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[0:00] 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and I want to look at verse 4. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

[0:18] 1 Timothy chapter 1. 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 18. It says, And the title of my message tonight is Some Things About the Spiritual Warfare.

[0:44] Now, I'm not going to give you everything because that could take all year. You know as well as I do, war is a big deal. And war goes on and you're never going to cover everything about war.

[0:55] But I just want to give you some things about the spiritual warfare. And you know, my qualifications. My qualifications, I don't consider myself a military strategist, although I'm almost 60 years old.

[1:08] I've served for 40 plus years in and around battle. I would consider myself somewhat well-versed in war. I have either been in some battles, seen them take place, communicated with some who have been there, read their accounts.

[1:23] I don't consider myself retired. I'm still active military. Only God knows my rank. I have had the same captain my whole career. I have seen a lot of casualties. And through the leadership of my captain, I have made it this far.

[1:36] There have been many books written about warfare. And there have been many wars and will be as long as we are in this fallen world. I've read my share of books written, but spend most of my time reading the one written by my captain.

[1:50] I am talking about the spiritual warfare. This war has no age limits. Right? When you get born again, you enter this war.

[2:00] There is no age like, you know, the army, you have to be a certain age. Not in this one. You get in this when you get born again. Are you saved here tonight?

[2:13] If you're saved here tonight, you are in a war. You know, my dad mentioned something to me. It's earlier today. That I was talking about, I told him I was going to preach on some things about the spiritual warfare.

[2:25] And he mentioned to me, he says, he goes, he goes, and it'll be going on while you're preaching. And, you know, I didn't even think about that, but that's so true. The spiritual warfare is always going on.

[2:37] So I just want to give you some things, some things about the spiritual warfare. I'm going to say, I got eight points and I'm going to stay in my a lot of time, but I'm going to say some things outside of those points.

[2:47] You just might want to jot down. The first time war shows up in your Bible, anybody, you know, it's in Genesis 14. If you remember the story, Abraham and Lot, right? Lot went down to Sodom and Gomorrah and they were having a war down there.

[3:01] And they took Lot captive and Abraham got word of it. And he took his trained servants in his house and said, let's go take on these kings and all their people. I said, that's pretty good.

[3:13] That's pretty amazing. He went up and got Lot. The first spiritual battle, the first spiritual battle recorded in the Bible would be in Genesis 3. That would be when Eve fell, right?

[3:25] That makes sense. That's the spiritual warfare, right? Look at James chapter 4. James chapter 4. James chapter 4 in verse 1, it says, So, from whence come the wars and fighting among you?

[3:46] Come they not hence, even of your lust, that war in your members? So, from whence come the wars and fighting among you? And then he just gets right into the spiritual. He said that your lust is the problem, right?

[4:00] It's a spiritual warfare. The first battle, I don't know, you know. I know there's a battle in Revelation chapter 12, where it talks about there's a war in heaven.

[4:16] Michael and his angels fight against the devil and his angels, right? And they were cast down to the earth. Isaiah 14 says, So, I don't know what all went on in there, but that's probably the first battle in history.

[4:35] It's probably Lucifer and that fall from heaven. But, the last one will also be with the devil, right? That's when he gets his crowd together at the end of the millennium.

[4:46] And God has fire come down out of his mouth and gets him. And that's the end of that. War. The definition. The definition of war is a conflict carried on by force of arms.

[5:00] Okay? That's what war is. It's the, and if you notice in James chapter 4, it said, it talked about wherefore are there, what does it say, wars and fightings?

[5:13] Yeah. That's because those two words go together. Wars and fightings among you. And the very definition of war is a conflict carried on by force of arms.

[5:24] So, that means you have weapons in that war. And you well know that our spiritual warfare has weapons, right? You're not going to go to war without a weapon.

[5:37] Right? I don't know what kind of war that would be. But, I don't know of any that have no weapons. As long as the devil has been around, there's going to be both physical and spiritual wars.

[5:51] Verse I quoted earlier, Exodus chapter 15, verse 3, talks about the Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. You know, there's different wars throughout the Bible, spiritual ones even.

[6:05] You know, the book of Daniel, right? The kings of Persia withstood. And Michael had to come and help the giver of the message to Daniel.

[6:19] We're talking about the spiritual warfare. I want to give you some things, some things, that about the spiritual warfare that you might not have considered lately. Okay? Number one.

[6:31] Number one is everyone's battle is different. Okay? The spiritual warfare, everyone's battle is different. And the reason I say that is that was brought home again to me recently with my dad being in the hospital.

[6:46] My dad was in the hospital for an ankle surgery. And I'm thinking to myself, well, at least he's safe. He's got somebody to care for him.

[6:58] You know, he's not on the street. You know, I'm going through these things in my mind thinking, it's all good. And my dad texts me back.

[7:10] And I say he texts me back, not about any of that. He just happened to text me. And in his text, he said, spiritual warfare. And I thought to myself, I think it's all about me.

[7:24] I think I'm the only one. I think my battles are the only battles. And what you got is not a battle. That's wrong. Everyone's battle is different.

[7:37] Okay? That doesn't make it any less part of the battle. All right? So, and I understand that the carnal man, the carnal part of you wants to be critical.

[7:49] The carnal part of me wants to be critical and say, you're not going through anything. I am. Right. You understand that? Right? That's the carnal part. The carnal part doesn't want to realize what you're going through.

[8:03] Look, we are in a battle together. We are part of the same army. We are in this war together. Your battle, Brother Russ, is no less or greater than my battle.

[8:19] We all have a battle of faith. We're all doing it. Every day, we ought to be in the battle. Everyone's battle is different. Everyone's warfare is different.

[8:35] Oh, we have some of the same weapons. Right? We have some of the same weapons. We have the same captain. Right? We're in the same army.

[8:47] We have the same enemy. Right? But the battle front may be different. You know, if you've read much on war. Anybody here a war monger reader?

[8:58] You read a lot of war books. You like war books. Okay. I like to read. I like to read those things. Read a lot of them over the years. And, you know, all those things. We have the same captain. We have the same army.

[9:10] But when you read those things, that battle front over there is a completely different battle front than this one over here. Some of them have special names. You know, I'm trying to think of the one in Germany where it's like the worst place to be.

[9:25] But there's those and then there's other fronts, you know, that are just different. But it's the same army. It's the same weapons. It's the same enemy.

[9:36] It's the same captain. Okay? Don't make light of somebody else's battle because it's not yours. Everyone's warfare is different.

[9:47] Number two, let me give you something else. The warfare is until you leave this life.

[10:01] Okay? The warfare will be until you leave this life. It goes on all the time, every day, until you die. Whether you are in the battle or not.

[10:13] Whether you are in the battle or not. But it's going to go on until your last breath. Okay? But Paul knew about that. Paul knew about that.

[10:24] Look at 2 Timothy chapter 4. You might remember this verse. 2 Timothy chapter 4. And we start in verse 6.

[10:36] It says, For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. So Paul is fixing to leave this life. He knows he's on his way out. He knows his time's up.

[10:47] He says, I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.

[10:59] And not to me only, but unto all them also that love is appearing. Paul knew he was going to go. Paul knew that his battle was to the end. And he says, You know what? My departure is at hand.

[11:11] And I've done it. I did it. I did it. My battle's over. I'm finished. And I'm ready to go. I don't know. You know, I wonder. He says, He says, Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.

[11:25] You know, and I was thinking today, I was thinking, I wonder if you're going to have, I wonder if there's going to be any medals of honor. I wonder, you know, you got these crowns, right? These crowns identify you, right?

[11:35] They're going to identify you. Crown of righteousness. Whatever the other crowns are, they're going to be identification crowns. And I wonder if you're going to be able to be up there in your white raiment and you're going to have across your chest your battle, battle recognition, recognizing.

[11:51] You know, that's what this life is all about. It's the warfare. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Number three, look at Joshua chapter four.

[12:02] Joshua chapter four. Joshua chapter four. Joshua chapter four.

[12:20] Chapter four and verse 13. It says, they're talking about going to Jericho. About 40,000 prepared for war, passed over before the Lord under battle to the plains of Jericho.

[12:35] Okay. The third thing is, it takes daily preparation. It takes daily preparation. First Corinthians chapter nine. First Corinthians chapter nine.

[12:45] Paul says, Paul says, who go at the warfare? Anytime at his own charge. Right. Who does that? Nobody does.

[12:57] Nobody goes to warfare at his own charge, right? Battles are run by people. You know, they're not just a bunch of people that don't get together and go, Hey, Hey man, how you doing?

[13:07] Yeah. Let's go fight somebody. Woo. You know, and then 10 other people. That's not how it works. Right. There's a leader. There's somebody that takes him into battle. Who goes, who go with a warfare anytime at his own charges.

[13:22] That's not how it works. So you need to have preparation. You need to have preparation for the battle. You need to prepare. These guys that went over to Jericho, they were prepared.

[13:33] They, they made preparation. One thing I remember reading about when I'm reading war books is one of the things I remember reading is you need to keep your feet dry.

[13:44] Anybody ever read that in the war books? Yeah. Okay. That was one of the big deals. I get it. You know, your feet are important. I'm realizing that a little bit more. You know, I was thought I was invincible till I was about 38.

[13:56] And well, I'm a lot older than that now, but I'm not invincible for sure. But I hurt my foot, you know, not a while back, I hurt my foot and it just never did get better. And I abused it some more and it kept stayed on and everything.

[14:06] And now it's, now I'm paying the price a little bit. Not like you, brother Mark. I'm sure you're, you're, you're a lot worse off than I am on your foot. But, um, the point is, is, you know, it's, I feel it.

[14:19] It bothers me. And, um, and, and these guys, if they, what it was called was trench foot, right? That's what it was called. And you didn't want to get that.

[14:29] So you had to keep your feet dry. Um, you had to keep your, oh, how about you, you need to eat, right? Somebody's got to supply those guys up front with food.

[14:40] If you, if you run out of fuel, you're going to be done eventually, right? You need to be able to sleep. These guys that didn't sleep, that got no sleep for days on end, they just went crazy.

[14:52] Eventually it's going to get you, right? You need to sleep. You need daily preparation. You need to, you need to prepare yourself. You need to do those things that you need to do as daily preparation.

[15:04] What do you do? What are you doing? What's your daily preparation? Uh, there's bootcamp for a reason in every branch of the armed service, right? There's bootcamp.

[15:15] You don't just, you just don't take somebody in your branch of army or branch of whatever service and go, Hey, I'm glad you signed up today, man. I'm glad you signed up today. You're going to the Panama Canal tomorrow.

[15:29] You're going to fight a war down there. Okay. Thanks for signing up. That's not how it works. It really wouldn't be too successful if that's the way it happened. They take that guy in. They go, this is what you watch out for.

[15:40] This is a training manual. This is how you break your gun down and put it back together. You never know when it's going to jam on you. That's not what you want, right? You don't want that to happen. Um, so there's, there's, there's bootcamp.

[15:54] There's, there's briefings about changes, right? When they're going, when they went into Vietnam, they didn't know what they were dealing with. They went into Vietnam. They're running through Vietnam right there and they're fighting.

[16:06] You know what, how they would fight and they're looking back. Where does John go? Oh, where did Mike go? They had a, they had to do some briefings, find out about some of the changes in the war, right?

[16:19] They had tunnel rats getting them. They were in the ground waiting for them to pass by and they were grabbing the last guys and killing them. They were taking them from behind. There was a different war.

[16:31] And that's the way it always is. You have to, you have to learn the changes. You have to prepare. You have to, you have to, you have to stay, uh, up on what's going on in your battle. There's, uh, more training, right?

[16:46] There's more training. There's always more training. These guys that go, they go into service. They don't go through bootcamp and then it's all over. There's more training. They got to get there.

[16:57] You know, it's like anything, anything like that. There's repetition, right? The same thing over and over and over. You want to be able to do it in your sleep. You hear, you hear the same thing over and over in church.

[17:11] Read your Bible. Pray, go to church, witness for Jesus Christ, et cetera, et cetera. Right? You've heard the same four or five things.

[17:22] You'll hear them forever because that's how you need to prepare. You got to keep doing that. It takes daily preparation. If you don't have a reason to prepare, you are probably not in a situation where you need to, or would have already failed.

[17:38] So if you don't have a reason to prepare, that means you're sitting there, you're going, I don't know. I don't have any reason to prepare. That means you're not in the battle or you are, you didn't realize it and you failed already.

[17:53] Right? Because that's just the way it is. You're not going to, you're not going to, you're not going to fight by accident. It's not how it works. That's not how it works anywhere.

[18:04] The fight to fight the spiritual warfare. You need daily preparation.

[18:15] What are you doing to daily prepare? That's the question you need to ask yourself. What are you doing? I'm getting up in the morning early by no means early enough that I, that, that, that I can spend the kind of time I want to spend, but I just don't, you know, I mean, there's only so many hours in a day, but what are you doing?

[18:40] Are you setting the alarm and you, you set your alarm, you hit your alarm, you get up, you throw your clothes on, you're out the door, you do your, your thing during the week, you know, at work. And then you head home and you sit down, you eat dinner and then you do whatever you do in the night there.

[18:54] And then you get ready and you go to bed and you do it all over again. Where's the preparation? You need to prepare, you know, first Samuel seven, three, and we can look at that first Samuel chapter seven.

[19:18] First Samuel chapter seven. And verse three, it's a Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel saying, if you do, if you, if you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods of Astaroth from among you and prepare your hearts unto the Lord.

[19:37] Now we're talking about the spiritual warfare. Okay. So we're not talking about preparing lunch and preparing, you know, your tools for work. We're talking about preparing your heart.

[19:50] We're talking about the spiritual warfare. You need to spend time preparing for the battle.

[20:02] Number four, the enemy is not going to quit or take a break. The enemy is not going to quit or take a break.

[20:13] Okay. You understand that? You know, your life and my life. I get it. I want to just relax. I do it. I get home.

[20:23] I sit in my easy chair. I kick up my feet. I relax. I get it. But the devil and his boys are not going to relax. You understand that? All right.

[20:34] You know what the Bible says. Look at first Peter chapter five. First Peter chapter five. Give some good insight on this. How many know where I'm going? First Peter chapter five.

[20:45] How many know the verse? Okay. This is very important. And you should know this verse. If you've been saved for five years, let's say five years, you ought to try to memorize this verse.

[20:56] This is a very important verse for you. First Peter chapter five. And first Peter chapter five and verse eight, it says, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.

[21:15] Okay. So this is, this is talking about the devil and he's your adversary. So it's a lot, a lot of things in here to look at. Notice it's present tense.

[21:26] It says, it says, because your adversary, the devil, as a, as a roaring lion, walketh about. This isn't, he walked yesterday. It isn't that he's going to walk tomorrow.

[21:38] He's walking right now. Right. He walks about present tense. He's always at it. It's always now.

[21:50] Notice something else in there. It says, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion. Okay.

[22:00] This is the king of the king of the jungle. Okay. So he's good at what he does. Roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. You know, there's things that you, that they, they're not, you know, these lions or whatever they are hunting.

[22:15] They know there's things they can't devour. There's things they can't get. You know, they don't, they, you know, you've watched enough of the nature things to know. You watch the lions.

[22:25] They go, they find the weaker one. They find the devourable one. Right? So don't be the devourable one. Cause that's who they're going to go after.

[22:36] First. I get it. If they're really hungry, they're going to take on whatever they need to. I've seen a couple of them get a, get a rough shot. Man, I've seen a couple of them where they show that thing is really hungry.

[22:46] And he goes out to somebody and he comes out of the bad end of it. I mean, he gets kicked in the head. He goes away hungry. He's even hungrier now, but he took, tried to take on something that wasn't devourable and it whipped his butt.

[23:01] It's just, you know, that's the way it is. So they're going to go after the devourable. You need to prepare so that you're not that it says, be sober, right? Be sober. So you're paying attention.

[23:12] And it says, be vigilant. The two different words are spelled different. They must have something different about them. Okay. So sober is serious. And this is a serious thing. So you need to be sober, but that's not good enough.

[23:25] You also need to be vigilant. You know, I was reading some of the definitions on vigilant. It said, avoid being killed. Yeah. So you don't need to only need to be sober where you're paying attention to what's going on.

[23:39] You need to try not to be killed. That's okay. Right. Yeah. I'm not just, I'm not, you know, these, I would say probably most people that go to war, that go in the army or go in whatever branch, whatever they do.

[23:55] And they go out to battle. They, they want to avoid being killed. Most of them, some of them, they don't care. They don't care. I get it. But the smarter ones would, would, would, would want to kind of come home.

[24:13] You know, the B2 bombers. If you ever read anything about the B, B24, it's where they, what were they? The, the, the fortresses, the, they call them something. What?

[24:26] What's that? Huh? Yeah. Well, whatever they were, but they called them something like a graveyard or something. They were, they, they, they, they were basically death machines. So, because they were getting shot down, so many of them in a slow, they, they, it's hard to get them to their, to their place of dropping the bombs and getting them back on the fuel.

[24:47] And they're, they're being shot at. And these huge things are easy targets. What's that? Yeah. Whatever they were. But I read these stories.

[24:58] And those guys that went on those, a lot of them, a lot of them did not come back. Very, very few. When it, when you do the percentage, it's probably like 25%.

[25:08] You got in that thing. You had a really, really good chance of not making it. So you need to be sober. It's not enough to be sober. You need to be vigilant.

[25:19] Avoid being killed. And I wrote down, stay in a crowd, stay in church. Right? So, you know, you, you watch some of these animals, animal stories, you know, and, and, and, and, you know, they, they, they, they show them if they're in a crowd, they're usually okay.

[25:39] And when they're chasing them, it's usually the one that drifts back. They're looking for that one. That's not going to be able to keep up. Right? And they, they got some of these animals that they, they get around their young.

[25:49] They, they all face, they all face like that around there. And it's just really hard to penetrate them guys. And, you know, they usually give up and go run after something else. But they're looking for that week.

[26:00] They're looking for that week in there. You need to stay in a crowd. You need to go in his strength. How about that? Right? It's what we, we looked at, we look at the, before, mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

[26:16] It's, it's, you got to be doing this in the spirit of God. Right? You're wear out in the flesh.

[26:28] You're wear out in the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Number five, and I'm hurrying. I see the clock.

[26:39] The warfare is spiritual. Okay? Number five is, is plain and simple. The warfare is spiritual. Ephesians 6, 12. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness in high places.

[26:59] None of them things are physical. Right? Yes, they take on physical manifestations, but they're not physical. It's a spiritual warfare. It's not touch not, taste not, handle not.

[27:13] That's not what it is. It's before all that. You get what I'm saying? Eve, Eve took her the fruit, but her problem was before that.

[27:29] When she lusted after it. Right? That's where her problem was. I get it. When they took her the fruit, that did the deal. But her problem was long before that.

[27:44] It's the things you can't see physically. It's the things you can't see physically. You know, it says, how about this? All that is in the world. You know the verse?

[27:55] All that is in the world, smoking, drinking, eating. That's not what it says. Right? All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

[28:08] It's long before the smoking, eating, and drinking. Right? You understand? There is doubt, discouragement, and discord. It's not somebody didn't keep their commitment to you.

[28:21] It's not somebody called you a bad name or turned on you. It was long before that. It's doubt, discouragement. Right? It's those things.

[28:32] It's long before that. It isn't the enemy you can see with your physical eyes. All right? This is spiritual warfare. Number six, and I'll just get through these real quick here. Learn from your predecessors.

[28:45] There's not much more to learn about this battle. Okay? We're at the jumping off place. It's wrapping up. We're done. Learn from your predecessors. Hebrew chapter 12, verse 1 says, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, talking about those of Hebrews chapter 11.

[29:02] Okay? So, learn from them. Learn. Are you reading missionary books? Are you reading books of people who have been successful in the battle? Are you reading? Are you watching the witnesses?

[29:14] Are you following somebody that's doing well in the battle? Learn from your predecessors. They said in World War II, they said, the guys that did well were the guys that got near a veteran and learned from the veteran.

[29:29] You know, the young people, they get in the military and they're all hard-headed and they got their own thing going. They know everything, of course. But those guys that got in there, those guys that got in there and got with a veteran, they did better than the kids that thought they were going to go in there and play G.I. Joe.

[29:46] Learn from your predecessors. Number seven is you need protection and you must fight. You need protection. Ephesians chapter 6, right? Put on the whole armor of God.

[29:57] And there's a lot of things in there. You ought to read chapter 6 this week, but it's going to tell you a lot of stuff in there about the armor, about the battle, right? And why you put the armor on, right?

[30:09] To withstand, to stand, to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. A lot of stuff going on in there. It tells you about the weapons. How many of you can name the armor? How many of you can name the armor?

[30:21] The pieces of the armor? A few of you. A few of you think you can name the pieces of the armor. If you can't, chances are you're not paying much attention to it. Does that make sense?

[30:33] If you don't even know what the armor is, you're probably not spending much time putting it on. All right? So I would recommend you memorize a chapter, Ephesians 6.

[30:44] You got no problem with that. John's like, yeah, give it to me. But okay, so work on a verse a week, whatever you got to do. It's important. And the last thing, the last thing is, you need to be able to recognize who the enemy is and who it isn't.

[31:02] Okay? You know, we're, our army, we're known for this. Anybody ever heard this? We're known for killing our own wounded? I mean, the Christians. You know, you ever heard that?

[31:12] You've heard that, Robin, right? You know, we're known for, we like to kick them when they're down. When our brother falls, we, man, we're kicking them right to the curb, saying, you had it coming, we saw it, remember I told you he wasn't going to make it?

[31:25] Remember? Right? That's, that's who we are. And that's because of the carnal nature that we don't put down. The spiritual man doesn't think like that.

[31:36] Right? So, know who your enemy is and who it isn't. Take a look around in here. Take a look around in here. None of these people are probably your enemy.

[31:49] Okay? So, if you've got any of that enemy thinking in your mind, you got it wrong because these aren't the enemy. Yeah, they're out here.

[32:00] They're out there. This is where the enemy's at. It's out there. You know, we, we don't, we need to get them saved and all that, but that's where the enemy's at. They didn't hear. Don't let this be where you're fighting.

[32:13] Right? Right? Know who your enemy is and who it isn't. Some things about the spiritual warfare, I hope you jotted them down and it was a blessing to you.

[32:27] Let's pray. Father, I know if there's one thing we are involved in and enlisted in is the warfare.

[32:41] That's not going to stop as long as we're here. And I pray that you would just help us to be more attentive to it, be more involved in it. And God, you said that the, you talked about the person being entangled in the affairs of this life.

[33:03] Being not entangled with the affairs of this life, that may we please him who hath chosen us to be a soldier. And I pray for thy people tonight that you would encourage them to look more at the soldier part of their life and be engaged in the battle.

[33:21]  In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.