Heal Our Land was the theme for the National Day of Prayer this year. Good reminder of that. There were probably 75 people who showed up to a prayer breakfast that morning at Calvary Baptist Church here in Roseville. There were some who gathered on the Capitol steps and then there were about 500 who gathered for prayer on the evening of the National Day of Prayer in downtown Minneapolis. And hopefully there were thousands of others, Christians, remembering to pray for our land that day.
I invite you to open your Bible with me to Ephesians chapter 6 as we think today regarding the invisible war and the tactics of the enemy. Put on the full armor of God, writes Paul in Ephesians 6, 11, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
This last week, General James H. Smith and Major General William Garrison testified before the Senate regarding the loss of American lives last October in Somalia. 18 Americans were left dead and 72 wounded in a particular battle in Mogadishu. The problem was that the American forces were not allowed to have the armor that was requested of the Pentagon. And it resulted in a tragic, unnecessary, and so it seems, a waste of American lives.
A soldier's success in battle depends upon a number of factors. His training, his equipment, his stamina and strength, his battle plan, his support system, and also his knowledge of the enemy's tactics. How the enemy maneuvers for advantage. For when a soldier knows that, he knows how to take counteraction to be successful. You and I as Christian soldiers dare not imagine that we can ignore our spiritual enemy, Satan. That we will be delivered from his attacks and from spiritual warfare.
If only we remain ignorant of him and his devices. Our ignorance only makes us more vulnerable and exposed, and in the end guarantees our defeat in spiritual battles. Now, if that weren't reason enough to learn about spiritual warfare, let me give you another reason found within the context of Ephesians 6. That is that Jesus Christ has called us to active service in spiritual warfare. The command that he gives us in verse 14 is this, stand. Three times that word is used in this paragraph.
The final time it is an imperative. It is a command. We are to stand firm, a command. In other words, we don't have a choice but to learn the truths about spiritual warfare and to be involved in the battle. We are called to active duty, not to the reserves. Now the word stand probably means more than to stand in a defensive posture. To stand may imply drawing up into military formation in order to charge the enemy. The Roman legions were famous for their formations.
They had a flying triangle, it was called, that devastated their troops. It was a formation of their soldiers. Paul may well have had that in mind when he tells us that we are to stand in formation and to charge the enemy. Satan, our infernal enemy in spiritual warfare, employs a variety of schemes to attack us. If we will learn them and arm ourselves, we can experience increasing victories in this warfare for souls.
This morning I would like for us to think about some of the schemes and how we can arm ourselves. Scheme number one is that of lies. Jesus himself said, Satan was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8.44. When one lies, he speaks falsehood with the intention to deceive. To lie is to cause an incorrect impression to be given to another.
It is to present a misleading appearance. Some of our advertising today is based upon this satanic scheme where people are told to do one thing in order to get them into the store. When they are in there, it is the old bait and switch tactic. They are brought in under one guise only to sell them something else. How many of you have gotten a card in the mail saying you have been the grand prize winner of a cruise in the Caribbean?
All you have to do is call this usually 900 number down in Florida and pay $250 for the processing and you will have your cruise. Too good to be true, isn't it? And it certainly is. It's a lie. We lie by the words that we use, by actions that we live, by behavior that we conduct. An example of this sadly in the early church is Ananias and Sapphira who chose to lie regarding what they were giving to God. Now it wasn't the fact that they brought a certain amount.
It was that they pretended to bring more than they actually did. They were giving a false impression. And therefore Peter spoke to Ananias and said, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Ghost? And he dropped dead. That was God's way of bringing immediate judgment in that case and creating fear in the church.
When he says why has Satan filled your heart, he uses the very same term, interestingly, that Paul uses in Ephesians 5, 18 when he says to us that we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So it is possible even for a Christian to be controlled by Satan, to be ignorant about it. I don't think that Ananias and Sapphira made a pact with the devil, but Satan lied to them and caused them to lie in their actions.
We are commanded in Ephesians 4, verse 25, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor. We are members one of another. You see the propensity of human beings to lie is not a phenomenon of the 20th century. It is a propensity of the human heart to lie and it always has been. And therefore we easily believe lies and pass them on. Sometimes at the instigation of Satan, lying is one of his schemes.
Our culture is riddled with lying and the economy of our state is being affected by that. No, I'm not talking about politicians. I'm talking about gambling. Gambling is a lie, did you know that? Gambling seems to say that you can pay this and be rewarded famously for doing nothing. Yet how many people win the prize and how many lose everything?
It seems to say this is an innocent pastime and yet there are those, including a city council member in Minneapolis this last week who acknowledged it, that become hooked and addicted to gambling. Gambling is based upon a lie. It is a satanic scheme and it corrupts society. Satan loves to use his lies to infect the wounds of our lives. For example, rejection or abuse or the conflicts that we get into. He infects these wounds with lies about who we are, about our worth, about God's character.
And so we find these thoughts coming from somewhere that say, God doesn't love you. If he loved you that wouldn't be happening. God doesn't care about you. God isn't fair. Those are lies. Or this thought seems to come from within you. It's planted in your mind and it says, I'm no good. I'm worthless. No one can love me. I'm a bad person and I deserve this abuse. I'm so stupid I'll never amount to anything. You notice how quiet it is in here? That's because these lies are so common.
And I've only begun the list. One of Satan's tactics is lying. And those thoughts seem to come from within ourselves. And they may. But how often they come from Satan. And once we create them ourselves he immediately jumps on it to exaggerate and magnify and intensify that lie in our lives with the express purpose of destroying us and our faith in God. He's very effective with lying, isn't he? A second tactic that he uses is that of accusations.
He is called in Revelation 12 10 the accuser of the brethren. An accuser is one who blames or charges another with crimes. An accuser is one who finds fault, who indicts others. There are many examples of this in the Bible. Satan, for example, stirs up accusations, hostility and enmity against God's people. He did that with Jesus. Pilate asked the Jews, what accusations do you bring against this man? And they laid the lies before him. Satan loves to accuse.
He was successful in interrupting the apostle Paul's ministry. And of course that's under the providence of God. But he interrupted Paul's ministry through false accusations of the Jews. He was arrested and had to defend himself against accusations. And then most of the apostles had to put up with accusations against them. A good deal of 2 Corinthians is based around the accusations that liars brought against Paul. And he had to defend himself. This is a day when accusations are so common.
Sometimes coming from amazing sources. Accusations. And how do you protect yourself against accusations? We've thought about that as a staff. How do we protect ourselves against accusations from a counseling situation? If you're alone with someone and they come out of the session and say during that session you did this. And they get a lawyer and go to court. How do you defend yourself against that? We've had to take some steps to do what we can to defend ourselves. We leave a door open.
There is a window in the door in the room where we do counseling. There are times when we do it with other people present. We have to. Three years ago the American Bar Association held a seminar at their national meeting telling lawyers how to sue churches on the basis of an invasion of the right to privacy. A brand new basis for legal action against churches that is taking a heavy toll. Do some things happen that are bad? Yes they do. And when they do they need to be exposed.
There needs to be an accountability for it. But what I'm talking about are false accusations. That's Satan's special love. False accusations. And he engenders fault finding and blaming among God's own people. And it's not that we sit down and we say, oh well now devil what would you like me to say? But it is that somehow there is this spirit of fault finding, of negative thinking, of criticizing. And it comes from Satan.
He seeks to create suspicion among the people of God which will produce division and factions. You say well that can come out of the flesh too. The Bible says so. And indeed it can. It can. But I want to tell you that when the flesh begins Satan is quick to use it. Because accusations, blaming, fault finding is of the devil. We need to be aware of believing everything that we hear. Even the apostle Paul was writing to the Corinthians.
He says I hear that there are divisions among you and I partly believe it. You see he said I only partly believe it. And then of course we must be extremely careful of passing on gossip. As though we know something is true when it's rumor. The third tactic of the enemy is doubts. Satan loves doubt. Doubt is an uncertainty in one's mind. Doubt is having an unsettled opinion or belief. Doubt is at its heart mistrust.
Now all of us I would assume have questions from time to time about God or about the Bible. That's normal. There's nothing wrong with healthy questions. When your teenagers or your children come to you with questions that strike to the very heart of your faith don't get angry and become alarmed. Thank God for this teaching opportunity. Questions mean that one is thinking. Questions mean that one is trying to assimilate, to make one's own what he's heard.
But questions that aren't answered, sometimes because they're not asked, they're just allowed to fester inside. But questions that remain unanswered often lead to doubt, to disbelief. That's another step away from God. That's not good. Questions are okay. Doubt is sin. An example of Satan using this of course is in Genesis 3 where Satan went to Eve in the garden and said to her, indeed, has God said, see the doubt there, has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?
Not only does he inject doubt but he twists just a bit what God actually said to create doubt in Eve. It worked. It worked. Thomas said, unless I can touch him with my hands, I will not believe. Jesus gave him the opportunity. Thomas didn't avail himself as far as we know. He just simply fell in his face and said, my Lord, my God. Among other things, Jesus said to him, Thomas, be not unbelieving but believing. We call Thomas what? Doubting Thomas. Be not doubting Thomas but believe.
It is amazing that even in those days before Jesus went back to heaven, after he had been alive and showed himself to his disciples, Matthew tells us in Matthew 28-17, and some were doubting. Isn't that amazing? The resurrected Christ among them and some were still doubting. This is a favorite of the enemy. Among the most common doubts are doubting one's salvation. How do you know that you were sincere? How do you know that God heard you? How do you know you used the right words?
Bordering this is a doubt regarding eternal security. How do you know that God is going to save you after what you've done? He causes us to doubt God's care. We're in the middle of a crisis. A child is sick. A loved one has died. The job has suddenly disappeared. And he's there to whisper in the ear, see, there's what you get for following God. God doesn't care about you. God may be faithful to some people, but he surely hasn't demonstrated it in your life. Doubt.
A fourth area of tactics that Satan uses is that of temptations. Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness, says Matthew, to be tempted by the devil. The tempter came, the tempter came. To tempt means to entice, to allure what is forbidden. There are some people today, instead of worshipping God or out the God of heaven, are out worshipping the fish god. And their whole attempt in their worship service today is to entice a fish to get on that hook.
And they do everything they can with the bait or the lure to catch that fish. This is the very idea in temptation. It is to seduce. Neil Anderson says, the essence of all temptation is the invitation to live independently of God and fulfill legitimate needs in the world, the flesh, or the devil instead of in Christ. He's right. Jesus was hungry. He had fasted for forty days. The tempter said, Jesus, aren't you hungry? Don't you think some nice warm bread would taste good right now?
If you're the Son of God, command these stones to be warm bread, maybe a little honey on the side. You see, it was a legitimate need which he sought to fulfill, to get Jesus to fulfill outside of the will of God. Satan knows how to exploit our needs. He knows how to exploit our weaknesses, the weaknesses of our flesh. And so then he employs the things of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, to beguile us away from the worship of God.
You see, Satan is content for us to worship anything at all. We don't have to become Satanists to please him. He's happy for us to be in church on Sunday. He's happy for us to sing hymns on Sunday. He's happy for us to read our Bibles. As long as we have something else in God's place of preeminence in our lives, the Bible calls that, by the way, idolatry. Idolatry is the name of his game, and he knows how to play it well. He tempts us to forsake God for a substitute.
A fifth area of tactic for Satan is that of condemnation, guilt, shame. Now of course, there is a place for genuine guilt when it comes from God, for it shows our need for repentance and restoration to him. But there is another kind of guilt that comes from the devil. There is a self-condemnation that he seeks to encourage. You see, he wants us to feel shameful, miserable, remorseful, sorry, as long as we don't feel repentant. There are examples of this, of course, in the Bible.
One of them is Peter, who denied God, and Judas, who betrayed the Lord Jesus. Both of them felt condemned. Both of them were guilty. They both wept, but it was a different kind of tears. Warren Wiersbe writes in The Strategy of Satan, one of his books, A feeling of guilt and shame is a good thing if it comes from the Spirit of God. If we listen to the devil, it will only lead to regret and remorse and defeat.
When the Spirit of God convicts you, he uses the Word of God in love and seeks to bring you back into fellowship with your Father. When Satan accuses you, he uses your own sins in a hateful way, and he seeks to make you feel helpless and hopeless. Judas listened to the devil and went out and hanged himself. Peter looked at the face of Jesus and wept bitterly, but later came back into fellowship with Christ. The tears of Peter were tears of repentance. The tears of Judas were tears of remorse.
There's a heaven and hell of difference between the two. The devil doesn't mind tears of remorse. He doesn't mind tears that I've been caught. He doesn't mind tears of defeat. Indeed, what he wants to do is paralyze you with condemnation, self-condemnation, and despair without pushing you to turn to God. How do we arm ourselves against these tactics of the devil? If in our warfare we understand his tactics, what is the armament for us? Let me show you quickly what it is in Ephesians 6.
The tactic of the devil is lies. You and I as soldiers are commanded to be girded with truth. Verse 14, the belt of truth. Neil Anderson says, since Satan's primary weapon is the lie, your defense against him is the truth. Failing with Satan is not a power encounter, it's a truth encounter. When you expose Satan's lie with God's truth, his power is broken. That's why the first piece of armor Paul mentions for standing against the schemes of the devil is the belt of truth.
Satan's lie cannot withstand the truth any more than darkness of night can withstand the light of the rising sun. The belt of the Roman soldier was this leather girdle almost that went around his body, protecting his torso. We are commanded to put on as the foundational garment of our warfare truth. That certainly includes understanding and knowing what is true about God, ourselves, our enemy. It's objective truth. But I think that here he's talking especially about subjective truth.
That is, we are to arm ourselves by being truthful people. There is to be integrity of character in our lives. There is to be honesty about us, so that when the lies come, they bounce off. Because we know the truth and we are truthful. His tactic is accusations. We are to put on the breastplate, he says, of righteousness. This protected the vital organs of the Roman soldier in his chest. Made out of fashioned metal or sometimes metal chain, the breastplate was essential.
Here we are commanded to put on this covering of righteousness. I believe that he's talking essentially and primarily here about holy and righteous living that deflects accusations. We cannot stop accusations being thrown at us, but our righteous, holy living can deflect those accusations and prove them to be false. The devil uses doubts. We are to put on the shoes of peace.
The shoes, of course, protected the soldier from injury that would come from stakes or pieces of metal that the enemy would sew in the soil. The shoes were leather and their bottoms, the soles, were often injected with metal pieces to make them sort of like cleat shoes. With these shoes, the soldier was protected. The shoes of peace are our shoes. That is, there is to be a subtleness of mind about God's trustworthiness. We are to truly believe the good news that God is for me.
He's not against me. And oh, what peace that brings to us so that when the doubts come, we know God is for me. When he hurls at us doubts, we remember God is on my side. He's not against me. And we're in peace. Temptations? For those, we have the shield of faith, the shield was the large rectangular shield of the soldier. It was leather fashioned around a metal frame.
Often it was water soaked so that as fiery arrows were shot at the advancing soldiers, the arrow would stick into that leather and the wet leather would immediately quench it. And so he tells us that when the fiery arrows of temptation come to us, we have the shield of faith. God is withholding from you. You need to have that need met over here. God isn't going to meet that need. And that shield of faith soaks in that fiery arrow, puts it out, and responds by saying God is good.
God is able to meet my need. God is wise in meeting my need. I will not believe this temptation. Condemnation? For that the helmet of salvation? The helmet of the soldier was made of leather or sometimes bronze. It protected the head of course. When thoughts of condemnation come to our minds, we need to remind ourselves that we are saved, that we have been delivered from condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
And so when despair comes, we defeat it with the hope of salvation. Then he says that we are to take up the sword of the Spirit. The sword provides the cutting, piercing, penetrating weapon in our hands that drives the enemy back and defeats his attacks. We use the sword of the Spirit not by merely quoting verses at the devil, because he can quote verses back at us. We use the sword of the Spirit when we choose to believe the promises and base our thinking and our actions on those promises.
And then the weapon of prayer, where we call upon our God who is the Lord of hosts, the God of the angelic armies of heaven, and ask him to intervene with whatever means he chooses. It weakens Satan when we pray. It defeats his assaults. If you want to know one of the great ways to pray against the enemy, I just learned this this week. I was excited to learn it. Pray that there would be confusion created in the ranks of the enemy. One of the great ways to pray against the devil.
Pray that there would be confusion created in the ranks of the enemy so that the spirits cannot coordinate and plan their attacks. You think God will do that? That fast. That fast. If we pray it. And then he tells us that the whole goal of spiritual warfare is not just that we can battle against the devil. The whole goal of it is outreach. Notice he goes on to say, and pray that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.
You see what we're really about is advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ so the people can be saved from their sin and their lostness and their hopelessness. That's what we're really about. And the reason that we have to fight, the reason we have to stand, is because we have a mission to accomplish in proclaiming the gospel of Christ.
We're going to be talking about that next Sunday and the vision of our church and how we as a body of people believe God wants us to advance and to accomplish the mission, the vision that he's given to us as a church. That's why we have to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. But let me remind you, let me remind you, amidst of the battle, there's no reason to fear. There's every reason to rejoice.
And when he says that we're to pray with all prayer, put this kind of praying, number one, on your list. P-R-A-I-S-E. The devil hates that above every other kind of praying you can do. He hates it. He hates it when you praise the Lord. He despises it. He can't stand it. He closes his ears. He runs. He cannot stand the people of God exalting the name of Jesus Christ. So as you pray, praise, praise the Lord. Sing choruses to him. Lift your hands up to him and praise.
But when you do, the victory is there. It's on the way. You see, we need to understand the tactics of the enemy and what our armor is, and then stand for active battle against him. And when we do, we are guaranteed the victory. Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Pray in God for that victory. Are you living in it today? Is your armor in place? Is there truthfulness? Is there integrity? Do you understand the Bible? Are you alert to the enemy?
You see, we can't just float along in the Christian life. We can't be passive about it. If we do, we are disobeying Jesus Christ. That's the bottom line issue, because he says to stand. And so let's get our armor on and stand up in the day of evil, and having done all, to stand. Let's pray. What piece of armor needs to be cleaned up and polished and put in place? What part have you forgotten that you need to get a hold of right now? Have you been defeated? Are you lying in the dust?
God's not finished with you. God still loves you. Don't listen to those thoughts of condemnation and shame and guilt, those lies that Satan's putting into your mind. Understand your value to God and what your calling is in Jesus Christ. Get up off your face and stand before your commander in chief and get into the battle. God deliver us today, I pray, from defeat, out of foolishness, out of sin, out of ignorance. May we be your army at Grace Church.
Alert to the subtle tricks and schemes of our enemy, and standing firm against him with the panoply of God in place, and all the time praising you. Let our eyes off ourselves, Lord Jesus, and on you and the mission that you've given us to accomplish in the world. Remove our short sighted thinking. Give us a vision for people who need Christ.
Let us look beyond the walls of this place, beyond those who are coming now to those who need to come, who need to hear, who need to be reached with the gospel. These things I pray through Jesus Christ. Would you stand together with me? Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever. He sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood. He loved me ere I knew him, and all my love is to him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. God bless you.
Let's live in that victory and wage warfare this week and stand for Jesus Christ. We're dismissed.