The second thing is that evil spirits are empowered to operate. They are lawfully - they have a realm that they operate in. It's the realm of darkness. It's the realm where the laws of God are broken, so wherever the laws of God are broken, whether you knew it or not, is irrelevant. They operate in those places. So for example, you go down the road and it's, you know, a 50 mile per hour area, and you go 65 and the cop stops you and you say I didn't know; it's not a defence, understand? The law is still the law. Whether you knew it or not is not relevant. You broke the law, there is a consequence. So in the realm of the spirit, when we break the laws of God, whether ignorantly or deliberately, there is always a consequence, and one of the consequences is we reap what we've sown. There's a consequence immediately inside us. There's an eternal consequence and also, demonic spirits have access to our life because of those actions, so while I live in the light they don't have access to me. When I go into the darkness, or break the laws of God, they have a realm where they can gain access, and this is what's happened in this guy here.
This demon didn't just arrive in his life. There was a door opened in his life by his actions. He did something that opened his life up. Think about that. He did something that gave a legal right for the spirit to come in, and as a result of that, now he's tormented, and probably he's sinned more and more and more and now he's got this major bondage in his life. Notice how Jesus deals with it; Jesus is not afraid of the demon. He just rebukes, then speaks directly to it. He rebuked the demon, spoke straight to the spirit. So when we come to ministering to people, we will speak directly to the spirit, so sometimes I'll be talking to you, and when it comes to ministry it'll be speaking directly to the evil spirit, and when we speak directly to the evil spirit, they know we're speaking to them. They know it, you know and that's when they begin to react and so on - so usually I'll speak with a different tone of voice. When I'm speaking to a person, speaking more gently; speaking to a demon, it'll be straight and strong - see, firm. Notice Jesus rebuked him - be quiet, come out! And the demon threw him on the ground. It protested. It did not want to leave, it was reluctant to leave, but it had to leave, because it was facing a superior spiritual authority.
So the spirit world recognises your spiritual rank and authority. Think about that. When we come, we're coming representing Jesus Christ, and they already understand that, they have been defeated by Him. All they'll do is, test out if you're going to pray for people, whether you believe it or not [laughs] right? So then the guy - it says straight away after this, it didn't hurt him. He came up, and he wasn't hurt at all, and he just - so sometimes when we pray for people they manifest, they fall on the floor, can be shaking, crying, screaming, yelling. It can be fighting around on the floor, it can be all kinds of things, but most of the time people get through quite easily, once the root system has been dealt with in their life. Amen.
Okay, have a look in Matthew, Chapter 12. I want to show you something else - do a couple more scriptures and then hopefully some of you are starting to wriggle [Laughter] Not the person next to you. That's you, I can see it [Laughter] Oh we'll be surprised just what God is doing just here, while we're talking right now, and so some of you are looking and smiling and others [fearful sound].
I'm glad you came, because God wants to set you free, so don't be worried about those things [Applause] you know, let's be open to the Holy Ghost. So we're just trying to learn about deliverance, because some of you come from cultures, or church cultures, where there's no teaching on deliverance, and so therefore it's sort of something weird or found in Hollywood only, and we need to have understanding this is just a part of Jesus' ministry that He entrusted to the church. He's entrusted this to the church, so we need this kind of ministry. So anyway, let's have a look and see what Jesus said.