The theme of today’s lesson is “There's a battle between good and evil and it's raging inside of me
There's a struggle, it's God and the devil It's love against the enemy” even if we don’t realize it... and the only way that we can be victorious in this war is to be on the right side and that right side is Jesus Christ.
This is about a war between “Good” and “Evil”, a war between the “Powers of Darkness” and the powers of Heaven......a battle between “Light” and “Darkness”. This war is about the eternal destiny of every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, from Adam to the last child that will be born before time ceases to exist as we know it.
Signs of this great battle for the souls of men are everywhere. All we have to do is look around and we can see many who have the scars of the battle. Many are wounded emotionally........... some are not able to cope with everyday life and its pressures. Some carry around scars of guilt and shame. Some carry a wounded spirit or a broken heart that sends them over the edge and makes them feel like life just isn’t worth living.
The weapons in this war are not bullets, knives, but words, prayer, sin and faith. (See Ephesians 6:10-17) Satan’s arsenal is filled with temptation, loaded fiery darts of passion and he lays traps, or minefields, where we walk every day. He’s an enemy that’s out to kill, steal and destroy everything that he can, including our very soul.
God’s weapons of this warfare are love, faith, prayer, a sound mind and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Blood of the Lamb and the Cross of Christ. God’s weapons are more powerful than the devil’s, BUT none of them can be used without faith and trust in God to make them work.
The problem is that most people won’t use God’s weapons because they don’t want to surrender their will to God’s will.
When an addict is fighting for their life, doing everything in their power to overcome whatever has them bound, it’s a fight with eternal consequences. To many try to fight this battle alone, believing “will power” can be strong enough to break that bondage.
“Will power” just won’t work most of the time. If you don’t think that’s so, ask yourself how long an addict can go without a fix from the needle or the pill, just relying on will power? How long can the person who needs a cigarette stand the jitters of needing that next puff...there may be a few cases where people claim to overcome these addictions through will power, most fail, and then this adds to their hopelessness and frustration.
The reason that people can’t overcome these things on their own is that these are not just physical battles with a physical addition. They are spiritual battles that can only be fought, and won, in the realms of the supernatural. Listen what the Word of God says about it.
Look at the Apostle Paul..... Paul was an addict before he was an apostle. He didn’t take drugs, he wasn’t hooked on tobacco and he wasn’t a man given to drink. Paul was a Pharisee, a man who dedicated his whole life to obeying the commandments of the Law. But he was an addict. He was addicted to ambition and to recognition.
There's a struggle, it's God and the devil It's love against the enemy” even if we don’t realize it... and the only way that we can be victorious in this war is to be on the right side and that right side is Jesus Christ.
This is about a war between “Good” and “Evil”, a war between the “Powers of Darkness” and the powers of Heaven......a battle between “Light” and “Darkness”. This war is about the eternal destiny of every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, from Adam to the last child that will be born before time ceases to exist as we know it.
Signs of this great battle for the souls of men are everywhere. All we have to do is look around and we can see many who have the scars of the battle. Many are wounded emotionally........... some are not able to cope with everyday life and its pressures. Some carry around scars of guilt and shame. Some carry a wounded spirit or a broken heart that sends them over the edge and makes them feel like life just isn’t worth living.
The weapons in this war are not bullets, knives, but words, prayer, sin and faith. (See Ephesians 6:10-17) Satan’s arsenal is filled with temptation, loaded fiery darts of passion and he lays traps, or minefields, where we walk every day. He’s an enemy that’s out to kill, steal and destroy everything that he can, including our very soul.
God’s weapons of this warfare are love, faith, prayer, a sound mind and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Blood of the Lamb and the Cross of Christ. God’s weapons are more powerful than the devil’s, BUT none of them can be used without faith and trust in God to make them work.
The problem is that most people won’t use God’s weapons because they don’t want to surrender their will to God’s will.
When an addict is fighting for their life, doing everything in their power to overcome whatever has them bound, it’s a fight with eternal consequences. To many try to fight this battle alone, believing “will power” can be strong enough to break that bondage.
“Will power” just won’t work most of the time. If you don’t think that’s so, ask yourself how long an addict can go without a fix from the needle or the pill, just relying on will power? How long can the person who needs a cigarette stand the jitters of needing that next puff...there may be a few cases where people claim to overcome these addictions through will power, most fail, and then this adds to their hopelessness and frustration.
The reason that people can’t overcome these things on their own is that these are not just physical battles with a physical addition. They are spiritual battles that can only be fought, and won, in the realms of the supernatural. Listen what the Word of God says about it.
Look at the Apostle Paul..... Paul was an addict before he was an apostle. He didn’t take drugs, he wasn’t hooked on tobacco and he wasn’t a man given to drink. Paul was a Pharisee, a man who dedicated his whole life to obeying the commandments of the Law. But he was an addict. He was addicted to ambition and to recognition.
Paul was first called Saul. As Saul, he was a defender of the faith of the Jews and he loved the idea of persecuting Christians. He was constantly going before the High Priest to obtain letters of authority to kill, maim and imprison every Christian he could find. Saul was fighting the battle against God. He was trying to win a battle that he couldn’t win. He could do nothing to overcome his desire for recognition and power. In fact, he saw nothing wrong with the way he was living and the things he was doing.
It’s a sad thing to see most of the world living for the devil, and fighting in his army, and not even realizing what they are doing.... No one would admit that they are fighting against God. Every man is right in his own eyes because he is blinded to the truth. The truth is that unless we are living for God and serving Him, and working for Him, then we are fighting for the devil.
Saul was soon going to come face to face with the war that was raging around him. He was fighting on the side of Satan, thinking he was doing God a favor, but he was going to meet the Lord on the Road to Damascus. It was there, in the middle of the day, that he was knocked off of his horse into the dust by the True Light from Heaven. Jesus knew that Saul was a sincere man, sincerely wrong even though he thought he was right; and Jesus also knew that Saul’s sincerity needed some direction.
Saul didn’t know who he was fighting for. He thought that he was doing the right thing the whole time. But he soon found out that he had been in the devil’s army, fighting against the very God that he thought he was serving. It took the power of God to break through his blindness and to shatter Saul’s addiction, and it still takes the power of God to truly break any addiction today. We can’t do it on our own, but with God’s help, according to Jesus, in Mark 9:23, “… Anything is possible if a person believes." When Saul gave his heart to Jesus on that road to Damascus, God changed him completely, making him a new creation in Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
Saul’s addiction to power and ambition to the chief among the Pharisees came to an end, broke down forever by the power of God. From that day on, God gave him a brand new name, Paul...... and a new purpose, to preach the gospel; and a new life. All that he had been in the past was forgotten by God and forgiven. The blood of Jesus had washed away every sin and Paul was filled with the Holy Ghost and power.
He kept fighting the same war between the worlds of good and evil, but now he was on the right side for a change.
In Acts 16:16-31, Paul and Silas are battling the forces of darkness as they walked the streets of the city. They were going about doing good, praying and ministering, but Satan never stops trying to win the war, so even in the simple things of living for the Lord, they are still in midst of the war.
Let that be a lesson to us all. Don’t ever think that the war isn’t raging just because life seems to be good right now. Our next battle with the devil is just ahead, so be ready for it.
There was a girl that followed Paul and some other disciples. She was “…. a demon-possessed slave girl. She was a fortune-teller who earned a lot of money for her masters. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, and they have come to tell you how to be saved.” (Acts 16:16-17) BUT, she wasn’t there to be a part of their evangelistic team. She was fighting in the devil’s army against them and she was doing everything she could to play on the ego and the former addiction that Paul had for recognition and power. What she was saying sounded good, but it soon became evident that her intentions were nothing but bad..
Sometimes we can become involved with people, on a job, or in a relationship that seems so right in the beginning. We can’t see anything wrong. But before long, something just doesn’t feel right anymore. That’s called the power of discernment, where the Holy Spirit living in us, begins to warn us that everything is not like it looks....
Finally Paul became so “exasperated that he turned and said to the demon within her, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And instantly it left her.” (Acts 16:18) Uh oh! Now the disciples were messing around with the girl’s “masters” pocket books. They were making a lot of cash from her fortune telling skills. By the way, where do you think these skills came from?
Now the girl’s masters had the disciples beaten, tortured and then cast into prison and put in chains; locked away to be forgotten.
Satan plays for keeps. He meant to destroy the disciples completely. His methods are subtle most of the time, but he can be as confrontational as he wants to be when the battle gets harder. He was perfectly happy to allow the little girl to do his dirty work for him, but now it was time for the “big guns” to go into action.
Sometimes living for the Lord is tough. Sometimes God allows things to happen to us that we just don’t understand. Paul and Silas may have thought, “Lord, we were doing our best, so why are we in jail?” It’s okay to ask questions, but then we need to accept the answer and leave it in God’s hands. Nothing can happen to us that God don’t know about.
Like Paul and Silas in that jail, God will make a way for us to escape the traps that the devil will lay for us. We may face some strong temptations to fall into our old life but we can’t quit, we must keep fighting. All of us face temptation, but that don’t mean that we have to give in to it.
And even if we fail, and all of us fail from time to time, God don’t give up on us. He says in Hebrews 4:16, "So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
"My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.” (1 John 2:1-2)
Jesus paid the debt for our sin. His blood washes away all sin, that from the past, from the present and for the future. We can’t do anything that the Blood of Jesus can’t wash away. All we have to do is repent of the sin, ask for forgiveness and then get up and walk on in our service to the Lord.
We’re in a spiritual battle, A War of the Worlds of Good and Evil. Whose side are we on? If we aren’t on the Lord’s side, then there’s only one master that we can be fighting for, the devil. There is no neutral ground. There is no fence. It’s either all for Jesus, or all for the devil.
