Spiritual Warfare and the Gospel

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Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service. And again, I want to thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. All right, so we're going through the book of Matthew.

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We're in Matthew chapter 17. You can go there. I'm going to say a couple preliminary stuff as you go there.

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But what I kind of like to do when I preach is kind of condense everything down in this passage into a scope or just a thought for you to have.

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But where we're going in the sermon kind of sounds like this. We all, as one fighting force, we must wage a good warfare against the devil.

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I know that kind of sounds a little weird, maybe to some, but we all must together wage a good warfare against what

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Satan is doing in this planet. Like never before, we're at a point of history.

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The church is always growing. The gospel is always advancing. God's people are more numerous right on the planet than they've ever been.

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So we should be as stronger than we've ever been. We should be waging war against the enemy and what he's doing to our neighbors, what he's doing to this world.

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Like never before, as one fighting, mobilized unit. That's pretty much the heart of what

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I'm going to get into tonight. We're going to see that in the scriptures that we're going to look at. You know, the work of gospel ministry is not done by a few super -duper

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Christians, right, that have some type of special ability that excludes the body from the work that God wants us to do.

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The work of fighting against the devil, the work of waging a good warfare against what he's doing on this planet, the work of evangelization is done by all of us together or none of us at all.

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Ministry is body ministry. Ministry is understanding that each and every single one of us are absolutely indispensable to what

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Jesus is doing on the earth, regardless of your age, your stage in life, whatever it may be.

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You are absolutely needed in the fight against the enemy. You're absolutely needed in the evangelization of our city and everything else.

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So understand that about yourself if you're saved. Understand you have to get into the fight and now is the time.

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When I'm talking about this stuff, I'm not just kind of a needed caveat. I'm not talking about wackadoodle exorcism ministries and stuff like that when

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I'm talking about waging a good warfare against the devil. I'm not talking about over -sensationalistic or emotion -based, just crazy stuff.

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We see that on YouTube. That's not what I'm talking about. You know, there's guys that wave the banner of Jesus Christ and they're saying that they're waging a good warfare and they're actually going to places like Berkeley and fighting against Antifa and the social justice warriors.

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These guys are actually going fist to cuffs for Jesus Christ. Just so you know, that's not the way to do it. We don't knock people out for Jesus.

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That is not the warfare that I'm talking about. Jesus says that we're supposed to love those who persecute us.

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We're supposed to bless our enemies and love our enemies. So as I unfold what I'm talking about tonight, please understand

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I'm not talking about some crazy unbiblical type of warfare that we're supposed to wage.

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We are, like I said, the body of Christ. We need to accomplish Jesus' evangelistic commands together. It's just something that we need to put our hearts to.

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Our adversary, the devil, he works relentlessly, incessantly to murder, deceive, enslave, blaspheme, and he's super good at what he does.

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God has called us to fight. 1 Timothy 6 .12 says, Fight the good fight of the faith. James 4 .7

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says, Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

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You know that word, resist, in the original language, it means to actively set yourself against. It means to actively oppose what

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Satan is doing on this planet. So if you would kind of reread James 4 .7, it would say,

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Actively oppose the devil, and he will flee from you. The devil flees in the face of an aggressive and offensive church of Jesus Christ.

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He always flees. When we become offensive, when we become aggressively intentional, when it comes to evangelism, the church of Jesus Christ was never designed a resource to be on the defense.

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Did you know that? We were never designed a resource to be on the defense.

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We're always designed to be moving forward together confidently and powerfully in the power of the

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Holy Spirit. You, you saved person out there, that's what God has called you and commanded you to do and to be.

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We got to let the bad news, and we got some bad news about Ireland, Southern Ireland, Ireland the last couple days.

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I don't know about you, but that makes me ferociously angry. Sad, but angry.

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But we need more angry people on the planet, right? The Bible says,

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Be angry, but sin not. Actually, being angry is a command. It's an imperative for God for you.

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I'm not talking about like a miser, the old, it's not talking about being a grump, right? But it's talking about understanding what

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Satan is doing on this planet to our neighbors, understanding what he's doing inside of this planet and allowing that anger and that rage about it to motivate you to activity, motivate you to enlist, motivate you to move forward powerfully with gospel ministry, with gospel proclamation.

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That, you know, it is so much like us as humans to default to cowardice. You know what we even do?

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We like to create false theological systems, false eschatological systems that we can rest in apathetically and get out of the fight.

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No, that is like us. That is like us because we're fleshly. But we can't, let's not try to theologically convince ourselves that we're not supposed to be in the fight, that we're supposed to be doing something else.

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Let's not hold to theological errors that keep us out of the fight that God's called us to be.

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We need to rid ourselves of those. I, you know, my whole life I've been a part of churches so engulfed in theological error and what that does, especially eschatological error, what that does is that just cripples you from activity.

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It absolutely impairs you. So as you're listening tonight, think about yourself, think about your life.

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I hope these words are convicting you and as challenging to you as they are to me, right?

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Matthew 16, 18, I know you guys have heard it a billion times, but it says, and I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock

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I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. The gates of hell cannot overcome a forward -moving, powerful, offensive church.

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The gates of hell are not designed to keep back. But if we're not resisting the enemy, if we're not moving forward, powerfully proclaiming the gospel, obeying

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Jesus's commands to be salt and light in this earth, then the gates of hell are not going to be resisted.

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And then he's going to do what he does best and continue to destroy. But we are the answer on this earth.

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We are the hope for this earth. The answer to the crap stuff happening on this planet is you.

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It's you in the power of the Spirit wielding the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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That is our only weapon. So last week, Jeff preached an awesome message about the transfiguration.

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And that shows Jesus as the great revelator, right? He is the final and full revelation of God.

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It was just powerful as Jesus disclosed his glory, as he unveiled himself for a second.

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And these guys could see him shining brilliantly and brightly. And there's Moses and Elijah.

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And they symbolize the law and the prophets that in the past, Jesus spoke partially through the law and the prophets.

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But now Jesus shines forth, right, as God's final and full revelation. It's awesome as you look in the

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Old Testament, God is always shrouded in clouds. He's always concealing himself. But now

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God, the Bible says the Son of Righteousness comes up. And he burns away and dispels the clouds.

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And now we know fully who God is through the revelation exclusively of Jesus Christ in the

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Scriptures. And I love how Hebrews chapter 1 is kind of a picture of the transfiguration. Hebrews chapter 1 says,

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Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his

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Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

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And he upholds the universe. Just think about that. He upholds the universe by the word of his power.

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So one of Jesus' missions was to reveal the Father. John 1 .18

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says, No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known.

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Jesus is the way, he is the truth, and he is the life. We don't go into any other source. We don't go to any other person, any other religious text other than our

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Scriptures. The truth about God, his full revelation is in Jesus Christ. John 14 .8

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-9, Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him,

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Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the

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Father. How can I say to you, show us the Father? The transfiguration is getting our focus on Jesus.

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Jesus is talking with Moses and Elijah. We don't know what he's talking about, but they're discussing. And then the

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Father says, listen to him. That's where we have to stop when it comes to trying to find out about God.

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Jesus is the light of the world. He enlightens every man to the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God.

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God's final and complete revelation is not found in the Quran. It's not found in the Apocrypha, the

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Pearl Gray Price, the Mormon Bible. If you can hear my voice and you're enslaved to a religious system, we would beg you to flee from those religious systems.

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If you're thinking that God is accurately revealed in the Quran, or in the pages of the

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Apocrypha, or the Mormon Bible, or the literature of the Latter -day Saints, flee those systems of false religion, because they will only lead you to everlasting punitive judgment in hell.

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And we do not want that for anybody. Just the thought of an everlasting punitive penal sentence in hell is absolutely mind -blowing to me.

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We don't want that for anybody. So you hear my voice and you're in that system, please, we beg you to get out.

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Flee as fast as you can. You will die and go to hell forever if you remain in that, obstinate against Jesus Christ.

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So God has spoken of Himself completely and fully in the person of the Son, revealed exclusively on the pages of the

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Bible. And that's just one of Jesus' multifaceted mission. He came to do much in the time that He lived, in the time that He had

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His public ministry. He came to fulfill Messianic prophecy, to usher in, of course, as we've been listening to for weeks and weeks and months, months, now years, to usher in the

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Kingdom of God, which is so essential to our understanding of who God is and who Jesus is and what the gospel is all about, to exact judgment on the house of Israel, to purchase redemption for His people, to receive in Himself the punishment for His own elect, for His own people, to seek and save the law, to obey the law of God perfectly, to prophesy against the house of Israel, and to destroy the works of the devil.

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So Jesus is coming, He's multifaceted. And that, what we see here, I think, in these scriptures, is

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Jesus' purpose of destroying the work of the devil. Let's go to Matthew chapter 17, 14 through 21.

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I said all of that just to get you to hear. Matthew 17, 14 through 21.

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The scriptures read this, And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to Him. And kneeling before Him, he said, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic, and he suffers terribly.

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For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not heal him.

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And Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am

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I to bear with you? Bring him here to Me. And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.

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And the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it out? And He said to him,

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Because you're of little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have a faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you, thus far as the reading of God's Word tonight.

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So I got a question for you. Am I the only one early on in your Christian faith that you actually believe that you can move a mountain with your faith?

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I did. I remember God saved me in San Diego, and I would go pray on the cliffs, and I would actually think

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I could move the mountains, the San Diego mountains into the ocean. That's not what Jesus is talking about.

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He's not talking about actually moving mountains. And He's not really talking about now in our day, and I'll get into this in a little bit, exercising demons out of certain individuals.

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There's so much more that He is saying. Just to summarize what these Scriptures say, again,

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Jesus is demonstrating His incredible compassion, His total sovereignty, and He's exercising and putting on show

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His kingly authority of the demonic realm, and destroying the work of the devil in the life of this young epileptic boy.

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So what I want to do now is just kind of walk. You can just keep your thumb here, and I just kind of want to walk through these verses.

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Matthew 17, 14 through 15. I'm just going to read them, and then we'll walk through them. And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to Him, and kneeling before Him said,

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Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic, and he suffers terribly, for he often falls in the fire and often in the water.

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So what we have here before Jesus is this absolutely desperate man coming to bring his son's situation before Him.

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In Mark chapter 9, in Luke's account, this is this man's one and only son. So his son from birth has something called epilepsy, and what that means is moonstruck.

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What they believed was when people do something like that, it was because of the movement of the moon. We have a word, it's called lunatic or lunatic.

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They used to believe it was the movement and the position of the moon that caused people to act a certain way, but we know it was the work of the devil in the life of this young boy, and nobody can help him.

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So he comes, and he's kneeling on behalf of his only son too, the only begotten son for help.

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And I think what we see here in these verses is just so powerful. It's Jesus just showing off.

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It's Jesus coming in His kingly dominance, in His kingly authority, in His sovereign control over everything.

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And this father has this right posture as he comes to Jesus, and he kneels down before Him desperately begging for His help.

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And I think that is the posture of the redeemed. That's the posture of the truly regenerate.

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When we know that God has saved us, we come to Him in submission, right? We come to Him as king.

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We come kneeling before Him in adoring and glad submission. That's what it means to be a member of God's elect.

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It's we come to the king of kings, and we adore Him, and we submit to Him, and we kneel before Him.

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That's how you can know that you're truly in the kingdom of God. The Bible says in Psalm 95, 6, He'll come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the

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Lord our God, our maker. But this father is coming to kneel before Jesus in desperation. There's nothing that has helped him up to this point.

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And can you imagine throughout the life of all this young boy that when you're cooking dinner, all of a sudden your son just throws himself into the fire, or you're washing or bathing your son, or you're washing or bathing your clothes, and this young boy is just trying to drown himself.

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That's the work of Satan in the life of every single individual. All he wants to do at every single time of whenever is destroy and to blaspheme.

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That is his mission objective every day, all throughout the day. He only wants to destroy.

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He only wants to kill. He only wants to decimate. The Bible says in John chapter 10, that the thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy.

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We see that so vividly and in living color at the abortion mill when we go out. We see the lives of women stolen, and these children killed and destroyed.

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The work of Satan is just so prevalent. He is behind it all. He is in it all. He's absolutely the undergirding power and force behind Planned Parenthood and all the destructive regimes and governments all throughout our history.

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It is based upon this being, this created absolutely destroyer of human life.

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We got to talk about the devil a little bit more. It's funny, and I know we can't really have confidence and research when it comes to the national pulse of Christianity.

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Those kind of research and those stats are kind of weird the way that they do them.

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I think a recent one said 50 % of professing Christians don't even believe that the devil is an actual being.

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50 % of professing Christians don't even believe he's an actual being. And a lot of times we don't talk about him.

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We don't bring him up because it's not in vogue, but we have to talk about what he does.

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And no way to glorify him, and no way to boast in him like some people can get off in doing, but we have to bring up his destructive works so that we can know how to fight against him.

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John 8, 44, Jesus talking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and really every single person outside of the kingdom of God.

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He says this, you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

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He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him.

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When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. And that is the chief way

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Satan destroys throughout this planet, is the power of a lie. It's the power of ideology.

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It's the power of worldview. That is the way that Satan wreaks havoc and decimates on this planet.

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And that's what he's doing, he's trying to murder the son. He's trying to murder this boy. And this man's coming to ask

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Jesus for help because his disciples couldn't do it. So let's continue on, Matthew 17, 16 through 17 says,

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And I brought him to your disciples and they could not heal him. And Jesus answered,

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O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?

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Bring him here to me. So Jesus walks down from the mountain of transfiguration, and he's in this incredible heavenly atmosphere talking with Moses and Elijah.

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And in that moment, as he is shining forth in his brilliance, look at Revelation 1, 2.

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It's just another verse talking about Jesus as deity. So he is just shining forth in his unmitigated glory and brilliance in this heavenly atmosphere.

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He's talking to Moses and Elijah, whatever they're talking about. And there is full faith in the heavens. There is full faith in heaven.

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There's complete trust, there's complete submission and subservience to God. And then he comes out of that time with Moses and Elijah, and then he's looking at this faithless generation.

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You could see why he'd become so exasperated going from those polar opposite environments.

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That's why, and you see it all throughout Jesus's ministry, his frustration over faithlessness, his frustration over the lack of faith in his own disciples.

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And he rebukes them, he rebukes them. Because when there is no faith, you see it all throughout

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Jesus's ministry. There's no power, there's no working of God. It takes trusting in him, belief in his word, belief in who he is to accomplish the things that he wants us to accomplish.

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Why is Jesus so frustrated at his disciples? Why is Jesus so frustrated because of the lack of faith?

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Because he's God on earth. He's Emmanuel. He's raising the dead.

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He's calling people out of tombs. He's a walking hospital. People are bringing their nanas and their aunties and their grandpas and their sons to him, and he's healing them all.

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He's a walking grocery store. Just bread and fish are flying out of his hands.

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And they still don't believe. Can you imagine being back there?

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Can you imagine jumping in a time capsule and going back and be able to behold the life of Christ and how amazingly incredible it would be?

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And they have no faith. That would drive the eternal son of God to frustration, and I think that it would drive any one of us to frustration.

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It's something that you can't wrap your mind around, but we're them. We're no better than those people back then.

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We're them. We struggle with unbelief. Unbelief inhibits us. It stops us up.

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It kinks the hose in whatever God wants to do through us powerfully. That's what unbelief will always do, is lack of faith, lack of trust.

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Unbelief inhibits and destroys and disrupts, and ultimately, unbelief is going to be the eternal cause of absolute separation from God, is what unbelief is.

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There's a good quote by A .W. Tozer. He says, every man will have to decide for himself whether or not he can afford the terrible luxury of unbelief.

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Right? The luxury, because we believe that unbelief is the way to go, because faith in what

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Jesus Christ has called us to do is beyond our capacity to do it. So many of us believe inactivity, or not obeying the word and the law of God, the commands of God will somehow be more comfortable for us.

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It's a luxury that we can't afford to be not in the game, to be AWOL from what

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God has called us to do, to not be about the work of Jesus Christ and this planet, but it's a luxury that we can't afford.

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So many people suffer on this planet. The neighbors that we are called to love, suffer because we don't do what

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God has commanded us to do. Hebrews 3 .12 says this,

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Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living

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God. Unbelief will always incapacitate you. It will always enslave you. It will always shackle you from doing what

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God has, He has designed you and resourced you to do.

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Don't let unbelief keep you out of what God has called you to do. And then

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Jesus says to them, Bring the boy to me, so his disciples could not heal him.

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He says, Bring the boy to me. And I think this is just super powerful, just those four words that Jesus says to them, to bring the boy to him because of who

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Jesus is. Hebrews 1, and I read it earlier, says that he upholds the universe with the word of his power.

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I mean, can you imagine the absolute mind -boggling power of Jesus Christ? His omnipotence just boggles the mind if you think about how powerful he is.

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You think that there is nothing living or has ever lived, there is nothing that is being sustained in its being, in its existence that Jesus Christ is not actively focused on causing to be alive.

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Think about the stars. A lot of people talk about natural laws, as if God just created these laws and he is absent from their activity.

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No, every law that God has given you, you're thinking about physics and the law of gravity, you're thinking about the stars and the galaxies, the billions upon trillions of stars hanging in the sky, burning, that Jesus is at this moment causing them to do so.

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Every single microbiological organism, every single tiny little salamander and worm that Jesus is causing to be alive, every single person that rages against God, that lies to themselves about some atheism that they hold to, that at that moment that they are raging against God, that God in his mercy is causing their hearts to beat.

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God, Jesus is so far beyond our capacity and our ability even to apprehend or comprehend his power.

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I love facts about the universe. I'm not going to get into too many of them. But the biggest known star, and I don't even know if it's the biggest known star.

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It might be. I mean, they're discovering new stars, you know, every single minute. But one of the big ones is

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VY Canis Majoris. And in Latin, it means the big, big dog star. So this star is so big, the sun is so big, that if you get in a commuter jet and you travel without stopping, you can actually go around the earth in 45 hours.

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That's how long it would take you. If you jump in a jet and you travel around the planet, 45 hours. But if you were to jump in a commuter jet, it's going about 500, 600 miles per hour, and you were to go around this

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Canis Majoris, it takes you 2 ,100 years just to go around this thing one time.

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And that's just one of these massive burning balls of fire that Jesus is commanding to burn.

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It's amazing. And then as he's doing all of that, and he's coming down in the incarnation, and he's fulfilling the work of all righteousness, and he's doing everything, he calls this young boy to himself as he's doing all of that.

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It's just the immense power and the immense compassion and concern that God has.

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Psalm 8 is such a powerful verse. It says, When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

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It just goes to show you that God is so powerful. He's so capable in everything that he does. But our own issues, our own life, our own walk with him is not outside of his interest.

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It's not outside of his view, that he's with us, that he never leaves us or forsakes us.

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He understands our trials and our afflictions, and he actually causes them to happen to you, but he's with you through all of them.

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It's just so, so immensely powerful. So Matthew 17 and 18, as we keep on going,

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Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.

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So here we have Jesus, as I said, showcasing his kingly and divine authority, his sovereignty, his absolute control, not only of the physical creation, but also of the spiritual realm.

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If you think about it, there is no existence that is outside of his power and control. He owns it all, he upholds it all, and controls it all according to his own will, according to his own pleasure, and according to his own purposes.

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This is all for Jesus. Through him and to him, everything in existence is for the Son, is for the glory of the

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Son. He is absolutely sovereign. He whispers, and the oceans become calm.

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He speaks to the dead, and they come to life. He curses trees, and they die. He heals sickness with his thoughts.

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He commands demons, and they absolutely all obey him. Jesus walks on this planet that he owns, and he absolutely plunders the house of the enemy.

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It's powerful. 1 Chronicles 29, 11, 12 says, Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the splendor, and the majesty for everything in the heavens and earth belongs to you.

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Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and you are exalted as head over all. Riches and honor come from you, and you are the ruler of everything.

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Power and might are in your hand, and it is in your hand to make great and to give strength to all.

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He's absolutely powerful and in control. Job 42, 2 says, I know that you can do anything.

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No plan of yours can be thwarted. Psalm 115, 3 says, Our God is in heaven, is in the heaven, and he does whatever he pleases.

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It's so important as you're thinking about Jesus, as you're looking at Christ in the scriptures, that when you do talk to people about Jesus, that you are representing this all -powerful, sovereign king of the universe that does not invite people to do anything.

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He's not knocking on the door of anybody's heart, waiting for you to let him in. He's not dependent upon you.

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He's not needing of you. He commands everything according to his own purposes and will.

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In our American evangelicalism, we have sissified Jesus Christ. We have reduced him down to something that the

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Bible does not portray him to be. So as we are about the work of evangelism and the gospel message, telling our kids about Jesus, telling our family about Jesus, telling this lost world about Jesus, let's get

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Jesus right. Let's get him right. He is the sovereign master and ruler and reigner over absolutely everything, exercising total control.

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Let's keep on going, Matthew 17, 19 -21. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said,

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Why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, Because of your little faith, for truly

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I say to you, if you have faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,

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Move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible to you.

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Like I said before, it was due to unbelief. It was due to lack of faith that the disciples, they couldn't cast him out.

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They were not believing in who Jesus called them to be and they did not believe in the ability that Jesus gave them.

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That was the heart. That is the heart of unbelief. They were incapacitated to deliver this demon out because they did not believe in the power of Jesus.

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They did not believe in the power that Jesus had granted to them. That, if we're not believing who

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Jesus is, if we're not believing that he has given us the Holy Spirit and he has made us capable to accomplish his commands and his purposes, of course, never apart from him, but through the power of the

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Holy Spirit, then that is where we will do nothing for him that he has called us to do. Does that make sense?

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In Matthew chapter 10, it says this, and he called to him his 12 disciples and gave them authority over the unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction.

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So he sent them off and he said, I've given you this authority. This is what you're called to do. But in their own unbelief, they didn't believe it.

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They weren't believing in God's word. They weren't believing in the power and the authority, like I said, that God had given to them.

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But we must believe in it. We must rest our faith in it. We must trust in the words of Christ as it pertains to us and what he's commanded us and called us to do.

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If we don't, it's just going to frustrate the will of God for you.

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It's just going to frustrate it. But if we all rise up, if we all understand our place in this and believe and move forward in that unbelief, the

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Bible says faith is dead without works. Putting action to our faith in fear and trembling, right?

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We're going to do much for the kingdom of God, much more for the kingdom of God. Is Jesus telling us that we can actually move mountains with our faith?

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No. The expression was a common Jewish, let me see if I can say this word right, colloquialism.

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Did I get it of that day? I think I got it. I don't think I did. I messed it up. But to a Jew of Jesus' day, that's what you would say to an impossible task, you know.

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If you have faith, you can move that mountain from here to there. We would say you can do it. But that was just something to reassure them that with faith, anything is possible with God.

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I think I listened to about seven or eight sermons as I was studying for this sermon.

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And it seems to be much of the focus is on the fact that we are called, we are commanded to have faith, and that if we exercise this faith, that God is going to remove all of our difficulties, that God is like a mountain being moved from here to there, that God is just going to take our trials, our afflictions, whatever we're dealing with, and then

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He's just going to move them away from us. That's what I got in a lot of my studies. But I don't think that's really the heart of what

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Jesus is talking about contextually. I understand that trials and afflictions are all part of the sovereign plan of God, that He uses those as a refiner's fire to hone us and quarry us and to sanctify us.

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That's not what it's talking about. And contextually, the mountain that Jesus is talking about in this pericope, in these passages of Scripture, is the work of the devil in the life of this boy.

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That is the mountain that Jesus is talking. Jesus is talking about this mountain. Jesus is saying, if you have faith, you can deal with this mountain here.

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He's talking about the work of the devil on this planet and their commission to wage war against it.

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That's really what this is getting to. If this is going to have enduring application for us or principle, enduring principle, and how this would flesh out in our lives, if it takes faith in the authority and the word of Christ to defeat the works of Satan, which we are commanded to do on this planet.

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Of course, not in the same vein as Jesus. I'm not talking about that. I think a good question that we have to ask ourselves is, do we presently have the ability to exercise demons?

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Are we supposed to just walk up to people in Walmart, grab them by the forehead, and just exercise the demons out of them? Yes, you are supposed to do that.

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No, I'm just kidding. No, we are not commanded to do that. That is, and I talked to Pastor Jeff for about an hour about this this week, that is not the normative.

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You don't see this manifestation of demonic activity all around us like they did in this period of time.

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Why was there such a huge degree of demonic activity? I like what Pastor Jeff had talked to me this week because the devil knew his number was coming.

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Jesus was there to plunder the house of the devil. Jesus was there to put the devil ultimately under his feet, putting him on a leash.

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But no, we are not called to exercise demons out of people. Jesus was exercising the demons because of Matthew 12, 28.

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He says, but if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. He's doing that to demonstrate his kingly authority that he is king and that they are under his feet, under his control.

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They obeyed his commands and the commands of the early disciples really to validate

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Jesus's kingship and deity. We are not called to do that. Just like we can't pass by somebody in a shadow.

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Our shadow is going to heal them, right? That's just not, that is not the way of the world.

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Why was there such a huge amount of miracles? Why was there this type of miraculous, supernatural activity happening?

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Well, you see it all throughout the scriptures that when there is, hi. I don't know what that was.

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That when there is this massive amount of supernatural activity happening, it was always to preface the word of God.

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It was always to validate the biblical author. So you ask yourself, why could these disciples exercise demons and I can't do it today?

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Well, it's because you're not an author of the word of God, right? They were going to pin the word of God by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And so God was doing supernatural work through them so that people can know these are validated men of God.

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God is in them and God is with them. That's how it's different to us today. 1 Kings chapter 17, 17 through 24.

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I'm not going to read the whole thing, but Elijah hears healing another young boy, right? It says then in verse 21, then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the

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Lord, O Lord my God, let the child's life come into him again. Actually, he's bringing this child back from the dead.

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And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah and the life of the child came into him again and he revived.

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And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And listen, listen,

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Elijah said, see your son lives. And the woman said to Elijah, now that I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the

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Lord is in your mouth. So the supernatural miraculous resurrection by Elijah was to substantiate

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Elijah's credibility. Does that make sense? To validate him as a man of God, to be entrusted with the word of God.

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That's why we have to be careful. There are so many hucksters and charlatans and frauds out there with these miracle healing ministries, right?

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And they are just absolutely faking the whole thing. That is, it's just not true.

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People like Benny Hinn or Todd Bentley are these absolute charlatans that are misrepresenting because when that happens, these men will come out as if they have this supernatural ability all in themselves.

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I'm not talking about miracles. God can do anything he wants. I'm not saying that miracles don't happen today.

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We've seen healing. We see God. God heals whoever he wants, whenever he wants. But it is not to a degree that we find in the scriptures because we have the word of God.

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I've been in these churches where these guys come in and they profess to have all the power in a single individual.

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And all these people start taking their hearts and their minds away from the word of God and the things of God. And they look to these fakes in an absolutely undoes churches.

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It destroys. I've been in these churches. So I'm not, believe me, I'm not saying that God can't heal and God does, of course he can.

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But this is the reason why it was so prevalent to that degree because it was all to have, as the scriptures say, a more sure word in the

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Bible, right? Now we have that. Here's a question. How do we actively oppose the devil?

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How do we actively oppose the devil? 2 Corinthians 10, 3 through 4 says this.

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For though we walk not in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.

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For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

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We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ.

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So we're not called to exercise demons like that. We are called to wage warfare with the sword of the gospel message.

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We're called to wage warfare against worldviews and demonic systems of thought and ideologies that are at the heart of the destruction of our earth and our neighbors all around us.

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We wage war against anti -Christ and anti -God ideologies with the power of the gospel message and God's word.

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That is how Jesus today is putting His enemy underneath His feet through the vehicle of the church, wielding the power of the gospel.

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That's how He's done it since the ascension. And that is how He's gonna continue to do it until He hands the kingdoms over to His Father and the last enemy is absolutely done with.

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It is with the power of the gospel, fighting and battling against any lofty thought or any worldview that would raise up against God.

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Revelation 19 .5 says, from His mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and He will rule them with a rod of iron.

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He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. That sword is the word of God.

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Ephesians 6 .17 says, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

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What drives these guys in high schools to open fire?

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What drove this young kid in Texas to open fire on his classmates?

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What was that? Well, it was lies, right?

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It was evolutionism. It was the byproduct of really holding back to, or really holding to Darwinian evolutionism.

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It's at the heart of evolutionism that we are just bags of primordial ooze or stardust, as Pastor Jeff has told us a thousand times.

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Is that who we are? That's what evolutionism teaches, that there is no purpose. That we are just, we are micromutational accidents in a universe that doesn't care, that's unguided at all.

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It's just chance processes. How is the world surprised that this happens in high schools?

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How are we surprised that this happens? Well, we should be surprised that this happens because this should not be happening on Jesus' planet as He reigns, right?

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Why is the world surprised when somebody gets up and just opens fire on these bags of skin and flesh that really mean nothing according to an evolutionary system of origins?

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What do we have to do? We have to battle that. We have to fight against that. We have to be preaching the gospel about who

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Jesus is and who God is and who people are and how sin has separated them. We have to war against that.

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What drives mothers to execute and fathers to execute their own children? It's the bondage of the mind.

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It's lies. He is the father of the lies. He only wants to deceive. And so we go out wielding the power of the gospel.

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False ideologies or worldviews are motivated by a very real devil. What's behind all the atrocities, damning, destructive, demonic systems of thought are worldviews that run against the word of God.

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The battle has always been, did God really say? Satan has been playing that card from the garden, right?

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Usurping and undermining the authority of God's word. And that arsenal that he uses has been so effective.

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That is what he does. He challenges the word of God. He gets us to believe contrary to that in his work of decimation and destruction.

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Moves forward. That's why we have, you know, that's why the guys do the show next week.

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That's why that show next week is so absolutely essential. It's because what do we do?

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What does Pastor Jeff and everybody else do in that show? Is they, in a culturally intelligible way, they're exposing lies.

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They're exposing counterfeit worldviews. They're exposing intellectually and truth bankrupt worldviews that destroy and decimate.

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That's why they do that. Jeff and I were in Kauai, and I love when he talked to me. He said, I've got to do this next week show.

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It has to be done because we have to run against the tide of lies. We have to run against these worldviews that are killing and destroying our neighbors and this nation as they just run amok all throughout everything.

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It's got to be the word of God penetrating that powerfully through the people of God, through our testimony, through our constant open mouth with the gospel and with God's word.

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The war is always a truth war. The only weapon that we have is accurate and adequate, but it's the gospel.

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God has always vanquished his enemies, and he does it day by day through the power of his gospel.

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We must battle. We must do this right, but we must do it all together.

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I'm almost done. Just a couple more things, but like I said before, we don't move forward as individuals.

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The work of God never moved forward into some individual people who are these, like I said, these super spiritually gifted people that it's been given their tasks as this super -duper

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Christian to do the work that God has called us to do. That's never how it works.

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It will never work like that. We see that in Christianity when someone builds something based upon some singular individual, when somebody builds something based upon a single person, upon their specific giftings, upon their specific, their amount of charisma or good looks.

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We see that. We've seen that happen all throughout church history. We've also seen those works fizzle and fade away.

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I'm so thankful we belong to a church that's not built on that. We're built on the word of God that we are operating as the body of Christ all with distinct and special and absolutely essential giftings that God has given you and that God has given me.

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But what we have to do is understand that if you're going to fight a battle, that if you're going to wage a good warfare, that no war and no battle is ever won on the strength of individual soldier.

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And whenever anything, any ground is taken, that when any battle is won, it's always based upon a mobilized unit, a team of people that are tied together and that we are indispensable to one another.

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We absolutely need each other. So just talking to you and talking to myself as we wrap this up, you know, who has

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God made you? You're not supposed to be me. You're not supposed to be Billy Graham.

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I can't believe I just compared myself with Billy Graham. You're not supposed to be whoever you have in your mind. Maybe you have some

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Christian brother or Christian sister that you look up to. Maybe they led you to the Lord and you revere them.

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But understand, you're not supposed to be them. That God has uniquely gifted you in yourself to obey the evangelistic duty and command the

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Great Commission just where you're at. If you're a plumber, if you're whatever you are, if you're an accountant, if you're a lawyer, some of the most important people on this planet are homeschool moms, right?

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Think about our public school system, which we all, if you can hear my voice, get your kids out of public school system.

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Get it out. Get them out. Some of the most important people on this planet when it comes to evangelization, waging a good war, are homeschool moms who are teaching their kids day in and day out about who

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God is and what the gospel is and what Jesus has commanded us to do and what

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Jesus has commanded us to be. Like I said, if we are upset about the things that God, sorry, if we're upset about what's going on in this world when it comes to high school shootings, when it comes to nations rejecting the word of God, when nations ushering in the slaughter of unborn kids like Southern Ireland has just done, let that anger drive you to activity.

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Don't let that anger drive you into some type of, like I said, theological system where, oh, this is just what God is doing.

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This is just all part of God's plan and therefore we're just gonna let it happen so Jesus will come sooner.

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Reject that false theological systems. Reject that type of eschatological framework that actually debilitizes, sorry, debilitates the church of Jesus Christ.

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Reject all of it and focus in on the commands of Christ. Be angry, be an angry

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Christian and let that anger drive you to battle. Let that anger drive you to war.

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The devil's work is as large as a mountain but if we have faith in the authority of God's word and the authority that God has given us, we can do damage which we are commanded and called to be.

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It's our command and we have to get busier about doing it. It's body ministry, it's collective ministry and so as you listen to this,

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I thank you so much for taking the time just to meditate on this with me. Think about your own role.

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Think about the things in your life. Think about the standards that you live by and the goals that you're striving to and the worldview that you adhere to.

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Think about how that is fleshing out in your life. Now you might have a strong biblical theological worldview and praise

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God for that. I hope we all do or we're striving towards that as Christians but we really have to get down to the brass tacks of what we're doing with our day today.

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Are we allowing the standards of the world to really generate our goals? Are we allowing the standards of the world which

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God has commanded us not to be conformed to? Are we allowing that type of worldview to drive us and to determine our day planner?

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What are you doing with your life? What are you doing with your giftings? Are you believing in who God has called you and commanded you to be?

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Are you exercising your role in this battle? It's something that we all need to take an account of and continually take an account of but I don't know about you,

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I wanna be happy. I wanna be comfortable. I hate going to the abortion clinic, I hate it.

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I hate doing the things that God has called to me. I mean, I love it, I know God has called us to do it but it's difficult.

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It's something that we have to get over and I'm telling you right now, I'm not the standard of this.

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The standard is Jesus Christ, look to him. I deal with fear and I deal with cowardice and I deal with dropping the ball myself.

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I'm preaching this to myself up here. But I know that our response when it comes to Ireland, I know our response when it comes to abortion, when it comes to kids shooting up the schools and when it comes to the devastation that this nation is under, we have to rise up and we have to grit our teeth and clench our knuckles and speak the gospel wherever we are, wherever you go, to your kids, to your neighbors, wherever it may be, that is the answer.

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Not bringing attention to yourself, not doing it for your own glory, that renders everything we're gonna do impotent but saying

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I'm going to be what God has called me to be. I'm going to be filled with the gospel message, filled with the word, right where you're at, right with the giftings that God has given you and we will do much damage toward the work of the devil.