Authority to Defeat Darkness | All Authority | Rick Atchley

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Welcome to the hills, my name is Rick. I want to greet the thousands of you who watch online, either right now or in our platforms later in the week, and of the thousands of you in person at one of our five campuses in Wetherford or Dallas or Keller or Westfoot Worth or North Richland Hills. We are in week three of a series called All Authority. We are declaring, but also just exploring what it means when we say that Jesus has all authority, because authority is necessary, and it's everywhere. But whether or not it's a good thing depends on who has it, right? For example, recently had a dream. And in my dream, Roger Stobot and Troy Aitman and Jerry Jones were in a car. And there was a wreck and all three were tragically killed and they appeared before the Lord. And the Lord said, why should I let any of you into my heaven? Roger Stobot stepped up and said, I quarterback the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl championships and I used my influence to raise millions of dollars for veteran support and cancer research. And the Lord said, well done, come and sit at my left side. Troy Aitman stepped up and said, and I quarterback the Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories, and I used my influence to raise millions of dollars for pediatric health care and the Lord said, well done, come and sit at my right side. And then Jerry Jones stepped up and said, I think you're in my chair. So I think we would all agree that authority is not good when it's held by someone who is not good. Now this is an issue that the Bible addresses from the very beginning to the very end because part of what it means to be made in the image of God is to have the capacity for the selfless stewardship of authority. Did you know that man's first commission was to responsibly steward authority,

to be responsible for the world? Now, I want to read to you from Genesis 1, a very beginning of the Bible, and I want you to notice the verbs. Now the first verbs belong to God because God always blesses before He commissions, but read with me. So God created mankind in His own image. In the image of God, He created them, male and female, He created them. God blessed them. Now remember that. We do what we do out of God's blessing, not to get it, okay? But God blessed them, noticed the verbs. And He said to them, be fruitful and increase the number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish and the sea and the birds and the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Maybe your translation says govern and reign or be its master or take charge and be responsible. And honestly, I think that King James captures the idea well, have dominion. God never intended for Satan to be the ruler of the world. So when man abdicated his position of authority, Satan was there and successfully launched a coup. And he established a dominion of darkness over God's good earth. Now we know that his intention is to steal and kill and destroy. And the only reason the world is not more hellish than it already is is the sovereign grace of God. My friend, Pastor Bob Russell, tells a story of a mother cat. trying to cross the street, but every time she stepped off the curb, she'd have to step back because the traffic was so dangerous, and a police officer saw the dilemma and walked out into the street and held up his hand

and stopped traffic and that cat ran across the street with her kitten and down an alley and disappeared, having no idea. She was protected by the authority of the New York City Police Department. We have no idea how much right now we are being protected from the dominion of darkness because of the staying hand of God. But do not doubt, as Colossians one makes clear, there is a dominion of darkness at play in this world. In fact, the devil, when he took Jesus out to be tempted and made this clear, they went up on a mountain and they saw all the kingdoms in the world. And here's what the devil said to Jesus, I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them, the devil said, because they are mine to give to anyone I please, I will give it all to you if you will worship me. Now, it's not a temptation if the promise wasn't legitimate. He could have done this and Jesus knows it. Authority was taken by someone who is not good, but got out of plan to take it back for good. And the second Adam came to take back the dominion that the first Adam forfeited. And so before he goes to the cross, Jesus made this profound statement. Now was the time for the world to be judged. Now the ruler of this world will be thrown down. Here's the big idea I want you to remember that when man lost his dominion,

the son of man lost none. It's absolutely true that Jesus came to be the savior of the world. But in order to save the world, Jesus had to re-establish kingdom authority in the world. And so Jesus came into enemy territory to challenge the illegitimate dominion of its rulers. And when you read the gospel accounts, the authors tell story after story of Jesus demonstrating his authority to defeat darkness. In fact, the gospels are not so much an account of Satan pursuing Jesus, as they are an account of Jesus pursuing Satan. My favorite way to illustrate this in one of the stories, Jesus is on a boat crossing at night, and they get close to shore, and they hear this ghoulish, awful, shrieking. It is a demon-possessed man tormented, cutting himself, ripping off his clothes, chains can't hold him. He's in a graveyard and it's dark. I'm not getting off the boat. And Jesus said, let me out here, because it came to drive back darkness. And this is what we see, that Matthew and Mark and Luke and John want you to know there is a new king in town. And he's come to establish authority, and we see it in many ways. For example, especially the healing ministry of Jesus, the disease yields to the dominion of Jesus.

Any careful reading of the gospels makes it clear that the healing ministry of Jesus was a huge part of what he did to proclaim the kingdom. Matthew four, Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about his spread all over Syria. And people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases. Those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures and the paralyzed, and he healed them. I made a go one day to read every miracle story of Jesus in the four gospels. And I noticed that almost three-force of the stories were Jesus healing the sick. And he did so in different ways. Sometimes he would just. Sometimes he would touch the person and they would get well. Often he would speak and he would touch. He might use mud. He might use his own saliva. He might allow someone to touch his garment. In fact, sometimes he would heal people that weren't even in his presence but were far away. He didn't heal all the same way, but he healed all he intended to heal. In other words, Jesus never engaged disease and lost. Listen to Peter's summary.

God, I know in the Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy Spirit in power and he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. I think when you read the Gospels carefully, you see that Jesus' attitude toward disease was more combative than it was supportive because he recognized in disease the illegitimate dominion of the devil. Now we touched on this last word and let me repeat. I am not saying that if you are sick that the devil is attacking you or that God is judging you. What I am saying is that all suffering in the world has a root. God didn't create this world for suffering and the root behind all the suffering in the world is that sin has poisoned God's world. This world is cursed and Jesus could not heal anyone of disease if he did not have authority over the sin that created it in the first place. In other words, what Jesus is doing is showing I've got authority to reverse the curse. That his healings were not so much a suspension of the natural order as they were a restoration of the natural order. That when Jesus was healing, he was announcing that what God created will be reinstated when his dominion is established again over all the earth. And I believe that Jesus is still making that announcement.

And that's why in every age of the church for 2000 years, we have seen miraculous healings. And that's why twice a year at our church, we have a time that we call healing prayer. And we're gonna have one of those times next Sunday. And we're gonna obey James five. Those that are sick should come to their elders and be anointed with oil and they should be prayed for. And you should come and you should tell your friends to come. Now, we live with the tension the very first Christians live with because Jesus did not heal all. In fact, he told a story where he said, when you went to visit the sick, you visited me. So Jesus said, we will also have many among us who are sick and they will not get healed. Here's what I believe when we obey scripture, we will always get a blessing. And when we come and we ask God to bless our healing, he may heal us. He may give us a word like he gave Paul to comfort us. He may give us a supernatural strength to endure. He may give us that supernatural peace Paul talks about to comfort and guard our hearts and our minds, but God will bless because you're not a believer. There's always gonna be redemptive suffering in the church. But if God doesn't remove it, he'll redeem it. That your disease will not be a vehicle for the expansion of the kingdom of darkness. That your disease will be a vehicle

where God's glory will be revealed and the gospel will be advanced. That Jesus has authority over disease for the purposes of the kingdom of God and the purposes of the dominion of darkness will be thwarted. So come for prayer and let's claim the authority of Jesus over disease because it announces to the world what hell already knows. Because another thing the gospel's reveal is that demons recognize the dominion of Jesus. Now, let's just get it on the table. Demons are real. There's an invisible world. And there are benevolent beings in that world. We call them demons. And when you read in the gospels, Jesus doing exorcisms. He is not accommodating the superstitious ignorance of the unlearned. If he was, he would be participating in deception. And when you're full of truth, you don't do that. These stories are accounts of Jesus defeating. And his critics knew he could do this. They said, "Well, we admit you have authority over demons, "but it's because you're in league with the devil." And Jesus said, and I'm paraphrasing, and that's a really stupid thing to think. When a kingdom's divided against itself, it cannot stand, and then he added this, "If it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons,

"then the kingdom of God has come upon you." There's a new king in town with authority. His ministry was proof that he could tie up the strong man. In a few verses later, Matthew comments, "Many who were demon possessed were brought to him, "and he drove out the spirits with a word, "and healed all the sick." And I love that phrase with a word. Demons never argued with Jesus. They never defied him, they never disobeyed him. They knew that the illegitimate rule of their master was short-lived. Remember that guy in the cemetery, full of demons? They run up to Jesus, and they say this, "Why are you interfering with us, son of God? "Have you come here to torture us "before God's appointed time?" You see what they're admitting? That the tyrannies of all the dark powers are temporary, and they know it. And let me tell you, this is good news to most of the world. Now I believe that Satan works demonically to have influence wherever he can in the way that will work best. And in the West, it seems to me, he does that primarily by demonically inspiring ideologies, pushed on the culture as elite and intellectual to distract and to distort the truth. But in much of the world, he's much more brazen, and he just attacks people with fear through demonic activity.

I remember of Miz's team with one of our missionaries in Africa, and he said he learned early on, I would go out to the villages to take the gospel, and the first thing the people would say to me is, "Does your Jesus have power over the spirits?" Because if he does it, we don't need to hear what you've got to say. Just recently, one of our missionaries shared a story with me again in Africa, and he's a refugee camp. And in this camp, there was a mother and a daughter, they were not believers, and the daughter began to act very bizarrely. She would rip off her clothes and renewed into the bush in the forest, and she would have to be chased, and she was very strong and she would resist it. And if you said the name of Jesus, especially in Arabic, she would get extremely violent. And she started talking in a way that they could not understand. She would not speak her native tongue anymore, and they thought perhaps it was gibberish, but then later as a big refugee camp, there was someone from another part of Africa who said, "Why is she speaking my dialect?" She'd never heard it, and she's speaking another language fluently. This is all verifiable, and so Christians gathered around, and they just began to pray in the name of Jesus. And over time, she recovered a sound mind,

and her native tongue came back to her, and she and her mother became followers of Jesus because the camp recognized he has authority over dark powers, and our missionaries tell us stories like this all the time. And I want you to know that one day, every enemy of Christ will bow and acknowledge him as the rightful Lord. And that includes what Paul calls the last enemy, because the gospel accounts make it clear death surrenders to the dominion of Jesus. I had the privilege three years ago to be in Bethany, the village where Lazarus lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha. You might recall John 11, he got sick, and his sisters asked Jesus to come, but he died before Jesus arrived. In fact, he'd been dead several days, and he put him in a tomb, and then Jesus arrives and says, take me to that tomb, and he gets there, and Jesus begins to cry deeply. And I've wondered why, and the standard answer is, well, Jesus saw all the other people grieving in Christ. It's not good enough. Because he's about to heal him. Here's what I believe. That in that moment, being God, and knowing what God intended, and knowing what the creation once was, and seeing what sin had done to God's good creation, and the suffering, and the grief, and the misery,

it's called billions of people, Jesus felt it so deeply that the humanity in him had to let the grief out. Jesus hated funerals. In fact, he never did a eulogy. If Jesus ever showed up and a funeral was happening, he just said, get up. Funeral was over. And the reason Jesus could boss death around is because death has no claim on a sinless man. And Jesus knew his mission. He had to put death to death. I like using this illustration. Hold up your hand if you've ever seen a James Bond movie. And don't you lie to me in the house of God. We've all seen James Bond movies, and they all have the same plot. There is a maniacal villain, and he's got some kind of virus, or he's got some kind of a computer, or some kind of weapon that is threatening the world. And James has got to go into enemy territory, and he's got to deactivate whatever that weapon is so that the villain can't threaten the world anymore. On the cross, Jesus did not say, I am finished. He said, it is finished. Mission accomplished. Listen to how the Hebrew writer interprets those words. Because God's children are human beings made of flesh and blood. The son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die. And only by dying could he break the power of the devil

who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who had lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. You see, death must now answer to Jesus. And this means that the future resurrections of all who are in Christ are guaranteed. I'm saying Satan has no authority to keep the believer from receiving their sick, free, sin-free body and living with God forever. I think the closest I ever came to feeling what Jesus felt at Lazarus 2 was at the funeral of my mother. She died after a five-year battle with cancer, and it was a tough battle. It took its toll. And she'd asked me before she passed if I would speak at her service. Of course I said yes. It is the hardest funeral I have ever preached. And I think one reason was because my spirit was so unsettled. My parents were of a generation that at a funeral you have an open casket and everyone calms that wants and looks at the deceased body. And so I did. And I did not recognize the person in the box. She had on a wig because the chemo had taken away all her hair. Her body was glint because she'd lost a lot of weight. And the people did their best putting on their makeup and the things that they do. But I looked and I thought, you look nothing like the vibrant, joyful, strong woman who raised me.

And I got angry. I don't know how to explain it. I felt anger. And I just started talking. Maybe it was to myself. Maybe it was to the devil. I just started saying death, you don't win. You get no glory here. She is not here. Her spirit is with Jesus. And when he returns that beautiful woman I knew is going to return. And I'll see her again. Death, you get no glory here. You don't get one inch of victory here. She belongs to Jesus. Listen to Paul, just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. But there's an order to this resurrection. Christ was raised as the first of the harvest. Then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back. After that, the end will come. when He will turn the kingdom over to the Holy Spirit. until He humbles all His enemies beneath His feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Paul is saying that the dominion of darkness has no claim on you. Jesus does. And what Jesus claims Jesus keeps. And it is this truth and the abrasive of this truth that has given the church such radical hope and courage throughout the centuries to defy the dark authorities that come against her. Because they have believed that in Christ there is power to defeat the powers and resist the devil. We can testify to the dominion of darkness that we know who they really are.

The defeated enemies that are under the authority of our God. Years ago I read a book called Kingdom Authority by a pastor named Adrian Rogers. And he included a testimony he sometimes gives when he feels attacked. Satan, you are a liar. Jesus is Lord and He defeated you at Calvary. My life belongs to Him. My sins are all under His blood. My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I refuse lies. You have no authority in my life. There is no unclean spot where you have any right to dwell. You are trespassing on my father's property. In the name of Jesus I refuse you and resist your power in my life. Here's what I'm saying. That Jesus' dominion is the foundation for our rebellion. I believe Christians should be the most subversive people in the world. We don't have to act like everyone else acts. We don't have to buy the lies that everyone else is selling. We don't have to treat people like everybody else is getting treated. We are in training for reigning and we don't take our orders from the powers that be. We only recognize the authority of the one who was and who is and who is to come. Paul says God stripped the spiritual rulers and powers of their authority with the cross he won the victory and showed the world that they were powerless. And that's why we engage and we invest in what I call mission possible. That's why in two weeks we are going to raise millions of dollars. I know what we're going to do with that money. We're going to start churches in some of the most unchurched cities in America. And we're going to send people to take the name of Jesus to some of the most dangerous and unreached places on the earth because we believe in every city and in every nation Jesus is Lord. And his authority gives us the right to go there and proclaim his name and push back the darkness. Christian Kane is from Australia. She her husband and their daughter Sophia came to America and they went to Walmart because that's what you do when you come to America. And the daughter wanted a toy and she picked a flashlight and she turned it on and she could not see it. And her mother explained, well honey we're inside and the first lights are drowning out the light. We had to go outside. And she said something that Christine later said was prophetic. She said, oh mommy, could we go and find some darkness? And this is how the early Christians lived. Unintimidated because they knew that one day all heaven will break loose. The world needs to know it and we need to live it. Pray with me. So God we declare, I don't know who can hear prayers but to every spirit that can, we declare Jesus is Lord everywhere over everybody. When would you give us God the courage to live like this is reality?

We resist and defend. excuse sin, we will not accept darkness, we will not embrace lies, and we will not believe that the way it has been is the way it has to stay. We declare the authority of Jesus, and we commit God that we want to take this news to the world. So Holy Spirit make us courageous, make us generous, and make us the most joyful people our neighbors have ever met. Because Jesus is Lord, and in His name we pray, Amen.