If you are a believer in Jesus, you are in a battle. You probably figured that out pretty quickly. You might have been surprised because you’ve heard people say something like, “Come to Jesus, and all your problems will be solved.” Then you come to Jesus, and your problems give birth to problems.
What’s the deal with that?
The problem is that you have engaged in a fight with an enemy that is much more powerful than you. It’s a battle not against people, but against what the apostle Paul called “principalities,” “powers,” “rulers of the darkness of this age,” and “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Spiritual warfare is just as real as any warfare that we can see with our eyes. But it’s different because it IS spiritual and not physical. So, it takes a different kind of preparation.
When we look in Ephesians 6, we see a list of armor that God gives us to use in this battle. Over the next several videos, we’re going to try to understand what each piece of armor is and how we are supposed to use it.
But before we do that, we need to have an idea of who our enemy is. So today we’re going to huddle up behind the battle lines to find out who it is we are facing. Just like a football or basketball team might list the strengths and weaknesses of its opponent for next week’s game, we should list the strengths and weaknesses of our enemy.
First, our enemy is unseen.
That makes it real difficult. How do you fight against an enemy that you can’t see?
Every once in a while, I’ll hear a blood-curdling scream coming from our bedroom, so I race upstairs to rescue my wife from the intruder or the terrorist attack, or whatever it is. But when I charge into the room, I don’t see anything except my wife pointing at the bed and saying, “Spider!” Of course, I can’t find it. So, we have this running debate in our house about whether these spiders actually exist. Even with my incredible crime-fighting capabilities, I can’t neutralize the threat of a spider that I can’t see.
Our enemy is dangerous because we can’t see him, but he can see us.
The second characteristic about our enemy is that he is powerful. Look again at the description of who we are fighting: principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual hosts of wickedness. Quite an intimidating list.
But, there’s one more thing we have to notice about our enemy. Not only is he unseen and powerful, but he has already been defeated.
In Colossians we are told that when Jesus died on the cross, He “disarmed principalities and powers” and “made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15).
The enemy has already been defeated, but he’s still fighting the battle. And he’s mad, like a swarm of bees that just had its nest destroyed. They’ve been defeated, but they’re going to get somebody. So, we can’t let our guard down or our enemy will destroy us.
That’s why we have the armor of God. Like it or not, we’re in a battle. And we have three choices.
First, we can quit. “Hey, I didn’t sign up for this, man! I’m outta here!”
Second, we can hide. “I’ll just kinda hang out around Jesus, but don’t ask me to get too involved.”
Third, we can fight. “I’m not about to let the enemy win a battle when he’s already lost the war!”
