"Daniel" Week 3

Welcome to the Maniturge Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world.

We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before.

Now, let's get to it.

Awesome.

How are we doing today, man?

Yes?

You guys good?

Yo, wasn't worship awesome?

Yes.

Fantastic.

I love it that we get to come into God's presence every single week and just get to lift up his name.

And I'm excited this week to actually get into the third message in our series on Daniel.

This one's gonna surprise some of you, actually.

It's gonna be good.

So last week, it's gonna be a hard left turn, by the way, from last week, too.

Last week was uh we talked about excellence.

We talked about how Daniel, while like Josh said, lived in uh a country where he was a captive and didn't really get to make decisions on the way things worked.

He could advise, but he couldn't decide.

Um, he did all the things he did in such a way, he lived with such excellence that it promoted and elevated him.

And I gave you a few points, just a couple of them is this excellence creates opportunities for you.

So we want to be a people that live with excellence.

God has actually called us to excellence.

We know that.

And then lastly, we need to develop excellence before we actually need it.

So get those habits into you before it's absolutely essential that they're there.

So I said this last week too, and I'm gonna hit it again today.

As we are going through Daniel for the next couple weeks, something that you are gonna notice more and more, and I'm gonna be more and more overt about it, is that Daniel and his contemporaries are just low-level players in a much more massive cosmic battle that's happening.

And we're gonna unveil some things today that that might make you scratch your head a little bit.

I I hope that that's what it does.

In fact, in this cosmic struggle, you can either be an active participant or you can be more of a passive bystander that just gets swept along in the current of what's going on.

And I believe that there's one of those positions that we should actually take as a church.

You can probably guess which one that I'm gonna say.

Where I want us to start this week is I want us to start actually in 1 Corinthians.

So we're gonna go back there to help us uh understand something.

Um part of what we share today might sound a little crazy if you've never engaged with any of these ideas at all.

I'm gonna promise you though, it's 100% biblical.

We're gonna use tons and tons of scripture today.

And if you get it, if you see some of the things that Daniel saw, if if you begin to comprehend what it is he saw, it will have a massive impact on your spiritual life.

So we're gonna start 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 6.

1 Corinthians 2:6

He says this, yet among the mature we do impart wisdom.

Although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away, by the way, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

So there's some hidden things that God wants us to see, and and the rulers of this age don't even get it, but it's being imparted by the Apostle Paul, and it's supposed to be imparted by the people of God in the earth.

All right, he goes on.

He says, Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

You guys gotta know this every single Sunday when I come up here and share, one of the things I ask is that, Lord, whatever it is I say, I pray that you would do your work with it.

And there's a lot of times people will come up to me and be like, wow, that was really good, this point you made.

And I'm like, I I don't know that that was a big point from the message.

Wasn't a big point I was trying to make.

Because the Holy Spirit is doing his work.

He is imparting spiritual truths to you as we are here together.

And so I pray that he does this today as well.

I know he will.

And so there's things we're gonna cover this week and we're gonna cover next week that I'm gonna wager most of you have not spent a lot of time thinking about.

It just has, in fact, on the teaching team, I was having this discussion with one of our folks there, and I kind of laid out a much larger teaching on all of it than I'm able to do this morning.

I said, What do you think about this?

And he said, I can honestly tell you, 99.95% of my life, I have not thought about this.

I spent less less than that percent talk thinking about this.

And so I I bet a lot of you are like this.

You you've been in church for years, decades, and this might be the first time you've had this unique dimension of spiritual life explained.

And I'm super excited about it.

I don't know if you can tell.

I'm super fired up today.

I'm also apprehensive, not because of the content that I'm gonna share with you, but I'm apprehensive because I know what's gonna happen is I'm gonna open this can of worms and you're gonna look into it, and what it's gonna do is create tons and tons and tons of questions, which I'm not gonna answer today.

I'm not.

I don't have time to answer it today.

Um, and I don't think that that's the work that the Lord wants to do today necessarily, but but we will answer it eventually.

And it's gonna open up our eyes to some things that that will reframe the way that we look at the next couple weeks.

It's gonna lead right into rock.

It's gonna be awesome, y'all.

Um, all that said, we're gonna get into it.

I think it's gonna be like giving, all right?

God's got something for you today.

Amen?

If you believe that, say God's got something for me.

All right, let's go, let's go.

All right, um, also, it's probably gonna be a bit of an abrupt ending.

Just letting you know, it's not gonna be a cliffhanger, but but I'm gonna teach this to you.

I'm gonna give you a couple application steps, and then we're just gonna kind of stop.

We're gonna go back into worship, but you're not gonna get as much as you want today.

Just be ready.

So, all right, long intro, but we're gonna get back into Daniel, and we're gonna start at chapter 10.

We did chapter 6 last week, we did chapter 1 the first week.

Now we're going all the way to chapter 10.

Daniel is an old man at this point.

He's probably between 70 and 80 years old, uh, and he has one of the most terrifying and unique encounters we see in all of Scripture.

It is unbelievable.

We'll get right into it.

Daniel 10, verse 1.

Daniel 10:1

In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel, who was named Beltashazzar, and the word was true, and it was a great conflict, and he understood the word and had understanding of the vision.

So the passage starts off a bit with the resolution of it at the end.

Daniel had this vision.

He tells us Daniel gets a re gets a revelation and understands it eventually, and then he goes back and starts to explain it, which is what we're gonna see.

Verse 2, it says, In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks.

You know, he had this vision, then he spends three weeks mourning.

I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all for the full three weeks.

So three weeks, he limits himself to a vegetarian diet, no sweets, no meats, no alcohol, sounds like he didn't even take a shower, right?

Three weeks long, right?

That's a long time.

Crazy.

On the 24th day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, that is the Tigris.

So three weeks after the vision, after fasting, after all this stuff, three weeks after it, he's agonizing, he's in labor about what we what he thought, and then we get to this moment.

He says, I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Ufaz around his waist.

Now he says it's a man.

But in verse six, we're gonna find out that it's not an ordinary man.

In fact, it's not a man at all that he encounters.

Verse six, it says, His body was like barrel, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches.

Think about that.

Picture this.

His arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude.

And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, for the men who were with me didn't see the vision, but a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled to hide themselves.

So here's here's the first point, and it's probably the main idea, if I could give you one, for this message.

And it's this there is more happening than you can see.

There's much, much more happening than what you can actually see with your own eyes.

And this experience is a visitation of a heavenly being, one of immense power that Daniel is is is in the presence of.

And Daniel, Daniel's physically experiencing this, but the people around him, they don't see it, but they also physically feel the presence of this.

I don't know if you saw that, but they feel it.

They can't see it, but they they feel it.

And then listen, this isn't a hallucination, this isn't a hologram, this isn't a dream, this is real.

And if you read this by itself, it's it's so similar to the description we read in Revelation of Jesus and his glorified form that a lot of people think that they're they're seeing Jesus here.

They mistake that.

But it's actually not Jesus.

So, so question, just a quick question for you.

Imagine you're in Daniel's shoes, you spent three weeks laboring in prayer over something, God gives you a revelation, you spend three weeks praying, fasting, don't even bathe.

And then this happens.

What do you do?

What do you do in that moment?

Like it's it's it's hard to to get into this.

We don't think that way.

Like, man, I spent three weeks asking God, and then boom, this revelation happens.

I'm with my colleagues, co-workers, friends.

They don't see it, but they are so terrified, they actually get up and leave, and you're left there by yourself in this moment, this experience.

Verse 8, it says, So I was left alone, and I saw this great vision.

Everybody else left.

No strength was left in me.

My radiant appearance was fearfully changed.

I retained no strength.

Then I heard the sounds of his words, and as I heard the sounds of his words, I fell on my face in a deep sleep with my face to the ground.

What he says is, I passed out.

Like BAM! This was so crazy.

Daniel passes out.

Then the man starts talking, and Daniel Daniel speaks to him and says, Behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my knees.

He says to me, Oh Daniel, man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you.

And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling.

Listen, quick aside.

Just because something is supernatural and terrifying and powerful, that doesn't mean it's evil.

This is not an evil exchange.

Supernatural stuff can be scary, but it doesn't actually have to be debilitating.

And I love how this being lifts Daniel up and then begins to speak to him.

And then he said to me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words.

So Daniel says something on day one.

But notice it takes a while for the answer to get there.

It takes some time.

And I'm gonna explain why it takes some time.

Excuse me.

Besides this being just kind of a crazy experience, one one that I am I am jealous of and simultaneously uh terrified at the prospect of, I will tell you, the significance of what he's experiencing, I just I cannot understate, I can't overstate it.

Um I would go so far as to say that this story, and you might not see the correlation yet, this story highlights a part of the gospel in a more real and tangible way than most of the other stories in the Old Testament.

In fact, like at the risk of overstating this, I'll tell you, if you can take your eyes, if you can open your eyes, if the Holy Spirit will do that for you and you can see things spiritually, it's gonna shed a new light on everything you read in the New Testament and everything you read in the rest of the Bible.

It will comprehensively change how you look at your life and your purpose on earth.

Like what is happening here.

That said, I'm gonna go back into it, all right?

We good?

You guys with me still?

All right, great.

Here we go.

Daniel 10, verse 13.

Daniel 10:13

We come back to our man talking with Daniel.

And this is what he says the prince of the kingdom of Persia.

So, day one, you asked your prayer.

You've been waiting 21 days for it, and he says, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days.

That time, God sent an answer on day one, but the whole three weeks he was fasting and praying, not bathing.

There's this conflict.

But Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia and came to make you understand what's to happen to your people in the latter days.

For the vision is for days yet to come.

So he says, the prince of Persia withstood me.

Another word for withstood is actually detained.

So that prince detained him.

So, so so again, think about this.

This being that we we just described is so powerful and so awe-inspiring, and yet there is another being that is potentially just as powerful and awe-inspiring that at least had the power to detain him and was at least powerful enough that it required another one, Michael, whomever that is, to come and help this being that we're seeing get out.

It's almost like if you could think about it this way.

Again, Daniel lives in the world just like we live in it.

We don't see this stuff.

Imagine there was an alpha predator that was hidden for your whole life.

All of you, there's this alpha predator, we don't see it, and all of a sudden it's revealed.

It would change the way you looked at the world, wouldn't it?

Like that's a that's a big bad guy.

And that's what Daniel is seeing right now.

It's not just bigger and badder, it's invisible.

Oh my goodness.

You can feel its presence, but it's invisible.

I'm gonna go on.

Verse 19, he said, O man greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you, be strong and of good courage.

And as he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, Let my Lord speak, for you've strengthened me.

Then he said, Do you know why I've come to you?

But now I return to fight against the prince of Persia.

And when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.

So a couple things here.

Our our our being is someone who's gonna go back into the fight again.

And you guys might say, like, why don't you just call him an angel?

I don't call him an angel because angel is actually reductive.

It's it's not a good description.

There are multiple words, and I'll get into this later.

There are multiple ways to describe heavenly beings, and angel is just kind of a bucket term we use for all of them.

It's not an accurate way to necessarily describe what's going on.

But what he says is he says, I'm gonna go on an assault against this creature, this thing that's ruling over Persia.

And then he references another spiritual being, one who somehow associated as a ruler over Greece.

And if you don't know this, historically, geopolitics, Greece does not too long after this come and conquer the kingdom of Persia in the physical world that we see.

Anyways, verse 21 he says, But I'll tell you what's inscribed in the book of truth.

There's none who contends by my side against these, talking about these princes, except Michael, your prince.

So what we see here is that Michael is the prince over Israel, not Daniel.

He's not Daniel's personal prince.

He is the prince over Israel.

And none of the other beings of this order, this class, they're not none of them are helping him, except Michael.

Hopefully, I haven't lost you guys yet.

I told you it was gonna be kind of crazy today.

So, this experience Daniel has, it gives us this small window into a reality every single one of us have been living under for our entire lives.

If if we had a whole map, it would be a lot better.

But unfortunately, all we got is just a little bit of a window.

When we read it, it's super confusing.

There's no clear and comprehensive place in scripture where we go to and it just describes the theology of what we see happening.

But if you look, there are breadcrumbs all throughout the Bible that that relate to this, that that help us see this.

Moses talks about it, the Psalms talk about it, Job talks about it, the prophets talk about it, the apostles talk about it, Jesus even talks about it.

Again, if you see this, it's gonna change how you read the Bible.

Second point here for us today.

The unseen world, so there are things that we we we don't see and they exist.

And the second one is that unseen world, it actually has real rulers and real authorities.

There are real rulers and authorities.

It's not just a concept, okay?

Legitimate thrones and and there's an entire ecosystem of created beings that we feel the presence of and we see the impact of, but oftentimes we don't acknowledge the existence of them.

How many of you know you don't have to see something to be heavily impacted by it?

Invisible doesn't mean imaginary.

And whether or not you you you fall on this like hyper supernatural kind of a spectrum or not, you believe that statement I just said, and I'll I'll prove it to you.

There are all kinds of unseen things that affect the experiences you have.

In fact, some of them impact you more in a negative way the less that you acknowledge their presence.

What about germs?

Right?

It's a poor, weak representation, but the concept is actually exactly the same.

They can be terribly powerful, they can alter your behavior, they can alter your way of thinking.

Some are easy to get rid of, others it takes a lot of reinforcement to actually get rid of them.

Regardless, you almost never see them unless somebody helps you.

Someone opens your eyes and gives you a piece of technology to be able to see what the germs are, right?

So there's an unseen realm, and just because it's unseen doesn't mean it's imaginary.

There's a funny movie that I watch with my kids.

It's PG, you can watch this with your kids, called Osmosis Jones.

Anybody ever seen it?

Yeah, it gives you an insight into this unseen germ.

It is a disgusting movie.

I'm just gonna tell you.

Bill Murray is the the lead character.

It's kind of funny.

Um, and he lives in complete denial almost by his behavior that germs actually exist and have an impact on his life.

As a result, he gets super duper sick.

I actually think that that's how most of us live in relationship to this spiritual reality.

Most of us live like the guy in Osmosis Jones.

We act oblivious.

And then there's other people that can be super hyper conscious.

I'm gonna poke at somebody.

Like we know we just went through COVID not that long ago, right?

We can laugh, it's okay.

There were people that were super conscious, and there were some people who are like, nah, don't worry about it.

And there were other people who are so super conscious, they're still super conscious about it.

And so we see it happening on a spectrum.

This happens in the spiritual world too.

There are people that are completely oblivious, and people who will not go to yard sales and buy stuff because they're like, there may be demons on the stuff I'm buying.

I want to bring that back to my house.

You laugh.

I know people like that.

Kid you not.

And so before you become impressed with any of the thing I'm about to tell you about the spiritual world, I want you to understand this.

It's a super important point.

Jesus made it all.

Jesus made it all.

God created all the dominions, all the thrones, all the rulers, and all the authorities.

And when I say that, a lot of you guys will concede.

Yeah, like I know Jesus made all the governments.

Yeah, that's Romans 13.

Not going there today.

That's not what we're talking about.

We're not talking about the earthly rulers necessarily.

We're talking about spiritual rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, things that we can't see with the eyes in our head.

We have to see with the eyes of our spirit, unless God does this crazy thing like what he does with Daniel.

I'm gonna read this verse in Colossians chapter one.

It's so good.

We actually sang this today.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, by the way.

So there are invisible things that he created by him, by Jesus, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

So God was there.

God actually takes credit for making it all.

If you go back a couple thousand years before this passage in Colossians, you actually get a picture into the moment God created it.

It's in Job 38.

I'm not gonna go to it.

You guys can look it up later.

I'm gonna give you several verses that you can look up later because some of you are gonna be really interested in this, and I'm not gonna answer all your questions yet.

So God talks to Job about the creation of the earth.

He talks about man, when I laid the foundations of the earth, the stars sang, and the sons of God.

Shouted for joy.

He talks about sons that he has.

And you might say, like, I thought Jesus, I thought God only had one son, Jesus.

Right?

Only one son.

There are actually multiple places throughout the Bible, most of them in the Old Testament, where the sons of God are mentioned.

And the word there, again, unless you think that God had multiple Jesuses, that's not what we're talking about.

That's not how we believe, all right?

The word literally means it's Bene Ha Elohim.

It means sons of the mighty one.

So Elohim, another way it can be translated, is just heavenly being.

So Elohim is like a class of creation.

So you have angels, that's what that's just the word we use a lot of times, angels.

But you have seraphim, you have cherubim, you have messengers, and those are just the ones we know about.

We don't know a lot about all the rest of them, but he says that there were sons, there were Elohim, lesser Elohim, that rejoiced when creation happened.

Super cool.

Um, and and the word here, it's talking about real beings with real motivations, real emotions, and they actually have interactions with people.

Like the real engagement that Daniel had.

Again, um, not just a vision, it was a visual experience for him, and even for the people who couldn't see it, it was still physically felt by them.

They felt a presence.

I don't know if you felt this, man.

I have felt ominous presences in my life, and I have felt really powerful holy presences in my life.

And these guys, they they they were terrified by what they felt.

And this shouldn't be too much of a leap for us to understand because it it even says we can have physical interactions with them in the New Testament, Hebrews chapter 13, verse 2, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained reductive term, angels unawares.

Hebrews 13:2

So not only can they be terrifying, they can appear so normal and ordinary that you just entertain them without even knowing about it.

In fact, if you go back to the Old Testament, Genesis 18 and 19, I think it is, Abraham and Lot and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah experience some of these creatures, and they're so normal looking that they don't know that they're sons of God, and they try to have sex with them.

Unless you go and look, that's actually not the first time that it mentions that in the Bible.

There's another passage where it talks about that whole concept.

Not gonna go there.

Don't get lost, locked in and stay with me here because we've got to go someplace.

Look it up later.

All right?

Psalms 82 talks about a council of them presiding over the affairs of the earth.

Job 1 and 2 actually give us a picture into at least a meeting.

Maybe it's this council, maybe it's not.

And there are these lesser Elohim who are deliberating over the inner interactions and the affairs of humanity.

Job 1, it says this, verse 6.

There was a day when the sons of God, the Beneha Elohim, came to uh present themselves before the Lord, the mighty one, the I am.

And Satan also came among them.

So now whether sons of God explicitly refers to Satan's character and what he's made of or not, we don't know.

But we know Satan at least had a place in the room.

And we see two interactions of this council happening.

It's kind of freaky.

Like, are they having a meeting in heaven?

This Job's just a dude.

And they're having a meeting in heaven.

God throws Job's name out, and they're like, oh yeah, we know Job.

And they have a whole discussion about it.

That kind of freaks me out to think there might be a discussion in heaven about me.

And Satan's involved in it.

It's a little weird.

Deuteronomy, we actually get a couple other clues about how God arranged things as Moses talks about the original establishment of rulers and dominions.

This is what he says.

This might be the first time some of you read this verse.

Deuteronomy 32, verse 7.

Deuteronomy 32:7

It says, Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations.

This is Moses talking, so he's already old.

All right?

He's saying, like, way, way, way back in the day.

Ask your father and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.

When the Most High, when the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, many people believe this is related to Babel when the language was confounded, and then there's another time where the earth was divided in the days of Peleg.

That's another passage in the Old Testament.

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, check this out.

What in the world?

That's a little strange.

Now, some of you, if you're reading along in your Bible, you may have a different translation.

It may say sons of Israel.

So, quickest side there, textual criticism.

There are some people that translate it that way, and I think it's a bad one because the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of them point to this being sons of God.

And quite frankly, the easiest thing is sons of Israel doesn't make any sense right there.

Makes no sense at all.

So he's talking about the Bene Ha Elohim, the sons of God.

And what he's saying is he's implying that God arranged the nations of the earth according to the number of some set of spiritual beings.

And he established their rule and their dominion over the earth and over the different peoples and people groups of the earth.

And then look what he says, verse 9.

But the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

So God then picks one people and says, but all you guys, it's like your boss when you have projects, and the boss is like, You guys all go deal with all these.

That project's mine.

I'm gonna pick that one.

That's what God does with Israel.

It wasn't because they were the best, um, it wasn't because they would be the best or they would be the most consistently faithful, because they weren't.

It wasn't for any of those reasons.

God chose them for his own glory so he would be glorified through them.

In fact, later on in the passage, we see that they rebel against the Most High, the highest Elohim of them all, by worshiping lesser Elohim, who now get a new label.

Watch this.

Same chapter, same, same monologue from Moses, verse 16.

They, Israel, stirred him to jealousy with strange gods.

He picked them out and they stirred him to jealousy with strange Elohim.

With abominations, they provoked him to anger.

They sacrificed to, here it is, demons that were not God, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.

So now we see these other rulers, they're just demons.

That's a word that we use for them.

So if you read this and you you you comprehend what's happening, what Daniel's seeing, even in the slightest, what you see is that this being is a ruler that Daniel encounters.

Who has the authority?

Chapter 4.

The devil and Jesus are having an encounter.

Jesus being tempted.

Supernatural experience Jesus is having with the devil and said to him, This is what Satan says, to you, to Jesus, I will give all the authority, all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I will give it to whom I will.

Think about that.

Again, some would say, like, no, that's not actually legitimate.

If it wasn't legitimate, it wouldn't actually be a temptation.

This was the temptation of Jesus.

Jesus was hungry, he tempted him with food.

Jesus was on a mountain, he said, throw yourself down, so he'll he'll physically help you as well.

This was this was uh uh an attack on Jesus' mission, and Satan was legitimately trying to corrupt that.

So it's real.

Satan has that authority.

We know, we we see this.

The kingdom of this earth.

In fact, Jesus talks about your father is the devil, my kingdom is not your kingdom, they're different kingdoms, and they're at war with one another.

You see that here.

The kingdoms, the rulers, the authorities in this world, they're aligned with Satan.

They just are.

In fact, if you go back to 1 Corinthians, you see it mentioned 1 Corinthians 2, 6 through 13.

I'm not gonna read the whole passage.

It says, Among the mature, we read this earlier, we impart wisdom, though it's not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, there's a dual meaning here, rulers, people, and rulers spiritual, who are doomed to pass away.

We know the end is already written, but we impart a secret hidden wisdom from God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers understood this.

For if they had, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory.

Do you think that the earthly kings would have crucified Jesus if they knew that he was the Lord?

No.

Do you think that the enemies of our God, the spiritual enemies in the heavenly places, if they knew that by crucifying him, they were leading to their own demise because that perfect sacrifice is what actually leads to him breaking the back of their kingdom, they wouldn't have done it.

They didn't understand it.

Satan may have authority, but he does not have sovereignty.

He does have real authority, but he's not sovereign.

He can fight over territories, but he cannot fight over the throne.

The throne belongs to one.

That's a third point.

Some of the powers that we experience are hostile.

None of them are sovereign.

I told you we're gonna go through this and we're just gonna kind of end.

I'm gonna leave you with some stuff.

What do we do with this knowledge?

Principality is superimposing, so much more imposing.

And at least some of them are so powerful that their presence is incapacitating to us.

And they're malevolent, they're not good.

The best thing I can do for us to just not leave you kind of in a huge cliffhanger is give us some guardrails.

I want to give you some guardrails because the truth is, as as much as scripture talks about this mostly unseen realm, there's just a ton that we don't have any clue about.

And when people get up and they try to explain it all and tell you this is absolutely what's happening, I'm immediately suspicious.

How do you know that?

If it's not in the word, how do you surmise that?

C.

S.

Lewis, he's one of the most influential Christian philosophers and apologists of the modern era.

He actually made a great statement about these beings.

Again, I'm not calling them angels, I'm just calling them beings.

He said this there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.

One is to disbelieve of their existence, the other is to believe and feel an unhealthy interest in them.

They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

So, my my mission today primarily is to increase your awareness.

Think of me like a doctor, and I'm trying to help you realize there are germs.

I'm not gonna give you all the applications.

In fact, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you, you need to come back next week and you need to come back for the rock because we're gonna talk about this more.

We're gonna talk about what it means for your life because this has huge, huge implications.

I'm gonna tell you, there is a way that most of us have walked out our Christianity that doesn't touch this at all.

And it is it like God's got more for you.

You were made on purpose for a purpose, and the purpose is tied to this very, very closely.

Again, I don't wanna I don't want to preach three messages in one though.

This awareness, it's gonna help you start to see things differently.

What I hope is that in the coming weeks, as you start to read the word more, you're gonna see this power dynamic played out more directly.

You're gonna see it in the word.

You'll be like, oh, when he says kingdom, what's he talking about?

When he says rulers, what's he talking about?

When he talks about spiritual, what's he talking about?

What I don't want you to do is allow this awareness to lead you to a dangerous place.

So uh the first dangerous place would be to be so crippled by fear of the germs that you're gonna sequester yourself away in your home.

Do not do that.

That's not the way that we live.

We can be confident that as powerful as these beings are, God has actually given us the power to resist them.

And more than that, he has actually called us to resist them.

I'm gonna read from Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10.

Ephesians 6:10

You've read this before, but think about it in context of this.

When he says powers and principalities and rulers and authorities, I want you to picture this being that Daniel created, except not a good one.

All right?

He says, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand.

Daniel couldn't even stand up in the presence of a good one, but that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers' authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.

Notice he doesn't say, I do not wrestle against flesh and blood.

Jesus does not wrestle against flesh and blood.

He says, We, the church, we wrestle.

Whether you like it or not, you experience germs every day.

Whether you want to admit it or not, you experience this reality every single day.

There is tension that you butt up against for your entire life.

You don't know where it's coming from.

You've been swimming against a current and you don't even realize what's been happening.

It's because you're not wrestling against flesh and blood.

You're wrestling against a cosmic power, a force in a heavenly place, a spiritual principality that does not like you and does not want good things for you.

In fact, the opposite.

He didn't just give us armor in the way that they give you a flotation device on an airplane.

You know that's worthless, right?

If you crash in the ocean, you're gonna die.

Just telling you.

Uh against these powers and principalities.

I can't stop an airplane from crashing.

I can't do that.

A man.

The word teaches me that God gives me armor that will actually be effective against these spiritual forces, that I can be protected against them.

So we don't have to hide in fear.

That said, there's another danger you can fall into, which is awareness without humility.

Don't be so cavalier that you go out, you're like, oh, Pastor Jake talked about demons and I got spiritual armor on.

I'm gonna go out and start casting demons out of everything.

Don't do that.

It's a bad idea.

Casting out rulers and authorities just because you're called to spiritual conflict when you don't even understand it.

There's some people who did this in the New Testament in the book of Acts.

They're actually related to each other.

Not gonna talk about it today.

It didn't go well for them.

They heard about it.

Maybe they heard a sermon, and then they said, Oh, I think I can go do that.

It was a bad idea.

So, so so where does that leave us?

What can we do?

I don't just want you to walk out in a lurch.

I'm gonna give you one application.

I'm gonna give you three P words so it'll be really easy to remember.

And they're all words you should have been doing, anyways.

Application is this don't focus on the enemy, don't focus on him, focus on Jesus.

That's what we do.

We don't focus on the enemy, we focus on Jesus.

And I'm gonna give you three ways to do it.

The first way is really easy.

Pray each day, multiple times a day.

Pray to him.

Don't focus on the enemy, focus on God.

Focus on praying to God.

And as you pray, proclaim.

Proclaim his rulership, his lordship over your life.

Proclaim his lordship.

Jesus for my family.

I speak the name of Jesus over my family.

Jesus over the anxiety that I'm feeling.

His lordship.

Jesus, I'm gonna speak your name.

I'm gonna proclaim.

Jesus, man, I you guys, I do this.

I'm gonna let you in a little bit into the window of what I do.

Every morning I get up.

The first thing I do, whether I gotta be up at 3 a.m.

or I get to sleep in till nine, first thing I do is I am in the word before I check my phone, before I do anything, I'm in the word.

Second thing I do is I pray.

And oftentimes what I do is sometimes I'll walk around my house and I'll just be like, Jesus, this is this is your house.

These people that live here, they belong to you.

Lord, I'm gonna go into work today, and that the people I shepherd, Lord, I'm just gonna proclaim your authority over it.

If you've given me authority, then I'm gonna blanket that authority.

So proclaim him over your workspace.

Do that.

And then lastly, I would say this.

Praise him.

Praise him.

Don't just proclaim it, praise it.

Psalm 22 says this, yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

God rules on this throne and appraises man.

We just acknowledge that that's where he sits.

When we acknowledge God, we put him in his proper place.

Michael is called a prince.

Satan is described as the ruler of this world.

Paul talks about rulers and authorities in heavenly places.

Where's Jesus though?

Word tells us Ephesians chapter 1, verse 20.

Ephesians 1:20

God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above.

All rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet, and he gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Listen, Jesus is not just kind of above, he doesn't just barely squeak his way above all these powers and thrones and dominions.

It says he is far above.

All rulers, all thrones, all dominions.

He is far above all of that.

He's at the right hand.

He's not competing for a throne.

It belongs to him, and he is firmly seated on it.

Amen.

So today I'm gonna pray for us.

And then we're gonna praise Jesus.

We're gonna proclaim him where he is, rightly seated on the throne.

So if you can bow your heads for me, real quick.

Some some of you today, you have been living in such a way where Jesus is actually not on the throne of your heart.

You have been living in such a way that other things are enthroned there.

And they receive your praise every day.

They receive your worship.

Could be attitudes, could be um finances, could be interests, could be all kinds of things.

Could be um perspectives, could be bitterness, could be who knows what it is.

But you are letting other things, other false princes and gods, rule over what is rightly Jesus'.

And let me tell you, he came to purchase that throne.

It was his already, but he came and he made sure that everybody knew, all the powers and principalities knew that the throne belongs to only him.

So if I could today, I just want to give you an opportunity.

If you want to acknowledge that and say, you know, Jesus, I've never made you Lord of my life, I've never put you on that throne, but today I want to do it.

I'm gonna lead you in a prayer.

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast.

If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available.

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If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m.

We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.