Daily Devotional – Aug 14

Friday afternoon. Can you believe that it's Friday already? End of the week and it seems like these weeks just whiz on by. And not only is it Friday, but it's August 14th, so middle of August of the last month of summer.

And goodness, where does the time go? It reminds me, I saw someone the other day made a post on Facebook, something to the effect that, can we just skip the last five months of 2020 and just get right on to 2021?

Like, that's going to make a difference in what happens in this world? It really won't. And you know why, don't you? Because if you've been listening this week in our daily devotional times, it doesn't matter what the calendar says.

What matters is what's going on behind the scenes of this world. And one of the blessings of being a Christian and having a Christian worldview is that you can watch the news, you can read the newspaper, you can see the things that are happening in this world, and you can see beyond it.

You can see beneath it. You can see what's behind it. And what we've been learning this week in our daily devotional times is that there is a spiritual foe that is bound and determined to overthrow God, overthrow God's throne, destroy Christ, damn as many people as he can to hell, and even defeat the people of God.

Now, we also pointed out he's a defeated foe, but that doesn't keep him from desperately trying to reach his objectives. Now, one of the things I want us to see today that will give us further insight and understanding into our world and all of its mayhem right now is the different armies, and I call them that, that Satan has.

Now, look, the devil is not God. A lot of times the spiritual realm is portrayed as this yin-yang kind of a thing. There's the dark side and there's a light side, and the two sides are constantly competing against each other, and it's like a tug-of-war back and forth.

Well, no, that's totally inaccurate because Satan, though a powerful foe, is a created being, and he is a limited being. He is not omniscient. He doesn't know everything. He can't be everywhere at one time, and he's not all powerful.

He can't do whatever he wants to do, but he is nevertheless the ruler over a whole spiritual realm of what I, for the lack of a better term, call it armies. So, and I get that from Ephesians 6, where Paul says in verse 12 that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood after talking about the schemes of the devil.

He says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers. There's one army, against the authorities, there's another army, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, there's a third army, and against the spiritual forces of evil, there's the fourth army in the heavenly places, in the spiritual realm.

So what are these armies? Let's take a look at them just briefly, and we can't exhaust this in the brief few minutes that we have together, but I think we can look at it quickly enough to give us some insight.

Satan’s Spiritual Armies in Ephesians 6

So first of all, he talks about us wrestling against the spiritual foe of rulers. King James translates it principalities. The Greek word means the chief ones, and these would be like leaders of the divisions of his whole army.

So for example, in the book of Daniel, Daniel had an encounter with the angel of God who said he was withstood by the prince of Persia, the prince of Persia, who was an emissary of the wicked one. This is a spiritual being that had some authority, some rule over Persia, and there are other places we get the same idea that the nations of this world have, influencing them, spiritual rulers that are emissaries delegated a power by the wicked one.

They're rulers sent by the wicked one to have influence over those nations. So you think about some of the genocides that take place. What in the world is behind such evil thing? Well, the Armenian genocide, for example, that took place in Turkey by horrific, brutal forces.

Men killing thousands and thousands, millions of Armenians. Same with a Jewish genocide, the Holocaust. What's behind that? I think what's behind that is the wicked one and his rulers in those nations, Germany, Turkey, and so forth.

And then he speaks of another realm or army, and the ESV translates that the authorities, and that's a good translation. The Greek word literally means authority. King James translates it powers. These would be spiritual forces that have delegated responsibility.

They can act independently within a realm of responsibility or boundaries given to them. And Satan needs to have these kind of delegated authorities because, like I said, he's a limited creature. He does not, he can't be everywhere at the same time.

And then a third army that he has is the world rulers of the darkness. Again, the ESV translates it the cosmic powers over this present darkness. I tend to think of these powers, spiritual powers, as those who have influence in the realm of ethics and morals.

Ethics and morals. Listen to what a commentator wrote back in 1967. He said this, he said, the USA has been the arsenal of the gospel for a full generation or more. However, he said this in 1967, socialism coupled with moral degradation will soon obliterate this effectiveness unless the tide is reversed.

The same laxity with regard to human behavior which fosters moral delinquency provides the climate in which socialistic theories of government flourish. These two handmaids are both children of the devil.

These two handmaids of moral delinquency and socialistic theories of government. Now if that was true in 1967, look at what's happening in the United States today. Satan has his cosmic powers of darkness that are working feverishly to fuel the both moral delinquency on one hand and the socialistic theory of government on the other hand, and these things will bring the demise.

It's exactly what he wants, to bring the demise of our nation, which has been so effective and prolific at getting the gospel out and around the world. Well there's one more army that Satan has at his disposal, and that's the wicked spirits in the heavenly or the spiritual realm.

Again, the ESV translates it this way, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, and I look at that as being the instigators of corruption in the realm of ideas and the propagation of those ideas.

So cultural expressions of ideas and worldviews and so forth. You think, those of you who are, you know, 30 years of age or older, you think about the rapid transformation that has taken place in ideals or values in our nation, cultural ideas that have taken root and have come to dominate our nation in the last 30 years.

One of the things that stands out in my mind is the thing of, you know, homosexual marriage. I mean, I'm 62 years old. When I was 32 years old, that wasn't even on the radar screen. I mean, sure, homosexuality has been around since, you know, for thousands of years, yes, but the idea of officially governmental sanctioning of same-sex marriage was not even thought about, was unheard of.

Where did these ideas come from? Where did these ideas come from? Oh, some would surely take exception to me when I say this, but I would suggest to you that those ideas have been propagated by, instigated by, and propagated by these wicked spirits in the heavenly realm, and we can go on and on with all of the different aspects of worldview and cultural expressions in our day that have been, that have far removed, that are far, far removed from biblical expressions of truth and virtue and righteousness and so forth.

Well, I think Satan is very effective with his armies at getting these ideas in the minds of people and propagating them and seeing to it that they are widely accepted in the culture of the day, and frankly, we'll see more of that in the years ahead unless God graciously intervenes.

Well, I hope that doesn't discourage you because I want you to remember that even though he has these armies and he is using them to the full right now in these days, he's doing his dead level best, our enemy is, to overthrow God, destroy Christ, defeat God's people, and damn as many souls as he can to eternal perdition.

He's operating from the standpoint of a defeated enemy. Let's not forget that. So as we pray today, we do want to be aware of all of his tactics and his different arsenal, armies in his arsenal, but we don't want to be paranoid or lacking of courage.

We want to keep on keeping on for Christ, and we want to put on the armor that the rest of Ephesians 6 talks about, and maybe we'll talk about that next week, Lord willing. Well, let's pray and ask God to give us grace.

So Father, in this day where we see Satan's armies so effective in our own nation, I pray that we would not feel a sense of defeat or discouragement, but help us to be courageous and confident that, again, Satan is operating from the standpoint of desperation, despair, and a defeated foe, and I pray as we look into this weekend and look forward to the Lord's day that we would keep our focus on worshiping you and serving you with all that we are and all that we have, and this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

All right, well, have a good rest of your Friday, and if you can make it Sunday for the morning service at 10 30 at the church, look forward to seeing you then. If not, I hope you'll join us on live stream on Facebook, at the church website, or on YouTube, and we'll worship the Lord together.

Have a good day. God bless.