Satan's Attack On Your Testimony! Series

Pleasant Hill Baptist Church of Quitman MS

Pastor Michael DePhillips

www.forministry.com/39355PHBC

"Satan’s Attack on your testimony"

Revelation 12:11

We are living in a day when we want to deny the real cause of anything and everything. We don’t want to see the results of what is going on in our world or even in our own lives as the works of SIN, FLESH AND THE DEVIL.

In 1951 Professor James S. Stewart was a key speaker at the Lymon Beecher Lectures at Yale University and although Professor Stewart is now in heaven, he was probably one of the greatest preachers in the early half of the 20th Century. As he preached on the cross he said, ‘I fear that as Darwin banished the Creator God, Freud will see to it that we replace spiritual warfare with phobias an with psychological jargon.’

Citizens of the United States of America spent 10.7 Billion dollars last year on anti-depressant stimulation and 1 in 43 as reported on WTOK last week during the national news. We have progressed from post partum depression to calling it post partum psychosis to explain away mothers who murder their children based upon the case of June 2001 when a woman in Texas drowned her five children in the bathtub. We take pills to help us go to sleep at night and we take pills to wake us up in the morning and we take a pill to help us get through the day but beloved when Jesus died on the cross he wasn’t only our sinless substitute but HE WAS IN A BATTLE WITH APOLLYON THE DESTROYER who has struggled and opposed us since the Garden of Eden. Not in any way saying that medicine is the root of all of our problems nor even that you should discontinue any medication but the true power of Christ Jesus has yet to be realized in many lives.

Colossians 2:13,14 "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us, HE TOOK IT AWAY! Nailing it to the cross!"

(1) Jesus said in Luke 10:17-20 that he saw Satan fall from heaven like a bolt of lightning and that he has given us power over the enemy to tread on scorpions and serpents and ALL THE POWERS OF DARKNESS. He wasn’t talking about natural enemies but spiritual enemies that plague us.

(2) Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11:3,14 that Satan deceives us through subtlety and that he appears as an ANGEL OF LIGHT veiling within the context of truth to manipulate us in such aw way that we will be defeated. His testimony is one of deception and compromise as he twists the truth of the gospel.

(3) Deception is to trap someone in a lie and a trap must have at least one of two components to be effective…

A. must be disguised or hidden

B. some type of bait to entice us to enter

In the Old Testament of your HIMBOOKS there is a story in history of King Hezekiah being laid siege to by Sennacherib and Rab-Shakeh in Isaiah Chapter 36 and the parallel story in 2 Chronicles 32.

(READ ISAIAH 36)

Part of our problem in the church is that we teach history lessons without learning to apply the truth to our present lives. Jesus isn’t a history lesson beloved because HE IS ALIVE and now sitting in glory to intercede on our behalf so we have to learn to see Jesus in our presence and praise him for what he is currently doing.

Rab-Shakeh to me is symbolic of Satan and represents the ministry and testimony of the devil himself giving us a clear picture of how Satan still opposes and besieges God’s chosen ones. Want you to listen to God speak to your heart in how to overcome the attack of Satan on your testimony because this is one of the most essential parts of your service to the Lord and of your ability to be used by God in reaching others.

FIRST… Satan will always be prideful of how much stronger he is than you and that you had better not resist him or there’s going to be trouble…(tries to bully us into giving him our lunch money)

· Had to stand up to a bully when I was a boy in the 7th grade

· Cleotis

· One day we’ve got to stand up to the bullies in our life

Rab-shakeh stood up and spoke in clear language a VEILED THREAT of what had happened to every other nation and person who withstood his power. Satan does the same thing doesn’t he? He’ll tell you about the other people claiming to have been Christian that he’s conquered and defeated but 2 Chronicles 32:8 says that with our enemy is only an arm of flesh but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight for us.