Thank you for listening to the Riverbend Church Podcast.
Riverbend Church exists to lead all people to know, love, and
live new life in Jesus Christ. We hope that you enjoy this
message. If you are new to Riverbend,
thank you so much for choosing to be with us.
If we haven't had the chance to meet yet.
My name is Ben get to serve as the lead pastor here.
We are in the midst of a series called The Unseen World.
And here's the here's the overall gist of this series is
there is a world, there is a spiritual world, a spiritual
realm that we cannot see that is impacting and affecting
everything that we can see. And if you grew up in church and
you, you, you're familiar with this term or the terminology
spiritual warfare or the spiritual world, it'll kind of
sound familiar to you. So my hope and my prayer and my
desire for you, if you're familiar with this concept of
the spiritual world, of the spiritual realm, is that there's
clarification that there's truth that's going to undergird the
equipping that is going to be taking place next week.
If you are new to this whole concept of the spiritual world,
or maybe you're you find yourself this morning, you're
just really skeptical. You're really, you're highly
skeptical that there is a world behind the physical world in
which we see. Then first of all, I would tell
you, thank you so much for being with us.
Whether you're in the room or whether you're with us online.
Thank you so much for being with us.
And my hope and my prayer, my desire for you is that is that
over this time, and not just this week, but the weeks to
come, that you would be open enough to the truth to realize
that just because you may not be able to see it, it doesn't mean
that it's not there. And just because you may not
right now acknowledge it, it doesn't mean that it's not
affecting your life. Or probably a more concise way
of that. We've been communicating that
truth throughout this series, something that we've called The
Big Idea throughout this series. And if you have your note sheet
with us, here it is. The unseen world is just as real
as the one I can see, and it's shaping my life every day.
The unseen world is just as real as the one I can see, and it's
shaping my life every day. This is week 4 of this series,
and if you've been with us throughout this series, want to
kind of give us a kind of a refresher.
If you're new to the series or maybe new to Riverbend, kind of
just bring you up to speed. Make sure that we're all on the
same page. Week 1 we talked about just the
reality of the spiritual realm, the the unseen world, the
overall reality of it. Week 2 we talked about how
everything where everything went wrong.
You ever, you ever wondered that?
Like you're watching the news, like you get a notification on
your phone and it's one more tragedy, it's one more huge
event. And, and you sit there and go,
man, what in the world is going on?
And you, you have to kind of walk that back a little bit and
you, you, you're left wondering like, where did it all go wrong?
Week 2 we talked about like where it all went wrong, like
the origin of rebellion, the, the, the, the war in heaven,
cosmic rebellion last week. If if you were here with us, we
did a 30,000 foot fly over of three key elements of the
spiritual world and it was God and angels and and heaven.
And this morning where we're going to be going this morning
is a similar 30,000 foot view of three essential elements of the
spiritual world. And, and the reason that these
past two weeks, that last week and this week or so essential
for us is we have to make sure that we have a biblical
understanding, the Bible says about these key elements.
Remember, if you were with us in week one, we talked about how
this series is 9 weeks long. And I would say that the first
five weeks or especially the first four weeks is going to be
much more informing. The last four weeks and maybe
the last five weeks starting next week would be that that
that pivot, that hinge is going to be much more equipping.
You see, we have to be properly informed or the more informed we
are, the better equipped we can be to to encounter this
spiritual world or to to affect and to live life with this
spiritual reality in mind. This morning we're going to do a
similar fly over of three essential elements like we did
last week. What we're going to be talking
about Satan, demons, and hell. It's by no means meant to be
exhausted. By no means whatsoever are we
going to be covering everything that there is to cover about
these three elements. The purposes of our time this
morning is to give us core essential foundations of Satan,
demons, and hell that are going to inform us of how we can
better be equipped for where we go next week, which is when we
talk about spiritual warfare. Like what is spiritual warfare?
How does it play out in our lives?
How can I be equipped to encounter spiritual warfare?
So like last week, you can notice on your bulletin sheet or
the note sheet on the back of your bulletin, there are
scriptural references out beside each one of those bullet points
or sermon notes. And we're not going to have time
to go through all of those at all this morning.
Those are really for you to spend some time walking through
and your own personal time with God to, for you to see for
yourself in your own Bible what the Bible says about Satan and
demons and hell. And that's going to like I said,
that's going to prepare us for where we're going to be going
over the next 5 weeks. So with that said, let's go
ahead and dive in. Let's look at that first key
question at the top. Who exactly is Satan?
Who is Satan number one? Satan was created by God as a
high-ranking guardian cherub Angel.
Satan was created by God as a high-ranking guardian cherub
Angel. I want to read something to you
when this is from the book of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel is a prophet and the Old Testament and Ezekiel gets a
word from God and this is God describing for Ezekiel basically
using the metaphor of another king at that time, but he's
actually describing Satan in this in this passage, he says
you talking about Satan. You were the signet of
perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the Garden of God.
Every precious stone was your covering.
Sardius, Topaz and diamond, Beryl, Onyx and Jasper,
sapphire, emerald, carbuncle, and crafted in gold were your
settings and your engravings on the day that you were created.
They were prepared. You were an anointed guardian
cherub I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of
God. In the midst of the stones of
fire. You walked.
You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created
till unrighteousness was found in you in the abundance of your
trades. You were filled with violence in
your midst, and you sinned. So I told about God.
I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I
destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the
stones of fire. Your heart was proud.
Because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom.
For the sake of your splendor, I cast you to the ground.
I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.
So out of this passage, there's two major things that we can see
about Satan. Number one is we can see that
Satan, Satan was actually created as a beautiful,
beautiful Angel. He was created as a beautiful
Angel. This fact that in our culture we
have this caricature of Satan or the devil as a red suited
pitchfork carrying like with a tail type of figure.
We have like an Angel on one shoulder and A and a devil on
the other. Those are really, really bad
mischaracterizations of Satan. He was actually a beautiful, He
was actually a beautiful Angel. The second thing that we see out
of this is he was created. He was created by God.
In other words, Satan has a beginning.
Unlike God, who is eternal, God has no beginning.
And Satan, he also has an end to which we're going to get to
later on, unlike God, who is eternal, will live forever and
ever and ever. So the point here is a lot of
times people think of when they think of God and Satan, they
think that it's kind of close, right?
That it's like, you know, I don't know, in your mind, is it
5149? God wins?
Is it, is it 6040? Is it 9010?
It's not even close. God created Satan.
He created Satan as a guardian cherub Angel.
And if you were with us last week, that does not mean a
cherub. Typically we think of a cherub
as a bald headed baby sitting on a cloud playing a harp.
You can read through Ezekiel's prophecy here.
That is not at all the description of Satan.
Second thing that we see about Satan is this is Satan has
limited authority, knowledge, power and presence.
Satan has limited authority, knowledge, power and presence.
If you're here with us last week we talked about how God, God is
all knowing, God is God is all powerful, God is everywhere
present. I think a lot of times we think
of Satan kind of as a version of that.
And, and the fact of the matter is Satan does have a sense of
authority, but only the authority that is granted to
him, that is given to him. He, he does not have all
authority. Satan does have knowledge, but
only limited knowledge. Satan does not know your
thoughts. Satan does not know your future.
Satan does not know your intentions.
Satan knows kind of your patterns.
Satan knows your patterns. But let's face it, like any, any
social media algorithm has that figured out.
But Satan does not know your thoughts.
Satan does not know your future and Satan does not, does not
know your intentions. Also, Satan does have power, but
he is not all powerful. He only has the measure of power
that is allowed and granted to him by God.
You can read about that in the book of Job, Job chapter 1 and
Job chapter 2. And then here's the last one.
A lot of times people think that Satan is, is everywhere present,
right? That that he's everywhere.
The fact of the matter is that's just not true.
Satan is limited in presence. In other words, Satan is only at
one place at one particular point in time.
So if you really want to know, if you, if you really kind of
want to know, I wonder where Satan's at right now.
Think of like the deepest, darkest parts of our world that
are suffering the major, the the most major atrocities.
Chances are, chances are pretty good he's in the vicinity.
That also means that chances are also pretty good that it's not
Satan that's tempting you to eat another Reese's Peanut
Buttercup, right? He's got bigger and badder
things on his plate than that. But Satan is limited in
authority, limited in power, limited in knowledge, and
limited in presence. Third thing that we see about
Satan, Satan was exiled from heaven due to his rebellion
rooted in pride. I want to read to you another
passage again staying in the Old Testament kind of that prophet
genre there in the book of Isaiah.
This is what God tells Isaiah and Isaiah prophesied to the
people. Again talking about Satan, how
you are falling from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn, how you
are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low, if you
said in your heart, I'll ascend to heaven above the stars of
God, I will set my throne on high.
I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the far reaches of
the north. I will ascend above the heights
of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most
High. You were brought down to shield
to the far reaches of the pit. You see, if you were here with
us a couple weeks ago, Jared Cagle LED us through in week
two, kind of that war in heaven, that cosmic rebellion, There's a
war behind every war did an incredible job.
If you, if you weren't here for that, I would highly encourage
you go back. You can go to the church's app
or or YouTube channel or, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
And I would, I would definitely listen back through that
message. He did an incredible job.
Listen, God did not expel Satan from heaven because God was
insecure. God expelled Satan from heaven
because of Satan's pride. Let me kind of unpack that a
little bit further. When we talk about Satan's
pride, it was Satan's absolute refusal to surrender to the
authority of God. And he thought, I will be my own
God. I'll be kind of master and
commander of my own ship. I don't need God.
I will be my own God. It's pride, right?
Which while we're here, isn't that kind of the basic or pretty
much the basic core essential behind all of our sin, that we
just refuse to acknowledge God is God and that God's ways are
actually best? We kind of think that we know
what's best for our lives. But it was Satan's pride that
led him to be expelled from heaven, which then leads to this
fourth point about Satan. Satan hates God and hates most
what God loves most. You see, due to Satan's pride,
God expelled Satan from heaven because God expelled Satan from
heaven. That led to Satan's seething
hatred of God. And one of the things that one
of the things that, that I think that we know that if you're a
mom or your dad or, or a parent figure in here, that somebody,
they, they, they can do whatever they want to to you, but may
have messed with your kids. They got a whole another problem
on their hands, don't they? Why is that true?
It's because as loving mothers and fathers, man, we become
super protective of our kids, right?
So Satan's seething hatred towards God, he exercises that
seething hatred towards God by trying to take it out on what
God loves the most. And God has made it very clear
through his words and through his actions throughout history
that God's most prized and treasured, treasured possession
is humanity, is mankind. Let me kind of dial that in a
little bit. God's most treasured and prized
possession and all of creation, it's you.
It's you. Maybe maybe you're here with us
in the room or online and you just need to be reminded of that
this morning. It doesn't matter who you are,
doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter like where
you've been. God loves you.
God loves you so much. God loves you so much that he
sent Jesus into the world for you.
And we'll kind of unpack what I just said in just a moment, but
man, God loves you. I don't know whether you came
here this morning thinking that like you were going to get
judged or anything like that, but can I just remind you, man,
God loves you. And as deeply and as
passionately as God loves you, Satan hates you.
Satan hates you, and he seeks to destroy you.
Which then brings us to that 5th and final core, central
foundational truth about Satan. Satan is the leader of all
forces of sin and evil. If you were with us in the first
week, we talked about that. All goodness that we see and all
goodness that we're able to experience.
The Bible is very clear that the source of that goodness is God.
The flip side is true all, all evil that we see and all
atrocities and tragedies that we experience, all pain and
heartbreak and heartache that we encounter in life.
The source of that is, is Satan. Satan is the leader of all sin
and all forces of evil. Which then segues into that next
major question, who and what are demons?
Who and what are demons? I want to show you this first
one. Demons were angels that followed
Satan in rebellion against God. Demons were angels that followed
Satan in rebellion against God. If you were here with us last
week, we talked about how angels are supernatural created beings
by God, that he actually created them with a freedom of choice,
with the ability to choose to either submit to the authority
of God or to rebel against the authority of God.
You see, when Satan, when he rebelled against the authority
of God, he had a whole whole host of angels that followed
him. As a matter of fact, I believe
out to the side of of one of your notes and your bulletin,
There's a, there's a scriptural reference.
Revelation 12. Revelation 12 talks about when
Satan rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven, he
took a third of the angels with him.
Those angels twisted in their rebellion, became demons.
So demons, first thing is you need to know about demons.
Demons were angels that followed Satan in rebellion against God
#2 demons are active in a variety of ways to keep people
far from God. Again, last week we were talking
about how angels are created for in a variety of forms, in a
variety of ranks, given a variety of assignments by God
himself. Demons actually are active in a
variety of ways to keep people far from God.
Some of those ways that they're active most often come in the
form of temptation. They most often come in the form
of temptation. And, and, and there's, there's
temptations that, that we all face that they, they kind of
appeal to, to our sense of pleasure, to where we're tempted
to click on sites that we know that we shouldn't go to or to,
to watch movies or, or stream shows that we that, that, that,
that we know that we shouldn't watch.
They tap into an ungodly sense of pleasure.
There are temptations that are kind of rooted.
They tap into our sense of pride, the, the, the sense of
hey, I've got this. I don't need anybody around me.
I don't, I don't, I don't need God.
I don't need his help. I, I don't need any church or
any pastor or any book to tell me what I should or shouldn't be
doing within my marriage or within my finances or raising my
kids. I don't, I don't need God at
all. I think that there's that
there's also temptations that are kind of rooted in, in our
ego. And we see this playing out in
our culture. This, this Ubu type of mantra,
like follow your heart. Well, the Bible says that's a
terrible idea because the heart above all things is deceitfully
wicked. That's terrible advice.
Like just follow your heart. Or, you know, hey, you stay true
to your own truth. Listen, these, these are, these
are all temptations. And what is the goal of these
temptations is to keep you far from the heart of God.
They're they're temptations that that tap into a sense.
They they, they, they attack our sense of hope and maybe you're
here with us this morning or with us online to where you're
facing an onslaught of temptations of almost the the
these whispers of hey, God's forgotten about you.
God doesn't care about you. It would just be easier if you
just gave up. These are all demonic
temptations that are all aimed at the same place to keep you
far from the heart of God. They come in a variety of ways.
That's one of the reasons if you've, if you've been at
Riverbend at any, for any amount of time, you already know this
to be true. We are not a place that is going
to compare struggles. In other words, hey, you may
struggle in ways that I don't struggle and I may struggle in
ways that you don't struggle. We're not going to tear those
struggles and go, hey, that's acceptable.
That's unacceptable. We're not going to tear those
because if we start tearing those, we enter into a mode of
being judgmental. What we're going to do is we're
going to look at each other as common strugglers.
We may struggle in different ways, but we're common
strugglers but looking at the same savior.
But all demons do is in a variety of ways tempt us or try
to keep us from the heart of God.
This means a way in which they do this.
Number three, demons can possess, oppress and suppress.
In case you didn't know, Riverbend Church, we are
formally a Southern Baptist church.
And if you don't believe me, look at those 3 words right
there. That's some Southern Baptist
preaching right there. Demons can possess, oppress and
suppress. Here's what that means for the
unbeliever. For someone who has not
surrendered their life to Jesus, a demon can possess that person.
Possession. Demonic possession means that a
demon, an evil spirit, can actually take bodily control
over an individual. You may say, well, Ben, have you
seen that? Yes, I have, but what do you
think? It freaks me out.
Let me share with you a really quick story.
So I grew up in a grew up in a church to where it was very,
very popular on Tuesday nights, our church, people within the
church, they would kind of gather together at the church
and they would go out and they would visit, visit people that
have visited the church, right? Like door to door.
Now 2025, some stranger knocks on your door.
You ain't answering the door. Back in the day, people would
answer the door if you're 30 and below.
I know it was a weird time, but anyway, our student pastor, me
and my friend Jason, we, we come on this Tuesday night.
Our student pastor at the time, he was like, hey, there's a girl
named Charity. She visited our our student
ministry. Would y'all like to go visit
Charity? And we're like, let's pray about
it. Yes, we would because we knew
that Charity was a cheerleader at a school across town and she
needed Jesus and we want to be the ones to share Jesus with
Charity. So knock on the door.
Charity answers the door, a student pastor introduces
himself, introduces us and we're like, hey, surely she knows who
we are already. She didn't and said, hey, do
you, do you have a moment? Could we, could we talk to you?
She goes, yeah, my, my parents, they just ran down the road.
They just ran down the road a little bit to, to grab some
stuff at the store. They'll be right back.
But y'all come on into the, into the living room.
So we come in and student pastor, he starts talking about,
you know, how, how school's going and you know, starts to
turn the conversation, you know, Charity, do you, do you have a
relationship with God? Tell me, tell me about your
relationship with God. And I'll never forget what
happened over the next 5 minutes.
She said, Oh yeah, I'm very spiritual.
As a matter of fact, I talk to my guardian Angel every night.
Her name's Sarah. She's here with us right now and
our student pastor looks at her the more he starts asking some
more questions. And then I'll never forget our
student pastor looks at her and said, Charity, there's a very
good chance that's not your guardian Angel.
That's that's, that's a demonic spirit.
And I'll never forget charity's expression, how it changed.
She said, Sarah said that y'all should leave right now.
And I was like, I think we should listen to Sarah.
Let's go listen. Demons, for an unbeliever,
demons can possess. I'm not saying that Charity was
possessed. I could tell you some other
stories of some of true possession we don't have time
for. I'm not saying that that she was
possessed. I would tell you that she was
absolutely oppressed and suppressed there.
There was a demonic influence in in her life.
You see, for an unbeliever, a demon can possess that person, a
demon can oppress that person. It's leading to external, not
unlimited, but limited authority, limited power to lead
external situations and circumstances and temptations
against that person to try to keep them far from the heart of
God. And suppress is if if oppress is
external, suppress is kind of more internal suppression is
where there's just kind of an overall heaviness over you, a
sense to silence you that that's for the unbeliever.
Now for the believer, if you've surrendered your life to Jesus
Christ, here's what I would tell you.
Demonic activity can oppress you.
And some of you are here with us this morning.
You're like, yeah, I could tell you some stories about how our
family is being oppressed right now.
There's so many external challenges and external things
that are coming against you, fiery darts that are coming
against you. You know that to be true.
There's also there can be demonic suppression, demonic
suppression. I believe that demonic
suppression happens most often either on Sunday mornings before
we decide to come to church tonight, come to church or not,
or in a worship service. Here's what I mean by that.
If you're a believer in the Holy Spirit of God lives in you.
There still is that sense to where, listen, I don't know
about you, but Sunday mornings I'm just extra tired.
Like when that alarm goes off, right?
It would be so easy to kind of stay in bed.
Hey, like let's stay in bed. We can watch online and if we
miss online live, then we can catch up during the week.
Or if we do come, there is a sense of suppression to where
God wants to silence your voice from speaking up or God wants to
greatly or or not God, but these demons want to greatly weaken
your praise. So it's this sense of I don't
want to sing loud because I don't want the people around me
to hear me. God, I want to lift my voice to
you and praise. But there's this, this like
sense of suppression there. That's for the believer.
Just because you've surrendered your life to Jesus Christ does
not mean that we are free from demonic attack.
But it does mean if you're a believer that you and I, we
cannot experience demonic possession.
Why? Because as a believer, we had
the Holy Spirit of God in our lives.
And where the Holy Spirit of God is, there's not room or space
for a demonic presence to live there.
Which then leads us to that third question is what and where
are hell? What and where or hell?
Let me get you in your note sheets.
This was this was this was my fault in the note sheets.
Let me go ahead and get you to flip flop that that first and
that second note in your note sheets.
Hell is a real place in the spiritual realm.
Isn't it amazing? We're not going to spend all,
all day talking about this? Isn't it amazing how casually we
talk about hell in our, in our culture?
We use it as a curse word in, in, in our conversations.
We use it to describe a a really hard or difficult season or, or
situation that we're walking through.
And sometimes we use it or it's used so casually that we forget
that hell is a real place. And I would go back and kind of
reiterate something I said at the very beginning of our time.
Just because you may not be able to see it doesn't mean that it's
not there. And just because you here this
morning may not acknowledge it, it doesn't mean that it's not
real. You see, Jesus talked more about
hell than he did about heaven. And there's a reason for that is
he wanted to emphasize the realness of hell.
Second thing that we need to understand about hell, Hell is a
place that was created. Hell is a place that was created
for Satan and his demons. Hell is a place that was created
for Satan and his demons. It was a place of punishment.
You know, quite often you we get the question like Ben, I believe
that God is a loving God. And if God is so loving, and I
believe that he is, then why would he create such a terrible
place like hell, Especially when we're able to read in the Bible
that the scriptures of hell. We're able to read the
scriptures like eternal fire, eternal torment, a place of of
weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place of gloomy darkness and
chains. The Book of Revelation refers to
hell several times as the lake of fire and sulfur.
And we sit there and go, how in the world could a loving God
create such a terrible place? And I would say that's a great
question. But he created it for Satan and
his and his demons. He created as a place of
punishment for Satan and his demons.
But don't miss this last point about Hell.
Hell, it's not only created as a place of punishment for Satan
and his demons. Hell is the eternal confines for
all those who rejected Jesus. See, this is when it gets like
really, really heavy. Hell is the eternal confines.
You see, Hell was a place create of punishment, created for Satan
and his demons. But Satan and his demons won't
be the only only entities in hell.
You see, every person throughout all of time and history who
rejected God, who rejected Jesus, will also spend eternity
in this very terrible, very horrible place called hell.
You may you may be here with us this morning.
You go, whoa, back up. I may not have surrendered my
life to Jesus, but that doesn't mean that I've rejected Jesus.
OK, let's let's kind of unpack that for a second.
Here's where I would tell you #1 as we'll see more next week, in
terms of spiritual warfare, in the spiritual realm, in terms of
what we do with Jesus, there is no such thing as neutrality.
You see, spiritually we, some of us, we want to be like
Switzerland to where we just want to go about our time and
eat chocolate and make good watches and, you know, just live
in peace. There's no such thing as
spiritual neutrality. Jesus himself said if you are
not with me, you're against me. If you do not gather with me,
you scatter. Jesus was incredibly, incredibly
black and white. You're either with me or you're
for me. He was incredibly binary and
that truth. So there is no spiritual
neutrality. The second thing that you and I
that we need to understand about this notion of what it means to
actually reject Jesus. Here's here's what we mean by
this. Remember how I said that God
loves you? God so desperately loves you.
He so desperately loves you that he sent Jesus into the world to
die on a cross. And you go, OK, so I don't even
understand, like, why did Jesus have to die on a cross?
Jesus died on a cross because the Bible is very clear that the
wages or the price of our sin is death.
And somebody's got to pay that price.
And I think that, you know, it doesn't matter who you are.
It doesn't matter if you're new to church, new to faith,
skeptical, seeking whatever in the room online.
I think that you would at least be honest enough with yourself
about yourself that you that you've sinned.
We've all sinned. The Bible says that we've all
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
But the wages or the price of that sin is death.
In other words, somebody's got to pay the price for that sin.
God loves you so much that he sent Jesus into the world to die
on a cross to pay the price of your sins for you.
But also God loves you so much that He will allow you.
He will allow you to pay the price for yourself, and if you
choose to pay the price of your sins for yourself, that payment
is in hell. So here's really where the
rubber meets the road. What does any of this have to
do? How should any of this impact my
Monday, my Tuesday, my Saturday, my Friday, my Wednesday?
How does any of this? How does an unseen Satan, how do
unseen demons that are unseen hell?
How does it impact my life? In other words, why does it
matter? And like I've shared with you
multiple times throughout this series so far, one of the most
challenging things throughout this series is separating the
the the, the fascinating from the useful.
So let's put some three useful handles as we turn the corner
this morning. How does it impact?
Here's the first thing that you and I need to understand.
Satan operates with urgency because he knows his defeat is
certain and his time is limited. He knows that his defeat is is
certain and that his time is limited.
Did you know? Here's another like little
caveat about Satan. Satan's not illiterate.
Satan can read the Bible and Satan knows that God's not a
liar. Guess who knows that that the
words in this book are true? Satan.
He knows that his he knows that his defeat is certain.
And guess what? With every ticking second, the
clock is ticking down. You want to know why things seem
to continue ramping up in our world?
Because the closer Satan gets to the end, the louder he roars and
the more vicious he attacks. So Church, if you want to know
why this series is so important right now is because we are one
day closer now to Satan's defeat and he knows it.
Second thing that we need to understand is demonic influence
can reveal itself openly or disguise itself subtly.
Listen, I grew up, you know, if you remember, if you were in
church culture, evangelical Southern church culture in the
1980s, it seemed like every your favorite cartoon and your
favorite action figure had demonic roots to it.
You know, I had AI had a great collection of he man masters of
the Universe collection. If y'all don't know what that
is, don't worry about it. If you do know what it is, your
heart's about to break. I come home one day and my mom
had had boxed up all of it and she thrown it away.
We could have become millionaires because there there
was an undercurrent in the 80s of of believing listen like we
need to be, we need to pay close attention.
We need to pay close attention to all things that whether it's
toys or cartoons and, and, and, and my mom and man, I, I could
not ask for greater parents. I could not ask for a greater
mom. But my mom had read like, hey,
it was he, man masters of the universe and there's only one
master of the universe. So we need to get that out of
our house. And we did.
And you can, you can make the argument that maybe that was too
far, but I, I don't think there's any argument to be made
right now that that pendulum has swung all the way in the other
direction to where there's overt, overt demonstrations of
demonic influence. We can see this going on in TV
shows, syndicated TV shows like Lucifer.
We see it in the syndicated, the streaming Disney Plus series
Agatha all along, which is a straight up cult imagery and
witchcraft. And we just look at it and go,
man, that is so entertaining. We can see it in the music
industry. You know, back back in the day,
the, the, the word was you had to play the records backwards,
back masking to get satanic messages.
Now you just turn on YouTube and you, you see, you see the
screens, you see demonic imagery and lyrics, concerts of very
popular artist Lil Nas X or Travis Scott or or Sam Smith and
we can go on and on and on. This is not about like a
cultural purging, but I'm just telling you is there's overt
demonic influence in our culture.
There's also subtle demonic influence in our culture.
There's a casual curiosity about things like like horoscopes.
There's a casual curiosity about things like like like like
witchcraft that's actually taken over.
There's that casual curiosity and just remember that Eve took
of the fruit. She disobeyed God as a result of
Satan. Just asking one question.
Did God really say it was just a casual curiosity?
So listen, I'm not here as your pastor to give you some script
of what you should and you shouldn't do and what you should
purge or not or or whatever. I would just say that anything
that has any type of demonic undertones to it, run from it,
flee from it. Third thing, this is where we're
going to land the plane this morning.
God allows people to choose their eternal destination.
Did you know that God allows people to choose their eternal
destination? And that choice, whichever path
people choose, it's actually rooted in love.
It's actually rooted in love. Let me kind of explain that we
talked a moment ago about how God loves us so much that he
sent Jesus to pay the price for our sins.
That is, that's the ultimate act of love, giving everything that
he could, all that he could. He gave his only Son to die on
across from my sins and your sins to pay that price for us.
That's that's rooted in love. But God will actually allow you
to reject him because love always requires choice.
He will never force a coerce you to be with him.
So because God's never going to force or coerce you all rooted
in love, He won't force you to to choose to be with him.
He'll, he'll allow you to spend eternity without him, again,
rooted in love. So this is my question for you.
Actually, a couple questions as we, as we come to an end #1 if
you were to die right now, do you know that you've surrendered
your life to Jesus? You see, this is not about like
it's not a scare tactic. It's just about the full counsel
of the Word of God. Do you know like today can be
the day of salvation for you? Maybe you came in here this
morning and you, you have thought for the longest time
that you could just ride the fence.
Maybe you've been a part of the church for a long part of time
and and you're really good at playing the church game.
Putting on the small, putting out the hand.
I serve, I teach whatever. You're really good at playing
the church game. But in the deep parts of you,
when you're really honest with yourself, you know that there's
never, there's never been a point in time that you
surrendered your life to Jesus. This morning can be your moment
of freedom. This morning can be your moment
of freedom. In just a moment.
We're going to pray and a couple of our pastors will be down
here. We would love to pray with you.
If you want to bring somebody to pray with you, we would love to
pray with them too. Or, you know, you can spend some
time just praying at this altar. But here's the second question.
If you know that your eternity is secure, that you have
surrendered your life to Jesus, ma'am, praise God.
And as we have been doing throughout this series, I'm
going to encourage you to pray for somebody that you are fairly
certain does not have that security.
Lift them up by name. Lift them up by name.
There's something powerful about praying for a person that is
near and dear to us by name, and they're probably not even here,
but the Holy Spirit can go. It is a prayer that launches the
Holy Spirit to track that person down, to go to the deepest parts
of him or her and to show them that they that they are loved by
God, that there can be hope and there can be peace, but there
has to be a point of surrender there.
So I'm going to encourage you as we pray and as we're about to
pray and as we're about to stand and sing, I'm going to encourage
you to just step out and come down and pray for the people in
your life. Maybe it's a family member,
maybe it's a Co worker, maybe it's a friend, maybe is is
somebody that you're in class with.
I'm just going to encourage you to come down and pray by name.
God, we love you and we thank you for who you are.
God, we thank You for Your word that tells us about Satan and it
tells us about his demons and it tells us about hell.
God, not in a way that is looking to scare us, but in a
way that is looking to inform us.
God, you are a God that doesn't want any of us to be ignorant.
God, as a matter of fact, you would be unmerciful and unloving
if you did not tell us through Your Word who our enemy and who
our adversary really is and what the plans are for us.
God, if there's anyone in here this morning, God, I pray that
if they are not sure about whether or not they can go back
to a time and a place to where they've give, they've
surrendered their life to you. God, I pray that the voice of
the Holy Spirit would be louder than the voices of the demons in
their minds. God that they would get over
themselves, overcome a sense of pride, step out and come down
and talk to a pastor. God, for those of us that we
have that security, God, thank you.
That is a peace that surpasses all understanding of knowing
that whatever may come, come what may, when we die, we will
be present with you in heaven for all of eternity.
And God, as much as we just glory in that hope.
God, our hearts are heavy for some people that are very dear
to us, that are very close to us that we just don't know that
they have that hope. And God, we just want to come
down and we want to lift them up to you by name during this time.
So God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would have his will in
his way, move in power and strength this morning.
Got to pray that you would give freedom this morning.
And it's in Jesus name that we pray.
Amen. Thank you for listening to the
Riverbend Church Podcast. Learn more about who we are as a
church and how to connect. You can head over to our
website, Riverbend Church dot Life.