Ephesians 6:12; The enemy pretends to be spiritual and heavenly while the believer is so as a gift.

Class Outline:

Thursday April 14, 2022

 

Our true enemy being spiritual in nature (not of this world) means that they seek to influence the very fiber of our inner beings with a darkness that sweeps down on the very light that is in us and threatening its extinction in our life. Not that our new life in Christ can be taken from us; it cannot. That life is ours forever, but its outworking, our experience of its light and beauty and power can be extinguished.

 

Our true enemy assaults the inner person. Each of us have different doors and secret passages into the core of our inner selves.

 

Our own patterns of sin should, over time, reveal to us where some of these weaknesses lie. Then we must be firmly committed to handing over those areas of our lives to God and stop sinning. Leave all excuses and self-justifications and all claims to reasons that the time of doing and overcoming can be put off, and go and do.

 

There are also patterns of false doctrines that the church has had her fill of over the last 20 centuries. I don’t think there are any new ones, but the old ones under new names. Each of us, because of our weaknesses, are more susceptible to particular kinds of false doctrine (lasciviousness vs. legalism for example).

 

The church has always been in conflict. Satan seeks to rob us of the knowledge and confidence in the gospel - who He is and who we are by grace.

 

The church has certainly been engaged in a double conflict. One the one hand, it was assailed by the material seductions of hedonism and the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand, it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the systems of error that were rooted in the mind of the age. It does not seem that Paul has physical torture or persecution in mind at all in this passage because flesh and blood are taken out. Plus, in our understanding of the conflict, failure isn’t dying or being hurt physically, but failing spiritually.

 

The forces opposed to Christian truth became more dangerous when they found their way within the church, spoiling the church’s teaching and practice, and growing like tares among the wheat. The craft of the devil is far more this than it is physical persecution or material lust. False doctrines in the church have been much more effective at weakening her. Sometimes, as Satan knows well, physical persecution can make churches stronger.

 

Writing of this phenomenon: “The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.” [G.G. Findlay, The Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 499]

 

Satan and his demonic horde want to take our greatest possession, our spiritual lives.

 

Satan and his demonic hoard do not want to only take our physical lives or our money or reputation, they want to take our greatest possession, our spiritual life. Our foe tries to take heaven from us, and what I mean is the experience of it in time. The believers who are falling for the schemes are the ones who are not studying the word of God consistently, for whatever reason, the reason doesn’t matter; perhaps they are studying but they are not applying the truth to their lives; perhaps they are studying but only the certain parts of the Scripture that interest them. Those falling for the devil’s schemes are not going to their church; they don’t have time to serve others; they don’t have time to pray; they are anxious about tomorrow (about life); and the failure to do many more of the things that make for a prosperous and healthy spiritual life. Every believer fails in his disciplined spiritual life from time to time, but the ones who have not stood firm against the schemes have a very consistent lack of spiritual discipline.

 

Our treasure is within us, in our earthen vessels. Beholding the Lord in His word transforms us. Satan seeks to stop us from beholding - our spiritual discipline.

 

2CO 3:17-4:11

Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

 

4:1 Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, 2 but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

 

7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; 8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11 For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

 

The ways of darkness, wickedness, and sin which are the way of the devil and his horde and fallen mankind. God repeatedly tells us that those ways in the fallen angels and in fallen man will only result in wrath and judgment. The unbelievers will perish along with the fallen angels, and God states this and then asks us believers why we should even consider remaining in those ways of wickedness.