Now God is a God of order, and so there is order in the universe. God has created rules that govern the natural world, and the spiritual world. Everyone abides by them. Now one of the most important rules, is the rules which govern authority relationships, and we'll see in a moment, the devil is required to submit to God's rules. He just can't run around doing what he wants. He actually has to obey what God has set down. Now all, everything that God has created, He's ordered in ranks of authority. They're not just lots of people all over the place; so for example, the angels of God - we won't go into the scriptures on it, but the angels of God are ordered in a hierarchy. The Bible describes at least two of them by name, the top ones are the archangels, and it tells us Michael is responsible for Israel; and Gabriel, who visited the earth at one point there, announcing the birth of Jesus - archangels. There are cherubim and seraphim around the throne of God, and then there are various levels of angels. In the demonic kingdom, the Bible tells us there's Satan, an archangel; then there are, in Ephesians 6, Verse 12, principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in the heavenly, or the spirit, realm. In other words, ordinary demons, occult demons, and then lower-level demons, so that's structured. It's like an army, in battle array.
So you have an army on one side, in battle array; an army on the other side, in battle array; and both are required to submit to the terms that God has lain down. That's extraordinary, because God has chosen man out of all His creation - now man also has to submit to the rules God set out, so God has set rules of authority governing the government, home, workplace and the church. There are set things God has set down, and so one of the most important things you can do, is find where you are in the order of things; and then you are empowered to bless all those below you. Does that make sense? To be a greater authority, is to have greater responsibility. That means you're a greater servant - why Jesus said: if you want to be great in the kingdom of God, it's not about bossing people around. It's actually, those are all the people you serve, so you want to climb up the ladder? No way, you're going down, you've got a heap of people more to serve, and you've got to lay your life down for them.
That's what Jesus said, Matthew 20:24-28, He said: in the world they will boss over one another, but in the kingdom of God it's not like that. You become the servant of more, so if you want to be great, get to serve a lot more people. That's how you get to be great in the kingdom of God, but before you start doing that, make sure you're doing what you've been given now. Be responsible for what you've been given now, and fulfil that. So now the Bible makes it very clear that human beings shall judge angels, so we need to understand that God has positioned us only a little lower than Him. We are made in the image of God, and our destiny is that we will govern all of God's creation. How about that? We will rule over angels, but it's not quite like that at the moment. So when a person is outside of Christ, he has no authority in the spirit world at all. He is under the dominion of darkness. When a person gets saved, he comes out of the kingdom of darkness, by acknowledging allegiance to Jesus Christ. Now he enters a new realm, and out of his relationship with Christ, he can be positioned to have dominion over demons and over spiritual forces, to release blessing and to protect, so here's some of the guidelines that operate it.
Number one, Satan as a created being, must abide by God's guidelines. He can't just do what he wants. He's confined to work in darkness, outside the law of God. That's where he's confined to. He can only get into your life if he deceives you, and you don't believe the word of God. He's got to find a way in, and we'll see how he does that in a moment. Now God has created laws that govern the natural world and the spiritual world, and he upholds them. The greatest laws of course, are concerning authority. Now you have one or two positions you can take, in relationship to spiritual authority. You either position yourself under it, as you recognise it; or you resist it. If you position yourself under it, it tells us in Romans 13:1-2, then we are able of course to actually flow with God, and be blessed and protected by those God's placed over us. But if we resist it, then we receive into ourselves the consequences of that, and we'll see what those are.