That song along says, “When you feel a
little prayer wheel turning.” It’s hard to explain exactly what that means, but I know what that’s like.
You can be sure that the Lord is turning the “prayer wheel” in your heart and moving you to pray.
So let’s not make this mysterious. Whenever you feel an inner urge to pray, do it! We would all pray a
lot more every day if we became sensitive to the impulse of the Spirit in our lives.
IV. If you want your prayers answered, stay awake and keep on praying.
“Be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (v. 18). Eugene Peterson gives us this
version: “Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops
out.” Paul uses a military term to get his point across. Consider a sentry guarding a base in
Afghanistan, not far from a Taliban stronghold. Now compare that soldier with a security guard at the
Kroger’s grocery store. Who will be more alert? It better be the sentry in Afghanistan. The one who
believes he is on the front lines is going to be more alert. Our problem with prayer is that we think
we’re a security guard at Kroger’s when in reality we’re like the sentry in Afghanistan. He has to stay
alert because his buddies are depending on him. It’s life or death to them. We mess around in prayer
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because we think it doesn’t matter, when in reality we are sentries standing guard on the front lines
of spiritual combat.
Whenever you feel an inner urge to pray, do it!
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to be distracted when you pray? Just as you bow your head, the
phone rings, or your pager beeps, or some music distracts you, or you suddenly remember that you
have to check the roast in the oven. A thousand things come crowding into your mind. Sometimes it
seems as if the devil’s best work comes when we decide to pray. He unloads his full armory of
distractions against us. Or perhaps you decide to spend an hour in prayer. So you get on your knees
and begin to pray. You pray for yourself, the members of your family, all your friends, the leaders of
your church, the missionaries you know, then all the missionaries in the world, then every country in
the world. Finally you pray by name for every person in every country of the world (or so it seems).
Then you look up and discover you’ve only been praying for five minutes!
Several years ago, during an “Ask Pastor Ray” night, one of the junior highers turned in the following
question: “If God is up in heaven, why do we have to close our eyes and bow our heads when we
pray?” Good question. We’ve all wondered about that from time to time. Here’s the answer: You
don’t have to bow your head or close your eyes when you pray. We do that simply to keep out
distractions. In the Old Testament men often prayed standing up, with outstretched arms, looking up
to heaven, eyes wide open. I find that I do my best praying when I’m riding my bike-and I assure you
that I keep my eyes open! Whatever helps you stay alert is the right way for you to pray.
We mess around in prayer because we think it doesn’t matter, when in
reality we are sentries standing guard on the front lines of spiritual
combat.
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V. The Wider Our Circle of Concern, the Wider the Results.
Paul instructs us to pray “for all the saints.” This means we need to pull ourselves out of the rut of
praying only for ourselves and our family. It’s perfectly legitimate to pray for those closest to you. But
you have not exhausted the power of prayer if you stop there.
If you pray for your friends, that’s good.
If you pray for your church, that’s also good.
If you pray for missionaries you know and love, that’s even better.
If you pray for other churches in your area, that’s wonderful.
If you pray for God’s work in other countries, your heart is stretched to new horizons.
Think of your prayers in terms of concentric circles. Naturally you start with those closest to your
heart and then move out from there. With every outward circle, you move away from yourself and
closer to the heart of God. “For God so loved the world . . .”
How wide are your prayers?
How broad is your concern?
When you pray, pray for the people of God around the world.
And pray for those yet to be reached with the gospel.
Dr. Lee Roberson called prayer “the Christian’s secret weapon, forged in the realms of glory.” It is no
accident that prayer comes immediately after the listing of the “armor of God” in verses 14-17. As
someone has said,
Pray is the Christian’s secret weapon, forged in the realms of glory.
Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
Some of us who know a little theology would do well to get an advanced degree in “kneeology.”
With that we can quickly sum up Paul’s personal prayer request in verses 19-20.
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Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly
make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may
declare it fearlessly, as I should.
He asks for two things: clarity and courage.
Clarity-that he might have the right words to say.
Courage-that he might say the right words at the right time.
Have you ever considered that the ability to communicate truth clearly is a gift from God? It comes in
answer to prayer. If a pastor is not preaching well, it may be because his people are not praying well.
Paul wrote from a Roman prison where he was chained to a guard 24 hours a day. He was literally an
“ambassador in chains.” Here’s what blows me away. Though he was innocent of any crime, he
doesn’t say, “Pray that I can get out of here” or “Ask God to reverse my sentence” or “Pray that they
will cut me loose from these chains.” In short, he doesn’t ask that his circumstances might be changed
because he understood that behind the mighty Roman Empire stood the Lord God himself.
God had called him to that prison.
He had work to do there.
So he asked prayer that he might be clear and courageous to do God’s work while he was in prison.
Did he want to be set free? I’m sure he did, but that wasn’t uppermost in his mind. Whether in prison
or out, he wanted only to proclaim Christ to those who did not know him.
Pray for clarity and for courage.
He doesn’t pray to be released nor does he ask that his life might be spared. He doesn’t ask for a
miracle. He only asked for this:
That when he opens his mouth he will have something to say, and
That he will have the courage to say it.
What a man.
What an example for the rest of us.
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Two Take-Home Truths
Let me summarize the teaching this way:
1. No one ever outgrows the need for prayer.
Most of us find it hard to say “Pray for me” because that seems like a sign of weakness. And it is! But
that’s why we need prayer in the first place. If we were strong, we could do it all ourselves. Here is the
real truth about you and me . . .
We aren’t that strong.
We aren’t that smart.
We aren’t that clever.
We aren’t that wise.
We aren’t that brave.
That’s why we need others to pray for us. No one is so strong that he is beyond the need of prayer.
No one is so rich in blessings that he does not need someone to pray for him. As the old spiritual says,
“It’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Sometimes we do not ask for prayer because
we are overly concerned about our image. Our pride keeps us silent even in desperate moments. We
want to keep up the image that we are in control, that we can handle our problems, that we are selfsufficient. After all, if people hear us asking for prayer, what will they think?
If they love us, they will think we need some prayer, and they will pray for us.
Sometimes we do not ask for prayer because we are overly concerned
about our image.
Who is the greatest Christian of all time? I nominate the Apostle Paul. Who knew the gospel better?
No one. Who preached it more fearlessly? No one. Yet he wanted the Ephesians to pray for him. Was
Paul a failure? Not at all. He wrote a great part of the New Testament and opened Europe to the
gospel. Yet he wasn’t afraid to admit his need. It is a mark of the right kind of humility when someone
says, “Pray for me.”
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2. No one ever outgrows the need to pray for others.
Someone you know needs your prayers right now. In the army of the Lord, every soldier needs help.
Someone needs hope, someone needs patience, someone needs courage, someone needs love,
someone needs determination, someone needs insight, someone needs strength, and someone
needs guidance.
Someone will be wounded unless you pray.
Someone will give up unless you pray.
Someone will be deceived unless you pray.
Someone will yield to temptation unless you pray.
Someone will make a foolish choice unless you pray.
Someone will grow faint unless you pray.
Someone will collapse under the load unless you pray.
Someone will go AWOL unless you pray.
There is always more than enough to pray about if only we would open our eyes and look around.
So let me return to the question I posed earlier. What would happen in our churches if everyone in
the congregation was prayed for every day? What would it do for our worship? Our outreach? Our
relationships? Our faith? Our vision for the future? Our leadership?
There is always more than enough to pray about if only we would open
our eyes and look around.
If we all started praying for each other every day, we wouldn’t be the same, would we?
I wonder if it could ever happen. I’m not thinking about another organization or some big program or
another meeting to attend or reports to fill out. Those things are well and good and have their place,
but that’s not what is on my mind.
Remember that Jesus said . . . “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful
if that were true of your church? My church? Every church?
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**Think of the word that would spread. “Those people really know how to pray.”
**Think of the love that would grow.
**Think of the lives that would change.
**Think of the miracles God would do.
**Think of the excitement on Sunday morning.
We would get up early and come to church eagerly, waiting to see what God was going to do. We
would sing with new gusto and pray with new fervency and listen with new expectation. And who
knows? Someone might just hang around and get saved.
**Think of the impact around the world as we begin to pray for God’s work in Burundi, Pakistan, Laos,
Gambia, Paraguay, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Hungary and Irian Jaya.
I think God has more for us than we have ever dreamed.
What if we really started to pray?
Some sermons answer questions. This one asks a question. Now it’s your turn to think about the
answer.
Our Father, we know so little about prayer. We stagger and stumble and pray our two-bit prayers,
and then we feel guilty. Make us willing to learn from you. We say with the disciples, “Lord, teach
us to pray” so that we may receive all that you have for us. In Jesus’ name,
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