Saul had failed as king to obey the Lord where the Amalekites were involved. He kept some of the animals alive supposedly for sacrifice instead of utterly destroying them. Samuel reproved Saul and said, Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. It would be better to obey God than to try to do a great service for Him. Just obey Him. Then Samuel brought the reason, For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. (referring to the occult) I Samuel 15:22–23.
Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Rebellion will set up in your heart that which makes you beam something toward a person the same as a witch or a warlock, without realizing it. When someone becomes rebellious they start emanating it. The emanation of a rebellious spirit reaches out to other people. You can do a great deal of damage through rebellion. When you are rebellious, God not only will deal with and judge you for your own rejection of the directions of the Lord, for that sin of disobedience and a wrong spirit, but He will judge you for what you do to others.
Do you believe that God will hold you responsible for the actions of your own spirit? Do you believe that you will answer for every word you speak? The Scriptures say we will give an account for every idle word. The grace of God is exceedingly great and God can forgive a multitude of sins, but there are so many things people set in motion of which they fail to repent, because they do not know what they are doing. A little child with rebellion in its heart can come to the table at which the family is in a good mood—cheerful, talking, and having a wonderful time—and before the meal is over, the rebellion in that child can spoil everything, until there is a bad spirit in everyone warring against one another.
Do you believe that you are really responsible for its affect on others if you have a bad spirit? What will happen if bitterness comes in your spirit? Beware … lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled; Hebrews 12:15b. Someone with a bitter spirit can put a cloud on a service that has to be offset by prayer. However, the great power of a right spirit is very wonderful. When you come before the Lord with a right spirit, worshiping and adoring the Lord, you can also throw out a positive spirit that just seems to sweep people along. If a good spirit is strong enough in the people it will nullify the bad.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Notice that stubbornness is as idolatry. How can stubbornness be likened to idolatry? If you would go out and worship something else, it would be no worse for your spirit than for you to be stubborn. Stubbornness is the most supreme form of idolatry a person can be capable of. It is the worship of self. The stubborn insist on their will instead of the will of God. All worship depends upon submitting to the will of God. If you are only submitting to your own will, it is an idolatry; something else is taking the place of God and that is what idolatry is. Something else has usurped God’s place. Saul did this when God told him to do one thing, but he thought to do something else. “I’m not going to go down and obey God and return with no recognition. I will lead King Agag back so the people can see how I conquered the king. I will also bring all the flocks and herds; it will be very impressive when we have all of those burnt sacrifices unto the Lord.” The Lord did not say they were to do that. He said, “Kill them all there.” To obey is better than sacrifice, to hearken than the fat of rams. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as idolatry. Saul set himself up to be God. He worshiped his own opinion and the way he wanted to do it.
You can come to the place where you say, “No one is going to tell me what to do. I will be submissive only to what I believe is right.” That’s not submission. The real test of submission comes when you submit even though you do not see that it is right. Sometimes you can come right down to the problem that may exist and never get to the heart of it because you are still not submissive. You do not take the word and say, “This word I will obey. This thing I will accept because it comes from the Lord, it comes from the servants of the Lord, those in authority over me. I will accept it—no questions.” You can always tell who is sitting on the throne by your consistent reactions. You had better reach the place where you are not going to be stubborn, but say, “Yes, Lord, I will be submissive, and I’m not going to react to your direction. It is in your hands.”
Jonah got a word from the Lord and it displeased him. David also received a word from the Lord and it displeased him. Jonah took off the other way. He did not want to preach to the people in Nineveh. The old flesh came up. Who was sitting on the throne then? God or Jonah? Before it was over, Jonah was dethroned. Would you want to take that submarine route into submission?
David brought the Ark of the Covenant back, but he almost did the same thing that his predecessor Saul did. David thought, “We will take the Ark back on a new cart. We will get some new cattle and we will have a nice parade. Everybody will see a new king is bringing back the Ark.” It was not to be done that way. It was to be carried humbly by staves through loops in the Ark. When the Ark began shaking as they came to a rough place and started to tip over, Uzzah reached out to steady it, and in the act of sacrilege he dropped dead. The Scriptures say, “David was displeased with the Lord.” David said, “How shall the Ark of God come to me?” So he found a little house where Obed-Edom lived, left the Ark there, and went on back to Jerusalem. “If that’s the way God wants to do business, He can just keep His Ark there and we’ll get along without it.” When David heard that God was blessing old Obed-Edom so much, he returned to pick up the Ark of the Covenant and bring it back. David lost out by being stubborn.
Stubbornness is as idolatry. If you are stubborn and think, “If that is the way God is going to be, if that is the way the pastor or the elders are going to deal with me, then I just won’t bother with it. I will leave it alone.” You will have to come back and pick it up again, because the Lordship of Jesus Christ is the major concern—and your absolute submission to it. You may feel you cannot, and do not know how to be submissive; if there is rebellion in your heart, then you are not submissive, but you can turn that rebellion into submission if you want to. Confessed rebellion is submission in action. All you have to do is say, “I’m sorry. I confess my rebellion.” That is an act of submission; and the more you confess rebellion, the more it will be broken in your spirit once and for all.
Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, but submission has a healing quality to the human spirit. If you work before the Lord to be submissive, you will find that the bad qualities of your spirit will slowly heal, one after another. It is the key of change. Wherever the growth is rapid in any individual in this walk, it is because there is a meekness and a submission. …the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong… Ecclesiastes 9:11. The race is not to the swift, that he wins the race. The battle is not to the strong, that he is the strongest in battle. It is that meekness and submissiveness in your spirit. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5. It is the meek, not the swift or the strong who will inherit the earth.
All self-deception starts with rebellion. Satan’s great sin was rebellion against the Lord. Lucifer fell because pride and rebellion entered into his heart; he exalted himself and he was brought low. It still becomes one of the most deadly things. Wherever rebellion comes up in a child, that child could easily lose the angel protection God gives every child. Obedience creates an aura of protection through which the angels of God can minister to the spirit of a child. Whom the devil would destroy he first puts in their heart rebellion. We overcome rebellion by the act of submission.
Rebellion is contagious. It is like bitterness—it will defile many before it is through. One rebellious person can begin to contaminate many others. You can reach out to take another person’s problems—but never reach out to take another person’s rebellion from him, whether they recognize it is there or not. It has a deadly affect. It is a spirit and it is contagious.
Stop and analyze your walk with the Lord. You may have a seed of rebellion that is thriving, and you don’t recognize it. You may go along, and suddenly pressure will hit you and that reaction comes out; then you pray over it and it is submerged again. You had better get rid of the whole thing. Get it out of your spirit.
Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty: he will smite their altars, he will destroy their pillars. Surely now shall they say, We have no king; for we fear not the Lord; and the king, what can he do for us? They speak vain words, swearing falsely and making covenants: therefore judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field. Hosea 10:2–4. None of us are insincere, but we can have a kind of self-deception when we think everything is all right, and we still nurture rebellion, and we are still not submissive. We are fooling and kidding ourselves. You can stand and worship and go on in this walk, but if you have not come into that submissiveness, if you have not rid yourself of that rebellion in your heart, you will find that deception is there; you kid yourself, and you never will really know the truth. You may say, “I am not afraid of false doctrine or of being deceived by someone coming along quoting a lot of Scriptures. But when someone becomes rebellious, they are open to deception because they are deceiving themselves.
John 7:17 says, If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God… It is in your submission to the Lord, your will set to do His will with no rebellion in your heart to it, that the deception is out. You will know the teaching, whether it be of God. But deception starts when you begin to deceive yourself with rebellion, and soon you will be deceived in everything else. It is only the lack of submissiveness resulting in rebellion in the heart of people that leads them to the place where suddenly they confront their leaders that God puts over them and they begin to criticize and reject them. They lose out every time.
Do not be rebellious. Do not let a lack of submission get to you. No matter how far away a man who is submissive goes, if he is submissive in his heart, the lifeline with the Body is always with him. He will always have that help. The minute that he becomes rebellious he emanates that which freezes out the good which God would bring to him. I cannot emphasize enough the deadliness of the sin of rebellion.
When rebellion comes up, confess it and it is easily dealt with. The only thing that can make rebellion or lack of submission flourish is if you are too proud to confess it. Keep that transparency and openness. Come and humble yourself. “I’m rebellious; pray for me.” Then you will get rid of it. The ones that are trying to put on or create an image are phonies, anyway. The only people that are going to come forth that are really great, are those like the early church: “He that would be greatest must be the servant of all” (Matthew 20:26). Peter asked who would be the greatest; Jesus told them to wash each other’s feet. The ministry to one ministers to all. Peter was always confessing and exposing himself. He always said and did the wrong thing, he was always making a mistake. Poor, rash Peter—but Peter was the best repenter and he would confess and bring it out, and God would bless him and put him right at the top because he did not try to be anything but just a humble open brother who confessed his need. Be quick to recognize rebellion for what it is. “Well, I’m just a little opinionated.” You may be rebellious.
We all stick together. We do not rebel. We can see a lot of faults in one another, but everyone in this walk has to be transparent. We have to be able to see right through each other, everything that’s good and everything that’s bad—the whole works, and not have it make any difference. We don’t judge each other. Accept one another in the Lord and when you see a problem, don’t judge it, but pray for it and bless it. The minute the wall comes up and you are not transparent, that minute you are in trouble. The minute that you begin to shut off and withdraw because you do not want anyone else to know what you are, you have missed the one thing in this walk. Do not be ashamed to say you have a problem or a need, or you will miss everything in this walk. Come and lay it right out on the altar and say, “This is what is the matter with me and if there is anything wrong, Lord, You reveal it to the rest of the folks. Discern me; show me Lord, what’s here.” That spirit is going to prevail.
These are days of preparation for what the Lord shall bring forth in our midst. It is not a time to be fearful or to draw back. It is not a time that thou shalt not be fully exposed unto the Lord and the moving of His Spirit as He searcheth the heart and prepareth thee that thou mayest enter in.
Is it not said unto thee as it was said of Israel of old, “Sanctify yourselves—for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you”? Thou shalt prepare to cross this Jordan and enter into thine inheritance. Thou shalt not say, “Behold, I am weary of the battle,” but only gird thyself with the strength of the Lord, for thou shalt enter into the battles that really count. Thou shall not fight circumstances as did Israel in the wilderness, but thou shalt enter in to fight Canaanites and possess your heritage.
Behold, there is a difference. Thou shall not struggle against the environment and against the changes, and murmur and complain, but thou shalt enter in to aggressively take that which God has provided and set before thee. Say not, “Behold, the battle is too great,” for thou shalt overcome this battle. Thou shall become sanctified in the sight of the Lord. Thou shalt pass over into the new area of battle that the Lord setteth before thee. It is the period of conflict where thou shalt possess and inherit; and thou shalt reach forth on the right hand and on the left. Therefore, prepare your hearts. Let the Lord prepare thy spirit that it be right before the Lord to enter into these things. Amen.