Spiritual Warfare – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

scripture reading is taken from Ephesians chap 6: 10-13 finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers against the authorities against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual for forces of evil in the Heavenly Realms therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you

have done everything to stand this is the word of the Lord so the devil was that a little too big a change in I'm not sure that was a changeing subject the devil we're in Ephesians and we're getting to this week and next week a passage on spiritual warfare now in Africa Latin America Asia most places in the world the idea of spiritual warfare of a conflict between spiritual good and spiritual evil is not uh an unusual concept many people in many parts of the world think it really helps them make sense of reality but

we here in the western world World find it a foreign concept so let's look at this passage this is the first part next week we'll look at another section on this and let us notice what we struggle you know spiritual warfare but let's notice who we fight what we fight and how we fight who we fight our struggle is not with flesh and blood with but with spiritual forces of evil what we fight the devil's schemes how we fight do everything all right first um who do we fight yeah you see here in verse 12

our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers authorities powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil now when Paul says this and he says we wrestle not against flesh and blood he doesn't mean that uh we don't wrestle with any Flesh and Blood version of evil he's not saying that I mean he's not saying that that evil doesn't take Flesh and Blood form he he struggled with people who imprisoned him and who flogged him and who uh you know stoned him so he certainly uh opposed Flesh and

Blood evil but what he is saying is we wrestle not only with flesh and blood evil that when evil takes Flesh and Blood form uh war and cruelty and violence and greed and strife and racism and crime and poverty when it takes those uh Flesh and Blood forms he is saying they participate in something that's above and behind and beyond that is more than merely human and natural that the Flesh and Blood behind it is something that's not flesh and blood and until you recognize that dimension of evil in the world you will not be

able to understand its depth and its pervasive and its intractability so that's what he's saying now here in the west modern Western World we have trouble with that because the modern Western mindset is this that everything has a natural cause and therefore everything has a scientific explanation if everything has a natural cause and a scientific explanation then crime and violence and greed and racism and War and cruelty all those things must have a natural cause and what is that natural cause is then we say it's bad psychological factors you were raised right you weren't educated

right or bad sociological factors you know bad social systems and we say there's got to be natural cause to all this and we can figure it out and we can fix it that's the Western mindset but it's wearing thin uh Angel Andrew delbanco who's one of the a great uh intellectual scholar type who's at Columbia University some years ago wrote a book called The Death of Satan and even though he says in the book I'm a secular liberal okay he wrote a book called The Death of Satan and the first line in the book is

this he says a gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it and then he goes on and says this that we've jettisoned in the west the idea of cosmic evil or Transcendent evil or Supernatural evil we don't believe in that in fact we don't even like to use the word evil and the reason we don't like it is because it implies value judgments and moral absolutes so we use medical terms we talk about dysfunction we talk about pathology and we don't use moral terminology but

delbanco says as the 20th century has gone on it's gotten harder and harder to say that Holocaust and ethnic cleansing and serial Killing is Just bad psychological and sociological adjustment dako turns in his book he turns to a very famous interaction it's in the book Silence of the Lambs and of course it was also depicted in the movie The Silence of the Lambs it's the place where the young policewoman officer Starling goes to meet for the first time the Monstrous serial killer Hannibal lecor and she goes to the cell and she's looking at him and

hearing what he's done and says what happened to him to make him so Twisted what happened to him that he could be so C cruel and she he heard her big mistake Starling and he begins to speak and this is what he says and it's very hard to read this without hearing Anthony Hopkins I know but you know she says what happened to him to make him so twisted and Lector responds quote nothing happened to me officer Starling I happened you can't reduce me to a set of influences you've given up good and evil for

behaviorism officer starling you've got everyone in moral dignity pants nothing is ever anybody's fault look at me can you stand to say I'm evil and dobano who's quoting this says modern people the modern West cannot answer the monster's question and he's right he says as the 20th centuri has gone on well we said 150 years ago that all evil has got natural causes as scientific causes psychological social causes he says it's wearing thin you know one of the things we used to say is that racism and violence comes from a lack of Education a lack

of civilization a lack of culture it's only primitive uncivilized uneducated people are like that and then we had World War II and then we had the final solution and the Holocaust and the death camps that arose out of perhaps as as educated and as cultured a nation as there was on the face of the Earth and we had Marxism and Marxism says Ah the reason for all the problem it's not psychological or educational it's social we have to put the means of production in the hands of the proletariat not in the hands of the capitalists

but we did they did and of course the proletariat was every bit as oppressive and violent as the capitalists were and now Marxism has been thrown onto the Dustbin of History basically and over and over again everything that says oh it's psychological it's social delbo says we cannot today in the west account for the depth and pervasive pervasiveness of evil but the Bible doesn't have that problem the Bible says here's where evil came from it came from the Free Will of two races of beings that God created angels and humans and some of the Angels

fell by exercising their Free Will and turning turning away from God and the Fallen Angels the devil and his demons are personal supernatural beings and then on the other hand we have the human race and we turned and now sin and evil is in our heart it's deep in our soul which is still spiritual roots and therefore here's what Christianity says yes psychological and sociological factors can aggravate they can accentuate and they can shape the innate self-centeredness the innate self-absorption the innate blindness and self-d delusion the innate uh radical insecurity in the human heart but

those factors don't create it and that that stuff that's in the heart aggravated by the devil is what makes the world the way it is so that's enough on that let point one we wrestle not only with flesh and blood so let me just uh push this home to you there is a devil there are demons you need to see that uh I know there's got to be people listening to me or who will listen to this recording that have a lot of trouble with the idea that there's a personal devil or believing in a

personal devil believing here what the Bible says but let me actually s let me suggest four things to you real quick number one if you struggle believing in the devil would you please at least consider that you're being simplistic New Yorkers want to be Sophisticated New Yorkers want to be nuanced and sophisticated not crude and unsophisticated but is it possible that perhaps by not realizing the multi-dimensionality and the spiritual depth Dimension to human evil you are being simplistic and you are being naive and not the people who believe in the demons that they're not being

the unsophisticated crude ones but you are here's a second point if you have struggle with believing in the personal devil consider that you might be might be um culturally narrow because you know white Western people have a lot of trouble believing the devil that's not true of most people in the world Africa Latin America Asia they have no trouble believing in spirits and demons and things like that and and they've got wisdom too don't they I mean are you really going to just look down at all that wisdom why not be open culturally to what

other cultures tell you about this to paraphrase Shakespeare there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your psychologies and sociologies here's a third idea you got to think of if you struggle with the idea that there a real devil uh personal devil do you believe in God you say oh yeah I believe in God well if you believe in God isn't it a little inconsistent if you believe in good personal supernatural beings why there couldn't be bad personal supernatural beings I mean where's the in that a little inconsistent but here's

the main thing I want to say if the Bible's true if the Bible's right about this and it is then you will not be able to understand let alone defeat on your own the darkness in your own heart in your family in the city in the world you won't be able to do that the dark is it's beyond you we're in over our heads unless God is helping us it's not going to just take psychology and sociology okay that's who we fight secondly what is it we fight and what what we fight it's it's actually

listed there the devil's schemes and all right let's let's spend some time on this the word scheme sometimes it's called WS it's a word that means it's the Greek word is methoda Method but it's a word that means strategies the devil therefore must have an arsenal of weapons or the devil must have a a portfolio of various strategies he throws that it's very interesting there's a place in 2 Corinthians 2 verse 11 it says uh do not be unaware of the devil's uh devices we should do not be ignorant of his devices the Old King

James says so what is that obviously the devil's got devices we have to fight them what is that there's two errors we must fight and two sets of strategies we must fight two errors that got the devil wants us to fall into and two sets of strategies that he throws okay first the two errors now the two errors are actually inferred you can infer them from the balance of what Paul is saying to us about the demons and the devil on the one hand he doesn't want us to overestimate on the other hand he doesn't

want us to underestimate their power so for example he doesn't want us to underestimate the power it said you know it says our struggle is not with flesh and blood the word struggle there is not the normal word for struggle it's a word that actually means wrestling with your bare hands on the ground you know if you're shooting arrows at somebody that's a battle and if you're fighting them with a sword that's a battle but when you get to the place where you're on the ground wrestling with your enemy with your bare hands that's the

most desperate life and death close moment and that's the word Paul deliberately chooses to talk about the spiritual warfare and then look at look at the words he uses why doesn't he just say demons instead he says the rulers the authorities powers of this Dark World spiritual forces of evil he's trying to show us how formidable they are just racking up these impressive words he's trying to show us do not underestimate them but on the other hand he actually says don't overestimate them be strong in the Lord meaning you know don't be afraid you know

don't run don't be cowardly and then he says at the end he says for when the evil day comes and you've put on the full armor of God and you've done everything I'm telling you to do you will stand he doesn't say you might stand he says you will stand expect success now some of you have heard this uh CS Lewis in in the introduction to his book screw tape letters says there are two equal and opposite errors you can fall into with regard to demons and demonic uh the de the Demonic and what are

those two opposite errors the ones that Paul's trying to help you avoid on the one hand you can overestimate their strength you can have what CS Lewis calls an unhealthy interest in them or ascribe all evil to them or ascribe too much power to them on the other hand to disbelieve in them to not believe in them at all one you could call Superstition one you could call substition one is over belief one is under belief and Lewis ends his little quote by saying they themselves the devils are equally pleased with both errors and hail

a materialist or magician with the same Delight now what why are both these errors bad I'll tell you why because they reduce evil and the key to fighting successfully all the things that are against us all the spiritual forces is to actually have a nuanced and complexified understanding of evil uh and if you say oh everything's the devil or there's nothing the devil you're actually you've reduced things and you really are you've got a simplistic understanding of what's goes wrong uh I I often refer to this well I don't know how often if you've been

around you've heard me refer to it before but some years ago I read a a sermon by Richard Baxter who was a 17th century British Puritan Minister um you know 1600s and he wrote a book on Melancholy which of course is our word is an old word for depression and he was a very good pastor and he knew how to work with people and so the sermon says well what are the possible causes of depression Melancholy and he named four the first one he says well it could be your depression is caused by the physical

it might have a physical cause in which case what you need is medicine or food or rest to be something with your body secondly he says there might be a psychological cause you might be cast down in your temperament and what you need then is lots of love and affirmation and just support but number three he says there might be a moral cause uh you might feel guilty about something or you might be angry at something and maybe feel guilty about being that angry and you need repentance and you need forgiveness and you need reconciliation

so there could be a physical cause there could be a psychological cause there could be a moral cause or he says there could be a demonic cause which we're getting to here now uh or it could be more than one and they could be kind of interactive now I challenge you to find anywhere hardly that level of nuance and balance because you see almost everybody falls into one of the two errors that csos talks about one of the two errors that that Paul's trying to avoid on the one hand let's face it you have a

lot of Christians today who actually attribute so much the devil if you got a problem if you got a temper problem if you got an anger problem for example it's the devil we got to do something about it well wait a minute what about the way you were raised what about the bad psychology in you because of a a a bad family background what about your physiology what about there's something wrong with your chemist chemical no no it's all the devil so what you're doing or or or maybe you're angry because you're refusing to forgive

somebody and that's a moral issue and not a demonic issue see on the one hand you've got you've got Believers you got Christians that are attributing too much they're like actually weirdly enough they would be upset to hear that but they're like magicians according to to to Lewis in other words there there everything is magical everything is ult everything is demonic on the other hand you've got what we have mainly in New York and that is we don't believe in it at all we give up on the whole thing the whole idea is kind of

silly both both errors equally please the Devils they hail both with equal Delight why because you're really not able to see all that they're throwing at you all that life is throwing at you most people are if you're you can see most people if you're discouraged depressed there's a super spiritual approach it's all the devil there's a there's an unders spiritual approach it's you know you just give a person medicine it's you know it's a psychological and the physical it's never the moral or the Demonic oh my goodness but Richard Baxter was biblical Paul is

being biblical are you being ConEd to one of these errors stay out of them it's it's part of the method it's it's part of his devices stay out of those two errors but now secondly understand the two categories of love lies the devil do you know the word devil here uh put on the full armor of God so you can take your stand against the devil schemes there's two words usually used to just to talk about the devil this is probably the most common one it's the Greek word diabos and you say oh yeah I

know that word diabolical but maybe you don't because the word diabos is a verb and is a noun form of a verb and the verb means to lie and slander now you need to understand this H we you need to get away from the error we we are too skeptical that is here in the west we don't think the devil's ever involved unless the person's head is completely turning around they're turning green and they're vomiting see then well maybe that is the devil you know perhaps because the devil got in there somehow the main way

the devil works is he's a liar the word devil means a liar it also means a slanderer John White wrote a book years ago Christian counselor and said here's how the devil Works take a a piano and open up the top and sing a note into it and whatever string that not your voice is attuned to you know most of us don't have perfect pitch so we have no idea what note we're actually saying but you can find out open up the top of the piano sing a note in and a particular note will uh

a string will vibrate it's the string that's attuned to your voice you you haven't even touched it you haven't touched the key you haven't touched it and yet it's vibrating to your voice that's what the devil does the devil cannot make a good person bad The Devil Makes a flawed person worse the devil plays on what's already in you he aggravates what's already in you through lies and that's the reason why for example it says in Ephesians 4 we actually saw it some weeks ago don't let the sun go down on your anger don't give

the devil that kind of foothold if you're bitter that gives him the ability to aggravate and press you and push you you've given him a foothold it says in first Timothy don't put a uh a a young man into um the eldership because he might get puffed up with pride and fall under the snare of the devil Pride helps you fall into the snare of the devil now there's two ways in which Satan's lies he says things to you it doesn't necessarily mean he literally says things to you that you actually hear a voice who's

that but rather what he does he stimulates talk that goes on in your heart and there's two basic categories of those according to the Bible Temptation and accusation Temptation and accusation now listen by the way from here out to the end you might get inspired but I'm actually here to instruct and convict so I want you to listen I'm trying to be very I'm going to be specific as I can in the next five minutes uh Temptation and accusation Temptation essentially gets you to have two High High a view of yourself so you go and

do things you shouldn't accusation is the devil's way of trying to get you to have too low and self-hating a view of yourself so that you'll go and do things you won't you shouldn't there both ways work they they both work Temptation in Temptation Satan is actually hiding from you God's holiness and how much he hates sin he hides that from you plays up the love but in Act accusation he hides from you God's love he plays up the God's holiness and his wrath on sin and he hides God's love that's the reason why uh

John Newton who was a very good pastor was writing to a depressed young man who was a Christian and who was very depressed and he was under accusation because he was saying oh I'm so awful I'm so awful I'm so awful God can't love me and John Newton knew he was under accusation so he wrote this he says you cannot be too aware of all your Inward and inbred sins but you may be indeed you are improperly affected by them and here's his main point you express not only a low opinion of yourself which is

certainly right but you also Express too low an opinion of the person work and Promises of the Redeemer which is certainly wrong now you say well how does this work exactly Temptations accusations are basically lies things that Satan leads you to think in certain ways and moves you to do what's wrong one through overview to High View yourself to low view of yourself to high view of God's holiness uh to low a view of God's holiness and to high view of his love too low a view of his uh love and to high view of

his Holiness um how do those lies work if you get a book by Thomas Brooks also of 17th century Puritan a peer of a uh of um uh you know contemporary excuse me of Richard Baxter Thomas Brooks wrote a book called precious remedies against Satan's devices I have chosen uh he's got 50 or 60 or 70 but what I've done is I've chosen just a few from the Temptation category and just a few from the accusation character category just to give you this sense of how this works so for example he says how does Satan

tempt us here's um here's eight devices ready listen I'll give you the device and then I'll sometimes give you the selft talk that you might be saying to yourself the first device is he shows you the bait and hides the hook which means he gets you to look at the uh the shortterm pleasures of what this would do and hide from yourself the long-term misery of what will happen come on you know that one you don't know that one here's number two by getting you to rationalize sin as virt virtue I'm not really greedy I'm

just Thrifty I'm not really nosy I'm just concerned I'm not an alcoholic I'm just sociable number three by showing you the sins of the other of Christian leaders so you say to yourself he did it too nobody's really that pure number four by overstressing the mercy of God so what you say to yourself is do it God will forgive you that's his job number five by making them bitter over suffering so what you say is I've suffered I deserve this by the way you know one of the one of the reasons that powerful prominent men

always are having these Affairs because what they say to themselves is nobody knows how hard I work and how many sacrifices I make so I deserve this that that's Temptation see um here's another one showing showing by showing Christians how many bad people seem to be having great lives and so the selft talk goes like this I might as well do it playing by the rules doesn't pay off and I'll just give you one more this is only seven the seventh one is by getting you to compare one part of your life to another one

part of your life to another look I'm very good over here I'm very good over here I do all that I do all that it's okay that I do that in fact you want an extreme form of that Ma Hitman I'm good to my mother okay I kill people but I'm really really good to my mother that's that's not a joke by the way I mean I knew you'd laugh that's why I told you but it's not a joke well what about accusation here's four from the a the accusation Arsenal how does Satan accuse Us

by causing us to look more at our sin than at our Savior by the way you know all the parent in books will tell you that if you give your child one compliment for every one criticism if you give your child one criticism for every one compliment the kids's going to grow up hating them themselves they're going to grow up hating themselves you need to give four or five compliments for every criticism because the criticisms really large and the and the uh compliments don't uh and there's reasons for that because the biblical reasons for that

is we know there's something wrong with us and so so you you got to have a lot more compliments than criticisms and the same way what Thomas Brook says is for every one look at your sin you need to take five looks at your savior and the devil makes sure that doesn't happen number two under accusation by causing them talking about Christians to obsess over past sins that have done damage that can't be undone number three by making Christians think that the troubles they're going through must be punishments so you say this wouldn't have happened

unless God was mad at me number four by making people think that the inner struggles and feelings they have Christians couldn't possibly have so you say if I were a real Christian I wouldn't be having these thoughts and desires do you recognize any of these he's playing you he knows what strings you've got and he's vibrating them you must not be unaware of his schemes you must understand what he's out there doing that's what we're fighting the schemes of the devil now number three how do we fight yeah you said booy you haven't left much

time no I haven't and it's partly because of the a little bit of artificiality I we've broken the part of the text on spiritual warfare into two sections this section basically gives you the problem and next week the full armor of God what that is brings you the solution but I can tell you two things and it's the good thing about the fact that um I have to I don't have that much time and it most of this is next week is it forces me to be concise right here and that's helpful to everybody here

I'd like to tell you two things you must do if you are going to fight successfully all these things that are being thrown at you the one is know what particular devices Satan uses on you I will never forget the first time I read Thomas Brook's precious remedies against Satan's devices and he's got all of these these uh devices and basically they're forms of selft talk little things that you say to yourself in your heart on your way into doing something wrong and I'll never forget how surprised I was that I remember three of them

were things were were things that I used to say to myself always say to myself and they always led to disaster and I just finally got rid of them I I never say that to myself anymore when my when I start to think that I said that's that's a dead end forget that you know disaster will happen now so i' never longer go there and I realized that that basically Satan had stopped trying those out cuz I'd gotten wise to them and I found three more so he's not stupid he moves around you know he

says okay okay they got wised me on that those three fine okay I won't go there anymore these are the three I said oh no do you know which ones he's using on you do you know which yours are see he knows what your strings are do you know what your strings are do you know where you you give him openings that's principal one principle two the gospel is the armor and do you know why come on let's do some theology here what are the two things that he does Temptation and accusation he either gives

you an overblown sense of God's holiness and minimizes his love so you hate yourself or he gives you an overblown sense of God's love and under and and plays down the Holiness so you go do things you shouldn't do and think everything's going to be okay and it's a disaster he turns you into e into someone who either is crushed by a sense of your guilt or doesn't have enough sense of a guilt at all now if you believe you're saved by living a good life if you believe what all the other religions say and

that is basically I will find God I will you know self-actualize I will be saved if I do these things and I do these things now if you really believe that through your efforts and through your achievements and through your performance you can save yourself then you either sometimes feel like a sinner oh I failed or you sometimes feel loved and accepted because you feel like you succeeded either you feel like a sinner or you feel loved and accepted but if you believe the gospel that Jesus Christ died for you on the cross as your

substitute that he took the penalty for your sin so that when you believe in him all of your guilt is put on him and absorbed there and all of his righteous and every all of his record is brought to you so you're loved and accepted in him then that means every Christian walks walks around with those two facts in their mind at the same time I am a sinner in myself I'm lost and my sin was so great that the nothing less than the death of the Son of God could save me sin was so

bad my sin was so bad that God had to do that Jesus had to do that on the other hand I'm absolutely loved I'm completely accepted I'm as loved now as I will be 4 billion years from now he sees me in Jesus Christ now do you know what that is one of those facts completely demolishes Temptation if you understand the gospel you know that the thing you're tempted to do Jesus Christ died so you wouldn't do that Jesus Christ was ripped from limb to limb because of this how can you have anything to do

with it but the other hand when you're being accused the other fact completely demolishes that strategy of Satan because you are absolutely loved and accepted it's the gospel you put on the gospel and it completely defeats the strategies of Satan let me just give you one example of the kind of talk that you have to what it means to put on the gospel if you're accused if you're feeling too guilty if you're feeling like I'll never be what I should be if you're feeling like a failure if you're feeling uh uh you know that you

are uh that God can't love you other people can't love you if you're on yourself this is what Thomas Brooks said I'll close with this Thomas Brooks who was a wonderful wonderful Pastor said this to people who were under accusation he said the remedy against this is to look upon all your sins as charge to the account of Christ he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed you know the wife who said to the bill collector if

I owe you anything go to my husband so may the believer say to Justice or to the devil if I owe you anything go to my Christ who has un underwritten me fully I must not sit down discourage this is still Brooks talking under the fear of those debts which Christ to the uttermost Farthing has fully satisfied the remedy against this accusation is to solemnly consider that Believers must repent for their being discouraged by their sins Believers must repent for being discouraged by their sins it Springs from the refusal of the richness freeness fullness and

everlastingness of God's love and from the refusal of the Power Glory sufficiency and efficacy of the death and sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ and from the refusal of the worth Glory fullness for largess and completeness of the righteousness of Christ given to you by faith God did not give a Believer a new heart for it to be rent and torn in pieces by discouragement what is that that's putting on the armor and now stand do you know how to put on the armor do you know how to handle the things that are being thrown

at you we wrestle not only with flesh and blood but with the gospel we can stand let us pray Our Father we thank you for giving us everything we need to uh fight the fights that are in front of us Lord we know it's not just the devil there's evil in us that's the flesh there's evil outside of us that's the world there's evil above us that's the devil we know things are complex we can never blame everything on the devil oh my goodness no but we recognize the multi-dimensionality of sin we recognize the spiritual

dimension of it we will not make the same mistake that our whole civilization has made for the last century of underestimating the power of evil and seeing that we wrestle not only with flesh and blood but in Jesus Christ you disarm the principalities and power when you died on the cross as the Book of Revelation said that when you accuse us we we we triumph over the accuser with the blood of the Lamb we pray Lord that you would teach us how to do that everybody in this room needs to find the ways in which

devices are being used against them and to use the gospel in the peculiar particular ways they need to give them that wisdom for we ask it through Jesus in his name we pray amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit w ww. gospeland life.com