Frankie Mazzapica - Three Gates The Devil Enters
Thank you for tuning in today, my name is Frankie Mazzapica, the title of the message is "3 Gates the Devil Enters", Three Gates the Devil Enters. You know, the Bible says in Genesis chapter 4, verse 7, it says this. "If you do good, will you not be," blessed? For, "If you do not," there is a spirit sitting, an evil spirit sitting outside your door, and we must conquer it. Many of us have a doormat outside of the front door of our home. Just like that doormat is sitting there, there is an evil spirit sitting there outside of our home. Its desire is to kill every good thing in your life, it's desire is to see what is prospering in your life and steal it. It's his desire to jump on you like a wild cat in the jungle, sink his talons into you, and fill you with depression and anxiety.
But the Bible says that if you do good, you will be blessed. In other words, the best thing you can do when I'm talking about if you do good, because there's nothing more good, I know that's bad English, but it's good theology, there's nothing more good than keeping your eye's attention on the Lord, and your heart's affection. When your mouth is filled with praise, "Jesus, I love you, Jesus, I praise you, Jesus, I worship you, Jesus, I thank you," listen to how basic those prayers are. "Jesus, I love you, Jesus, I thank you" Smith Wigglesworth once said, "I may not pray for a half an hour, but a half an hour doesn't go by without me praying".
You see, when we're doing that one good thing, that enemy that sits outside of our door, it cannot move, there is an angel standing there with a sword, poking it in its forehead, saying, "You cannot move, you can sit there if you want to, but you're gonna watch our child of God walk in and walk out". Come on, put your hands together for that. I'm so glad that God has not complicated good things. All he says, in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33, "Seek first the kingdom of God". Talk to him, prioritize him, long for him. If you make a mistake, brush it off like dust, and just say, "Lord, you know I'm made from dust," and, "I'm just gonna keep worshiping you, I'm gonna keep praising you".
And when God looks at you and he sees that you're worshiping, he's praising, he makes sure that the enemy cannot come to you. He puts a ring of fire around you, he puts a ring of fire around your home. But there are three primary gates that the enemy tries to slip through, three primary doors that the enemy tries to slip through. It's my hope, it's my desire to make us aware of these primary doors, because if we're aware of them, we'll make sure that the enemy stays outside of them. The first door is what we see, it's our eye gate. The second door is what we hear, it's our ear gate. And the very last one is our mouth, it's our mouth gate. I wanna lay the foundation using a fascinating incident that took place in Scripture.
It's in 2 Kings chapter 20. In the 2 Kings, there's a man of God named Elisha, he has a servant with him, an assistant named Gehazi. There was a leader of a Arabian army named, what was his name? I forgot. Naaman, sorry, Naaman, I promise you it'll get better. Naaman, and he was filled with leprosy. He was told, "If you go to the man of God, he will pray for you and you will be healed". So Naaman went out and he found Elisha. When they met, Elisha said this, "You will be healed if you go to the River Jordan, dip yourself seven times".
Naaman was so angry because it seemed so insane, the man of God didn't even pray for him. I've been to the River Jordan, it's not sparkling blue, it's not somewhere where you want to snorkel, you're not gonna scuba dive in the River Jordan, the River Jordan is brown. And so here Naaman is, "I don't wanna go over there, this is absolutely ridiculous, you haven't even prayed to your God". And so we backed up and he said, "This may be ridiculous, but I don't have any other options". Sometimes life will bring us to a place to show us that if God doesn't step in we will stay in the season that we're in for way too long. And so we will find, that in these moments of desperation, we'll lift our chin, we'll put our eyes on the Lord and we'll say, "If I don't have you, I don't have hope". And when God hears those words, he sends angels on your behalf with a drawn sword.
You see, Naaman wanted to be blessed, but first he had to be obedient. Oftentimes, we want to be blessed first, and then we'll be obedient. "God, if you just open up this door, if you just make this happen, if you just cause that to happen, I'll promise you I'll be as faithful as long as I live". Well, the Lord says back, "I want you to be obedient first," because obedience always precedes the blessing. So Naaman goes down and he dips himself seven times in the water. He gets out, he's completely healed. Now, here's where things get interesting, Gehazi is standing there, and out of his eye gate he begins to interpret what he's looking at as a very dark thing. God just moved, but the way he's looking at it, he sees it as a dark thing.
In 2 Kings chapter 20, verse 21, it says this. I'm sorry, it's not verse 21, it's in verse 20, it says this, that Gehazi, when he saw Elisha begin to move in this way, he said, "My master should," take gifts from Naaman because he's been healed. You see, Naaman offered 175 lbs of silver, 75 lbs of gold, and 10 outfits. All the ladies in the room will say, "I'll take those outfits, and throw in a pair of shoes". But the Bible says this, that Elisha said no thanks. And here's where the Scripture comes in. He said this, Gehazi said this, My master should have told Naaman that he wanted those gifts, he should have accepted those gifts. And so Gehazi said: As surely as the Lord lives, I will, follow Naaman to get something from him. He saw everything completely different. Elisha saw it one way, he saw God moving in a special way. Of course, he wanted 175 lbs of silver, who wouldn't? But Gehazi saw it another way. He said, "Look, I don't know if God's gonna be faithful in the future, so I'm gonna take care of me now".
I know all of us have fought that temptation of seeing things in a negative way, in a negative fashion. I heard a story of this young girl, she was with her dad, and her dad was late for a meeting. She was only about 9 or 10 years old, and the dad was going as fast as he could to get to the meeting. He told his daughter, "I've got to stop and get some gas". So he ran into the gas station while he was pumping gas and he started grabbing candy for his daughter. He grabbed a bunch of candy, he grabbed a drink, he ran back in the car and he said, "It's gonna be a little bit of a drive, so I got you something to eat". Well, the 10-year-old little girl, the 9-10 year-old little girl, she opened the bag and she saw all the candy she doesn't like, and her heart broke because she thought to herself, "I don't even know if daddy even knows what I like". And it broke her heart. She just thought to herself, "Man, I wish I had a dad who knew me better than this".
And she started thinking that, and all of a sudden, this 10-year-old shifted her perspective. Now, I don't know about you, but I've learned a lot of things from my 10-year-old. Every once in a while, a child will say something to you, and you'll jerk your head over and you'll think to yourself, "You might be smarter than me, I'm not sure". But she had this moment where, all of a sudden, she shifted her perspective, she saw the entire situation completely different. She said to herself, "Wow, my dad loves me so much that he ran into the gas station and started grabbing food for me, it was more important than his meeting, and he ran out and he gave it to me. He was moving so fast to take care of me, he didn't have a chance to think about what I would prefer, he was just trying to take care of me".
You see the two perspectives right then and there. I tell you, I was pumping gas one time, a lot of things are happening at the gas station in these illustrations, but I was pumping gas and I realized, "I need to go to the ATM inside of the gas station and get some cash". I put my ATM card into the ATM machine, I'm staring at the screen, I'm so frustrated because I could barely see the green letters on the dark screen. I got so frustrated, I thought to myself, "Are we not paying enough for gas for you to have a nice screen"? I'm looking at the guy behind the counter, I'm thinking to myself, "Is this your standard of excellence? Come on, you're running this place, you can do better than this".
As I was looking at the screen, I thought to myself, "It might help if you take these pitch black glasses and lift them up". All of a sudden, the screen was perfect, I felt like a nut, and I thanked God. "Thank you, Jesus, I didn't say anything to him". I'm half-Brazilian, half-Italian, it's a cocktail mix for way too much passion. The possibility of me saying, "Yo, can you put a couple of bucks into this screen," is very likely. I would have looked like an idiot, looking from a different perspective. I'll say this just so that we can be honest with each other. We all know that it's true that we ought to try to find the good of every situation, we know that, I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. But what we all know is that we can talk about it easier than we can do it. I'm a preacher, I can preach it better than I can do it. I'm anointed to preach it, but I gotta live it like everybody else.
And so I've learned that I can throw a stake in the ground, I can draw a line in the sand, I can point to myself and say, "I'm positive from here on out," but the moment somebody cuts me off in the parking lot, all of my decisions out the window. Have you ever gone up to a red light, and you're looking at the cars that are sitting on the line before you and you're trying to pick out which car is gonna go the fastest? So you pick a car but you keep your eye on the car you almost picked, and you're wondering, "I hope I picked the right car". But sure enough, the car you picked, forgets that you move on green, and you're sitting there and you're yelling at a person that you don't even know.
Now, some of you are looking at me like, "I've never done that before". That's fine, I'm confessing in the house of God today. But all of these thoughts and I think, "I told myself I wasn't gonna do this anymore". You and I can make all the decisions we want to and we'll never be able to overcome them. The reason why is you are not wrestling with your own thoughts, you are not wrestling against your own flesh. The Bible says, in Ephesians 6, verse 12, you are not wrestling, "Against flesh and blood," you're not wrestling, "Against flesh and blood," you are wrestling, "Against evil rulers and authorities," devils and demons walking around this place. You are wrestling against those, "Against mighty powers in this dark world," we all know that this is a dark world, "And against evil spirits in heavenly places".
We can't see the city of heaven that he's prepared for you and for me, the streets of gold, but we can see the first heaven, which is the atmosphere, the sky, the clouds, the stars, the planets. And when it says that, "Evil spirits in heavenly places," it means that they're flying around like bats. This is who we're fighting. And so, when we are wearing and we know we're looking at situation in its negative and our eye gate is failing us, you can't just, "Ok, I'm not gonna do that". The only way that you can do and shift is to fill your mouth with praise. "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you". Come on. "I love you, I love you, I praise you, I love you". You hear how simple those praises are. When your mouth is full of praises, the enemy's mouth closes, and you worship until you can't hear him anymore. Are you with me?
Come on. Point number two, the ear gate, I'm sorry, the eye gate, and now, the ear gate. When Gehazi heard what was happening, all of a sudden his thoughts started tormenting him. He backed up and he said, like he said in verse 21, "I'm gonna go after Naaman and get something from him". So the Bible says that Gehazi went after him, he set after him. And as he was going after him, Naaman turns around and sees Gehazi running to him. The Bible says that he climbed out of his chariot, chariot being pulled by horses. He climbs out of his chariot and he starts walking towards Gehazi. And he looks at Gehazi and he says, "'Is everything' ok"? And Gehazi says back to him, "Yes," everything's ok, "But my master sent me to tell you that two young prophets from the hills," "Of Ephraim have," come down to see him. And, "He would like 75 pounds of silver and two," changes, "Of clothes to give," "Them".
Obviously, Naaman gave it to them. You know, when you hear thoughts, when you hear the enemy whispering into your ears, "Do this, do that," but your spirit knows, "Slow down, no-no," there's this wrestling match. You're hearing things, but you know the Holy Spirit is trying to anchor you, you can feel the tension. Sometimes it'll be someone speaking to you, they're telling you a story about a person, they're complaining about a person, you're hearing it. It's not thoughts from the enemy, it's thoughts from someone else telling you about a negative situation, about a person, slamming a person, all the talking bad about a person.
And when you listen to somebody talking bad about someone else, you will notice that your own spirit is affected by their mouth, your own spirit will begin to shrink. Because the Bible says, in Proverbs chapter 18, verse 21, that, "Life and death are in the power of the tongue". And when you're listening to someone speak death on someone else, your own spirit begins to be smothered, it's at that moment that we have to quickly change the subject. You have to say to yourself, "I don't want my emotions to go to that place. You're taking my spirit, you're taking my emotions, and you're taking me to a place, a dark place".
If we continue to listen, oftentimes we'll pick up their offense, we don't even know who those people are sometimes. "That person's a jerk, if that person said that to you, they're a jerk". And all of a sudden, we're getting caught up in this slander and this darkness because we're not guarding our ears. Sometimes the enemy will whisper without a human's voice, it will cause you to be depressed, cause you to be anxious. Sometimes he'll use another person's voice, sometimes they're Christians, just like Peter. Peter was one of the three people, with James and John, that were closest to the Lord, and even Peter spoke on behalf of the devil. Jesus had to turn around and say to him, "Be quiet, get behind me".
In the same way, I want to encourage you, whether it's if the voice of the enemy is causing you to be pulled down. And any thought you have that's causing you to feel less about yourself, it's from the enemy, any thought you have that's causing you to be discouraged and full of fear and anxiety, it's from the enemy. If you feel down, it's from someone that's down below. If you have a thought that causes you to have hope, it is coming from someone up above. And when you have those thoughts that are coming down, I want you to do what Jesus did, "I know it's you, devil, now get out of here, get out of here. I command you, in the name of Jesus, to leave me, in Jesus's name". You take control and then fill your mouth with praise, because, once again, when your mouth is full of praise, the devil's mouth gets closed. And so I'm talking about, first of all, the eye gate, the ear gate, and now I wanna talk to you about the mouth gate.
You see, when Gehazi got back, Elisha looked at him, in verse 25, and he said, "Where have you been"? And Gehazi said, "'I haven't been anywhere,' I've been here the whole time". And Elisha looked at him and he said, "Because you're lying to me," because your mouth gate is saying things that are motivated by hell, "You yourself are going to have leprosy". You see, lies ruin lives. Not only do lies cause you to go to a dark place, but the people that are around you, who you're lying to, they also are dragged to that dark place with you. But just as your mouth can speak death, you can say, "You know what? What I just said, I wanna take back, in the name of Jesus, I cancel that, in the name of Jesus". Just as easy as the enemy can come in, he can go out. You back up and you say, "Devil, get out of my life now, in the name of Jesus". You have that same power, you have that same authority.