KNOW YOUR ENEMY

 Know Your Enemy: Breastplate of Righteousness | Righteousness, Sermon series, Enemy

WED EP Reflection 092320 (PS 119: 97-120; Luke 4:1-13) Know your enemy!

Psalm 119: 105 tells us that the Word of God is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path. This is simply reality for all believers. Without the Word of God lighting the way, we would simply be walking in darkness and potentially incurring injury from a fall. This scenario fits a person whose walk is not informed by the Word of God. When a person doesn’t know the enemy, it is easy to fall into his traps! We should know the enemy if we are to defeat him. I am talking about the devil, Satan or the evil one. Luke tells the story of Jesus temptation and tells us that it was at the beginning of Jesus ministry. I was listening to a preacher who explained well these temptations, that’s what I want to share with you.

I was surprised to learn that the devil uses a pattern when he tempts his victims. The same temptations he attacked Jesus with, the serpent had also attacked Adam, the first man God created. Gen 3: 1- 6. The woman said: Of course, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, it’s only fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said: You must not eat it [true] or even touch it [false]; if you do, you will die. Eve is not the only one to add more to God’s word, the serpent also added to it, but only the serpent contradicted this report. The serpent replied to the woman: You won’t die! [false] God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, [true and an addition] and you will be like God [partly true even Jesus, being in the form of God did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped Philippians 2:6] , knowing both good and evil [true].

We see these 3 categories of temptation in 1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world: (Cat. 1) lust of the flesh or a craving for physical pleasure; (Cat. 2) lust of the eye or a craving for everything we see; and (Cat. 3) pride in our achievements and possessions or the pride of life. Eve was caught by the second category: the lust of the eye: Craving for the forbidden fruit. In Jesus temptation in the wilderness, all three categories were represented: the stone looked like a bread, and Jesus was hungry. Satan was offering a shortcut to intense hunger, Jesus body needed food. Satan tries to attack us at our weakest point. This is why knowing our enemy’s strategy is helpful so we can identify it even before we seriously consider it. Jesus replied: “Man shall not live on bread alone.” His reply is the word of God from Deut.8: 3.

The preacher I was listening to said: “Even I have to look back at what I preach and learn to live it out…to resist the devil and refuse the shortcut.” The shortcut is offered to us so that, we may satisfy our need without trusting God for it. Satan knows how intense our cravings of this need is, and he is content stirring up our emotions so we can believe that this need must be satisfied now urgently if not, we will die. Of course, it’s a lie… the more we focus on the need, the less fighting we will put up in resisting. I was reminded of Abraham and Sarah. Sarah couldn’t wait, the need to have an heir (a kid) was so intense for her, that she suggested a shortcut. This created a heavy burden in the family with the birth of Ismael from Hagar the servant. This could be category 3: pride of our achievements.

Satan always find news ways to dish out these 3 categories. He tried to tempt Jesus with category 2: the lust of the eyes. “The Kingdoms of the world belong to me, and I can give them to whom I want.” The devil said. Jesus did not contradict this, he said in John 12: 31 that Satan is the ruler of the world; the god of this world in 2 Cor 4: 4 and the prince of the powers of the air in Eph 2: 2. But he did reply that: “You shall worship God only”. It is true that our cravings are connected to worship, the more we want things, we bow down to them, what you love is what you serve. We are basically offering ourselves to that which we are craving for by wanting to possess them.

Jesus did reply also to category 3. You may wonder how jumping from the pinnacle of the temple would be appealing to the pride of life. We must admit it would be amazing, but Jesus responded that you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Satan wants to offer us a shortcut, to bypass suffering and due process. Satan says: Why wait? Get it now satisfy your need! But the truth is, it is through those difficulties/sufferings that the Lord teaches us lessons. Satan wants us to avoid the difficulties and use a shortcut to satisfy our needs. God says I will be with you through it all. Don’t be exhausted trying to fix it in your own way. Hebr. 5: 7-8 says Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered. We often want to learn things without suffering. Satan left Jesus until another opportune time. Satan is an opportunist, we should be ready to counter his attacks with the word of God/ the power of the Spirit.

Amen.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Removing Other gods From The Father's House

Image
The Passover of the Jews was near. A big deal for Jews! They rehearsed and remembered their divine rescue from Egyptian slavery, a day that is ingrained in the minds of the children of Israel. As it was customary, Jesus would be in Capernaum often teaching about the Kingdom of God. After having spent a few days with his mom and brothers, he went to Jerusalem. In the Temple, the idea was that people of God gather; pursuing holiness and purity in front of a Holy God, so that God, would come and vindicate them. Remember they were conquered by Romans, they certainly had many prayer requests asking God to intervene in their lives. As part of the Passover celebrations were the Matzah: A simple meal, made from flour and water without any yeast: a symbol of the meager rations the Jewish slaves had to subsist on during their enslavement, and a reminder of the poverty and hardship they endured. When Jesus got to the temple, it was business as usual for Israel’s leaders. The very reason to come
Read more

When the Stakes are high

Image
An Archbishop of Canterbury once wrote that we should embrace joyfully the love and forgiveness of God at all times---and allow God’s forgiveness to change us. I picture this as a journey with a destination to God’s immense love and forgiveness. Nothing in the Bible says that this journey is comfortable, but it’s the safest one. It’s fascinating that Paul’s words are painting the same profile picture of someone in the direction towards God’s embrace. What does such person look like? I don’t mean tall or short or fair skinned. God doesn’t look at that. I mean the character of Jesus’ follower. Why should we care about Christian character in our lives? What’s at stakes here? I will tell you: If our lives are not measuring up, we should know. The word of God is the plumbline. 2 e.g., of ignoring the stakes: The writing on the wall was destined to a King obstinate in his ways. Nothing scared him: it read: You have been weighed and came up short/ didn’t measure up. He died. I also thought o
Read more

A Basket of The Essential: Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross

Image
The study of today’s scriptures drew me to this title: paying attention to the essential. To be honest, it didn’t sound like a difficult task at first, but on close examination, you kind of realize that every day we make some choices that do not fit in the category of the essential. Is that necessarily a bad thing? In our world maybe not, I may still live okay if I don’t focus on the essential, but Jesus explains to us that we cannot get to our destination if we don’t know where we are going/ the essential is needed. You may ask: What is this essential that is absolutely necessary in the Kingdom of God? Jesus points us to a category we call “profitable”. We all have this basket inside us and we put things in it, that we think are good/profitable to us. There is a huge gap however in God’s Kingdom, between choices with focus on divine things and those with focus on human things. They don’t mix. The essential has a formula that Jesus gave to his disciples and Paul repeated it on several
Read more