I. Recap from Session IV.
A. Friendly fire.
1. Last week we talked about friendly fire and how the evil one tries to get us focused on fighting one another instead of resisting him.
2. Four passages of scripture that the Lord highlighted for us to examine ourselves.
a. 1 Cor 3:1-3 being carnally minded, divided by strife
b. Ez 34:17-24 fat sheep bullying the weak sheep
c. Matt 18:21-25 being an unmerciful servant (not forgiving, though forgiven)
d. Matt 23:13 being a spiritual gatekeeper
3. We’ve got to humble ourselves & restore the weak in a spirit of gentleness. (Gal 6:1)
4. This wasn’t a one-time message, but a challenge from the Lord for each one of us to consider our ways and ask the Lord to search our hearts. We shouldn’t deceive ourselves and assume the word is for someone else, but ask the Lord if it applies to us and then repent.
B. This week- four steps to freedom.
1. The Lord is preparing us to restructure our lifestyles. Specifically in the areas of money and debt, times and seasons and family and community.
2. To do this, the Lord wants to take us back to the Word and measure our lifestyles against it. When we measure our lifestyle against His Word, it will reveal which kingdom we favor. Are we living by the principles of His kingdom or by the world’s kingdom?
3. There are many reasons why a disciple of Jesus might still be living the world’s way.
a. Raised that way from childhood.
b. Adopted the surrounding ungodly culture. (Corinthian church.)
c. Fear, anxiety, past negative experiences, etc.
d. Not taking the scriptures as seriously as we should (lying, manipulation, etc.)
e. The influence of demon spirits, principalities, powers, etc.
f. Addiction, mental strongholds, automatic negative thoughts
4. As we follow the Spirit through this process, He will reveal areas of our life that need to be submitted to the Lordship of Jesus. WARNING: If we are serious about following Jesus, we will eventually be triggered as the Lord confronts our heart with the Truth. (Rich young ruler. Matt 19)
5. But how do we do this? What do we do when we realize that an area of life is outside of His kingdom? I want to give you four steps to freedom that you can use to overcome in any area of life that is not experiencing the freedom and peace we have in Jesus.
6. These four steps are: Recognize, Repent, Remove and Resist.
C. The fire analogy.
1. To illustrate how to use these fours steps, I will use the analogy of a fire.
2. Proverbs 6:27&28
27 Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? 28 Can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be seared?
3. So to apply the four steps to a fire we have…
a. Recognize: Do you smell smoke? Or has your house burnt down around you?
b. Repent: Have you been playing with fire? Have you finally been burned badly enough that you are ready to never do that again?
c. Remove: Are you sufficiently convinced of the dangers of fire that you are ready to remove anything flammable form your life?
d. Resist: Are you committed to stopping out embers when they pop up?
II. Four Steps to Freedom.
A. Recognize.
1. Do you smell smoke? Or is it worse than that and you’re living in a house that has partially burned down?
a. What I mean is, can you recognize the areas of your life that are not experiencing love, joy and peace? Or have you accepted your circumstances?
b. The hallmark of the presence of God is peace.
c. Isa 9:7 “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end…”
d. Peace is shalom and means ‘total well being”
2. We have to first spot and acknowledge the problem exists. In scripture, we often see God addressing dysfunction in His people by getting them to first recognize that their is an issue.
a. Gen 3 in the garden. “Where are you?” “Who told you that you were naked?” “Did you eat from the tree?”
b. Haggai 1:4-7
4 “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” 5 Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways! 6 “You have sown much, and bring in little; you eat, but do not have enough; you drink, but you are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” 7 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!
3. God is saying “Look at the circumstances of your life. Are you blessed or cursed? Are you experiencing peace or anxiety?”
4. Jesus put it this way in John 10:10
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
5. Take some time to unplug, get quiet and ask the Lord to help you examine the fruit of your life. Are you experiencing theft, death and destruction or abundant life? Do you smell smoke? Is your house half burnt down?
6. The world will try to convince you that you can be a Christian and do whatever you want. Galatians 6:7&8 teaches us that this is not true.
7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8 For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.”
7. Actions will always have consequences, whether good or bad. This is a spiritual law. Freedom begins by recognizing the fruit of our actions.
a. Ex: The first step build wealth is to find out how much debt you have.
b. Using the fire analogy: “Every time I do this, I get burned.”
8. WARNING: As long as we are blaming other people for everything going wrong, we will not be able to recognize the enemy. What we need to see is often obscured by what we want to see, and the evil one hides behind our deception.
a. Deception is like camouflage for the enemy. He hides in our blind spots.
b. If you really want to be free, you have to be willing to see.
B. Repent.
1. Repent: to change one’s mind out of regret, to lament over one’s actions and change direction.
a. metanoeo, to perceive after the fact and change direction
b. (as opposed to…) pronoeo, to perceive beforehand
2. The number one call to action in the scriptures is to repent.
a. Matt 3:2 John came preaching “Repent the kingdom of heaven is near.”
b. Matt 4:17 Jesus began to preach “Repent the kingdom of heaven is near.”
c. Mark 6:12 the disciples went out preaching that people should repent.
d. Acts 2:38 Peter preached “Repent!”
e. Acts 3:19 Peter preached “Repent!”
f. Rev 2&3 4 out of 7 churches are told to repent by Jesus.
3. Repentance is not something we need to overthink or over philosophize. It’s very simple, stop living the way you have been and live God’s way.
a. It burns when you touch the fire, stop touching the fire.
b. The problem is, we think we can play with fire, and we keep doing it until we get burned so badly that we learn our lesson.
4. Sometimes the consequences are more subtle and take time to be revealed. We talked about the Law of Sowing and Reaping, but we need to talk about the Law of Delay. Sometimes we are not burned right away, as with the fire, sometimes there is a lag time between sowing and reaping the fruit. This lag time tricks us into thinking that we got away with it, that there are no consequences. But don’t kid yourself, the fruit is coming, it will always come. (Heb 11:25 sin for a season)
5. We have to stop seeing ourselves as a victim of consequences and instead see ourselves as a student of consequences and repent.
III. Remove.
A. Remove everything that’s flammable.
1. There are different types of fires, and different strategies for each type. But for any fire, we have to remove everything flammable. (Firefighters spray water but they also cut off the fuel for the fire.)
2. Some fires are from the consequences or our own sin. Some are from the consequences ofsins that others have committed against us. Some are from the evil one. But in any case, we cut off thefuel supply.
3. Some examples of how we feed the fire:
a. Negative words, thoughts and actions.
b. Repeating the same destructive behaviors. (Watching porn, horror, etc.)
B. A brief discussion about legal right.
1. We need to understand the place of legal right in the spirit realm. Many people object to this teaching and refuse to accept it, but it is biblical.
2. Legal right is simply power that we abdicate to the evil one through sin or deception.
a. It does not mean that a Christian is no longer saved, no longer has any control.
b. It simply means that in whatever are of life we surrender control to the evil one, we have given him legal right to rule that part of our lives.
c. Again, we do this by repeated sin, by deception or by agreeing with his lies.
3. Biblical evidence:
a. Romans 6:15&16 (You are the slave of who you obey.)
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
b. Romans 5:12 (Adam’s sin gave death a legal right to the human race.)
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned…”
c. John 5:14 Jesus “Sin no more, lest something worse happen to you.”
d. James 5:17 “…confess your sin… that you may be healed.”
e. Matt 18 turned over to the tormentors.
f. Eph 4:26&27 give no place to the devil.
g. 1 Cor 6:12&13
12 All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. 13 Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
4. The argument against legal right is that everything was done at the cross and it is finished. The cross finished the work of salvation, the concept of legal right is not about our salvation, it’s about abdicating our power in Christ to the evil one because of ongoing sin or deception.
5. Someone can be a born again Christian and yet still allow the evil one to have access to their lives by repeated ongoing sin and deception. (Alcohol, porn, horror, music, smoking weed, etc.)
C. Whatever we feed will grow.
1. Satan was cursed to be a serpent in Genesis, to crawl on the ground and eat dust. In Revelation he’s become a dragon. (From a serpent to a dragon.)
2. Why? Why did he grow from a serpent in the beginning to a dragon at the end? Because the human race keeps feeding him.
3. He was made to eat dust in Genesis, dust represents the flesh. We are made from the dust of the earth.
4. Every time we live to gratify our flesh, we are feeding his influence in our lives. That doesn’t mean that we are not saved, it means that we have a pest infestation.
D. Recognize, repent and remove.
1. If we are serious about living in freedom, we need to remove any access that we have given the evil one into our lives.
2. Recognize the fruit of it, turn from it and decide to live God’s way from now on and remove the evil one’s access.
3. Examples of removing access:
a. Alcohol: you cannot drink, remove it from your house
b. Drugs: stop buying them, no vaping, no THC drinks, gummies, etc.
c. Lust: get a dumb phone if you have to, remove any visuals that trigger it
d. Anxiety: stop ruminating on automatic negative thoughts, worst case scenarios
IV. Resist.
A. The final step.
1. James 4:7&8
7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
2. 1 Peter 5:8-10
8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.
10 But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.
B. Resist with the Word.
1. Resist means to stand against something by opposing it. We stand against the evil one by opposing him with the word.
2. Jesus opposed satan in the wilderness by countering the temptations with the Word. In Revelation 1:16 a sharp two edged sword is seen coming out of the Lord’s mouth. If we are going to effectively resist the evil one, we also need to have the sword of God’s Word coming out of our mouths.
V. Closing.
A. The four steps to freedom.
1. Recognize, repent, remove and resist.
B. Jesus was sent to us by the Father so that we could be free.
1. Isa 61:1-4
1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, 3 to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
4 And they shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.
2. What is the call to action that the Lord speaks to us? Repent. To turn from our sin so and He promises to send times of refreshing.
3. Salvation for all.