From time to time I'm going to mention
a book that I want to encourage you
to acquire.
I mentioned one last week, and these two
are of the same quality and caliber, and
yet little known by God's people.
One is by Jim Wallace, W-A-L
-L-I-S.
I hope we're getting this on the tape.
And it's called Agenda for a Biblical People,
published by Hopper and Brothers.
I just don't have words enough to describe
the depth, the significance of this book, the
grasp that this young brother has for the
kingdom of God, the church, the issues that
are before us, including the one that we're
discussing in these days.
Another one by William Stringfellow, who has now
gone on with the Lord a long struggle
with cancer.
He was a lawyer in Harlem and undertook
on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden
and gained tremendous insight in what goes on
in society with regard to the powers.
And the book is called An Ethic for
Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.
It's a very long title, but it is
absolutely superb.
It's chiseled, every word is monumental.
He's a lawyer theologian, and it's just an
astonishing statement of which most theologians know nothing.
So these two books and the one that
I recommended last week would be such a
substantial contribution to the foundations of your faith.
And as Lord gives me grace tonight, I'll
try to intersperse some select quotations into the
text.
And I want, I think by the encouragement
of God, to try something new tonight.
And I've been struggling with the issue of
quoting.
I know that quoting from texts like these
can be difficult for the hearers.
The reader is familiar with that material, and
he understands what he's saying.
But for those who have not read it
and are hearing it, they can't quite lay
hold the first time.
And yet these quotations are so cogent and
penetrating that it would be a pity to
omit the material altogether.
So I'm just looking to the Lord how
to present this tonight.
And I believe that he wants me to
use a text in Acts 16, if you'll
turn to it.
And then try strategically to fit in some
of these very powerful quotations as they are
significant to the text.
So we're talking about the principalities and powers
of the air for those of you who
were not here last week.
And I want to read a statement immediately
from William Stringfellow's book.
Because I mentioned how little understanding there is
on the part of the church in this
enormous subject that was so well known, so
familiar to the early church.
In fact, the profoundest aspect of the atonement
of Christ was not so much with the
issue of sin as it was deliverance from
the powers, that he made an open spoil
of the enemy.
Was for the early church one of the
most significant aspects of the atonement of Christ.
And yet this is least known by the
modern church today.
Because the principalities and powers, this invisible spirit
realm that occupies a heavenly place over the
earth seems a little far-fetched, it's a
little out of keeping with the temper of
our own rationalistic and scientific civilization.
And so even eminent theologians have poo-pooed
these references in scripture, though they're there.
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities and powers, the rulers of
this world's darkness.
And they attribute that to some kind of
vestigial hangover, some Judaistic remnant from Paul out
of his rabbinical upbringing.
But not any true reference to an authentic
dimension that needs to be recognized by the
church.
It's more or less a mythological language that
does not refer to actuality.
And if the church goes on with that
kind of understanding, it's doomed before it begins.
So here's what Stringfellow says, Americans, including professed
Christians, who have biblical grounds to be wiser,
remain, it seems, astonishingly obtuse about these powers.
They seldom impute to them personality or integrity
as creatures, and commonly deem institutions and similar
principalities as subject to human sponsorship, patronage, and
control.
Like government, like culture, like sport, like rock
music.
We think of it only in human cultural
terms and don't recognize that behind them are
these powerful forces acting upon men.
But the animus, the animation, the source, is
in the heavenlies.
Yet to be ignorant or gullible or naive
about the demons, to underestimate the inherent capacities
of the principalities, to fail to notice the
autonomy of these powers as creatures, abets their
usurpation of human life and their domination of
human beings.
They want nothing more than to remain unknown,
than to be looked upon as mythological, to
be ignored as some kind of ancient reference
that doesn't have any present validity, because in
that way they can continue to operate and
increasingly bring men and societies and nations under
their domination.
As I mentioned last week, we have had
recent opportunity in history to see entire nations
come under the domination of these powers.
Nazi Germany being a powerful case in point.
And we could say the same for the
USSR. These nations that are bound by powerful
ideologies that dehumanize even their own citizens, that
are ruthless in the employment of force, all
of these are characteristic signs of a nation
manipulated and jerked, operated by the powers, through
the gullible and unwitting acquiescence of people who
just don't know better.
Because there's only one agency in the earth
that does know better, or should know better,
namely the church.
And if it remains in a posture of
ignorance or indifference, and does not make known
the victory won at the cross, then nations
and societies are required to be the continuing
victims of these powers.
Any social concern of human beings which neglects
or refuses to deal with the principalities with
due regard to their authentic identity, I'm paraphrasing
because you might get tripped on his language,
is delusive.
While any social change or any evangelism, now
I'm adding, any program of the church predicated
upon mere human action, while prompted by a
so-called social gospel or motivated by some
pietism, is doomed.
In other words, any activity of the church,
whether evangelistic or social or any program, that
does not take into full cognizance the reality
of these powers of the air, is doomed
in the accomplishment of the thing that it
intends.
It just is making mock motions that accomplish
nothing.
In short, to behold America biblically requires comprehension
of the powers and principalities as they appear
and as they abound in the world, even
alas, in America, in this country.
So I want to show from an early
episode in the book of Acts, the 16th
chapter, something of the evidence of these powers
as Paul and Silas were confronted by them
in the course of their journey.
To save time enough to begin with the
earlier part of the text, we know that
Paul was successful in promulgating the gospel in
Asia and then he was stopped by the
Holy Spirit from continuing and he sought to
go to another location and the Spirit prevented
him and then a vision came in the
night of a Macedonian beseeching him, come help
us.
And so when the vision came to Paul,
they assuredly gathered, it says in the King
James, that the Lord had called them and
therefore they set forth with a straight course
and they came to Philippi, one of the
principal cities of Greece, and it was the
first account, the first instance of the gospel
being brought to Europe from Asia.
First time that the gospel came into what
is the western world and then subsequently to
ourselves.
So it's interesting to see what was their
experience in the bringing of the gospel to
the west.
In verse 11, therefore, setting sail from Troas,
we made a direct voyage to Samothrace and
the following day to Neapolis and from there
to Philippi, which is the leading city of
the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.
We remained in the city some days and
on the Sabbath day we went outside the
gate to the riverside where we supposed there
was a place of prayer and we sat
down and spoke to the women who had
come together.
One who heard us was a woman named
Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller
of purple goods who was a worshipper of
God.
The Lord opened her heart to give heed
to what was said by Paul and when
she was baptized with her household, she besought
us saying, if you have judged me to
be faithful to the Lord, come to my
house and stay, and she prevailed upon us.
It hurts me to have to even rush
by these verses, all of which deserves enormous
acknowledgement and commentary.
And I've got to just say this much,
the Lord opened her understanding as Paul spoke
and when she was baptized, no ifs, no
ands, no buts, she heard the word and
immediately made the most radical commitment to God
in a place and in a culture where
baptism would be so offensive and such a
source of rebuke upon people in a pagan
or even a Judaistic culture.
But she did not hesitate for that act
of obedience and even besought them to come
stay with her.
Subsequently they will go, but the stigma of
having received apostolic men will remain with her
and she is willing to bear it.
And another thing to note, that the gospel
begins with a woman.
It began with women at a riverside.
It began with a woman hearing, believing and
entering.
So this is again a continuation of a
whole pattern that God shows us in the
scriptures.
That almost invariably the inception of God's profoundest
works begin with women.
And carrying on from verse 16, As we
were going to the place of prayer we
were met by a slave girl who had
a spirit of divination and brought her owners
much gain by soothsaying.
She followed Paul and us crying, These men
are servants of the Most High God who
proclaim to you the way of salvation.
And this she did for many days.
But Paul was annoyed and turned and said
to the spirit, I charge you in the
name of Jesus Christ to come out of
her.
And it came out of her that very
hour.
If I had something to do with the
translation, I don't think I would use the
word annoyed.
That sounds like he was petulant or piqued.
It bothered him.
He was being disturbed.
The better word is he was grieved.
He was stricken in his spirit to see
a woman being used as merchandise by men
who were employing her because she was under
the influence of demon spirits and had a
spirit of divination which brought her masters much
gain.
And I just am asking you to sense
in this little episode the universal import that
what we have here is a slice of
something, a reality, a statement of the influence
of the powers in society that continues to
this very day.
Of victims who are jerked and manipulated by
a spirit realm that has something to do
with profit, with advantage to men, which is
fiercely contended for, as we're going to see
in a minute, the consequence that falls on
Paul and Silas for this single act of
deliverance.
It wasn't just, well, there was a woman
who was distracting them and to get rid
of her they took authority over the spirit.
In being grieved by her bound condition and
her exploitation by men through the powers of
the air, they affected a deliverance, but in
doing so they touched something at the very
heart and the wellspring of civilization itself that
is under the dominion and rule of the
principalities and the powers of the air.
That has to do with profit, self-aggrandizement,
self-seeking, exploitation, misuse, abuse.
And the reason that we miss this is
that we think that the only one who
needs deliverance is someone who's foaming at the
mouth or someone with jerks or spasms or
some blatant form of demonism and don't recognize
that there are entire societies that are under
demonic rule and influence that don't even know
of their condition, that are being employed by
IBM or 3M or corporations or sports organizations
or forms of culture that are manipulating and
dominating and sucking the very life out of
them in an exploitive way, and we haven't
so much as taken notice because it is
so normative in our society.
And yet it's characteristic of the powers to
rob mankind of its humanity, to mar the
image of God in man by exploiting, by
brutalizing, by taking advantage, by dominating, by jerking
by strings, by playing on fear, on manipulation,
hope of profit or whatever motive.
In a word, what I'm asking us is
to begin to take on an apostolic seeing
of entire societies and civilizations under the dominion
and influence of the powers of the air
that have had so long an unfettered sway
and unchallenged dominance that we take the culture
under their influence to be normative.
That is robbing the life of millions and
we ourselves subscribe to it and to a
certain degree are even under that influence also.
And to the degree that we are, we
are voiceless and powerless and without authority to
stand against these powers so as to deliver
those who are their victims because we ourselves
are being jerked and being manipulated.
I don't know if I mentioned last week,
I gave a few examples of how the
Lord has been bringing this subject to my
attention.
Did I mention how in East Germany, on
the last night of ministry, on the back
of an envelope with a flow pen, the
Lord was inspiring certain statements and there were
downstairs six elders from the church in this
city in East Germany waiting for a final
word from me and when I brought that
word, these men went pale in their faces
and began to tremble.
And the word was this, that something was
moving in my spirit that causes me grief,
that I've been moving through a nation, as
one East German brother said, our nation is
a nation of schizophrenics and alcoholics.
The man whose house I was staying worked
in an automobile factory and he says half
of the employees are crocked all the time.
Alcoholism is the most prevalent social problem in
communist Marxist nations.
Why?
They're without hope because they're being exploited, because
the kinds of things which God constituted men
to live is not available to them and
not the least of these things is truth.
And in East Germany, they're living in a
lie and the signs are everywhere.
It's ubiquitous.
Sorry about that.
That means present everywhere.
You see it when you get off the
train stations.
You see it in front of factories.
You see it in social halls.
Signs, 45 years of Soviet-German friendship.
It's a piece of malarkey.
It's just a piece of communist propaganda.
There's no friendship at all with Russians.
Those poor Russian soldiers, I've seen them in
the streets.
They're like dogs.
They can't even get the time of day.
But for the purposes of propaganda, for the
Marxist objectives, these kinds of signs are seen
everywhere.
An alternative to being confirmed is to making
a vow to the state.
And if you'll pick up a paper on
Sunday in East Germany, you'll see statement after
statement where they buy these ads and the
young kids who have made these covenants with
the state make their statements.
There's something so patently false.
There's something so rotten.
Something so against anything that can be understood
as integrity.
Something so brainwashed, so formed, so manipulated.
An entire generation being fitted to the purposes
of a state without any regard for its
humanity, that it kills you.
And so what the Lord had me to
say to these men is there's only one
agency on earth that can stand for what
is made in God's image, namely the church.
That we need to be jealous for and
protect and stand for the image of God
in men.
And when we see an entire nation becoming
schizophrenic and freaking out or alcoholic, we need
to confront the powers that are using propaganda
and the lie to rob them of their
integrity and the sense of truth and to
tell them that if you continue like this,
you may succeed in your political and economic
goals, but you're going to have a nation
of robots and automatons that have been robbed
of their humanity.
How do you like to go and tell
the communist officials that as the church, you
are authorized and have a responsibility to bring
this to their attention?
They need to regard the issue of truth,
that there's something more important than the expediency
of propaganda, namely human personality that requires truth
in order to be formed in the image
of God.
And I said to these men, this is
not just a guise by which you're going
to witness to them or hope for the
salvation or the conversion of these authorities if
it comes great.
And you're not even to go in the
hope that they're actually going to act on
the statement that you make.
That would be tremendous.
Whether they act on it or not, whether
they throw you in the clink or not,
whether you're never seen from again or not,
you have an obligation to stand for truth.
And that's what Paul did.
He could not stand to see the image
of God marred in this demoniacal victim being
exploited by men to bring them much gain
and commanded the demons to come out of
her and that's where they are.
Now it's instructed to see what was the
consequence of Paul's act.
But when her owners saw that their hope
of gain was gone, when their false hope
was demolished, when the lie by which they
were operating and by which so much of
society operates in the hope of gain, which
is a false premise, it's not one which
God gives men for their life in earth,
and yet the profit motive and the object
of gain is so unchallenged and so accepted
as normative that we don't recognize the source
and the inspiration of that false hope.
Remember what Paul said on Mars Hill?
That God has made all men from one
blood and established the bounds of their habitation.
If haply they might make much gain, if
haply they might make much profit.
He said, if haply they might be found
of God, for he is near to every
one of us.
And Paul was saying, this is the true
purpose for our human existence.
To be found of him, to establish a
relationship that would be enduring and eternal while
we yet have breath in this earth.
So the hope of gain is a false
hope.
But if the church does not identify it
as false, it allows people to run after
and to be motivated by something contrary to
God's intention.
And therefore, to have their whole life marred
and warped and made perverse.
Are you following me?
I'm talking about demon spirits in a context
that we don't ordinarily consider.
We have been so habituated to think in
terms of deliverance of an individual person who
is evidently under the influence of demons and
to consider that deliverance.
I want to say respectfully, that's kid stuff.
That's only peripheral.
That's majoring in the minors.
In fact, we wouldn't even need to do
that if we really struck at the foundational
thing that is going on which needs to
be recognized and can only be recognized by
a church that has the discernment and equally
the authority to stand against these powers and
to reveal them as false and their premises
as false and to deliver the victims from
those false motives and misspent living.
Do you understand why I prayed tonight?
Lord, be merciful.
Lord, give us grace.
My God, to understand this.
So though Paul here is only dealing with
an individual victim, what's being revealed is a
slice of something that affects entire generations, affects
entire societies and entire civilizations living under a
false hope of gain.
False premises, false assumptions, lying spirits that have
become normative in civilization because they have not
been challenged by the only agency that has
the qualification to challenge and to reveal the
false thing by the truth, namely the church
who is not being jerked by those false
values and not only proclaims the truth but
is the living evidence of a people who
are moving by another beat, by another set
of values and another alternative.
Got the picture?
No wonder we'd rather run to perform an
individual deliverance because we can perform an individual
deliverance without so much as any alteration of
our lifestyle.
But to tackle the powers of the air
and the principalities and rules of this world's
darkness that has affected entire societies, nations and
civilizations is not so light a thing.
That's going to require a radical alteration of
our own mode of life, not the least
aspect of which is a tremendous capacity for
givingness and for sacrifice because we'll even make
ourselves poor to help others like the church
in Zaire because we're not ruled by fear,
because we don't think that the issue of
our income and making it to the end
of the month is based on just an
arithmetical calculation of what we're getting from our
employers and what we can afford because we
know that we're moving and living and having
our being in another dimension altogether that is
not determined by an employer but by God.
But when the powers look down upon us
and see us in our miserliness handing out
the traditional Lutheran dollar in the collection plate
and playing it safe and seeing to our
own future and security and unwilling to take
the risks of faith that would beggar us
and show that our confidence is in God
that we believe the word that liberates us
that says, give and it shall be given
unto you when they see thou trembling and
see our miserliness they're not at all impressed
when we make reference to give and it
shall be given unto you.
They're not at all impressed when we invoke
a scripture.
They know what is the actual condition of
our heart and life because our lifestyle betrays
and reveals it.
Paul they know and Jesus they know but
they don't know us in the sense that
we in any way constitute a threat to
their dominion over men.
Once you begin to challenge the unspoken premises
and the assumptions by which the powers have
dominated over societies and nations here's going to
be a little taste of the kind of
thing that we will provoke against ourselves.
No wonder that these East German elders went
pale.
So when her owners saw that their hope
of gain was gone they seized Paul and
Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before
the rulers and when they had brought them
to the magistrates they said, these men are
Jews and they're disturbing our city.
They advocate customs which is not lawful for
us Romans to accept their practice so sanctimonious.
The crowd joined in attacking them and the
magistrates tore the garments off them and gave
orders to beat them with rods and when
they had inflicted many blows upon them they
threw them into prison charging the jailer to
keep them safely who having received this charge
put them into the inner prison and fastened
their feet in the stocks.
A marginal note here in my Bible says
the stocks were not only a device by
which men were restrained they were a device
by which men were tortured.
Just look at all of the verbs used
here that are violent vicious vehement they dragged
they seized them they dragged them the crowd
joined in attacking them they tore the garments
off them they gave orders to beat them
with rods they inflicted many blows upon them
they threw them into jail they cast them
into the inner dungeon they fastened their feet
in the stocks.
You know what you have to say?
This is an untoward response This is a
response out of proportion to the offense which
is exactly the issue of what is happening
to believers who are tonight in dungeons and
prisons and concentration camps in iron curtain countries.
The viciousness and even in Latin America where
the saints come into the hands of these
revolutionary groups.
It's not just an issue of murder it's
an issue of torture it's an issue of
fiendish violence there's a vehemence there's a vile
kind of thing that wells up that seems
to be the pattern everywhere as it was
with Paul and Cyrus.
That is out of proportion to the offense
of the deliverance of a single woman and
we need to understand why because something was
being touched here that was at the heart
of a whole mode of existence.
The powers were outraged that anyone dared break
their monopoly dared to reveal their domination over
men dared to free a victim that had
come under their authority because once a victim
is freed in the power of Jesus once
a demonstration has been given that these powers
can be resisted and that the victims can
be released what will be the next?
Such a society cannot tolerate such a possibility
they have to keep the most severe clamp
down on a church that threatens them with
another kind of loyalty another kind of worship
another kind of authority another kind of power.
So long as the church is emasculated so
long as it's willing to play patsy so
long as it's satisfied with mere Sunday services
as unhappily the East German church is only
too happy to do there'll never be a
vicious response like this but once the church
begins to act apostolically once it begins to
discern the bondage under which the people are
bound once it begins to deliver by the
authority which is theirs corporately and raise questions
about the unspoken premises by which the whole
civilization is falsely living then you can expect
WHAM!
a tremendous blow coming down with vehemence against
those who dare to unveil the enemy and
show him out that's exactly what happened to
Jesus but the remarkable thing is the more
furious the response of the powers and the
powers only know one kind of wisdom threat,
fear, intimidation they know that mankind can be
jerked because of its fear of its bodily
well-being we're afraid to suffer and we're
afraid to die and therefore whole civilizations will
fall into line just at the threat of
in any way being affected in our body
or our life isn't it remarkable that it's
an enemy that has been disarmed and made
an open spoil and is yet still able
to manipulate entire nations as I spoke last
week about Italy with the influence of the
mafia because though they are without true power
they are an influence using threat and intimidation
because people are so alive to the condition
of their own bodies and so fearful of
injury, suffering or death therefore there's only one
people again who can show these powers out
for the bluff that they are can confront
them exactly on this ground namely a church
that is not afraid to suffer not afraid
to die not afraid only a little faith
why are you afraid when you think of
faith in this context as against the way
we've been hearing it up to now in
terms of believing for a Cadillac we're on
an entirely different ground we need to measure
our faith not by the material things for
which we ourselves hanker but in terms of
the kind of fears that are still operative
in our lives so let me read a
quotation or so around here here
he quotes Solzhenitsyn the Russian who gave the
remarkable Nobel address at Harvard who says let
us not forget that violence does not exist
by itself and cannot do so it is
necessarily interwoven with lies violence finds its only
refuge in falsehood falsehood its only support in
violence any man who has once acclaimed violence
as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as
his principle there's a connection between the use
of violence and the lie and we see
it in our text these men being Jews
do exceedingly disturb our city and they teach
customs that are not lawful for us to
receive as if these men are concerned for
the righteousness of law as if they're trying
to maintain the peace or the decorum of
their city it's a lie and just as
lies were employed to bring Stephen to a
place of execution and martyrdom lies were employed
to betray Jesus lies will be employed were
employed against Paul and Silas and they'll be
employed against us there's a conjunction between lies
and violence which is a characteristic of the
powers of the air some of the quotes
that were impressive when I read them are
not equally as impressive when I'm standing here
here's a beautiful statement tremendously significant typically he
writes each and every stratagem and resort of
the principalities seeks the death of the specific
faculty of rational and moral comprehension which specially
distinguishes human beings from all other creatures whatever
form or appearance it may take demonic aggression
always aims at the immobilization or surrender or
destruction of the mind and at the neutralization
or abandonment or demoralization of the conscience in
the fall the purpose and effort of every
principality is the dehumanization of human life categorically
the powers of the air who major on
death who are the enemies of God who
are usurpers who want to draw the loyalties
of men away from God and to themselves
as the gods of this world love to
ruin and to mar whatever is made in
God's image that's why homosexuality is so blatant
women's lib the blurring of distinction between the
sexes even in their appearances the hair of
the women getting shorter the hair of the
men getting longer the feminization of men the
masculinization of women are evidences of these powers
working to blur and to mar the image
that God intended in the distinction between sexes
because there's a genius of something there and
a mystery there that God is wanting to
bring forth to make of the two one
new creature what can we say about the
mob the crowd joined in attacking them the
same ones who are the victims of the
powers instead of seeing the hope for their
own deliverance come against the men who might
have been their help they themselves are so
ruined in their own minds their own thoughts
they are so victim to the system that
the powers have encouraged that they attack the
very ones whom they should be uplifting we
need to see this that the minds of
men their thought life I'm always telling my
kids if they stay in front of the
TV set too long their brains are going
to be turned into scrambled eggs there's no
such thing as neutrality there's no such thing
as sitting in front of the set and
just being faintly amused or entertained something is
happening something erosive something is happening to our
faculties of discernment our ability to be clear
our dullness comes into our spirits the same
thing can happen in church it could happen
when there are words going forth that are
not sincere and not true although technically they're
scripturally sound there's no such thing as neutrality
if we're not moving in truth something else
is happening if we can't praise if something
is not working in the reality of God
and we're going through a mock motion a
dullness is coming into our corporate spirit and
into our individual life that's what he's saying
in this statement it's the stratagem and the
resort of the principalities that seeks death of
the faculties of rational and moral comprehension and
that's why we're seeing child molestation abuse rape
murder mayhem and such things as were unheard
of a generation ago are now becoming ordinary
happenstance because where is the sensitivity where is
the sensibility where is the sense of revulsion
where is the sense of horror where is
the sense of guilt or shame there's not
even today the ability even to blush at
the most horrendous kind of crime against one's
own children we have become so habituated to
these kinds of things that the conscience has
been dulled and the mind has been dulled
and you can believe that this is already
a statement of how powerfully the powers of
the ear are working to bring down an
entire mankind what did Paul and Silas do
when they find themselves bound in a dungeon
with their backs hanging in ribbons having been
beaten with many rods publicly disrobed can you
imagine this for an orthodox pharisee the sensibility
of Paul to be an open thing in
the marketplace before the rulers and the magistrates
and I hope by the way you didn't
pass over that lightly no accident that the
judgment of society comes in the marketplace where
the magistrates have their rule that there's a
conjunction between the economy and the political order
and that the fury and fiendishness of both
falls on Paul and Silas to the point
that they're beaten within an inch of their
lives virtually left for dead no one to
attend their wounds thrown into some stinking inner
dungeon with the smell of human feces and
urine and the moaning of prisoners and the
scurrying of rats and vermin thousands of miles
from Jerusalem or from Antioch not any hope
that anyone would even know of their location
or that they're ever going to get out
of that pit in which they thought that
they were being obedient to the heavenly vision
that came to Paul by dream it's a
formula for despair it's a formula for someone
to throw in the towel to nod his
fist in God's face and say, where are
you?
and what kind of God are you?
that's allowed me who sought to be a
diligent servant to come to such a hopeless
impasse as this everything speaks despair and hopelessness
and futility and imminent death how many of
us would be singing Hallelujah then?
and saying our amens then?
and here comes the most powerful verse that
I think I know in the whole New
Testament that I've read from the first moment
I ever read it but at midnight the
darkest hour when things seem absolutely hopeless when
the powers are playing upon you in doubt
and that, that, that, that, that, that where's
your God now?
and you're hopeless in your condition and you're
going to die of gangrene and you'll never
be heard from again and you even missed
God you thought that you saw a heavenly
vision that bid you come to Macedonia you
should have stayed in Asia where the church
was being added to daily you blew it,
you missed it you're going to die, you're
going to rot you never were an apostle
you're worthless you've been lost to the purposes
of God it's not just physical abuse it's
moral so everything calculated to drive a man
to be pulverized and to give up and
to surrender to the wisdom of the powers
of the air already but it says at
midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises
unto God what we need is a minute's
respectful silence that this is if we wanted
to find one single distinguishing characteristic of true
apostolicity this is it it's one statement but
it sums up everything men who are able
to praise God in the midst of their
severest affliction and duress it's celebration in the
midst of suffering it's the triumph of the
wisdom of God contrary to the wisdom of
the powers the powers have ventilated their fury
their abuse and their violence on these apostles
to the point almost of their death but
these men in the wisdom of God have
received the suffering as somehow coming through the
hand of God that somehow God's sovereignty permits
this and that in fact they're not just
unlucky victims of some stratagem of God but
they're privileged to share in his sufferings for
which they can rejoice I mean either that's
insanity or it's another kind of wisdom altogether
of which the world knows nothing and to
believe that and act in that wisdom and
that enormous confidence in the sovereignty of God
despite the circumstance so as to praise him
in the midst of it is an absolute
destruction to the forces of darkness that thought
that they were having the upper hand no
accident in that very moment suddenly there was
a great earthquake and everyone's bonds were loose
and the doors burst open the foundations of
the prison were shaken excuse me for getting
poetic but I think it means much more
than that individual dungeon I think that the
foundations of the prison were shaken I think
that the unspoken premises and assumptions of that
society were shaken I think something so powerful
broke in to the forces of darkness that
had permeated that Roman society and outpost and
civilization that it's never going to recover it
was an enormous intrusion a death blow something
new coming from another mode of life from
heaven into the earth that was going to
set back the forces of darkness and release
many captives not the least of which were
the prisoners who heard them it says and
the prisoners heard them don't you love the
terseness of the scripture?
the brevity no explanation but you know that
you know that you're going to see every
one of these men in heaven the lowest
scurvy rats the rejects the refuse of this
filthy and vicious system predicated on false premises
those men who had no hope heard a
new thing for the first time that came
to them from another realm altogether that was
a greater reality than that in which they
had lived up to that time they heard
men able to praise God in the midst
of their deepest affliction the prisoners heard them
and they'll be prisoners no more even if
they remain in their cells they'll be prisoners
no more because he who is free in
Christ is free indeed as a matter of
fact I don't know if we'll finish this
tonight I don't think so when the prison
keeper awakes from his sleep and sees the
prison doors open and is ready to kill
himself Paul says do yourself no harm we're
all here we're not going anywhere we're not
in the cell because of happenstance or accident
or mistake and neither will be out of
the cell by anything that is human or
volitional or accidental our movements are of God
in Him we live and move and have
our being and we're as much free behind
the bars as outside them in fact if
there was any man who was captive and
bound it was the prison keeper himself who
had the keys and was ready to kill
himself because he thought that the prisoners had
fled and what about my social security and
will I get my pension he was a
slave to fear for security and for that
reason he could inflict agonies upon men and
live tremulously for his own security but is
that living so he called for a light
and he sprang in and he fell down
trembling and he said to Paul and said
what must I do to be saved how
do I come to this place where you
are how do I come into this glorious
freedom that is completely above circumstance that is
unaffected by suffering that enables you to rejoice
in the midst of affliction that makes you
though you're the lowliest been cast into the
lowliest place to be exalted above the very
authorities who publicly humiliated and drove you there
that's salvation how do I get saved like
that whatever that is that's what I want
I want to be free from these powers
that have jerked me and manipulated me a
whole lifetime long that made me fearful for
my security for my pension not to offend
the authorities to keep my nose clean to
live a narrow and circumscribed life which indeed
has not been living at all but I
see in you in this cell more freedom
a vista of such proportion that it eclipses
anything that I could have ever known what
must I do to be saved this writer
asks the question seeing the influence of the
principalities and powers and I'll end with this
tonight which are themselves fallen powers acting in
a fallen world and bringing such afflictions upon
mankind and the church what are we numerically
and in our strength what should we do
and he writes whatever is the apparent outcome
the humanizing experience is the resistance to death
the only way to live humanly is not
to be a patsy the only way to
really live is not to go the way
of all flesh the only way to truly
live is to defy these powers and not
to subscribe to the unspoken premises by which
entire generations are jerked and manipulated to come
to such a place that no matter how
adverse the circumstance to believe the sovereignty of
God that has brought you there and that
somehow there is a purpose in that suffering
and in that affliction if it's no more
than the release of the prisoners it's reason
enough and to rejoice in that because we
don't live by the thing that is visible
and seen or felt but we walk by
faith and not by sight we see the
thing that is eternal and invisible and the
eternal weight of glory and that eternal weight
of glory will enable us to endure whatever
is provoked against us by opposing the powers
that have led mankind captive do you believe
that?
do you believe that?
do we have a faith for that?
have we come to that apostolic faith?
is it deeply in our spirits?
are we manifesting it in our lifestyle?
do we walk through our jobs without batting
an eyelash whether someone else is getting promoted
and we're being ignored?
do we worry that we don't get the
raise?
are we affected by the rise and fall
of the stock market or our securities or
the prospect of pension or any of those
things do people see us as walking through
life completely unaffected?
does our life match our profession?
and give our words weight and authority to
take the battle to the enemy and to
declare that you're lost false presumer and a
jerk and a manipulator of men but your
game is over we're blowing the whistle on
you we're going to show an entire mankind
there's another alternative there's another way to live
without fear and without regard to circumstance in
him who made of you an open spoil
in him we move and live and have
our being whether it's in a cell or
out whether we get the raise or we
don't whether we beggar ourselves with giving for
the work of God and wonder how then
can we make it to the end of
the month and yet rejoice he writes, hope
is reliance upon grace in the face of
death this fear of death that has kept
mankind forever in bondage are you afraid to
die?
when you've broken that fear of what shall
you be afraid when you say grave where
is your terror and death where is your
sin of what shall you be afraid you
get a symptom or something comes into your
throat or your body is aching and can
it be cancer?
can it be this, can it be that?
you begin being riddled by fear and sometimes
your fears come upon you can we move
through these things undistracted letting them fall away
because God has triumphed over the grave in
his resurrection and we are eminently the people
of that resurrection it's another alternative another mode
of life and the only one that can
contradict the powers of the air and bring
them to their final ruin and establish for
mankind a basis for life that is in
keeping with their God intended humanity to live
in truth to live freely to live authentically
to live without fear look there's a people
who have done so the kingdom of heaven
is at hand hallelujah so I want to
pray for us my God may we come
to this Lord in Jesus name I want
to declare freedom I want to declare liberty
for the captive of any soul in this
room who is fearful for their body for
their health for their future for their security
for anyone who is going through circumstances and
has been completely taken up by them to
the place where they cannot praise at midnight
my God make us worshippers who love you
so who recognize that you are so the
Lord so the sovereign God so the ruler
of all things who is bringing every authority
under your feet who has called us to
freedom in Christ to move through this world
my God as having dominion over it and
not being dominated by it or its systems
precious God blow the trump Lord and set
the captives free let it be seen in
our faces in our ease and in our
peace in our freedom from anxiety or distress
about the future what's going to happen Lord
we praise you we worship you we want
to be ultimate worshippers not just when we're
well fed and comfortable and in the presence
of the saints but at midnight in our
darkest hour and in an hour of affliction
that will come if we go on with
you we're going to bring it upon us
persecution must come if we dare stand against
these powers but when it comes what a
glorious opportunity to shake the foundations and burst
open the prison doors to loose the captives
and to defeat them once and for all
having done their worst your praises are yet
triumphant Lord groom us for this and prepare
us for this in our present life in
our situations marital difficulty family difficulty bodily difficulty
whatever it is may we see it as
an opportunity given to God to be groomed
to be prepared to come to maturity and
understanding and overcoming triumph in that very thing
make us apostolic we pray to the glory
of God and to the freedom of captives
and we'll thank you and give you the
praise in Jesus' holy name and God's people
said Amen