Numbers 22-23 | The Kingdom of Darkness | Alex Culpepper

Amen. Amen. You can be seated, kids. You can meet at the back of the sanctuary. We'll dismiss you up to kids ministry and church.

I would invite you to open up your Bibles to numbers, chapter 22 if you are new or visiting and we haven't had a chance to meet yet. My name is Alex Culpepper. I'm the pastor here at Renovation Church. And it's my joy every, every time that I come up here to be able to open God's word with you, to just bring insight for us, discover together what it is that God is speaking, how it meets us in the particular time and place that we live in. And so if you don't have a Bible of your own, we've included.

It's a long passage today, very long passage. And so we didn't include the whole thing in there, but we included the main pieces that we'll be working through this morning in there. If you want to follow along with us. And we did something a little new this week. There's fill in the blank notes.

So if you want to process along with us and just pay attention to what's going on, we would provide those for your use as well. And so I want to start this morning by talking about so called new age practices. The reason I say so called is because they're really not new. They're actually ancient practices, but they have kind of like a fresh coat of paint on them. That's what's going on.

So what am I talking about? Talking about things like TikTok horoscopes, things like healing or energy crystals, tarot cards, psychics or mediums, communicating with the dead, things like the law of attraction or witchcraft or Wicca or Ouija boards or Reiki, various forms of alternative medicines, tapping of chakras, accessing of chi. Right. Like all of these things. Now I may have said a bunch of stuff and you're like, I've never heard of that before.

I don't know what that is. And God bless you for not knowing what that is. That's a good thing. But these things are prevalent. These practices are actually becoming more and more abundant in our culture at an exceedingly rapid pace, especially with the advent of social media.

The number of these practices that you can actually walk, like if you scroll through your, whether it's Instagram or TikTok your feed, I wouldn't be surprised if you see in some of your scrolling your algorithm give to you a TikTok witch whose doing some kind of witchcraft ritual in the process or who's trying to read your horoscope or something like that. And so what are New Age practices? New Age practices are pathways into spiritual power that promise a quote, blessing. Now, blessing is in quotes in the sense that there's like a gift that they give you, right? And so what are these blessings that people seek for?

Well, it's usually in one of three categories. People are seeking pathway into health or healing or power. Right? That's what these blessings accomplish. So this is material prosperity, worldly success, pleasure, otherworldly knowledge.

Or sometimes what they do is they just kind of give like a transcendent experience, you know, something beyond myself that gives me a sense of meaning or purpose or identity. And these practices are being engaged at an increasing rate. So one of the most beautiful statistics that I've read recently is that Gen Z is one of the most spiritually open generations, more open than any of the three generations that preceded them. But we need to be aware that their openness is not just an openness towards the gospel. Right?

They are very open towards the gospel, but that spiritual openness goes in just about every direction. And so I want to add one clarification to this definition that I provided for you. And it is this New Age practices are dangerous pathways into spiritual power that promise a blessing. So what makes them dangerous? Well, whether the users of the practices realize it or not, all of the practices that I named earlier have been developed through interaction and fellowship with spiritual powers, like with actual entities that have rebelled against God.

If you look at the roots of the practices that I name, you can follow and trace the line through history into a route where people were interacting with spiritual entities and they provided them these. These actions, right? So it comes from spiritists who are like, oh, this is what the spirits tell us to do. And so this is what we do. And this is the important part that their pathways of seeking spiritual blessing, apart from from obedience and loving relationship with the God who created us, that's why they're problematic, right?

Because spiritual powers tell us there's a way for you to have the things that you want. There's a way for you to have power, but you don't have to go through him, right? You can go around Him. And that's why each of these practices is problematic. And so here are two ways that we know they are dangerous.

The first way that we know that these spiritual practices are dangerous is because of the words of Jesus. So what Jesus is doing In John chapter 10, Jesus is teaching to distinguish himself from kind of every other spiritual person. That has come before him. There were at his time other messiahs who said that they were like the Messiah of Israel and he was distinguishing himself from them, but also from other religions more generally. And so what sets Jesus and his kingdom apart from everything else?

So John 10:10, sorry, John 10:8 and then verse 10, all who came before me, meaning every other spiritual practice and guru and false messiah and all that stuff. All who came before me are thieves and robbers. They want to steal from you. And verse 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. That's, that's, you know, every other spiritual practice, every other spiritual being, every other thing that you could pursue comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came to give life, to give abundant life, right? So only the king and his kingdom is extending spiritual power for our benefit. That's the implication of that. Every other spiritual force or spiritual being or spiritual practice that does not come from Jesus is something that wants to manipulate and lie to and destroy images of God. Now why do we're images of God?

We're made in the image of God. God made us in his image. Why do they want to destroy images of God? Because they hate the one true God, but they can't touch him, they can't get to him. And so their alternative is to go after us, his images, right?

That's, that's what they do. So they're sneaky in the way that they go after us though, because they can't attack us head on. What they need for us to do is to open the door to their influence. They need us to invite them in. And so what they do is they give us tools and pathways to entice us into seeking their power instead of God's power.

And this is why the Old Testament, in the Old Testament, God provides to his people his own set of holy, set apart spiritual practices. These are the things that you will do. And then he forbids his people from doing the spiritual practices of the other nations around them. And so the second reason that we know that they're dangerous is from testimony and experience. When you engage in false spiritual practices.

The way that this works is it's like pay to play, right? So you've heard lore about people saying, oh, you know, he probably made a deal with the devil or something like that. It's not an accident that that lore has come about, right? Because the lore exists because this is how dark spiritual power operates. Every interaction made with demons is a transactional interaction, right?

You give me something of you, I'm going to take Something from you in order to give you some aspect of my power. That's what demons do. And so what does this look like? Well, it may be something like they just tell you a lie, right? And they use that lie to open a door and build a foundation on which they could put other lies and lies on top of lies.

And eventually what you have built is what Second Corinthians 10 calls a stronghold, right? A thought, a way of thinking that is that exists as, like the structure of lies in your thinking that gives the enemy lots of influence over you, Right? So that, that could be one way that that works out. The other way that it could be is that they get something in exchange for giving their power. What does this look like?

Well, they might use you in seeking their power to destroy the lives of others, which is a joy for them, or they might use, like, save up over the period of time that they invest in your life to cash in on your destruction at a later time. And the reason I tell you this, this is the thing about testimony and experience. The people who do this stuff, when they come out of it and into Christianity, they will profess that this is the stuff that they were dealing with, stuff that was trying to destroy them. So why do I tell you this? Well, we are continuing a series this morning called Wanderings and Warnings.

The story that we read today is like so much real estate devoted to a guy who it seems like, may not be an Israelite, right? He's a guy who seeks after dark spiritual power. And there's like four whole chapters in the first five books of the Bible. Four chapters is a lot of real estate in the Bible to tell us the story of this guy. And it exists.

It stands to God's people as a warning to them and as an encouragement about the danger of seeking spiritual power outside of God's terms. Right? He's. God is warning them with this story. Well, and the people of Israel actually experienced it.

But for people who came afterward, you were meant to be warned of the danger of seeking spiritual power outside of God's terms. But this is the encouragement when the kingdom of darkness stands toe to toe with God. The kingdom of darkness is utterly weak and powerless. That's what this story shows. So this is the story of Balaam the sorcerer, okay, numbers 22, 1 and 2.

Then the people of Israel set out encamped in the plains of Moab, beyond the Jordan, at Jericho. And Balaam, the son of Zippor, saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. So Balak, Balak is The king of the Moabites, he is very afraid of the Israelites because God has won many mighty battles for them. And Balak does not have the military ability to compete with the nation of Israel. And so he sends, what he does is he sends a few of his local tribal leaders to petition a guy whose name is Balaam.

And so verses 6 and 7 tell us, come now. So this is his. They bring this petition to Balaam and they say, come now. Curse this people for me. Since they are too mighty, I can't defeat them with my army, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed and he whom you curse is cursed.

This is what they're saying to this guy Balaam. And so what did they do? Well, they departed with fees for divination in their hand. So these details, along with a few other from, from various other scriptures, are meant to inform us that Balaam, in the area that he resides in, is a renowned and powerful sorcerer. Many people from around this area come to Balaam to seek the spiritual power that he offers.

Balaam is a, what we might call a spiritual guy. And apparently the king of Moab has heard of the spiritual power of Balaam and knows that, like when you give curses, like, people tell me that your curses work, and people tell me that your, your blessings work. And if, if the king knows this, then, then it's probably because other people know about it. And, and this guy, what he has done, he's figured out a way to work this transactional system with demons in order to make them do the things that he desires to do. He's kind of like, you know, like a bookie, works for, like a mob boss or something like this.

Balaam is like a demonic bookie, right? He knows how to pay off the right people in the right way to make things happen. And so get this, not every spiritual person is a good person. Now for our Christian framework, every, any kind of person is a person that we're called to love and bless in the name of Jesus, right? That we go to and we serve and we speak the hope of the gospel to them, because all of us at one point were children of disobedience.

But not everybody who calls themselves a spiritual person is a good person. Back to Balaam then. Balaam is this guy. He extracted heavy food, hefty fees for his work. You know, you pay me, I'll do something for you.

He was motivated by greed and extortion. We see that as the story goes on because, like, there are 10, like eight or 10 different interactions between Balaam and this guy Balak. And it's like every time that there's a new interaction, he gets paid another fee for the interaction. And so if Balaam is anything like modern day shamans or wicked witch doctors, like in a place like Africa, because those are the same kind of people who develop the kind of reputation that, that Balaam has developed, right Then he is a person to be feared. Right?

Because you don't know what kind of curse he's going to set. It's likely, in fact, it's not even likely. We see evidence later in the story like he does blood sacrifices in order to pay the transactional fee to seek spiritual power to work for him. And I would say that there's at least a small chance that he's even accustomed to doing human sacrifices because we have evidence that this people group in this area practiced human sacrifice. And so I want to introduce you to a person.

This guy's name is Peter. Peter works with an organization called Campisi Childcare and Ministries. He lives in Uganda. He works in Uganda. I met him during my time at village church.

Peter leads an orphanage there. And part of what they do is that they rescue kids from witch doctor ritual sacrifices. They step in and in fact, Peter went to village church to share about this. And this is nuts. The fire alarm has never gone off at village church during a worship service.

Peter stands up to speak and talk, starts talking about their ritual sacrifices and the work that they're doing and the fire alarm goes off and it interrupts everything. And he can't finish talking about what he has to say because there's spiritual power that's interested in making sure that the message of what he's doing does not get out. But this is Peter and this is what he does. And so their orphanage gives kids a safe place to grow up to hear the gospel. And the reason this is is because witch dog doctors in the area, like if you're a construction worker and you're starting a new build, what you'll do is you'll go to the local witch doctor and you'll say, hey, I want this build to be successful.

I want this, this company that I'm building for to be successful and I'm going to go pay you off so that you can do give me some blessing here. This is what these witch doctors do. And these are the kinds of things that this guy Balaam would do as well. And so he's bleeding right now. These tribal leaders for money, right?

This king for money. And so they come with fees for divination. Now, just so you know, there are various kinds of words for all of these dark practices. Divination in the Bible is a process of questioning spirits about the best way to move forward in a given situation, right? So that's what he's trying to figure out.

What do we do? How will I curse this nation that's wandering through Balak's territory? What am I going to do? And so numbers 22. Sorry, numbers 22, nine.

God.

So Balaam's like, let's do a little ritual, figure out what kind of thing we can get to show up here. He's used to very strange things happening. But notice who shows up. It's not just like any spirit. This is God himself.

He shows up and said, you shall not curse the people for they are blessed, right? So he runs into God himself in the process of asking these questions. And the essential idea here is, hey, their blessing is so strong. And it's not just you shall not. It's not like God is giving him a command like, hey, don't do this.

It's actually that God is saying, you will not be able to curse them because their blessing is from me, right? And so let's just be clear on this. The Lord's blessing is stronger than any curse.

So one of the many questions that you ought to ask when you just run across this in the story is, well, how did they get blessed? Where does their blessing come from? Because when spiritual powers bless people, what happens is that there's always like a bit of a transactional price. You pay me this, I give you this, right? So what price did this people pay?

What requirements did they fulfill in order to achieve this blessing? And this is where we get the utter joy of understanding that Yahweh does not operate like any other spiritual power, because this people Israel performed no transaction to get the blessing that they received. They are blessed because their forefather Abraham responded to God's call in faith. And God chose by the power of his word to bless Abraham's descendants, right? No pay to play, no sacrifice.

If you do this, then you get this. No, God chose to bless Abraham and did it with the power of his word. Genesis 12:1 3. This is the promise that God gave to Abraham. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred.

Verse 2. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you. Verse 3. And I will bless those who bless you. This is a powerful blessing, right?

It goes beyond just simply you. If anybody blesses you they're going to get blessed too. And him who dishonors you, I will curse. This is the blessing that God put on Israel. And here's the thing, Balaam cannot break the spiritual protection that God has placed on this people.

And so what he does is he sends this guy, Balak sends these tribal leaders and Balaam talks to them, and then he sends them back to the king and says, hey, you got to go empty handed. I don't have anything for you, I can't do this. And the king of Moab, Balak, he was not satisfied with the answer God gave, and so he sent the same guys, he said, no, go back and talk to him. This is very important to me. I need to curse these people.

And so this is, this is now Balaam's response. After, after he sends his, it's like this back and forth and back and forth. And so Balaam is responding to these leaders and, and says, though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God to do less or more. So you two please stay here tonight that I may know what more the Lord will say to me when he says, the Lord my God, we need to be very clear about something. This is not Balaam's confession of faith.

This is not him taking ownership of the God of Israel, like I have faith in him. Now, this is not that at all. What it is, is, as he transacts in this realm of spiritual power, he has now run into Yahweh, the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. And he realizes that, like, I have no authority here, like, he is over me if I'm operating in this realm, like he's going to be in charge of whatever I do. He's essentially saying, like, God is in charge in this situation and I'm not, right?

And so even though he knew that it's very interesting, his greed is still at play. Like, he's still going to take the money, like, here, stay here for the night, we'll see what happens. Like, let's talk to God and figure this out. And so just remember, not all spiritual people are good people. Verse 20.

And God again came to Balaam at night and said to him, if the men have come to call you, rise and go with them, but only do what I tell you, right? You can go, but you're under my command. You will only do what I tell you. And so essentially what has happened is that this guy Balaam has been now forced, like his arm has not only been twisted like he has been, you know, righteously coerced by the God of the universe to come under his authority. Because there's no spiritual power stronger than the spiritual power that, you know, spoke and things came to be, right?

That's who Balaam is dealing with right now. Now, the rest of chapter 22, this is again, like I said, long text, long story. We're not going to go through every detail, but this is like also one of the most interesting stories if you were to read through the rest of chapter 22, because I'm just going to summarize it for you if you want to, I just encourage you go this week and read it. But when Balaam goes, the Lord is simultaneously coercing him and angry with him, right? He is, he is angry at what Balaam is doing.

And so you might say, well, he's angry, but didn't he tell him to go? Well, yeah, but Balaam sees himself as a friend of spiritual powers. And Yahweh also intends to show Balaam that he is no friend of his. And so Balaam, what he does is he gets on this donkey and he goes on this journey up to a high place. He's intending to go to a mountain where he can meet with some spiritual powers.

And he's going to go though, and remember, do what God says. But as he's on the way, the donkey just stops moving, like, won't go forward anymore. And the text tells us that the reason is the angel of the Lord stood in the way of the donkey. But Balaam can't see the angel of the Lord, right? So the dumb animal that he's riding can see the angel of the Lord, can see the reality of the spiritual powers.

But Balaam, who's supposed to be this amazing guru, right, he can't see the angel of the Lord, right? And so the donkey stops. And by the way, the angel, the angel of the Lord, when you read it in the Old Testament, I want you to be very clear about this. This is Jesus wielding his sword, right? When he's standing before the donkey, the donkey sees like God on earth, right?

Jesus is standing there, the son of God is right there before him. And so Balaam, his donkey stops, he doesn't know, kicks the donkey and tries to get the donkey to go. And the donkey tries to start to go, but then gets stopped again on a different pathway. And then he kicks the donkey again and then he tries to get him to go a different pathway. And then he takes his rod out and then he's like trying to beat the donkey and the donkey won't go forward.

And then all of a sudden, the donkey starts talking, right? And so let's just look at what the donkey says. Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, what have I done to you that you have struck me these three times? Like, what did I do to deserve this? I'm just here.

And Balaam said to the donkey, I just love how he's like now engaging in a conversation with this animal. Like, it's worth saying that people who do traffic in this stuff, like, they're used to being surprised. They're used to the. The unexpected happening. And so he talks back to the donkey.

Donkey. Well, because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword drawn in my hand, for I would kill you. And then verse 30. And the donkey said to Balaam, am I not your donkey?

On which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to do this to you? The donkey is trying to say, you know, like, if you were really thinking about this situation, you would recognize that my behavior right now is unusual. And then you would start asking questions. And Balaam goes, oh, good point.

No, you don't normally act this way. And then after that, what happens is that the Lord opens Balaam's eyes, and Balaam is now forced into this place where he knows he's not only under the command of the Lord, but he is now terrified and cowering before the angel of the Lord because he can see the angel of the Lord. And he says, you know what the Lord says to Balaam? You're lucky that your donkey is smarter than you are, because if your donkey had kept going, he would have been. You would have been crushed by me.

And so by putting this story in the scriptures, what God is doing is he's seeking to show his people a key lesson. Yahweh's power is greater than demonic powers. Every other spiritual power is greater than all of it. And so here's the thing. When we start using the word demons, Hollywood has made us very afraid of demons, made them out to be much bigger and scarier things.

And they do want to destroy us. But here's what we do with demonic powers. We neither seek them nor fear them. We neither seek them nor fear them. What we do, this is what scripture tells us to do.

We resist them and we fear the Lord because his power is mightier. He's the one who crushes them. And so I just like we need to be really clear about this. The world is not yin or yang, right? The world is not like some kind of everlasting competition between good and evil, and maybe we'll see which one wins out.

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, right? And so the reason that God doesn't wipe out all evil right now is because he is merciful and patient towards us human beings, waiting for us to come into alignment with him and out of alignment with evil. But we need to be clear that we should not confuse his mercy or his patience with some sense that he is somehow in competition with these powers. Because when Yahweh determines to make his power manifest, no spiritual power can compete with him. Every demonic power must submit to his word of command.

So then after the donkey episode, Balak comes and I'll talk to you about this in a minute. But essentially what happens is there's a, you know, he's going to do his task, right? He's going to get the thing that he gets paid for. And so they go up to a mountain, a high place, they make sacrifices in order to create this transaction where maybe they can curse. And so Balak goes multiple times to go and curse the people.

And every time what happens is that Balak and Balaam are there together. Sorry, their names are confusing, they're very similar to each other, and if I get them wrong, just please forgive me for that. But you have Balak and Balaam together up there. And Balak says, okay, now do this, like, carry out this curse, right, that you're supposed to do. And Balaam says to be like, I need to remind you I can only do what the Lord tells me to do.

And Balak is like, okay, great, go for it. And so Balaam opens his mouth and he goes, I bless the people of Israel, right? Every single time he, he, like, he gets. Starts getting the words out, and then the only thing that comes out of his mouth are the words that the Lord puts into his mouth, and they extend as a blessing of Israel. And every time he opens his mouth and starts speaking, Balak goes, no, stop, don't say those things.

Stop saying those words, right? That's, that's what's going on. And so, so Balak is kind of stubborn too, and he doesn't get the point. And so he says, well, let's try it again. And the same thing happens again, right?

And then he says, let's try it again, and we try it again. And it actually says in one of the instances that after, after Balaam Spoke like the third blessing or something like that. It says, then Balak's anger was kindled against Balaam, right? He's like. He's like, angry with this guy that he's hired.

And Balaam's just like, man, I told you I can only do what the Lord tells me to do. And it's just so interesting that it ends up in a place. There are four different blessings that Balaam speaks out over Israel, and he speaks those blessings out in the attempt to speak out a curse over them, right? The fourth one is incredibly interesting because Balaam, in his attempt to use spiritual power against God's people, ends up being one of the first people in history to speak out a prophecy of the Messiah. So the fourth blessing that Balaam speaks says, okay, I'm blessing this people, Israel.

Something is happening, though, in this people. I see him, but not now. He's not here yet. I behold him, but it's a long way out. It's like he's very far away.

Then he says, a star shall come out of Jacob. That reference to a star is simultaneously like a reference to a spiritual power kind of embodied in a human form, right? Like a star shall come out of David and a scepter. Scepter is referenced to authority and kingliness. A star shall come out of Jacob.

Jacob is Israel. And a scepter shall rise out of Israel, and it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down the sons of Sheth. Edom shall be dispossessed. Seir also, his enemies shall be dispossessed. And I love this, as Balaam is just out there and he just, like, can't help but exclaim in the midst of this blessing, Israel's doing really good.

Like, things are going well for Israel as I look off into this future with this king. And verse 19 and 1 from Jacob shall exercise dominion, right? And this dominion is not to be confused with, like, a small nation. The idea that's being presented here is that there is going to be a king coming out of Jacob who's going to rule the whole earth and destroy the survivors of cities. So in his attempt to curse God's people, Balaam actually ends up telling about the promise of the Messiah.

And we know, right, because we're Christians, that he was talking about our king Jesus, who came first to die and rise for our forgiveness, that we could be saved and set free and experience the mercy of God. And he is coming again to wage war on his enemies and to judge the living and the dead. And so we need to be super clear about all of the implications of this story this morning, the kingdom of darkness is no match for the King of Kings. Just like there's no comparison between their power. There's no sense of equality in that realm.

Okay, so what? So what? The first thing I would say is resist the temptation. Because there is a temptation. Like when these people start operating in this realm and then you realize that the, quote, blessings that they extend actually do the thing that they're accomplished to do, they become quite appealing.

And so resist the temptation to seek after people like Balaam. Remember, not all spiritual people are good people. We need to let the Bible define the kind of spirituality that we call good. We need to let Scripture be our guide. Right?

And so there are several New Testament references to Balaam. And they talk about Balaam's greed and they talk about Balaam misleading God's people. And there's a bit of a story later on that we'll probably talk about that next week. But I just want to give you kind of four categories of people to especially watch out for for people who are Christians, believers in JEs. And the first category is health and wealth profits.

These are people who chase after money and chase after influence. And they will suggest in their teaching that the mark of real and true and great faith is that you would have a great mansion, right? Or that you would have a really nice car, that you would have all of the abundance that you could possibly need. These guys are liars, right? They promote themselves as Christians, but they lead people down a dark path in which the end and outcome of Christianity is worldly prosperity.

And that is absolutely untrue. Okay, so health and wealth prophets. The second people to watch out for are progressive. And I put Christian in quotes here, Christian leaders. These are people within, you know, a handful of denominations.

And I'm not going to go about naming what they are. Right. But they give permission to and even advocate for practices that challenge that which God hates. Right? Because these practices are blatantly opposed to his intent in creation.

And he has named his opposition to these practices multiple times. And so what they do is they give all permission to all sorts of sexual immorality and rebellion against God in the process of their leading. Watch out for those people. The third group of people to watch out for, our spiritual gurus. Now these are interesting because they will not call themselves Christians, but.

But they use some interesting lang. They have an air of appeal and they will talk a lot about love, right? It's very important that we. There's like this Transcendent love that we need to be a part of and that we need to internalize and we need to ascend to. And they'll talk about a particular.

They'll use the word, you know, and that's what Christ did. In fact, it is the Christ consciousness that is in all of us, right? So you ever hear those two words together? Christ consciousness. Just be very careful.

Look out, super dangerous stuff. Stuff, right? And so what they do is they call it Christ, right, The Christ consciousness. But ultimately it is in the purpose of deceiving people to go away from Christ, Right? Because the idea that these guys advocate for is that, you know, well, all religions sort of have some validity to them, right?

And they're all kind of leading us to the same place. And so what Christ revealed to us was the Christ consciousness. And so those people are liars. Do not listen to them. And then number four again, Christian in quotes, Christians who justify occult and New Age practices.

Now, I'm not. Don't hear me. If you have stumbled into the occult and the New Age, I'm not saying that your faith is not genuine. But there are Christian leaders out there who are advocating for and justifying involvement in the occult and New Age. And I would put Christians in quotation marks definitely for them.

I would be very uncertain of the reality of their faith, right? So these are acts that, just as God opposed them in the Old Testament, he is opposed to them now because they seek to lead people to spiritual power apart from the one pathway that God has given us into spiritual power, which is submission to God and surrender to God. That's it. Like, that's the pathway that we have, right? And his plan and his will and his purposes.

And so I put this up here, and then I just want to give you a verse from The New Testament, First John 4, 1, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets, people who claim to have spiritual insight, people who claim to be in touch with spiritual power, many false prophets have gone out into the world.

So just for what it's worth, I want to be sure that we reinforce this. I also want to say it like, many of these people are kind people and they are patient and empathetic. Many of these people are very generous people, but whether they know it or not, they are opposed to God and His Word. And we need to keep watch on ourselves that we don't go after them. And we need to warn others to not go after them.

And we ought to bless them and Love them and tell them the truth about who Jesus is, right? Number two, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. It's like. It's that clear, as human beings, we will do just about anything to find spiritual power besides the one thing that we need to do, right? We will find any way that doesn't involve our humility, right?

That doesn't involve making ourselves low before God. And so in the Kingdom, spiritual power doesn't look like what the other guys say it looks like, right? Because what it means is that we surrender our wills to God's will. We don't force our will upon God. We surrender our will and we ask the Lord, what is your will?

What would you have me do? We submit and surrender. And that means that we get to play a role in God's agenda for our lives and the places and spaces that we live. Live. But when you get people surrendering to God's agenda, I would tell you the most spiritually powerful things that you have ever witnessed start happening.

Right? You see, people start repenting, right? And this is. I just want to talk to you about history of revival for a second. Right?

Revivals throughout the history of our country and in the history of the world. What happens? People start repenting, people start confessing sin. People start making themselves low before God. People start forgiving those against whom they have bitterness, right?

People start boldly speaking the truth of God's word out to other people. And then the Holy Spirit just loves to see that. And so he falls on people with power. And then you see people starting to get healed, healing breaks out. You know, deliverance of demonic strongholds breaks out.

And people who didn't believe before start believing in a more powerful way and. Right. So I just want to be clear. There is nothing more powerful and. And more beautiful than what God's power can accomplish.

But it starts with his people laying down our wills and surrendering and submitting to God and resisting what the enemy would lead us into. And that's where we find the power of the kingdom. That's where we watch darkness flee. So, Church, would you pray with me, please?

So, Father Jesus, we lift up your name and your authority. You are the name that is above every name. We honor you. We celebrate you, Lord. And as we come to communion, would you just give us this blessed opportunity to make ourselves low before you?

We celebrate, but we celebrate nothing about ourselves. We celebrate the goodness that you've extended to us, the opportunity that you've given to us to be saved and redeemed. And to experience the power of your kingdom. So, Holy Spirit, would you bless us now to have a humble heart and to receive the beauty of what Jesus purchased for us. We pray this in Jesus mighty name, Amen.