Robert Jeffress - War of the Worlds
You may remember a song many of us learned as children, a hymn. It’s a sweet little hymn entitled «This is My Father’s World.» How many of you remember that song? This is my Father’s world. It is a song about the sovereignty, the control of God over all of His world. While it’s theologically true, experientially it doesn’t seem to be the case. I mean, if this is really God’s world, isn’t He doing a pretty lousy job of running it? I mean, look around—all the natural disasters, tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, and rumors of war, the terrorist attacks—not to mention the struggles we face day in and day out, personal issues, and relationship problems. Why is this world described as God’s world? You know, many of us think that C.S. Lewis probably has a better description of this world than that hymn writer. He once wrote that «Earth is enemy-occupied territory.» That’s what this world is. I think that’s true.
The question is, how did this world get into the shape that it’s in? How did it go from being a perfect world to the world we live in? Well, last time we began answering that question by talking about purpose-driven strife. You see, every problem in the world today, the world in general and in your world right now, can be traced to a cosmic battle that began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It’s that cosmic struggle between God and His former chief of staff, Satan, who was known as Lucifer. Last time we began looking at Lucifer and what happened to him, we saw by looking at Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 that you can piece together his story.
First of all, he was a created being. As we said last time, Satan, who is the name we usually refer to him by, is not God’s opposite. If Satan has an opposite, it’s not God; it’s Michael the Archangel. Satan was created; he didn’t exist eternally, just as God created all the angels. He created Satan. He’s a created being, unlike God, who is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and so forth. Secondly, Satan held an impressive office in God’s kingdom—he was the chief cherub, the chief of the cherubim, that group of angels charged with protecting the holiness of God. Thirdly, we saw that Satan possessed incomparable wisdom and beauty. Finally, we saw that it was his pride that led to his downfall. He began looking in the mirror too often; he thought he was responsible for everything good about him. He forgot that he was the creature and not the Creator, and because of that pride, he led a rebellion against God. Isaiah 14 tells us that he was cast down to earth along with a group of rebel angels we call demons today. Right now, he’s in the process of creating his own shadow kingdom. He wants to overthrow the kingdom of God, and he’s working to accomplish that.
So today, we’re going to look at how Satan is assaulting the kingdom of God. And by the way, you’re a part of the kingdom of God if you’re a Christian. I’m a part of it. If Satan is going to attack God’s kingdom, it means he’s going to attack us. That attack against the kingdom of God is being fought out in three distinct rounds, and we’re going to look at those three rounds briefly today. Round one of Satan’s battle with God is what I call deception. I want you to imagine with me what it was like when Satan and his demons were cast out of heaven.
Now, I’m just conjecturing here, but it could be that they crash-landed on planet Earth at just the time God was finishing up His work of creation—His crowning act of all. After He made the plants, minerals, planets, and animals, His chief crowning creation was man. We read about that in Genesis 1:26–27: «Then God said, 'Let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'» God created man in His own image; in the image of God, He created him, male and female He created them. God saw all that He made, and behold, it was very good. Everything else God created, He said was good, but when He finished with man, He said, «This is great! This is very, very good!»
Now, just imagine you were Satan—you had just been cast out of heaven, and you saw that creation of man take place. If you hated God as much as Satan did, the only thing that could be worse for Satan than having to live with one God would be to live with a bunch of little gods, or at least little creations of God that resembled God. So as he looked at the creation of Adam and Eve, he had this insidious thought, a sinister thought: What if I were able to take these servants of God and convince them to become my slaves? What if I were able to flip them from building God’s kingdom to being part of my kingdom? What if I could enlist them to rebel against their heavenly Father and follow me? What if I could turn God’s grandest creation into His biggest mistake?
So he decided to try to deceive them into following him. He used a plan that we’ll examine in the weeks ahead—the same plan he uses against us—but in short, his plan was very simple. He would whisper into Adam and Eve’s ears, «There is a way better than God’s way. There is a better way to live than God’s way. Life apart from God is not only possible; it’s preferable.» And you know what happens? Adam and Eve fell for that deception, and when they put their interests above God’s interests, not only they but every subsequent generation, every subsequent person that was created would be an automatic follower of Satan. You say, «How could that be? How could Adam and Eve’s bad choice affect you and me today?»
Well, Paul answers that question in Romans 5:12. He says, «Therefore just as through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.» Paul is saying when Adam sinned—and Eve, but he blames Adam for it—when Adam sinned, it corrupted not only himself but everyone who lived after him, every descendant of Adam. That would be everyone of us in this room who has inherited the sin virus.
Now, how’s that possible? Theologians debate this; they have two theories. One is what’s called «sinful headship.» Adam was the sinful head of the race; that is, we were all genetically present in Adam so that, in a sense, when Adam sinned, every one of us sinned. Other people say, «No, it’s not like that.» They believe in what’s called «federal headship,» that is, Adam was the appointed head of the human race, and he voted for every one of us when he chose to disobey God. Just as you have congressmen or legislators who vote for you, they are supposed to represent you. Adam represented us when he voted to sin against God.
Now, I know, I know—I’ve heard it all my life. People say, «Well, that’s not fair! That’s not fair! If I had been Adam, I never would have made that mistake. I would have chosen God!» Really? Do you really believe that? I mean, look at the way we, even as Christians, vote against God every day. We choose to sin against Him, and we’re children of God. No, the fact is, whether through sinful or federal headship, when Adam sinned, the whole race that followed him became servants of the evil one.
Now, how do you think God responded when He saw His first two children, Adam and Eve? He had put them in a perfect setting, and they chose to rebel against Him. He could have been filled with anger; He could have said, «If this is the way this new creation is going to treat me, I’m just going to wipe them off the face of the earth and start over again.» He could have been filled with anger or a sense of injustice, but the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible says when He saw what had happened to humanity, and what would be the future for Adam and Eve and all of us who would follow after them, His heart was filled with compassion. He was moved in His being; there was something that made Him want to reach out to us and show us His love. That’s why Ephesians 2:4-5 say, «But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace, you have been saved.»
You know, I’ve heard people try to explain why God saved us. Some people say, «Well, God had to save us; otherwise, He would have been lonely without us.» God would have been lonely? He desired fellowship with human beings? How ridiculous! God had existed for billions, trillions, and quadrillions of years before Adam ever set foot on this earth. God was doing just fine without human beings; He didn’t need anything, including their fellowship. Other people say, «Well, no, no, God saw a reflection of Himself in those human beings. He saw a spark of divinity.» Is that what the Bible says? The Bible says, «God, being afraid of being lonely, made us alive together with Christ,» or «God, seeing a spark of divinity within us, made us alive together with Christ»? No! It wasn’t because God was lonely or He thought there was something worthwhile in us. The Bible says, «But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us.» Remember this, ladies and gentlemen: Your salvation, my salvation, has absolutely nothing to do with us, but it has everything to do with God. It’s all about the compassion, love, and grace of God. That’s the reason He saved us.
And that explains round two. Satan, we’ll have to be honest, won round one: deception. He was successful in deceiving Adam and Eve, but then God instituted a deliverance program, and what a plan it was! There are 600 soldiers who will never forget Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2003. There were soldiers serving in the war in Iraq in 2003, and it was Thanksgiving Day. They had been summoned to a makeshift mess hall at the Baghdad International Airport to have a Thanksgiving meal. As they gathered together that Thursday at noon, little did they know what had been happening the night before, halfway around the world in Crawford, Texas. President George W. Bush left his home in Crawford at 7:00 p.m. in an unmarked car, went to the airport north of Waco, and boarded Air Force One for an all-night secret journey to Baghdad. It was a dangerous journey—in fact, as the plane descended into the Baghdad airport, they had to turn out all the interior lights, pull down the shades, and go into a corkscrew descent as quickly as they could to avoid missile fire.
Meanwhile, in the mess hall, the soldiers were completely unaware of what was happening. The U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, stood up to read a proclamation from President Bush—a Thanksgiving proclamation—but before he read the proclamation, he said, «You know, it’s protocol for the most senior officer in the room to read a proclamation from the president. So I wonder, is there anybody in this room who is higher than I am in the chain of command?» And that was the cue; President Bush emerged from behind the curtain to the thunderous standing ovation of the soldiers. There they were, thrilled to see that their commander in chief cared about them. Somebody asked President Bush after that, «Why did you go to all that trouble?» And this is what he said—I thought it was great. He said, «It’s got to be lonely for the soldiers. I thought it was important to send that message that we care for them.»
You know, even though mankind wandered away from God, God never stopped loving us. For hundreds, thousands of years, He sent and communicated that love through miracles and messages. But then, 2,000 years ago, He did the unthinkable: He decided to actually visit our war-torn planet, planet Earth, in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. But His journey to Earth was different from President Bush’s journey to Iraq in two specific ways. The president’s journey to Iraq was planned so that he might escape death. I mean, after all, the temporary morale boost from seeing the president isn’t worth him sacrificing his life; that would have dispirited the troops. The president’s journey was planned to escape death; Jesus' journey to Earth was planned so that He might experience death. Experiencing death was the ultimate objective of Christ’s visit here. He was a baby born in Bethlehem, a baby born to die—it was all part of God’s plan. Remember seven weeks after the crucifixion and resurrection, Peter preached to the very group that had crucified Christ. He spoke to them on the southern steps in Jerusalem during the sermon of Pentecost, and in Acts 2:23, Peter said, «This man Jesus was delivered over by the predetermined plan and knowledge of God. You nailed him to the cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.»
What would cause God to devise an elaborate plan that would end in the torture and execution of His own Son? Well, that leads to the second difference between the president’s visit to Iraq and God’s visit to Earth. The president came to reassure the troops, but Jesus Christ came to rescue the troops. That’s what we just read about in Colossians 1 a few moments ago, verses 13 and 14: «For God rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.»
Ladies and gentlemen, when we are born into this world, we’re automatically part of the kingdom of Satan because of Adam’s fall. We are born, whether we know it or not, whether we choose or not; we are born servants of Satan. But we don’t have to remain that way. God sent Jesus to pay the ransom so that we could be delivered from Satan’s kingdom to God’s kingdom. And that’s what that word in verse 14 means—redemption. It was through Jesus' death on the cross that we received the redemption—the forgiveness of our sins. What does that mean? He redeemed us. You’ve heard me talk about this many times. That word redeemed is used more than 20 times in the Greek New Testament. One of the words for redeemed is «ex agorazo"—ex meaning out of, «agorazo» the agora, the marketplace.
Now get this: In biblical times, if you wanted to purchase a slave, you would go to the marketplace, the agora. You would pre-pay the necessary price, and you would redeem that slave. Why did you redeem him? So you could set him free? No, that was never the goal with a slave—to set them free. You bought that slave so he could serve you instead of serving his former master. In the same way, Jesus Christ paid the price—the price for our redemption, the price for our release from servitude to Satan. He bought us with His own blood. Why? So that we could be free to do whatever we want to do? No, God has no interest in freeing you from doing what you want to do. He doesn’t want that. He has saved you so that you could serve Him instead of serving Satan. That’s what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20. He said, «Do you not know you are not your own? You are not the captain of your ship, the master of your faith. You are not your own, for you have been bought with a price.» That was the plan—to redeem us so that we could serve Christ.
Now, Satan was fully aware of that plan, and he did everything he could to thwart it. Remember when Mary was told by Gabriel that she had conceived the Christ child? What did Satan try to do? He tried to persuade Joseph to divorce Mary so that she would be stoned for adultery, risking not only her life but also the child’s. That didn’t work. So Satan put it in the heart of Herod to kill every Jewish baby two years of age and younger. Maybe that would extinguish the Christ child. That plan backfired as well. Then Satan thought, «Well, maybe I can disqualify Jesus from being the Messiah by enticing Him to sin in the wilderness.»
That didn’t work either. Then he filled the hearts of the religious leaders to kill Christ prematurely before He could fulfill some of the necessary prophecies that showed Him to be the Messiah. That didn’t work. And remember Friday afternoon, as Christ hung on the cross on that Good Friday? What did He say? John 19:30: «It is finished"—"Tetelestai!"—paid in full. In that moment, Satan was defeated in his plan. And three days later, the resurrection of Christ from the dead is proof to the world that God accepted the payment of Jesus on our behalf. That cross, that death on Friday, and that empty tomb represent Satan’s defeat.
But even though he was, in truth, defeated that weekend, he isn’t waving the white flag of surrender. He hasn’t given up. And that leads to round three of Satan’s assault on the kingdom of God, and that is desperation. You know, you read today’s headlines; you look at the struggle in your own heart, and it’s hard to believe that Satan has been defeated. I remember a book that came out years ago by the late Hal Lindsey entitled, «Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth.» How many of you remember that book? «Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth.»
Well, Lindsey got it only half right. It is true, Satan is alive, but he’s not very well. He’s been mortally wounded, but that doesn’t keep him from trying to stage one final assault on the kingdom of God. He wants to do everything he can to defeat those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ. You see, the date for Satan’s final judgment is already on the calendar. John alludes to it in Revelation 20:10. After the final rebellion, after the millennium, Satan stages one final rebellion, and God snuffs it out as soon as it begins. I don’t know if He used bunker-busting bombs or how He did it, but Revelation 20:10 tells us, «And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.» That is his ultimate fate—to be tormented in the lake of fire forever.
But right now, folks, we are living in that in-between time—the time between his initial disarmament at the cross and the empty tomb, where he was, so to speak, defanged. We’re living between that time and that future time when Satan will be dispatched into the lake of fire. And what he is doing right now is trying to build that shadow kingdom that will somehow topple the kingdom of God. What is his plan? His strategy is very simple. It’s twofold. Write this down: First of all, blinding unbelievers to God’s offer of salvation. He wants to blind unbelievers to God’s offer of salvation. Remember, the whole world is born in servitude to Satan, and he wants to prevent as many people as possible from hearing, accepting, and trusting in the gospel. So he’s blinding people to salvation.
Let me tell you right now how you can guarantee you’ll go to hell when you die. Do you know what you have to do to ensure that, when you die, you will end up in hell forever? Here’s what you have to do: Nothing. Nothing. You’re already headed to hell if you’re not a Christian. You’re on that broad way that Jesus talked about that leads to destruction. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll find yourself eternally separated from God. But if you’ve come to the place in your life that you realize you and I are sinners who need God’s forgiveness; if you believe that Jesus is the Savior who came to die for your sins, you didn’t come to that conclusion on your own. God has taken the blinders off your eyes so that you can see. But just because you see and understand that now doesn’t mean you always will. Most people don’t reject the gospel for intellectual reasons; it’s for spiritual reasons—they cannot understand; they cannot receive.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 says, «And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world—Satan—has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.» Satan wants to blind unbelievers to God’s offer of salvation. Secondly, he wants to rob believers—people like you and me—of the benefits of our salvation. If he can’t have us for all eternity, he wants to make our lives as miserable and as meaningless as possible while we’re here. Remember what Jesus said about Satan? He called him a thief. The thief, John 10:10, comes to kill, steal, and destroy. But I have come, Jesus said, that you might have life and have it more abundantly. Satan wants to steal every good thing he can out of your life. He wants to steal the joy out of your life that comes from being in fellowship with God. He wants to steal the benefits that come in this life when you follow God. He wants to steal the influence you have for leading other people to come to worship and serve Jesus Christ. And he wants to rob you of the eternal rewards that can be yours in faithfulness to Christ.
You say, «Well, if Satan has been disarmed, how does he go about accomplishing those two objectives: blinding unbelievers and robbing believers?» Remember this: When Satan fell from heaven, he didn’t give up. He didn’t lose his attributes; he’s still incredibly crafty, incredibly appealing, and incredibly dangerous. And next time we’re going to unravel that personalized blueprint Satan has already devised for the destruction of everything important to you: your faith, your family, and your future.
Let’s bow together in a word of prayer. We’re going to do something different today. I’m going to ask you to stand quietly where you are as our altar partners come to the front. With every head bowed, every eye closed, listen to me. Maybe I’m speaking to some here or watching this program—you’re not yet a Christian but would like to be. You’ve come to that understanding that you and I are sinners who need a Savior. Maybe you believe and accept that Jesus was that Savior who came to earth to die, not for His sins but for your sins and mine today. Perhaps you would like to trust in Jesus to be your Savior. Remember, Satan is saying to you right now, «You don’t need to do that,» or «You’re a member of the church,» or «You got baptized.» Don’t listen to the evil one. The Bible says, «Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.»
And today, if you would like to call upon the name of Jesus for your salvation, I’d encourage you to pray this prayer in your heart as I pray it out loud. «Dear God, I know I have failed You. I’m truly sorry for the sins in my life. But I believe what I’ve heard today—that You loved me so much You sent Jesus to die for me, to take the punishment I deserve for my sins. And right now, I’m trusting in what Jesus did for me to save me from my sins. Thank You for forgiving me, and help me to live for You.» If you prayed that prayer and meant it, God has written your name in the Book of Life, and you can know you’re forever His.
There are others of you who are already Christians, but you feel like you’re being assaulted. You’re being assaulted by the evil one. Maybe you’re struggling with a physical problem and need God’s healing or at least God’s endurance to go through what’s happening in your life or the life of somebody important to you. Maybe some of you are struggling with a broken relationship that you would like to have healed. Maybe some of you are struggling with depression. Some people may be struggling with a financial need that they have in their life. But as we’ll see in the weeks ahead, one of the most powerful weapons we have is prayer. James said, «You have not, because you ask not.» He said, «The effective prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much.»
There’s so much that can be accomplished through prayer—boldly asking God for what’s in your heart, quietly resting in His answer. That’s why we have these altar partners here. We’re going to have a time for you, if you have any kind of struggle in your life that you would like God’s supernatural help in, to pray with this altar partner. They are righteous, godly people who will pray for you. You can be as specific as you’d like to about your struggle or as general as you would like, but you will leave this worship center with the weight of the world lifted off your shoulders if you’ll take advantage of the power of prayer today. So if you have a request, I’m going to ask you to start coming right now as our choir begins to sing. Would you come, please? Be sensitive to those trying to get out of the pew if you’re in the middle.