Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners. I'm Sharon Knotts, welcoming you to the Sound of Faith because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Today's message is part of an in-depth study entitled The Spoken Word Series, which includes teaching on the creative word of God because everything that's created, visible and invisible, God spoke into being.

Also, the living word, the revelation of the two-mouthed sword of the spirit, which is the spoken word of God when we speak what God has quickened to our spirits. This teaching is the culmination of my own personal journey from a place of deep despair to an authorized and dynamized deputy of the spoken word of God.

R. G. Hardy: Well, today is our final session of our series on the spoken word of God. In our first session, we talked about the creative word. Last week, we began with the living word, and that part was about revelation. The revelation is the two-mouthed sword of the spirit. Amen. God's mouth speaks to our spirit a rhema word, a word from the written word, quickens it, or makes it alive in our spirit.

Then we come into agreement with God, and we say the same thing that God says. When we speak it out of our mouth, it then, and only then, becomes a two-edged sword. It is the one weapon against which our adversary, Satan, has no defense. Amen. So today, we will give our final session on the application. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Luke, the fourth chapter. We'll be spending time in the Gospels today, and we'll begin in Luke, the fourth chapter, beginning with verse one.

"And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days, he did eat nothing. And when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, 'If thou be the son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.' And Jesus answered him, saying, 'It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'"

"And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in just a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, 'All this power will I give thee and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine.' And Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.'"

"And he brought him to Jerusalem and set him up on a pinnacle of the temple and said unto him, 'If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down from hence.' Now the devil's going to start quoting the Bible. 'For it is written, he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou shalt dash thy foot against the stone.'"

Whenever the devil starts quoting the scriptures to you, listen carefully. He's either going to twist it, delete something, or add something. Here, he added something. He's quoting Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12, but he added "lest at any time," and that makes a huge difference because it infers you can do it whenever you want. I can just go up there and say, "Watch," and jump off the pinnacle. But what did Jesus say? Verse 12 says, "And Jesus, answering, said unto him, 'It is said, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season."

For a season. Now, we are all familiar with the temptation of Christ, but I wanted to read it again. Number one, I wanted it to be recorded. But also, generally speaking, we always think of the three temptations that we were given by John in 1 John 2:16, where he said all that is in the world is the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. That would be correct. He was tempted on these things. These are the three temptations.

However, I see here not only those three temptations; I see three challenges. Satan challenged Jesus on three things: his identity, his authority, and his faith. Notice how he said in the beginning, "If thou be the son of God." He challenged him on his identity, who he is—the Son of God. Then he challenged him on his authority because he said, "All of this splendor, all the glory of these kingdoms," and you notice that Jesus did not dispute him when he said, "I can give this all to you." He didn't dispute him. He challenged him on his authority. But Jesus said, "It is written, thou wilt only worship the Lord thy God."

Then he challenged him on his faith, and I think this is where he gets a lot of people that are seasoned Christians. He said, "Why don't you just jump off here, off of the pinnacle of the temple? You know what the Bible says; he's going to send angels, and they'll bear you up in their hands." Now, if Jesus was to accidentally fall off something, then the angels would come. It's the same with you and me. If we happen to be in a precarious situation and danger is there and something catastrophic is about ready to happen to us, God sends his angels to bear us up.

But we wouldn't get up there and jump off on our own. Because if we do, we're going to find out that the law of gravity is not rescinded for Christians. So Satan's going to try you on this. Then he's going to come against you with your identity, with your authority, and your faith. No matter how long you're saved, you will always have the devil challenge you on your faith. Sometimes he's going to tell you you don't have any faith. Then he's going to tell you you've got too little faith. Then he's going to tell you you've got weak faith.

But the devil is a liar because scripture tells us in Romans 12:3 that God has dealt unto every man the measure of faith. That means "the" means it's the necessary measure, whatever I need. Well, I know that I had to have faith to get saved. By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. It's not of works, lest any man should boast. I just quoted Ephesians, the second chapter, around verse eight.

So God gives you the faith to get saved. Now, if that faith is good enough to save your soul from sin and hell, is it not good enough for everything else you need to receive from God? God does not give out junk faith. He doesn't give out puny faith and anemic faith. God doesn't have that kind of faith to give out. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father above. So if he gave you a faith as a gift, it's good and it's perfect. If it saved you and keeps you so you believe that when you die you're going to heaven—I tell you what, that takes some kind of faith to believe you're going to heaven when you die.

Well, is not that faith strong enough, powerful enough for every other challenge that you face? Here's another good one: 1 John 5:4. "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." God only has one kind of faith: overcoming faith. And if you have faith, then that's what kind of faith that you have.

So we have to use the same weapon against our adversary that Jesus used. All three times that the devil tempted him or challenged him, he reached all the way back into the Book of Deuteronomy and he quoted from the written word. We read that he was full of the Holy Ghost. And so because he was full of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost was able to give him what to say. We found out in Ephesians 6:17 that it is the sword of the spirit.

The reason why it's called the sword of the spirit is because it's the spirit of God that will quicken that word in your spirit and give you the right word for the right time—that word in due season. He takes that word that's already stored in your spirit. You've deposited God's word in your spirit, and this is something we do on a daily basis. Then the Holy Spirit is able to quicken that and bring it up out of our mouth. When we speak it to our adversary, it becomes that two-mouthed sword.

That's what he did for Jesus. In fact, Isaiah 49:2 prophesied about the Messiah and said, "He has made my mouth like a sharp sword." When he comes back in the Book of Revelations, we see he says, "And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." It's the one weapon against which Satan has no defense. Jesus had fasted for 40 days. He was hungry; we read that. Let me tell you something, the devil does not fight fair. He doesn't jump on you when you're strong, exercising your spiritual muscles.

That's not when he shows up. He comes when you're down, when you're discouraged, when you're sick. Maybe you're in the hospital, or maybe you've been out of church because you can't get to church because you're sick or something's happening in your life. That's when he comes to jump on you. He waited until Jesus was weak in his flesh. But what he didn't bargain on is though he was weak in the flesh, he was strong in the word. It wasn't about matching power for power or strength for strength. It was about matching the authority of the word of God over all the power of Satan, and Satan had nothing to fight back with. He had to leave.

He had to go. And when you continue to stand and speak the word of God, he's going to go. He may not go the first time. He may not go the second time. But if you continue to stand and speak the word of God, he will go. Now, he may come back. In fact, he probably will come back. We read that he departed from him for a season. And this is very important. In the Greek, it actually means he departed from him for an opportunity—for a particular opportune time.

He realized, "I failed this time. I failed. I gotta go. So I'm going to wait for another time when I have an opportunity, and then I'm going to come back at him." And you know, I believe that probably that happened when Jesus was in Gethsemane. But it didn't matter how many times he comes back. If you found out the sword worked the first time, use the same weapon when he comes back. You continue to use the same weapon.

Realize he will come sometimes when you're so weak in your body, but you cannot allow the weakness of your body to cause you to clam up and become withdrawn. You've got to be bold in your spirit because faith resides in your spirit. And when you realize that and you do what James 4:7 says, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." I love this verse: 1 John 2:14. "You are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the wicked one."

That's how we overcome—with the word of God. Our strength is not dependent on how we feel in our body or even in our emotions, but our strength is dependent on how much word of God we have in us. And you know, all of this message came out of my own experience. Many of you know, and I won't go into detail, but all the years, many years of which I was housebound and often bedridden. There were years where I spent like 18 hours a day in bed with back pain.

The thing that brought me out, I had to come out of the despair of it. I had to come out of the hopelessness of it. I had to come out of the mental and the emotional fatigue as well as the spiritual. It's when I began to latch onto this truth and started using the word of God. So every morning when I would get out my Bible and my devotions and things, before I would even read one word of them, I began to speak this. I still to this day do it.

Every day in the morning before I open my Bible and my devotions, this is what I say. I say, "A word to keep and a word to give, by every proceeding word I live. A word to give and a word to keep, a rhema word, deep calls to deep. Deep within me, speak forth this word. Be in my mouth a sharp two-edged sword. Lying Lucifer, get thee hence. Against this weapon, you have no defense."

I say that every morning before I even open the Bible and the word of God up. I've already prepared myself and I've already served notice on the devil. I'm going to read something right now. I may have read it a hundred times already, but what I'm about to read is going to be sharpening my sword. Because your victory will be won or lost by the words of your mouth. This is a powerful proverb. Many of you know it, but we'll quote it: Proverbs 18:21. "Life and death are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof."

Here's Proverbs 13:12: "And a man shall eat of the good fruit of his mouth." Basically, what this is saying is what you speak will either bring life and healing and deliverance and blessings, or it will bring curses and sickness and defeat. It all depends on what you speak. Your words and my words affect our physical bodies, whether to the negative or to the positive. For instance, how do lie detectors work? Because when a person is lying, their blood pressure goes up. Their heart rate goes up. Sometimes they even begin to perspire.

All of these things can be measured electronically. They can measure it, and so that tells them you're probably lying. Because they're going to ask you all kinds of questions. "What's your cat's name?" "Well, my cat's name is Shakespeare." And your cat's name is Shakespeare; it's going to be fine. They're going to ask you all kinds of mundane questions. But when they start zooming in on the matter at hand and they begin to ask you questions, if you are trying to hide something, if you're trying not to confess something and you lie, chances are it's going to show up on that lie detector thing. It's going to go crazy because your blood pressure went up and your heart rate went up.

So you can see that that illustrates to us how influential our words are to our physical health. I just heard this literally almost as I was going out the door and I thought, "Oh, I gotta remember that because I hope it'll fit. I'm going to throw it in here. I hope it'll fit." But anyway, it was a story I was listening to on the radio about a surgeon who was a Christian surgeon. He was doing open-heart surgery on a lady who was, I think, the member of the church he went to.

She had a very serious defect with her heart, and it required open-heart surgery. He told her upfront that we're going to have to stop your heart while we're doing this. But when the surgery's over, all I have to do is touch the heart and it'll go back to beating. So the operation was in progress. It was finished and it was successful. But when he whatever he did to the heart, it didn't beat. He did it again and it didn't beat. It didn't matter every time he touched it, nothing happened.

He finally walked around to the head of the bed, took off his surgeon's mask, and bent down and whispered in her ear. He said, "Mrs. Johnson, your surgery is successful. I repaired your heart. Now you tell your heart to start beating." And guess what happened? What happened? It started beating. Because that's how powerful our thoughts and our words are to affect our physical health. Amen. Out of the abundance of our heart, our mouth speaks.

So that means that whatever we're meditating on, whatever we're thinking on, it's going to come out of our mouth and our bodies are going to respond, whether good or bad. It's in your thought life that that sword is forged. It's in your thought life it begins. So what are you feeding your mind? What is the menu that you have for your mind? That's another whole message that I don't have time for. But let it suffice to say this: the meditation of our spirit can become the medication of our flesh.

So if you meditate, you can medicate. Whatever you meditate on because it tells us in Proverbs 23:7, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so shall he be." In other words, whatever you think is what you're going to become. You're going to be what you think, and you're going to get what you speak. So your meditation is important because out of your mouth, you're either going to speak that which is going to bless and make you healthy and whole, or that's going to cause your problem to only get worse.

Saints, listen to me. When you speak doubt and fear and unbelief, it's like you take the sword out of your mouth and stick it in the devil's. Because there are no—let me tell you something—you're either going to get the good or the bad. There's no neutrality here. Do you understand that? The Bible says we're ensnared by the words of our mouth. That's Proverbs 6:2. We are ensnared by the words of our mouth. Sometimes when we're believing God for healing and we're on our way, but we snare our own selves by things that we say.

Or things that other people say that are negative. We cannot let them get into our spirit. I don't know how many times I fell for that. I repeated that mistake many times. I would get in the service and God would touch me and I would feel touched and I would really be encouraged. Somebody would say something, and most of the time they didn't even have any idea. I'm not talking about saying something real, real bad, but just say something, a little something that would strike fear in my heart. Then it seemed like it just undid everything that I had just received from the Lord. I had to get smart. I had to get smart and begin to realize when I got really touched: get ready. Get the shield out there. You just got something really good from the Lord. He really touched you. Now get ready; be prepared so that when that fiery dart comes, you're immediately ready to quench it and not let it take root in your heart. Amen.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I really hope you are being blessed and spiritually enlightened by this teaching, The Spoken Word Series. This revelation was forged in my spirit during a time of prolonged suffering in my body, which triggered emotional and mental anguish. I had always had a strong spirit of faith, but after being homebound and bedridden, I despaired. In my distress, I begged God for a word to hold on to, and he gave me John 15:7. "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you will and it shall be done."

Honestly, I was disappointed. I wanted something more dramatic. But then I began to get this revelation of God's spoken word, and gradually, as I put it into practice, I overcame the attacks of the adversary. The foundation is the creative word; the word of God literally spoke everything into existence. He framed the worlds and he upholds all things by the word of his power.

The revelation is the authority that Jesus, the word of God made flesh and dwelt amongst us, had himself and gave to us to speak the word as a sharp two-edged sword against the enemy. The literal Greek says "two-mouthed sword." One mouth is God's, and the second is mine or yours when we speak forth the word that God quickens to our spirits. This creates the one weapon against which Satan has no defense.

Rhema is not a magical formula. It is the active, living word of God, a word from "the" word that comes out of our mouth. The application is the illumination of Jesus' own ministry, by which he demonstrated faith in his own spoken word and its unlimited authority over time and distance when he sent his word and he healed them.

Friends, I urge you to order The Spoken Word Series. The complete set is a 3-CD set, offer SK136. That's SK136. Please send a minimum love gift of $15 to the Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, or order online at soundoffaith.org, where you may also order on MP3. But to order The Spoken Word Series by mail, send your minimum love gift of $15 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, request offer SK136. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying, Maranatha.