Hey, I love our guests. Can we thank Jesus for bringing some guests here today?
Wonderful. If you're a guest or you're just part of the First Assembly family want to come by and chat, I'm gonna be out here right by the fountain. Come by and see me when you get through today. Now we've been going through the Gospel of Mark. We're at Mark chapter 1 and here's where we're going for the next couple weeks. Today I'm going to talk about Satan and demons. Next week I'll talk about Satan again. Then Pastor Chris is going to come and preach on evangelism and when I get back into town I'm gonna preach the following week on demons. So our schedule is Satan, Satan, evangelism, demons, okay?
So it's gonna be really fun in a couple of weeks here. And you know it's interesting. It's an interesting phenomenon. I'm talking to lots of young men and women coming out of atheism and agnosticism that are attending cross assembly which is kind of strange.
I mean I'd love to see it. You probably want to go to a smart church where the pastor knows what he's talking about if you want to kind of come out of that stuff. But at any rate it's interesting hearing them talk. And the Bible they're pretty good with. Our theology they're pretty good with. But then when we start talking about Satan and demons and the supernatural, many times atheists and agnostics who are interested in Christianity, they start checking out. Because the assumption is I can't be a thinking person and also believe in Satan. That's just for you backcountry fundamentalists from Possum Hall or North Carolina that are into that kind of stuff. Thinking people aren't into Satan and demons. They don't believe those fairy tales.
Let me just share two things that might help you with that if that's your struggle. Number one, you can be a thinking person and believe in the reality of Satan. Over the last week and a half I've just had the privilege of being able to communicate and sit down with two world-renowned doctors. They're actually specialists in their field.
World-renowned. One is actually I had lunch with them the head of a major medical school. And as we talked they shared with me their belief in the supernatural. Demons, Satan, the Holy Spirit. These are thinking men who understand the reality of the supernatural. In fact Dr. Joseph Castleberry who's the president of Northwest University did a study and he has found that in Latin American context it's different. The more educated you are the more you believe in the reality of supernatural Satan demons. Isn't that kind of interesting? In the United States it might be different but in other global contexts the more educated you are the more you believe in the reality of the supernatural.
C.S. Lewis brilliant man. He held academic positions in Oxford and Cambridge. He believed in the reality of Satan and demons and the supernatural. In fact he wrote this, there can be our two equal and opposite errors in which our race can fall about the devil's. One is to disbelieve in their existence and the other extreme is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.
Do you see what he's saying? As an academic, as an intellect, I'm just telling you there are two extremes. One is to not believe in the reality of Satan and demons and the other extreme is to become obsessed with them and we need to be in the middle.
So for those of you who say you're now getting into weird territory that I can't track with you, I'm gonna say it again, you can be a brilliant person and believe in the reality of Satan. Secondly, I'm gonna say this to those of you who may be coming out of atheism and agnosticism and you say no no I'm a science guy. Science is my worldview.
How's that worldview going lately? Hey science for decades for example has told us that depression is a chemical imbalance. There are issues with serotonin in your brain. That's just what science told us. We understood that's science.
It's sealed. It's done with and yet a couple weeks ago there was a landmark study out of University College in London that says there is no evidence that depression is a chemical issue. There's no evidence that it's a serotonin issue. There is no evidence of the pharmacological efficacy of drugs like SSRI drugs.
Isn't that amazing? Science for years had said this is settled and now science has said there's no evidence for that. Now some of y'all are on medication. I'll be honest with you, I like you a lot better when you're on your medication. So I'm not saying get off your medication, okay?
If the last two years have told us anything with COVID and the shots, it's that science doesn't know what it's talking about. And so here's my question. Why yoke your conscience? Why yoke your worldview to a discipline that is constantly changing? Why don't you stand on something that is unchanging, infallible, eternal, the Word of God? And so the importance for the next two weeks is I'm gonna tell you how to fight the satanic, how to fight the demonic, how to fight temptation. And it's gonna be very vital that we go back to the Word of God because how many of y'all this week have been attacked by the enemy? Raise your hand.
I hope everybody's raised their hand. Here's the thing. Satan's a lot of things. He's not dumb. He's not gonna waste his energy on somebody that's not a threat to him. If you are not being attacked by Satan, that says a lot about your walk with Jesus.
If you are being attacked by Satan, you are being perceived by the enemy to be a threat to him. And you know, during World War II, there's a brilliant tank commander named Erwin Rommel. Have you ever heard of Rommel before?
And Erwin Rommel, he's just brilliant. So he fought in World War II. He was probably the greatest fueled marshal of World War II. During World War I, he actually wrote a book on battlefield tactics.
It was it was a textbook that was used in military colleges. So he wrote that in World War I. He's fighting in World War II and George Patton, General Patton, overcomes and defeats Rommel. And it is said that after Rommel was defeated, Rommel was kind of like, what in the world happened?
How did this guy defeat me? That Patton kind of looked off in the distance and kind of spoke to Rommel and said, I defeated you because I read the book. I defeated you because I read the book. Hey, look, this book is not just a book about God.
It's a book about Satan and his battlefield tactics. And if we're gonna defeat him, we have to read the book. And so go back, if you would, to Mark chapter 1. Mark chapter 1. In Mark chapter 1 verse 12, this is right after Jesus had been baptized. We talked about that a couple weeks ago. And it says, immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness and he was there in the wilderness 40 days tempted by Satan and was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered to him.
A couple weeks ago, I'm gonna go somewhere to the same spot where this happened. Here's a picture of the Judean desert. It's a very rocky, desolate place and it's about 35 miles by 15 miles. It's very arid.
Hardly any water there. And so this is where Jesus is fighting temptation. This is where Jesus is fighting Satan. It's actually the lowest spot on the face of the earth.
It's a desolate, dry, bleak place. And that's where Satan chooses to attack Jesus. Now today, here's what I want you to do. I want to give us, just to start out with giving a background on Satan. I'm gonna throw a lot of details at you and it's gonna get kind of tedious for the next 20 minutes.
How do you like that? When a preacher says, I'm about to bore you for the next 20 minutes. But anyway, we've got to get into the background of Satan because here's what I understand. You can't fight somebody if you don't know who your enemy is.
And so I want you to know a little bit about the background to your enemy. And I'm gonna take you to a couple passages of Scripture. The first one is Ezekiel 28. So turning your Bibles to Ezekiel 28. I know we don't read Ezekiel a lot so don't act spiritual. Just go to the table of contents.
That's fine. And in Ezekiel chapter 28. And here's what's happening. Now God is addressing a human named the king of Tyre. But you're gonna see real quickly he's not talking to a human being. It's almost like he's pushing him out of the way and he's talking to the satanic influence behind the king of Tyre. You know, Jesus does the same thing with Peter. Remember how Peter in Matthew says, Jesus you will not be crucified. You won't go to the cross.
I forbid it. And Jesus says, get behind me. Satan. What he was saying is, Peter I'm now kind of pushing you out of the way and I'm addressing the satanic force that's using you now. That's what's happening here in Ezekiel chapter 28 and says this in verse 11. Moreover the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre. Say to him, thus says the Lord God, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.
You see why I'm saying now? He can't be talking to a human being. This goes back thousands and thousands of years before. He says you were in the Garden of Eden.
You were the seal of perfection. So he's talking not to a human but to Satan here. Look at verse 13. Every precious stone was your covering, the sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, turquoise and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created.
So I want you to see this. He talks about this entity being dressed in all these jewels. The interesting thing about it is if you go back to Exodus chapter 28, the high priest was dressed in all these same jewels. Implication, Satan before he fell was a priest of God.
He was serving God. And he says your timbrels and your pipes, what timbrels, watch this, are musical instruments. They are percussion instruments.
Pipes are woodwind musical instruments. So Satan, watch this, Satan was a priest of God overseeing the music, overseeing the worship. You want to know why in every church the first place it's going to be attacked in a church's program is the worship ministry because Satan knows that better than any other industry. And so Satan, you were a priest. You were over the worship of God.
And it says something interesting as well in verse 13, the day you were created. Satan is a created being. If I were to ask you what is the opposite of God? Don't say Satan because God has no opposite. God is uncreated. Satan was created. God is omniscient.
He knows all things. Satan is not omniscient. God is omnipresent.
He is everywhere. Satan is not omnipresent. So when you say, well, you know, Satan attacked me this past week, he probably didn't attack you.
You're not that important. It was probably one of his demons that attacked you, but does that make sense? And so he is a created entity. Verse 14, you are the anointed cherub who covers.
I established you. You're on the holy mountain of God. You walk back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. Okay, here's something else about Satan. He was a cherub. A cherub is an incredible, beautiful being that covers the throne of God. So he's a high ranking entity. He actually covers the throne of God. He is this beautiful entity that leads people in worshiping God. And it's interesting, after the fall of Satan, you don't just see one cherub. From there on, it's cherubim, two of them, staring at each other over the throne of God, as if to remind each other, don't get too cocky.
There's somebody else just as beautiful as you are. And verse 14, I'm sorry, verse 15, you were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within and you sinned.
Since he traded, that word to trade can mean to bargain. It's almost as if Satan got cocky and arrogant and started to go around to the other angels and say, you know what? God doesn't treat you the way you ought to be treated.
If you were to follow me, I'd give you a promotion. God doesn't appreciate you the way I would appreciate you if you had followed me. And so Satan starts to foment this rebellion with all the other angels bargaining, if you'll follow me, I will do what God doesn't do.
I will appreciate you. I will be a better God to serve. And as a result of what happens of this, with Satan going to all these angels saying, follow me, it says in Revelation 12 verse 3, and another sign appeared in the heaven and behold a great fiery dragon having seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on his head. His tail drew down one third of the stars in heaven and threw them to the earth. So the great dragon was cast out that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him.
Do you see that? One third of the angels in heaven says, we'll follow you instead of God. And God kicks them out of heaven. So that's a little glimpse in who you're dealing with there in Ezekiel. There's a second passage in the Old Testament as well.
And again, it's the same phenomenon. God is speaking to a human, but he's really not speaking to the human. He is speaking to the satanic force behind that human. And we see this in Isaiah chapter 14 where God is addressing the king of Babylon, but he says verse 12, watch this, Isaiah 14 12. How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.
How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations. Now here in that passage he's called Lucifer. Lucifer is a Latin term. It means light bearer.
For some reason the King James translators decided to just leave it in the Latin. The Hebrew term is Hillel Ben-Shachar. Hillel Ben-Shachar. He's called Lucifer, but his Hebrew name is Hillel Ben-Shachar, which means the shining one, the son of dawn, the son of morning.
In fact, have you ever done this? Like if you got really, really early and the dark, the night time is fading away and it's starting to get light, have you noticed there's one bright star that you kind of still see out there? It's the planet Venus, but it's that morning star. There's some type of connection between that and Satan's name here, Hillel Ben- Shachar, but he is the shining one, the one of the morning.
Here's what's significant about that. Satan never appears as this man with 666 on his forehead, horns sticking out, a big long tail, you know, breathing out green smoke. That's not Satan. Every time we see him in the Bible, he is beautiful. He is gorgeous. He is a shining being.
There's something attractive about him. Here he is called, again, Hillel Ben-Shachar, the shining one, the son of the morning. 2nd Corinthians 11 14 says, he appears as an angel of light. Hey, when Eve was confronted by Satan in the Garden of Eden, she didn't run away in terror, she's drawn to him.
So he's a very enticing being. Now there are three principal archangels in the Bible. Lucifer, or Hillel Ben-Shachar, Gabriel, anybody know the third one is?
Michael. Lucifer, Michael, and Gabriel. And evidently it looks like each one of them were assigned one-third of the angels in heaven.
Michael got a third, Gabriel got a third, Lucifer, Hillel Ben-Shachar oversaw a third. And in verse 12 it says, Lucifer, Satan, you are now cut down to the ground. You're cast out of heaven. Jesus says the same thing in Luke 10 18. Jesus has talked to his disciples. He said, hey, incidentally I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
I was there when God kicked his tail out of heaven. I saw it happen is what Jesus is saying. And now suddenly Ephesians chapter 6 makes sense. Ephesians 6 12 says, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
And those aren't just synonyms, you know, powers, principalities, those aren't synonyms. What this is saying is Satan is not only a beautiful enticing creature, he is also a highly organized creature. I don't know how many angels fell with them, maybe millions, maybe billions. And now Satan has an elaborate organized system and you're seeing that in Ephesians 6. There are different levels. Hey, how many of y'all believe that there's a high-ranking demonic entity over the United States?
You believe that? I believe there's a high-ranking entity over the state of North Carolina. I think there's a high-ranking demonic entity over the city of Raleigh. I think there's an entity assigned to you and your family. That's Satan's organizational system here.
So you see what happens? He's kicked out of heaven, he brings all those angels with him and they hit planet earth and he just organizes them in a highly systematic organizational flow chart and now we're fighting these kinds of entities. Verse 15, for if you've said in your heart, Satan, Lucifer, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. Stars in the Bible often represent angelic powers. What he's saying is, I'm not just gonna be any angel, I'm gonna be the angel of angels.
Look at this, this is amazing. I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north. That language, I will sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north.
It's very interesting. Those are terms that describe the Millennial Kingdom when Jesus Christ reigns on planet earth. Hey, how many of y'all believe Jesus Christ is gonna come back and one day he's gonna rule this world?
You believe that? Well, the Bible often talks about that in the Old Testament, but it uses that in those terms, which tells me Satan probably didn't want to take the position of God the Father. What he's saying is, I want the position of God the Son. I don't want Jesus to reign over this world, I want to reign over this world one day.
And we're gonna see that more next week. Verse 14, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, Lucifer said. I will be like the most high, yet you will be brought down to Sheol to the lowest depths of the pit. Do you know what that's saying? One day Satan's gonna go to hell.
That's exactly what that's saying right there. One day God, who kicked Satan out of heaven, says earth isn't low enough, I'm gonna send you to hell itself. You've heard this before, when Satan reminds you of your past, you remind him of this future. So one day you're gonna burn in hell. And so that's what this is saying right here. So we put all this together and the biblical picture of Satan is, Satan is a powerful, high-level, supernatural entity who, along with one third of the angels in heaven, launched a rebellion against God.
He and his angels were cast out of heaven and they continue that rebellion now on planet earth. Okay? So all that kind of background, that's your enemy. Gives you a glimpse as to who you're fighting. And so this week and next week I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you some principles on fighting Satan, on fighting temptation.
Let me give you the first one today and we'll give you the rest next week. If you're gonna fight Satan, if you're gonna stand against temptation, the very first thing, number one, you have to remember is this. Satan has a plan. Satan has a plan.
Go back to chapter 13 of Mark 1. And he was there, Jesus was there in the wilderness, 40 days, tempted by Satan and was with the wild beasts. And wild beasts often describe demons and so Satan is, is attacking Jesus. Demons are attacking Jesus. But understand this, Satan doesn't attack you just because he wants to mess with you. Satan doesn't attack you just because he wants to make you feel bad. Satan has a plan for you.
There's a coordinated attack on you, on your family, on your morality because Satan has a plan. Y'all remember that campus crusade for Christ where they changed their name to crew or whatever. So campus crusade for Christ, they used to have these tracts. Let me say this, don't bash, you know what I mean by tracts, gospel tracts? Don't bash that ministry.
I just did a, you won't believe this, I did a wedding a few weeks ago of a young man who married a godly young lady. He's a Christian, she's a Christian. None of his family members are Christian at all.
They come from a totally different culture. They're not Christians, it's just him and his brother. I said, man, how'd you get saved? He said, yeah, you won't believe this. He said, my brother, we immigrated from another country, my brother was walking down the street one day and he saw this booklet lying on the ground. I said, what in the world is that?
It's a tract. He picked it up, he read it, and he got saved. And I noticed the difference in his life. I said, man, what in the world has happened to you?
He said, read this. I read it and got saved. They're both on fire for the Lord Jesus Christ because there was a tract laying on the ground, okay? You remember how Campus Crusade would start their gospel tract? God loves you and has a what? Wonderful plan for your life. Did you know Satan has a gospel tract?
And here's how his starts out. Satan hates you and has a terrible plan for your life. And look, that in and of itself is not enough to fight temptation, but as you fight temptation, if you start to understand this temptation that you're fighting, it's part of a larger cosmic, supernatural, demonic plan, that begins to put your temptation in perspective. Why is Satan tempting Jesus here in Mark 1?
Very simple. Satan wants to destroy Jesus and Satan wants to destroy God's plan to redeem humanity. It's part of a bigger plan. This wasn't just, let's see if I can get Jesus to lust.
That's not it. It's, let me see if I can get Jesus to fall so that I can destroy God's beautiful, wonderful plan for humanity. Because all the way back in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15, after Satan had rebelled and after he attempted Adam and Eve to sin. Have you read this before? Genesis 3 15, God comes to say, hey Satan, you see this puny group of people called humans?
He said, yeah. One day the descendant of Eve is going to chop your head off and destroy you. Now Satan must have laughed because Satan is a high-power, supernatural entity. We humans are weak, we're stupid, we're frail, and Satan must have laughed and said, don't you think they're going to defeat me one day? That'd be like saying to the New England Patriots, you see that pop Warner football team of nine-year-olds? One day they're going to defeat you in the Super Bowl. They just laugh.
There's no way. Satan, one day a descendant of Eve is going to defeat you. Satan began to take that seriously. In fact, if you look at pain, Eve's first child, evidently Adam and Eve and Satan thought, oh that's the descendant and it wasn't. And the human race starts to grow and there's more and more people and Satan's like, okay, which one is it now?
There's millions of them. And then Satan starts to hear these prophecies that God is giving, that out of Judah there will arise a scepter, out of this one tribe there is going to be a king. And he says, good, now I can narrow it down. It comes from the Jewish people and that's why when the Jews move into the Promised Land, Satan tries to mess up that area by planting the Nephilim, hoping that they will intermarry with the Jewish people and defile the seed of the Jews. Satan is constantly trying to attack Israel. And I bet you every time a Jewish boy is born, Satan says, is that the one? Is that the one?
Is that one? And then one day a demon comes and reports to Satan. He says, sir, he said, there are reports coming out of Nazareth that Gabriel has appeared to a teenage girl and said, your son is the one. And Satan said, I got him. And from the time Jesus was born, Satan tried to kill him. From the time Jesus was little, Satan is trying to get him to mess up morally. Because do you realize if Satan can get Jesus to sin just one time, then Jesus is no longer the spotless Lamb of God and he can't die for the sins of humanity.
So that's what's going on here. Satan is trying to destroy God's plan. The first way to fight temptation is to understand this. Satan has a plan and it is to destroy you, your testimony, your family, your soul, your generations. He wants to destroy. John 10 10, the thief Satan comes to what? Kill, steal, and destroy.
1 Peter 5 8, he is a ravenous lion wanting to destroy, wanting to devour. Listen, he's wanting to destroy families. Families in this church, godly families with a great future legacy, I believe in the future God if Jesus tarries wanted to bless this generation and this generation and this generation and use this family to serve the Lord Jesus. And daddy started making some bad decisions. And those bad decisions derailed not just him, but his whole family. And now the family and the future generations are reprobates who don't walk with Jesus.
Why? Because Satan wants to destroy families. And ladies, you're not off the hook on this. I've seen godly families with godly potential where the women went off the rail. How many of you know, in a spiritual sense, mamas have in some ways even greater influence than daddies do.
And mamas went off the rail and the whole family went off the rail. Satan wants to destroy families. Satan wants to destroy cultures. It's interesting that as cultures get into paganism, when they start falling into paganism, look at any culture around the world that gets into satanic paganism, self-mutilation always follows. We have a generation of teenage girls that are mutilating themselves, cutting themselves. Satan wants to destroy entire cultures. And that's why I'm so mad at this crazy transgender stuff.
If you're a 40-year-old man and you want to transition, have at it. But leave our kids alone. It is satanic. It is satanic to castrate our little boys and chop the breasts off of our teenage girls.
And if you're a doctor who does that, who willingly castrates our boys, you're not a human. You're a monster. That's satanic.
That's what's behind that. Satan wants to destroy families. He wants to destroy cultures.
He wants to destroy individuals. I tell you, the news is driving me crazy. Why do I keep watching this? But I was watching the news last week and there was a conservative gathering down in Florida and you always have the protesters out there. And I watched this footage.
All these conservatives are going in to talk about family and whatever, all the conservative stuff. And there's a young girl, 18, 19-year-olds outside, and she is screaming to the point that her voice is cracking. And she would be a beautiful girl, but her hair was wild. And the camera is on her face and she is screaming, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I want all of you to die. And usually that stuff makes me mad, but for the first time, I actually looked in her eyes as she's screaming that. And I said, I've seen that look before. That's not human. That's demonic.
Satan has taken a precious young girl made in the image of God with a divine destiny and somehow he has hijacked her will and he has turned her into something hideous. Have you noticed, okay, this is gonna be my chauvinism, whatever coming through. Have you noticed this? Have you noticed Satan likes to destroy beauty? Have you noticed, now this doesn't happen all the time, but it happens often. Have you noticed these beautiful Hollywood celebrity ladies, beautiful ladies, who have now said, I want to go on a reprobate lifestyle.
I'm gonna be a reprobate. And have you noticed the before and after pictures? These beautiful Hollywood celebrities after a couple months of this, they're not beautiful anymore. Francis Schaeffer said, as our culture, and I know our culture wasn't always a quote-unquote Christian culture with everybody saved, but there was a Christian worldview that underlined our culture. And he says, he said, I want you to do this. I want you to compare the art and music of a culture that had Christian underpinnings and start comparing as they get farther and farther away from that. The art gets chaotic.
The music gets cacophonous. Satan hates beauty. He wants to destroy individuals. He wants to destroy families. He wants to destroy churches. That's Satan's plan. And as you go into temptation, understand it might look good, might look pleasant, but it's satanic.
He wants to destroy. You know, I told you I love the Puritans. I've stopped really quoting a lot of, you know, current pastors and authors because the week I quote them, the next week they've fallen into sexual immorality. I'm gonna quote a bunch of old dead guys because they can't come out of the grave and commit adultery. So I'm going back to the old guys. And the Puritans loved, this is their favorite analogy, they love to compare temptation to a baited fish hook.
Thomas Manton, Thomas Brooks, all those old guys. In fact there's one Puritan author, Ann Bradstreet, who wrote, quote, the skillful fisher has different lures for different fish, but there is a hook under all of them. Satan, that great angler, hath his sundry baits for sundry tempers of men which they all lunge greedily at.
But few perceive the hook till it be too late. Couple weeks I'm gonna go trout fishing up in the mountains. I'll pass you through the fly fishing. Fly fishing is for rich Yankees who come down here. I'm just gonna take a worm and go out on some creeks and that's how I'm gonna go trout fishing, okay?
And it's interesting when you trout fish. You throw the worm and the hook in the hole and you wait there. And a trout will come and they'll nibble at that worm and long times they'll taste the hook. They know there's something weird, there's something not quite right about an earthworm and this metallic thing and they'll back off and they'll nibble a little bit more. And if you just keep that worm and that hook in there, at some point they'll be like, you know what, forget this thing and they'll just lunge and grab it. This fish is so stupid. They know something's wrong. They know this doesn't taste right and yet they keep going back at it.
But we're the same way. I know this website is gonna hook me. I can't help it. I'll just keep going back. I know this relationship is gonna destroy me and my family but I can't help it. I keep going back and if you start to understand it's Satan, the master fisherman, who has baited that hook and once he catches you he will destroy you.
That's the first way to overcome temptation. Now beloved listen to me as we wrap this thing up. You need to understand this. There are two, it seems like contradictory statements here okay. You and I have to believe in both of them. So let me give you two statements that seem contradictory but they're not.
And if you don't hear anything else I say, hear this. Number one, Satan is victorious over Satan. Not one day, no, one day he will defeat Satan. No, no, he's already defeated him. Satan is defeated. Jesus is victorious over Satan.
Are you with me on that? Not sometime in the future. Not one day he will be.
He already is. Jesus is victorious over Satan. That's number one. And number two, Satan is still very dangerous.
Wait a second, how can it be both? How can Jesus be victorious over Satan and Satan still be dangerous? Well a man named Jeremy Sutcliffe experienced my biggest nightmare. I hate snakes. Jeremy Sutcliffe of Texas was working in his garden when he came upon a diamondback rattlesnake. He took the hoe and he chopped the head off that rattlesnake. Short time later Jeremy Sutcliffe went back to dispose of the snake and the head, the decapitated head, bit him.
Sutcliffe had to have 26 doses of antivenom. He spent a week in the hospital. He almost died. His kidneys almost shut down because a snake's bite reflex can be triggered up to several hours after its death.
The head was chopped off but the head was still dangerous. And 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ crushed the head of the serpent at the cross. Jesus Christ defeated him but he is still dangerous.
He is still on the prowl. He wants to destroy you but the day is going to come when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever. Satan's time is short. Jesus is the last man standing. Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and Satan is a defeated foe.
You believe that? Oh just stand on me right now because some of y'all are still afraid of Satan. You're still afraid of what he can do to you. You're still afraid of him coming after you.
I've said this a thousand times before. Listen to me. Satan is not afraid of you. You don't frighten Satan.
Satan is not afraid of you but he is terrified of the Jesus who lives in you because at the name of Jesus demons are cast out. At the name of Jesus cancer is healed. At the name of Jesus the dead come back to life. At the name of Jesus demons flee a terror and one day at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. There's power in the name of Jesus. Let's praise the name of Jesus Christ.
Oh Jesus Jesus. Come on church sing it out. Shall Jesus help the mountains and Jesus in the streets. Jesus in the darkness over every enemy. Jesus for my family I speak the holy name Jesus. Shall Jesus help the mountains and Jesus in the streets. Jesus in the darkness over every enemy.
Jesus for my family I speak the holy name Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is power. Your name is life.
Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Your name is power. Your name is power. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows.
Your name is power. Hey church listen to me. This crazy defensive posture that we're taking it's got to stop. I know the world is dark and it's crazy. I know there's demons.
I get it. But this defensive thing of huddling together in the lifeboat saying dear Jesus come back don't let the demons come and get us and don't let the liberals hurt us. We've got to stop that. We need to have an offensive mentality that says let's go into a dark and dying world with the good news of Jesus. Let's take the battle to the enemy. That's offensive. So I want to speak this over you.
Now let me just say this because people ask this quite a bit but just got it again last week. Why is it the pastor speaks in tongues at the end of the service and he doesn't get the interpretation. I'm not speaking in tongues. I'm going to speak to you in Hebrew OK. This is a southern redneck version of biblical Hebrew OK. And this word was spoken over a man with an offensive spirit before God sent him out to take on giants and demons and Satan. God said to that man which means be bold. Be strong.
You ought to be afraid and you don't be terrified of anything. Why. Because the Lord your God who crushed the head of Satan is going to be with you everywhere you go this week. In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit we pray. Amen. God bless you and go take this world the Lord Jesus Christ.
