Take Evil Seriously

Every meaningful story has a villain. 

For Batman it was the Joker

For Frodo, it was Gollum

For Maximus it was Commodus

For William Wallace it was Lord Bruce Junior, the noble

For Luke Skywalker, it was his father Anakin

For Jesus, it was King Herod first – in the genocide of all boys that were two years of age and under. 

So what drives a villain?

-          Intense jealously, the desire for control, pride,   corruption of his target, to continually evade capture,

-          pride and self preservation.

We have a villain in our own story, Satan and he is all this to us.  The question remains whether we take the reality of that conclusion at face value or whether we try to downplay it.  The ramifications of our decision are serious in the battle that is being fought for the hearts of men and women.

It is the unseen world that is the most dangerous to us.

It was Anne Marie whose cardboard testimony read the following:

• Naïve 

flip

• Totally aware of the evil in this world

This is the spell that needs to be broken!  We need to wake up to the reality of coming against all that hides in the darkness and expose it and bring it into the light.

We know evil is all around us.  We see it in the news and we don’t have to look far whether it is the cholera outbreak in Haiti, another porn ring that has been uncovered here in Canada,  child bullying on the front pages of our newspaper.  So where did it come from.  Why do we encounter such brutal murders and child exploitation?  

The fact is that there is more to this world than meets the eye.  Something happened a long time before we hit the stage.  We are not alone and Paul makes that abundantly clear in Ephesians 6 where he reminds us that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against the powers of this dark world and spiritual forces in the heavenly realm.

It becomes even more real to us when we have to deal with it head on as Sharon and I had to deal with an evil presence in our former home.  We learned that a previous owner of our home had set up one of our child’s rooms as a shrine to her Hindu gods. 

We recognized that we had to act right away and prayed over every room in the name and being covered by the blood of Jesus out loud.

We certainly sing of angelic host during this time of year and there is certainly more popularity around the reality of angels, but have we got the picture right?

Daniel 10:4-8  Angels absolutely struck fear in their visitations because often they rose up in judgment and they carry out the justice of God

It all began with an angel who stood out and was captain to all angels.

The Origin of our Enemy

Ezekiel 28:12-17

We need to recognize that this battle began long before we entered the scene.  It began with Lucifer

He was the head of millions of angelic hosts, he had everything and was the commander of the armies of God.  Lucifer means ‘Son of the morning’ and he shined in the glory of God until he sought to become the glory of God in himself.

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.  Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.  C.S. Lewis.

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the NT seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe – a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death, disease, and sin…Christianity thinks that this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong.  Christianity agrees…this is a universe at war.  

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

As we unpack this passage in Ezekiel 28, we learn that:

·         He comes in the form of pride v17  He was found to be full of violence, wickedness and completely self-absorbed. 

·         He is a master at betrayal.  He was the model of perfection, he was on the holy mount of God and he completely walked away from everything that he knew.

·         He is the incarnation of the very worst form of evil.  We see evil at its worst when self raises its ugly head  and demands worship.  It is seen in the Hitlers and Stalins.  As John Eldredge writes, ‘he didn’t want to play a noble role in the Story; he wanted the Story to be about him.

The Arsenal of The Enemy 

Understand his playbook

Genesis 3:1-7

·         The enemy comes to distort.   The lie that he often sells us is that God is holding out on you.   He is not delivering on what he promised you.  He didn’t come through, He didn’t show up.  I have heard so many stories of people who tell me they did all the right things and it never paid off and they throw in the towel.

Sin is the belief that God cannot meet my needs so I have to take matters into my own hands.  I don’t trust God to love me completely so I seek to find it in someone else

·         The enemy is our accuser.  Once we commit sin or walk away from God, from faith, lose hope, he is right there to tell you that you can never go back, you’ve lost your faith, you have no hope.

·         The enemy deceives.  Ultimately he wants us to believe that our decisions will not affect us, we will be perfectly fine and so the downward spiral begins.  He comes to manipulate our relationships, our circumstances

Going to War with The Enemy

Matthew 4:1-3; Ephesians 6:12,17,18

Going to war becomes more real when we face it head on for ourselves.

We had friends in Milton who became believers through the ministry there and it would be one of our friends Sonia who told Sharon about a dream that she had one night.   In that dream she described a villain type of character that had a cloak on that came over his head and covered his head and part of his eyes.  She shared how he came after our family but that the glory of the Lord surrounded me and he fled.  We didn’t think much of it until about 3 months later that Jordan opened up with us and described the same evil presence that came into his room and scared the life out of him.  It was insistent with us that this wasn’t a dream, but that it was a vision.  Sharon and I would also learn during this time that a previous owner of our home had set up Jordan’s room as a shrine to her Hindu gods.  The most recent owner who happened to my church secretary also asked about whether I heard footsteps in the house.   I thought to myself...you didn’t tell me that at the time I was buying the house!

At that point Sharon and I knew that we needed to pray over our house and every room for that matter and out loud because remember the enemy can’t read your mind.

·         Confess  out loud!  

The power over the enemy and sin for that matter is broken when we confess  (agree, admit, acknowledge)..  Do a study on the word confess in the Bible.

We realize that prayer is an offensive weapon,  it is a weapon that we use when we are on attack.  However, we need to remember that the enemy of our soul is a mind reader.  We need to fight bad thoughts with Scripture.  We need to pray out loud – the enemy cannot read your thoughts.  Jesus combated the enemy with Scripture.  We see this clearly during his extreme time of temptation.  We need to know the promises that we claim, we need to renew our minds.

Romans 12:1,2

·         Pray in the Spirit

All too often we are uncomfortable with the silence yet it in those moments of surrender that we claim back enemy territory.  As we listen and cry out to God, we ask the Holy Spirit how we should be praying and he will bring the verses, the thoughts, the action to mind.  Romans 8:26,27

The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.   I know a young man who is tortured by the belief that he has been predestined for hell and it was while we were praying for him that God dropped Psalm 35:3 into my spirit a few weeks ago.

Psalm 35:3 Brandish spear and javelin
   against those who pursue me.
Say to me,
   “I am your salvation.”

It became clear to me as I shared these verses with those praying with me that this young man knows Jesus, but has lost faith in the promises of God for him.

·          

CClaiming victory before  feeling victory

We need to affirm Scripture more than ever when the enemy fills our heart and mind with false thoughts and this is especially true when we don’t have any feeling of this in and of ourselves

It was the story of Paul’s faith that everyone on the ship would be safe that brought this truth to life for me in the importance of believing in faith.

So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Acts 27:25

The season that we are entering, Christmas and New Years can be one of the most difficult times for people we know.  We can choose to believe it or ignore it.  We all know what it is like to be surrounded by a lot of people and yet feel like we are all alone.

The Globe and Mail did a report yesterday and the ever increasing divide between religion and atheism or the lack of any belief in God.  Statistics have shown that it is now over 70% of Canadians who see this time of year purely as a holiday.  The paper made the comment that since church attendance has continued to go south that we have a whole generation of children growing up with no understanding of Christian beliefs.  It also mentioned that the Catholics are the # 1 religious group in Canada, but now #2 is Muslims and in the next 5 years they anticipate that Islam will represent 10% of Canadians. 

The Takeaway

The Enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and we are called to battle for reconciliation, for healing, for everlasting life.

We are in a heated battle and it is time we take evil seriously in our lives and in the lives of others and pray against it in Jesus’ name.

Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good.  He came to make dead people come alive!