Your Enemies Will Leave Suddenly and Ashamed — Carter Conlon

This recording is provided by Times Square Church in New York City. You're welcome to make additional copies for free distribution to friends. All other unauthorized duplication or electronic transmission is a violation of copyright and other applicable laws.

This recording cannot be posted on any website. However, written permission to link to the Times Square Church homepage may be requested by emailing info at timessquarechurch .org. Other recordings are available by calling 1 -800 -488 -0854 or by writing to Times Square Church Tape Ministry, 1657 Broadway, New York, New York, 10019.

A Prophetic Word About Sudden Deliverance

I have a message today which is more than a message. I've got something from heaven. I know it in my heart. It's a prophetic word for you today and perhaps for many others in the future. God is about to do something sovereign.

Your enemies will leave suddenly and ashamed. If you'll turn in your Bibles to Psalm 6, we're going to begin there. It's a Psalm of David. And I think it, I don't know what Teresa's message is this afternoon, but I do believe this interweaves with what the Holy Spirit has given her to speak on.

Father, I thank you, God, with all my heart. Lord, what an hour to be alive. Truly, you have risen up to defend your name. Lord, you're speaking clearly that for your name's sake you will now arise and you will set at liberty your own people.

God Almighty, I see a great revival coming. I see a touch of your hand coming to your church. Ordinary Christians becoming extraordinary in God. I thank you, Lord, that you're going to vanquish our enemies and their defeat is going to be sudden and their shame is going to be total.

God, I thank you for it with all my heart. Help me today, Holy Spirit. Help me to convey this the way you've spoken it to my heart. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, Psalm 6 is a psalm of David at a time of distress in his life.

David's Distress and the Voices That We Hear

Now, how many here this morning, you've been fighting in your mind like never before? Yeah, I thought so. The last month or two just seems to be this incredible warfare going on in the mind. There's a reason.

I'm going to explain it to you. Psalm 6. David says, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed.

My soul is also sore vexed, but thou, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver my soul. O save me for thy mercy's sake. For in death there is no remembrance of thee, and in the grave who shall give thee thanks?

I'm weary with my groaning, and all night I make my bed to swim, and I water my couch with my tears. Mine eye is consumed because of grief. It waxes old because of all my enemies. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.

The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord will receive my prayer. Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed. Let them return and be ashamed suddenly. Now, this psalm is written at a time in David's life when he felt that God was looking down at him with heated anger.

Actually, the word is hot displeasure in the King James, but in the original text it has a reference to heated anger. That God is looking down at me, and he is fiercely as it is angry with me. In verse 2, it says, Have mercy, O Lord, for I am weak.

My bones are vexed. You see, this perspective that he had embraced at this particular moment of how God was feeling about him had taken away his strength. Even David, who was anointed to be a king, a wonderful young man of God, found himself in this position of having embraced this perspective of how God sees him or was seeing him at that particular time.

And that perspective that he embraced took away his strength. You must be very careful which voices you are listening to in this last hour of time. Verses 3 and 4, listen to the cry of David. He's saying, Oh, how long will you be angry with me?

How long will it be before I feel your mercy towards me again? God, will you retain your anger towards me forever? Will you not be merciful to me? Verse 5, he says, For in death there's no remembrance of me, and in the grave who shall give thee thanks?

He says, I'm losing strength to the point where I feel like I'm not going to make it. It's not so much that I'm contemplating that I'm going to get through this, but if we have embraced a wrong perspective, if the enemy succeeds in placing thoughts even about God in our minds, you can get to the point where you feel you're not going to make it.

And of course, you know that's not the voice of God. God doesn't bring you to the place where you think you're not going to make it. It's the enemy who brings you there. And then once you've embraced that, then he'll turn around and begin to accuse God of not...

See, he's the accuser. He'll accuse God of not being faithful to you. He will accuse you of not being faithful to God, then accuse God of not being faithful to you. And the endgame is to get you to give up.

Because he wants you with him in hell for all of eternity. He will fight against your faith in God because there's no other way he can defeat you but by getting you to embrace a contrary argument to truth in your mind.

David says, I'm losing strength and I feel like I'm not going to make it. Listen to where he's at now, spiritually. I'm weary with my groaning. All night I make my bed to swim and I water my couch with tears.

I mourn and I weep day and night. Now, if David was in our generation, he'd say, I mourn getting on the subway. I have this deep inner groan. I mourn getting off the subway. I mourn walking into my place of work.

I mourn going up in the elevator. I mourn at my desk all day or my broom or whatever it is I've got. I mourn when I go home at night. Because God, I feel that this is how you're feeling about me. In verse 7 he says, my eye is consumed because of grief.

You see, remember the scripture says the light of the body is the eye. In other words, David is saying, I see no way out. And at the end of verse 7, he said, a wax is old because of all my enemies. I look around and all I see are gloating enemies on every side.

Everywhere I look, it seems like I'm surrounded by these voices. I'm surrounded by enemies. I don't see the way out of this situation that I find myself in. Now, we take a look at David for a moment. And he was undoubtedly a righteous man.

He was a man who was pursuing the heart of God. And, beloved, let me tell you something. If that's who you are today, righteousness is that we have no struggles. Righteousness is that we are following God to the best of the ability that God has given us.

We want to be people of truth. We want to do right. We want to live a life that truly glorifies Jesus Christ and we have trusted him for our salvation. But yet, for various reasons, we find ourselves in times of difficulty.

But, nevertheless, we are pursuers of God. And the moment you become a pursuer of God, you become a target of darkness. There is no way around this. You're going to hear about it again. I don't know why I keep saying this, but I don't even know what her message is.

But I know you're going to hear about it again this afternoon. The moment you set apart to be a pursuer of God's heart, you become a target of darkness. You will find yourself in a war like you've never known before.

And it's not a war because you're unrighteous. It's a war because you are righteous. You are walking in right standing with God. The accuser will come against you with full force. He will accuse you. He will accuse Christ.

His whole reason for even being here in the world today is to accuse. That's all he can do. Jesus said in Matthew 5, chapter 5, verse 10,. You see, this simple pursuit of righteousness will invite this onslaught of opposition, such as we have read in Psalm 6 this morning.

Righteous Pursuit as a Threat to Darkness

You see, the devil knows that the greatest threat to his kingdom comes from the hearts of men and women who have truly chosen to pursue Christ. That's the greatest threat to his kingdom. He's not threatened by religious political activism.

He's not threatened by people who are pursuing hallways of power and love the admiration of men. He's not threatened by people who run around opening the Bible looking for reasons to become rich. He's not threatened by any of this.

This has no power over his kingdom. No, it's the man or woman who sets their heart to seek God for God's sake alone. They say, Lord, I want your will. I want your ways. I want to know who you are. I want you to be revealed to me.

This man, this woman, irrespective of age, social standing or ability, is a great threat to the kingdom of darkness. The devil knows history. The devil has been around, folks, longer than you and I have.

And he has seen when individuals of no significance and no report, no education, and they've not come from the halls of power or learning, have gotten in their hearts to seek God. And he's been the recipient of the prayers of many who have begun to understand that we have authority in the name of Christ to tear down powers and principalities of darkness.

He has time and again been the recipient of the prayers of the weakest of God's saints who have laid hold of the heart of Jesus Christ. You see, but David also made mistakes just like you and I do. He's in this time of feeling God feels about him this way in Psalm 6.

Firstly, because he's a righteous man. But secondly, being a righteous man did not mean he didn't make mistakes. And we make mistakes. You make them and I make them. We all make them. We make them every day.

You don't believe that? When you get to the throne of God, you're in for an awful surprise. Don't turn there. But let me share with you 2 Samuel 11. One tells us that it was a time when kings should go forth to battle as it is today.

We're living in a season, folks, where the church needs to be going forth to battle. We need to be in prayer meetings. We need to be in the Word of God. We need to be standing as lights in a darkened time.

We need just to simply to choose to live righteously in our living in our work environment. Because we know from the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, if God could have found 10 righteous people, he would have spared a wicked city.

But he couldn't find 10 righteous people. It's time for kings to step up and go to war. It's time to stand for the truth. It's time to fight for the souls of men. It's time simply to live righteously.

And God does all the fighting that needs to be done through us. Just simply his presence. The way we speak. We respond in kindness when people are angry. We speak truth when others are lying. We respond in mercy when others are exhibiting violent behavior.

We do the things that Jesus did. We do it by the power of the Holy Ghost indwelling us. And we stand as a testimony of the fact that there is a God alive in this generation. It is time for the church to become servants one more time to people around them.

Not just in the household of faith. Primarily it should be there. But secondarily to a society and a world that is headed for hell and don't even know it. It's time for the church to stand out and not be intermixed with the ways and practices of our generation.

It's time for kings to go to battle. You see this battle that God had given David to do was so that he could dwell in the midst of his people. And his people's hearts would always be turned towards him.

This was the fight God has always wanted to bless humanity. Not curse humanity. He's always wanted to save and not to judge. He's always wanted to bring healing and not sorrow. It's his delight and it's his desire to bring healing to even the most deep and depraved fallen of humankind.

David’s Diversion and the Church’s Loss of Focus

It's time for kings to go forth to battle. But in this season David's eyes and his mind were occupied by a diversionary pursuit. Now we know what he did. He went up on his household. The top of his house looked over the railing and he saw a beautiful woman and his heart began to desire her.

But you see it could just as easily have been the pursuit of fame. He could have been diverted by that. He was after all a king and he could have been pursuing his legacy. I need to have my name engraved on pillars all over the place.

I need to have people remember the name of King David. It could have been the pursuit of wealth that could have been a diversionary thing in his life. It could have been personal comfort. It could have been the pursuit of ambitions outside of the will of God for his life.

It could have been the desire for unrighteous vengeance. After all, a lot of people had talked about him and he had been betrayed by a lot. He could have gotten to the point and said, well I'm just going to kill everybody.

I'm the king anyway. I'm just going to head out and just slaughter people that I don't like. He could have done it and it would have been an unrighteous pursuit. But his eye looked over his balcony and in a time when kings are supposed to be doing battle, he was diverted.

I want to ask you a question this morning. Where are your eyes looking in this generation? Are you looking for the glory of God as the body of Jesus Christ? What are you looking at? Where are you looking in the secret times?

This was a secret place. Nobody else is in that bedroom but David. But what are you looking at when you're alone at night? Where is your heart focused? What are your eyes seeing as something that will bring fulfillment into your life?

You see, this was a king diverted. And I believe in my heart it's been the devil's design to divert the church of Jesus Christ in any way, shape or form that he can. He will tempt the church of Christ.

He will bring false theologians into the church of Jesus Christ. He will put billboards all over in front of the church of Jesus Christ to get your eyes off of the glory of God being revealed through you.

The light of the body, Jesus said, is the eye. If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. The only singleness of eye that I know of in the scriptures is that I choose and want Jesus Christ to be glorified in my life.

I want the desires of his heart to be fulfilled. I know the desire of his heart. He's yearning for this generation. He's yearning for these young ones in New York City and surrounding area who've been raised and told there is no God, who come from broken homes and broken promises at every turn.

There's a yearning in the heart of God for this generation. I know, I know, I know what's in his mind. I know what's in his heart. If my focus is the focus of God, Jesus says, your whole body will be full of light.

I'll be able to flood you. There'll be no corners that are dark in your life. I'll be able to come and give you illumination. You'll understand what I'm thinking. You'll know where I'm going. And even better than this, you'll understand that I'm the one who gives the power to accomplish the journey.

He says in verse 23 of Matthew 6,. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. Folks, there's nothing darker than a religious darkened person.

There's nothing darker than somebody who can quote scripture and is living almost none of it. That's the darkness that is the scariest darkness I've ever seen in my life. Just enough religion to send them to hell.

That's all it is. And they feel happy on the journey. They're spouting the name of Jesus Christ, going to church, clapping their hands, singing songs, heading to hell the whole time. Just enough light to make them exceedingly dark.

Better that they'd not known the truth than have come to the knowledge of the truth and then turned away from it. David didn't know that this looking away, this looking over the balcony, this abdicating as it is the place that God had given him as a king.

Do you not know this morning, church of the living God, that we are kings and priests unto the Lord? The scripture bears witness to this. David now is not in the place he should be. He's looking over the balcony.

He's looking to satisfy something in his heart that only God could satisfy. And he had no idea that the direction he's looking to would bring him to an abandoning of righteousness for personal lust. How many people in our generation have abandoned righteousness for personal lust to fulfill some inner desire that they are unwilling to bring to God and let Him become the satisfier of everything that they feel they need in their heart?

He didn't realize it would lead him to adultery, to the betrayal of a loyal friend, a friend that would stand by him, a friend that would sleep at the door of his own home rather than go in and satisfy the desires of his own nature.

He didn't realize that looking in the wrong direction would lead him to murder and a loss of discernment as to his own true spiritual condition. Here is David when Nathan comes into him and tells him, there's a man in your kingdom who had a visitor come to his house.

He had all kinds of wealth and instead of taking from his own flock, he took another man's little lamb. And this lamb was so precious to this man and he mercilessly took it and he slaughtered this lamb and used it for his own need.

And David, anger rises up in him and he says, Oh, this man will be put to death for this and he will pay back fourfold. Of course, he knew the scriptures that price was a fourfold payback if you stole something unrighteously from another person.

And that's when Nathan turns to him and says, You're the man, David. You see, he had lost his discernment. But because he was a righteous man, God could still speak to him. You see, this is the issue.

Hearing God’s Voice After Losing Discernment

A righteous man can still be spoken to. A righteous person can still be challenged. You can be so far off track that you can't even see the train this morning. But if you are righteous, if you are righteous, you can still hear the voice of God speaking to you.

You can still hear the plea that is in the Holy Spirit. He's not condemning you. He's pleading with you. Come to me. You'll find everything you want in a living relationship with the living God. The deepest desires of your heart and even more will be met.

If you delight yourself in the Lord, I will give you the desires of your heart. Not just the things you think you need, but I'll give you new desires and then I will be the fulfiller of those new desires and it will be so far beyond anything you ever thought would bring you to a measure of success and fulfillment if you will simply delight yourself in me.

And I see David, finally, finally, it's as if the scales fall off his eyes and he finally realizes his true condition. I do believe with all my heart that a sovereign moment is coming to the church of Jesus Christ in America when the scales are going to fall off her eyes and she is going to see her true condition.

She's going to understand that God is not angry with her. God is longing for her. God is pleading for his bride. God is saying to her, come out. Come out to me. Leave Babylon. Leave all of its false comfort.

Leave all of its misguided thinking about success and wealth and fame and prosperity and come to me and learn the desires of my heart again. Now God is faithful. Proverbs 3 .11 -13 says, My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord and neither be weary of his correction.

For whom the Lord loves, he corrects, even as a father the son in whom he delights. Happy is the man that finds wisdom and the man that gets understanding. 1 Corinthians 10 .13, Paul says, There's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man.

Now the devil will always try to tell you, you've gone too far. You're too deep in this. You can't get out now. I'm all around you. I've surrounded you. God hates you. God is angry with you. God endures you.

But he doesn't love you anymore. He's not going to set you free. You've stepped over the line. You've messed up his name once too often. He tries to convince you that your testing or temptation is something unusual.

Something that has not happened before and that all other men are not having to go through. But the Bible says, there's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. That means you look on your left and right and everybody in this room is going through the same thing as you are in one stage or another and in one form or another.

But God is faithful. God is faithful. God is faithful. Who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able. The enemy himself. You see the word temptation here in its original text means two types.

It's a testing of God to prove those that are his. But it's also a temptation of Satan to make you fall. Neither one comes your way and will take you beyond your endurance, God says. I will not test you beyond your endurance.

God can't tempt. He can only test. And Satan comes to tempt. And he said, I won't test you beyond your endurance and the Satan will not be allowed to test you beyond your endurance. But with the temptation also will make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it.

God says, I'm going to make a way out for you. And folks, I want to tell you something. You're going to know it this morning before you leave this sanctuary. I'm not saying this to build a message. I know it in my heart.

The Enemy’s Sudden Defeat

Your enemies. You many of you come in here with enemies. Many of you come in here surrounded with enemies. You come in here and I've just read Psalm 6 and you say, Pastor, you just preached my month. You preach my life as it is right now.

Now, if the message ended here, then it would be rather dismal, wouldn't it? You say, well, you showed me my condition, but you didn't really show me the way out. I'm telling you. I'm telling you today that your enemies are going to leave suddenly, suddenly.

There's going to be an instantaneous moment when you are aware that your enemies are defeated and they're going to leave you ashamed, which means that they have not been able to fulfill their assignment over your life.

They're going to be ashamed. They're going to go back to hell. They're going to go back to the devil himself. There are demonic powers that are going to go back to hell itself this day and say, well, we had her surrounded.

We had him surrounded. We had her completely convinced that coming to church Sunday morning was a waste of time, that God was angry. We had her convinced she should stay in Starbucks and not bother coming to the church or get off the train at 47th and just go downtown and spend some time there.

No, but for whatever reason, she stayed or he stayed on the train and came here to Broadway and 51st. And we did our best. She sat, he sat in his seat and we surrounded him. But there's a power there.

You see, our force of our argument was diminishing moment by moment. And finally, there was this look that came across the scene of God's face and we knew the jig was up. We knew it was over. They finally realized that we are just a pack of liars.

That's all we are. Just an absolute pack of liars who have lied about God in the minds of God's people. Now go with me to second Kings chapter 18. I think this is the best place that you're going to be able to see this.

Second Kings chapter 18. Now, with the advent of the airplane, we became aware in greater measure of a tactic in warfare called psychological warfare. Psychological warfare is where the planes of the enemy, in this case, let's just say it's the planes of the enemy, fly in over the invading army or the army that they're attempting to conquer and drop in leaflets.

The leaflets fall seemingly from heaven. They fall to the ground and unsuspecting people pick them up and they begin to read them. And on these leaflets, there's an objective. And the objective is to persuade your opponents of the hopelessness of their cause.

It's hopeless. Imagine if you're walking down Broadway on Monday and a leaflet just drifts down. You're saying, God, can you give me a word? Then a leaflet falls and you pick it up and it says, it's hopeless.

Give up. We see that's what the devil does. The objective of psychological warfare is to give false reports of troop strength, locations and victories. False reports of the strength. It's to offer mercy for surrender.

Oh, just give up. Why fight the way you're fighting? Just go home, take a holiday. I know it's time for kings to fight, but go home, take a look over the balcony. Maybe there'll be something there that might interest you.

To offer contrary arguments against the justification of your resistance. And to threaten further misery if you refuse to cooperate. That's psychological warfare. That's dropping leaflets all over a land and trying to get the people to lose their resolve.

No wonder, no wonder, no wonder Paul in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 2 seems to make a reference to Satan being the prince of the power of the air. He is truly the prince of leaflet dropping all over the church of Jesus Christ.

Now, nowhere better do we see his leaflet campaign than in 2 Kings chapter 18 and chapter 19. The Bible tells us in chapter 18 there was a king, his name was Hezekiah. He was 25 years old, verse 2, when he began to reign.

And he reigned for a certain period of time in Jerusalem. He did that which was right, verse 3, in the sight of the Lord according to all that David his father did. He took away the high places, he broke the images, cut down the groves.

He broke in pieces even religious symbols, the brazen serpent that Moses had made. And for in those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it and he called it Nahushtan or a piece of brass. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah nor any that were before him.

He claimed to the Lord and departed not from following him but kept his commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him, verse 7, and he prospered with whosoever he went forth and he rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not.

Now Assyria is always symbolic of mixture. Because Assyria was a nation at that time that would come in and when they would conquer a people, they would take them and they would divide them all throughout the kingdoms that they had conquered in the earth.

Hoping that the people would intermarry with them, they would be assimilated and they would lose their culture. That was the Assyrian strategy. Hezekiah was a man of God and he said I will not be assimilated into the society around me.

Oh folks, I'm telling you, that's got to be almost the first resolve that gets into your heart. And many of you started this way. You came to Christ and you said no more mixture in my life. No more setting wicked things before my eyes.

No more divided heart. I'm going to live for God. You even answered all the calls. And you became a great threat to the kingdom of darkness. The enemy began to move against you like never before. This man Hezekiah said I will not serve this mixture anymore.

And I'm going to have to go through this quickly so follow with me. And in verse 17, the king of Assyria sent ambassadors and a great host against Jerusalem. Now we find the king of Assyria has been conquering.

He's been conquering other peoples and he's been allowed by God, we find later in the scripture, to do this because they were intermixed. We find assimilation is conquering great portions of the church of Jesus Christ, not only throughout history but in our generation.

Assimilation means we look exactly like the society around us. There's almost nothing in us that makes us stand out. Our conversation is the same. Our pursuits are the same. The society produces fame.

The church seeks fame. The society seeks wealth. The church seeks wealth. The society seeks power. The church seeks power. Almost nothing in the church looks different from the world all around it. We see this happening in our generation.

And because of this, the king of Assyria was allowed to go in and he conquered great portions of what claimed to be even the people of God. Now he came against Hezekiah. And when he began to threaten Hezekiah, Hezekiah began to make some concessions to him.

Well, maybe I've been a little too extreme. And it says in verse 15, he gave him the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house. He cut off the gold from the doors of the temple and the pillars, which had been overlaid in Judah with gold, and he gave it all to the king of Assyria.

He said, I'll make some concessions. I'll only go to church twice instead of five times in a week. I'll pull back. I won't be quite so extreme at work. I want to warn you, the moment you pull back, you have an enemy that will never stop.

He's not intent on just making peace with you. He's intent on destroying you. The next thing that happens is Hezekiah gets a report that a great army has now been emboldened and come against Jerusalem itself.

Now Jerusalem represents the very center of God's heart. It's the very place that God wants to dwell among His people. I do believe with all my heart we have been living in a season where Jerusalem, meaning the place of true worship, has been under siege in the house of God, especially in Western society.

It's been under siege. And this king of Assyria comes with a great host, and it's amazing. In verse 17 it says they camp by the conduit of the upper pool. Now, that's the water. That's the water supply.

They camp by the water supply. The enemy says, now, if I'm going to take this city, I've got to shut off the water supply. Now, it's obvious where this is heading, because the Bible clearly depicts the Word of God as living water.

There's no way around this. And he says, I've got to go, and I've got to shut off the water supply. I've got to inundate the church with false prophets that prophesy out of the visions of their own heart.

I've got to turn away people from the Word of God. I've got to shut down the water supply, or I won't be able to get to the very heart of worship. The devil has always been against the seed of the woman.

The sooner we understand this, the better off we're going to be in this generation. The psalmist in 119 verse 130 says, the entrance of thy words gives light. It's the Word of God. It's not coming into church, and worship is wonderful.

Thank God for good worship. But true worship is the end product of the Word of God having found a lodging place in the heart. You can't have worship without the Word of God. It'll just be noise, and it'll be relegated to that.

And in verse 22, now this king is coming against of Assyria, and he begins to threaten him. And he says, but if you say to me, we trust in the Lord our God, is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away?

And here's the subtlety of this strategy. You see, you say, no, God's going to fight for me. But the enemy says, no, I say you've failed in service and in worship. There was a place of strength, but you took it away.

You forfeited it. And you've lost it. And because of it, you're going to be also conquered like those who have been conquered before you. In verse 23, he says, I pray you give me pledges to the king of Assyria.

Provide some strength, and I'll give you 2 ,000 horses if you'll be able to set riders upon them. The enemy comes and says, you have no strength to fight. You can't fight this fight. You know you have no strength.

You know you can barely stop your gossiping tongue. You know you can barely love the unlovable. If anything comes out of you, it just seems like a drip out of a leaky faucet. You don't have this river of living water that Jesus speaks about.

You've barely got anything to fight with. And now you think you're going to be able to stand up against me. And in verse 25, then he really gets dirty. This is the enemy now. He says, am I to come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it?