The Way of Spiritual Warfare | "The Way" Week 8

- Today, I'm really excited to speak on a subject that I don't hear taught on as much. We obviously hear teachings on it, but as much as we may used to. There are a lot of things that Jesus teaches His disciples and us, the followers of the way. And a lot of the things that Jesus teaches us are comforting, right? He taught His disciples and He teaches us how to read the word and how to pray. Jesus literally says, this is how you pray. We've covered things like, this is how we work and this is how we rest. And all of these things, some of them may grind at us a little bit, but a lot of them, they're comforting. They're easier maybe. But there's something Jesus did over and over again, all through the Gospels that has really been sticking out to Michelle and I for the last several months that we can't ignore. And it's this, Jesus over and over and over and over and over and over again, confronted darkness. Over and over again, through His time on earth, He confronted demons. He confronted over and over again, the devil. In fact, as you read the Gospels as many times it would say that, yes, we focus on the idea that Jesus went out and healed the sick.

And that's usually where our attention goes to a lot. But almost every time in the Gospels, when it says that there was crowds that came and Jesus was healing the sick, it also says that He was casting out demons. And if it's in the Bible, we should look at it. We should study it. We should know what's happening here. So if you have your Bibles, flip over to Luke, chapter nine, that's where I'm gonna start. And we're gonna go kind of through Luke a couple of different places. But I wanna start in Luke, chapter nine with the 12 because He taught His disciples, the followers of the way. He taught them how to do this, okay? Everyone calm down, all right? Don't get nervous, I don't have any snakes. I got nothing, all right? Everybody just take a deep breath, all right? Luke, chapter nine, verse one, listen to this. It says, "One day Jesus called together His 12 disciples and gave them power and authority to cast out demons and to heal all diseases." And I know what you might be thinking. You're like, well, John, that's the 12. You know, that's the famous ones. That's Peter James John, and I'm not that. I'm not one of the 12. Of course, he pulled the 12 in. Well, let's flip over one chapter.

One chapter over, in chapter 10, it says this. It says, "The Lord now chose 72, other." Somebody said, "Other, other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places He planned to visit." And these were His instructions to them. The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who's in charge of the harvest and ask Him to send more workers into the fields. So the one word that I wanna just point out here is the word others. It doesn't tell us their names. It doesn't tell us where they're from. It doesn't tell us their resume. We don't know anything about these people. We just know that Jesus, apart from the 12, selected another 72 of His disciples of these so-called followers of the way. And He sent them out two by two. We don't know their names. We don't know anything about them. They were just another follower of Jesus who was willing to go where Jesus sent them to go. - Fair? Okay. - Now, go with me to verse 17. So they go, they do all these things. And Jesus is talking in between. You can read that tonight. Verse 17, listen to this. When the 72 disciples returned, they joyfully reported to Him,

"Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name." These others, these nameless, these people that were the commoners, just simple followers of the way. And Jesus didn't even tell them to cast out demons. He just said, "Go do ministry." And while they shared the Messiah and while they shared the good news, they encountered demons. And they came reporting back to Jesus and they were blown away. They were like, "Jesus, this is crazy. "You didn't even tell us to do this." But when we started doing ministry, we encountered demonic activity. We actually encountered the enemy. We actually encountered the devil. Jesus says, "Yes." He says, "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning." So now he's like remembering back to the time where Satan used to be an angel and he was thrust out of heaven into darkness and he says, "Yeah, I remember. I remember all of it." In verse 9, he says, "Look, I've given you authority over all." Somebody say, "All, all the power of the enemy and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them and nothing will injure you. But don't rejoice because evil spirits obey you." He's like, "Now he's bringing correction. Rejoice because your names are registered in heaven. I love that he even brings correction in the midst of something so wonderful." And I got to kind of tell a story. Most of my sermons or my ideas for sermons come from encounters with people or their scriptures. And this wasn't even on my list. I've got every single week of the way already pre-slotted, right? But they keep changing. They keep changing. And I'm okay with that. I want the Holy Spirit to lead that. I had zero intention of preaching about this subject of demons and spiritual warfare. I have zero ambition for that. I was on a call with a guy probably about three weeks ago.

Just a dear friend of mine attends one of the campuses and he's just going through it just for weeks on end, for months on end. In fact, for about a year, it's just been thing after thing after thing after thing. And I've walked him through every single one of those. I've been with him. I've been on calls. I've been with him. We've cried together. And we've been through a lot of difficult things together. And one day I just asked him, I said, "Hey, because there was another shoe that dropped." And I said, "Hey, let me ask you a question, man. When you pray about this, how do you pray?" How do you pray? And he goes, "Well, you know, I just asked the Lord to help." I just say, "Lord, help." And I'm sure it's a little more than that, but I'm just asking for the Lord to help. And I said, "Let me ask you another question. At any moment, have you ever spoken to the enemy? Have you ever had any sort of authority?" I said, "You're the husband. You're the father of your home. This is your home. Jesus has given you authority. Over the powers of darkness. Have you spoke to the darkness at all?" And he goes, he literally looked at me and he said, "Now, this is a guy who's been saved for over 50 years. Faithful husband, faithful father, amazing man of God, amazing man of God." And he said, "I wouldn't even know the first way to do that." And so we talked about that and went on down the road. And I walked away that day going, "We have to talk about this. We have to talk about this because we do have an enemy." I know that's not a shock, but I don't think we talk about him anymore. It's weird. I grew up in a Pentecostal church. We're like, "I've seen it all." But it's like we don't even talk about it anymore. It's like the modern day church, and I'm not blaming any church because we are the church. Victory church is part of that. Like the modern church has gotten really good at talking about things we can see. We like to talk about things we can see in everyday life and encounters and cute little sermon series and practicalities and things. And we're good at talking about circumstances. And we're great at talking about emotions. And we can do sermon series on relationships and habits. And we even talk about mental health in the church now, right? So now we even do that. And all those things are great. And I'm not saying that any of those things are bad. But Jesus confronted demons like a lot. A lot. And we don't. So I just think it's something we need to talk about. You can't read the gospels. It's impossible to read the gospels, honestly, and remove spiritual warfare from them.

It's impossible. So most Christians, there's people even now that maybe you grew up in a different denomination and you're like, "I knew this was one of those word churches. We got to get out of here. Listen, we have to confront and deal with what's in the Bible." Because most Christians just want to kind of like, "I don't want to talk about that. I just want a nice and clean church. I want to just take my kids to soccer. I want to pay the bills. I want to go to to a church that doesn't notice I'm there and just live my life. So we're going to dig into this, we're just going to talk about it. So I'm not going to throw all of the crazy verses at you that every fire, spit and pastor, you know, that wants to go this way, it does. But there are in the Bible, you know, Ephesians 6, Paul says that we don't fight against flesh and blood, that there are principalities, that there is a world that we can't see. Jesus says that the thief, the enemy comes to steal it to kill and to destroy. He's, 1 Peter talks about the adversary, the devil, and he likens him to a lion that prowls around seeking, seeking someone to devour. And if you've ever watched lions hunt, they look for the weak one. They look for the one that's gotten outside of the pack, outside this limping that's struggling. And that's the one that the lion pursues, John 8, Jesus talks about the devil and he says, he's the liar. In fact, he's the father of lies. And so Paul talks about this, he said, I don't want you to be ignorant about the devil's schemes. And I think that if we're not careful, we can just kind of live our lives oblivious and praying to a God, please help me, but never understanding and realizing and stepping into the full authority that Jesus has given us. So I don't want to skim it, I don't want to pretend like it's not there, we got to deal with this. If we say we want to be followers of the way, Jesus showed us how to deal with the enemy. So the enemy wants to lie to us, he wants to divide your marriage, he wants to confuse your children, he wants to deceive your children, he does.

He wants to get fear into your home, he wants to isolate you, he wants to accuse you, he wants to tempt you, he wants to distract you, he's been playing the same playbook for thousands of years. And every sermon in this season, I love to give disclaimers, all right, this is my disclaimer. I am not one of those people who thinks there's a demon under every rock, okay. If I stub my toe, as I'm walking out of the church today, I'm not going to say the devil's really coming after me. No, I just stubbed my toe, right. If I don't pay my bills for six months and then I have to file for bankruptcy, I don't say the devil's really attacking my finances. No, I'm a deadbeat that didn't pay my bills, right. So I listen, I want to give that disclaimer, I want to bring balance to the word of God. I'm going to try my best to thread a needle here and I'm not preaching about the devil to bring attention to the devil, I'm not telling you to be afraid of the devil, I'm telling you that we need to start being aware. When you start having awareness of his schemes and know that we have authority, you can't fight something that you refuse to acknowledge or that you aren't aware of. And so we're going to acknowledge it. And today we're going to talk about the talamah sermon, we're going to talk about the way of warfare, we're going to talk about the way of warfare. So how do we practice this on a daily basis? What does that look like to not just pray, but to be aware and to practice spiritual warfare? I have two really quick theological steps, two theological thoughts. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on these because I'm not a theologian, I'm a pastor. But I have two theological frameworks that I want to start with, all right. The first one before you can get too excited about, yeah, Jesus has given us authority. And I think this is what the Pentecostal Church is kind of guilty of is we just get all riled up and we're like, yeah, if we yell louder, and if we spit a little bit when we do it, then we can come over every demon, you know, maybe we do have authority. But I think we miss a really important step theologically, and I want to show it to you.

Step number one, before you have authority, number one, you are under authority, okay? This is a really, really important step in spiritual warfare that I think most Pentecostals are very guilty of skipping over. We are under authority. So back to verse one, the Bible says that Jesus takes the 72 and he sends them out. He sends them out. This is a really important word, this idea of him sending out, these 72 didn't just wake up one morning and be like, we got to go. Let's go. Let's go do this. Let's go attack the enemy. Let's go preach the gospel. No, they were sent. They were sent, which means they were under the authority of a rabbi. They were under the authority of a teacher. They were sent. And so our authority in Christ begins with being under the authority of Christ. Here's a scripture that I would point to in James 4, 6, it says this, it says, "Therefore is says, "God is We missed that first sentence, but we go right to the next one. It says, "Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee." Pentecostals like to say, "Resist the devil, and he will flee." But we missed the part where it says, "Submit, submit to God." This word opresses in the Greek, this word opresses, it says, "God, listen to the words of this." And we skip right over this too. Think about the words of this. God opresses the proud. And we skip right over that.

We're just like, "I have authority." Yeah, but he opresses. God opresses the proud. This word opresses in the Greek means to range in battle against. So let's kind of use an imagination here. So let's say that there's two rugs here that are at my feet. Let's say that this side is God's side, and this side is the enemy side, okay? And let's say that I'm a believer, but I am not under authority. I just spit and holler and yell, and I'm prideful. I have a lot of pride in my heart. The Bible says that God opposes that person. So before the battle ever starts, I'm on the enemy's side. If God opposes the proud, it doesn't matter if he's given us authority if I'm doing it with a prideful heart, because he opposes me. So if I try to come with authority, but I have not submitted my life and submitted everything about me to the Lord, then I have no authority. And we miss this really crucial part, and we have to submit, then resist. So my authority over the enemy flows out of my submission to Jesus, okay? And so, well, I'm good there, John, I'm submitted. Well, before we ever say devil, you have no authority here, we have to ask a very much more important question.

Is Jesus, do you have full authority here? Have I given you Jesus full authority of my life? Now, if you really want to get into the weeds of what that looks like, you should do some deep diving there, because it means that if I've given Jesus full authority over my thought life, if I've given Jesus full authority over my emotions, have I given Jesus full authority over my finances, have I given Jesus full authority over my marriage, have I given Jesus full authority over my anger? And if I am not submitting to Jesus, not perfection, it's not perfection, but if I am not coming to Jesus with a humble heart saying, Jesus, I need you, I submit to you, is there anything in me that you need to deal with? I'm coming up under that authority. I'm submitting to the Lord. It is then and only then that I can have authority. So being under Christ's authority means there is no area of my life where Jesus just gets a vote. There's a difference between authority and a vote. Is Jesus just getting a vote in something in your life or does he have full authority? So I can't rebuke the devil over my home, out of my home, when I refuse to lead my home, the way that Jesus would ask me as a man to lead my home, okay? Getting blunt, y'all, forgive me. I can't rebuke the devil over my finances if I have not submitted my finances to Jesus. I have no authority to rebuke the devil on my finances

if I haven't first submitted my finances. Okay, you see what I'm saying? I can't rebuke the devil over my family. If I live in constant fear of something happening to my family, 'cause now I'm being led by fear. So you see this pattern, this rhythm, I can't rebuke the devil over my marriage if I refuse to forgive my wife. Nobody likes this point. Okay, let's go to the next one. So the safest place, listen, the safest place to stand against the enemy is under the authority of Jesus. Key word is under, under. I am under the authority of Jesus. And then and only then can I do number two. Number two is I have been given authority. I've been given authority because I'm submitted to Jesus. Luke 10, 17 says, "Lord, even the demons obey us." Listen to these words. "When we use your name has nothing to do with them." Nothing. They're not that special. It wasn't because they said it really loud. I think it's funny when people scream. I don't think he's deaf, but maybe, I don't know, It's not how long I've been saved. Nothing to do with that. I have authority in Christ because of who Christ is. A good illustration would be if there was a police officer, and he's standing in the middle of a four-way stop. He's directing traffic. And an 18-wheeler that weighs 80,000 pounds is barreling towards him at 80 miles per hour, and he steps out right in front of the 18-wheeler and goes.

And guess what? The 18-wheeler stops. Why? Not because it's a match. There is no match. That 18-wheeler could just barrel right through him, and there would be no match. But the badge, there's an authority behind the badge that has granted this police officer authority to operate as one who can tell people when to stop. This is a good illustration, a good analogy. It's an analogy, but the devil would run us right over if it had not been for the authority that Jesus gives us. So we have been given not because we earned it, not because we're that special, not because you're anointed, not because you're appointed. It's because of what Jesus did and no other reason. We aren't that good. Jesus is that good, and he has given us authority. This word authority in the Greek is the Greek word exosia, and it means ability, strength through the right to do it, the right delegated jurisdiction. It's a delegated jurisdiction. Okay, enough theology. Let's get super practical. Let's talk practicality. How do I exercise the authority that Jesus has given me? Do I have to get across? What do I have to do? What does this look like? Do I scream? Do I yell? Do I pace? What does it look like? Tuesday morning, what does this look like? Let's just cover a couple things. First one, I'm going to cover real quick because it's a recap. Number one, get low. Get low. Okay. We step into authority from a low posture of submission. Remember, we're submitted to Christ. So James says, "Submit to the Lord and then resist the devil." So I got to come low. I'm coming with that posture. Number two, speak up. Speak up. Let me ask you a question. All right. Here's a question. Can Christians talk to the devil? Right? And I think what we have to ask ourselves is a second question. Did Jesus talk to the devil? So when Jesus was called out, he's baptized and says the Spirit led him into the wilderness, and the devil comes to confront him. Three times the devil comes, and every single time, Jesus responds verbally, verbally. And he didn't say, "Well, you're a bully, and you make me feel bad, and so leave me." It wasn't... You know what Jesus did every single time? He quoted the Word of God. All three times, he said the same thing. It is written. It is written. Do you know who knows the Bible? The devil. And so when you quote the Bible, he knows that he has to come under the authority of what it says. So Jesus says it is written three times. Jesus didn't... He didn't think scriptures. He said them. He said them. There's something to this. We speak truth to the lie. Why? Because the devil is a liar. That's all he knows how to do is lie. So anything that's coming against you is a lie. And so the only way to overcome that is to speak truth. So remember last week, we talked about we accept the truth. It's not enough to just hear

it. We have to accept it. Like the seed. Remember the seed and the good soil. This week, I would say, we don't just accept it. We use it. We use it. Because in Ephesians 6, it says that the Spirit of the Lord is the Word of God. So this... The sword of the Spirit, I should say. The sword of the Spirit likens the Word to a sword. Remember in Hebrews it says a sharper than a two-edged sword. This is the sword of the Spirit. And when we use it, when we speak it, it does the fighting for us. So last week, the word was a seed. This week, it's a sword. It's a sword. So 2 Corinthians 10-3, this is Paul. He says, "For though we walk in the flesh, for though we're just taking there are kids to soccer practice on Monday, we do not war against... We do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the We're destroying speculations, speculations. Most of the time, the enemy comes against you, he's speculating. Have you ever been to court of law and the lawyer yells out, that's speculative. It's not even real. It's a speculation. And Paul is saying, we have the authority to destroy these speculations and every lofty thing that's raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That, right? That you know what spiritual warfare is? That right there. That's spiritual warfare. Because fear says you're going to lose. You're going to lose. And you can say right back to the devil, God has not given me a spirit of fear. So it's something about knowing the word of God because we use it as a weapon. It's a sword and we use it against the enemy. Number three is we hold our ground. This is really important. Let me go over to Ephesians 6. This is the really famous one that Pentecostals led to preach and scream at. Ephesians 6, let's go to verse 10. Verse 10 says, "The final word be strong in the Lord and in the mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on every peace of God's armor so that you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then, after the battle, you will still be standing firm, stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of righteousness." Then it goes on to say all of the parts and you can read that later. My point is, and I love one translation says, "After you've done everything to stand," you know what you should do after that? Stand. Stand. You know what that means? It means that just because you defeated the enemy today means that he's coming back tomorrow. A lot of Christians

are able to kind of fight it for a season, but that's why I think a practical thing for us to remember is really to hold our ground because if I overcome fear today, fear is coming back tomorrow, so don't move. Don't move. Don't move tomorrow. The lies are going to come back tomorrow. Don't move. Hold your ground. Hold your ground. The temptation, whatever it is. Sometimes, winning is simply refusing to move. Maybe that old song, "I will, I will, I will not be moved." Maybe that old song. Man, now my Pentecostal days are coming back in a flood. Okay, almost done. I just want to say two things. I want to get really specific, all right? I want to talk to the men. I'm going to try to do that one and not cry. And then I want to talk to the ladies, okay, because we will both fight this a little bit differently. Okay, we fight differently. God created us differently. God created men to be warriors. We're warriors. That's how God designed us. God made us physically bigger, usually, right? Statcher, posture, it's voice, it's strength. It doesn't mean we're better at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure we're not. But God designed us the way we are. We're intimidating. And if you don't know, become a father and raise your voice just a little bit to your children for the first time and watch their eyes get this big. Like we just were boisterous. We're loud. And what we have to understand is we have to put this to use against the enemy. Okay? Ephesians 5 talks about that the husband is the head. Okay? Fellas, let me put it this way. Okay, it's 2 a.m. You hear somebody coming in your front door, broken glass, someone's breaking into your house. Okay? Let me ask you this. Do you do this? Honey, go. Stick them. If you pull the covers up tight and you're like, tell me when it's clear. No, you're the man. You get your tail in there. Come hell or high water. That enemy's going to face you first. Your posture. But most men are spiritually weak and we delegate the spiritual authority to our wives and we delegate spiritual oversight to V kids and to the youth department. And I'm not saying that there's this posture. Please don't miss her extremely biblical headship isn't about being the most powerful person in the room. Okay, that can be abused real quick because right after that, it says, you know, you should do men. You should lay your lives down. So, so biblical headship is about being the first person willing to lay my

life down against the enemy. Okay. Fellas, we cannot outsource the spiritual leadership of our homes. We can't, we can't do it. I get it. Your wife's a better prayer than you. I get it. My wife's better at praying than I am, but that devil's going to have to get through me to get to her. So we speak words over our families. When fear comes in against our home, we confront it with truth. If a child is strunging, struggling, we're going to give them wisdom and we're going to pray with them. Okay. We're going to lead our family spiritually. We're not going to let our kids skip church. We're not going to let our family skip church, not because church fixes everything, but it's a practice of the way. It's a practice of the way. All right, John, I don't, I don't know what that looks like. Let me tell you what I do, fellas. All right. When no one's home, I'll walk through my house. I'll walk around my house and I, I don't yell because I don't want the neighbors to think I'm crazy and call the cops, but I talk to the enemy. I talk to the enemy and I tell them that you have no authority here. You cannot go to, I'll go. I'm sorry. I'll go in my kids' rooms and I will tell the devil. You cannot come in here.

You don't belong in here. Cancer, you are not welcome in this home. I will walk around my house. I don't sk, I don't scream. I don't yell. It's not weird. I just talk to the enemy. It's not about having a conversation with the enemy. It's about confronting the enemy. Why? Because Jesus gave us the authority to why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we? Okay. So we don't just pray. Yes, we pray. Yes, we plead. Yes, we get on our knees. Yes, we fast. We pray, but we also talk to the enemy. All right, ladies, I can't get into your business as much because I'm a man and I got to be nice. But we were in Colorado a couple of weeks ago. I got a hurry a month ago and we had a leadership retreat up there and we were vision casting. And we came across, we were a bike ride, all of us on the executive team. And we came across this mama bear and she had three cubs with her. And let me tell you something, we weren't going near that thing. Why? Because that's mama bear. That's mama bear. Ladies, you are you are mama bear. And God designed you that way.

He's given you a God given fierceness to be a mother, right? To protect, to protect them physically, to protect them emotionally. To fight for their education, to fight for their friends, but but don't my, my only encouragement to you, Moms, is don't just fight for what you can see for fight for the unseen. Fight in the spirit realm for your kids. I watched my wife do this for years. Pray over their minds. Pray over their friendships. I remember Michelle and I will pray together and say, God protect their ears, protect their eyes. We come against the enemy in any, any pornography, any sort of things that wants to come and attack. Why? Because he, he's going to. He's going to. So don't just worry about your children, war for your children, war for them. Okay. Now, here's the good news. Now, imagine, mom and dad, imagine if mom and dad came together, both of them submitted to Jesus, coming low, speaking up, holding our ground, both of them coming together. The Bible says Jesus said, where two or three are gathered together. And my name, there I am in the midst of them. coming together, submitted to Jesus, praying to the Lord and commanding every devil in hell to get out of here in your family. There's nothing more powerful than that. Okay? I think that's all I want to say. You have no authority unless you're under authority. Let's just recap. Submit to God. Then you can resist the devil. So step one is, Lord, is there any areas of my life where I am not submitted to you? And maybe you've tried this. John, I've yelled at the devil.

I've talked to the devil and nothing happens. Well, then we have to back up because this says that I must first submit to the Lord. So maybe there's an area of our lives that we're not submitting to the Lord. So we need to ask the Holy Spirit to show us what that might be. And then we step into our full authority. We get low, we speak up, you hold your ground. Let me pray for you, Lord. Lord, I pray that this would be a wake-up call to all of us and that we would pick up our sword and begin to fight. God, give us eyes to see not physical eyes, Lord. We've used those enough. All they do is create fear and anxiety and worry and control and bitterness and unforgiveness. God, give us spiritual eyes to see what the enemy scheme is. Show us his playbook for our kids. Show us his playbook for our marriage. Show us what the enemy wants to come in and to steal and to kill and to destroy. And then we submit it to you and then we step into full authority. We thank you for this in Jesus name. - We're so grateful that you joined us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God and we expect big results. If you would like to receive prayer, you can submit a prayer request by visiting victory.church/pray. If this message or any of our messages have impacted your life and you would like to partner

with us through giving, you can do so at victory.church/give. Thank you again for joining us. At Victory Church, we live life to the full. - Thank you. (gentle music) [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]