"ALREADY ABOVE THE ENEMY"

Exod 14:31-15:18  And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant Moses. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The LORD [is] my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he [is] my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him. The LORD [is] a man of war: the LORD [is] his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone. Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, [which] consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, [and] the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.  Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who [is] like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who [is] like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful [in] praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people [which] thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided [them] in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The people shall hear, [and] be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be [as] still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O LORD, till the people pass over, [which] thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, [in] the place, O LORD, [which] thou hast made for thee to dwell in, [in] the Sanctuary, O Lord, [which] thy hands have established. The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.

• As Moses warned Pharaoh to let Israel go lest God's wrath fall upon Egypt, the dynastic Kingdom of Egypt fell to its wobbling knees at the almighty power of the one true God.
• Moses told Pharaoh to let Israel go three days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice.

• It was three days from His death to His resurrection.
• And as much as there was more to be accomplished for Israel after their three days' journey, that is, their need to enter the Promised Land and establish God's Kingdom in the earth, there is much more for the child of God after the experience of the three days' journey of the death, burial and resurrection with Jesus Christ.
• I say WITH Jesus Christ, because we took a three day's journey, if we obeyed Acts 2:38.
• We were crucified with Christ, were buried with Christ and were risen into newness of life with Christ.
• Since it took Him three days to experience all of this, and we experienced it with Him, then we took our three days' journey.

• You see, it takes death, burial and resurrection with Jesus to be saved.
• Acts 2:38 and its threefold command of repentance, baptism in Jesus name and reception of the Holy Ghost is the fulfillment of that GOSPEL in our lives.
• And since that is salvation, and since the Bible says TODAY is the day of salvation, we can experience the three day's journey in one day.
• Many have repented, and in the same day were baptized in water in Jesus' name and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
• They took a three day's journey in one day!

• It is as real as having experienced a three day's journey as it is to say that we died with Christ two thousand years ago.
• How could we die with Him when He died two thousand years ago?
• It is because He died as every human that would ever live.
• And we just need to recognize that and believe it is true.
• And since He died as us then we can say that we died two thousand years ago with Him.

• But we have gone the three day's journey.
• If you have not obeyed Acts 2:38, then you need to do it today, and be free from Egypt!
• You need to be free from sin.

• What else is there?
• Twiddle our thumbs until Jesus comes?
• Far from it!
• Now we must enter the PROMISED LAND!

• In that song, notice the tone of victory over Egypt.
• Notice how they knew GOD is a man of war.
• God won the war for them.
• The enemies ahead shall hear and be afraid!
• Edom's dukes, Moab's mighty men, and al the inhabitants of Canaan will melt in fear!
• They shall be still as stone.
• Petrified!
• Until God's people pass over into their land and defeat them, too, as God defeated the Egyptians!
• GOD WILL BRING THEM IN.

• Oh, the victory we felt when we were saved!

Numb 13:32-14:4  And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, [is] a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it [are] men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, [which come] of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.

• I thought they were shouting victory over Canaan before they even came near Canaan!
• The trouble was they did not keep the memory of  Egypt's defeat in their hearts as proof that they can conquer any enemy.
• Notice the reason they felt so victorious in Exodus 15:


Exod 15:17-19  Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, [in] the place, O LORD, [which] thou hast made for thee to dwell in, [in] the Sanctuary, O Lord, [which] thy hands have established. The LORD shall reign for ever and ever. For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry [land] in the midst of the sea.

• They saw God defeat Egypt, so they knew He would defeat Canaan.
• But they forgot all about that.
• If they would have kept that in mind, they would have saw the giants and said, once again, "They will stand in fear as we pass over and plant the sanctuary in the Land!"

• But the ones who grow feeble and weak and lose their composure are the ones who did not keep in their minds the victories God gave them at the start.
• God has not changed.
• What happened?
• They forgot!


Exod 15:22-24  So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they [were] bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?

• Could not God deal with that?
• He did!


Exod 15:25  And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, [which] when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,

• The message is that if we apply the CROSS, the old rugged tree, to our situation, we will see the bitter turned into the sweet!
• Apply the cross to your situations.
• Keep in mind the victory that you experienced when God saved you and defeated all of Hell, and Satan had to stand in shame as God spoiled you from principalities and powers!
• Apply that victorious standing you have now to your situation.
• Because of the Cross I am one with Christ and if God be for me, who or what can be against me?
• We are dead, buried and rise with Christ.
• When trouble comes, remember who the cross made us!
• A people ONE WITH CHRIST!

• Mostly because they did not know the cross' power in putting them in victory means everyday experiences can be tackled and taken down, too.
• People think all the cross is for is salvation.
• But it is to get you out of the world, plus a lot more!
• There are truths of the cross that God is opening up to His people in these last days that were practically unheard of before.

• And they never knew that our position "in Christ" is a position in the highest form of holiness one could ever know!

• Yet they never knew that "In Christ", since He died unto sin once, and is alive forever more unto God, we are dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God (Rom. 6:7-11).

• People need to go back to the cross and understand all that they missed.

• But the same Bible that says we died with Him, were buried with Him, and resurrected with Him, also says that we are ascended with Him far above all principalities and powers and are seated at the right hand of the Father WITH HIM! (Eph 1:20-2:6).

Exod 15:26  And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I [am] the LORD that healeth thee.

The problem is that if the devil knows you think you have to rise above him, then he knows you do not know you are already over him!

• And if you do not know you are already over him, then he can make you think you do not have a whole lot of other victories that you already have.
• He can say you are not holy enough.
• He can say you have not died to sin yet.
• He can say you are not good enough for God.
• The fact is that the cross made all of this our's the moment we obeyed Acts 2:38 and made the three day journey from death to resurrection!

• Jesus did not have to roll up his sleeves and fight.
• He used the WORD.
• You do not need to fight the devil, the fight already occurred and he is defeated.

• The only fight we have is TO FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH.

• As crazy as it sounds, many think that the idea of the cross of 2,000 years ago was the place Mike Blume died is just as ridiculous.
• BUT IT  IS TRUE ANYHOW!
• But God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

A while after their Three day's journey, Israel finally came to Canaan, as we described earlier.

• 12 spies went into check out the promised land.
• They spent 40 days there.
• This was the land where God's kingdom would be established.
• But ten of them came back and said they could not enter in.
• God said forty days would become forty years of wandering in the wilderness, until the last of the doubting adults died.

• The same victory that defeated Egypt would defeat Canaan.
• But they doubted.
• And after they heard about the 40 desert years, they still did not see that it was not them who would fight, but God would fight for them, and they tried to enter and ...


Numb 14:40-45  And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we [be here], and will go up unto the place which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned. And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the LORD? but it shall not prosper. Go not up, for the LORD [is] not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites [are] there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the LORD, therefore the LORD will not be with you. But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, [even] unto Hormah.

• They thought they could not handle the enemy so they would not go in.
• Then when they heard about dying in the wilderness, they tried their best to fight and lost.
• Both times they did not get the point that GOD WILL WIN THE BATTLE.
• You think you cannot win so you stand in unbelief.
• But then you see the danger, so you fight with all your might and then  lose.
• You are not getting it.
• You might say, "Well, you said standing in fear and being afraid to enter in is unbelief, so I went in but still failed."
• Yes, BUT YOU FAILED TO SEE BOTH TIMES THAT YOUR FAITH IN GOD'S POWER UPON YOUR LIFE WILL MOVE GOD TO FIGHT THE BATTLES, NAD IT MUST NOT BE YOU WHO FIGHTS.

Acts 1:3  To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

Acts 1:9  And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.
 

• After forty days of talking about the Kingdom, Jesus ascended.
• After forty days about walking in the kingdom, Israel doubted and refused to face the enemy.

• Where did Jesus ascend?
• Far above all enemies (Eph 1).
• Israel faced the enemy after forty days and "chickened out".
• The SAME BLOOD THAT FREED THEM FROM EGYPT WAS FOR THEM TO ENTER CANAAN AS WELL.
• THEY WERE ABOVE THEIR ENEMIES FOR GOD WAS WITH THEM.
• BUT THEIR INABILITY TO REMEMBER THAT WORD FROM GOD BROUGHT THEM DEFEAT.
• We are ascended with Jesus and are above our enemies also.
• But some are so full of unbelief that they can hardly stop fighting each other let alone enter the place of power in the Kingdom and start casting down devils.

• We are seated in heavenly places in Christ.
• Guess where the principalities and powers are?
• In HIGH places.
• In heavenly places.
• We need to see we are over them and thrown them out!

God set Israel free from Pharaoh.

• They left the Dynastic Kingdom of Egypt.
• You would have thought it would have taken an atomic bomb to cripple the kingdom and stifle the military prowess of the nation and let Israel run free of any threat of military enclosure..
• Or, a clandestine espionage of a thousand Hebrews to knock out the court guards and run and take Pharaoh hostage and demand Israel's freedom, until they were safe from Egypt, to let Pharaoh go in the desert.

• KILL A LAMB.
• That's all?
• Kill a lamb?
• GO INTO YOUR HOMES, KILL A LAMB AND STAY THERE.
• Crazy by the reasoning's standards.

• Behold the Lamb, JESUS CHRIST!

All our imaginations about what great feats of human ingenuity and manpower could be implemented to defeat an entire Kingdom called Egypt, and all the overwhelming forces of the means to try and stop death, itself, from touching Israel, do not match the power of the Blood of the Lamb!

• The blood of the lamb did what knocked out the Kingdom of Egypt with all its chariots and armies and its world-power forces from harming God's people who were mere slaves in the land.

There is enough power in the blood that all our enemies we will ever face are simply no match for those united to Christ by it.

If we are trying to rise above the devil, then he knows we do not know we are already above him.

Egypt is not only defeated, but the enemies that have not even stood against us yet have been defeated long ago.

GO ON IN AND TAKE WHAT IS YOURS!

• You are already above the enemy!