Spiritual Battle

[00:00:00] We sang that hymn last week, too. [00:00:05] This was our hymn of the month in the school. And so the kids have been singing it in music class, and we've been singing it in chapel, and so we know this one. And so I told them on Wednesday, hey, if you come to church, we're going to be singing this hymn that you know. And, boy, it's one that bears repeating, you know, it's one worth singing and worth learning just to remember that Jesus is king. You know, how often do we live our lives remembering that there is a king, a monarch, a single ruler, who is above all and to whom we owe our allegiance and under whose guidance and governance we live, or at least ought to live, by faith, by faith in Jesus Christ. [00:00:57] This is a powerful king, a king whose power and might and rule are uncontested. Well, they're kind of contested, but not by serious contenders, not by someone who can actually usurp the throne. [00:01:22] The devil would like to. The devil, who was. Who was created as a good angel, but decided to try to overthrow God and be God himself. [00:01:36] It was a lie. It could never be true. [00:01:41] So he became the father of lies and nothing, not the Lord of all. God reserved that for himself. But the devil continues to fight against God in whatever way he can. [00:01:55] That's the battle with which we're engaged. [00:02:01] The reading from revelation ends with this warning. But woe to you, o earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. [00:02:15] The devil knows that his time is short because he's been defeated by Christ in his death and resurrection. This scene in revelation follows his, essentially, his ascension into heaven and his coronation. In the book of Revelation, he's been seated on the throne and crowned with glory and honor, given dominion over all things. [00:02:42] But the devil, well, he's still at work, trying to do as much damage as he can. [00:02:53] Now, we often psychologize this spiritual battle. [00:03:01] So, for example, maybe we deal with regret or confusion, confusion about how to deal with problems in our lives, how to move forward with reconciliation after a break in a relationship or after difficult words are, there are all kinds of things spiritually that we deal with, and we have names for those things as well. [00:03:42] Depression, anxiety are a couple of them. [00:03:50] These are spiritual issues we see in our world. More and more people being diagnosed with depression and such. I don't know numbers, but a lot of people, a lot of us probably have been said to be depressed. [00:04:11] And there's help that the world of psychology can offer in thinking through how the mind works, and sometimes there are physical factors and whatnot. But our temptation, especially today in our materialistic society here after the enlightenment and with all the scientific progress, we focus on the material. [00:04:36] And that materialism can tempt us to forget about the spiritual battle that's raging in which we're caught up, even though it's above our heads. [00:04:51] If you think about the kinds of things that cause depression or anxiety or that cause us to feel conflicted or confused, that work us up to be angry or cast us down into the dumps, those things operate according to patterns. There are patterns of these things. That's why, like, psychologists can study it, right? It's because it happens in. In patterns. [00:05:21] Patterns are themselves spiritual. Like, what's so, what's uniting all the experiences of guilt or regret among human beings? What holds all that together? You know, that in itself points to something meaningful. There's an order to this. It's not just a bunch of random chemical reactions or something like that. There's an order to all this. It is spiritual. [00:05:52] So looking at it not from below, not from the sort of materialistic, scientific view, but from above, from God's word that comes down to us and explains reality to us spiritually, we turn back to the garden, that first temptation, where Satan, in the form of a serpent, directed Eve's attention to himself and his word, and he sowed his lives, his lies, to bear fruit in her and in Adam and in all of us. [00:06:33] So this is the spiritual battle that we're engaged in, a fight to listen to Christ or the devil, to listen to the truth incarnate, right? He says, I'm the way, the truth and the life, or to listen to the father of lies, as Jesus calls him, the truth or lies. [00:06:58] That's the battle that we're engaged in. [00:07:02] And because we've given in to the father of lies, because we've listened to those lies, we've become corrupted to the point that it's not clear to us necessarily what the truth is apart from God's revealing it to us by his word, apart from his sending Christ the word incarnate, the truth in the flesh, to bring us back to God, to show us the truth, to expose the father of lies. [00:07:31] This is how we can come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved, be saved from confusion and death. [00:07:47] Now, angels, angels have already been through this. [00:07:52] There was a battle in heaven. There was a rebellion early on, right before Adam and Eve's rebellion, another rebellion happened. [00:08:04] Satan. [00:08:05] That name means accuser. [00:08:09] He rebelled against God and rejected Goddesse became the father of lies. [00:08:20] But the angels are. Now they're set. Okay? It's not like the devil's going to become good, and good angels are going to become bad. All of that is set in place. [00:08:35] So angels, they see things more clearly than we do. Angel means messenger. Angelas is where that word, it's a greek word, okay. But the hebrew word also means messenger. They're messengers of God and servants of God, and they do God's will. They do God's bidding. [00:08:56] They're spiritual beings. So all of this, like the battle that's going on by the hosts of God. Hosts means armies, right? God has armies. God and his armies through which he works. [00:09:11] Everything's clear to them in a way that it's not necessarily clear to us. [00:09:17] They see what's going on, and we. [00:09:21] Well, we walk by faith and not by sight. [00:09:27] Do you think about God's angels and what they do for you in this battle that's above our heads, that's kind of beyond our easy sight, the battle in which we engage by faith. Do you think about their work, what they do for you? [00:09:47] I hear stories from people about times when they saw an angel or were rescued by an angel. Often. One time somebody said, I was driving along in the mountains, and a deer jumped right in front of the car, and I saw, you know, hands move the deer, that kind of thing. And it's like this feeling, like, wow, this. I would have died. And I was saved. You know, that's. I'm not. You know, I wasn't there. [00:10:16] But I don't discount it, right? Like, God works through his angels to provide sure physical protection. Like, does the devil want to hurt you physically? [00:10:27] He wanted to hurt job physically, right? [00:10:33] Really? He wanted to hurt job spiritually. And then that was kind of the reason for the physical temptation. [00:10:41] So just to back up in the book of Job, it begins with this scene where the devil comes to God, and he says, hey, God says, check out job. [00:10:52] You see how he's faithful to me? He trusted me completely. And the devil says, well, that's just because he has everything. [00:11:00] So then he gets God to say that, yes, he can harm him and take things away from him. [00:11:08] And God uses this to strengthen job's faith. And the devil is wanting to tear job down. [00:11:16] So does the devil want to harm you physically? Sure. [00:11:23] His true aim is to destroy you spiritually. He just thinks that physical harm can get you there. Well, God does actually allow physical harm to us, right? In some cases. [00:11:39] But he's also protecting you, protecting you and me from things that we don't even know, things that we can't even imagine, not just on the personal level, but on a wider, like a national level, let's say, and I don't know, a group level, right. Bring it up a notch and, you know, pray, pray that God would protect us from, you know, evils of the past being repeated, like totalitarianism or things like that. Right. There have been some awful things. [00:12:12] God protects us from those things and allows some of those things to happen. [00:12:20] So the spiritual battle that's going on has to do with the physical, has to do with our physical lives and whatnot. [00:12:29] But it's up a level that is really the aim. That's the aim of the devil. It's the aim of God. What does God want for you? [00:12:38] Not just physical, material happiness, but more than that, God wants faith in him. He wants you to know him and to trust in him, just like he made us to do in the beginning. Adam and Eve should have looked to God and his word and trusted in him, but they gave that up for another word. And so the rest of the story is God bringing us back to himself, bringing our attention back to himself, so that he is governing us, so that we're his people, so that we're not confused, so that we're following God who made us. [00:13:17] Now Satan is more powerful than you and I. You and I by ourselves again, this is above our heads. This is a battle that we don't have power to fight. [00:13:32] That's why we need Christ. [00:13:34] Christ came, the conquering king, and defeated the devil. [00:13:40] And he gives you and me the power, like power over the devil, power to tread on serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. [00:13:52] How does he do that? [00:13:55] He himself comes and dwells in us. He himself unites us to himself by faith and gives us everything that he has. [00:14:04] So we see him exalted with the name that's above all names. [00:14:09] Why? For us. For us and for our salvation. For our sake. Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, has all power and authority. Paul says in Ephesians two that he's seated us, the heavenly places with Christ. [00:14:26] We are elevated above the devil and all the power of the enemy. Nothing shall hurt us, not because of anything that we can get for ourselves or possess apart from Christ, but simply because we are in Christ. [00:14:45] See, if we take this spiritual battle for granted and think that we now are fine and forget about Christ, then we fall into, well, pride and the original sin of turning somewhere else than God and trusting in something else than in God. So Jesus gives this warning to the 72 disciples. He sent out the 72 disciples, and they were casting out demons. They come back rejoicing, saying, lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. You see, they remember, hey, this is not us. This is Christ. That's good. But Jesus adds an additional warning. He says, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you. Right. That by itself isn't enough. But rejoice that your names are written in heaven. You could even say, written in heaven. [00:15:43] What does that refer to? [00:15:45] First thought might be like the book of life, right? Our names are written in the book of life, that kind of thing. [00:15:53] But I think this could even just be related to that passage that I just mentioned in Ephesians two. That we've been seated in the heavenly places with Christ, that we are in Christ. Or like Paul says, in Colossians three, our life is hidden with Goddess Christ. Right? Our life, our identity. That's what a name is. [00:16:14] It stands for our identity. Your names are written in heaven. [00:16:19] In Christ. [00:16:21] So St. Michael and all angels give thanks to God for the spiritual battle that happens. Apart from our planning or trying to make anything happen. It's just God graciously working through his servants to protect us and ultimately to strengthen our faith and to lead us to everlasting life. In Jesus name, amen.