Usually when a king goes into war they would have armour, a shield, and a big sword. They understand that in order to fight you need weapons of destruction.
But how would an Upside Down King fight?
Would they choose weapons like that? Or is there something else that is even more of a weapon of destruction?
Let’s have a look at how Jesus the king fights his enemy, Satan, in the wilderness.
Now if you remember, Jesus has been there for 40 days.
He is alone. He is hungry. And he is tired. If there ever were a time that Satan would take him down, it would be now.
Notice the temptation? You are hungry! Eat! If you are the Son of God, you could easily do this! But notice how Jesus fights back…
What does he do? Does he take a swing at Satan? Does he do the miracle? Does he sit down and have a cup of coffee chat with him, like Eve did in the garden?
He says that
it is the word of God that is the real food.
But Satan doesn’t end there. He attacks again.
This time he does a different temptation.
”Hey! Jump off this building, because if you really are the Son of God, he will get his angels to catch you before you go splat!”
Now, what does Satan do here that is different to the first temptation?
It is something that Jesus also did.
This little phrase :
It is Written
What are they doing?
They are quoting Scripture.
That is, they are having a bible chess match.
How does Jesus fight? He fights not by swords, but words. And not just any words but the very words of the Bible.
Satan picks up on this and he ALSO quotes from the Bible.
”Hey! If you can do it, I can do it too!”
Sooo, if this is the way that Jesus fights, how do you think he is going to respond to this quote?
He quotes Scripture again! Of course he does! See, both understand that the ultimate way of fighting is not by sheer force of the sword but the sheer force of the words of God.
That is where the power is Jesus has a high view of Scripture AND Satan has a high view of Scripture.
Satan changes tactic and just says,
“Look, just worship me, and I will give you all the kingdoms.”
Do you need to be a rocket scientist to know how Jesus responds?
Every single time Jesus attacked Satan with the Bible.
I did a count of all the words that Jesus said in this passage and have a look at the amount of “Scripture Percentage” he has that comes from his lips.
What, you might ask, was NOT scripture? What was in that remaining 29%?
Basically everything he said flowed out of the Bible.
I wonder what our Scripture Percentage would be? Jesus understood that this is the upside down way of fighting the upside down enemy. If you don’t know the Bible, you will not fight well.
But before you get a little embarrassed for not knowing the Scriptures, have a look at where Jesus quotes from:
Those three times he quoted JUST from one book of the Old Testament : Deuteronomy.
AND he quoted JUST between chapter 6 and chapter 8 of a 34 chapter book.
Do you see what he is doing? He could have used all of the 39 books of the Old Testament to defend himself, but he only chose a veeeeery tiny part of Scripture.
In other words, Jesus is saying to Satan,
”Hey, you want to fight me in a bible chess match? Sure! I will beat you, and I will only use one pawn on the chess board.”
That’s how potent Jesus is with the Scriptures. Or should we say, that’s how potent the Scriptures are in fighting.
It is like fighting someone but with no weapons and just your little pinky toe. That’s what Scripture is like.
Knowing a little bit of Scripture
can be enough for you to fight.
So start knowing a little Scripture.
Jesus shows us that he is in this war. And you know what he does next?
As every good king does,
he builds an army
