The Powers That Be (Ephesians 6:10-12)

Introduction

A. Preliminaries

Welcome: Please turn with me in your Bibles to the sixth Chapter of Ephesians, beginning in verse 5. Our text this morning will be verses 10 thru 12 of Chapter 6, which you can find near the top of page 1163 in the navy blue Bibles found in your pews.

Ephesians 6:10–12 (ESV)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

B. A Word of Caution

We continue this morning our reflection together on the topic of Spiritual Warfare, and on Ephesians 6:10-12, and we will give special attention to verse 12 today.

Spiritual Warfare is a complex topic and part of the reason for that is that it has become something of a field unto itself in the last couple of centuries. Part of the reason for that is that when it comes to the spiritual realm and things like angels and demons, the the Lord has seen fit to tell us only what we need to know rather than everything that we want to know. And when there is a gap between what God has told us and all that we would like to know, Christian publishers often see an opportunity to make a lot of money.

So spiritual warfare has become its own genre. Everything from what motivates demons to what angelic help and assistance looks like to the function of prayer in spiritual warfare. Some of it quite helpful. And some of it descends into superstition.

I don’t mean that belief in angels and demons is superstition. That’s as real as oxygen. Belief in the spiritual realm is not superstition. Superstition is when we start dabbling in special rituals and magic words to try to control such things.

You have more than a few authors in the Spiritual Warfare genre saying that the reason why your prayers are not getting answered is that you’re not praying after the right style, with all the right emotions, and with the right kinds of magic words. So, according to these authors, if you want real spiritual renewal and help from heaven, you have to pray these kinds of words in these kinds of ways at these times. You have to use this form of address, you have to name these kinds of names. And you have to make sure all your prayers are detailed to the highest point otherwise that’s not a real prayer in faith.

Such people should learn humility and re-read the Lord’s Prayer, which comes straight from the lips of Jesus and is alarmingly broad and general in its content and details. In fact, I dare say that many authors in the Spiritual Warfare genre might—in their unguarded moments—criticize the Lord’s Prayer as boring and lacking in faith.

And a lot of prayer meetings have fizzled out and died because God’s people have made their special prayer styles that they read about in a book a requirement for authentic prayer.

So there are at least three things I want you to see in verse 12 of our passage this morning. That our enemies are

1. Not Flesh and Blood 2. True Authorities 3. No Match for Christ

I. Not Flesh and Blood

Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

A. Our Only Foe?

I addressed this a bit last Sunday, but want to give it a bit more attention this morning.

Paul’s point here is that there is a fight going on in the spiritual realm, with all manner of demonic powers arrayed against us.

New Testament scholar Peter O’Brien observes:

“Many contemporary Christians seem to be unaware that there is a war in progress, or if they are, they consider it to be fought at a purely human level, and therefore earthly resources will be entirely adequate for conducting the campaigns.” Peter T. O’Brien The Letter to the Ephesians (Pillar NTC) (1999, pg. 470).

This is the ultimate fight.

And it is kind of delightful that Paul puts this right after his teaching on earthly vocations. We go from wives to husbands to children to fathers to servants and masters to warfare and demons.

Just in case you had any illusions that the work before us was only some earthly relationship maintenance, vitally important as that is.

Now one thing I want us all to be very clear on, because it will affect our work and life together here is that Paul is not saying that we have no sort of fight with flesh and blood, or that our conflicts involve no human adversaries.

Paul has already pointed out that we can be tempted by human beings

Paul teaches that God has equipped the saints with sound teaching,

Ephesians 4:14 (ESV)

so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Human cunning and human scheming and false teaching propagated by humans is part of the conflict here.

Paul’s point is not that we never have fights with flesh and blood. Paul’s point is that the ultimate opposition that we face is not (and never has been) a matter of merely flesh and blood. As I said last Sunday, our fight is against evil and wickedness, but we do not fight with vague and abstract concepts of disembodied evil.

B. Society or Satan?

One of the major debates on this passage in New Testament scholarship has been supernaturalism on one side and what I’m going to call a kind of structuralism or societal-ism on the other.

So one side says that this passage is about personal demonic intelligences. The other says that “rulers and authorities” is a way of talking about structures in society. This idea has become popular especially in the latter half of the 20th Century. After the horrors of two world wars, a holocaust, and two atomic bombs, it became popular in New Testament Scholarship to say that Paul was not so much talking about demons as he was about power structures in human society. Because the second half of the 20th century is marked, philosophically, by an absolute obsession with power and who wields it. An obsession that is still with us today.

So the thinking was that our real battle is not against flesh and blood (by which was meant individuals) but rather, social systems, political systems, economic systems, and judicial systems. And this just happened to be perfectly congruent with the rise of Critical Theory that was coming about in the academy at the same time.

And so what happened, was a sort of conservative and liberal divide that boiled down to “It’s either demons or it’s systems.”

To which I think we should just laugh and say “This is yet further proof that the demons are far more clever than we give them credit for.”

To be crystal clear, this passage is about demons. But it is hardly a secret that Satan and all his hoards seem quite happy to use human systems as it serves their purposes.

Paul writes the Thessalonian Christians of his travel plans...

1 Thessalonians 2:18 (ESV)

because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us.

The Apostle John wrote to the Christians in Smyrna in the first century, and he told them

Revelation 2:10 (ESV)

Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

The devil is about to put some of you in prison. Wait, I thought this corrupt political system was about to throw us in prison. And the answer to that is “Uh huh.”

And I said earlier that Paul warns in Chapter 4 of Ephesians that part of our fight is with the false teachings of flesh-and-blood false teachers. And yet Paul tells Timothy

1 Timothy 4:1 (ESV)

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,

So does the false teaching come from men or from demons? Well, yes. But the men who are saying it are the only ones that can answer to correction, so we deal with them. So we recognize the true nature of the fight, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t be fighting the very human, terrestrial, earthly ways that the schemes of the devil play out.

So how is our enemy described? That’s the second point...

II. True Authorities

A. Rulers and Authorities

Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So you have four phrases here, four descriptive terms. You have

Rulers

Authorities

Cosmic Powers

Spiritual Forces of Evil

I am not convinced that Paul is giving us four distinct and separate categories here. Rather, these seem to be different terms that point to the same reality.

Remember that the devil is specifically mentioned in the previous verse (“…that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil). So it seems obvious that these powers and authorities and so on have a relationship to Satan. We are not really told what the relationship is, but the alliance seems obvious. It seems to be a united front. They have a common nature, a common objective, and a common method of attack.

And the first thing we can say about these demonic powers is that they have real power. When Satan offered to Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” if Jesus would worship him, that was an authentic offer.

And there does seem to be sufficient biblical evidence for the idea of a kind of delegated hierarchy of power and authority belonging to particular demonic entities. In Daniel 10, Daniel is visited by an angel who tells him that he was hindered by a demonic prince who ruled over the Kingdom of Persia for 21 days until the archangel Michael showed up to assist him.

Man, what do we do with that? We should probably make it a habit to imitate Daniel, who when he was told all that, said

Daniel 10:15 (ESV)

When he had spoken to me according to these words, I turned my face toward the ground and was mute.

Here is the point: There are real demons in the world today with real power and real authority. It would not bee too much of a stretch to say that certain demonic entities have been given power to terrorize Alexandria. To tempt Louisiana’s political leadership into continual corruption and cowardice. And to sow confusion over God’s design for men and women throughout our whole nation.

So that is rulers and authorities. Let’s talk about the next bit...

B. Cosmic Powers and Spiritual Forces

Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So next we have the “cosmic powers” literally the Greek term there is “the world-rulers.”

And it’s important to go back to our earlier point about practicing some humility here. This term “World-Rulers”—this is the only time it shows up in the whole New Testament. But in other 1st Century Greek literature it was a term used for the Greek gods. The pantheon of gods who had authority over different areas, right? Some had authority over the weather or the daylight or wine, or war. Some had authority over particular cities, do you remember what happened when Paul was in Ephesus and a riot started?

Acts 19:28 (ESV)

When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

So what do we do with this? Well, again, we are speaking somewhat speculatively here, but I want to offer you this: What if Greek mythology isn’t really quite mythology? What if Zeus isn’t made up?

What if Zeus was a demon, and we don’t know his real name. But for a time, men called him Zeus. And whatever that demonic principality’s name really was, we will probably never know, but he was happy to be Zeus for a while. He was a cosmic power over that present darkness. Past to us, but present to Paul.

Now immediately what I want to do after saying that is try to build a dam to keep us from drowning in the floodwaters of speculation. But it’s worth considering that perhaps when we study Greek mythology, we’re not just studying made up beings? Well now we’re not just studying Greek mythology, we’re studying some form of supernatural history.

Now that is speculative. That is an “I suppose.” We have to be very careful because there’s a whole field of study called Speculative Theology, where we go far beyond what the Bible says explicitly and we speculate about what might be.

And speculative theology is very inviting. What could be more enticing than gaining an understanding of the mysteries that God hasn’t told you about?

In fact, many of you know that in the 90’s there was a very popular work of fiction by a fellow named Frank Peretti and it was called This Present Darkness, using langauge from right here in verse 12. And it’s a fictional account of an ordinary American town but behind the curtain so to speak, the angels and demons are fighting it out.

It was a bestseller in the 90’s though I would be surprised if any of our young people have read it, it has not really continued to endure. But in its day, it shaped the whole concept of spiritual warfare for a generation, I think for good and for ill. But this is one of those areas where many of us get very driven to figure out more than what God has said about a thing. Such moments should call us all back to Deuteronomy 29:29

Deuteronomy 29:29 (ESV)

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

So I think one of the great benefits of exploring these things together is that we set our eyes on some important principles for warfare that God has given to us, one of those being “Know thy enemy.”

Not be obsessed with your enemy. But know that he and his hoards are real and crafty, and cunning, and truly having power, and likely hiding within mythologies, history books, paranormal terrors, and campfire stories.

But know most of all who your Warrior King is, and that he is not the least bit intimidated.

III. No Match for Christ

We must know that there is a fight. It’s invisible but so is carbon monoxide. The invisible can still destroy you. So we must be mindful that we are in a war.

So what can we know?

We are talking about demons here. Personal demonic intelligences.

What these rulers and authorities have in common is that they all really do have real authority and power.

What they also have in common is that their chief weapon is fear. Fear of them. Fear of your own future. Fear of your own present. Fear that following God in obedience might be far more costly than you thought. Fear that you might have to trust God and his promises more than the results of your own work. And most ultimately, the fear of death itself.

The author of the Book of Hebrews wrote to a people who were very afraid. They were facing persecution, loss of property, loss of life. It was very real, and very frightening, and to them he says

Hebrews 2:14 (ESV)

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

Anglican Apologist Michael Green, while writing about the powers and principalities in Ephesians 6, once observed that

Death is, accordingly, the supreme focus of these enemy forces. They smell of death. They revel in it. They spread it. From Michael Green, I Believe in Satan’s Downfall (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981, pg. 90). Quoted in O’ Brien, PNTC Ephesians, pgs.469-70.

The chief identifier of demonic work is that it revels in death, and we are in a cultural moment where death is metaphorically and literally worshipped.

Remember that when the people of the village want to kill the king, but can’t reach him in his high and elevated castle, the only thing they can do is burn him in effigy.

So it is in our present moment. When the embittered soul longs to kill God, and cannot kill him, it does the only thing it can do. It destroys whatever bears his image. Which is men and women. Boys and girls. Babies and infants. When you hate the king, but can’t touch the king, you burn down his image.

This is why the Church must be the clear and prophetic voice in our cultural moment, as our people and our land worship death.

It is also why we must live as clearly as we speak. Speak well of the glory of man and woman Christian, but then give your heart and your energy and your good attitude and your prayers to a marriage that proves it all to be true. Oh that the Lord would give us such health in our marriages and families and relationships—that the Lord would give us such delight in each other in fellowship, that the Lord would give us such humility before one another that the watching world sees and says “They must be lying. There’s no way that can be real.”

And let us never forget that one of the primary features of Christianity is that we preach a crucified God-Man who rose from the dead. In him our sins are forgiven, and we find ourselves living in the light that terrifies this present darkness.

A funeral is where Christians exercise sanity in an insane world. We grieve and we rejoice. We weep and we lift up thanks. There are tears and there is triumph.

So let us know our enemy. Let us be mindful of what God has said as well as what he has chosen not to say. Let us be mindful that the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers, and the forces of evil all have this in common: they revel in death, and they hate the Creator.

But do you know what else they have in common? Paul’s already covered it back in Chapter 1, when he said that God has blessed us...

Ephesians 1:19–21 (ESV)

...according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.

So if you wanted a way to categorize these demonic hoards, you might go with “forces of darkness.” You might also go with “servants of Satan.”

You might also go with “Those over whom Jesus Christ rules, and by whom He is not the least bit intimidated.” Today and in the age to come.

Finally, therefore, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. The Lord is our light and our salvation. Whom shall we fear?

In the name of Jesus, Amen.