Living Hope Church

Phil Steiger: It's great to see you this morning. It is truly an honor to be able to address you from God's word. Some of you may have noticed that Loretta is not here with me this morning. She is not feeling well. She's not absent because I'm speaking, at least that's what she said. But she is watching online and we are so thrilled to be a part of this church family.

I'd like to direct our attention this morning to 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 and I want to share some thoughts with you with regard to living in the triumph of Christ. 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 says this: "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere."

Let's pray. Father, we ask for the help of your Holy Spirit this morning to illuminate our hearts, to bring understanding as to the wonderful work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, and the confidence that we can live in, the confidence that he has already won the victory and that we can live and walk in that same triumph. We thank you, Lord, for this marvelous truth. May hearts be encouraged today. In Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

This is interesting language that the Apostle Paul has chosen in this passage. "Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession." For the ancient reader of that text, they would have immediately understood what Paul had in mind when he talked about the triumphal procession of Jesus Christ. In the Roman culture of that day, they had a celebration called the Roman Triumph. It didn't happen with great frequency, but every once in a while, because of a great victory that had been won by one of their generals and their armed forces, they would set up this grand parade through the city of Rome, terminating at the capitol, celebrating the victory that had been won.

The parade must have been something to behold. The parade started with trumpeters who were going through the streets announcing what was happening. The people would flood out into the street sides and watch as the parade went by. Historians tell us that this parade was made up of trumpeters followed by spoils that were taken from the conquered land. That was followed by pictures that had been painted or drawn to depict the land and even models of citadels and ships that had been taken captive by their troops.

Following that part of the parade, there was a great white bull, and this bull was to be taken to be sacrificed. Then there were the captive princes, leaders, and generals in chains going in the midst of this parade. They were followed by minor officials of the Roman Empire, and following them were musicians again playing their lyres. Behind them came pagan priests carrying their censers burning sweet-smelling incense. There was a fragrance that wafted over the city as a result of this grand parade. Following the priests was the general himself.

The general would be in a chariot drawn by four horses, wearing a purple tunic. He had an ivory scepter, and he was there in grand style being celebrated by the people of Rome. Following him was his family and behind the family were the troops that had won that victory. It must have been a grand and glorious event to behold. The Apostle Paul says to the believer, the follower of Jesus Christ, "Christ is always leading us in the triumphal procession."

As I was thinking about this passage this past week, I was reminded of a story from my family history. I have an uncle whose name was Kenneth Harrelson, my mom's brother. She had several brothers and many of them fought in World War II. Kenneth fought in the 28th Infantry of the US Army in the field of Europe. During the course of that war in 1944, in about the month of May, Germany had taken captive the city of Paris and they were holding the city.

Charles de Gaulle was the President of France at that particular time, and there was a revolutionary force, a French resistance, that rose up from among the citizens. They began to rise up against the German occupiers of the city of Paris. There was also a division of the French army that was fighting on the front lines with the allies, and they left the front lines to join the resistance in Paris. They fought against the Germans who were occupying the city of Paris and they overcame them. The Germans there in the city, contrary to Hitler's desire, surrendered.

Hitler had wanted them to render the city of Paris in rubble if they were going to be overrun by this resistance, but instead, they surrendered. Charles de Gaulle had this incredible parade through the city with these French resistance fighters and those that had left the front lines to come and fight with them in Paris. History records as many as two million Parisians that flooded out into the streets to celebrate with them. A few days later, in August of 1944, Eisenhower brought the 28th Infantry Division to march through the streets of Paris and my Uncle Kenneth was part of that division.

I remember him telling our family the story of what that meant to him and his fellow soldiers that had been fighting ferociously against the Germans. They marched through that city and he talked about the people that flooded to the street sides. They were cheering and encouraging him. He said even women would break into the ranks of the soldiers and kiss them. They were so thrilled with what the allies were doing to liberate France. D-Day still lay ahead of them in June and the war was not over, but they had won these victories and they were on their way to the final victory and triumph over World War II.

What a marvelous experience that was for them. It gave them heart. His brother Harold had been killed in a tank in Europe and his body is buried in Holland awaiting the resurrection. Kenneth survived the war, lived in Denver, was one of our neighbors, and what a marvelous story he had to tell. Friends, we are in a battle for sure for our souls. Satan is fighting against the cause of Christ and the redemption of human souls, but Jesus Christ has already triumphed over Satan, he has triumphed over sin, and he has triumphed over death. He leads us in this triumphal procession.

It's a marvelous truth that I believe God wants us to find comfort, confidence, and strength in. Because of this triumph of Christ, I believe God wants us first of all to rest in the triumph of Christ, to abide in his triumph, to experience the assurance, confidence, and peace that Christ has already on our behalf conquered the enemies of our soul. First of all, Christ conquered sin. Colossians chapter 2 verses 13 and 14 says this: "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."

You need to believe that, rest in that. Satan is the accuser of the brethren. He wants to remind us of our sin, he wants to remind us of our failure, and he wants us to feel unworthy of what Christ has done for us. But Christ has already taken your sin and my sin upon himself. 2nd Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake he made him, Christ, to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Now, you may not feel very righteous this morning. That's appropriate.

But God is righteous, God is holy, and he has imputed his righteousness to you as a child of God. He sees you in the perfect, moral, absolute righteousness of his son, Jesus Christ, and he wants you to embrace that truth and live in that truth and lay aside the guilt that used to afflict you and need not afflict you any longer because Christ took responsibility for your sin and my sin. When we come to him in faith and repentance, he forgives us of our sins and, as the scripture says, he removes them as far as the east is from the west.

He buries them in the deepest sea. He will remember them against you never again because Christ has conquered sin. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer, the follower of Jesus Christ. Then the triumph of Christ includes this fact: he conquered Satan for us. Colossians 2:15 says, "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him." These rulers and authorities is a reference to Satan and the demonic powers that accompany him. Jesus Christ disarmed them.

The Bible tells us that Satan is the god of this world. Jesus revealed that those who were opposing him and unredeemed in heart were the children of Satan. He was their spiritual father, and so it is with you and me until we come to Christ. We are actually under the spiritual authority of Satan until we come to Christ and receive his gift of salvation. When we do so, we're taken out of that domain of darkness. Listen, Colossians 1:13 and 14 says, "He's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Christ stripped him of his authority over you, of his authority over me as children of God, and now Jesus is Lord of our lives. And then Jesus Christ conquered death for us. Romans 6:21 is a familiar passage: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Amazing. 1st Corinthians chapter 15, listen to these passages: "Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by man came death, a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

All the advances of medical science are wonderful and can prolong our lives for a period of time, but death will visit us all. It is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment. You may have noticed in the news some months ago a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping of China. In that meeting, the news reported they discussed their mutual, profound interest in discovering ways to prolong their lives as much as possible, hoping they might be able to live to as old as 150 years.

As I thought about that, I thought when your only hope is what you can experience while in this body, yeah, you may want to live to be 150, though I'm not so sure you'd want to look in the mirror when you reach that age. But Christ has conquered death. In 1995, I had an experience in my life that was very unexpected. I was 48 years old and began to experience chest pains. I went to the doctor, who sent me to the cardiologist, and I ended up in Penrose Hospital. They did an angiogram and discovered that I had a 99% blockage in my left arterial descending artery.

They said I had another artery not quite as critical with about 90% blockage. They talked to me before the angiogram and said we can do an angioplasty if necessary, or if you like, we can do a bypass surgery if necessary. I said let's go with the angioplasty. Sure enough, I was on the table. If you've ever been through that experience, you're fully awake. They have the computer screens, and you can see exactly what's happening. You can see the condition of your artery. As they went into that artery, they put that balloon in that area of blockage and they expanded that balloon, pressed the plaque back into the artery walls.

Afterwards, they reported that it was a miracle that I had not had a serious heart attack. I was only 48 years old. After that experience, talking to doctors and reading a lot of books about cardiovascular disease, I learned that the first symptom of heart disease for 80% of people is death. Isn't that something? Because of medical science, here I am 31 years later. Now, that remedy is temporary; I know that. By the way, I had an experience with the Lord a few months after the procedure in which I believe he was adding supernatural healing to the work they had done, and I'm very grateful for all of that.

But medical science isn't the ultimate answer. Christ has conquered death. To be absent from this body is not simply to be absent, or for the believer, not even to descend into hell, but to be in the presence of the Lord awaiting the resurrection and the transformation of the seed of this body into a celestial, immortal body. What a glorious hope. Rest in the triumph of Jesus Christ. And then, now that we're resting in what he has done, depending fully upon his work and not ours, we begin to reflect this triumph of Jesus Christ through our lives.

This is God's plan. Colossians chapter 1, 9 and 10 says this: "And so," the Apostle Paul writing to these believers in the city of Colossae, "From the day we heard," and he's speaking of they had heard of their faith in Jesus Christ, "From the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God."

To walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord. One of the Ten Commandments is "don't take the Lord's name in vain," and I believe there's a twofold meaning to that commandment. One is simply how we verbalize what we say and are we honoring God with our lips, our tongue. But the second meaning is you can picture it like this: when a child is adopted into a family, they take the name of that family. When you take the name of Christ, we've been adopted into the family of God and we bear the name of Jesus Christ.

That's where the name Christian came from. It identified those believers in the early days of the church as followers of Jesus; they're Christians, they bore the name of Christ. Don't take the name of Christ in vain. Paul says "walk worthy of the Lord." How do we do that? By entering into his victory, first of all, by overcoming sin. I'm not an idealist; I know that this is a journey. I know that not until we see Christ are we going to be really like him totally, but there is this reflection of him that is to be growing progressively in the course of our lives on this earth.

Romans chapter 6 says this: "For the death he, Christ, died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness." You see, we have some responsibility in all of this. "But present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin," notice this statement, "For sin will have no dominion over you."

Do we sometimes sin? Yes. But what has dominion over you? We are now under the lordship of Christ. He's overcome sin and he's saying to us now, "I want you to begin to reflect that righteousness in your behavior, your thinking, your speech." What a marvelous possibility. "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace." Remember, grace is not only unmerited favor, but grace is also the divine influence upon the heart reflected through the life. So God, the Holy Spirit, is there prompting, directing, assisting, helping us to live in a manner worthy of the Lord.

1st Peter 2:24 says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." Friends, our ability to overcome sin is based upon God's empowering grace, the presence of his Holy Spirit, the truth of his word we've brought into our minds, even the fellowship of the body of Christ and our cooperation with what God desires within us. We can overcome Satan's influence. 1st John 4:4: "Little children, you're from God and have overcome them," he's speaking of evil spirits, "for he who is in you is greater than he that is in the world."

Ephesians 6:10 through 12: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Now, our first line of defense against Satan and these demonic powers is the armor of God, which we might summarize by saying living in Christ, living in the truth of his word.

We have on the helmet of salvation and the righteousness, the breastplate of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, and the belt of truth, God's holy word. We have the preparation of the gospel that shod our feet, and we have the shield of faith to fend off the work of the enemy. We have the sword of the spirit, the word of God, which Jesus employed when Satan was tempting him in the wilderness, and he overcame Satan by the word of God. God has given us these instruments to defend ourselves from the enemy of our souls, Satan, and his demonic powers.

Our second line of defense is taking authority over demonic powers through prayer. This is an area that is quite interesting and I think requires careful examination of God's word and wise action on the part of God's people. We see in God's word, of course, Jesus overcame demonic powers. There were occasions when he cast demons out of demon-possessed people, occasions when he healed people who were oppressed by demonic powers and healed the sick and natural diseases and etc. We see in the life of the Apostle Paul when he was in Philippi, an occasion when there was this young woman who was possessed by a spirit of divination and she was kind of ridiculing what Paul was doing in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul finally got tired of it. She was following along as he was speaking to the people in the crowds and what not, ridiculing, and even though she was saying precisely what he was doing, it obviously was being done in a manner that was to discredit what the Apostle Paul was saying. So he finally turned and he commanded that evil spirit to leave that young lady in the name of Jesus Christ, and the spirit left. Because she was so changed, the people who used her and these demonic expressions through her life to make money began to oppose the Apostle Paul because their means of income was now a woman who had been delivered from these satanic powers.

We have authority and power, Jesus said, over serpents and scorpions, these evil spirits. Now, here's where I think we need to be careful. In Jude, we have some information given to us about the archangel Michael who contended with the devil himself over the body of Moses. He says that the archangel Michael dared not to bring blasphemy against the devil; in other words, he wasn't going to rebuke him on the basis of his own authority. Instead, he said, "the Lord rebuke you." You might remember from the book of Daniel that Daniel, who was so faithfully living for God and had seen this incredible vision, was trying to understand it.

An angel was sent by God, this messenger was sent by God, and Daniel was deliberating and waiting for days, wondering what is the meaning of this vision that I've received. Finally, the angel shows up and he says, "I've been delayed by the prince of Persia." He was talking about this category of demonic beings that apparently have some rulership or authority over nations. We read from Ephesians about the fact that we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, etc. What I would suggest is this: when we find ourselves in an encounter or in some situation where we discern that this is a demonic power that is oppressing me or my family, then we can in the name of Jesus Christ take authority over that demonic power and command them to leave.

"Submit yourselves therefore to God," the Bible says, "resist the devil and he will flee from you." Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers, against the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. And, friends, I would suggest this: that when you consider these over-ruling demonic powers and authorities, that God has not given us the authority to address them directly.

We wrestle against them, but we should do so in prayer. Jesus taught us that we are to pray in this way: "Deliver us from evil." It could have been translated "deliver us from the evil one." Friends, there's absolutely nothing wrong with praying, "God, would you deliver us from these demonic powers that I believe are at work in this situation?" When we consider something that even exceeds what would be on the level of a personal experience with a demonic power, that's where I think we should put our effort. And that is, oh God, would you take authority over these demonic powers and deliver us.

We go through seasons in life. I remember pastoring in the 80s and 90s, there was quite a movement in those years with regard to supernatural activity. The pendulum swings, and quite frankly, in some streams of Christianity, their teaching and their efforts at wrestling with demonic powers exceeded the biblical revelation and they began to venture into areas that they should have left to Christ. It was problematic in many ways. The pendulum has swung, and it seems that in the last couple of decades the church in general has become much more naturalistic in its embrace of biblical truth and has been kind of ignoring, not this church but kind of ignoring, the supernatural realities that we face in this world.

Just a little story, a little illustration. Loretta and I took a trip to Phoenix some months ago and spent a few days there to get warm. We were traveling back and we're a little too old to make that journey in one day now, so we spent the night in Albuquerque. We began to have some experience there in Albuquerque. We've been in Albuquerque many times; this is nothing against Albuquerque. But Loretta came under some real oppression. By the way, I asked her if she would mind if I tell this story this morning. She's not here, so she said that'd be fine.

Through the night, she just was not herself. We got in our car the next morning, started for the last leg of our trip home. She was silent, she wasn't talking at all. It was obvious to me that it was as if she had kind of become enveloped in depression or something. So I asked her what was happening and she just said, "I don't understand it, there's no reason for me to feel this way. I'm just in a real funk." She was trying to describe for me this sort of dark place that she was in. As we were talking about that, it occurred to me and I think to her as well that this is not just a normal—we have these things happen to us just because we're emotional beings and we have natural ups and downs.

I wouldn't dismiss that at all or attribute too much to the devil. But on this particular occasion we discerned, "You know what? You're being attacked spiritually." So we pulled over to the side of the road and we prayed and took authority over that spirit and got back on the road again. Wow, she really started feeling better and was back to her old self. It was a small thing; it wasn't anything dramatic. But you know, I think we're living in a time, in a season, in which Satan has increased his activity.

We go through seasons, I think, God's activity changes from one season to another. We had great awakenings and we have periods of time where there's not this tangible move of the Holy Spirit and then it happens again. And we go through seasons in which the activity of Satan and demonic forces kind of ebb and flow. I believe God wants us to be sensitive. Careful, we don't need to be casting demons out of HVAC systems like they were doing in the 1980s. But you do have an enemy of your soul who wants to do damage to your faith, who wants to hinder you from being able to live out your life in the victory that Christ has won.

And, ladies and gentlemen, we can take authority in that spiritual realm and we can pray and we can wrestle with the enemy and overcome him. He will have to flee in Jesus' name. Don't dismiss that as an unneeded element in your life; it can be a very helpful tool of defense. The Apostle Paul concluded that passage about this spiritual armor by saying "and praying always in the spirit." Thank God for the victory that Jesus has won.

When we started, let me read again our text: "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere." What is this fragrance of those who know Christ? I believe it's a Christ-honoring, hope-filled life. And that's yours in Jesus Christ. May we be of that number who live, who rest in, and reflect the triumph of Jesus Christ. God bless you. Thank you.