Hindering Spirits: Paul’s Journey Through Spiritual Obstruction

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Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The message you will hear today, Hindering Spirits vs. Ministering Spirits, is the first of the five-part series, Spirits, Angels, and Demons. You are probably familiar with the term ministering spirits, describing God’s angels sent forth to aid and protect His children. But there are also hindering spirits sent forth from our adversary, Satan, to impede our progress on our Christian race and prevent doors of opportunity from opening. Where did they come from? Find out in Hindering Spirits vs. Ministering Spirits. Amen. You may be seated. So let’s begin this morning in the scriptures, and we’re going to go to 1 Thessalonians 2 and 17. And if our God is for us, then who can be against us? And if he’s with us, who can stand against us? It’s going to tie in the words to that song with our message today and reading in 1 Thessalonians 2 and 17. But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence. not in heart, endeavored the more abundantly to see your face with great desire. Wherefore, we would have come unto you, even I, Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us. Amen? The word here for hindered in the Greek, agopto, was originally used to describe a road that had become so deteriorated it was impassable. it forced the person to turn around, go back, and try to find another way to get to his desired destination. And you know what? It brings to my mind what we saw on this week’s news of the mudslides in California. And they’ve had mudslides quite frequently through the years, but I tell you, this one was like none I’d seen before. How many saw the mudslides? Do you know that in some places it was raining intensely, two inches an hour? And these people were just driving down the road like they do every single day. And out of nowhere, mountains of mud just cascaded down. Do you know some of those vehicles were buried up to 20 feet in mud? Some people were trying to get out of their cars as the mud was coming up. It is miraculous that no one was killed. I mean, whole families, even with children in the car, were struggling to get out quick enough because of the mud. And many of those highways are still closed down. If you go and Google it, you’ll see pictures of vehicles, trucks and cars on the highway up to their roofs in mud. Now, it’s going to take some doing to get that mud removed to get those vehicles out of there and get those roads opened up. Amen? And so I would say that those folks were hindered. from getting to where they wanted to go. Amen? And so that’s what the word means in Greek. It means that your roadway is deteriorated and you cannot pass it. You have to turn around and go back and look for another way to get there. Amen? And Paul said that not just once, but more than once, he wanted to get to Thessalonica and see the saints there. And really, he’s sort of exuding a lot of affection, if you read this in 17. He said, you know, we’ve been taken away from you for a short time. That is our bodily presence. But, oh, my heart is right there with you. I’m with you in heart. And I have endeavored abundantly. wanting to see your face with great desire. And now Paul was really wanting to get back there and see the saints at Thessalonica. And he desired it with all of his heart. And he had tried more than once to get there, but he said, every time that I would come to see you, Satan hindered me. Amen? Satan hindered me. And so we see here he wasn’t able to go. The metaphor being that his pathway, you know, we think of the pathway, and especially then they didn’t have asphalt or cement roads. You know, they just had dirt roads. And so if rocks would fall down or if it rained and it was washed out or trees fell on the roadway, It’s not like they could say, okay, well, we can’t take Interstate 70, but we can hop on 40, and we’ll still get there. It wasn’t like that, amen? So if their roads were washed out, they were hindered from getting where they needed to go, amen? He said, we tried to come over and over again, but Satan hindered us. let me give you a secondary meaning of the word hindered in greek from the word egg copto it also had an athletic meaning to it and what it literally did was portray a runner running in a race and he’s out in front he’s in the lead and he’s running and here all of a sudden comes another runner who’s catching up to him, and comes abreast to him. But before he passes him, he takes his elbow. and elbows him out of the way. And when he elbows him, he may fall to the ground and have to get back up. And even if he doesn’t fall, he gets off of his pace, allowing that other runner to pass him by. And by the time the one that was elbowed gets himself together, he’s lagging behind. Amen? And we have seen that happen in races. It’s ugly, but we’ve seen people do it, haven’t we? Amen. When people want to get what they want to get, they’ll do it if they have to cheat. And so this was another definition of this word hindered. It meant to be by an aggressive action of another party has come and elbowed you and knocked you down or knocked you off your pace and hindered you from keeping the pace on the road in the race that was set before you. And this is how Paul saw Satan’s tactics. He believed that it was Satan who had specifically engineered unseen and unanticipated actions to keep him from getting to Thessalonica. You know, he wrote the same thing to the believers in Rome. Let’s turn to Romans, the first chapter, beginning at verse 8. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. And one reason for that is because the emperor had thrown all the Jews out of the city at one point. Amen? And so there was a lot of persecution against… Jews and Christians in Rome. And so he says, your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers. making request if by any means, now at length, I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift to the end that you may be established. That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. Look at this, but often I purposed… To come to you, but I was let. And this word can also be hindered. That’s what it means. I know it seems so, you know, out of place there. And sometimes this is when the old King James is a little tricky. Amen. But you know what? All we do is take a moment to explain it. It is actually, we see it in tennis. Now, I’m not a tennis player, and I’m not a lover of watching, and I think it’s kind of boring, actually. But, you know, if you see that when they hit the ball and it hits the net, they say it let. In other words, the net hindered it from going over. So that gives you an idea of what it means. So he said, oftentimes, I want to come and see you. I feel that God has given me a gift, a spiritual gift to impart specifically to you Roman believers. And I want to come to see you. In fact, I believe you can bless me too. I believe we have mutual faith and love here. And I believe it’d be for my benefit to see you and your benefit to see me. This is what he was saying. But he said, I’ve tried. I’ve purposed to come to you more than once. But every time it seems like I have been hindered, something has kept me from coming to see you. Amen. Flip over to Romans the 15th chapter. That’s the beginning of the book of Romans, the very first part of his letter. Now we’re going to go to the end of his letter in Romans 15 and look at verse 19. through mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about unto Illyria come, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. Yea, so I have strived. to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation, but as it is written, to whom he was not spoken of, they shall see, and they that have not heard shall understand. Verse 22, for which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you. And so Paul saw this, that Satan was behind this. Satan was orchestrating events, amen, and circumstances, which we don’t know what they are in every case, but we know that there were tactics that the kingdom of darkness had initiated to try to stop Paul from reaching the Thessalonians, from reaching the Romans, amen. Clearly, saints, we have an adversary. Amen. That’s what Peter said. You have an adversary, the devil. Amen? And he launches tactics against the Christians and especially against people like Paul who preach the gospel. He wants to stop and impede their progress. He wants to stop them from getting to the people they need to get to. Amen? And today in modern times with technology, we know it not only means to physically travel to get to a city or to a town, but now we preach the gospel by the printed page. We preach the gospel by radio. We preach it by television. We preach it by internet. Amen. And so Satan is trying to hinder and impede those who are preaching the true gospel. Now, this is my opinion, but I don’t think he really puts out a lot of effort to stop preachers who are preaching a lot of fluff and a lot of sugar-coated stuff because it’s really not damaging his kingdom. I don’t think he needs to expend a lot of energy going after them. Amen? But he’s going to go after those who, like Paul, preach the gospel. He says, I want to preach the full gospel to you. Amen? Amen. And he seeks to hinder us. And saints of God, he seeks to hinder you from completing your course with victory. He wants to elbow you every chance he can get. He wants to elbow you. Amen. And so you need to expect it. And when he elbows you, if you stumble and trip, don’t give up and don’t quit. Because in this race, in this race of eternal life, everyone that crosses the finish line is a winner. Amen. Everyone that crosses the finish line is going to get the prize. Is going to get the gold. We’re all going to get gold crowns. Amen. And so we have to understand things that happen in your life. And sometimes you scratch in your head and you say, where did that come from? Anybody ever heard felt that way? Have you ever felt blindsided? You didn’t see it coming. You didn’t expect it. You were really concerned more about a particular situation that’s brewing over here, and so therefore you’re really trying to figure that one out and concentrating on it, and all of a sudden, oh, from out of here, nowhere, out of the blue, something comes along as equally distressing or as equally troubling. knocks the wind out of you and when a runner gets the wind knocked out of him it takes him a few minutes to get himself back together amen so Satan is trying to hinder the Saints amen let’s turn to Galatians 5 chapter 5 and look at two verses Galatians 5 and verse 7 Paul writes to them and saying, he says, you did run well. Who did hinder you? Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? This persuasion comes not of him that calls you. Amen. And so Paul is clearly saying here, you were off to a great start and you were running well on the highway to heaven. Amen. But someone hindered you because he didn’t say what did hinder you. Did he? He said who? Amen. Who did hinder you? The who is Satan. And I say to you that the who was hindering spirits. Hindering spirits dispatched by the enemy. And sometimes he uses people. Amen. but behind it are hindering spirits. So where do they come from? Where do hindering spirits come from? And how do they operate? Okay, we’re going to go skip a few verses here and there to show you. Let’s go to Psalm 104. Psalm 104, and we’ll read four verses. Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, thou art very great. Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, who covers thyself with light as with a garment, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, who lays the beams of his chambers in the waters, who makes the clouds his chariot, who walks upon the wings of the wind. And verse 4, who makes his angels spirits. His ministers a flaming fire. Amen? Now hold your place there, and we’re going to quickly look at two verses. If you don’t want to turn there, I’ll read them to you in Hebrews. Paul explains in the book of Hebrews what 104.4 means in the psalm. He says in Hebrews 1 and verse 7, And of the angels, he said, who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire. He identifies that these ministers of a flaming fire are angels, referring back to 104.4 in the Psalms. And then in verse 14 of Hebrews 1, he says, are they not all angels? ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be the heirs of salvation. So we see here that God has angels that he calls ministering spirits. God calls his angels, ministering spirits, and he sends them forth to minister to us who are the heirs of salvation. Amen? And it’s important that we understand that it is God who’s sending them forth. He sends them forth to assist us, to aid us in time of trouble, to come to our rescue in time of need. We know such verses as Psalm 34, 7. The angels of the Lord encamp round about them that fear him and deliver them. Psalm 91, 11, and 12. He will give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They will bear thee up in their own hands, lest you should dash your foot against a stone. We see a picture here of ministering spirits that God sends forth his angels in a time of trouble. I dare say that there are how many times in our lives have we been delivered by divine intervention of an angel and we didn’t even know it? I mean, we rarely see them, may never see them, amen? But we know when something supernatural has occurred, we know that God has sent forth his ministering spirits. You know, there are many great testimonies of people that have seen angels. I’m thinking of many wonderful testimonies on the 700 Club, and one was this man was working on this huge rig, right? that weighs tons, and he was underneath of it trying to figure out what was wrong, and it fell on his chest. You know, he was pretty much a goner. And there was no way that the other people that were there could get it off of him. But they saw two angels lift it up off of him. Now, he still had to go to the hospital. He still had to have a lot of medical treatment. But he lived. He lived. And he recovered and was restored. It’s a powerful testimony. And there are many testimonies like that where people have been in vehicles and terrible accidents have occurred and really they should not have survived it. Amen? Or somehow or another it missed them, even though they were right there in the line of danger, but somehow or another they ended up over here. Amen? Angels that God sends forth and they’re called in Hebrews. He names them and describes them as ministering spirits. Okay, look up at 103 while you’re here in Psalms 104. Just look up at 103 verse 20. Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure. Again, we see God calls angels his ministering spirits. And he says here, they excel in strength. I like that. That means when you excel in something, that means that you go above and beyond everyone else. And that tells me that they excel in strength. They are greater and stronger than the… hindering spirits and the hindering angels that Satan dispatches against us, but the angels of the Lord are mightier and greater. And they hearken to the voice of his word. When God speaks a commandment or an instruction, they are right then obedient to To go out and carry it out. They are faithful. They are loyal as we will see in a moment. They are faithful to God and all God has to do is speak and they act. All God has to do is say go and they’re gone. They go wherever God sends them. They hearken to the voice of his word and they do all his pleasure, which means they do all his will. Amen. And so this is what I want you to see that there are ministering spirits that God sends. And then there are hindering spirits that Satan dispatches. So where did they come from? How do we get these hindering spirits or these hindering angels? Well, we know that when Lucifer fell in the ageless past, we know that when he fell, he took one-third of the angels with him. Amen? Turn in Ezekiel, the 28th chapter. You may know these verses well, but for the sake of those who may not, or people who may hear this message later, we want to have the scriptures for them. So let’s look in Ezekiel 28, and let’s start at verse 11. Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God, thou sealest up the psalm full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden in the garden of God. This one little phrase here tells us this was not a human thing. Amen? Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold. Again, this is not a human. This is a very exotic angel. The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Again, not a human. I ministered on this not too long ago, that he had musical instruments built into him. And now we know for sure it’s not a human. Verse 14 says, Thou art the anointed cherub. That covers, and I have set thee so. And thou wast upon the holy mountain of God and has walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. That means he walked up and down right in front of the throne of almighty God. And thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created till iniquity was found in thee. And by the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence and thou hast sinned. Therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty and thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings that they may behold thee. Oh, wow, that day’s coming. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities. I want you to see this next phrase. By the iniquity of thy traffic. Therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee. It shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. So what Ezekiel is telling us here, and by the way, we won’t turn there today, but the companion passage that identifies and names him as Lucifer would be Isaiah 14. But here we see that Lucifer was an anointed cherub. And he was the highest of the cherub. He had the stones, the jewels in his person. And he had musical instruments in his person. I mean, I just can’t even imagine what he must have been like. He was so extraordinarily beautiful. And not only that, he had superlative wisdom. I mean, he was God’s highest, at that time, the highest creation that we know of in the Bible. amen but what happened he began to focus on his own beauty he focused on his own beauty and self-focus is dangerous now i know today if you go to the psychiatrist you go to the psychologist and the therapist they’re going to have you focusing focusing focusing on yourself and looking in there and all that sort of thing that’s not the bible way to do it Amen? And so we see here that this is what caused Satan to fall, that he was focused on his extraordinary beauty. It was not imagined. It was not exaggerated. He wasn’t thinking something that wasn’t true. It was a fact. He was beautiful. He was extraordinary. He was wise. But because he focused on it, it began to corrupt. Amen? corrupt his thinking and corrupt his wisdom. He looked around and he could not see anyone superior to him when he looked at all of God’s creatures. No one was superior to him. But he then made the mistake of thinking that he was equal to his creator. And the thing created cannot be equal to the creator. It’s not possible. Amen. And we know if you read in Isaiah where he said, I will be ascended to the throne. I will be the most high. I’m going to sit on the throne in the mouth of congregation. So that’s what happened to him. Amen. What an insightful teaching on hindering spirits versus ministering spirits. Scripture tells us that God sends forth his ministering spirits, angels to each of us for protection and assistance that we may complete our assignments on the earth. Amen. Amen. Amen. They use their training in alliance with Satan against us. Hindering spirits versus ministering spirits is the first teaching in my five part series, spirits, angels and demons, which include familiar spirits, seducing and allying spirits. Man-fearing spirits and bail busters and troublemakers. This album of five CDs can be ordered for a love gift of $25 or more for the radio ministry. Request SK-185. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to soundoffaith.org, where you may also order on MP3s. I strongly urge you to get this powerful series the Holy Spirit has given me. It is thorough but simple and scripturally sound. You will learn much. So order today. Send $25 to P.O. Box 1744 Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Request SK185 for spirits, angels, and demons. Till next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.