4 Reasons God Allows Prolonged Testing, Part 2

Greetings, friends and new listeners and welcome to The Sound of Faith.

I'm Sharon Otz thanking you for being with us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If you've ever been in a time of prolonged testing, today's message is perfect for you. For reasons God allows prolonged testing. God has promised that He is faithful and will not allow us to be tested above what we are able to endure. Find out why He sometimes allows our test to become protracted in four reasons God allows prolonged testing. Number two reason why God allows us to go through prolonged trials and temptations.

To manifest to the angelic beings, both the good ones and the evil ones, Satan's utter defeat. Remember when the disciples came back to Jesus, He had sent them out two by two. Said now you go into the cities and towns, you heal the sick, you cleanse the leper, you cast out demons, you preach the gospel, you tell them this is the kingdom of God. And they came back, they were so joyful, they were just coming back running over, they had such success, they had such great victories, they couldn't wait to get back and say Jesus even the demons are subject to us in your name. Like that was news to Him. He wouldn't have sent them out and told them to do it if He didn't expect them to succeed. And they were gleeful and delighted about it. And here's what Jesus said, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

What? So we just told you the demons are subject to us in your name and you say I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. So what Jesus was saying is, I expect this, I was there, I was there and I watched as He got kicked out of heaven and all of His rebellious angels with Him.

Amen. I saw it. And not only did Jesus see it, but all of the faithful angels, the two-thirds of angels that stood true to God, they were standing there and they saw Lucifer come marching in with his one-third of rebels. They saw them come in before the throne of God and he started acting like I'm going to dethrone you. And God didn't even get up off of His throne. And the word of God didn't get up off of His place.

Amen. One of God's faithful archangels, Michael, he stood up and he gave, he must have had those killer shoes on. He gave Satan a good kick with those killer shoes and he fell like lightning. Those faithful angels had a front row seat to that spectacular event and you know it made a lasting impression on them. I mean, they were probably friends with some of the mother angels that went along with Lucifer.

They might have been good friends before that. And they were probably thinking, well, we are true because we know God is God and we trust and love Him. Boy, I'm so glad I didn't get tricked and join them. I'm so glad I didn't listen to their lies. I'm so glad I didn't let Satan deceive me.

Amen. He lost his position in heaven when he was the anointed cherub, when he was the leader of the worship and the praise to God Almighty. He lost all of that. And he did not like being without authority. He'll never get back in the position in heaven.

So he was decided I guess the next best thing is try to get authority over this earth that God has recreated and given now to some creature that He's made in His likeness and His image. And I cannot bear that. I cannot bear that somebody that looks like God is going to be bossing me around.

I'm going to do something about that. And we know how He seduced Eve and deceived her. And Adam joined in.

Amen. And he usurped authority over the earth when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden. And the Bible says in Adam's fall, we all fall.

Romans 5 12 says by one man's disobedience and by one man's sin, sin and death entered the world and death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. We were born in the family of Adam. Every one of us was born in the family of Adam and we were born slaves to sin.

And that means slaves to Satan because we were born with a sin nature. Amen. But thank God for the second Adam, the son of God. Hallelujah. And thank God Paul said in first Corinthians 15 as we have born the image of the earthly Adam, we now bear the image of the heavenly Adam.

Hallelujah. We've been born again of the seed of God, the incorruptible seed of the word of God. So Jesus said, look, look guys, I was there when Satan got kicked out and I saw him fall. That's Luke 10 18. Now he says in Luke 10 19, behold, I give you the church, the born again, redeemed one's authority over all the power of the enemy and nothing by any means shall hurt you. So Jesus was saying, basically, don't be amazed that the demons are subject to you in my name.

I saw Lucifer himself fall from heaven. And let me say to you and to all of us, every time we cast out demons in Jesus name, Satan experiences his fall all over again. Every time you kick the devil out of your life, every time you stomp him under your Holy Ghost feet, Satan experiences his fall all over again.

Amen. Every time we endure the temptation and the trial patiently, we show those good angels, those faithful angels, those ministering spirits that God sends forth the minister to us. And we show the bad angels, the ones who now are in Satan's service. We show them that not only is he kicked out of heaven, but he's kicked out of my life and he's kicked out of your life. Amen. And he's under our feet. We show the angels that are watching Satan's utter defeat.

And I always like to have a play on words. You know me, brother Hardy has the message. Satan's complete defeat. That would be D E F E A T. Well, I want to say Satan's complete defeat. D E F E E T. Amen.

Let me show you guys over here. D E F E E T. Satan's complete defeat. Amen.

He's under defeat. And we show them that he cannot overcome us with his temptation only if we let him. Because God said up front, I am faithful. I will not let you be tried above the measure of my grace and I will make a way out. Now, if you can show me that God's not faithful and he's got a bad track record, then you know, then maybe I will think, oh, I'll be discouraged.

But if you can't show me that God is a liar and you can't show me that God has failed those who trusted in him either by giving them a way of escape like he did Daniel in the lion's den and the three Hebrew boys in the furnace or give them the measure of grace, which he did to 11 of his disciples to die a martyr's death. So that even beyond them, Apostle Paul, who he said was born late in season, but nevertheless got born. Amen. He said, I am now ready to be offered up. My time is at hand and I'm ready. Amen.

I'm ready now. He said for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If God requires anyone to die for the, on behalf of Jesus, which we see now, and maybe not here, but all around the world in China and many of those Islamic countries, God gives you grace to live by. He gives you grace to die by. He's never going to let you be in a position where they got a gun to your head or some other terrible thing and he's not going to give you the grace to go through it. Sometimes I read some of them stories and I think, Oh God, Oh God, I think I don't think I could do it.

Oh Lord, I don't think I could watch my loved one be shot in the head if I don't deny you. In fact, Lord, I know I couldn't do it, but you see if it ever came to that, he would give me the grace. He would give you the grace.

Amen. So the angels are watching. They're watching us and they are seeing God's great plan of redemption and that Satan is utterly defeated. You know, I just have to read it because I want the devil to know we're going to prove it with the scripture. Revelation 12 tells us what I just sort of paraphrased. Revelation 12 and verse seven and there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon fought and his angels. And there's another verse that tells us that the dragon is the devil and prevailed not neither was their place found anymore in heaven or he was kicked out and the great dragon was cast out.

That old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceives the whole world. He was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him. Amen. And behold, I heard a voice saying, now is come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ and the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before God day and night. So here we have what took place. And may I say this, there's going to be a sequel. In the future, there's going to be a sequel after the tribulation and after the millennial reign of Christ. This is going to happen again, but this time he's going to be cast in the lake of fire and the smoke of his torment will rise up forever and ever. He's not getting out again.

Amen. Now, Peter said in second Peter two, four, God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment. And Jude said the same exact thing in Jude six. So the word here that says cast them into hell. The Greek word is tart, tar, rue, tar, tar, rue, T a R T a R O O. And I want to bring your attention to it because when you read hell in the English, there's several words that are interpreted hell that have different meanings. If you're in the old Testament, even their Hebrew has several words for hell and the Greek does too.

So just reading the English doesn't always give you the full picture. So what is tart, tar, rue? It's a compartment of hell that is total, total darkness. It's not fire. It's total darkness. It's a prison.

That's what the word means. A prison, a compartment that's total darkness. And first Peter three nineteen tells us that in the three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection, Jesus went down into tart, tar, rue. He went down there in that place of darkness and preached to the spirits that were there in chains. So you see some of these fallen angels because they were disobedient.

Even after the time of Lucifer in your Bible, in the book of Genesis, we are told that some angels came and had sex with Adam's daughters and produced an evil race of giants. And those angels who come after the fall of Satan are now in tart, tar, rue. And Jesus went down and preached to them.

Let me throw this out there. When you hear certain ministries say that Jesus went to hell to be tormented of the devil and tormented of demons and he had to go through that for us on our behalf. So he had to go through it and suffer that way. And there are some that teach that and they act like he was down there being beat up by demons and taunted and tortured until finally the third day, God said, that's enough.

Well, that's not what happened. He went down there and said, take me to those angels and chains. He went in there and preached them. He preached to them.

Amen. And he told them the plan of God that you tried to thwart, the plan of God that you tried to corrupt, you failed. The plan of redemption has been paid. I just came from the cross. Look at the wounds in my hands. Look at the wounds in my feet. Look at the wound in my side. Look at the stripes on my back.

Look at the wounds in my brow. I paid the price. It's too late. It's too late. The price has been paid.

Amen. He went down and he went to another compartment called Abraham's bosom. We're told about it in Luke the 16th chapter.

It's where the righteous saints of God, when they died, they went there and it was a place of comfort. You see, they couldn't go to heaven yet because the price was not paid. So everyone that died from righteous Abel, all the way up to the last one that died, the thief on the cross.

Amen. All Jesus went there and he ripped the gates off. And we're told in Ephesians the fourth chapter that he went down and he took captivity captive.

Another words, all of those godly righteous men and women who had died in faith looking for the coming of Messiah and the Redeemer, they had died in faith. He went down there and he said, come on, time to go home. It's time to go to paradise.

It's time to go to your father's house. And he led all of them on high and he led them into the father's house and ever since then, everyone that dies in faith goes straight there. For to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Second Corinthians five and I believe verse eight.

Amen. So, all of these angels have seen this. They have seen that the plan of redemption has prevailed over the plot of Satan to derail it. We're told in revelations 118, he took the keys. Keys mean authority.

Whenever you see keys in the Bible, it means authority. He took the keys of death and hell off of Satan. And he went and unlocked that door. He said, come on, you're coming with me. Amen. He'd already told the thief on the cross when he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus said today, today you're going with me.

You're going to be in paradise. Amen. So that was number two.

Let's go to number three. Why God allows us to go sometimes to extended trials. We learned here it's to show both good and bad angels the plan of God.

Now three to reveal his plan of man's redemption to his good angels and to show them God's power to keep us. Let's turn to First Corinthians chapter four. Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. So we are ministers. I'm going to tell you about this Greek word and at first you're probably not going to like it very much. When we think of minister, we think of someone who has a title and a position. They might even have a particular way they dress to let everybody know I'm a minister. But I want to tell you what this Greek word here means.

Now in other places in your English Bible, you will see the word minister that is actually from the word diakon, which we bring it over deacon. But that's not the word here. The word here is hupo retes. Hupo retes. Two words. Hupo means under.

Under. And ereso, which is what retes comes from, means to row. And I'm literally talking about you have oars on a boat and you're rowing. But not just anyone rowing on a boat.

Don't think of a little canoe or something. Think of those ships back in that time, in the Roman times, that would have had a galley below the deck. There was a galley and they would have had up to 100 men sitting on a little hard bench like this and on each side and they're rowing. And that is what kept the ship moving. And these guys were not treated always in the best way. They were overworked, worked too long.

And sometimes I hate to tell you this, they would let somebody row to the point of exhaustion and sometimes they would kill over dead. Now God doesn't do that because he's not like the devil. But I want to show you that this particular word, what it meant, it was the lowest Greek word for servant, the lowest one. There's another one for doulos, which means servant. But this servant, even though he was not free to come and go, he was still treated a lot better by the master.

But this is the lowest of the low. And he says, that's what we are. We are the ministers of Christ. And he said, we're stewards of the mysteries of God. Now, it seems like a dichotomy here because on the one hand, we got this lowest form of servant and now we've got steward. And you know what a steward was? A manager, a superintendent, someone to whom the owner or the proprietor entrusted to manage and oversee his affairs, his house, even his finances.

We could say he was the master's deputy. So in other words, he did not own the house. He didn't own any of the treasures in the house.

He didn't own any of the money in the bank account. None of it was his, but yet he was given this trust. The master had so much trust in him. I can turn over to you the running of my house, the overseeing of my finances. I trust you that number one, you are competent and capable to do a good job so that, you know, it's not destroyed and I lose everything.

I can trust you that you are not going to be dishonest. See, that's what the word steward is. And Paul was saying that we were given the stewardship over God's mysteries. In other words, over the revelation of the gospel, the word of God, both the gospels of Jesus and then the epistles to the church. Paul said it was his main concern that he had to preserve, protect these revelations and dispense them. He had to get them out. He had to get the truth out that God had entrusted to him to do. And sometimes he was beaten for it, jail for it. Many things that he suffered. You can read the catalog of the things that he suffered, beaten with rod and many stripes.

He said sometimes with many stripes, he was in shipwrecks. One time he spent a whole day and a half in the sea, but he says, God has entrusted me to get this truth out in this word of God out and whatever the cost is, I'm going to do it because he said the first requirement is that we be found faithful. Now keeping that in mind, keeping in mind that our first requirement, no matter if God's called you to sing, if he's called you to be a soloist, a choir director, a choir member, an instrumentalist, teach Sunday school, whatever God gives you to do, come and sit in this house of God, pay your tithes. Whatever God asks you to do. Number one, be faithful and dropping down to verse nine, you're going to see another good reason why. Because first of all, let me just interject that Jesus said one day he's going to say, well done, thou good and faithful servant. You've been faithful in the least. Now I'll make you ruler over most. So that's self serving.

That's for your benefit and my benefit. Amen. What an insightful word of the Lord for reasons God allows prolonged testing. God is on record that he is faithful and that he won't allow us to be tested above that which we are able. When we feel that we're at our breaking point, he will make a way of escape, an exit plan, or give us the commensurate grace to stand. I have found four reasons in scripture that explain why sometimes tests are harder and longer. To teach us spiritual warfare, to manifest to angels Satan's utter defeat, to reveal to the faithful angels his plan of redemption, and to teach us to never give up.

We will look back to the pre-creation account at the fall of Lucifer, to the coming of the Redeemer and his delegated victorious authority to his church, to the coming sequel of Satan's fall and the believer's eternal glory. Four reasons God allows prolonged testing can be ordered on CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. And please consider adding extra to help us with mounting postal costs. Request SK 218. That's SK 218 and send your love gift of $10 or more to Sound of Faith, PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Or you can order online at soundoffaith.org where MP3s are available. But to order by mail, send your minimum love gift of $10, request SK 218 to PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. And we would appreciate your letting us know the call letters of this radio station. Till next time, this is Sharanat saying, Maranatha.