Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

I. Your dual role as a citizen in the Kingdom of Heaven

II. There is another kingdom involved in our world!

A. The Kingdom of Darkness …to you God says:

(Ephesians 6:10-11) Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. (NIV)

III. Weapons of Spiritual Warfare

A) Two kinds of weapons

1) Defensive weapons:

2) Offensive weapons:

(Ephesians 6:10-13) Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 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. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes , you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand (firm).

(Ephesians 6:14-17) Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (NIV)

1) The girdle of truth (loose cloth)

2) The breastplate of righteousness (Jesus righteousness in you)

3) The shoes of readiness (straight ahead!)

4) The shield of faith (door) (shoulder to shoulder)

5) The helmet of salvation (protection for the mind)

6) The sword of the Spirit (slicing and dicing)

(Ephesians 6:17) Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. (NIV)

Where is there a noticeable lack of armor?____________ Why?_______

1) No retreat!…must never turn your back on satan

2) Fellow Christians have your back!…never break rank!

Isolated Christians = Defeated Christians

III. Taking the Offensive

A) Using the Sword;

The only piece of weaponry that we have discussed so far that is in any way offensive is the sword. But while the sword is offensive is has certain limitations in battle. What is there about the sword that limits its effectiveness in battle?

It is always hooked to the end of the soldiers arm. A soldier with a sword can’t affect the battle over there… It effect is limited to the immediate reach of the soldier…. He can only increase its reach by moving, himself to a new location.

For this reason our military isn’t using a lot of swords these days. We want to negatively affect the enemy long before we get into hand to hand combat.

There is a strategic reason why we use smart bombs to take out an enemy location before we ever arrive there on the ground.

It’s too bad the Christian’s armor doesn’t include smart bombs that we can release from a distance and effect the battle field even before we arrive…isn’t it?…..

…or could it be???

B) More than a sword…?

According to:

(2 Corinthians 10:4) … The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (fortresses). (NIV) (10-4?)

If our enemy is operating out of strongholds how will we take his fortresses with a hand sword? If only we had smart bombs to lob into his strongholds to take out his power before we ever got into hand to hand combat….

As long as satan keeps the church of Jesus in a defensive posture, we may hold our own in battle, but we will never win the war?

We have an eternal obligation, if we are going to impact this world for righteousness, to move from defensive self-protection to an attack position!

The mandates Jesus gave at the end of his earthly ministry do not sound like he is leaving us just to ward off the arrows of satan…He had more in mind:

(Matthew 16:18) And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against it. (TLB)

(Matthew 16:18) "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. (NKJV)

Do you see how opposite this is to some views of fighting the evil one…

Some see the church as hiding behind our gates holding off satan as he attempts to knock them down… this suggest that satan is behind gates holding out defensively against the church and the gates he is hiding behind will not stand against an attacking church! Jesus adds:

(Matthew 16:19) "And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (NKJV)

Let’s try another:

(Matthew 28:18-19) And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (NKJV)

What is therefore, therefore? Because all power has been given to me…. Therefore you go and exercise my power, snatching souls from satan’s bondage.

(2 Corinthians 2:14) Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. (NKJV)

O.K….Let’s regroup:….

(Ephesians 6:12) For we are not fighting (wrestling) against people made of flesh and blood, but against persons without bodies, the evil rulers of the unseen world, those mighty satanic beings, and great evil princes of darkness who rule this world; and against huge numbers of wicked spirits in the spirit world. (TLB)

You’re not doing all that with a sword in your hand… even if that sword is the Word of God. What is another weapon…What is the smart bomb in the Christians arsenal that we can use to take out satan’s strongholds? How can we blow the gates of hell off their hinges instead of waiting for satan to show up at our gates.

We didn’t finish reading the Ephesians 6 passage…. There is another very important sentence right after the list of the armor we are supposed to put on. You can’t cut it off from the passage. Some do… they don’t understand that in this context, it is critical. It reads like this:

(Ephesians 6:18) And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. (NIV)

C) God’s Smart Bomb of Prayer

Prayer is like an intercontinental ballistic missile! It can be launched from one place, directed by an advanced guidance system to a target in a completely different place to destroy an assigned target with absolute precision.

The targets we are destroying are these strongholds of satan; in others as far away as halfway around the world, or as close as right inside of our own selves.

Satan has no authority to have strongholds anywhere…

(Colossians 2:13-15) When you were dead in your sins…. God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins… And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (NIV)

(Colossians 1:12-14) … For he (God) has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (NIV)

Unfortunately, in most of us, with all this power of heaven at our disposal, all satan has to do to build a stronghold in us is to play with our minds and convince us that we are powerless to withstand his temptations. If he can get you to believe that, he can set out to bury a wedge of sin in your life that will infect until it becomes an abscess, full of putrid sinful puss, and low and behold you, a child of God; you who’s Savior defeated satan on the cross, have in your life a stronghold of satan that going to trip you up repeatedly until it is cut out.

You have a task to do:

(Ephesians 6:18) And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. (NIV)

You are to be sending these intercontinental ballistic missile of prayer! Launching from your private place of prayer, directed by an advanced guidance system to a target in a completely different place to destroy an assigned target with absolute precision!

We saw this in action a few weeks ago in the example from Daniel in the Old Testament. Let me give you a New Testament example:

(Acts 12:1-6) Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.

… Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. (NKJV)

Oh my…satan is winning…the sky is falling.. we must run and tell the king!

(Acts 12:8-11) Then the angel said to him, "Put on your clothes and sandals." And Peter did so. "Wrap your cloak around you and follow me," the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.

They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself (dude!), and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, "Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating." (NIV)

Look at the damage this intercontinental ballistic missile of prayer did:

(Acts 12:19-23) After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while. He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. Having secured the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king's country for their food supply. On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. They shouted, "This is the voice of a god, not of a man." Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. (NIV)