Unseen Realm Pt. 3 // Spiritual Warfare

Discover the biblical understanding of spiritual warfare and why the world seems increasingly broken. This comprehensive teaching explores the three primary enemies every believer faces: the devil, the flesh, and the world, and how they work together to oppose God's kingdom. Learn about demonic influence, spiritual deception, and how fallen angels operate in today's world. Understand how your sin nature and disordered desires make you vulnerable to spiritual attack, and discover practical ways to train your desires through biblical disciplines. Explore how worldly systems and culture normalize sin and create pressure against Christian living. This message reveals how Jesus has already won the victory through his death and resurrection, giving believers authority to live in spiritual freedom. Find practical strategies for discerning spiritual influences, resisting lies with Scripture, and walking in the Spirit. Learn about spiritual disciplines like fasting, Sabbath rest, generosity, and biblical community that strengthen your spiritual life. Discover how the church serves as a counter-resistance movement, demonstrating kingdom values through love, forgiveness, and mutual care. Perfect for Christians seeking to understand spiritual warfare, overcome spiritual oppression, and live in victory.

This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is an older color of our vision. Is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love? Visit us online at thelookout.church. Again, it's so good to have you guys with us here today. If we haven't met yet, my name is Luke. We're gonna jump into the scriptures this morning and continue our series on the unseen realm. Before we do that, let's just quiet our hearts across the room. Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just become aware that Jesus is present with us even right now. Let's just slow ourselves down for a second. My words do not have life, but your words have life. And so we just ask that you would speak and that we would be able to receive God. I thank you that what we're doing here is more than just lecturing about you and about good ideas and good philosophies. God, we are talking about the living God, and we're opening the living word. And so I thank you, I thank you, Jesus, that just as we sang, we actually believe this, that you are alive and your word is alive. So would you speak to us this morning? We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. If you have your Bibles open up to Ephesians chapter 2, it's in the New Testament. It's a uh six-chapter letter that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, the Apostle Paul. We're gonna start there today and cover quite a bit of ground today. Um, if you haven't been with us, if you're just joining in, it's a great week to join in. Um, we've been in this conversation over the last few weeks called Unseen Realm. And the reality is when you open up the scriptures and the Bible and the story that we're entering into together, it's more than what you can see with your eyes. It has to do with this entire world of both what is seen and what is unseen, and a world that God has created, and that's what we are looking at together. So, Ephesians chapter 2, I'm going to read this, and then we will thank God together for his word to us. So here's what it says: starting in verse 1. And you were dead in the trespasses of sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, everybody say, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. And so we are coming into this is week three of the series, Unseen Realm. One of the interesting things is in the month of September, one of the things we saw in America was Bible sales have doubled in the last month. In the last uh last month or two in America. Bible sales in the United States has doubled uh in our culture, in our nation. This can be directly traced both to the violence that was witnessed back uh back in September with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but then also uh geop geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainties. Basically, as a culture, what's happening right now is everyone's saying, we need help. Something is stirring, and everyone's saying, I don't know what's in this book, but I'm hoping it can help because there's this collective realization, kind of the mood of the nation, so to speak, is something is broken. And people are trying to figure out why. One of my neighbors who I love so deeply, every time, almost every time I talk to her, she always asks me, she says, Luke, why are things so messed up? Except she doesn't use the word messed. She uses a different word. And that's how we start most of our conversations. Why are things so messed up right now? And it's a good question to ask. It's a question that everyone's asking in their own particular way. And it's a really interesting time because if your framework doesn't allow for the existence of God or the existence of evil, or if it doesn't allow for a spiritual realm, then all of uh then then we're forced to have to tie together all the threads using logic and rationale to all of the world's problems. So so we're forced to find scientific reasons for all of the world's problems or cultural reasons for all the world's problems that um that it's this is existing because of a problem with wealth, wealth distribution, or lack of education, or power differentials between race and classes of people, all of which probably are true in a lot of different ways around the world, or maybe just a general lack of kindness, right? So these are things are all true, but it doesn't quite get to the core of what we're talking about and the deepest questions of the human heart. And so when we open the biblical narrative, we see right away that there is a deep problem, and it's primarily a spiritual problem that has a trickle found down effect into peoples and cultures and governments and world orders. Okay? So as we've explored over the last few weeks, this all started in the scriptures when there was a divine being or divine beings that rebelled against God, and then out of that rebellion incited humans to join them in that rebellion. And here we are, millennia later, still under the effects of these rebellions in both heaven and in earth. And in our culture, it's really uncomfortable to admit that. You will not see headlines or news stories talking about a rebellion in heavenly places. All right? Because, first of all, that would force us to have to acknowledge that there is a spiritual problem we're dealing with. And second of all, nobody wants to be the person that feels like there's some cosmic boogeyman and minions that are after us. Nobody wants to kind of go down that road because it doesn't have a good look in our culture right now. But as we open the scriptures, we read that Jesus himself had a very different picture of what's happening in the spiritual realm, and he understood his mission in that way. His mission as Jesus came was to undo the powers of darkness that have had rain on the earth. And following his resurrection, we talked about this last week, he said, All authority in heaven and on earth is mine, so go therefore into all the nations. In other words, go out and call people into allegiance with me. Tell them that they no longer have to be enslaved to sin and darkness any longer. There is a way out, and it's through me. That's what Jesus is saying, and that's what he entrusted us with. And so we're in this really interesting time right now on earth where we could call it a war of allegiances. Who will be the ones that live faithful to the to Yahweh, the Most High God, and who will live under the influence of the gods of this world, of the influences of what the scriptures would call powers and principalities, powers of this present darkness that are very real and have an effect on this world. Now, classically in the church, hold on, classically, we call this, we have a category, a bucket for this kind of level of conversation. We call it spiritual warfare, right? This is spiritual warfare. Like growing up, everything was about spiritual warfare. And uh, and for so for some of you, maybe a photo like this comes to mind of Jesus in an arm wrestle with Satan. Maybe that comes to mind, all right? So, you know, just crystal clean white European Jesus, you know, uh, just trying to take out, you know, the the red devil. Um I don't know who decided that the devil looks like this, but we'll go with it for now. Um and so when we think about spiritual warfare and this kind of thing, some of us have this thing about this, it's almost like this cosmic wrestling match. Who's gonna win? Right? Who's got it? Who's gonna win? Jesus takes a little, then the enemy comes back, and Jesus takes a little. So we we see it, this like tug of war of we don't know who's gonna win. And so, if that's your frame, the the only problem with this is that we actually know who wins. And when you enter into the story of the gospel, the story actually ends with Jesus defeating the powers of darkness. And we're not waiting for him to do that. He actually did that in the resurrection, he did that in the cross and in the resurrection. That was the climactic scene of the story. So we're in the aftermath of the climactic scene of the story. He said, All of heaven and on earth, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, which basically means the enemy only has power where he has been allowed to have power and given power. But where he is evicted, he no longer has power because he no longer has authority where he is evicted in Jesus' name. Are you guys following me? And so it's almost like if you guys ever uh you know, every now and then we drive through our neighborhood and we see all of the contents of a home out on a curb. And it was really clear that whoever was living in that home is no longer living in that home. And and clearly they didn't move their contents out on the curb. Somebody else moved their contents out on the curb, and you know, and so sometimes that happens and we get out at our popcorn and we just kind of watch from the street, you know, just to see what's happening in that house. It's always entertaining, but it's uh actually it's not really entertaining. But when we're watching, we're always wondering what how did all of that end up on the curb? And usually it's a story of somebody that was living in the house that didn't actually have legal right to be in the house any longer, that that had to leave. And I think it's a good picture for us of what happens when we're living on this earth. The enemy is defeated, but he is not going to leave without a fight. And he is not going to lose his grip unless he's been asked to give up his grip. And so there's plays the reality is there's places, there's our homes, there's places on the earth where he still has dominion. And it's not that Christ doesn't have power over the darkness. It's Christ has called us to be the ones that move out into the nations of the earth, exercising his name, calling people into allegiance, and that every dark and spiritual, defiled, unclean thing would leave in Jesus' name. This is what he's called us to do, and this is how the enemy loses his grip on the earth. All authority in heaven on earth belongs to Jesus, but the enemy clings to power and control as long as he's given access to it. And this has all kinds of threads and tentacles in on it. And it affects our lives, affects our communities, affects our nations. And so even Jesus, as he was talking about the effects of the enemy, he used language that talked about people becoming free from the effects of the enemy. And Jesus had the authority, and but he when he would send out his disciples, sometimes his disciples would come back and say, Hey, we couldn't cast out the demon over here. And Jesus would say, Hey, you need to know that this kind only comes out through prayer and fasting. Oh, okay. So, according to Jesus, the implications of that, there are some demonic powers that are just stubborn, they require a deeper dependence on God. There's hierarchies of spiritual beings. That's what the scripture would teach us. And Paul's taxonomy in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul would say, our struggle is not against people, it's against rulers and authorities and cosmic powers over this present darkness. And so, even according to Paul, there's a variety of spiritual powers, and there's things going on in the spiritual realm that have different effects at different times. And so this is why Jesus also prays when he teach taught us how to pray. In the Lord's Prayer, when we come before God, He included this line that when we come to the Father, we pray, deliver us from the evil one. Which basically means Jesus expects his followers to face an ongoing conflict, an ongoing deliverance. Deliver us from the evil one where that whether we have partnered with or agreed with this enemy of ours that is out against us, would you deliver us from the effects, from the influence, from the thoughts, from the deception of this evil one so that we can live fully and free in the kingdom of God? Are you guys tracking with me today? So, how do we go about this eviction? This is where it gets interesting. If if our job on earth, as those commissioned by Jesus under his authority, to go into all of the worst making disciples, that's our commission. So you might not know that, but I'm just telling you right now, that's awesome. That's pretty sweet. It's better than just going to work tomorrow at nine o'clock. I mean, it's like you are commissioned by Jesus to go into all the world, making disciples, and pushing back, undoing the powers of darkness. How do we do that? Well, it starts by understanding how the enemy seeks to maintain control. Now, in the in the passage that we read at the beginning, we read a few different layers as Paul was talking about some of the problems and the brokenness that we face. He said that we're dead in our trespasses and sins. Okay, that's true. That's the natural course of death of sin and trespass is death. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. It's the human condition. And he said, following the course of the world and the ruler of the power of the air and the passions of our flesh, we are by nature children of wrath. And and he kind of names three different layers here. There's there's this layer of the devil, the ruler of the power of the air. And as he deceived Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve surrendered authority in the garden. He became, he, he gained dominion and authority over the affairs of the earth. Jesus took back those keys and the authority, but now he entrusted us back to reverse what Adam and Eve lost in the garden. He says, I want you to go back and reverse where they got wronged. You're going to, you're going to gain back what they lost in the garden. But what but but Paul, according to Paul, there's a the power, the prince of the power of the air. So it's the devil and all of his evil, vile followers. We'll get to that in a bit. The devil, there's the world, the course of the world, and then there's the passive passions of the flesh. And we see there's three enemies distinctly that we face the devil, the flesh, and the world. The devil is the one who is against us. He deceives us primarily with lies and deception. That is that is his that the primary weapon against those created in the image of God. He primarily deals in lies. And those lies play to our flesh, which we could say are the passions and cravings that are disordered, the disordered desires and thoughts of our of our hearts and lives, we call the sin nature as well. The flesh is our sin nature. And so when he lies, he appeals to our sin nature. And then what happens is the devil and the flesh, when those become habituated and normalized in a society in the world, that becomes the way of the world. And so when you have enough people living into deception and falling prey to our own sinful desires, we can actually habituate that into what we call the course of the world. It's the way of the world. Okay? So we're going to take a look about all these three things because while they are distinct, they're also interwoven. They form a concentrated pressure against the abiding life of Jesus. This is true for you. It's true for me. It's true for your family. It's true for every human on the face of this planet. It's not new. This has been going on since the beginning. But the ability for us to name it and expose it allows it to meet the shining pure light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that's how it loses its power. Amen. Come on, dude. I'm going to start preaching here. I don't really like talking about the devil that much because that's what he wants. He deals in distraction. C.S. Lewis, we read this a few weeks ago. He said there's really two major errors that we face as people. We either we either don't, we either completely ignore the devil and everything he's doing, or we give him completely too much credit and attention altogether and we obsess over what he's doing. All right. So I don't want really to do either one of those, but even in the scripture, um, Paul says in another part, he says, do not be ignorant, do not be unaware of the schemes of the tactics of the evil one. Okay? Jesus believed this himself. Now, listen, some of you have written off Satan in your life because you you kind of you did away with the whole, you know, uh like little man in a red jumpsuit with the tail and the pitchfork, and you're like, uh, I don't, I don't know, like that doesn't feel real to me. Okay, and you can you can you can set that off to the side. But listen, even when you go to Jesus, Jesus says, Listen, you you have somebody who opposes you. And in John chapter 8, he said, You he's talking to the Pharisees, and the context is something different here, but he says, You are of the father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. That's what Jesus thinks about him. So you don't have to believe him at all, but Jesus seems to think that there is a father of lies. And he was murdering from the beginning, and he's out to murder you now. Okay? And the enemy would love nothing more for you just to be to think that's a silly myth that we believe just to get people controlled and in line. That's what he would love to believe. The Bible describes this enemy, this adversary, an accuser who prowls around like a lion seeking somebody to devour. His primary strategy, again, though, is deception. And this happens through the seductive temptations of riches, success, power, belonging that lure us away from the wisdom of God and into a path that's independent of God. That's what he does. He lies to us to get us to be self-autonomous, to depend not on God, but on ourselves for the very cravings of our heart. Many people spend years, even entire lifetime chasing the empty promises of fulfillment rather than staying in set with God's purposes. And so he devours us and he devours you. You're not exempt from this. He wouldn't want nothing more than to devour you through thoughts of fear, anxiety, insecurity, jealousy. It happens one day at a time, one thought at a time. And when we fail to stay attuned to the Spirit of God and the voice of the Father, we can fall prey to these voices and these thoughts and be deceived. Do not think that you cannot be deceived. What's really interesting is if you get into the thought process of the enemy, it gets really interesting. Another pastor, you know, just like we do with every question we have, like what does Satan think about? Let's ask Chat GPT. Alright? Another pastor put in a chat GPT prompt. If you were the devil, and maybe you are, if you were the devil, what would you do? Here's what came up. Here's what Chat GPT said. If you were the devil, what would you do? Here's what it said. I wouldn't waste my time trying to get you to worship me. No, I just convince you to not worship God at all. I'll tell you that truth is relative. Your truth, my truth, until now. Nobody knows which way is up. I'd whisper, as long as you're happy, it's right. I'd keep you busy. Too busy for prayer, too busy for church, too busy to ask eternal questions. I'd fill your hands with a phone so you never have time to fold them in prayer. I'd break families, get fathers absent. Marriage is bitter and kids confused. If I can fracture the home, I can fracture the future. I divide the church, petty arguments, comparison, offense, celebrity culture. If I can get Christians fighting with each other, they'll never fight me. I'd desensitize you. I'd glamorize sin in movies, normalize it in music, laugh at it in comedy, and celebrate it in culture until what once shocked you now entertains you. I'd attack your identity. I'd make you question who you are, where you belong, and whether you'd matter. I'd whisper shame so loud you can't hear God's voice of love. And through it all, I wouldn't even try to prove I exist. My greatest trick is to convince you I'm not real. Because if you don't believe I'm real, you'll never resist. Okay, so that was ChatGPT's answer. Does that freak anybody out? Woo! Yeah, exactly. And so there's a coming to terms with the fact that we're dealing in it with an enemy who loves to stay hidden, who loves to deal in lies, and loves to redirect our energy towards other purposes. Now, I will say this. In our culture, I do believe that there is such a thing as mental illnesses, chemical imbalances that must be corrected. However, I'm at a point where I believe much of what we've written off as medical issues also has incredibly deeply spiritual roots that we're not willing to talk about. I'm not saying it's an either-or, but I think in a culture that has completely secularized, we've had to have diagnoses for things that historically have just been called demonic. Demonic activity is a real thing, and that's something we haven't really talked about, is we have this rebellious divine being called Lucifer, and the scripture seems to indicate that he was cast down from heaven. Even Jesus saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven as his disciples went out in authority. And in Revelation chapter 12, it said a third of the angels went with him. Just a quick note here between angels and demons. Some of us are wondering what the difference is between them. Demons are fallen angels. God created a whole host of angels that existed to worship him and to do his will. Somewhere called the angel, the angelic word is actually translated as messenger in most of the scriptures. And so they they were messengers for God to do his will, to worship him and to assist with his affairs in his created order. A third of these angels, at least, came under the influence of Lucifer in the scriptures, this divine being who wanted more than what he was given. He wanted to be more than the most high God. And because of he was given the freedom to rebel, he did. He was cast out of the presence of God into Hades, into the earth. And he took with him a third of the angels. So just a couple quick clarifications. When you die, you do not become an angel. I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you. That's not a biblical idea. Some people you die and you like cupid, you get these cute little wings, and like that picture doesn't exist in the Bible, just so you know. I'm sorry if that's depressing to you, if that's what you wanted, but that doesn't happen. Also, when you when you die, you don't become a demon either. Demons and angels are created beings that there's their own types of beings, okay? So demons are essentially angels that lost their created purpose. And now they exist to distort everything that God loves and to defile everything that God loves because it reminds them of what they were created for. And so they they they answer hierarchically to the prince of the power of the air. And so they do what they're told to do and they wreak havoc all across the earth. And that happens in a lot of different ways. As far as modes of demonic influence, there's oppression, there's fear, nightmares, destructive thoughts, despairing thoughts. Some of you know what that feels like. To just feel like darkness is lurking. Like when you go home, you feel darkness lurking. When you are left on your own, you feel darkness lurking. Sometimes that's just oppression. It's a demonic spirit that exists to hold you down and to weigh you down. So sometimes that's experiential, but sometimes it's intellectual. Paul talks to Timothy in 1 Timothy about deceitful about deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, infiltrating thought and even doctrine. That it's it's it's a sobering thought to think that even in church life, in church world, or in uh spheres of thought and intellect, that it can actually be informed by teachings of and doctrine of demons, that there can be demonic ways of thinking that infiltrate the way of the world. Okay? And and we have to remember that the enemy is out for us. He sends his demonic influence uh to assist us in our destruction, to assist you in your destruction. And anybody willing to partner with his thoughts and his lies. Okay? There's a few years ago uh I heard a story from somebody we know that was sharing when they first gave their heart to Jesus, and they they they they uh they came into like loving salvation through Jesus Christ. And they said that what happened was that they were uh addicted to drugs. It was a really nasty way of life. They were far from God, addicted to drugs, um, to crack, and it was starting to get so bad that the despairing thoughts were coming and thoughts of suicide. And uh they just they just became convinced that life is not worth living, this isn't worth fighting for, what am I doing? And so this person had tried to take their life more than once, and in one particular time, and I'll spare you the details, uh, but they had gone out to the garage with a rope and and and and planned to take their life. But what happened is after they got to the garage and uh they had this rope and this whole mechanism, um he realized while he was there that the knot around his wrists, he didn't know how to tie that knot. And it was a sophisticated kind of knot. And he was there, and fortunately his wife came and found him and uh and and and got him out of that situation before he was able to take his life. But the whole thing freaked him out because he realized that this is not just me thinking my own thoughts trying to take my life. Something is assisting me and trying to teach me how to kill myself. Some somebody, something taught me how to tie this knot. And I remember hearing it, it freaked him out so much he said, oh God, and he gave his heart to Jesus on the spot and was delivered from suicide. He's alive today. He it was just a miraculous conversion because he realized this is a lot more than me having some depression. Something is trying to assist me in my own demise. And he became so normalized in that way of thinking that he didn't even question it until he was there on the last breath of his life, realizing that not only did the enemy sow seeds of lies to him, but the enemy was now trying to assist him in his own destruction. He does that for you and for I. He did that for all of us. And in fact, I think that even in the church, sometimes what happens, we become so destructive ways of thinking where we've allowed, we've partnered with deceptive thoughts of the enemy. It's been so long since we've done that. We've actually normalized what should be written, what should be silenced in the name of Jesus. We've normalized that and we've baked it. This is just the way it is. I'm telling you, it's not just the way it is. Jesus has a say in your life, Jesus wants to bring freedom to your very thoughts and your very soul, even today. And if you think that the enemy is not out to get you, to destroy you, to get you to partner with him, you get something else coming. But Jesus has a life in his name. Amen. Alright, so that was just the devil. We still have the flesh on the world to talk about. Guys, smile at me. We're okay. We're gonna get through this. And so part of our part of part of, before we go to the flesh, part of our job, then, because the enemy does try to come after us, and I don't want to give him more credit than he's due, because he's he only counterfeits what God creates. He's not creative at all. Okay, it does require that we grow in what the scripture would call discerning of spirits. You need to know where your thoughts are coming from. You need to know where your thoughts are coming from. Why are you thinking about what you're thinking about? Where did that come from? And you have to have the ability to align yourself with the truth of the scriptures, and that's how we resist the enemy so that he flees. Come on, somebody say amen. And so the enemy lies to play to our flesh, which is enemy number two, lest we think that the problem is always out there somewhere else. Let's be reminded that we must first deal with the problem right here. So here's what C.S. Lewis wrote about in his famous book, Screw Tape Letters, which was kind of written from the perspective of uh Satan and his demons. He said this, my dear Wormwood, be sure the patient, the patient means, let's just say you and I, be sure the patient remains completely fixated on politics, arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met. They have never met serves an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character, and the things that the patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration, and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from furthering from further developing. Ensure the patient continues to believe that the problem is, quote, out there in the quote, broken system rather than recognizing there is a problem with himself. How easy is it to do, to think, to look to look at all the problems of the world without acknowledging that God has to save us from the sin of our own hearts and the trespasses of our own hearts. The scripture refers to this as the flesh, our natural instincts to want to satisfy momentary fleeting desires. And the reality, our flesh does not always want what is actually best for us. No, that extra donut might not be best for you. Right? You just name your thing. Your body doesn't, your flesh doesn't always know what's best for you. It's we're filled with all kinds of desires. And the scripture would say that we we try to gratify the cravings of our flesh. That's where sin comes from. Sensuality, appetite, control, domination, pleasure, all of these things. And so this is why we are so susceptible to so many destructive habits. This is why you could sit on YouTube at night or Instagram and do the doom scroll all night, and it's a perfect word for it because it's it's it it satisfies our desire for more. We have this constant desire for more. If I just keep doing this, I just keep getting more of what I want. And so it's not that the body, when the scripture uses the word flesh, it's not that the body is wrong, but this word flesh talks about the sin-bent orientation of the self, disordered desires that curve inward. Ignatius of Loyola said this. He said, sin is an unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is my deepest happiness. Sin is that's that's really what it is. More than just right or wrong, it's the unit's the unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is my deepest happiness. And if I'm going to get it, I gotta do it on my own terms. And so the enemy feeds into those natural desires to grasp for life in our own way. And these desires, many of them, are good. We we are desired to feel significant, we are desired to belong, we are desired to feel secure, but there's right and wrong ways of achieving significance. There's a right and wrong way of achieving belonging and of security. There's a right and wrong way. So the enemy can feed into disordered desires and exploit them. And so when we come into Christ, though, what happens is we become disciples, all of our disorders, all of our desires are rightly ordered in him and under his lordship. And he he realigns us from the inside out. And we come into Christ, we die to our sinful flesh, and we come alive in the spirit. The scripture says we do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, because those who set their minds on the flesh, it's death. But those who set their minds on the things of the spirit reap life and peace. And so, how do we do that? How do we reconcile the flesh? We start to train our desires through spirit-led practices. And so, as we come into Jesus, not only do we resist the enemy, but we train our desires through giving ourselves to things that form us from the inside out. That's this opening the scripture to resist deceptive thoughts with the truth. It's through gathering with the saints, like what we're doing right here. You think you're just coming in for a good church service? No, this is like this, like what you're doing right now is spiritual warfare, just gathering with the church because you're resisting individualism and isolation. We do this through fasting, we resist the cravings of our body. We do this through Sabbath rest. We actually resist the frenetic pace of this world that won't let us go. We do this through generosity like we did today. We resist greed and hoarding. There's all kinds of things that we do to cooperate with the life and the kingdom, and every single thing breaks the power of sinful flesh, saying, I am not my own, I was bought with a price, and I will live for him that died for me. And that's what we get to do. So we resist the flesh, but then the third thing is the world. The world, and I'll keep moving here because I want to give a chance to respond. But in the world, what happens is the lies of the enemy that play to our disordered desires on a large scale shape societies and systems. And in Romans, it says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It doesn't mean that we that we treat, it's not an us and them mentality. Um, God for God so loved the world that he gave his only one and only son. So we love the people of the world, but the ways of the world are what the scriptures say is are corrupted. Um the scripture says, Do not love, do not love the world or the things of in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eye, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. So when sin gets baked into institutions and celebrated and ratified into law and culturally celebrated, that is the way of the world. Let me just bring Let me just get this down to something a little more practical, though. Richard Foster said it like this. He said, In contemporary society, our adversary majors in three things noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in muchness and manyness, he will rest satisfied. So when you leave this place, the way of the world is often just overwhelmed through noise, hurry, and crowds. It's got a gravitational pull that feels normal. It feels like the water we're swimming in. But when we come into Christ, we start to see that just because it's something is normal in the world doesn't mean it's normal for us in the body of Christ. Are you guys with me? So there's a lot of things that we can talk about, but when we come into Jesus, here's one of the powerful things that happen. When you start following Jesus, you are not following as a lone ranger, you become adopted into a family. So that the way that we resist the world is living into a new family of Jesus. That means that the church is called to prophetically live out a counter-resistance to the ways of the world. This is not a good moral social club. We are called to prophetically do exactly the opposite of what the world would tell us to do. So we gather in love and hospitality at the table of God when the world is biting each other and fighting each other and condemning each other. We forgive each other in the family of God for a wrongdoing rather than canceling each other. We care for each other's needs, not just our own needs. We use our gifts to the building up of the body, not just accumulation and significance and growing our own personal kingdoms. We laid down our lives for the sake of our brothers and sisters. This is how, these are just a few of those that we live prophetically into this new nation, this new people group that God is making in his very own image. So that's why we give ourselves to the church. That's why we give ourselves to growing as the people of God. Now, when we see these three, let me just give you a few more examples here of how these three come together. The devil, the flesh, and the world. And again, the we the reason we talk about this is because when we expose it and name it, it loses its power in our lives. This is nothing to fear. There's nothing to fear. But this is how we remind ourselves that the stakes are high. Okay? So let's just talk about a few examples. Greed and money. The devil will say, You don't have enough, God is holding out on you. So that's the lie. The flesh, our sinful desire, will say, What if I run out? What if I lose what I've built? So that's that's kind of the fleshly part. And the world will double down on that saying, You will not be happy until you get more. So when those three things braid together, what guess what that does? It just will crush you under the weight of the false promises and a false God, of mammon, really, is what it is. Okay, let's take another one. Let's call it sexual and gender confusion. The devil says, God made a mistake with you. You define who you are. Truth is what you feel. The flesh will say, I want to feel whole, I want to feel seen. That's not a bad desire. I want to be free from this pain. But the world will say, You are your desires. Your body is a canvas and redesign. Authenticity is self-expression. These things will braid together in order to create a generation that is massively confused about what it means to be in the body and what our sexuality and gender actually is. What about political enemies? The devil will say, Your enemy is on the other side of the aisle. Your flesh will say, I can't afford to lose this. If they win, I will suffer. And the world says, cancel them, crush them, kill them. Those things come together to create an environment that just wreaks havoc. Have you guys ever felt that? Have you guys felt these things coming together? For me, I've I've I've felt this, you know, even as a leader, as a pastor, sometimes it's like the enemy will come in and say, nothing you do matters. And that feeds into my fleshly desire of, I want to do something that matters. I want to be significant. And the world will come on the backside and say, Yeah, well, you won't be significant until you have hundreds of thousands of followers and a lot of money. And you everybody knows your name, but you won't you won't have made it until you get there. Those things, the three things come together, and if I don't notice how they're working together for my destruction, I will go with the flow. But as a child of God, if I come back to him and say, no, the truth is I am beloved of God. I am a son, and because I'm a son, no matter what I do, I am significant. And my significance does not come from what I do, it becomes from my identity given to me by my Father. And the world can do what it's going to do, but it's not going to take me down that path because I know that leads to destruction. I am set apart for the purposes of God. Do you see how it can be resisted? We resist the enemy with the truth of the Lord. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. He has not left us to fend off the enemy. Our job, here's our job. Here's what spiritual warfare is. It's not going on, going out and putting on your, you know, your workout pants and going out and you know, and actually like doing, you know, warfare. It's it's not what you think in your mind. It's warfare is is attuning your attention into who God is, what he has done, and because of that, who you are and how you should now live on this earth. It's getting your mind back on what is true and what is real. So we resist lies with worship, with truth, with the scripture. Walk in the spirit through spirit reform practices. We embrace the communal counterculture. We close doors and footholds. We'll talk about those in this next week. There are there is such a thing as spiritual bondage that's more than just deciding to get out of something. There's other things that happen in our lives that create what we can call strongholds. And Jesus wants to break those chains as well. But for today, the way that we make our way through and submit to the kingdom of God is where we come and we confess any place that we have been believing a lie that we know is a deception from the pedal. And we can assess that to each other. And we expose it to the white light of Jesus Christ. And we invite the Holy Spirit to come and we're not. That's how we're going to be able to do that. I believe in this room that there are some here that you have been wise and mastering inside of you. And you've still been partnering with thoughts that are leading to your destruction. And the Lord wants to free you. And Jesus wants to free you from those thoughts. And he wants to bring you into truth and life. And you might not even know what those thoughts were. If you were, if you if you did, you'd already be over it, probably. That's what makes it tricky. But we're just going to trust that God is going to bring to mind anything, if there's any ways of thinking in this room, they just need to be confessed. And what we're going to do in just a bit, we're going to have our ministry team along the sides of the room. And these are people that will pray with you. And some of you, the most powerful thing that you'll be able to do today is to say, I am I am going to name these destructive thoughts, these thoughts that I'm having, I don't think are but believe from God. I'm going to confess those. I'm going to welcome someone to pray with me. And together, we're going to agree that God has a new thought, that God has a new day, that this is not what He has given to me to live with. But I am a child, I am a son and daughter of the Most High God, and freedom is mine in Jesus' name. Are you guys with me today? Can you stand with me? We're going to sing. And I just want to invite the Holy Spirit this morning. I want to invite the Holy Spirit together. Could you just join me in your own words across this room? What we're talking about is not something we can just do in our own strength. This is the work of God. So, Jesus, as we share this space together, we thank you for what you've accomplished in your cross and your resurrection. I thank you that you've defeated the powers of darkness. And you've brought them to open shame. And you're exposing them and you will finally judge them. But the things that have tormented and harassed the people of God and the people in our neighborhoods, the people in our families, our marriages, our kids, our parents, these evil, wicked things that we have just normalized. I just pray that you would expose them in the light, in your light this morning, even right now, God, if there's anything in inside of us, Lord Jesus, where we have partnered with lies or deception or lies that we would have the courage to name those, to renounce those, and to come into the light of your presence today. Holy Spirit, we invite you to come in your power and your strength to fill this place. Fill this place, Holy Spirit. We welcome you into our hearts and our lives. We're saying we need you. And we thank you. We thank you to bring freedom in Jesus' name. Let's just take a moment to sing, to turn our attention to Jesus in the name of Jesus, and then we're gonna pray again. So I just want to name a few things. I just my sense are even even for those in this room, if if you're dealing with any of these things, I just think there's an invitation for you to receive prayer, to be free. Some of you are dealing with deep pervasive shame. Maybe it's through failure, the shame that is resulting to a particular failure, and it will not release its grip on you. And you've tried to talk yourself out of it, but you cannot talk yourself out of shame. If that's you, I encourage you to go to one of these ministry team members on the side of the room and just say, Man, I need freedom from shame. And they want to pray with you. Some of you may be in the room had a sense that maybe there was somebody here that uh has been dealing with lies as it relates to body image and your sense of beauty, your sense of self-worth. And you can't talk yourself out of it, no matter how many compliments other people try to give you. It does not get it does not get through because there's a lie that you're believing from the enemy about your own sense of uh, I don't know, your body image. If that's you, come forward and get prayer. Confusion. My wife had a sense that there was somebody doing with confusion. Uh maybe it's a season of life. Everything is confusing, nothing is easy. There's a cloud that seems to follow you everywhere, and and you're almost convinced that there is no way to think clearly through the things that are in front of you. If that's you, get free today. Uh, in the face of confusion, that's not what God has given you, He has not given you a confused mind, and you need to get free from that today. There's others, maybe you're dealing with substance abuse, and the enemy keeps telling you that you are in control, and you know that you're not in control, but you can get free. And if you're dealing with substance abuse, go and get prayer. Some might be dealing with uh chronic illness, and you've been dealing with so much chronic illness that you have accepted that this is part of who I am now. It's not just something I live with, it's part of who I am. And you've associated your identity with something that has gone wrong in your body. You need healing in Jesus' name, but to just start with you are not your illness. That is not who you are. You may have illness, but you are not your illness. And you need to receive prayer today, okay? Go to the people on our side and receive prayer. The last one is this. Some of you, you just you maybe just hear this phrase, you are nothing. You are nothing. And you just hear this phrase over and over, you are nothing. And I just want to, I'm saying it just to expose it, and I it it's a lie from the pit of hell. And God wants to free you from that that thought. If you if if anybody has had that thought, you are nothing. That is not what God's given to you, and that's not the identity He speaks over you. Go get prayer, go get freedom in Jesus' name, okay? And if anything else comes up, this is for you too, guys. We get to practice freedom, we get to respond to anything else that God brings up. So let's sing this again. Let's sing to Jesus, the name above all names, to freezes from the darkness. Come on, let's sing this out.

unknown 51:29

Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

Come on, let's shout the name of Jesus together. Jesus, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for light. We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we thank you by grace. We have been saved, and that you have come to undo the powers of darkness. I thank you, Jesus. In this room, we declare we are free in Jesus' name, and we are becoming free in Jesus' name. I know that, God, sometimes it's a journey. It's not just a moment, it's a journey. But today we say we thank you. We are thankful for the cross, we're thankful for your resurrection. And today, God, we shout your name because we know your name is power. We love you in this place, God. And I thank you that as we move out from this place, that we do not go empty-handed, we go with your very power and your spirit to do for others what you have done for us. So we love you, Jesus. We love you, God. And it's in your mighty name we pray together. Amen. Come on, amen. Amen. Come on, everybody, let's go! Amen. So, listen, today we go with a spirit that is free in Jesus' name. And I just want to encourage you before you leave today, you might still need prayer in your life. Maybe you didn't go to somebody for prayer. It's not too late to go to somebody for prayer today. There is power in prayer. There's power when we agree with each other. This is what we do for each other. But as we go, listen, if you're a guest with us, we want to get to know you in the back. We're gonna be in the back. Come visit us in the back. Go get your blessing bags, fill those up, bring them back next week, and go get your kids. They will love that. So, Jesus, bless us as we go. I thank you for your power, and we go in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name. Everybody said, Amen. Alright, go in peace.