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Remember in one of our sermons sometime ago we talked about the experience of the children of Israel at Rephidim, where they were attacked by the hostile Amalekites, this attack is an analogy or a comparison of the different types of spiritual warfare in which we, God’s people, find ourselves constantly engaged as we move ahead in our Christian lives. Rephidim is a Hebrew word that means "place of rest" or "resting places". In the Bible, it refers to a camping site where the Israelites rested during their 40-year journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The Bible mentions Rephidim five times, from Exodus 17:1 to Numbers 33:15. Despotism means the exercise of absolute power, especially in a cruel and oppressive way. The name Rephidim in Hebrew means place of rest as said above, as seen in Exd. 17:1, 8 and 19:2, a place which literally lies in the march of the Israelites from Egypt to Sinai in the broad valley about 25 miles from Jebel Musa (that is Mount Sinai). You remember one of the miracle event that happened in Rephidim, the miracle of water flowing out from a rock as seen in Exd. 17. You know that the battle of Refidim or Rephidim took place between the Israelites and the Amalekites on their way towards their Promised Land. This goes to show that there is always a battle in life especially in the real areas of life; hence we hear that there is nothing good that comes easy! Consider for a moment the striking contrast between what happened at the Red Sea and what happened at Rephidim. At the Red Sea, when the Israelites were delivered from Egypt’s bondage. God’s command was, ‘Fear not; stand still (firm, confident, undismayed) and see the salvation of the Lord which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians you have seen today you shall never see again” Exodus 14:13. This illustrates beautifully God’s work in our salvation. In bringing us into the Christian life God alone is the agent fighting against the forces that does not want us to embrace Christianity. The Israelites could do nothing to secure their salvation at the Red Sea –God did it for them by helping them to resist the Egyptians who do not want them to crossover and go to where their God has promised them. But having been delivered from Pharaoh and introduced to a new life free of bondage and suffering, they soon discovered that there was a warfare in which they had to engage; and so it is in every sphere of life, there is always a battle to fight in life in other to actually and realistically be free. All Scripture has a purpose; it is inspired by God to teach and instruct us in the art of effective Christian living as seen in 2 Timothy 3:16, “16 Every Scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, [and] for training in righteousness (in holy living, in conformity to God’s will in thought, purpose, and action)”. The experience of the Israelites at Rephidim, described in Exodus 17, serves to remind us that once we come into Christian life we must recognize that we are thrust right into the middle of a spiritual battle between the Church and Satan and his forces. For too long many Christians have neglected this all important fact and have been enjoying a peaceful coexistence pact without a sense of being alert, with the archenemy, the devil. We have adopted this attitude of being careless with our alertness towards Satan: ‘Don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.’ The war between Satan and us is not a ‘cold war’ but a real hand–to-hand combat, waged in the power of the Spirit. We should never forget this fact of a spiritual and physical war between us and Satan if we really want to be safe. Did you now get it; that living life on earth is a battle between good and bad, between good living and wickedness, between life and death: so the solution is Christ Who helps us to battle and fight against these forces for us! So let us always live our life in a way to give advantage to Christ living in us for Him to always fight and war on our behalf knowing that Satan’s aim is to render us carnal and fleshy so that our being empowered by our union in Christ which is also our Spiritual Armor will be very weak unable to draw our strength from Him resulting to a very great difficulties in His guiding us in life in Christ which is His main aim of indwelling us by His Holy Spirit so that in life we will be able to stand up against [all] the strategies and the deceits of the devil.

Does this talk about the devil and spiritual warfare, which has been the focus of our attention over these past few months, make you feel somewhat apprehensive and afraid? If so, then don’t worry because this is not unusual; the majority of Christians feel a degree of trepidation when the subject of Satan and his forces is raised. Trepidation is a feeling of fear or anxiety about something that may happen. This fear of the devil, ‘said Corrie Ten Boom, “is most likely from the devil himself.” Satan will do everything in his power to prevent you from seeing your true authority in Christ, because if you are mature enough in Christ to see and know the authority that you have in being in Christ then you will know that it is the devil or Satan that should be afraid of you than your being afraid of him. If Christ is truly in you, Satan knows and sees Him, and Satan is aware that Christ in you is seeing everything about him Satan and will be impressing/inspiring the things He sees of Satan in your heart/mind where He resides in you and thus making you too to know Satan’s intents/plans through Christ in you and since everything about Satan is evil and bad, Satan is always afraid of being exposed by Christ in you, do you now see why Satan should be afraid of you if you are in Christ which is why God’s Word said that no one of evil wants to come to the Light (Christ) for fear that the Light will expose him! But today Satan himself have worked very hard through all his agencies of humans and other evil spirits to dwarf the Christ Contents of many people in diverse ways especially through worldliness making it virtually impossible for the Christ in these Christ-dwarf people to function in impressing/inspiring them, thus by this act of dwarfing the Christ in people Satan and his cohorts can do anything evil/bad around and in them without their knowing thus fooling them, fooling everybody and destroying in them/in the world. Satan will try to keep you away from every good book, every divinely inspiring sermon and every inspiring situations/discussions in which you might discover that although he is a cunning and tremendously influential wicked foe, yet, because of what our Lord Jesus Christ did for us when He died on Calvary, he Satan is a defeated foe. The reason the Son of God, God Himself in form of a human appeared on earth was to destroy the devil’s work’ in its entirety as seen in 1 John 3:8, saying “8 [But] he who commits sin [who practices evildoing] is of the devil [takes his character from the evil one], for the devil has sinned (violated the divine law) from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo (destroy, loosen, and dissolve) the works the devil [has done].” Can you now see why God Himself came into the world in human form called Lord Jesus and it is also interesting to know that after God destroyed the devil’s work’, He gave that same power Christ which He used to man, so that man too will have the same ability that God has to face Satan any time Satan tries to challenge him man but you see Satan always play a smart one on man in deceit through his cunning acts! Now listen to me carefully and please do not misunderstand what I say. If you could only see the power that is available to you in Lord Jesus Christ and would reach out to possess it then, instead of you being afraid of the devil, the devil would be afraid of you. Some Christians view the devil as great and powerful while they view God as relatively small and insignificant. If you want to see how much greater God and Christ are than the devil then consider the passage before us right now. Lord Jesus seems to be saying, ‘You wonder how I cast out devils? Well, such is the supremacy of My Father that I do not need to use God’s arm, or even God’s hand –I simply use His finger.’ Praise God there is more power in God’s little finger, so to speak, than in all the might and energy of Satan and his forces put together. This is the truth but do not try to claim it or pretend to have it hypocritically otherwise you are on your own. Christ ability is inborn and you have got to be living life based on true knowledge of God and God’s Word on a daily basis to grow and keep growing the indwelling Christ in you by feeding it with the fruit of the spirit as detailed in Ephesians making you to be mature in Christ so that you will be amongst the people that Christ is using on earth. It is simple, but you just don’t have to live life in a worldly way as many others are doing, you have to follow the example of how our Lord Jesus Christ lived life on earth, notice that as from age twelve He began being interested in God’s activities in the Church but not following the activities of those He saw in Church but following according to how God’s Word said Church activities should be, He read and know virtually everything in God’s word to His finger tips and practicing it in His daily life on earth doing good.

Do you hear that, ‘having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word’, which means that water (Word) and blood both serves as cleansing and washing items for our Lord God Almighty unto humanity! No wonder we always sing the song ‘sacha mu Nna, sacha mu oh, were mmiri na obara sacha mu oh! Now we come to the real heart of this matter of sanctification and I ask is sanctification instantaneous or is it a process, a gradual process? There are those who say God sanctifies in a single act, and those who say that sanctification is a process that goes on in our lives day by day. In many ways both views are correct. Day by day, as we open our lives to the gentle, convicting power of the Holy Spirit, He points out our wrong attitudes/characters or wrong behavior, our wrong lifestyle and, as we respond by making positive amends, He applies His cleansing and sanctifying power to our hearts to enable us. This is the process of sanctification and this is where hearing the Word is very essential/important. Sanctification is a very theological-sounding word, yet it’s one of the defining pursuits of the Christian faith. It is the act of being made or becoming holy. It isn’t a one-time or static event but an ongoing experience of God’s grace. Sanctification is the action of making or declaring something holy, "the sanctification of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ". Sanctification is the action or process of being freed from sin or purified, "the process of sanctification takes deliberate action on our part". It is also the action of causing something to be or seem morally right or acceptable. Without laying aside the necessity of a daily sanctifying process, it is also true that sanctification can be linked, for some, to a definite moment in time. Commissioner S.I. Brengle of the Salvation Army, speaking of the great experience when, as he put it, ‘God sanctified my soul’, said, ‘On January 9th, 1895, at about nine o’ clock in the morning, God sanctified me He gave me such a blessing as I never dreamed a man could have this side of heaven.’ As one reads the biographies of great Christian men and women one finds that many, such as John Wesley, Hudson Taylor and Frances Ridley Havergal, testified to receiving sanctification as a gift from Him, God. However we view the matter, one thing is sure: God wants us to be clean, pure, and holy being transformed to keep conforming to His Christ. Christ is waiting to deliver us from inbred evil, inbred is something existing from birth, the stubbornness of self-will, and the self-centred attitudes and wickedness that leave a dark stain upon our spirits/our conscience. Let us invite Him to cleanse our inner being from every sin and stain of wrong living. ‘God paints in many colors,’ says Gilbert Chesterton, ‘but He never paints so gorgeously as when He paints in white.’ And we all knows what white stands for!

The thing about God’s promises is that they are often conditional on us obeying His instructions. Whenever our good Lord makes a promise to us, watch and always know that it is often predicated on condition and that condition must be met for the promise to be fulfilled. But more often than not people just jump on God’s promises without being watchful of the conditions and because those conditions were not met/kept, the promises are not fulfilled and people begins to doubt God without realizing that the fault is theirs in not keeping the condition! Today’s promise is an example in kind. In order to know God’s guidance we need to learn to submit to His ways no matter how difficult we feel it is. At times submitting to the Lord demands we put rational thought aside for a moment. As verse 5 tells us –we have to learn to “Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.” Today the great problem is that people like and want to follow God their own way, not the way God wants Himself to be followed. In other words people wants to follow God the way it is easy for them, especially when the way God wants to be followed seem a little difficult for man! Then man designs his own way to follow God. Over the last weeks I have had to put all my natural inclinations aside, I have cleared unnecessary possessions out of my house in order to simplify my life. Everything in my rational mind said I should hold to the items and spend every Sunday morning over the coming summer at car boot sales to see if I could make a bit of money to help make ends meet. Often in this type of situations, the Lord had different ideas. He gave me the strong impression that I was not to spend every Sunday at car boot sales –He wanted me in Church to be with Him in heart. So I decided to engage the services of an agent who sells items for customers on the internet. She calmly but clearly told me the items would not sell! The Lord then told me to give all of the items away. Now that was not an easy thing to hear or to understand or to do, especially when some of the items held memories from my childhood, or had been collected over time, sometimes at considerable expense or sacrifice. But the Lord does not call us to understand before we obey, but to be obedient (but note He does not call us to be reckless either!) but to be explicit/implicit with His words/commands. Unburdened/relieved of all those items I recognize that I am now free to move on to the tasks to which He is calling me. Being unnecessarily burdened with life needs/necessities is the reason we are often not able to yield in obedience to all what our Lord God wants us to do for Him, we then device our own way, that ruins! Let us always learn to follow and obey God in all our ways for it to be well with us!

Wao! Can you hear this, yet people are still allowing themselves to be deceived despite the fact that God’s word spelt out everything out for us! Paul has given the Colossians several warnings in this chapter and here, in verse 18, is another one. J.B. Philips translates it in this way: ‘[Don’t] let any man cheat you for your joy in Christ by persuading you to make yourselves “humble” and fall down and worship angels. Such a man, inflated by an unspiritual imagination, is pushing his way into matters he knows nothing about, and his cleverness forgetting the head.’ Some commentators believe one aspect of the heresy threatening the Church at Colossae was the veneration of angels –the idea being to seek out mediators in addition to Christ. If so then it is another indication of the existence of beliefs similar to those of second-century Gnosticism. Paul has no intention of allowing the false teaching to rob those who are ‘in Christ’ of their prize, and characterizes the individuals concerned in this way: ‘Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen [in visions], and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.’ Here we see the root of the trouble: those advocating the worship of angels were puffed up with pride. They claimed to have inside knowledge but really they had found a ‘spiritual’ way (so called) of drawing attention to themselves. When talking to Christians with strange ideas about the faith, I have found that often the underlying motivation is to be noticed. They have little or no sense of identity, and as aligning themselves with others is not enough of a boost for them, they go in the other direction. Thus they are different. The root of all this is, as Paul discerned, pride. William Law put it well when he said, ‘Pride must die in us or Christ cannot live in us.’ Pride and Christ cannot stay together!