“FEELING ATTACKED?"
Genesis 3:8-15; Luke 24:1-9
(July 12, 2009)
From Jim Cymbala’s book “The Church That God Blesses”
Introduction: In the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew, chapter 2, we are told how King Herod is angry that there was a “king” who was born. There can be no other kings other than himself, so he tries to attack and kill the baby Jesus. As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we need to understand that we are all under the threat of attacks from Satan. Whenever a church begins to move in the right direction, whenever a church starts to grow, whenever a church decides to follow God’s leading, Satan will attack the church by putting obstacles in its way.
This is a truth of Scripture, that Satan wants to keep us from following the plan of God. Satan wants to keep us from bringing people to Christ. Satan wants to keep us distracted by our struggles, or by our differences so that we lose the focus of serving Christ and making an impact for the kingdom of God! So this morning I want to talk about what we can do when we are attacked.
I. The Secret of Growth- (Acts 11:19-23; James 1:22-27)
a. The hand of the Lord- In Acts chapter 11, we are told of a church that
God was blessing; it is the great Christian church in Antioch. This church was not formed because of known and powerful people. What was the real secret for its birth and growth? The secret is seen in Acts 11:21- “The hand of the Lord was with them….” Now this may seem obvious, that it takes the hand of the Lord to grow a church, but too often people try to do ministry and try to grow a church without seeking God’s blessing and guidance. They think they can do it on their own knowledge and their own efforts!
Because of God’s blessings, the church in Antioch led people to repentance and faith! This is really how God wants to bless a church, and grow a church, through bringing to faith those who don’t know Jesus! All too often we see churches grow by people leaving one church, and going to another. As we add members we think we have growth. And to some degree this is true. But listen to this: THE CHURCH IS GROWING IN NUMBER, BUT THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT!
In Acts 11:23 Barnabas comes to visit Antioch, and the verse says this: “When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.” Barnabas “saw the evidence” that God was blessing the work of Antioch. How can you know if the Lord’s hand is on you as a church? You will see the evidence. (Unbelievers will come and believe, prayer meetings will happen and will be powerful, there will be a spirit of unity amongst the members, people will share of their money and resources, people will be prayed for and healing will occur, and on and on it goes.).
b. What’s the problem?- So what is the problem? If we know that the hand
of the Lord needs to be with us, then why can’t we grow our church? I believe one great problem is what I said before: Satan. We will talk about this in a moment. But there is another problem; lack of zeal. For churches to grow, they need to have zeal for the Lord. But I think too many contemporary churches have lost their zeal; they are just going through the motions. They are meeting together, and eating together, and talking together, but they aren’t utilizing the power of the Holy Spirit.
You see, when we meet for a Bible study, it is nice to talk about God’s word, but even more important is what we DO with God’s word. The book of James, chapter 1, verses 22-27 says, “But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it…this man shall be blessed in what he does…This is pure and undefiled religion, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
What James is telling us is that we can look at ourselves in the mirror, and then go away and forget what we saw. Looking at ourselves in the mirror has done nothing for us to make us a better person. When we encounter God’s word, especially at church with God’s people, and then we leave without it affecting our behavior, then we do not have zeal for the Lord. James then tells us that religion is to be about living; things like caring for orphans, widows, and others who have needs. Sharing the salvation message with those who are lost. We don’t have any great passion to do this, and so we won’t grow as a church until we do!!
II. Satan: Our Adversary- (Genesis 3:8-15)
a. Temptation- From the time when Satan tempted Eve in the garden of
Eden, to now, Satan has always been our adversary. Satan desires to keep us from God; Satan desires for us to in no way be productive for God. And because of the threat that all Christian churches are to him, churches are especially a target for Satan. How does Satan target churches? By targeting the people in the church. He tries to get people to think that the “church” is only a place to visit on Sundays….if you can spare the time. Another way is that through the teaching of the world around us, he gets us to think that other things are more important than church. He also tries to make our prayer ineffective or bring gossip into the church. If you want to see some great insight into this thinking, I encourage you to read C. S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters.
Let me read for you an excerpt from this book: to understand, Screwtape is a senior devil training a junior devil how to attack people. Their main goal is to keep them from becoming Christians. But if a person becomes a Christian, their secondary goal is to keep them from being an effective Christian. …(pages 45-46)
“My dear Wormwood, I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know—rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world….No doubt he must soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based…The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realizes this new pleasure as a temptation…”
Satan is deceptive in his temptations, and slowly seeks to lead us away from living for the Lord with zeal, conviction, and faithfulness!
b. Don’t be naïve- Illus. “…The Tardy Oxcart,” p. 564- The great
playwright Oscar Wilde tells a story about the day the devil was traveling across the Libyan Desert. While traveling he came across some of his imps who were trying to tempt a holy man, but with no success. After watching for a bit, the devil stepped forward and said to them: ‘What you do is too crude. Step back and watch me.’ With this he whispered in the holy man’s ear, ‘Your brother has just been made Bishop.’ With this the holy man’s countenance immediately changed with a spirit of jealousy in him as he said to himself: ‘How could my brother be chosen over me? The very idea is preposterous!’ Then the devil looked at his demons and said: ‘Now that is the sort of thing I’d recommend.’
It is easy for us to be naïve and think that nothing like this could happen to us or in our church. But the worst thing we can do in life is to underestimate Satan’s influence and power. Satan is not more powerful than Jesus, but in those times we stray from Jesus, we can easily be overcome by Satan. If we think we are not subject to Satan’s attacks, then we will lose before the battle begins.
So we must understand that Satan desires to attack us. And when does he want to attack us? He wants to attack at those times he feels are the best opportunity for him to do so! We can learn from the life of Jesus. When did Satan try and attack Jesus? When he had fasted for 40 days; when he was weak and tired and alone. And this will be true for us, the attack will come when we are weak, or tired, or frustrated, or discouraged, and when we are alone!! It will not be when we expect it. It will not be when we are with others. It will be when we have stopped reading God’s word, or stopped going to church regularly, or when we are feeling overly spiritual, or when something good has happened and we feel prideful.
III. Spiritual Attack- (Ephesians 6:10-11; Luke 24:1-9; Genesis 3:15b)
a. Inevitability- Here is a truth. SPIRITUAL ATTACK IS NOT JUST A
POSSIBILITY, IT IS AN INEVITABILITY. As I said before, Jesus was attacked by Satan in the wilderness when He was fasting. Jesus was attacked in the garden of Gethsemane when He began to doubt, and ultimately Jesus was attacked when He was crucified on the cross. This is the part of Genesis 3:15 where God tells Satan “You will strike his heel.” The cross was a striking of Christ’s heel; a temporary wound. On all these occasions, we see Satan attacking Jesus thinking he could be victorious.
But we are given important words in Ephesians 6:10-11 where Paul tells us to stand “strong in the Lord and in his mighty power so that you will be able to stand against the devil’s schemes.” Don’t you think the disciples felt attacked when Jesus was taken and beaten, and killed, and then buried? Don’t you think they felt attacked when they were all alone, isolated in a house? Spiritual attack is inevitable!
Ilus. In a Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy comes up and licks Lucy, to which she says: “Hey, get away form me with your ol’ wet tongue.” Then Snoopy goes over and licks Linus, to which he says: “Hey, cut it out. Do you have to be licking people all the time? If you’re not licking somebody’s hands, you’re licking somebody’s shoes. Stupid dog!” To which Snoopy responds: “They all resent me because I’m so devoted.”
Now if Satan were as obvious with his attacks as Snoopy was with his licking, then we would be aware of them and seek to stop them. But Satan is as devoted to attacking us as a dog is devoted to licking his master. But the Scripture tells us that if we “ resist the devil, he will flee from us.”
b. The church coming under attack- We must never be surprised when the
church comes under attack and Satan tries to snuff out the fresh, new thing God is preparing to do in us. In fact, we need to expect it. We need to expect it like we would expect our house being broken in to. If we didn’t expect that, then we wouldn’t have locks on our doors, and we would leave the locks unlocked.
Jesus tells us in Luke 12:39- “But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” In the same way we are to be ready for the Son of Man coming, I believe we need to ready ourselves for the attacks of Satan.
So when feeling spiritually attacked, the church needs to trust in the promises of God’s blessing and protection. We need to understand we have a call and a commission from the Lord to do His work. We need to understand that we can be guided and empowered by God’s Spirit to carry out the work. We need to understand that we are not in this alone.
As I said last week, too many people have disconnected themselves from the church. Because of this the church is going through an identity crisis. In a gallop poll, many stated sentiments like this: “I am my own church.” It isn’t just that there are many who don’t believe in Jesus. Even more, there are many who don’t believe in the Church. They don’t understand the identity, purpose, or mission of a church. They don’t think that churches are that important. They believe that all that is important is to believe. “I can do it on my own.” And so the church is not very strong to stand up under attack, because the commitment to church is not there.
Conclusion: We need to understand that Jesus and the disciples were attacked, but Jesus’ power reigns in all of His believers! Even though Jesus was attacked, and ultimately killed, He did rise from the dead! When the tomb was found empty, it was the beginning of all that Jesus was going to do in and through His Church. Jesus being raised from the dead is the other part of Genesis 3:15, where God tells Satan that Jesus will “crush his head.” The resurrection was Jesus’ defeating death so that we could be saved in Him and have eternal life. There is no attack that Satan can wield that can overcome what Jesus did through His death and resurrection.
So, if you are feeling attacked in some way, know that this is not unexpected. Don’t back down from the attack, commit yourself to Jesus, and commit yourself all the more to the church, where together we can stand up against Satan. Satan has no power over us unless we give him this power. Satan tries to attack us when and where we are weak. But with Jesus, and the support of others we are safe and secure from any and all attacks! Amen.
Genesis 3:8-15; Luke 24:1-9
(July 12, 2009)
From Jim Cymbala’s book “The Church That God Blesses”
Introduction: In the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew, chapter 2, we are told how King Herod is angry that there was a “king” who was born. There can be no other kings other than himself, so he tries to attack and kill the baby Jesus. As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we need to understand that we are all under the threat of attacks from Satan. Whenever a church begins to move in the right direction, whenever a church starts to grow, whenever a church decides to follow God’s leading, Satan will attack the church by putting obstacles in its way.
This is a truth of Scripture, that Satan wants to keep us from following the plan of God. Satan wants to keep us from bringing people to Christ. Satan wants to keep us distracted by our struggles, or by our differences so that we lose the focus of serving Christ and making an impact for the kingdom of God! So this morning I want to talk about what we can do when we are attacked.
I. The Secret of Growth- (Acts 11:19-23; James 1:22-27)
a. The hand of the Lord- In Acts chapter 11, we are told of a church that
God was blessing; it is the great Christian church in Antioch. This church was not formed because of known and powerful people. What was the real secret for its birth and growth? The secret is seen in Acts 11:21- “The hand of the Lord was with them….” Now this may seem obvious, that it takes the hand of the Lord to grow a church, but too often people try to do ministry and try to grow a church without seeking God’s blessing and guidance. They think they can do it on their own knowledge and their own efforts!
Because of God’s blessings, the church in Antioch led people to repentance and faith! This is really how God wants to bless a church, and grow a church, through bringing to faith those who don’t know Jesus! All too often we see churches grow by people leaving one church, and going to another. As we add members we think we have growth. And to some degree this is true. But listen to this: THE CHURCH IS GROWING IN NUMBER, BUT THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT!
In Acts 11:23 Barnabas comes to visit Antioch, and the verse says this: “When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.” Barnabas “saw the evidence” that God was blessing the work of Antioch. How can you know if the Lord’s hand is on you as a church? You will see the evidence. (Unbelievers will come and believe, prayer meetings will happen and will be powerful, there will be a spirit of unity amongst the members, people will share of their money and resources, people will be prayed for and healing will occur, and on and on it goes.).
b. What’s the problem?- So what is the problem? If we know that the hand
of the Lord needs to be with us, then why can’t we grow our church? I believe one great problem is what I said before: Satan. We will talk about this in a moment. But there is another problem; lack of zeal. For churches to grow, they need to have zeal for the Lord. But I think too many contemporary churches have lost their zeal; they are just going through the motions. They are meeting together, and eating together, and talking together, but they aren’t utilizing the power of the Holy Spirit.
You see, when we meet for a Bible study, it is nice to talk about God’s word, but even more important is what we DO with God’s word. The book of James, chapter 1, verses 22-27 says, “But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it…this man shall be blessed in what he does…This is pure and undefiled religion, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
What James is telling us is that we can look at ourselves in the mirror, and then go away and forget what we saw. Looking at ourselves in the mirror has done nothing for us to make us a better person. When we encounter God’s word, especially at church with God’s people, and then we leave without it affecting our behavior, then we do not have zeal for the Lord. James then tells us that religion is to be about living; things like caring for orphans, widows, and others who have needs. Sharing the salvation message with those who are lost. We don’t have any great passion to do this, and so we won’t grow as a church until we do!!
II. Satan: Our Adversary- (Genesis 3:8-15)
a. Temptation- From the time when Satan tempted Eve in the garden of
Eden, to now, Satan has always been our adversary. Satan desires to keep us from God; Satan desires for us to in no way be productive for God. And because of the threat that all Christian churches are to him, churches are especially a target for Satan. How does Satan target churches? By targeting the people in the church. He tries to get people to think that the “church” is only a place to visit on Sundays….if you can spare the time. Another way is that through the teaching of the world around us, he gets us to think that other things are more important than church. He also tries to make our prayer ineffective or bring gossip into the church. If you want to see some great insight into this thinking, I encourage you to read C. S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters.
Let me read for you an excerpt from this book: to understand, Screwtape is a senior devil training a junior devil how to attack people. Their main goal is to keep them from becoming Christians. But if a person becomes a Christian, their secondary goal is to keep them from being an effective Christian. …(pages 45-46)
“My dear Wormwood, I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know—rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world….No doubt he must soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based…The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realizes this new pleasure as a temptation…”
Satan is deceptive in his temptations, and slowly seeks to lead us away from living for the Lord with zeal, conviction, and faithfulness!
b. Don’t be naïve- Illus. “…The Tardy Oxcart,” p. 564- The great
playwright Oscar Wilde tells a story about the day the devil was traveling across the Libyan Desert. While traveling he came across some of his imps who were trying to tempt a holy man, but with no success. After watching for a bit, the devil stepped forward and said to them: ‘What you do is too crude. Step back and watch me.’ With this he whispered in the holy man’s ear, ‘Your brother has just been made Bishop.’ With this the holy man’s countenance immediately changed with a spirit of jealousy in him as he said to himself: ‘How could my brother be chosen over me? The very idea is preposterous!’ Then the devil looked at his demons and said: ‘Now that is the sort of thing I’d recommend.’
It is easy for us to be naïve and think that nothing like this could happen to us or in our church. But the worst thing we can do in life is to underestimate Satan’s influence and power. Satan is not more powerful than Jesus, but in those times we stray from Jesus, we can easily be overcome by Satan. If we think we are not subject to Satan’s attacks, then we will lose before the battle begins.
So we must understand that Satan desires to attack us. And when does he want to attack us? He wants to attack at those times he feels are the best opportunity for him to do so! We can learn from the life of Jesus. When did Satan try and attack Jesus? When he had fasted for 40 days; when he was weak and tired and alone. And this will be true for us, the attack will come when we are weak, or tired, or frustrated, or discouraged, and when we are alone!! It will not be when we expect it. It will not be when we are with others. It will be when we have stopped reading God’s word, or stopped going to church regularly, or when we are feeling overly spiritual, or when something good has happened and we feel prideful.
III. Spiritual Attack- (Ephesians 6:10-11; Luke 24:1-9; Genesis 3:15b)
a. Inevitability- Here is a truth. SPIRITUAL ATTACK IS NOT JUST A
POSSIBILITY, IT IS AN INEVITABILITY. As I said before, Jesus was attacked by Satan in the wilderness when He was fasting. Jesus was attacked in the garden of Gethsemane when He began to doubt, and ultimately Jesus was attacked when He was crucified on the cross. This is the part of Genesis 3:15 where God tells Satan “You will strike his heel.” The cross was a striking of Christ’s heel; a temporary wound. On all these occasions, we see Satan attacking Jesus thinking he could be victorious.
But we are given important words in Ephesians 6:10-11 where Paul tells us to stand “strong in the Lord and in his mighty power so that you will be able to stand against the devil’s schemes.” Don’t you think the disciples felt attacked when Jesus was taken and beaten, and killed, and then buried? Don’t you think they felt attacked when they were all alone, isolated in a house? Spiritual attack is inevitable!
Ilus. In a Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy comes up and licks Lucy, to which she says: “Hey, get away form me with your ol’ wet tongue.” Then Snoopy goes over and licks Linus, to which he says: “Hey, cut it out. Do you have to be licking people all the time? If you’re not licking somebody’s hands, you’re licking somebody’s shoes. Stupid dog!” To which Snoopy responds: “They all resent me because I’m so devoted.”
Now if Satan were as obvious with his attacks as Snoopy was with his licking, then we would be aware of them and seek to stop them. But Satan is as devoted to attacking us as a dog is devoted to licking his master. But the Scripture tells us that if we “ resist the devil, he will flee from us.”
b. The church coming under attack- We must never be surprised when the
church comes under attack and Satan tries to snuff out the fresh, new thing God is preparing to do in us. In fact, we need to expect it. We need to expect it like we would expect our house being broken in to. If we didn’t expect that, then we wouldn’t have locks on our doors, and we would leave the locks unlocked.
Jesus tells us in Luke 12:39- “But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” In the same way we are to be ready for the Son of Man coming, I believe we need to ready ourselves for the attacks of Satan.
So when feeling spiritually attacked, the church needs to trust in the promises of God’s blessing and protection. We need to understand we have a call and a commission from the Lord to do His work. We need to understand that we can be guided and empowered by God’s Spirit to carry out the work. We need to understand that we are not in this alone.
As I said last week, too many people have disconnected themselves from the church. Because of this the church is going through an identity crisis. In a gallop poll, many stated sentiments like this: “I am my own church.” It isn’t just that there are many who don’t believe in Jesus. Even more, there are many who don’t believe in the Church. They don’t understand the identity, purpose, or mission of a church. They don’t think that churches are that important. They believe that all that is important is to believe. “I can do it on my own.” And so the church is not very strong to stand up under attack, because the commitment to church is not there.
Conclusion: We need to understand that Jesus and the disciples were attacked, but Jesus’ power reigns in all of His believers! Even though Jesus was attacked, and ultimately killed, He did rise from the dead! When the tomb was found empty, it was the beginning of all that Jesus was going to do in and through His Church. Jesus being raised from the dead is the other part of Genesis 3:15, where God tells Satan that Jesus will “crush his head.” The resurrection was Jesus’ defeating death so that we could be saved in Him and have eternal life. There is no attack that Satan can wield that can overcome what Jesus did through His death and resurrection.
So, if you are feeling attacked in some way, know that this is not unexpected. Don’t back down from the attack, commit yourself to Jesus, and commit yourself all the more to the church, where together we can stand up against Satan. Satan has no power over us unless we give him this power. Satan tries to attack us when and where we are weak. But with Jesus, and the support of others we are safe and secure from any and all attacks! Amen.
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