You just ask yourself a simple question: What do, if the principalities and powers
and the rulers, the powers of darkness, if they know this stuff,
and by now they do because, you know, it's out in the open.
What do they fear? What do they fear? They fear their own destruction,
which means they fear the success of the Great Commission.
Romans 15, «For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised
to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs,
and in order», you have the Jews as one audience, but the other audience is the Gentiles,
«and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.”
And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.”»
So here again, he links the resurrection with Gentile ministry, not just Jews,
but Gentile ministry. Now what's going on here? If you look at Romans 15,
the end of it, verse 12,
Paul tacks on one other verse. «And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles"», the root of Jesse, this is messianic language,
the branch, okay, the Old Testament would have, or roots or the stump.
Interestingly enough, just sidebar. Isn't it interesting that for the king, for the Messiah,
here, once again, we have tree, garden imagery, used of the Messianic King?
But again, that's a sidebar, we spent a lot of time on cosmic gardens and all that stuff.
But here we have «“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.”»
Now what's interesting here is if we turn our interlinear on,
arises is the verb anistemi. It means to rise up, okay?
There's another word used for the same thing.
That means again, to rise up, both of them are used for the resurrection.
But anistemi is one that's noteworthy, because the noun form of this is Anástasis,
which is the New Testament word for resurrection.
That's Anástasis, resurrection. And what's kind of cool is if we go to...
I don't know if I have it open, but I'm going to open it here.
If we go to the Septuagint, I'm gonna show you the English Septuagint.
Here, English translation.
Okay, Paul's writing in Greek. Septuagint in Greek. And if I remember
my Septuagint, numbering correctly, Septuagint, Psalm 82, is not 82. It's 81.
Septuagint has different numbering.
We read here, again, this is Psalm 82. God assembled, you know, in the divine assembly
with the gods, he's going to judge the gods. He rails on them
for the chaos they saw in their nations.
He says, «I said, “You are gods, and all are children of the Most High.”»
And most high is the term used in Deuteronomy 32, for the divorce of the nations.
«But now you die as humans, and as one of the rulers you fall.
Stand up, O God [the psalmist says; rise up],
judge the earth, because you will inherit among all the nations.»
Guess what? It's the same verb as this one.
Okay, Paul links Jesus' resurrection, specifically to rule of the Gentiles.
He knows his Old Testament,
they're under foreign supernatural domination.
The gods over here have to be dealt with and they are dealt with by the resurrection.
There are several passages like this in the Old Testament in the Septuagint,
where the verb and the noun of resurrection is linked to the rule of Gentile territory.
This is why Paul, again, Paul knows his Old Testament really well.
This is why Paul when he thinks of resurrection,
and he thinks of ascension, he associated up here, mentally and theologically,
as being the key to diminishing, to stripping away, Colossians 2,
to stripping away the authority,
disarming the rulers, the principalities and powers over the nations.
And ultimately, ultimately, as the kingdom progresses, let's go back to 1 Corinthians 15.
A couple clicks back here. Ultimately, it's not going to be just disarming.
When the Great Commission is accomplished, okay?
When basically all the people are gathered,
«then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father,»
then he's going to destroy them.
He's going to destroy them. It's no longer disarming, it's destroying.
Now I often get asked, you know, on talk shows, or interviews or whatever,
about spiritual warfare, and how does all this factor in spiritual warfare.
The first thing we have to realize is that Paul's ministry was a tough one.
Just because Paul believes on the basis of Scripture,
and the basis of the reality of the resurrection and the ascension,
that the authority of the supernatural powers of darkness in all these places,
these Gentile dominions, just because he believed
that their authority had been taken away, doesn't mean they're leaving.
Okay, they're going to fight for their turf, they're going to do all they can to blind
the people who live under their charge to the gospel.
They don't want to lose their worship.
They enjoy enslaving their populations. They hate Yahweh, they hate God's people.
The last thing they want is to lose their own subjects to the real King.
Okay, they're going to continue to fight. This is why Paul talks about spiritual warfare.
We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities
and rulers in the heavenlies. Okay,
it is a conflict, they're not dead, yet they're not destroyed yet,
they will be and they know it,
because of Psalm 82 and other passages, they know that. But Paul, again, has linked
the coming of the kingdom, and with it the day of the Lord in the end and the destruction
of the supernatural beings, he's linked it in Romans,
we just read the passage to something called the fullness of the Gentiles,
when the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in, then Israel will awaken,
all Israel will be saved. And that needs to happen too, that needs to happen too.
So do you see what that means? Paul, again, biblical theology,
links the success of the Great Commission to the return of the Lord,
the Day of the Lord
and the destruction, the final destruction of all the cosmic powers.
So when I get asked what is spiritual warfare, okay, it's not shouting at demons.
Okay, it's not you know, these confrontational things that we think of as spiritual warfare,
spooky stuff, like we're Ghostbusters or something, okay?
It's not that. I've talked to plenty of missionaries, and they have those episodes.
And people over here too, they have these episodes, they're real, and it could happen.
But that is not the ultimate end game. It's not even the ultimate battle.
It's not really even what it's about.
What it's about you just ask yourself a simple question.
What do, if the principalities and powers, and the rulers,
the powers of darkness, if they know this stuff,
and by now they do because, you know, it's out in the open.
What do they fear? What do they fear?
They fear their own destruction,
which means they fear the success of the Great Commission.
Their game plan, do they think they can win?
Of course they don't think they can beat the Most High,
they don't think they're going to kill him off, because they're not idiots. All right.
But what they do believe, what they do know is that the longer
we kick the Great Commission can down the road.
The longer we blind people to the gospel. The longer it takes
to reach whatever point this is, and only God knows when the fullness of the Gentiles
is accomplished, and Israel awakens. The longer we can keep that in the future,
we survive. That's the game plan.
That's how they are going to define victory; we're still here.
And this is spiritual warfare; it is focused on the Great Commission.
So, what I try to advise people is look, I know spiritual warfare sounds sexy,
it is because of the way it's sort of in Hollywoodise and whatnot.
And like, it would be it would just be the highlight of our day
to get into a conflict with a demon Okay,
what the highlight of your day ought to be is winning somebody to the Lord.
Because that is what they fear. They don't fear getting kicked out of a room or you know,
I gotta go possess somebody now, you know.
No, what they fear is their own destruction. And the only thing that's going to lead
to that is the success of the great commission. That is biblical theology.