CHRISTIANS AND THE SPIRITUAL BATTLE 1
CƠ-ĐỐC NHÂN VÀ CHIẾN TRẬN THUỘC LINH 1
Kinh thánh: Gióp 1: 6-12
Câu gốc: 1GIĂNG 5: 19 – Chúng ta biết mình thuộc về Đức Chúa Trời, còn cả thế gian đều phục dưới quyền ma quỉ.
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CHRISTIANS AND THE SPIRITUAL BATTLE 1
Bible: Job 1: 6-12
Main Verse: 1JOHN 5: 19 – We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
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– According to the Bible, we are very lucky because we are called the children of God after confessing our sins and believing in Jesus Christ.
– At the same time, when we became the children of God, we have entered a spiritual battle with Satan. He has been rebelled against God before Adam was created and has became the enemy of God’s children ever since.
– This battle has existed from the time a person was born into this world but we only recognized it when we became Christians. Before that time, people just ignored it and thought about it as a matter of conscience, not worthy enough to pay attention to.
– Satan wants human beings to go astray from the righteous path that God has set forth for us in the Bible. That path helps humans to have a chance to be in Heaven with God for eternity. Satan does not want us to achieve that, so he uses temptations to destroy humans’ lives.
– As God created human beings, He has put conscience into our hearts so that we can be guided onto the righteous path, but Satan has been tempting people to be selfish and stray away from it. For many unbelievers, they thought their ambitions were more important than conscience, that’s why they had easily fell into Satan temptations, sometimes more willingly, because it satisfied their greed.
– But as we became Christians and His children, God wants us to resist temptations and live a righteous life according to His standards in the Bible. That’s why we struggle more with our hearts than back then, when we were unbelievers.
HEBREWS 13: 2-21 – Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen
HÊ-BƠ-RƠ 13: 20-21 – Đức Chúa Trời bình an, là Đấng bởi huyết giao ước đời đời mà đem Đấng chăn chiên lớn là Đức Chúa Jêsus chúng ta ra khỏi từ trong kẻ chết, nguyền xin Ngài bởi Đức Chúa Jêsus Christ khiến anh em nên trọn vẹn trong sự lành, đặng làm thành ý muốn Ngài, và làm ra sự đẹp ý Ngài trong chúng ta; sự vinh hiển đáng về Ngài đời đời vô cùng! A-men.
– The inner struggle that we feel every time we decide what we want to do or should do in this life is referenced to, in the Bible, as the spiritual battle and we are not fighting it with men, but with Satan and his demons.
EPHESIANS 6: 12 – For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ê-PHÊ-SÔ 6: 12 – Vì chúng ta đánh trận, chẳng phải cùng thịt và huyết, bèn là cùng chủ quyền, cùng thế lực, cùng vua chúa của thế gian mờ tối nầy, cùng các thần dữ ở các miền trên trời vậy.
– When a soldier goes into battle, he is very alert and anxious to win and to be alive, but on the other hand, many Christians entered the spiritual battle very casually with the attitude of a person walking in the park.
– They adopted that attitude because they did not know much about Satan or they just did not care. They did not think that Satan was real and that they were a brutal enemy of them. They thought Satan was just a figure that church ministers employed to scare them into going to church. Even in today’s society, people used to portrait Satan as someone who loved children and had many beautiful, lovely daughters. They made many baby dolls for children with that kind of image.
– And we never heard any church that has a special session to study about Satan. They think that idea is weird and abnormal. They think Christians should study about Christ’s apostles, or other saints in the Bible. They think only wayward cults had studied him. That’s why Christians entered the spiritual battle as blind and empty handed soldiers, waiting to be slaughtered by Satan and his weapons of temptations. That’s why lots of Christians failed miserably in their spiritual fight. They sinned and even abandoned their faith in a very short time.
– Other Christians did not even care about the spiritual battle. They never thought about it, and they believed that if they did not offend him, Satan would leave them alone. They thought if they compromise with the world and with Satan, then nothing bad would happen to them and they would have no enemy.
– But they were all wrong. Whether we want it or not, the spiritual battle will still comes upon us, regardless of what we think about it.
– As we have said earlier, the battle has already happened, or felt immediately at the moment we confessed our sins and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. In that moment, by expressing our faith in God, we left the world and joined on God’s side bound for Heaven and eternity, we also became His children and soldiers in Jesus’ army, and because of that, Satan immediately became our real enemy.
– In the universe, there are two side that cannot compromise on anything mutually: God’s on the good side and Satan on the bad side. There is no middle ground, so we must be on one side or another. That’s why although some Christians thought that they did not offend Satan, they still were attacked by him and his demons.
– Might be there were some Christians who said that if they knew that having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was difficult or dangerous like that, they might not believe Him in the first place. But thinking that way is not sensible nor logical.
– We Christians believed in God in order to be blessed in this life and then to be admitted into Heaven for eternity. The spiritual battle that followed is the price for that. In other words, we cannot have rewards if we don’t want to pay the price. It’s simple like that.
– Let us have an example like this: Students went to school to have knowledge and academic credentials at the end. They could not say that they wanted to have academic credentials without going to school, or if they went, they did not want to have homework, tests and examinations. That’s the price that they must pay to get what they want.
– Likewise, we want to have blessings from God, to be free from sins’ bondage, to be in Heaven after passing this life, so spiritual battle with Satan is the price we must pay in order to get what we want. And I hope that, you, my brothers and sisters would not lose your courage because of that.
– And please do not cheat yourself with the thought that if you did not offend Satan, he would leave you alone peacefully. He is an evil spirit and he will surely attack you whether you believe Jesus or not. Unbelievers don’t feel the fight because they all surrender to Satan’s temptations so easily. Look around, and you can see many proofs of it. People have committed immoral life styles and called it freedom, they murdered unborn babies and called it planning for parenthood, they cheated on their spouses with adultery and called it taking a chance, and so on and so forth.
– They have done that because they don’t have a set of rules that unchanged with times, but we Christians have the standards of the Bible and they are for eternity. Human’s rules and opinions change according to circumstances, but the Bible does not, it has been around for more than 4,000 years and it’s there forever, for eternity. That’s why we Christians has felt the pressure of the spiritual battle in our lives from the moment we believed in God and adopted His standards in the Bible for ourselves.
– Even we Christians just want to have peace so that we can follow the Lord Jesus Christ with a quiet life, but Satan has always tried to attack us with temptations, and please know this: As he had tried to tempted Jesus in His ministry on earth, he will surely do the same to us, with no exception.
– Satan has done that from the time Adam and Eve still were in Eden and he will continue to do so until he is cast into the furnace of eternal fire at the end of Judgment day.
– Let us look into the story of Job. He was a righteous man and nowhere in the Bible indicates that Job had offended Satan, but still he wanted to attack Job and hurt him. We can read Job 1: 6-12 again. But on the contrary, the Bible has stated clearly that Satan attacked Job without any reason:
JOB 2: 3 – Then the Lord said to Satan: “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason”.
GIÓP 2: 3 – Đức Giê-hô-va lại phán hỏi Sa-tan rằng: Ngươi có nhìn thấy Gióp, tôi tớ của ta chăng? Trên đất chẳng có ai giống như người, vốn trọn vẹn và ngay thẳng, kính sợ Đức Chúa Trời, và lánh khỏi điều ác; lại người bền đỗ trong sự hoàn toàn mình, mặc dầu ngươi có giục ta phá hủy người vô cớ.
– It is Satan’s wickedness. He likes to attack God’s children with many kinds of temptation, but sadly some Christians are still cheating themselves with an armistice with Satan. They thought Satan might still have some goodness left in him and he would accept their agreement for peace. That’s why there have been so many spiritual failures among us Christians and many had surrendered completely to Satan and his wicked ways. They abandoned their faith in Jesus and now accepts the world and its poisons into their lives.
– Now when we know that we cannot avoid the battle with Satan, we must prepare ourselves accordingly so that we can come out at the end victorious like Paul, the apostle:
2TIMOTHY 4: 7 – I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2TI-MÔ-THÊ 4: 7 – Ta đã đánh trận tốt lành, đã xong sự chạy, đã giữ được đức tin.
– In order to win this kind of battle, we must be alert like a soldier and keep watch all the time, as the Lord Jesus Christ has taught:
MATTHEW 26: 41 – Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
MA-THI-Ơ 26: 41 – Hãy thức canh và cầu nguyện, kẻo các ngươi sa vào chước cám dỗ; tâm thần thì muốn lắm, mà xác thịt thì yếu đuối.