Sing it one more time.
Thank you
very much for the music and now I
want to invite you, if you would please,
to open your Bibles and we're going to
continue the message on spiritual warfare, how to
engage in it, how to overcome the powers
of darkness because we're living in an evil
day.
The Apostle Paul tells us in the Bible,
Ephesians chapter 6, verse number 10, Finally be
strong in the Lord and in His mighty
power.
Put on the full armor of God so
that you can take your stand against the
devil's schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and
blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against this dark world and against the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
We find it is very evident in the
New Testament that it is taught that we
are engaged in a spiritual warfare.
And being engaged in a spiritual warfare, it
is very needful that we understand how to
get involved in this spiritual warfare and how
to be prepared for this spiritual warfare and
how to be able to stand in this
spiritual warfare without being overcome by the enemy.
We also brought to you, now what we're
going to do here very quickly, is I'm
going to go over so that we have
it on tape.
I'm going to go over very quickly this
morning's message regarding the preparation for spiritual warfare.
And these are the scriptures that we gave
this morning we shared in Ephesians chapter 6,
verses 10 through 13.
We also shared in the book of Matthew
chapter 16.
Matthew chapter 16, beginning in verse number 13.
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people
say the Son of Man is?
They replied, some say John the Baptist, others
say Elijah, and still others, Jeremiah or one
of the prophets.
But what about you, he asked?
What do you say I am, or who
do you say I am?
Simon Peter answered, you are the Christ, the
Son of the Living God.
And now in verse 17, Jesus replied, blessed
are you Simon son of Jonah, for this
was not revealed to you by man, but
my Father in heaven.
And I tell you that you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of Hades will not
overcome it.
I will give you the keys of the
kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth will be bound
in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth
will be loosed in heaven.
So here we find that Jesus Christ gave
to Peter, but not only to Peter, but
he gave it to the entire church.
He gave the keys of the kingdom of
heaven.
Now the keys of the kingdom of heaven
represent the authority and the power that the
believer has in order to bind and loose.
Now we do not bind and we do
not loose those things that we want or
that we don't want, but we bind and
we loose those things that are in accord
to the Word of God.
This basically is what spiritual warfare is all
about.
Spiritual warfare is not going around and confessing
with your mouth what you want and then
expecting God to honor your wishes.
Spiritual warfare and binding and loosing is not
binding the devil from a Cadillac so that
you can possess that Cadillac.
Binding and loosing has nothing to do with
physical natural prosperity, but biblically speaking, binding and
loosing is in relation to the powers of
hell regarding sin and sickness, and we have
the power to bind the devil and to
loose God's power so that men and women
might experience deliverance in Jesus Christ.
The Bible says that Jesus Christ was made
manifest in order that he might destroy the
works of the devil.
The works of the devil are sin.
The works of the devil is murder and
lust and envy and strife and hatred, and
these are the things that God wants His
church to begin to understand how to bind
and how to loose.
Now this morning, we began this message in
Joshua chapter 5, and that's where you may
turn if you like.
In Joshua chapter 5, we began this message,
and we showed you that before you as
a believer engage in spiritual warfare and enter
into the wrestling match against the powers of
darkness and the powers of hell, there are
four things that need to take place in
your life, four things that need to take
place in your life as preparation for the
spiritual battle.
We are not wrestling with people.
We are not wrestling with personalities.
Many times people think that their enemy is
another Christian, when another Christian is not your
enemy, but your enemy is Satan and all
the legions of devils and demons that are
in this world today, and the source of
all true spiritual problems are Satan himself.
He is the author of confusion.
He is the author of fear.
He's the one who plants the seed of
hatred in someone's heart against you.
He's the one that plants the seeds of
jealousy and the seeds of discord.
He's the one that plants those bad seeds
in God's vineyard.
The church is God's vineyard.
The church is God's building, and it's the
enemy who comes by night or during spiritual
darkness.
You see, when the Scriptures speak of night
in the church, it refers to the time
when you're sleeping.
You see, when you're spiritually awake, and you're
walking in the light, and you're wrestling with
God in prayer, and you're reading the Bible,
and you're walking according to the desires of
the Spirit of God, rather than the desires
of your own flesh, you're walking in the
light.
And the Bible says that if you walk
in the light, you will not stumble.
But when you begin to close your spiritual
eyes, and you begin to get lazy in
God, and you begin to get away from
the Bible and prayer and holiness, and you
let your mind begin to get on carnal
things, you begin to watch too much television,
I would recommend that you don't watch any
of it.
But that's your own personal business between you
and God.
There's nothing good on that television.
You might find a preacher every once in
a while, but we're not finding too many
good ones of them either.
I recommend that you keep your mind on
the things of God and the things in
God's Word.
But spiritual darkness is when the Christian turns
from God and turns from spiritual things and
begins to follow the carnal desires of the
flesh.
And the Bible says it's during that time
that the wicked one comes and he sows
bad seeds.
Now the place that he sows the seeds
is in your heart and mind.
And when you are spiritually sleeping and when
you have a spirit of slumber upon you,
that's when the devil comes and he sows
these seeds in your life.
And you wonder why all of a sudden
you become dissatisfied and you find yourself becoming
jealous or you become apathetic and you're filled
with complacency.
You're in a spiritual warfare and it's because
the devil's trying to turn you from God.
And if we don't recognize this, then what
will happen is we will become a prey
to the devil and he will put us
to sleep spiritually and destroy our effectiveness as
a Christian.
And if our effectiveness as a Christian is
destroyed, then Jesus said, what good is salt
if it's not salty anymore?
It's good for nothing.
It's not even good for the dung pile.
So we have to be aware of this
spiritual battle that we're in.
Now in Joshua chapter 5, we discover a
quick history here on where we're at as
far as where Israel is at.
At this time, Israel had just crossed the
Jordan River under the leadership of Joshua.
The land of Canaan was the place that
God promised Israel.
It is the promised land.
It's the place that God promised Israel for
their habitation, for their dwelling place.
It represents the place where God reigns as
King of Kings and Lord of Lords and
He drives out all the enemies.
That's what God promised Israel for Canaan.
And Canaan represents to you and I possessing
the fullness of Christ.
Our spiritual Canaan today is walking in the
fullness of God and His Word.
In such a place, God drives out all
our enemies, doesn't He?
God drives away our enemies.
And when the devil comes in like a
flood, in that place the Spirit of the
Lord rises up a standard against him, doesn't
He?
Sure He does.
Now Israel was entering into Canaan.
But before they faced their first Jericho, now
Jericho was the first battle that they had
to undergo entering into God's promised land, isn't
that correct?
Jericho was a walled city.
It was the enemy's fortified city in God's
land and it had to get out.
The enemy had no right being in Canaan
because God gave it to Israel.
But before Israel could stand up against the
walls of Jericho and see a great and
mighty deliverance, they had to first camp at
Gilgal.
Gilgal represents the place of preparation.
And I submit to you tonight that if
you begin to get desirous to engage in
spiritual warfare and be a real prayer warrior
for God, I'm not talking about being a
flippant Christian now and playing religious games and
going about doing your own thing and asking
God to bless you as if God was
your servant.
You know, today Christianity's got things backwards.
We've got God as our personal servant and
we tell Him our plans and then we
ask Him if He'll come bless them.
Not so biblically.
God is not our servant.
We are His love slaves.
So I'm not talking about, nor is the
Holy Spirit inviting people who are not serious
about God to engage in this stuff that
I'm preaching on.
It's not for the lukewarm Christian.
If you're a lukewarm Christian, you can repent
and get right with God and then you
can jump in and get in.
But you can't engage in fighting the devil
as a lukewarm Christian.
He'll whip you.
It's what they say down south.
He'll whip you.
He'll whoop you.
He'll whoop you is what they say.
He'll whoop you.
You've got to be clothed in God's armor
or you've got to come to Gilgal first.
You see, this is significant.
The Holy Spirit is so sovereign and so
omniscient.
That means all-knowing.
It marvels me when I get into the
Word of God and see how beautiful God
puts His Word together.
So let's discover tonight what God had to
do in Israel before Israel was qualified to
stand before Jericho and engage in their spiritual
battle.
First of all, let's begin reading in verse
1 of Joshua chapter 5.
Now when all the Amorite kings west of
the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along
the coast heard how the Lord had dried
up the Jordan before the Israelites until we
had crossed over, their hearts melted and they
no longer had the courage to face the
Israelites.
Now we want to point out now, and
boy this excites me, when the enemy sees
that you are beginning to enter in and
possess God's promises, his heart begins to melt.
See, the Bible says that when the enemy
saw that Israel was entering into the Canaan
land, their hearts began to melt.
They began to tremble because they knew that
the God of Israel was the God of
the universe.
Praise God.
When you begin to stop playing church and
you stop playing Christianity, you get in and
you become a soldier for God and you
put on the armor of God and you
put off games and you begin to get
serious with God, bless God, the enemy's going
to take note.
He's going to notice that you are going
on with God, but he'll probably try and
discourage you, but you can overcome discouragement.
Praise God.
How many experience faith when God's Word is
placed in our hearts?
I do.
I get excited about God's Word.
Someone once asked me, Brother Beach, how come
you always get so excited when you preach?
I said, because God's Word excites me.
Then I said, how come you never get
excited when God's Word is preached?
May I say it's because it doesn't excite
you?
I didn't say that, but I was tempted
to.
I was tempted to.
Verse number two, at that time the Lord
said to Joshua, make flint knives and circumcise
the Israelites again.
So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the
Israelites at Gibeah, Heroloth.
Verse eight, go down to verse eight.
And after the whole nation had been circumcised,
they remained where they were in camp until
they were healed.
Number one, Gilgal represents spiritual preparation
before entering into spiritual warfare.
And our first spiritual operation that takes place
when we camp in Gilgal is we experience
a spiritual circumcision.
We experience a spiritual circumcision.
Now in Romans chapter two, Romans chapter two,
verse 28, a man is not a Jew
if he is only one outwardly, nor is
circumcision merely outward and physical.
No, a man is a Jew if he
is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of
the heart by the Spirit, not by the
written code.
Such a man's praise is not from men,
but from God.
So our first point is you must experience
a spiritual circumcision as preparation before you enter
into spiritual warfare.
Spiritual circumcision is that work which the Holy
Spirit does whereby He goes into your heart
and He rolls back the fleshly life, He
rolls back the fleshly life of carnality, and
He gives you a new heart, a heart
that seeks to follow after the Lord.
Now I know this is hardly a summary.
It sounds like I'm preaching the sermon again.
Well, I am.
I won't make any excuses.
Number two, verse 10, on the evening of
the 14th day of the month while camped
at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the
Israelites celebrated the Passover.
Now, once we experience spiritual circumcision, number two,
we must also experience the spiritual celebration of
our spiritual Passover.
Now, we know that the Bible tells us
that in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7,
1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7, it says,
get rid of the old yeast that you
may be a new batch without yeast, as
you really are.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
In order to properly be able to stand
against your Jericho, which is wrestling against the
powers of hell, you must not only experience
a spiritual circumcision in your heart, but you
also must experience celebration of Jesus.
You must learn how to live for God
on a daily basis and learn to derive
your joy and your happiness from God alone.
All of these things are prerequisites for spiritual
qualification or spiritual readiness.
Number three, verse number 11, the day after
the Passover, that very day they ate some
of the produce of the land, unleavened bread
and roasted grain.
Thirdly, you must be brought to the place
where you learn to feast upon unleavened bread.
Now, unleavened bread represents living a life of
holiness, a life of righteousness.
Now again, in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, 1
Corinthians chapter 5, Paul speaks about unleavened bread
and shows us the meaning of unleavened bread
to the Christian.
1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 8, therefore let
us keep the festival not with old yeast,
the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with
bread without yeast or unleavened bread, the bread
of sincerity and truth.
You must, as a Christian, learn to walk
every day in sincerity of motive and in
truth.
There seems to be a absence of this
many times, but if we want to be
qualified spiritually, to engage in spiritual warfare, we
must come to the place in our Christian
life where, number one, we are spiritually circumcised
and our fleshly carnal life is rolled back
and we are given a heart that seeks
the Lord.
Number two, we must become filled with the
celebration of Christ.
He must become our joy.
He must become our hope.
He must become our satisfaction and our reason
for living.
And then thirdly, we must feast on the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, which means
we need to begin to walk righteously and
in holiness.
And all these things are done as we
yield ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
The Bible says it's not by power, it's
not by might, but by my Spirit, saith
the Lord.
Zechariah 4.6. This means that the work
of God in relation to spiritual circumcision and
spiritual celebration of Christ and the unleavened bread
of sincerity and truth is brought to us
by the power of the Holy Ghost.
It's not something that we conjure up.
It's something that comes to us by a
supernatural impartation via the Holy Ghost, and all
we do is we yield ourselves unto God.
We become obedient to God.
We obey His Spirit.
We say no.
The Bible says the grace of God has
appeared unto all men, teaching us that we
are to deny and say no to ungodliness
and worldly lusts, and live a holy and
a sober and a righteous life in this
present ungodly world.
How many interprets Christianity as doing that?
Sometimes I wonder what kind of Christianity people
believe in.
They talk about Jesus, they go to a
church, they say they believe in God, but
yet they don't live by the Word of
God.
As Titus says, with their mouth they profess
to know God, but in action they deny
Him, being abominable and disobedient in everything they
do.
I can't understand it.
Christianity is obeying God by the power of
the Holy Ghost, not by legalism.
And our fourth work of preparation that must
be done in our life before we're qualified
to stand up against the powers of hell
is found in verse 13 of Joshua chapter
5.
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked
up and saw a man standing in front
of him with a drawn sword in his
hand.
Joshua went up to him and asked, Are
you for us or for our enemies?
Verse 14, Neither he replied, but as commander
of the army of the Lord, I have
now come.
Then Joshua fell face down to the ground
in reverence and asked him, What message does
my Lord have for his servant?
The commander of the Lord's army replied, Take
off your sandals, for the place where you
are standing is holy ground.
Fourthly, we must get a revelation that God
is on the throne and that Christ is
the ultimate victor over the devil and he
is fighting our battle.
We must see Jesus as the victor.
We must have a revelation, and this is
all under the fourth point.
We must see Jesus as the victor.
We must have a revelation of the sword
that proceeds out of the Lord's mouth, which
is the Word of God.
We must have a revelation of His holiness.
That's why when Joshua said to the angel
of the Lord, Is there anything that you
would like to tell me?
The angel said, Yes, take your shoes off.
In other words, God wants us to know
He is holy.
Now, I'm not talking about this kind of
holiness where girls don't wear pants and don't
wear makeup.
I'm talking about a holiness that makes God
separate from people and from anything in this
world.
That's true holiness.
And when you get a revelation of that
holiness, you're going to walk softly before the
Lord, and you'll conduct yourself in a Christian
way.
And lastly, under this fourth point, we must
get a revelation that our sufficiency is in
Him and not ourself.
When you're all ready to fight the battle,
then you've got to realize it's not going
to be your power that's going to win
the battle.
You've got to trust in the Lord and
in the power of His might.
We cannot put the cart before the horse,
church.
We cannot become so excited and so zealous
about these keys that God has given us,
the keys of the kingdom, and we can't
become so elated that we go around and
say, Bless God, I've got the keys of
the kingdom, and I can bind, and I
can loose, and I can do this, and
I can do that.
You can do nothing, except you abide in
Him, the Scripture says.
And it is absolutely necessary that we find
our spiritual Gilgal.
If you are at all seeking to go
on with the Lord, the Holy Spirit will
lead you to a spiritual Gilgal in which
He will do these things in your life.
If these things have not been worked in
your life, then you need to ask the
Holy Spirit to bring you to a spiritual
place where these things can be done in
your life so that you can be prepared
and ready to stand against the adversary of
your soul clothed in the armor of God.
You see, Gilgal represents the place where God
confirms His covenant in our heart.
He confirms His covenant in our heart.
He establishes it in our heart.
He makes us steadfast and unmovable in the
things of God, and there we become persuaded
that we are God's, not saying we're gods,
that we belong to God.
Got to be careful with that.
You say you're gods, and people think you're
saying you're a god.
It's the place where you become persuaded that
you are God's property, and that you are
fully His, and that your only reason for
living is to serve Him and to love
Him and to honor Him and to glorify
Him in whatever you do.
So many Christians go so many years without
even coming to this place, don't you agree?
They just seemingly live in a wilderness.
They never get out of the wilderness.
Now, this morning we mentioned that the wilderness
represents wandering as a Christian in disobedience.
You see, when God calls Israel to wander
in the wilderness, they did a lot of
walking and went nowhere.
And when we're in disobedience, when we're in
rebellion against God, when our life is not
submitted to Him, then we go into a
wilderness and we seemingly do a lot of
stepping but don't go anywhere.
Isn't that what is characterized by disobedience?
You just don't make any progress in the
Lord when you're disobedient.
You can't be rebellious or want your own
way all the time.
See, you've got to be willing to let
the Lord make you pliable and soft.
See, we're supposed to be clay.
And you know what happens when clay gets
away from water?
It becomes hard.
And when clay gets hard, it can no
longer be molded.
And you know what the Lord has to
do when we can no longer be molded?
He has to mush us.
You say, well, I never want that to
happen to me.
Then you stay in God's presence and in
God's Holy Ghost and in the water of
the Word.
See, and the water of the Word keeps
you pliable as God's clay so that He
can keep molding you without too much effort.
I want the Lord to always be able
to just touch me and I'll move.
I don't want Him to have to go
like this and say, oh, He's too hard,
because then I know what's going to happen.
He's going to have to arrange some kind
of circumstance in my life in order to
break me, because hard clay is no good
to a potter.
A potter wants to be able to make
the clay in the fashion that pleases him,
right?
And God wants to make you the way
He wants.
But when we get strong and stiff-necked
and rebellious and we want things our way,
we're like hard clay in the Master's hand.
And it saddens Him, because we no longer
are pliable.
We're no longer sensitive to Him.
And in such a state, He has no
choice but to break us.
Joshua chapter 5, the place where God prepares
us for our spiritual warfare.
Now, we're only going to go into this
briefly tonight, and of course, we're going to
continue to preach on this as the Holy
Spirit leads.
And we've got a whole bunch of parts
to this message, various different aspects of spiritual
warfare.
But we'll begin tonight by going into Joshua
chapter 6 and begin to discuss the things
in Joshua chapter 6 and begin to learn
about the spiritual warfare.
Joshua chapter 6, verse 1.
Now, Jericho was tightly shut up because of
the Israelites.
No one went out and no one came
in.
Now, we must remember that Jericho represents that
which does not belong in God's land.
Jericho represents a fortified city of the enemy.
Jericho represents anything in our life or in
the life of the church or in the
life of someone that we know that is
Satan's work.
You see, the Bible says that we've been
bought with a price.
The Bible says that we belong to God.
Our spirit belongs to God and our body
belongs to God.
Now, if this is God's property, should the
devil's works be fixed in me?
Should there be Jerichos inside of me, walled
cities that don't belong there where the enemy
lives?
Should the enemy be lurking within us or
within the church?
Should the enemy have fortified cities in the
body of Christ?
Should the enemy be roaming around inside a
spiritual Jericho, there sowing all kinds of discord
and envy and strife?
No!
Jericho needs to be destroyed in God's house.
But what did the Scripture say?
Jericho was tightly shut up.
When the devil gets his works fixed in
you or me, if we allow him to
fix his work in us, it becomes strong.
It becomes fortified.
It becomes almost unmovable.
So when we approach spiritual warfare, we have
to realize that many times the powers of
hell and the spiritual Jerichos are very strong
and very fortified.
We can't expect things to happen immediately.
We can't expect things to happen instantly.
Today's Christians have nearly lost the secret of
perseverance and patience.
The reason why is because we're living in
a generation, and I say this very often
while preaching, we're living in a generation when
everything is quick.
If you want a hamburger, you just run
down to McDonald's and get a hamburger.
Fast food, fast food restaurants, fast food supermarkets.
If you don't want to wait in line
at a big supermarket, you just find a
little quick check, and you run in and
you run out.
If you've got to change your oil and
you don't have time, you just find an
oil changing place that guarantees in ten minutes
you can have your oil changed with a
new oil filter too.
I mean, we've got to the place where
we just don't have to wait.
Impatience characterizes the spirit of this age.
Impetuousness characterizes the spirit of this age.
But when you get involved in God's business
and you get involved in spiritual warfare, you've
got to get that impatience out of you.
You've got to pray and ask God to
get it out of you.
You're not going to be a soldier for
Jesus and be impatient.
Church, God wants to teach us that when
we approach spiritual fortified cities and we approach
the powers of hell, we can't be under
the influence of quick, quick, quick.
I want it done quick.
We've got to learn that God has a
way of doing things, and it's always through
patience and long-suffering and endurance.
The New Testament, the entire New Testament is
filled with exhortations to endure, to be patient,
to be long-suffering, not to faint.
Isn't it?
Sure it is.
Why do you think that's true?
Because when you get enlisted in the Lord's
army, it takes time sometimes to see the
Lord's works manifested.
And people fail miserably when they go and
enter into spiritual warfare thinking that once they
speak it, it's all going to be taken
care of.
That is erroneous.
That is incorrect.
That is not in the Bible.
There's so many errors floating around.
As a preacher, it grieves my heart.
We've got a gospel today being preached by
people where just say it and then just
forget about it.
And if you say it again, that means
that you have doubt.
That is so foolish.
Jesus said, pray, and once you're done praying,
pray again, and once you're done praying, pray
again.
Don't stop praying.
Keep praying.
The widow who was under the influence of
an evil king, what does the Bible say?
She just simply prayed once and then said,
no, I won't pray again because God's going
to do it.
No, she prayed continually, non-stop, day and
night.
This idea just naming it with your mouth
is not true.
You've got to grab hold of God's promise,
and you've got to pray, and you've got
to intercede, and I'm getting ahead of myself
now, but nevertheless, you've got to have patience.
Don't think it's a sin if you ask
the Lord over and over again for something
if you know it's His will.
It's not a sin, and just because it
doesn't happen, it doesn't mean that you were
filled with unbelief.
It doesn't mean that you have sin in
your life necessarily.
It could mean that, but it doesn't necessarily
mean that.
Jesus prayed for someone, and he wasn't totally
healed.
Jesus had to pray again.
Remember the man who was healed of blindness,
and Jesus said, what do you see?
And he said, I see trees.
Jesus prayed for him twice.
Now, I'd like to see anyone accuse Jesus
of unbelief or sin.
Why did he have to pray twice?
Because that's what God wanted.
Very easy.
Sometimes God doesn't answer us to test us,
to see whether or not we're going to
continue to believe and ask.
The Bible says, ask, seek, and knock.
Do you know what that represents?
That represents once you know the will of
God, you continue with everything that you have
inside of you to seek for until it
comes to pass.
You just don't say it once and then
walk away and say, praise God, it's done.
Hallelujah.
Don't mention it anymore.
That's not faith.
That's not true.
See, if you want to understand what faith
is, you have to go to the Bible
and understand faith biblically.
See, the greatest thing that I see today
in the church that is causing a lot
of Christians to go into error is they
do not go to the Word in order
to understand certain terms, but they listen to
people and they allow men to interpret and
to define what terms are.
Like, what is faith?
You go to the Bible and you find
every person in the Bible who God said
had faith and then see all the circumstances
in their life.
Does having faith mean that you'll never have
trouble?
Some people think that's true.
I've talked to them.
They think that any kind of displeasure that
comes to a Christian is because of their
unbelief.
As if if we had perfect faith, we
would never have any problems.
If that's true, then Paul was filled with
unbelief because Paul was the great apostle of
faith, but yet he was perplexed, he was
naked, he didn't have any food.
Did you know that?
The Bible says Paul went hungry sometimes.
Great faith in God didn't protect Paul from
being beaten and stoned.
You got some people telling you that if
you have faith, nothing will hurt you.
That's not true.
Jesus had more faith than anyone and they
plucked his beard.
What makes you greater than him?
You see what I'm saying?
We've got a perverted idea of what it
means to have faith.
Peter had faith.
He was crucified upside down.
What happened?
I thought if you have faith, everything's going
to be all right.
Health, wealth, and prosperity is what they say.
That's what faith will get you.
That's not what it got Paul.
So how can that be true faith?
If you want to know what faith is,
find in the Bible what faith is.
If you want to know what righteousness is,
look in the Bible.
You've got to go back to the Word
of God, church.
That's what I'm telling you tonight.
Go to the Word.
Go to the Word of God.
We're going to entitle this series of messages,
Spiritual Warfare, and we're making tapes so if
you can't come, I'm just going to, unless
the Holy Spirit tells me not, I'm just
going to continue it Wednesday.
And then from Wednesday, I'm going to go
to Sunday.
And then if I don't get it done
Sunday, I'm going to go Sunday night.
I'm just going to get this thing all
the way until the Lord releases me from
it.
I believe it's an important message that the
Lord has given us and I believe it
can change your life.
Do you believe that?
Amen.
Spiritual warfare is a very, very interesting and
intriguing subject and we need to be aware
of these things.
So as we read in Joshua chapter 6,
verse 1, Jericho was tightly shut up.
We can't expect anything or everything to happen
immediately, but we can expect God to answer
when He's ready in His time.
Now, verse 2 says, Then the Lord said
to Joshua, See, I have delivered Jericho into
your hands, along with its kings and its
fighting men.
Now, verse 2 tells us that when we
approach spiritual warfare, we must realize that God
has delivered into our hands the power that
comes from Christ to overcome the works of
the devil.
Even though Jericho is tightly shut up, and
even though Jericho is fortified and strong, yet
the fact is God has delivered Jericho into
our hands.
We do not have to bow to Jericho.
We do not have to submit to Jericho.
We do not have to run from the
powers of hell, but we can stand in
the Lord's might and in the power of
His Spirit, and we can see God deliver
Jericho into our hands.
We don't have to be fearful.
We don't have to be timid.
We don't have to draw back as the
Israelites did that were in sin and rebellion.
You remember the generation that had to wander
in the wilderness.
When they heard about the giants in Canaan,
what did they say?
Oh, we can't overcome.
We are too weak.
You see, when people live in sin, they're
intimidated by the devil, and they're afraid of
the devil.
But when people have the spirit of Joshua
and Caleb, which is those who follow the
Lord holy, they see God as their victor,
and they believe that with God all things
are possible.
They believe that all things can be overcome
through the power of God.
That's the difference between someone who's filled with
faith and someone who's filled with unbelief.
Someone who has faith, believes God's Word, understands
the will of God, and doesn't give up
until God brings about His promise.
Someone that's full of unbelief looks at the
hardships and looks at the wild, fortified cities
of the devil, and instead of saying, Praise
God, we can take you in the name
of the Lord, they draw back and become
Christian pansies, and just go around and just
sort of, Oh, woe is me.
I'm just, oh, I just, we just can't
overcome.
The enemy's too strong for us.
Hogwash.
The enemy's not too strong for us if
we stand in the Lord and in the
power of His might.
Amen?
So the Lord delivered Jericho into their hands.
Okay, this is a good place to stop.
My daughter's crying now.
This is a good place to stop, and
I believe we're going to stop here, but
I want to encourage you, if you cannot
continue to come, I want to encourage you
to get these messages, because starting our next
message or our next time together, we're going
to get into the two ways to bind
the devil, through intercessory prayer and through waiting
on God, and we're going to show you
what intercessory prayer is and what it is
not.
A lot of people have a misconception about
intercessory prayer.
Intercessory prayer is not some kind of an
Eastern mystical thing where you go around, as
Brother Lowry does.
He illustrates it, but it's a very definite
way of praying in the power of the
Holy Ghost.
So I want to encourage you to continue
to get in and read Joshua chapter 5
and Joshua chapter 6, and if you can't
get the, if you can't come, then we
want to encourage you to get the messages.
They're available at any donation, if you have
50 cents, if you have a couple dollars,
whatever you have.
So we'll just continue this the next service.
Amen.