Spiritual Warfare - Lesson 15

Dr. Gerry Breshears
Spiritual Warfare
th251-15
Accounts in Luke and Acts
Lesson Transcript

Let's look at some 'huh' passages. My response to Bible stories is one of two things, it's "What?" or "Huh." And these are halfway in between the two. Well, Luke 22, end of Jesus' ministry. He's headed to the Passover, Festival of Unleavened Bread, it was approaching and there the bad guys are looking for a way to get rid of Jesus to solidate. But then Luke 22:3 says, "Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve and he went to the chief priest, one in the Temple Guard, and discussed with him how he might betray Jesus. They were delighted and agreed to give him money. He consented and watched for an opportunity to hand him over." Luke presents this very briefly.

If you look in John 13, at the Last Supper, "And Jesus says, one of you is going to betray me," and the disciples, "What? Who is it? Could it be me?" And the answer to there is no, but then he says, "The one I dip the bread and hand it to," of course dipping bread and handing it too is common in the Passover meal. And he dips the bread and hands it to Judas and he says, "What you're about to do, do quickly," and it says, "and Satan entered him at that point." Luke says, just very simply, "Satan entered Judas," and talks about the negotiations to betray Jesus. Now, there are all kinds of things that are enigmas here. Why is Judas betraying Jesus? What does he think that he's going to win? Because when he realizes something is not accomplished, then he's tearful, repenting, throwing the money back to the guys who were mocking him and that's what... What is he trying to accomplish by betraying Jesus? I don't know.

The question with that, when Satan enters Judas, why doesn't Jesus kick Satan out of Judas if he's a disciple? And somehow Satan using Judas to betray is something that's prophesied in the Old Testament, and this is the way God is going to accomplish his purpose for the crucifixion Messiah, but is clear, full of like, What in the world, what is Judas trying to accomplish? What is it that Satan taps into to partner with Judas? It's a strange picture there, and we don't get any explanations except Satan's hatred of Jesus and his complete commitment to destroy the works of Jesus using anything he can. But if any of you get an idea of why he did that and want to send me a note, I'd be glad to have it.

But that's not the only one that's strange. When you come down here in the story a little bit further down in verse 31, Simon, he says, "Satan asks you to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail and when you've turned back, strengthen your brothers." Then he says, "Lord, I'm ready to go to prison and to death," and Jesus said, "You're going to die me three times before morning." John takes it a little bit further and there's a whole story there I'd love to talk about, but it doesn't relate so much here.

But that picture, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. Like what is that about? Now in these kinds of things, what we do is we hyperlink around and where I hyperlink here from this story, Satan has demanded you sift you as wheat, I hyperlink back to Job. In that strange story, Satan puts a bet with God. "I bet you if I ding him, he'll deny you to your face." God says, "Yes," and he lets him do anything he wants to do and Satan chooses to kill his cattle, kill his kids, destroys his homes, that kind of thing and Job stays faithful.

God says, "Well," and then Satan comes back and says it again. "Well, if you let me touch him, he'll deny you in your face," and God accepts that again. I hate the Book of Job. Bizarre weird thing. I mean I really do. It tells you how to suffer well, that's the point and how to respond when God shows up. It's brilliant at that level. But what's this about? God says yes to Satan. Again, "You can touch him, but you can't kill him," and he chooses to give him boils. Then I asked myself, Satan can do anything he wants to do within the limits god sets and he chooses to kill his kids and destroy the house and when he gets a little more room, he gives him boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

And the answer to why Satan did what he did to Job, if you go back Deuteronomy 28, the blessings and curses, "If you obey, I'll give you these blessings. If you disobey, I'll give you these curses." Satan knows that passage and what he does is exactly what God says, "I will do to curse you if you disobey me, I'll destroy your kids. I'll destroy your homes or your homes will be destroyed." In Deuteronomy 35 I think it is, it's cut and paste. "You will have loathsome boils from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. That's why Satan did what he did. He's responding to Deuteronomy 28 and making it look like God is punishing Job and he's not.

He's counterfeiting and make it look like God is punishing Job. And that's what the friends pick up on. Well, Deuteronomy 28 says, this happens. It's sin, repent of your sin and it'll all be fine. Their interpretation of the Bible is correct, but their application is wrong. They assume that's what's happening in their explanations. I hate the book. You can look it on your own.

This is what's happening here. Jesus says to Peter, Satan is asking to Job you. He's asking you sift you like wheat. He will shake you violently is what that means. Now, it doesn't say that God gave him permission in so many words, but what he does say, I've prayed for you that your faith will not fail. That's an intercessory work of Jesus. And then when you've turn back, strengthen your brothers, and that's what happens.

Which brings, okay, Satan enters Judas and does his thing. Is Satan wanting to enter Peter? I mean it's just like this. But Satan has demanded, Satan has asked to shake you violently, to Job you. And Jesus doesn't say God gave permission. He just said, I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail. And Peter's faith doesn't fail. He follows Jesus into the courtyard of the temple of Caiaphas, the high priest. He's in the house of Caiaphas, the high priest when he says to a servant girl, I don't know who he is. And when Jesus catches his eye in Luke, he weeps bitterly when he realizes what he's done. Peter is a faithful disciple. He doesn't get all right, but he handles when he gets wrong well, I think.

But this I think is applicable to us. Is there a time when Satan wants to sift us like wheat? And the point is here is that it may happen, we can be attacked. I think that's true. If Jesus can be attacked, we certainly can be. If Peter can be attacked, we certainly can be. But the point is Jesus is praying for us with the goal that are faith will not fail. That's the foundation is the triumph of the cross, the continuing work of Messiah Jesus, to pray for us that even our sins will be forgiven and taken care of because of the intercessory work of Jesus. And then when we turn back, strengthen our brothers. It's a fascinating lesson, fascinating lesson, and I'm much intrigued by it.

Another thing I'm intrigued by, I'm intrigued by a lot of things, but in these kinds of stories, act 16, it begins with the idea that Paul wants to go one direction. Spirit says, no, you cannot go to Asia. So they come to the board of Mysia, want to go Bethania, and the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to go. And then you get the Macedonian vision. So they go to Macedonia. It's a good thing when God calls you somewhere go, they find Lydia and she's converted it's an amazing story.

But then you get this really strange picture. Acts 16, once we're going to a place of prayer, we're met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for owners by fortune-telling. So this demonic spirit gives her the ability to predict the future well enough that people are paying a lot of money for her advice. Can demons predict the future? Here it is. They do. Are demons omniscient, no, but demons know a lot and somehow she's able to predict the future effectively. Well, demons can't do this they're not omniscient, they're doing something. Demons have a lot of power and I think we tend to diminish that they're predicting the future and she's following Paul and the rest of us. Again, demons are attracted or demons are, I don't know what you say, stimulated. They hate being looked at in the name of Jesus. They hate the presence of him. So she's with them following these men are servants in the most high God and telling you the way to be saved.

Now I would think that Paul would get [inaudible 00:10:28] phone and take a video of this and post it on Instagram or something, come and see what this woman is talking about. He doesn't do that. I mean be more than slightly sarcastic, of course. She kept this up for many days. And finally Paul became so annoyed, they'd turned to him, said to the spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come outer. And the moment it left, and then she couldn't predict the future bad for business, and they ended up wanting to get him killed. What a weird story. Why does Paul wait many days to kick the demon out and finally out of just pure annoyance he does it. It's really strange. And she's saying, these men are here to show you the way of salvation. Why does he shut her up? Why didn't he feature her or something?

Well, the base idea is this good message, wrong mouth. So she's telling the truth. It seems that he's okay, but when she wouldn't shut up, he finally goes after the spirit and kicks it out. And again, simple command in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out and it does. So it's just the very simple command and the demon is gone. So it seems to me that in the ruin of business, it seems to me to be a hint that Satan often works through economic systems and the systems of the world are actually under influence and control. We find this in revelation with beast, the false prophet and the Babylon. The beast there I think is the economic monster and control there in Revelation.

Paul doesn't take on governments here. Paul does not tear down the government at all, but he releases trapped people. It has a big impact on the economy of the system, but I don't think he's taking on the system itself. And this comes into our relationship with the economic systems around us and the communities of government. It seems to me our goal is not to save or destroy economic systems. Our goal is to release trapped people and form communities of the king here in the midst of that. And that's a current thing, what's our relationship to the state?

Let me show one other one. Acts 19 following some of these same ideas. Acts 19, starting down at verse eight. Paul is here and for two years here in Ephesus, he is preaching and arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God and having impact. In verse 11, God extraordinary miracle through Paul, but even handkerchiefs in April did touch him, was taking the sick and their illness was cured and evil spirits left them. And you get this funny stories of Jewish exorcists. And what exorcists do is they release you from this demon by going to higher order demon that can kick out the lower order demon, I think. And they're looking for magic names and magic rituals that work in the dark side. And they see Paul using the name of Jesus. Oh, it's a new name. So I say we will use the name of Jesus as a magic phrase. And guess what? It doesn't work. And it's really funny because they get beat up really badly and they run away naked and bleeding. I laugh at that.

But what happens here is when these people are released from tyranny, the worship of Artemis, here, they verse 18, many of those who believe now came openly confessed what they had done. A number of practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. And the value is huge. And this way the Lord spread widely and grew in power. Seems to me what's happening here is people who are trapped in the worship of Artemis and people who have evil spirits, when they're released from that tyranny, they get rid of the magic arts that they used to use, the power of the demons that hurts business. And then you get this riot come up, the silversmith named Demetrius who made silver shrines and sold them and was making a lot of money, was going out of business. So he got a riot going.

Gosh, that's very similar to what's happening today, surprise. There's a danger our trade to lose a good name, but the temple of great goddess heart will be discredited. The goddess herself will be worshiped. The Asia will be derobed of her divine majesty. And they're appealing to Artemis because that's a big thing in their time. And they go on a riot and they're wanting to kill a whole bunch of people. I mean, the story's there, you can read that.

But what happens here is verse 35, the city clerk, now by this read city manager in our current economies, this is a high up official of the city of Ephesus, one of the four great cities of the Old Testament, or of the Greco-Roman... This city clerk quieted the crowd and he already said, fellow Ephesians, doesn't all the world know the Ephesus of the guardian, the great temple of great Artemis? And if her image would fell from heaven? So she, Artemis is the God of the city the way Baal and [inaudible 00:16:17] are the God of Canaan and [inaudible 00:16:18] is the God of Emon and so on. These facts are undeniable. So that you ought to call down and not do anything rash.

Now here's the thing, you have brought these men here and charged them of bad stuff. And then he says this, they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. Now this to me is significant because they are releasing people from demonic possession. Evil spirits are leaving the people. They are releasing people from the worship of Artemis to come over to the worship of Jesus, which is bad for Artemis' business. But what they're not doing is they're not praying down Artemis. They're not taking her on directly, which I think is a territorial higher level God of the city like [inaudible 00:17:20]. In those we've seen in the Old Testament, he's not trying to pray down or tear down Artemis directly. He is releasing people from tyranny, demons.

And the reason this is significant is there's people today that are doing what's called strategic warfare prayer. And the argument is, before I can do evangelism in my home city, Portland, I have to pray down the Prince of Portland, the regional deity of Portland. And I assume there is such a thing. And I don't think we have to do that. I don't think our job is to go after the higher level spiritual beings. I don't think we have to go after Marduke if I lived in Babylon, I wouldn't go after Artemis if I lived in Ephesus, I wouldn't go after Kali if they lived in a certain region of India. But I would release people from demon possession, demon oppression, and I would lead people to stop the worship of Kali as an example, and come to the worship of Jesus, which may be bad for the Kali idol business.

But I'm not going directly against the system of the city. I'm not going directly against the God of the city. And again, this has all kinds of implications. I'm not going to draw out much more here. Excepts [inaudible 00:18:46] phrases become very common in the past, oh, 15, 20 years I heard it first through NT Wright and his phrase is, if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. And I don't think that's the right phrase. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not, I think if we said it properly, if Jesus the Lord, then Satan is not. That is the spiritual power behind the king. If Jesus the Lord, then in his case, maybe Caesar, Jupiter is not, or Apollo, whatever his personal God would be, I don't think our thing is Caesar is not Lord. The thing is that Satan is not Lord or parallel, I am not Lord. I think that'd be better than say if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. I don't think that's the message of Acts and I don't think it's the measure. And Jesus never takes on the Roman powers directly.

Jesus is said innocent of trying to overthrow the government, though he's charged with that. Paul twice is declared innocent by high powers Acts 17 and Acts 26. I don't think he's trying to tear down the Roman system. He's undercutting it by taking away the worship of their gods, but he's not tearing down the God. I don't think we need to be doing strategic warfare prayer, though some really powerful people are arguing that we must tear down those princes. But I don't see that happening here. Our job is to release people who've been taken captive to the bidding of Satan and his powers, and that's what he does. So this city clerk, they've neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess, I think is a pattern.

Going through a couple more passages, if I go to two Timothy, a very, very personal letter to Timothy, the younger man, Timothy 2:22. He says, flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteous faith, love and peace along those who call out the Lord with a pure heart. And man is his next verse appropriate. Do not have anything to do with the foolish and stupid argument that just produced quarrels.

Please, there are stupid arguments over super lapsarianism, or you could put in whatever you want that just so tie up our churches, we end up fighting with these [inaudible 00:21:24] have nothing to do with them. Now, of course, what counts as foolish and stupid arguments varies. But I think we spend a lot of time on social media arguing things we ought not argue about. Lord, servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to everyone able to teach and not resentful. Well, what about the opponents, Paul? What about the opponents? I mean, they're attacking me. Well, he answers that, opponents must be gently instructed. Huh? That's not... In hope that God will grant them repentance leading to [inaudible 00:22:00] to the truth. And in verse 26 is really interesting and that their hope is they'll come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil who's taken them captive to do his will.

Are these believers he's talking about? I think they are because in Titus 3 when he's talking about heretic costs, there, warned them once, warned them twice, kick him out. Here he's saying, instruct them gently so that they can escape the trap of the devil who's taken them captive to do his will. I think believers can be taken captive by Satan or demonic powers to do their will. He doesn't have the authority to do that. But we can give in to his lies and I'll talk about how to escape that in the next section of the course. But I think this is what that's talking about. I think that believers can be taken captive to do the will of the devil. And that's the deception. That's the false gospels of Galatians that we can fall prey to through deception, and that's what Paul's asking to do. So I think we can be taken captive.

Now, the whole question is can a demon be inside us or not? I'll postpone that one for a bit, but that's a related question. Those are powerful passages and very, very enigmatic. I think that there's a lot to be said here in terms of when we're dealing with demonic powers, our goal is to release people from their domination, to release people from their attachments, release people from possession. If that's the case, we want to deal that in demons, which are lower levels, personal malignant things that attack us directly and personally.

There are higher level spiritual powers, the territorial spirits, Artemis and [inaudible 00:24:02] and all them. I don't think our wars against them directly, our wars against them indirectly by bringing the worshipers to leave the worship of Artemis and come to the worship of Jesus and form kingdom communities of outposts in a place where Artemis is still the princess of that world, of that city. I think that's happening today.

And I don't think our goal is to tear down economic systems. I don't think we have to rescue economic systems from demonic control. Again, that's my philosophy of things. That's where I come out and I just present this to you as issues to think through in this whole issue of warfare because they're very relevant in Paul's day and they're very relevant in our day as well. So that's what I think lot to ponder. Stay tuned.

More just to comment than anything else. I'm trying to remember where he says this, but Gordon Fee his commentary on the pastorals, and I think it's in reference to what the young widows were doing in first Timothy 5, not the second Timothy passage. He argues that they're dealing with magical incantations. So if he's correct, then it's not just senseless and foolish talk, they were actually involved in magic, which would be demonic in that case, I think. And this was part of the problem in Ephesus, is that they were fooling around with demons and they shouldn't have been fooling around with them at all. So that adds an interesting extra dimension to his prohibition to stop doing what you're doing.

He does talk about genealogies and that sort of stuff. Taking that on specifically, I'd not run across that idea before, but I'm much intrigued if we know that Artemis is a huge power and the worship of Artemis continued to be a problem there in Ephesus. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if these people were involved doing magical incantations trying to do some sort of synchronistic worship of Jesus. And that's a huge, huge problem. That's an interesting idea. I never thought about that one before, that what they're doing is actually bringing in their Artemis stuff into the church and causing trouble with that. I guess I should go read Gordon Fee's commentary. I mean, he's with the Lord now. He understands all kinds of stuff. But what a great man of God.