DEC 22 2019 | Grace on the Galilee S1E7 | Jesus Heals a Spiritual Sickness

Sea Change Church · Grace on the Galilee · "Jesus Heals a Spiritual Sickness" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · December 22, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

That was beautiful. Let's give it up for the band. Thank you. I'm Joe Brandy and I'm reading scripture and we're reading it from Mark 1 verse 21. I was going to do it dramatized because there's a demon possessed person, but then somebody asked me not to. So don't do it. Okay. Okay. Got it. Gosh. All right. I want to really bad. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. All right. And they went into, Capernaum and immediately on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching and they were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one who had authority, not like the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue, a man with an unclean spirit and, and, and he cried out, what do you have to do with us? Jesus of Nazareth, have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him saying, be silent and come out of them.

And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him and they were all amazed. And so they questioned among themselves saying, what is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him at once. His fame spread everywhere throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. The word of the Lord. You're the best man. You're the best man. Cut those Raider colors on and all that. I know you're a Raider fan, aren't you? Yeah. I'm, I don't have a team anymore. They broke my heart.

They were breaking my heart for 50 years before that. So what's the difference? Great to have you today. We extended the, um, grace on Galilee series and we're getting into the, the miracle, which one of the ones we didn't actually hit. There's three types of miracles. There was miracle over disease, miracle over physical elements like the wind. And then there's miracles over the power of darkness. And, uh, when Jesus casts spirits out, it's considered a miracle.

So we hadn't spoken about that, but I also was just, uh, really being personally, uh, touched and motivated by the scripture. As I've been looking at what is around the margin of these miracles. Uh, let me pray. And then we'll start into it. Lord Jesus, thank you for the word of God. That is rich, uh, that speaks to us. God, we pray that you would give me, uh, effective words as we communicate, uh, practical change and hope for people today. Amen.

So I want to talk today about maintaining spiritual wellness. We talk a lot about emotional wellness. These days we talk a lot about physical wellness. I would say even within the church, I hear more casual conversation about physical wellness, which is very important than I do about spiritual wellness. Think about it. Uh, when you have conversations, how many conversations in the courtyard with your friends? Are you talking about the latest?

Keto diet or your keto diet or your run up, uh, wherever you ran up Soledad and back and how quick it was versus how much you talk about your own spiritual wellness. Spiritual wellness is really not something even in the lexicon of church speak. It is something that is spoken about as we speak the common language of the faith. But rarely will you have people say, I want to be spiritually well. They'll say it in different ways. I want to get closer to God. I want to, I want to pray more. I want to do these things. And all of those things will help you be maintained spiritual wellness.

But what if we began to look at spiritual wellness in the same way we look at physical wellness and in the same way our culture now looks at emotional wellness. I want to talk today about maintaining spiritual wellness and how what we are in agreement with. This is key. How what we are in agreement. You want to write right on your notes agreement. How what we are in agreement with affects our spiritual state of well-being. The things you agree with. The things that you are for. The things that whether you're not, you might not be for them, but you do them anyways.

You are still in agreement with those things. Either allowing the work of God, these things we're in agreement with, uh, and his kingdom to be manifested in our lives. Or the work of the enemy in darkness. Whatever you are in agreement with will manifest in one way or another. I don't believe we stay still in our faith. Uh, we are either moving towards the kingdom, although there are verses like Ephesians 6, stand when you're in temptation or against attack, stand and stand firm.

But this is a different understanding of, are you moving in spiritual wellness towards in the momentum of the kingdom? Or are you being de-energized, de-energized, de-enervated into, uh, spiritual darkness? How is your spiritual wellness? And when was the last time you thought about it holistically? Here we have Jesus is healing a man from spiritual sickness. In this, uh, story, Jesus comes and there's a man who is, maybe he's physically sick.

A lot of times spiritual sickness will manifest itself holistically because we are body, mind, and spirit. You even hear that in secular culture. But secular culture seems to focus more on body and mind and not much on spirit. Although they will still give an homage to the understanding of a spirit. But God wants us to work holistically where there's a health, just like the Trinity, uh, work together of body, mind, and spirit.

So emotions or, or, or, or body and then your spirit as well. So how do we maintain that heal, that, that wholeness? And we find that one can affect the other. This man comes in, he might have been physically sick. And some people are physically sick because of a spiritual illness. The New Testament says some of you are sick because you have a spiritual condition going on. It actually says in kind of a spooky weird verse that I don't like to think about much.

Some of you have even died because of your spiritual condition. Some of you are sick because of a spiritual condition. Now this isn't even something you hear in the church much. Most people won't talk about that the things you do that you are in agreement with that affect you spiritually actually affect your mental well-being, your emotional well-being, and your physical well-being. Although if you read a lot of, you know, articles of like men's health or whatever, they talk about this connection of your physicalness and your well-being with your emotional health.

But rarely, if ever, will you ever see that it might be tied into spiritual health. Jesus is dealing with somebody here who is incredibly spiritually sick. And being able to even take an assessment, a regular physical, so to speak, or a spiritual, of where you are spiritually, I think is very important. This guy comes in and for one reason or another, he has continued on a path of spiritual sickness to the point where he has been possessed.

Let's just go through the scripture to make sure the scripture stays primary. I want to read through it again and then we're going to get into it. And then we went into Capernaum. Now Capernaum is where Jesus healed Peter's mother. It is where Peter, mother-in-law, it is where Peter is from, is where I believe Philip and Andrew are also from. It is a city where his disciples were. It was about 1,500 people. There was a synagogue there.

We were most recently there in that synagogue. It is also a place that Jesus said, woe to you if I had done the miracles in Sodom. Now Sodom has a reputation. I don't know if you know that. It's actually in popular culture as well. If I had done the miracles in Sodom that I have done in your city, they would have repented and turned to me a long time ago. That is a radical statement. That was the one where fire and brimstone came down, whether it be from a volcano, whether it be from the heavens, however God decided to do it.

But the entire city was destroyed because of a spiritual sickness. It's interesting that just as an insight, when we were driving through there, there's actually pillars of salt all over Israel where the ground has receded, the dirt has receded because of a flood or one thing or another, but the salt has formed into these pillars. And so there's a whole valley we drove through by the Dead Sea where you will just see these pillars of salt.

Remember it says that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. We actually saw that there are pillars. They'll be like this high, these pillars of salt, and it was something that was regular. So as you can imagine them going through the pillars of salt, he looks back, no wife, another pillar of salt. This is Capernaum. And cities actually have a spiritual sickness, or cities, because they're made up of people, can be spiritually healthy or they can be spiritually sick.

This is true for nations. And what a nation is in agreement with will affect whether it's moving in kingdom light or whether it's moving in darkness. And it'll also affect the health and the mental health and emotional health of an entire area. We see Jesus. This is normative understanding of Jesus when he speaks about cities and people and spiritual health. And immediately, that's a key word, immediately from Mark, he talks about immediately.

And the reason it isn't Jesus was in a hurry, that is meant to show you that God has a purpose. Jesus knew what he was doing. He was about his business and about his father's business. But you'll also see the word with immediacy used here in a moment as we continue reading. On the Sabbath, big day, circle the Sabbath. Sabbath is a day that had meaning. It is a day for the Jews where you were, it really was about rules.

You could do certain things. You couldn't do other things. You couldn't even heal somebody on the Sabbath. They had made all these rules around God's law to weaponize the law of God so that they could control other people through a series of burdensome law, extra laws. And so the Sabbath is really important. And Jesus intentionally goes into the Sabbath and then he begins to teach. Now, you don't teach in the Sabbath unless you are somebody.

So Jesus was somebody. He was a rabbi. He was known as a rabbi. And he speaks on the Sabbath. And he entered the synagogue, which is interesting. They use the word the and not their. Later on, they personalize the synagogue by saying this was their synagogue. Now, and here it says the synagogue. So the reason that I believe that they do that is because there is a differentiation oftentimes between when Jesus says this is my father's house, it is being treated as if it is my father's house, or this is a den of robbers and liars, and it has nothing to do with me, that particular religious body.

It is drawing a definition there. And so he enters into the synagogue, but later on we see their synagogue. And just a quick note, I think for pastors, for elder boards, for staff, for volunteers, for us as a church, is this their church, according to God, or is this his church? And we want to continue to be in churches that are about God's business and not creating our own business. It says, and he entered the synagogue and was teaching.

And they were astonished. That's a key word. They were astonished. Later on it says that they were amazed by what he did. But astonished means they're like, wow, that's some good stuff right there. That movie was great. Oh man, I am astonished. I haven't seen a movie like that for a while. But when he heals the guy later on, it says they're amazed. And actually the Greek word there, being amazed, means they are like blown away.

Like when I was in sixth grade, I was at Palomar camp, and we had a shooting star, but it ended up being like a meteor. And it seemed like it was three miles away. And it felt like the size of the sun. We were on like an evening hike, and it went across the sky. And I was in sixth grade. I mean, it was still to this day the most incredible natural thing that I've ever seen. And I still remember that. And I was amazed.

There's a difference. So they were astonished at first. They're like, that Jesus, have you heard that Jesus? He's good. Later on they're like, dude, that Jesus, wow. Like they are amazed. There's a big difference by being interested in Jesus and thinking he's a pretty cool dude and being amazed by Jesus. We see that. And there's a change in the congregational understanding of who Jesus is. Are you just cool with Jesus?

Or are you amazed by Jesus? Do you put yourself in a place where you can be amazed by Jesus? Continuing on. They were astonished at this point. For he taught them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. What does that mean? Back in the day, in order to show that you were an awesome scribe, and the reason they used the word scribe there is because these guys were really good at copying books. They were super into books.

They were into God's book and the law, but then they were into all the other teachings around the law, and you became really well known by your textual criticism of what the law says. Not that you actually lived it out. Jesus says, you know, we're basically walking tablets, that we are the gospel. There's all this language, but what they were into is scribing out what the latest teacher said. And so when they got up there and taught, they would say things like this.

Well, I want you to know, and then they would try to find the most well-known scholars. So they'd say, you know, the law means this, and Joe Brandy spoke, and he said, or they'd go way back to another scholar, and they would say, you know, 500 years ago, you know, it wouldn't be a Josephus or whoever it was. They would just constantly be referring to this scholar, and that scholar, and this guy. Jesus didn't do that.

Jesus straight up walked up and says, you've heard it said this by all of his people, and that, you've heard them say this, but let me tell you what I say. And they're like, dude, you're not referencing anyone. Except himself, right? Imagine someone coming in and blowing up the whole pulpit, the whole way everybody did something, and teaching with authority. You've heard it said this, but I tell you this. Like all these people had built a religion upon what man thinks about God's stuff.

And Jesus comes in, he says, let's knock all that down. Let me tell you who the true God is. There is a big difference between wowing the crowds with your scribely knowledge, and talking with authority and power from the word of God, and letting the word of God stand on its own. There's a big difference. It says, that you teach as one who has authority, and not as the scribes. Now this authority word is really important, because with authority, you're going to see that it talks about Jesus has power and authority.

Now a thief might have power, but he doesn't have authority. A judge who, you know, who is a weak judge or somebody, or a parent who never disciplines their children, might have the authority, but they have no power. You ever seen a family where like the seven-year-old runs the family? Just go to the airport. You know, it's not hard to find. Ah! You know? Power and authority. Jesus worked with power and authority, and in our lives, you know, Satan wants to keep you from knowing one.

He wants you to work all in power, but no authority. So we use all the tricks of our trade, our, you know, passive aggressiveness, or whatever. You have power. Whatever power, we'll use it, but no authority. He wants to make sure that you don't understand one of those. You have power, power, and authority, and understanding, and claiming that in the name of Jesus, but not as the scribes did. Continuing on. And immediately, hmm, there's that word again.

This time it's not Jesus immediately. This time it shows a counterattack. This time it shows a plan. This time it shows that immediately Satan was responding to something that Jesus was doing, and you will see these counterattacks immediately, immediately, and then Jesus doesn't react, Jesus responds. Immediately, there was in where? There, there, there, synagogue. Now it's interesting, when they use there now, when, he doesn't use the term there, it was the, now it's there as soon as it starts talking about there's a demon-possessed dude who has a spiritual sickness in their synagogue.

Now was he part of their synagogue? Maybe. Maybe this is drawing the correlation by using the term there to identify a synagogue, spiritual sickness, that actually all of Israel actually had, as Jesus talks about it, and the person that was a part of that synagogue, or, and I looked at the Greek and I couldn't really tell, if maybe he was just out on the street and this guy walked into their synagogue. Now it could be saying that, but looking at how they used the earlier, I think there's a reason that the, the original translation speaks to the point where it says the, and then it goes to there.

I think it's trying to draw a connection to say there was a spiritual sickness in that synagogue. There was a spiritual sickness, and you see this all, I mean this is backed up over and over again through the entire Old Testament, through the prophets. It's not a reach to actually say that. It actually has a lot of backing. The scribes and Joe Brandy would tell you this. Just kidding. And immediately there was, and it says, and he cried out.

He picks a fight with Jesus. He actually says, and it's not, once again, this is in the original language, it's in no translation. There's actually a Greek word used. It actually says, he says, ha! There's a word. It says, he used the word, he says, ha! Now, I don't know why they didn't put that in the translation, but it was a mocking term. And it's interesting, when he cries out, it's like, oh Jesus, what have you do?

He actually starts by leaning in and attacking Jesus. We'll talk about that here in a second. What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nathar? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him. Circle rebuke. You can either be in agreement, or you can rebuke. You can be in agreement with things, but certain things, we don't want to be in agreement with, and we need not to just let them hang out.

You ever watch the playoffs, the basketball, and you have one team that's better than another team, and at the halftime, you'll hear the people say, man, they're just, they're such a better team. They're just letting this team hang around. That's the term. Hang around is the term. Just let them hang around. You got anything that's just hanging around? Anything you haven't rebuked? Jesus did not allow for clingers. He did not allow hanger honors.

He would rebuke things in the moment because he didn't want to have agreement with things that were not of his nature, that were not of the nature of the kingdom. Are you in agreement, or have you rebuked things? It says that he rebuked him. He said, be silent and come out of him. Now, why would he say be silent after the demon said something that was true? Once again, it has to do with timing. Immediately, immediately, Jesus is going to do things about his timing.

He is the master of time. He is the chronological, you know, God that knows timing, and Satan loves to mess out timing. In your life, whether, you know, especially with, you know, engaged couples, or in, whether it be marriage, or a financial decision, or with our own personal sexuality, he loves to mess up timing. He, if he can, he can have you do all the right things and convince you that you're doing all the right things, but if he can get you to do it in the wrong order, many times that's considered sin.

They come out, and he's trying to push Jesus into this thing. He's trying to cause a problem, and if you go into a synagogue where people are like, hey, that guy thinks he's legit. I mean, that guy, he's got some good teaching, and all of a sudden, if you're trying to cause a stir, what would you do? You'd send a demonic protester in to say, to just stir it up, right? What's the worst thing that you could say at a, you know, when Jesus, early on, this is like very early on in his first three years of ministry, so early, he's starting to get a little bit of attention.

You walk in, you go, and it's a dude. They don't know it's a demon at the moment. It's just a guy crying out, and he goes, you're God. You're the Holy One of God. Imagine how that's going to fly in the synagogue. Not going to go well. He comes in, he's trying to create a problem for Jesus. He's creating a problem with the timing. Jesus is going to reveal this very thing, but he's going to do it in his time. How's your timing?

How's your chronology with God? And realize that this demon is picking a fight with Jesus. Bad call. Continuing on, be silent, come out of him. This is called the messianic secret. You can Google messianic secret if you want to know why Jesus says, stop talking when they say true things. And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him. And they were all astonished? No. Amazed. Why?

So they questioned among themselves, saying, what is this? They had no idea what it is. And I like on occasion being overwhelmed by God. Like, whoa. If you're aware and in control of everything in your spiritual life, let me just say, you're probably not living the risk element of faith enough. Maybe just step out 1% over that. What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands unclean spirits. That exousian is that word there, authority.

He commands even the unclean spirits. And they obey him. Obey. Do you think they wanted to obey? No. But they are forced to obey. Let me say that you as a believer in Christ with the Holy Spirit in God's timing with his power and his direction have the same ability to rebuke, to bind, to release, to unleash in heaven. The question is, do you want it? How healed do you want to be? This is a great question. They obeyed him and at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding regions of Galilee.

You really never see Jesus picking a fight with a demon like this. Usually somebody comes to him. Jesus doesn't pick fights with the enemy. That's why I struggle sometimes with church models that are always picking fights with the enemy. We're going to go pick a fight with the enemy. We're going to go, you know, and sometimes you need to do spiritual things and to have spiritual health, but sometimes, excuse me, we need to be careful that we're not trying to pick fights with the enemy.

So we look at this. Jesus heals a man from a spiritual sickness and this is considered a miracle. Getting into the notes now. I would say this, that society, this isn't in your notes, but it will, but I added it. Our society, when it comes to spiritual sickness, downplays this element of holistic living. We, only in the last, I would say, 20 years, 30 years, have we really even validated emotional sickness, right? You know, before 30 years ago, to go to counseling, you just don't do that unless you're broke.

Corrine, one of our counselors here, said she worked at a clinic 25 years ago and they had a back door for the pastors to come in. Like, really? Like, the pastor needs to, like, secretly go to counseling because they're supposed to be, like, this perfect model. We live in a society that downplays spiritual wellness, that doesn't even talk about it, and actually is affronted if you mention we might have a spiritual sickness.

Although I would believe, I believe, that much of the emotional sickness you see in our society today, on the streets, people doing things, violent acts in our society, are actually, have an emotional component, but it is actually because of a spiritual sickness. You'll hear over and over again, I don't know if you've noticed this, people do horrific things and then when they're being questioned if they get caught by the police, they say, well, I just, what did they hear?

They heard a bunch of voices speaking to them. What's so interesting here is Jesus also heard a voice, this man cried out, but we live in a society that I believe has a huge spiritual sickness, but they don't know they're sick. I believe that we have a fourth stage spiritual sickness that no one is diagnosing. Now, I say our society because we tend to think that our society knows best. We're only one society amidst a lot of societies in this world and if you go to places like India, you go to places like Africa, I think it's a little bit of societal snobbery to say, well, they're just behind us a little bit, right?

They believe in hocus pocus, but come on, we're a scientific society. We have that kind of snobbery about other societies. There are more people in the world who believe in spiritual sickness and spiritual powers in the world way more than there are people who don't, but we scoff at those people and say that they are not on the same plane of us as understanding. We do the same thing with chronology. We have this idea that anything that is progressing is progressing in the right direction.

Have you ever gone on a road and gone the wrong way and then you're like, oh my gosh, I'm 30 minutes down the wrong road. I'm going the wrong way. Just because we're moving doesn't mean we're progressing in the right direction. We feel the same way with the thing I think, you know, C.S. Lewis called its chronological snobbery, that you look back at any other century before us and the things that they thought are backwards compared to us.

Why? Because we've moved. Assuming that every time you progress, you are progressing in the right direction. We need to be, especially when looking at spiritual sickness, we need to look beyond Western culture, number one. I've put myself in these places. I've seen people with these same types of issues. I've prayed with people that have fallen onto the ground and convulsed and screamed out. I've actually seen this happen in other places.

And then as well, if you go to India or Thailand or you think about other places that have come before us, study other cultures. Study these things and begin to think, do they actually have something to say to us? Or just because we live in America and because we're scientific, are we right? Understanding that our society downplays just like in the same way we downplayed emotional sickness. In the 1950s, we completely downplayed emotional sickness.

And we're doing the same today with spiritual sickness. At least many of us are. I want to bring this back to you that the main reason I'm speaking about this is so you can diagnose yourself. How's your spiritual health? And what are you in agreement with? Are you in agreement with things that make you healthy spiritually? Or are you in the things that make you unhealthy spiritually? What goes in your eyes? What allow your mind to think about?

What you allow yourself to hear? What you allow yourself to speak? Where you allow your feet to go? All these things have to do with a spiritual wellness. Moving on. For one reason or another, this man has become a host for a parasitic viral spirit. When it comes to spiritual things, like attracts like. I will say that. Gee, this man, for one reason or another, had become a host. He had agreed so much with darkness, and there's many reasons.

It would take a weekend conference to go over it. Many reasons people can have a spiritual sickness. They can, just like a virus, a virus can get on your clothes, but if it doesn't get into your system, you know, somebody might sneeze on you, but if it doesn't get into your system, you're a host for the, you're a host on, you know, exterior has a host for that virus. Someone touches you, they can still get sick, and you could easily be affected by that, but unless it gets inside of you, then you actually go from being a, something that has the spiritual sickness on the outside as opposed to on the inside.

This man had become in such agreement, because agreement is the road to becoming intoxicated with the virus. I guess that's not the right word, but he had become a host for a parasitic viral spirit. Now, Judas did the same thing. At the Last Supper, Judas, it says, finally does the final act. You have to know that Satan was influencing him for a very long time. Satan was outside of him, influencing his mind, influencing his thinking, doing all kinds of things on the outside.

He was giving him all this pressure, but at one point, he finally agrees where he's sitting at the table with Jesus. He had already made the deal. He had already done all these things in agreement. He knew what he was going to do, but when he was sitting at the table, there was something in that moment of agreement where he had so much agreement and went from an exterior oppression to a possession. He was in so much agreement that Satan, it actually says, Satan himself, not just a demon, Satan himself, enters physically into his spirit, that he all of a sudden becomes possessed by this spirit.

What did it have to do with? It had to do with agreement. Agreement. Agreement to the point of actually turning yourself over with complete agreement. Now, you'll see this in abusive relationships. Not where someone is possessing someone, but you will see a person in abusive relationships so many times where they will just stop thinking their own thoughts. The person who is the abuser oftentimes becomes so powerful in their life that they not only abuse them, they affect them, they cause them to do what they want.

This is the exact same thing that we see happening here spiritually. And when it comes to spiritual thing, like attracts like. It says here, what do you have to do with what? Me? It says, no, what do you have to Jesus? What do you have to do with us? I want to say that spirits are attracted to spiritual places, and if the devil gets a foothold in your life, he's going to call for reinforcements. Guaranteed. They congregate.

They don't just hang out solo on their own. They congregate, and they attract more and more. This is why when Jesus speaks to the one man who was demon-possessed, he says, what's your name? What does the guy answer? Legion. Was that a thousand? I think that's a thousand Roman soldiers. Is that right, Jim? Thank you. A thousand Roman soldiers. I always go to Jim for my legion or anything about Rome. Yeah. A thousand demons are there.

Why? Because there was agreement. And once you give a foothold, the enemy always wants to make a foothold and turn it into a stronghold that we see here. Moving on. On the next page, it says, so how does, at least on my page, how does one become spiritually sick or even possessed? I said it was about agreement. I said it's the same way that we become physically sick or emotionally sick. You can become emotionally sick by continuing to agree with thoughts, I'm no good.

I'm not worthy. I'm a loser. This kind of dark thinking that we see, it's prevalent in elementary school now, middle school, Harry will tell you, and high school. It is somewhat cool to hate your life these days, to speak these negative thoughts. I told you I was in Home Depot recently and I was talking to a guy and I said, hey, where is the, I think it was detergent or something like that. And he goes, oh, it's on 37.

And then he goes, oh no, 34. And he hit himself. He had like a stick and he, I forgot what it was, he was doing something and he hit himself with it. And I was like, dude, I just want the detergent, bro. Like, he said, I'm so dumb. I said, dude, you're not dumb. You just, you made a mistake. And he goes, yes, I am. And he hit himself again with it. Now I'm a customer. I'm sitting there and the guy is beating himself with a stick.

Dude, that is a deep wound. And that agreement, if you continue to agree with things like that, I'm no good, no one loves me, no one likes me. This happens sometimes because there was a trauma. Whether it be, you know, children have lots of different traumas, I won't name them all, but they have traumas. And after a trauma occurs, it sets up the opportunity, the temptation, to begin agreeing with your own understanding of why the trauma existed.

If you were assaulted as a child, you know, so many people that have had that happen begin to think, I'm no good, I'm dirty, I'm this, I'm that, which is not the truth at all. But they begin to have agreement with these things to the point where their entire lives, the enemy wants to come in and be that abuser. He wants to come in and basically, excuse the words, but I've worked in, with ministry of the prostitution and in Rosecrans, he wants to pimp you out as much as he can to negative thinking, negative thoughts, negative actions, and to continue to treat you and beat you and be your abuser.

If you be in agreement, if you're going to be in agreement with him until one day you have the ability to stand up and say, no, I rebuke that, I no longer receive that, I need to recalibrate my entire thinking as we change. This is what we see happening here. It's about agreement. Romans 6.16 in your note says, don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin, right there, that's a spiritual sickness, being a slave to sin, which will lead you to death.

It actually leads you to eternal death. That's why it's considered a sickness, that's why it's considered a miracle because sin is a living organism that will infect you and lead you to death. So when Jesus cures you from a spiritual sickness, even through salvation, salvation is a miracle because you are being healed from eternal death. That is why this spiritual sickness is considered one of the miracles of Jesus because he's actually healing something that will lead you to death.

It says, or if it's not leading you to death, it'll lead you to obedience which leads to righteousness. Once again, what I wrote this morning was I want to talk about maintaining spiritual wellness by either allowing the work of God with what we agree with and his kingdom to be manifested in your life or the work of darkness. A spiritual assessment, how's your spiritual health going? Are you in agreement with things that you're just letting them hang around?

But that team ain't hanging around just to, you know, clap and give you the trophy at the end. They want a buzzer beater in the final seconds of the game and people are going to be dropping their jaw and they can't believe how did that person go down? Have you ever seen these people, especially pastors in my realm, where all of a sudden out of nowhere they just go down? Why is that? Because they've been letting hang our honors.

They've been letting things, agreeing with darkness behind the scenes. Darkness likes to work in darkness and they only come out of the darkness when it seems like to be a tactical reason to do so, but they want to walk in darkness as much as they can. So you see that we either lead to righteousness. I'm going to just finish up the notes and end this. I want to define the difference between a foothold and a stronghold.

I talked a little bit about that. I won't go into that, but a great verse for that you'll see there is Ephesians 4.26. Be angry, but don't sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil what a foothold. It's all battle language from the first century. Footholds are meant to become strongholds. What did they do? If you've ever watched Lord of the Rings, in order to make sure that you could not climb up the wall, they put oil on the walls so that you could not climb up the wall because they would try to get one or two or three or five people into the city and go open the gate.

You've seen the movies. They put oil on the wall and if that didn't work, they have a match and they light the walls on fire. They were stone walls. When was the last time you were so concerned about your spiritual wellness that you lit the walls of your life on fire to save your life? Because it just takes one enemy to get over the wall into your life through that thing that you're just letting hang around to spin open the door and then boom, you don't even need a Trojan horse.

It's just been opened up straight in and then they come in. I want to say just quickly as we look at this, something that was interesting to me before we close is that this healing happened due to a tactical mistake by the demon. The devil, by the way, makes mistakes. Do you think he would still crucify Jesus if he had a chance to do it again? No. Bad call. Did you ever realize that was a really bad call? That he woke up the next day and he's like, ugh, knew it.

Knew he was going to rise from the dead but I should listen to myself. We have to realize that the devil, because he is negative, is fallible. He has cracks in his armor. He's fallible. He's living in death. He's moving towards death and he makes mistakes all the time. He lives in darkness. He lives in lies. You know what's so interesting? I really believe in my heart the devil still thinks he's going to win. He is so, he thinks he's going to win.

Somehow he's going to pull it out. You know, he thinks he's going to buzzer beat it at the very end of the game. He lives in such lies. He doesn't know he's a defeated foe. I have a friend that prays devil. You know you're a defeated foe. I'm like, no he doesn't. He thinks he's going to win and he makes mistakes all the time. Mistake number one, picking a fight with Jesus. He rolled up on Jesus. Ha! And then he plays the victim.

What are you going to do with us, Jesus? Like, and it's so passive aggressive. It's so classic, you know. Total victim mentality. Using it to weaponize victimhood. He does that. And he picks a fight with him and then he plays the victim. And he says, have you come to destroy us? Yes. I want you to know the answer to that is yes. Jesus has come to destroy you and he will destroy you. And it says in John, 1 John 3, 8. It says, he committeth sin as of the devil.

For the devil sins and has been a sinner from the beginning. For this purpose, listen to this, read this. And by the way, you can put your name there next to it. For this purpose, I've got to find my verse. For this purpose, the Son of God, Jesus, and Harry, and Chris and Dave, and Keith, are manifested that we might destroy the works of the devil. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. And so, you remember those erector sets when we were kids?

We used to build things with kids. We had these things called Lincoln Logs. They were so cool. If you're a parent, get your kids something they can build. It's a really cool thing. So we had Lincoln Logs and we were always sitting on the floor making stuff and playing with stuff. It was so awesome. We had these things called bikes. I don't know if anybody knew what they were. Yeah, no, bike, Harry. Yeah, we'd get on it.

No, it's, yeah, right. I think I saw that on a video game once. It says, for this purpose, yeah, forgot, oh, I was gonna say, we were building things. Make sure what you're building in your life, the framework of your life that you're building is based on things of righteousness. What are you building? Or we continue to let things hang around. Now, here's the conclusion. Due to the rebuke of Jesus, I think this is in your notes, due to the rebuke of Jesus, who acts not only with power, but also with exousian, with authority, power and authority, the works of the devil are destroyed, demonic territory was lost, and power was surrendered.

This is how you want to live. The enemy has bulwarks. If you're a Christian, if you're trying to follow God, even if you're not a Christian, he's always trying to, it's about territory. It's a territorial battle. The primary, the place that he really wants to win, the gold standard is your heart. That's what he wants. He wants your heart. But he'll take any territory, right? He'll take your house, he'll take your TV set, he'll take your music collection, he'll take your addictions.

Whatever you have, he wants territory. And if you could put a map of the terra firma or the geography of your life, how much does the enemy hold? You know how much it is. Be honest with yourself. And are you willing to go against that and to say, I rebuke that? So, how do we let the enemy not have authority in our lives? How do we allow God more opportunity? You've got to set your walls on fire. You've got to pour oil over those things, and you do it very quickly, you do it very easily.

First, you rebuke that thing. You just physically, Jesus spoke it out. So be by yourself. Just say, I rebuke that anger. I had a disagreement earlier this week, and I felt all this temptation to get really mad and to act out. I could do this, and I thought, that's not going to go well for me if I do that. And I just kind of thought through everything, you know, where I kind of stamp around and be mad and be that guy.

Or I could do the right thing. And I said, you know, I'm just going to rebuke that. I actually ended up doing the right thing. It worked out well. Rebuke. Repent if you need to. Repentance, I mean, that just, that'll set your walls on fire. That'll put the oil on the walls. That'll give you territory back immediately. And then recalibrate. How am I going to change? What is it going to take? Where am I not going to go anymore?

What am I going to do? Rebuke, repent, recalibrate. This is the way to go in 2020. We want to see this church take more ground in 2020. A double portion of everything that we've done to this point. I want to see it all happen again in a year in your life. Your emotional wellness, your spiritual wellness, your physical wellness. Amen? Let's stand if we would. If you extend your hands, I want to pray as a prayer team comes forward.

If you need prayer today, you can do it. I want to also mention Ralph and Gail here today. I got divorced 41 years ago and got remarried this week. Here. It's the third time that's happened in our church. A 27-year divorce, I got remarried at 35 and 41. So that's like, right? Really, I mean, to stand here and to do that, it's just so powerful. It's super powerful. You never see that happen. We've seen it three times in seven years.

Never. It's powerful. I want to bless you. Let's extend your hands. Lord Jesus, I bless these people. We rebuke the works of the enemy. We want to destroy the works of the enemy. We want to rebuke, we want to repent for the things that we have been in agreement with because it's easy or because we like it or because we get a payoff. We speak to the darkness. We say in the name of Jesus, be gone. Be silent. Nope, be silent.

Nope. Nope. Be silent. Done. That when those thoughts come, we say, no, be silent. No, you don't have a seat at this table. You have no seat at my table. And Jesus said, they would have a desire, God, to make our walls of our life on fire, God, as a hedge of protection. That there would be no foothold. That there would be no stronghold. And so we send this army of God's consolation out with a new hope, a new desire to spread the fame of Jesus and the love of God that dwells richly in their hearts.

We bless and we send them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.