Understanding Authority (Part 1) — Paul Lloyd

We want to do that this morning, Lord, wait upon You. We want to wrap our lives around You, have You wrap Yourself around us and experience that strength and power that comes from You afresh. Thank You, Lord, that You're here.

Thank You, God, that You're a God who cares. But every soul in this room today, every little child, every man, every woman, every youth, that you long to meet needs today, you long to speak and you long to use Your Word to do something creative in our lives, to make something in us that's of You.

So, Lord, we ask You to do that. God, we just open our hearts to You this morning and say, Lord, speak to me. And we ask You, Lord, to give us a heart that says, yes, Lord, yes, Lord. And, Lord, take away from us anything that would say, no, Lord, or not yet, Lord.

May there be a spirit of surrender to You, we pray. We ask You to bind and remove every evil influence here today, every influence that would want to hinder us from hearing or receiving. Surround us with Your angels, Lord.

We come under You and we say, Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives and of this place, in that You are the one who has authority here. We don't want anything else. So, we welcome You, Lord, to just be big, be all that You can be and want to be in our midst.

Open our eyes to see You, Lord. Help me to speak Your words, Lord, not my own, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, are you glad to be here today? Do you love the Lord? Do you love His Word? Amen. We do. I'd like to speak today on the topic of understanding authority.

Understanding Authority and Its Meaning

Understanding authority. I'm not going to be able to do it in one message today. I realized that last night I was wearing myself out. I thought I'm going to wear everybody else out if I try to do that tomorrow.

So, this will be part one. Part two will come some other time. Maybe next week. I don't know. What does that word do in you when you hear the word authority? Does that word make you feel good? Does the word make you feel bad or not feel anything?

How does that word affect you? To a lot of people, that's kind of a bad word. Authority. A lot of us have had bad experiences with authority, haven't we? I have. So, yeah, it's a word that has some mixed baggage with it.

But I want to do a teaching on understanding authority. Sometimes when we don't understand something, well, yeah, if we don't understand something, we're missing it. We're missing the point. And authority is one of those things that I think is not understood very well.

And so today in this message, what I'd like to talk about is kind of the background of authority, where it comes from, what it is and where it is and what authority we have as Christians. And I hope you did as excited as I did when I was studying this.

And then the next time I want to talk about more of the practical thing. How shall we live? Because of these things. So understanding authority. Authority is everywhere. I don't know if you realize it, but you've been moving in authority all day long.

You drove to get here, right? What side of the street did you drive on? Why did you do that? It's a rule. Who made the rule? The government. How did they get the right to do that? Authority is everywhere.

You know, there's authority in your mailbox. Did you know that? I looked this up. I used to put tracks in places. And one time I heard you can't just put things in people's mailboxes. And so I knew that.

But I wanted to look up what's the official rule about that. So I looked it up yesterday. It says this is on the Postal Service website. It says mailboxes are considered federal property and federal law makes it a crime to vandalize them or to in any way mess with what's inside.

So have you ever heard people go around with baseball bats and drive their car and knock them over? This is what the federal law says. Violators can be fined up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or imprisoned for up to three years for each act of vandalism.

There was a guy one time came down our road. He knocked about five of those things over. I don't I don't know if he got caught, but he could have. Spent 15 years in jail and paid a million two hundred and fifty thousand if they threw the book at him, that's authority.

There's authority in my mailbox. There's authority in you exercise it this morning if you're like me, right, son, get your belt on. Don't forget your belt. That's authority. How did I get that authority?

Where did it come from? It's just everywhere. We can't get away from it. And we live in a world that is there's realms and layers and of authority everywhere. Peter said to I think it was Ananias, he said about it.

Remember, he sold his house and he brought the money, but he didn't bring all of it. And Peter said, was it not in your power to do with whatever you wanted to? And that word is the word authority. This might be a good place to bring this this word thing up.

Dunamis and Exousia: Power and Authority

OK, how many of you have ever heard the difference between dunamis and exousia? Anybody? All right, not a whole lot. Some of us. OK, in the King James Bible, particularly dunamis is a word translated power.

Dunamis is the word in Acts 1 8 that says, but you shall receive power when the Holy Ghost has come upon you. Dunamis, that's we get our word dynamite. Our English word dynamite comes from that Greek word dunamis.

It's talking about might, power. Something's going to come upon you. You're going to have power to be a witness. Your life's going to change. That's dunamis power. But then there's this other word called exousia.

And that word is often translated power in King James. But if you actually study it and I mean, power is not a wrong translation, but it has a lot of the connotations of authority more so. It means exousia means you have a legal power.

In other words, you have a right to something. So, for example, I have I have I came here in my vehicle. That's my vehicle, right? I have a legal right to that vehicle. Now, who gave me that exousia to own personal property?

Who? No, they but you're right. In a sense, they they categorize it or they whatever protect it. But who gave people the right to have personal property? God did. How did he do that? He said, you shall not steal.

Do you get that by saying you shall not steal? God is saying, I acknowledge that there is such a thing as personal property that people own and you can't take it. So that all of us in this room today, we own stuff, we have personal property, we have exousia, we have the right to oversee that property.

We have authority over that property because God gave it to us. And I'd like to say right off the bat, all authority comes from God. Remember what Jesus said to Pilate? Pilate said, don't you know, I have authority that I can release you or I can kill you.

And you remember what Jesus said? You can have nothing except that we're giving you from above, from God. Jesus understood that. And so exousia, we're going to look at a lot of these words and there's actually several of them that are translated power.

That to me, it's it's it really was a lot more exciting to put that word authority in there because power is something that is like, OK, you have like physical force or you have the might to do something.

But authority means there's something behind you, bigger than you, stronger than you, backing you up. So let's just take an example. Just this isn't so common in our day, but in the old days, they didn't have traffic lights.

They had a traffic policeman. Now, if a semi truck, 18 wheelers coming down the road and that policeman standing in the middle of the road, does he have power to stop that? No, the thing will run him right over.

Right. He has no power. But does he have authority to stop that? And so this man who doesn't have a bit of power that could stop that semi, if he just goes like this, what happens? You better stop, right?

If he doesn't stop, what happens? There's somebody behind that man. Now, if somebody just decides, hey, I think it'd be fun to direct some traffic today. That would be really cool. I'm going to just go out there and do that.

OK, that could be hazardous to your health. Right. Because he stands out there in his whatever, his jeans and T-shirt. He goes. And these people are gone. I don't see any sign of authority there. Why?

He doesn't have a badge. He didn't have a hat. He doesn't have that sign of authority. And so people recognize that and people would say, you don't have any right to do people just drive right past. We had a situation the other day, a tree fell into the road right in front of us.

I never saw anything like this. It was a calm day. This tree just rotted in half and fell across the road. And the guy who was right in front of me, you know, he just he sort of ran over the sticks, the things.

And it was a very bad situation potentially. And, you know, the tree was this big around. And so we're like, OK, what do we do now? And we I was sort of faced with this challenge of how do we do this is dangerous.

Somebody could get killed here. Right. And that could be me if I'm not careful. So we pulled over to the road and we we went back. We came back. And it just so happened this guy came from the other side who had a.

Chainsaw in his truck. So he parked it right in front of this tree on the other side. And, you know, I realize this somebody's got to stop the traffic. Right. So I didn't have my badge. I didn't have my nothing.

But I just, you know, kind of went like this. And the people stopped. Why did they give me that authority? I didn't have that authority. How did I get it? Huh? Yeah, they looked and they saw a tree and they go, hey, you know what?

Somebody needs to do something here. I'm going to let him stop me. I'm going to allow him to have authority in my life. And so I got to be one of them. Always wanted to be one. You know, just stop all those all those big, heavy vehicles, you know.

And anyway, that situation turned out good. It worked out well. And, you know, praise the Lord. It was fun. You know, the guy with the chainsaw was having fun. And, you know, everybody threw the thing over the side and everybody got to go again.

And but the thing about authority is it's not dependent on how big you are, how strong you are. You could get a brand new police guy who's, you know, 19 years old, whose uniform doesn't fit him. It's too big, you know, and hanging hanging on him.

And, you know, he's it's his first day on the job. He's at. But when he has that badge and he sticks his hand up, they stop. Why? Because of what's behind. That's the beauty of authority. If there's something behind me that it's not about me, it's it's what's behind me and that thing that's behind me is way in our case as Christians is way bigger, way stronger than we could ever hope to be.

And so it's an exciting topic today, and I hope that, you know, through this message, I hope you can get excited about what it means to be in the authority of the Lord and to be his representative and to have him standing behind you.

What a powerful thing. Well, let's write a few things up here. The very title of God's realm is called the Kingdom of God that speaks of authority, doesn't it? The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God. OK, now there's also another realm and it's called the what?

Kingdom of what? No, Kingdom of Darkness. I like how God didn't call it the Kingdom of Satan. It's like he didn't want to give him, you know, even give him that title or that credit. He said the Kingdom of Darkness.

So we also have, of course, the kingdoms of this world, physical nations and so forth. We're not going to talk about that so much today, but there's in the spiritual realm there are two kingdoms. There's a kingdom where God reigns.

There's a kingdom where Satan reigns. How did Satan let's see who is the head of the Kingdom of God? Let's go there. God, particularly what person of the Godhead, the father. Well, OK, let me rephrase it.

Who has all authority in the Kingdom of God? OK, OK, Jesus Christ has all authority. He said that, didn't he? He OK, that's what you see. He said all power is given unto me. That's what you see. All authority has been given unto me in where heaven and earth.

And then he said, therefore, you do something. Now, how did he get that? How did Jesus get that? Let's start with me to Philippians, Philippians, chapter two, and let's look at starting at verse five.

Christ’s Humiliation, Obedience, and Exaltation

We're going to read about how Jesus got this authority. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but he made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man.

He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him given him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father.

Every single one of the knees in this room is going to bow to Jesus Christ and say, you are Lord. Every single tongue is going to confess that not one will be left out. There won't be any who say, I'm not going to do it.

I'm not doing that. Nobody's going to be able to do that. They shall all come before the Lord Jesus Christ, the worst rebel, the worst dictator, Adolf Hitler, whoever, they shall all bow before him. The Bible says, and they shall all declare with their mouth, Jesus Christ is Lord.

Praise God. Isn't that exciting? We live in a world where those thugs and people are running rampant and they're allowed to do their thing for a season and that doesn't feel good and that's miserable for us.

But we know there's coming a day when every one of them shall bow before Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. Without exception, Jesus became the head. Look what it says here. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

And the next verse says, wherefore, because he was obedient to the death, God highly exalted him and gave him that name, which is above every name. Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God works on the principle of obedience.

Jesus obeyed the father. He went to the cross in spite of the fact that he said, you know, if there's any other way, father, that this cup can pass, please. But, you know, not my will and thine, he obeyed.

And that act of obedience brought him to the highest place of honor. And of authority in God's kingdom, this is the kingdom of obedience now. Let's just contrast these. This kingdom is the opposite. How did Satan, how did this whole kingdom start?

Was it not through the rebellion of the devil? Rebellion. Now, where are people born? Which kingdom are people born into? This one or this one? Physically born into this earth, we're born into here. How are we going to get out of here and get over there?

That's the question. And that's what we want to look at. It says in Ephesians chapter two, a couple of pages over there, it says, you has he quickened, brought alive. Who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world.

According to the prince of the power, that's exousia, the prince of the authority of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Now, what kind of spirit do you think works in people who are called the children of disobedience?

What kind of spirit do you think that would be? OK, or I was going to say just disobedient. If they're called the children of disobedience and there's a spirit that works in them, wouldn't it be a spirit of disobedience or rebellion?

Same same idea. So there's a spirit here. Now, is there a spirit over here? Come on. Is there a spirit here? The Holy Spirit, who is that spirit given to us? Look at Acts chapter five. Turn with me quick.

Acts chapter five. In verse thirty two, and we are his witnesses of these things, and so also is the Holy Ghost whom God has given to them that. Obey him, you see, you see what happens, you see how you get translated out of here and into here, it's a Holy Spirit and it's given to them that obey.

It's given to them that obey. This is the way the kingdom works. There's a there's a king. He's Jesus and all things are underneath him. He is Lord. Remember, I said there's eight thousand references to Lord in the Bible, eight thousand.

I don't think there's any other word that has so many references. He's Lord. He's king. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of obedience. It's a kingdom where Jesus is the head and all of us are underneath.

Beneath him now, the kingdom of Satan is the opposite, the kingdom of rebellion. And there's a spirit of disobedience in that kingdom and we need to be taken out of that. Now, look at look what it says in Colossians chapter one.

This is one I got excited about. Let's just pick up in verse twelve, Colossians chapter one and verse twelve. Paul's writing to them, he said, giving thanks unto the father, which has made us meet or able to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light who has delivered us from the power of darkness, the exousia, the authority of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

Does that excite you? Satan does not have authority any longer. He translated us out of the authority of darkness into the authority of Christ. And that is a beautiful thing. He translated us out of that kingdom into in John, chapter one and verse twelve, it says, but as many as received him to them, gave he power to become what?

Sons of God. That word again is that exousia authority. When you receive Jesus, you now have authority to be a son of God. That means you have the right. You see, this is a very legal thing. You now have a right, you now have a right to be free from the control of this one and you now have a right to enter into the kingdom, but also a right to become a son of God.

What a privilege that is, what you know, what an what a right. What a that to me, that authority is much more exciting than just the thought power, because it means I have a right to be here. I have a right to be here because of what Jesus did.

He died on that cross for me. He paid the price for all my sin, for all my unrighteousness, for all my darkness. And now I have a legal right to be into this kingdom and to be a son of God. And this, you know, Satan is, well, he's called the what of the brethren accuser.

That's kind of a legal term there, isn't it? He's like the prosecuting attorney or whatever. He's the accuser. And he comes and he says, Brother Paul is bad. Brother Paul did wrong. Brother Paul, let me tell you about all the things that he did.

Let me list all of Brother Paul's sins and just let it out forever, you know, for all of it, for God and everybody to see it. He's wrong. He's wrong. He did this and did that when he's 14, did that when he's 16.

And he did this thing and he thought those thoughts and all this. He is a legalist. He is a legal prosecutor in that sense. But the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ, he is what he's our advocate.

That's another law term. I have a lawyer. And, you know, like somebody said, he's a Jewish lawyer, he's a he's a good one. And my advocate, I hope that wasn't offensive to anybody. But my advocate says he's covered in the blood.

I paid for all of those things, paid for in full everything Brother Paul did. Yes. OK, yes, he did that. But the record is expunged. It's been removed as far as the East is from the West. So far has he removed my sin.

I don't have to stand and be guilty before God because of everything I used to do and everything I did. Why? I have an advocate. I have authority. I have a legal standing that says that I have been justified by the blood of Jesus Christ.

And so many Christians don't understand that. And so Satan, you know, he he's a liar. What he will try to do is if you're living in the reality of that, he'll try to fool you to make you think that it's not real.

And, you know, if you don't know your rights, so to speak, people can take advantage of you. Right. If you do know your rights, you can say, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute. That's not you have no right to do that to me because I am this in our in our case.

I am covered with the blood. Jesus is my righteousness. It's not me. And I, you know, I don't try to deny things when I feel accused by the devil. No, I acknowledge that's right, I did do that. That's exactly right.

And I did things that you didn't even mention, you know, and probably worse things. I did it all. I'm I'm willing to admit the truth about myself, but my plea is Jesus. And then I have a legal standing.

OK, that's a beautiful thing. He gave me the right to be a son of God. He gave me the right to get out of there and get into his kingdom. That's authority. And see, I have something now behind me. When I'm standing there in front of the bar, the judge, it's there's authority behind me backing it up.

I mean, I can say I can say I got Jesus is, you know, my righteousness or whatever. But if that's not really true, there's nothing behind me. But if that's a true fact, I have all that power, all that authority behind me to back that up.

And Satan has to yield. And this is what happens. He's looking for legal rights in our life. On the night that Jesus was crucified, he said, the prince of this world cometh, but he hath what in me? He's got nothing in me, Jesus said.

He has zero. He's coming. He's going to do what he's going to do. But Jesus said he has nothing in me. This is where the Christian life gets challenging, is that there's times where we get we get over into here and he has something.

He's got something in me. The goal is to live here where he's got nothing in me. There's nothing I am walking in the light. I'm not hiding anything. I'm not being deceptive. I'm not covering anything up, but I'm just in the light.

And yes, maybe I'm saying I sinned, but I'm saying, Lord, wash me in the blood. I'm sorry. I repent. Forgive me. And Satan has nothing. Where he he lives in is this realm over here of the darkness where I'm not willing to say the truth about it.

That wasn't anger. That was righteous indignation, you know. Now, just call it what it was. See what I mean? It's a legal thing. If you're not going to call it what it is, then the prince of this world cometh and he might have something in you.

It says in the Bible, give no place to the devil. That's what that's talking about, giving him a place, a place where he can stand something in our life, some little foothold, some little rock rocky outcropping, something that he can just stand on because he why?

Because he has a legal right to stand there. And so one of the things that we need to come to grips with as Christians is, you know, we can pray all we want. We can cry all we want. We can say, I want to be delivered all we want.

We can, you know, want to be free. But if Satan has a legal right, you're not going to get free. If he has a place that he is rightfully standing on, he knows his rights, he knows when he when he does not have to leave.

He also knows when he has to go. And so if there's anything in our life, you know, that's not surrendered to the Lord, isn't this this is obedience. This is the kingdom of God where I am surrendered to the Lord.

Jesus, whatever you say, that's what I want. When we get out of that realm, Lord, I know you said that, but I just don't want to do that. And, you know, give me something else to do or whatever. No, that's unsurrenderedness.

And that opens some of those doors. And so one of the challenges of sanctification and of coming into victory of overcoming that wicked one is is being willing to recognize any places. Yes, we were translated out of this kingdom and into this kingdom.

That is true. But there are also places in my life or in your life where we are operating in the the realm of these things. We are not surrendered, we are not submitted, we are not completely given to the Lord.

And so it's not like we're not safe, I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying is Satan has a place to torment, to do his work. I mean, Jesus said that about the man who wouldn't forgive. You remember, this was a guy who had been forgiven everything, ten million dollars of debt.

His his Lord forgave him everything. Matthew 18. He went out and there was a guy who owed him like ten dollars. He took him by the throat, he said, pay everything you owe me or I'm throwing you in jail.

And the Lord of that servant was so angry that he turned him over to the tormentors, so he should pay back all that he owed. That's speaking about us. I owed ten million, probably more than ten million.

God said, if you're not going to forgive, you are going to be turned over to the tormentors. Those are the creatures in this realm. See, God is overall. He uses these creatures. God, you do you believe that he uses tormentors, he uses creatures of darkness to accomplish his purposes because what they do is they make us miserable, they make us, you know, wiped out and they make us defeated and they make us bringing us to that point where we just, you know what, anything, God, just get me free from this, this bondage in my life.

I don't care what it takes. And so those evil entities end up being a instrument in the hand of God. I can testify that in my life. I've experienced that as a Christian, I was being tormented, I was things were not going my way and I was just even, you know, life was miserable until I came to that place where I was willing to deal with whatever that thing was that the Lord, the Holy Spirit of God was putting his finger on.

And then once that happened, once we reached that place, that zero point is one way to call it when we're done, freedom, Satan in the name of Jesus, get out of my life. I renounce my tie to you. I renounce my my opening of the door to you.

I want nothing to do with you, Jesus. You're everything in my life. You come and tell it and that devil has to go. So the question this morning, does Satan have something in you or in me? Is there anything, any little place I don't want him?

I want to be like Jesus to say Satan has nothing in me, not one thing. As far as I know, that's true. Satan has nothing in me today. So salvation is in its essence, is leaving the authority of Satan and coming under the authority of Jesus.

Is that a good way to say it? Isn't that true? It's changing allegiance. It's changing kingdoms. It's leaving darkness, coming to the light, leaving Satan as my king, as my master, coming to Jesus as my king.

That's salvation in its very essence. It's leaving disobedience and entering into obedience. And the people of God are people that are marked with a spirit of obedience. We heard about it today in our Sunday school, right?

He was talking about that in Deuteronomy way back then. I want you all to obey me. It's very important. You need to be my people and show forth my praises. But we live in a world where authority is a bad word.

When I was growing up as a boy, one of the sayings that came out was question authority. Anybody ever heard that? You ever seen it on a bumper sticker? Question authority. There's probably a right place for that.

I don't mind my children questioning me. Or my fellow servants of the Lord in the congregation coming to me with a question about authority where I'm involved. But that was something else. The guy who said that, his name was Timothy Leary.

Anybody know who he was? He was a Harvard psychologist turned LSD promoter. He promoted everybody to do drugs, you know, take trips. But this was the way to fulfillment. And I guess it was on one of his trips where he got that one.

I don't know. Question authority. God says obey authority. Another thing all around us is the idea of be your own authority. Is it? Be your own authority. We, you know, this is huge in our country. It's promoted everywhere.

Self, in other words, and see, Satan, his kingdom, that's what he says to people. He doesn't say you need to serve me. You need to bow down and offer sacrifices to me. Now, some people do that, but rather it's, hey, do your own thing.

Whatever turns you on, whatever you like, that's fine. I'm not like I'm not like him. He says you can't do this and you can't do that and you have to do it. I'm not that way. In my kingdom, you can do whatever you want.

You can be your own authority. And most people say, I like that. I really like that, that that feels a lot better to me, that's not so confining, you know, be your own authority. God says something else.

He says, submit yourself to authority. Come under, put yourself under the authority in your life and authority. We're going to probably next time we'll talk more about what is this authority? Where is it and how does it practically work itself out?

But God says, put yourself under authority. You do it, you submit yourself. My job is to make you submit. My job is to submit myself. And that's all of our jobs. God says, put yourself under authority.

Authority, Humility, and Service

All right. OK, the idea in the world, here's another one. Can you all read that? Or am I just scribbling? Authority is in my way. I can relate to that. I'm just telling you how I used to think. Authority is in my way.

I want to do this and they're saying no. In the kingdom, it's different. It says authority is my friend. And it is a gift from God to me. Do you believe that? Are you glad that there's police? How many of you appreciate that the fact that there's policemen in your community?

Anybody? We should all be thankful for that. If there was no police, what would our life be like? I don't really want to think about that. I'm thankful for that. You know what? There was a time when the policeman was not my friend.

You know why? Yeah, you know why? Because I did stuff I shouldn't, some of which I could have been in trouble for with the police if I got caught. But now he's my friend. Authority is a gift from God.

And I was thinking this just this morning as I was thinking about this, I was really blessed with thinking about I -58. OK, the world says authority is in my way. Wait a minute, you're a relief. They're doing this or they're doing that or they won't let this or they can't.

I've been blessed to see the leadership of I -58 say, you know what? God has all authority and you're a relief and whoever else it is that we have to deal with the Greek government. We're going to get on our knees and we're going to talk to the authority.

We're going to ask him to open doors and we're going to believe God that these people cannot stop us. This entity which has authority, they have the authority there to say, you all got to leave. I -58, get out.

They could do that, right? Not if God says, no, I -58 will stay. They will stay. And one of the things that's blessed me is, you know, one of the things that has opened that door and allowed God to touch the hearts and make this happen is the attitude of I -58 toward that authority.

See how this works? I -58 comes in and says, hey, you know, these bathrooms are a mess. And they were, right? I mean, we won't get into the graphic details, right? They were a mess. I -58 comes in, hey, we'll clean it.

We'll do it. The relief workers from Europe, do you think they wanted to do that? The secular relief workers, I'm not touching that stuff. Not me. The Christians came in and said, we'll do it. We're here to bless.