There’ll be other people here tonight, also troubled with the same issue; and God wants to set you free as well. Some of you will be troubled with nightmares. Some of you troubled with, like you wake up, and someone’s grabbing you. This is a spirit. This is a demonic spirit. Some of you at night-time will feel like someone’s touching you or molesting you, but there’s no one there. That’s an evil spirit.
God wants to set you free of these things. That’s why Jesus came – to deal with the issue of sin, and then to set us free of tormenting spirits. He wants you to be filled with His spirit. Where His spirit is present, there is peace and joy. You notice when I was praying for some of the other people, that there was a joy came on them. There was a peace came on them, kind of happy. God’s spirit brings great things to our life.
The fruit of God’s spirit in us is: love and joy and peace. Demonic spirits bring turmoil and agitation. God wants us to be free of that. That’s what tonight’s about. It’s about people being set free of spirits. So later on tonight we’ll extend the invitation: that God will set you free also. Amen. Come on let’s give Lord a clap shall we?
[Teaching]
We’re going to have a look at a passage in the Old Testament. We’re going to go to the book of Exodus. We’re going to just look in a couple of places. We’ll first of all look in Exodus 1:13 – 14. Then we’ll look in the book of Exodus 15.
The Bible is a revelation of the unseen spirit world. The Bible helps us to understand there’s an invisible spirit world. That there was a real physical world; and human beings are quite unique. We can live in the physical world; and we can connect with the spiritual world. Jesus came to talk about the kingdom of God. Jesus came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.
In the kingdom of heaven, there are no evil spirits. The kingdom of heaven takes on the nature of the king. Jesus is King over the kingdom of heaven, and His kingdom is: full of light; full of life; full of creativity; full of peace; full of joy. It’s an amazing kingdom, and He wants to bring that kingdom to you.
The problem is, there is another kingdom - the kingdom of darkness. When Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled against God, demonic spirits began to manipulate, and govern, and rule over people’s lives; tormenting them with burdens, and problems, and pressures; bringing sickness and affliction to people.
Jesus came to set people free. He said: the Spirit of the Lord anointed Him, and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. So Jesus ministered to people, and set them free of tormenting spirits, and introduced them to the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, there is no sickness, there’s no disease, no torments. Where Jesus rules, His life prevails.
Now we’re going to have a look at a story in the Old Testament. These stories in the Old Testament are pictures of the invisible spiritual world. We can learn from these stories, we can learn about Jesus Christ. We can learn about the hidden spirit world. So we’re going to look at a story of Israel, and we’re going to first of all, look in Egypt, where they were in bondage.
The people of Israel were held as slaves in the land of Egypt. They wanted freedom. They yearned for freedom, but they were dominated by a foreign military power. They were slaves that served taskmasters. They wanted to be free, but they could not be free. They needed someone to deliver them.
This is just like us. Before we come to Christ, we may think we’re free; but we are living in sin, manipulated by evil spirits, and our life is very hard. Our life is served with bondage. Look what it says in verse 13. “So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service, in which they made them serve, was with rigor.”
So we see a group of people who long to be free; but they are ruled over by cruel taskmasters; and they made every part of their life hard and difficult. It says: they made their lives bitter. In other words, the people were hurt. They were abused, they suffered; and they had no way to escape. They were literally slaves in a foreign country; and their heart became very bitter.