The Unseen World
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JESUS AND SATAN ARE HAVING A CONVERSATION...
Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on his computer. They had been going at it for days, and God was tired of hearing all of the bickering.
Finally God said, "Cool it. I am going to set up a test that will run two hours and I will judge who does the better job."
So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away. They moused. They did spreadsheets. They wrote reports. They sent faxes. They sent e-mail. They sent out e-mail with attachments. They downloaded. They did some genealogy reports. They made cards. They did every known job. But ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured and, of course, the electricity went off.
Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed. The electricity finally flickered back on and each of them restarted their computers.
Satan started searching frantically, screaming "It's gone! It's all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!"
Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours. Satan observed this and became irate.
"Wait! He cheated, how did he do it?"
God shrugged and said, "Jesus saves."
ha-foke bah
ha-foke bah
Introduction
New message series:
Big Idea: The right nudge from the right source at the right time will get you to the right place.
Story: The world of Science says there is a universe of activity going on in the human body every minutes that is nudging you in a certain direction.
Yeshua taught his disciples there was an unseen world nudging you and your choices.
A world that, like the world of our DNA and Neuro systems, has the potential to nudge us and have massive impact and influence on our visible world
We don’t need a microscope to determine the reality of this unseen world of nudges and prodding. We simply need a rearview mirror.
Some people are able to avoid or resist the wrong nudges and seem to successfully get nudged in the best directions.
Why don’t we just look at the statistics or the headlines and resist getting nudged in the wrong direction?
Why do we allow ourselves to get nudged in a direction our heart, mind and will knows will lead us away from where we really want to be?
Yeshua believed in this unseen world that is constantly nudging you and impacting what you feel, what you think and what you choose to do.
His explanation of this unseen world is a bit unsettling.
You may push back on this. I do at time.
You may think, “and that is why you are all cookoo.” I do at times also.
This raises as many questions as it does answers, but that does not mean it is not true. It just means we can’t thoroughly explain or understand it.
Personally, I’m okay with that. This morning I got up and sent out an e-mail. I do not fully understand nor can I fully explain this mysterious thing called the internet and how it works. I use it. I depend on and utilize things all the time that I don’t understand. I’ve yet to see a neurotransmitter carry information across a synapse to the next neuron. But I know this is happening because when I stub my toe that information travels through my body and out my mouth.
In Matthew 16, Yeshua finds himself engaged in a question and answer session about His identity and purpose.
Matthew 16:13
When Yeshua came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
Yeshua carefully chose Caesarea Philippi as the location for this Q & A.
These were the famous gates that in pagan culture acted like a portal from the world of demonic spirits to our world. This is like Yeshua choose to stand outside of a supposed “haunted house” for this discussion.
Panias was the ancient name of this site, contemporary times it is called Banias, was the location of soul destroying prods. The pagan temple Yeshua and his disciples were standing at had three layers: The Greek god Pan, and ancient Arcadian god half-man and half-goat celebrating fertility. The greek god Hades who ruled over the dark world of death and there was a Roman Temple to celebrate the rule of Caesar.
These represent the three nudges of: uncertainty, fear and conformity.
Matthew 16:14-15
They answered, “Some say John the Immerser, others say Elijah, and still others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
He said, “But who do you say I am?”
He has given them more than enough evidence to believe he is from God. But the majority of his people, keep falling back on what is easy to believe or the most Jewish thing to believe.
He knows the majority of people are just saying what they have been told to say. This is easy believes. That is the easy thing to say.
He is asking them something deeper, “Who do you say I am?”
This is the question that Yeshua knows will reveal the unseen world inside of them.
It is like take a meath thermostat and putting it into a thick slab of meat. What I can’t see or know the thermostat tells me. This question is the thermostat into the unseen world of his disciples.
Matthew 16:16—17
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Yeshua said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven!
Peter is giving voice for the rest of the apostles.
Yeshua says that the fact that they do recognize him as having come from God as Messiah and Son of God is evidence that they are being nudged by the unseen world of God’s Spirit.
If they were just being nudged by what everyone else was nudged by they would never know who Yeshua really is, they would not recognize that he came from God not as a prophet nor a holy man but because God’s Invisible Spirit was working in them they were also seeing the unseen world of who Yeshua is.
John 14:16-17 The Helper and the Truth
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper so He may be with you forever—
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him. You know Him, because He abides with you and will be in you.
Yeshua believed some people are nudged by what is visible and others by the One who is unseen.
Matthew 16:18
And I also tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My community; and the gates of Sheol will not overpower it.
The nudges of the unseen Spirit of God are our strongest defense against every other unseen nudge, prod or poke.
Yeshua promised he would build his ecclesia against this rock face with all its etchings and niches devoted to gods and goddesses, all of which represented crushing falsehood. Nudging, eroding and poking people in all the wrong directions. The unseen activity of the Holy Spirit revealing the Messiah would be an offensive against the destructive world views that rob people of life and hope. These gates would collapse as unseen Spirit of God moved forward with power in women and men’s hearts.
He makes a statement that shows how easily we can be nudged by a darker more sinister unseen world.
Matthew 16:21-23
From that time on, Yeshua began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and ruling kohanim and Torah scholars, and be killed, and be raised on the third day.
Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Never, Master! This must never happen to You!”
But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but the things of men.”
You don’t understand how I will be who I am.
Is it the disciple’s hearing? No.
The reason you can’t recognize the obvious is because you have been confused and deceived.
There is something/someone else at work.
There is an invisible influence that is influencing your understanding.
Matthew 16:23
But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but the things of men.”
He describes who is nudging Peter’s understanding of how the Messiah would be Messiah but not only who was nudging Peter but who had been nudging people all along in the wrong direction.
He names him: Satan. This is not a figure of speech to refer to evil in general but the personal name of a real being. One who is described as
Arrogant - Isa 14:11-12
Your pomp is brought down to Sheol with the music of your harps. Maggots are spread out under you, and worms cover you.” How you have fallen from heaven, O brighstar, son of the dawn! How you are cut down to the earth, you who made the nations prostrate!
Cunning - 2 Cor 11:3
But I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds might be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion and purity to the Messiah.
Murderer and Liar John 8:44
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks lies he is just being himself—for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Prince of this world - John 14:30; Luke 4:5-6
“I will not talk with you much longer, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has nothing on Me.
And leading Him up, the devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in an instant. And the devil said to Him, “I’ll give to You all this authority along with its glory, because it has been handed over to me and I can give it to anyone I wish.
Yeshua links the blindness and temporary insanity we’ve all experienced and seen around us to a real being, Satan.
So we shouldn’t be shocked to discover that thirty years later, when the apostle Paul was instructing disciples in Ephesus how to live, he makes personal application. The practical side of things . . .
Paul fleshes out the practical application of Peter’s grand statement that was nudged along by the unseen world of God’s Spirit and the dangerous statement that was nudged along by Satan. Ephesians 6:10-12
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.
Put on the full armor of God, so that you are able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the worldly forces of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
The devil is scheming (v. 11). That explains the confusion.
It is a system that nudges peoples minds, hearts and wills away from God.
Nudges towards pleasures that lead to broken hearts.
Nudges away from God and then blames him for the consequences.
Nudges towards a broad and twisted path full of compromises and apathy.
Our greatest problem is not one another but being nudged by this unseen schemer.
Our enemy wants to nudge us away from the one thing that most help us.
Matthew 16:24
Then Yeshua said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.
Dying to ourselves. He knows if die to all we once knew, what once drove us, and if we are born again, born anew and become like children then we will recognize the devil’s nudges for what they really are; the prods of self-destruction and damnation.
He also wants us to loose sight of who we are once we are born-again and he equally wants us to see one another as the enemy. We are going to flesh this out more in this message series.
Maybe, just maybe the your husband, your kids, your boss, your employees, your congregation is not the real problem.
There is a spiritual component to all of those struggles. We are dealing with being that is ancient, powerful, murderous and cunning. He knows how to nudge you just a little so that it sets off a ripple effect in your life.
Have you ever said to yourself, “Why did I believe that, I sure was wrong?” Or, “Why did I loose my cool?” Or, “Why did I say those words?”
We have a very real unseen enemy.
But, we also have a very unseen and real Helper. The Holy Spirit of God.
The right nudge from the Holy Spirit will get you to where you really want to be.
Conclusion
Now all of that may sound like a bunch of science fiction nonsense. I’m wired to agree. We can’t go around blaming the devil for everything—if such a creature even exists.
But every once in a while, I bet you have seen somebody do something that was so purely evil that you wonder: How could anyone? Who would ever? Why would a person?
A milkman who walks into an Amish schoolhouse and kills five girls to revenge the death of his daughter years earlier
Genocide in Rwanda, Darfur—cutting off children’s hands/arms
Slavery
Child pornography
Child prostitution
Holocaust
Flying passenger jets into buildings to please God
How does anyone get that confused? Deceived?
I bet that every once in a while you have seen somebody do something so incredibly amazing you wonder: How could anyone? Who would ever? What would a person:
Die as a martyr by the hands of ISIS rather than renounce Yeshua.
Hide Jewish people from Nazis at the risk of their own families lives.
Give all they have to feed the poor and care for the sickest of the world.
Courage to confront terrorist wanting to fly planes into buildings.
To set apart yourself to god instead of pleasuring self.
That’s when I fall back on my fundamental belief that there is an unseen world. It is full of activity where a cosmic scale battle is being fought daily. And whether I understand it all or can explain it all, I’ll lean into his explanation of the world around me rather than my own.
This is why I pray every day, “God fill me with your Holy Spirt and keep falsehood and lies far from me. Help me to see as you see.”
So, for the next four weeks, we are going to compare and contrast four nudges. We are going to see for every nudge of the Holy Spirit our enemy also has a nudge to respond with and these nudges are intertwined with our lives every day.
We are nudged every day.
The right nudge from the right source at the right time will get you to the right place.