Preached on Sunday, September 9, 2018 (a second edition of a sermon preached 6-9-13)
Scripture readings: Acts 13:4-12; Ephesians 6:10-20
Paul and Barnabas were honored to be invited into the
presence of the Roman governor of Cyprus to tell him the message about Jesus.
They found that he was, in so many ways, the perfect audience for the good news.
He was intelligent; which didn’t mean that he was merely
very smart. Being merely smart can cause so much trouble. Intelligence meant
that he could understand, and sort things out, and see what was really there,
and come to the right conclusion. And this intelligent audience had a wizard, a
sorcerer, right by his side.
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| Walking Near Crab Creek, North of Mattawa/Desert Aire August 2018 |
We can’t be sure that Barnabas and Paul knew from the very
start that the man standing beside the governor’s chair was a sorcerer. They
seem to have argued with Elymas as though he was merely an influential man, like
others they had met. There was some shifting in what they understood was going
on in front of them. There was some shifting in what they realized they had to
do about it.
There was a kind of inspiration involved on Paul’s part. We
read that he was, “filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas (the
wizard)” and spoke judgment upon him. (Acts 13:9)
While Barnabas and Paul were trying to share their faith and
lead the governor to faith in Jesus, the sorcerer “opposed them and tried to
turn the governor from the faith.” There was this growing conflict, until the
Holy Spirit opened the eyes of Paul to who this man named Elymas was, and what
he stood for. The conflict was an outbreak of what has been called “spiritual
warfare.”
I know, from my own experience that such warfare is real and
that it is going on all the time. There is the Kingdom of God and there is the
Shadow Kingdom of this present darkness. There are armies of these kingdoms
fighting some kind of war that we can’t see, but that war involves us and has
an effect on us.
At the same time, I want to avoid obsession. C. S. Lewis
said, "There are two equal
and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to
disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an
excessive and unhealthy interest in them." (C.S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”)
I think our human race can fall into the same pair of
opposite errors related to angels: either to disbelieve in them or to have an
unhealthy interest in them. Angels almost never make their presence known
unless they have a special mission that requires them to communicate with us.
Elymas the wizard probably would never have called his
familiar spirits devils. They were just spirits, and maybe even gods to him. Or
he thought they were angels at his service. As Paul says, “Satan himself
masquerades as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)
Paul, in his thoughts on our struggle against “the spiritual
forces of evil”, doesn’t tell us much about either devils or angels. The angels
may well be working or fighting all around us but, for Paul, the main point is all
about living inside of the spiritual realities that come to us through Jesus:
truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, the Spirit and word of
God, and prayer. He calls this our armor, or our defense. He calls it our means
of standing through it all; standing up in resistance and going forward.
(Ephesians 6:11)
I have seen angels, myself, a few times. One summer night,
when I was sixteen, I struggled with an invisible devil until I was able to
say, “Go away, in Jesus’ name, and don’t come back.” And that came as quite a
surprise to me because, at that time, I really didn’t believe in the devil or
in demons. But I know what the Bible told me to do about it.
That is one way of being aware of a spiritual warfare but
there is no need whatsoever for any kind of experience like that. In fact, if
you tried looking for experiences like this it might get you in a lot of
trouble. I know this from personal experience. I would solemnly warn you that
there are much more important and necessary ways to be aware of such a warfare.
Paul said for us to be aware of it in the form of things
like truth, and peace, and faith, and prayer. Our hold on the truth, and the
peace that comes from the good news, and a faith and loyalty toward God in our
heart, and all kinds of prayer make us part of the warfare.
Seeing these in others is also a way in which we take part.
We see the armies of the kingdom of God when people live out the truth, and
bring peace to others, and patiently cope by faith and prayer; trusting and
communicating with God.
At such times, you see and feel the unseen. You see and feel
the power of God living in others and living in you. You see it in the love and
integrity of families. You see it in the baptism of babies, and children, and
adults. You see it in weddings. You see it in holy funerals.
You see the glory of the armies of the kingdom of light. You
see people living out what God is putting into them, but you also see it as a
sign of the march of a whole kingdom (a whole new world) on the move; holding
out and advancing against the darkness.
On the other side of the war, it is easy to see the sadness
and the badness lurking in human nature; but sometimes you see something much worse.
You see self-fulfilling fears. You see self-destructive behavior. You see the
irresistible and irrational descent into misunderstanding and misinterpretation
between people who should be working together; people who should be friends, or
who should love each other.
You see something beyond human weakness. Sometimes you hear
the cackling laughter of the spiritual forces of darkness. You may not hear it
with your ears but you feel it in a shudder down your spine.
Paul was aware of something strange in his meeting with the
governor. There was this other man. His name was Bar-Jesus (bar-Joshua, son of
Joshua, a common name) Elymas (a Jewish and a Greek combination). In this way
he was just like Saul who was also Paul (Saulus Paulus, a Jewish and Roman
combination). One was a Jew who had turned into a sorcerer. The other was a Jew
who had turned into a Christian. They had parted ways. They had been swept
apart by the forces from the dark side of the spiritual warfare.
The Romans were so much about mastery and control, and this
Roman governor was being mastered by the sorcerer every time Paul tried to
share Jesus with him. The governor was “intelligent”, meaning that he had a
gift for putting things and ideas together. He had the skill to see where and
how things added up, and he was oddly not able to hold on to anything Paul
said.
In the governor’s oddly disabled intelligence Paul saw
something more than the work of a man who simply posed as a sorcerer. He saw
that Elymas was more than a poser. He saw that the spiritual forces of evil
were there, and at work.
The power and the wisdom of God, in the form of the Holy
Spirit, filled Paul. So, Paul could speak for God and put his finger on exactly
what was going on. Paul saw the hand of God was at work in this moment of time.
God himself was there with Paul to face the spiritual forces.
The interesting thing is that, as far as we know, nothing
worse happened to the sorcerer than what happened to Paul on the road to
Damascus where Paul had met Jesus. Paul, too, had been blinded for a time by
Jesus himself, and had to be led by the hand, just like Elymas. (Acts 9:8 and
13:11)
Paul’s blindness and having to be led by the hand were the
mercy of Jesus. They were part of the story of Paul’s salvation. They could be
part of the salvation of Elymas. We simply don’t know how the story of Elymas
ended. When it all happened to Paul, it was a matter of salvation and hope. The
salvation and hope that come through Jesus are the power that created the armor
of God.
They come to us not as a feeling but as a fact. Jesus, and everything
he has done for us, almost forces itself upon us in a way that leads us to
repent and surrender. We see Jesus. We see the cross and the one hanging there.
We see an empty tomb and death and all our fears and defeats defeated by Jesus
and the resurrection. When we see it, how can we say “no” to what he shows us?
How can we escape?
We see the truth of it; and it is that truth (that
factuality) that serves like a belt that holds our lives together: the belt of
truth. However much we may struggle, Jesus has made the fact of his love, the
truth of his love, just as great a reality as any of our struggles.
There is the “breastplate of righteousness” where everything
is set right. Jesus is the righteousness of God and our righteousness too. He
is the justice of God who sets us right with himself and with ourselves.
In the cross of Christ, we die to ourselves. From the tomb
of Jesus, we rise as new people who can stand against the devil, because Jesus
has made us right before God, and Jesus stands with us.
We are still sinners, but Jesus stands up for us against all
accusers. The word “devil” means accuser. The spiritual warfare seeks to accuse
us and make us give up. The grace of God in Jesus enables us to stand up.
There is “the shoeing of your feet with the gospel of
peace”. Paul almost never says anything in a simple way. The gospel means good
news. The good news of Jesus gives us peace with God, but it also gives us
peace in every way. In Hebrew, the word peace is shalom and it is all about
relationships. It doesn’t mean an absence of conflict. Peace means all
relationships are healthy and flourishing, especially our relationship with
God, in Christ.
The spiritual warfare attacks us when we are not nurturing
our most important relationships. Or the warfare tempts us to mess with our
most important relationships. The gospel of peace prepares us to stop and pay
attention to people. The peace of Christ teaches us how to nurture our
relationships, and this protects us, and it protects them, from the spiritual
forces of evil.
There is “the shield of faith” and faith is a kind of
loyalty and trust in God, in Jesus. Loyalty listens to Jesus instead of listening
to our doubts, or despair, or weariness, or weakness, or our strongest desires
and temptations.
Loyalty and trust help us to listen to Jesus, who forgives
our sins, and so we have another way to defend ourselves than by proving
ourselves, or by justifying ourselves, or by pretending we are something other
than what we are. True faith saves us from pride as well as from fear.
Then there is the “helmet of salvation”. When I was
seventeen I drowned, but I was saved from the lake. I was rescued from the
water by Charlie Lucas.
I was rescued, then I was resuscitated, then I was safe and
alive. Salvation is our rescue by God, in Jesus, and we are safe. Knowing we
are safe in Christ is how we stand up to the struggle of the war.
Then there is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of
God”. In Isaiah chapter eleven we can see the power of the Lord working through
the Holy Spirit, and through the Messiah. Isaiah wrote like this, “A shoot will
come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The
Spirit of the Lord will rest on him; the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of
the Lord; and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by
what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with
righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for
the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with
the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” (Isaiah 11:1-4)
This would tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the word
that Jesus speaks in healing, mercy, and judgment. In this way, Jesus himself,
in the Spirit, spoke from Paul’s heart and mouth to the sorcerer Elymas. Or we
could say that Paul spoke in the Spirit, and Jesus spoke with him.
The Spirit put his sword in Paul’s hands, or the Spirit put
his sword in Paul’s mouth. The Spirit gave him God’s word to speak God’s truth.
It sounded like judgment, and yet it had the potential for mercy.
In spiritual warfare, we can see things as they are, and
name them for what they are. At the same time, we can also leave the door of
mercy open. We know that the sword of the Spirit has been given to us with an
end in view; to make all things new.
We have many powerful swords of the Spirit in the Bible. When we recall or speak these words of God, the voice of God speaks again from the words we have read from the Good Book, and works with power.
Then there is prayer. Prayer isn’t given a name as a part of
the armor of God. Yet, maybe it is also part of the sword of the Spirit. In
Romans chapter eight, Paul says, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but
the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans
8:26)
In the spiritual struggle we may be too tired, or confused,
or frustrated to know how to pray, but God’s own words and thoughts (what we
would pray if we were faithful, and loving, and wise) gets said. Through the
Holy Spirit praying in us, the word of God gets said, in prayer; and that
prayer changes things.
What God does for us in Christ is the real armor that we
wear. God is our strength. The Lord’s Supper tells us this. Here is the gospel
set upon a table. “Eat and be strong,” it says. “Be strong in the Lord and in
his mighty power.” (Ephesians 6:10) “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
(Psalm 34:8)
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