Art of War | Discern the Terrain: The War You’re Already In - Ephesians 6:10-18 | January 18

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Father, as we talk about spiritual warfare, as we become more aware of what is already around us.

We can fall into a lot of temptations with that.

And some of it is to overemphasize, some of it's to ignore and underemphasize

that which we don't understand, which could be scary.

We don't need to walk in fear. We don't need to look around every corner.

So I just pray that you would give us wisdom in our hearts, that you'd help

us in this westernized science,

humanistic, naturalist culture to realize that there's more to life than what

we can see and awake us to that reality more and more, God.

And indeed, that our fight is not against flesh and blood. There is a spiritual

battle going on. So awake us to that.

And I just pray that you would expose within us any strongholds that might exist,

that we might walk in freedom.

That's a desire that you have for us as your disciples is that we will be in

freedom and then we'd walk in identity of who you are, who you say that we are.

So I pray that you'd speak the truth to us this morning and cut through all

of the things that we've heard and all of the lies that might exist within us

and just let the truth reign, God.

Let your truth reign in us this morning. Amen.

So, The Art of War is one of the oldest and most influential books or texts

that you might say in human history written about conflict.

And it was written some 2,500 years ago in China.

And this was a time when the history of China was not unified.

It was marked by these warring clans and what historians call the warring states

period where China was severely divided and what people expected and lived in

was constant competition.

Everyone fighting for survival, not knowing what the next day would hold, out of control.

And war was not occasional in this time period, but it was constant.

Entire societies lived under the reality that their borders could collapse overnight,

that leaders could be overthrown, that their survival depended on them being

prepared and aware of what was going on around them.

Wisdom, preparation, discernment. So in that environment where war was a constant,

and it was life and death literally, Sun Tzu wrote this text.

And unlike other.

Other books or ancient war texts that glorify strength, they glorify numbers,

they glorify brute force.

The art of war focuses instead on awareness, discernment, on preparation,

on understanding the battlefield before you even need to act.

And so it took a different line.

And Sun Tzu argued that the greatest victories are often won far before the battle ever begins.

And that's through knowing the terrain, knowing the battlefield,

you might say, which we're going to talk about today, knowing the enemy,

knowing yourself, and being aware and prepared with the tools that you have,

that victory belongs to those who understand the situation they're in and who

know the tools that are at their disposal to fight back.

And so, as we are beginning this new series, which, of course,

I call The Art of War, since we're talking about spiritual warfare.

We're going to encounter this reality of the war that we're already in.

And you don't get a choice.

You don't get to opt in or out. This is a battle. This is a war that we are

already in or we can't avoid.

And so because of that, we must understand the battlefield. We must understand what's going on.

Sun Tzu wrote that the battlefield is a matter of life and death,

and it must be thoroughly studied.

But I think what happens and what has happened within us is that perhaps we

mentally assent to the fact that

there is a battlefield and that there is spirit realm in the spirit war,

but we look at it more as that we are aware of a place on a map, right?

So I'm going to explain this further, but let me try and get us there quickly.

We can know that there is a battlefield, but that's different than being on

the battlefield, right? And so I can know, if you want to throw up the next

picture, Brent, I can tell you that this is a lake.

It's Lake Wanaka. I could point to it on a map for you.

I could tell you that I've seen pictures that Ginny really would have loved

to have seen in person where there are just flowers all over the side.

And I could tell you all the facts about it.

But you still would never have been there. You would never have experienced for yourself.

But I can also tell you, if you want to go to the next picture,

that having been there and having stood on that rock, I could tell you more

things. I could tell you that that water is cold.

It's glacier fed. I could tell you that it may not look like it,

but those last steps before that boulder were almost to my neck.

I could tell you all of these experiential things that are different from pointing

on a map and knowing that it exists.

This is the same thing that I want us to get to today as we just set the stage,

that there is a difference between knowing that there is a war and being involved in it.

And knowing that the spiritual world is real,

which is a main understanding for us this morning, that the spiritual world

is real, that there is an ongoing spiritual war for the hearts of man and the

forces that even want to turn us away from God.

They want to distract us and they want us to be separated from him.

And the first step in engaging in that war is recognizing that it exists and

examining our own hearts toward it as well.

What do we believe? Why do we believe it? And can we make steps into living

more in the reality that exists around us?

And so before we continue too much further, I'd love for us to read again,

as we did last week, Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

This time I just want to do 10 to 12, I think.

Rather, it says 10 to 18, but just 10 to 12. I'd love it if y'all could stand

with me as we read God's word.

Again, this is something that I want to do every week so that we get this into

our bones, that we begin to memorize it as an accident almost.

So we'll try and read this together. I know it's hard to do things together, but.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,

against the authorities,

against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, and against the spiritual

forces of evil in the heavenly places.

That's great. Thank you all. You can go ahead and sit back down.

And so in this passage, when it says that we do not struggle or wrestle against

flesh and blood, that word...

Can more appropriately mean war. We do not war against flesh and blood,

but what we actually war against, what the reality is, is that there are spiritual

powers that exist that are at war within us.

Ian Bounds was an influential Methodist minister in the 19th century.

He says that the devil is remorseless, cruel, and a mighty foe.

Nothing advances Satan's work with more skillful and readier hands than to be

ignorant of Satan and his ways.

And so we have over the years, as a society, what we've done as we've advanced

in science, as we've increased what we call our understanding is that we've

forgotten things that should not have been forgotten, that we have.

Failed to remember what we should have remembered.

And when we encounter these stories,

a lot of times, depending on where we are and what our experiences are,

we react with them, and we react to them with doubt and we react to them with

incredulity, incredulity.

And I was listening to some podcasts this week,

and I was hearing some people speak about the ministries that they have with freedom and,

deliverance and prayer, and they were telling a story about how a friend of

his who's a pastor called him and had this woman in his office who was rolling

around the floor, and he's like, I had no idea what to do.

I don't know what's going on, and this guy's walking him through,

okay, first do this, first do that, because he had experience with it, and

The turn of the story is the guy, the pastor, who was unprepared and unaware.

He said, okay, I think I got it. I'll call you back if I need more help or once it's under control.

And so they prayed these freedom prayers over this woman.

She ceased from the rolling around. She was freed from the demonic attack in that moment.

Even like saying the word demonic attack, it's like, I don't feel like that's

weird to say. I don't want to say that.

But we hear these stories. and my first thought, I don't know if it's your first

thought, but my first thought is like, yeah, that doesn't happen.

Disbelief is our first response. We have to measure our own hearts.

And the turnaround of this story is the guy who was experienced in his liver

ministry said, okay, just how did it all go?

Asking about the events. And the guy was marveling, the pastor in his experience

was marveling at it and said, yes, this was my mother-in-law actually.

And so I'm going to walk through this with my daughter, or not my daughter,

my wife, who was her daughter and has experienced some of these same strongholds.

And so it opened up this door to freedom and deliverance in their family and in their church as well.

So if we're not careful, we meet these in our heart posture,

these stories with disbelief and confusion.

And it all stems from lots of different things. It stems from our culture.

It stems from the lies that we encounter as a society with regard to spiritual warfare.

Maybe the things that we've learned along the way or from textbooks,

somebody that's perhaps told you in a church something and lots of churches

believe certain things about spiritual warfare, but maybe it wasn't quite right.

Yet the people who are involved in these deliverance ministries,

most of them have been forced into it by accident as they've encountered them.

And it's not something that they've sought out, but as they're thrust into this

fight that they didn't go looking for,

what they have discovered in more reality than we as we stand in our disbelief

is that there is a war that we are already in, and we can't avoid it,

even though how we respond typically is.

With ignorance, with being unaware of the biblical teaching on the devil and

the spirits at work in those who do not believe, and within us as well.

We meet it with fear, fear of the unknown, and these hearsay accounts of demonic

encounters sort of color our picture of this bizarre world of the spirit realm.

And so we let Hollywood inform us more of what demons and demonic possession

looks like than we let the Bible.

We meet it with a belief that demonic powers are just a figment of man's imagination.

We meet it with the belief that if they are there, they're not interested or

active in the world around us.

We do meet it with some pieces of truth that Satan's power is limited,

which is absolutely true.

Satan is not God's equal, and we'll get into more of that later on in the weeks to come.

But we also meet this idea that Satan's power is limited with the same idea

that therefore Satan can't produce miracles.

And certainly not to the extent that God can, but certainly to the extent that

seems like us to us to be miraculous and supernatural.

We have been over the years told and taught that the spirit-filled Christian cannot be bothered,

by the powers of darkness and that Christians are insulated from demonic attacks

and we've been taught other things such as that.

But then if we really investigate in the scriptures We see that Satan is bold

enough to walk into the throne room of God and ask if he could tempt Job, right?

We see him ask permission to go after Peter.

And Jesus doesn't say, oh, he can't do that. You're a spiritual Christian.

He says, I've prayed for you.

We see throughout the Bible that that's not the reality.

And even though our naturalist humanistic culture says that these things don't

exist, the fact is that these powers are real.

And so, another option for us is that we think, okay, well, I'll just avoid

these power encounters. Why mess with them?

But I think if we, as we investigate today specifically, we'll kind of realize

is that the question isn't, I guess the question is more, is that even possible

for us to avoid these powers? Is it even possible?

Or we could go the other direction and have an arrogant attitude that in its

brazenness just says, like, I'm going to push back the darkness.

I'm going to fight the enemy.

And while God has given us authority, what that actually does if we in our arrogance

seek to do that is it invites demonic attack and invites something that we're

actually not prepared for because these powers are real and they're not to be

trifled with. They're not to be taken lightly.

And let's be clear by saying over the weeks that I am not an expert and I am

unprepared, not because I

haven't prepared, but because I think even those who are writing the books,

on deliverance ministries would also say that they are not experts.

And I don't think our job is to be experts. You won't find us talking in the

next several weeks about the rank and order of angels and demons and all the

different kinds that there are because that information is not in the Bible

for us to follow that rabbit hole.

We're not supposed to be chasing down, figuring out the rank and file and order of the spiritual world.

So you won't find us pursuing it in that way.

Just to be more aware of the battlefield that we're in, to give you a little

bit of insight, I took a class in seminary called Folk Religion and Spiritual Warfare.

And this was sort of my first introduction into this.

The reality of this world opening my eyes. And there was not a night that entire semester,

that I didn't go to sleep, or couldn't go to sleep unless I repeated in my head,

Joshua 1.9, that God is with me wherever I go. Do not be afraid, do not be anxious.

There was not a night that I could go to sleep unless I was reciting that verse in my head.

And you hear these stories about things that happen, and my rationalistic brain

that has spent so much time in the world of science was like,

okay, yeah, those things don't happen.

But during that semester, just being more aware, there was nights where I would

wake up and I saw something at the end of our bed.

And again, I'm already afraid of everything, so that didn't help.

There was a night when I woke up and you hear stories about people being choked

by anything and I was being choked and I couldn't understand it.

And I couldn't rationalize it.

But the more we are aware, and I don't say these things to make us afraid.

Like, I don't want you to be afraid. We'll definitely get into the fact that

we are operating from a place of victory and that the devil has no power except what God allows.

And that God has given us authority from the throne room to be able to speak

life and empower over these things.

So I don't want us to be afraid. I just wanted to affirm that reality that there

is a spiritual world and we are in a spiritual battle and we can't avoid it. And even just this week.

There has been all of this stuff as we have prepared to come together to talk about it.

Because we need to be aware. And Paul writes in 2 Corinthians.

That when I forgive whatever needs to be forgiven, I do so with Christ's authority

so that Satan will not outsmart us for we are familiar with his schemes.

And that's what today is about, that we would be aware, that we would be familiar,

that we would not be caught off guard, because I feel like that's where we all

usually sit, is in a place that is prone to being blindsided by it,

to the simple reality that creation has an enemy.

And I say creation purposefully because we'll talk about how God does not have

no, he has no equal, he has no opposite.

So in some ways we could say that Satan is not God's enemy, but rather our enemy

and in creation's enemy.

Homer Duncan, the founder of Worldwide Missionary Crusades, has distributed

Christian literature globally over the hundreds of years, said that many people

who believe that what the Bible says about God do not believe what the Bible

teaches about the devil.

Since they do not recognize that he is their enemy, that creation has an enemy,

they do not realize the tremendous power that he exercises.

And many Christians fail to recognize that being children of God brings them

into conflict with Satan.

And so spiritual warfare happens because,

Our internal struggles, our internal sins, our personal sins, our ethical dilemmas.

This war, these spiritual battles happen because of the spiritual forces that are opposed to God.

They happen because there are malevolent forces like demons that are on a mission.

And I don't know if demons and angels sleep.

That's not talked about at all, but you better believe that they are thinking

about how to turn you away, how to distract you, how to destroy,

how to discourage, how to deter you from your belief and faith and trust in God.

And they are thinking about that more than we are thinking about how to stay firm in faith to Jesus.

So you better believe that they are at work And even though we tend to think

of this as something that occasionally happens, that it's something extraordinary,

that this is a reality for all Christians across time.

For us to daily contend with a spiritual foe that is...

Hell-bent, I guess, would be a pun. I don't know if that's a pun or not. On our destruction.

And Jesus laid down sort of this fundamental truth as he lived his life and

as he taught that there are no sidelines in this war.

The kingdom of God has come and we are either with Jesus or against him.

And there's a million ways to oppose Jesus, to oppose his work in the world.

But those who are with him are focused on the same goal, building his kingdom,

building his kingdom, knowing him and following him, helping others to do the same thing.

And so what I really want for us to do this morning, because I could keep just

saying that fact over and over again, the spiritual world is real,

the spiritual world is real, we're at war.

But what I want to spend just a few minutes on is a way for us to bring this

home and for us to evaluate in our own lives,

what are the ways that these spiritual forces, these powers and principalities are at war within you?

What are the ways that they are building strongholds and filling you with using

your wounds, filling you with lies and at work in and around you right now.

So I just want to kind of give you some questions, and I'm probably going to

give you questions that repeat themselves, but in a different way,

because I just want you to kind of think.

And give your yes or your no to these. And as we get into the later weeks about

knowing our enemy, knowing ourselves, and knowing the tools we have.

Identifying and beginning to fight

and work against to break down these strongholds and to walk in freedom.

So let me just give you some questions for you to evaluate.

What are the thoughts that are dominating your mind right now?

Are they leading you towards Jesus?

Are they leading you towards peace? He's a God of peace. Or are they leading

you towards fear, towards shame, towards anxiety?

Do you feel securely loved by God and confident by who you are in Christ?

Or along that line, are you struggling with shame? Are you struggling with rejection?

Are you struggling with fear? Are you struggling with feelings of I'm not enough?

Are there any ongoing sin patterns, behaviors, addictions, habits that you feel stuck in?

As you are hearing these voices internally, do these thoughts sound like the

voice of Jesus or the voice of accusation?

Jesus convicts us with hope, but the enemy convicts us without hope.

The enemy always wants to name you by your past.

I can't get away from this. This is who I am. This is what I've done.

The enemy always wants to name you by your past.

So with that, are you rehearsing something over and over again that God has already forgiven?

Are you letting shame retell your story that grace has already overshadowed?

Are you assuming the worst about God?

These are the original lies from the garden, that God doesn't actually love

me, that God doesn't actually care for me, that God doesn't actually know what's best for me.

Are you filling in those gaps with fear instead of trust? Is there anyone that

you have not fully forgiven, that you can't bring yourself to forgive,

including yourself, any bitterness that you're holding onto?

Are there past hurts, past traumas, past wounds?

There's no place more likely for us to have strongholds in our life than places

where we've been legitimately hurt in the past.

So are there any wounds, past hurts, traumas, or painful memories that you still

are carrying with you that still carry emotional weight in you?

Are you agreeing with these lies that feel true but aren't biblically?

In some ways, it's not helpful to ask the question, what lies are you believing?

Because in your mind, they don't feel like lies.

They feel more true than anything else you can imagine.

So are there any things you are believing to be true that just simply don't

agree with what God says?

Are we avoiding obedience in certain areas of our life?

Which voices get the most time in our lives?

Is it self-talk, media, these past wounds, well-meaning people?

Are we isolated with our thoughts? Have we stopped inviting God or others into

what's happening in our minds?

Isolation is one of the key warning signs of the enemy at work in us.

Do you sense spiritual oppression, harassment, resistance that isn't simply

explained by your circumstances?

Are you believing that your struggle disqualifies you? You think that you have

to fix yourself before God can work?

There's, of course, the more obvious question that perhaps that we would want

to overlook because it is also weird to us, but has there ever been any spiritual

or occult involvement in our lives?

False religions or spiritual experiences outside of Christ.

Is there any of that in our family history? Do we know any of our family history?

Because sometimes the wounds of our parents, the wounds of our family,

open up wounds in us that we aren't even aware of.

This is this idea of generation influence, generational patterns,

family struggles, words spoken over you that have been spoken over you by others

that still have power over you, Labels, curses, family sins.

Do you ever have the thought, I'm all alone. No one loves me. I cannot be loved.

Everyone will leave me. I'm not good enough.

Any of those thoughts. These are the present. Now listen, I will say this as

we kind of finish our time.

All of us will probably have said yes to at least one of these.

That doesn't mean that you need an exorcism you.

What we all need is what we might call a truth encounter.

And we all need this every day. We need to remind ourselves of what's true.

And we need to allow these lies that are spoken over us, that are spoken to

us, that are rehearsed in our minds.

We need to allow God to push them out as truth is filled within us.

So we all need these truth encounters. This is why I talk about memorization

of scripture so much, because there is no way for us to better be filled with

truth than to literally think it in our head all the time.

So we all need truth encounters.

But also, probably more of us than we would like to admit or give thought to

need some sort of power encounter deliverance that happens in our life.

To be able to pray in the authority that Jesus has given us over each other and over ourselves,

that whatever spiritual work that might be at play in us,

like if our truth encounters, if we are pressing in to Jesus and these things

are still so prominent in us,

then we also might need some power encounters to get rid of these spiritual influences in our life.

Because something, as I mentioned, that I have believed and been told for years

and years is that for a spirit-filled Christian, demonic powers can have no influence in your life.

But I think the truest thing to be confronted with for me,

as we dive into this is that there are strongholds that we have given we have

given the devil, the enemy, a seat at our table that we have allowed him to come and sit down.

And we've allowed him to speak things over us that aren't true.

And because we've done that for so long, we've created patterns in our lives

that we can't just simply escape on our own, in our own authority.

So we need that authority that Jesus has given us to walk in freedom from these things.

Because this war is massive, it is violence, and there are casualties.

And the stakes are high. It is over every human heart.

And no matter what we would like to believe, we cannot escape it.

So my prayer for us as we walk into this more reality, or this reality more and more, rather,

is that we will take steps collectively and individually towards the freedom

that God invites us into.

Freedom from the lies, freedom from the patterns, destructive patterns,

freedom from the wounds, that we would walk in forgiveness, that we as those

who have been forgiven would walk in forgiveness towards others.

And we would let go of our bitterness, that we wouldn't give the enemy a seat

at our table and allow him to dictate or to speak into what life is.

There's a Blue Giglio, I think he wrote a book, he also has several sermon series

about this idea that don't give an enemy a seat at your table.

And he goes through Psalm 23, that God prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemy.

And as much as we'd like to think that our enemy is not bold enough to come

up and just take a seat, the reality is in the Bible, we see that he tries to do that all the time.

And when we give him that seat, then we open ourselves up to have those lies

spoken over us and to believe and walk on that.

So I hope that we take steps collectively through the truth and through power

encounters as necessary to walk with each other in freedom as we hop off the

sidelines that don't even exist anyway and engage in this spiritual battle, this spiritual war.

So that's my prayer for us today. That's my prayer for us over the next several weeks.

And I just encourage you to be honest and share as we get into our family groups

this week where you're at.

Like, how do you feel about this stuff?

So that we can speak over it and name it and be able to walk in truth together.

That we would share these lies, these struggles.

That we would share if these truth encounters that we're just,

we're trying to remind ourselves but it's not working.

That we would be aware together And so we can step towards freedom together, because that, if we're,

we talk about discipleship, and as we answer the question, what kind of disciple

do we wanna be, and what kind of disciples do we wanna make?

For me, one of those words is freedom.

Can go and tell people all we want, that God is real and that he is God who

created the universe and that you can live and experience him.

But if we have never lived and experienced that freedom that he brings us,

then we can't truly tell him in like sincerity what he is offering.

And so I pray that we would all experience that freedom over the weeks to come

and that we'll walk in that freedom.

And people who have been free, the Bible talks about that a lot,

right? Like who in the sun has set free is free indeed.

People who have been free want to see other people free.

And so I pray that that will be contagious for us.

And as much as I would love to be that person, I heard a story about a guy who

woke up in that same regard that I mentioned earlier, where I woke up and saw

a presence at the foot of his bed.

And I don't know which is some famous pastor preacher from centuries ago,

probably, but his response was, oh, it's just you. And he rolled over and went back to bed.

I wish that I could be that brazen and have that much just like fight within

me to say, yeah, God is on my side and I don't have to fear you.

So if you're going to stay there, that's fine. I'm going back to sleep.

I don't know that that'll be me, but, and I don't know that I'll give this rallying

speech for us to push back and fight against the gates of hell.

But I do believe that we can fight and we can have victory, which is already

ours over these powers that influence in us and in our community and then lives of those around us.

And I believe that is something we can all walk in and see lives changed with.

Lord, I just pray. I pray for freedom.

I pray for walls to come down, for chains to break.

Hearts to be set free. For us to not walk in fear,

I pray that all of us would think more about the spiritual world and that we

would continue to be more aware of its reality around us, to be more aware of

this spiritual war that is at place that we are a part of.

I pray that we would walk in more awareness and knowledge of that,

and I pray that that doesn't lead us to fear.

The victory is already yours yours is

the greatness yours is the power yours is

the victory yours is the majesty yours is everything

God yours is the kingdom and I

just want to see us all walk in that reality of those who have been plucked

out of the kingdom of darkness and place in the kingdom of light the kingdom

of your son that is our reality we don't need to fear. We don't need to be afraid.

We can trust you and we can know that not only is there a war that we are in,

but also that you are fighting for us and there is no match for you, God.