Daily Devotional – Aug 13, 2020

and looking forward to the Lord's Day and be gathering together Sunday morning and looking at the next section of Ephesians chapter 6, just beyond what we've been considering through these devotionals this week.

And looking in Ephesians 6 verses 11 and 12 and getting a sense of the identity of our enemy, knowing our enemy.

We're in a spiritual conflict and we look at our world and we see all that's going on in the cities of our land and around the world.

I was just reading the other day the number of Christians, I think it's in Niger, that have been executed by some radical groups and that's not unfortunately an unusual circumstance.

There's been an awful lot of that on the continent of Africa in the last few years. And on and on we can go around the world.

China, for example, is becoming more and more hostile and controlling, trying to squelch

Christianity as much as it possibly can. Well, that's what's happening in the physical realm by people who are instruments of our enemy, who's a spiritual enemy.

We know this because of what Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 verses 11 and 12.

He says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the 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 we need to stand against the schemes of the devil. So as we can continue to think about working toward knowing our enemy, one of the things we need to understand is tactics.

If you're at all familiar with some of the tactics of warfare like around the time of the

American Revolution, the British soldiers, they were dressed in these red outfits.

They would march in uniform columns and all this kind of thing, and it was all very dignified, very

British, if you will. And it was all very much up front.

You pretty much knew what your enemy was doing just by watching. You could see. Well, our enemy is not like that.

He employs schemes. The idea of this word communicates a craftiness.

And from our very first introduction of our enemy, as the scripture reveals him, we find that's exactly what he employed.

Back in the garden, everything's perfect. Adam and Eve enjoying the Garden of Eden and all of its bounty and blessing.

And there was this one tree. God said, don't eat the fruit of that tree. And he said, the day you eat of it, you're going to die.

Well, along comes our enemy, again, our spiritual foe, masking himself as a serpent, taking that serpent form, and speaking through that serpent.

And what did he do as he communicates to Eve? Did he come right out and say, hey, listen,

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to convince you to eat that fruit that's going to kill you. It will kill you, but I just want you to see how good it looks, and I want you to know it tastes really good, but it will kill you.

Is that what he said? No, that's not what he did at all. What he did was deceive her.

He employed craft, and he did so quite skillfully, distorting

God's Word and undermining confidence in God. This is the tactic, the primary tactic of the wicked one, and he still employs that today.

Listen to what we read in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 3.

Paul says to the Corinthians, he says, but I am afraid that as the serpent deceived

Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

What's Paul recognizing? Paul understands our foe like we need to understand our foe, that he is very crafty and cunning and deceptive, and he uses all kinds of crafty schemes to deceive you into thinking that something that is not acceptable or appropriate or right or virtuous is actually something you want and is desirable to have, and he does this in a variety of ways.

One of the things he does is he imitates. He imitates that which is good. The way he works is he makes something look appealing and look good on the outside, but on the inside, it's very, very destructive.

Think about that in terms of the abuse of alcohol or drugs.

Here's this perfectly good -looking little pill, if you will, and it'll make you feel so good, and you take it, and what happens?

It ends up ruining and distorting your mind, and on and on we can go with all of his tactics of imitating something that looks on the surface to be so good, but it's really going to corrupt you and ruin you and destroy you.

The other thing is he distorts and twists the truth, again, using the lie that things like, you deserve to be happy.

Your happiness is the most important thing that you can pursue. Well, is that true? Is it true that you deserve to be happy as you define happiness?

Well, obviously not if you know anything about the scripture, and so Satan comes and distorts the truth in that way.

The other thing that Satan does is what he did with Eve, and when you think about this,

Adam and Eve had this incredibly huge and beautiful plush garden full of anything you could want and satisfying thoroughly, but Satan was very clever.

He got them to take their eyes off of all the blessings and the benefits and the good things that God had given to them and turned their eyes onto something, the one thing that God said you can't have.

Satan still does that today. How many marriages have been destroyed because Satan was successful at getting a man or a woman to turn their eyes away from the blessings and the benefits that are available in a

Christian marriage and have them look at another person outside of that marriage, and they go pursue that because they think that's where their happiness lies, and in the end, they're going to be sadly, sadly disappointed.

And the other thing that Satan does and he does incessantly is he causes us in his schemes, he tries to get us to question

God, to doubt God's word. Has God really said, does God really mean that if you take this or if you do this that it's going to be destructive to you?

Can you really count on that being the case, that God's going to have that kind of complication and implication in your life?

Well, you can, but Satan will do his dead -level best to get you to doubt it and to ignore it, and then you go on pursuing what he wants you to do.

So you need to identify his schemes. The other thing I want to leave us with today is an understanding of the nature of his kingdom and the extent of his kingdom.

As we mentioned, he's a spiritual foe and he's a king over a spiritual kingdom, if you will, a ruler over a spiritual kingdom.

Our text says that these are spiritual rulers in high places, or literally in the heavenly places, in the heavenly places.

And looking at the scope of what we understand about his kingdom, the realm of Satan, it encompasses the totality of unregenerate people.

In Ephesians 2, verse 2, for example, Paul talks about what you once were when he says, let me pull it up here so I can find that passage.

Well, I don't have it with me right in front of me, but Paul says that he,

Satan, has corrupted the minds of people, and you once lived like that.

You were in that realm of darkness, that realm that Satan controls.

And Satan also is over certain aspects of human government, and he has a certain amount of control.

And we don't quite understand this, but remember when Jesus was being tempted by Satan in the wilderness, one of the temptations that Satan enticed

Jesus with was he wanted him to bow down before Satan, and Satan said, if you do that,

I'll give you all the kingdoms. Look at all the realms of this world. I'll give them to you.

I'll give them to you. So he has some measure of authority even over human government, and then of course he has his whole false religion realm as well.

So Satan has quite a kingdom, but it is not the ultimate kingdom, and it is not God's kingdom, and it is not superior to God's kingdom.

It's not even on par with God's kingdom. Remember what we said.

Satan is a defeated foe. He's a defeated foe who nevertheless employs all kinds of schemes and tactics and cunning to try to advance his kingdom, which is ultimately doomed to defeat.

Well, as we close in prayer today, let's pray that God will give us eyes to see the deceptive tactics of our enemy.

So our Father, we realize that Satan is very crafty and therefore very difficult sometimes to discern his tactics and his destructive ploys.

I pray that you would open our eyes to see by your spirits working in our hearts, give us grace that we may be alert to those tactics and not fall prey to them, and we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Thursday and look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

The last day of this week in our devotions, we'll be looking at the different armies, if you will, that Satan has at his disposal.