The Secret To Defying Your Fallen Nature by Apostle Arome Osayi: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Brazen Serpent — A Prophetic Preview

In Numbers 21:5-9, when Israel rebelled and serpents were released among them, God did not remove the serpents. Instead he provided an antidote: a serpent of brass set upon a pole. Anyone bitten who looked upon it lived. God chose not to take the serpents away — he provided a cure. The solution was tied entirely to what they looked at: look and live, or die.

This image carries prophetic weight. God never does anything in the New Testament without first performing a dress rehearsal in the Old. That brass serpent on the pole was a prototype pointing to a reality yet to come.

The navigation point from the Old Testament scene to its New Testament fulfillment is Romans 8:3: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." The serpent on the pole — made of brass, the metal of judgment — depicted exactly this: God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that sin would be condemned and judged there.

The Origin of the Serpentine Nature

To understand what God was accomplishing, we must go back to Genesis 3 — the first appearance of the serpent.

A demon is a person that lacks a body. When angels violated their estate and fell, they were bereaved of their spiritual bodies. Satan, cast out from heaven, found himself between realms — and he needed a vessel. Among all God's creatures, the serpent had more subtlety than any other. Subtlety is the rail tracks upon which deception is built, and Satan needed those tracks for the initiative he was launching. So he negotiated entry into the serpent's body.

Satan's first move in the garden was to bypass authority. The authority installed in Eden was Adam — yet it was the woman Satan addressed. Every time the serpent works, it violates established authority. God institutes authority systems so that his purposes can find expression. Satan always enters through illegitimate authority.

Satan will not come through designated authority. Satan will come through illegitimate authority — which is the essence of witchcraft.

Satan came to the garden with a question: "Has God said?" Anyone who comes with a question is admitting a gap in their data bank. Satan needed information to build his attack. He came to test their depth — to find out how much they knew and whether they understood why they were where they were.

When Eve responded, there was already a problem in the education she had received from Adam. In his zeal to protect the estate, Adam had added something to God's instruction: "Neither shall ye touch it." God never said that. It was Adam's addition — made with good intentions, but still the voice of man, not the voice of God. When Eve touched the tree and nothing happened, a gap opened in her defenses. That small unauthorized addition became Satan's entry point.

Say only what God has said. Do not add to it. Only the truth can make free.

Satan then unveiled his sales pitch: "You shall not surely die — for God knows that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

What Satan was selling was the full scope of the fallen nature: a state of independence from God. Rather than needing to consult God to know what is good or evil, man could have that capacity installed in himself. The way of the tree of life is a way of dependence; the way of the knowledge of good and evil is the way of independence. Satan was advertising self-sufficiency — a nature that can survive and operate without God.

The Fallen Nature vs the Human Nature

There is a critical distinction that must be understood: the fallen nature is not human nature.

Every nature is supported by a life. The divine nature is supported by divine life. Human nature is supported by human life. The fallen nature — what Satan was selling to Adam — is supported by satanic life. It is the life of that serpent. The deception that Adam now operated under made him a victim of the spiritual venom. When Satan becomes your life, you have the capacity to express Satan. When Christ is your life, you have the capacity to express Christ.

The fully-grown expression of the serpent nature is called Leviathan. Isaiah 27:1 names him: the piercing serpent, the crooked serpent. If the serpentine nature gives you its bite, it will pierce your entire system and make you crooked — it will make you like it. Genesis 8:21 confirms this: "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." The serpentine nature was taking hold in the human race — and no one goes to school to learn evil. It becomes natural, because the operating system is satanic.

What was happening in Numbers 21 was therefore a divine object lesson. When Israel rebelled, insulted Moses, and insulted God, God released serpents — and those serpents were a depiction of their own nature. The fallen nature, left unchecked, leads to self-destruction. Even without external cursing, the fallen man already has within himself that which will destroy him. The serpents that God released were, in reality, the full expression of what was already in them.

When they cried out, God's response was not to remove the serpents. His answer was: I will judge your nature. That is the brazen serpent — brass meaning judgment. And the condition of healing was to look.

Three Natures in the Believer

A Christian is a complicated being. Consider:

• The fallen nature — still present in the mortal body; supported by satanic life
• The human nature — self-centered and self-seeking when operating without the Spirit
• The divine nature — given at new birth; supported by divine life, which cannot be destroyed

The believer who operates by the fallen nature is carnal. The one who operates by human nature is soulish. The one who operates by the divine nature is spiritual. These are different categories of Christian life — and only the spiritual man is truly free.

Sin Dwells in the Mortal Body — Romans 7

Romans 7:5: "For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death."

The "motions of sin" — a difficult word in Greek, best translated as desires or passions. Sin is a nature, but it is domiciled somewhere specific: the mortal body. This is the only scripture in the entire Bible that locates where the satanic life dwells — in the physical body.

The body has appetites: sleep, sex, hunger, the desire to see, thirst. Every appetite the body has can be used by sin as an object of rebellion against God. Sin flows into the appetite and uses it to draw you away from him. That is what Romans 7 calls the motions of sin.

So the law of sin is this: the things you want to stop doing, you cannot stop. The things you do not want to do, you find yourself enabled to do. Romans 7:24: "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" The body is called the body of death because that is where sin is housed, and through the body's appetites, sin brings the fallen man into perpetual captivity.

The law could reveal this condition — just as a lab test reveals malaria in the blood without curing it. God ordained the law to function as a diagnostic tool. The law revealed humanity's condition; it could not solve it.

What Happened on the Cross

This is what the serpent on the pole was pointing to. Romans 8:3: God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.

Jesus was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh — that is what the serpent on the pole depicts. On the cross, at the moment of the eclipse, everything that sin was by nature — every potential it had, every possibility, every power — was placed on Jesus. He fulfilled the Old Testament prototype of the scapegoat. All of it was laid on him and he died outside the walls of Jerusalem, ensuring that the scapegoat completed its journey and did not return.

Sin was judged in the flesh. It was stripped from every man and placed on one Man — and that Man died.

This means that sin no longer has true spiritual foundations. When the appetite speaks and the Holy Spirit calls you higher, you can defy the flesh — and nothing will happen. Sin was fully stripped of its authority in the courts of heaven when Christ died.

A New Operating System

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. God has created a new option — spirit — supported by the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ. That law is superior to the law of sin and the law of death.

Consider: the law of lift does not suspend the law of gravity. Gravity is still active. But lift is superior to gravity — and so, in spite of gravity, flight is possible. In the same way, the law of sin is still there. But the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus is superior. As long as the Spirit is operating through grace, believers can walk in victory.

Grace provides the spiritual energy that gives the believer capacity to live up to the expectation of God. But intentional gates of sin must be shut down deliberately. They were opened intentionally — and they must be closed intentionally.

What troubles you now and tries to sway you is a shadow. Your life should not go in the direction of shadows. The reality is Christ in you, the hope of glory.