Spiritual Warfare

Introduction

Creation came out of the goodness, infinitude and immensity of God. It wasn’t that God was bored and just thought, “Well, I will make myself some toys.” It wasn’t that man had a desire to be created. Although there is much mystery surrounding the pre-creation mindset of God if we can use such a phrase to speak about God.

God created man in the complexity of His divine self as the crowning ornament of His material creation. I believe that what Christ taught us to pray in the so-called Lord’s Prayer existed in the creation of Adam and Eve in the atmosphere of perfect fellowship with God. The pre-fall state of the created world was in a sense fashioned from the order of heaven. The laws of heaven governed the earth. In other words, the kingdom of earth was existing in a sense in the Kingdom of Heaven.

We can link the fall of Lucifer to the fall of man in that it was this enemy of God who disguised himself as a serpent and tempted Eve and beguiled Adam. With the fall of man creation was thrust into the middle of a battlefield. It became kingdom against kingdom. The kingdom of Light against the kingdom of darkness. The reality has always been however that the King of kings rules in the Kingdom of kingdoms. Hence victory is guaranteed.


BC (Before Christ)

Israel’s understanding of warfare was of a more physical nature, I do believe though that God’s decrees to Israel to fight, there was an underlying spiritual reason.

Isaiah 14 gives us an understanding of Lucifer being behind kings whose powers are used for oppression and evil.
In the verses before it is clear that it is a reference to the king of Babylon.
But as if Isaiah changes his focus to not just the king but also the power behind the king.
No where in the scriptures can we point to God sending Israel to war against a nation that was not wallowing in corruption and being anti-God.
David’s Understanding of war and victory seemed to be deeply embedded in the spiritual than the physical. When we look at the Psalms we find verses like these:

Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.
One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple. (27:3 & 4)

16 No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength.
17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.
18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
19 to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine. (33:16-19)


The reality is that Israel found warfare to be both physical and spiritual at the same time.


AD Anno Domini

The New Testament is littered with evidence of the belief that most if not everything we face on earth has some spiritual undertone.

The Gospels
According to the four biographies of Christ, His central focus was not to ushering a new brand of religion called Christianity nor was it primarily to institute a universal gathering of grace-rescued humans called the Church.

In Mark one we learn that the central thing in the mandate of Christ when he stepped out of eternity and became an inhabitant of time was to make manifest and to declare the kingdom of God.

The beatitudes of Matthew speaks about the kingdom inheritors and the application of the laws of the kingdom in mercy, grace, joy, comfort and so on. The Sermon on the Mount was another citation of kingdom principles.

Luke in his second chapter speaks as a true historian and gives events of celebration fitting only a king. He speaks about the God-ward praise uttered by Anna a prophetess and Simeon a righteous devout.

John begins holding nothing back as he immediately proclaims the immensity and infinitude of the Word. Then he announced that it was this very God who created and rules everything who allowed himself to call the confines of Mary womb home.

Throughout the pages of the Gospels we see the authority of Jesus being demonstrated our demons and even over Satan. If anyone was mindful of the fact that there was an immanent warfare it was the Christ. He was not assuming that intellectual reasoning could wrought the salvation of a man. He was not of the assumption that carnal swords and shields could bring about the deliverance of Israel. He took the fight to the enemy where it was meant to be fought in the first place. The battlefield was the spiritual realm.

The Epistles
Of course the first scripture to be mentioned from the epistles in this regard is Paul’s. When we look at Acts 19 we see that Paul’s experience in Ephesus was one of
Outpouring of the Holy Spirit on believers who had not been baptized in the Holy Spirit. (v1-7)
Rejection of his persuasive intellectual arguments in the synagogue paralleled by the spreading of the Gospel of the Kingdom through Asia (8-10)
Miraculous signs and wonderings by God through Paul. (11-12)
Demons overpowered of the seven sons of Sceva who had been using the name of Jesus without the power of the Holy Spirit on their inside. (13-16)
Repentance by the believers from their evil deeds. Persons gripped with reverence and fear burnt scrolls of witchcraft worth over 136 years worth of wages. (17-20)
The revival in Ephesus became bad for business for evildoers and idol makers. (23-41)

It’s along these lines that Paul would have written his pastoral and doctrinal letters to the believers in Ephesus. Under the leading of the Holy Spirit Paul penned, Ephesians 6:12 “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Quotes from the Contemporary

Spurgeon
…for the world is a battlefield, and the Christian’s occupation is war.

Christians are expected to fight with their feet in the battle against sin and Satan. Indeed, they must fight with all their powers and faculties. That grand promise has been given to us, "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" (Rom_16:20).

Luther
Christ and Satan wage cosmic war for mastery over Church and world. No one can evade involvement in this struggle. Even for the believer there is no refuge—neither monastery nor the seclusion of the wilderness offer him a chance for escape. The Devil is the omnipresent threat, and exactly for this reason the faithful need the proper weapons for survival.


Questions:
Is there a real hand to hand, foot to foot combat against demons and Satan now?
How do we fight this battle?
Does it go away when we ignore it?