Pathway to Victory

David J. Mullins: Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. Now, here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, God has called us to do more than survive Satan's attacks. He's told us to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, to join Him in doing that. And that's what I mean by what I call offensive Christianity instead of defensive Christianity.

David J. Mullins: Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. As Christians, we often find ourselves in a defensive posture, simply trying to survive the attacks that come our way. But what if God is calling us to do more than just hold our ground? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains how to move forward in faith while facing adversity. But first, let's take a moment to hear some important ministry updates.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Thanks, David. And welcome again to Pathway to Victory. In this season of global unrest, chances are you've felt a wave of uncertainty and fear about the future. You see, our minds are like Satan's playground. Well, I've written a bestselling book called *The Divine Defense*. Based on the armor of God described in Ephesians chapter six, my book outlines a step-by-step action plan for defending yourself against Satan's attacks.

Satan wants nothing more than to see you live in fear and turn away from God. And my book will show you how to protect yourself against his attacks by using the spiritual weapons at your disposal. A copy of *The Divine Defense* is yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. And if you respond today, I'm also going to include an illustrated multi-folded brochure that identifies each item in the armor of God. This brochure is called *Equipped for Battle*. It's a powerful reminder that God is at your side to help you win whatever battle is confronting you today.

David J. Mullins: I'll say more about my book, the brochure, and other resources later. But right now, let's get started with today's study. For the past few weeks, we've been learning how to defend ourselves against Satan's attacks. But now it's time to turn the tables and take an offensive position. I've titled today's message, "Storming the Gates of Hell."

Dr. Robert Jeffress: One of the truisms of football is that the best defense is a good offense. That same truth applies to the military as well. When a soldier hears the bullets buzzing over his head or the bombs bursting around him, his natural instinct is to drop to the ground and protect himself. And that's a good thing.

But if the soldier is going to actually be successful in his mission, there comes a time he has to stand up, shake off the dust, and actually move forward to the goal. Surviving is not enough. And it's the same in spiritual warfare. Yes, we've talked about the fact that Satan has a plan to destroy our life. We need to know how to survive those attacks.

But God has called us to do more than survive. He is actually inviting you and me to join Him in overthrowing the kingdom of Satan. Do you realize that as Christians, we are the first wave God has sent to soften up the soil, if you will, to prepare it for the final invasion by Jesus Christ, our Commander-in-Chief? We're just softening up the territory right now, getting it ready for that final invasion.

Think about it. Every time you win somebody to faith in Christ, you are delivering them away from the enemy's power into God's army. And when you win somebody to faith in Christ, you just loosen up by a little bit more the grip Satan has on this world. When you give God glory for something He's done in your life, you help dispel the enemy's myth that there is no God.

When you encourage another Christian who's going through a difficult time, you're strengthening the troops in order that they might serve God. Every time you refuse to surrender any area of your life to Satan, you throw Satan into chaos and thwart his plan to destroy your life. Again, God has called us to do more than survive Satan's attacks. He has told us to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, to join Him in doing that.

And that's what I mean by what I call offensive Christianity instead of defensive Christianity. You say, "Well, this idea of overthrowing the kingdom of Satan, that sounds a little extreme. Where in the Bible are we called to do that?" I'm so glad you asked. Matthew chapter 16, remember Jesus asked His disciples, "Who are people saying that I am?" And they gave various answers.

And then Peter said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And what did Jesus say? In Matthew 16:18, He responded, "I say to you, Peter, that you are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church." The word "rock" there, the gender doesn't refer to Peter. He's not the rock of the church. Petros, it refers to the confession that Peter made, the truth that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

It's upon that foundation Jesus said, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it." We have recited that verse for so long that we've never looked at what it's really saying. We get this idea when we think about the gates shall not prevail against it, we picture that it's the church and its members that are behind the gates, shivering with nervousness and fear that Satan and his demons with their battering ram are going to prevail. They're going to knock down the gate and take us captive.

That's not who's behind the gate. It's not the church; it's Satan and his demons. The gates of hell will not prevail against the kingdom of God. Satan and his demons are scared to death that you and I will actually act on what we believe to be true. They're scared of the church. But the church, Jesus said, is to be on the offense. We're the battering ram against the kingdom of Satan. Upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

And that leads to the definition of offensive Christianity. You know what it means to be offensive in your faith? It means moving forward instead of standing still or retreating in God's plan for your life. Moving forward instead of standing still or retreating. The fact is when you are moving forward in God's plan for your life, guess who's moving backwards? The more you go forward, the more Satan is the one who is forced to retreat.

That's why the Bible often uses the imagery of walking to describe what the Christian life is like. It's a walk. Sometimes, if the biblical writer is feeling especially invigorated, he talks about running. But it's all the same idea: moving forward in the plan God has for you. Just jot down some of these references comparing the Christian life to walking.

Colossians 1:10, "So that you may walk in a manner worthy of the calling, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God." Or Ephesians 4:1, Paul said, "Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called." Or First Thessalonians 2:12, "So that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory."

Again, the goal is to walk, to move forward instead of standing still or retreating. The writer Neil Anderson gives a great picture and illustration of this. He said, "Imagine a long, narrow road. And at the end of that road, you can look, and at the end of that road is Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of your faith." You're standing here. All you have to do is move down that road to finally be in the presence of Jesus.

That road represents the unique path, the course, Jesus has for your life. Now, what's interesting is there are no barriers in that road that keep you from coming to Christ. But on opposite sides of that road, there are some apartment buildings, multi-story apartment buildings that are inhabited by demons. And as you walk down this road toward the Lord Jesus Christ, the demons are doing everything they can to keep you from moving forward.

They're trying to discourage you. They're saying, "You don't have the strength. You don't have the ability to continue down that course. You're not going to make it." Other demons try to entice you to leave the road to come up and enjoy what they have to offer. Still other demons try to confuse you when you're on that road, making you wonder, "Am I on the right road, or should I be on a different road?"

But again, those demons and Satan have no real power over you. The only power they have is the power that you choose to give them. That's what it means to walk, to move forward in the plan that God has for your life. Now, that's where the spiritual weapons come in that we've been studying in this series, *The Divine Defense*.

In Ephesians 6, Paul says God has given us six strategies, six weapons. We looked at the first three. And what those first three—the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the feet shod with the preparation of the gospel—those weapons are more defensive in nature. They help us stand firm; they protect us against Satan's attacks. But the next three weapons are more offensive. They mean going forward: the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

So, we're going to look at the first of those three offensive weapons today: the shield of faith. Look at Ephesians 6:16. Paul says, "In addition to all,"—some translations say "above all else," meaning this is really important—"take up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one." Shields are always important in battle.

One of my favorite TV shows I used to watch when it was on was *24*. How many of you ever watched *24* with Jack Bauer, who every hour was facing a terrorist threat that he would try to protect the world from? And I remember in one episode, there were some terrorists holed up in a house in Los Angeles with some hostages who were scared to death.

And Jack Bauer is out there strategizing about how to get inside and rescue the hostages. And finally, he says to the police, to the SWAT team, "Bring in the shield." And they bring in this mammoth shield. And once Jack Bauer has a shield, he's able to move forward in spite of the barrage of bullets and he's able to save the world yet another time. Shields are important, and guess what? Shields predated Jack Bauer and *24*.

They actually existed during Paul's time. A Roman shield was an important weapon, an offensive weapon for when soldiers were moving forward. As they started moving forward toward the presence of the enemy, the enemies would use flaming arrows. They would take a normal arrow, they would take the tip of that arrow, and they would dip the tip of the arrow in pitch. They would dip the tip of the arrow in pitch.

And once they had the pitch on it, they would set it afire and it would burn. So, when the soldier sent it, it was a flaming arrow, a flaming missile. Now, interestingly, the closer you got to the enemy, the more missiles came flying at you. That's when the enemy got desperate. And by the way, one way to know you are in God's will is all the trouble you may be experiencing.

The troubles you experience individually, the trouble sometimes a church experiences is because they're getting close to threatening the enemy and he's going to launch every kind of attack he can. Well, what do you use in order to extinguish those flaming arrows? It was the shield. In Paul's day, the Roman shield was four and a half feet tall, two and a half feet wide, and it was covered in leather that had been soaked in water.

And therefore, when the missiles started coming—the flaming arrows—all the soldier had to do was hold up the shield and as soon as that flaming tip met the water-soaked leather, it would be extinguished immediately. In the same way, we have a shield as Christians that protects us from the many different flaming arrows: arrows of doubt, disobedience, discouragement.

We have a shield, but it's not a shield of leather. It is a shield of what? Faith. Faith is our shield that immediately extinguishes the flaming missiles of Satan and allows us to keep moving further down God's road for our life. What do you mean when you talk about faith? Don't you agree that's the keyword in this passage? Take up the shield of faith.

Now, I want you all to listen to me. I want you to think about what really faith is. If you listen to some television preachers, they will give you the idea that faith is just this positive emotion you conjure up in yourself, making yourself believe that God will do what you want Him to do. And if you simply will declare in power, "I claim this, God must do this."

If you say that loudly enough and often enough and with enough persistence, God will be forced to do what you want Him to do. That's what they call faith. Faith is the assurance they believe that God will do what you want Him to do. Anytime I hear that, I think about a story I used to read the triplets when they were little: *The Little Engine That Could*. Do you remember that story?

Little tiny engine, and it's got a big hill to go up. It's not sure it can make it. But it keeps saying to itself, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." It gets to the top of the hill and it's downhill after that. Everything's great. A lot of Christians actually think that's kind of what faith is.

It's this belief that if we just say something, chant something, it'll make God want to do it. If we will just believe hard enough that God will heal my marriage, if we believe strongly enough that God will heal my body, if we believe that God will answer this request or this request, if we just have enough faith that God will do what I want Him to do, He must act. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not faith. That is presumption.

Here is what faith is: Faith is the assurance that God will do what He has promised to do, and acting accordingly. I don't know all the time if it's God's plan to heal, or God's plan to take care of a financial need, or it's God's will to give you a job or not. You can ask for those things, but faith means quietly resting in whatever God's answer is.

But there are some things God has promised to do. And faith means believing those things that He has promised to do and acting accordingly. Jot down Hebrews 11:1. This is the definition of faith that the writer gives: "Now faith is the"—what? Say it out loud. Assurance. What? Assurance. It's the assurance of things hoped for. It is the—what? Conviction of things not seen.

Will you notice that real biblical, God-pleasing faith is first of all not a hope, wish, or desire; it is an assurance. That Greek word "assurance" refers to the concrete foundation of a massive building. It is concrete. It is the assurance of things hoped for. It is, secondly, the conviction. That word "conviction" refers to the result of our faith, actions you take because of your faith.

Let me illustrate that for you. Think about Noah. He believed with all of his heart what God said, that there's going to be a flood, and he acted accordingly: he built a boat. Or think about Abraham. Abraham believed that God would make him the father of a great nation, and he acted accordingly by moving his family to a land that God would show him.

Think about Rahab the harlot. She believed what God said, that God was going to give the Israelites victory over the Canaanites. And what did she do? She hid those two Hebrew spies, risking her own life. Again, faith is believing God will do what He has promised to do and acting accordingly. And in the realm of spiritual warfare, faith means moving forward in following God's plan for your life in spite of the flaming missiles of doubt, discouragement, depression, or whatever else Satan may fire in your direction.

A great illustration of somebody who held up that shield of faith when he was under attack is the Old Testament patriarch Job. Remember Job? He was having in chapter one what we would call a really bad, horrible day. In just 24 hours, think of all that happened to him. There was a fire that destroyed all of his livestock, his livelihood. Then there was that freak windstorm that killed all of his ten children.

And if that weren't enough, there were these illnesses that were incurable. Job was discouraged, rightly so. But he held up the shield of faith. There are three truths that made up Job's shield, three truths that constructed his shield of faith that it's vital you and I have in our shield of faith. Three convictions and appropriate actions that followed.

First of all, Job believed that God is in control, therefore he could trust Him. If you're going to have a shield of faith that allows you to move forward in spite of Satan's flaming arrows, your shield of faith has to be an assurance that God is in control and therefore you can trust Him. It's hard to believe God is in control sometimes, isn't it?

We look at what's happening in the world in general or in our world in particular, and we think, "God, are you asleep at the switch? Don't you know what's going on? I mean, if there really is a God in control, why doesn't He reconcile my marriage? Why doesn't He return that prodigal child? Why doesn't He heal my illness or the illness of a loved one?"

If God is in control, why did these things happen? And we're tempted to think a lot of things. Maybe God is apathetic; He doesn't care. That's what the Greeks thought about their gods; they were apatheos, without feeling. Maybe God doesn't care. Or maybe God is impotent. He wishes He could help, He'd love to help, but there are these natural laws that preclude Him from doing anything supernatural.

That was the thoughts of Rabbi Harold Kushner, the famous Jewish rabbi in the 1980s and '90s who wrote that book *When Bad Things Happen to Good People*. He had a young son who died from a terrible illness. And Rabbi Kushner came to the conclusion that God would have loved to have helped him, but He was just incapable of doing so because of the natural laws of the universe.

Another Jewish rabbi in reading that responded, "If that's who God is, then He ought to resign and let somebody more competent take over." Is God impotent? Not the God that I serve. Well, maybe it's that God doesn't even exist. Maybe we've just conjured up this God to make us feel better, but in fact, He doesn't answer because He can't answer.

But to have faith means that God is in control even when we see evidence to the contrary. That's the conclusion, by the way, Job came to. It's interesting, when you read the book of Job, Job did not immediately come to the right answer. It took him some time to process things. He had some questions he wanted to ask God.

You know what? God is not troubled by your questions. God's not bothered by you asking questions. What He's bothered by are not difficult questions, but it's wrong answers. God doesn't mind you asking the question as long as you come to the right biblical answer. And in Job 42:2, after suffering all of these losses, listen to what Job said: "I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted."

That's the shield of faith. I know that you're going to do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Do you believe that? Do you believe that God has a plan for your life and that nothing is going to change that plan? Do you have that assurance? Ladies and gentlemen, when those fiery missiles come into your life, you need to know that God is in control and you can trust Him even though in the darkness you cannot see what God is doing.

That's what Job believed. God is in control, I can trust Him. Secondly, Job believed God rewards the righteous, therefore obey Him. God rewards the righteous, therefore obey Him.

David J. Mullins: I'm not finished with today's topic. There's much more I want to show you in Ephesians chapter six about spiritual warfare and putting on the full armor of God, so stay with us. And in a moment, David will explain how you can listen to this entire series called *The Divine Defense*, either on audio CDs or video DVDs, or by listening online.

But first, let me remind you that this teaching series that was delivered to the congregation at First Baptist Dallas not long ago has become a bestselling book as well. And today, you're invited to request a copy. It's going to arrive at your home along with an illustrated brochure called *Equipped for Battle* that identifies each garment God has designed for your protection.

Follow God's plan by putting on the full armor He provides, and the devil doesn't stand a chance. You'll read about the strategies for spiritual warfare in my book, *The Divine Defense*, when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Maybe it's been a long time since you've sent a gift. Perhaps you've never done so.

Now's the time to come alongside Pathway to Victory so that we can equip Christians far and wide how to fight their spiritual battles. Without God's help, we have no hope. But I know His light shines brighter when we all come together and broadcast the good news of Jesus Christ. Now's the time to respond. Thanks so much. Here's David to tell you more.

When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you *The Divine Defense*, Dr. Jeffress's bestselling book on demons and spiritual warfare. You'll get that along with the *Equipped for Battle* brochure. Just call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. To give by text, it's simple: send PTV to 78800.

And when your gift is $100 or more, we'll also send you this month's teaching series on audio and video disc, a companion study guide, plus a book especially for children called *Suit Up for Kids*. This engaging book equips children with biblical truth and practical lessons on spiritual victory. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could write to PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: I'm David J. Mullins. God has given you powerful weapons to push back the forces of darkness. Learn how to use those powerful weapons Wednesday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

David J. Mullins: Alaska's pristine wilderness showcases God's glory like nowhere else on Earth. And you're invited to experience it firsthand on the Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska. Enjoy daily Bible teaching, worship led by Michael O'Brien, and laughter with Dennis Swanberg, all aboard Holland America's five-star Koningsdam. So reserve your cabin today. Call 888-280-6747 or visit ptv.org.

You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His word.

To become a pathway partner, go to ptv.org/donate or you can follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Oh, and one last thing before we go: have you reserved your spot yet for the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska? You've been hearing me and Dr. Jeffress mention it, so what are you waiting for?

Just picture yourself on the deck of Holland America's elegant Koningsdam and stepping out on deck to witness nature's grandeur. It's beautiful. These moments in God's creation will deepen your faith in powerful ways. It really will. Experience five-star dining, luxurious staterooms, and visiting iconic ports like Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway. We're also bringing along our own Christian entertainment, you'll love it. Seats are filling up, so book your spot today at ptv.org.