Into The Darkness Part 2: Be Careful Who You Listen To
Scripture: Matthew 16:21-23; 24:10-11; Acts 8:9-10; 16:16-19; 1 John 4:1
Introduction
Last week I spoke to you about walking in the darkness. I told you that walking in faith means that we must get very comfortable being in the dark because to walk in faith means we will deal with situations where the outcome will not be known to us. However, although we may be in the dark as we walk by faith, the One with whom we are walking knows what is going on. So we turn walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) and not having the “sight” into a situation is okay because we know by faith that it will be all right. At the conclusion of the message last week, God led me to share with you what I had seen on TV earlier that week. When I thought about it, I really did not think that it truly fit with the message, but I knew I was supposed to share it. So, at the close I told you about the infomercial I saw about a man called “The Prophet”. I did not fully realize the impact of this until God brought it back to me this week.
The infomercial was about a man who is called “The Prophet”. Rev. Ike (famous for the slogan: “You can’t lose with what I use.”), Rev. Al Sharpton, Russell Simmons, the author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and Judge Hackett were all giving praises to this man who had changed their lives through his prophecies. As I watched this, my mind immediately went to a place where I was thinking about how these people, having good intentions, were actually in spiritual darkness. Although I believe that there are true prophets of God in the world today, I did not sense that this man was one of them. My spirit could not come into agreement with him or what I was seeing on the TV. All of the testimonies were about how the prophet was able to help them financially. On the infomercial you could call in and request your first “free prophecy” and once you were hooked, you could purchase others. What I found interesting was that all of these people said that every prophecy he had given them had come to past – yet they had to purchase them. I cannot find no where in the Bible where the prophet charged for the prophecy and gave you one for free just to get you started.
This is what God brought back to my memory this week – that there are good people being led astray because they are following the wrong “voices” while they are in the darkness. When God spoke this to me, He also told me that this was only the beginning. He reminded me of Christ’s warning in Matthew the 24th chapter. In verses ten and eleven of that chapter Christ speaks of what will happen in the last days – our days. He says “At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.” These false prophets will mislead many because the people walking in faith will seek out and listen to anyone that will bring them to any type of “enlightenment”. Again, because many of us do not like being in the dark, we do not want to wait on the Lord, but rather engineer our own escape. We are entering into danger times. Because we have a great need to know what is happening around us when we are “supposed to be walking in faith”, we will seek out anyone who will tell us what we desire to hear while ignoring where God is trying to take us. The one point that God stressed upon me was that not everyone who speaks a word into our situation is speaking from Him. What am I saying? I am telling you that many good people will speak something that is not from God into our situations and if we are not listening for the voice of God, those words that we accept can wreak havoc upon our lives.
Paul warned Timothy of this time in which we are living. He said “….the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4) When we seek out and listen to the voices that speak to our own desires, we will find ourselves in situations that God never intended for us to be in.
When I delivered this message last week, I was not planning a second part, but there was something that stayed in my spirit. All week there has been this nagging that I was leaving out something and it finally hit me yesterday. Last week I briefly said in closing that we must be careful of the voices we listen to while we are in the dark (walking in faith) because they may or may not be of God. This morning I need to close this by completing what God was saying about the voices. Some of this we will get into in more depth in Bible study as we discuss demonic oppression, but for this message, there are a couple of things I need to make you aware of as it pertains to the voices that will speak in the darkest hour of our faith walk. Once again, this message is a warning to all of us that we need to be very careful of the voices we listen to during the darkness of our faith walk for not every voice contains the word that God has for us.
I. Not Everything Appearing of God Actually Is
As we have learned in Bible Study, Satan is a master of disguise. His demonic forces are at work and he will use any means necessary to trip us up – especially when we are standing in faith. Satan will use spiritual leaders, family and friends to try and influence us to get off of our faith walk with God. He will use those close to you to try and influence you to give up or give in. Think about it. How many times have you been standing in faith and someone close to you came to you with good intentions and shared something with you that you knew contradicted what you were standing for. They meant well and thought they were helping you out, but in reality, in most cases Satan had used the person to try and get you to fail. I want to share a personal story with you about an encounter I had with someone who gave me a “word for the Lord” that was not really a word for God. In order for you to understand what I am going to share with you, there are a couple of things you need to understand about how Satan operates and how he easily fools those who are not aware of his devices. Remember, Satan is very subtle and his influences will not always be recognized unless you are listening for God’s voice and recognizes it when you hear it. So let’s turn to Acts the 8th chapter.
We have been trained to listen to the spiritual leaders within our churches, often without questioning what they say. If the Pastor says it, then it must be true. Likewise, many good Christians in our society believe that if someone speaks a “word of knowledge” over us that contain some truth it must be from the Lord. If we witness supernatural things happening, it must be from the Lord. We seek out all types of camp meetings and church services seeking the next spiritual high, yet we do not understand that God is a personal God who wants a personal interaction with each of us. This was the case in the story recorded in Acts chapter 8 concerning the magician Simon. Simon was a man who had been practicing magic. When Phillip came to town and was performing signs and miracles, Simon witnessed it along with all of the people of the town. The “signs” that Simon witnessed Phillip doing included casting out unclean spirits and healing the sick. What the people were seeing was a true manifestation of the power of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. But, and here is where I want you to really focus in on, before Phillip arrived on the scene, these people actually thought that Simon was doing the work of God. Look at verses nine and ten of Acts chapter eight. “Now there was a man named Simon, who formerly was practicing magic in the city and astonishing the people of Samaria, claiming to be someone great: and they all, from the smallest to greatest, were giving attention to him, saying, ‘This man is what is called the Great Power of God.” (Acts 8:9-10)
Focus on what is said in verse ten. Consider the attitude and response of the people to Simon and the magic he was performing. They saw the magic and “assumed” that this man was operating in the power of God. Did you pick up on that? You see, these people, as do we, assumed that anything supernatural that happens is of God and that is not always the case. We assume that any word spoken in Church that sounds good is of God and it is not. Simon was practicing magic under the power of Satan yet the people who witnessed this assumed that he was a great man of God although at this time he was on his way to hell. We cannot get so caught up into the “signs and miracles” that we fail to understand whether or not God is actually operating in the midst. Let’s look at one more example. Turn to Acts the sixteenth chapter and look at verses sixteen through nineteen. It reads “It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, ‘These men are bond servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.’ She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, ‘I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!’ And it came out at that very moment. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities.”
There are a couple of points that I want to make from this recording. First, we have a woman who had a spirit of divination who was making her owners a lot of money through her fortunetelling. When Paul and Silas arrived to town, she immediately began proclaiming that they were the bond-servants of the Most High God. Notice that she did not say that Paul and Silas were servants of Jesus Christ, but of the Most High God. The spirit that was operating within her knew Jesus, but apparently did not want to speak of Him at this time. So for many days she followed Paul and Silas around making this proclamation. In the proclamation that she was making, she was proclaiming a truth about Paul and Silas which would then also reflect on her as being within the same category as them. Remember, she had been operating in the city for a long time before Paul and Silas arrived and people knew her. When she began making proclamations about Paul and Silas which everyone found out was true, it gave her even more credibility. Now here is where it gets interesting. At some point, maybe even from the first day they hit town, Paul realized that the woman possessed a spirit of divination. When he was fed up with the woman after this realization, he cast the demonic spirit out. Now here is what God wants us to understand. This woman was speaking the truth, but it was not coming from God. She was operating with another spirit, not the Holy Spirit. Had Paul and Silas not understood what was happening, this woman could have continued. But it does not stop there. When Paul cast the demon out of the woman, her masters became very upset. Why? Because this woman could no longer tell fortunes thus they lost one of the income sources. They did not care about her soul, they cared about the money they were making.
We have people today in ministry who care more about the money than the souls of the people. This is what Christ and Paul had warned about in these last days. We must not get so caught up in the signs that we fail to hear the voice of God. First John 4:1 says “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” We need to heed this warning as we walk in faith. Not every person who speaks to you is speaking from the Spirit of God. Remember, there are many spirits in the world and we must understand which one is speaking to us. I have one more Scriptural reference I want to share with you. Turn to Matthew 16:21-23.
“From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.’ But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
In these very familiar verses of Scripture, Jesus had begun to tell His disciples about what was going to happen to Him. After hearing this, Peter pulls Jesus aside and tells Him that God did not want this to happen. Peter probably did not even realize that he was being used of Satan. Satan was so very crafty in how he used Peter. Peter was one of Jesus’ confidants and Satan knew this. When Peter pulled Jesus off to rebuke Him, Jesus immediately knew who was speaking. Jesus called Satan out and told him to get behind Him. What if Jesus had been like many of us where He was not able to distinguish Satan’s voice from God’s? He might have thought that He had had it all wrong for all of these years and that God had sent Peter to set Him straight. This would have proven a disaster. Thank God that Jesus knew who was speaking to Him. One more point before I leave this example. Jesus told Satan that Satan was a stumbling block to Him. Now if Jesus recognized that Satan was a stumbling block to Him, why do we think that we are exempt? We are not.
II. My Personal Story
Now let me share with you my personal story which really brought this home to me. Back in the early 90s, I was a youth Pastor and trustee at a Church. Throughout my time there, I became close with my Pastor and shared with Him that I knew God had called me to be a Pastor one day. My Pastor said that God had already confirmed that within him also. After a couple of years went by, my relationship with my Pastor began to change as things started happening within the Church that I knew was not right. Well one night we had an evangelist come to the Church to conduct a revival. The evangelist called me out of the audience because he had a “word from the Lord” for me. He told me that God had called me to Pastor and that I would. He also told me that I must be ready for the time was coming. Since this was something I had been praying about I accepted this word as being from the Lord.
Shortly after that revival and receiving that word, my Pastor called me into his office to share with me that God had opened up a door for me to pastor my own Church. This Church was losing their pastor was beginning to seek out a new one. My pastor was assisting them in their search. When he met with me, he basically told me that the Church was mine and he believed that this is what God had spoken to me that night during the revival. Although my spirit did not agree, I needed to make sure that I was not missing God. So we set up an interview with that pastor and his Church. Nikki and I traveled 3 hours to a small town to meet with them and for me to preach that Sunday morning. After the services, the Church congregation and the Pastor was happy. They wanted us to commit that day and I shared with them that I needed to go back and pray on it. I knew this was not of God. When we returned home, my pastor was excited as he expected that we would accept the Church. When I told him that I did not believe that this was God he looked at me with disappointment and told me that I would need to pray and ask God for grace to stay there because I was out of God’s will. I have looked back through the years wondering what would have happened to us had I acted on my desires to pastor and accepted that Church. I would have truly missed God and in the process would have harmed a lot of innocent people because I would have been out of God’s will. I share this with you so that you understand that not every word that someone tells you is from God. It may sound good, may be scriptural and may be something that you truly wish to do, but you need to be sure.
Conclusion
God brought me back to my message from last week to ensure that we all know that we must be careful of the voices that we listen to as we are walking and standing in faith. When we believe God for something, there will be times when we are in total darkness waiting for God to reveal His will. During these times Satan will ensure that other voices are speaking to us in his attempt to get us off track. As we grow in that one on one relationship with God, we will begin to know and understand His voice. Jesus said “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:27) May God bless and keep you is my prayer.
