Understanding The Gates

This morning we want to examine gates and their spiritual significance in your life

How to engage scripture and apply spiritual principles in your life

Today were going into deeper spiritual understandings

The Bible says in Ephesians 5:17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

As that understanding comes our eyes, become enlightened, and the spirit of wisdom and revelation in Christ is given to us.

Ephesians 1:17–18

that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

Deeper spiritual truths take us into the deeper things of Christ.

Revelation takes us from theological understanding to experiential application of scripture.

This is where Spiritual principles are lived out to further advance the Kingdom of God in and through your life.

Unfortunately there are many things that fly over our heads when we read the Bible.

This is due in part to lack of detail when reading but also a lack of faith. (Some people would venture to say God can do that for them but for me it probably wont happen)

Today with this message my aim by Gods grace is to increase your faith and give you strategies on how to fight the enemy effectively.

Examples of gates are all throughout scripture.

Some gates are meant to advance evil or righteousness in spiritual matters over regions and territories

Some gates are meant to keep you out, some gates are meant to protect you and hedge you in.

What were the function of gates in the Bible

The gate is usually the most vulnerable part of a town’s or city’s defenses, simply because it stands at an opening into the city. Because of its vulnerability, strong towers often flanked the gateway to help protect it.

Proverbs 18:10 (NKJV)

The name of the Lord is a strong tower;

The righteous run to it and are safe.

Are you calling on the name of The Lord to keep your gates intact, to keep the spiritual gates of your life strengthened and fortified?

In addition, heavy wooden or metal doors would be closed to shut the gate at night or in times of imminent attack.

Psalm 107:16 (NKJV)

For He (The Lord) has broken the gates of bronze, And cut the bars of iron in two.

Warren Wiersbe says: The administration of an ancient city was transacted at the city gates, so the gates were to those people what the city hall is to citizens in the western world today.

The Gates during ancient times were where judges passed laws, Kings made decisions and where commerce was taking place.

It is still that way today, wherever there are decisions affecting peoples lives through a governing system there will be a spiritual battle to affect that gate.

satan will always try to possess and take control of the gates.

Important gates to understand in the Bible

The Gates of righteousness

The Gates of Hell (Hades)

The East Gate on the east side of the jerusalem temple is one of the most important gates to study.

In ancient Israel, the horses came in and out for battle through the east gate. The Christian life is a battle.

The east gate was where the glory of God left the temple in the book of Ezekiel right before the Babylonians burned it down.

The East gate is the closest gate to the priest and their living quarters within the temple, the enemy wants to fight you close to, or literally in your home.

The Eastern Gate is where Jesus came into the temple on Palm Sunday a week before His crucifixion

The East side of the gate faces the mount of Olives where Jesus gave us Matthew 24 the Olivet discourse which gives us a road map regarding the end-times

Jesus is set to come back to the temple through the East Gate when He returns

I want show you how satan is fighting this gate, just as he is fighting yours right now

Right now the East gate is said to be sealed shut.

The Eastern Gate was sealed shut in AD 1540–41 by order of Suleiman the Magnificent, a sultan of the Ottoman Empire. It’s believed that the reason for the closing of the Eastern Gate was to prevent the Messiah from gaining entrance to Jerusalem. Jewish tradition states that the Messiah will pass through the Eastern Gate when He comes to rule. The Muslim Suleiman was attempting to thwart the Messiah’s plans with sixteen feet of cement. The Eastern Gate has remained sealed for nearly the past 500 years.

What inspired Suleiman to seal the eastern Gate? Do you think that inspiration came from a natural source?

Right now as we speak the eastern Gate to the temple in Jerusalem is sealed shut with a cematery in right front of it.

This is because Jesus being our high priest and priest couldn’t be around dead bodies or come near them because they would be unclean, are trying to prevent Jesus from coming back to the temple through the eastern gate to set up His millenial reign when He returns.

But the Bible that me and you read says

Psalm 24:7–8 (NKJV)

Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle.

Women are gates

Ex. Eve, Mary, Hannah, Sarah, Jezebel, the wife of Phineas which birthed Ichabod: which means the glory of The Lord has departed

When we understand this as the body of Christ universally and also locally we will be affective in influencing and changing our territories with The Gospel.

The most powerful gate is Christ Himself

John 10:9

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.

That word for gate in the original language of the New Testament Greek is

Thura: thoo´-rah; [comp. “door”]; a portal or entrance (the opening or the closure, lit. or fig.): The door, or gate.

Jesus is the gate of Salvation.

We must enter by the narrow gate Matthew 7:13–14 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Jesus’s body is a gate that leads us into holiness in the sight of God.

Colossians 1:22

in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—

The body as a gate

Your body is a gate in the Spirit

Even Jesus said He needed a body, through the body of His flesh He carried out the mission of salvation which was planned from the foundation of the world.

Hebrews 10:5

Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,But a body You have prepared for Me.

Just the way Jesus came into this world bodily which was a type of a gate because it provided entrance for Him into this world, The enemy needed bodies too. You see this play out in Genesis chapter 6

Genesis 6:4 (ESV)

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

The Fallen Angels needed bodies as a gate before the flood of Noah to cause havoc on earth.

Paul talks about our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit

Every temple had gates whether the temple of The Lord or a pagan temple, all temples had entry points

Your eyes and ears are an entry point into your soul.

Your soul is the center of the intellect, emotions and will.

As Christians this is where evil unclean spirits can reside and carry out their destructive plans against us.

With an opening, an access point, provided for by the flesh, worldly living, & willful sin, the gates and walls of our lives as Christians can be brought down. This eventually leads to backsliding.

Sometimes they’re access points in our lives in the spirit we are ignorant of even if were not living in sin. This is due to a lack of understanding in taking authority against the enemy and a lack of identity in Christ.

If we have access points open at the gates of our spiritual lives, unclean, evil spirits, can influence us and cause believers to be

Oppressed

Acts 10:38 “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”

Fearful (A spirit of fear)

2 Timothy 1:7

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Vexed

2 Peter 2:8

(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

Tormented

Matthew 18:34

And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

Confused

Isaiah 19:14

The Lord has mingled within her a spirit of confusion, and they will make Egypt stagger in all its deeds, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit.

Egypt is a representation of the world in the Old testament. You can see the spirit of confusion in the world right now, the spirit of confusion still can affect believers if they don’t have their minds renewed.

Depressed (The spirit of heaviness)Isaiah 61:3 To console those who mourn in Zion,To give them beauty for ashes,The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness,The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”

Memory recall

Isaiah 43:18 (NKJV)

“Do not remember the former things,

Nor consider the things of old.

Philippians 3:13–14 (NKJV)

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Double-mindedness( two souled/spirited)

James 1:7–8

For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

The word for double-minded in the original language is two-spirited

dipsuchŏs: two-spirited, i.e. vacillating (in opinion or purpose):—double minded.

The gates of our lives have to fortified & made strong

Spiritual Gates usually can reside over

Over nations

Over cities, towns and neighborhoods

Gates over families

Gates over churches, ministries or Christian organizations

Gates over individual lives & destiny’s

Usually when we are building or attempting to rebuild our gates we encounter major spiritual resistance.

In the book of Nehemiah we see the Israelites being allowed back to Jerusalem to build the walls of the city again.

This project was financed by The King of Persia, when the southern kingdom of Judah was taken captive by Babylon and kicked out of the land. This was a display of Gods favor on the Jews again to go back and rebuild the city.

During this building project the Israelites experienced intense resistance, even to the point of wanting to give up.

Nehemiah 4:1 (NKJV)

But it so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews.

Nehemiah 4:2 (NKJV)

And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish—stones that are burned?”

When gates are meant to keep us out

They cause different challenges and resistance that we wouldn’t otherwise have

In Genesis we see the prophecy of the seed of Abraham possessing the gates of their enemies

Genesis 22:17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

God empowers us to pull up the gates that are keeping us out

We must get rid of the notion that we are only wrestling against ‘flesh and blood’ on earth. Our wrestling is essentially in the spiritual realm, the realm of the heavenlies. It is simply another way of emphasizing … that we must always think of the enemy who is fighting against us as one who is not only personal, with his personal agents, but also as one who lives in the realm of the spirit.

The Christian Warfare,David Martyn Lloyd-Jones