Spiritual Warfare

Old Testament Reading: Deuteronomy 1:1-9, 20-25
New Testament Reading: 2 Timothy 3:1-6

Spiritual Warfare
“Satan’s Attack on the Family”
Ephesians 5:22-6:2

Wayne J. Edwards, Pastor

   Every born-again believer is involved in a cosmic spiritual war between God and Satan.

• Once we see our sins, our need for a Savior, and Jesus Christ as the Savior we need, Satan ramps up his attacks upon us, tempting us with every kind of sin and assuring us if we will join with him and rebel against God, he will give us the pleasures of the world.

   Then, the three consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin get intertwined within this spiritual warfare.

• The curse God placed on the earth – Genesis 3:17-19
• That Satan is the god of this age – 2 Corinthians 4:4
• That every person is born with a sin nature – Psalm 51:5

   When we received Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, while our spirits were born again, our soul was not. Therefore:

• Our minds must be transformed by the study of God’s Word.
• Our wills must be surrendered unto the will of God.
• Our emotions must be controlled by the Holy Spirit.

   The god of this age has infected the major social systems of society.

• The governments of the world are intent on establishing the New World Order, unaware they are preparing the world for the arrival of the Antichrist.
• Under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the stated goal of the Department of Education is to indoctrinate our children in the ideology of wokeism and to prepare them to live under Marxist Socialism.
• Having sold their soul to the devil, those involved in the media use their platforms to openly support the globalist agenda.
• Satan is using the medium of music to divide families and to divide churches, to destroy the ministries and missions of the Evangelical churches.
• Satan knows the family is the fabric that holds society together and the channel through which God’s work is carried out on the earth.
• If Satan can be successful in tearing down the structure of the family, he will be successful in damaging that which is dear to God’s heart and halt the spread of the gospel to the world.

1. God’s Intentional Design for the Family Ephesians 5:22-6:4 – “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

• Because Eve was the first to be deceived, God established the husband as the “head” of the marriage and the family – Genesis 3:16.
• Referring to that, the Apostle Paul said wives should “submit” to their own husbands – Ephesians 5:22-24.
• “Headship” is a divine calling of a husband to take responsibility for Christ-like servant leadership in the home.
• “Submission” is a divine calling of a wife to honor her husband and to use her gifts to affirm her husband’s leadership.
• When the husband provides the right kind of headship, the wife will respond with the right kind of submission, and their marriage will be successful.
• When we take that which God designed and created for His purposes and redefine it to fit our needs, we have not only sinned against a holy God, we have stepped outside the canopy of God’s blessings and opened the family to the power of Satan.

2. Satan’s Determined Destruction of the Family – Job 1:6-12 –

“The Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.”

• Under the new paradigm of wokeism, the biblical definition of the family is considered to be racist, bigoted, xenophobic, or an outdated cultural depiction.
• The results of Satan’s attack on the family include the increase in the number of divorces, the growing acceptance of common-law relationships, the legalization of same-sex marriages, and the number of children who live with one parent or with a parent who is not their birth father or mother.
• The U.S. Department of Education forces teachers to teach our children to be skeptical of their parents and to coach them to believe if their parents don’t agree with what they’re doing or want to do, they cannot be trusted.
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services filed a regulatory proposal to eliminate the words “mother,” “father,” “paternity,” “his,” and “her” from the childcare-related laws. Their goal is to “recognize the existence of and the needs of diverse family structures.”
• If this proposed regulation is signed into law, grade school children can choose to have medical procedures done to their bodies that will affect their lives forever without the consent of their parents.
• When that medical procedure does not produce the happiness the child expected, there will be more hurting children who are physically and emotionally isolated from their parents, and Satan will have won another victory.

3. The Scripture’s Divine Recovery for the Family
   

   Deuteronomy 6:1-8 – “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

• To protect their children from Satan’s attacks while they are under their watch-care and to prepare them to stand firm in their faith once they leave home, parents must reject the ways of the world and follow the Word of God.
• First, they must love the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and might and then diligently yet authentically teach their children to do the same thing.
• When children see their parents respecting the things God has taught them, they will respect the things parents want to teach them.
• Rabbis taught the children about the Scriptures, but the parents, and primarily the fathers, taught their children about God and how He was to be respected and revered,
• God uses the family to teach children about His nature.
  • As they see how their parents relate to each other and with the other children, they can see and example of the relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
• God uses the family to teach children about His church.
  • As they experience the love and grace extended to each member of their family and the love that is communicated to them through their family, they can better understand what it means to be a part of the family of God and to relate to other believers as brothers and sisters in Christ.
• God uses the family to teach children about the world.
  • As they see the physical, mental, and emotional effort required to provide for the family, they are exposed to a biblical work ethic, which is required for a civil, sane, moral, and productive society.
• Now that we know Satan’s goal is to destroy the biblical model of the family, Christians must separate their children from the world in every way and follow God’s plan to build a strong, vibrant, Bible-based, gospel-centered, distinctively Christian family.
  • Today’s parents cannot blame the world for what it is doing to destroy their children until they accept the responsibility for what they should be doing to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.