Cutting Room Floor: The Devil

Hey everybody, my name is Justin.

I'm here with my good buddy Madison.

Hey guys.

And this is a little mini version of our podcast, or I don't know what it's like.

It's a sub podcast.

A sub podcast.

Folder within a folder.

Exactly.

Called The Cutting Room Floor.

This is a podcast episode that we do every once in a while when we cover a topic on a Sunday message and there just is not time to get into all the details.

Your message was 52 minutes and you still didn't you weren't able to talk to them.

That's fair.

Now here's the deal is what's kind of funny.

So if uh if you're listening to this in chronology or the week that it was created, this last Sunday we talked about the devil.

Yes.

Um so if you're listening to this and you haven't listened to the message about the devil, uh, I would listen to that.

It's called Resurrected The Devil.

And this is the cutting room floor, the things that didn't make it in the message.

Yes.

So usually I talk for like 37, 38 minutes.

That's my that's my norm.

And I say that knowing that it's hit or miss.

It is.

But it's getting better.

It's getting more consistent.

It is getting better.

That's good.

Um but then this message, man, I wrote it and I practiced it, and it was super long.

And so I rewrote it to get it shorter and I practiced it.

And it was still super long.

And then I rewrote it and I actually cut it down.

I really did.

Yeah.

And then when I was up there on stage, call it lack of self-control.

I prefer to blame the Holy Spirit.

Um, but there were some things that that we ended up kind of going off and talking about that I I didn't want to even talk about.

It just sort of so were there things that stand out in your mind now, thinking back on it, where you're like, if I would have better clarified it, it would have gone a different way, or you were just comfortable with what happened on Sunday?

I was.

I felt like, you know, I mean, I think number one, I always want to try to keep into a certain time frame.

I will say that this was a topic that a lot of people were really interested in.

And and I'm pretty good at reading the room, and it definitely didn't feel like like people were like checked out, like, oh my god.

And one of the great ways you know that is when you do the final song and the vast majority of people stay in the room.

That that shows when you do the final song and like they didn't run away.

They're like, they're ready to get out of there.

That wasn't the case.

So so I think it was fine that we took the time that we did, but it's just a huge topic.

What I did feel bad about is I wanted to figure out a way to do it as a two-parter.

Like, but I couldn't figure out how to break it into two parts so that it ended on a high note, and then the next week, or it didn't end on a the devil has power, you know, like the end, but come back next week.

Um, but then it wasn't until after I gave the message.

Like, literally, I walked out of the big room on Sunday and I was like, Oh, I could have broken it up like that, and it would have been perfect.

But we had a kid's message toward Easter, the week before Easter, where it just ended on and then Jesus died.

Come back next week to see what the end is.

Courtney was like, it was just so sad for all the kids.

But she was like, But he gets back up.

I promise.

Be here Easter.

You'll hear all the details.

So we talked about the devil, and this is a huge, huge topic.

And it I actually think it surprised me how much research and I'm not even so much, I mean research, yes, because I always do research and study, but also really trying to think through where most people are at on that subject.

I did a a bunch of research on uh Christian polls, and I think I mentioned this in one of the messages, but not both, in the depending on what service is on the podcast.

I can't even remember if it made it into the message or if it was in our conversation.

Yeah, we've had a lot of conversations.

So 40% of Christians polled by this group called the Barna group, which does research, uh, said that they don't believe that the devil is an actual entity or person, but rather a symbol for evil that we have sort of we've we've personified evil and given it a name or a title, because really Satan in the Bible is a title, like Christ, you know, it is with Jesus.

Christ isn't Jesus Jesus' last name?

In the Christ home, like oh, where the Christs live?

Yeah, Christ.

Christ means Messiah.

And uh and we translate Satan, Satan, in in the in the Bible, so we just call it Satan like a name.

But really, it means it's the Satan, which is like the the accuser, the opponent, the like it has that kind of connotation.

Um but anyway, so even if here in like we live in Georgia, 40% of people who attend church in Georgia, remember this this poll was not of people, it was of Christians, right?

Self-identifying Christians, don't believe the devil is real.

It is just a symbol that we've come up with.

And I don't know, maybe they were doing that in a different part of the country.

You know, if you grow up in maybe a more Catholic part of the country, it'd probably be a higher percentage that think that way.

Um the South, maybe it's it's not 40%, but it's still a decent percentage.

And it really hit me as I was preparing that in the last 10-15 years, this is something you and I talk about a good bit, but in the last 10-15 years, churches are really straight away from talking about more spiritual things because I think it's really out of a desire not to weird you out.

Like I don't want to weird you out.

You know, I don't want you to be stressed.

I want Jesus to be really easy, right?

And yeah, I don't want to weird you out by talking about things that Jesus actually talked about a ton.

Right.

But uh, so we're just gonna focus what we do instead in church too much is we focus on these like boiling the Bible down into a series of of life hacks, and uh and hey, here's here's five tips for having a slightly better life stuff, and we don't dive into the spiritual because like we talked about the message, we need to go into it again.

We don't see the spiritual as practical, right?

But Jesus did, and he talked about Satan a lot.

So I really had to spend time thinking about how do I approach this, knowing that there's probably a decent number of people in the room or or out there listening to this who are Christians, have given their life to Jesus, but they're like, I don't even know if Satan's real.

I mean or haven't even thought about it.

I think there's a lot of people that that just live in this world where it's like what I what you see is what you get, and when you add Jesus on top of that, sure, there's a lot of wisdom to add to your life, but there's not necessarily the the impact of being a spiritual person, having a spirit, having uh what that means uh that follows up with accepting Jesus.

You know what I mean?

Yep.

Yep.

And I know that you were specifically um very careful with your words and like the way you talked about it and in your research, you were you were talking about like there's so much sifting through like myth and things that you don't that are built on just popular culture or myth.

Are you gonna be as careful in this cutting room floor?

Probably not what you said?

Okay, probably not.

And and I think that uh what when when you say so it's a kind of interesting parallel, and I'm talking about this on uh on Sunday, so you know, but but I was talking with a guy who's been involved in our addiction recovery stuff here at the church for a while, and I was telling him, like, if you say the word, if I say the word sorcery, what do you think of?

And he's like, Well, I think of like Merlin, you know, I think of of that kind of stuff, you know, Disney movie, bippity bobbity-boo, or or I think of like a witch, a Halloween in front of a cauldron, you know, I'll get you my pretty type stuff.

Yeah, right?

Well, the word that we translate sorcery in the Bible, it the the Greek word actually means like drug use.

It's the word pharmakaea, which we get the word pharmacy from.

So when you read like in Galatians and it says uh the here are the works of the flesh, and it's like blah, blah, blah, blah, and sorcery or witchcraft.

Sometimes it says witchcraft, depending on the translation.

And we're like, yeah, very few people.

I mean, we're not, it's not talking like we think Ouija boards and stuff like that.

It's actually the word is pharmakaea.

It means the administration of drugs and substances and poison.

And you don't have to go that far back in history for witches to be a reality where it's administering some drugs, some sort of poison.

In the ancient world, you even see you actually see this a little bit in like Disney movies.

That there's a lot of like, think about Snow White.

What does she do?

The witch.

She creates like a potion, right?

Dip this apple in this thing, it's a substance, and it was poison, and it'll so when we say certain words, pictures come to our mind that were not the pictures that came to mind.

So, like we might say in our church today, very few people struggle with sorcery.

Um, and I'm not calling people who have drug addictions witches.

Sorcerers or witches.

But my point is that the idea of drug use in biblical times was completely tied to this concept.

We've sort of separated that in our minds as two different issues, to the point that when we read scripture, we get a whole different picture.

Right.

Well, I think the same thing applies with demons, with angels, with Satan.

We have these very specific pictures in our mind that are not at all what the biblical writers pictured, because those pictures actually come from fictional stuff that happened way after the Bible, like Dante's Inferno and pop culture, when you see Satan or the devil, he's like he's read, he's got big goat horns, and you know, and so the the Renaissance and the way the way angels and and Jesus and Mary and the devil was pre like in in art, that's where we get those pictures from.

None of that's biblical.

And so the it's almost like a perfect strategy for Satan to make himself seem like a myth, so we don't believe in him.

Um, but yeah, yeah.

So I what we're gonna do here is Madison is gonna ask questions.

I don't know the questions you're gonna ask or the order you're gonna ask.

I don't have I don't have many questions.

That's fine, but I have some questions for you.

And then we'll just do our best to answer them.

I'm not I'm in no way, shape, or form like the I would not consider myself uh like a foremost authority on this.

I did a good bit of research and I've been a Christian for a long time.

Um so there's probably a ton of resources out there you can I I mean I encourage anyone study um and study study scripture and study people who believe in scripture and their their takeaways from it.

There's a lot of good stuff out there.

There's also a lot of bad stuff.

Yeah.

So happy hunting.

Okay.

First off, the uh thing that I really like one of the biggest takeaways from the message on Sunday was your description of the already but not yet using the basketball game analogy.

That was the first time that I heard like that idea that Jesus has already conquered things, but it's also not yet where it actually made sense because it's like there's no practical example of something being finished but not finished, and you you pulled it in.

Um, so that was very helpful.

I just wanted to give a shout out.

Yeah, the idea there, yeah, that like Satan's Bible talks about him as being defeated, but then we're constantly told to be on guard.

Well, why if he's defeated?

The game is over.

It's the same.

You're up by a hundred points, but time's still on the clock, so there's still things that can happen.

The enemy team can still break your elbows in a fit of rage, and you're like, oh yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

So what are the I love that you picked broken elbows, which would probably like one of the most rare injuries in the world.

Like, I mean, how many people do you know who have broken an elbow?

I don't know, sports.

Is a broken elbow not a not a thing that happens?

I mean, it's probably broken collarbone, those snap pretty easily at me.

I mean, maybe like uh yeah.

A scratch?

Yeah, you get scratched.

There you go.

A tough to bear pull?

Get poked in the eye real hard.

You get poked so hard in the eye.

Um so what uh what from the message didn't make it into the message?

Like what from the planning process didn't make it in the talking about the origin of Satan in terms of like one of the things I said was we just don't have time to get into that.

And part of that's because we really don't know.

I mean, the by the so the the Bible, and I I'll tell you a great resource, and one that you and I have talked about, um one that you've actually really kind of got me hooked on is uh Tim Mackey.

He does a podcast called Exploring Your Strange Bible, My Strange Bible.

He also is one of the guys that does the Bible Project.

The Bible Project has a really interesting series on their podcast about I think it's called God.

Yeah, but it really examines um the fact that spiritual realm spiritual realm.

Because truthfully, Old Testament, there is all kinds of talk of other spiritual beings, of power.

And and I'll use a basketball analogy again.

Like we we we've been brought up to be to be taught, it's you've grown up in church, like there's only one God.

And and yes and no, there's only one God like God.

But there are many in scripture, many spiritual beings.

Satan would be a classic example, but also archangels, um, false gods.

The Bible doesn't really talk about these false gods as if they're just made up by some of them, it talks about idols being made up by people.

Right, idols might just be a piece of wood, but also don't eat in Zeus' temple because you're bringing your allegiance to Zeus.

Not necessarily saying that Zeus is real, but there's an authority there that might, you know, seize that authority, like your permission, and go, Well, I'm gonna work in your life.

And so people would say, Well, you're saying that Zeus is real or like Baal in the Old Testament.

Like, no, but there's definitely the picture that there are other spiritual beings that were created by God that have authority.

I think the the Bible Project podcast calls it like God's staff.

And uh some of them went like AWOL and whatnot, kind of like the idea of Satan.

And so, yeah, I was using the basketball analogy by by saying, like, okay, there's only there's only one God.

Yes.

But there are beings that you might verbiage-wise call gods in the sense that they are greater than people, powerful, creators, but they but compared to God, they're not God.

No, no different than I can tell you I'm a basketball player, because I do.

I play basketball a lot.

But if I was standing next to LeBron James and I went and he's and LeBron James said, I'm a basketball player.

Then I was like, Yeah, me too.

No, not really.

Technically speaking, sure, I have a ball in my hand and I I've played, but I but compared to him, so God is the only true God, he's the only God that should be honored.

Has ultimate authority has ultimate authority to be honored and celebrated.

And I'm not saying that there's other gods like Zeus, but there are other spiritual beings of authority, Satan being one of them in scripture.

And that's authority that you know, we kind of got into some of that during the message.

Yeah, and the the fact that if your obedience doesn't fall under Yahweh's obedient, obedient to Yahweh, obedient to God, obedient to Jesus, then your obedience is falling somewhere else.

Yeah.

And that was, I think, the main focus.

But you said the origin didn't make it in.

The origin didn't make it in, and part of that is because, you know, the Bible tells the story, and I think the Bible Project guys do a really good job of explaining this.

The Bible tells the story of the rebellion of mankind and how God has worked to restore what was broken through our rebellion, right?

Well, hinted at in scripture many times is that there was a rebellion before this rebellion, because by the time Adam and Eve show up, there's already creatures in rebellion, right?

And that that some of these other spiritual beings, that's just the word we would use to describe them, um, they're probably just beings.

Yeah.

This is all we've known.

But but other spiritual beings rebelled and and they actually started messing with God's creation in in heaven on earth in all kinds of these ways.

The Genesis account is that's where there's this the serpent and the serpent, you've got the I mean some of the crazy stuff, sons of God that left him or whatever it is.

I mean, it's just all and we might look at that stuff and be like, oh, it's a mythology, it's it's whatever.

Okay, well, but it it's it's in there a lot, and Jesus, Jesus talked about Satan as very real.

And so as far as the origin of Satan goes, there's no chapter of the Bible that says Satan.

Here's here's the eighth day, Lucifer, whatever.

So what you there's no prequel to creation, then there's not.

What you can pull from are some scriptures in the Old Testament, for example, like in Ezekiel 28, there's this like po and it's a poem.

And so we have to read it that way.

And it's a poem about about this being they call the king of Tyre.

Uh there was a region called Tyre and Sidon, which was near Jerusalem and Israel.

It was uh Tyre and Sidon was were like city-states.

Um in fact, I'm almost 100% sure that Jezebel, who was the wife of Ahab, that caused all this trouble when with Elijah in the Old Testament, was from Sidon.

Um it was Tyre or Sidon, but I think it's Sidon.

Point being that these are actually actual places.

Yep.

And this is about the king of Tyre, and one of the things it says is it's a funeral song for the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28.

You were made of you were made the model of perfection, full of wisdom and exquisite in beauty.

You were in Eden, the garden of God.

Your clothing was adorned with every precious stone, red carnelium, pale green paradot, white moonstone, blue green barrel, onyx, green jasper, blue lapis, lazuli, turquoise, and emerald, all beautifully crafted, set in the finest gold.

You were they were given to you on the day you were created.

I ordained and anointed you as the mighty angelic guardian.

You had access to the holy mountain of God, and you walked among the stones of fire.

I don't know what that means.

But you were blameless in all you did from the day we were created until the day evil was found in you.

Your rich commerce led you to violence, and you sinned, so I banished you in disgrace from the mountain of God.

I expelled you, O mighty guardian, from your place among the stones of fire.

Your heart was filled with pride because of all your beauty, your wisdom was corrupted by your love of splendor, so I threw you to the ground and exposed you to the curious gaze of kings.

You defiled your sanctuaries with your many sins and your dishonest trade.

So I brought fire out from within you, and it consumed you.

I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching.

All who knew you were appalled at your fate, you have come to a terrible end and will exist no more.

Okay?

So there's this language in there of like you had access to the mountain of God, but you were cast out because of your pride, and you like whatever.

And a lot of people believe that this Tyre of Sidon thing is king or sorry, king of Tyre.

Yeah.

It's like a metaphoric representation of Satan.

It's like a mirror rebellion happening with Satan and potentially with whatever's happening in the mouth.

Yeah, because it alludes to things like you had access to the mountain of God.

That wouldn't make sense in the context of Tyre itself.

Yeah, like maybe.

Like you, you like there was a mountain that they, you know, Mount Sinai was a a holy site.

But again, is that is that a literal story of a king and how he fell, and it's just using poetic language of of the heavenlies to kind of describe it, or is it kind of it's a uh interesting time.

Ezekiel is isn't Ezekiel contemporary with like the captivity in Babylon?

Yeah.

Where so it's like it's also saying there's that mirror rebellion happening in this punishment for Israel at the same time that it's bringing up this punishment and rebellion of some spiritual being.

Then there's other scripture like Isaiah chapter 14, and again, this stuff is poetic.

Isaiah 14 · chapter mention

It's not written like a history, and I think it's one of the important things to know when you study scripture is to know what genre of literature you're studying.

So some of it is historical stuff.

When you're reading Exodus, it's not written metaphorically.

It's written, this happened, and then this happened, and blah, blah, blah.

Um, the prophets wrote very they wrote in visions, they wrote in in pictures.

It's poet, it's literally in Hebrew poetry.

Um so you have this in Isaiah 14.

Uh, how you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning.

You've been thrown down to the earth, you who are you who destroyed the nations of the world, for you said to yourself, I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars.

I will preside on the mountain of the gods, far away in the north, I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the most high.

Instead you'll be brought down to the place of the dead, down to its lowest depths.

Everyone there will stare at you and ask, Can this be the one who shook the earth and made the kingdoms of the world tremble?

Is this the one who destroyed the world and made it into a wasteland?

Is this the king who demolished the world's greatest cities and had no mercy on his prisoners?

And so there's this language, and one of the things you see in that language that's constant is this idea of being cast down from heaven.

Now Jesus, and I believe Luke chapter 10 says, I saw Satan fall from heaven like a bolt of lightning.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Or I think he actually says I saw Satan cast from heaven like a bolt of lightning.

So Jesus connects the idea of Satan to this being cast out of heaven concept, which totally, totally in the minds of the Israelites who he's talking to, who would have been familiar with these scriptures, would have brought up these pictures, right?

Because this was like, I mean, this is what they lived by.

And so cast out of heaven.

So there's this idea that, and it's it's kind of a commonly held belief that Satan was an angelic being created by God that at one point in time had great authority in the sort of heavenly realms, rebelled against God out of pride, set himself above God, led a rebellion against God, it was unsuccessful.

He was cast out from heaven along with all the angels who followed him, and that's where the demons come from.

But the Bible doesn't talk about as clear-cut as that.

A lot of that is us extrapolating, inferring, and then taking kind of popular modern storytelling tropes that we see in movies and stuff and attaching it.

The point being a lot of us talk about this origin of Satan with a lot more clarity than the Bible speaks to, because this just isn't a topic that it gives great detail to.

That's not the that's not the story of the Bible.

So and people point to that as saying it's not real.

Exactly.

So and I guess listen to the to the message if you want to go through the facts of why scripture supports the devil being real or Satan being.

And all that just depends on like some people will take, well, if the Bible doesn't clearly talk about it, then it's just a myth.

And and they'll look at historical thoughts like the idea of a I mean, the Old Testament has the story of Job.

And Job is probably the first, in terms of like when it was actually written by a human hand, Job is the oldest book in the Bible.

Almost all scholars agree that the the the manuscript the book of Job was probably written before any of the other other books.

And part of that is because Job does not describe himself at any point as an Israelite.

Right.

In the land of ooze, isn't it?

Yeah, there's no there's no description of Job being connected as a as a son of Jacob.

And so the first, you know, the first books of the Bible written long after the events that happened.

Most a lot of people say it was Moses that wrote those.

Well, Moses was long after Abraham.

Oral tradition, oral history passed down.

We would say that the Holy Spirit guided in that, and and it's a whole different conversation.

But but Satan's in Job.

I mean, he's listed and he's in the heavenly courts.

I mean, it's like this picture almost of like a king and someone approaches his throne and is like, I have an appointment with the brother.

And what does he do?

He accuses the accuser.

And so you let Job have a good life because whatever.

Yeah, he worships you because it all goes well for him.

Let me mess with them and see what happens.

And that's a classic story.

So all that to say this.

Some will say that, okay, well, then we believe Satan's a myth, and what they'll base that on is that if you look at human history, the idea of a Satan, the idea of uh an evil being is something that sort of evolved throughout history in other cultures too.

And that's true.

And so, oh well, the by the time New Testament comes along, other cultures, the Persian culture, for example, they had already come up with some of these ideas.

That to me is like, okay, I I believe in this thing called called like uh revelation, you know, and progressive revelation, and I believe God has throughout history been slowly bit by bit revealing who he is, not just to not just to people who wrote the Bible, but to all to all of creation.

Right.

So it it doesn't like it's not a big deal to me that the Old Testament doesn't speak in specifics because that wasn't the point.

The the point of the Bible, the Old Testament, was not to let's tell the story of Satan.

It was the story of the nation of Israel and God.

Um so Jesus talked about Satan as if he Was real.

And I think that's where we kind of landed at the message was is he real or is it just a myth?

Well, it depends on who you ask.

If you ask Jesus and if you view Jesus as an authority, Jesus never talked about Satan metaphorically.

I mean in the sense that when he talks about Satan, it is very clear cut.

It's one of the reasons I believe in hell, even though there's this kind of push lately in church culture not to.

It's a different, it's kind of connected.

But it's uncomfortable.

But here's the thing, it is uncomfortable.

Someone I love might go there.

But Jesus talked about hell very and here's the thing.

Jesus was not afraid to challenge the religious beliefs of the people of his day.

So if they believe stuff that was like made up, Jesus was okay cutting through that stuff.

He would say, Hey, you've heard it said this, actually.

You know, he he would correct them.

He never corrected their belief in Satan.

He never corrected their belief in hell.

He actually, if anything, reinforced it because he talked about it.

Sorting out the sheep from the goats.

It's not so so Jesus, Jesus seemed to believe 100% in Satan being a spiritual being of power that had authority in this earth because we've given him authority and we need to be on guard and watch out because he's out to to destroy us.

Yeah, and there's wisdom in acknowledging that there's danger and that there's danger prowling at your door, waiting for you to just go, you know what, that's not that big of a deal.

That doesn't affect me, that's not that bad.

Let me just whatever.

I I I'm following how I feel all of those things end up leading you closer and closer to G or to danger.

And Jesus is saying, no, that's that's finished, so have nothing to do with that.

That's a great point.

And I think one of the epidemics we see happen in the church right now, in in America at least, because it's the only church I know, um, is this sort of stupid, I think like like because we don't want to weird people out, we don't want to make people feel feel uncomfortable, right?

We've we've erased, there's actually a really good book called Erasing Hell by Francis Chan.

Totally recommend it.

We've erased it from the conversation.

I think Satan falls into that category because people just, it's like, I don't like the idea of that.

Um but here's the deal beware of false teachers, because there are many of them.

And we've I've known people here at our church that I would like have gone that route.

I always go with go to Jesus.

About about about a third of Jesus' parables are parables of warning.

Where he's like, make the right choice.

If you don't there will be consequences, there will be.

And it's not a threat.

It's never a threat.

It's always just he's just hanging it out like it is.

I'm gonna pull this car over and make you He doesn't say that.

He's like it's like in it's like the Garden of Eden when he says, Don't eat the apple, don't eat the fruit.

He doesn't say apple, but don't eat the fruit, you'll die.

He's not threatening, he's not saying I'll kill you.

He's being like, this is the result of what will happen.

So if if you have a teacher who's like, Oh, there's no hell and there's no Satan, all of that's just you know, da-da-da.

It's like, well, then what was Jesus spending so much time warning people about?

Right.

I mean, it it doesn't line up.

Yeah.

Um, so you might not believe in Jesus, and that's cool, but if you do believe in Jesus, it's cool.

I'm saying like prerogative.

Yeah.

But but if you do believe in Jesus, then I think you have to deal with the fact that there's no indication we have that Jesus did not believe in an actual being of evil named Satan and an actual eternal judgment, whether that's eternity in in hell or or ultimate destruction in hell.

You you can make some arguments there, but like it's just it's clear.

So there's danger, uh, Satan is real, demons are real, angels are real, not necessarily the way we thought of.

Uh do they have influence, and they do have influence.

I think this is our takeaway.

Um, something else that you said that you weren't gonna be bringing into the message, but you'd be sharing on the cutting room floor is uh a demonic experience that you've had.

So do you want to frame that or do you want to Sure.

So well, I'll frame it by saying this.

I I I grew up um in, you know, I started going to church when I was in the fourth grade, and I went to a really like Bible-believing church, but not a very spiritually experiential church.

Sure.

So we really studied scripture, but we didn't really think in terms of the things we were studying.

Like we we believed every story in the Bible.

So all these crazy things happened in the Bible, spiritual things, we're like, oh, that's awesome.

So cool.

But we sort of, if anyone said something like similar, it happened to them, we're like, you're nuts.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

It was one of those the father and son and Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, you know, which we don't really know, we don't talk about.

So yeah.

So so I grew up, I would say, honestly, as a Christian, somewhat skeptical of anyone who would talk about having intense spiritual experiences, either good or bad.

And just didn't have a category for it.

I wasn't raised around anyone who talked that way.

Someone saying, God told me, you know, that was like, you know, you think God talks to you.

But then you read scripture and it's like he talks to tons of people all the time.

Right.

Um, I'd had some experiences, I had this one experience in high school that really like changed me in terms of just I think making me more spiritually open to the idea of God, of a spiritual, direct uh influence, influence, and and like moments.

So when I was in high school, my house got broken into.

Um and we'd we really hadn't been living there very long.

It was when we moved here to Georgia, and we had we had this like intercom system in our house.

It was a nice house.

Like my dad had gotten a big promotion, and this house had intercom.

I always remember laughing because my mom would hit the intercom button and yell into it really loud, as if she was just yelling upstairs, like when we didn't have one.

Um Get up! And it's like, mom, that's the point of the intercom is you can just talk in normal volume and we can hear you real loud because the volume's up in here, but it'd just be like this jarble.

Um, so one night, like it's uh I I wake up, middle of the night, the alarm's going off in our house, and I hear my mom on the intercom saying, like, Justin, is it, you know, Aaron, get downstairs, my brother.

And so, because their bedroom's downstairs, so I go downstairs.

My dad was out of town.

And when I turn down the stairs, I see my mom at the bottom of the stairs, and she says, Come on, like she kind of waves her hand, and then she goes, she's she's like, Get my purse and get to the bedroom.

And I'm in a stupor.

And so I'm just like, because I just woke up and it's all shocking and it's loud.

It's like, you know, you see a prank on YouTube of like people do weird things when you wake them up in the middle of the night suddenly.

And I I turn at the kitchen, I grab her purse, and I take it to the bedroom, and we're in there, and the police come and all this stuff.

So later on, she's like, I am so impressed that you thought to grab my purse.

And because her keys were in it, and uh, and I think she had a cell phone in there that, like, you know, in case whatever.

And I was like, Well, you were at the bottom of the stairs and you told me to get it.

And she's like, I never left the bedroom.

And I was kind of like, What in the world?

And some people might say, You dream that, okay, fine.

And I'm like, whatever.

But but I was like, I really think that that was a that was a God thing, like uh whether that was an angel or that was who knows.

Um, but I remember it as clear as day, and I'm not I'm the kind of person that like loses my own keys all the time.

And so you're not there's not a lot of forethought in the presence of man, no.

I'm like one of those people who's likely if if I didn't have Megan, I I would be that guy who goes like to the airport is like, oh, I didn't think to bring my license, you know.

Like I didn't realize I'd need that.

Um, so anyway.

So I'd had experiences like that, but when I was when Liam was born, my my oldest son, he was he's eight years old now at the time of this recording, but maybe not at the time of this listening, because this could live forever on the interwebs.

You might it might someone might be listening to this in the year 2068.

Welcome back to the 2018 archives coming at you from 2145.

Um so this one night, you know, when Liam was born, he was in the NICU for two weeks, uh almost two weeks, I think it was like 10 days.

And that was really hard.

He was our first child, and here he is, and his life's in danger, and it was just it was crazy, you know.

And and so we bring him home, and and I think we'd probably only been home for maybe like a week.

It was really early.

And his bassinet in our bedroom, we we he was in our bedroom at that point in time, it was our first house, and his bassinet was like at the foot of our bed, okay.

And so one night, middle of the night, I wake up, and and I by wake up I just mean like I opened my eyes and I'm laying on my back.

And all I can tell you is that I was completely and totally paralyzed.

I could not move a finger, I could not, I couldn't move a leg, I couldn't even lift my head up from the pillow.

And I felt disturbed in a way that I've never felt in my life.

Like, almost like the air around me was keeping me, like holding me down.

Like it was very intense.

And all I can say is that I open up, I open up my eyes, I can't, I can all I can do is like look straight out.

I can't even not, I cannot even like lift my head forward to look toward the foot of the bed, but I was aware, totally aware, of of a being.

There was something in the room, it was dark and it was bad.

And it was it was standing on the left side from my perspective, on the left side of Liam's bassinet, looking into it.

And what's funny is I couldn't even see.

Like I my my eyes can't even look that way, but I I know your mind's eyes.

And it's and it's clear as day.

And I can't move.

I I've never I've never in my life felt I you know, like the fight, flight, or freeze thing.

I am not a freeze person.

I've never I I literally cannot remember a time in my life where I've ever felt that way.

And I can't, I mean, I'm like paralyzed in fear, and I know that something is in the room, and I I know where it is.

It's like I don't know how to describe it, it's just like a it's like my spirit could see in a way that my okay, whatever.

And then I hear I heard it speak, and I heard it with my ears, and I heard it as clear as as day, and it said the words, who is this man?

So it's looking into my son's bassinet, and it asked the question, Who is this man?

And I mean, even though I'm saying it right now, dude, I've got like that's intense, I've got super, you know, um, and I just laid there for a good 30 seconds and I could not move an inch.

I mean, nothing.

And I and I started to pray.

So I'm praying in the name of Jesus, like all I can think to do is pray in the name of Jesus, right?

Praying like in the name of Jesus, this thing has to go, and I've gotta, you know.

I'll be honest, I would prefer to say, and then I woke up.

Yeah, and that didn't happen.

That'd be really comforting, actually.

Um, but it was I couldn't go back to sleep.

I was not dreaming.

It was incredibly intense.

Um, and just like any normal human being, I doubted afterwards, like, does that really happen?

Whatever.

No, it it happened.

Um, and what's really crazy, Megan and I were talking about it, the number of people in the world, if you actually polled people and said, How many of you have had an experience with something that you couldn't explain and blah, blah, you you'd have a lot of hands go up.

I mean, there's a lot of people, but then everyone's like, I just made up my head.

That's just a night terror, a sleep party.

And then that stuff's real.

And I think that that speaks to the intersection of the spiritual and the real, is what the secular society has to say about that is like, oh, it's just sleep paralysis, your brain is going haywire.

You know what I mean?

But what we believe, and what we get from scripture, is that there's a reality there that we can't see but has influence over many things.

And that's the intersection there, is like, man, it was real for you.

There might be ways to explain it, but there's a reality for you that you're like, there's nothing that's gonna deny that that was a spiritual experience.

Yeah.

And and I think what and I'm I mentioned this in the message, I didn't go into great detail, but it's funny because you said the secular world.

I I think that the impact of the modern age, we're we're in the postmodern world, you know, but the modern world is all about facts and scientific stuff, like can it be proven?

And what's so funny is some of the the some of the most uh accepted and exciting um popular scientific theories of today, not a hundred years ago, today, are the the theories of the multiverse.

That there are multiple, you know, we we see in three dimensions, right?

Well, I guess four, because time is a dimension.

Sure.

We can see height, width, depth, see, time.

But we perceive it as passing.

We perceive like that those are the dimensions that we are capable of perceiving.

But theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking, who is celebrated as like one of the most genius human beings ever, believed in in multiple dimensions that we don't have the ability as human beings to perceive.

We cannot see them, but they exist and they impact our world.

And they they they might even like overlay with it.

We just don't have the capacity to observe them.

Did you ever see the 90s show Sliders or maybe early two?

Yeah, so I bet the the the CG on that when I so I was like in middle school, high school when that was out, and it was like super cool special effects.

I bet it's super hooky now.

Yeah, like so also the geniuses that wrote sliders also believed in the multiverse theory.

Yeah, the idea that there are these parallel universes and all that, that that's actually we call it science fiction, but there's actually science behind it.

I don't understand the science because I'm not a scientist.

Um, but that's not a far cry from you know, Paul saying our our battles are not against flesh and blood, not against what we can see, yeah, but against spiritual forces, evil forces in the unseen world.

You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, okay, so even walking away from this conversation and you sharing that experience is like my takeaway is fear.

My takeaway is like, I really hope that doesn't happen to me.

You know what I mean?

Like, so people listening, I'm sure, in are in the same position.

Hey, but when I prayed in the name of Jesus, it went away.

I'll tell you that.

There you go.

I'll tell you that.

And you know, I think that fear is the tool that that Satan uses because it's really all he's got.

It's like fear and intimidation because he's he has been defeated.

He knows he's defeated, and he knows that he has no power of us if we belong to Jesus.

He doesn't, he has no claim.

He does have a claim over us if we don't.

Because just like Ephesians 2 that we went through in the message said, if you're not, I mean, Jesus actually said this.

If you're not with me, you're kind of against me.

I mean, he used that language.

And if you're not obeying the Father, you're obeying the devil.

The Bible doesn't give you like this gray area of like, well, you don't obey God, but you're not like you're obeying the devil.

Right.

It's like, no, because the the devil's not, I think, and and this is what I'll we'll finish with.

Sure.

Another thing I didn't have time to elaborate on, which is why I would have broken it into two parts.

And if I ever do it again, I will.

When we hear devil Satan, you know, what does Satan do?

We always jump to like the worst possible thing you can think of a person doing.

Like murder, you know, torture, really dark stuff you'd see in horror movies.

That's the stuff of Satan.

And so anything short of that, we just kind of have this whole category of like there's righteousness, there's the really good things that God would have us do.

Then there's like the Satan stuff, which is like murder and mayhem and it's like the gross-out horror movie.

The hospital on fire.

Yeah.

And then there's all this stuff in between those two things, and we're sort of just like, eh, you know, and then the other stuff.

There's not righteousness, it's not God, but it's not Satan, it's not like whatever.

No, no, no.

No, the Bible does not paint that picture whatsoever.

That there is the things of God, holiness, and everything short of holiness.

Because everything short of holiness is rebellion.

And it doesn't matter if it's a lie, it doesn't matter if it's uh uh uh, you know, a little fudging on your uh on your on your resume to get a job, it doesn't matter if it's you know telling your wife something that isn't quite true.

Anything short of holiness is rebellion to God, is sin.

We have an issue as human beings is that we way underestimate sin.

We just don't think it's that big of a deal.

We really don't.

Even at the point like look at porn, for example, okay?

Most human beings don't look at porn.

No, true, sorry, yeah, as as an example, not as an as a behavior.

Um thank you.

So um most human beings would say most human beings, like a 99.99%, would say that that child sex trafficking is bad.

The only people who wouldn't say that are the people who do it or participate in it.

Right?

Whatever.

But then those same people will be like, say porn.

They're like, it's not that big of a deal.

I'm not hurting anyone.

Yeah, not hurt anybody.

Well, here's the the reality if there's no porn industry, there's not a sex trafficking industry.

Those two things, do any research you want to do in the world.

I'm not even talking about crazy conspiracy theories.

Those two worlds are closely, closely connected.

What's the gateway for people who like people don't wake up one day and be like, I'm gonna go see if I can find a sex trafficking ring to get involved with.

What happens?

They start going down, they start with porn.

It's like the common story.

And you can look at people who work in that world and they'll tell you it's the every time it's the same story.

A guy sitting across from me, how did it how did it man, what happened?

How did this happen?

I looked at porn, it became a thing, and then it wasn't exciting anymore, and I needed more, and eventually I went down this wormhole that led me here.

So we look at porn and we're like, no big deal.

And then we look at sex trafficking and we're like, Satan.

Big deal.

Yeah.

Porn is Satan too.

Yeah.

It's it's the and I think that's where we get so tripped up as Christians, is that we we underestimate what we would consider the little sins, where Satan, like, those are the ones he loves.

And we don't even make him work that hard for it.

It's uh we're talking about the wolves in John 10 saying that the wolves are coming to to destroy the flock.

And it's like a lot of time, especially with teenagers, since I'm speaking with teenagers, a lot of times we get the wolves in sheep's clothing.

We we we put the sheep's clothing on the wolves.

We're like, hey, just pretend to be nice and so that I can ignore you.

Or pretend to be nice so that we can walk around or even have pity, like all those wolves, those wolves, they're so alone.

People are always judging the wolves.

They're hungry.

It's like just wolves.

Right.

That's all they know.

And so, yeah, no, I agree.

And so I think that if, you know, and we'll wrap up because it's but we've talked for a good bit, but if I could, if I could have elaborated on more, and again, I should have done this two parts.

I'll look at it.

But I have but here's the cool thing um Ephesians 6, we're gonna get to that eventually, and that's all about it so it's like that's when you, if you go through scripture, we'll deal with it.

Um Satan, the way he tempts us, I think we we forget, like think about having an affair with your spouse.

Okay, we're both married.

Maybe there is a guy who woke up one, who was super dedicated to his wife, really smart boundaries, totally like careful, and then one day woke up and been like, you know what, today that's throwing.

I'm giving myself all this mulligan.

Yeah, I'm gonna go find me a woman have an affair.

Maybe, right?

I don't think so.

But here's what happens Satan tempts you to, you're angry with your wife, don't say you're sorry.

Don't recognize you carry bitterness in your heart, right?

You and your wife, you're not talking, you're not communicating, things are off.

Um she says, Can we talk?

You don't want to talk.

You choose your own way over what her need is, right?

You say you're not today.

As time goes on, you grow distant because you're not engaging, you're not, you know, you're not doing those little things.

And every time you have that voice in your head that's like, hey, go go reach out to her, talk to her.

Then the other voice that's like, no, you don't want to do that.

She needs to there's someone at work that will listen to you.

And then the temptation of like, hey, yeah.

Um, the someone at work that will listen to you, hey, okay, so you and your wife aren't talking.

But this this person at work really seems to understand me.

You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna open up with her a little bit.

I'm maybe gonna talk, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna vent that one time you get that temptation, like, when she asks, how you doing?

And you're like, man, my wife and I'm gonna be able to do it.

Oh, you know what?

I'm so sorry.

Your wife, your wife, I think your wife is a lucky woman.

She should be more happy.

Like, seriously, every one of those little things, yeah, that's how Satan operates.

He is all about death by a thousand cuts.

And I think we get tripped up because we're we're like trying to be on guard for the big temptations.

And what we forget is that people don't get to the big temptations in a moment.

It's it's a thousand little cuts.

It's saying, it's saying yes to well, saying no to your conscience in these little bitty ways.

Hide this.

Oh, my wife doesn't need to know I spent that.

You know, I've done that with my wife, by the way.

I bought plenty of pairs of shoes that I've had I've had delivered to the church so that I didn't have to have the then because then later I can have the conversation with her, right?

I'll explain later.

That's so funny.

That is funny.

Anytime I saw a box with the Justin McTear on it, I'm like, is that shoes?

Now there is a box that's coming, uh, but it's not shoes for me.

It's shoes for Liam, and my wife and I agreed on these because he outgrew the shoes and we're selling his shoes.

I have a shoe thing.

Okay.

Um but uh but my point is temptation, it the small stuff matters.

And I think we get messed up because we just don't see people read the Old Testament and be like, what is God's deal?

It's like, well, he he handles sin.

Sin's a big deal to God.

Yeah.

It's not our issue is that we judge God and we look at God and we go, that shouldn't be you're you're being oversensitive, God.

I think if we could see what what sin is and what it actually does, I think we'd be just as aggressive as God is with it.

Yeah.

And then I think that part of that being on guard thing is putting on the righteousness of Jesus and every single day putting on that righteousness.

Ephesians chapter 6, the he's talking, you're talking about the armor of God.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Yeah, yeah.

And so you got the armor of God, um, but it's also the fact that you don't when Jesus or when God looks at you, he sees Jesus, he sees the sacrifice, that that atonement, you know what I mean?

Like diving into all that.

But it's not this thing where it's like you're alone in this fight.

You're not, it's already been handled.

No, we we as Christians, we have no reason to fear Satan.

We don't, he has every reason to fear us.

And he and he does.

He actually does, because he fears Jesus.

I mean, the demons tremble at Jesus, they tremble.

I think that's something we just you know, to end on a positive.

I I mentioned this at the end of the message, but like Jesus is legit.

We we have a way of looking at Jesus as this meek, mild-mannered dude, you know, and and uh you know he did some cool miracles and stuff, but at the end of the day.

Soft spoken.

Yeah, he's like, hey, my children.

Well, when anyone who was possessed by a demon in scripture came face to face with Jesus, the demon literally like cracked its pants.

Like it, it's it's like, oh God, please don't kill me.

Yeah, that's that's what like I'm trying to think of the scenario where if I'm walking down the street and I see a person, and my instant reaction would be like, please have mercy on me.

Danny DeVito.

Oh, Danny DeVito, oh my gosh, in the penguin costume for Batman Returns, I just freak out.

Um, but no, no, like that's a weird thing.

That's what that's what demons do, just being near Jesus.

Um and it's like that's our God.

So we don't need to be afraid, we just need to stand with them and And and not, I think what we do unintentionally sometimes, but but intentionally, is we've got Jesus, and he said, Hey, come over here, be with me, do life this way.

And and and then we're like, hey, Jesus, I'll be back.

I'm just gonna go do, I'm gonna go do this.

There's a really cool dark canyon over there.

Like, there's people I know, there's guys I know, and there's a lot of guys, and if someone's listening to this and they think I'm talking about them, it's just there's been a lot of guys who have left their that I've known in the church, who have left their wives and gone to be with some other girl.

And I and life never works out for those guys.

It's not the dream, their dreams come true.

And the reason is is they're putting themselves at the mercy of Satan.

Yeah, they're taking the bait, they're following that temptation.

It's like it's like a fish who bites a hook and goes, sure hope they throw me back in the water after, and like, nope, skewered and and baked.

And I the number of guys I have known that made a decision like that, and I'm not just talking about the relationship collapse, I'm talking about they lost their job.

And it's like their whole world fell apart.

Why?

Because Satan hates you.

And you and if you go ahead and go, hey, I'm gonna do things his way and see how it works out.

And he hates you because you're valuable.

Yeah, he hates you because you belong to God and you and he hates God.

So um yeah, so obviously this is still not like a total This is just a conversation.

It didn't make the cut, and man, if it had, can you imagine?

This is probably an hour long.

It's 40 something minutes.

Okay, so it's getting close to that message.

So an hour and a half long message.

And obviously, we're talking this stuff.

But hey, you know, listen to this.

This is obviously optional.

You don't have to, so don't be mad at us that we talked this long.

You could have stopped it at any point up to this.

Uh, but we'll do this from time to time.

Anytime there's messages that we feel like, man, I wish I could have talked longer.

I just I couldn't have.

Um, or I should have done a two-part.

That's what I should have done.

And one day we will.

So anything else?

Um The Screwtape Letters by C.S.

Lewis.

Ooh, good stuff.

That kind of gives you some perspective.

It's fiction, but it it shifts your perspective into like, oh, there might be uh another realm that has active forces in it.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

Yeah, and on that note, I think that I do think that God has left, you know, He created us, He breathed the Spirit into us.

I do think there's this innate sense in humanity to like in a weird way to sort of like seek after the spiritual truths of the world.

Which which is so interesting because like look at the world we live in.

How how many how many stories and movies deal with like unseen forces?

Right?

How many how many movies that come out every year that are about like the world collapsing?

Yeah.

Like that, I mean it's like it's a constant theme, not just in our day and age, but has been throughout throughout history.

I mean, it's just like crazy.

Like Lord of the Rings.

You put the ring on and then like you're in the spirit world.

Whatever, like the number of video games that have that sort of thing.

And and I'm not saying that those are proof, but I what I am saying is that there seems to be a fascination that the human mind has with like, what if there's something I can't see, but it's real?

And I just wonder sometimes if if that fascination we have is because we God like that's in us.

Yeah, because we're in tune to having a spirit and there's being a spiritual thing.

Yeah, because there's a version of philosophically, there's a version of the world where we can't even conceive of something like that that it would exist in that way.

Yeah.

So very cool.

Cool.

All right.

All right, man.

Thanks.

Cutting room floor the devil.