Beloved, this week, we shall be looking at a message entitled, “The last laugh”. We shall start by looking at Psalm 2:1-5. It says, “Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed saying. Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure”. Verse 9: “Thou shall break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
God laughs at His enemies and He laughs them to scorn. The first question is this:
WHO ARE THE ENEMIES OF GOD?
1. All those who oppose the gospel and all the lovers of the world are the enemies of God. The bible says in 1 John 3:15, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him.” And James 4; 4 says, “. know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God”.
So, those who are comfortable with the world system and the way it operates, are God’s enemies.
It gives me a lot of concern when those who are actually God’s enemies join others to sing the popular song, which says, “Let God arise and His enemies be scattered.” It is foolishness for those who are qualified as the enemies of God to be singing that song.
2. All those who hate the truth. Some people will prefer to believe lies to believing the truth. Once you prefer lies to the truth, the Bible says you are an enemy of God.
3. All those who are not born again. As far as God is concerned, the spirit of the power of the air controls all unbelievers. No matter how nice they are, no matter how educated, beautiful or handsome they are, as far as they are not born again, they are enemies of God.
4. All those who attack God’s children. Apostle Paul before his conversion was attacking the children of God. But while he was on his way to deal severely with the apostles, there was a blinding flash of light and then the voice sounded, “Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou me? It is a hard thing for thee to kick against thorns.” And Paul said, “Who art thou Lord?” He was persecuting the body of Christ on earth, and Jesus made him to understand that it was He the Lord he was persecuting. All those who are fighting the children of God in one way or the other, constitute themselves as enemies of God. The Bible says the Lord shall laugh them to scorn. The Lord sees them as jokers.
Psalm 37:12 says, “The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him; for he seeth that this day is coming.”
When you look through the word of God from the beginning to the end, you will discover that all those who wanted to serve God from the bottom of their hearts were always subjects of hatred. Enemies in the Bible sometimes had to resolve their differences because they wanted to fight against a child of God. It is still happening now. But the Bible says they imagine a vain thing. Some stubbornly fight on even when they are losing.
WHAT WILL GOD DO?
The Bible says, “He shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” People like Pharaoh and Haman in the Bible understood that message very well when they fought against the children of God.
As a child of God, when God is asking you to change, you better do so unless you want to belong to the group of people who He laughs at. I don’t want you to belong to that category at all. Proverbs 1:24 says, “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded.” For example, if God asks you to stop drinking, or smoking, or going around with strange women, or moving about like a ghost at night and you refuse, or He says, “Come” and you say you are not interested, verses 25-26 say, “But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity: I will mock when your fear cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.”
All who hear God’s call and pleadings and remain unrepentant, God says He will laugh when their own calamities begin to come. Therefore, it is a very serious thing, which we must sort out within our spirit. If somebody says he is repenting of certain things, and makes a vow that, “O God, I promise that this particular thing I will not do it again,” and you go back to it, you have committed a terrible offence because you have broken a vow that you made with God. At such a person, God says, “I will laugh.”
The fact that you fall asleep anytime you want to read the Bible, means that there is an enemy of God inside you. If you find it difficult to pray even after you had determined to do it and you could not, shows that there is an enemy of God in the camp of your life. The fact that anytime you want to move the way God wants you to move, there is a force dragging you behind means that you have something within you that is pitching its camp against God, that is why there is that struggle. If God tells you to come, and you are able to run to Him, then there is no hindrance. But when He says come and as you try to move, you find that your legs are heavy and you are moving slowly, know that there is an enemy inside dragging you behind.
Your own enemy could be pride. It could be resentment, bitterness, anger, lack of concentration, or unreachable spirit.
Sometime ago, we had a message entitled, “The rod of Elisha in the hand of Gehazi.” The rod of Elisha could not function in the hand of Gehazi because the wrong person was holding it. The enemy of the power in the rod was inside Gehazi who was holding it so, there could not be any cooperation between them. I could wear the best cassock in the world, and yet there could be a conflict between the cassock and me. A person could have a godly name and not be godly. There could be a conflict between my name and what I am. Beloved, we must sort the things out. Immediately you sort them out, and remove yourself from the group of those God is laughing at, then you become an Elijah who in I Kings 18:25-27, displayed and boasted in his God.
I Kings 18:25-27 says, “And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, choose you one bullock for yourselves and dress it first; for ye are many, and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. (Note the way he was talking to them) And they took the bullock, which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon saying,, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar, which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he slept, and must be awaked.”
When you transfer yourself from the camp of the enemy of God to that of His friend, you can mock and laugh at all the decisions and strategies of the enemy because you know that He that sixtieth in the heaven shall laugh them to scorn and which He is already doing now.
Sometimes, the situation of Christians may seem as if God is no longer there, but at the heat of the problem, God takes you out. The question is, why does He permit it to happen at all? When He allows it to happen, and the enemies think they are having their way, He steps in and begins to operate.
LET US LOOK AT SOME REASONS GOD STAYS SILENT SOMETIMES
1. To give us the opportunity to develop our faith. Most of the strong prayer warriors we have around did not become so out of personal decision. They became strong prayer warriors because they had things to uproot and break down and in the process of dealing with those things, they became aggressive. God allows it to happen before He starts His laughter.
2. To prove that the enemy does not have all the power. The enemy may do all sorts of things but he does not have all the power.
3. God allows things to go rough sometimes before He delivers His people to make them develop unshaken confidence in Him. And when other storms come, they will be able to stand because they have been tested.
4. God sometimes allows the heat to be so bad before He comes in to strengthen our faith to teach us some important spiritual lessons. God will keep repeating a particular lesson to a person until the person learns. God is not fraudulent. Therefore, He would not allow anyone to fail in His examination. You must pass before you can be promoted. For example, if the lesson God wants to teach you is to stop crying anytime you have a small problem and you have not learnt it, He will keep repeating it until you learn.
5. God allows the heat to get bad to make people appreciate the worth of their deliverance.
6. God allows the heat to get bad to prove your spiritual strength, to know how strong you really are. It is easy to say you are a Christian when there is no problem. But when there is attack here and there, and everybody seems to be against you, then we will know whether you can really stand. You have no right to say that you are not a thief until you have been given the opportunity to steal and you do not do it. You cannot say that you are not a proud person until you are placed in an important position and you remain humble.
Beloved, the believer will always have the last laugh. For 120 years, Noah constructed a boat and other people laughed at him and called him a foolish man. But when the flood began to chase them and they started to climb the trees, they changed their minds and cried unto Noah to rescue them. But Noah said, “I am sorry, it is God who locked the windows and door. I cannot open the door. I am sorry.” Who laughed last? Noah and his family.
A believer may look foolish and it may seem as if he does not know what he is doing. They may call him the father or mother of Jesus or whatever, but he will laugh last. God passed the people of Israel through the land of Egypt and the wilderness and allowed Pharaoh to get close to them to see whether they would have confidence in Him or not. Why did not God send thunder and blast Pharaoh to pieces before he got close? Why did God allow Saul to give David a hot chase of his life for twenty years? Was God sleeping when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den? Was He sleeping when Shadrach, Mehsach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace? But David, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had the last laugh.
When king Ahab wanted to go to war, and consulted with about four hundred prophets, they told him to go that he would succeed. All of them said he should go because they were on his payroll. There are many people today who have prophets on their payroll. All the four hundred prophets said the same thing but somebody there, who was not convinced, asked the king if there were no other prophets apart from the four hundred. The king said, “There is one called Micaiah the son of Imlah. The problem with him is that he prophesies evil always. If you bring him now, he will prophesy evil”. But he was persuaded to send for him. When the messenger got to Micaiah he said, “Micaiah, the king wants you concerning a matter. Other prophets have prophesied good, make sure that when you get there, your words agree with theirs.” And the prophet said, “What the Lord says to me, that I will speak.” When he got to the king, he said, “I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills as sheep that have no shepherd; and the Lord said: These have no master: let them return every man to his house in peace.” The king got angry and ordered that he should be locked up. But when Micaiah said, “The Lord has prophesied evil against you, He has called a committee meeting in heaven and they have decided that you must die.” Then the chief prophet slapped him and said, “How can the Lord leave me to come and talk to you?” He was ordered to be locked up and fed with water and bread of affliction until the king and his people came back in peace. And Micaiah said, “If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath not spoken by me. And he said, Hearken, O ye people, everyone of you.” And Ahab never came back. Who laughed last? It was the man who was fed with bread and water of affliction. (I Kings 22).
Why was the Lord Jesus Christ led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit? Why did Paul have to pass through horrible things? God’s people know that God will always have His way in the wind and in the whirlwind. It does not matter the wind of adversity and rivers of problems you are passing through now, ensure that you are His friend and not His enemy and He shall laugh those your enemies to scorn.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Anything in me that is your enemy, O Lord, chase them out today, in the name of Jesus.
2. I dissolve every evil agreement, in the name of Jesus.
3. All spiritual vultures working against me, be roasted, in the name of Jesus.
4. Let all the vows and promises of the enemy on my life be nullified, in the name of Jesus.
5. Let every stranger in my life be consumed by fire, in the name of Jesus.
6. Father Lord, arise and let it be known that you are my God, in the name of Jesus.
7. Let the fire of God purge away every evil deposit in my life, in the name of Jesus.
8. I shall laugh last, in the name of Jesus.
