Good morning. Ephesians 6. First place we're going to be. I don't have a bookmark there. We better pray first. Thank You, Lord, for the great privilege and opportunity to come out here and preach Your Word to Your people. Thank You that I own a copy of Your book. I'm able to read it. Thank You for the liberty we have here in America to have a church to meet without fear. I pray You'd preach this message this morning, get me out of the way, and You would shine forth. I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Ephesians 6. I guess I'll entitle this message, Power and Might. Amen. Verse 10. Ephesians 6. Verse 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. There's an awful lot of verses about power and might and strength in the Scriptures. I'm not going to get to all of them today. I'll get to a few, okay? Amen. And we'll start in Romans 13. I only got about 20 references. It's going to be an easy message. Romans 13. According to Cruden's concordance, Power can be either strength of arm or authority. The power to rule. The power to be the judge. That sort of thing. But we'll probably use both today. Romans 13, I said, verse 1. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. There's no power but of God. That makes sense. He made everything. Everything we have, everything we are, all comes from God. He made us all. So it makes sense that all power comes from God. When Jesus Christ stood before Pilate, Pilate said, answerest thou not me? Know ye not that I have power to crucify you or release you? And the Lord told him, ah, you're nothing. He doesn't have that kind of an attitude. That's what I would have told him. He says, you could have no power over Me, except that we're giving you from above. Amen. Amen. Now, there's different kinds of power. Some of it's good, some of it's not so good. But it's all made by God. I wrote this verse down in Isaiah 45. I'll read it to you. God was speaking by Isaiah. In verse 7, He said, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. All that works to His plan and His purpose. His purpose. Amen. Look for a minute in Luke 22. Bible drill. I put a bookmark of mine, didn't you? Amen. Luke 22. I'll give you a second to get there. Verse 53, this is when Jesus Christ is being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas has come up and smooched Him and told everybody who He was, and He's being arrested. Verse 53, He says to them, When I was daily with you in the temple, you stretched forth no hands against Me, but this is your hour and the power of darkness. Not a good power, but all power is of God. the power of darkness. Darkness is easy to understand. It's falsehood, untruth, and lies. That's what darkness is. It's the opposite of truth, the opposite of light. Amen. And the power of darkness is deceit, deception, and ultimately, death. just like what the devil did to Eve and Adam in the garden. He deceived them. Ultimately, it was death. Amen. Which brings us to another power, the power of death. That's in Hebrews 2. We'll go there next. I do have a bookmark there. Smart guy. Alright, Hebrews 2, verse 14. For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Amen. Power of death. It's even explained to us what the power of death is. It's fear. Power of death is to scare you. and puts you into bondage. Not the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, but fear that puts you in bondage. That you won't get off your pew and do anything for God. That you won't pass out a gospel tract. That you'll listen to the lies that the devil puts in your mind about why you shouldn't do that. This is not a good time. He's got lots of stories to tell you to keep you from doing right. Amen. So there's really a process involved. Power of darkness, power of death. You can see a process. First there's lies, deceit, death, fear, bondage. A progression that leaves you sitting on your pew doing nothing. I mean, you can always pray, you know. It doesn't take any courage to pray. If you're short on prayer life, you don't know what to pray. Of course, the scripture says none of us know what to pray for as we ought. But if you can't figure out what to pray for, you should try reading the epistles of Paul. There's lots of prayers that Paul prayed in his epistles. And they must be pretty good prayers because God preserved them for us right here in his Bible. One of them is in Ephesians 1. Well, I don't want to go there yet. I want to go to 2 Timothy 1 instead. Go back to 2 Timothy 1. Deceit, lies, deceit, death, fear, bondage. Amen? 2 Timothy 1. Verse 7. Pastor preaches on this one a lot. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of sound mind. I don't know if that's three spirits or one. Power, love, and a sound mind. But the spirit of fear is certainly one. And it helps if you understand what a spirit is. There's different kinds of spirits in scripture. There's the heavenly beings that are called spirits. I'll read one of those verses to you later on. And there's also Jesus Christ's definition of spirit. It's the one I'm gonna use today. Brother Ricky used that verse back in, last time he preached, John 6, 63. I'm not gonna turn there, I'm gonna quote it to you. It's the spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit. They are life. Words are spirits, what Jesus Christ said. And that's what the spirit of fear is. All those words that run in your head. All those thoughts that run through your head are spirits. Pastors preached before on talking about us, going about our mind and our own business, doing our thing, and all of a sudden some horrible thought pops up in your head. Where did that come from? It didn't come from you, it came from outside. Amen. Spirit of fear, it's the same sort of thing. It's those ideas in your head that tell you, oh no. Something bad will happen. Your health will fail. Somebody will look at you funny. Somebody will yell at you. Somebody will flip you to bird. Somebody will do something. All those lies that the devil tells you. That spirit of fear telling you lies. See, the spirit of fear is part of darkness. It's not part of the light. There's a whole bunch of bad spirits that are trapped in your flesh. I got them too. I got the spirit of fear. But fear is a choice you make. Love is a choice you make. God chose to set his love on Israel. He made a choice to do that. I chose to set my love on Betty, my wife. And I ain't taking it back either. That's a choice I make. I get to make it every day. I ain't got to change my mind. Amen. Fear's a choice. Don't choose fear. Choose love. Choose power. Amen. Now, I said John 6.63, right? Words of Spirit. Jesus Christ said that. I got some examples of that to help you to believe it. I wrote them down so you wouldn't have to turn there. In 1 Kings chapter 22, Ahab, the king of Israel, and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, are having an alliance. They're good pals. And Ahab invites Jehoshaphat to go with him to Ramoth Gilead and take the city back from the Syrians because it belongs to Israel. Now, Ahab was an obvious politician. He went with the Poles. He had 400 prophets of Baal that told him, go up the Ramoth Gilead and prosper. And Jehoshaphat says, isn't there a prophet of God whereby we can inquire? And he fetches Micaiah out of the city, and Micaiah tells him about the vision he saw. He says, and the Lord said, you saw this vision of heaven. And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. All those 500 prophets of Baal were telling him, yeah, go for it, go for it, you'll win. And he did go for it, and he got killed in the battle, which is exactly what the Lord wanted. But that lion's spirit, those words coming out of the mouth of his prophets, spirit, lion's spirit. And there's another one in 1 Kings also about the Queen of Sheba. She goes and visits old Solomon, you know, and sees his wisdom and the like. It says here in verses 4, And when the Queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. There was no more spirit in her. And she said unto the king, It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit, I believed not the words until I came, and mine eyes have seen it. And behold, the half was not told me." No more spirit in her. That's a hard one to figure out, but I studied it out in a dictionary and figured it out. It means her thoughts changed. She came to visit Solomon with the idea that it was all a bunch of baloney, that what she'd heard couldn't possibly be true. And when she saw that it was, all those thoughts went away. Those were thoughts of darkness, not believing the truth. And the light of truth dispelled the darkness from her mind. There was no more spirit in her. That's all that means. Her thoughts changed. She didn't think about that anymore. Those thoughts... Pardon me, got a little virus. That's why I'm avoiding you this morning. It's not that I don't like you. Her thoughts totally changed and they never came back. She changed her mind to the point, never thought that way again. The same thing happened to me when I got saved. All my false religion stuff that I had in my head went away just like that. Amen, when I learned the truth. when the law brought me to Christ. Amen. No more spirit. No more words. No more thoughts. Those things that run through your head. That's what they are. They're spirits. You've got a spirit. I've got a spirit. Brother Caldwell preached on that last week. Amen. Brother Scott preached on Psalm 100 a couple weeks ago. He says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. And he talked about all the noise in our environments and our culture. You can't go anywhere with being inundated with noise. Rock and roll music or something. And every one of those things is a camouflage for a spirit that you're getting poured into your head. All those things are spirits. Spirits are words. They're ideas. They're concepts. Sometimes they're even feelings and intuition. But all runs around in your head. And there's a lot of people out there. Well, the Prince is the power of the air. It's the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. He's running around out there trying to trip you up and trip me up. Amen. You need to be careful of that. So let's find out about the power of God in His might. Judges 6. Judges. Chapter 6. That's in the Old Testament. I've got a bookmark in my spot. Do you? Amen. Judges chapter 6. It's after Joshua and before Ruth, maybe? Sounds about right. Before Ruth. Amen. Good. I don't remember that stuff. I used to know all those things. I don't remember them anymore. Judges chapter 6. Okay, the Israelites have been sold into bondage to the Midianites. The bad guys, or the Midianites. They had to hide their food. They had to hide everything because the Midianites were going to steal them. And that's where we are here in verse 11. And there came an angel of the Lord and sat under an oak which was in Ophira that pertained to Joash the Abbai Israel, and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. They were stealing all their food. They had to live that way. They had to hide. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. And Gideon said unto him, O my Lord, If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles where our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. Well, his parents and grandparents and his ancestors had done their job, they'd obeyed the law, and they'd passed all this information on to Gideon. until their grandchildren and stuff. Boy, we're all supposed to be doing it. They did it. They were faithful to do so. And Gideon knew all this stuff. Verse 14 says, And the Lord looked upon him and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Had not I sent thee? Go in this thy might. That's it. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. That's all of it right there. The knowledge of God. The Word of God. knowing what God can do and has done and will do. That's what the power of God is. Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. It's up to you. You're responsible for your own spirituality. The pastor preaches that frequently. You're responsible for your own walk with God. And the power of His might is the knowledge of God. Amen. 2 Peter 1. He tells us that. 2 Peter chapter 1. I'm going kind of fast. I may have to throw some Blarney out there too. 2 Peter 1, verse 2. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. His divine power through his knowledge. That's what Gideon had. He had the knowledge of the holy. He had the knowledge of what God did before. He had the knowledge of what God could do. And of course, Gideon went out with 300 guys against an army of 135,000, and all he had to do was show up. That's all he did. He showed up. God caused the army of the Midianites to fall on one another. They fought one another and killed one another off. God did it all. All He had to do was show up. And that's all you and I got to do also, is show up. Show up for the ministries. We got visitation every now and then. We got prayer meeting on Tuesday night. Got a street ministry on Saturday night. Just need people to show up. Amen. That's all Gideon did. He and 300 guys showed up and watched the enemy kill themselves. according to His divine power, hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. Already got it. It's already written down in the book. If you don't read the book, you might not know much about it. If you don't study the book, God won't deal with you very much. If you don't have a prayer life, how are you going to get anything off of God? I mean, it's a two-way street. I stand up here and talk to you, the pastor stands up here and talks to you. You read your Bible, that's God talking to you. But He expects you to talk back. He expects you to tell Him about the things He's telling you. Talk with Him about it. A lot of good prayers there in Paul's epistles, if you look them up. We've been talking about spirit. In Ephesians 1, Paul prayed a prayer. He says, I ask that God would give to all the church the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened. God has to do that. God has to enlighten your understanding. This is the spirit of wisdom and revelation right here. This is King James Bible. Word of God. That's it. It's been given to us. But it's up to God to enlighten the eyes of your understanding. If you don't spend time with God, it's not going to happen. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, we all might know it, it's the hope of His calling. and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us were to believe, according to the work of his mighty power to wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and set him in his own right hand in the heavenly places far above all. Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. So are you, if you're a member of the body of Christ. If you're in Christ, you're sitting at the right hand of God too. What great power is that? To be able to talk to the creator of the universe, Do you do it? Do you open your mouth and talk to God? Amen. No reason not to. He wants to hear from you. He even wants to hear from me. Imagine that. He wants to hear from you too. Amen. 2 Peter 3, as long as we're right there. There's another prayer in chapter 3 of Ephesians you could look up. At the end of it he says, now unto him who's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end, amen. Just like the power that Gideon had with God. Go on this thy might, just knowing the things of God, and believe in them, and acting on them, and making like you really believe it, amen. That's all it takes, the power of faith. That was another prayer. I think I got that one written down, so I'll wait until I get there later. Chapter 3 is 2 Peter, right? The second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. Remember, to be carnally minded is death. Spiritually minded, life and peace. That's a pure mind there, to be spiritually minded. To be thinking of the spiritual things of God. I mean, this book here is spirit. My words are spirit. Amen? There's a capital S spirit in your Bible that means God. But there's a small s spirit in your Bible that means something else. It means words. Small s spirit, that's what we looked at. Spirit of fear is a small s spirit, it's words. Amen? Pure minds by way of remembrance. We talked about the power of darkness. Lies, deceit, death, fear, bondage. To be carnally minded is death. Those are the things that run through the mind of a carnal man. The things of this world, the things of the earth, and they're all lies. They're all darkness. They're not right. This book is light. King James Bible. Word of God. That's light. That's what we're supposed to have in our minds all the time. That's to be spiritually minded is life and peace. He said, the words that I speak unto you, they are life. And they're supposed to be running around in our minds all the time. in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior. Know in this verse that there shall come in the last days scoffers, etc." People that don't believe it. And that's what we see out there all the time, all over. Doesn't matter where you go or what you do, you're going to be bombarded with spirits that are scoffers. Doesn't matter if you turn on your television, darkness. Go to a restaurant and listen to the music, darkness. Doesn't matter where you go, Walmart, darkness. Scoffers. Don't believe it. Amen. Knowing this first, we're supposed to be warned about that. Amen. Hopefully you're warned. Seven minutes. Deuteronomy 32. That's in the Old Testament. I've got a bookmark in mine. How about you? Amen. Oh, that's not Deuteronomy 32. There it is. Deuteronomy 32. We there? Verse 31. It says, For their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. You'll notice that their rock is a small r, the God of this world. Our rock is a capital R, the God of Israel. For their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. For their wine is the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of Gaul, their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Paul got into that in Romans chapter 3. I'm not going to go there. Amen. Their wine is the poison of dragons. Well, we know dragons are devils, right? You know that? There used to be real dragons running around the earth, but he's talking about spiritual dragons here. Devils. When the Apostle John, Revelation 13, he saw the Antichrist show up as a beast coming up out of the ocean, he said he had horns like a lamb, but he spake as a dragon. The words of the dragon coming out of his mouth. That's what you hear out there in the world. The words of the dragon. The prince of the power of the air is the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Those are the thoughts that you get bombarded with all the time. Not to mention the spirits that are trapped in your flesh that work against you all the time. Abstain from fleshly lusts. The spirit that dwelleth in man lusteth to envy. Don't listen to that stuff. Don't listen to those spirits that come up. There's a whole long list. I remember Pastor John Asquith saying that there were seven evil spirits trapped in your flesh. There's a lot of evil spirits listed in the Scripture. I don't know which seven are stuck in your flesh. But none of them are any good. Amen. Spirit of fear is one of them. I got it. I get scared. Everybody does. Those cruel venom, the whinings, the poison of dragons. Proverbs 23. I've got a bookmark in mine. Amen. You should put bookmarks in your Bible before you come to church so you can find these places. I do. Amen. Proverbs 23. Verse 29, are we there? Proverbs 23, 29. Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine, that go to seek mixed wine. Their wine is the cruel wine of dragons, the venom of wasps. Mixing your wine is not a good idea. Mixing the things you let go in your ear and in your eyes with the things of God is not a good idea. I remember Pastor Randall harping on this lots and lots of times. He says, I cannot overcome with three hours of church a week, 18 or 20 hours in front of the television. Can't overcome that. Especially for your children. The young people that are being, what's the word? They're impressionists. They're being impressed with things. Can't overcome that with a couple hours of church a week. That's why the pastor's on you and has been for some time about family altar. about doing church at home. Doing Christianity at home. Amen. 2 Thessalonians 1. Don't mix your wine. I don't have a bookmark in 2 Thessalonians 1. Falling down on the job. Amen. Must have been Betty's fault. She probably distracted me. All right. Amen. Chapter one. One of Paul's prayers. Another one of his prayers. There's lots of prayers. There's prayers. There's two in Ephesians, one in Philippians, one in Colossians. There's a couple in the Thessalonians, one in Hebrews. You can go look them up. Start praying those things. God thinks they're great prayers because he wrote them down in the book so we know about them. Here's one, it starts in verse 11. Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power. That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ might be glorified in you, and we in Him. Word of faith. The work of faith with power. God works in us both the will and to do, right? The work of faith. If you don't believe what it says in the book, there's not much to work with. Not much for God to work with in your life if you don't believe what's in the book. If you're not familiar with what's in the book. If you don't spend your time reading the book, spend time with God, talking to God. If you don't do that, there's nothing to work with. God works in us, both the willing to do, but He's got to have something to work with. He said that the Holy Ghost would bring to our remembrance all things that He said. Well, if you never put it in there, there's no memory to bring forth. You don't remember what you've never seen or heard. He's got to have something up there to work with. And that's up to you. I can't read for you. I can't even put your bookmarks in your Bible for you. You've got to do that. Amen. Okay, the last references I have are already quoted to you from Ephesians. They were prayers by Paul in Ephesians. One in Philippians says he prayed that he might have their fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now. That was his prayer for their fellowship in the Gospel. Amen. That's a good prayer. Let's see. I don't remember the one in Colossians. I'll have to go look it up. Shame on me, right? Well, I'm out of time anyway, so I guess I'll call it a day. Amen. I'm going to take my bookmarks and go home. Amen. If it seems like I've been avoiding you today, it's true. I have been. I have a virus. I don't want to pass it around. Betty told me plain out, she said, do unto others as you have them do unto you. I don't want you to give me your viruses. I'm not going to give you mine. All right. Thank you, Lord, for this great privilege and opportunity. Praise, sir, that the words that were preached up here today will work in all our lives to our edification and comfort to make us Holy to be more like your son, Jesus Christ and pray in the name of Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.