Pastor’s Pen Pulpit Series: Spiritual Warfare

September 5, 2004

ITS NATURE

I want to make it clear that what you see in society and in the world today, the alarming trends and increasing tensions, is but the tip of the iceberg. Back of these visible atrocities there is an unseen battle going on that is far greater than you or I could ever imagine. There is a deadly spiritual philosophy that is shaping the world and life views of men. What we see is merely the outworking of that philosophy. The thing is that believers are caught up in this struggle. We are not isolated from it. In fact we are actively involved in it (II Corinthians 2:11; II Timothy 2:4; II Corinthians 10:4; Ephesians 6:12).

The truth of the matter is that the believer doesn’t have any human enemies. Our enemy is a spiritual one working through human beings who do not know Jesus Christ. We read in Ephesians 6:12 “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places”. This means, of course, that we fight spiritual enemies with spiritual means as the Ephesians six passage teaches. However, I would like to summarize this warfare by looking at II Corinthians 10:3-4: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses”.

The Old Testament book of Joshua affords us some great illustrations of spiritual warfare. When general Joshua led the people of Israel into the land they overcame a myriad of enemies who attempted to block their attempt to conquer the land God had promised to them. In Joshua 9:1 we read that “The Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite gathered themselves together with one accord to fight with Joshua and with Israel”. While these were physical battles, there was also a spiritual force back of them. Satan did not want God’s people to settle in that land. Why not? Because it was from there that Messiah would eventually come to crush the head of the serpent. The battles serve also as illustrations of the spiritual forces that the church faces today. And our Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ leads us in triumph over them.

Now a closing summary: the believers’ struggle is not essentially against flesh and blood although we contend with people. There is a military structure of spiritual forces of unbelievable power headed up by Satan, himself, who subtly energizes his philosophy through godless men - men who establish principles, value systems, life-styles, trends, etc.

But, as we shall see in our continuing series, that believers are more than able through Jesus Christ to stand against this structure of evil. Until next time, God bless.

Love in Christ,