Sermon Cloud

Ephesians 6:12-20.

The Christian Life is one of struggle. We battle our flesh (own fallen inner inclination to sin against God and others); the world (prevailing worldviews and values of our culture that are contrary to God’s and promote a pattern of life that is opposed to his will); our text – Satan and his demonic hosts that continually tempt us and oppose us. These three enemies work in concert to promote autonomy from God and lead us into sin and rebellion and keep us from the life that God intends for us. Focus of our text is on our struggle against Satan and his demonic forces.

Satan is a fierce and powerful foe. Created powerful and intelligent angel (not God’s equal) who became full of pride and desired to be worshiped as God instead of serve and worship God. He wages a war in heaven where he loses and he and 1/3 of the angels who fought on his side are swept out of heaven. These fallen angels are referred to in the bible as demons, powers, authorities, spirits. They are powerful, evil, angelic hosts that carry out Satan’s designs. Satan is thoroughly evil, hates God and all that is good and is set on destroying all that God has made. He targeted our first parents in the garden. Adam and Eve were put on the earth to be God’s representatives and exercise dominion over God’s creation. But Satan tempted them with his own hubris: you can be like God and can be autonomous from God. They rebelled against God and willfully sided with Satan over God. In doing so, Satan introduced his dominion, exercising a pervasive, controlling influence over the world, so that the Scriptures call him the “ruler of this world,” “the god of this age,” “the prince of the power of the air,” and states that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Satan exercises a powerful, controlling influence over people, nations, and power structures in this fallen world and promotes every kind of evil. He is referred to in the Scriptures as “a murder from the beginning,” “the father of lies,” and  “the tempter.” Anytime we see violence, bloodshed, murder, war, oppression, genocide, or any other expression of hate as well as any and every sin, deception and evil, Satan and his demonic host are promoting it, enticing people to it and empowering it. He is the “spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2).  You can trace all evil, error, and violence back to Satan. His ultimate desire is to deceive all people away from God into sin, misery, death and eternal destruction. This is an age when he is continually active and his reign over what the bible calls “the kingdom of darkness” is very real. But…

Satan is a defeated foe. Even after Satan deceived Adam and Eve and plunged the entire world into sin, misery, and death, God made a promise. Genesis 3:14-15 “The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”” This is a promise that God would bring forth from the woman, one who would utterly defeat Satan (cursed) and in the process this victor over him would be bruised. We know from the rest of the story that Jesus is the promised one, eternal God the Son, incarnate. 1 John 3:8 “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” Jesus came to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ life and ministry showed that Satan’s kingdom was crumbling and the Kingdom of God was overcoming it and would one day obliterate and eradicate Satan and the kingdom of darkness. Matthew 25 and Revelation (in particular ch 20) give us the final word on Satan. He will be cast into eternal fires of hell along with his demonic hosts, a place created specifically for him, and the Kingdom of this World will become of the Kingdom of our God and his Christ… So, Satan opposed Jesus during his earthly life and at every stage, Jesus overcame him. Satan’s greatest attempt was the entice Judas to betray Jesus and the political powers to crucify him. But even in doing so was the unwitting agent of God to bring about the ultimate plan of God and seal his own doom. It was the cross that dealt the decisively death blow to Satan. Col 2:13-15. Satan’s destructive power lies in his ability to deceive people away from God into sin, misery and ultimately eternal condemnation. The Cross strips him of that power – it reconciles us to God, secures forgiveness of all sin, releases us from condemnation by paying the penalty for sins, frees us from sin’s controlling power, purchases for us the Holy Spirit who empowers us to resist temptation and hear and obey God and live in his will, and gives us an eternal home in heaven with God and his people forever. Christus Victor. The cross and resurrection has sealed Satan’s doom. 19th Century Scottish theologian John Eadie “our redemption is a work at once of price and power – of expiation and of conquest. On the cross was the purchase made, and on the cross was the victory gained. The blood which wipes out the sentence against us was there shed, and the death which was the death-blow of Satan’s kingdom was there endured.” Those of us who have sided with Jesus, who have received his grace and salvation have experienced a dramatic change in our life. Colossians 1:13-14 “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14) in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” We are no longer enslaved to darkness, no longer enslaved to his controlling influence and no longer captive by his lies to do his will, no longer kept alienated from God and under condemnation. We belong to Jesus; we are forgiven, live in his kingdom and are under his saving reign. Satan is defeated; Christ has rescued us from his grip on our lives. Jesus is sovereign over evil powers and has defeated them. So Satan is utterly defeated by Jesus and doomed. His days are numbered; his kingdom will come to a complete end. Illus: But Satan is like a Kamakazi pilot – as good as dead, but taking down with him as many as he can.

Satan still relentlessly opposes the people of God. Our cold and ruthless enemy steadily and relentlessly opposes the Church and Christians. He and his demonic forces are intent on bringing ruin and misery upon God’s rescued people. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. Wrestle (up close, hand to hand combat) - the day to day, nitty gritty conflicts, pains, temptations, and tragedies of life have spiritual causes. Satan and his demons are constantly working to tempt us to sin and do evil so as to bring about our ruin and misery as well as the ruin and misery of others.  Look at your life: addictions or sinful patterns of lust, pride, anger, rage, abuse, sexual sin and perversion, lying, sloth, greed, gossip, slander, deception – all these things are fueled and inspired by our enemy and he reasserts his grip on our life when we give into them. Satan attacks marriages inspiring coldness, infidelity and divorce (you ignore your wife? talk harsh to her? lust over other woman? think about what life would be married to another man? – that is demonic). He attacks families inciting abuse and neglect (you lose your temper with your children and abuse them with verbally or physically?); He attacks churches inspiring moral failure, false doctrine and division in the body. He attacks our conscience condemning us for past sins and failures that we have already confessed to God so we end up avoiding God out of shame instead of worshiping him out of joyful gratitude. Many of us live with so much defeat, and conflict and struggle and pain and relational turmoil in our lives, jobs, marriages, and families and live completely oblivious of what is standing behind all of it. It is not flesh and blood that is the problem. It is our cold and ruthless enemy seeking to bring sin, misery and ruin into our lives and keep us from the life God envisions for us. But, the tone of our passage is one of victory. We don’t have to live defeated lives. The message of the NT is clear – Christ is victorious and in him we are more than conquerors; he leads us in triumphal procession; greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. We can stand strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might and resist the devil and he will flee from us. Romans 16:20 “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” This is the normal Christian life – one where we are not being defeated, but dealing crushing blows to the enemy as we resist him and experience Christ’s life giving grace more and more in our lives. But victory will not come easily.

We must learn how to discern and defeat the enemy. If you are going to win a fight, you have to know your enemy and how the enemy fights. And you have to know what weapons are being used so you can have the right weapons. Most of us are ignorant of our enemy’s schemes. We may know that he wants to destroy our marriages, but we don’t know the subtle ways he would go about it. We may know he tempts us to sin, but we don’t know his schemes that snag us. The rest of the series we are going to look at the enemy’s tactics and how we discern his attacks and defeat them with the right weapons.

Conclusion: The biblical reality is that you belong to one of two kingdoms – you have either sided with Jesus and belong to his kingdom… OR you have aligned yourself, even unintentionally, with Satan who stands in rebellion against God and leads you in the same fashion. The beauty of the Gospel is that Jesus died to make his enemies free and bring them into his gracious kingdom, not by force, but by love. He died to reconcile us to God that we would no longer be enemies of God, but friends of God; He bore our condemnation so that we would not have to fear the accusations of the enemy, but could live in the freedom of forgiveness. All the sins stacked against us, we stacked upon him. He was condemned so we could be accepted by God. He became powerless by the cross so that we could be empowered by the cross.