Satan, Demons, and Hell | The Unseen World (Part Four)

Thank you for listening to the Riverbend Church Podcast.

Riverbend Church exists to lead all people to know, love, and

live new life in Jesus Christ. We hope that you enjoy this

message. If you are new to Riverbend,

thank you so much for choosing to be with us.

If we haven't had the chance to meet yet.

My name is Ben get to serve as the lead pastor here.

We are in the midst of a series called The Unseen World.

And here's the here's the overall gist of this series is

there is a world, there is a spiritual world, a spiritual

realm that we cannot see that is impacting and affecting

everything that we can see. And if you grew up in church and

you, you, you're familiar with this term or the terminology

spiritual warfare or the spiritual world, it'll kind of

sound familiar to you. So my hope and my prayer and my

desire for you, if you're familiar with this concept of

the spiritual world, of the spiritual realm, is that there's

clarification that there's truth that's going to undergird the

equipping that is going to be taking place next week.

If you are new to this whole concept of the spiritual world,

or maybe you're you find yourself this morning, you're

just really skeptical. You're really, you're highly

skeptical that there is a world behind the physical world in

which we see. Then first of all, I would tell

you, thank you so much for being with us.

Whether you're in the room or whether you're with us online.

Thank you so much for being with us.

And my hope and my prayer, my desire for you is that is that

over this time, and not just this week, but the weeks to

come, that you would be open enough to the truth to realize

that just because you may not be able to see it, it doesn't mean

that it's not there. And just because you may not

right now acknowledge it, it doesn't mean that it's not

affecting your life. Or probably a more concise way

of that. We've been communicating that

truth throughout this series, something that we've called The

Big Idea throughout this series. And if you have your note sheet

with us, here it is. The unseen world is just as real

as the one I can see, and it's shaping my life every day.

The unseen world is just as real as the one I can see, and it's

shaping my life every day. This is week 4 of this series,

and if you've been with us throughout this series, want to

kind of give us a kind of a refresher.

If you're new to the series or maybe new to Riverbend, kind of

just bring you up to speed. Make sure that we're all on the

same page. Week 1 we talked about just the

reality of the spiritual realm, the the unseen world, the

overall reality of it. Week 2 we talked about how

everything where everything went wrong.

You ever, you ever wondered that?

Like you're watching the news, like you get a notification on

your phone and it's one more tragedy, it's one more huge

event. And, and you sit there and go,

man, what in the world is going on?

And you, you have to kind of walk that back a little bit and

you, you, you're left wondering like, where did it all go wrong?

Week 2 we talked about like where it all went wrong, like

the origin of rebellion, the, the, the, the war in heaven,

cosmic rebellion last week. If if you were here with us, we

did a 30,000 foot fly over of three key elements of the

spiritual world and it was God and angels and and heaven.

And this morning where we're going to be going this morning

is a similar 30,000 foot view of three essential elements of the

spiritual world. And, and the reason that these

past two weeks, that last week and this week or so essential

for us is we have to make sure that we have a biblical

understanding, the Bible says about these key elements.

Remember, if you were with us in week one, we talked about how

this series is 9 weeks long. And I would say that the first

five weeks or especially the first four weeks is going to be

much more informing. The last four weeks and maybe

the last five weeks starting next week would be that that

that pivot, that hinge is going to be much more equipping.

You see, we have to be properly informed or the more informed we

are, the better equipped we can be to to encounter this

spiritual world or to to affect and to live life with this

spiritual reality in mind. This morning we're going to do a

similar fly over of three essential elements like we did

last week. What we're going to be talking

about Satan, demons, and hell. It's by no means meant to be

exhausted. By no means whatsoever are we

going to be covering everything that there is to cover about

these three elements. The purposes of our time this

morning is to give us core essential foundations of Satan,

demons, and hell that are going to inform us of how we can

better be equipped for where we go next week, which is when we

talk about spiritual warfare. Like what is spiritual warfare?

How does it play out in our lives?

How can I be equipped to encounter spiritual warfare?

So like last week, you can notice on your bulletin sheet or

the note sheet on the back of your bulletin, there are

scriptural references out beside each one of those bullet points

or sermon notes. And we're not going to have time

to go through all of those at all this morning.

Those are really for you to spend some time walking through

and your own personal time with God to, for you to see for

yourself in your own Bible what the Bible says about Satan and

demons and hell. And that's going to like I said,

that's going to prepare us for where we're going to be going

over the next 5 weeks. So with that said, let's go

ahead and dive in. Let's look at that first key

question at the top. Who exactly is Satan?

Who is Satan number one? Satan was created by God as a

high-ranking guardian cherub Angel.

Satan was created by God as a high-ranking guardian cherub

Angel. I want to read something to you

when this is from the book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel is a prophet and the Old Testament and Ezekiel gets a

word from God and this is God describing for Ezekiel basically

using the metaphor of another king at that time, but he's

actually describing Satan in this in this passage, he says

you talking about Satan. You were the signet of

perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

You were in Eden, the Garden of God.

Every precious stone was your covering.

Sardius, Topaz and diamond, Beryl, Onyx and Jasper,

sapphire, emerald, carbuncle, and crafted in gold were your

settings and your engravings on the day that you were created.

They were prepared. You were an anointed guardian

cherub I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of

God. In the midst of the stones of

fire. You walked.

You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created

till unrighteousness was found in you in the abundance of your

trades. You were filled with violence in

your midst, and you sinned. So I told about God.

I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I

destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the

stones of fire. Your heart was proud.

Because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom.

For the sake of your splendor, I cast you to the ground.

I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.

So out of this passage, there's two major things that we can see

about Satan. Number one is we can see that

Satan, Satan was actually created as a beautiful,

beautiful Angel. He was created as a beautiful

Angel. This fact that in our culture we

have this caricature of Satan or the devil as a red suited

pitchfork carrying like with a tail type of figure.

We have like an Angel on one shoulder and A and a devil on

the other. Those are really, really bad

mischaracterizations of Satan. He was actually a beautiful, He

was actually a beautiful Angel. The second thing that we see out

of this is he was created. He was created by God.

In other words, Satan has a beginning.

Unlike God, who is eternal, God has no beginning.

And Satan, he also has an end to which we're going to get to

later on, unlike God, who is eternal, will live forever and

ever and ever. So the point here is a lot of

times people think of when they think of God and Satan, they

think that it's kind of close, right?

That it's like, you know, I don't know, in your mind, is it

5149? God wins?

Is it, is it 6040? Is it 9010?

It's not even close. God created Satan.

He created Satan as a guardian cherub Angel.

And if you were with us last week, that does not mean a

cherub. Typically we think of a cherub

as a bald headed baby sitting on a cloud playing a harp.

You can read through Ezekiel's prophecy here.

That is not at all the description of Satan.

Second thing that we see about Satan is this is Satan has

limited authority, knowledge, power and presence.

Satan has limited authority, knowledge, power and presence.

If you're here with us last week we talked about how God, God is

all knowing, God is God is all powerful, God is everywhere

present. I think a lot of times we think

of Satan kind of as a version of that.

And, and the fact of the matter is Satan does have a sense of

authority, but only the authority that is granted to

him, that is given to him. He, he does not have all

authority. Satan does have knowledge, but

only limited knowledge. Satan does not know your

thoughts. Satan does not know your future.

Satan does not know your intentions.

Satan knows kind of your patterns.

Satan knows your patterns. But let's face it, like any, any

social media algorithm has that figured out.

But Satan does not know your thoughts.

Satan does not know your future and Satan does not, does not

know your intentions. Also, Satan does have power, but

he is not all powerful. He only has the measure of power

that is allowed and granted to him by God.

You can read about that in the book of Job, Job chapter 1 and

Job 1 · chapter mention

Job chapter 2. And then here's the last one.

Job 2 · chapter mention

A lot of times people think that Satan is, is everywhere present,

right? That that he's everywhere.

The fact of the matter is that's just not true.

Satan is limited in presence. In other words, Satan is only at

one place at one particular point in time.

So if you really want to know, if you, if you really kind of

want to know, I wonder where Satan's at right now.

Think of like the deepest, darkest parts of our world that

are suffering the major, the the most major atrocities.

Chances are, chances are pretty good he's in the vicinity.

That also means that chances are also pretty good that it's not

Satan that's tempting you to eat another Reese's Peanut

Buttercup, right? He's got bigger and badder

things on his plate than that. But Satan is limited in

authority, limited in power, limited in knowledge, and

limited in presence. Third thing that we see about

Satan, Satan was exiled from heaven due to his rebellion

rooted in pride. I want to read to you another

passage again staying in the Old Testament kind of that prophet

genre there in the book of Isaiah.

This is what God tells Isaiah and Isaiah prophesied to the

people. Again talking about Satan, how

you are falling from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn, how you

are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low, if you

said in your heart, I'll ascend to heaven above the stars of

God, I will set my throne on high.

I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the far reaches of

the north. I will ascend above the heights

of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most

High. You were brought down to shield

to the far reaches of the pit. You see, if you were here with

us a couple weeks ago, Jared Cagle LED us through in week

two, kind of that war in heaven, that cosmic rebellion, There's a

war behind every war did an incredible job.

If you, if you weren't here for that, I would highly encourage

you go back. You can go to the church's app

or or YouTube channel or, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And I would, I would definitely listen back through that

message. He did an incredible job.

Listen, God did not expel Satan from heaven because God was

insecure. God expelled Satan from heaven

because of Satan's pride. Let me kind of unpack that a

little bit further. When we talk about Satan's

pride, it was Satan's absolute refusal to surrender to the

authority of God. And he thought, I will be my own

God. I'll be kind of master and

commander of my own ship. I don't need God.

I will be my own God. It's pride, right?

Which while we're here, isn't that kind of the basic or pretty

much the basic core essential behind all of our sin, that we

just refuse to acknowledge God is God and that God's ways are

actually best? We kind of think that we know

what's best for our lives. But it was Satan's pride that

led him to be expelled from heaven, which then leads to this

fourth point about Satan. Satan hates God and hates most

what God loves most. You see, due to Satan's pride,

God expelled Satan from heaven because God expelled Satan from

heaven. That led to Satan's seething

hatred of God. And one of the things that one

of the things that, that I think that we know that if you're a

mom or your dad or, or a parent figure in here, that somebody,

they, they, they can do whatever they want to to you, but may

have messed with your kids. They got a whole another problem

on their hands, don't they? Why is that true?

It's because as loving mothers and fathers, man, we become

super protective of our kids, right?

So Satan's seething hatred towards God, he exercises that

seething hatred towards God by trying to take it out on what

God loves the most. And God has made it very clear

through his words and through his actions throughout history

that God's most prized and treasured, treasured possession

is humanity, is mankind. Let me kind of dial that in a

little bit. God's most treasured and prized

possession and all of creation, it's you.

It's you. Maybe maybe you're here with us

in the room or online and you just need to be reminded of that

this morning. It doesn't matter who you are,

doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter like where

you've been. God loves you.

God loves you so much. God loves you so much that he

sent Jesus into the world for you.

And we'll kind of unpack what I just said in just a moment, but

man, God loves you. I don't know whether you came

here this morning thinking that like you were going to get

judged or anything like that, but can I just remind you, man,

God loves you. And as deeply and as

passionately as God loves you, Satan hates you.

Satan hates you, and he seeks to destroy you.

Which then brings us to that 5th and final core, central

foundational truth about Satan. Satan is the leader of all

forces of sin and evil. If you were with us in the first

week, we talked about that. All goodness that we see and all

goodness that we're able to experience.

The Bible is very clear that the source of that goodness is God.

The flip side is true all, all evil that we see and all

atrocities and tragedies that we experience, all pain and

heartbreak and heartache that we encounter in life.

The source of that is, is Satan. Satan is the leader of all sin

and all forces of evil. Which then segues into that next

major question, who and what are demons?

Who and what are demons? I want to show you this first

one. Demons were angels that followed

Satan in rebellion against God. Demons were angels that followed

Satan in rebellion against God. If you were here with us last

week, we talked about how angels are supernatural created beings

by God, that he actually created them with a freedom of choice,

with the ability to choose to either submit to the authority

of God or to rebel against the authority of God.

You see, when Satan, when he rebelled against the authority

of God, he had a whole whole host of angels that followed

him. As a matter of fact, I believe

out to the side of of one of your notes and your bulletin,

There's a, there's a scriptural reference.

Revelation 12. Revelation 12 talks about when

Satan rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven, he

took a third of the angels with him.

Those angels twisted in their rebellion, became demons.

So demons, first thing is you need to know about demons.

Demons were angels that followed Satan in rebellion against God

#2 demons are active in a variety of ways to keep people

far from God. Again, last week we were talking

about how angels are created for in a variety of forms, in a

variety of ranks, given a variety of assignments by God

himself. Demons actually are active in a

variety of ways to keep people far from God.

Some of those ways that they're active most often come in the

form of temptation. They most often come in the form

of temptation. And, and, and there's, there's

temptations that, that we all face that they, they kind of

appeal to, to our sense of pleasure, to where we're tempted

to click on sites that we know that we shouldn't go to or to,

to watch movies or, or stream shows that we that, that, that,

that we know that we shouldn't watch.

They tap into an ungodly sense of pleasure.

There are temptations that are kind of rooted.

They tap into our sense of pride, the, the, the sense of

hey, I've got this. I don't need anybody around me.

I don't, I don't, I don't need God.

I don't need his help. I, I don't need any church or

any pastor or any book to tell me what I should or shouldn't be

doing within my marriage or within my finances or raising my

kids. I don't, I don't need God at

all. I think that there's that

there's also temptations that are kind of rooted in, in our

ego. And we see this playing out in

our culture. This, this Ubu type of mantra,

like follow your heart. Well, the Bible says that's a

terrible idea because the heart above all things is deceitfully

wicked. That's terrible advice.

Like just follow your heart. Or, you know, hey, you stay true

to your own truth. Listen, these, these are, these

are all temptations. And what is the goal of these

temptations is to keep you far from the heart of God.

They're they're temptations that that tap into a sense.

They they, they, they attack our sense of hope and maybe you're

here with us this morning or with us online to where you're

facing an onslaught of temptations of almost the the

these whispers of hey, God's forgotten about you.

God doesn't care about you. It would just be easier if you

just gave up. These are all demonic

temptations that are all aimed at the same place to keep you

far from the heart of God. They come in a variety of ways.

That's one of the reasons if you've, if you've been at

Riverbend at any, for any amount of time, you already know this

to be true. We are not a place that is going

to compare struggles. In other words, hey, you may

struggle in ways that I don't struggle and I may struggle in

ways that you don't struggle. We're not going to tear those

struggles and go, hey, that's acceptable.

That's unacceptable. We're not going to tear those

because if we start tearing those, we enter into a mode of

being judgmental. What we're going to do is we're

going to look at each other as common strugglers.

We may struggle in different ways, but we're common

strugglers but looking at the same savior.

But all demons do is in a variety of ways tempt us or try

to keep us from the heart of God.

This means a way in which they do this.

Number three, demons can possess, oppress and suppress.

In case you didn't know, Riverbend Church, we are

formally a Southern Baptist church.

And if you don't believe me, look at those 3 words right

there. That's some Southern Baptist

preaching right there. Demons can possess, oppress and

suppress. Here's what that means for the

unbeliever. For someone who has not

surrendered their life to Jesus, a demon can possess that person.

Possession. Demonic possession means that a

demon, an evil spirit, can actually take bodily control

over an individual. You may say, well, Ben, have you

seen that? Yes, I have, but what do you

think? It freaks me out.

Let me share with you a really quick story.

So I grew up in a grew up in a church to where it was very,

very popular on Tuesday nights, our church, people within the

church, they would kind of gather together at the church

and they would go out and they would visit, visit people that

have visited the church, right? Like door to door.

Now 2025, some stranger knocks on your door.

You ain't answering the door. Back in the day, people would

answer the door if you're 30 and below.

I know it was a weird time, but anyway, our student pastor, me

and my friend Jason, we, we come on this Tuesday night.

Our student pastor at the time, he was like, hey, there's a girl

named Charity. She visited our our student

ministry. Would y'all like to go visit

Charity? And we're like, let's pray about

it. Yes, we would because we knew

that Charity was a cheerleader at a school across town and she

needed Jesus and we want to be the ones to share Jesus with

Charity. So knock on the door.

Charity answers the door, a student pastor introduces

himself, introduces us and we're like, hey, surely she knows who

we are already. She didn't and said, hey, do

you, do you have a moment? Could we, could we talk to you?

She goes, yeah, my, my parents, they just ran down the road.

They just ran down the road a little bit to, to grab some

stuff at the store. They'll be right back.

But y'all come on into the, into the living room.

So we come in and student pastor, he starts talking about,

you know, how, how school's going and you know, starts to

turn the conversation, you know, Charity, do you, do you have a

relationship with God? Tell me, tell me about your

relationship with God. And I'll never forget what

happened over the next 5 minutes.

She said, Oh yeah, I'm very spiritual.

As a matter of fact, I talk to my guardian Angel every night.

Her name's Sarah. She's here with us right now and

our student pastor looks at her the more he starts asking some

more questions. And then I'll never forget our

student pastor looks at her and said, Charity, there's a very

good chance that's not your guardian Angel.

That's that's, that's a demonic spirit.

And I'll never forget charity's expression, how it changed.

She said, Sarah said that y'all should leave right now.

And I was like, I think we should listen to Sarah.

Let's go listen. Demons, for an unbeliever,

demons can possess. I'm not saying that Charity was

possessed. I could tell you some other

stories of some of true possession we don't have time

for. I'm not saying that that she was

possessed. I would tell you that she was

absolutely oppressed and suppressed there.

There was a demonic influence in in her life.

You see, for an unbeliever, a demon can possess that person, a

demon can oppress that person. It's leading to external, not

unlimited, but limited authority, limited power to lead

external situations and circumstances and temptations

against that person to try to keep them far from the heart of

God. And suppress is if if oppress is

external, suppress is kind of more internal suppression is

where there's just kind of an overall heaviness over you, a

sense to silence you that that's for the unbeliever.

Now for the believer, if you've surrendered your life to Jesus

Christ, here's what I would tell you.

Demonic activity can oppress you.

And some of you are here with us this morning.

You're like, yeah, I could tell you some stories about how our

family is being oppressed right now.

There's so many external challenges and external things

that are coming against you, fiery darts that are coming

against you. You know that to be true.

There's also there can be demonic suppression, demonic

suppression. I believe that demonic

suppression happens most often either on Sunday mornings before

we decide to come to church tonight, come to church or not,

or in a worship service. Here's what I mean by that.

If you're a believer in the Holy Spirit of God lives in you.

There still is that sense to where, listen, I don't know

about you, but Sunday mornings I'm just extra tired.

Like when that alarm goes off, right?

It would be so easy to kind of stay in bed.

Hey, like let's stay in bed. We can watch online and if we

miss online live, then we can catch up during the week.

Or if we do come, there is a sense of suppression to where

God wants to silence your voice from speaking up or God wants to

greatly or or not God, but these demons want to greatly weaken

your praise. So it's this sense of I don't

want to sing loud because I don't want the people around me

to hear me. God, I want to lift my voice to

you and praise. But there's this, this like

sense of suppression there. That's for the believer.

Just because you've surrendered your life to Jesus Christ does

not mean that we are free from demonic attack.

But it does mean if you're a believer that you and I, we

cannot experience demonic possession.

Why? Because as a believer, we had

the Holy Spirit of God in our lives.

And where the Holy Spirit of God is, there's not room or space

for a demonic presence to live there.

Which then leads us to that third question is what and where

are hell? What and where or hell?

Let me get you in your note sheets.

This was this was this was my fault in the note sheets.

Let me go ahead and get you to flip flop that that first and

that second note in your note sheets.

Hell is a real place in the spiritual realm.

Hell is a real place in the spiritual realm.

Isn't it amazing? We're not going to spend all,

all day talking about this? Isn't it amazing how casually we

talk about hell in our, in our culture?

We use it as a curse word in, in, in our conversations.

We use it to describe a a really hard or difficult season or, or

situation that we're walking through.

And sometimes we use it or it's used so casually that we forget

that hell is a real place. And I would go back and kind of

reiterate something I said at the very beginning of our time.

Just because you may not be able to see it doesn't mean that it's

not there. And just because you here this

morning may not acknowledge it, it doesn't mean that it's not

real. You see, Jesus talked more about

hell than he did about heaven. And there's a reason for that is

he wanted to emphasize the realness of hell.

Second thing that we need to understand about hell, Hell is a

place that was created. Hell is a place that was created

for Satan and his demons. Hell is a place that was created

for Satan and his demons. It was a place of punishment.

You know, quite often you we get the question like Ben, I believe

that God is a loving God. And if God is so loving, and I

believe that he is, then why would he create such a terrible

place like hell, Especially when we're able to read in the Bible

that the scriptures of hell. We're able to read the

scriptures like eternal fire, eternal torment, a place of of

weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place of gloomy darkness and

chains. The Book of Revelation refers to

hell several times as the lake of fire and sulfur.

And we sit there and go, how in the world could a loving God

create such a terrible place? And I would say that's a great

question. But he created it for Satan and

his and his demons. He created as a place of

punishment for Satan and his demons.

But don't miss this last point about Hell.

Hell, it's not only created as a place of punishment for Satan

and his demons. Hell is the eternal confines for

all those who rejected Jesus. See, this is when it gets like

really, really heavy. Hell is the eternal confines.

You see, Hell was a place create of punishment, created for Satan

and his demons. But Satan and his demons won't

be the only only entities in hell.

You see, every person throughout all of time and history who

rejected God, who rejected Jesus, will also spend eternity

in this very terrible, very horrible place called hell.

You may you may be here with us this morning.

You go, whoa, back up. I may not have surrendered my

life to Jesus, but that doesn't mean that I've rejected Jesus.

OK, let's let's kind of unpack that for a second.

Here's where I would tell you #1 as we'll see more next week, in

terms of spiritual warfare, in the spiritual realm, in terms of

what we do with Jesus, there is no such thing as neutrality.

You see, spiritually we, some of us, we want to be like

Switzerland to where we just want to go about our time and

eat chocolate and make good watches and, you know, just live

in peace. There's no such thing as

spiritual neutrality. Jesus himself said if you are

not with me, you're against me. If you do not gather with me,

you scatter. Jesus was incredibly, incredibly

black and white. You're either with me or you're

for me. He was incredibly binary and

that truth. So there is no spiritual

neutrality. The second thing that you and I

that we need to understand about this notion of what it means to

actually reject Jesus. Here's here's what we mean by

this. Remember how I said that God

loves you? God so desperately loves you.

He so desperately loves you that he sent Jesus into the world to

die on a cross. And you go, OK, so I don't even

understand, like, why did Jesus have to die on a cross?

Jesus died on a cross because the Bible is very clear that the

wages or the price of our sin is death.

And somebody's got to pay that price.

And I think that, you know, it doesn't matter who you are.

It doesn't matter if you're new to church, new to faith,

skeptical, seeking whatever in the room online.

I think that you would at least be honest enough with yourself

about yourself that you that you've sinned.

We've all sinned. The Bible says that we've all

sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But the wages or the price of that sin is death.

In other words, somebody's got to pay the price for that sin.

God loves you so much that he sent Jesus into the world to die

on a cross to pay the price of your sins for you.

But also God loves you so much that He will allow you.

He will allow you to pay the price for yourself, and if you

choose to pay the price of your sins for yourself, that payment

is in hell. So here's really where the

rubber meets the road. What does any of this have to

do? How should any of this impact my

Monday, my Tuesday, my Saturday, my Friday, my Wednesday?

How does any of this? How does an unseen Satan, how do

unseen demons that are unseen hell?

How does it impact my life? In other words, why does it

matter? And like I've shared with you

multiple times throughout this series so far, one of the most

challenging things throughout this series is separating the

the the, the fascinating from the useful.

So let's put some three useful handles as we turn the corner

this morning. How does it impact?

Here's the first thing that you and I need to understand.

Satan operates with urgency because he knows his defeat is

certain and his time is limited. He knows that his defeat is is

certain and that his time is limited.

Did you know? Here's another like little

caveat about Satan. Satan's not illiterate.

Satan can read the Bible and Satan knows that God's not a

liar. Guess who knows that that the

words in this book are true? Satan.

He knows that his he knows that his defeat is certain.

And guess what? With every ticking second, the

clock is ticking down. You want to know why things seem

to continue ramping up in our world?

Because the closer Satan gets to the end, the louder he roars and

the more vicious he attacks. So Church, if you want to know

why this series is so important right now is because we are one

day closer now to Satan's defeat and he knows it.

Second thing that we need to understand is demonic influence

can reveal itself openly or disguise itself subtly.

Listen, I grew up, you know, if you remember, if you were in

church culture, evangelical Southern church culture in the

1980s, it seemed like every your favorite cartoon and your

favorite action figure had demonic roots to it.

You know, I had AI had a great collection of he man masters of

the Universe collection. If y'all don't know what that

is, don't worry about it. If you do know what it is, your

heart's about to break. I come home one day and my mom

had had boxed up all of it and she thrown it away.

We could have become millionaires because there there

was an undercurrent in the 80s of of believing listen like we

need to be, we need to pay close attention.

We need to pay close attention to all things that whether it's

toys or cartoons and, and, and, and my mom and man, I, I could

not ask for greater parents. I could not ask for a greater

mom. But my mom had read like, hey,

it was he, man masters of the universe and there's only one

master of the universe. So we need to get that out of

our house. And we did.

And you can, you can make the argument that maybe that was too

far, but I, I don't think there's any argument to be made

right now that that pendulum has swung all the way in the other

direction to where there's overt, overt demonstrations of

demonic influence. We can see this going on in TV

shows, syndicated TV shows like Lucifer.

We see it in the syndicated, the streaming Disney Plus series

Agatha all along, which is a straight up cult imagery and

witchcraft. And we just look at it and go,

man, that is so entertaining. We can see it in the music

industry. You know, back back in the day,

the, the, the word was you had to play the records backwards,

back masking to get satanic messages.

Now you just turn on YouTube and you, you see, you see the

screens, you see demonic imagery and lyrics, concerts of very

popular artist Lil Nas X or Travis Scott or or Sam Smith and

we can go on and on and on. This is not about like a

cultural purging, but I'm just telling you is there's overt

demonic influence in our culture.

There's also subtle demonic influence in our culture.

There's a casual curiosity about things like like horoscopes.

There's a casual curiosity about things like like like like

witchcraft that's actually taken over.

There's that casual curiosity and just remember that Eve took

of the fruit. She disobeyed God as a result of

Satan. Just asking one question.

Did God really say it was just a casual curiosity?

So listen, I'm not here as your pastor to give you some script

of what you should and you shouldn't do and what you should

purge or not or or whatever. I would just say that anything

that has any type of demonic undertones to it, run from it,

flee from it. Third thing, this is where we're

going to land the plane this morning.

God allows people to choose their eternal destination.

God allows people to choose their eternal destination.

Did you know that God allows people to choose their eternal

destination? And that choice, whichever path

people choose, it's actually rooted in love.

It's actually rooted in love. Let me kind of explain that we

talked a moment ago about how God loves us so much that he

sent Jesus to pay the price for our sins.

That is, that's the ultimate act of love, giving everything that

he could, all that he could. He gave his only Son to die on

across from my sins and your sins to pay that price for us.

That's that's rooted in love. But God will actually allow you

to reject him because love always requires choice.

He will never force a coerce you to be with him.

So because God's never going to force or coerce you all rooted

in love, He won't force you to to choose to be with him.

He'll, he'll allow you to spend eternity without him, again,

rooted in love. So this is my question for you.

Actually, a couple questions as we, as we come to an end #1 if

you were to die right now, do you know that you've surrendered

your life to Jesus? You see, this is not about like

it's not a scare tactic. It's just about the full counsel

of the Word of God. Do you know like today can be

the day of salvation for you? Maybe you came in here this

morning and you, you have thought for the longest time

that you could just ride the fence.

Maybe you've been a part of the church for a long part of time

and and you're really good at playing the church game.

Putting on the small, putting out the hand.

I serve, I teach whatever. You're really good at playing

the church game. But in the deep parts of you,

when you're really honest with yourself, you know that there's

never, there's never been a point in time that you

surrendered your life to Jesus. This morning can be your moment

of freedom. This morning can be your moment

of freedom. In just a moment.

We're going to pray and a couple of our pastors will be down

here. We would love to pray with you.

If you want to bring somebody to pray with you, we would love to

pray with them too. Or, you know, you can spend some

time just praying at this altar. But here's the second question.

If you know that your eternity is secure, that you have

surrendered your life to Jesus, ma'am, praise God.

And as we have been doing throughout this series, I'm

going to encourage you to pray for somebody that you are fairly

certain does not have that security.

Lift them up by name. Lift them up by name.

There's something powerful about praying for a person that is

near and dear to us by name, and they're probably not even here,

but the Holy Spirit can go. It is a prayer that launches the

Holy Spirit to track that person down, to go to the deepest parts

of him or her and to show them that they that they are loved by

God, that there can be hope and there can be peace, but there

has to be a point of surrender there.

So I'm going to encourage you as we pray and as we're about to

pray and as we're about to stand and sing, I'm going to encourage

you to just step out and come down and pray for the people in

your life. Maybe it's a family member,

maybe it's a Co worker, maybe it's a friend, maybe is is

somebody that you're in class with.

I'm just going to encourage you to come down and pray by name.

God, we love you and we thank you for who you are.

God, we thank You for Your word that tells us about Satan and it

tells us about his demons and it tells us about hell.

God, not in a way that is looking to scare us, but in a

way that is looking to inform us.

God, you are a God that doesn't want any of us to be ignorant.

God, as a matter of fact, you would be unmerciful and unloving

if you did not tell us through Your Word who our enemy and who

our adversary really is and what the plans are for us.

God, if there's anyone in here this morning, God, I pray that

if they are not sure about whether or not they can go back

to a time and a place to where they've give, they've

surrendered their life to you. God, I pray that the voice of

the Holy Spirit would be louder than the voices of the demons in

their minds. God that they would get over

themselves, overcome a sense of pride, step out and come down

and talk to a pastor. God, for those of us that we

have that security, God, thank you.

That is a peace that surpasses all understanding of knowing

that whatever may come, come what may, when we die, we will

be present with you in heaven for all of eternity.

And God, as much as we just glory in that hope.

God, our hearts are heavy for some people that are very dear

to us, that are very close to us that we just don't know that

they have that hope. And God, we just want to come

down and we want to lift them up to you by name during this time.

So God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would have his will in

his way, move in power and strength this morning.

Got to pray that you would give freedom this morning.

And it's in Jesus name that we pray.

Amen. Thank you for listening to the

Riverbend Church Podcast. Learn more about who we are as a

church and how to connect. You can head over to our

website, Riverbend Church dot Life.