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Psalm 16:7 says when a man's way pleases the Lord he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Here we looked at 24 possible ways that God enforces this peace. 21 of the ways it was God making an unwilling enemy to have no choice as they are dealt a strong blow or rendered useless. But God also leaves a chance for the enemy to repent and become friends through unforgettable encounters.
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Psalm 16:7 says when a man's way pleases the Lord he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Here we looked at 24 possible ways that God enforces this peace. 21 of the ways it was God making an unwilling enemy to have no choice as they are dealt a strong blow or rendered useless. But God also leaves a chance for the enemy to repent and become friends through unforgettable encounters.
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The speaker discusses different ways in which God deals with enemies. He mentions involuntary ways, such as killing them, causing them to run away, paralyzing them, and frustrating their purposes. He also talks about voluntary ways, like turning their own supporters against them and making them walk into their own traps. Additionally, he mentions how God can turn enemies into a laughingstock and remove the basis of their power. Finally, he discusses how God can harden their hearts to destruction and use them as an example or for experimentation. Hello and welcome to Start Right With Jesus. My name is Ovio Ayola and my prayer is that as you listen today, God will bless you. I will be continuing as promised on talking on the Bible verse that says, When a man's way pleases the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. That's Proverbs 16.7. God opened my eyes to 24 different ways that you can deal with your enemies. 21 of them are involuntary, that is the enemy that has refused to change and God deals with them in diverse ways. And three of them are voluntary when the enemy becomes a friend of God. So I just want to first talk about the one of unwilling where God forces the enemy unwillingly to be at peace with you. Obviously the first one that you need to know is that the dead cannot fight against you. So God chooses in his mercy to kill some of them so that they cannot talk against you, they cannot frustrate your purpose. And you find an example of that in 2 Kings 7 verse 2 where Elijah was giving a prophecy about abundance in Samaria by this time tomorrow. And the Bible says that the minister on whose hand the king leaned, you can call that the chief economist or the governor, said that even if God was to come down on himself, this thing cannot be. And the man of God just simply replied, you will see it with your eyes, but you will not eat of it. The long and short of it was that man was trampled upon. He was dead. He was not alive to mock the man of God again. I pray that as many of your enemies that will not change, that God will sort them out in Jesus' name. Another way which is not as drastic is that God can cause the enemies to run away just by giving them rumors of war. He makes them to hear sounds, sounds that makes them to tremble with fear. In the same 2 Kings 7 that we have looked at, when you look at verse 6 of that 2 Kings 7, you will see that the army of the enemy, they started hearing from the lepers. It was the lepers that were coming, but the army started hearing sounds of chariots, sounds of war coming from there. That was a rumor of war that God sent to them. And as a result, they abandoned everything that they had brought to the battlefield. They abandoned all their gold, all their treasures, all their garments, and they fled away. Your enemy that refuses to stop pursuing you, God will scare them away in Jesus' name. Some of them, God chooses to just paralyze them. You will see an example of that in Psalm 23 verse 5. He chooses to paralyze them so that they are not able to do anything to attack you. He just makes them to be rendered powerless over you. The Bible says in Psalm 23, Psalm 23 verse 5, it says, He set a table before me in the presence of my enemies. When God has paralyzed your enemies, has made them irrelevant, He will set a table before you, even right in their presence. They may have objections, but there is nothing that they can do about it because God has already paralyzed the enemy. For some other enemies, number 4, for some other enemies, what God does instead is to frustrate their purpose. It will frustrate their purpose so that they are not able to affect God's plan for your life. You will see an example of that in Psalm 21 verse 11, Psalm 21 verse 11 and Isaiah chapter 44 verse 25. In Isaiah chapter 44 verse 25, the Word of God says that God frustrates the talking of liars. In New King James Version, it says, He frustrates the signs of the Bible and drives diviners mad, who turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolishness. Psalm 21 verse 11 says, for the intended evil against you, they devise a plot which they are not able to perform. In other words, God frustrates their efforts so that they are not able to harm you. The fifth way in which God deals with your enemies involuntarily is that He contradicts them. He made the council of Aetopel to become foolish. Aetopel was a man that had a reputation that his council used to be like the very word of God, like the very council of God. Even at the time that God decided to disgrace him, he gave very accurate counsel, but God just made it to amount to nothing. That is because God frustrates the talking of liars. He turns the wise men backward and makes their knowledge to become foolish. That is exactly what He did to Aetopel. And as many as are using their knowledge against you, that is what God is going to do to them. Number six, God causes a rift between them among your enemies. Those that have been collaborating to fight you, they will begin to fight one another. The Bible says, let them gather together. Those who gather against you, they shall be scattered for your sake. God is going to scatter them and turn them into enemies against themselves. Number seven is that God turns even their own supporters into their adversaries. People that have been supporting their ministry, people that have been supporting their lifestyle, people that have been supporting their decisions will begin to turn against them. You will find an example of that in the book of Esther chapter 7, verse 7-9. Here, Esther organized a dinner with the king and Ammon, who thought he was going to be honored. And the long and short of it was that the king was so upset with Ammon because God has turned the supporter of Ammon into his adversary. And as a result, on that day that he thought he was going to be honored, he was condemned to the gallows that he himself arranged. And that will be the portion of all your enemies in Jesus' name. Number eight way in which God can deal with your enemies is that he can make them to walk into a trap of their own making. You know, they have already set a trap for you and they thought that you are going to fall into that trap. You can look at Proverbs chapter 26, verse 27. The New Living Translation says, if you set a trap for others, you get caught in it yourself. Your enemies are going to get caught in their own trap. Number nine, what God does is that apart from your enemies falling into their own trap, he breaks the net that they have set for you. God breaks the net that the enemies have set for you. Psalm 124, verse 6-7 says, Blessed be the Lord who has not given us a spray to their teeth. Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken and we have escaped. And so will you escape from every trap and every net that the enemy has set for your feet in Jesus' name. The tenth way God deals with his enemies compulsorily is that he turns them into a laughing stock, into a joke. You know, when they are still busy planning all their devices, God just laughs at them. In Psalm 2, verse 1-4, you will see it. He says, Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the hearts set themselves and the rulers take counsel together. Against the Lord and against his anointed saying, verse 3, let us break their bones in pieces and cast away their curse from us. Verse 4, he who sits in the heaven shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in very soon. You know, God will laugh your enemies to scorn. He turns them into a joke and they will suddenly discover that nobody takes them serious. The people that they are reporting you to, they are not taking them serious. Why? Because God is laughing at them. So they become the object of ridicule and mockery in the eyes of the people to execute their plans. The eleventh way that God will deal with your enemies compulsorily is that you remove the basis of their powers. The Bible says in Psalm 20, verse 7, that some may trust in chariots and in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. In Exodus chapter 15, verse 1-2, God looked at the Egyptians as they trusted in their chariots and just let both the horses and the riders get swallowed up in the sea. All your enemies that are trusting in their chariots and their power, God is just going to waste their strength and energy and get them to be swallowed in the sea in Jesus' name. The number 12 way in which God can deal with your enemies is that he hardens their hearts to destruction so that they can pursue you. See, they drive themselves into the Red Sea. You will see this in Exodus chapter 10. In Exodus chapter 10, you see that the Lord said to Moses that he should go to Pharaoh because he has hardened his heart so that when your enemy that God wants to deal with refuses to relent, you know that the plan of God is to harden their hearts so that they can be destroyed without looking back. The number 13 way in which God can deal with your enemy is that he can use them for an example, as an experiment. You know when they are testing new drugs, they want to see how efficient and how it is, you know. And when there is a new weapon, they want to test how it is. God just uses your enemy for experiment, to know how, so that the rest of the world can know that indeed his power is great. You will see an example of that in Joshua chapter 2 verse 10. Joshua chapter 2 verse 10, where the enemies heard about the previous enemies that have been dealt with, and the Bible says that their hearts melted. Their hearts melted and they were so afraid. Why? Because God has used a previous enemy as an experiment. May you not be one of those that God uses for experiment, but may all your enemies be taken care of in Jesus' name. The number 14 way is very close to the above. In Joshua chapter 7 verse 13 to 18, what God does is that he puts a paralyzing fear in your enemies. In the previous one, he uses them as an example so that other people will fear. But in this case, God puts a paralyzing fear in your enemies. You will see it in Joshua chapter 7 verse 13 to 18, where Gideon himself was afraid, but he was instructed to go out. And he went out and he heard people discussing, and they were making a discussion, showing that they were afraid. And by that, they affirmed what he was led to do. You will find that detail in Joshua chapter 7 verse 13 to 18. The conclusion of it was verse 15. It says, And it was so when God heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation that he worshipped, he returned to the camp of Israel and said, Arise, for the Lord has delivered the camp of Midian into your hand. Today, God will fill your enemies with a paralyzing fear so that they can be delivered into your hands in Jesus' name. The number 15 way in which God can take care of your enemies who have refused to stop chasing you, the way you can take care of them if they are not willing to repent is that you can put them into a deep sleep. Your enemy can be put into a deep sleep. You know, sleep is a state of temporary death in a way. And that is exactly what God used against Saul in 1 Samuel chapter 26 verse 12. The Bible says that a deep sleep from the Lord fell on them. You know, they were coming, they were looking for David to harm him, but God allowed a deep sleep. Every enemy that will not allow you to rest, God will put them into deep sleep in Jesus' name. The number 16 way in which God can deal with your enemy, we can still find it in that same 1 Samuel 26 verse 12, is that he puts them at your mercy within the reach so that their very life depends on you so that they can learn humility. If David wanted to kill Saul, he was close enough, he was able to cut his throat, but he did not harm him because God just put the enemy in his hand so that he can learn some humility. That is the number 16 way. The number 17 way is that even if they refuse to turn back, it can make them to fall on their own sword. Interestingly, in that same 1 Samuel 26 verse 12, David prophesied that his time was going to come, that he would die himself, and that was exactly what happened to him eventually. The number 18 way that God can deal with your enemy, who are willing to change, is that he can make them to walk into the Red Sea with their own feet and their eyes open. They are seeing danger ahead, but it will just look like fatal attraction to them. They will continue going until God allows the Red Sea to swallow them up. You find this in Exodus chapter 14 verse 22 to 24. So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a war to them on their right hand and on their left, verse 23. And the Egyptians pursued and went after them into the midst of the sea. All Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen, verse 24. Now it came to pass in the morning wash that the Lord looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and he troubled the army of the Egyptians. I pray today that God will trouble the army of your pursuers in Jesus' name. God allowed them to walk into the Red Sea with their own feet and their eyes open. Number 19 way in which God can deal with your enemy, if they are not willing to change, is that he can raise up adversaries for them and allow adversaries to overpower them. If you can see an example of that in 1 Kings chapter 11 verse 14, where the Bible says that God raised up adversaries against Solomon. And which means that even if you go to church and you are doing something against God, as we are going to be talking about later, God can raise an adversary against you if you are not doing what he wants. The number 20 way in which God can deal with your enemy is that he can set even their family and trusted ones to kill them. And this is scary. It means that those that they trust, those that they lean upon, can even be the one that God will allow to kill them. And that is something that can happen to your enemies. You see that story in 2 Kings chapter 19 verse 35 to 37, where Sennacherib was killed by his own sons. And finally, number 21 way is that God can call himself, if all these other ones do not look serious enough, God can call himself in the form of his angel to come and kill them. And you will see that in the same way in the same book of 2 Kings chapter 19 verse 35 to 37, where an angel of the Lord came and killed his entire army before he himself walked into his own house to be killed by his own children. You will see that in verse 35. It says, It came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the cup of the Assyrians 185,000. God can go to any extent to make sure that the enemy that is not willing to leave you alone is rid of you. And so shall it be in Jesus name. But the interesting thing is that God always gives the enemy an opportunity to repent if they are willing. And when they do that, he will not need to apply any of these 21 ways that we have mentioned. And I will just quickly mention three ways in which God does that. If they are willing to change, he gives them the opportunity to repent. He gives them the opportunity to repent. And you find that example in the case of Paul, where God himself met him on the way to Damascus and give him an opportunity to repent. Paul did not miss that opportunity. He repented and it was a different story after all. Secondly, just using the same Paul, God can give your enemies who are willing to change, he can give them an unforgettable encounter. There was no way Paul was going to forget meeting Jesus Christ on the way to Damascus, where he was stopped. And Jesus himself said, why are you persecuting me? It was God himself that came. And as a result, it was an unforgettable encounter. And finally, God can turn these enemies that have decided to cooperate with God into friends. When there are no more enemies, just like Paul, they will come to your side and you'll begin to pursue the same righteousness. Now, and that leaves me, we are talking about 24 ways God can deal with the enemy, 21 when they are willing, three when they are willing. But the question we need to ask before we get too excited is, who is the enemy? Who is the enemy? There are two types of enemies. There is the external enemy that we all like to pray about, but there is the internal enemy. We are a man in the one that is acting against his own interests. I just want you to be sure that you are not the enemy before you begin to rain fire and brimstone upon your enemy. If you are living in disobedience to the word of God, you are an enemy. And you can know that any of those things that can happen to an enemy can happen to you. And that is why Jesus Christ has come and is giving you an opportunity to move away from the path of being an enemy and come and become a child of God, a friend of God, so that you can enjoy the benefits of his presence. And that's why I'm inviting you today to come and give your life to Jesus Christ. And all you need to do is to sincerely, sincerely repent from your sins and ask God to come and live in you. And as you do that, as you call upon him, say that there's no one that will call to him that he will cast off. He will accept you and he will make you a friend. And you can be sure that God will be on your side. And then you can confidently quote the scripture that says, when a man's way pleases the Lord, he will make his enemies to be at, even his enemies to be at peace with him. Remember, your way has to please the Lord. It means if your way does not please the Lord, just like Solomon, that we cited, that we cited, God can even be the one to raise the enemy against you. And I pray that that will not be your portion in Jesus' name. Until we meet again, it's me Ovir Ayola saying, start trying with Jesus and you'll never lose. God bless you. Bye.
