Joseph Prince - The Enemy's Tactic to Keep You In Defeat
This is an excerpt from: Hear Your Way Out Of Every Weakness
This is gonna set you free from stress, fears, worries, apprehensions, amen, doubts, as well as also any depression that you may suffer from, knowing this truth from the Word of Christ. Are you ready? Are you ready to receive more? So it says, "Sin shall not have dominion over you". I'm sure you've heard people saying, "Be careful of grace," all right? "Be careful of the teaching of grace".
Now, who do you think is behind this casting of aspersions on the teaching of grace? Who do you think is behind it? It must be the enemy. Why? Because he knows this. "For sin shall not have dominion over you," when? "When you are not under the law but when you are under grace". So he will do his very best and he will sound so spiritual that you feel guilty for not being under the law. He will do his very best to attack grace and the reputations of those who preach grace that you have no choice but to feel safe with what is old and familiar, the law.
Be very careful. Have you fallen from grace? And the Word doesn't say, "Have you switched from grace"? It says, "Have you fallen from grace?" because grace is always the higher ground, amen? When God gave the law on Mount Sinai, we know that 3,000 people died, okay? Some time after that, 3,000 people died. And the Jewish people will tell you that was given on the very first Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus literally died on the Feast of Passover, the Jewish Feast of Passover. So all the feasts, the seven feasts of Israel in Leviticus 23 that many Jews still celebrate today, all those seven feasts point to Jesus Christ, to His finished work, to His perfect, human life. In the flour offering, that points to His perfect, human life.
And then the olah, which is the burnt offering. And then we have sin offering, we have the trespass offering, we have the peace offering. The peace offering has your health and healing in it because the word "shalim," "shalom". Shalim, "shelamim" is the Hebrew word for "peace offering" has "shalom" in every part of your spirit, soul, and body. The secrets are there in the peace offering. So seven feasts of Israel to demonstrate what Jesus did. Jesus died literally. He was born, I believe, on the Feast of Tabernacles. And that's why the Bible says the word, "Tabernacle among us". Literally in the Greek it says, "Tabernacle among us," using the feast day, amen? He was crucified on the Feast of Passover. He rose from the dead on the Feast of First Fruits, because he is the First Fruit, amen.
Fifty days after Passover, they were at the foot of Mount Sinai and what happened? The law was given, 3,000 people died. The Bible says the letter kills, the law kills, but the Spirit gives life. And then we have, on the Day of Pentecost again, the feast of the giving of the law. Today, you speak to an average Jew who knows his Bible, he will tell you that the law was given on which feast. You ask him, he will say not Tabernacles, but Pentecost, all right? They call it Shavuot, amen. They celebrate the giving of the law. We celebrate Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost. "When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, God gave," what? The Spirit. He came like a rushing, mighty wind, like He can't wait to fill the believers, amen? And He filled them all up.
So we celebrate Pentecost as the day of the giving of the Holy Spirit. The promise of Abraham was fulfilled, amen. And what happened? Three thousand people were saved at the preaching of Peter on the Day of Pentecost. That demonstrates the under the law, there's death, amen. Under grace, you live, amen. Now, nothing wrong with the law. The morality of the law is something that we still have to keep, right? Now, let me say it like this. Not that we have to keep, it is kept in us as we know how to flow with it. The thing is the devil wants you to be law-conscious and try to keep the law. That is the very thing that a lot of people are trying to do. And by trying to do that, you fall under Romans 7. The more you try to, Paul said, "The more I try to keep the tenth one", "Thou shall not desire or covet," all right, "what belongs to others". "The more I try to do that, I find in me all manner of desires".
It stirs up. Or you can say, "Thou shall not lust," all right? The more I try not to lust, the more I lust. So the devil wants to bring the law to your consciousness so that the more you try to keep it, you activate your human strength, you fall, right? And you don't even know how you fall. You fall right away and you don't even know how you fell. It all starts with you trying to be good, trying to do what's good. Are you listening? A group of boys passed by, all right? They passed by a greenhouse. You know what's a greenhouse? A lot of glass, right? And there's nothing. They don't feel anything. Right at the end of the street, there's another greenhouse and this one, "Don't throw rocks. Fragile". No one is around.
One boy looks at another boy. Another boy looks at another. What do you think they are feeling? They don't feel anything with the first greenhouse. The greenhouse is not the problem, nor are the signs in the next one the problem. Nothing wrong with the signs. But something wrong with the flesh. The flesh needs a law to activate it. That's why the Bible says, "The strength of sin is the law". So, nothing wrong with the law. The law is holy, righteous, and blameless, amen, but it cannot make you righteous. It cannot make you holy. So, how do you become holy then? Not by being conscious of the law, by being conscious of Jesus. We are to walk in him, amen, and you don't have to worry about the law. In fact, the law is limited.
The law says, "Thou shall not commit adultery". There are people who don't commit adultery, listen, because they don't have the money, okay, for example, okay? They can do it in their mind but they cannot do it physically because, okay. In some cases, not all. Some don't commit adultery against their wife, but they don't love their wife. Is that what God wants? No, but when you're occupied with Christ, he gives you that love for your spouse, amen. Walking in grace makes you in love with everyone, even those who speak against you, those who write against you, whatever. You know, I tell you, it fills your heart with love for them. You feel compassion for them. It's hard to carry bitterness for a long time. You feel for them.
People ask me, "Pastor Prince", you know, people write things about me, say things about, "Pastor, I hope you're okay". Don't worry about me. Like Jesus told the people who were saying to the Lord, right? He was carrying the cross. What did He say? "Don't cry for Me, Argentina". No, He didn't say that. He said, "Don't weep for Me, daughters of Jerusalem, but weep for yourselves and your children," amen. Even, you know, none of us if we are suffering can think of others. We think about ourselves. But He has the time to think about others. How unselfish, how beautiful His moral. His moral beauty and excellence comes out when He's suffering, amen. Even at the cross, He gave comfort to the thief who said, "Lord, remember me". "Today, you shall be with Me in paradise".
He thought of His mother and the grief of a mother's heart. He says to John, "Behold your mother. Take care of My mother". All the while, He's thinking of us. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". Ah, to be like Jesus. I look at myself, okay, you look at yourself hopefully, and you compare yourself with our Lord Jesus, and you see how far short we fall, amen? We are irritable every day. We don't know why we are irritable. We are just irritable, amen? So the devil wants you to try your best to not be irritable. Try to suppress it. Oh, that is a surefire way of becoming more irritable, amen? So how do you get out of it? By being focused on Jesus, not the law.