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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
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Spiritual Legal Rights: Why do Evil Spirits Follow the Rules?
Genesis 3-4, Romans 6
Introduction
If I had a time machine, I would have done this episode a long time ago, because it’s so foundational to understanding the weird stuff in the Bible. Let’s begin with some questions.
Is sin a verb or a noun?
Is it an act you choose, or a power that chooses you?
Is sin something you do, or does it do something to you?
And the answer to all of those questions…is yes.
Today I’m going to talk about what happens in the spiritual realm when we sin.
We often focus on sin in the physical realm as something we choose. What we don’t realize is our sins actually create legal rights in the spiritual realm for evil spirits to harass and try to dominate us.
So today’s episode will give you a greater context for the spiritual battles that we find ourselves in, especially in combatting the flesh or our own sinful desires. And it all begins where sin began, which is Genesis 3. Eve talked to the snake, she bit into the fruit, Adam had some, too, God comes up and asks what they’re doing, and here is what Eve said in
Genesis 3:13
“The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Here’s something interesting about this word for “deceived me” in the Hebrew. It can also mean the serpent “put me in its debt.”
And that’s such a strange idea. We know who the serpent is- the devil. So how does sin put us in the devil’s debt?
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Genesis 3, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
Recap of the Dominion mandate
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about spiritual legal rights.
Honestly, the best place for this episode to have aired was probably a month ago, as I was taking you through Genesis 3 and explaining the dominion of man. But I was so excited to get to Ephesians that I probably jumped ahead too quick.
So a quick recap- especially for all the new listeners we’ve gained in the past month- welcome to you if you’re new and thank you to everyone listening for the privilege of being your Bible teacher today- let me recap what we learned in Genesis this summer.
We were looking at what Satan gets out of it by tempting us into sin. Because we wonder: why does Satan hate us so much? And the typical answer is that humans are made in God’s image, that Satan hates God, and so therefore Satan tries to destroy the beings who are made in God’s image.
And that explanation is fine- I’m not saying there isn’t any truth to it- but there’s a bit more going on than just disliking the way we look. God gave this earth to mankind as man’s dominion. Man was given authority and dominion over the earth. But when we sin, we actually surrender our dominion and authority to the devil.
And that’s what happened in Genesis 3. Man lost dominion to Satan through the first sin. It broke the universe. It gave Satan legal rights to be here.
Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden to punish him and punisher- and arguably it was for their own good- but that wasn’t the end of the punishment. It unleashed a curse on creation, and we still feel the effects to this day. And not just for Adam and Eve’s sins, but our own sins that keep it going.
Even though sin has already entered the world, your own decision whether or not to sin truly matters. Choosing to do the right thing might not fix all the problems in the world, but it can definitely fix a lot of problems in your own life, and I’ll explain how deep that goes today.
Nahas in Genesis 3
So let’s go back to Eve’s words in Genesis 3. For full context, I’ll read all of
Genesis 3:8-13
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So let’s drill down on the Hebrew vocabulary here. We talked on another episode this summer about the meaning of this word serpent, or nachash. It looks like “nachos”- or maybe it doesn’t and I just want some nachos right now- but it’s pronounced naw-kosh.
When Eve said the nachash deceived her, the word “deceived me” is nasha (naw-SHAW). This word means “deceived me” or “beguiled me.”
But here’s what’s really really interesting about this word. The same word can have a different pronunciation and a different meaning if you put the emphasis on the first syllable instead of the second. It’s still spelled the same way, just a slightly different pronunciation. If you say that same word as “NAW-shuh” instead of “naw-SHAW,” then the meaning changes to mean “creditor” or “lender,” like if you lend someone some money. In other words, to put them into debt.
So, we don’t know how Eve pronounced the word. The Bible translates it as “deceived me,” and I think that’s the right way to translate it. I’m not saying the translation is wrong. But I think that the Holy Spirit is using a very clever sort of pun right here in these words, because it has selected a word that has two different meanings, and both apply in this situation.
It’s kind of a pun. When Eve says “the serpent deceived me,” it sounds something like, “The nachash naw-shaw.” It might have sounded kind of like a tongue-twister. Peter Piper picked those pickled peppers. The naw-kosh nawshawed me. Try saying that five times fast!
Not only did the serpent deceive her, but he put Eve into his debt. He somewhat owned her now; or another way to say it, he stole her dominion authority from her. And Adam, too. Now he had some ownership or ruling rights over them, because they submitted themselves to the serpent. He now had legal rights through the power of sin. As Proverbs 22:7 says, “... the borrower is slave to the lender.”
Key point 1 today: Submitting to the devil- our flesh- our evil desires- is sin.
Key point 2: Sin leads to debt.
Key point 3: debt leads to slavery
Key point 4: slavery leads to control
Submitting to the devil’s words was sin. This put them in the devil’s debt, and he gained control over them.
Another place we see this principle of debt meaning you’re owned by someone:
Deuteronomy 15:6
For the LORD your God will bless you, as He promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.
Debt is slavery, and slavery is control. And submitting to sin puts you in sin’s debt and dominion.
Masal in Genesis 4
We see the power of sin come up again in the next chapter of Genesis. The story of Cain and Abel. I’ll assume you know the story; it doesn’t end well for Abel.
And it doesn’t end so well for Cain, either. He becomes an outcast. Just as Adam and Eve’s sin drove them out of the Garden, Cain’s sin drives him away from his family.
But God tried to warn Cain, because God could see that Cain was letting anger have a foothold in his life, and this gives the devil legal rights to fill Cain’s mind with dark thoughts. I heard it said this week, “A foothold can become a stronghold,” and I thought that was a great quote.
Genesis 4:3-7
3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.”
That’s the first place the word “sin” actually appears in the Bible. God says, “Cain don’t do it! Sin is crouching at the door!” Now that’s a weird way to talk about sin. I thought sin was the thing Cain would do. What does it mean that sin is waiting to pounce on Cain? Is God just being poetic?
The answer is, sin is not just an action we do, but a force that compels us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do. It tries to control us.
God says, “Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.” The word “rule” there is masal (maw-shawl) and it means “to have dominion or reign.” If you won’t control the urge to sin, then the sin is going to control you. As Jesus said:
John 8:34
“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
And Peter also bears this out. Listen to this principle in
II Peter 2:19
For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.
Submission leads to sin. Sin leads to debt. Debt leads to slavery. Slavery leads to control.
(I feel like Yoda. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leaders to suffering.)
So we often think of the word sin as an action we do. But also, the Bible speaks of it as an entity that tries to control us.
How we find freedom
Let’s look at one more place today to flesh this idea out. Romans 6. You’ll see a lot of these concepts we’ve been talking about from the earliest chapters of Genesis being brought up in Paul’s conversation about the relationship between the believer and sin.
He spends so much of Romans talking about how we can’t be made righteous by our works. That no amount of good works or avoiding sin could earn our right to heaven. And it might cause some Christians to say: then why does it matter if we stop sinning once we become saved? Do we still need to worry about our sins even after we’ve been granted salvation?
Romans 6:1-2
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Remember something I’ve been saying the past couple episodes- and I sent out a chart about this a few weeks back in the newsletter- the devil wants to gain domination over three areas:
1- he wants to drag you into sin to he can keep you from salvation
2- even after you become a Christian, he wants to tie you up in sin so he can make you an ineffective Christian
3- he wants dominion of physical space on planet earth
Last week, I really focused on physical space in our discussion about principalities. But today, I want to focus more on that second point. I assume we’re all Christians. Let’s assume we’ve been cleansed of our sins by the blood of Jesus. We’re saved and going to heaven. So what is the problem with it if I continue to sin now that my eternity is secure?
Because you can still be enslaved to sin. You can still leave open doors for the enemy to come into your life and affect your mind, your health, your living conditions. You can get in mental ruts and mental fogs and have anxieties and depressions, and these can be due to a demonic influence, and un-repented sin can still leave an open door.
And Paul says in Romans 6 that it would be a darn shame to have the freedom from sin available to you by the blood of Jesus and yet continue to submit to the enemy in your life and give him control over you.
Romans 6:3-7
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
If you continue in sin after being saved, it’s like God has come and got you off death row- He unlocked your prison cell and set you free- but then every night you go back to the prison because you like sleeping on that cement bed in the prison cell. God’s like: you don’t have to live like this anymore. You haven’t just been set free from death row; you can live a free life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.
Sin is not just something you do. It’s not just an action. It’s an entity that wants to enslave you and dominate your life.
So often we may continue in sin after being saved because we think there won’t be any consequences. We think, “well I can do this and get away with it.” And often we don’t really perceive the consequences for sin in the physical realm.
But if we only knew in the spiritual realm what kind of access we were giving the enemy to our lives, to our minds, we would do whatever we could to avoid sin.
Skipping down to verse 11
11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
Notice that word reign. It wants to control you. If you submit to it, you are letting it control you.
13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Dominion. The same word that the Bible uses in Genesis 1 for what God gave man: have dominion over the earth.
The devil steals our dominion when we sin.
Verse 16
16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
That’s where I’ll stop on our verses for today because that gives us the answer. Obedience from the heart. AKA repentance. This removes the legal right of the enemy from your life.
It’s because you acknowledge before God that Lord, I once did this. I thought it was OK. I thought it wasn’t a big deal. I thought it could get away with it. That was wrong of me, God, and I repent of that action and ask for your forgiveness and ask you to bind any evil spirits who are actively trying to ruin my life.
And you do need to practice obedience from then on. A month or two ago, I was talking about how deliverance must be followed by discipleship. Because if you continue in your sin, your deliverance will only be temporary. The sin will leave an open door for the enemy to come right back into your life and mess you up. That’s why Paul says “you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart.”
Repent and obey. And this closes the legal rights of the enemy. Like Jesus warned the man in John 5 that he had healed from being paralyzed:
John 5:14
“See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
Woah. That should be sobering. This guy had been paralyzed so long, I always assumed he had been paralyzed from birth. But technically, the scripture doesn’t say that. His paralysis may have been due to an evil spirit, like we see people afflicted with various maladies in other places of scripture. Jesus says “sin no more,” which implies to me that some kind of sin had allowed this problem into his life. And then Jesus warns him: “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
We want deliverance. I'm all about deliverance ministry. But we don’t want deliverance without discipleship.
Why do evil spirits follow spiritual laws?
Now let’s deal with a couple questions real quick: why would evil spirits follow spiritual laws?
In fact, I remember one time I was taking my son to an event at a local state park when he was 3 (almost 4). He has always loved playing with nerf guns and other toy guns. He called them “doo-doos” because that’s the sound he thought they would make. “Doo doo, doo doo.” Maybe that’s what they sounded like on Star Wars or something.
And when we were going into this state park, there’s a sign on the door that says “no firearms allowed,” and it had the symbol that looked like the no-smoking symbol, but it had a gun in the circle with a line through it. And my 3-year-old understood what that mean. He says to me, “Daddy, why do they say no doo-doos?” I said, “Well, they don’t want bad guys to bring in any doo-doos.” He says back to me, “But daddy, bad guys don’t listen.”
What he meant was: why put up signs telling bad guys not to do anything when bad guys don’t follow the rules in the first place. That’s what makes them bad guys. And I thought that was a pretty perceptive point for a 3-year-old boy. I would kind of like to ask some people in congress that same question.
And this is a question we might ask of evil spirits as well. So you say, “OK Luke, there are spiritual laws. Legal rights in the spirit realm. But why does it matter if I live righteously or not? Won’t they just attack me anyway because they’re bad? Why should I expect evil spirits to follow the rules?”
And the answer to that is, they have to follow the rules because God gives harsh punishments when they don’t.
Jude 7
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day
Notice this in Jude 7: these angels had a position of authority. That mean a place where they were allowed to be. (We talked about back in episode 5 or 6 of the podcast, long time ago. We won’t get into that whole story today because I’m almost out of time.)
They had a position of authority. But they left it. They transgressed the boundaries of where they were allowed to go. And the punishment was that God put them in chains in the deepest dungeon of hell, which is called Tartarus. And they are trapped there until judgment day. So there are strict punishments when the evil spirits don’t follow the rules.
But it’s interesting that they can get away with a lot within the space that they are allowed to have authority. And the point today is that when you sin, you make space for them to have authority right there in your life.
Think of it like this: evil spirits are like bored cops. When I was growing up- and I grew up in a log cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere- there was a town just a few miles from me called Goodman. Did you ever see that little town that Zod and his goons crashed in Superman 2? It was a town like that.
And because of where I lived, you had to go through Goodman to get about anywhere. And Goodman had a couple of cops, and they were the most bored police you’d ever see in your life, because they had nothing to do all day. So they were constantly trying to catch you breaking the tiniest little infraction. Whatever they could nail you on. So my family would always warn me: do NOT go even one mile over the speed limit in Goodman because they’ll ticket you for it. Not a joke. Even my grandma got pulled over one time and got a ticket for just the tiniest little thing. These Goodman cops just had nothing to do but look for an opening where they could give you a ticket. And you can complain all you want that it’s not fair and that it’s too strict. But if you leave the opening, they’ll take it.
Demons are like the Goodman cops. They look for wherever they can get an opening. And if they see it, they’ll take it. There are certain limits to their dominion. But when you sin, you grant them your dominion.
Because [drift into a Yoda voice] submission leads to sin. Sin leads to debt. Debt leads to slavery. And slavery leads to control. Control leads to suffering.
ANNOUNCEMENT: LAUNCH OF THE WSITB STORE
And that’s where I had better sew things up for today. Running out of time again, but let me tell you what’s on the docket for the future:
1- next week, I plan to finally finally finally address this topic: what’s going on in I Corinthians 6:3 where it says, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” I started into this series this summer because I wanted to know more about that; I’m finally read to share it.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it next time!
2- this whole thing about spiritual laws and the dominion mandate and Ephesians 6 and kosmokrators and all that, if you have any questions about any of that- or just questions about whatever is on your mind- go ahead and send me an email: WeirdStuffInTheBible@gmail.com
I plan to do a mailbag episode in a couple weeks to answer some questions that have come in throughout the summer, so this would be a great time for you to send some questions in as well.
And some shoutouts to a few people who have written in: thank you for the kind words from Trish in New Zealand, from Josiah, from Beau, and anyone else who has written in lately. (Especially Vicki in Indiana who is now on her second round of the podcast. Superweirdo!)
Also a shoutout to the Christian Post for publishing a couple of columns from me this past month. I had one called “This Question Will Change How You Read Your Bible” last week. So often we approach scripture asking “what does this mean to me?” I offer a different question with which we can approach our Bible-reading-time, and there’s a link to all the stuff I’ve written for Christian Post in the show notes.
Also a new article on WeirdStuffInTheBible.com about the naked man who fled in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested. I bat around some theories about who this guy was in this very random, strange verse from Mark 14. There’s a link to that in the show notes as well.
One last big announcement today: I’ve been asked before: where’s the merch shop. Why haven’t you created a merch shop? I’ve been asked this for more than a year at this point. The truth is, I don’t want to seem like I’m in this for money. This is a passion project for me. I’m not in this to make any money.
But that said, if you just personally want a T-shirt or a hoodie or a coffee mug with the logo for the podcast on it, here you go, there’s a shop for that now. You can now get to the shop by going to my website: WeirdStuffInTheBible.com and click on the “SHOP” tab at the top. Or, once again, you can find a link to it in the show notes.
There’s a mug with the “Let’s Get Weird” slogan on it. There’s a mug with the podcast cover art on it.
I do feel really weird creating a mug with my face on it. But you might also notice that I have a product called the Pug Mug, which is a mug with a picture of my dog Marty’s face on it. Because Marty is a very fashionable and attractive pug. Those of you who have explored my website might have noticed that I have an entire page dedicated to my dog Marty called the Marty Gallery. Some of you might think I’m not taking this podcast website thing very seriously by having an entire page dedicated to my dog. To them I say: how dare you.
And if you do buy anything, please send me a picture of what you buy. I haven’t even seen any of these products yet. So if you want to be the guinea pig, please email me and tell me about the quality of these products. I hope you love em. But please tell me if you don’t and I’ll find a better distributor.
With the launch of this store, you get 10% off with the code “WEIRDO” for this first month, so go check it out when you have the time. Which is right now. The podcast is over, so you have time. Go check it out right now. Just stop what you’re doing and go check it out.
And if you think having mug with my dog’s face on it is weird, I hope you’ll be a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.