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.
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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.