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.
KEY TO TRUSTING IN GOD IS RESTING IN HIS WORD! Years ago there was a popular bumper sticker that said God said, I believe it and that settles it! We need more than ever to believe God’s Word. One day we’ve got to stop sucking our thumbs and burying our heads in the sand and become the victorious church Jesus died for…
· I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!
· By His stripes I am healed!
· Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle and the end!
But Satan won’t give up if he can’t bully you beloved. Look with me at verse 8,16-17 of Isaiah 36 again (read)
Do you see what the devil does? He tries to bribe us into compromise. Remember when I told you of the people who got what they wanted but lost what they had from Psalms and God sent leanness unto their souls. Satan will always try to get you to compromise for instant gratification.
Instant Grits
Instant Pictures
For everything else there’s Mastercard!
Want to make this point with you, WHEN WE RESERVE OURSELVES BY HOLDING BACK OUR TRUE GOD GIVEN TALENTS AND ABILITITES BECAUSE OF HURT OR BITTERNESS, THAT IS SIN! We give place to the devil in our own hearts by compromise and we need to confess it and repent of it so we can accept forgiveness. Bitterness and Hurt feelings and Envy have become strongholds in the church but as R.G. LEE said in his message Payday Someday, THE DEVIL ALWAYS PAYS OFF IN COUNTERFEIT MONEY, HIS RUBIES ARE LUSTERLESS MARBLES, HIS NECTAR IS HOG SLOP AND IF YOU EAT HIS CORN HE’LL CHOKE YOU WITH HIS COB, YES HE WILL, YES HE WILL! BUT WHO HAS THE POWER TO CONVINCE PEOPLE OF THAT TODAY?
Look with me again at verses 13-14, 18 (read) Next part of Satan’s strategy is to turn you against the leaders God has set over you and who must one day give an account. He tries to make you feel that God’s leaders are trying to harm you and you get offended. You know before I became a preacher, I really didn’t have anyone who I could say hated me or despised me. I used to put people in jail on a daily basis and see them a few weeks later and they’d talk to me in a civilized manner but when I became a preacher all that changed. There are people that absolutely despise me even though they can’t quite put a finger on what it really is.
· I used to be able to go get drunk and get in a fight in the bar room and try to beat the snot out of the other guy but a few weeks later I could run into that same man in a bar and buy him a beer and everything was forgiven. But since I have been saved and surrendered to preach the matchless gospel of Christ, there are people who hate me in the community and even in the church even though I’ve never done anything to them! It’s not really me they hate but HE WHO LIVES WITHIN ME! Glory to God for the enemies he has given me to draw me closer to himself.
· He just hollers too much for me… at least you know I’m alive!
· Satan always turns us against God’s people when we begin to compromise and believe the lie the God of Heaven really can’t deliver and save us from our circumstances.
Think about that for a minute. How many times have you heard somebody say, I’m not going down to that church! I know deacon so and so or someone else and do you know what he or she does when they’re away from church? I’m not going down there with those hippocrites!
WELL YOU GO TO THE SAME SUPERMARKET WITH THEM! YOU MIGHT WORK AT THE SAME JOB WITH THEM! YOU LIVE IN THE SAME TOWN WITH THEM!
That’s just an excuse! Problem is they’ve been deceived into believing that this is some type of competition and as long as your sins are higher than my sins and we get judged on the same day, I’ll come out on top. But that’s not the truth! Unless you meet Jesus in a real and personal way, you’re going to hell my friend even though you may not be as bad as some of the people in the church!
People think the preacher is trying to hurt them but he’s trying to equip and help them be born into the family of God. I can go visiting and while I’m walking up to the door hear feet running through the trailer, OH NO IT’S THAT PREACHER HERE TRYING TO GET ME SAVED! EVERYBODY BE QUIET! SHHHHHHHH!
I’ll be your friend even if you die and go to hell. You don’t have to run and hide or think I’m trying to hurt you. I wouldn’t pull one hair from my head to try and put burden on you but I’ll put my 300 pounds under you to try and help you be born into the family of God. I love lost people and I’m comfortable around them because I spent most of my adult life lost. I left Maurepas Baptist Church and it wasn’t the church people who came to see me and tell me they loved me, oh yeah they wish I hadn’t left or that I’d come back, but it was the lost people in the community who came to cry on my sofa and ask me not to leave.
Led some of them to the Lord too! Don’t you give place to the devil in your heart by thinking that the preacher doesn’t care about you or is out to get you! Folks there’s a war going on all around us and people are dying and going to hell but the church doesn’t care! We just want to keep our offerings up and plan a new project or wait for some new program because they know where we’re at if they need us!
We are the only army in existence that won’t follow orders, listen to our leaders or rescue our wounded. We shoot our wounded, throw away our orders and overthrow our leaders because we don’t know the enemy wants to divide us so he can CONQUER US!
