GOD'S SPIRIT IS ABOVE ANY OTHER SPIRIT – PART 1
Sakkie Parsons
Translated from the Afrikaans Version: God se Gees bokant elke ander gees – Deel 1
Translator: Lynda Botha
Someone wrote to me the following:
"Can you please help me understand something? I have read 1 Samuel 16:14 “the Spirit of the Lord left Saul, and a tormenting spirit from the Lord filled him.” What does this mean? Surely the Lord doesn’t make use of spirits under the power of Satan?
Here is how I view and understand this matter:
Our Lord is sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. So, nothing whatsoever can happen in the universe which He does not know about and which He must allow eventually otherwise it would not happen.
Therefore, you can presume, as stated here in 1 Samuel 16:14, that the tormenting spirit went out from God – But the evil spirit only went from God as far as God knew in His omniscience and did not prevent it in His almightiness and omniscience.
1 SAM 16:14 “Now the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul, and the Lord sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear.”
We also read similar statements in other places.
I will explain later why our Lord did not prevent the evil spirit from taking possession of Saul.
I believe what I am going to share with you next will help you understand better what I have already said thus far.
I want to start with the following from the Word of God:
Jesus says:
MAT 12:30 “Anyone who isn’t with Me opposes Me, and anyone who isn’t working with Me is actually working against Me.”
You see –
A person can never be neutral when it comes to our Lord and there can never be an emptiness inside of you.
You either have Jesus' Spirit within you, or, to put it this way, the spirit of this world within you.
You can never have both present within yourself but either the one or the other.
MAT 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”
In the Amplified version this verse reads as follows:
MAT 6:24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (money, possessions, fame, status, or whatever is valued more than the Lord.)”
It doesn’t matter how nice a person's personality is or how many wonderful things a person has done – but If this person has not adopted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, that person does not have Jesus' Spirit present in them but then rather has the spirit of this world in them.
Also remember that the god of this world's spirits is not equally evil or bad.
I am reading:
MAT 12: 43-45
43 “When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none.”
44 “Then it says, “I will return to the person I came from.” So, it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order.”
45 “Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation.”
Do you see?
This spirit was bad, but he went to fetch spirits even more evil than himself.
Jesus says the following about His followers:
JOHN 14:16 “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you.”
JOHN 14:17 “He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it isn’t looking for Him and doesn’t recognize Him. But you know Him, because He lives with you now and later will be in you.”
In Saul's case, the Spirit of God left him:
1 SAM16:14 “Now the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul,..”
So, then there was a void which Satan's spirits took immediately.
Because you see:
MAT 12:30 “Anyone who isn’t with Me opposes Me, and anyone who isn’t working with Me is actually working against Me.”
Therefore, we find in Saul's case:
1 SAM 16:14 “Now the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul, and the Lord sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear.”
This brings me immediately to something else which the writer wrote to me about:
“Surely the Lord doesn’t make use of spirits under the power of Satan?”
I will share my view regarding the above question with you in part 2.
For now, I leave you with the following reality out of the Word of God in our human existence here on earth – and that is; In the end, your and my struggle is not against those so-called evil people, but against the evil one that abuses that person:
EPH 6:12 “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”
Greetings,
Sakkie