Spiritual Warfare - 1 'The Battle' — Jim Logan

The Reality of Spiritual Warfare and Victory in Christ

I'd like you to turn to Matthew. I want to share a promise every day that has to do with victory before we talk about defeat. A thing about this kind of conference that can be really not too positive is that it can be negative.

Because we're looking at the enemy, we're going to be talking about, try to use a lot of missionaries, families that were having tremendous demonic problems, the kind of problems they had and why and how God has done a wonderful work in the lives of their children or in them.

And then related to the word and all, because I was sharing last night that my dealing with the demonized, it started with missionaries. And that was my first exposure to the whole demonic world was through missionaries as I was the president's assistant of Child Advances in Fellowship.

And we work in a hundred countries of the world and we'd have these missionary fresher courses and the missionaries would come back discouraged and defeated and ready to give up, ready to quit. And many of them veteran missionaries and not realizing the dimension of the battle they were in, didn't understand what a principality was or a power or the rulers of darkness or what they did.

And here they're out there coming under all this attack and not having any understanding because they went the kind of Bible college I did that said that it was something that was during Jesus' day and God put a parenthesis around it.

Someday in Revelation it's going to all come loose again, but in between we're all safe. And our missionaries were being wiped out because they didn't understand the enemy, nor the battle, nor their position in Christ.

And they were just being defeated. In Matthew 16, I'd like you to look here. We want to give at least one promise of victory every day that we hold on to. We gave you a couple last night. I'd like to give you one today before we look at the subject today.

Well, I might give you the whole thing. This is kind of an interesting thing here in sharing it in the context. Remember, Jesus is walking along and he said to the disciples, who do men say that I am?

And they were all giving some kind of an answer. And Peter said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus said something very significant. He said, Peter, that thought did not come from you.

God put that thought in your mind. And I'm sure Peter went, wow. God put a thought in my mind and I shared it. Then later on, Jesus said, I'm going to the cross. And Peter said, what? Don't go. And Jesus said, Peter, that thought came from the enemy.

Now, you know what's significant about that? Peter believed that every thought that entered his mind was from himself. So he thought he was the source and the originator of every thought that came into his mind.

Where is the spiritual battle fought? Warfare, right here. And if I believe that every thought that comes in my mind originates with myself, I've had it spiritually. It's interesting. Peter did not know.

But Peter gets a little bit mature. And what did he do with Ananias and Sapphira? He said, why have you allowed Satan to fill your heart to do this? He could begin to discern in someone else's life where those thoughts were coming from.

Ananias and Sapphira didn't. And we want to, I don't know if we have time this morning, but we'll have to cut probably the message this morning in half and do the other half tonight. But why didn't Ananias and Sapphira recognize the voice of Satan?

If you don't recognize the voice of Satan, how can you resist him? Right? Isn't that true? Do this. You're here. Even if you don't agree, just do this. It encourages me. But let's look here in Matthew 16.

What is interesting, Jesus just puts a promise in there. He drops it in. In fact, it's the first mention of the church. Isn't it amazing that he mentions demons with the church the first time? First time he mentions the church, he mentions Satan and all his forces.

In Matthew 16, in verse 18, he said, I say this unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now let's look at these words through a little Greek study, and then put it together, what was he saying?

The Church’s Authority Against the Powers of Darkness

The first thing, and they're significant words. The warfare, if you were here last night, realize it's relatively a new area for me. Probably the last, I've only been counseling the demonized for probably the last six years.

But immediately when I was so unnerved with my, and some of you know the first missionary that are here, know the first missionary that voices spoke out of them, and it was a terrible thing. I began to read, and to study, I'm very slow to change.

And you can ask my wife that. And so I began to get books, and I've read about 500 to 600 books in the area of warfare. Began to get them from other countries. Began to read everything I could read on it to be sure.

What do I know? What do I believe? What has been written on this? I've read books written in the 1500s, 1600s, amazing. Now there's a book in the 1500s, it's called The Christian in Full Armor. And the other one is Precious Something Against Satan's Attacks.

That's written in like 1657. Now let's say I have books on the back table. I've got cookbooks from 1657. Or I've got, you know, how to travel. You know, would you be interested in a book from 1657? But I'll tell you, you read a book on warfare from 1657, and you're amazed, you think it was written yesterday.

You know, the enemy has not changed. And you can get those from Scripture, what's it, Banner of Truth, or whatever it is that prints these old classics, old classic books on the subject. So it's interesting, you know, that I didn't realize all that had been written from a standpoint of solid reading.

And then I went through the New Testament four times and marked every verse that alluded to Scripture warfare with SW. Then I've gone back through and do Greek word studies in every verse. I don't want to go down the wrong road.

Then I went through the Old Testament four times and did Hebrew studies on these key passages. What are they saying? What has God taught? I don't want to stand up here and teach you something that's not true to the Word of God or the missionaries that were in our mission.

But just look at this one. This was one that I never even thought about. I knew this verse for years, never thought about it as spiritual warfare. He said the first thing, the key word in this thing is church, which is ekklesia, which is what?

The called-out ones. The Lord said, I'm going to call out a people for my name, the called-out ones, and they're going to be my body. The second word here is the word gates. Gates are an interesting word.

Some of you have been to countries where gates are significant. In America, gates aren't too significant. Often they're decorative. But you go to Israel, and you find out that the gate system of a city was extremely important.

In fact, they can tell any city they dig up if Solomon was the designer of the city because of the gate system. If you go to Megiddo, you see the city there and the unique gate system that Solomon designed.

The gates were very important because the gates were the weakest part of a city. If these gates weren't designed right, that city was very vulnerable. So gates spoke of two things to the reader in those days.

They spoke, first of all, of power because the more powerful or the stronger the gates, the more protected they were. The second thing gates speak of in Scripture is authority. Lot sat in the gate, and what did he do?

He judged. Absalom sat in the gate. What did he do? He judged and turned the people's hearts. It was the small claims court of that day where you handled that, and that's where you got the authorities of the city.

So it speaks of power and authority to those who were reading this at that time. The word hell there is sheol, and it refers to the spirit world, all the bound and free wicked spirits. It's the term referring to all of the spirit world regardless of where they are or what they do.

The last one is prevail, and that means stand against. And this is the promise that Jesus said. He said, fellows, I'm going to call out a people for my name. I'm calling them church. And all the power and all of the authority of the unseen spirit world cannot stand against them.

Isn't that beautiful? Amen. That's, you know, we need to know this. They can't stand against us. Will they try? You better believe it. Let's say, you know, I'm a missionary also. We don't charge for counseling.

It says buy the truth and sell it not. So we don't charge. And since you know the kind of funds that missionaries usually have, welcome. But I decided that I'm going to stand in front of the apartment complex they've got me in, and I'm going to charge everybody who walks up that walk $2 to approach the building.

Now, if you're walking up there and I'm standing and you approach me and I say, I want $2, you can't go in there without $2. I've got a suit on, a tie. Would you give me $2? No. He said, get out of the road.

You know, and that's what the enemy does. He says, I want $2. People say, oh, I'll pay. See, they're ignorant of how he works. And so instead of standing against them, what do they do? He stands against them and they collapse.

And we need to stand on the truth of God's word. He cannot stand against me. I need to know that. I need to know how to stand against them. So we're trusting that this conference will do this for you to some degree.

That's why you have the notebook. That notebook is the result of all the books I read. You have Swindoll's Five Steps, How to Resist Satan. You have Warren Wiersbe's Warfare Prayer that he and his wife pray every single day.

You have Theodore Epps' concept of Principalities, Powers, Rulers. That's what's all in there. It's just a collection from these books that people have written. And we have all kinds of notebooks, but this is the simplest one.

And we never wanted notebooks. But our missionaries said we needed material, so we needed to take this stuff, put it in a logical order so our missionaries could go back to over 100 countries of the world and have this notebook so when they needed it, they could flip in there and do a little study and be encouraged and go on.

I wasn't going to give you this one today, but I will. I'm kind of warming up here. So let's look at Matthew 28. I never saw this either. Until after I got into warfare and began to realize and find these warfare verses and putting Sw by them.

Christ’s Authority and the Great Commission

But this was so neat. Of course, most of you have read Matthew 28 at least once and heard it. And it says, And when they saw him, they worshipped him, and some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given to me in heaven and earth.

Go ye therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

Amen. You say, oh, that's nice. That's really nice. And do you know what's dangerous about familiar passages? They never speak to us anymore. Do you know that? You say, oh, I know that one. And I dare you to tell me something out of Psalms 1 that I don't know.

Or I dare you to do... You know what I mean? It's just like, oh, I know that. And we close ourselves to the Holy Spirit. You know, it's so familiar, and we know it so much, we never ask God, is there anything new here for me?

I just know it. And I just knew this. You know, after all, I was a missionary. So, you know, I knew this. And I read it, and then I thought, this is interesting. I mean, after all, the last words of someone is usually important.

And the last words of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's got to be an important thing. And he said, all power is given me in heaven and on the earth. You know, that's fine. You know, I go, and then I'm supposed to go.

Why did he say that? Why did he... You know, he didn't just say words. Why did he say that? Why did the Holy Spirit tell us that? He has all power. He exercises total authority. Where? In the heaven. Now, is he talking about where the angels are?

The third heaven? The boat of God? Absolutely not. Of course he has all power there. I mean, everybody does what he says. I mean, it's just obvious. He's talking about in the heavens. Who operates in the heavens?

The prince of the power of what? The air. And the whole world lies who? Where? In the wicked one. Jesus, I want to tell you something. I exercise a greater authority in the heavens and on the earth, and because of this, you'll be able to go.

Isn't that wonderful? Because you're going into the enemy's territory to snatch out his people, and if you think he's going to let go of them without a fight, let me tell you, you're deceived. You're deceived.

He doesn't want to lose, not one. Yesterday, the young man who was the worst person we ever dealt with was here. A youth pastor. He sat in my office with his arms folded, totally out of it. He had disappeared.

The demons were talking out of him two weeks ago, and he said, Fall down and worship me, and I'll give you power. Now, this kid wasn't there. His body was there. He had faded off. The demons were speaking.

You kneel before me, and I'll give you power. They said, Logan, you're on the losing team. Look at Sioux City. How many people have we got? And how many does Jesus have? You're following a loser, Logan.

Look around the world. We'll give you real power. That's out of the mouth of a youth pastor. And what could I say? We're not doing so well in Sioux City. We're not doing so well around the world either, if you go by numbers, are we?

No. I wanted to hit him, but I knew I wouldn't hurt the enemy. I just hurt this poor youth pastor. I was angry. We need to realize who we are. And I can go. And I don't have to fear going. Because I am connected to one who has what?

More power. I have to realize that. And I know we're going to talk about the power of the enemy. And he has awesome power. But you know what it's done for my wife and I? As we've seen the power of the enemy in the lives of God's people, we have come to appreciate the tremendous power of God.

Because we see a greater power than the power that we're seeing operating. And you know what the enemy hates? This is free. He hates the Word of God. You know the first sign that you're under demonic attack? Is stopping having devotions.

He hates it. I can't tell you I've been cursed. Shut that book. I hate that book. Shut it. I don't want to hear any more of that. It's too bad. I'm going to read Revelations 4 and 5. They don't like that very well.

You know where God is lifted up and worshiped? They hate it. The enemy hates the Word of God. Because he knows that the Word of God is going to set people free. That's why you guys are into it, isn't it?

Is that why you're into it? Did you sell these Bibles? Is that why you're into it? Or do you believe that the Word will set people free? Well, let's turn to Ezekiel. Interesting description here of the enemy.

Satan’s Beauty, Music, and Deceptive Attraction

You know, often people think of the enemy as something creepy. You know, out of the swamp type thing. Well, you can imagine Eve in the Garden of Eden and this thing comes out of the swamp towards her.

I mean, she'd have been frightened. But we see that he's what? One of the most beautiful of all God's creation. Very attractive. Very, very attractive. Why are all the high school kids getting into this stuff?

Why are all the college kids getting into this stuff? Because it's attractive. He offers a lot of pleasure. He offers a lot of power. He offers a lot of stuff to these kids. He talks about all these stones.

I see this is a woven garment of gold with all these stones in it. Satan was an angel of light. It wasn't that light came on him. He didn't walk in God's spotlight. Light came from him. And can you see this one with the light coming through all these stones?

Study the color of the stones. You know, this beautiful color coming out of him. But what's interesting in the King James, and you can check this out in the Hebrew, there's two words there. It says, it talks all about, as our brother read, about the stones.

And it says, the workmanship of thy tablets and thy pipes was prepared in thee the day that thou was created. Now, we just did a medical seminar last week on the demonic for 280 medical doctors and psychiatrists.

We do this every year. So we've got about 600 guys now that we have trained in this area that are sending us information from all over America on the medical problems of a demonized person and all of this kind of thing.

So, what is the... You go to a doctor and you say, you know, I think I'm having problems with my tablets and pipes. You want to take them out? You know, he can x-ray you, and as my brother said, that's my call to fame.

I was an x-ray technician before I got saved. And, you know, you can x-ray somebody with a fluoroscope. You know, where's his tablets and pipes? He doesn't have them. You know what those are? Musical instruments.

Hebrew musical instruments. What's it saying about Satan? It's kind of interesting. Light flowed from him, and also what? Music. You know, Dr. McGee was my pastor for a number of years. And Dr. McGee said this.

He said, When Satan fell from heaven, he fell in the choir loft. I know McGee must have had some problems with his choir. You know, the enemy uses music. Now, I don't know who you are, whether you've been in the tribes, but you cannot visit any animistic group and not realize that they use music to call spirits.

And when you hear the music, you know exactly what music it is, and not all the music is that way, is it? But there is special music, specific music, that is designed to call spirits. And spirits respond to music.

And I can't tell you, the missionary kids that we're dealing with, my next prayer letter has a director of all of the outreach for Eastern Europe had to leave the field when his son became heavily demonized by the time he was 14 through rock music.

Heavily demonized. And was delivered by navigators that I had trained. And I missed this kid. Because this kid came in when I didn't realize the enemy was real as the counselor of the mission. And this kid's life went downhill from 14 until he was 24 and he was delivered to the University of Columbia by the navigators.

And they said, Jim, you know so-and-so. And I said, yes, and this kid's written his testimony. And how he got into this music and his rebellion and how the spirits began to come into his life. And then he wanted to kill his brother.

Can you imagine? I mean, you know, kids fighting and one kid's thought is to kill his brother? And he's got demons to help him? Well, it's no wonder they left the field, right? I mean, have your kids ever fought?

Can you imagine one of them having the enemy empowering him to try and kill his brother? And this tore up the family so bad they couldn't go back. You know, the family was just shredded. How can you minister and your kids are a mess?

I mean, you can fake it, but you can't minister well. And the enemy was just shredding this family. And they came home and had been home for years. Well, ten years. And now the boy is doing super. He's grieved.

He's asked his parents' forgiveness. You know, it's wonderful, but there's ten years that they came back to the home office because of the terrible devastation that was happening in that particular country.

And that country is a graveyard for missionaries. Graveyard. More missionaries kill themselves there or try to kill themselves in that particular country than any country in the world. And that particular city is probably the worst city in the whole world.

And it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. We'll talk about it. That's principalities and powers. We need to understand how to stand against them. You know, there's a principality over this area.

Are you praying against them? The Lord said, we wrestle them. Have you been wrestling the principalities and powers that are right here in this area? They're all over. We'll get into that. But this music.

Music is... There's music that repels the forces of darkness, right? What did David do? David was called to play. And as he played, the spiritual demonic forces that came upon Saul left. So there seems to be music that invites the forces of darkness.

And there's music that repels the force of darkness. Let me tell you, the best thing that you can take to a tribe outside of your Bible is good music. Good music. Uplifting music. Music that can minister to your spirit if they allow you to do that.

I think they do, don't you? I mean, the stereo only has to be so big. It can't be real. And so Satan was cast down. And you say, why? In verse 17, it says, because his heart was lifted up with beauty and corrupted by wisdom and brightness and so on.

Pride as the Root of Satan’s Rebellion

As you read this, you realize the enemy was lifted up with pride and God cast him out. Turn to Isaiah 14. We get a better description here of exactly what happened. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?

How art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nation? For thou hast said... That's verses 12 through 14. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend to the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit upon the mount of the congregation of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, and I will be like the Most High.

I want to ask you a question. Who did Satan say this to? Who did he say it to? Who? Not God. He said it to himself. He has said it in his heart. The most important conversations you have, you have with yourself.

You want to do an interesting study when you're reading the Bible? If I read the Bible and I'm not looking for something, you know what I get? Nothing. I'm just not one that can open the Bible and just read.

I have to usually be looking for something. And I did a study one time through the Old and New Testament and marked every passage that talked about what a man said in his heart. You know, a fool has said in his heart.

The wicked says in his heart. The righteous says in his heart. Satan spoke in his heart. So the most important conversation you ever have, you have with yourself. If I really wanted to know you, I need to give you a Walkman to put in your ears that will record everything you thought and in a week I'd know you.

In fact, tonight we have a chair that's going to be right here and we're going to pick a lucky person and they're going to sit here and I brought some equipment and what we're going to do is project your thoughts for a week on the screen.

Isn't it funny? No one's coming tonight. But listen, that's where the enemy works, isn't it? We're talking about this. Let me give you an illustration of this. We were teaching this kind of a thing to our missionaries when they came home from overseas.

And we always had missionary refreshers and tried to bring them up to date on things. One of the missionaries, a super girl from Gabon, outstanding girl from Gabon, was going to resign. Didn't tell anybody she came home to resign.

And when she went through this, just a simple, we had a little more time than we have here, warfare thing. She came to me and said, Mr. Logan, I just can't believe it. She says, you know that I've been involved in spiritual warfare and I didn't realize it?

She said, I would get up and I would teach. And this is for instance, and I was just with this girl a few months ago in Africa. She said, she would teach and she'd say like, God loves you. And then this thought would come, but He doesn't love you.

This is four years of this. God will meet your needs. He won't meet your needs. And she's going, how can I be a missionary if I don't believe God's word is true? But she says, I do believe God's word is true.

You know what she thought spiritual warfare would be? That she'd be tempted to be immoral with another missionary or national. Or she'd steal funds, or lie, or seizures, or something. She didn't realize that that still small voice putting these doubts about God's word was the enemy in her life.

And she was going to resign. And I was just with her. And that was probably at least six years ago, seven years ago. And this gal is doing super. All the battles change. He doesn't say that to her anymore.

You know why? She goes, that's got the smell of brimstone on it. She recognizes it now. So he switched his tactic. We always wrestle against the forces of darkness. We always will. And he'll switch his tactic once it works.

I was dealing with some campus crusades and one guy was having all kinds of moral problems. And he said, Oh, Logan, I'm so sick of this. He says, When is Satan going to change his tactics on me? I said, Well, there's a verse in Ezekiel.

It says, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. He said, What do you mean? I said, It's working, isn't it? He says, Yeah. I said, Why should Satan change? Right? I mean, if it works so good, why should he do something else?

I said, If you get victory in that area, he's not going to change. That's what I thought. He wanted a quick fix. And then he said, Seven I wills here. These are important. What were the I wills? The last I will is very significant.

He said, I will be like the Most High. Now, Satan could have picked any name for God he wanted to. He picked a name for God that described what he was talking about. He could have said, I want to be like Jehovah, or Jehovah-Jireh, or any of those names.

But he didn't. He picked El-Elyon. I want to be like El-Elyon. What was he saying? El-Elyon is the name for God that indicates the Sovereign One that reigns. Now, he didn't say, I don't want God in my life.

He said, I want to be like God. What was he saying? I want to be like God in control, but not character. I want to run my own life. I want to be the final authority in my life. That's what he wanted. And do you know what that is?

Pride. Pride is establishing yourself as the final authority in your life. It's what I want. It's what I think. The big I. Dr. Fred Dickinson, who was my trainer in counseling demonized people, the head theologian at Moody Bible Institute, this is what he said.

I wrote it from his book. Satan has sold his rebellious philosophy to mankind and rule over us all who have fallen into sin. He promotes with a vengeance and by multiplied means his concept of creature-centered living.

You know when you're most like Satan? When you're creature-centered. You're most like Satan when pride is reigning in your life. That's when you're most like the enemy. In fact, I think it was Dr. Unger said that when you allow pride in your life, you just took your stand with Satan.

If I was Satan and I wanted to wipe out this mission, I would attack every missionary with a good dose of pride. Who do they think they are? You ever had that thought? The leadership here. Leadership.

Can you imagine? How these guys get to be leaders? Last ones, you know, are they so old that they're still, you know, the only ones that you wait until everybody dies off and then the one that's the oldest is now leader, sits behind a desk and tells me what to do out here in the jungles?

Air-conditioned building? I wish I was in Waxhaw behind a desk and telling people what to do. Right? Now, I worked in a mission. I was an executive. They said it about me. Can you believe it? About me.

I mean, about the president. I can understand that, but about his assistant, no. Let's see why pride is so devastating. And we'll just be able to do that and that'll be it. And then we'll look at why it is devastating.

Proverbs on Pride, Strife, and Ruin

We want to see some of the judgments of a proud man. Turn to Proverbs. We're not going to skip a one. We're going to look at every single reference to pride in the book of Proverbs. We've got time. There's not that many.

Okay, let's look at Proverbs 6. Do you know, let me share this. Do you know that God's word is accurate? It is so accurate. I had a man who loaned, on the average, between five and seven million dollars a month in loans.

He had done it for ten years as a loan officer. And this was back when I was teaching at Calvary Bible College, so it was a number of years ago. Money is bigger money, but that was big money in those days.

And guess how many bad loans he made? One. One bad loan that he made to a friend, $45 ,000. That was not paid back. They would have him travel all over America saying, what's your secret? Well, his secret was he looked in Proverbs, I just happened to notice there's a couple of verses ahead where we're looking, and saw the three signs of a wicked person.

So when a man came in for a loan, he'd look for the three signs of a wicked person. And if he saw the three signs of a wicked person, he wouldn't give the loan, or they would do more investigating. Do you know the three signs of a wicked person?

It's right here in Proverbs. The wicked man, or the naughty man, verse 12, chapter 6, says he walketh with a forward mouth. Now how, and you can't pick that one up, this twisted mouth, always. But here are the three things he looked for.

It says, first of all, he winketh with his eyes. You know when people lie to you, usually they blink first? I hate to tell you that, because some of you are going to come and talk to me, and I'm going to look for blinking eyes.

They blink their eyes. You ask a little kid, I didn't do that. So this guy says, oh yeah, we've got a warehouse full of all this stuff, and his eyes are blinking. He's going, that's number one. The second thing it says, he speaks with his feet.

Shuffling feet. That's number two. And then he teaches with his fingers. Well see, look at this. That was it. I'll tell you, this book is true. You can count on it. So let's look at Proverbs, and you can also count on what God says about the proud man in Proverbs.

These six things, verse 16, does the Lord hate, yea, seven are what? An abomination unto him. God has given us a list of things he hates, and abortion is number one. No, I think it's incest. No, it's, what is it?

A proud look. Say, you're kidding. Hey, really? That's an abomination? To God? And all these horrible other things were going on? Sacrificing of children, that's not on his list? A proud look. Pride in the countenance.

God says, I want you to know, it's first on what I hate. And when I see that in a life of a believer, that believer becomes an abomination to me. When you say God, you do your thing, and I'll do mine.

Turn a page, if you've got the right kind of Bible. I have those for sale afterwards, see me up front. Proverbs chapter 8, verse 13. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. And what's the first evil that he mentions?

Pride. You know, the fear of the Lord is a conscious awareness of God's presence. By the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. When I am living and realizing that every day thou, God, seest me, it will change the way I live.

It will change the things I say. There are conversations I've had with my wife I hope that God wasn't listening to. That maybe he was looking at somebody else. But if I had an awareness of his presence, I may have worded my wording a little differently.