Can You Defeat What You Don’t Know

As a total fan of the hit show, Hawaii Five-O, I am always blown away by the different challenges facing this elite task force. The team was formed by an unfavorable event in Steve McGarrett’s, the leader of the team, life. As a Navy Seal, McGarrett was serving his country and bringing down a group of criminals when his phone rang. It was his father who was tied up by the brother of a man Steve was bringing in. Somehow they knew Steve enough to find his father and try to blackmail him. (Spoiler Alert)-After Steve’s father is killed, Steve spends a large portion of the first season trying to figure out who attacked his family.

How important is it to know who your enemy is? Can you honestly defeat them without understanding where they came from or what their goal is? Have you thought of your adversary the Devil? When we think about how he has stolen, killed and destroyed the very things we love—do we just sit back and let him do it? Have you ever thought of where your enemy came from and where he is going? As a child, I was educated that this nasty devil—who hates anything that God loves and who tries to destroy everything good and kind—was initially made by God himself. Stop and think about that. We fight a creature that was originally made by the same God we serve. Now some will get all philosophical about it all, but I want to take you somewhere else.

Can You Fight Perfection

Can you think of anything that God made that was not perfect? Is there anything that God created that we deem mediocre, ugly or foolish? If we understand the Creator, we know the creation.

In Ezekiel 28, there is a description of Lucifer (his God-given name) before the fall. Between  verse 12-19 we see some descriptions that many scholars agree are those of Satan. In verse 12 it says that he, Satan, was the seal of perfection. There was not one flaw in Lucifer. There was no sin in him; there was no iniquity in him when God made him. He was perfect in wisdom. He was anointed and ordained a guardian angel. God gave him a high position in this heavenly army. He was described as “blameless.” The word blameless means that he was perfect, guiltless, irreproachable and virtuous and all of this was found in his actions.

When you put it all together, we are fighting a being that was once perfect, wise, anointed, ordained, blameless, and guiltless. What happened to this great creation? Read verse 15b-17

 “… wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade, you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth;”

He was perfect until wickedness was found in him. Where did the wickedness come from in Lucifer? He was in Heaven, and there was no tree of knowledge of good and evil, there was no serpent to tempt him. How could wickedness be found in someone so perfect, who lived in an ideal world, serving a perfect God? How could a creation that was in an atmosphere of peace and serenity be full of violence? You have to remember that there was no war ever in Heaven because God had no enemies, so how did he know about war and violence? It says that Lucifer sinned.

How could he sin without someone tempting him as we have Satan tempting us? From the beginning of it all, those created by God followed the Most High with love and admiration. No one knew what sin was because there was no reason to go against the rules of God. Somehow this blameless being was unhappy with what he was told and missed the mark God placed before him. The question is, did God go to Lucifer— as he did to Cain in Genesis 4—and warn Lucifer to be careful because sin was knocking at his door? God does not have a reputation of seeing his children heading into danger and not trying everything possible to stop them or warn them.

Whichever way, Lucifer did not fight the urge, and he sinned against God without the need of a tree with forbidden fruit or a slithering reptile to entice him. He looked at himself and started to admire his beauty, and the most dangerous ingredient was added to his character…pride. His admiration of himself corrupted his thinking. God gave him divine wisdom, and he damaged that wisdom. The sin of pride found in him was the most dangerous of all, and sadly, this is also seen in us. Pride is at the base of several sins. It’s pride that can break up a family, destroys a marriage, brings down a company, demolishes an empire, and levels the future of a strong and powerful ministry. It is pride that makes us think we are above the law of sin and death. Pride is what makes us feel we can touch what God has not given to us. Its even arrogance that allows us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to.

After observing all these verses look at the end of this one, “I threw you to the earth.” Not only was he thrown onto earth, but Revelation 12:4 recalls his demise and says that the dragon’s tail (Lucifer) swept 1/3 of the stars (angels) out of the sky and flung them to earth too. Satan was able to deceive 1/3 of angels to go against their leader. He convinced them, somehow, that he was more powerful and more capable of leading them than God Almighty. So not only was one perfect being, in a perfect, state corrupted by his pride—he deceived an innumerable amount of perfect angels to follow him as well. Stop and think with me for a minute here…this cunning, conniving, sinful, deceptive, wicked, egotistical, prideful creature is OUR ENEMY!!!!!!

He is on earth invisible to our naked eye nevertheless we can see his handiwork every day. It was God’s plan for us to have dominion over this beast and his fellow fallen comrades, however in the garden, we handed over our authority to him, just like those angels did, and allowed him to deceive us. Just like a third of the angels, man chose to listen to Satan instead of following God.

We Get Another Chance Guys!

Surely if God were to give man another chance, removed the tree, allowed us only to worship him, and gave us full knowledge of our enemy, man would never turn their backs on God or fall into the enemy’s trap. Hmmm…I don’t know. The powerful deceptive nature of our enemy is seen the most in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 20 it says that—before the complete end of this world—there will be a 1000 year reign of Christ, and Christ alone. The only ones that remain will be the ones to survive the tribulation. During this tribulation, faithful believers will go through so much pain and struggle that the Bible says that if God does not shorten those days, humanity will not be able to survive according to Matt 24:22. These people will have such a love for God that they would rather be beheaded than to allow themselves to follow the enemy. These amazing people are the ones who survive to reign with Christ for 1000 years! During this time Satan will be bound up in 20:2 and will not be allowed to deceive or tempt the believers.

Let’s just take a minute and pretend you are one of those special people that make it through that relentless time. Imagine 1000 years (3x longer than America has been a nation) serving God in this world without Satan. Everybody on earth has the same desire to serve God. Their faith has already been tested for seven long years with extreme war, violence, poverty, wickedness, drug abuse, starvation and much more. They resisted all of that and had come out on the other side. Now there is complete freedom to serve the Lord; no Satan, no deception, only God to worship with everything in us.

With an atmosphere of pure, uncorrupted worship, you would think that Satan’s hold would be null and void. How could he deceive a nation, a people that survived his most brutal and violent attacks? How could he deceive a people that had been saturated in the real unrestrained presence, communication, and goodness of God? How could he fool all of humanity a second time? Could Satan actually get any of us to turn against God that we have served faithfully for 1000 years? Well, my friend, he doesn’t get one of those dedicated believers…but a number that can’t be measured!!!!

“When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number, they are like the sand on the seashore.  They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.”  -Revelation 20:7-9

Can you believe that even in a perfect utopia where the people of God have no enemy, Satan is capable of getting us to turn against God, again?! This is the kind of enemy we are fighting my friend. We can pretend all we want, but in the end, if we do not submit everything over to God, we will find ourselves being the victim of an enemy who has been around since before the creation of this earth.

So how do we fight such a deceptive enemy? Well, first we must recognize that we can not underestimate Satan nor overestimate the strength of our flesh. Second, we must submit to God because He alone knows every move Satan will make, his weakness, his strengths and his tactics. Third, we must obediently saturate ourselves in God’s word and prayer so not to allow the same pride that destroyed him and the other fallen angels fill our mind and make us think we don’t need God. I hope that these four weeks have been enlightening as we have seen that good and evil doesn’t look that much different when we are looking at it through hurting eyes click to read. We talked about the importance of fighting right click to read. Sometimes we struggle with those God has given us for this hash journey. Also, we talked about knowing our enemy. Satan does what he can to make his existence obsolete click to read. Please take this time to look at our video for added support.

Also, our newest book is out!!

We have worked really hard to talk about the war that Christians are in. We are meant to win every battle set before us but there are many times we get in our way.  What are some things we need to learn in order to never lose another spiritual battle again?  Buy our Book on Amazon to find out.