Aug 11 – Daily Devotional

The Lord's using you, and you're being faithful to the calling that has been given to you, whatever that might be. So I'm not a great student of history. I like to read history, and I do it more on a hobby level, just because of time, if nothing else.

But I read a lot of, you know, kind of military history, I've read some history of World War II, biographies of people in the past, and so forth. I haven't honestly read a great deal about the Vietnam War, more what I've seen in documentaries and so forth.

Identifying the Enemy in Spiritual Warfare

But one of the things that every documentary that I have seen about the Vietnam War that stood out to me is that they make a point of saying that we as United States, in our fighting against the Viet Cong, we had a very difficult time identifying the enemy.

And of course, if you're in a war, it's very critical that you are able to identify the enemy. And we had that difficulty not only because of appearance, there wasn't a great deal of way, it wasn't a great, there wasn't an easy way to distinguish between the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese.

But besides that, the difficulty came in the tactics that were employed. The North Vietnamese did not have any problem whatsoever using children to lure American troops into the open, and then even actually use those children with bombs to kill Americans, or to lure them into the open and then sabotage them.

And then of course, there's the guerrilla warfare, the fighting in the jungles, and they were very adept at hiding in the jungles, and then when our troops would approach the jungle and start to enter into it, then they open fire and attack our troops.

So we had this challenge of identifying the enemy and then being able to handle the enemy. Well, in Ephesians chapter 6, in our Sunday morning services at church, we've been going through the book of Ephesians, and in Ephesians chapter 6, Apostle Paul is winding down his letter and he warns us that we need to put on armor so that we can stand, and stand against a very crafty enemy.

And the important thing that we need to do regarding this standing and this battle, this warfare, is to be able to identify the enemy that we're up against. And so when you come to verse 11, verses 11 and 12 in Ephesians 6, Paul says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against those 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, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So when we think about our enemy, it should cause us to think about our world in which we live, and especially the world as it is right now. Think of the chaos that occurred in Chicago over this past weekend, the looting in the Magnificent Mile, and just the violence, and not only in Chicago, but you've got the ongoing rioting in Portland and these kinds of places.

What's behind that? Who's behind that? It's easy to, I suppose it's easy for some people to just blame George Soros for all of this, and so on and so on. I don't have any idea what connection he has to this stuff, and I don't really care.

I can't prove anything and I wouldn't try anyway, but that's not my point. What is really behind that? Who is really behind that? And I think the answer to that question is the enemy that is also our enemy.

Paul tells us to put on the armor of God that we may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. Paul tells us that our enemy is the devil. Now, this person, and the devil is a person. What we're talking about here is not merely a force, like the yin and the yang, or the dark side in the Star Wars saga.

What we're talking about regarding our enemy is a person, not a human being, but a created being that has an intellect, has emotion, has will, just like any person has, and this person is identified in this text as the devil.

But the thing is, this person goes by several different monikers, several different names and descriptions. Some of those names have to do with his, the devil's attack, or his enemy status against God's people particularly.

So he's called the devil. That means the slanderer, the false accuser. So when you, as a believer in Christ, if you have, you know, you sin, you do, and you confess that sin, you acknowledge that sin, and you forsake it, you turn from it, but then the devil comes back with these kinds of thoughts in your mind.

You can't serve God. You're just a terrible, look at what you've done, and he goes on to slander you. That's the devil. He's also called Satan, and that name, Satan, means the adversary or the opponent.

So for example, Peter speaks of him in 1st Peter 5 as your adversary, the devil, one who opposes you. And then he's also called your enemy, your enemy. And then another name given to the devil or title given to the devil that specifically has to do with you as a believer is the tempter, the tempter.

But there are some descriptions of the devil that have to do more with his character, what he's really like, and one of those descriptions is the wicked one. Another is the evil one. Obviously synonymous there, but those two descriptions have to do with his character.

What's he like? He's wicked. He's evil. And then there are some descriptions that have more to do with his general relationship to the world as a whole, to what God has created. And so, for example, he's given the title Abaddon or Apollyon, and that name means destroyer.

He's out to destroy. Now think about that in light of the events of the last couple of months with all of the destruction, the destroying of property, the destroying of monuments and federal property and state property and public property and, you know, police cars, all of that kind of destruction.

Who motivates that? Where does that come from? It's rooted in the activity of the destroyer, Apollyon, the devil. He's also called the dragon, the ancient serpent, the deceiver of the whole world. The idea of calling him the serpent takes us back to Genesis chapter 3, where he came in the form of a serpent to beguile Eve.

He's the deceiver of the whole world. He's also called a murderer, a liar. True, that has to do with his character, but it also has to do with what he does in the world. He's the father of lies. He's the one that promotes every distortion of the truth.

So one of the things that we are having a terribly difficult time trying to discern today in the COVID thing and beyond, politics, etc., is truth. What is the truth? Why is it that you can't seem to trust almost anything that comes out of almost any politician's mouth?

Because we have been lied to, we've been deceived for so long, and what's behind that? It's the father of lies, the devil. He's the father of lies, the liar. He's also called the god of this age, the prince of this world.

We'll say more about that in days to come, but the idea is that God in his sovereign providence has given to the devil a certain measure of authority and power to employ in this world, and as the, quote, prince of this world, he uses those powers to his advantage in the nations and so forth.

And then he's called the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the kingdom of the air. Again, we'll say more about these, the way he employs these titles in the next couple of days, but just all of this summary just gives us a sense of the scope of our enemy's power, his work, his influence, his evil, who he attacks, you personally as a believer in Christ, if you're a follower of Christ, and everybody and everything in this world.

That's his objective, and that does remind me that the enemy that we have, he has some constant objectives, a few basic objectives that haven't changed through the centuries. One of them that really kicked him out of heaven, if you will, and solidified him in his position of evil, his objective was to displace God from his throne.

Isaiah describes that in Isaiah chapter 14 when he said, I will make myself like the Most High, I'm gonna take over his throne, basically is what he was saying. Revelation 12 speaks of him as having the objective of destroying Christ.

When Christ was born, it was the work of the devil that was behind the edict of Herod to destroy all the babies in Bethlehem, in the area around Bethlehem. Why? Because the devil wanted to destroy Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah.

Second Corinthians 4 tells us that he has the objective of damning souls, blinding the eyes of men and their hearts, lest they should believe the gospel and should be saved. He wants souls damned because he knows his ultimate fate is that damnation.

And then as 1 Peter 5a tells us, he's like a roaring lion, prowling about, seeking whom he may devour. He has the objective of destroying you as a Christian, a believer in Christ. So he has these few basic objectives and he's constantly at them, trying to get them accomplished.

The Devil as a Spiritual, Not Physical, Enemy

Finally this afternoon, let me just suggest a further thing about our enemy as we seek to know him, and that is he is a spiritual foe, not a physical one. Paul tells us in that text in Ephesians 6, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and so forth, and we'll say more about that in the next few days.

But what I want us to get into our minds today is that our enemy is ultimately not a physical one, he's a spiritual one. Now we often see the instruments that he uses, the people that he uses, in the carrying out of his tactics to try to reach his objectives.

So we see these people, we see people involved in destruction and looting and lying and all the rest of that, and it's easy to come to the conclusion that they are our enemies, but the reality is they're tools in the hand of our enemy, and I think that's an important distinctive to keep in mind.

So when we think about this battle that we're in, this spiritual warfare that we're in, let's keep in mind who our enemy is. It's very vitally important that we know our enemy. Let's pray and ask God to fix that in our minds, who our enemy is and what he's like.

And so our God, as we go through the course of our day, we're very well aware that the enemy is constantly on the prowl. We need to be aware of that. We also need to be aware of who he is and what he's like.

Give us that sense of understanding, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, I hope you'll be encouraged through the course of this day to not only be alert to who your enemy is, but one thing I didn't emphasize yet is the fact that he is a defeated enemy.

He's still on the prowl, he's still doing his thing, but he's a defeated foe. We'll look at that idea tomorrow. I hope you'll be back. God bless you, have a good day.