Matthew 12: 29
This morning I have a few words that I would like to say that God gave me. I was thinking about what am I going to speak to your people about on this day? And this is what God dropped in my mind for today. Matthew 12:29 says again, “Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods except he first bind the strongman and then he will spoil his house.”
So, I'm sure many of you have heard this scripture and you may have even heard people speak about binding the strongman. When we speak about this scripture, we usually look at Satan as the strongman. And Jesus is saying how can we enter into the strongman’s house unless we first bind the strongman? Then we can enter his house and spoil his goods. So how can we spoil the goods of Satan? How can we interrupt what he is doing? How can we stop his influence in our lives and in our homes and in our communities? How can we do that? We must first bind him. And how do we bind him? We bind him through preaching and teaching the true doctrine of God because there is false doctrine. We bind him through the Holy Spirit, as I'm sure you know this word, we bind him through the Holy Spirit because God has given us that power. He has given us that authority. He's given us power over all the power of the enemy, and when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have power over all the power of the devil. So, we have the authority. God has given us the power to go forth and bind the works of the devil.
But that's not what I'm going to be talking to you about on this day. We can look at that scripture in another way. The strongman. Who is the strongman when we look at the House of God? When we look at the House of God the strongman, is the Holy Spirit. So, we can bind the Holy Spirit. But you say God can't be bound. God is God, God is the creator of the heavens and earth. God made all things. How can we bind God? He cannot be bound. But he can be bound, his Spirit can be bound. We can bind the Holy Spirit through our doctrines and through our practices, we can bind what the Spirit of God is allowed to do in our assemblies. We can bind the Holy Spirit in our lives and keep Him from operating the way he would like to operate. we bind him through our doctrines and our practices through what we preach and what we teach.
We bind him because we can teach for commandments the doctrine of men, and so when we do that, we bind him and he's not able to operate in the House of God. He's not able to operate in our lives the way the word of God says that he wants to operate. God wants to set us free from bondage, he wants to set us free from addictions, fear, doubt, insecurity, sexual immorality, pride, guilt, shame and so many works of the flesh and filthiness of the spirit.
Scripture says in the Book of Revelation, Jesus said I stand at the door and knock. If any man would open up, he would come in and sup with you. God is not going to force his will upon anyone, I Repeat, (he's not going to force his will upon you.) He has given us the freedom of choice. So, we have the freedom to choose whether we are going to allow him to operate in our churches, or whether we're not going to allow him to operate. We also have the freedom to choose whether we're going to allow him to operate in our lives. So, we bind the Holy Spirit. So, this is saying how can one enter into a strongman's house and spoil his goods except he first binds the strongman?
As we can see, the strong man in the House of God is the Holy Spirit. And we bind the Holy Spirit when we teach for doctrines the commandments of men. When we don't worship God in Spirit and in truth. This is how we bind the Holy Spirit and keep him from operating. We go to our churches. These assemblies that we go to because we are the church, we are the body of Christ, we go to our assemblies on Sundays. And so often this is the only day of the week people will go to church. And so often, sometimes the service may last for an hour and a half. We have put God in the box. How do we put God in a box? As I mentioned earlier, we put him in a box through our doctrines and our practices, by not worshiping him in Spirit and in truth. The Bible says study, “study to show yourself approved, a workman unto God that needed not be to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” But how can we rightly divide the word when so many bibles do not say the same thing? When many of them have been changed so that you cannot line up scripture. Satan has been very clever and effective in using people. And when we don’t know what the word of God says about salvation, about what he has called us to do, how he wants us to be set free, then he has effectively used the people of God to bind the Holy Spirit.
So, we put God in a box. Because the Spirit is not allowed to operate freely in so many of our services. The Spirit of God is not allowed to operate, so we go to service, and we have a program. We should have structure because you don't want things to be out of order. But so often in some assemblies, God is basically on the program, things are timed. OK, we're going to get up. We're going to have three or four worship songs. We're going to have praise and worship for 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Then we’re going to receive our tithes and offerings. Then we're going to call forth the preacher. The preacher is going to preach, and we're going to hear the word. And then we're going to go home. How can the Spirit operate? How can the Spirit of God have free course? How can he operate in assemblies when he's not allowed to go forth? We don't allow for any type of deliverance to go forth, We don’t allow for after-service prayer, and we're not allowing for the Spirit to move freely when we put him on the program. If the Spirit says I don’t want, you to preach right now or today. I just want you to spend this time of the service in praise and worship or I want you to spend this time in prayer because there’s something I want to do in this body today, there is something I want to do in this assembly on today. I want the people to be set free. There are people here who have been bound. And I need these people to be set free, from bondage. And I want you to do the service differently on this day. No, no, no. No, we can't do it like that God. We have a set program and people need to get out of here by12:00 o'clock. We have to make sure that the people are out of here by 12:00 o'clock or 12:30 or one o'clock. Whatever the time may be. No, we cannot, no we're not, we're not going to do those things.
And this is how we bind the Spirit of God. This is what many people are used to. This is how we put God in the box because we're not allowing him, the Spirit, to flow freely in so many of our assemblies, and God is not pleased with this. Because he has to have freedom and he's not going to force his way, we want to invite the presence of God into our assemblies. We want him to be in our assemblies, but we've got to let him operate. But if we don't have the Spirit of God to begin with, then God is not going to be able to operate freely. the scripture says in I Thessalonians 5:19. It tells us to quench not the Spirit. He is telling us don't quench the Spirit of God.
We bind the Holy Spirit in many of our assemblies, and we put God in a box because we might say that women are not allowed to preach and teach. They can teach other women, but they are not allowed to hold certain positions; they cannot be pastors, they cannot be elders, they cannot be bishops, and they cannot be Deacons. They cannot be any of these things in some churches, so therefore women are bound and the Holy Spirit, is not able to operate freely. However, when we read in Acts chapter 16, we read where Paul was in Philippi and he and the people who were with him went out of the city by a river where the people were praying, and they spoke to the women who were there. They met a woman named Lydia; she was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira. She worshipped God and when she heard the word that they preached she attended or took heed to the things that Paul taught. She was converted and she and her entire household were baptized. Then she told Paul that if they found her to be faithful to the Lord then come and stay at her house and they did. In ancient times Thyatira was about a 2.5 day’s journey from Philippi. And when we read in the book of Revelation, one of the seven churches that Jesus gave a report to was the church at Thyatira.
The scripture says that God was going to pour out of His Spirit on all flesh, not just men. And our sons and daughters would prophesy. Not just men. If the Holy Spirit dwells within a woman the same as a man, then why are women bound?
Some people say I don't believe in prophets. I don't believe that people are supposed to go forth and prophesy in church. But we read I Thessalonians 5:20, which says to despise not prophesying. God has people who prophesy, and he still has prophets. He's given us many gifts in his body. The word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, gifts of healings and miracles, gifts to discern spirits, and speaking in tongues. He's given us the ability to cast out demons, but if we put God in a box in our assemblies, when will the Holy Spirit have time to operate if someone comes in and they need to be delivered? We put him in a box. We time him, so when can he move? God is not going to move. The Holy Spirit must have the freedom to operate. So, God has given us many gifts and he's given us talents. He has given us these things in his body to operate to bring forth healing and deliverance to his people, to the hurting people who come in hurting. people who come in and they're looking for something. But when we put God in a box and we put him on the program, the Holy Spirit is not allowed to operate freely. So we go forth in our assemblies and we go forth with our programs with our schedules and God wants somebody to be healed on that day. But since God is in a box and the Holy Spirit is not allowed to operate the person comes, they may come to the assembly point and they leave the same way they came because the Holy Spirit was bound, and he was not allowed to operate.
People are in assemblies where they don't believe in laying on of hands, they don't believe in signs and miracles. They don't believe in gifts of healing. And this is not the way God wants us to operate. This is not the way he would have our assemblies operate. Putting God in the box. So, my prayer today. As we go forth is that we here at Victory Truth Church will operate in the gifts and callings. We won't put God in the box. His Spirit will be allowed to operate freely. We won't have a set time we've got to be out of church. The Spirit of God will have the freedom to move and operate. Sometimes we might be in service for 2 ½ hours, oh no, I can't be at church that long, 2 ½ hours. I’ve got to get home. I am going to watch the game, I have plans to go eat. But yet we watch movies for that long, we go different places, and we might spend the whole day out and about doing different things. Going hiking or whatever it is we may choose to do; we go to ball games and we sit up in a ball game for two to three hours and that's fine. We can play video games for hours and hours, we can read books for hours and hours. We can do those things and many more but we can’t come to an assembly of God for more than 90 minutes. We can't do that. No, we can't do that. That's too long. It's too long. It's too long because the Spirit is being fed, the flesh is warring against the Spirit, and the flesh does not want to have any part of that.
Our flesh is not being edified. Our flesh is being held, it is being held in subjection and our flesh does not like that. So, for too many people that's just too long. I can't. I don't want to do that. It's just too long. We've got to change our minds; we've got to get out of that frame of mind. Where service is only going to last an hour or an hour and 15 minutes. God never said that. This is something that man has done. We've put God in a box, we put him on the program, we put him on the schedule, and we've got to change people of God. We must change. We've got to do better. We've got to. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to operate freely in our services so that we can go forth and we can have this great revival, we can have healings and miracles and people can be set free and demons can be cast out and we can see all sorts of things and we can just go forth and worship and praise and God and he would just be so pleased with us.
Binding the strong man and putting God in a box. We bind the strongman when we don’t pray or fast, we bind the strongman when we don’t walk in love and the fruit of the Spirit. We bind the strongman when we walk in the flesh and not the Spirit. This is when the strongman in us is bound and when this happens Satan will come in and spoil the house. He will come in with his lies and doubt and fear. He will come in and bind us with strongholds.
Let's stop putting God in a box. Let's stop putting God on a program in our services, putting him on a time in our services where the preacher gets up and says, well, I only got 20 minutes to preach, so I gotta do my sermon in 20 minutes. Boom, boom, boom. 20 minutes, because people have got to get out of here. People need to get home, but we go to work for eight hours and that's OK. We can’t come to the House God hour for two hours and a half or two hours. We can’t come to prayer for an hour. We can't do all-night prayer. Oh no, we can't do that. It's just too long. I need to go home. I need to go to sleep. We've got to change our mindset as the body of Christ. We've got to get out of that mindset, we've got to put off the works of the flesh and start to feed the inner man. Start to feed the Spirit man. This is what we must do. We've got to take God out of that box. Take the Holy Spirit out of the box. We’ve got to stop binding the Holy Spirit in our assemblies and in our lives.
Prophetess Nadine Richmond/Pastor of Victory Truth Church
Cofounder- The Church Readiness Ministries
