When the Enemy Knocks on theDoor

[HKHaugan]

When the Enemy Knocks on the Door

“Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God (1John 5:5).”

The Holy Spirit elevates Jesus as the only person to whom we can look to guide us through the growing hazy maze mankind has fallen into. This is the Father's will. It is the Holy Spirit Jesus sends to enter our heart to direct its trajectory toward Him and away from the devil. But in order to let Him work in us we need to know this enemy and his strategy so we can identify his activity as we go along. We can only briefly touch on that here.

First, the devil is a fallen being. Jesus says, “I saw Satan like lightning fall from Heaven (Lk.10:18, Rev.9:1, 12:8-9).” He is mentioned in Job 1:6 as a kind of an accusing accountant parlaying an authoritative challenge to God. He is a father of lies (Jn.8:44), a tempter (Mt.4:3), and his spirit is sin (1Jn.3:8). He lives in the kingdom of darkness (Col.1:13). Basically, he is the author and manager of self-centeredness. If you look at all the qualities of Jesus, the devil is the complete opposite. As you read Scripture you see Jesus, the loving God personified. When you see the devil you see the anti-God, anti personal self-containing force of sin and evil,--- actually, you can't see him because he is always hiding. He hates and so avoids being seen. He is most effective when we deny he exists or get fascinated with him. He gets us to blame others for our condition, gets us angry and defensive, gets us to isolate ourselves from others, gets us to make excuses, rationalize and justify ourselves. These are the things he really works on constantly. He is a genius when it comes to alienating people. He's had a lot time at it. Fortunately for us Jesus exposed him, his nature and his plan and his demise is sure.

Second, the rub in all this is that the devil is voraciously consumed in going after those who believe in Jesus. He doesn't worry about the world in general. He is already its prince (John 12:31). He's out to destroy the Body of Christ. The Bible presents him as sin and evil personified. Sin is ultimate self-centeredness and evil is the collective atmosphere of sinful beings. That's his atmosphere and it is one of total interpersonal distrust, suspicion, manipulation and fear. The sum total of the devil's objective is to fight God by isolating each of His people from one another and setting up his own dark empire of eternal self centering activity. Secular society is the visible picture of the kingdom of darkness headed for self-destruction. That's called hell, where each person is isolated, alienated, frightened and alone in darkness---forever.

Evil is personal because sin is personal. Evil is the devil's atmosphere and sin is the devil's spirit. Yes, there is a devil and he is as personal as you can get. Look how He tried to do Jesus in (Mt.4)! If you survey the world scene evil is as obvious as the fact you exist. But evil is not a thing, a concept or a fantasy. It is an atmosphere you can feel when you experience anything invisibly anti-personal, divisive, hostile, separative, isolating and fear filled.

From God comes personal grace, acceptance, relationship in love and open honest community. You can see it, hear it, feel it and enjoy it interpersonally. From the devil, the master of separation, comes personal evil. Even his spirits exist in fear of him and each other. Evil is always operative wherever people are because sin pervades the human heart and the devil's goal is to find a person's vulnerable spot in the sinful heart. Temptation is that spot. When he finds that spot he sends his spirits to work on that spot. He knows when to hit. That's what Job 1 tells and add his 'roaring' (1 Peter 5:8).

Evil spirits are attracted by weakness. Temptation is our primary weakness. It emits a scent drawing them. They exploit that scent. Weakness is seen in that inner shortcut we take to satisfy the need of the moment. Wherever we are most tempted is where every person can identify weaknesses that are unique to them. Sin works uniquely in each person. The very fact we find a way to rationalize our behavior shows that weakness. Sin gets us to look at the world around us, gather the wisdom from it to find our way through it and immerse ourselves in it. Again, for each person sin is unique because a person is unique.

That world is secular society and the relational environment we are in everyday. Without God whatever it takes to survive in it is the method of the moment. That's sin. That survival is where our personal weaknesses emerge. If we know God, we realize what they are, the sin that spurs them on and He helps us stand against them. Our basic weakness is fear, fear for our identity, for our physical well being, for our family but mostly for ourselves and the uncertainties that face us each day and fear of the future and not having the best way to get through any moment. Whenever we are in those moments, the devil jumps in to distract us from the Lord and His will (Gen.3). This is where the devil-operated spirits encourage us to take hold of whatever will satisfy the need he wants us embrace.

Paul identifies the vulnerability of the sinful nature that lives only in the moment without a moral foundation in God, “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.” We can either continue to let spirits overrun and deteriorate us or take up the shield of faith, discern them and rebuke them in the name of Jesus ((Gal.5:19-21 Message Bible).”

Take for instance the spirit of compromise, which is very real and often mistaken as humility. Compromise can be a social technique allowing you to fit in to the group you are with at the moment. It is also a political technique to allow two or more secular groups to find some temporary solution to a disagreement. The spirit of compromise behind it is real. You can feel it personally when you are in a group where crude jokes and language dominate the conversation. There is that hesitant embarrassed semi-laugh you emit but wish you were somewhere else.

Remember the party courts, partying late into the night, hoping for something or someone to happen that will make sense but never does? Still you go and participate in the endlessly meaningless conversations. Then the frenetic attempts to bring some novel joke or impress the surrounding onlookers with intellectual depth or physical prowess. These usually end up with empty glasses and empty hearts drifting into the night only to face another day of burdensome labor and unfulfilled expectations. There is no question the devil is the prince of this world and his spirits are relentless in their fear-driven need to latch onto the weaknesses in human nature.

Institutions of all kinds are courts in the world that can appear to be ends in themselves, final answers to the deep heart needs only God can satisfy. The country club, the yacht club, the fraternity setting, alumni associations and the myriad organizations that covet your membership can be fraught with spirits that would distract you.

Denominations are no exceptions. Many mainline churches have emerged as world-conforming self-perpetuating bureaucracies whose secular-compromised authorities submit to annual budgets, man-made laws of governance, drawing arrogant self-elevating leaders with control issues and the ever-demanding program to keep membership happy. They subscribe to the bloated secular idea that quantity equals quality, that buildings and programs and attractive eloquence can replace a direct relationship with God. None of them has an eternal fix. They are temporary man-made copies of world structures. They take God’s ideas and make them ideals to be worshiped apart from Him. Separated from God they become ideals without substance thus making them idols. From idea to ideal to idol, the courts of the world without God are merely shadows of what could have been. 'Church' apart from Jesus and His Word is just another man-made social idol.

Typical of this process is the way the world uses the words of God like love and truth. For instance, the idea that one can ‘make love’ is absurd. God is love. Another example is this, over the entrance to the New York Public Library is engraved, “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The implication is that if you can keep delving into all the knowledge in the library you will be free. Think about it. Where did that statement come from but John’s Gospel where Jesus says that if you are His disciple, then and only then, you will know the truth and He being the truth will set you free, this in the ultimate context of Jesus declaring that He is the truth (Jn.8:32). This is what the world does with God’s ideas. It takes a statement from God and separates it from Him to make the world seem more wise than God. It's really called plagiarism and we become the plagiarists. Imagine. To think we can take His idea, separate it from Him and make up our own idealistic world in which we actually become our own god. How false is that? Consider all the other separatist ideas we take on and redefine them for our benefit like the use of the word 'love' for instance.

The bottom line in this entire discourse is that “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them [evil spirits], because the one who is in you [Jesus] is greater than the one who is in the world (1Jn.4:4).”

This leads to one more thing, the way you deal with the devil and his spirits. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). “And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire (Zech.3:2)?” “The Lord rebuke you (Jude 1:9).”
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2Cor.10:3-5).”

Think Jesus, think His Word, resist the devil, demolish rationalizing and self justifying arguments in self and among others, take evil thinking captive and hand it over to the Cross.