Faith in Trials 1 Genesis 26 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill We’re studying the Old Testament from the point of view of the life of faith; how to exercise faith in our own everyday situations and we’re beginning in Genesis 26. I don’t know if you remember what we shared a month ago, but there were two facts of reality that you and I needed to face bluntly. One was that the world as it now exists is not the way God meant it to be, that he has in fact subjected the world to futility. And you remember I used the illustration; why does the belt of your coat always fall outside the car door when you’re getting in? Why doesn’t it fall on the inside? In other words, why do so many things go by Murphy’s Law? And the fact is they go by Murphy’s Law because God has allowed a kind of futility to come into even the natural world. It’s seen in earthquakes, in storms, and in all kinds of disasters that take place and all kinds of things that happen in our own lives. It’s obvious that God has subjected the world to futility to let us know everything is not right in this world. “There is a disaster that has taken place at the beginning that wasn’t my plan, and earthquakes are not my plan, and it’s not my plan that your coat belt will always fall outside the car door instead of inside the car door.” Then I pointed out that Jesus said to us, “But I have overcome the world,” the world in Jesus was crucified and for us who believe that, so it is possible to live a charmed life. It is possible for us to see the world going our way, to see even circumstances turned around for us by our faith in Jesus. Now there’s one other thing that has gone wrong in this world and it’s mentioned by Jesus himself in John 14:30 and is something somebody brought up in their prayer earlier on. Jesus says, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me.” We may not like the idea, but even Jesus calls Satan the ruler of this world. Satan is the present prince of this world and even Jesus didn’t challenge that when Satan offered to him the kingdoms of this world, Jesus actually didn’t challenge Satan’s right to give him those kingdoms, he just knew it was wrong to receive them from his hand. But even Jesus calls Satan the ruler of this world. The fact is loved ones, that Satan is the prince and ruler of this world at this present time, he has power to send his demons and his angels throughout this world and that will continue until Jesus comes again. Many of the things that occur in our present lives occur because of Satan’s activity. Jesus said that Satan has blinded the eyes of men so that they cannot see the truth of the gospel; so Satan is able to blind people’s minds. And I don’t know how many of you have experienced what I know I experienced over the past weeks and months, but I found that Satan was able, if I simply let him do what he wanted, to fascinate my mind with certain thoughts. He would have my mind going round, and round, and round, just like a merry-go-round, around certain thoughts that I knew were absolute lies, and absolutely untrue, and absolutely unreal. But he was able, if I let him, to get my mind to go round, and round, and round. I don’t know how many of you have found it in regard to things in the future, but he suddenly begins to fascinate you that “this might happen,” or “that might happen,” and they’re utterly idiotic things that don’t happen that way at all, but he is able to fascinate your mind with those worries and those anxieties and it’s because he is the prince of this world. He is able to fire fiery darts into our minds, thoughts of evil, thoughts of doubt, thoughts of critical attitudes, thoughts of anxiety about the future, and if we go with that he can absolutely turn us upside down. And don’t you think that one of the things that has prepared us for this is even our education? Don’t you think that Satan has kind of gotten into the educational world and we’ve been encouraged to pursue this kind of free association of ideas – like with the old ink blot test, “What does this ink blot look like?” “Well it looks like an elephant’s ear” yeah but it looks like Satan with horns; it looks like the test we’re going to encounter this week. We’ve been encouraged to let our thoughts float around and whatever they light on, let them go on that. And Satan jumps in on that and fires fiery darts of different things into our minds and if we have that kind of democratic idea that thinks, “Well, we ought to examine any thought that comes into our mind. I mean, let’s not be afraid of any thought at all.” Before we know it we’ll have Satan leading us deeper, and deeper, and deeper into his lies. He is the prince of this world loved ones; he does still have free absolute liberty to fill the soulish atmosphere around us, and the spiritual atmosphere to some extent, with his own thoughts and his own lies because he is the prince of this world. Now here’s the glorious fact, if you look at it there in John 14:30, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me.” Jesus says, “The ruler of this world is ruling this world and he therefore causes many things to go wrong in it, and he creates much evil that tries to swamp you in your thought life and in your action life, but he has no power over me. And anybody that is in me, he has no power over them. In fact, he that is within you, the Spirit of Jesus, is greater than he that is in the world.” So we need to hold that intention. Jesus said that though Satan is the prince of this world he has no power over Jesus himself and he has no power over people who are in Jesus. In fact, the Savior goes further if you look at John 12:31. “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out.” Jesus was referring to his own resurrection. He was saying, “The moment I rise from the dead, the ruler of this world is cast out from his position of domination in this world and though he will still dwell in it he has no power any longer when he comes up against me or against any who believe in me.” And then Jesus gave this great promise to his disciples in Luke 10:19, and he promised this to his disciples when he was sending them out and it’s a great promise and it comes right down to us today, “Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you.” And Jesus said that to the disciples; he said, “All power in heaven and in earth is given unto me and I give that power and that authority to you. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy,” Satan, “and nothing shall hurt you.” And the truth is that all you have to do to Satan is resist him and he will flee from you. That’s right. I’ll tell you that from my own experience; all you have to do is turn to Satan and say, “In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I rebuke you and cast you out from me” and Satan will withdraw. Now it’s incredible but he will. It doesn’t matter if you waken in the middle of the night and you find your thoughts anxious and worried, or you find your thoughts troubled and twisted. If you simply speak to Satan, and you have to speak to him; Jesus has given the authority to us. He has destroyed Satan, he has put him under his feet in Calvary but we ourselves have to exercise that authority over him. We have to actually speak to him. So many of us have a mistaken idea because we think we only have to pray to God and ask him to remove the mountain. No, Jesus said, “Speak to the mountain and say, ‘Be cast into the middle of the sea.’” We actually have to speak to Satan in a situation. So loved ones, when you find your mind absolutely twisted and torn in the middle of the night or early in the morning in those twilight hours when your free will is not exercised as strongly as normal and you find you’re filled with worried thoughts, or anxious thoughts, or troubled thoughts, or thoughts that you know are not normal for you, then in the name of Jesus rebuke Satan. Now if you’re like me, you probably think, “Don’t be dumb, that’s spooky stuff. That’s just unnecessary. I’ve just got to think it through in my mind.” It won’t work, honestly. I thought the same. I thought, “This is silly, this is that religious fanaticism stuff or that charismania and all I have to do is think this through in my mind and I have to bring every thought into captivity of Christ Jesus.” No. Jesus is the only one who can destroy the power of Satan at any moment that he attacks you. And that’s why he requires you to speak in the name of Jesus, because you can’t do it just by governing your own thoughts. When you try to do it by governing your own thoughts, you’re rejecting Jesus’ work on Calvary. That’s why Jesus requires you to speak to Satan and to rebuke him in the name of Jesus and cast him out. Now here’s the amazing thing, you can actually do it for other people as well. You can. You can do it while they are in your presence and often you can do it for a certain length of time just by standing against Satan in Jesus’ name in their lives. Now, the tragedy is you can’t do it after they get out of your presence and they can actually therefore, fall back under his control. That explains why many of them are healed in healing services while there’s a great spirit of faith around them, but then they go home they cease to exercise faith in Jesus’ power over Satan so they fall back into the sickness. But you can often while you’re present with them, in an office situation for instance, or in your home with relatives and you know there’s a bad spirit coming from them, you can in the name of Jesus stand against that spirit and the spirit of Jesus within you will actually simply wipe out his power. Now maybe it’s good to point out to you it is not a struggle game. Many of us in the old days here on campus thought “Oh it’s a struggle against Satan; it’s the way I do it: be cast out Satan. No. “BE CAST OUT Satan.” It was dumb, they were just playing games. It’s not a strength struggle. Jesus has already destroyed Satan, all Jesus requires is for you to speak in faith in Jesus’ name and that’s all you have to do. And you’ll be amazed, you will, I could not believe it. I could not believe how my mind cleared, how my thoughts cleared, how I was able to sleep deeply and well at night and you’ll find the same. I think many of us have been under this attack, during these weeks and months, of Satan’s lies about people, lies about each other, lies about all kinds of things. Simply rebuke him, don’t put up with it, just rebuke him again and again in the name of Jesus and he will withdraw from you. There’s nothing else to be done and you can do that. I’m sorry we’re not going as fast as I thought we would but it’s more important to speak truth than to get the chapter done. There’s a dear guy named Kenneth Hagen Senior. I don’t know Kenneth Hagen Junior at all, though I know he heads up the ministry now, but Kenneth Hagen Senior tells of a psychiatrist who worked in one of the hospitals and was faced with a gentleman who had lost the power of speech. They had been working on him for weeks and months and nobody could do anything. And then this psychiatrist began quietly, because there were other doctors around and he didn’t want them to start putting him in a psyche ward, so he said quietly under his breath, “In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke the spirit of Satan. Whichever spirit of Satan that is in this man, or any spirit of Satan that may be in him and is keeping him from speaking I rebuke him in Jesus’ name.” And he did that for weeks and weeks, and just did it quietly. If there was no other doctor in the ward or in that room at the moment, he’d do it out loud, but when there were other people present he’d do it quietly, so you don’t need to be a kind of showman, don’t feel you have to do that. But he quietly did that and the man’s speech returned to him after two or three months and of course the other doctors were bewildered. Now that doesn’t mean that every sickness is caused by Satan. It doesn’t mean that every sickness is caused by spirits of Satan, but Jesus will respect your faith, so don’t get all caught up over, “Well, what if I rebuke Satan and Satan isn’t there to be rebuked?” Jesus will work that one out, he can operate on the level of your faith, but the big thing that you’ve to do is take a stand in faith. Now this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about Genesis 26; we’re talking about how to exercise faith in Jesus against the powers of Satan in this present world. So maybe we could at least begin Genesis 26, “Now there was a famine in the land.” Do you remember the piece in the bulletin that I think Liz or someone put in from Oswald Chambers that went, “An average view of the Christian life is that it means deliverance from trouble.” This verse that we’re reading says,” Now there was a famine in the land.” Loved ones, this world is subjected to futility by God, and Satan is the prince of this world; you are going to face trouble whether you like it or not. There’s going to be trouble. The world does not go as God meant it to go, only heaven will be like that, and as long as we are in the world Jesus himself said, “In the world you are going to have tribulation. The servant is not greater than his Lord and you’re going to have the same kind of tribulation and trouble as I had” so you are going to have trouble and you can’t get away from it. I don’t know if you’re like I was, I thought, “Well, maybe you come to a certain place in your faith in Jesus when you don’t have any troubles.” No, the deeper you get into Jesus the more troubles he lets come to you and the reason is that God allows that to take place so that the victory of Jesus can be manifested. Every time the victory of Jesus is manifested God is glorified. Every time a Stephen is able to kneel down and say, “Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” in absolute peace as the stones are raining upon him, God is glorified because Jesus’ resurrection is lifted up and is vindicated and manifested to other people, and a Saul who stands by looking after the coats of those who stoned Stephen is saved by that act. So loved ones, it’s going to be like that until the very end and really God chooses those of us whom he reckons are strong enough in his grace to stand against the trouble and to triumph over it by faith, he uses us to manifest the resurrection of Jesus to others. So don’t be cast down whenever troubles come to you, rejoice in them. Rejoice in them and see, “Lord, you’ve allowed this to come to me because Jesus’ death on Calvary has already taken the sting out of this trouble and has already brought victory over it and I’ve to rest in you that that is true until this thing manifests itself so that others can see it.” And loved ones, that’s what we’ll be facing all through life. Thomas á Kempis says the same thing. I don’t know if you know the book and maybe I should begin to recommend some of these books so that you’ll build your own library that can strengthen your own spiritual life. Thomas á Kempis wrote The Imitation of Christ and it’s a famous classic that many people regard as next to the Bible in inspiration, so it is beautiful. He writes this about this same subject of troubles; “Resolve then, as a good and faithful servant of Christ, manfully to bear the cross of your Lord who was crucified for love of you. Prepare your veil of tears for such will be your lot wherever you are and you will encounter them wherever you conceal yourself, it must needs be so. Nor is there any remedy or means of escape from ills and griefs, you must endure them. Drink lovingly the cup of your Lord, if you wish to be his friend and to share all with him.” Part of it is of course, it makes heaven dearer to you. It makes heaven more home to you. This world is not our home, we are just passing through. This world is not what God meant it to be; it’s all going to be burned up and God does not want us to get too fond of it. In a way, the little enjoyments that we have are almost more dangerous than the troubles that are here because the troubles, well you know what happens, what have been the sweetest times between you and Jesus? What have been the closest times between you and God -- I know for me it’s the times that have been most troubled in this world. The times when the difficulties have been greatest, where everybody seems to have left you, where you’re on your own and you have only God, those are the dearest times between you and your maker. But brothers and sisters, aren’t those the most real times? Because what is going to be the most real time in your life and mine -- the last moment. The last moment of our life is going to be the most real time. Every other moment is kind of partly filled with distractions, but the last moment of our life is the most real moment in our life, and at that moment there will only be God, there will be nothing else. It won’t matter whether the sun is shining, or whether it’s raining outside, all that will matter is God. So that’s why God has planned it this way. The whole world has fallen away from him and he has used even that falling away to drive us deeper and deeper into himself. It seems as the years go on the world itself becomes less and less attractive. Indeed, in funny ways, it becomes more and more repelling to you and more repulsive to you and it becomes very unsatisfying. In fact, he’s [congregation member] talked about it because he used to be one of those guys who helicoptered to the mountain and skied the whole way down. And I suppose we all enjoy the fast boats, or the fast motorbikes, or the fast cars, and the nice restaurants, and bit-by-bit as the years go by all that stuff kind of gets old. It seems less and less interesting and kind of more and more boring and it seems as you go on in life those things become less worthwhile and less valuable and the whole world becomes more and more an unsatisfying place to be. And it’s interesting, that as that happens, trials kind of – I don’t know that they’re nice things you look forward to, but you realize that God uses them more powerfully to draw you nearer to himself. And when you have arrived at that state when troubles seem sweet and acceptable to you for Christ’s sake, than all is well with you for you have found paradise upon earth. But so long as suffering is grievous to you and you seek to escape it, so long will it go ill with you, for the trouble you try to escape will pursue you everywhere, it will. Yet you don’t have to lie under it, it’s not a question of you lie under it and you’re beaten by it. No, you exercise faith against it and you thank God that he has taken the sting out of this trial, and the sting out of this trouble, and you thank him that he has overcome it and you live in peace with him at the right hand of God while he deals with that trouble. As you take a position of faith in Jesus at the right hand of God, far above all rule, and authority, and dominion, and power, and over the prince of this world who is bringing the trouble, you’ll see the trouble driven back and dissolved before your eyes. That’s the way to deal with it. But never to try to escape it; you’ll find as I found it I think, to my cost, whenever you try to escape it Satan sees that fear in your eyes and he charges after you more and more. So don’t come back from him, don’t retreat from him, go at him with all your heart. Go at him straight, straight into his face in the name of Jesus and don’t be afraid at all because Jesus has already destroyed him and you don’t have to fight Satan, you just have to speak and reject him. That’s the amazing thing: he knows that he has no power over you because of Jesus. But there will be famine in the land. “Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham.” You remember there was a famine that Abraham had had to face. “There was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him, and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.’” Maybe I should point out that Abraham also went to this Abimelech king of the Philistines and you find that in Genesis 20:1. It’s good to be realistic and see that this is a historical narrative and not treat it as myth. Genesis 20:1, “From there Abraham journeyed towards the territory of the Negeb, and dwelt between Kadash and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’ And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.” So Abimelech was the king of Gerar when Abraham went there and that was 80 years before so there are two possibilities. Either Abimelech was the name of all the kings of Gerar as all the kings of Egypt were called Pharaoh, or it is still possible that even 80 years later it could be the same king, because it was not outlandish in those years to live to 150. That would have meant that Isaac, Abraham’s son, could have gone to the same king. So it was either that Abimelech was another king of the same line or that he was the same king at that time. But you read, “And Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.” And then in verse 2, “And the Lord appeared to him, and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.’” Now you remember that in the same situation, when Abraham was facing a famine, he went down to Egypt and that’s where he got into all the trouble. Now God said to Isaac, “Now don’t go down to Egypt, dwell in this land.” God will do that with your troubles; there’ll be a famine that will come to you, some trouble will come to you, but God will be by your side to modify it so that you can bear it by his grace. He will. He’ll come to you at times and say, “Now, alright you have to move but don’t go down into Egypt.” God will not allow a trial to come upon you that you’re not able to bear. And that’s good to remember because you may think tonight, “Well, Pastor I’m game to face these things but they’ll just crush me.” No, God lovingly filters every trial through his fingers and allows to come to you what you’re able to bear. That’s spoken of in 1 Corinthians 10:13. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted,” and the Greek word for temptation used there can be translated “trial” and at times is translated as trial. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted,” or be brought into a trial, “beyond your strength, but with the temptation,” or the trial, “will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” And so brothers and sisters, your God is still in charge. That’s why it’s good to pray that way about Susan and the cancer. Our Father sees the four little children and he sees Serge (Susan’s husband), and he sees Susan, and he allows only so much of Satan’s work to come through that she will be able to bear by his grace. So with each one of us here; God will not allow anything to crush you into the ground. And so you may come into situations where you feel, “This is wearing me down. This is overwhelming me.” No, you are still able to exercise faith in Jesus and to stay up on your feet because God has promised that he will not allow anything to come that is too heavy for you. So even at the moment when you feel, “No, no, I cannot take anymore.” You can know that you can take more because God will not allow anything to come to you that you cannot take. And why I put it so strongly is, I’ve been in that situation where I’ve felt, “I can’t bear anymore Lord, it is impossible.” But then there’s a little voice of Jesus that comes within me and says, “Yes, you can bear whatever God allows to come because he knows your strength and he knows the grace he is giving you and he will not give you more than that to bear.” So you can loved ones, you can stand, and having done all, stand in Jesus’ name against the power of the enemy. You’ll be amazed at what trials you’re able to bear and what amazing trials you’re able to overcome. There is never, never a place for defeat in the lives of those who are God’s children, never; there is never a place for defeat. It is always what [Winston] Churchill said just with his own human natural sense, “In any circumstances, whatever the difficulties, whatever the problems, whatever forces are against you, however many people have been destroyed by those things before, never, never, never, never give up.” And that spirit that came from an ordinary man like Churchill who had not Jesus in his heart the way he has come into our hearts. That’s the spirit for those of us who are God’s children because the Father never allows anything to come to us above what we’re able to bear and he always does this. There may be a famine come into the land, but he’ll speak to us, “No, don’t go down into Egypt.” In other words, “I’ll show you the way through this.” So loved ones, you’re never on your own; God is always speaking to you and beginning to show you the way through. And the way through is always through faith in the fact that Jesus our Savior has already destroyed the powers that are coming against you. Maybe it’s good for us to remember that and see it is always those principalities and powers, it is. It’s not men or women, it’s not events or circumstances, it’s the principalities and powers. It’s those things that are coming against us and it’s those things that Jesus has overcome on Calvary and that we can simply destroy in one word and that word is Jesus. We haven’t got too far and it would take us till 10 o’clock to finish the chapter, so I think I should go on next time. Let us pray. Dear Father, we thank you for all the truths of this dear word of yours. And Lord, we think of the many times when we’ve struggled, we fought valiantly, struggled against all kinds of evil thoughts and all kinds of worried and anxious thoughts that have worn us down and we have felt very small against them, we’ve felt at times our brains were almost going insane. We’ve felt Lord that we had no control over anything and we see now why we haven’t; that these things come from powers that are greater than we are on our own and no wonder we couldn’t control these things. But we do thank you Lord Jesus that you have on Calvary destroyed death itself, destroyed the worse enemy that we knew in the physical world. But with death you destroyed the power of Satan and you trampled him under your feet and we thank you Lord that you have said to us, “I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you.” Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you that all we have to do is resist Satan and he will flee from us. All we have to do is rebuke him in your name and your name he knows. Our name he doesn’t know, our name he doesn’t respect, but your name he respects because you have crushed him and you have cast him out of his position of authority. So Lord Jesus, we thank you that there is not a thing we need fear this coming week. There is no enemy, no evil, no sickness, no disease, no trial, and no conflict that we have to fear. You have already foreseen them. You have taken the sting out of them because you’ve destroyed the spiritual powers that lie behind them, and all we have to do is rebuke those powers in your name and we will begin to see the trouble dissolving and retreating. Lord, we thank you for that. We pray for each other tonight. Pray for good deep sleep for each of us, Lord Jesus. For any dear one here who is troubled with their body at all, any pain in it, or any sickness, we now would rebuke that in Jesus’ name and in Jesus’ name we would say be healed. And we would thank you Lord that you removed every evil that troubles mankind and that we can be free from those at this moment by faith. So we pray for each other that we may have good deep sleep tonight and that in the morning we may rise up refreshed and looking forward to the week. A week of victory in our jobs and our business, and in our own homes through the name of Jesus who makes every evil flee. We thank you Lord. We give ourselves to you and pray that somebody else may see your victory in our lives during these next six or seven days. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.