Devil Possession Today? and How to Study the Scriptures | Bible Questions & Answers

good evening welcome to our livestream tonight this is the Columbus Bible Church livestream question-and-answer session we appreciate you tuning in with us again as a reminder the program is 7 o'clock p.m. Eastern Standard Time so let me open us in a word of Prayer and we will jump in oh my god thank you for all that you've done we thank you for your grace we thank you for what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross we pray that the time spent today would glorify you it's in the name of Lord Jesus Christ we pray amen I want to start tonight by just giving a shout out to the studio audience and the obey you know our technical crew competition to get on the technical crews were pretty intense so we have a very elite team but we're proud of them and so we appreciate all that they do the question I want to take up tonight and it'll probably just be a single question but we're gonna spend a lot of time on this question and I go ahead and pull up blue letter Bible if you would but here's the question and I want to work through with you how to study this question so this is going to be a little bit of a step-by-step process that we're going to go through together so here's the question that someone raised do Devils possess people during the dispensation of grace and so just let's think about the question together for a minute we know that devilish possession happens during the Lord's earthly ministry because it's discussed at length multiple multiple times the question asked by the listener is does devilish possession do Devils possess people during the dispensation of grace and so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to give you a few moments to think about the following question before we jump in together and here is the question that I want you to think about if you were studying this what would you do what techniques would you do how would you go about searching out the answer to this question so I'm going to give you it just a moment to think about this starting now [Music] [Music] alright now we we have some jeopardy fans that they listen so we wanted to do that for them but it also raises know how do you how would you go about this so we have a blue letter Bible up I'm gonna show you what I think the answer is there's not a soul right answer but I want to give you some thoughts about what I would do now the first thing if you recall is the question is do Devils possess people during the dispensation of grace so the first thing I'm going to do and I and I do this cautiously is I'm gonna go to the I'm going to go right here to this little box right here and I'm gonna set the range and what I'm gonna do is actually let me do it this way so I typed in there POS s asterisk de VI L asterisk now it's gonna pull up the results but I want you to I want you to notice something that I'm gonna do here as a refinement I'm gonna go to Advanced Options and in Advanced Options I'm going to select the Pauline epistles why am i doing that the question is specifically focused on the issue of whether Devils possess people during the dispensation of grace Toth so to start off I'm gonna start by restricting the search to the Pauline epistles I may change my mind on that I may broaden the search but to start that's what I'm gonna do so I've chosen the Pauline epistles I've typed in POS s asterisk so that will get possessed possession possessed de VI l asterisk so devil Devils devilish and so on I hit return so this is gonna pull up every verse in Paul that has both the word devil and the word possessed in it and we'll see what what this result what this search produces so blue letter Bible is cranking through that and it's going to give us our resultant well look at that there are no hits so are we done are we sure that there's nothing about devilish possession in anything Paul wrote here's why I would not be comfortable with that what about you know that there are verses in the Gospels where someone had a devil and it doesn't use the word possess so in my mind what you want to do is you don't want to be quite this specific when you run a specific search like that where it's limited to certain books and you have two terms it's is there's a good chance you'll get zero hits but be hesitant to conclude the scriptures say nothing on that topic so what I'm gonna do actually is I'm gonna leave the the search range as the Pauline epistles and there's three terms that I'm going to search and if you think about this think about what those three terms should be I'm gonna run the word possess then I'm gonna do a separate search for the word devil and then I'm gonna do a separate search for the word cast why am i doing that well the issue is do Devils possess people during the dispensation of grace so we're gonna look at every verse that has possessed obviously we're going to look at every verse that has devil and then why are we going to do the word cast well the reason of course is that we know during the Lord's earthly ministry people cast out devils so we want to look at the verses that have cast as well so the first thing we're going to do is we're gonna run the word possess and we'll look at all the times that this appears in what Paul wrote now obviously if we just run the word possess it's going to pull up several things that have nothing to do with devilish possession and and that's okay but what we're going to do is we're going to be a little broad to make sure we capture every relevant hit it's better to be broad and capture some things that you can then weed out then it is to miss a really good a really good reference so here we go it's come back with our results and you can see there it occurs four times in four verses so let's just scroll through this together so the first is first Corinthians 7 verse 30 and they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoice as though they rejoice not and they that buy as though they possess not well that verse has nothing to do with with devilish possession right that's individuals buying something and but not possessing it so we can quickly rule that out we could click on 1st Corinthians 7 verse 30 and look at the context and study it further but for our purposes this doesn't seem to have anything to do with devilish possession so we're gonna move on to the next 2nd Corinthians 6 verse 10 as sorrowful yet alway rejoicing as poor yet making many rich as having nothing and yet possessing all things well that's not the devil possessing a believer that's the believer possessing all things so that verse isn't really referent isn't relevant to what we're looking at either Ephesians 1:14 which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession under the praise of his glory in Ephesians 1:14 the purchased possession is the believer who has been purchased by God with the shed blood of Jesus Christ useful verse good verse but but really doesn't have anything to do with devilish possession 1st Thessalonians 4 verse 4 that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor that's how you possess your body so what we've done here is we've looked at all four times that the word possess appears in Paul's epistles none of them have anything to do with devilish possession so I ask you again does that mean that we're done I would say it doesn't now what we can what we can safely say is Paul never mentions possession by Devils in his epistles we know that because we just confirmed that but we should really do a little bit more just to make sure there's not some sin in him or something else that we're missing so we did the word possess now let's do the word cast because if people were dwelled in by Devils today if Devils possessed them then there would need to be something about those Devils being cast out so let's run the word cast and we'll see what results blue letter Bible comes back with now we still are using the filter where we are restricting it to just Paul's epistles so let's notice let's notice we have 11 hits so we're gonna go through these just like we did last time then we're gonna see if any of these times where the word cast appears it's a reference to Devils so Romans 11 verse 1/2 God cast away his people and I'm just gonna stop there this whole verse here we could read the rest of it but this is about God casting away as people it's not about the casting out of Devils so we can we can rule out that verse Romans 11 to get God hath not cast away his people again not relevant Romans 13 12 the night is far spent the day is at hand let us therefore cast off the works of darkness again not relevant now I'm going through this somewhat quickly and let me just pause for a moment and make sure that I'm being clear about something I'm not saying these verses are bad verses I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these verses these verses are very relevant when you read through the book of Romans I wouldn't skip over them I would read them but what we're trying to do right now is we're looking for a very specific subject we're looking at the subject of devilish possession and the relevance of the word cast is the casting out of devils these verses clearly don't have anything to do with it so we're gonna just go through these and if we can determine the verses irrelevant we're gonna move on to the next one first Corinthians 7 verse 35 and this I speak for your own profit not that I might cast a snare upon you well that's that's not devilish possession 2nd Corinthians 4 verse 9 persecuted but not forsaken cast down but not destroyed well that's that's not relevant either verse 2nd Corinthians 7 verse 6 nevertheless God that comfort of those that are cast down comforted us by the coming of Titus that verse is also not relevant Galatians 4 verse 30 nevertheless what saith the scripture cast out the bondwoman and her son for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman that one is not relevant either first Timothy 5 verse 12 having damnation because they have cast off their first faith well that's a reference to someone departing from or throwing away discarding their faith but doesn't really have anything to do with Devils now again I'll just remind you the way that blue letter Bible works is since we did cast with the asterisk the first section will be hits that have just cast CAS T it won't have the different forms of cast like casteth so during the first section we're gonna see the word cast but then when we get to the bottom we need to keep going because there's some other matches that have for example casting for if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world that's the casting a way of unbelieving Israel not not really relevant to Devils first Corinthians 9:27 but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means when i have preached to others i myself should be a castaway well you know what a castaway is that's like Gilligan's Island that's like the SS Minnow right there are castaways when there's people that are shipwreck you know good verse and so on but nothing to do with with Devils second Corinthians 10 verse 5 casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ the thing that's cast down in 2nd Corinthians 10:5 is imaginations it's not talking about Devils so what have we seen so far what I'm gonna suggest to you is we have seen that Paul never uses the word cast in relation to Devils he never uses the word possess in relation to Devils so you might be thinking well we're G that was sort of a big waste of time I would tell you it's not because now what you can say is you can say I've run the search I've read every single verse where the word cast appears I've read every single verse where the word possess appears and none of those verses are talking about devilish possession that in and of itself is a huge step forward in understanding what is the doctrine as to devil devilish possession during the dispensation of grace so that's an important first step now the thing that we should do next what we haven't done yet is we realize Paul doesn't use those terms but we we still don't really have any understanding of why he doesn't use those terms so what we need to do next is we just need to run a search for devil so I'm going to type in here de VI l asterisk wildcard search we're still going to do this only in Paul's epistles now we're going to do it only on Paul's epistles at the moment because we're focused specifically on the dispensation of grace but we may need to broaden that in the future or if we decide to pursue something different but for right now I'm just gonna run devil with asterisk to see what it pulls up alright so we see that devil and its various forms occurs ten times in eight verses let's look carefully at these so Ephesians chapter 4 Ephesians chapter 4 in verse 27 Ephesians 4:27 neither give place to the devil okay so what that verse is telling us is not to give place to the devil not to give them a foothold not to give him a position in your life it doesn't really say anything about being possessed or not being possessed it does indicate that the believer controls whether or not they give place to the devil in other words if you tell someone don't give place to the devil it means it's something within your ability to control so in that verse it seems that what's being described is the believers ability to control whether or not the devil has a place in the believers life let's go to the next verse Ephesians 6 verse 11 Ephesians 6 verse 11 put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil now that verse doesn't say anything about possession or Devils being cast out but it is very helpful in telling us something about how Satan attacks today so let's look at it again put on the whole armor of God and that armor of course is described in Ephesians 6 that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil so what are the wiles of the devil the wiles of the devil are his his tricks his deceptions the sneakiness that he engages in so what we understand that's important from Ephesians six is what does the devil do today he has Wiles he has tricks so we note that from Ephesians 6:11 and what I would normally do at this point is I would copy that verse and paste it into a Word document because that's when I'm certainly going to keep that that's a relevant verse to understanding what Satan is doing today and by the way let me just make this obvious illustration any commander that's worth their salt studies the tactics of their enemy I mean done that makes sense dude when football teams have a game approaching do they watch their opponents tape they watch their opponents tape is it because they worship their opponent no it's not because you worship their opponent it's because it's the way you prepare for war you determine you investigate how is my adversary likely to attack what tactics do they use where do they like to attack from who are their best players what are their best weapons where are their weaknesses that I can attack them all those basic questions are part of preparation for war part of preparation for a football game or a basketball game or any other sort of athletic contest it's just prudent people do that in in litigation when they're getting ready to go to court do they evaluate the weaknesses and the strengths of their opponent's case that they do all that as part of the necessary preparation to go into combat so we want to understand as we're looking at these verses we want to understand how does Satan attack what does he do and we saw from Ephesians 6:11 that he uses Wiles the next verse is first Timothy chapter 3 and we notice here that there's gonna there's verse six and there's verse seven so turn to first Timothy three and we'll look at both of these first Timothy chapter 3 first Timothy chapter 3 in verse 6 not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil verse 7 moreover he must have a good report of them which are without lest he fall and approach into reproach and the snare of the devil now when we looked at those two verses it's it's clear obviously that they're they're in the middle of some context so just to make sure we understand it let's go a few verses before so go to first Timothy chapter 3 verse 1 this is a true saying if a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work what first Timothy three is going to do is it's going to tell us the qualifications of a bishop importantly in verse one it tells us that someone should have a desire to be a bishop so notice what it says if a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work now one of the things you've heard is you've heard stories where what people will say is I didn't want to preach I resented it I fought it every step of the way I didn't want to do it I don't know why I have this accent but people say stories like that right in other words I didn't want to preach I was dragging my feet I didn't want to do it but the Holy Spirit made me and he overcame me and he resisted my will and he called me with his powerful calling and I couldn't resist it and that is what scripture calls fables that that's just stories that's just preacher talk that's stuff that people say what does first Timothy 3:1 verse say if a man desire the office of a bishop so in other words if in truth and in fact you have any desire to be a bishop then don't do it that would be the scriptural approach what that tells you is someone wanted to do the job and now they just have a story about how the Holy Spirit supposedly called them and so they must have a really important role because they didn't want to do it but God had such a call on their life that he forced them to do it and you know that is just just preacher talk the cure for confusion is reading the Bible people say all kinds of crazy things we just need to read it and believe what it says so the idea that God calls people to ministry today is just just not true it's just false verse to a bishop then must be blameless so here's some requirements a bishop then must be blameless the husband of one wife vigilant and so on so we can see the context here of what we're looking at and just for the sake of time I'm gonna go down to well let's let's go to verse four one that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity for if a man know not how to rule his own house how shall he take care of the Church of God and so we see all these qualifications in there that that are required now notice verse six not a novice that's interesting so it's not a beginner it's not someone that's new to the faith not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil I'm gonna suggest to you that's very informative so it says not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil I think what that tells you is the devil fell very early in other words he fell shortly after he was created I don't believe that there was a thousand years before he fell I don't believe there was a hundred years before he fell I don't believe there were years before he fell I think what happened is he was a novice he was newly created and what that verse says he was lifted up with what pride and that's that's what happened to the devil he was lifted up with pride and as a result of that that's why he rebelled now the thing to notice in verse six is that one of the the dangers of having someone take the office of a bishop is they can be lifted up with pride and that's just a common problem that that preachers have so verse six not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil that's that the air the sin the rebellion that the devil participated in verse seven moreover he must have a good report of them which are without so the bishop has to have a good report of those outside the faith lest he fall into reproach that's criticism that's that's critique and critique that is based upon valid things reproach notice this and the snare of the devil okay so we found something interesting here in 1st Timothy 3 verses 6 & 7 we know that the condemnation the devil relates to being lifted up with pride that often happens to a preacher that is a novice then what verse 7 tells us is the preacher can fall into reproach and now we see the snare of the devil now when we were in Ephesians 6 just a minute ago it talked about the wiles of the devil here it doesn't use the word Wiles it uses the word snare but it's the same concept isn't it what's a snare a snare is a trap the nature of a trap is it has to be concealed right what would a any sort of trap doesn't work if it's immediately apparent to the prey that it's a trap so a snare by nature has to have a wily aspect to it has to be deceitful has to be deceptive has to be hidden so we're starting to notice a theme here I would suggest to you we saw Wiles now we see the snare of the devil let's look what so why do we have no video signal let's back here and let's go to the next verse which is second Timothy chapter two second Timothy chapter two second Timothy chapter two verse 24 now we're going to look at verse 26 but I want to go up to verse 24 just to get context and the servant of Lord must not strive but be gentle unto all men apt to teach patient so the servant of the Lord is gentle by nature when you see someone that purports to be a servant of the Lord and they're not gentle they're not doing it right apt to teach patient verse 25 in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves fascinating verse you know what happens when people don't believe the truth they're not hurting the preacher who are they hurting they're hurting themselves in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves that's what happens when people reject sound doctrine if God peradventure will give them repentance that's a change of mind to the acknowledging of the truth so people that are in unbelief need to repent him and acknowledge the truth now notice verse 6 and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will fascinating so people that are in unbelief are can be captive they're taken captive by the devil and how do they do that because they're in a snare now notice what verse 26 says is this sort of fascinating and that they may recover themselves what's fascinating about this prison this this snare this trap it's a prison that only the person themself can get themselves out of you see well it says that that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil this is not a physical prison if this is a physical prison and someone's trapped in it someone else can bust down the walls and let them out but if it's a prison where it's one where you've been and you don't really perceive you're in prison that's a problem because only you can get yourself out of that let me let me give you this illustration many people have the idea of many lost people I'm not gonna get saved if I get saved my life would be terrible I'd have to give up all the fun stuff that I like to do and right now I have this liberty and freedom to do what I want now you realize that's a snare of the devil because what Romans 6 would tell you about that person is there a servant of sin they don't have freedom in any meaningful sense yeah they have the freedom to sin but that's not a freedom that anyone should covet that's the freedom to commit self destruction they are a servant of sin they imagine themselves to be in freedom or to be in Liberty when in fact they've been taken captive by the devil they have believed his lies so notice now I think we're seeing a pretty clear theme here aren't we we first saw the wiles of the devil then what we saw is the snare of the devil and now we see the snare of the devil where people are taken captive by him at his will get with me first corinthians so let's go to let's go to the next verse the next verse we're going to see here is first corinthians so go with me to first corinthians and we're going to look at first Corinthians chapter 10 first Corinthians chapter 10 first corinthians chapter 10 verse 20 but i say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils that's interesting and not to God and I would not that ye should have fellowship with Devils verse 21 you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils you cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils so let's notice something about verse 20 what it says there is the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils so in other words when Gentiles when he then make sacrifices and they make them to their their idols of wood and stone and whatever they sacrifice to what are they sacrificing - well according to that verse they're sacrificing two Devils now I realize that they may not perceive that right they think they're offering this sacrifice to this god of wood and stone and so on but there's a there's a devilish influence that undergirds that underlies that's behind that Idol I'll give you a simple proof point of that if I could a lot of the world worships cals okay they just do when when you hear that statement you think well yeah that that's true in India but that's not true elsewhere well I would tell you that it's much much broader than that so for example when when Moses was up on Mount Sinai what did Aaron do he made a molten kangaroo you remember that if you read the Living Bible closely it refers to it as a molten kangaroo or maybe it's a molten koala bear no I'm sorry it's a molten calf right it is a molten in Genesis 3 Genesis 3 when God curses the serpent what does he curse him above he curses him above all cattle why does he curse him above all cattle in Hosea 8 when it describes the idols of Samaria it describes it as the calf of Samaria you may recall that after Solomon's reign when his son Rehoboam comes to the throne what the Lord does is he splits the nation of Israel he splits it into a northern kingdom of ten tribes in a southern kingdom of two tribes and the northern kingdom what happens is it's led by a man named Jeroboam who's in who's an evil king and what he does is he decides that jur that the northern kingdom called Israel they needed some of their own gods he didn't want his people going down to Jerusalem to worship so he sets up gods for them and what does he set up does anyone remember he sets up calves and the reason why he sets up calves let's just look at it together get Ezekiel 1 get Ezekiel 28 at Ezekiel 1 in Ezekiel 10 Ezekiel 28 as a kiyul 28 Ezekiel 28 verse 12 is equal 28 verse 12 son of man take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus and say unto Him thus saith the Lord God thou c-list up the sum full of wisdom and perfect in beauty and you look at that you say well that's that's is he talking about the human King of Tyrus that seems odd keep reading look at verse 13 thou has been in Eden the garden of God every precious stone was thy covering the is topaz and the diamond the barrel the Onyx and the Jasper the Sapphire the emerald and the carbuncle and gold the workmanship of thy tablets and of thy pipes was prepared in the in the day that thou was created so verse 12 refers to this person as the king of Tyrus but it's clear it's not a human King because this person was in the Garden of Eden and so by process of elimination how many people were in the Garden of Eden well there was God there was Adam there was Eve and there was the serpent I'm not Billy I mean there was some cherubims that guarded the weight of the Tree of Life there's not a lot of other options so who is this well it's pretty clear that it's the serpent now notice something in verse 13 before we move on the workmanship of thy tablets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that that was created so when God created Lucifer he did so in a way where Lucifer had tablets to essentially percussion instruments drums and pipes he gave Lucifer an inherent musical capability that he could use to lead the universe in worship of Jehovah God now notice verse 14 thou art the anointed cherub that covereth well that's fascinating Lucifer was created as a cherub now what you've been told or you have the idea is that what a cherub is is it's a little baby with wings and that is not what its share of is so get with me Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 I want you to get both passages please Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 Ezekiel 1 has a very lengthy description of a cherub and for our purposes we're just going to notice verse 10 Ezekiel 1 verse 10 as for the likeness of their faces they four had the face of a man in the face of a lion on the right side and they four had the face of an ox on the left side and they four also had the face of an eagle so these cherubs they're not little babies with wings they're a creature that has four different faces and it lists them they're in Ezekiel chapter one now keep Ezekiel chapter one but get Ezekiel chapter ten Ezekiel chapter ten Ezekiel 10 and verse 13 Ezekiel 10 and verse 13 next it was a start in verse 14 and everyone had four faces the first face was the face of a cherub and the second face was the face of a man and the third the face of a lion and the fourth the face of an eagle so Ezekiel one in Ezekiel 10 have similar but not identical descriptions of the faces of the cherub one of them said lion ox man eagle the other said lion man eagle cherub so those lists are similar but they're not the same well we can be fairly confident that lion matches lion man matches man eagle matches eagle so what we're left with by process of elimination is that the face of a cherub corresponds with the face of an ox now think about that with me if you would that is incredibly revealing Ezekiel 28 says that Lucifer was created as the anointed cherub that covereth if he was in fact a cherub which he was then he was one of those creatures described in Ezekiel one and he had the face of the lion man ox and cherub and we just saw that the cherub can fairly be described as an ox because one verse uses the word ox the other uses chair now what that tells you is all those verses with that in the Old Testament that were cursed above all cattle the molten calf the calf of Sumeria it all makes sense because it is all a form of homage to the anointed share of the covereth so go back with me to 1st Corinthians chapter 10 first Corinthians chapter 10 but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice sacrifice they sacrifice to devils and not to God and so what I would tell you from that verse is that it's very clear that what happens is that the the the pagan religions of this world they don't exist that way by accident their doctrine is not random it is devilishly influenced that's what first Corinthians 10 20 tells you and if you simply look at calf worship throughout history there's absolutely abundant evidence of that so the false religions of this world are inspired by the god of this world Satan yet first Timothy chapter 4 first Timothy chapter 4 so we have one more devil verse here that we need to look at first Timothy chapter 4 first Timothy chapter 4 verse 1 first Timothy 4 and verse 1 now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith so they leave the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils fascinating verse what that tells us is people depart the faith they leave the faith because of why there are spirits that seduce them well what are those spirits it's not the Holy Spirit that's seducing people away from the truth it's obviously devilish spirits and then what this verse tells us is there are doctrines of devils see people imagine that what Satan is involved in as he's involved in the drug in international crime and this that and the other what scripture specifically tells you is he's involved in the doctrinal business which means he's involved in things like Bible versions and commentaries and radio programs and other false teaching that's what he's doing so if we add this all together with Wiles and snares and doctrines of devils and the fact that Devils are behind the false religions of the world you can see that based upon the testimony of everything we've looked at in Paul the nature of Satan's warfare today is it is a warfare that is based upon traps based upon snares based upon false doctrines that's what his warfare is so it seems like the way that Satan attacks people today is not through possessing them or having his Devils possess them it is through deception through false doctrine so we've looked at cast we've looked at possess we've looked at at devil what I'm gonna suggest we now do is let's look at the word Satan so we're gonna run a new search here and we're gonna run Satan and we're gonna continue to restrict it to Paul's epistles and the idea here is we've seen some things about what the devil's do let's just confirm that we don't see anything different when we look at what Satan is doing during the dispensation of grace and so we'll let this run here the yeah you don't need a wild card because you could use it but there's no I guess actually there is a Satan's seat in Revelation there's an apostrophe esque so big shout out to the studio audience studio audience asks why I didn't run a wild card I don't think it matters in Paul's epistles but the best practice is to run the wild card so probably what we're gonna do is extend the studio audience contract for a job well done so no pay raise but longer tenure more hours so congratulations look with me at Romans 16 verse 20 Romans 16 verse 20 Romans 16 verse 20 and the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you amen great verse that verse is about Satan's destruction it's not about Satan's warfare against the body of Christ so we're gonna keep that in our minds but we're not gonna do anything further with it the next verse is 1st Corinthians 5 verse 5 1st Corinthians 5 verse 5 to deliver now obviously we're starting here in the middle of a sentence so we want to be careful about that start in verse 3 for I verily as absent in body but present in spirit have judged already as though I were present concerning him that hath so done this deed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ when you are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus now what's happening in 1st Corinthians 5 and first millions 5 verse 1 you read about someone that's committed a grave offense and what Paul says is you need to deliver them unto Satan now let's just think about that for a minute how do you do that does Satan have a mailing address is there an address at which he takes deliveries does Amazon deliver there do they deliver on weekends I mean these are questions people would want to know well 1st Corinthians 5 verse 5 when it says to deliver such a one unto Satan I'm gonna suggest to you this is what it means and we're not gonna spend the time to look at all the verses on that but it might be a good thing for you to pursue in your own study Satan is the god of this world and what Paul does as Paul describes the church as a doctrinal protection from the deception of the world and so what happens is when you put someone out of the assembly which is really what he's saying to do when you put him out of the assembly and out of the protection of sound doctrine what he's gonna do is he's gonna fall even more completely into the snares of the devil and into the deception of the world so that's what we're seeing here in 1st Corinthians 5:5 s 2nd Corinthians 4:4 says as you know Satan is the god of this world it's not the Satan owns the world but Satan is the one who influences its course according to Ephesians chapter 2 verse 2 heavenly 1st Corinthians 7 verse 5 1st Corinthians 7 verse 5 we're looking at the next verse regarding Satan 1st Corinthians 7 verse 5 defraud ye not one the other except it be with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency so that verse tells us that Satan tempts people and specifically he's tempting people there with incontinency so Satan does tempt people get with me 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 let me scroll down a little bit here 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 we're gonna look at verse 11 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 verse 11 lest Satan should get an advantage of us for we are not ignorant of his devices now notice that Satan has devices he has schemes now one of the things that I'm trying to teach you with blue letter Bible is you type in a word and you can pull the cross references and that's a very helpful thing to do but be thoughtful be be be very careful for the following reason the King James Version does not follow a uniformity of phrasing what I mean by that is the King James does not take a Greek word or a Hebrew word and always translate it as the same word in English for example the word pasta the Greek word pasta pas CH a David go get me Brian Brian's book it's on mom's desk the Greek word pasca the King James Bible will translate that same Greek word in most places as Passover but in Acts chapter 12 verse 4 Acts chapter 12 verse 4 it translates that same word as Easter now some people lose their minds and they say well that's got to be wrong because elsewhere it's translated Passover so it has to be translated Passover there well that doesn't make any sense the English language has synonyms it has different words that mean the same thing there example that would be faith and belief Paul uses both of those and he uses them a way to mean the same thing he says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ but then he says faith in his blood it's not talking about faith and belief as opposites are different they have the same meaning so let me give you a little endorsement here this book is don't Passover Easter it's been number one on the Amazon bestseller list in a New Testament criticism or in New Testament exposition or some category I'm probably getting it wrong but number one on the list written by dear brother Brian C Ross of Grand Rapids in the state up north so we would encourage you to get this you can get this at from the dispensational publishing house so we commend that to you alright you see the point the King James Bible does not follow uniformity of phrasing so if what you did is all you did was you looked at the word snare you wouldn't have come across the word devices right you wouldn't have come across the word wiles but when we look at all of these verses and we run search after a search after search we see there's a theme here there's snares there's wiles there's devices there's doctrines of devils so on alright get with me 2nd Corinthians 11 2nd Corinthians chapter 11 the next verse will look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 11 verse 14 and no Marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light that in and of itself is a deception he wasn't an angel he was a cherub but he's transformed himself into an angel well he's calling himself he's tricked he looks like an angel of light he looks like one of the good guys now you know this when you watch an old western movie are there some guys that wear black hats and they're the bad guy and then there are other folks where it's pretty obvious you can tell they're the good guy and what they do in case you're really slow is when the good guy comes on screen there's good music and when the bad guys about to make his appearance there's bad music and it's nice and simple because it's theater in other words it's trying to give you no doubt as to what's going on this guy's the bad guy this guy's the good guy well what's going on in San Quentin is chapter 11 what Satan does is he transforms himself to look like a good guy even though he's a bad guy another form of deception alright get with me next turn with me to 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 7 second curtain is 12 or 7 and lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations there was given to me a thorn in the flesh this is amazing people debate what the thorn in the flesh is some people say it's I trouble some people say it's something else the verse literally tells you what it is look at this a thorn in the flesh , the messenger of Satan I'm gonna go out a limb here and say the thorn in the flesh is the messenger of Satan because that's what the verse says it is so now think about this carefully Paul's thorn in the flesh was a messenger a messenger of Satan so was that messenger telling the truth obviously not that messenger would have been teaching doctrines of devils I hope what you're noticing here is when we take the the verses on Devil's and the verse on Satan and we just run them and search them we see all of these related concepts the words may not be identical but we see all these related concepts relating to deception get with me 1st Thessalonians 2 first Thessalonians chapter 2 first Thessalonians and chapter 2 verse 18 wherefore we would have come unto you even I Paul once and again but Satan hindered us so Satan hindered Paul and he hindered Paul through the opposition of men in other words there were men that rose up against Paul's ministry get second Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 9 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 9 2nd Thessalonians 2 verse 9 even him this is the the man of sin even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and notice lying wonders we see another different word their lying wonders get with me 1st Timothy chapter 1 1st Timothy chapter 1 1st Timothy chapter 1 and verse 20 of whom is hymenaeus and Alexander whom I have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme I just paused for a minute when you think about that verse what comes to mind didn't we read earlier about someone delivered unto Satan now we found the perfect cross-reference for it didn't we Paul has delivered them unto Satan just like he instructed the church in Corinth to do which means he's expelled them and then let's get the final one first Timothy 5:15 first Timothy chapter 515 for some are already turned aside after Satan and the the metaphor that's being described there is instead of walking down the straight path what do people do they turn aside from it to follow Satan and they turn aside from him because of his devices and snares and Wiles and deception you and lying wonders and so on you can see how that all fits together so what have we seen so far Satan is heavily involved in lies and deception and in trickery and there's really no verse in Paul that says anything about being possessed with the devil or being possessed by Satan there's no verse about being cast out by Satan so basically on all the research we've looked at so far does it seem like the casting out of Devils or the possession of devils is something that's applicable during the dispensation of grace I don't think so let's dig just a little further get with me 1st Corinthians chapter 12 1st Corinthians chapter 12 now why am I going to 1st Corinthians chapter 12 the reason I'm going to first Corinthians chapter 12 is that in 1st Corinthians chapter 12 Paul deals with the spiritual gifts and so we might want to just look at this and make sure it doesn't tell us anything about the casting out of Devils or anything like that in 1st Corinthians chapter 12 so looking at verse 4 now there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit and there are differences of administration's but the same Lord and there are diversities of operations but it is the same God which worketh all in all but the manifestation of the Spirit is given to everyone to profit withal 4 to 1 is given by the spirit the word of wisdom to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit so you can see here we're going to look at a list of spiritual gifts that are given verse 9 to another faith by the same spirit to another the gifts of healing by the same spirit verse 10 - to another the working of miracles to another prophecy to another discerning of spirits to another diverse kinds of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues but all these worketh that one and the selfsame dividing to every man severally as he will verse 28 and God hath set some in the church first apostles secondarily prophets thirdly teachers after that miracles then gifts of healings helps government's diversities of tongues are all apostles are all prophets are all teachers are all workers of miracles have all the gifts of healing do all speak with tongues do all interpret so we went through the the leading chapter in Paul on the spiritual gifts and there's no gift that talks about casting out Devils or that power so that's yet another indication that the casting out of Devils or the possession of Devils is not really a thing during the dispensation of grace now having having done all that what we've done then is we've looked and we've seen what Paul what Paul has to say about the subject and all of those searches have been in Paul's epistles so they've been within the dispensation of grace now I'm going to tell you what I would do here and since we're we're close to the end I'm not actually going to walk you through each verse but what I would do is I would run a new search for cast and devil but what I would do is I would take off the restriction in other words I wouldn't just run it in Paul's epistles I'd run it because I would want to see I would want to see I would want to understand more about how it worked when it was in place during the Gospels now if you do that here's I'm gonna give you a couple of verses that you'll come across so get with me mark 16 verse 17 mark 16 verse 17 so in other words after we specifically looked at Paul what I would do just to be safe and to make sure I understand the scriptural doctrine is I would then run cast and devil throughout all Scripture I would run possess and devil throughout all of Scripture and I'd make sure I understood precisely how those how that manifest station operated in time past so look with me about mark 16 verse 17 and these signs shall follow them that believe in my name shall they cast out Devils they shall speak with new tongues they shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover now when we look at mark 16 17 and 18 we are looking at capabilities that were given to the kingdom Church okay those were specifically said to follow those that believe and it's talking about kingdom believers there get with me Matthew chapter 12 in other words just looking at those capabilities they don't look like something that is given to people that believe today look at me at Matthew chapter 12 verse 28 and I'm gonna suggest to you that Matthew 12 28 really cements this doctrine in my opinion so look at me a Matthew 12 verse 28 but if I cast out Devils by the Spirit of God then the kingdom of God has come unto you now I'll just pause there why do I think in fact I'm going to give you a little music so you can think but before we do that here's the question how does that verse give you clarity about the casting out of devils during the dispensation of grace [Music] [Music] okay great does anyone know the answer what that verse tells you is that Jesus Christ cast out devils how he cast out Devils by the Spirit of God by the Holy Spirit so now if we think about how the Holy Spirit operates during the dispensation of grace we might get some real clarity on this so now get with me 1st Corinthians chapter 3 1st Corinthians chapter 3 we've got a couple more verses and that we not that long but just stay with me if you will and you're gonna find something interesting here 1st Corinthians chapter 3 first with each chapter 3 verse 16 know ye not that ye plural are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you if you're saved today who dwells within you the Spirit of God right get with me 2nd Timothy chapter 1 2nd Timothy chapter 1 2nd Timothy chapter 1 verse 14 2nd Timothy 1 verse 14 that good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which what dwelleth in us so now we've seen two different verses that tell us that today the Spirit of God dwells in believers get with me Ephesians 1 Ephesians chapter 1 see here's what happened when we were looking in the Gospels and we were running verses on casting out Devils and by the way it's not the first one you read you have to read several before you find this you realize that the casting out of Devils occurs by the Spirit of God so then what you can do is you can then read through Paul's epistles and think about the Spirit of God so communications 1 verse 13 in whom he also trusted after that ye heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation in whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise the order is very clear you hear the gospel when you hear the gospel you can choose whether or not to believe it so if you hear it and you believe it what then happens to you the Holy Spirit seals you so that doesn't take place ten years later when you hear the gospel and believe that the Holy Spirit seals you Ephesians chapter four verse 30 Ephesians 4 verse 30 and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption so you're sealed from the time you believe unto the day of redemption so let me pull this all together based upon everything that we have looked at Paul never mentions in any of his epistles the casting out of Devils Paul never mentions being possessed by Devils but what he talks about again and again and again is that Satan's warfare is lying wonders doctrines of devils he's transformed into an angel of light he has a messenger of Satan he has stairs he has devices everything is about deception trickeration when we looked at the casting out of Devils it appears to be specific to the kingdom program we then saw that Devils are cast out by the Holy Spirit so think about this with me if you would does a believer today have any problem with being possessed by a devil well if the Spirit of God casts out Devils and the Spirit of God indwells the believer guess what what can there not be inside a believer let me ask the question this way does anyone honestly think that the Holy Spirit is going to allow Devils as a roommate is he gonna say yeah I'm inside David jr. over here but there's plenty of room so yeah devil if you want to move in you can have the bottom bunk but you know try to clean up your stuff don't leave the place a mess I mean no one believes that right the Holy Spirit is not going to be a roommate with Devils so I don't think there's any reason a believer today needs to worry about devilish possession at all there's just not going to be there the Holy Spirit wouldn't put up with it so you say well wait a minute what about lost people well we haven't seen anything that says lost people can be possessed by a devil but even if that was possible what is the obvious answer the obvious answer is you tell a lost person what the gospel is if they believe that Jesus Christ died for their sins was buried and rose again the third day who's gonna come and start dwelling there the Holy Spirit and if the Holy Spirit is dwelling there guess who's not Devils or not so hopefully this has been helpful to you hopefully you see the benefit of of running search after search after search when you run search after search after search what you what you can then say with complete confidence is there are no verses in Paul about casting out Devils there are no verses about being possessed with Devils and in fact I read every verse where Satan is mentioned we read every verse where Devils are mentioned and his warfare is not possessing people it's what his deception and we we understand how the casting out of Devils actually worked in time past we realize it was the Holy Spirit that did it which now dwells in you so devilish possession is not a thing during the dispensation of grace and even if it was just believe the gospel and it won't be a thing anymore so thank you for spending some time with us we will be back tomorrow 7 o'clock Eastern Standard Time let me close us in a word of Prayer father God thank you for this time we thank you for the great clarity that your word provides we pray that all the folks that are listening would would study these things out we pray that they would they would take very seriously your instruction in 2nd Timothy 2:15 study to show thyself approved they don't need to be convinced in my mind they need to be convinced in their own minds they need to do their their own study they need to do their own due diligence to to prove all things and to hold fast that which is good we thank you Lord for this time and we just give you all the glory it's in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we pray amen you

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Length: 70min 4sec (4204 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020