Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 100 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Overcoming the power and influence of Satan; Eph 6:10-18.Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 100 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Overcoming the power and influence of Satan; Eph 6:10-18.
Announcements / opening prayer: 2Co 5
Armor of God review:
In review, the armor is the person of Christ in operation through the believer in time as he battles Satan and the kingdom of darkness. Its application is:
Satan seeks to frustrate the will of God in the believer's soul; (we must be filled with the Spirit).
a. By deceit: Eph 4:14.
b. By using his minions to frustrate the believer's work: 1Th 2:18.
c. By projecting thoughts to produce mental attitude sins such as worry, anxiety, and fear, 1Pe 5; Heb 2:
Christ said, "Don't be anxious for your life." Earthly possessions and desires dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety. If our hearts are set on them, our reward is an anxiety whose burden is intolerable. Anxiety creates its own treasures in the desire for that which will assuage the anxiety, and they in turn beget further care. When we seek for security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the net result is the precise opposite of our anticipations. The fetters which bind us to our possessions prove to be cares themselves.
The walk of the disciple is maintained only when nothing, no desire or lust or pride is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves. He promised to provide everything and along with it, the fulfillment of desires that go beyond what we can think or imagine as well as heavenly rewards which make our desires look like dung heaps.
d. By distracting the believer's focus, Jer 17; 1Ki 19:
Satan seeks to frustrate the will of God in the believer's soul:
e. By promoting a self-righteous lack of forgiveness:
If Satan can get some person or group to refuse to forgive some other person or group then he can start the seeds of division in a church, family, marriage, or organization. We are to forgive one another in light of how much God has forgiven each one of us. Separation from another will be warranted at times, but a lack of forgiveness is never warranted. The man in Corinth who was having an affair with his father's wife was to be excommunicated from the church at Corinth, but the church was to always have forgiveness, and when the man recovered, he was to be lovingly allowed back into the fold of the church. Forgiveness is used here in the sense of allowing the man to come back. Certainly, if the man did not repent of his conduct, they were not to allow him back into the fellowship, but they were to forgive him in their hearts and not harbor and bitterness or judgmental attitude towards him.
2Co 2:5 But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree — in order not to say too much — to all of you.
2Co 2:6 Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority,
1Co 5:5 I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
2Co 2:7 so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest somehow such a one be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
2Co 2:8 Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.
2Co 2:9 For to this end also I wrote that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things.
2Co 2:10 But whom you forgive anything, I forgive also [from his authority as an apostle]; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ,
2Co 2:11 in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan [to cause division as well as the destruction of the man]; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
Satan seeks to frustrate the will of God in the believer's soul:
f. Satan attempts to convince the believer that the Christian way of life is improving the world. We are to expose the darkness, but we cannot eradicate it.
God's solutions to sin and evil are in Christ and only in Christ. This is for every individual, but every man has the free will to reject the gospel and continue in evil. There will be evil people, evil organizations, and evil governments until the second coming of Christ. The false teaching of post-Millennialism states that the gospel will eventually be believed by the world and that there will be a period of great peace, or Millennium, and then, and only then, will Christ return. This view lost popularity in Christianity after the world wars, but it has not died out and its influences are still being felt.
g. Satan, at times, is allowed by God to hurt the believer's life in some way. That believer has all he needs by the grace of God to be sufficient and actually rejoice in the given weakness.
2Co 12:7 And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me — to keep me from exalting myself!
2Co 12:8 Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me.
2Co 12:9 And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast [glory] about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
The weaknesses that Paul will glory about, or revel in, are not sins but the infirmity, either mental or physical, that the demon was allowed to afflict him with. Rather than hurting Paul or hindering him, it became a cause of rejoicing because he saw in real time how sufficient the grace of God really is.
Satan's plans will always blow up in his face if the believer remains in the sphere of grace.
2Co 12:10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
We have the power to overcome these attacks because Christ bound up Satan at Calvary, and at the same time He has given us superior assets. |