9991--Tom Marshall--Principalities and Power_128k

00:00:00 Speaker: Was always a bit embarrassing. I think they'll tell you more about the kindliness of the heart of the person who's speaking than the person who's speaking about. So take with a grain of salt everything except the bit about the armchair. I was very surprised that it hadn't any bore. Perhaps I'll get it back. The area of our corporate struggle is identified in terms of what you could call the principalities and powers. In Ephesians six twelve, Paul says, we do not struggle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the world forces of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. And I want to focus our attention a little this morning upon this whole area of what is meant by the principalities and powers, because I want to tell you something. They rule the society you live in. They dominate the town, the borough where your fellowship is. They are the reason why you substantially why you do not have revival where you where you are now. I know there's an area of personal preparation that's needed. God's dealing with that here. God's dealing deeply with that. But there's another area that also has to be dealt with. And if that is not dealt with, no matter how holy and how godly and how dedicated the lives of God's people are, we will still not get the move of God's Spirit that God purposes to bring. And that's because we're against something out there in society, right? I want you to turn to the book of Colossians. I just want to give you a very quick, but I hope, useful study into just what we face. Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one and verse sixteen. Paul is talking in this passage, this great Christological, uh, passage about Christ, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him that is, in Christ, in him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Christ is the source, the executive agent, and the object, the goal of all creation. John says in his prologue. Without him, nothing was made that was made. All the potentials of creation were in and through and for our Christ. Hallelujah! And he holds everything together. The word hold together is a Greek word from which we get our English word systems. So we might say, what Paul is saying is that creation is systematized through Christ and in Christ, and the systems of the world are one aspect of what Paul means in the New Testament by the principalities and powers. God's law for creation has two aspects one what we call natural law, the laws of nature. The second, the norms of culture and society that man shares in developing. So the creation that Paul is speaking about as systematized in Christ, includes all the structures of the society. We live in a school, a government department, a business firm, a language, a family, the educational disciplines, all the structures of society are included in what the New Testament refers to as the principalities and powers. You have to understand that these are creatures in their own right. They are created realities in their own right. Now, we recognize in law even this, and it is not a legal fiction. A registered company, for example, is an entity quite separate from the people who formed it. All those people could die. The company goes on. There was a recorded case of a of a company annual meeting in France during the war, and a bomb fell on the entire shareholders and they were all wiped out. Didn't affect the company one bit. It just went on. Now that's a legal recognition of something that is an actuality. It is something on its own. Now, for example, well, let me give you an example. Some years ago we had on the coast a Baptist minister from London who had come out to New Zealand to recuperate. He'd gone through a kind of a spiritual burnout. And while he was there, God did a real work of restoration and healing. And that they brought us out. We got to know him very well, a lovely brother. And the night before he left to go home, we were sitting in my study and he was talking about his childhood, and much of the things that he was hurting over was the lack of fathering. His father had been an executive in the London Transport Board, had risen to the head of that great corporation has got an OBE or MB from the Queen for his public services. But he'd sacrificed everything to his career. And so he was this man of fifty years of age, still hurting over the lack of a father whose life had been taken away from him by the London Transport Board. And while we were speaking, he took off a gold watch he was wearing around his, around his wrist and he said, Tom, he said, you know, that's all that's left of fifty years of my father's life. My heart sank. I thought, what is the London Transport Board that sucks fifty years of a man's life out of him and pensions him off with a gold watch. What is it now? It is not flesh and blood. It is not the people who are there because they weren't there twenty years ago. Another twenty years they'll have gone. But the corporation goes on and on, and it uses people and spits people out and shapes people and and affects people. What is it? It is a created reality. It is a principality and power or power. It is a ruler, an authority. It has a life of its own, a culture of its own, and it impacts upon people. I spent the last fifteen, twenty years of my working life in a in a government, uh, educational institute, and I learned an awful lot about principalities and powers. I learned, for example, some of the things the principality and power does. It never makes a mistake. Have you ever noticed that government department never makes a mistake? Either it's not a mistake at all or somebody else made it. now. Why has that kind of thing happened? It is an influence of a creative reality that we live under those sea and people. God's people are suffering. They're oppressed by those things. Now, the first thing to understand is that they were originally part of God's good creation. God made the world to be formed and formed in that way. Otherwise, it would fall into chaos. So these principalities and powers, they exist because of God's creative ordinance in the first place. I'll tell you something about that. Brothers. Go watch. You know, we prayed that night that had become a symbol of his servitude. About a week after he left, I got a letter from him. He said, after that night in your study, he said, I went down the next morning. Just before we left, I went down to the beach. He was living on the coast at romantic and he said, I waded out into the water as far as I could go. And he said, I often throw gold watches away. But I took that gold watch in my hand, and I flung it as far out into the sea as it could go. You want to go fishing for a gold watch? You know where to go. And he said, I knew I was free. And he said, don't ask me the theology of this, but somehow I knew that somewhere in the universe my father had come free. He was up in a rama before he left, and he bought another watch, much less expensive watch. And he engraved on the back the date and his name set free. Hey, that's. That's the effect of a principality. Now we all are affected by these things. You see, what has happened is that in the fall, Man lost his dominion mandate over creation. God's will for man was that he should be fruitful and fill the earth, as our brother said last night, and subdue it. God gave man a creation and dominion mandate over the world. But when man sinned, man lost that dominion mandate. And two things happened. And we need to be clear about these two things. The first thing that happened, the first or the not the first in time, but the the first in the order, we're going to mention it here. The first thing is that the powers became also fallen. The fall of mankind was cosmic in its effect. All creation suffered from that fall. Therefore, all of man's culture at all of man's organization. All these creatures are fallen. They share in man's fallenness. And now they seek to hold man under and to separate man from God. Listen, there is a fallenness about all the powers. And I want to tell you something. Your church in these terms is also a power. And therefore it also shares in the fallenness of the powers. I've been astonished many times to see in Elderships, for example, people doing on behalf of a church totally unethical things that they would never dream of doing in their own personal lives. And I wonder why. What is it? The Bible makes it very clear it's a principality. Our enemy is not flesh and blood, but it is principalities and powers. And the first drive of any principality is to stay in existence. I remember a certain Prime minister, ex prime minister of ours saying on television one time the first response, what's the first responsibility of a government, you'd say to govern? It's an art. He said the first responsibility of a government is to stay in power. The drive of a principle. It will do anything to survive. If I was to go home after this conference and say to my people, God has spoken to me, we are now to wind up Capital Christian Center, sell all our property, give all our money away and that's the finish. There will be a hell. But I'd ask myself, why would that mean that I could no longer fellowship with other believers? Now mean I can no longer minister anywhere? Anywhere? Not at all. Does that mean that any of those brothers and sisters are affected that way? Not at all. What is howling? What is howling is the principality reality we've created to it. The Calvary Christian Center and I recognize that it also has a fallenness about it. And if I went back and said that you know what to do, it would do its darned best to get me out of it so it could survive. You'd soon know then what you're struggling against. And if that happens, brothers, sisters, hear me. If that happens to you as well, it might as well. It might. Well, you hold this in your heart that there's not people who will hurt you. It's not people who are your enemy. It is the powers. It is the principalities. Because they also, even the religious ones, share in the fullness of man's sin. Now, secondly, there is something even more serious than this. Because into the lost dominion over the world, that man forfeited by his sin came the devil. The Bible calls Satan the ruler of the demons, the archon of the demons. And what has happened is that the archon of the demons has become the archon of this world. He is called in John fourteen the ruler of this world. One John five nineteen says, the whole world and the the word is used is cosmos. The whole world system, and has all the principalities and powers lie in the hands of the evil one. So do you see the principalities and powers? We're touching two dimensions. We're touching the dimension of fallen creaturehood, and we're touching the dimension of demonic spiritual entities. And they go together. So we have behind the fallenness of the principalities, we find the organized opposition based on the demonic power that is against the will of God. And that is the combined Bind force that set against the the Church of God in the world today. That's why we have problems in this area. And until we recognize the real nature of the problem, I believe we're fighting in the dark. Right. So the opposition in the world today comes to God's will comes from these sources a sinful, rebellious man, individuals. Secondly, fallen principalities, the cosmos, the world system, and thirdly, the spirituals of wickedness. Paul says in Ephesians six twelve, right. That's the bad news. Now for the good news. I was delighted, I really was so glad that we sang that song Lord, make Calvary real to me. I was actually that goes way back to my my Bible class days. I think it's a new song. It's a very old one. I used to sing that when we were fifteen years old. I sang it, I guess, in a different way. Last night I said, Lord, I want you to make Calvary real to these brothers and sisters in the whole dimensions of its godly wisdom and mighty redeeming power. You see, we place such limits on Calvary in first Corinthians two six. There's a very interesting passage that I come back to many, many times. First Corinthians chapter two. Paul is speaking about wisdom and he says, we do speak wisdom amongst those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age have understood. Because if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Now the rulers of this age that Paul is speaking about here are the spirituals of wickedness. He's talking here about the principalities and powers, the ones who engineered the death of Jesus on the cross. And what he's saying is, there was a hidden wisdom in the cross that if the devil had imagined for one moment what was in that he would have moved heaven and earth to make sure nobody ever crucified Christ. Listen, he would have felled every tree in Palestine rather than to make a cross. If he'd understood, if he'd dreamt the wisdom that there was in the cross of Christ. Beloved, I believe there is a desperate, desperate need for us to recover the centrality and the power of the cross of Jesus. It's. almost disappeared. I've been to Easter conventions where the last thing was ever mentioned was that Jesus died on the cross and rose again. Now, I've got no problems with any of the things that were taught. I'm sure that all of them were spiritual and useful and necessary. But, beloved, if ever we depart from the one source of our power and our victory, and that's the cross of Jesus, we are lost. One of the reserves that I always have in terms of, uh, much of our understanding of human nature and deeper life, teaching and inner healing and so on. And listen, I, I teach that and I function in that myself. One of the reserves I always have, I say we must never, never use it as a means to bypass the cross, because if we even suggest that there is a way of solving problems and being sanctified and being made whole, that bypasses the cross of Christ, we're leading people down a dead alley. It will not work. God's answer to man's needs always lie in these two things that are never separated and can never be added to. One is the work of the cross and the other is the work of the Holy Spirit. And they always, always go together. And beloved, in terms of the victory of Christ over the powers. Calvary is where it happened. Do you understand? You see that Jesus lived in his humanity, right in the midst of the powers. It was no accident that he lived in a nation that was oppressed by a foreign political power. He lived in Palestine when it was occupied by the Roman Roman armies. He lived under an economic system that held people down in grinding poverty. That's a power. He lived under the heel of a rigid religious system. That was a power that would rather see a man with a withered hand got crippled all his life and had one of their laws broken. See, Jesus lived under the powers. The glory of it is that he lived a life that was absolutely and totally free. You know, it blows my mind away to think of what that man must have been like in all these. Amongst all the powers, amongst all the pressure, amongst all the oppression, there is a man who is totally and absolutely free. We can be manipulated one of two ways by greed or fear. The carrot or the stick. He was a man who had no fear at all. None. There's a boat and there's a demonic storm. And the disciples are scared out of their wits. They're absolutely irrational. They're waking him up saying, Lord, don't you afraid we are perishing? Never enter their little heads that if they were perishing, he would perish. They were quite out of their mind. What did he say? He said, why are you afraid? Can you imagine? Why are you afraid? Since I be still when it says foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests. Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. We've got a picture that Jesus must have had a kind of woebegone, forlorn look on his face. I believe he was almost hilarious. He didn't want any of it. It was all his father's anyway. He's always among his father's things. What do you do with a man who has no greed and no fear? You cannot manipulate him at all. He even said, nobody takes my life from me unless I lay it down for my of myself. Now, you can't get any freer than that. He's all. Lay it down. I'll take it up again. He lived amongst the powers he faced. Not only temptation. He faced the tempter face to face, eyeball to eyeball, and overcame right along the line. He lived a life that was absolutely free. And when he came to the cross, he was able to say to his disciples, and I think this is incredible. He said, The God of the Archon of this world comes, and he has nothing in me. Isn't it amazing? He has nothing in me. For the devil to try to get a hold on Jesus would be like trying to climb up a sheer icy glacier. Nowhere you can get a foothold. The prince of this world comes. He has nothing in me. That is why he went to the cross. That is why he went down to death. That's why he yielded himself up to the power of darkness. He said, now is the hour and the power of darkness. For one brief moment, one brief hour on the face of the earth. The devil had everything. Do you understand that? Darkness had absolute authority. It even had the Son of God in its hands, because Jesus yielded himself up to it, and he went down to death. And the power of the devil rests in death. The devil is the one who had the power of death. Why did Jesus do that? Why did he die? Wasn't just to deal with our sin. It was to destroy the power of the powers. You see, death had no claim on him. The power of death is sin. He had no sin. He said, the prince of this world is nothing in me. There was no sin, no failure, not a single weakness anywhere. Death had no claim, no legal right on him. He went down into death. Death couldn't hold him. But listen to something much more important than that. When Jesus came to the cross, he. Up until that point, all that we're speaking about was locked into one individual personality. Only one free man. Only one sinless man. Only one victorious man. But when Jesus came to the cross. Lacrosse, that individual personality became a corporate one. He incorporated us in him. John twelve thirty one says this I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men into me. I used to think that meant that Jesus, when we preached and was so attractive that he'd attract people to him, doesn't mean that. But it means something much more, much more basic than that. Because the verse goes on to say this. He spoke about the death, that he would die. When Jesus came to the cross, he incorporated in him all those who would believe. Remember the upper room. Jesus goes to wash the disciples feet, and he goes to Peter. And Peter tucks his feet under his toga and said, Lord, I'm not going to wash my feet. Jesus had a very strange thing to Peter. He said, Peter, if I don't wash your feet, you have no part in me. You have no part in me. Now, Peter, who is much quicker on the uptake than generally we give him credit for. He got it straight away. He said, Lord, not just my feet, my head and my hands. Why I want to have part in you. And that part in him was that incorporation of all who believed into the corporate personality that was Christ. So when he then went down into death, we went down into death. When death discovered it had no claim on him, death discovered it had no claim on us. When he broke the power of death and came back in resurrection life, we came back in resurrection life. And just as he was able to say, the prince of this world comes and he has nothing in me when I plead the blood of Christ, what was true about Christ Hallelujah becomes true about me. The God of this world has nothing in me, has nothing on me. See? And his death and his resurrection become the heritage and the power and the source of authority of his body, his church. That's why it says in Colossians that he disarmed the principalities and powers. He rendered the devil powerless, because he took away from him his power of death. Death had no claim on the Lord. And when that risen Lord came back in resurrection life, that power, that authority that was vested in him, now becomes vested in his church. That's why we have power and authority in the name of Jesus over all the principalities and powers, the spiritual ones on this earth. Now, having said that, I want to say something that may seem to be a contradiction. The powers are still there. The powers are still operating. The powers are still All oppressing people. I look back many times these days to the time of the Second World War, forty years ago. A long time. We now know that the war was over by late nineteen forty three or early nineteen forty four, after some of the major battles like Stalingrad and Alamein and Wake Island, one or two others. The war was won. It was impossible for it to have gone any other way than the way it eventually did. But listen, although the war was won, the second front still had to be opened. The nation still had to be liberated one by one by one. The island still had to be taken one by one by one. Otherwise, the Japanese and the Germans and the Italians would still be there to this day. As far as the spiritual war for the for the, uh, the universe is concerned, the war is over. The final issue was settled on Calvary. There's no other way it can go than towards the time when Christ will render yield up the kingdom to God the Father, and all his enemies will be under his feet, and even death will be abolished, and no other way it can go. But the devil believes he can postpone his eventual demise for generation after generation after generation. And he will. He will, unless we do something about it. What is the role of the church in what we're speaking about now? First Corinthians fifteen twenty five or forty five I think it is says he must reign until all his enemies are under his feet. Who's going to do that? Christ. How is he going to do that through his body? No other way. He will never do anything outside his body. And the role, the function, the ministry of the Church of God on the earth today is to disarm, is to dispossess the principalities and powers and bring them under the feet of Christ. Some verses in familiar verses have taken on a new meaning to me in this context. Take one like Matthew twenty four forty three, talking about the Second Coming. Then the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. What are the powers of the heavens? That's what we're talking about. Principalities and powers that rule in heavenly places, that foster the darkness of this world, keep men's minds blinded. Beloved, we have to dispossess them of their hold on whole societies and whole cultures and whole towns. Now, that is a corporate struggle, and it can only be carried out corporately. It's not a place for a bunch of guerrillas doing it one by one. There are no superstars in this. It is a corporate struggle that has got to be done corporately. Now Christ has provided the victory on which our operations can rest. But unless we do something about it, we'll leave New Zealand when we go on to glory. As bad as it is now, if not worse. See, now that's the the source of our struggle. Now, the second thing, second aspect of it is this that we are called on to dispossess the spiritual powers in order that we might recover the creaturely aspects for Christ's lordship. You see, remember what I said before, that powers have two aspects one temporal, the other spiritual, one a created reality, the other a spiritual entity. The spiritual entity has no right to be there. It's demonic. It is a usurper. Its power has been broken. We are to dispossess the devil out of those situations in order that we might recover the created reality for the Lordship of Jesus, so that he might reign over the field of economics, so that he might reign over the field of business. So he might reign over the field of education, so that he might reign over the field of political science. So he might reign over medicine and law and language and family and all these areas, so that Christ's lordship might be expressed over those things. Ephesians one tells us that Christ is seated at the right hand of God, far above all principalities and powers. And the mission of the church corporately, is to bring all creation back to the place where it is the arena of the father's glory. You see, all things were created in Christ. All things are fallen and rebellious, all things are redeemed. And God's purpose at the end of time is an administration suitable to the fullness of time. Know what it is, the summing up of all things in Christ. Now, beloved, that is not something that is to happen after Jesus comes back. It is something for the here and now. Listen, I believe one of the problems in our evangelical thinking is when you start to talk to people about, uh, kingdom principles and business and kingdom principles and education and even more way out, talk about having a local, a local authority that's operating in Kingdom principles, a whole city that's functioning under the principles of God's kingdom, a whole nation that's functioning under kingdom of God's principles. They say, oh, well, that's ridiculous. Now things will never be perfect until Jesus comes. That's true. There will never be perfect one to tell you something. They can be redeemed. They can be redeemed. You're redeemed. You're not perfect. Yet my family is redeemed. Not a perfect family. Vastly different. What have been or hadn't been redeemed? My marriage is redeemed. Not a perfect marriage is not bad. Joint over forty years. Not perfect, but it's redeemed. Far different. Marriage might have been in existence if hadn't been redeemed. Now why not a business redeemed. Not perfect, but redeemed. A school not perfect, but redeemed. I believe if Jesus words are to be taken seriously, this gospel of the kingdom will be demonstrated in all the world for a testimony, and then the end shall come. I believe that somewhere on the face of the earth before Jesus comes, there's got to be businesses that operate on kingdom principles. There has to be somewhere, a city or a borough that operates on kingdom principles. There has to be somewhere on the earth, a nation that operates on kingdom principles. And I say, why not my nation? Why not New Zealand? We are small enough and God's invested enough in this church here to do it. I want to ask you something in terms of the Second Coming. Are you waiting for Jesus to take you out of this world? Or are you waiting for Jesus to come back to this world? Think of it makes a big difference. If I'm waiting for Jesus to take me out of this world. And if this world's going down the tubes. So what? You know I'm going to leave it. None of my business. But if Jesus is coming back to this world, that scares me because he's liable to say to me, what have you done with my world? What's this I hear about my world? And we say, but Lord, the problems are enormous. He's liable to say to us, but haven't I left you, my Holy Spirit and my revealed word and my supernatural power, my gifts. What have you done with my world? Listen. The Incarnation is God's commitment to his creation. God will never abandon the work of his hands. God is not destined to the work of his hands to be burnt up and destroyed. Otherwise, he would never have become part of that creation himself. To me, the Incarnation is God's commitment to the work of his hands. And God has redeemed all of it. God is going to restore all of it, and God has commissioned his church to recover all of it. And beloved, I believe we need to understand the dimensions of this, this struggle that we're involved in. Right. We need. Let's bring it down to a level of some practicality. You see, again, in a war, nobody is given the whole war to win. And I think sometimes it's here when we talk about spiritual warfare that we we get off track. You're not called on to win the war. You're given a local, a very specific and a very local objective. It's just that farmhouse over there, that bridge, that ridge, that clump of trees. You go and get that. That's all you have to do. And listen. You have to do what? Do it whether you like it or not. You have to do it whether you're scared or not. You have to do it whether you think you can or not. And I believe something of that mentality, something of that attitude needs to come into the church. Your church has a limited local objective. You're responsible to take that, to occupy it, to expel the demonic powers that are ruling it. To recover that for the kingdom of God. If you don't do it, nobody else will do it for you, and you don't have to do any more than that area there, that bit there. And listen, you have to do it whether you think you can or not. And I believe it has to take an absolute priority in our life. What's the sort of dimension of the of the struggle that we're facing? In other words, how do the powers operate? I think you can discover a good deal of how they operate. If you look at a passage like Ephesians six, which speaks about the armor of God, and realize that there is the armor of God is provided against certain specific strategies, let me just run through some of them quickly, and you'll recognize, I think, before we're too far into it. Some of the basic strategies of the powers in human life, for example, are. Part of the armor is the girdle of truth, the belt of truth. That is because the powers operate on the basis of deception and falsehood and double speak and misrepresentation and so on. The breastplate of righteousness. In the Bible. Righteousness is a relational term. It means to be right wise with. I can always tell when I'm not right wise with my wife. It's terrible. I can't stand it for more than half an hour. I go and apologize. Or even worse, not to be right wise with God takes me less time than that to go and apologize. Righteousness is a relational term. The drive of the powers is always to breach relationships. So they they major on things like division and misunderstanding and misrepresentation and envy and resentment. It's a strategy. It's a tactic of the powers in any shape or form to divide people, alienate people. We have the the gospel of peace. The drive of the powers is things like discord and contention and strife and anxiety and fear. The helmet of salvation, Thessalonians says, having for a helmet the hope of salvation. Have you notice how much of the powers produce in people? Pessimism. Poverty. Low expectation. Oppression? Depression? The sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. So skepticism and humanism and doubt and unbelief. Now these are all the strategies of the powers that you face and our people face, not in your church, but in the workplace, in their homes, in the shop, wherever it is they are. And this has struggled. That is a struggle that we face. Right. What are the weapons that God has provided us with in this struggle? Two Corinthians six seven talks about the weapons of righteousness for attack and defense. Here are some of the weapons. The first is the armor of God. What is the armor of God? I'm going to confess that for years, that passage never meant anything very much to me. I could imagine all that tinware. And from time to time in my imagination, I tried to put it on, but it never did much for my spiritual experience. So one day God showed me what the armor of God actually is. Paul is not talking in metaphors. The armor of God is a set of life conditions that God wants to establish in your life. And if you allow God to establish those conditions, it will enable God to work. It will prevent Satan from working very, very important. And these things that we've been talking about, truth and peace and relationships and hope and the Word of God. Those are the essential things. No matter what else you think when it comes to spiritual warfare, those are the essential things. Otherwise, the Spirit of God wouldn't have made it on them here. Their life conditions that God wants to establish that prevents Satan from working and enable us to work. Secondly, our weapon is the blood of the lamb. That's a shorthand expression, if you like, for all that's involved in the death and resurrection of Jesus. When I plead the blood, what was true about Jesus becomes true about me. The devil discovers he's got nothing on me. He's got nothing in me. Hallelujah. Thirdly, the recognition of our position of authority. We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. We're operating from a place of authority. We need to recognize that we need to state it. We need to remind the devil of it constantly. Fourthly, offensive prayer. I just want to finish on this Ephesians six eighteen praying. Paul says with all prayer and supplication. There is a type of praying that has to do with spiritual warfare that is different from the sort of praying we do in other in other situations. Prayer is such a rich thing. Prayer is worship. Prayer is communication. Prayer is intercession, but prayer is also warfare. And when we're praying in terms of spiritual warfare, it is not asking God to do something. It is declaring what God has done. I remember one time God really reveals something I've never seen before about prayer. What prayer actually is. I was puzzled, for example, to notice that Jesus prays, not he prayed. He prays now he ever lives to make intercession for us. I start to wonder, why does Jesus pray? I mean, say He's God. He must know what God's will is. Why does Jesus pray? Then I discovered not only does Jesus pray, but the Holy Spirit prays when we don't know what to pray for. The Bible says in Romans eight, the spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Oh, why does the Holy Spirit pray? He also is God. And then an amazing thought struck me. I start to understand both what prayer is and why God is so surprise that people don't pray. Listen. Prayer is actually the inner language of the Godhead. It is the way in which the father and the Holy Spirit and the son communicate with one another. And when we pray, we are ushered in to the inner language of God to share God's thoughts, to express God's desires, to declare God's will. That's why the Bible says he wondered, there was no intercessor. Fancy that privilege of being ushered in to the inner language of God and being too bored, or too tired or too weary, or have other things on our mind that we turn up an opportunity like that. But because that is what prayer is, that is sharing in the Word of God. When we take the rhema, the quicker the quickened Word of God on our lips and speak that against the principalities, and speak that against the powers, and declare that against these alien authorities they have to submit to the authority of that word. Just recently, in our Sunday night meetings at home, we've started a prayer, praise and intercession time. Uh, and uh, much of it is focused on this whole area of the principalities and powers. What we do is that we pray in five minute slots, uh, on a series of topics that we feel God speaking to us to pray about. And currently, a lot of it focuses on this whole area of the powers over, uh, our community. But we pray the way we prayed last night where everybody prays aloud and we pray as hard as we can with all our heart and all our soul. Now, you can't keep that up for very long. Five minutes probably. Well, you might be able to stretch it a bit, but about five minutes. Uh, you know, that's that's a that's a fairly demanding kind of session. But listen, the faith that's generated and the power that's generated and the fallout we're starting to experience out of that is amazing. We're starting to see a real lifting of the powers over the area and the real reaction of the powers against us. For example, one aspect that we that we discovered was that over our area, there is, amongst other things, a spirit of poverty, a curse of poverty, not only financial poverty, but low expectation low, just a low, just a poverty stricken kind of outlook. And so we started praying against the spirit of, you know, what happened for the next two weeks, the church offerings were disastrous. We were heading for bankruptcy fast. It was all of a sudden the thing said, I'll fix you. And screwed the tap tight. Well, that that generated a lot of very energetic praying. We broke that. The last two weeks have been boomers. We haven't had offerings like that for years, if ever. But God was showing us. You're touching reality. See, it's not an imagination. You're touching realities. And, uh, there's a kickback. Listen, we need to understand the categories that Paul uses here. He's talking about warfare now in a war. Listen, brothers and sisters, there are no rules. Anything goes. Listen, we better learn to fight or we'll get trampled under. Make no mistake about that. But listen, we discover when we do that that the weapons of our warfare are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Now, I want to say two things, and Now, probably a way past my time this morning, I want to say two important things. One is that what we're facing is a moral and spiritual struggle between two wills. It is substantially a matter of willpower whose will is going to dominate your society, your community, the will of Satan or the will of God. And we are standing in relationship with the divine Lord of the universe, declaring, speaking his will, insisting, insisting, insisting that his will be done. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven may be in some context of prayer in many contexts. In this particular has to be a declaration thy will be done. God's will shall be done in this area. I insist on I stand on it. God's will shall be done. Do you see what I'm saying? Now listen also in this it is something that you have to do with your spirit. It's not just saying the words. It's not even a matter. It's not a matter of human willpower. It's a matter of divine willpower. It is standing in the place where, under the anointing of the Spirit of God, you catch the flow of God's divine will. You see, we make so much of Jesus ministry so static when it was not a leper comes to Jesus and says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. We read, Jesus said, I will be clean. So just like that wasn't like that. I believe Jesus said, I will. I will know the will of the man without the will of God went out. And we have to learn in this area how to use our spirit to be the vehicle through which the will of God is expressed. There is something dynamic. There is something powerful. There's something demanding and energetic in what I'm talking about. When Paul says in Ephesians six, the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. He does not only mean the sword of the Holy Spirit, he means the sword of your human spirit. And sometimes, you know, when it comes to spiritual warfare, we think the sword will do it all on its own. We get in our foxhole and here the enemy comes. We throw the sword out, you know. Sword. Go get em. Sword won't go get em. It is a sword of the spirit. Your spirit has to go out with the word. And that's true about every area of spiritual ministry. It's true about preaching. It's true about witnessing. It's true about praying for people. It's supremely true about spiritual warfare. You have to do it with your spirit. That is why you have to do it with the armor of God. That is why you have to do it corporately. Otherwise, there will be some casualties. Otherwise there'll be there'll be little effect. And in this area. Brothers, I need you. You need me. We need to get our people together and go together on it. And let me say this I believe above all it is a it is a role. It is a function for men. You know why? Because essentially it is an authority problem essentially is the establishment whose authority is going to rule in this community, the authority of God or the authority of the devil. It's a clash of authorities. And men are the priests, the authorities and their household. And so often, tragically, the men stay home, send the women off to war. Now, in our church, what we're touching now has been birthed out of a small group of elderly ladies. In some ways, I'm ashamed to say it, who interceded? They hung in there and they battled. And some fiery little folk amongst them. And they they they generated something. But I believe essentially not just for men. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being silly about it, but primarily, primarily, it is a role where the heads of the household. It's a role where the leaders need to get together, and we need to stand together in one another in a way that I can depend on you. What is it like in a battle? What is it like in the middle of a of a of a of an attack? When the guy over there that you're looking at to protect your back, suddenly he's not there. He's off having a smoke somewhere. Whatever. We've got some other thing on his mind here. The strength of an army is, is the strength of its commitment to one another. They've discovered some very interesting things that when it comes to the battlefield, the things that people fight for are not the cause. Things that people fight for are not the folk at home. Things that people fight for are not the honor of the nation or the honor of the enemies. Things that people fight for. That bunch of guys have lived with a bunch of guys that are in that unit, and they'll live and die for them. Their commitment and arm is as strong as its commitment. And beloved God, I believe, wants to generate that kind of commitment in our churches. So we've got people who say, look, brother, I'm with you. I'm behind you wherever you go. I'm with you in this battle. You can count on it. I'll be there. Let's go together. Listen, we've got all the resources to break down. Not demons, but demonic power. We're touching demonic powers in our society. We have all the capacity. We have all the resources to break down demonic power. That's one aspect of it. And having broken down that demonic power to recover the for redemption, the structures of society that God created for his glory and he wants to occupy, he wants to redeem all this human culture we live in, and they can only be redeemed and brought back to the Lordship of Christ and the power of God's kingdom. When those demonic powers are dismantled that are over them. And beloved, we can only do it corporately. I believe the preparation that God is doing in our hearts is so there'll be no weakness. There'll be no, uh, treacherous aspects in my life that are going to threaten your future or your progress. Because, listen, brother, if I walk with you and there's an area in my life that sold out, consciously or unconsciously, the devil is a foothold. He's gotten me. Not only will I be dragged down, I can threaten your position. God wants to deal with these areas in our life. Let's allow him to do it. But listen, there's also that's. That's not an end. It's a means to an end that together we might begin to recover the land. Listen, our nation needs a year of jubilee. In the year of jubilee, all the land went back to its rightful owner. This is God's country. It belongs. Doesn't belong to the Maori brothers and sisters. It belongs to Jesus and God wants the whole thing to come back to him. And I pray God stirs. God gives us revelation in our spirit and we see what God is driving for. Listen, I believe that that the source of frustration of most Christians is they're living for goals that are far too small, and they're frustrated because I know somehow what I've got, what God's done for me, what I'm touching. There must be more used to it than just sitting in this church every day. There must be more used to it than just going to a Bible study group. There must be more to it than just going out evangelizing. Listen, the kingdom is bigger than the church. God's heart is set on the kingdom. The church is a means to establish God's kingdom. It's not the goal of God's heart. Oh, I pray God stirs something in us today for his name's sake. Amen.