Put Your Foot Down

Let's get our Bibles out and pick them up and wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad, and let's say this together say Heavenly Father, I'm so glad for Wednesday night.

I look forward to what the Word of God has for me.

I know you've got something just for me tonight and I have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying.

I know that I'm increasing in faith and in fidelity to God's holy Word.

In Jesus' name, amen, praise God.

Let's turn in our Bibles.

I've got several places.

First Luke, chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

And while you're out, ephesians 1 and Psalm 91, got three verses to kind of get started with.

We'll start with Luke 10, 19.

Jesus is speaking to disciples and he said behold, I give unto you power.

That word power means execia, its authority.

I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power.

And that word power is dunamis, which means supernatural power.

So you have power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the supernatural power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

And then we see in Ephesians, chapter one, verse 22,.

The apostle Paul had the revelation of who we are in Christ, through Christ.

All of those are so important for us to learn.

And this Ephesians prayer in Ephesians, chapter one, verse 22,.

It says that God has put all things under his feet I'm not talking about Jesus and gave him to be the head over all things to his church, which is his body, the fullness of him, which Philothaught and all.

So I ask you, where are his feet?

Well, his feet are in the body.

So God has put all things under our feet.

And then in Psalm 91, 13, it says you shall tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon shall you trample under foot?

And so the title of this message is put your foot down.

And it's inspired by an old time saying.

I heard my parents say it when I was growing up.

You don't hear it much anymore.

I'm putting my foot down.

I put when I heard about that.

I put my foot down.

What does that talk about?

It says you're saying no, you're saying you're not cooperating, and really like a lot of old time saying is drawn from the Bible.

We read tonight about treading or putting your foot upon things.

And so this authority comes from heaven.

Everything has been put under Jesus' feet, and that includes the devil, demon powers and all of their things, that they bring sickness, disease and trouble.

And since Jesus is the head and we're the body, everything is under our feet.

We're the ones that God is expecting to do something.

You know he's already done what he's gonna do.

But God's not gonna put the enemy under our feet.

He's not gonna walk on the devil.

It's our job.

It's our job to tread upon him.

And whatever comes against you you know health, finances, family, anything that comes against those areas we can walk right on top of them.

We just literally just put our.

It's time to put our foot down.

And of course, you know, in Luke 10 and Psalm 91, it's certainly not really it doesn't say the devil, it says all these other things serpents, scorpions, lions, adders, dragons.

So you know anything that is strong, that is vicious, that strikes suddenly, and you know the devil's demons are definitely under our feet.

But I like to I like to you know, whenever trouble comes, I like to associate it with an evil personality, because that's where it came from.

I'm not saying a demon did it, but I'm saying the demons are behind all trouble, they're the troublemakers.

And so it kind of helps our faith to realize that we're going to tread upon the devil and demon powers when they bring trouble.

Many years ago in fact, it was 1990, I was watching a newscast about and it was.

The subject was the Gulf War, which we were fighting at that time, and we left Saddam Hussein in power at that time, but they were showing the vastness of the right, as I think it was right.

Before we attacked, they had a film of Saddam Hussein's brother and he had this poor person bent over trying to beg for his life, and his brother, saddam Hussein's brother, wasn't Saddam Hussein, it was his brother.

He was dressed, he's army fatigues, he had his beret on, he had a big old gun on his hip and he had a big old boot, you know, and he was marching around like he's so strong, and this poor man was bowing before him, kneeling on the ground with his head down, and this man, saddam Hussein's brother.

He lifted his leg and put his boot right on top of this back of the man's head and shoved his face right into the dirt.

He put his foot right on that man and shoved him into the dirt and I was instantly reminded about how the devil is under our feet and in the Middle East.

This is what they did.

They would take and they would tread their enemies under.

They would put their foot on the enemy's neck as a place of submission, humiliation and dominance.

Now here in our Western society it doesn't mean a lot to us, but in the Bible we have to understand.

It means that we have power, we have authority, and I learned so much just from that news reel.

I mean, I got to thinking you know, we've got power over the devil.

He's bowing before us because Jesus defeated him, hallelujah.

And so it's really not talking about serpents and scorpions and lines and all of that.

Literally, it's talking about demon powers and what they do.

In Psalm 91, it talks about you shall tread upon the lion and the adder, and in my margin the word adder it's asp.

And sure enough, when you look it up in your concordance, in the Hebrew that same word is used for asp.

Let's turn over to Romans three.

It talks about that too.

It's amazing, when you start looking into this subject, how many places you find Romans three, 13.

Their throat, their throat, is an open sepulcher grave.

In other words, with their tongues they have used deceit.

The poison of asps is under their tongue.

So what is this talking about?

You know, this is just talking about people that are lost and undone.

They're, and they often use false accusation.

The poison of asps.

That's lies, backbiting, slander, gossip.

And you know, when people talk bad about you, don't get so wrapped up in getting angry at the person, start associating what they're doing with it, the spirit behind it.

There's a demon power that's stirring that up and you can tread him under.

You can tread him under.

I mean, don't get so focused on the person.

You know it's the spirit behind that person and you know, sometimes in life our own failures and our own mistakes can hold us back, keep us from moving forward.

You know we start work.

You know, start playing the woulda coulda shoulda game.

I don't recommend it.

I've played it myself.

I've lost every time.

But you know I've talked about my business failings and there were more than one.

I mean, you know, and you just, I remember not being able to sell houses and nobody would buy them and the interest was piling up.

I was losing my ability to keep up with it and I was so ashamed and I was so, you know, I felt so bad.

I didn't understand.

It took me years to find out why that happened.

What happened?

Because I didn't build them in faith.

I built them in presumption and you know, god didn't author me to build those houses and so he wasn't authorized to bless those houses and so they went unsold for a long, long time and I didn't get the benefit when they did sell.

They did finally sell, but I didn't get the benefit from it.

Well, you know, I had to.

I had to get over that.

I had to not allow that, that mistake and that failure, to hold me back from moving forward.

I just put it behind me.

I put it under the blood.

Lord, I learned from my mistakes, I'm going forward.

And yeah, I made some more mistakes after that and I just did the same thing.

I'm telling you, the blood of Jesus will cleanse you from all the wood of cutters shoulders.

We just need to put our foot down and not let the devil condemn us and hold us back.

Put your foot down, and so you know.

I look here in Joshua, chapter one, verse three, the Lord told Joshua.

He said every place the soul of your foot shall tread.

That have I given you, as I promised it to Moses Every place the soul of your foot shall tread.

So you know your inheritance is not going to just fall into your lap.

In his case, he had to get behind it.

I mean, he had to put one foot in front of another and he had to cross the river Jordan and flood stage, and he had to go over to Jericho and defeat Jericho.

And then he had to go to AI, and then he had to go to the next town, the next city and the next town, the next city.

He had to put one foot in front of the other and he had to tread all over Israel in order for them to inherit their inheritance.

And we're going to have to do the same thing.

We're not going to be able to take our inheritance while just sitting in front of the fireplace and watching the fire.

You know we're going to have to take action.

I want you to say that word take action.

I was meditating on Matthew, chapter eight, verse 16 and 17, recently, and in those verses it says when the evening was come, they brought unto him Jesus many who were possessed with demons, and he cast out the spirits with his word and he healed all that were sick.

That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah, the prophet, saying himself bear our sicknesses and took our infirmities.

And as I was just meditating on those verses, because that's our new covenant, that's, I mean, he fulfilled Isaiah 53.

As I was meditating on that, it occurred to me that Jesus took action against sickness and disease 2000 years ago.

He took action.

He didn't just say okay, they're going to get it.

No, he took action and he bore it and he carried it.

He did something.

So you know, healing is not going to fall on you.

You're going to have to do something.

You're going to have to take action.

Whether it's healing or deliverance, or provision or whatever it is, or relationships in your home, you're going to have to take action.

You're going to have to stand on the Word of God and exercise your own authority.

You've got to put your foot down, because if you don't put your foot down, then you're just going to float along with whatever's going on and you just get worse instead of better.

And so I have a question for you Just how severe is the attack?

See, that's something we need to look at.

You know you have to answer each attack with a greater intensity.

You know it's one thing to have a headache.

It's quite another thing to have a heart attack.

Yeah, I've had both.

And let me tell you something it takes a lot more intensity.

It takes a lot more steps.

You're going to have to put your foot up.

You've got to pick your foot up and put it down.

Pick it up and put it down.

I mean there was a lot of steps it took for me to get over the heart trouble and congestive heart failure and irregular heartbeat and so forth and so on, all the things that attacked me over the years.

And there hadn't been just one attack, there's been a number of attacks.

Thank God I'm in good health now.

You know what?

I've taken a bunch of steps and I take steps every night to keep that intensity up, to stop any kind of a future attack that he would have to bring on me.

And so you know, let's quit looking for a quick fix and let's dish out the hot legs.

Let's take the word of God and take it back to the enemy.

Let's put our foot down and not put up with what he's trying to give us here.

Let the never.

You know, I was watching a video the other day.

It was a video of a little donkey.

He wasn't even full grown, he was a little, and this wild dog had attacked him.

And usually dogs were running packs, but this dog was dumb.

This dog, hey, this dog, this donkey, is little, I can take him by myself.

So the dog had a hold of the donkey in his right or in his rear flank.

You know, he'd had his mouth around his rear flank, biting down on his flank, on his leg, upper leg, like his thigh, but the donkey was bent all the way around and he was biting the dog and they just went around in a circle like that and the dog was biting the donkey, but the donkey was biting back and it wasn't too long until that dog figured out that he wasn't going to win, that he was going to have some wounds that weren't going to be too cool to have and he gave up.

You know, sometimes you just got to tell the devil look, devil, you just jumped on the wrong donkey, I'm biting back, come on, lift your hands right now.

I'm just.

All these things are probably things that you know already, but you know, I just want to encourage you tonight Just don't, don't, don't get lax in your resisting the devil.

You know.

Submit yourself, therefore, to God, resist the devil, and when you resist him, you have to resist him with a word of God, throw the sword of the spirit at him and and he will flee from you.

And that word flee means to flee, as in terror.

And so he, he's more afraid of us than he lets on.

No devil, I'm putting my foot down on this one.

I'm not allowing you to do another thing.

And and then I think about this church and how collectively we've put our foot down for many, many years on things that are going on.

We've put our foot down, we have spoken against things.

I just think back.

I was telling the story again today about the COVID.

You know how we, we, we put our foot down and says no, we're not closing for COVID, we are not going to close our church down, we're not going to, we're not going to accept the fact that we're non-essential.

And you know, we, we took some action, we took legal action, we took prayer action, we took, you know, we, just we had to just make some decisions.

And we made a number of decisions after one after another, after another, after another, and praise God, you know, we stayed open and we grew and we became a refuge for people whose churches left them and churches closed down and some churches never did open back up.

And so you know, collectively, we're putting our foot down.

We're saying no to communism, no to abortion, no to this woke ism, no to the transgender agenda, no to open borders, no to this anti Christ spirit.

There is such power when we agree and but it all fits together.

We're, we're together.

We're all putting our foot down.

We are going to receive our inheritance in Jesus' name.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight.

Glory to God, hallelujah.

Be encouraged.