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.