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The Wisdom of God


Eph 3:10

We have been seeing from previous studies that Paul is excited about being able to share the good news of Jesus' forgiveness to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Have you been excited about sharing about Jesus to others. The Bible is changing the lives of people as they learn about the wisdom of God. People are being freed from past fears, sin and depression. God is liberating people as they learn from the Bible how to live a victorious and righteous life. But there are some who are trying to stamp out Christianity because they know that it is much more powerful than they are so they try to get rid of it instead of getting a new way of life. They are not willing to part with the pleasures of sin and the power that they enjoy. If they turn their lives over to God they will no longer be in control because God will be. What they do not know is that they are freed if they become Christians but if they do not they will become more and more enslaved. Because people do not understand the spiritual world they are falling into the trap that Satan has set to destroy them.

Elijah Khoza in Zululand of South Africa, shared what was happening to him. He proclaims the truth about the spirit world now that he is a Christian. He shared his testimony in a magazine a few years ago. He said. "Every new church robs Satan of turf. Every new fellowship of believers takes away his power. I came to Christ because a new church was planted in my area. I am living proof of how Satan's power was broken." Elijah's mother and father had both been involved in witchcraft when he was a child. A few years ago, the demonic powers that had possessed them tried to take his life. "I had no peace," he says. "They tormented me." He finally capitulated, however, and began to study the magic of their muti(medicine) that is often endowed with supernatural powers. Meanwhile, a new church was started in his town. His wife was won to Christ and had the members of the new church fervently pray for her husband. "Even though I was by this time a qualified witch doctor, I began to feel God dealing with me. One night I fell out of bed at midnight and began to plead with God to redeem me. He did! The demons left!"
What a thrill to see God transforming people and giving them peace.

From this story we see that God is greater than any of the evil forces in this world. We see that when people try to follow Satan there is no peace. Even though Satan let up tormenting Elijah when he started to go Satan's way Elijah still did not have peace in his heart. Not until he cried out to God did he get true peace.

Have you ever thought about who is controlling this world? Some of you may say the God is in control and this is true but Satan is trying to take over the world from God and so we have a battle shaping up for the end of time. In the meantime what kind of progress do you think is being made by the evil one?

To get a handle on this, we have to understand more about the powers which Satan has and how he is using other evil powers who work with him to accomplish his purposes. Satan has a great host of workers who are seeking to destroy God's plan for the salvation of all mankind. These demonic forces have worked with people to create different religions which seem right to many people until they truely understand the wisdom of God's way.

Several years ago in Argentina, a country in South America, there was a group of believers that wanted to begin a new ministry in a nearby town of Rosario. They had a unique insight which they said was the reason why a great revival broke out in that town when they began their ministry there. This group, before they started prayed. This is not very unusual but how and for what they prayed is. They went through the streets of Rosario and prayed that they evil spirits which had jurisdiction or power over this territory would be bound by the power of Jesus Christ. They continued this praying for some time and then they began their ministry. They believed that because the powers of darkness had been bound by God, they were able to reach the minds and hearts of the people in

Rosario and many people turned to Christ. What kind of spiritual powers have power or control over our community? Why are young people turning away from God and to worldly pleasures? What powers are influencing them? There are several passages which explain the spiritual forces of Satan. It appears from the language that is used in scripture that there is an organization of evil spirits who are seeking to deceive and destroy God's creation including people. Paul expands this concept of rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms in Ephesians 6:12. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." This verse divides the spiritual realm up into 4 categories. We learn from the book of Daniel that not only do these evil spiritual forces try to hinder people but they also seek to hinder the good spiritual forces like angels. Daniel 10:13.

What do these demonic spirits do? These spirits have several tactics. In the case of Elijah Khoza of Zululand or Harry Potter in the currently popular childrens story book series, these spirits seek to take control of individuals. We call this demon possession and there are a number of examples where Christ commanded these spirits to leave the individuals that they possessed. This is still happening today and many of these people are very destructive as was happening in Bible times. To get rid of the evil spirits, Christians must be spiritually prepared and both pray for the individual and have the individual command the evil spirits to leave by the power of Jesus Christ. Then the individual must ask Jesus to fill is spirit with the Holy Spirit and forsake all activities which might open up the door to the demonic spirits to return. The second thing that these powers and authorities in the heavenly realms are involved in is to oppress and seek to influence the general population and believers in Jesus Christ specifically. Their philosophy is that if you cannot take complete control, try to cripple the influence of strong Christians. If they are unsuccessful in doing that directly the evil spirits will seek to attack family members. They are relentless in their attempts to destroy the work and ministry of Christian leaders. Once they have gotten a believer to fail just once they set up a stronghold in the life of the believer and seek to exploit that weakness again. God, in his wisdom, has given us the power to resist sin and evil and extended forgiveness and the power to transform the life of every believer to ward off the attacks of the evil ones.

The third thing which the demonic spirits are involved in, is that if the first two do not work, they seek to destroy the life of believers. There is much persecution around the world. Satan has tried through communistic leaders to get rid of millions of Christians. But Russia, China and many other nations have discovered that although the outward signs may appear that they have squashed Christianity, the movement expands underground and God's work will go on in spite of persecution. Many believers have gone to prison or been killed but they have continued to inspire others though their Christian witness whether in prison or in death.

To what extent is the church going to sit back and allow the forces of evil to destroy our families, our communities, our nation or the world? We need to use our spiritual powers to overcome the evil one and all those who follow his leadership. II Corinthians 10:4 - 6 " The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete."

We are to demolish arguments that seek to diminish God. We need to learn how to speak against the foolish arguments which tell us to indulge ourselves and seek pleasure. We need to counteract persuasive arguments and advertisements which tell us to ignore others and only think about ourselves. Many try to get you to be more concerned about your personal advancement than to be concerned about others. This is a part of the wisdom of God, that when we follow God's way we will find true joy and happiness. When we seek to put others in the right road, we will be blessed and God will lift us up in the process. This is so contrary to the message we get everywhere around us and many church leaders have also fallen into this trap.

We need to learn how to get rid of strongholds that satan has in our lives. Anger, speech which is sensual or negative, pride, generational sins, lust, envy and many more attitudes and sins which tear us and others around us down instead of building us up. The wisdom of God is that he has given us His word and His Holy Spirit as guides to live a victorious and fruitful life. A life of triumph and joy filled with peace and contentment. If that is not your experience, you have not learned of the truth of the Bible and will not be able to demonstrate to the spiritual forces the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God is found in the Bible and as we learn it and apply it to our lives we will defeat every onslaught that the evil spirits attempt to use to destroy us. The evil spirits have been successful in destroying many and they are proud of it but when we stand up and fight against them through the power of Jesus Christ we will be demonstrating the God's power and wisdom are far superior to any arguments and temptations which the evil spirits seek to destroy our joy and peace.

We have the weapon of crying out to God for deliverance which the demonic spirits have no power over. They would try to keep us ignorance and ineffective because as believers become bold and live our life according to the standards in the Bible their effectiveness to destroy and harm us is gone.

Romans 11:33 Oh the depth of the riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his judgements, and His ways past finding out.

What an assurance that God will continue to give us spiritual power, wisdom and understanding if we search the scriptures, meditate on them and apply them to our lives. In this way the church will be demonstrating the wisdom of God to the unseen spirit world that is seeking to destroy all of God's creation.

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March 10, 2002