Out and Up ​Part 2 – The Devil We Know

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You’ve heard the saying: “The devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know.” That’s not the truth. Both are horrible and they both want to kill, steal, and destroy you.

 

Hebrews 3 NKJV

7  Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice,

8  Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness.”

 

Last week we discussed why the Children of Israel rebelled against God in the wilderness. It was basically because the devil they knew seemed better to them than the devil they didn’t know. In fact, more than once the leaders and the people argued and even launched protests aimed at forcing Moses to lead them back to Egypt and to the bondage they once knew. 

 

People sometimes get comfortable in their sin and often they don’t even know what they are missing. It is evident that some of the Children of Israel weren’t as motivated as were God and Moses. This is not an uncommon problem. Virtually every parent has faced trying to get a child to be as excited about getting up and going to school as they should be. You can think of so many other examples I know. 

 

It was an easy choice to run from the enemies they'd always known but not so easy to run towards enemies they’d never known.

 

But the reason God delivered the Children of Israel from the enemies of their past, was so they could help Him conquer the enemies of their future.

 

Exodus 3 NKJV

7 ¶  And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

8  “So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.”

 

The devil they knew was life in Egypt. The Hebrew word for Egypt has at its root meaning: To confine; limit; fence in; cramp; enclose; bind; distress; or to build a stronghold against. This was the devil they knew, and it is the same devil who is lord over every lost person. 

 

Getting people to do what is best for them or at times what is even critical for them is not always easy. Motivating people to do what’s right is a hard job. Nonetheless, God wanted to bring His children out of their bondage in Egypt. And He wanted to bring them up and into a land flowing with milk and honey … but there were giants in the land … enemies they had never faced. Let’s take a brief look at the six enemies God told His children they would encounter in their new life.

 

Each one of these “ites” represents an enemy that can be recognized by their Hebrew name. God called them:

 

1. The Canaanite

a. The Peddler

b. To bow the knee

c. Compromise

d. We cannot live a victorious life and enjoy the promises of God with one foot in the kingdom and one foot in the world.

e. The Church has to be very careful not to mimic the world under the deceptive umbrella of being relevant.

f. We are and we must be different.

g. “Come out from among them and be separate,” says the Lord. (2 Corinthians 6:17)

h. “For you are a peculiar people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood … called out of darkness into His marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

i. At some points in your Christian walk you will be tempted to compromise by enemies you have not met before … don’t! But if you do, repent and recover yourself from this snare of the devil. (2 Timothy 2:25&26)

 

For some reason it seems easier for God to get His children out of the world than it is to get the world out of His children. As we said earlier, we cannot live a victorious life with one foot in the Kingdom and one foot in the world. A little compromise goes a long way … keep going and soon you will arrive … keep acting like the world and soon no one will even know you’re a Believer.

 

2. The Hittite

a. Dismayed

b. Dismayed means to be so afraid that you are broken, shattered, confused and unable to focus or think clearly. The Hebrew word translated dismayed in Joshua 1:9 is the Hebrew root word for the word “Hittite” …

c. There was one reason the Children of Israel who came out of Egypt did not go into the Promise Land – It was Fear!

d. Not just any fear … but the fear which made them afraid, unsettled, disabled … it left them shattered, broken in pieces and confused. They were in mortal terror.

e. Their fear terrorized them … they were dismayed – “Hittited” …

 

This demon spirit wants to limit us living our Christian witness in the wilderness, short of the Promise Land. 

 

Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

 

It’s not only about your victory over the situation, but also about your victory in the situation. You get victory when you trust God above the things you see. 

 

What do I do when I face a Canaanite who is tempting me to compromise? What do I do when I face a Hittite who is trying to break me, confuse me, and make me afraid? 

 

1. Stop where you are and call it what it is – The Enemy of God!

a. Who is trying to upset you? 

b. Who is trying to defeat God’s will in your life?

c. Is it God or is it the Devil?

d. Call it out and rebuke it in the name of Jesus.

2. Go to the Word of God and get some armor and ammunition.

a. Find 3, 5, or 7 scriptures to use against the enemy.

b. The Word of God is your sword.

c. Confess the Word – it strikes the heart of your enemies.

3. Get help.

a. Pray.

b. Get Godly counsel.

c. Confess your faults to someone you trust with your life, not a new acquaintance – someone trusted, tried, and true – someone who has invested in you – and get them to pray overyou.

 

There are two things you don’t want to miss. One is the rapture of the Church, and the other one is next Sunday. Next Sunday we will continue our series by uncovering two more of the enemies God mentions in Exodus 3. Specifically the Amorites and the Perizzites. If you want to get ahead, begin reading through the book of Exodus and the book of Joshua.

Out and Up

Gtcotr/ss031625

 

Hebrews 3 NKJV

7  Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice,

8  Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness.”

 

God is referring to the Children of Israel after He delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. He intended on bringing them up and into the land of plenty. They just didn’t want to participate and nothing could convince them. He called them stiff-necked, stubborn, and rebellious children. 

 

Exodus 3 NKJV

7 ¶  And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

8  “So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey …”

 

God delivered the Children of Israel from the enemies of their past, expecting them to help Him conquer the enemies of their future. 

 

But the one enemy that kept defeating God’s children was their own stinking thinking. Their greatest enemy was their own attitude towards God. Now this is not you, but some people think these things. They say:

• “I don’t believe God has my best interest at heart.”

• “I feel like He is doing something He wants, not something I want.”

• “I don’t think God is enough for me.”

• “I’m not sure God can help me.”

• “I just don’t wanna do it.”

• “I’d rather worship a cow.”

 

When the Children of Israel decided to leave Egypt,they walked to the Red Sea and camped there. Kind of out of Egypt but not really. Again, that’s not us. I don’t know if they would have ever left that spot if God had not hardened the heart of Pharoah to pursue them and pin them up against the Red Sea. It was either go forward or die. So God moved behind them and shielded them from the enemies of their past and opened a miraculous way for them to cross the sea on dry ground. God is good like that …

 

These same waters ultimately drowned and destroyed their enemy. Once on the other side safe and sound, Exodus 15 says Moses and the Children of Israel all broke out into singing and dancing and shouting for what God had done. Again, God delivered them out of Egypt expecting they were going to go up and go into the Promise Land. But they didn’t want to.

 

It is an easy choice to run from the enemies you’ve always known but not so easy to run towards enemies you’ve never known. The children of Israel got it half right … They came out but they were unwilling to go up. In today’s terms: They wanted to reap, but they didn’t want to sow.

 

God stood behind them at the Red Sea. He covered them in the wilderness. And when they finally crossed the Jordan River some 40 years later, God went before them and led them into every battle. God will go before you today. He will lead you against enemies you’ve never faced before.

 

God wants us to be as excited about the promises and the blessings as we were about salvation. For God, it’s all one covenant: Deuteronomy 28:1-13.

 

In Exodus they sang after being saved. In Joshua they marched around Jericho, blew trumpets and shouted,before the walls came down. How does this play into our lives today? What does God expect from us?

 

Well He was not happy with the attitude of His children in the Exodus. And He won’t be any more pleased with you and me if we don’t trust Him. He still has some ground to claim in our lives and in the lives of others.

 

We need to check our attitude towards God. Are we treating Him like God or are we treating like an option? Is He our Lord and Master or is He only our Savior and Servant? Are we onboard with God’s plan or do we have our own agenda? There is no future in worshipping a cow, even if it’s a golden cow! There is a difference between having a problem and being a problem.

 

We have come out … now let’s go up and into the will of God for our lives.

Global Warming

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I believe in global warming. Don’t turn me off yet. The last words we have attributed to the Apostle Peter “shortly before he put off this tent,” were almost entirely devoted to the subject of global warming. Let’s read them together with an open mind.

 

2 Peter 3  NKJV

1 ¶  Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder),

2  that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior,

3 ¶  knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts,

4  and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation."

5  For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water,

6  by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

7  But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

 

Just as God once destroyed the wicked world with a flood of water, it is presently being preserved by the Word of God, waiting on the already reserved fire as the  last judgment and deserved reward for ungodly men.

 

All it will take is one word from God. Believe me … there is enough heat available right now to destroy the entire world in a flash, anytime God chooses. Let’s talk about how much heat is available. How hot is hot?

 

The hottest day ever recorded in the United States was in Death Valley on July 10, 1913. It was 134 degrees F.

 

Hottest day ever recorded on the surface of the earth was in 2005 in the Lut Desert in Iran – 159 degrees F.

 

Average daytime temperature on the surface of the moon is 215 F.

 

The surface temperature of Venus, which is the hottest planet in the solar system – 863 F.

 

Lava from a volcanic eruption – 2192 F.

 

The hottest part of a wax candle flame – 2552 F.

 

The temperature at which iron melts – 2800 F.

 

Gold - Melting point: 1947.52 °F.
Platinum - Melting point: 3224F.
Ruby - Melting point: 3722°F.
Sapphire - Melting point: 3704 °F.

A diamond has the highest melting point of any mineral. A diamond will melt at 6416.33 degrees F.

 

The chemical element with the highest melting point is carbon, at 7280–8000 °F.

 

The surface of the sun is 10,000 degrees F, while the inner core reaches about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. 

 

The Earth’s inner core of iron has a temperature of approximately 10,800 °F, yet it is solid, because the pressure at the earth’s core is about 3 million times greater than on the surface.

 

The Earth’s inner core has a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun … that’s hot!

 

Did you know that one bolt of lightening can superheat the air around it up to 50,000 degrees F? That is roughly 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun and the core of the earth. But …

 

The heat generated inside a nuclear explosion fireball reaches approximately 18 million degrees F.

 

That’s hot but not the hottest thing man has caused. 

 

The hottest man-made temperature was created in 2012 by collisions of lead ions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland – 9.9 trillion degrees Fahrenheit. This equates to only about 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius. That’s over 5 times greater than the big bang theorists calculate that it took to create the universe.

 

Man is fully capable of disintegrating the earth, its moon and all the plasma in the heavens in between here and there today. God doesn’t even have to lift a finger this time … (Source for much of this data:  http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131218-absolute-zero-to-absolute-hot).

 

It is a wonder the world has not already been destroyed. However Peter encouraged us to remember:

 

2 Peter 3:8 ¶  But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

 

What is God waiting for? According to heaven’s clock, it’s been less than two days since Peter wrote this warning . As well, both Peter and Paul admonished us to always be ready for that day. They said, it will come as a thief in the night, when we least expect. Peter continued in his last letter:

 

2 Peter 3    NKJV

9 ¶  The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

10  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.

11 ¶  Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,

12  looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?

13  Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

 

Just one word from God is all it will take. Or, if God removes His steady hand at any time … boom! Knowing these things, what should we do?

 

2 Peter 3 NKJV

14  Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless;

15  and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation — as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you,

16  as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

17  You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand , beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked;

18  but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

 

1 Thessalonians 5:2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.

 

Good News!!! Today we are having a relatively cool day. And there is still time to get saved. Beware and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord before Global Warming, or some idiot with their finger on the button, destroys the earth. (9.9 trillion degrees F! It’s just one click or one word from God away.)

 

Are you saved? Don’t allow untaught or unstable people twist the truth of the scriptures to deceive you. The devil has been doing this since creation. Beware, we are in the last days. Invite Jesus into your heart and into your mind. Decide you are going to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus. You’ve made a good start by going to Church today