Stop Ignoring This in Your Bible! | Kingdom

Welcome to the Kingdom podcast. If this is your first time listening, I've got one goal for you to answer this question. What does it mean to seek first the kingdom of God? And that question is often loaded.

Like for instance, how do you lay up treasures in heaven and not here on earth? And what about all of this war that's happening between kingdoms? That's what we're gonna talk about. So I'm your host, John Moffitt.

I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. I'm also the host of Theocast, which is a weekly podcast about Reformed theology. If you haven't heard that, you can go listen to that wherever you download a podcast.

This podcast is part of the Theocast network. So we're gonna pick up a little bit where I left off last week. I know it was a little hot, so I apologize about that. But I am so overwhelmed by how powerful the Bible is.

And we all believe this and we want it to be true. But just for those of you who feel cold,.

Discouraged, disheartened,.

Or even just struggling with your Bible, struggling with believing there's something supernatural about your relationship with God. By the way, just so everyone knows, I am not a charismatic in the technical sense of the term, where I believe that we are still speaking in tongues and things like that.

So if you think this is the direction it's going, it's not. But I do believe that Christianity has removed the supernatural side of their relationship to God's word. And I will say to God himself. Very soon in the next few weeks, you're gonna be hearing about a class I'm gonna be doing on prayer and the supernatural side of prayer.

This could possibly be a little bit of an introduction to that. So stay tuned for that. You can go to our website to learn more about that once it comes out. When you think about your Bible, it depends on how you were raised, but a lot of people view it as a handbook for the Christian life.

There's moral guidelines. Some people look at it and really, they take the Old Testament for, I would say, fascinating stories and encouragements from Psalms and Proverbs. And then the New Testament is where they really spend the most of their time, because that's where the meat and potatoes of what they're supposed to do, right?

All the instructions are there. If that's mostly how evangelicals have been raised. And we know the Bible's supernatural because we believe in creation and Noah and the Ark and things like that. But we think of those as past events that really there's no cohesion to it other than the world's messed up.

Jesus came, He saved sinners, and that's really what we're focusing on. I agree that Christ is the most important thing in the Bible, but I think the supernatural relationship that you should have with Jesus is diminished because you don't understand the supernatural nature of the Bible in general.

And I don't really think there's a lot of people who understand the weight of the darkness and the utter power that Satan and his minions fight against us with, and we fall prey to that. Let me just tell you the story, okay?

The Serpent, the Seed, and the First Gospel

Let me put some pieces together for you. Here's how it starts. So God creates a world, and in this world, He puts two humans. Now, we know this part of the story. I'm not gonna get into this today, but all of a sudden, you have to ask this question, why is Lucifer in, aka Satan in the garden, and what is he doing there?

Because he clearly has an agenda from the moment he enters in as one of the characters. And he is the protagonist, right? He's there to just destroy this relationship, this symbiotic, beautiful relationship that Adam and Eve have with God.

Because the first question he asks is, did God really say? He's questioning her. And then turns her into a rebel, causes her to distrust, and then turn her back on her God. And that's how the story begins.

But it's interesting, in Genesis 3 .15, that there's something that is said that I think it would be important for us to understand the nature behind it. So this is Genesis 3 .15, it says this. God's saying, I will put enmity between you and the woman, so between Satan and her, and between your offspring, Satan, and her offspring.

That word translated there in the ESV is technically seed. So offspring, kind of the same word, but your seed and her seed. And then this is where we get the first gospel. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

It's a metaphor of defeating, of overcoming. And we know from that moment on, Adam and Eve were looking for a child to be born as the Messiah, and that child and that message continues on through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all the way throughout the Old Testament.

And so there's the story of watching for the seed. It's a beautiful story, and we love that story. And if you've been listening to Theocast at all, it's the story of redemption. And we get excited about that and seeing how Israel failed.

But do you ever ask yourself why Israel continued to fail over and over again? And who did they fall to? They kept falling prey to their own lust, their own desires, but also false gods and idols. Constantly they're being drawn away.

I mean, as soon as they're pulled out of Egypt, who is it that they fall prey to? They make a golden calf. They're falling prey to their old gods again. Notice that he says enmity, there'll be strife, which means there's going to be fighting between the seed of humanity and the seed of Satan.

So you can expect there to be animosity and fighting. We know that from Jesus himself, that Satan despises the great adversary. He doesn't even really have a name. Satan is just a descriptor, just means the great adversary.

That even Jesus describes him in reaction to himself and to his people to whom he's saving, he seeks to kill them and destroy them and to steal from them, steal their hope, their joy, destroy any type of relationship that they may have and ultimately kill them.

So when you sit back and you realize that this war is happening, just go back to Daniel chapter 10 when I talked about it last week, where a messenger from God is coming to Daniel, but it gets held up by the Prince of Persia and angel, the archangel, Michael has to, or Gabriel has to come and be a part of this war.

These stories are there so that we understand there is an actual spiritual war that's happening. And it takes place in a physical realm, but you can't overcome it by physical means. See, the opponent isn't a physical opponent, the opponent has a spiritual nature to it.

This is going back to Ephesians chapter six, where he says, the weapons of our warfare, I'm sorry, he says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. And then he names all of these beings that we're wrestling against.

Or even 2 Corinthians chapter 10, he says the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. So we can't, the church has made this mistake in the past, we can't pull out a sword and attack other people of the flesh, assuming that's how we're taking out evil.

We take out the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and we proclaim the gospel. And that's how we destroy the strongholds of the demonic realm that is attacking us. But I know that some of you are probably like, what is he talking about?

I just wanna challenge you to start thinking about your Bible in this narrative, that it's the overarching story of redemption. And it's not just that God is restoring people who have fallen, and they need to be rescued, and the greatest enemy is ourselves.

But the story of redemption is that God is rescuing people while the kingdom of darkness is trying to war against us and prevent us from it. Now, some people would say, well, why did God stop that? I don't know, why didn't he keep Satan out of the garden?

We don't know. Donald Gray Barnhouse had a great example of this, I think it was helpful. He said, if you want to prove you're the most powerful being and nothing can take you out, then you let the strongest opponent come fight against you.

You guys remember the story of David and Goliath? Goliath was the representation of the Philistines, the strongest of them. And so he went out as the representation. And who was it that was supposed to come from this Israel side is the strongest representation, right?

And this is a tactic of war saying, we're gonna take out your greatest warrior in proof that we are the greatest kingdom. That's kind of the idea, because what did David end up doing? David brought God's power and defeated the strongest opponent that was available.

Now, there's five stones. Some of the theory is he was gonna go take out his four brothers. I mean, I don't know, it's just an interesting story. But I think Barnhouse has got a point where he's allowed Satan to have reign to prove that when God says in Romans 8, nothing can separate us from the love of God, including this powerful dark realm.

What else did I just say? Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. So there, it's part of God's story in his divine providence, he left it in there. And he left it in there for a reason often we don't really always know.

I think that's a good explanation. Let me go back to how this applies to you on an everyday basis. You already have a weakness of your flesh. You already know you're gonna be struggling. And our responsibility that God has given to us, he could have just from the skies, his voice come down and preaches the gospel, or he could have angels declare it like he did to Mary and to the shepherds that Jesus has arrived, but he didn't.

He says, you're going to be the weapon in God's hand. The church is the weapon in God's hand to proclaim the light into the kingdom of darkness, to cut back the light, cut back the darkness, and then rescue those who are enslaved to it.

This is exactly how he describes it in Ephesians chapter two, right? You were dead in your trespasses and sins. You were a slave to it. You are an enemy to God. And how did he pulled you out of it? Or in Colossians one, where it says, he rescued you out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

So that's every day when we wake up, that's our life purpose is that we are standing in the armament of God. We hold on to the power of Christ. And we are forcefully running into the kingdom of darkness to rescue.

Now he's saying, if you do this, you need to understand from Genesis three forward, there has been an opposition. Peter says it this way. He's a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, right? But he disguises himself.

You're not gonna see the roaring lion because Paul then says he's an angel of light, right? He's gonna deceive you. So the reason I'm trying to introduce you to this is that I want you to read your Bible like you read a fantasy book, but then realize it's not fake.

Like this is Narnia, but real. This stuff is happening. And if it sounds weird and like, I just can't do that, the deception has already laid in. These verses, I don't think Paul is using hyperbole. I think he's being factual here.

I think he's trying to be literal and saying there is an actual opponent. He's been, I'll give you one last illustration and we'll be done. You ever heard of the story of Job? It's fascinating that God is in the council with the gods, we'll get into that another whole nother time, or of angels.

And Lucifer, this time he's just called a Satan, the adversary, just comes prancing in and God asks him a question, what have you been doing? He goes, well, I've been looking all over the earth. I've been looking up and down.

And the next statement from God is, well, have you considered my servant Job? Meaning the interaction in the book of Job is describing Satan seeking. He's looking to cause friction. And God goes, well, I've got an opponent for you.

Why don't you try Job? And it just, that is fascinating. But that story is there to show us, because in the story, what Satan says is, well, the only reason God, he loves you is because you have blessed him.

Like Satan doesn't understand the spiritual nature and the connection that we have with God. And so he's like, sure, take away all of his pleasures, take away his family, take away everything. You just can't kill him.

And I will prove to you that my relationship with him is supernatural. It's not based upon whether he is being blessed by me or not. What does Paul say in Philippians? It's been granted to you, not only to believe, but also to suffer for my sake.

Like if you were gonna embrace the gospel as anyone who's embraced the gospel from the beginning of time, you're gonna be a part of the opposition. And in that, it's part of it. So I just wanna, as a part of the kingdom, if you're gonna actually embrace that you're a part of Jesus' kingdom, it isn't just Jesus' kingdom and that's it.

There's Jesus' kingdom, and then there's this world. And 1 John 5 says, the whole world is under the power of the evil one. This is why it's called the kingdom of darkness. John and Jesus both call him, or Paul and Jesus both call him the God of this world.

So I just kinda wanna introduce you to this. This is an actual war that's happening. Now, I'm gonna leave you with some hope. What you should not have is fear. That's not, the God has said is, I'm not giving you a spirit of fear, for greater is he that is in you that is in the world.

But if you don't think that you can be tripped up and that you can be discouraged or even tricked, then you're missing it. Because the warning passages that Paul gives us even in Ephesians 6, when he says, if you're gonna stand up against Satan, you have to put on this armor.

The way I would look at it is how you drive a car. When you get into that road, there's a reason why you look left, you look right. You use a blinker, you put on a seatbelt, you drive the speed limit.

Because there's actual danger around you. So you drive cautiously, knowing that someone else may not be paying attention or someone else could plow into you. The Christian life is the same way. We live fully confident in the capacities of God and cautious of our frailties and cautious of the lies around us because they can trip us up if we're not aware of it.

And I believe Christians are ignoring the side of the danger, are not living cautious, and they're believing a half gospel that's often causing them to wonder, am I even truly saved? You don't find strength in preaching.

You don't find strength in prayer. Church doesn't make sense to you. I want to recover all of that for you where preaching is powerful, prayer is a joy, and the gathered church is a bomb to the soul. And Satan has done a good job of destroying all three of those.

So we're gonna tackle those next coming up. We'll see you next week.