Untitled Sermon (2)

Message:

Real freedom is choosing who you’re going to serve. Which side of the fight do you want to

be on? This is the reality we must deal with from here on out; there’s no going back. There

is no neutral ground, no spiritual Switzerland in this war.

You must choose to fight for God and His Kingdom or Satan and the kingdom of darkness.

This is the heart of “spiritual warfare.” In our time together, we’re going to pull back the

curtain a bit more to explain in detail how these two kingdoms fight for influence and

control over our lives. Most of all, we’re going to finish this session with a clear

understanding of how to properly wage spiritual warfare, and I think the answer will be

different than what you expect.

Ephesians 6:12

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the

authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in

the heavenly realms.”

I’m going to refer to these spiritual forces, both good and evil, and the “heavenly realms”

this verse mentions, as the “unseen realm.” So in other words, our fight in this life isn’t

against the human beings around us that we can see. Our fight is against the fallen, wicked

unseen realm.

(video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1rai6WoOJU&t=306s 6 min)

This video opens our eyes to see reality in the same way the people of the Bible did: With a

supernatural, spiritual worldview. Here in America, many of us have been taught that the

material world is pretty much all that there is – except for God, the devil, and a few demons

if you’re into witchcraft or something like that. But the reality is, there is an entire kingdom

of darkness, which has structure and hierarchy just like the Kingdom of God. This dark

kingdom is out to control us, to control our campuses, control our cities, and control all of

culture – so that they can lead the whole world into sin and darkness forever.

Just like any athlete who goes up against an opponent they haven’t studied really doesn’t

stand a chance, or any military leader must gather intelligence on his opponent, we too

must understand how our enemy wages war.

All of humanity were originally intended to live as citizens in the Kingdom of God. God

wanted to share his family business with us, allowing us to exercise authority and care for

creation just like He does. When Adam and Eve rebelled, they rejected their citizenship

with God and instead became slaves in the kingdom of darkness. You and I today were born

into that very same slavery, that wicked and depraved citizenship. This means that we will

by default do evil, selfish things because we’re allegiant to the kingdom of darkness. As we

live this out and sin more and more, our evil spiritual masters empower us to be even more

wicked and evil and destructive. This is their mission. This is where we are trapped, apart

from the rescuing work of Jesus. Period. As I said at the start, there is no neutral ground.

If we haven’t actively chosen to follow King Jesus, then we have implicitly chosen to follow

the kingdom of darkness. (repeat)

I believe that each and every one of us here today want to exchange our citizenship as a

slave in the kingdom of darkness for that of a son and a warrior in the Kingdom of God. And

I think most of us in this room have made that exchange, we’ve repented to King Jesus and

accepted His new life for us. If you’ve made it this far through Men’s Encounter and haven’t

made that exchange yet, that first step of repentance and faith in Jesus, then consider this

my appeal for you to do so immediately.

I needed that same appeal not long ago. When I was about to start my Freshman year at the

University of Kansas, I was forced to deal with the poor and broken state of my relationship

with God. I’d grown up learning about God, talking about God, singing about God, but I’d

never committed to letting God actually be the leader of my life. He wasn’t my Lord or my

Commander in Chief; I was still an arrogant young guy calling all the shots. I was a slave in

the kingdom of darkness. I didn’t realize this until God let me fall on my ass into a pile of my

own consequences. (Story about alcohol abuse and broken relationships all coming to a

head at the same time: losing scholarships, hurting my parents in the midst of the divorce,

having a record, almost getting people and myself killed, etc.) But God gave me an option.

He gave me a way out! He called me to something higher and greater and more demanding

than any “Christian experience” I’d had up to that day. And I said hell yes, I enlisted, I

transferred my citizenship to the Kingdom of God and committed to fighting for other men

and women around me to do the same.

So how did I begin effectively engaging in spiritual warfare? How does this verse in

Ephesians 6 and the Bible Project video and what we’re talking about all say we are to

fight?

This is where Jesus’ life and what He accomplishes becomes so important, so crucial. And

not just His death on the cross and resurrection again. We saw that in the video; Jesus

death and resurrection was the decisive victory over the kingdom of darkness. But the fight

isn’t over for us yet. Jesus’ life on this earth was a prototype of what God wanted from all

humanity – how to follow God and fight back against the fallen unseen realm. Jesus saw the

unseen realm at work around Him, and He cared for and ministered to and moved towards

people – broken and messy people, successful people, even people who were opposing

Him.

1. Jesus was called a friend of drunks and sinners. He wasn’t afraid or put off by rough

and difficult and marginalized people of His day. He frequently ate and talked with

prostitutes, drunks, and other lowlifes. He built real friendships with them, had

compassion on them, and He met both their ultimate need for a relationship with

Him and their other needs here in this life. This cost him a lot of prestige and respect

from the elites of His day, but Jesus didn’t care. He knew that He was fighting for

these men and women’s freedom from the kingdom of darkness.

2. Jesus also was unintimidated by the powerful and successful people in his

community. He spoke boldly and asked challenging questions of Roman military

officials, of Jews turned traitors who served the agenda of the Roman occupation,

and wealthy landowners and businessmen who gave Him an audience. Jesus didn’t

pander to or shrink back from any of these powerful, national stakeholders. He saw

them as normal people who needed to submit to the Kingdom of God and be set free

from the spiritual slavery their wealth and success prevented them from seeing.

3. This one may be the hardest example to follow ourselves, but Jesus even waged

spiritual warfare by choosing to love his enemies. Now, with this many men in one

room, I know we’re going to be working with a few different assumptions of what

“loving our enemies” means. In our country’s cultural and historical moment, we’ve

been force fed a few wrong and even dangerous definitions of “loving our neighbors

and our enemies.” Here’s where we must start: Our only true enemies are the fallen,

wicked spiritual beings that Ephesians 6:12 talks about. Other human beings are

never our ultimate enemies. They may oppose us, argue with us, fight us, or even

seek to harm or kill us. But even in those moments, these people are the slaves of

their unseen spiritual masters. How did Jesus respond? He chose forgiveness over

revenge. He didn’t fight back against the Roman soldiers who took Him into custody,

and he even healed one of them when His disciple Peter chopped the dude’s ear off.

But Jesus wasn’t a pacifist! Like He said to Pontius Pilate during His trail, Jesus had

to just say the word and a whole legion of angles would come and fight for His

release! Jesus didn’t compromise on the truth of His message and the authority of

the Kingdom of God when He met resistance – even armed resistance. He lived by

the truth, He continued to declare the truth, and He sacrificed His own life for those

who loved Him and those who were still His enemies.

We don’t win this war by attacking people who think or believe differently than us, nor do

we win it by somehow trying to attack the unseen spiritual realm directly. We win by

sharing the full gospel of Jesus with everyone around us. We win by helping each and every

person that we can to follow King Jesus. We win by choosing to forgive, to have

compassion, to serve, to sacrifice, to defend, to challenge injustice and oppression, to speak

truth boldly, to put aside our own preferences or comfort or plans for our lives, and

ultimately to move towards the people God has placed around us with faith and love and a

commitment to recruiting them to join the Kingdom of God with us. Just like the disciples

experienced in Acts 2, we all must ask God to fill us with His Holy Spirit and send us out

onto our campuses and into our cities and our nation to tell people about King Jesus and

demonstrate the power of God – that God’s Spirit within us is now actively pushing back

the forces of hell.

So now, we’re going to open up the crosses again. This time, take a moment to speak with

God about your perspective of spiritual warfare prior to our time together tonight. Ask Him

what you need to repent of: It could be passivity, selfishness, a materialistic view of life,

fear, aggression, a lack of love for others, pride, the list could be pretty long. Once you’ve

had a minute to think and pray about it, get up here and write down whatever has kept you

out of the fight until now. Nail it up there, repent, and when you get back home from

Empower tomorrow consider yourself fully commissioned members of the army of the

Lord. Move towards the broken and messy, the successful, those who oppose you, and

frankly anybody whom God has placed in your life and fight to see them set free! The

crosses are open.