Video transcript below. Transcript was transcribed using AI software, please excuse any typographical errors.
Welcome to Basic Bible concepts, video 10, spiritual warfare, living like warriors. So we learned last time that when we are first born again, we are spiritual babies and we must grow, or the consequences are devastating. And one of the reasons the consequences are so devastating is that we are in a spiritual warfare. Can you imagine sending a baby or a toddler or even a fifth grader into battle against Hamas? Well, I guarantee you, the enemy that we are fighting is much worse, millions of times worse than Hamas. And that enemy we’re going to talk about today, what that enemy’s plan is, we must be ready. We must be ready to join the fight because we live on a battlefield with eternal consequences. And we must be ready.
So in this video, we’re going to learn who is the enemy? Who are the enemies? What is the goal for each side of the conflict? And what is our part in the battle? So first of all, who are the enemies? Well, we know the main enemy is Satan, right? The Bible says in 1 Peter 5:8, Be sober. Be vigilant because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour. Right? And we also know that there’s a couple other enemies.
We have our flesh, the enemy we sleep with, right? And we learned about that when we learned about body, soul, and spirit. And the Bible says, for those who live according to the flesh, have set their mind on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit, the things of the spirit, for to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is enmity against God. So those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You are the enemy of God if you’re living after your flesh, okay? If you’re born again, and believe me, I did this for years. I was an enemy of the cross. Even though I was born again, I was living after the flesh. So I was an enemy of God. Our flesh is our enemy, and it’s a very powerful enemy.
We also have the world system. 1 John 2:15 and 16 says, Love not the world, neither of the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Listen, friends, we have some massive dangerous enemies, and we need to be ready to fight the battle. We need to fight like men and women warriors that are trained. But 1 John 4:4 says, You are of God, little children and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. God says, look, I’ll train you. You, I will make you ready for this battle. Not only that, I’m going to battle with you, okay? He’s inside of us, the power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us and gives us the strength to fight the battle. Okay? But we got to armor up. Okay? So let’s talk about, first of all, what are the goals and the strategies for each side of the conflict? You know, when you go into warfare, it doesn’t matter who your enemy is, you’re going to do all the intel you can to know what the goal and strategy of the enemy is, right?
First of all, I want to just make sure we understand something. This warfare, I want to reiterate, is spiritual, not physical. This is a conflict for the dominion of humanity, okay? This affects individual humans, but also families, communities, and nations. And to win the war, of bringing peace, we have to start with each soul. Each soul. That’s one of these, these first concepts were so important. It is the complete underlying premise for what we’re doing and the basics for what we’re doing in spiritual warfare. The Bible in Ephesians 6:12 says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age against spiritual hosts of wickedness. Okay? We are in a spiritual warfare. This war is not with your neighbor because his dog chases your chickens. It’s not against the person who’s betrayed your confidence. It’s not against the person who’s a gossip and has tried to hurt your reputation. There’s a much greater enemy at work. And on the battlefield, there are eternal consequences. So while warfare has physical ramifications, it’s important to remember the conflict is spiritual. And there’s so many examples in the Bible about spiritual conflict, when even Jesus Christ was tempted by Satan. And that is the prime example of spiritual warfare. There are no limits on where Satan will go. If he’ll go after Jesus, he’s going to go after you. And he is going after me. He went after Job. He went after Eve. He succeeded with Eve and Adam, right?
So first of all, let’s look at the goals and strategies for both sides. Okay? God’s goal and strategy is based on who he is. We learned about who God is. In the third concept, he is, the most important part of his nature is love. And we know that because his motivation is unselfish and sacrificial. His ultimate goal was to benefit others for his own glory, right? And 1 John 4:8 says, he who does not love, does not know God. For God is love. God’s goal, because of his love, because of who he is, is reconciliation. And we have talked about this, okay? We have talked about the substitute, how he came in, the concept called the substitute. He came and sacrificed himself to reconcile us to him. To be in a relationship now, in a relationship forever. And you know, there’s going to be a day when everyone who has been reconciled him, who has chosen to enter into relationship with him through the gift of salvation, has this amazing promise out of Revelations chapter 21, where it says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth that passed away, and there was no more sea. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, behold the tabernacle or the house of God is with men. And he will dwell with them and they will be his people. God will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And there will be no more death, no sorrow, no crying, no pain. Oh, can you imagine that? And that’s where we are, we get to be there. And so that’s what makes spiritual warfare so important, because we are wrestling against principalities for the humanity around us. Our neighbor whose dog chases our chickens, that person who gossips about you. No one, we don’t want anyone to spend eternity apart from God, right? We want everyone. And that should be our heart. Because if Jesus lives in us, we have the heart of God, right? We should love like he does because Jesus commanded us to love like He does, right? So God’s goal is, his goal is redemption. His goal is reconciliation. And his strategy is, first of all, he paid the price. So we didn’t have to, because we couldn’t, right? And when we choose salvation, which we’ve talked a lot about in these concepts, then we get to have eternal redemption.
But he has also not only provided the plan of redemption, but he has provided instructions, which we talked about in the last video, like how to live in a way that you’re constantly growing. You have to train and train and train to continue to be effective in warfare. Every person who is active duty does training. And it’s not just basic training. There’s continual training to make them better soldiers. Because the rules of engagement are constantly changing depending on what the technology is, right? Well, God has provided us his word, and he wants us to grow.
And then thirdly, he has provided us this thing called discipleship. And Jesus said in the great commission, Matthew 2:8, go therefore, and make disciples. He said, discipleship, which is coming alongside people, training them, teaching them how to share the gospel, teaching them these concepts, teaching them how to answer the hard questions in life. For people who come up and say, Hey, how, where does your peace come from? And if you don’t have some answer, that doesn’t make any sense, right? You can tell them, Hey, I have peace because I know the prince of peace. And this is how you know the prince of peace and you share the gospel with them, right? Discipleship, that’s where those things are taught. And so that’s God’s goal and strategy for this war.
So what is Satan’s goal and what is Satan’s strategy?
First of all, let me just mention Satan. You know, the Bible doesn’t say a lot about Satan, but it does say some pretty telling things. In Ezekiel 28, it describes Satan as being the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. And it talks about how he was perfect in his ways from the day he was created until iniquity was found in him. And what was this iniquity? It’s pride. It says your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. And God in Ezekiel 28 said, I cast you to the ground. Let me just mention this. Satan’s goal is to rule the universe for his own glory, to satisfy his own pride, which is what got him kicked out of heaven, right? It was pride. You know, we are warned not to be prideful, not to be puffed up, lest we fall into the same condemnation as the devil. That’s what First Timothy three, six says. And you know, pride is sneaky when we think we have humility, when we think we’re humble. I heard somebody say the other day, well, I’ve finally become humble. I’ve lost all my pride. And I thought, well, pretty sure that statement just took you back into pride. Our pride is sneaky, our flesh is sneaky. Like Satan, that’s what brought him from perfection to nothing. That’s what the Bible says. It says in Ezekiel 28, you have become a horror and shall be no more forever. Can you imagine being nobody forever? Oh, terrible, right? And Isaiah Fort 14 describes his fall. It says, oh, how are you fallen from heaven? Oh Lucifer, son of the morning, how you are cut down to the ground, you who weaken the nations, and you sit in your heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of the congregation, I will ascend to the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high.
You see, Satan fell because of pride. And Satan is an immoral adversary. He uses deception. He doesn’t want people to know the truth about God. Because if you know the truth, you’re going to be attracted to God. And he doesn’t want anybody to be attracted to God. So he deceives people about who God is. He also seduces people to sin because we are drawn away by things that are beautiful, right? And we make them our God. We make sex our God. We make houses our God, we make money our God, we make people our God, we make our kids our God, right? Whatever we love the most, whatever we can’t live without, that’s our God. And that’s Satan seducing us. He is so good at it. And we have to be aware.
Also, false religions. Oh my gosh, if I could tell you the number of people who come into my office, and they asked me, I need to find peace. I need to find peace. I feel so unloved, And I’m like, well, do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? And they say, well, I’ve been baptized. And I’m like, well, that’s what makes you think that that’s going to bring you into a relationship with God who is the prince of peace. And they’ll recite some false idea that they have to be baptized or they have to do good works. They say, I’m, oh well, I haven’t been to church in a while. Like, what does that have to do with it? With being saved? Because they haven’t been taught the truth. Because there’s so many religions that teach you that you have to do things to be saved instead of being reconciled to Jesus Christ through the gift of salvation, which is by grace through faith and not of works, right? So false religions are a big tool of Satan.
And then there’s always the fourth thing, force and intimidation. Oh my goodness. If you look at the history of the martyrs and not just the New Testament, but even after that, some of the worst persecutions, people crucified, people boiled alive, all for the sake of their faith. This is another way that Satan works.
But we can have hope because we know that Satan’s destiny is the bottomless pit. Satan is going to end up in the lake of fire, and will be tormented forever. And you know, it says in Isaiah 14, God said, you shall be brought down to the lowest depths of the pit. That’s Satan’s end. And we need to remember that. We need to remember that we win because Jesus won. And greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world, right? So what’s our part in the spiritual battle?
First of all, we need to make sure that we are, have our alliance with Christ. We must be committed to Christ. Jesus said, either you are for me or you are against me. There’s not any in between. You’re either for the enemy or you’re for me. In Second Corinthians 10:3-6, the Bible says, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity, to the obedience of Christ, Second Corinthians 10:5.
I don’t want to rehash all the Christian growth from the last video, but I do want to point out that in Ephesians Six, Paul talks about putting on the whole armor of God. I have done a whole series on this. And if you go to my website and search for armor of God, there’s a whole series on this, and I can’t get into that on this video. But you need to understand that even this armor of God can be distorted. the belt of truth, you know, can be manipulated. The breastplate of righteousness. We have to have not our righteousness, but God’s righteousness. We need to understand how to present the gospel. We need to have the shield of faith. In other words, faith in God, not faith in some power other than God’s. We need to have the helmet of salvation. In other words, we need to know that we are born again. And we need to have the sword of the spirit. We need to know the Holy Spirit is the one that does the work. It’s not us and our persuasiveness or our pretty face or our great muscles or whatever. Our great intelligence. God does the work, the spirit of God. We have to rely on the Word of God. The Spirit of God. And then we need to apply the things.
We need to have the attitudes that Jesus taught us in the beatitude series that we did, the whole podcast on that series of beatitudes and videos, the attitudes of Christ help us to put on the armor of God. And then we must train, train, train, right? We have to practice telling people about the gospel, practice our own testimony. That’s why I wrote a track for my own testimony. That’s why I did a video. That’s why I wrote it out so that I would know how to share it. It would be second nature. And you know what, if I had the cure for cancer, believe me, I would be sharing with everybody I knew. If I knew the cure to cancer was to go rub my hands in the dirt and then wipe them a certain way on my face or whatever, I’d be telling everybody that, right? This is what the gospel is. It is the power of God unto salvation and to win the race or the war for humanity. This is the only answer, is the gospel. And we need to be sharing it. And to do that, we have to be trained. We’ve got to follow the orders that Christ gave us. And the most important commandment, he says, to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That the message of the gospel has to be brought by love, right? We have to care, and love is unselfishness, right? It is caring about people more than we care about ourselves. And so when we do this, we’re actually engaging. When we do these things, we’re engaging in warfare. We are winning, we’re fighting like warriors and we’re winning. And I don’t know about y’all, but you know, this last video, this last basic Bible concept is about the church. And I like to call it the Band of Brothers Because when we are in the warfare, we enjoy the camaraderie of our fellow laborers, our fellow warriors that are in the same cause as we are.
And I’m going to end this video with 1 Peter 5:8-9. And this encapsulates what our mindset needs to be. You know, Roman 12:2 says, we need to renew our minds daily, right? And First Peter 5:8-9 says, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour, resist, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brothers that are in the world. We have a common enemy. We have a common warfare. We need to be vigilant and focused on this spiritual warfare. And when we apply the things in these basic Bible concepts and we apply the attitudes that Christ taught us, we will win every day. And our day will be victorious. Every day will be victorious, even when times are hard. So join us for the next basic Bible concepts Video 11. It’ll be the last one. The church, our band of brothers.
