The Baal of Peor

The Baal of Peor (Num. 25:1-4)

While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people profaned themselves by whoring with the Moabite women, who invited the people to the sacrifices for their god.  The people partook of them and worshipped that god.  Thus Israel attached itself to Baal- Peor, and the Lord was incensed with Israel (Num. 25:1-4)

The word Baal means god; and the word Peor means hole; cleft or opening.   

So this speaks of the worship of the genital area.

There are various connections between the Baal- Peor narrative and the sin of the golden calf in Exodus 32-34.  In both, sexual licentiousness combined with idolatry; in both, many Israelites died in the wake of what was done; in both, the zealots were rewarded by the Lord.

So we are told in (Num 25) the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate and bowed down before these gods. So Israel joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor. 

And the Lord’s anger burned against them. The Lord said to Moses, "Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the Lord’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel." So Moses said to Israel’s judges, "Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor."

Then an Israelite man brought to his family a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent he took the spear and thrust it through both of them and the Plague that killed 24000 was stopped from wiping out the nation.

The story behind this is that today we do not confront evil. Churches today are tolerating and agree with evil. 

Pope Francis has said that he will not judge the priests who are involved in homosexuality. That is endorsing evil. Most churches and communities today are accepting abortion (Jer 20:17) shall my mother’s womb become my grave. Leading politicians all over the world are endorsing sin and the churches are not standing up for righteousness.

These are the days of Elijah

Where are we now in Church history?                                                                     

Elijah’s ministry was during a time of great apostasy. Ahab was king but Jezebel his wife wore the pants, she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal and they began to serve Baal and worship him.  We are told that ‘there was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife’ (1 Ki 21:25). Then when Ahab died, his son Jehoram reigned but Jezebel was there in the background still calling the shots. 

The worship of Baal involves child sacrifice. The Jezebel spirit is about manipulation, control and domination.

In Ecclesiastes 3:15 it says, ‘what is, already was; what is to be, has been already’. In other words, history keeps repeating itself, so what is happening in the world right now has happened before, but when it happens in the time just before Jesus returns we will see the greatest show of ungodliness ever. So why did God destroy the world in Noah’s day? It was because they were ungodly. He could not see any image of himself in humanity. When you become ungodly it means that there is nothing within you that reflects the image of God. That is why he destroyed Sodom & Gomorrah. They were pleasure seekers not God seekers. Peter tells us that ungodliness is rebellion against God’s constituted authority; it is calling good evil and evil good. People with an insatiable capacity for sinning; Lawlessness within is the nature of the devil himself.

The modern day Ahab, Jezebel & Jehoram were Bill & Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.

On the 4th day of the Clinton presidency he signed, in a televised Oval Office ceremony, a series of executive orders undoing the policies of the Reagan-Bush era relating to abortion, contraception, and family planning. Hillary had pushed unequivocally for the orders.  In 1996 Bill Clinton twice vetoes the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Obama was the political ‘son’ of the Clintons and with Hilary behind him he was the most pro abortion and anti Christian and anti Israeli President ever. He voted against banning partial birth abortion. He voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP (child health insurance). He voted NO on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion. He voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. He voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. And he voted YES on $100m to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives and ensured access to and funding for contraception. Hillary was planning for full term abortions.

Under his rule same-sex marriage was made legal and married same-sex couples were granted equal social security and other marriage benefits.

Obama signed an executive order, making it illegal for federal contractors to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Eleven days after she announced that she was running for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton said that ‘deep seated religious beliefs must be changed’. Why? So that abortion can increase.

What we are seeing in nations today would not be happening if God’s people were lights shining the light of God. Most mainstream denominations have completely apostatized. They are sanctifying abortion, gay marriage and gender identity and have compromised with the world. The church is no longer salt to the earth. Salt flavours, it stops the spread of infection and disease and prevents from corruption.

Apostasy involves people who once knew God but no longer follow or believe in him. A culture that once was Christian and has turned away is a culture that has become the gods of their own lives and becomes worse for them because their punishment will be greater.

‘For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them. It has happened to them according to the proverb, "The dog turns back to its own vomit," and, "The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud."(2 Peter 2:20-22)

 

The spirit of the antichrist is a rejection of Christ and his ways. This present generation is now worse than the generation of Sodom. The prophet Daniel (7:7) described the 4^th beast as different from all the other beasts and the purpose is to change all the laws that have been already set. This 4^th beast seeks to change all traditions and create an unnatural civilization, by changing the natural order.

Today they are re-defining marriage * manhood * womanhood * parenthood and childhood and the way they are changing the natural order according to (1 Macc 1:34) is they are installing an army of sinful perverse men and women in positions of power. Today we have many powerful people ruling in Governments, in the Media, in the legal system that years ago would never have been in power. We are seeing a total reversal of the natural order.  

The spirit of the antichrist seeks to change what is natural to what is unnatural. What was mainstream now has become the fringe and what was fringe has now become the mainstream. People who were once considered leaders, lighting up God’s word and God’s ways now find themselves pushed out and treated as bigots, troublemakers and intolerant and now we have a reversal of culture as Isaiah 5:20 says ‘calling evil good and good evil, calling darkness light and light darkness’ What was profane has now become celebrated and what was holy has now become profane.

Other signs of the antichrist at work are the spirit of pride, arrogance and mockery. In the name of tolerance they can say what they like against God and the faith of believers. They are tolerant towards evil but intolerant to everything that is holy. The end time culture is of man declaring himself as god, re-defining morality, re-defining marriage, re-defining gender.

 3 times in the 1^st chapter of Romans we are told that God steps back. Whenever a nation or people rebel against God and turn away from him he steps back and lowers the hedge of protection and he allows evil to multiply and in sweeps a sexual revolution. This happened in the 1960’s.

Then there was a window of grace in order for people to repent and we had a big wave of the Holy Spirit in the form of Charismatic renewal. It was meant to come into the heart of the Church but the leaders rejected it. So because of their refusal to repent, then God stepped back again and lowered the hedge and in swept sexual perversion with them all coming brazenly out of the closet and into the open

Finally, God steps back again and removes the hedge completely and delivers those in the nation to a depraved mind which is what we are witnessing right now. We are seeing things today that we could never have imagined years ago. We are witnessing a great rebellion in our country and it’s the blind leading the blind.

Judgment always follows acts of desecration. The rainbow is a holy sign that belongs to God and not to man. The LGBT people have desecrated this holy sign of God. By their insistence on same sex marriage they are desecrating and violating God’s divine order. This is calling evil good and good evil. They are driving God out of society, persecuting believers and all those who have come out of the closet now want to put into the closet, all those who disagree with them. So we now have a nation that has once know the ways of God but has now rejected his ways, that’s apostasy. The heart of this nation has grown cold.

If you want to impact the world then keep yourself separated from it. Do not bend the word of God to fit your lifestyle. Bend your lifestyle to fit the word of God. In the days of darkness that lie ahead be a light, it shines brighter in dark places. Remember it was the 5 foolish virgins who were rejected because they had no oil in their lamps, you need to keep the lamp of faith alive and you need the anointing of the Holy Spirit to keep going in times of darkness. The world is not your friend it is your enemy (James 4:4)

Abortion: (Lev 18:21) Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

Homosexuality: (Lev 18:22) Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

Bestiality: (Lev 18:23)  Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it.  A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.  

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. (Lev 18: 24-25)

The Abomination of Desolation

The Islamic structure of the dome of the rock has the satanic image in stone marbling. That image is on the holiest place in the world and this is Satan speaking through Isaiah 14:13 ‘I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the recesses of the north’. God said to him in Ezekiel 28: 14-16 ‘You were on the holy mountain of God- but I cast you off’.  So here you have Satan trying to get back to that place where he saw himself as greater than God, not to praise God but to defile the place God has chosen to put his name.

 

Satan was an anointed cherub, and cherubs are in the place of God’s presence. In the Temple Mount you had the holy of holies and it had 2 covering cherubs standing face to face towards the mercy seat. There are 2 faces on the marble on the dome of the rock; the same image of the face of Satan facing each other in the exact same place in the recesses of the north of the Temple. The enemy will always seek to defile and to change what is holy.

 

 

 

We read in 1 Maccabees 1:54 where Antiochus Epiphanes overrun Israel and erected the ‘abomination of desolation’ on the Temple Mount above the altar and sacrificed to the pagan idol of the Greek god Zeus. Jesus mentions this in Matthew 24:15 and spoke of this as the forerunner or shadow of what was to come.

 

The next abomination of desolation was in 70AD when the Romans

destroy the Temple in the name of their god who was Jupiter; well Jupiter is another name for Zeus whose other name is Baal and the Romans offer up sacrifices to Jupiter on the destroyed Temple Mount.

In the next century the Emperor Hadrian whose name means ‘the dark one’, he decides to rename Jerusalem and it is going to be named after Jupiter. A pig was carved over one of the gates to honour the 10th Legion that had wrecked the city under Titus. A temple to Jupiter was erected at the sight of Solomon's Temple. A statue to Hadrian was erected on the spot that had been occupied by the Holy of Holies.

In Ezekiel 36; 2 the enemy says ‘Aha these mountains have become our possession’. So for 2000 years the enemy has been trying to prevent the Jewish people from coming to their high place, to Calvary, preventing the Jewish people for coming to their Salvation, not only spiritually but physically, because you have the ‘abomination of desolation’ of today in the form of the Al-Aqsa mosque which is square shaped and the ‘dome of the rock’ which is polygon shaped which is built on the Temple Mount. These are super imposed over the exact spot where Hadrian built his temple to Jupiter.

 

 

ISRAEL'S & OUR ENEMIES (Part 9) The spirit of the Jebusites

The spirit of the Jebusites

The word Jebusite means: Condemnation; accusation and intimidation.

The Jebusites were the last enemy subdued before Israel got peace and their stronghold was in Jerusalem There is always a constant battle to establish peace in the heart of a believer.

The root word is found in Isaiah (14:19), and it means to tread down with the feet, to pollute and defile and the Lord used it to describe Satan or Lucifer. The word ‘underfoot’ is the root word where we get the name Jebusite.

This spirit carries to us condemnation, accusation, intimidation, it treads down, it pollutes and it defiles the holy ones of God. Those who have been called, sanctified and made clean by the regenerating work and the sanctifying work of the word of God.

In type, Jerusalem is called ‘the holy city which Yahweh has chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to give his name a home there’.  (1 K. 14:21).  Jerusalem is called the city of the king and in the Psalms David often refers to it as Zion.

When Abraham returned from defeating the five kings, Melchizedek who was the King of peace, the priest of God and the king of righteousness, came out to minister unto Abraham and they had communion. There he sustained and encouraged him after the time of battle, to comfort and strengthen and refresh him.

In the book of Judges we know that something tragic had happened to Salem and a terrible change had taken place. No longer was it called Salem the city of peace, but it now bore the name ‘Jebus’. The name had been altered.

 ‘But the man would not stay there; he got up and set off and came within sight of Jebus¾that is Jerusalem’. (Jud 19: 10).

 

In the day of Joshua we find a man by the name of Adoni-Zedek, whose name means: justice of the Lord or the Lord of righteousness and he is ruling in what was Jerusalem but which was now Jebus. This man was a counterfeit of Melchizedek; he was a child of the devil, because he was a Jebusite. So here you have a man setting himself up as the Lord and no longer is that place called Salem the city of peace and no longer is there a person who is like as unto the Son of God ruling in that place. Now there is this Jebusite there who calls himself Adoni or Lord and he is reigning in that place and making himself lord over the dwelling place of God. He sets himself up as a self-righteous lord, but all the time he is treading down, he is polluting and he is defiling the holy place that had been chosen by God to give his name a home.

 

Zion, the Heavenly city is a type of our bodies, which are the temples of the living God. ‘Your body, you know, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you since you received him from God. You are not your own property; you have been bought and paid for. That is why you should use your body for the glory of God’. (1 Cor 6:19-20). So now, our bodies, individually and collectively are the Zion of God. Now we are the living stones making a spiritual house where God lives by his Holy Spirit.

This is the spirit that attacks our bodies. This spirit of the Jebusite is the one that tries to destroy the temple of God. It is this spirit that wants to lord and to rule it over our bodies with infirmity; with sickness and disease; with habits and addictions so that we cannot glorify God in our bodies, which are the temples of the Holy Spirit.

How does this spirit begin to work?

It is this spirit that tries to cast down our bodies with sickness and disease. It is this spirit that tries to find strongholds in our carnal bodily appetites and desires. Once we let this ruling spirit in through our bodily appetites and desires, then that appetite will become, the lord over one’s life. Whether it is alcohol or tobacco, whether it is drugs or gambling, whether it is gluttony or immorality that rules over that person. This enemy will come into that fleshly appetite and take over control. And by doing so, begins to rule and to reign in Zion; begins to rule and to reign as lord over the temple of the Holy Spirit which is our bodies. If you take a simple example from television. You switch it on and you watch an episode of one of the ‘soaps’. It’s presented in such a way that you are ‘encouraged’ or ‘stimulated’ to watch the next episode to find out what happens next, and before you realise it, you are hooked. That’s how people become addicted, it only takes a cigarette or two and before you know it, you no longer have cigarettes but they have you.

How subtle this enemy is and here is what it does. In the same way it tempted Eve, it always presents the temptation as something good. We know that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and this enemy will ‘sift you out’, to come into your body so that it can become the Adoni-zedek over your life.

That’s why Peter warned us, ‘to keep yourselves free from selfish passions that attack the soul’. If this enemy can get control of our bodies, then that in turn will affect our soul. Because once we lose our peace of mind and our peace of heart, then that is ruling and weakening our spirit.

Because’ Grief of heart wounds the spirit’ or as another translation puts it ‘where the heart is sad the spirit is broken’. (Pro 15:13).

If the enemy can get in and rule over our bodily appetites, then it will affect our soul by causing us to grieve over things. It will cause us to grieve over our weaknesses whenever we try to stop or give up the things that are controlling us. And when we say that we will never do that again and we fail, then our grieving will rob our spirits of strength. There are many people who have made decisions to live good clean and holy lives but their bodies are bound by habits and addictions and then this spirit will cause them to feel condemned, to live under guilt, to feel remorse, to live under self pity and to rob them of that true peace of God that the Lord wants us all to have.

 

If you are grieving over your weaknesses, which is what this spirit wants you to do. If you have made resolutions and commitments and you have tried and failed, you may feel condemned, unclean, polluted and defiled. I want to tell you that your standing before God does not depend on what you have or have not done. It stands in your faith of the risen Lord. This enemy will cause us to speak perverse words against ourselves. We are to judge ourselves according to what the word of God says about us, and ‘what God has made clean, we are not to call unclean’. (Acts 10:15). This enemy will impart a sense of unworthiness and restlessness upon us. Many consider themselves to be unworthy because of their faults and failings. This Jebusite spirit will cause us to say to the Father when we approach him in prayer that we are unworthy to be called his children. God does not condemn us because of our failures. God does not condemn us because of our weaknesses. The only reason that we can stand before the throne of grace is because of Jesus and what he has done for us. In ourselves we do not have any worthiness. Our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and our faith in his atonement and in his blood is the only thing that has caused us to be worthy. That’s why the table of the Lord has been provided for us. At the table we have the only sacrifice in the whole of creation, which is sufficient and effective for our salvation. The lord has provided a table for us in the sight of our enemies and when those enemies see us going back time and time again to that table, that he has provided for us, they have a fit. How do I know that?

‘When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the walls he flew into a rage, beside himself with anger. He ridiculed the Jews, and in front of his kinsmen and the wealthy men of Samaria he exclaimed, ‘what are these pathetic Jews trying to do? Do they expect to finish in one day? Do they think they can put new life into these charred stones, salvaged from the heap of rubble?’ Tobiah the Ammonite was standing beside him. ‘Let them build, even a jackal jumping on their wall, will soon knock the stones back down again’. (Neh 4: 1-3).

 

The name Sanballat means ‘fallen branch’ that speaks of Satan and his mate Tobiah means ‘god is good’, but in a mocking and accusing way. When we go back to the table of the Lord, we are rebuilding the walls around our spirit; we are rebuilding the temple of the Holy Spirit; we may hear the voice of the enemy casting us down with words of ridicule¾ ‘ I know what you’re like; You’re feeble, you’ll never be any good, you’ll never  change, you’ll never make it, you’ll not be forgiven this time, and you’ve blown it now’.  But the truth is, Jesus says ‘Come unto me all you who are weighed down by the attacks of this enemy and I will give you forgiveness for your sins, healing for your bodies, peace for your minds and rest for your souls’. There is healing at the table of the Lord, and the Lord provided it for us because he knew we would be weak, but at his table he provides food for the journey and he strengthens us.

This spirit of the Jebusite was responsible for David numbering the people wrongly. It brought great destruction and death and when David saw the angel of the Lord about to put his hand towards Jerusalem to destroy it, he admitted to the Lord that he had sinned and that it wasn’t the fault of the people and the angel withdrew his hand. When numbering the people David should have taken a redemptive coin. The angel of the Lord stood beside the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and David purchased the threshing floor from the Jebusite and built an altar to the Lord and it was on this spot that Solomon built the Temple. For the first time since entering the Promised Land Israel now had peace.

 

We know from the scriptures that Satan is the one who accuses us day and night before the throne of God, and that is the nature of this spirit of the Jebusite, it is a constant battle. Paul tells us ‘not to grieve the Holy Spirit’, and if the Holy Spirit can be grieved then our spirits can also be grieved and when this enemy attacks, it goes first for our bodies through our appetites. Then it goes for our souls through our emotions until we become like a city without walls where our spirits can be exposed to grief through the accusations of this accusing, condemning, intimidating, polluting and defiling spirit, so that it can be lord where Jesus should be Lord.

 ‘Bow down then, before the power of God now, and he will raise you up on the appointed day; unload all your worries unto him, since he is looking after you. Be calm but vigilant, because your enemy the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to eat. Stand up to him strong in faith and in the knowledge that your brothers all over the world are suffering the same things. You will only have to suffer for a little while: the God of all grace¾will confirm strengthen and support you. His power lasts forever and ever Amen. (1 P 5: 6-11)

 

ISRAEL'S & OUR ENEMIES (Part 7) The spirit of the Girgashites

The spirit of the Girgashites

 

 

The word Girgashite means: returning back from pilgrimage and black mud.

When it says returning back, it is the context of setting out on pilgrimage and then changing your mind and going back to where you came from

When it says black mud it’s in the context of ‘the dog goes back to its own vomit’ and ‘when the pig has been washed, it wallows in the mud’. The word Adam means red earth, and someone who is all muddy is Satan.

 

This is the spirit that causes apostasy. ‘The man of sin will not be revealed until there is the great falling away’. Another word for falling away is apostasy. In other words, before the man of sin is revealed in the earth, there has to come first a great falling away or apostasy.

 

Paul wrote to Timothy and told him that Demas had left him for love of this life and had deserted him that’s apostasy. That’s what Jesus was saying when he said that if any man put his hand to the plough and looked back, then he is not fit for the Kingdom of God. This is the spirit that entices us to go back, Demas was enticed by the pleasures of the world again and left his ministry and calling. Jesus told us that in the end times, ‘Many will fall away; men will betray one another and hate one another¾because of the increase in wickedness, the love in most men will grow cold’. (Matt 24: 10-12).

The tactics of this enemy is to cause us to be disheartened and discouraged, causing us to lose hope. So he will throw some obstacle in our path to stop us from going forward. We need to learn how to be persistent in the face of this enemy. Like the man who went to his friend in the middle of the night looking for bread. Jesus said that persistence would be enough for to make the man get up and give his friend all that he wanted, so he said that we were to ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking. In other words don’t get discouraged, don’t give in, don’t fall away.

‘If you come back to me, I will take you back into my service; and if you utter noble, not despicable thoughts, you shall be as my own mouth. They will come back to you, but you must not go back to them’. (Jer 15:19).

Because of the backsliding and the apostasy of the people Jeremiah was losing trust in God. Many times those who have been called in ministry, especially in leadership, become disheartened and discouraged by the coldness and the lukewarmness of the people. When there is little or no response of participation in the congregation, then it is very easy to think about packing it all in and lose heart. It’s very easy to say to yourself, ‘why should I bother, nobody’s interested?’ And it’s very easy because of the discouragement to go along with the flow and do nothing. That’s what was happening to Jeremiah, because of the apostasy of the people, he was losing heart and was thinking about leaving the ministry to become one of the crowd. That’s what happens when you step back; you become one of the crowd and the spirit behind this is the spirit of the Girgashite.

The word to Jeremiah was that the people were to return to him and not the other way round. In other words; step forward and they will follow you This enemy will also cause us to lose hope, and a loss of hope is mistrust in God. When we lose hope, then we are saying that the Lord cannot work in that situation. When we say that someone or something is a hopeless case, what we are really saying is that God is not powerful enough to do anything about it and we no longer trust him. This is how the enemy comes in and sows doubt within our hearts. When we pray and don’t doubt in our heart, then we can have whatever we say. If we want to get rid of doubt in our hearts, then we have got to get rid of our mistrust in God.

 

When Jesus was talking about the apostasy and the falling away he said, ‘remember Lot’s wife’. Don’t turn back. Don’t look back and give up your testimony just because others are not following you. If they want to stay there, leave them there but you yourself must keep going forward.

 

About five thousand disciples stopped following Jesus when they were offended at his words.

This enemy will use our failures to get us to turn back. Remember when Peter had told the Lord that they had left everything to follow him, and later on it was Peter again who said to Jesus that he would never leave him nor desert him and you know the story; Peter failed. His failure caused him to return to his nets, the nets that he had left to follow Jesus.

 

There are many times when we say that we will never say that again, or that we will never do that again, and when we fail, we become downcast and disheartened, and like Peter, the temptation is to go back, to return to the old ways, to return to where we were before and that’s the nature of this Girgashite spirit.

 

ISRAEL'S & OUR ENEMIES (Part 6) The spirit of the Perizzites

The spirit of the Perizzite

The word Perizzite means: Unwalled town or village. It also means separation.

When Israel had defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan, they captured all their towns and possessions ‘all strongholds enclosed in high walls and fortified with gates and bars, not to mention the Perizzite towns, which were many’, (Deut 3:5) and we are told that these Perizzite towns were unfortified.

What do the scriptures say about the dangers of an unwalled or an unfenced city?

‘The Lord says this: On that day a thought is going to enter your mind and you will work out a wicked plan. You will say: I will attack a land of unwalled villages and march against this peaceful and unsuspecting people. They all live in towns that have no walls or bars or gates. (Ezk 38:10-12).

 

This speaks about the invader that is going to come down upon Israel in the last days. Israel will make peace with the nations that are surrounding her and when they are not suspecting, when they have dropped their guard, then they will be attacked. But what does it mean to us spiritually?  

‘He that has no rule over his spirit is like a city whose walls are broken down and has no defences’.  (Pro 25:28).

The influence of this spirit causes division and separation and if you have no walls, it means that you think that you are dwelling in safety. It means that you are not recognising the fact that there is an enemy. When they had unwalled cities, it meant that they were not suspecting any attacks and that they felt safe and secure enough not to put any guards up.

 

The prophet Amos writes ‘Wow to those at ease in Zion’. In other words, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Don’t let this enemy separate you from the rest of the group where he can pounce and ensnare you.

 

If we take David as an example, we will see that it was this spirit of the Perizzite that caused him to fall into his sin of murder and adultery. In his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 David asks the Lord to create in him a clean heart and an upright spirit. What had happened to David was; that he was at ease. He was dwelling in safety and he was resting on the top of his house. ‘At the time of the year when kings go to war- David stayed in Jerusalem’. (2 Sam 11). Spiritually speaking David’s spirit was at ease, it was not upright, he had let his guard down and the enemy was able to come in and tempt him. David’s problem was that he had lust of the eyes that he had inherited from his forefather Judah; who slept with his daughter-in-law, thinking her to be a prostitute. That’s how this enemy works. This enemy will lie and wait for you to let your guard down and as soon as he gets the opportunity he will attack at the point of least resistance, your weakest spot.

 

If I don’t have any walls it means that I am dwelling in safety and I’m not recognising the fact that there is an enemy about, it means that I am asleep, that I’m not awake.‘You can be quite certain that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have let anyone break through the ‘wall’ of his house’. (Matt 24: 42-44).

Q. What are our walls?

A. Our emotions are the walls around our spirit.

What happens is that, when the enemy can come in and cause us to negatively emotionally respond; it will weaken, paralyse and immobilise our spirit. So instead of having the power to pray and to resist in the spirit, we will end up being ineffective.

Remember the man who was lowered through the roof and we are told that the condition of this man’s paralysis was spiritually based. That man was lying down; his spirit was not upright and because he was not standing upright before the Lord, he had no power over the paralysis, which was in his body. When Jesus forgave the man his sins, his spirit was now upright before the Lord and he was able to stand up. Many a time when we weakened by our guilts and our griefs, our bodies then become susceptible to all kinds of sicknesses and illnesses and we can’t understand why we can’t shake off colds or pains. Well it is because we are not standing upright in spirit. That’s what happened to David when he sinned.

Happy the man whose offence is forgiven, whose sin is remitted. Happy the man to whom the Lord imputes no guilt. I kept it secret and my bones wasted away. I groaned all the daylong for night and day your hand was heavy upon me. Indeed, my strength was dried up as by the summer’s heat. (Ps 32: 1-4).

Here David was saying that because he had kept his sin hidden, the weight of the guilt upon his physical body had a profound effect, because he was not upright in spirit.

‘A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness,

But a crushed spirit who can bear? (Pro 18:14).

It’s not your bones that hold your body up; it’s your spirit. This spirit of the Perizzite wants us to lie down in spirit and when he succeeds then many a time we will lie down in our bodies as well.

Guilt can rob you and can cause you to be weak It will drain out the strength of your spirit and then you become a city without a wall around it.

Grief is one of the major sources that will wound your spirit.

‘Grief of heart wounds the spirit’. (Pro 15:13).

 

We can grieve over many things. Many disappointments can cause us grief. We have great expectations for our children and when those expectations are dashed, our spirits are wounded. We have great hopes for our marriages and when those hopes are shattered, our spirits are also crushed. There are many disappointments through loss of employment or loss of property and all these sorrows the scriptures call; grief. When we grieve over all these losses and disappointments then our spirits become weak and we have no power.

The nature of this Perizzite spirit through attacking our emotions our griefs and our guilts is to separate us away from one another and away from the Lord.

 

Have you ever noticed when someone feels guilty about something they have done? The first sign is; they stop coming to Church, they start isolating and separating themselves because their emotions or feelings have caused them to separate away from the body of Christ. The same thing happens when a person has grief. They start to isolate themselves in their own self-pity or in their own depression and they can’t share or give out, because of their grief.

‘This is what causes my grief;

that the way of the Most High has changed’. (Ps 77:10).

Grief in the life of the Psalmist caused him to think that God had changed his ways. He was now looking at God through his emotions and that emotion of grief will cause a distortion of the image of God in our minds and will cause us to be spiritually impoverished, isolated and separated from one another and from God, when we allow our emotions to rule over us.

This spirit of the Perizzite attacks our emotions and when our emotions are out of control, we weaken in spirit and the enemy has us exactly where he wants us; powerless.

The nature of this spirit is to separate, and grief is like a death or separation. That’s what the word death means. And the reason why a lot of women have postnatal depression is because there has been a death or a separation of the child once the cord is cut. Adam died the day he sinned, not physically but spiritually; and death or separation was passed down from Adam until Jesus restored us to life and fellowship with the Father. It’s not always a physical death that causes us to grieve, it can be the loss of expectation in a person or in a situation or in the break-up of a relationship, so many times when there is a death of the expectation it will create real grief and that’s where this enemy can hold us in captivity.

 

ISRAEL'S & OUR ENEMIES (Part 5) The spirit of the Hittites

 

The spirit of the Hittites

 

 

The word Hittite means: fear, terrified, broken or amazed.

The Hittites were one of the first enemies that the Israelites encountered when they came into the land of Canaan. One of the first things that we have to overcome in our own personal lives is fear, if we are going to move forward in the things of God. The first time ‘fear’ is mentioned is after Adam sinned, when he was afraid and hid himself from God.

 

The next time we see ‘fear’ is in the life of Abram when he went down into Egypt and his fear caused him to lie about his relationship to his wife Sarai. ‘I know you are a beautiful woman. When the Egyptians see you they will say, “That is his wife”, and they will kill me but spare you. Tell them you are my sister, so that they may treat me well because of you. (Gen 12: 10-20). So his fear caused him to lie.

 

 

We see this in the life of Peter when he denied Jesus. He also lied to save his own skin, for fear of being found out. Jesus had already told Peter that he would be handed over and tortured and that he would die and rise again. Peter was afraid of dying, he didn’t want to suffer pain and it wasn’t until later, when Jesus indicated what kind of death Peter would have, that Peter was released from his fear. Peter’s problem was not his fear; it was a lack of understanding of the knowledge of the Love of God.

‘In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love: because to fear is to expect punishment and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love’. (1 Jn 4:18).

Some of the things that people are afraid of are sickness; the future; lack of finances; tragedy and calamity and many other things. If we take note of what Job said,’ whatever I fear comes true whatever I dread befalls me’. (Job 3:25). Fear will prevent us from inheriting God’s blessings.

 

Paul wrote to Timothy telling him that he had ‘not received a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of self control’. Paul was writing from prison and Timothy was taking his place in the Church in Ephesus and because of that he was going through the same kind of persecutions and stress that Paul had been subjected to. So out of prison Paul reminds Timothy to ‘stir up the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you¾you are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord’. (2 Tim 1:6-8).

 

One of the greatest snares that prevent us from sharing out the word of life is the fear of man. The fear of being ridiculed, the fear of being laughed at but maybe most of all, the fear of being rejected. Let’s say that there is some area in my life where I feel that I need to share with you. How can I become transparent with you in sharing my feelings and my emotions, if the fear of rejection is there? Every week when we go to Church we usually meet the same faces. We should have the freedom to turn to the person sitting next to us to share out the word of life, or to ask that person to pray with us for a specific need, or just to be able to bring up things that are bothering us, so that we can get help and be set free. That’s the influence of this Hittite spirit and an awful lot of people are under its influence.

 

There comes a time in all of our lives when the ‘axe must be laid to the root of the tree’. (Matt 3:10). We need to come to a position where we can say that ‘The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? (Ps 118:6). You may know in your head that God is with you. You may know from reading about it or from someone else telling you about it. But if you are in the Lion’s den, head knowledge won’t do you any good; you need to know that he is there with you to rescue you. Unfortunately in this day when more and more are turning away from God, you will see a greater increase of fear in people’s lives.

 

There is a text in Isaiah that says, ‘do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it’. (Is 8:12) Here Isaiah is talking about the Assyrians coming in and they are in a wilderness. Sometimes when we go into a wilderness experience in our own lives we lose the sense of God’s presence. God is always there, it just seems that he has gone on holiday and we can’t seem to contact him. That’s what happened to the Israelites at various stages in the wilderness and they lost their relationship with the Lord.

We are told that they looked for a God that they could see.

• So they turned to idolatry. They wanted to be like other nations and worship Gods that they could see. What would you classify as idolatry? It’s setting your affection upon some material object. At this time when the Assyrians came in and they had again broken relationship with the Lord, we are told that they turned witchcraft.

‘When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people enquire of their God?’ (Is 8:19).

 

Saul when he no longer heard the voice of God? He turned to a witch.

• Why do you think people today are turning to the occult? They are turning to mediums, to crystal gazing, to their horoscopes, to palm reading, to tarot card reading, to teacup reading, to faith healers, to lucky charms, all because they have lost their communication with God.

Then they turned to Egypt, that is, they turned to outside sources for help.

• A person who has fear in their life has done that. A person with fear has not established a right relationship with the Lord. They have not matured in love with the Lord, so they might turn to idols and this is what people in the world are doing and so they get fearful. They look to people for answers.

‘God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in times of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea¾The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress’. (Ps 46: 1-7).

The whole purpose of this spirit of the Hittite is to break your relationship with the Lord. This spirit will use the circumstances of your life to bring in’ fear’. That’s what this spirit did to Peter when he walked on the water.

If you serve the Lord out of fear instead of love, then it will cause you to be spiritually impoverished, like the man who buried the talent.

Is fear such a crippling thing that it will cause us to be bowed over in the presence of God? Yes¾Look at Adam.

Don’t let this spirit of the Hittite cripple your walk with God. It will ‘come against you but will not overcome you’. (Jer 15:20).

‘Do not be afraid, do not be daunted by this vast horde; this battle is not yours but God’s’. (2 Ch. 20:16).