War & Peace | Week 2 | Pastor Micah Sutton | Five Lakes Church

Well, let's get into the second lesson of war and peace.

This series is all about the battle that we as believers fight, and we do fight a battle, whether we understand it or not agree with it or not want to, you are not, there is a battle and the catalyst for your soul and mind for the souls of humanity.

In fact, we were in the war before we ever knew the war existed.

We were in the war before we were saved.

Jesus wanted us, the world had us.

Satan had us carnal nature ADUs.

And one day we, I recognized who he was versus who we are.

And we came to him and said, we need you.

I need you.

And he said, I want you.

And he saved us.

And I praise God today that we get to be the children of God.

We're talking about spiritual warfare.

Now the phrase spiritual warfare isn't in scripture, but the concept is very biblical expresses the engagement that you and I, as believers have with forces outside of our ability to see or interact with on a physical plane.

Now, some people have told me that they have seen devils or demons and, and, uh, and I, I have not personally seen devils or demons.

Now I've seen a few that I won that I identified as devils or demons, but they looked a lot like me.

Um, and, and sometimes I think might've been me.

And so we're, we're talking about the spiritual aspect of things in this, this walk of Christianity.

And last week we said that spiritual warfare is intentionally engaging in the war that believers are in.

So when we say spiritual warfare, it means I'm making a decision to be aware of it and to engage in it.

And we've talked about the fact that war is always about power it's religion has been used as the excuse for war over and over and over again.

But very rarely has it been the actual reason for war.

In fact, war is always about power and our enemy wants power.

All power comes from God.

So the, let me cannot have any power that God does not allow him to have.

We discovered last week that that our walk with God is all about faith.

Faith.

Faith connects us to God and it is built and sustained by the word of God.

So the focus of the fight that we're in every expression of spiritual warfare, everybody say every expression it's it's imperative that we understand that every expression of spiritual warfare is designed to, to, to create doubt in your heart, in my heart, in the Believer's heart, concerning what God said.

Now, next week, I'm going to talk about how to work with how to fight with God's word and align our hearts with God's word.

That's, that's going to be our subject for next week.

But this week, our big idea is this.

Knowing who you fight informs how you fight, knowing who you fight informs how you fight.

Now.

I am not the world's best movie guy.

I don't remember a lot of movies.

I don't remember.

I'm the guy who watches a movie in about 35 minutes into it.

I go, you know, I think I've seen this before.

And Chrissy's like, yeah, yesterday you saw this yesterday.

And, uh, I'm not really good at it.

But one, one scene in a movie that I have remembered for many years is an old movie called crocodile Dundee.

And I don't know if it was one or two or 37.

I have no clue how many of them there were.

I just remember that this one guy braces, crocodile Dundee with a switchblade, and he says, that's not a knife.

I can't do accents.

I'm not going to try, but this is a knife.

And he pulls out this machete.

And the other guy runs.

If you had known that you were facing a man who knew how to use a machete, you'd have probably brought something different than a switchblade, knowing who you fight informs how you fight now for you and I, as believers, Romans, Ephesians chapter six gives us a lot of insight.

It says for, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities against powers against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places and the heavenly places.

So he's identifying for us who we are not fighting and who we are fighting.

And I have three thoughts for us today and thought, number one is this.

The believers' enemy is spiritual, not physical.

At the end of the day, the, the neighbor down the street, the friend, the boss, the employee, the coworker, the family member that you may be in conflict with.

If it's a spiritual thing that we're dealing with, then, then they are not the ultimate enemy here.

They may be, uh, a, a tool being used by enemy.

They may be oppressed by or impressed by the enemy, but they are not the enemy themselves.

Remember we said last week that spiritual warfare can be experienced in individuals' lives as depression or anxiety or fear without reason.

And I shared with you that in my own life, unreasonable unreasonable responses to stimuli seems to be how I'm affected often by spiritual warfare where something small will happen and I will go off the rails on it.

I know that's hard to imagine,

But it happens.

Okay.

And

I try not to let it, and sometimes I'll catch it before it goes there.

And I'll say to Christie, Hey, because of what I'm feeling right now, I think we may be involved in some spiritual warfare.

And now seeing that that's a little bit of a misnomer in, in, in how I'm saying that, because the fact is we are always involved in spiritual warfare.

It's just that sometimes it starts hitting us in a way that's more impacting or more effecting in our personal lives.

It that's the moment that is really getting to me and these things aren't always physical.

Sometimes they're illogical.

I'm just telling you my responses to things at times are illogical.

There should be no amens from the back corner where both my wife and son.

Amen.

Uh, yeah, that would be bad.

They're illogical, but they're real.

They're real.

It's not like I can say that's not happening or, or we don't feel that, or we're not experiencing that.

They're very real.

They're very impacting.

And then we also said that spiritual warfare intensifies naturally negative situations.

So we're going through COVID and it's naturally negative.

We're going through a downsizing at work and it's naturally negative.

We're we're some things are shifting and changing in our family dynamics and it's naturally negative.

But then the enemy comes along and begins to put additional pressure on that and intensifies the naturally negative thing.

Well, Paul is his first eliminating flesh and blood enemies here.

He's saying, when you're dealing with this stuff, don't look at the flesh and blood person or entity or situation as the thing that is causing your problem, look beyond it.

And if you fight just the natural enemy, if my neighbor's causing me a problem, and my, and I punched my neighbor in the nose because, well, that's just feels good right now, probably just going to exacerbate the problem.

We're not going to fix anything, but if I handle it on the spiritual level, then I could not only fix the problem, but I might also gain a friend in the process when I, the way it's meant to be handled.

According to the spiritual reality that we're dealing with, often the result becomes better than we could have imagined.

So secondly, Paul defines the enemy first, he's eliminating the flesh and blood enemy.

Second, he's defining the enemy, evil rulers and authorities in the unseen world.

Now, there are there's one enemy here that he's, that is defining the spiritual enemy, but there are four categories or four levels of those enemies.

I'm about to hit them very quickly here.

But last week I told you that for the first time I'm doing supplemental [email protected] as videos.

And are we released one video after the service last week, this week, we're releasing four videos, and I'm going to be talking about these four different categories of the, within the singular enemy and kind of identifying them, breaking them out more.

So first is principalities and principalities is the chief.

The first, the principle, this is the highest rank in the demonic forces.

As, as what we're seeing here in scripture, then there are the powers, okay?

And this is, these are those with delegated influence.

They're not the chief, but they're following the orders of the chief.

If you will.

And then you have rulers of darkness of this age and the rulers of darkness of this age means the rulers of this time period.

So there are unique things that happen within time periods.

And I'm actually going to delve into that just a little bit more right now.

And then you have the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

These are base spirits and they promote, and they, they encourage the base nature of carnal man, that these, these are the ones in my opinion, that we are facing most specifically, most often, probably the most dominant spiritual force day-to-day in our world.

That's not of God.

And so I encourage you to go online and see though, see the videos there as I break those out a little bit more, but each one of these are anti-Christ, they're all against God.

They are spiritual enemies that are pushing against anything that has godly anything.

That is good.

And it's interesting to me, I've read a number of surveys this week, and many surveys reveal that more people believe in God, Jesus, angels, and heaven than believe in Satan demons or hell more people believe in the good stuff.

Then believe in the bad stuff.

More people believe in the blessing than they do in any level of punishment.

And it that's an interesting thing to me because the same book that reveals angels heaven reveals Satan demons and hell.

It's just like humanity has gone.

Yeah, I like that part don't care so much for this part.

So this isn't true.

This is here's another great idea.

Although it's not our big idea.

We don't get to do that.

I could close the sermon right there.

I think this stems from a misunderstanding of how the demonic world works.

However, Paul writes this, he says that false teachers will disguise themselves as a possibles of God.

And then he says in second Corinthians, the next verse, verse 14, second Corinthians 11, 14, but I'm not surprised.

Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, an angel of light.

So when the demonic world is revealed, it presents a face of goodness of light because its entire goal is to attract you.

Not repel you The mnemonic force, isn't trying to reveal itself in all its ugliness.

It's trying to attract you into leaving God and following it.

It's like the hotdog company doesn't show you what goes into the hotdog.

Cause ain't none of us going to eat that they, they show you something entirely different.

In fact, they don't typically even show you the hot dog at all.

They show you a time at the ballpark.

They show you in the park, they show you playing with your kids and it comes down to hot dogs.

They're presenting something.

That's beautiful.

If you're in the hot dog business today, they're delicious.

I'm just telling you, I just don't want to know what's in it.

The demonic world is doing all it can to attract you.

Not repel you.

In fact, let's remember the first temptation that we read about in scripture, Genesis chapter three, this the Bible says the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals.

The Lord God had made.

One day he asked the woman, did God really say, you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees of the garden.

So the first thing he does is question, what does, what did God really say?

He didn't ask her to say, he didn't say, Hey, what did God say about this?

He said, did God really say?

And he puts a twist on what God actually said.

He's letting her tell him that he's right or wrong.

But he's inserting his own thought into the dialogue here.

Of course the woman says, of course we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

The woman replied.

It is only the fruit from the tree of the, in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat.

God said, you must not eat of it or even touch it.

If you do, you will die.

Now, if you know the scripture, then you know that God never told them that they couldn't touch it.

He did tell them that he, that they could not eat it.

And so now the enemy here sees an opportunity.

He sees, okay, she's not exactly certain.

I've already inserted something that's not accurate.

And she has not only, she kind of re corrected me, but then added her own incorrectness into this situation.

And so the surface as you won't

Die, you won't die.

The serpent replied to the woman.

God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it.

And you will be like God knowing both good and evil.

It's interesting that many scholars believe that Satan tried to ascend to the throne of God and was kicked out of heaven by God.

I ascribed to that belief myself.

And so it's interesting that Satan ascribes to the woman, the thing that he personally was desiring to be like, God.

And he saying to the woman, Hey, God knows some stuff that you don't know.

And here's the, the methodology of the enemy then.

And now first question what God did say.

And then second offer, hidden knowledge question what God did say, and then offer hidden knowledge.

There's something that God doesn't want you to know.

Okay, let's settle something here today.

Ready?

God does know stuff that you don't know

[inaudible] he

Does know stuff that I don't know.

And I'm grateful for that because if he doesn't, then I am equal to God.

And if that is true, it's the worst news you've ever received in your life.

I am not God.

And he does know stuff that I don't know, but Satan saying he knows stuff.

He doesn't want you to know.

He's hiding stuff from you.

Eating the fruit disobedience to God will actually reveal a hidden things in your life.

Anybody remember the book, the secret,

The secret.

Okay.

Apparently not.

Apparently it's still a secret

[inaudible],

But as the New York bestseller millions and millions and millions sold, and then they had a SQL to it.

I don't remember the thing.

It was called, the power, the whole, the whole book about the secret is I'm going to show you a secret way that you can attract great things into your life and, and, and doing so.

It's going to unlock all this hidden potential in your world, but it's a secret.

Not everybody knows this, but if you can learn the secret, you're going to be awesome.

And so millions and millions of people purchased this book.

I'm going to guarantee you that if the title of the book was a book about stuff, you already know, it would not have sold as many copies because that's not nearly as intriguing.

I want to know the secret.

Well, let me tell you, let me tell you what the word occult means.

A cult means secret knowledge.

The whole concept of the occult is that we're going to show you secret knowledge, knowledge that has been hidden.

And that's what the enemy does.

It says, Hey, there's stuff that you don't know, but we're going to uncover it for you.

And, and, and the lust of our lives ends up being drawn to that.

Satan copies God on every level, God is light.

The holy spirit enlightens truth to us.

The holy spirit will teach you all truth.

Bring all my words to your remembrance.

Jesus said that if you'll recall and Satan disguises himself as light, and he reveals lies that are mass as truth.

It's a key truth that you need to write down.

Satan's appearance and tactics are always appealing, appealing.

He will.

He will, uh, impact.

Yes, he will old press.

He will convince he will use every political and social system out there, but he's going to appeal to you in some way or another.

He'll find out how to appeal to you and go there.

It will be a good looking man or a good looking woman that no one, the Satan's never tempted anyone physically with somebody, they did not find attractive in some way, one way or another.

It's going to be a better job.

That just, that just requires a little bit of sacrifice or a little bit of compromise.

It's going to be a little bit of compromise with, with really big rewards.

Well, if I just give a little bit over here, then I'm going to get this great reward.

I mean, it's just a little line.

It's just a little thing.

It's just a little bit of influence.

It's just a little bit, and man, I can gain the world if I will.

Just, if I just do this one little thing, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his.

So, but the enemy will say no, no, it's all right.

His only goal, he has one goal convince you to choose to walk away from God.

Notice you must choose, but he wants to get you to convince you to choose, to walk away from what God has said.

He doesn't care about a certain system.

He doesn't care about a certain lifestyle.

He, he doesn't care what you call it, how you act it out.

All he cares about is that you reject what God has said and gravitate towards anything else.

And that's the choice that we have before us.

Who are you going to believe?

God or anyone else, anyone else at all?

So if the battle is spiritual, is the physical world so difficult, it's all a spiritual battle, but why is it a physical thing that I deal with at times?

Well thought number two is this.

The spiritual battle is revealed in the physical world.

The physical is not separate from the spiritual, not at all.

Let's notice where temptation comes from James chapter one, verse number 14.

Temptation comes from actually, let's read this out loud together.

You ready?

I want you to really believe what I'm saying to you.

Okay?

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away.

These desires give birth to sinful actions.

And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.

What an encouraging scripture, the tempter, Satan, demonic, realms that spiritual, but the temptation is in the natural realm.

So something appeals to our body, our mind, our emotions, and it's presented to us and we want to connect with it.

We want to connect with it.

And so our own lust moves us to sin.

Now the basis of sin is constant.

In every age, in every age, sin is sin less to the eye, less the flesh pride of life.

That's the three basic realities of sin.

Drivers upset, but different sins are in Vogue at different times.

Paul called these things.

In my opinion, rules of darkness of this age, I'm going to go into more detail, but I'm gonna give you a little detail right now, spirits with power in this present age, these are relevant spirits, spirits that are relevant to our moment in time.

So Satan is adjusting his strategy to fit the age.

Have you ever thought it interesting that generations seem to create their own distinct cultures and unique cultures from generations that raise you.

The parents raised this generation, grandparents raised this generation, but the present generation is creating a culture that their parents and grandparents could not have conceived of in 19, 19 fascism and communism was on the rise.

Even here in the United States.

People were like what that generation was like, yeah, this is the way to go.

How about in the 1960s?

Music changed drug culture became a powerful and prevalent thing.

The sexual revolution became widely known and accepted 1980s and 1990s.

Suddenly you had a, a move towards fuel fluid sexual attractions, where, who you were attracted to sexually did not have to fit what had been normal for every generation previous.

I'm not saying that every sin wasn't, uh, expressed in every generation, I'm just talking about what was normalized and what was generally accepted.

Now you have the gender fluid concept that we're working within and that this generation is dealing with.

The fact is that things that were unnatural, things that were considered wrong were first normalized.

Then they were celebrated and then they were impressed onto the unwilling.

If you're not willing to accept these things, then you're bad.

You're wrong.

You're bigoted.

You have a problem.

You are the definition of the issue, the physical expression of a spirit agenda being pushed and it's being pushed forward on the back of our own

Lusts, using

Expressions that fit the age.

I don't know.

I know that this sermon is going to get me a lot of friends, but it's right.

And the spirit of the age, it develops, uh, inventions and allurements and enticements.

It, it develops events that produce the atmospheres and, and the environments that are particular to their own day.

And they are destructive to our spiritual lives.

If we engage them, remember this, remember that Satan is a luring, he's enlightening lies and passing them off as truths.

And these spirits, they deal in high and lofty goals promoted by the age.

Things like justice, things like respect, things like mercy, see things like financial equity and equality.

We all want these things.

These are not things that any one of us could say.

Yeah, I, I don't, I don't want justice.

No justice.

No.

Don't believe in it don't want it.

I think it's bad.

No, we all want justice.

And so the ideas are ideal, but the spirits that drive them are against God and then their physical expressions always promote pride, appealing to natural lusts.

Do you find that ironic that those fighting for justice often act unjustly?

Or how about those touting piece often create conflict or those professing a desire for mercy often act without mercy or those preaching financial equality, usually profit from the efforts is that I, I don't think it's ironic.

I think it's, it's the spirit of the age.

None of all of those things are good.

All of those things are right.

All of those things should be, but the way they manifest in humanity, doesn't always align.

Even with their own profession.

God calls us to love, to peace, to generosity, and it always produces godly humility in those that follow his call.

It never, never produces pride and appeals to the lust of humanity, never.

And so sins expressions, whether it be physical or mental or emotional, that's the expression, but the source is always spiritual.

And the physical reflects the spiritual good works is a physical thing.

But James says that good works are produced from faith, which is experiential thing.

The spiritual is pushing the physical.

So God has some tools.

He uses your physical body.

He uses your soul that is submitted to God, Romans one 12 with a 12, one re rather would, would, uh, reflect this.

The enemy also has some tools, your carnal nature and the carnal nature of those around you.

So in salvation, we died to sin.

Can we say praise the Lord for that?

But our default doesn't change instantly.

I might have died to sin, but it doesn't mean I never anger.

Angry.

I made have died to sin, but it doesn't mean I don't fight a battle, even in my natural flesh.

Why?

Because it's always easier to fall downhill than the climb uphill.

It doesn't take much effort to go down.

Does it?

No.

It takes a lot of work to go up.

It's easier to get mad, then become happy.

It's easier to hurt someone than to help someone.

It's easier to pull someone down than to lift someone up.

Pull downs are easier than pull ups.

I can do a lot of pull downs.

I can't do hardly any pull ups.

And if you can, don't tell me about it.

Cause I'll be jealous and that sin.

So why is the temptation to fight physical enemies?

So strong is because carnal nature of others is influenced by spiritual forces and they do things that hurt me, scare me, inconvenience me.

And so I want to fight them.

But on the other side of that equation is my carnal nature rises up and I say something, I do something that's wrong or hurtful.

And I'm called out call, call me out on the thing that I've done and pride Wells up.

Now I'm mad at you because you call me out and I want to fight you.

If you do something to me, I want to fight you.

If I do something to me, if I do something to you, I want to fight you too.

On both sides of the equation.

I want to fight.

I want to defend myself as pride, as risen up within me.

And that brings us the thought number three, knowledge of the enemy determines the strategy.

Now the authority of the believer is this.

The enemy would love for you and I to be freaked out about all the spiritual stuff around us, he would, he would like for us to be like so afraid.

Was that a demon over there?

Is that a demon over there?

Is that a demon over there?

Is that a demon over there?

Or that's certainly a demon.

That's probably Satan himself over there.

He would love for us to get all freaked out about this, but here's the thing you do not need to be personally afraid.

This is not physical warfare because we don't fight against flesh and blood.

This is not mental or emotional warfare because we're not manipulating ourselves or others into anything.

This is spiritual warfare because it is fought, won and lost in the spiritual realms.

Our issue is that we try to fight battles from physical experiences versus spiritual expressions.

Here's what I mean by that last week was July 4th.

And we talked about the independence that the United States, one from great Britain and the colonists fought the English army humanity fighting against humanity for some kind of an ideal, but humanity against humanity, meaning they fought on common ground.

So the things that hurt the colonists hurt the English.

So it was easy for the colonists to say, okay, I know what's going to hurt the English in this situation because I know what hurts me.

The things that tricked the colonists could also fool the English.

So the colonists could say, you know what?

Let's put together this trick right now, and let's do this ambush.

And we know that it can work because it has worked on us before.

So he can work on them, humanity against humanity.

How about the things that damage the morale of colonists hurt would also hurt the morale of the English.

So they were fighting on common ground.

If it can mess with me, it can mess with you.

Believer's fight spiritual battles in a natural world.

So we want the fight with natural weapons that we understand, but they cannot be fought.

This battle.

Can't be fought with natural weapons.

Spiritual spirits are not affected by bullets by her.

Uh, they're not hurt by FIS.

They're.

They're not convinced by rhetoric spirits operate on a spiritual realm, but here's the thing warfare against demonic forces or satanic forces.

We want to complicate it.

In fact, I can show you books.

I've got several of them books on how to do battle with Satan and demonic forces.

We want to complicate it, but it's really not that complicated.

James four seven says submit yourselves, therefore to God resist the devil.

And he will flee from you.

Let's read that again.

Cause that must be super complicated.

Submit yourselves, therefore to God resist the devil and he will flee from you one more time, submit yourselves, therefore to God resist the devil.

And he will flee from you.

You want to know where the complication comes, submit yourselves.

Therefore to God, submitting to God means believing what he says and applying his word to our lives.

Resisting the devil simply means don't give him room to interact with your life.

And at the end of the day, this is what the scripture says.

I don't think I have it on the screen, but Romans chapter eight verses 38 and 39 says, and I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today, nor our worries about tomorrow.

Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love no power in the sky above or in the earth below.

Indeed.

Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus, praise the name of the Lord.

At the end of the day, you don't have to fear the forces that you fight.

Jesus already won.

And because he won you and I win too.

And next week, we're going to talk about how to use his word, to fight that battle.

Let's let's stand on our feet and by our heads today, holy spirit, what are you asking us in this service?

What are you telling us in this service?

What are you revealing to us in this moment?

I thank you that you're greater than the enemy we fight.

And though we are so tempted to try to fight a spiritual war on physical terms.

I thank you that you have given us the understanding of what we do, what we need to do.

We have some understanding of how the enemy works.

Some understanding of how he tempts us, but at the end of the day, we stand victorious.

We stand in your love and nothing, not Satan himself, not all the powers of hell.

Nothing can separate us from your love and for that mighty God, we are, we are incredibly grateful in Jesus' name.

We pray and let everybody say amen, amen, prayer partners.

Would you come forward?

If you need prayer, come forward.

We're going to close this service today in worship.

And I'm just encouraging you.

Give it up for God today.

Let your worship reinforce.

And if you need prayer, come up here and let's pray for you in Jesus.