Kingdom of Darkness - Ignorant and Wicked

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting scripture, but scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focused discussion will be the kingdom of darkness, ignorant and wicked. Let's open the Word of God then to the sixth chapter of Ephesians, in our series on the believer's armor, and let me read the text for you so that you have in mind the sweep of thought that Paul gives us in this matter. Starting in verse 10, Ephesians 6.10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to distinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, with all prayer and petition. Pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Clearly, a simple reading of that text lets us know that we are engaged in a serious battle. The whole world is a battleground between God and Satan, good angels and fallen angels, holy men and unholy men. For us, as Christians, while all is well in an eternal sense, as long as we remain in this world, we are engaged in a very serious battle, a warfare. It is in some ways a life and death struggle, a struggle with the unseen hordes of wickedness behind the visible evil in the world, and these are demonic forces that control the minds of men and the cultures of the world to activate the purposes of their leader, who is none other than Satan himself. We then contend, as Paul says, not with flesh and blood, our enemy is much more formidable than just human. We contend with spiritual beings, demons, who are behind all that is bad and all that is against God in the thinking of our world. Consequently, every child of God must also view himself or herself as a soldier. We have all been called to battle. We have all been drafted by the King of Kings, and we cannot dodge the draft, and there are no deferments. We battle with enemies we can't see, enemies we can't touch, enemies we can't outwit. We need protection and we need strength, and we need wisdom beyond ourselves. You can take all that is ours in Christ, all that is listed for us in chapter one, all the blessings that are ours in the heavenlies in Christ, which are delineated in the first three chapters, we can talk about the wonderful gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit. We have also been given the revelation of God in the Word of God, and still with all the blessings, with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and with the resource that the Word of God is, we still cannot stand in our own strength. In fact, we are reminded in 1 Corinthians 10 that whoever thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall. We have to recognize that as Christians, we live in a very dangerous place, namely this world. There is danger all around us, and it is masked with all kinds of deception. Now we're not saying that we're so vulnerable that we can lose our salvation, we can lose our promised eternal life, but we certainly can lose the battle for usefulness, the opportunity for joy and blessedness, if we don't learn how to fight effectively. Just a reminder along that line. In John 10, 29, Jesus said this: that anybody who belongs to him, no one can snatch them out of his hand. Snatch is harpazine. We cannot be snatched away from the hand of God or the hand of Christ. Satan cannot overpower God, and yet we can fall into sin that renders us useless, joyless, and brings us under divine discipline. We will not lose the war, but we can lose battles along the way and live in the doldrums of defeat. That is why we are told in verse 11, to put on the full armor of God, in order that we might be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. We want victory, we want blessing, we want usefulness, we want joy, we want the freedom of the fullness of Christian fellowship and worship that a life armed against Satan will produce. Now, just a little bit more by way of introduction, taking you a little deeper into verse 12 for a moment. We're reminded there that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, simply not against humans, but against and then notice the rulers, the powers, the world forces of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenlies. These are all statements that identify for us a hierarchy, and this hierarchy is frankly not new to us, because clearly there is a hierarchy among angels even before the fall of Satan and his demons. The way God organized the angels, and the way he created the angels, was not like they were all rubber stamped and identical to each other, that is a misconception. All angels are not equal. There are angels, and then there are different kinds of angels. There are cherubim and there are seraphim, there are angels and there are archangels, and that would be those who are above the regular angels. And then there are super angels or superarchangels, who even have names, like Michael and Gabriel and Lucifer. So there is a structure, there is a hierarchy. When God creates the angels, and God dispatches his will to the archangels, who disseminate that will to the angels who carry it out, so that when Satan fell and took a third of the angels with him, according to Revelation chapter twelve, a third of them, they fell with the same variation of abilities and powers that were in the original creation, only now in a fallen condition, but still there is order among the demons. There is hierarchy among the demons, and the angel over all of them, who is not by nature different than them but more powerful than them, is Satan himself. He too is an angel like all other angels. He is a fallen angel like all other fallen angels. He is a demon like all other demons, only he was not created like them all, he was created to be above them all with superior powers. So in battling against the demon world, we are not battling, you might say, a sort of random operation by a whole lot of equally empowered and equally gifted angels, who are sort of independently doing whatever they do. We are warring against a very sophisticated hierarchy that operates in some degree from the top down. Although, because angels are fallen, they are by nature in a fallen condition, and a fallen condition would be a condition of pride and rebellion, and therefore it must be very difficult for Satan to coordinate all the work. Holy angels, in the hierarchy in the structure in which they operate, operate perfectly in a holy manner. Fallen angels operate imperfectly because being imperfect themselves, they are by nature rebellious and wicked, and resist the very structure of their own system. But nonetheless it is sophisticated, and Satan does get what he wants done as the architect of schemes through the hierarchy of these archangels and angels. Sometimes called principalities and powers and rulers, they are placed in a strategic location. Sometimes Satan places certain of these very powerful demons in positions behind governments, such as Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14, Daniel 9 and 10. You see these hierarchical powers, these elevated kinds of demons, with powers above the rest of the demons put in very strategic positions to affect the purposes of Satan through certain nations, always at the end to work against the purposes of God. They are also identified by the word darkness, which would be parallel to the word wickedness. Darkness represents the character of this domain. Remember Colossians 1. We have been delivered out of the domain of darkness, into the kingdom of God's dear Son. Darkness describes a couple of things: ignorance and immorality. In the Bible, you'll find darkness used as a metaphor for ignorance, and you will find it used as a metaphor for wickedness. So the kingdom of darkness is both ignorant and wicked. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the kingdom of darkness, ignorant and wicked. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.