I have appreciated the comments in the last few weeks regarding the series on the invisible
war.
I'm glad that God is using these remarks to help us understand what true reality is all
about.
We live in a world that is based upon lies.
Our cultural worldview is one that is based upon things that are unbiblical.
Currently with man being in the center of the universe, that's just not the way it
is.
God is at the center of His universe.
And God in His Word tells us what true reality is all about.
We've looked at something of the makeup of the spirit realm the last couple of weeks.
I think today we need to back up a bit and remind ourselves that the warfare that we're
in is not just with spirits.
That's part of it.
But there's a context in which they work.
The warfare that we have is a warfare on three fronts.
I invite you to open your Bible with me to 1 John chapter 2.
I'm going to begin reading in verse 12 of the second chapter of 1 John.
I am writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven you for His name's
sake.
I am writing to you fathers because you know Him who has been from the beginning.
I am writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one.
I have written to you children because you know the Father.
I have written to you fathers because you know Him who has been from the beginning.
I have written to you young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you
and you have overcome the evil one.
Do not love the world nor the things in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the
boastful pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world.
And the world is passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God
abides forever.
Just why John uses these three terms to describe his readers we do not know.
Little children, fathers, young men.
He may be referring to chronological age or perhaps to maturity level in the things of
God.
But perhaps the best explanation is simply this, that he is using these names applying
each term to all of us.
For in some sense all of us are little children.
In some sense all of us are like mature adults, fathers.
And in some sense all of us are like young men in the strength of their lives.
Your sins are forgiven for his namesake.
You know the Father as the little children of God.
You know him who has been from the beginning as those who are mature adults.
You have overcome the evil one.
You are strong and the word of God abides in you as energetic, strong people in the
prime of their lives.
Young men.
The apostle tells us in this brief text that our warfare is on three fronts.
There are three enemies that we must fight.
There is the evil one, the external, the infernal enemy.
There is the world, the external enemy.
And there is the flesh, the internal enemy.
Let's begin with the infernal enemy, the evil one, Satan, who is mentioned several
times in this book.
Chapter 2 verse 14 we have seen him mentioned.
And called the evil one.
And in chapter 3 verse 12 he mentions Cain who was of the evil one.
In chapter 5 verse 18 he says, we know that no one who is born of God sins, but he who
was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.
Verse 19, we know that we are of God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil
one.
We don't have to guess as to the identity of this evil one.
Of course Satan.
In chapter 3 verse 8 he is called the devil.
John says the one who practices sin is of the devil.
The devil has sinned from the beginning.
And again in verse 10, by this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.
John tells us that the devil has sinned from the beginning.
This idea of the beginning is an important idea to John.
You see it in the Gospel of John.
In the beginning was the word.
And now again in this first epistle John several times mentions the beginning.
He is talking about that epoch, that period before the seven days of creation recorded
for us in the book of Genesis.
But after God had begun his creative work, there is some period that is there.
We do not know the time involved in that period.
But it is in that period that God created the mass out of which he formed the world.
It is in that period that God created the spirit beings that we have talked about the
last two weeks.
And it seems to be in that period from what John says that the devil fell from his exalted
place guarding the throne of God and he sinned.
He sinned.
And we know from the account of the book of Genesis that the devil then entered into the
world after God had created it in Adam and Eve.
And he brought sin into this perfect world that God had made.
And throughout the history of humanity he has worked to reproduce sin in the lives of
those who are the descendants of Adam and Eve and those who follow him.
And he says in chapter 3 and verse 12 that Cain is an example of that, the son of Adam
and Eve.
He says that we should not be as Cain who was of the evil one and slew his brother.
Fear comes from the devil.
The taking of innocent human life comes from Satan.
It is of the devil.
He is interested in doing anything that he can to perpetuate evil in God's world.
Satan is a determined foe of God.
He is steadfast in his hatred of all human beings.
Even those who serve him he hates.
He abuses them and ultimately he destroys them.
Even though he deceives many of them into thinking that somehow he is their friend.
He hates them.
He hates all humans.
But especially is his hatred focused upon those who profess faith in God and in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
You and I have an infernal enemy.
His name is Satan.
He is the evil one.
And in this series on spiritual warfare we are especially going to be focusing on him.
And so I am not going to say a great deal about him this morning.
But let's go on to set in context this warfare against the enemy on the front of the infernal.
Because we have another front that we need to be alert to and that is our external front.
Our enemy here is the world.
The world.
John says to us, do not love the world.
The world he says is passing away.
Don't love it.
The word world here is the word cosmos.
Cosmos.
That's a rather familiar word to us.
Literally the word cosmos means an order or an arrangement of something.
When this word is used of the world in this context as in 1 John it means that present
order of unbelieving humanity which stands in opposition to God and which is dominated
by satanic principles of greed, force, selfishness, ambition and pleasure.
I want to repeat that definition.
The world, the cosmos is that present arrangement or order of unbelieving humanity which stands
in opposition to God and is dominated by satanic principles of greed, force, selfishness, ambition
and pleasure.
Regarding the world the editors of the Schofield Study Bible have a helpful comment.
I quote, the world system is imposing and powerful with military might, is often outwardly
religious, scientific, cultured and elegant.
But seething with national and commercial rivalries and ambitions is upheld in any real
crisis only by armed force.
What they're saying is that on the exterior the world may appear very alluring and attractive.
It may be refined and cultured and even religious.
But beneath that exterior there is a seething selfish force that is based upon satanic principles.
All aspects of human culture and society are affected by evil.
That is not to say that culture itself is inherently evil.
That is not the case.
Human beings have culture.
Culture is not inherently evil but evil affects it, you see.
Every culture is to some degree or extent influenced and twisted by evil.
Now I would say that a culture to the extent that it adheres to the principles of God's
Word is less twisted by evil.
To the extent that it is given to idolatry and thus the worship of demons and Satan,
it is nearly thoroughly affected by evil.
Why is it that the Western culture and especially our American culture is changing so rapidly?
It is because the Christian biblical principles that have held it in place have been eroded
and are being removed rapidly resulting in a twisting of our culture by the evil one.
So our entertainment industry is today fomenting evil.
We sometimes hear the executives of that industry defend themselves by saying, well, we're just
reflecting what's happening in society.
And in fact they very well may be, but they are also exacerbating what's happening in
society.
The entertainment industry in our culture is very guilty of the destruction of our culture.
But it doesn't stop there.
We could talk about commerce.
We could talk about those principles that control the big corporations of our nation
as well as the small businesses.
We could talk about the greed and the selfishness, the ambition that is a part of that.
That is thorough worldliness.
And it does not come from the Father.
We could talk about politics.
Probably shouldn't.
And I say that simply because we all know it so well.
The politics, our current political system is rife with corruption.
It does not serve the interests of the people of this nation or of this state.
It serves the interests of those who are in power and who want to stay in power at any
cost.
Even the enslavement of those who have put them in those positions, worldliness, evil.
And it is in religion, even in religion that is under the name of Christianity.
There are tears among the wheat.
There is that in Christianity today which is false.
And whole denominations are being led down paths of evil because of the influence of
Satan within them.
So that denominations that a hundred years ago or more were preaching the gospel of Jesus
Christ and founded institutions, educational institutions to benefit humanity.
Those same denominations today have so conformed to the world that they are leading their adherence
to eternal destruction.
Art, education, the media.
You pick out anything you want to pick out in the world and you find there underneath
a surface that seems to glitter.
A heart that is evil.
What does John say about the world in our text?
He says that all that is in the world is not of the Father.
Now he is not talking about the created things.
You understand that.
I mean our Father created everything that is in this world.
All of the good in this world is from Him.
But all of this insidious evil that is in the world is of the world.
It comes out of the world's values and its principles.
So however enticing those things may appear, they do not come from God.
Its entertainment, its rewards, its goals, its ideas, all of these things are intended
to lead away from the knowledge of God and from His values.
The world utilizes the drives and the appetites of human beings to entice, to blind, and to
enslave us to those things that it wants us to focus on.
And what are they?
The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Just to boil those down to three simple words, the world wants us to focus on pleasure, possessions,
grace, and power.
Now you tell me if the Western culture isn't thoroughly worldly.
Are those not the three highest values in America today?
Pleasure?
Entertainment is the God of America.
Americans worship at the shrine of entertainment.
Entertainers and movie stars are the gods and goddesses of America.
They are as ignorant as most other people on most subjects.
But if there is an issue, they come to town and they speak and everyone listens to what
the movie star says.
Isn't that right?
Am I wrong?
They are the gods and goddesses of this pleasure-worshipping society we live in.
Possessions?
The whole advertising and marketing business of our culture is geared to make us buy things
we don't need with money we don't have.
So we can have them.
Possessions and then position.
Being important.
Being somebody who's got prestige and power.
America worships power.
Our culture is thoroughly worldly and dear people, I have to say this to my own shame
and to that of our church and most churches in America, if not all of them, we are worldly
too.
We have conformed to this world because we so easily make pleasure, possessions and power
the driving forces in our lives as well.
There is need for all of us to repent of worldliness.
Thirty years ago when I was growing up, worldliness was very easily defined.
Drinking, smoking, dancing, going to movies, some of you are smiling, you remember those
days.
As long as you didn't do those things, you weren't worldly, you were a good Christian.
Now we bought that and the result of it is that we have been deceived into thinking still
today that worldliness is exterior things.
No, worldliness is the attitude of the heart.
Worldliness is what drives us.
Worldliness is the values that we hold that cause us to do the things that we do on the
exterior.
Worldliness is a heart attitude.
That's why John says, to us, love not the world.
Do not love the world.
If you profess faith in Jesus Christ, there is another reason not to love the world.
Verse 13 of chapter 3 says, do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you.
You see the world system hates God.
Its whole organization is to lead people away from God.
And so those of us who profess faith in Jesus Christ are the objects of the world's hatred.
It's hatred.
The world is no friend to the child of God.
This front of the external enemy of the world is one where we have lost the battle.
And we have a lot of work to do to reclaim that ground because I believe that I and many
of us are so worldly in our ideas that we don't even realize it.
We're so deceived by it.
And thus when people come from other cultures to America, the great land of opportunity,
and they have any Christian values at all, they are shocked at the state of the church.
And missionaries who are gone three or four or five years at a time and return home go
through a worse culture adjustment coming back to the church of America than they faced
when they went to the foreign land.
Because we are so much on the skids, not only in culture in the world, but in the church.
We need to get to the internal enemy, the third front.
What is it?
Well, it's the flesh.
John mentions the lust of the flesh and notice that he incorporates the flesh in with the
world here.
There's a reason for that that we'll get to in a few minutes.
What is the flesh?
The New Testament uses this word several ways, but here it is referring to that part of our
fallen humanness that is unredeemed.
Ray Stedman says, quote, it is the urge to self-centeredness within us, the distortion
of human nature which makes us want to be our own God, that proud ego, that uncrucified
self which is the seat of willful defiance and rebellion against authority, close quote.
The flesh that all of us battle is centered in our unredeemed bodies and it relates to
our mind, our emotion, and our wills.
The flesh is that imprint upon our person that is still intact even after the death
of the old self, the old man that we were before we came to Jesus Christ.
The flesh is that leftover programming within us, that programming that was put in place
by the old man that we were before coming to Christ, that old man that was crucified
with Christ.
The flesh is the responses, the values, the ideals, the goals which were programmed into
us by the old man.
Neil Anderson says, your flesh is that part of you which was trained to live independent
of God before you became a Christian.
Even though you have come to Jesus Christ, if that be the case, there still is within
you, within me, this flesh out of which come all kinds of lusts and drives and appetites
that are opposed to God.
How do these enemies to our spiritual development and success relate to one another in this
spiritual war?
Just want to make five statements before I close.
Number one, here's how they relate.
Number one, the devil created, cultivates, and maintains the world system.
We read in chapter five and verse 19, the whole world, the cosmos, lies in the power
of the wicked one, the evil one.
The world system is his baby.
The picture there is of an adult holding a baby, rocking the baby in his arms.
The world system is the devil's baby.
It's his thing.
God created the physical world.
The devil created this arrangement or order of things that is opposed to God, that controls
unredeemed humanity.
So you see that there's a relation between these two fronts of the devil and the world.
It is the devil who created the world.
It is the devil who cultivates the world.
It is the devil who maintains it.
Number two, the flesh, the third front we've talked about, is stimulated by both the devil
and the world.
You see these are not three independent enemies that we face.
They work together.
My flesh has appetites and drives that are ungodly.
I don't need the world or the devil to create sin for me to struggle with.
But the fact is that both the devil and the world utilize my flesh as a base of operations.
My flesh provides them an inner ally.
I have an internal responder to external temptation from the devil and from the world.
Satan knows our vulnerable points.
He knows what our flesh is like.
And so he seeks to exploit our weaknesses, those areas of struggle with sin that we naturally
have because of just who we are.
He seeks to aggravate and to exploit our weaknesses.
And then he looks for vulnerable times in our lives, like periods of depression or crisis,
which he may also exploit.
And the reason is that he might put pressure on us in our place of weakness or our time
of vulnerability to displease God.
That's what temptation is.
It's pressure.
And so he uses our flesh.
And the world system, which is his baby out here, knows how to entice our flesh.
Number three, all three of these enemies have been dealt defeat by the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Let me give you some scriptures to look up on your own.
Defeating the devil, 1 John 3, 8.
For this reason, the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.
Judgment came on the devil at the cross, John 12, 31, John 16, 11.
What about the world?
Galatians 6, 14, Paul says, I boast only in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
the world is what?
Crucified to me and I to the world.
Jesus said to us, I have overcome the world, John 16, 33.
What about the flesh?
The apostle Paul says, I, as the old man, have been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I, as a new man, live.
And the life which I now live in the flesh, he's talking there about his body, I live
by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
The old man was crucified and put to death, and thus its programming, the flesh that's
still in me, was dealt with at the cross.
You and I face an enemy on three fronts, the devil, the world, and the flesh.
But listen, each of those enemies has been dealt with by the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
He came into the world, became one of us, he went to the cross and died, and then was
raised from the dead, is exalted at the right hand of God today so that you and I can walk
in victory over the devil, the world, and the flesh.
Number four, our enemy, excuse me, our victory over each enemy comes through our position
in Christ.
It is because of who we are in Jesus Christ that we can experience victory.
Christ gave the death blow to them.
And now because you and I who have trusted him are in Christ, we may have victory over
these enemies.
It is because of who we are in Christ.
Paul said, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me.
It is the indwelling Christ.
It is the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
It is because of our ability to come to God directly and pray that you and I can experience
victory over the flesh, the world, and the devil.
Our victory comes through Jesus Christ and our position in him.
The last statement I want to make is that the spiritual war must be fought on all three
fronts simultaneously.
We don't have the luxury of fighting for a little while against the flesh and laying
that aside and then going to the devil and defeating him and saying, well he's finished,
now go to the world.
It doesn't work that way.
It's a multi-dimensional war.
And the only way that you and I can fight that war is in the strength of the Lord.
Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, says Paul.
The temptations that come to us are multi-dimensional.
You say, well how do I know if it's the flesh or the devil or the world?
You know really it doesn't make any difference.
The answer is the same whichever it comes.
And besides that all three of them are working together all the time.
The answer to facing temptation is to say no to it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The battle begins in our mind and then it becomes our attitudes and then our actions
and finally our character.
And so we need to fight the battle in our minds, to win the battle in our minds with
the truth.
Every person listening to me today who names Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is either
a victor or a victim of this multi-dimensional enemy that we've talked about.
You say, well I'm not really a victor right now but I don't see myself as a victim either.
You're on your way one direction or the other.
It's sort of like a light switch.
It's either on or it's off.
Either you and I are walking in victory or we are walking in defeat and we are victims.
We just don't know it yet.
That's why it's so important that you and I press for victory.
That we not just flow with the stream.
That we not just give up apathetically and just rest.
We need to keep pressing for victory.
And claim who we are in Jesus Christ and walk by faith and the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
There are some people who respond to this by saying, hey I'm just not interested in
that kind of stuff.
I don't want to learn about spiritual warfare because if I learn about it I may get attacked.
There's a real failure in that logic.
You are under attack.
You cannot avoid being attacked.
What you can do is get armed and begin walking in victory in Jesus Christ.
And that's what I want all of us to experience as we press ahead in this series on spiritual
warfare.
I want us to learn who we are in Jesus Christ and how to utilize the authority that we have
in Him to experience consistent victory in our lives.
Is that where you are today?
I know some of you are.
And I rejoice with you.
But if you today are living in defeat, if you're a victim of your own lusts, of the
world, of the devil, then today determine in your heart that by the grace of God you're
not going to be victimized anymore.
You're going to learn what it means to walk in victory in Christ.
God will show you, He will teach you, and you will experience the fullness of all that
He has in Christ for you.
Let's bow together.
I know I'm talking to some who are very discouraged today in your Christian walk.
I don't know what the battle may have been this last week or what the time is that you're
passing through, but God does.
God does.
And friend, if you're defeated, don't be discouraged.
Don't be discouraged.
Respond to defeat by looking to the Lord Jesus Christ and acknowledging first of all your
defeat and the sin that's involved in that, and then asking Him to fill you afresh, to
do a new work in your heart, to truly be the Lord of your life and show you, to teach you,
how to fight the good fight and to be a victor in Christ.
I hope that will be your response this day, even right now as we pray.
Father God, thank you for the Lord Jesus.
Thank you that He came that we might be forgiven of our sins and have the abundance of life
in Him.
And I pray for myself and for all of my brothers and sisters here that we may experience what
Jesus came to give us and that experiencing it we may walk in the victory that is Christ's.
And I pray especially for those who are low today that they will respond positively, not
wallow in defeat and discouragement, but repent and walk in the right direction.
And begin seeking after you first, making you truly the Lord and King of their lives.
I long for that and I know Lord that you desire it for all of us and so we rejoice today in
who you are and the privilege we have even now to come to you and pray.
Amen.