B (12:01)
Modern day. And so what we learned is that Satan has a hierarchy. It's Lucifer, Satan himself, over principalities who are over powers, who work with world rulers of this present darkness, who manage spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. These are disembodied spirit beings. They don't have physical bodies, but they have spirit bodies. And they have been cast out of their former habitation, which was heaven. The Bible has a whole system from Genesis to Revelation that is ingeniously interwoven and all congruent with a central theme of theology. Michael Heisler, the great now deceased scholar expert in Hebrew, says that when the nations were dispersed at Babylon, they tried to create mankind, tried to create a unified empire linked to an occult ruler who would have the mind of Lucifer and impose. It's a premature version of what comes back in the book of Revelation as a one world government, probably with AI and neuro links in the head and all kinds of ways of creating, creating that unity. But God's judgment on that premature empire of a global system was I don't want an empire, I want nations. That's why I'm a Christian nationalist, because God likes nations. He said, I don't want just one big thing, all of you being the same thing. And so, boom. He separated them into 70 different language groups. And therefore, according to the Hebrew text, he numbered the nations according to the numbers of the angels, which means that of the principate or the principalities that fell, there were 70. And those 70 all had nation states that had languages. That was the number one first unifying feature of a nation is language. The second thing which clearly defines it is geography. When you have language and geography, you have the beginning formation of the nation state. So God likes nations. But since man was in a fallen state and they had 70 of these principalities, all focused on unifying this one group, God says, scatter them, scatter their tongues. 70 according to the number of the angels. So angels, these dark angels were scattered out and God said, one territory I'm just going to make for me. And so Elohim, God uses the word in the Old Testament, Elohim, which means that he is like. It sounds strange, Michael Heiser's genius in teaching it. God took Israel for himself. And so the God of Israel becomes the issue in the Old Testament because their gods, Dagon and this God and that God, they would come and they'd merge their armies and their ideology and their politics and their religion. They come against Israel. And the righteous kings that serve the God of Israel, like David would look at that Goliath and say, who is this uncircumcised Philistine who curses me by his gods? I come in the name of the Lord God of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. And you're on our turf, buddy. And you defied him, not me. You're going down. See, it was the God of Israel that went to work to deal with the gods of the Philistines. And the other gods in the earth were all wiped out when Jesus decided to send a message to the devil. Here's a little inside baseball for the sophisticated Bible scholar. He, he gets 70 disciples. Why 70 you say? Because I just told you there were 70 nations, 70 fallen principalities over those nations. And he said, this little group right here, I'm training up 70, wink, guess where they're going to go? Into all the nations until all those principalities that are over those ages come down. Recognize that the God of Israel is now the God of the Christian, is now the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's been commanded to make disciples of nations. And when he comes back, he's going to deal with all the nations that refuse to submit. That's his mop up campaign. That's your apocalyptic second coming in the Bible. He comes back to go to war with Antichrist unified global Babylonian linked economy linked, language linked whatever. He's coming back to break up the second Babylonian empire. That would be persecuting his people. Interesting story, isn't it? I'm not crazy either. It's just the Bible. So much more interesting than most of us make it because well, we stick with see spot run, run spot run and Jesus died for me. And then every Sunday it's an altar call and it's a feel good, it's how to overcome and how to God love loves you and it just isn't enough for the patriot Christian in spirit warfare you need the meatier matter, don't you? I mean you need some meat to chew on, not milk, you understand? Principalities, powers, rules of the darts of this world, spiritual wickedness in high places. There's a hierarchy to hell. There's 70 nation states. Now right now you go to the United nations, you got 150 nations. Whatever nations subdivide into sub nations. Some empires expand and assimilate nations. But this is the Bible. The 70 is the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament. To give you the template for comprehending the concept of rulers of darkness over territory. They rule over territory. Do you ever wonder why it is that New York or Cincinnati or why is it that certain cities, Seattle, Portland, the devil. It's as though the principalities that rule over those states hover over the territories of the cities where the densest areas of population are, where they could work their wiles or mind schemes through political structures and corrupt criminal structures, I'm pretty sure that converge together in self interest around money and power and resources. And a lot of church planting isn't really done there, not effectively. And most churches you see in America are the rural red out there. It's whether you're a small church, the average church, 200 people or less. But Paul says here, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. What's the evil day? When the devil uses flesh and blood to lock you up, to bankrupt you, to assassinate you, to blow up your car, to threaten your life, to kill you, to martyr you, to drive you. The devil's using people. But your enemy isn't the people, it's the spirit working through them. And understand people are the problem. You get goofy on that and you get, you lose your sanity. Oh no, those people. Somebody's punching me. Keep an eye on that referee. No, I'm telling you, it's the devil is using people, which is why you pray for rulers and those that are in authority that you may lead a godly and peaceful pray for rulers. Why? If you get a goofy ruler, he'll destroy you and create havoc. Because hell has authorization to enter into Hitler's mind, Mao's mind, Stalin's mind, the mind of the Jihadist in Washington or in New York. And once that spirit is in somebody with human agency cloaked at the gates of influence, whether that's the DOJ or the FBI or the CIA or the irs, those three letter agencies are the gates. Jesus said I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail. Gates themselves are inanimate objects. Gatekeepers are what you're battling. The keeper of the gate, which is a flesh and blood person under the control of either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of self. And if it's self then the devil can take them fast. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. I will build my church. Where's the church? The church down in the corner there with the steeple on top. That's the problem with the Catholic church we associate with the altar, with the priest, with the Vatican and a place. No, the word Jesus used there in Greek is I will build my ecclesiastical. And Ecclesiastes were two or more are gathered together in my name. There I am in the midst of them. God filling you, God at work in you. God moving you up to the gate level of influence where you're sitting at a table with your enemies administrating and pressing the agenda of what is right and what is wise and what is good. And sometimes you may not even be a strong Christian, you may not even be a Christian, but your heart and your principles and your thinking is clear headed with a true north like a Lincoln, like a Churchill. And the intercession of the people in the nation finds the hand of providence comes on you, moves you into public office to serve the will of God through the intercession of his people. Pray for rulers and for those that are in authority that that we may lead a godly and peaceable life. And sometimes he taps you in the shoulder and says, you know you're going to have to run. I've got at least half a dozen friends of mine that have held office who are business people, prayer people. Daniel's praying for their government and God said run for governor. They ran and they won. They ran for office. So you're going to withstand in the evil day. We always have a bad day. It comes at some point in time. But what is the weapons that you stand with? You stand girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness. Every one of these is like so profound. Paul is in prison, right? He's looking at the Roman guard. He actually wins his guards over. Eventually a lot of them get saved. And he's looking at him and he's looking at the armor and he sees something by the spirit that every piece of armor that is useful in military combat actually has a corollary symbolic in the spirit, the helmet that covers your thought life and your brain is called the helmet of salvation. Well, that's interesting. Paul refers to it as the helmet of salvation here. In other words, there's a helmet that covers your thought life and it is having, say, brains. Sophronismos is the Greek word. It literally means having the power of the truth of God so penetrated into your thinking process that your mind blocks the roadways that Satan wants to build into it. Keeping your head in the peace, keeping your mind under the control of the spirit, and having your feet shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Walking in the spirit, being led by the peace. There's kind of a calm when you're in the will of God in the middle of a storm, in the middle of a battle, but you feel this inner solitude of certainty, the peace of God in your heart. You're walking in the spirit. Well, I'd like to cover the rest of this here, but I have to take a break. And so Paul is looking at the armor and he says, the helmet of salvation. Cover your thought life. Then he says, well, the waist girded with truth. Well, the belt, you see, is what holds all the weapons or the instruments. And so the belt was a very important part of the artillery because it centered all of the resources that that soldier had to rely on. So Paul is saying that you need to have your loins girded with truth. In other words, the central theme that surrounds you better be truth. If it's truth there, then you can have a breastplate of righteousness. What does the breastplate cover? Your heart so there's no condemnation, because you know the truth, that if you have submitted your life to Christ, then your sins are forgiven. You're not perfect, but you have an advocate with the Father and you can deal with issues in your life because the issue of sin has been surrendered and Christ has been invited in. Therefore, righteousness covers your heart. When accusations from the devil fly at you, you have to go to the truth to remember you're Righteous by faith, not by performance. It's by Christ's righteousness, not your righteousness, that you get to heaven. But then you know the. Then it says, but above all, this is important. And literally the Greek word means they're in front of everything. Take the shield of faith, which, with which you'll be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. What's that mean? That means that there's a shield he saw there which was leather strips, layers of leather that was stretched out and then connected to a frame. And that leather provided the lightness but the strength of layers of hide that you, that the enemy sword or pierce arrows wouldn't be able to get through to strike at the soldier. So you see, your faith goes out in front of you. Your faith goes in front of you and intercepts fiery darts. What are fiery darts? Fiery darts would have been arrows that had, were, had cloth on the end of them, dipped in tar, dipped in asphalt, and then lit so that they would fly, so that when they hit, if they hit your breastplate, they would splatter and burn your neck, your face. It would affect your sight, your eyes. So the key was it would splatter and explode when Satan hits you. And I've had it happen where a certain people do this at the stupidest times. Human beings listening to the devil will, will carry a message to you at the wrong time. You're about to speak, you're about to do something important and somebody says, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it goes off. It hits like five different areas of your life at one time. Your imagination, your anger, your frustration, a little bit confused, you're not sure. You need to find out more. But then the harassment, the schedule, the environment, then something else flies over here, then something goes wrong over here and you start to lose, your blood pressure starts to spike. That's a fiery dart. Remember, Satan sends the fiery dart, he says in verse 13, in the evil day. So if you have your faith out in front of you, it intercepts the fiery dart. It doesn't hit the breastplate, it doesn't splatter against your, your, your helmet. It's intercepted. So your faith has to be strong enough to be able to stop it from getting to you. Does that make sense to you? So a lot of people that are strong in the word of God and in faith, they take this stuff seriously because they want to intercept out front what the enemy wants to send. That's going to get close, that'll get to your emotions and your mind. And they, boom, they get it.