Revelation 1

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Revelation 1

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning it's not just said we're in the Book of Revelation the last book of the Bible so if you flip to the end you're going to find it you can follow along with us we're going to be in chapter one today uh we're doing Revelation three parts the part one is uh the letters which we'll get to uh in a little bit uh but this is also just a disclaimer this is my first sermon back since being back from sabatical and I just we have we have a teaching that we uh was the.

First opportunity to preach this and and work on this together and I was amped like I just was so excited to be back so I don't know what's going to happen I'm I'm excited about the Book of Revelation but uh but also I might we'll see what this goes I just this is a this F for what happens next um I Heard a about a poll that was done that asked uh preachers what is the book that you are least excited about to preach and it was the Book of Revelation and they also asked members what is the book you most want to hear preached and it was the Book of Revelation.

So why why the discrepancy why the why is that response uh this is one of the most difficult books in the Bible to interpret uh because it is apocalyptic literature okay so we'll get to more of that in a moment on what that means for this book but that makes this more uh welcome back is that bad all right we'll do this like rat battle style which fits with how amped I am all right so it's one of the most difficult books in the Bible to interpret.

Because it is apocalyptic in nature in fact GK Chesterton once said he said St John saw many strange monsters in his vision he saw no creature as wild as one of its own commentators and it's like yeah you you read a lot of different commentaries a lot of different takes on this book you can get some pretty wild takes Martin Luther once said uh in the most blunt fashion which is that is Martin Luther what he would do uh he said many people have brewed stupid things in their heads in trying to understand this book.

So there are a lot of opinions on this book and I would say some strong ones out there and and what happens is is that this book and the content in it also kind of shows up in in popular culture so when I grew up uh in the 90s Left Behind was the book series I mean like it transcended culture I mean it was just a really popular book series so popular that they made a movie out of it so popular that years later they made another movie with Nick Cage in it.

So if you didn't know that Nick Cage is in a Christian film that deals with some of the things that is in the Book of Revelation and what happened was is that kind of seeped into a lot of our thought like I my brother one time he went to uh he showed up to youth group and there were like two or three kids it was a big youth group it two or three kids and he said what happened and the kids looked at him and said dude you missed it man the Rapture happened.

For a moment they had him like he just because there's just like oh that was the that was the the the air of the day was just like oh no it's it's happening right and some of you like okay I that's fine you obviously grew up hearing about these things I don't really know anything about the Book of Revelation and I'd say well actually I think you know more than you think uh it shows up a lot in uh references all over the English language the imagery of the Pearly Gates of Heaven which shows up in a lot of bad jokes that that comes from the Book of Revelation you ever heard of the number.

666 And some of the evil mystery that surrounds that number that comes from the Book of Revelation if you've heard the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that comes from the Book of Revelation in fact the popular use of apocalypse actually comes from The Book of Revelation so there's a lot going on there and some of you are excited to be in this book maybe a little too excited all right so when you get a group tone it down a little bit you might scare some.

Okay so some of you are nervous and you're nervous because you have a fear of the future and and uncertainty some of you are nervous because you maybe have been a part of churches or small groups or Community groups where this became a divisive subject which is as Matt just prayed it's not going to be for our Church uh we're going to be unified in this but before we really jump into all the details that are going to be in this book in chapter one I want to give a little bit of an overview and I want to help us.

See the big picture because there's a lot of debate as we're going to get into this in the series a lot of debate and and discussion over some of the finer details that are throughout this book but while some of that is debated and some of that may be less clear there's one thing that is abundantly clear there's a main big picture that we cannot miss that we're going to see in chapter one that's going to guide us throughout the rest of our time in Revelation we're going to.

See four things that make up this big picture of the whole book so let me pray for us and then uh we'll walk This Together heavenly father I pray that you might help us have hearts to receive your word that it might mold us and shape us and conform us into your image in a way that helps us behold you for who you are in Jesus name amen all right so uh verse one the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants the things that must soon take place all right.

So a few things out the gate it's Revelation not Revelations it's a common mistake just the one not a plural set of Visions just one Revelation I had a a professor in college who got super annoyed when people would put S at the end of it so we like just emphatically would say Revelations we like just draw it out you could just see it was fun uh for people who are in a Bible class but that it's just the one so Revelation singular in the Greek word.

For that word uh Revelation in the original language was apocalypsis apocalypsis which you can guess that's where we got the word apocalypse from apocalypsis in the Greek just means revealing that's why we call it Revelation so next time uh if you want to fund Jesus Juke at work right in the office or the shop wherever you work if someone starts especially if it's about the election they start talking about oh this person gets elected the apocalypse is happening just kind of Juke on in and say.

Well actually I just learned that apocalypse comes from the Greek word apocalypsis which just means revealing it's actually the revealing of Jesus Christ you have a few minutes where I can share you the Gospel of Jesus Christ you will you will be a big hit at work that's just that's bonus content y'all that's for free all right so it's a revealing of Christ the main figure in this book it's about Christ and his revealing and specifically what's going to happen in the end of this age.

So it's going to be talking about things that are present but also things that are to come some of you may be familiar with that language of eschatology which you might hear throughout this series and that is the the uh study of the last things in the end of this page and that's what Revelation is going to be a lot focusing on so Jesus is the main figure of this Revelation and then I want us to focus on the first part which I think is the.

First part of this big picture that is crucial to understanding this book and that is that this is an apocalyptic book this is an apocalyptic book which means it's it's apocalyptic genre the style of writing is apocalyptic and that's important because that's different sometimes uh you may have an approach that thinks the Bible is just all this you know it's all the same literature but it's not actually they're different styles of writing W in the gospels are a biography of sorts really a theological biography that focuses on the last three years of Jesus's life and communicating bigger theological points The Book of Proverbs is wisdom literature.

So you would read the gospels different than you would the pro Book of Proverbs and other wisdom literature in the same way you read apocalyptic writings different so the Book of Revelation the last part of of Daniel the book of Daniel 7 onward parts of the Book of Ezekiel these are apocalyptic writings which means you have to approach them differently and in apocalyptic writings there's a lot of symbols a lot of symbols that point towards a very real fulfillment a very real future and that statement in and of itself that it's symbolic that points to a real future that's going to be examined over and over and over again throughout this series.

So when we study this book when we read this book together you're going to see a lot of images a lot of symbols you're going to see the scroll and the lamb some of the things we just sang about you going to read about the Seven Seals the 144,000 the seven Trumpets the seven bowls and there's a lot of debate over what each of these symbols mean and that's a part that really drives a lot of Christians crazy because I mean some people just like can I just have like a straightforward Narrative of how this is how.

Jesus is coming like can we just get that maybe you're the kind of person that in English class you know yall were reading animal farm and Animal Farm is you know it's it's a it's just points to a bigger story and the other kids in class were like yeah and like you know the pigs represent communism and they get all into it you're just like I could it could oral have just written a straightforward paper on how communism was bad you're the kind of person just give me just tell tell me what it tell me what it is right.

If that's your posture then parts of this series May annoying but I I want to ask you and invite you to really have a a humble posture that God has chosen to reveal this to us that God has chosen to uh speak in a way that shows how he's going to make all things new like this and that maybe we should just have a humble posture that says okay there's some mystery here I'm trying to figure this out but we should have a posture of humility as we approach some of these symbols and what you're going to.

See is that in apocalyptic literature like this a lot of these symbols are going to repeat themselves like you're going to see similarities between them over and over again they're kind of repeating making a bigger picture of what is actually how God is going to make all things new it's similar to a mosaic a mosaic is a is a big picture that's made up of a lot of smaller pictures and so if if there was a mosaic of Nick Cage it would be Nick Cage's face with a bunch of pictures of him in from all his movies and all the crazy stuff he's done and it makes up this bigger picture.

So a lot of ways that's what apocalyptic writing is like and that's what the Book of Revelation is like it's a lot of individual pictures and what happens is is that we might focus on those little pictures that are fuzzy and get lost when we what what we need to do is to to step back and see the bigger picture of what's happening so as we walk through a lot of the symbols in this book in this apocalyptic book we need to keep that in mind and we're going to spend some more time in this actually even going we're going to have a training weekend on September 13th which you want to mark your calendar.

You can sign up for that but we're going to have a night that we will do things a little bit different than we do on Sunday morning to to dive further into this so we can understand this book correctly so this is apocalyptic genre it's crucial for us understanding everything that follows all right I've just been the first verse and we got to keep going because we got a whole chapter to go through all right so he made it known it continues by sending his Angel to his servant John who verse two bore witness to the word of.

God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw all right so who is this John uh there's some debate on this uh but Church history has largely agreed on this this is the same John the Apostle John who wrote the Gospel of John first second and third John he probably wrote this at the end of his life when he was exiled on the Ireland of Patmos around 85 to 95 uh ad under the reign of Dom Mission.

So that's some background on who this Revelation is being revealed to first so we're going to see that John is recording this and Jesus and an angel throughout this book are revealing this to him all right verse three blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near all right pause if you were like me and you're not excited about this book.

For fill in the blank reason we we're wrong what it just said blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy you are blessed to read this book you are blessed to sit under uh this word we so we get to repent and change and have a better attitude otherwise the fall is going to be super long you guys verse four John to the seven churches that are in Asia all right here comes the curveball this book is not just apocalyptic it is also a letter that's the.

Second big thing you need to see this is an apocalyptic book and a letter it's a letter so why it's part one is called the letters Revelation Chapter 2 and chap three are seven letters that are written to seven different churches we're going to sit in each one of those letters to to see what uh John has to say to those churches but also what it means for us as well so in typical New Testament letter fashion John starts with a greeting he says grace to you in peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.

So fairly normal start very similar to language in the rest of the New Testament in the letters that are written and from the seven spirits who are Before the Throne and it begins a lot of this coming up all right and it says and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of Kings on Earth okay seven what seven Spirits what is John talking about I'm going to tell you something three words that you're going to hear l in this series I don't know I don't know.

For sure now is is it seven angels who are in the presence of God is that what's happening here or is this language for the Holy Spirit because seven as we're going to see throughout this book is a number for completion and this is the fullness of the Holy Spirit I lean that way I think that makes the most sense especially because in a lot of letters there's you see trinitarian language father Son and Holy Spirit and that's all right here.

So it makes sense that it is but I'm not sure and there's a lot of debate over that and you're going to hear that a lot this series I don't know some people interpret it this way some people interpret it this way so there'll be a lot of this as we walk through this book and I'll just say this if you come across anyone that is like really really sure of themselves B Revelation like you you're on YouTube like deep in YouTube and all of a sudden someone just says like I I have the secrets of this book I'm going to show you how it's going to happen how it's going to go down like.

And subscribe or whatever book you may have came across where there's such certainty and how they understood the Book of Revelation may I suggest that you keep scrolling because they have an arrogance that 2,000 years of Church history doesn't have brothers and sisters for 2,000 years have just had Parts just gone I don't know and that's okay it's it's a difficult book to interpret so I would suggest that as we study this together to be careful about what you watch and be careful about what you read.

Because there are a lot of wild takes and I bet you that person also has a YouTube channel on the Illuminati and chemtrails like that there some of that goes hand in hand so just Revelation is not that simple as we're going to see so then we get this beautiful Declaration of the Gospel continues say to him who loves us and that is the love of Christ and has freed us from our sins by his blood that's the atoning work of Christ's blood that covers our sin and made us verse six a kingdom priests to his.

God and Father the Church is a kingdom of priests a holy nation declaring the Gospel and the glory of God to him be glory and Dominion forever and ever amen that's a pretty good start to the letter and he's not done like he just exalted that's the gopel right there he spent a whole sermon on that right there and he's like I that's not I I need one more amen then he goes in verse 7 behold he is coming with the clouds and every eye will.

See him even those who pierced him and all tribes of the earth will whail on account of him even so amen what we kind of see here is that first Declaration of the Gospel is a celebration of what Christ has done for his Church but the second amen is a declaration of what God is going to do when judgment comes to those who don't believe he this is Christ coming on the clouds that's Daniel 7 apocalyptic language Jesus coming on the clouds Judgment Day language here every I will.

See even those who murdered and pierced Christ that judgment comes to all unbelievers from every tribe nation and tongues out the gate we see it's also a warning for those who do not believe those you do not need the warnings that are found in this book then we get this quote from Jesus in verse 8 that shows up later in the Book of Revelation I am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come the almighty and that language there Alpha and Omega is the.

First and last letter of the Greek alphabet and it just is is a statement it says I'm I'm the beginning I created all things and I am the end bring this to its conclusion Christ is God verse n i John is John's appear here I John your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus the.

Third thing I want us to see this is an apocalyptic book and a letter written to A persecuted people written to A persecuted people so John says your partner in the tribulation that is the trials sufferings and persecution of himself and those seven churches in that time onward that that's what he means by tribulation here he's talking about the present real sufferings and persecution that they are enduring that's going to be important for us to remember they were enduring heavy persecution.

When the Church began shortly after there was persecution in Jerusalem and the Church spread all across uh Asia and uh uh Europe and then Emperor like Nero came along around 65 665 May and absolutely persecuted Christians in some absolutely Insidious ways the kind of persecution that arrested tortured and then burnt Christians at the stake at night as literal human torches for the streets that's the kind of persecution the Church was enduring all the way to do Mission which is what we think is the time that John is writing in the Church is enduring heavy persecution I mean John is on Patmos and we know from we can uh tell from Church history that he's there.

Because he was exiled it's part of his persecution after there's some debate on this but some Church historians uh will read sources and say that he was actually Bo he's the only disciple that wasn't martyred but he was actually uh boiled in oil and then in Patos Exile so this is written to A persecuted people that context is going to be incredibly important for understanding a lot of the language that is in this in fact I would argue that there are churches all across the world that are currently being persecuted in ways that are that are heavy and severe they actually love the Book of Revelation they love it they.

Because it is a comfort to them to know that Christ will come to judge all those who have opposed him and to know that Christ is coming back so it's important context all right verse 10 it says I was in the spirit on the Lord's day this is John talking which again you could post up we're not going to be in Revelation for a full year but you can do a whole sermon on that right there because this is the only reference from the New Testament to the Lord's day and it's kind of beautiful.

Because the Lord's day is this that's the day it's Sunday it's the tradition where uh the Church chose to uh worship Christ on Sunday it's kind of our Sabbath where we get to worship Christ and we see the early parts of this tradition beginning here and that's the reason we meet here even now but again got to keep going I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying write what you.

See in a book and send it to the seven churches to Ephesus these are the seven churches Ephesus and to smea and to pergamum and to thyra and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and leoda so we're going to see that this is written to a bunch of persecuted churches over the next seven weeks as you sit in each of these letters so while worshiping the Lord he gets this prophetic Vision he hears a voice sounds like a trumpet it's booming write this to the seven churches.

And then he turns around and seas verse 12 then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man clothed with a long robed with a golden sash around his chest the hairs of his head were white like white wool like snow his eyes were like a flame of fire his feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace and his voice was like the Roar of many Waters and his right hand he held Seven Stars from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

Wo welcome to apocalyptic writings I mean there's a lot going on there John receives this Vision he starts writing it down and he sees Christ the glorified ascended on high Christ and all of his majesty and it's a terrifying beautiful picture his clothes are white his hair is white his eyes are like fire his voice is like a roar of a r raging River it's a powerful picture and then he talks about the seven lampstands and the Seven Stars and it's like.

Okay what does that mean and once we get past chapter 2 and three we're going to see lots of pictures like this and that's kind of the difficult part of interpreting these book is what what what does that mean however we get thrown a bone here because Jesus just tells us what it means early on so verse 17 when I saw him I fell at his feet though dead which catch that he just so overwhelmed he falls on his face before the glorified Christ.

But he laid his right hand on me saying fear not I am the first and the last and the living one it's just just the the so terrifying so Wonder and then puts his right hand on says fear not that's our savior right there he says I I died and behold I am alive forever more and I have the keys of death and Hast write therefore the things that you have seen those that are and those uh those that are and those that are to take place after this as.

For the mystery of the Seven Stars that you saw in my right hand and the Seven golden lampstands the Seven Stars are the angels of the seven churches and the Seven lampstands are the seven churches so we get some interpretive help there Christ seven lampstands are the seven churches that we're going to read about over the next seven weeks and the Seven Stars the seven angels that reside over those churches which we'll get to that in the coming weeks as well.

So when you look at the images here from chapter four onward they paint a picture of the Revelation of Christ and how he's going to bring an end to all things before he makes all things new and there's a lot of symbols there's a lot of there a lot of content in it can make your head spin a little bit and as we read the rest of the letter what what the danger of what can happen is that we can get lost in some of those details I heard one pastor like people forget this is the Revelation of.

Jesus Christ not the Revelation of the War of the Worlds and that is right it's a Revelation of Jesus Christ and I think what Left Behind did in really a lot of of writings like that is it put so much focus on some of those fuzzy details that have been debated for over 2,000 years of Church history that it really made the American Church lose thread of what this is all about so as we go through the Book of Revelation here is the big picture this is an apocalyptic book and a letter written to A persecuted people telling them to endure.

Because Jesus is coming that's the big picture it is an apocalyptic book and a letter written to A persecuted people telling them to endure because Jesus is coming back that's the big picture of Revelation that is Crystal Clear we may have some differences of opinion on some of the Minor Details of this book but there is no debate on how that is the big picture what's happening and I love that I'm so thankful I'm so thankful you go back a few verses and says fear not Christ puts his hand on him says fear not I'm the.

First and the last and the living one that's that Alpha and Omega language he says I'm it I'm the first and last he I I died and behold I'm alive forever more and I have the keys of death in Hades right therefore the things that you have seen those that are and those that are to take place after this to a people who are suffering deeply the effects of tribulation and trials to hear that Christ is coming back is incredible news it is incredible to hear he is coming back that that is what's going to help them endure that knowledge that certainty that Christ will come and he will make all things new and he.

Will judge the wicked that is good news to a people who are suffering so deeply and so we're going to walk through a lot of this vision and we're going to see all the different parts and then we're going to see at the end how Christ comes and how he comes to make all things new and if he flip the final chapter of the Bible in Revelation 22 you get these pictures of the Church of Jesus Christ and just we've we've.

So clung to these in the hope that is bound in verse 12 chapter 22 says Jesus says behold I am coming soon bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done I am the Alpha and the Omega the first and the last the beginning and the end in a time of suffering to know that the God who rules sovereignly over all things is I am coming and and and and weay for recompense it's going judgment will come.

But I'm also going to make all things new and the final verses of the Bible this verse 20 says he testifies to these things saying surely I am com soon and John says amen come Lord Jesus the refrain of the Church for 2,000 years come Lord Jesus the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all amen there is certainty Christ is coming and we we may have some some disagreements I'm sure on how all that's going to unfold but he is coming which means that this present moment though painful at times this present life though filled with suffering at times it pales in comparison to what awaits that the present suffering that is very real.

That we feel right now that feels so long it is going to end and there is a day coming where there is no more pain where there is no more death where there is no more suffering where there are no more trials Christ will make all things new and the Church of Jesus Christ for 2,000 years has collectively rejoiced saying come Lord Jesus make all things new come that's the hope that we have and some of you are are feeling the effects of suffering right.

Now some of you are physically suffering you're physically feeling the effects of your body decaying and wearing away and the physical loss maybe chronic pain you if you feel that suffering some of you are suffering emotionally there is deep sadness and maybe even depression that you are living in right now some of you are suffering spiritually maybe it's doubt maybe it is spiritual warfare that you are just you feel on a very everpresent basis some of you are suffering relationally that following Christ has cost you relationally with friends with family.

And while we're not being burned in the streets like the New Testament Church we feel it we feel the very physical and emotional spiritual we feel the reality of suffering now and I want to help us see so clearly in this series that Christ is coming the resurrection that awaits us is a reality that is what awaits us there is a day coming where there is only endless joy and all the pain of this present life is dist that what awaits us.

Because that is true we can't endure we can't hold on a little longer we can struggle and strive because we know that while the pain that we feel now in this present life is real it is but a moment and what awaits us is eternal and the Church for 2,000 years has held on to this letter with that hope in and that's what we're going to do in this series we're going to get into a lot of the details but we're going to keep the main thing the main thing Christ is coming and that is incredible news.

For the Church of Jesus Christ band's going to come up and we're going to behold God and His glory for who he is and worshiping y'all I brought joy to my soul to hear our Church sing this morning rejoicing in what Christ is going to do but the reality is this letter is not just for the Church it's not just for the Church to be told of how Christ is going to come back it's also a warning the reality is is that some of you may not know Christ you may not belong to him you have not tasted and seen that he's good and surrendered your life completely to him you don't belong to him.

And this wonderful mysterious Incredible Book is a warning to wake up and see the truth of the Gospel that Christ loves you so much that it came to rescue you and give you life with him for eternity that offer is for you to be spared of all the warnings all the things that are warned about later on in this letter that is offered to you and there's no better thing that you could do than right now to lay down your life and surrender to that savior a savior who is fearful and wonderful.

But also will put his right hand on you and invite you in the faith of him my hope is you would not leave today you would not leave this series without placing your hope in him so that you might experience the joy of Christ's Church worshiping and dividing in him for eternity let's pray Heavenly Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves we thank you that you're not leaving us here in our sin but you came to rescue us through faith alone in your life death and Resurrection.

But you are coming back help us right now believe that if there are Christians here that are suffering May that truth be so but it may Pierce through whatever is in their life that they may so behold you in your glory for who you are and for what you're going to do if there's anyone here that has not placed their faith in you Lord may you do it may you pierce their heart maybe you win them over to Faith and use they May Delight in you.

For eternity we ask this in Jesus name amen.

Three Enemies: Stand Firm

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Three Enemies: Stand Firm

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here uh grab a Bible and go to Matthew chapter 6 we are finishing up our series three enemies today um we have been taking some time to consider that as Christians as those who are trying to follow Jesus and be uh conformed to his image that we have enemies that are at work against us to keep us from doing that and the the three enemies that we've talked about are the World the Flesh and the devil that the Bible is going to tell us that all three of these in different forms and different Fashions and in different ways are at work against us.

Our hope in this series is to try to help develop a radar for these enemies that we would be aware of them we would be looking for them we would begin to notice where they're at work in our lives it's it's like when you went to buy a vehicle and you found one that you were like this is this is one I'm going to I'm going to drive and as soon as you got it you realized you started seeing them everywhere you're like everybody's driving a black Saturn what the heck.

But you started noticing them all the time because you now had found one and saw it on the road and now you see it everywhere and that's kind of what we're hoping is that we would begin to have some sort of uh awareness of these enemies so that we might not be caught unaware or offguard but that we might be able to respond to them so here's what we've said I'm going to we're going to take a minute we're going to get to Matthew 6.

But but we're going to uh catch ourselves up a little bit on what we've been talking about so we said we have three enemies and they work this way together deceitful ideas that play to disordered Desires normalized in a sinful Society so that Satan lies one of the primary ways that he works is that he lies he puts deceitful ideas out there and that he's working against God's truth because all truth is God's truth and all truth ultimately is going to lead us to Christ as we find what is real in the world we're going to be led to God's glory his creation and the work of.

Jesus so the enemy is anywhere but home he's trying to work us anywhere uh but Jesus he's lying and that we have disorder desires that you and I want to sin that there's part of us that wants to pursue sin and so we want to believe some of these lies and the problem with lies that we believe is that we think they're true you the thing about blind spots is that you can't see them and so sometimes you're like no that's not a lie that's true and it's like right.

But you believe it but it's not true and so the enem is lying there's part of us that wants to believe it and then it gets normalized in a sinful society that collectively were surrounded by other Sinners who also believe lies it's a little bit like uh when you're running late for class and you're hustling and then you see someone else who's in that class and y'all laugh and immediately slow down because now you're not late by yourself you got a teammate and it changes the whole thing and that's the way this gets normalized in a sinle society is that we we.

Look around and go well they're doing that and they're doing that and I'm not treating my money the way that person treats their money and I'm not treating my spouse the way they treat their spouse so I'm doing okay and we normalize sinful patterns that's the way the enemy works and so what we've said is we've spent a lot of time talking about the way these enemies work what they do how they show up and then we've given some responses some practices uh in a way that we would respond against these things and our hope.

Today is to spend more time time on the practices to be a little more practical today so here's what we've said we' said we've got deceitful ideas disordered Desires in a sinle society and so as we've talked about this we said we have deceitful ideas which means that we need truth and then we said okay so if we need to fight against deceitful ideas and we need truth then we need to read the Bible specifically the way we talked about was that we need to live in the Bible you need to know your Bible you need to know what's there it needs to be uh familiar to you.

And so that we want to be people who read our Bibles know our Bibles memorize our Bibles this is honestly this series is a little bit odd for us we're still studying the Scriptures but most of the time as a Church we just work straight through a book of the Bible because we want to know our Bibles and as soon as this week's over next week we pick up with another book of the Bible we're just going to work through it.

Because we want to be people who know and believe our Bibles we want to fight the lies with truth we have disordered desires and we want to respond with faith trusting that Jesus really is better than everything else that he really is better than the thing that I'm wanting and so that we would be people who confess and repent practice self-control follow the lord in obedience so that we would be people who know our Bibles and that respond with self-control and obedience and confession and repentance that we would practice these things that have been a part of the Church forever.

And then we said we live in a sinful Society we need a counterculture we need to be particularly here what we've said is join a community group belong to a people who are trying to follow Jesus together that you need good peer pressure you need people who uh believe that you should be reading the Bible and following Jesus and expect that from you so if the enemy works this way deceitful ideas uh show the whole sentence deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires that are normalized in a sinful Society what we want is biblical truth that leads to Faith that is normalized in a.

Jesus loving Community that's what we want biblical truth that leads us to to respond in faith that's normalized in a Jesus loving Community now if you've been here for a while if it's your first day we're glad you're here welcome also I'm running through a whole bunch of stuff we've been talking about for a long time and I'm going really fast you're like what is going on a recap of like five weeks just so that we're all tracking but if you've been here a.

While and you read that you go wait a second that's what y'all say all the time yeah that's what the Church has been doing forever y'all this is from the book of Acts this is Acts 2:42 it's the Church has just been the Holy Spirit has just gone to work and it says this and they that's the new Christians devoted themselves to the apostles teaching what's the apostles teaching that's the word that's turns into eventually becomes the gospels and the letters and it's it's the teaching of the Old Testament in Light of Christ.

So they devoted themselves to the word they devoted themselves to the Bible and being devoted to it meant they practiced it that these were people who had just repented and were now practicing what it meant to follow Jesus they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellow Fellowship what's that that's each other the other people who are following and practicing and following Jesus and some of you were like I like my Bible but I don't like people yeah but your Bible that you say you like is going to tell you that you have to love those people it thankfully tells them to love you too and you need to belong you need to be.

A part of following Jesus together you're like well people are difficult yeah and you're being a little difficult in this conversation if I'm being honest welcome to the club you need to belong you need to participate in what it's like to belong to people we need to walk this out together and then it says to the breaking of bread and the prayers the breaking of bread would have been sharing meals in homes it also would have been the intentional meals gathered around communion this idea of Jesus's broken body.

For us this was a Gospel people that shared life together and the prayers and so that's what we're talking about today practices and prayer because that's where I had you turn in Matthew 6 we're going to look at a prayer and we're going to see that as we've talked through these enemies that we ought to be mindful of them on a regular basis in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid one of the Best Westerns ever Butch and Sundance are hired to defend somebody who's going to pick up payroll he runs a mining company he's got to go pick up payroll got to return it and he needs protection.

When he has all this money so they he they're going with him to go pick up the payroll and they're riding down the mountain and Butch and Sundance are back there behind him talking and Sundance says I'm telling you they're hiding in the trees and Butch says no no no they're behind the Rocks sudden he says no it's the trees he says no it's the Rocks they said well you watch the trees I'll watch the Rocks finally the the guy who's hired him stops and turns around and says morons I got morons on my team which I heard my dad quote to me like a thousand times in my life whenever me and my brothers.

Were doing something stupid this just came out of his mouth I got morons on my team and then he says they ain't going to rob us going down the mountain cuz we ain't got no money going down the mountain they're going to rob us when we're coming back up the mountain and they're morons because they were looking for enemies that weren't there I would like to submit to you that we might be morons of a different fashion we are not looking.

For enemies that are there that we're Trucking along not being aware of these enemies at play in our lives and I want you to see as we look at the model prayer that Jesus teaches that he's aware of them and he intends for us to be aware of them in our normal everyday life as we follow him that we ought to be Christians who are mindful of our enemies as we seek to follow Jesus so we're going to talk this morning about practices and prayer let's pray pray.

And then we'll jump into Matthew 6 Lord we ask for your help we pray that you would uh multiply the effectiveness and helpfulness of us studying this together that we would be people who are aware and watchful of our enemies but not fearful that we would be people who understand the victory in you but then get to apply it and live it out as we practice what it looks like to follow you and Lord we specifically today ask that you'd help us to wrap our minds around this more personally in the situations that we're facing and to learn to pray as you've taught in.

Jesus name amen so what Jesus teaches in the model prayer is not a magic formula of something to repeat it is not a mantra to say over and over again it is a model he specifically says right before this don't just say empty phrases but he gives them a way to pray that would teach us how to pray and if you're learning how to pray it's an excellent pattern to follow so I'm going to read it all the way through.

Then we'll go through it in pieces he says pray then like this this is Matthew 6 starting in verse 9 we're going to go through verse 13 pray then like this Our Father in heaven Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom Come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil so go back to verse n he says this is how you ought to pray and he starts with our.

Father in heaven Hallowed be your name both acknowledging the connection that we have to God that he's our father that he loves us that he cherishes us that he cares for us that we can approach him and that he's holy that he ought to be honored revered and respected and then he says your kingdom come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven that we are to be mindful that he's the king of all things and that we want his kingdom to advance and we want more people to follow.

Jesus and we want his will to be done in the world around us and and in US many of our prayers should be let your will be done in me that I might look the way I'm supposed to and that the the relationships I'm in and the world I'm in might look more and more like heaven as we follow you and he says give us this day our daily bread that we might pray about the needs we have and be aware of the provision that he provides daily to be thankful.

For it but expectant on it and dependent on him and this also means that this is a normal daily prayer that he expects this to be a regular way that we pray and then he says this and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil y'all that's our three enemies he says that we're supposed to ask for forgiveness of sins our debt to him is sin other places will say forgive us our trespasses or forgive us our sins as we forgiven those who've sinned against us that's what that is that we would repent of sin we be aware that we're Sinners.

Lead us not into temptation we're to be aware that there's a world around us both filled with people that tempt us and situations that tempt us that are calling us into sin that we'd be mindful of that and Deliver Us from Evil some of the versions will say evil one or have an as they say this can be translated evil one it's this personification of evil it's Satan it's the enemy that we would be delivered from the enemy that Jesus says your normal daily way to pray is to be mindful of your three enemies I I have found in my relationships with people and talking with people that a lot of times we're aware of.

Some of these some of you may not pray like this at all ever about any of them a lot of us are aware of some of them so that you're may be aware that you're a sinner you like I'm messing everything up and I'm I'm the one who causes so much trouble and I'm the reason everything's wrong and you might might be able to clearly sometimes see your sin some of you that one doesn't show up on your radar at all you're great everyone else around you is the worst.

If they would just listen to you when you talk their problems would be solved and it's like hey yeah you might want to start praying that you could see your sin and that you would be forgiven and that you'd be forgiving that you'd see your sin some people notice Temptation you're aware of it you see patterns and situations that you get in that cause you problems you talk to parents sometimes they see this one for their kids my kids great but they just they've been hanging out with a badg crowd my precious little perfect little gold-hearted angel just hanging out with some bad people it's like I think they're like.

Second in command to that team like I yeah there's some Temptation yeah you need to be aware of it but it's not the only thing there are other things as well but some of us are completely blind to this you don't you you maybe know that you're a sinner but you don't think at all about patterns and systems that you have set up and things that tempt you some of you do most of your sinning after 10 p.m. go to sleep some of you need to.

Look and realize hey I I hang out with a bunch of morons and I act like a kiss some new friends change some of your patterns change some of your habits be aware of some of the Temptations around you some of us are mindful that we have an enemy you'll talk to some people sometimes that are aware that there's an enemy they'll be mindful of that a lot of us aren't a lot of us because we're westerners Americans we maybe have a place.

For the enemy because the Bible says it but no real functional process for how we would think about that or pray about that and so it's like yeah the devil exists and he does things but there's no he doesn't lie to me and there's no way that I'd be have to be worried about that there are some people who overthink it I've talked to people before and they're like yeah Satan was in my toaster what was he how why what maybe you just need a new toaster like I don't even know how you're processing through this.

But for most of us we're not thinking about that at all we're not watchful and sober minded as Peter says that we would look out for an enemy who wouldn't want us to follow Jesus wouldn't want us to have joy wouldn't want us to raise our kids to love Jesus wouldn't want us to read our Bibles wouldn't want us to fight through for what is good would actively try to keep us from belonging to people and repenting of sin that we have an actual enemy and we're blind to that.

Jesus says no this is how we ought to pray this is what normal should look like and what's beautiful about this one of my favorite things that I find so encouraging about it is we just get to pray like that all the time we don't have to be investigators all the time figuring out exactly which one it is we just get to be aware that all of those enemies are usually at work in most situations they're all there helping if you'd say this is 100% me it's like maybe I mean you're a sinner you're 100% involved.

But I would say enem is probably at work I'd say there's probably some the world at work if you say no this is 100% the world like if if I wasn't tempted at all I'd never SE a yeah but you were there and you sin so I would think you're involved the enemies involved like they're all involved there was a movie I watched when I was probably 11 I maybe watched this I don't know 450 times it's the movie major pain.

So that maybe tells you a little bit about my my life growing up in the movie major pain uh it's a it's a guy who is like a very good military leader person killed a lot of folks at the beginning of the movie he gets told that he there's nobody left to kill and he's got to go run an ROTC program with children he actually looks at him and says there's got to be somebody needs some killing they say no you got to go run this.

For children at one point one of the kids comes to him in the middle of the night scared says there's a bad man in his closet there's a monster in the closet he walks over and says that closet he says yes he pulls his gun out and just shoots into the closet pow pow pow pow pow pow pow puts his gun up looks at the little kid and says if he's still in there he ain't happy and that's the way I feel about this a little bit we we got three closets we got three enemies we don't have to open them all up all the time and figure out exactly what's going on we can.

Trust the work of the spirit to help us see some of that but we also get to just shoot into every closet we get to say Lord please forgive me I know I'm a sinner I know I'm wrong I know specifically I sinned here forgive me of that but I also know that I don't always think about things right so help me help me turn from my sin help me run from my sin please forgive me help me to be gracious.

And then you get to say Lord help me keep me far from Temptation I don't know exactly know all the ways that I'm in the middle of this and I'm trying to figure that out but help me guard me and then Lord I don't know where the enemies at work here but I know he's a liar and I know he hates me and I know he hates you and so for protect me deliver me from the work of the enemy here.

Let me not listen to him let me listen to your spirit and we just get to pray all three and we don't have to go well I don't know if that's involved or that just just normal prayer is all of them so here here's what we're going to do with the time we have left we're going to do two case studies for lack of a better way to put it we're going to take two topics and consider them and we're going to consider how the practices how the enemies would be at work how the practices and praying will help us fight against them.

So how's the enemy at work here how are the enemies at work here and how does following these practices and praying in this way help we're going to take two they may or may not perfectly apply to you but we're trying to walk through this thought process so that in the situations that you're facing in the struggle that you're facing you can see a little bit of okay I can see how this works together and I can see how we would pray.

So that's what we're going to do the first one we're going to talk about is sexual sin or sexual Temptation now we talk about this topic a good bit and part of the reason we do that is because our culture never shuts the heck up about it it's not like it's our favorite thing to talk about it's just that we're we're going to talk about it some when we gather together and then you're going to go hear a thousand messages on this topic during this week there are some things that we can just tell you the Bible says and nobody else is arguing we can teach you about David and what he did we don't.

Need to tell you that over and over again because nobody else is trying to tell you David did something different they don't care but when we tell you what the Bible says about this you're going to go out and every ad you watch and every show you watch is going to preach a different message and so we talk about this some so we're going to talk about this this morning so first how are the enemies working together well Satan's lying and he's put some things out there that are culturally accepted some of the lies are in order to be a full happy human you have to be sexually satisfied otherwise you're deficient as a person.

Uh sexual desire is just it's like an appetite it's like hunger you get hungry you eat you get thirsty you drink we have desires fulfill them this should just be something that just happen s it should be cheap and easy and free that's one of the lies then on the other side you have this is so supremely important to real genuine relationships in love it's the Bedrock of all healthy relationships and it's essential to existence cheap easy free essential to love and existence and fulfillment which both of those can't really be true that's not how stuff works it's either special or it's not it's either everywhere or it's like you.

But this is what's put out in front of us and then we have disordered desires so you have your own desires some of our desires aren't even physical or sexual they're I want to be liked I want this relationship to work I I want to be normal I want to participate in what life is supposed to be like so you not even really your own desires but just what the world told you you're supposed to chase after I want to have uh this relationship continue I want I want I want this to be special I want to be loved I want to be desired and we participate with our own disordered desires.

And then our culture co-signs all of this non-stop it leads to misery added into that is now the belief that these desires actually Define who you are whatever you feel here is actually essential to your soul so free easy like hunger also the core of your identity we hear those so much we hadn't even considered the fact that those can't coexist so how do the practices help us well if we're reading our Bibles we're going to see a few things one sexual immorality is sin sin is destructive.

So the idea that this will help you in some way be fulfilled complete help your relationship help your uh dating help your whatever make you feel happy make you feel full fix your identity no it can't because misplaced it's sin now we're told that it's not gross or evil it's a gift given to marriage it's a covenantal gift meaning that you're supposed to participate in it fully and Covenant you're saying all of me belongs to all of you and whether you know John Legend is playing in the background or not I don't know.

But that's what you're saying like I'm fully yours All of Me belongs to all of you it's a covenantal ceremony but if that's not true it's destructive this is where Paul says that you're you've got you're becoming one flesh that there's a union that's taking place and so it's meant to be something that only happens inside of a marriage so you're reading through this and you're starting to see the Bible's in forming a picture of something you know what else it says it's not essential to being a human Paul says I wish everybody were Lov like me didn't need this weren't burning with passion and could just focus on.

Jesus not have to get married and just be missionaries and get after it and tell people about Christ and not worried about what their husband wanted their wife wanted not be caught up in domestic duties and raising children that's what Paul says so it's not a essential to you existing and being healthy or happy so you're studying the word this is changing you you're waking up in the morning and reading your Bible we're supposed to live in the Bible so you're reading this at night before you go to bed you're writing verses down and putting them in your pocket and memorizing them you're listening to this as you go to work.

Because you've got to get this in your head and you're studying the Scriptures all the time and it's not all the stuff the Scriptures talk about but you keep running into these things that are helping you that are helping reframe and change you start realizing wait if the Bible says this and the Bible's true then that can't be true you start repenting you you gather with your group and you actually start confessing things to them start telling them what's going on you tell them the lies you've been believing you tell them the frustrations you've been feeling you tell them the sins and you get to confess not.

Because you've got to get all that out to get fixed but because Jesus is so good that when we bring these things to him he heals us he redeems that we've got to turn away from sin in a way that rescues us and so we're confessing not just to them but to Jesus we're walking out in Repentance what it means to follow Christ and then we have a group of people who start asking us questions we don't want to answer somebody in your group says.

Okay you want me to start texting you at 10: all right you want us to all start going on your dates and you never get to see this person alone again and you're like no and they're like well do you want to keep sinning and you're like No And it's like well I'm your new third wheel I really like putt putt we don't want you to to pursue sin we don't want things to fall apart for you so we're invested we're coming we want to be a part of this with you we're going to start praying.

For you and pleading for you and expecting that you would love Jesus more than you love this sin and so that's what starts happening and then you start praying asking for forgiveness specifically confessing to the Lord what's going on praying against patterns and temptations and understanding that there are situations you get yourself in asking the Lord to help and you start praying hey Lord I know that the enemy lies to me and I know that he doesn't want me to love you more than I love this and in the name of.

Jesus I want to listen to you not him so he doesn't get to mess with me he doesn't get to mess with my thoughts he doesn't get to claim parts of my soul I don't get if I don't belong to him I belong to you so Deliver Me From Evil and you start praying that regularly the second one I want to talk about as a case study is marriage again one of the reasons is that our culture does not help us here.

Because if you are married you have married a sinner they have too but it's way more obvious to you that they are but that's how it works it's difficult it hurts it's hard at sometimes extremely hard and the enemy lies if you were really supposed to be married it wouldn't be this difficult you've made a mistake divorce will fix this and it's actually your only route to happiness you can't live your whole life this way you're going to be miserable forever this is the only way to fix this they've changed they're not the person you married they'll never change.

Jesus can't fix this which often those Lies come in at the same time and they can't both be true that this person's changed but will never change if Jesus is going to stand over you and make you stay in this marriage then he's more like a prison Warden than a savior and do we really trust him should you really trust him is he really good which is as old as the garden we have disordered desires I'm so angry I'm so hurt I don't want to have to do all the work to fix this I don't think it's fixable I anything that cosign my desire to get out feels.

So true so good so helpful and we're surrounded by a world that makes divorce easy as easy as it can be it's it's extremely difficult you're supposed to be happy as defined by you at this moment and anything that stands in the way of that is the enemy should be removed so how do the practices help us and how is praying help us well for reading our Bibles we will first be confronted by how absolutely good Jesus is how kind and merciful helpful and forgiving how Sovereign and trustworthy that he loves us.

So much that he would come and die to make us his and that he hates sin and everything that tears us apart and that he loves us so that he's with us mercifully and graciously in the midst of this difficulty that he can be trusted we'll also see that marriage is a covenant not a contract and that it's based off of Christ's love for the Church which means that even in the middle of difficult marriages we can still display his goodness.

Because our world understands why you would stay in a good marriage and our world understands why you would leave a bad one Christians get to point to Jesus as we stay in by what is by all worldly standards bad and say I'm holding on to something that's more true I'm holding on to something that's more good and I'm TR trusting that Jesus can go to work here and I'm trusting that he's good enough for me in the middle of this difficulty and I'm trusting that he can work in this person's heart and I can stay and grow to be faithful.

So you begin to repent knowing that you're not 100% right in the situation and that even if you're the one who primarily has been sinned against that there are things where you need the Lord to work in your heart and how you're responding to that and anger and frustration and bitterness and is asking the Lord for help and mercy and Grace you're confessing but you're also asking for his work in you to be faithful and to trust him and love him more and you have your Church family around you every person in our Church.

When you come to them to talk about marriage difficulty should be heartbroken with you and should say stay in every person say you you need to you need to let's lament but let's keep fighting let's keep pressing in towards what is good because that's how the Church is meant to work now these may not have applied to you it might have applied too much to you but this is how we want to walk out what it looks like to follow Jesus we want to be people who practice these things things who are in our Bibles who live in them abide in them y'all my my group comes to my house I I host a community.

Group every week I move my trash can from my pantry to a spot where it's easy for everybody to know where it is and then like a I walk into my P Pantry 37 times while my group is at the house holding trash I I kid you not I have carried my trash can set it down grabbed a piece of trash walked to my pantry because I know where it is and I live here this is where it is all the time that's the way we ought to be with our Bibles we ought to know where things are it ought to be.

Second nature for us to be able to walk and just be a part of what the Scripture says we ought to know it we ought to live and abide in the Bible that's what we're going for we want to be that kind of people we want to be people who are genuinely repenting who love Jesus and see that he's good he's calling us into hope that he loves us so much he would die for us so that he's trustworthy with everything and we ought to not trust ourselves.

So much and know that Lord there's stuff that's wrong with me and I need your help and I know that you're actually more trustworthy than I am because I'm not willing to put up with pain to pull me away from what's broken but you were willing to die to do it Lord I need your help and then we need our Church family you remember in middle school when two people if you went to a home school this may not have happened this way.

But if you're in public school uh two people said they were going to fight well usually it was one person that said something but there was like a runner you know uh middle schoolers aren't the best at communication until there's going to be a fight and then communication lines are crystal clear so somebody would go to one and say hey Mark said he's going to beat you up and they you look you know they say oh are you scared well I'm not scared all right you walk back Mark he said he ain't scared you back and forth Mark say there going to be two hits he going to hit you and you going to hit.

The ground you got a group of people around well uh you go back hey Mark he said why don't you go outside and practice falling down he'll be out in a minute and at the end of the day wherever it was playground behind the gym whatever there was a circle of middle schoolers and Mark and the other guy were inside the circle and you might think that this circle is just sinful and we you've made promises you've confessed you following Jesus don't don't get out of this you want to stay in you want to keep fighting you want to keep pressing towards what's good we're meant to gather around each other.

When you try to leave say no no no no no no no no no stay don't run after something stupid Jesus is so much better I know you can't see that right now but he's so much better don't don't go any don't go anywhere that's our hope that we would be people who believe biblical truth that leads to Faith that is normalized and Jesus Ling Community that's what we want and y'all we have three enemies but we have one savior who has defeated all of those enemies who has redeemed us from sin who judges and rules over the world that he has a kingdom that is coming and that his his will will be done.

On Earth as it is in heaven he will fully consummate this at some point it will fully belong to him and that we get to follow after him trusting him to go to work in us and go to work in our Church family and get to pursue after the work that he's already accomplished on the cross and getting to participate in it and so our hope is that we would stand firm in our one savior as we Face Off against three very real enemies that we need to be mindful of.

But not fearful of because we have a king let's pray Lord we need the work of your spirit we need your help Lord we thank you that there's forgiveness through the work of Christ this is not about us earning anything but it is about us getting to participate in the Glorious Redemption of Jesus to the praise of his glorious Grace Lord we're tempted tempted to believe lies tempted to pursue things that will harm us tempted to chase after things that will destroy our souls and lead us away from you tempted to believe in.

So many ways so many times that something else is better than you and we ask that you would lead us away from Temptation and help us to see how gloriously good you are and father we have an enemy who lies to us who tells us you don't really love us that this situation won't get better that we are broken and it'll never get fixed that that our Church family doesn't want us around that we're a burden that nobody cares about us that all these things things on repeat that this would satisfy me this will fill me up.

If I could just have this I'd be happy and we pray in the name of Jesus that you would shut his mouth you would strike him on the cheek and break the teeth of the enemy and that we would be people who would pray mindful of our enemies but oh so much more mindful of you our glorious King that our eyes will be set on you and that we would not fall prey to anything else we submit this to you in your grace and your sovereignty in.

Jesus name amen this morning we get to celebrate baptism baptism is a public profession of Faith it's a outward sign a representation of something that has already happened inwardly this is displayed in the way we go about baptism the person doesn't get in announce to you hey I used to be messed up but I'm fixing that now and then bathe themselves in front of you there's actually people who are in there with them representing the Church representing Christ they are baptized backwards.

Because they're buried in their sin buried with Christ y'all if they don't they're dead they were dead in their sin and they're buried with their sin if they don't come back up they actually die that's what it's representing so we bury them and then we raise them again washed and risen to New Life In Christ that when he was buried they were buried when when he died for their sin their sin died and they get to walk in newness of life.

Because of the resurrection of Jesus and they have a hope of Resurrection that is what baptism is proclaiming and we praise Christ for his salvation and we praise Christ for his hope and we praise him specifically for Two Souls today that get to join us in following Jesus in faith and baptism proclaiming that their hope is in Christ.

The World

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Three Enemies: The World

Isaac Hill

Transcript

Good morning uh it is great to be here for this time of worship with you all on the Sunday morning that's a little bit muggy outside but nice and comfortable inside and uh if you're new here I want to welcome you my name is Isaac I'm one of the pastors here at mil City Church we're glad that you decided to join us this morning uh if you haven't been with us for the past several weeks we have been working our way through a series called three enemies and we have been focusing on how the script Scriptures uh specifically highlight three enemies that are Waging War against the kingdom of.

God and Waging War against our formation as people into the image of Christ and so uh we're towards the end of the series and so I want to quickly recap what we have talked about thus far to make sure uh that we are all on the same page so Chad started us off in week one to help us understand that the things that we do do things to us that the regular rhythms and habits of our life are forming us into something and that we have to be careful.

Because we might think that there's neutral ground but there's not neutral ground either the things we're doing are helping form us into the image of Christ or deform us away from the image of Christ and then in week two we spent some time outlining how uh the the three enemies themselves the devil the Flesh and the world work together in a unified strategy that it's not Randomness it's calculated and we have this phrasing um that we have been using to be helpful from uh a pastor and a Christian thinker who's on the west coast he says uh that the strategy of these enemies is deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires that are normalized in.

A sinful society and so those are the three enemies at work that first it's the deceitful ideas that we have a real spiritual enemy a real spiritual being with agency is at war against us and his main mode of operation is through sewing lies that he lies to us and that then we talked about that we accept the lies because we have disordered desires that the Bible calls this the Flesh in us that we want it to be true because there's a part of us that really wants it to be true.

And then you get a bunch of people that are believing these lies and then they become this becomes accepted as the Baseline truth in our cultures and in our societies and this is what Scripture calls the world and this is our Focus this morning so let me pray and then we'll Dive In Father we thank you very much for this opportunity that we get to open up your word and we get to admit that we don't don't get it on our own that we need help.

And so this morning through your spirit would you be teaching us your truth and instructing us in your ways that we might find the freedom that you provide Jesus name amen we are going to be spending most of our time this morning in 1 John Chapter 2 verses 15-1 17 so if you want to go ahead and turn there uh if you don't have Bible with you uh you can grab one that's in the seat racks and if you're in one of those blue Bibles it's going to be on page 592 uh several years ago we worked through a series in.

First John and so if you haven't had the opportunity to go back through our archives and listen to that I would encourage you to uh to get a fuller uh explanation of this whole letter um but just for this morning we're just going to be in chapter 2: 15 to 17 and uh before we begin I want to give a quick little bit of context for this passage as we begin and so this book of the Bible is written by John it's written by the Apostle John and he's writing a letter to a local Church and the tone of the book is not really negative he's very encouraging to the Believers who are there.

But he does highlight in Chapter 2 a little bit later than where we're going to be at this morning that there is seemingly a group of people who have left this local Church and that by chasing the things that are against Christ chasing after the things of this world they've revealed their true colors that they never really belong to Christ and the first place and then John goes on to say that not only that that they're also seeming to be putting pressure on this Church.

For the members to come and follow them in their teaching rather than to follow Jesus and so this is the situation in which John finds himself writing this letter to the local Church so let's dive in into verse 15 do not love the world or the things in the world if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not not in him now I don't know about you but when I come across a verse with this level of intensity it forces me to self-reflect that.

If you thought that Raz is blunt have you met John John just said that if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not in him this forces me to ask myself some questions and so that's what we get to do this morning and there are two specific questions that we're going to be asking ourself first is what is the world that's important to know it's important to understand that and second what does it look like to love it what does John mean to love the world.

So first let's start with what is the world now it's important whenever we uh are reading Scripture that we have an understanding that we're all coming in with our own contextual understanding we're all coming from different places whatever our history is at maybe you've got a lot of Bible teaching maybe you don't whatever it is it doesn't matter where we come from maybe you've never even heard of the idea that the world could be an enemy and maybe you've only ever heard of the world as an enemy it doesn't matter either way we're going to come to Scripture to define the word and the idea.

For us we're not going to import our own understanding and so a couple weeks ago as we were doing a bird's eye view approach to these three enemies and their strategy um I referenced Strong's exhaustive Bible concordance which is basically just a big concordance of definitions of ideas and words that are in Scripture and he used this definition he said the present condition of human Affairs an alienation from and opposition to God they when talking about the world and the context that John is speaking of In this passage he says the present condition of human Affairs an alienation from an opposition to.

God so even though there is a way to talk about the world in which it's the physical world the things that we see in touch like trees and rocks and sticks and stuff like that specifically what John is talking about here is not the physical things we can see but something deeper than that something beyond that and this is why some translations will translate this word age or as Paul says in Ephesians 2 he says the course of this world and Paul in Colossians 2 as he's been building this understanding and this idea of the world he says this he says.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ so the way that Scripture defines this enemy me the world is that it's helping us understand that it's the agreed upon or underlying assumptions or philosophies which inform a way of life that is based on empty deceit and human tradition and not according to Christ that this is what the world is as John is referring to it.

So in our framework of the strategy of how these enemies work together the world of Scripture talks about it as the enemy of God is what happens when you have a whole society that is putting lies on repeat repeating lies to itself over and over again that first it starts on the individual level with lies that you and I believe to be true and that part of us wants to be true because we have that flesh remember these are the first two enemies we talked about the lies.

And then us accepting it but it starts with me on the individual level then you get enough people that are believing these lies and then a whole Community or Society then begins to believe it and it becomes the accepted Baseline truth and then what happens is that then Cycles back to us to reinforce in us the lie that we started to believe in the first place this is how this idea of the enemy of the World plays back to us that it starts with an individual fleshly desire that's.

Then formed into a collective societal worldview of apart from Scripture that Fe then feeds back into our fleshly desires and it's this cycle that goes and continues on for those of you that don't know me I grew up uh on a summer Campground and bethl Christian Camp that's about 15 minutes from here great Pace to grow up when you're a little kid you get to run around and have fun uh but one of the opportunities that you get is that during the summertime you get to work on staff.

And so for several years I got the great opportunity to work as a counselor uh when when kids would come for week of Camp I got to work with a cabin of kids each week and one of the things that I loved especially with the younger kids that are like seven years old is that us as staff we talk to them about the legends of the lake ninja and so we had the legends of the lake Ninja at bethl and all the staff they'd all be in on it you know we'd come up with silly stories lives under the dock eats turtles.

For breakfast you know all sorts of crazy things and uh believe it or not it doesn't take much when you get a bunch of adults communicating to seven-year-olds that there's a lake ninja that exists 24 hours in they're totally sold out a lake ninja exists they're start they're having their own side conversations about a lake ninja we we weren't even instigating them they come up and ask us questions Mr Isaac Mr Isaac you know Lake ninja does he do this does he do that where is he am I going to be.

Okay I you know there might be some 25-year-old kid that thinks there's a lake ninja still I don't I don't know but it's funny it's funny to think about some seven yearolds um being convinced of this lie um but the reality is is that there were enough people around them especially those that they looked up to that were kind of perpetuating this lie it was harmless and it was fun and we laugh at a seven-year-old but the reality is is that we're all in the same camp that we're all in the same boat.

When it comes to the way of this world we fall prey to this and are impacted by this way more than we would like to admit that we don't want to admit it but we are way more affective Ed and influenced by the way of this world then we would dare to admit and so that's what we get to look at today and this is also why in that sermon a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the specific weapon that this enemy the world uses against us is that it's the ability to cosign belief and practices and the ability allows us the ability to hide that we can just throw up our hands.

And saywell if everybody else is doing it this is why Adam gets to say it was Eve's fault and why Eve gets to say it was the Serpent's fault do we just get to try to sh the blame onto somebody else and hide and mask ourselves so with this understanding of the world we come to our second question what does it look like to love the world we're going to continue on in the passage 1 John chap 2 verse 16 for all that is in the world the desires of the Flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the.

Father but is from the world so John is going to categorize what our love of the world looks like in three umbrella terms he's going to say that what the love of the world looks like is the desires of the flesh the desires of the eyes and the pride of life and so what we're going to do is we're just going to work our way through one by one so first desires of the flesh so last week if you were with us you know that Raz spent some time talking about what is the Flesh and we talked about this idea that it's that part of us that is naturally drawn towards the things that are.

Part from God and I think John has some of that in in view here um but I also think he's also talking about our physical flesh that you and I are made as real people that we have bodies and I think what's helpful in tying into this is that he says this Greek word here for desire is epithumia and it can also be translated other other places in Scripture as passions or lusts even different translations of the Bible as they're trying to help us understand this idea uh going to read a couple different translations of this word this phrase desires of the flesh.

So the NIV is going to say the bels of sinful man the new English Bible is going to say all that panders to the appetites the New Living Translation is translated the lust for physical pleasure or as one commentator put it and translated it what the body hankers for and so this is this idea that's being built up and for me personally I think that the word lust is the most helpful translation that really sets the tone of what he's trying to work and get at.

Because lust is the Twisted form of love lust is just the Twisted form of love desire is just the Baseline thing that we feel but lust is then what we begin to do with it and so lust is this desire that's turned toward myself for satisfying my physical senses especially at the expense of someone or something else that it's us wanting to satisfy our natural bodily Cravings specifically the way in which we pursue our own ends and self self-sufficient independence of.

God As One commentator put it so what does this look like then for us if John is saying that this is what the love of the world looks like what does that actually mean for us what are some of the things that John has in mind here well one very sure way that I think one very sure thing that I think John has in mind here is our approach to sex that we're physical creatures and sex involves physicalness and the way in which we engage in sex is going to help us understand whether or not we have a love.

For the world Scripture teaches that all sexual encounter outside the Covenant of marriage falls in the category of sin or Falls in this category of Love of the world and the reality is even once you get married it's not like it's some magic trick that makes your sex life all pure all of a sudden you still have to work at it you have to learn with your partner how to honor and love each other so the way Scripture talks about the world's approach to sex is that it's us taking advantage of someone else.

For the sake of our own pleasure that's this idea of lust it's me and my desires taking advantage of you or something someone else something else for the sake of my own pleasure I think that this the clearest simplest example of this in our culture is hookup culture so hookup culture is pounding this line to our heads over and over and over again that sex doesn't really mean anything sex might as well be like a piece of bubblegum you unwrap it chew it spit it out just instant little moment of pleasure that's all it is I mean.

If you haven't already just pay attention to whatever current TV series you're watching through whatever movies you like to go watch at the theaters just pay attention to the way they talk about sex is that the truth or is that a lie so here's what I think has happened we as people we have a natural drive for sex it's an eight to being a human and Scripture teaches that it has a proper place that is beautiful but at the individual level the lie that's been believed is that sex is just a physical interaction with somebody a transaction.

If you will that's all that it is and then you get a whole community of people that are believing that lie that that's all that sex is and you have a culture whose world view removes any sanctity from sex any depth to what it actually is between two people and then this culturally accepted lie then reinforces for the individual that they can participate in sex in whatever they way they want cuz I mean it's just physical interaction that's it and then you track that over the past Century over the past 150 years.

And then you land us where we're at now in our modern Western culture totally confused no Baseline whether it be sex in a dating relationship whether it be hookup culture whether it be adultery pornography whatever it does it doesn't take long in Reading Scripture to come to an understanding that God's way for sex is very different than what our culture teaches so I think heal question for us in understanding do we love the world is are we shaped more by our culture's approach to sex sex or by Scriptures are we shaped more by our cultures approach to sex or by Scriptures of course we have more than just bodily desires.

For sex so under this umbrella that John is talking about he also uh has other things in mind like the consumption of food so whether it be related to our body image or just pure Indulgence it's also very easy for us in our day and age to have a very unhealthy approach to food we understand that food is good how we actually understand that it's very good it's great at sustaining us it gives us energy it's great at creating spaces around the table.

For Fellowship it's wonderful but it's also so easy for us to just binge out on a row of Oreos just to scratch the itch our approach to alcohol fits into the same category substance use fits into the same category we live in an overstimulated world and we could talk for a long time about all the possible ways in which the world is a could be a Temptation for us to just give into our bodily desires but I think we get the picture that the individual level we've been believing lies about the way in which we're supposed to engage with our physical desires.

And then that's manifested itself into a culture into a moment and that it says that's what you pursue that's what you live for is to satisfy your physical pleasures and then that reinforces for us and it becomes the Baseline the accepted Truth for us this is what is at war against our formation into the image of Christ so that's the desires of the flesh John also talks about the desires of the eyes now obviously our eyeballs don't have desires in and of themselves.

But our eyes are the way in which we observe the world around us and if you were to sum up this idea into one word I think John is trying to talk about greed or covetousness this idea that whatever we see we believe that we need it and that I have the right to have it for my own I think the grocery store is a prime example of this just to help us understand the layout of a grocery store is specifically designed.

For you to see stuff so you can spend the money on it you know where all the name brand stuff is it's not on the bottom right hand corner of the Shelf tucked away you know in that spot of the store where the lights a little flickery so it's hard to see anyways no right on the eye Lev shelf right there for you to see well maybe most of y'all's eyes the level shelf if it's me I'm like one shelf above Craig he's all the way at the top they haven't they don't have anything.

For Craig but we get it what they understand that whatever we see we're going to want I read a short study done by the University of Southern California that stated most mascots for cereals marketed to children look down at an average angle of 9.6 de somebody in some Kellogg's meeting was sitting at the table they were asking the question how can we sell more Frosted Flakes and a guy was like well you know when mom takes the kids into the grocery store and they're walking down the aisle I really think we need Tony the Tiger to just lock eyes with little Johnny that's just what we need I know some of you next time you're.

In the Cal aisle you're going to look around and try to see if it's true I mean heck you make it all the way through your grocery shopping Adventure which is an adventure for sure and you finally make it to the checkout line no it's not done whole plethora of little candy bars soda pop magazines whatever it is anything that our eyes can latch on to just so that we can take it and I mean could our current age of technological advancement reveal any more of our propensity to be drawn to the things by our eyes we're all carrying around in our pockets at all times this little device that shoots flashy little eyes lights.

At our eyes just to get us to pay attention to it there are whole marketing departments that are predicated upon the fact that you have a desire of the eyes I mean if you have the Amazon mobile app I think one of the recent updates there's a whole section of the app that literally is just short form video content of people having other things just to see if you want to buy it you can sit there and scroll on the Amazon app video after video of just people owning different things just to.

See if you want to buy it at the individual level we believe the lie that what we see with our eyes can ultimately satisfy us and we should pursue to go get it I just need that next thing and you get a whole community of people believing this lie and you have a cultural worldview that's built an economic green machine that panders to our Covetous nature rather than instilling the character of contentment so John is highlighting that the way of this world entices us to want more and more and more all I need I just need that next thing.

And then it'll be and I'll be Satisfied we should be careful and ask ourselves the question what are we looking at what are we drawn to by the things of our eyes so that's the desires of the eyes lastly John talks about pride of life the word life here is the same uh word that's used in Mark 12 uh the story where Jesus is with his disciples in the temple uh and the poor lady comes to drop her two coins in the offering.

And when she goes to put the coins in Jesus gets his disciples attention he says see that right there she has given all she had to live on that's that same word live on it's that same word as life here in the Greek but the point is the stuff that we have it's our our stuff whatever's yours and this idea of Pride here is it's the arrogance and the things that I have as being s sufficient to sustain me and then I boast in them.

If the lust of the eyes is worshiping what you don't have the pride of life is worshiping what you do have and we live in a culture of abundance we know this I mean for most of us that are here today we're living like the kings of old we got fridges that are stocked with the finest of foods we got entertainment available at our whim privacy fences as castle walls to defend any enemy Invasion on my perfectly manicured lawn all at 2.75 in just beautiful and this is what is sold to us as the good life and not only that that we should take pride in it the fleshly part of us believes that I.

Have the right to be prideful and to boast in what I've got CU after all I've worked for it haven't I well you get a whole community of people that believe that and you come up with something to the effect of the American dream which is predicated on my backbreaking work to accomplish for myself a kingdom in which I can boast to the world to show that I'm capable and I made it and that in turn just fuels in us this desire to work toward Independence we just celebrated Independence Day I love being in a country in which we can gather without fear of harm to worship it's fantastic.

But on an individual level Independence that's not in the vocabulary of Scripture Scripture says that every good and perfect gift comes from above everything that we have is simply a gift to us it has nothing to do with the fact that you work for it your paycheck has nothing to do with the fact that you work for it it is a good and perfect gift to you the house you have the lawn you have I don't whatever it is it's not.

Because of your work it is a good and perfect gift to you it's on loan for us to us for the time that we have here and this lie that's been perpetuated to the point of full acceptance and belief that what I have is mine wages war against the idea of dependence upon our creator in all things even in the smallest of things like the shirts that are on our backs so this is the cultural moment that we're in this is the world that we're influenced by and we're way more influenced by it than we would dare to admit and maybe you feel The Angst the pressure of John's statement that.

If you love the world the love of the father is not in you you have to ask the question what do we do what could we do against this well as John finishes his thought in chapter 2 verse 17 he says this and the world is passing away along with its desires all that we just talked about it's all going to fade away but whoever does the will of God abides forever what God is working to build is going to last forever what.

God is working to build in your life and in my life that's forever that right now what he's doing in you to form you into the image of Christ that lasts forever I'm not saying when you die I'm saying forever for all eternity and one day there's going to be a new world a new heavens and a new Earth that's created and the way of this world will be no more there will be no more desires of the flesh there will be no more desires of the eyes there will be no more pride of of Life there will just be satisfaction and contentment and the love and goodness of our.

God and this is why Jesus came to set us free from the bondage of sin because it's real bondage that he's wanting to point us to the one who actually satisfies and fulfills our deep need and is one who is worth boasting in so this is why in Romans 12 Paul can say do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind it's not worth conforming to this world it's not worth believing the lies that are accepted by our culture we should reflect and consider in our own lives in what ways are we loving the world rather what Paul says is worth it is that we need to let.

Transformation in our life take place by the renewal of our minds and in this section of Romans Paul just spent 11 chapters detailing the most he he gives the most detailed picture of of what God is doing of who Jesus is and what he's done in the Gospel the renewal of our minds is directly tied to who Jesus is and what he's done Paul is encouraging the Church that the daily rhythm of reminding ourselves and rehearsing the Gospel is the power by which there is transformation.

If you feel the weight of this in your life if you're considering ways in which maybe you fallen prey to the love of the world and you want transformation how does it take place the daily rhythm of reminding ourselves and rehearsing the Gospel what a gift that we would be able to remind ourselves of the love and the truth of the Gospel of Jesus so this is why here we have Community groups this is why we exist as Church Church family together in order that inside of that Community we might constantly remind ourselves of the truth that we're called to engage in regular rhythms of what we would call as life on life with other.

People that we're sharing in everything whether it be the good stuff the bad stuff the ugly stuff it doesn't matter because in all of it we want to be pointed back to Jesus as being better than everything else that this world has to offer cuz he is because remember all the stuff of this world Fades away but he lasts forever in our group one of our members was uh encouraging their friend to come out and hang with us hang out with us and you know she was pastoring her a lot wearing her down most effective tactic there is and eventually her friend decided to try it out she was hesitant at.

First didn't stick right away but as she continued to be more and more involved in what we were doing she began to express to us that she's never been a part of a community that's loved her in this way and in this way she was experiencing the Gospel of Jesus in a whole new light she never had before that simply by the daily rhythm of being around people people that are trying to regularly remind ourselves of the truth of the Gospel that there was change this is the power of regularly committing ourselves to a group of people that are set on pointing each other to the truth and goodness and love of.

Jesus this is why we do it this is why it matters so as we close I want I want to end with a couple questions to leave you that I hope you consider so that wherever you're at specifically in your life right now this can start to take root so if you're here this morning and you're you're already committed to a group here which Church family that's all of you if you didn't know that I want you to ask yourself this question in what way do I need to be more connected to my community group in what way do I need to be more connected to my community group.

If this is a space where we're going to remind ourselves of the Gospel don't we want to be there don't we want to be as connected as we possibly can so I don't know what the step is for you I don't know if it's in your willingness to confess sin I don't know if it's signing up to bring something other than just drinks to events I maybe it's reaching out to someone to learn how you can time of discussion maybe it's just showing up more regular L to the rhythm of the group meeting time I don't know what it is.

For you I don't but I know you can ask yourself that question and I know that the spirit of God can work to equip you and encourage you and strengthen you in fighting against this enemy of the world that would love nothing less than to convince us that the desires of the Flesh and the desires of light dies and the pride of life is worth something maybe you're here this morning and you've been around with us a little while on Sunday morning.

But you haven't gotten connected to a group yet if that's the case for you I want you to ask yourself this question what is keeping me from taking the next step of connecting to a community group here at m city what is keeping me from taking the next step of connecting to a community group here at Mill City maybe you've come by and you've never stopped by the connect Corner maybe you have stopped by the connect corner but you never showed up to a group I don't know what it is.

For you and I don't know what's kept you back I don't know if it's fear I don't know if it's apathy but ask yourself the question what's kept me from being connected to this group of people that is seeking to remind themselves of the Gospel of Jesus day in and day out whatever it is it's not worth it so the band's going to come back up and as you're reflecting on your question if you you get an answer this morning if you feel like you have a response don't wait.

If you're in a group and you feel like you know this is the next step you need to take grab one of your group members and just say hey this is what I'm going to do don't wait cuz by the time Wednesday night rolls around there's a whole bunch of time that's going to happen between now and then there's a whole bunch of world that's going to happen between now and then maybe for you the next step is just stopping by the connect corner.

So you can figure out which community group meets close to you so that you can show up you should go stop by take that step this morning our volunteers don't bite you don't have to be afraid of them but let's not miss any opportunities that could be given to us to be more connected to Church family as God is working to redeem a people from this world let's participate in the things Everlasting not the things that are going to fade.

The Flesh

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Three Enemies: The Flesh

Raz Bradley

Transcript

Good morning it's good to be with you this morning my name is Raz U if you've been with us the last few weeks you'll know we're working our way through a series called the three enemies this is an old theological Paradigm used to illust whoa don't do that this is an old theological Paradigm used to uh illustrate the various ways that we as Christians have to combat certain elements that are at war against us and so we have these three enemies we have the world which represents external forces everything which is outside of us and uh kind of influences us we have the flesh that which is the internal sort of carnal desires that we.

Have and we have the devil who represents spiritual forces so we have a war and we have these three different battlefields that the war is being fought on simultaneously today we're going to be focused on the internal war that is the enemy of the flesh but before we get too far into that I kind of want to sidestep a minute and give a pretty good-sized illustration to help us think through a lot of the stuff we're going to be talking about.

Today but before we get to that I want to define a couple of terms be before we get into all so this kind of an intro to an intro to an intro to the point today yall just going to have to bear with me um there's a couple of words that we need to uh Define before we can move on on and one of those the first one is sanctification in Christianity uh the theological word sanctification refers to the process by which a Christian becomes holy uh literally the word sanctify means to make holy and there's plenty of references to this in the Old Testament you you would have heard uh times where the they're.

Commanded to sanctify the altar or sanctify the temple those kinds of things before they get into ritualistic practices and that is to make something holy so that it is presentable to God when you apply that word to Christians though it refers to a process a process by which Christians throughout the course of their entire life become more and more like Jesus in the first week uh when Chad was introducing the I guess the whole series uh he talked about the idea that you are being conformed into something you're being conformed into something what is it.

Well sanctification refers to the process where Christians are being conformed into the image of Christ there's another big important word and that word is justification justification is a legal word and it refers to an act of God to declare a person as righteous in contrast this is not a process this is a transaction it's a moment in time it happens immediately upon the time when a person places faith in Jesus legally we believe that Jesus Takes our guilt and our punishment.

For us that we are washed clean and that we are accredited with righteousness that's justification and it's separate and distinct from sanctification we believe as a Church that we are justified through faith alone in Christ alone and not by works legally our guilt is taken by Jesus at the moment we place faith in him boom saved forever sanctification however refers to a process a lifelong process it takes time the fight against the flesh that's the the second enemy that we're talking about is one where Christians wage war against their own desires and it's integrated with that idea of sanctification becoming more and more like Christ over time.

Now historically there are three umbrella category views of sanctification that's three different ways that uh people have read the Bible and thought I I think I fig can figure out how this is going to work um and inside of each of those categories there are subcategories we're not going to worry about subcategories today we're going to stay high level I'm G to borrow an illustration that I learned from a former CIU president named Robson mcquilkin um he died a few years ago I've read a bunch of his books I don't.

Remember ever reading this illustration in his books uh but he delivered a a sermon this one time and the illustration is stuck with me ever since um so this is borrowed it's from him but I don't know where for you to find it if you have want to go look for it here here's the idea suppose you're on a skiing trip you pack up your snow skis and you get to the mountain and you look up the mountain and you know some way somehow.

If I'm going to enjoy my skiing I have to get to the top of the mountain now in the early days you didn't have much choice you were going to strap those skis to your back just like this and you're going to have to hike your way all the way up that mountain this is the first view of sanctification this view is rought with effort It Is by Blood Sweat and Tears that you're going to suffer each and every one of those steps struggling the entire way that you try to climb that mountain this is the Christian Life as it is most commonly misunderstood by most people four steps up slide down five steps up.

Face plan fall back down it's all up to me I'm on my own I've got to climb this mountain it's all my effort now to my knowledge there is no Evangelical Church that officially takes this position but it is a common misunderstanding amongst Christians and non-Christians alike about what it looks like to be a Christian do better try harder more effort everything is up to you don't fail in the Christian Life though as you know there is no reaching the top by effort no matter how hard you try you are not going to be perfect.

But in 1935 thanks to some American Ingenuity of course everything changed go to any ski resort in the world and this is no longer the option go anywhere in the world and you're going to arrive and you're going to see a giant steel pole a massive police system a steel cable and this magic chair in the sky that does all of the work work for you this is the second view of sanctification I don't have to do anything it's all up to.

God in this view I have no autonomy I have none of the control I could actually try if I wanted to but it wouldn't do anything I can't steer this thing I can't make it go faster I can't make it go slower just straight to the top that's how it works God does it all for me now just for the record this is also an incorrect uh view of sanctification but at this point we have two views we have one view where it's all up to me and we have one view where it's all up to.

God effectively these are two ditches on either side of the road that represent the big mistakes we can make in understanding sanctification I want to introduce you to a lady who tried that first option she tried to do it all on her own realized she couldn't and so she switched strategies she decided she was going to let God do it instead her name is Carrie Underwood she sings a song it's called Jesus Take the Wheel the chorus goes like this Jesus Take the Wheel take it from my hands cuz I can't do this on my own I'm Letting Go she tried doing it all on her own she realized that wasn't working.

And so she switched she said I've had enough of that give me the chairlift I don't want to do this anyway now we shouldn't be too surprised that if there's two ditches on either side of the road you could crash into one and then crash all the way into the other if you refuse to put your hands on the steering wheel we'll call these the carry mistakes well luckily there is a third view of sanctification a more accurate view uh installed in the US.

For the first time uh in 1958 just before the 60s Winter Olympics is a new kind of lift called the pommer lift now if you've never been skiing a pommer lift looks like a frisbee on a stick and uh it it's a little bit harder to use in a chairlift you you arrive and uh you get handed this Rod you've got to grab onto it and kind of stick it between your legs and it's going to tow you all the way up the mountain.

But you've got a little bit of work to do with a pomel lift you're going to have to hang on you're going to have to dodge obstacles you can see that it just kind of goes up this up the side of the mountain and there's nothing stopping skiers from coming in between there's nothing stopping you from just dropping off you can hit potholes I've been on ones where you've got to navigate over Bridges and stuff in this in this scenario you have a great deal of individual responsibility.

If you want to make it all the way to the top of the mountain the lift the machine is the part that is providing power you don't provide Power but if you were to let go you would not find yourself at the top of the mountain you would find yourself back down at the bottom but if you're committed to Hanging On Tight you'll be dragged all the way up the mountain closer and closer in the analogy sense to the likeness of.

Jesus over time now it's not a Perfect Analogy they never are but it is kind of like that and the point here is that the first two views are incorrect when we talk about Christian Living being conformed into Christ likeness it's not all about you it's not all about your effort and it's not all up to God either but instead there is this third option where you are an active participant but it's God's power that provides the mechanism for you to make the journey possible at all this is the correct way to think about sanctification this is how you should think about the lifelong journey the lifelong process of what it looks like.

For you starting where you are now to be conformed more and more into christlikeness for the rest of your life so as we turn today to the second enemy The Flesh we're going to keep this in mind and the reason for doing so is that when it comes to making application points later on we run the risk of functionally viewing the Christian Life functionally making the mistake of believing that first option that it's all up to me that I have to do better that it's on me I've got to go away and do better try harder and I can't make any mistakes and that would be a misunderstanding.

But we do have an enemy we are fighting a war and effort is required but the trick we have up our sleeves is that we don't have to win on our own the power doesn't come from us much like the PFT the power comes from the spirit and we are just an active participant so with that in mind let's talk more about this second enemy The Flesh uh couple weeks ago Isaac introduced a key phrase it comes from John Mark comr and it says the deceitful ideas play to disorted design desires that are normalized in a sinful society that kind of encapsulates all three those deceitful ideas we talked about them last week that is.

Satan and his lies they play to disordered desires that's what's inside of us the Flesh and that is normalized in a sinful Society we'll talk more about that next week that's primarily coming from the world so last week Chad delved into the idea that the devil is involved in all of this we're fighting a spiritual war and his primary role in that is as the deceiver the one who SWS lies but those lies appeal to us because we have disordered desires.

When he lies to us and he says this is the thing that will make you happy you deserve it everyone else has it the only reason it appeals to something is that there's already something inside of us something internal we're going to look at two places where the Apostle Paul talks about this today both of them in letters that he wrote to churches and we're going to start in Galatians 5 if you go to Bible that'll be the place to stick to.

Today I'm going to go to Romans 8 later but for for your purposes just stick to Galatians 5 now Paul uh has a very distinct theology when it comes to those who are saved and those who are not saved frequently in his writings he he splits everyone into two camps and he has a number of different ways of labeling those two camps so we're going to start a little kind of not even a scoreboard it's just a checklist of each of those sometimes he'll refer to the old self versus the new self sometimes he'll refers refers to those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ sometimes it's those who are under the.

Law and sometimes it's those who are under grace but there's a line in the middle and that line is either side of when someone places faith in Jesus uh in Galatians 5 it talks about the conduct of the people who fall into each of those categories uh it's distinct from each other because the conduct of the Believers is not like the conduct of the non-believers now I'm hoping that as we read this some of it at least will be kind of familiar we had this OB section of this as a memory verse I don't know two two months ago or.

So but we're going to start reading from verse 16 and as we do I want you to pay attention to the spirit and the Flesh and how he kind of puts them in opposition to each other they're highlighted on the screen in yellow and green I was going to use a different color but it's kind of hard to see so just bear with that um but attention to those two words he says but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do but if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law now the works of the flesh are evident that is the observable Behavior associated with the second enemy The Flesh that Associated behavior is evident we can see them sexual immorality impurity sensuality idolatry sorcery enmity Strife jealousy fits of anger rivalries dissensions divisions Envy drunkenness orgies and things like these I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit.

The Kingdom of God and now the next section we have a little song for in kid city to make it easier to remember it says but the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control hey it's pretty nifty against such things there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires if we live by the spirit let us also keep in step with the spirit.

Let us not become conceited provoking one another envying one another you know as I was originally writing this um just in like sermon construction mode you have to provide some brain breaks for people you have to make jokes every now and then and I I really wanted to make a joke here at this point in time but it kind of hurt a little bit um I wanted to make a joke about you know in kids City we have this song fruit of the spirit love joy peace patience kindness good and faithful hey and the whole idea is that we get to teach kids Scripture and in this case the fruits of the spirit and my.

Whole joke was going to be about we had another song and it was called The Works of the Flesh and we would teach the kids The Works of the flesh The Works of the flesh are sexual immorality impurity and sensuality idolatry and sorcery enmity and strife hey yall know it jealousy fit of anger rivalries dissensions and divisions and envy and drunkenness and orgies it wasn't going to be a good joke and I'm not going to make it but the reality set in and it kind of made me sad.

Because the whole point of the joke was to say we were're going to teach that song but it wasn't going to be popular and then I realized something about popular music and it's that every popular song these days is about one of those things pluck one out of the list write a song about it and you're going to be on the Billboard 100 and it just kind of made me think how pervasive this stuff is and how even though we wouldn't in theory joke about kids knowing those songs they already do.

Because we're already there so anyway what is Paul saying here we have an internal sin nature in us we believe lies and they manifest in ways that seek gratification to the self Paul calls us to participate in fighting against that so let's bring back up our table that we had we're going to add a couple things we see that those who are in Adam in the old self and under the law are characterized as living by the Flesh and they have the works of the Flesh and that big old list.

And then on this side we have those who are the new self in Christ under grace in the spirit and they have the fruit of the spirit and they're characterized their conduct is characterized by these things now in case you were inclined to defend Carrie Underwood's honor earlier I think it might do well to check in on her how is she doing she released Jesus Take the Wheel in 2005 uh 10 months later she released another hit single and I wonder was letting go of the wheel such a good idea in her next song she sings I dug my key into the ins side of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive I carve my.

Name into his leather seat she has a long name by the way she took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights slashed a hole in all four tires but it's his fault maybe next time he'll think before he cheats girl I don't know if letting go of the wheel did much good for you Paul tells us that the works of the flesh are evident there's a scoreboard for these things how's your enmity how's your Strife how's your jealousy fits of anger much have we been practicing much peace patience kindness gentleness self-control as it turns out letting go of the wheel bad strategy.

For sanctification so if the flesh if the flesh is this internal sin nature we have the propensity within ourself to seek after self-gratifying things and we know the signs of the flesh the various list of things that show evidence of f fleshly living then what kinds of things can we do to combat them I'm going to put Romans 8 on the screen starting in verse one there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus that's justification we talked about this earlier.

If you're in Jesus legally the transaction has happened boom you no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus you have been credited with his righteousness verse Two for the law of the spirit of life has has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death you see this ju the position again the old and the new the law of sin and death and the law of life and the spirit of life for God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likness of sinful flesh.

For sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit this is the important part for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit for to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God it does not submit to God's law indeed it cannot for those who are in the flesh cannot please God and he keeps going on so let's bring up our scorecard table thing again we can add a few things on the left those who are in the flesh have set their minds on the Flesh and that leads to death and is hostile to God and on the right we have those who are in Christ they set their minds are set on things of the spirit and that leads to life and peace as they are indwelled by the spirit.

Notice that it is your mind that is set on either the things of the flesh or the things of the spirit it is the things that our minds are set on that drive us to do one thing over the other that's why we made such a big Point that's why Chad made such a big point last week of why we have to know what we believe because that helps you combat the lies that the enemy feeds so much of this is a mind game Satan's lies are Mind Games the fight with the flesh is a mind game worldly influences and temptations are Mind Games.

If you consistently flood your mind with sexual immorality that will lend itself towards works of the flesh if you consistently flood your mind with idolatry envy gousy your actions will become self-gratifying fighting against the flesh begins with controlling your mind what kinds of things do you let in what are you consuming on the internet what kind of books are you reading what kind of shows are you watching on TV what kind of music influences you who are you surrounding yourself with and what is the content of those conversations.

If you can control what your mind is set on based on the inputs that you're feeding it that will in turn control the kinds of outputs you get now in contrast if you consistently flood your mind with love goodness patience kindness the kinds of things that benefit others that will also affect your actions these are also influenced by the kinds of things that you allow into your mind in the first place what you consume on the internet in songs on TV and from others more we talk about this the more we stray into what we're going to be talking about next week which is the world and the external influences.

But my point here is that you have control over what you allow into your own mind and in doing so you have some control on the way and the format in which you are being conformed into Christ likeness now as I said at the very beginning there's a false application that can come in somewhere around this point there's an application that says of all of this that if I want to be a good Christian I have to go away and I have to do all the things I have to be loving I have to be joyful peaceful patient kind good faithful gentle and self-controlled I have to do all of these things and not do.

All of these things and that if I fall short if I give into something if I get drunk if I have a fit of rage if if I'm envious if I'm impure if I'm not doing all the good things and I suddenly do something bad then I'm a bad Christian and God's not going to have me that would be a false application that believes something like that first view of sanctification that it's all up to me that I'm on my own I provide all the power and I have to work really hard.

For this thing instead how we should be thinking about this is is much more like the third view of sanctification um a little bit further down in Romans 8 and verse 13 says the following for if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the spirit you put to death the Deeds of the body you will live let me read that with e with emphasis but if by the spirit you put to death the Deeds of the body you will live the spirit is that Palmer lift and you putting to death the Deeds of the body is hanging on to that pel lift and staying Vigilant and not letting go like.

The pomt rider I must contribute something to this uphill climb lest I lose grip of the power that actually gets me there and I end up falling to the bottom so then what does it look like to be an an active participant and what does it look like to combat the enemy of the flesh there are two practices that are as old as they come in the Christian Life uh the first one of those two is one of the fruits of the spirit it's self-control manifests itself in a bunch of different ways I think that more of this stuff than we realize more of this stuff than we give credit to is inside of our.

Control it takes focus it takes controlling our mind just like we talked about but being an active participant is filling our mind with these things and not filling our mind with these things it's no surprise then in this mental game that in the sermon of the mount Jesus says if your eye causes you to lust rip it out if your hand causes you to sin cut it off uh Paul says it differently he says crucify the Flesh and put to death what is Earthly in you doesn't matter how you take it they're all pretty violent they don't sound fun it's not supposed to be pleasant.

Because there's things in us that we love and don't want to let go of there's things in US these pervasive disordered desires that are very hard to let go of it's not likely to be easy but we are called to find the in inputs in our life that drag us back into these works of the Flesh and eradicate them uh maybe for you that is eliminating social media maybe it's moving the computer out of the office and into the living room maybe it's ending a Netflix subscription maybe it's limiting your involvement with certain friendship crowds some of us should delete Facebook Instagram snap Snapchat or Worse Tinder and Bumble.

If you don't know don't look it up some of us should not own a smartphone some of you should stop talking to that guy or that girl some of you should probably stop drinking and you probably want to argue with me in the same way that I want to argue with me because a lot of those things are not on the list their neutral territory there is nothing wrong with Facebook sure there is nothing wrong with a beer there's nothing wrong with a glass of wine at dinner there is nothing wrong with Netflix no.

But are they consuming your mind or is the part of it that consumes your mind the wrong part do you have control over this them or do they control you part of following Jesus is being con and being conformed into his likeness involves crucifying the fleshly desires that we have that is the not fun part of this but we are told it leads to life there's a second practice in the Christian Life that is as old as time and that is confession and repentance it sounds like two things they're very closely linked on I'm just going to treat them as one we read earlier in Galatians 5 that was the whole part about the works.

Of the Flesh and the fruit of the spirit here's a whole bunch of things that are of the flesh here's a whole bunch of things that are on the Spirit uh and the very next sentence in our modern Bibles it split up into chapter six but when he wrote this letter there was no chapters he was just continuing his single thought uh he continues in the very next sentence he says Brothers if anyone is caught in any transgression then you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted bear one another's burdens.

And so fulfill the law of Christ we talk about bearing each other's burdens at mil City a lot so often when we do that we talk about tangible things nothing wrong with that someone's having car trouble someone needs babysitting someone needs financial assistance someone is sick those count those are bearing each other's burdens but look at this context he's just said don't do the works of the flesh do the works of the spirit if you see someone caught in transgression The Works of the flesh.

Then you who are spiritual go and restore them bear one another's burdens part of being an active participant in our sanctification part of clinging onto that pomt as we're being dragged up a mountain is having an attitude and a self-awareness and a self-control and an attitude that confesses and repents when we fall to these works of the flesh that is how we combat them that's how they lose their power it's how we can be conquering them by not hiding them anymore it's also the responsibility not just the thing that they could choose to do it is the responsibility of those we surround ourselves with to call us out of these patterns.

When they see it that's where Paul says you who are spiritual restore your brothers in a spirit of gentleness if you see your buddy he's on a pomt a metaphorical pomt and there is an obstacle in front of him and he's not paying attention you say hey wake up there's an obstacle in front of you I see you are about to hit it two hands on the palm lift Dodge that thing do not fall back into that we believe it so much we wrote it into the mil City membership Commitment.

If you've ever been to a m city class we have a one-page document that says here's all the things we believe and as a Church here's the way we apply them and point 10 reads the following confession and repentance will noticeably mark my life it's the self-awareness part I fully expect to be confronted and corrected as God allows by other members of the family and my community group to see sin in my life we need that self-discipline the self-control but we are going to stumble and we need those around us those who we've surrounded ourselves with to call us to repentance and bring us back to the Gospel the war against the flesh is not.

An easy one Satan is on the other side and he is going to tempt you over and over again with lies provoking you to giving into your own fleshly desires and they're different for each of us but by the power of the spirit we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus away from the works of the Flesh and towards the fruits of the spirit so there's elements in there of self-control but also through the restoration of our brothers and sisters and the power of confession and repentance we gain ground on that internal war against our own flesh I am not telling you do better try harder I am also not telling you do nothing.

As if God is going to do it all for you and that you have no responsibility to fight sin I am telling you that effort to fight sin is not in vain so as a Church we are going to wage that war against our own sinful flesh by pursuing the age-old practices of self-control and confession and repentance and in doing so we are conformed day by day year by year more and more into christlikeness we push away the old self and we put on the new self let's pray.

God we pray that you would continue day by day to strengthen us to empower Us by your spirit so that we may walk in the fruits of the spirit in self-control and in confession and repentance continue to build us up more and more to be like Christ each day it's in his name we pray amen uh Matt's going to make his way back up and we're going to have an opportunity this morning to take commun communion communion is a practice of the Church reserved.

For Christians for believers if you're not a Christian or you're not a Believer you're not a Believer yet I would encourage you to just stay where you are and consider what your next step towards Jesus might be if you are a Believer for the Christians in the room we're going to tape the bread we're going to dip it in the juice we're going to confess sin and repent we're going to pray that God would continue to empower Us in the fight against the flesh the stations in the front the stations in the back.

If you're like me and you're gluten-free we're headed to that corner um but everyone else go ahead and take communion.

The Devil

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Three Enemies: The Enemies and Their Strategy

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here if you will grab your Bibles and go to John chapter 8 we're going to be all over the place this morning as we kind of are trying to understand a concept um and look at uh as we kind of continue this series in the three enemies um we began the series by pointing out that you are developing into something you are growing into something uh you were getting better at something it might be sitting on the couch it might be being mean to your spouse.

But you're getting better at something and what we want to as Christians get better at and grow into is the image of Christ we're trying to grow into Joy we're trying to grow into life and we're trying to develop and follow Jesus and be made more into His Image that's what we looked at the first week the second week we discussed that we have three enemies Satan the Flesh and the world are three enemies of our soul that are at work to keep us from growing into the image of Christ and we uh Isaac introduced us to this this phrasing from uh um a was a pastor.

Now he's just kind of a thought guy book writer person um John Mark comr we don't agree with all the things that he would teach but we thought he worded this really well and so we uh this is kind of what the three enemy strategy is together which is decept deceitful ideas that play to disordered design desires that are normalized in a sinful society and that's kind of the three at work together that the enemy lies that we personally want to believe the lies there's part of us that wants to sin we have disordered desires.

And then they're normalized in a sinful Society that's kind of where we are and so today we're going to look at Satan which is is just translated it's the the adversary so sometimes we might just refer to him as the enemy even though we have three that we're talking about we might be the enemy the adversary we're going to talk about Satan and how he lied so as we begin this this morning I'm going to pray and then we're going to jump in to Jesus's words in John 8.

So pray with me Father we've been lied to and we come in this morning as people who are believing lies we're believing lies about you we're believing lies about our world we're believing lies that fr name up our interactions with our families with our Church family that frame up our interactions with money and work with sacrifice and joy and so we ask that in the name of Jesus that we would hear truth this morning that we would see truth this morning that we would grow in truth this morning and that you would by the work of your spirit begin to un undo all the areas where lies have begun to take root in our souls.

And we ask this in accordance with your mercy in accordance with your power and to the glory of Your Great Name in Jesus name we pray amen John chapter 8 Jesus is teaching and in verse 30 is where we're going to pick up it's on F page 522 if you have one of these blue Bibles it says says that many of the people who had heard him believed in him and so in 31 it says this so Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him.

So they've just come to Faith just come to trusting in Jesus is who he says he is they they don't fully know what that means but they're trusting in Him he's the Messiah that he's from God and he says if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free and they answered him we are offspring of Abraham and have never been in ens slaved to anyone how is it that you say you will become free this is interesting.

Because The Offspring of Abraham was enslaved at one point it's also currently under Roman occupation but they seem to be making this a very literal like we're not the the people of Abraham aren't slaves we're not enslaved right now like what are you talking about I've never been a slave I'm a free agent I can do what I want what are you talking about they mean it really practically really earthy and he says verse 34 Jesus answered answer them truly truly I say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin the slave does not remain in the house forever the sun remains forever.

So if the sun sets you free you will be free indeed so Jesus says I'm not talking about Earthly bondage I'm talking about eternal bondage I'm talking about Sin they're like we we're offspring of Abraham we're not slaves he says oh have you sinned he like oh probably it's like yeah every one who sins is a slave to sin your soul is enslaved to this and and he says the slave isn't free the son is free and that's himself he's the son.

So if the son sets you free you'll be free indeed so he's saying that he's going to set you free from sin he's going to work to set free from sin which is our other enemy The Flesh which desires sin is sold under bondage to sin and so he's saying he can set you free from sin he ultimately does this by paying the penalty of sin the price of redemption which is buying slav slaves Freedom price of redemption at the cross where he pays the penalty.

For our sin so he saying you can come to me and be set free I know verse 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham so he's saying I know that you are Jewish I know that you've come from Abraham yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father so he says I know your offspring of Abraham.

But you're doing what you've heard from your father that's going to be important later but he says you've been listening to your father and you're doing what he's told you to do they answered him Abraham is our father this is getting these are the people who just believed and now it's already tense you ever feel like that like I just became a Christian why is Jesus all up in my business I already did the thing it's like yeah this is what he's doing he's working these things out.

So he says they say Abraham is our father Jesus said to them if you were Abraham's children you would be doing the works Abraham did but now you seek to kill me a man who has told the truth that I heard from God this is not what Abraham did he says no no you're you're not you're wrong you are doing The Works your father did so he's all right so this father that they've been hearing from this father they've been listening to is not Abraham he said no.

If you were If Abraham if you were really his children you'd do what he did but you're not your penny takes it back to their father they said to him we were not born of sexual immorality we have one father even God so they say okay well if Abraham's not our father God's our father Jesus said to them if God were your father you would love me for I came from God and I am here I came not of my own accord.

But he sent me why do you not understand what I say it is because you cannot bear to hear my word you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him when he lies he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of Lies but because I tell you the truth you do not believe me.

Okay so in us trying to understand the devil this is a helpful passage where Jesus is talking and explaining something about him first of all Satan is real he has a real personhood he's a real entity it's not an idea or concept or like a a vague Force out in the world Satan is a real spiritual being Jesus treats him as real the Scriptures treat him as real we see Jesus interact with him he's throughout the Scriptures a real being he is spoken of in some ways the way we speak of as of Hitler that Satan uh is leading this Rebellion against.

God so it's Satan and all of his demonic forces and so that when I say we speak of the way we speak of Hitler like you might could have read a a newspaper article that says Hitler invades Poland but if you looked at the picture it would not be like Hitler running into Poland it means Hitler and his forces Hitler as a figurehead Hitler as working against the world and that's the way Satan has spoken of some in the Scriptures he's a physical being like a spiritual being an entity he has personhood.

But he's not omnipresent and so when it talks about Satan a lot of times it just means all of his forces at work against God but he's saying that Satan himself is a liar and the father of lies and he's a murderer and a liar so his aim is destruction his aim is death but his strategy is lies we see this in Genesis he's working towards death but he lies this is what he's doing he's working towards destruction he's working towards death and his strategy is lies he's the.

Father of lies he's the father they've been listening to so they're listening to lies believing lies and acting out of that that's what he's talking about and that all lies ultimately find their Source in Satan which makes sense because God created reality and reality exists we have reality there are certain realities in life life we're not in the Matrix this isn't a simulation we have reality which means that we also have unreality so we have reality we have unreality this is why we'll say phrases like that boy's in.

For a real reality check because reality is what you run into when you're wrong this is why we can say you'll get a dose of reality what we mean is you're about to realize you're wrong and reality it will teach you because there's reality and there's unreality Now by God's good design for us we can hold unreality in our minds this imagination this is how we build things how we come up with ideas so we can think about a thing that doesn't really exist.

But it also is the thing that lets us believe lies so we have three things we have reality truth we have unreality imagination or lies so we have or and we have what we think what we believe this is why Jesus calls us to Faith calls us to believe in him and sometimes I think we frame that up like there's a whole lot of things we could believe in and Jesus is one of those things and he's saying hey believe in me like.

If you went to the grocery store and you were buying cleaning products there's like a whole wall of cleaning products and all of them are saying pick me now all of them will help you clean there's not one there that's going to make things dirtier they're all going to help you clean you're trying to figure out which one's the best and I think sometimes we think that's what it's like with Jesus that all these things are good or all these things are helpful or all these things will work in life.

But Jesus is saying he's the best but the reality is Jesus is saying he's the truth that there is one reality that God created the world and that Jesus Christ is the way back to God that he's the reality and that everything else is a lie everything else is untrue and so it matters a lot what we think it matters how we frame up the world because we have reality and we have unreality and Jesus is calling us back to him and we're doing this all the time we're thinking all the time we're framing the world up all the time in order to help you kind of wrap your head around this I want to.

Talk about maps and math and I know somebody here is like finally I've been wanting to talk about maps and math well you're welcome today's your day all of us that live in this area wherever you live it's a real place there it's an actual City actual buildings that you can run into roads that you can ride on and then all of us are building a map in our heads all the time we're constructing our own map so that we can travel around you do this in your house you have a pretty good map of your house like you don't usually you're not sitting in the living room and go I'm going to go to.

The restroom and point to your front yard but go to the restroom you know where your bathroom is so you'll point the right direction but the bigger the map gets the maybe the fog or it gets for you and you might be the type of person who just points in random directions and stresses people out Spencer does this periodically from up here he'll be like over in kids City and you can see people twitch because kid City's that way but you can do this you can have you have this map in your head that you're building all the time and we build it differently.

When you start talking to to somebody you'll realize the way their Map works is different than yours every time I'm talking to miss Louise and I'm trying to find a place trying to go somewhere she will she will use Road names I don't have all the road names memorize Miss Louise has all the road names memor I don't she use Road names sometimes you might talk with someone and they'll use directions they're like well you're going to head north and you're like I I'll make sure to bring my compass they'll say things like.

Well that's where the Old Farm buau used to be it's like oh how what I often have to talk to people and I'll say things like they'll be telling me stuff and using Road names or whatever and I'll say do restaurants tell me where the closest Bojangles is this this works well because sometimes I learn about new restaurants but I know where restaurants are you're like you know where the Arby's and Casey is yes I know where the Arby and Casey is.

Now you can get me there but we're building this map if your map in your mind is right you'll get where you want to go if the m map in your mind is wrong you'll be led astray this is how it works with reality and unreality and you're building a map of your world not just a physical map but you're building a map of your world with Concepts like freedom and fairness and joy and hope and the purpose of life you're building that in your mind all the time that's Maps math one of the things I love about like spaceship movies or science fiction movies is at some point in the movie.

If it's a good one there's a moment where math becomes immensely important they're like talking through things and like we can get these people home and someone raises their hand in the back and they're like not if you want them to have air they're like what do you mean and they're like math or there's like a guy with a whiteboard and he's just been mathing it up he runs in all sweaty and he's like the math and we're all like if they do a good job we're like the math.

Because we know that math is meant to correspond to reality that's the point they're doing all this math so they know how much time they have how fast they can travel if they come in at the right angle will they burn up this is just Pro tip I know we've got some teachers in here if you teach math this is how to teach math make them watch one of those videos first day and then when you give them math problems and they get it wrong just be like oh your astronauts are dead anybody else want to try that way you keep fifth graders with the intensity cranked up.

So they know why math is important the point is we're working working out something that corresponds to reality and what I need you to know is when it comes to your life you're doing the math and you're making the map all the time and if it corresponds to reality you'll get where you want to go alive and if it doesn't you'll be led astray and burnt up and it matters and Jesus says I am the way the truth truth and the life.

But this is how the enemies at work he's lying he's the father of lies and here's how his lies work I have been a part of two surprise parties in my life like planned surprise parties not just like an impromptu hey we're having a party but like a planned surprise party one I was the surprise e like I walked in and people surprise which is fine and two I was one of the surpris ear I hid in a house and I got to be like surprise.

But I think the best surprise party job is the person who distracts the person who's going to be surprised you're in on it but you don't have to crouch down in a dark house for a long period of time you're just the person who's going to keep them busy you're going to go to the movie with them or whatever but your job one job is they can't go home till the designated time or whatever you've got to keep them distracted.

If you go and the movie sold out you've got to come up with something else it doesn't matter what it is anything else will work you can deflate your tires you can be like let's go to another movie you can be like hey let's go eat you can be like I really suddenly need to start a stamp collection let's head to the post office you can come up with whatever you want it's anywhere but home and that's Satan's goal anywhere.

Jesus anywhere but reality so if that's complete Rebellion aggression promiscuity wickedness you're harming people great great but if it's distraction comfortable nice quiet suburban American life where everything's fine and you're good and you're nice enough and you're not one of those bad people out there fine anywhere but home anywhere but Jesus believe anything but Jesus this is why the lie of all roads lead to God is a great one because anywhere but Jesus it it that's the ways it worked and this is what he's doing he's lying.

So Jesus is going to say this is why Jesus calls us back to the truth when they ask Jesus in John six what do we need to do to do the work of God he says this this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent he's calling us back to reality he's saying you need to trust in me you need to know that I am your hope I'm the way the truth the life Satan wants any other way anything that's not that is not the truth it's a lie and it doesn't lead to life.

So we've got the way through truth to life or we have any other way through a lie to death it's the way it works Revelation 129 this is the enemy this is what he does it's all over the place and the Great Dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole world we're in 2 Corinthians 11 but I'm afraid as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ or Titus 3:3 he says.

For we ourselves were once foolish disobedient LED astray slaves to various passions and Pleasures passing our days in Malice and envy hated by others hating one another or Romans 1 when it's talking about how the world works this big thing that it says is that they exchanged the truth about God for a lie what lie any lie anything but reality Works anything but Jesus Works 2 Corinthians 4:4 in their case the God of this world has blinded the what blinded the what Minds what would we expect you to blind eyes.

But he's at work in our thoughts he's at work in the world of ideas he's at work in what we believe so he blinds the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God this is why second Corinthians will say things like this Same Same Book same letter just later for though we walk in the flesh we are not Waging War according to the flesh so flesh there just means physical IAL body that we have physical bodies we're not Christian war is not against physical bodies it's not like all right y'all we're going to do PT training next week.

And then we're all going to get our guns and we're going to go attack those unbelievers and that's not what this is we can just get rid of those bad people that's not how this works at all the war is not against flesh and blood it's not a Waging War according to the Flesh and it says this for the weapons of our Warfare so we said we have three enemies we're waging a war are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds that's a verse y'all we have weapons we're in war and our weapons have divine power.

So I don't know if you pictured yourself with weapons well now they're like glowing like you pulled the sword out and it's like it's got divine power and it's got divine power to do what destroy strongholds a stronghold is like a tower or a castle something that's meant to keep you out something that's been built and planted and rooted it's here it's not going anywhere and he says no we have weapons of divine power that I mean obliterate them we read this we like yeah let's go.

And then he keeps going we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ where is the war happening in your mind it's happening in what we think and what we believe and the arguments and opinions I don't think when he's saying we destroy arguments he means get your YouTube apologetics video going and start destroying people I don't think he I don't think he means that but he does mean we need to undo arguments undo opinions we need to we need to step into the realm of the spirit to believe what is true and what is right and what is good and what is.

Real and that we actually have power to do that but the war is happening in what is true and what is a lie and this is happening in your mind all the time Dallas Willard is a pastor and he says that we truly live at the mercy of our ideas that your life is framed up by what you think by what you believe by how you think about your world we're truly living at the mercy of our ideas Spencer went on sabatical and in my head I realized a couple weeks in that I was just repeating to myself I'm going to be really tired after this.

Because it just I had to take on extra stuff but I I was busier and I just kept saying Yeah I'm going to be tired after this I'm going to be tired after this and then I got convicted the spirit helped me but he was like why why why are you saying that over and over again there's no no mercy no Grace no work of the spirit no strength you're that important like it was like like 15 different ways I was told yeah shut up.

And then I was just framed up with I was like all right I'm gonna think of a better way to think of that and I decided we'll be a better Pastor after this and when he's back I'll feel like a superhero cuz I won't be as busy that's the have framed it up I've started saying it that way in my head but we're at all times living at the mercy of our ideas and we have big ones that frame up the world we have like World constructing ideas uh I was reading a book by Carl Truman He calls this the social imaginary.

But it's where we've collectively come up with ideas like freedom justice fairness like there are things that we kind of all agree to so that someone can yell at you that's unfair and they're they're they're throwing a concept at you telling you to imagine the same idea and there are ones that we've culturally agreed to some of them are good and in in line with reality some of them aren't there are things that our culture has agreed to that other cultures haven't and there are things that other cultures have agreed to that are culture hasn't like we don't talk about shame a lot I doubt you've ever looked and been like I've shamed my my.

Ancestors I just don't think you've said that but if I'm watching a movie of a samurai and he's like on his knees in the rain and he says I've shamed my ancestors I'm like like oh no don't do that I actually probably have shamed my ancestors but I've never talked about it never even thought about it because I'm riding around on the you know my horse smoking my Mars and being a free American I can do what I want ain't nobody ain't no me.

But me you know like that I don't have any ancestors I'm trying to shame or live up to or whatever we just don't think about it it's not the thing that we've framed up but we have things that we have framed up that we've agreed to and we've held up in our minds but there are other ones there are some that are line with God's grace his goodness his reality if you find any truth and you pull that thread you'll eventually get to Christ that's how this works.

Because all reality belongs to him and so we have things that are mixed with truth we have some things that are good some some freedom is good but absolute negative Freedom which is that nothing should ever impose on me and anything that does anything that has a claim on me or tells me I can't be the most me I can be is e evil well then you can't have children you can't get married or you'll be married for just as long as that doesn't impose on your absolute freedom uh we've got the idea of consumerism running out there I have more stuff I'm more happy we bought into that we have the sexual Revolution that.

My sexual desires give me an identity tell me who I am and that no one can ever tell me I can't pursue those and that if I'm sexually fulfilled as a person then I'm a real person we have that does that line up with God's reality and truth and goodness does that lead towards life or destruction we have the idea that if I was in power if I had more power if I was more respected if my political party was in power.

Then I'd have joy I'd be at peace everything would be good we've had that one for a long time all of these things the enemy has worked to bring in lies I want to show you how some of this works more personally we have the big ones that we believe but they're also what do you do with those so let's just think about the LIE I'd be happier if now you can put in whatever your if is it's possible that when you fill that out you said I'd be happier.

If I was more obedient to Christ but I doubt that's what you've been repeating to yourself I think you've probably been saying something like I'd be happier if I had more money more house more car more whatever I'd be happier if things would be better if I had more power if my relationship was better My Romance was better I was in this relationship out of this relationship out of this relationship and in that relationship whatever I'd be happier if something now most good lies have some truth in them like.

When I run out and try to you know deal with my boys and I'm saying what is going on like why are yall screaming and hitting each other or whatever if one of them looks at me and goes I I'm not even here I'm at school it's like that's terrible there nowhere close like you got to you got to at least you know get close change it just a few places so the truth is you might actually be a little bit happier.

If I'm not going to argue with that a little bit sure if your house was bigger I bet you'd like that okay if people respected you more yeah wow who wouldn't like that nobody's like I wish I was more disrespected that's nonsense but these things the thing that you're repeating the thing that you're saying over and over again your head you're hearing repeated the lie that the enemy is feeding you is kind of true but there's more to it my son has an egg allergy uh he can't eat cake.

Because there's egg baked in he can have icing most of that's just sugar so he likes icing and we have never been like we're going to build our whole diet around this kid who can't eat things that's crazy so we would eat pizza and feed him Beans and we would have cake and give him scoops of icing we' just be like here this is probably not good for you but that's fine he likes icing if he sees cake what you see is the icing he can eat the icing.

But there's death baked in and that's what the enemy has done he's iced a cake with something that's kind of true and there are all these assumptions baked in there's death baked in so I'd be happier if blank well there's a whole lot of assumptions that if we can drop this down you'll suddenly go oh wait hold on a second I'd be happier if blank okay I deserve this Jesus is withholding God is withholding this or uh since I'd be happier with it and I know that.

God wants me to be happy therefore I should have blame he he actually wants me to have it he wouldn't stand in the way of it we'll say things like if it were really a sin I'd feel convicted it's actually just an indication of how far our hearts are from Jesus that you feel nothing as you blatantly sin uh if I don't get this I'm G to waste my life being miserable I only have so much time we're going to live.

For eternity if this doesn't change I can't put up with this forever I can't deal with this forever there's assumptions in all of these things about where the good life is where Joy is found where hope is found whether eternity exists whether Jesus actually saves whether he's actually good and that he actually has our good in mind all of those things are baked in and all we're doing is repeating the the icing over and over again and so we're eating the whole thing.

But there's death baked in this is all over the place and all these lies are ultimately lies about Jesus because any truth is going to lead us to him so any lie is going to point away from him and all of them are about Jesus any lie that you're believing I can like you can sit and consider it for a while and you can see how ultimately that makes an accusation about God about what is good about who he is about what he does about what he promises about what he provides about whether or not There's Hope in him about whether or not there's satisfaction in him about whether or not there's joy in him.

And so the enemy is not just accusing us and tempting us but he's constantly lying about Christ and we see that in the garden that's what he shows up and does twists a little lie a little Hal truth a little question a little something Tobit the hook that ultimately begs the question is God really good can he really be trusted so we repeat things to ourselves and a lot of them are a little true most of them are a little true I'm the worst have you got some evidence of that I'm a terrible sinner yeah Bible tells you that I'm going to ruin everything maybe you do ruin some stuff you've made bowling less fun.

One time I know no nobody wants me around I'm a burden to my group a little bit sometimes that's the nature of relationships if they're real all of them have some bit of Truth with a wicked conclusion one of the questions I'll I'll talk with people when I'm counseling them sometimes is I'll just say would the Holy Spirit tell you that would the Holy Spirit draw that conclusion every time the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin calls you a sinner whatever he's he's pulling you back to.

Jesus he's pulling you back to repentance he's pulling you back to Joy if he says you're a burden to your group if the Holy Spirit says it well he's correcting you on something but he's going to press you into your group probably first through repentance or gratitude but the enemy is going to say you're a burden to your group get out go die alone he's going to have some kind of terrible conclusion something's going to be baked into that some kind of assumption about.

God assumption about his people I'll show you a lie that I think a lot of you here or repeat to yourself on a regular basis in some form and it's this one I've been married for 15 years this past may I wrote my wife a card all it said on the front when I opened it up was I love you asterisk how you think that would have gone over I didn't give her a car that did that I had to explain later it's going to be a sermon illustration.

Okay no I don't do that but that asterisk changes the sentence but some of you here yeah yeah okay yeah yeah Jesus loves you yeah yeah your group will say well you know Jesus loves you and you'll go had that little asterisk you'll do it to yourself when you're working through sin you go I know Jesus loves me and it's like there's some fine print and the fine print is usually technically kind of Jesus forgives me asterisk I'm welcome here asterisk and you you accept it.

Because you think it's about you but Satan has just lied about Jesus not you that his Mercy's not enough that his love isn't enough that his redemption's not enough that when Ephesians says that he washes the Church so that she doesn't have a spot or wrinkle or blemish or any such thing that somehow you've snuck in as what a spot a wrinkle a blemish a such thing that you're somehow in on a technicality that you're somehow welcome on a technicality that you don't really belong here these are lies From Hell from an enemy that wants to leads you to hell that wants to pull you away from.

Jesus that wants to pull you away from joy that wants to tell you you're kind of forgiven is and want you to live in a world where there's no glorious mercy and Grace from the King where there's no Redemption and joy where you're only dragging around as kind of some little Mark on your group on your Church on the people of God and you don't really belong here and you'll show up on Sundays and go nobody talks to me and never even think about the fact that you talked to no one that we're some how just not really the one who's really included not really the one who's really welcome and he's told us this.

Over and over again these lies about I'll be happier if I can get out of this marriage I can't put up with this anymore I can't stand this anymore everybody hates me my spouse hates me they'll never forgive me this person dislikes me this person I mean it's all over the place you have been lied to you have heard the lies from the father of Lies you've been lied to a lot so what do we do we said early on we're going to talk about our enemies.

But we were going to get practices things to do to help fight against this stuff well the first thing to do is this you need to know Jesus Colossians 2 2-4 says Paul's writing and he says he's praying about the Church he says I pray that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to to reach all the riches of full Assurance of understanding and the knowledge okay this all stuff in our head of God's mystery which is Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments you need.

Jesus and you need to know that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and truth and reality are in him they're in him and he says I'm saying this so that no one would delude you with a plausible argument because the arguments will sound pretty good they've got some truth in there they got some reality in there but just enough to pull you astray just some asteris to get you away and he's saying no I want you to know Jesus if you don't know.

Jesus you need to know Jesus and y'all if you belong to Jesus he has defeated the enemy he says that we're in an unpluckable hand you're not going anywhere this is what 1 John 3:8 says say whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil for the devil has been sinning from the beginning the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil he came to win and he did on the cross Colossians 2:15 says he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open Shame by triumphing over them in him that him is.

Jesus and it says that he nailed to the cross our debt the record of our debt the enemy has nothing on you anymore you you do not lose Paul Paul in Romans is writing a letter he talks all this theology talks about all these things and when he's ending his closing remarks he's saying say hey to this person say hey to this person and he just includes this the God of Peace will soon Crush Satan under your feet Jesus wins he has already disarmed the enemy and he will crush the enemy.

But then we're told things like do this so you won't be outwitted by Satan that we won't be uh blind to the schemes of the devil or 1 Peter 5'8 says Be sober minded Be watchful your adversary the devil prows around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour I love that because sober minded means think clearly and As Americans none of us think that thinking clearly is watching out for the devil none of us are like I just got to be on guard against the devil I'm trying to think clear that's not we're not trained that way in the west.

But Peter says you need to he's writing to the Church not that the devil will steal your soul but that you'll believe his lies and he'll rob you of joy and fruitfulness and relationship and delight and rest and worship he's not going to take you ultimately to hell he can't he can't if you belong to Christ you aren't going to be condemned but he can help you mess up your marriage he can help you choose sin he can help you leave a Church or tear one one up.

So we need to Be watchful so what do we do first first thing you need to do is know Jesus second thing you need to know your Bible so happy to get to say that I feel like there's a little bit of like really this is going to end with read your Bible yes yes it's going to end with read your Bible y'all did you see what Jesus said to the people that first believed in in John 8:31 so Jesus said to the Jews who have believed in him.

If you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free and then he goes into a big discussion with them about how they've been listening to the lies of Satan they believe and he says you need to know the word because you've heard so many lies that you're outdoing the works of Satan you need to know the word y'all that word abide means live you need to live in your Bible you know how you go to someone else's house and you're like where's the trash can or you need a spoon and you open what should be their spoon drawer and you're like.

Idiots Ziploc bags and spatulas close it and then you go where your spoons but in your house you don't do that you know right where everything is cuz you live there you need to know right where everything is because you live there when the enemy shows up and tells you something you need to go nope that can't be true that can't be true because Jesus told me something else that can't be true because Jesus told me something else he says this here hold on a.

Second I'll get there hold on hold on wait wa wait wait wait that thing about yeah I'm the worst yeah yeah watch this watch this watch this watch this I was dead in my trespasses and sins this is the beginning of a good sermon I'm the worst yeah yeah yeah but God being great in Mercy with what the great love that he had for us he's shown steadfast Grace to us that he's at work to show immeasurable Riches of his kindness in the future that I have a hope of an eternity don't get me going we got to know where it is this is why.

Jesus who can every time he speaks it turns red letter just so y'all know when he speaks it's it's Bible every single time when he's Tempted By by Satan in Luke and Matthew do you know how he responds every single time he quotes Deuteronomy because he's showing us if you want to not believe lies you better have Bible in you you better have the word of God in you you better live here I don't know what lies you're believing but I know you're believing.

So I don't know what you've had on repeat in your head that is working to lead you out of your out of faithfulness out of peace out of joy out of Grace I don't know what you've been repeating in your head that's leading you towards sin I don't know what you've been uh making okay in your head that you know the Bible says isn't okay I don't know what it is that you're working towards or that's allowing you to be unfaithful or that's robbing you of the grace and the joy of belonging to a Church or belonging to a people or repenting of sin I don't know what it is.

But I know it's there and I know that we need to live here and by God's grace enjoy what he's purchased for us in the cross let's pray Lord we've been lied to we've been tricked the enemy's baited the hook and we've bitten and we ask that by the power of your spirit that right now you would begin to help people hear the lives you'd begin to help them hear what they've been repeating to themselves over and over again what they've bought into about the good life about Joy about Hope about Eternity.

For those who do not trust you may they see the truth the enem is trying to get them anywhere but Jesus we ask your spirit to be at work and we praise you for rescuing us and calling us back to the truth may we be a people who love your word in Jesus name amen the band's going to come back up we're going to sing and celebrate the victory of Christ I I don't know what your Bible reading looks like I don't know.

If reading's really hard for you I don't know if you don't know how to read There are apps that will read to you there are ways to memorize Scripture but we've got to live here we've got to abide in it we've got to act as if our joy and our life depends on it because so much of it does and it all points us towards Freedom towards Grace towards hope and I would encourage you sometime this week to get to a quiet place get your phone away from you get a blank sheet of paper and ask the spirit what lies have I been believing he loves to answer that question.

And then get your face here and see what's true.

Confidence in Christ (1 John 5:11-21)

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Confidence in Christ

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you. God is light. In Him, there is no darkness at all. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. So that you may know you have eternal life. Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in 1 John for one more week.

This is it. We are finishing up this letter that John wrote. The Apostle John, who was one of the disciples of Jesus, wrote. Most likely to be circulated among the churches. It doesn't really have anyone he directly addresses. And this is kind of written to the churches as John was older.

And he writes this letter to the churches. And we are finishing up today. We are going to look at where John says, this is why I wrote this. So we're going to look at kind of his final conclusion. And the way this works today as we come to this section in 1 John 5 is this final conclusion. And then it's kind of like when your teacher was finished teaching, had taught everything they needed to tell you on a subject.

And then the bell rings. And they shout a few things at you as you're walking out of the room to kind of take with you. They're important. But it's like the main part of what he said is kind of concluding. And then he says, now take this with you. Here's kind of what to do from here.

And so we're going to pick up in 1 John 5. And we're going to look at verse 11. We read this last week. But we're going to look at it again as we start this morning. So we'll pick up 1 John 5, verse 11.

Let's pray. And then we'll get into the text. God, we ask that we would have ears to hear your word this morning. And that we would not be people who just hear it, but that we would respond. We pray for the work of your spirit this morning. That you would move.

That you would convict. That you would encourage. That we might draw closer to you in repentance. And that we might receive grace and joy and salvation and confidence in Christ. In Jesus' name. Amen.

1 John 5, verse 11. He says this. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life. And this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God does not have life.

So whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God. Does not have life. And John has said very clear, direct message this whole time. And I want you to see how clear this line is. There's no ambiguity here in the scriptures.

You have Jesus. You have life. If you don't have Jesus. If you don't have life. And this life here is not enjoyment and delight in this life. The way we might would say.

Yeah, I'm really living the life. Living the good life. That's not what he's meaning here. He means eternal life. Now that does bring some delight and joy in this life.

But not always. But that's not what he's talking about. What he's talking about is eternal life. That if you believe in Jesus. You have eternal life. That's what he says in verse 13.

I write these things to you. Who believe in the name of the son of God. That you may know that you have eternal life. I write these things to you. Who believe in the name of the son of God. That you may know that you have eternal life.

I'm sorry. Carlos, can you turn me down a little bit? I want to get aggressive later. And I don't want to feel like I can't. Alright. Thank you.

I was hearing myself in my head too much. I write these things to you. Who believe in the name of the son of God. That you may know that you have eternal life. That's his thesis. That's why he wrote this.

That you may know that you have eternal life. If you believe in Jesus. That's the whole point of this letter. That you really genuinely believe. And this. We need to hear this.

Because culturally. In the south. We all know some things about Jesus. Maybe you've been told things about Jesus. Maybe when you were younger. You said a prayer.

And you told him you believed in him. But the belief that is in 1 John. Is real. It's tangible. It affects life. It doesn't just mean that we know things.

That we mentally agree with some things. But it means that we're banking on. Trusting in Christ. I have several friends who work in. Financial advising kind of work. And one of them was telling me one time.

That they had a lady who was very wealthy. And she invested all of her money. In UPS. And they would talk to her and say. Hey. That's a lot of money.

You should probably diversify. And she would say. Nope. And then. UPS would dip. It would drop.

She's losing money. The price of UPS would go way down. And sure enough. Phone would ring. They'd answer. It'd be her.

And she'd say. Think I should buy some more UPS? It's cheaper now. And they're like. No. But she would.

And I heard recently. She's doing quite well for herself. UPS is doing well right now. But she believed in UPS. She's trusting in UPS. She's got hope in UPS.

And that's some of what he's talking about. When you trust in Jesus. Have you actually begun to put weight there? Is your hope actually in Christ? Or is it just something you've said. But there's no.

You have no skin in the game. You haven't actually begun to devote yourself to him. Follow him. And have this show up in your life. And this is what he says over and over again. That it looks real.

And we showed this triangle. John's love triangle. The love triangle that Christians can really get on board with. We showed this the other day. But this is what John says over and over and over again.

We said it was like Mr. Miyagi's wax on, wax off. He just goes through this over and over and over again. But he says if you believe in Jesus. You have the Father. It's through Christ that we're brought in.

It's through Christ that we're given salvation. This is not something that we earn or accomplish or do. But it's through Christ. But then once that happens. We love the Father. Father.

And he loves us. And we love the brothers. We love the church. And that by loving the church we love the Father. And if we love the Father we'll love the brothers. And then it says if we love the brothers we'll obey his commands.

And by obeying his commands that helps us love the brothers. But obeying his commands also shows our love for the Father. And John in his letter goes through and basically covers each one of those up. And says if someone tells you they have the Father but they don't have Jesus. Liar. Liar.

And then he says if they tell you they have the Father but they don't love the brothers. Liar. And then he says if they say they have the Father but they don't obey his commands. Liar. And he doesn't mince words. He's pretty clear with his this is what it looks like.

And he does not say that these things save you. He says that Jesus saves you. But that once he remakes you this is what you look like. Those are the these things that he's talking about in verse 13. When he says I write these things those are the these things that he's talking about. The stuff that he said over and over again.

That Jesus came in the flesh. That he died for sinners. That we have hope in him. That he is the Christ. That those who believe in him are forgiven. And he said all this so that if you know if you have Christ you know you have eternal life.

His whole letter was meant to be encouraging. Have you trusted in Jesus? You have life. Eternal life. Essential hope for eternity in Christ. Verse 14.

Now as we move on that's his that's his main point. And now it's like I said it's a little bit like the bell rings. And then he gives us things to kind of take with us. He's finished his main argument. And he's saying now here's some things to know and to do from here. And as he says these things there are a couple of places where if we misunderstand what he's saying we can head in some odd territory theologically.

So we'll have to a couple times try to tease some things out. But he says this in verse 14. And this is the confidence that we have toward him that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask we know that we have the request that we have asked of him. Now Jesus says this in John's gospel multiple times.

The same idea. If we pray according to the will of God he answers our prayers. He says this in John 14. John 15 twice. And in John 16. Jesus repeatedly tells them that it's God's pleasure to answer the prayers of believers.

That it's his pleasure and delight to actually move through us praying in the name of Christ and to see things happen. This is an incredibly encouraging text for him to say God hears your prayers and he responds to your prayers. Now the way we could get a little sideways with this is to go sweet. I'm a Christian. I can ask for whatever I want and he'll give me whatever I want. He says if we pray anything according to his will.

Well this has actually been beneficial in my life. When I was in middle school. Seventh, eighth grade. I used to pray. I would read my Bible a lot. And I was like.

I was like okay if you have faith you can move mountains or whatever. And if you really come to the Lord in faith he answers prayers. And I used to pray at night before I went to bed. Trying to muster up as much faith as I could. That I would wake up with a full beard. That was my prayer.

And not like the beginnings of a beard. A beard. Like I wanted to wake up looking like Gimli from Lord of the Rings or something. A ZZ Top. And God apparently didn't have that in his will for me to have that happen in seventh and eighth grade. And actually I really appreciate.

That's a kind of a trivial example of God's grace towards me in all the prayers he has in answer. Because the hope we have here is that he hears us and that he responds and that our prayers are effective. And that he's good enough to move according to his goodness and his wisdom for us. And so there's this great encouragement here on both sides. That he does hear our requests. And that you can come to him with specific requests.

Praying and trusting that in his goodness he answers prayers. Praying and trusting that in his goodness. I don't know if these are related. I like to think that they are. I have two brothers and I am the only one capable of growing a full beard. And it brings me great joy.

Now maybe they prayed that they would be able to get a tan. And I never thought to pray for that. My skin turns red and falls off. I actually passed that on to my younger son. When we took him out the first time and we put sunscreen on him. We could not tell where it went.

Like we wiped it on. And I was like oh my gosh this is going to take forever. Because there was no way to tell if it was on him or not. So anyway. Okay. Lost my train of thought there.

Let's keep going. He answers prayers and he continues with that. And he goes into verse 16. He is going to press on this idea. That we would have confidence in our faith in him to pray. And then he specifically tells us something to pray for.

Verse 16. If anyone sees his brother committing a sin. Not leading to death. He shall ask. And God will give him life. So you see your brother in sin.

You pray on behalf of your brother. And God gives life. That he works in that situation to bring about redemption. It says to those who commit sins. That do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death.

I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin. But there is sin that does not lead to death. Okay. John actually says something that is pretty straightforward here. Then he says a whole lot of other things.

As he is saying that. So that his main point here. Is if you see a brother in sin. Pray for them. And God brings about repentance. He brings about life.

He brings about redemption. That is what he said. But that is not what we heard. I know if I was in school. And John was doing this. My hand would be up before he was even done.

And he would say yes. Annoyed with me. Because I would raise my hand a lot. Just so you know. I did this in school. Yes.

What is a sin that leads to death. What is a sin that leads to death. Would be my question. What was that that you said there. And thankfully John hasn't mentioned this before. He doesn't mention it again.

This is all we get. He just says it and moves on. And I was being sarcastic when I said thankfully. That's not very helpful. This is just what he said. So you want to ask this question.

It's like I want to hear what you said. And he did say something positive. He told us a command. But what is this whole thing about sins that lead to death. And sins that don't lead to death. I feel like we should understand what that is.

So we're going to try to answer that question first. Here's the thing. This is the only place that this is mentioned. In the New Testament. It's the only place it's mentioned in John. It's the only place it's mentioned in the New Testament.

There's not even Old Testament real clear references. To what he would be talking about in these two categories. And so here's what happens. When you come across something like this. That's a little unclear. What you do is you look at the immediate context.

What came right before it. What comes right after it. Sometimes the author will define their terms. You look at the context of the book it's in. The letter it's in. You look at the context of all of scripture.

And so what we're able to do this morning. Is to rule some things out. I think we can make that category smaller. We can try to understand it a little better. But I can't give you a definitive.

Here's exactly what he meant. Because he doesn't give that to us. And nowhere in the scriptures does he give that to us. But I think we can say it doesn't mean this. And it doesn't mean this. And this is helpful.

Because what happens often with passages like this. Is that that's the correct approach. You zoom out. You try to figure out. Okay well if this says this. And it could be taken this way.

It could mean that there are some specific sins. That you commit. That are sins that lead to death. You need to know what those are. Because they're immediately disqualifying. But then you read other passages.

And you go well that actually doesn't seem like that's what that could mean. And so you change it. But there are times where people use these. Little obscure kind of passages. As if they're like the secret door. To like a speakeasy or something.

Like you know the secret knock. And then the little slit opens. And just the eyes pop out. And if you can just figure out. Oh we found it. If we just dig into this one.

And if you really understand what's going on. Then you'll be in on all the bible secrets. And it's like that's that's not helpful. And it honestly is a little weird for John to do in his letter. He just said I wrote this letter. So that you can have confidence in Christ.

That if you believe in Christ. You know you know that you have eternal life. And then he goes unless you commit one of the secret sins. Gotta go. It's like wait what? And he's like oh nothing.

It's like no that that can't be what he's doing. And so people would look at this and say. Maybe there's a list of sins. And if you commit that one. That's a sin leading to death. And people have thrown out guesses.

People have guessed murder. Adultery. Suicide. They'll try to fill that list out. The problem is we have no textual defense for that. Here or elsewhere.

The catholic church teaches mortal sin. And venial sin. Or they have the teaching of the seven deadly sins. Which would you would think. Oh maybe that's what it's talking about. Well the bible doesn't talk about seven deadly sins.

In any kind of different way from normal sin. So here's what we know about sin. All sin leads to physical death. And all sin not redeemed in Christ. Leads to eternal death. That's flat basic teaching of the scriptures.

Over and over again. The wages of sin is death. We will all die. And in Adam we are all born into that. That we inherit sin. And that we choose sin.

And that we all deserve death. But that through Christ we can have eternal life. So when he gives these two categories. He does seem to have in mind some sort of a sin. Some sort of a behavior. Some sort of an action.

That is something that leads to this eternal death. Not just physical death. But some sort of something that leads to eternal death. I don't think that we can just pick a particular type of sin. One because I don't think we have any backing for that. And two because he's already said in his letter.

That sins that are repented of are forgiven. First John 1.9. If we confess our sins. He's faithful to forgive our sins. And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's not like he put an asterisk.

And said see chapter 5. Except for those secret ones. That I'm not going to tell you about. Best of luck. He's saying no. That we actually.

He says in John chapter. First John chapter 2. Verse 1. My little children. I'm writing these things to you. So that you may not sin.

But if anyone does sin. We have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ. The righteous. So he says if you're watching a brother.

And they're committing a sin that doesn't lead to death. Pray for them. He says but not sins that lead to death. I don't think he even. Considers that. Brothers.

True brothers. The way that he's taught us this entire time. Can actually commit. Sins that lead to eternal death. Because he consistently says. If you have Jesus.

If you're a real brother. He works in you. He brings about this redemption. He even says in. In first John chapter 2. Verse 19.

When he's talking about people who've left the faith. He says they went out from us. But they were not of us. For if they had been of us. They would have continued with us. But they went out.

That it might become plain. That they all are not of us. John seems to have a really clear line. Brothers. Stay. Brothers continue to believe.

Brothers repent. And if they don't. They weren't brothers. So here's what I think he's. Saying. If.

You see. A brother. That you understand. Because the way that we understand. Who is a brother. Is they tell us.

And then he gives us some things. As we go through. That he says. Well. They probably aren't. They're probably lying.

If. But if you see. A brother. A sister. In Christ. And they're in sin.

Pray for them. And God will respond. God will work. On their behalf. But. Then he gives us.

Category of sins. That lead to death. And I think. Textually. From John. Or from the rest of scriptures.

He meet. He has in mind. One of two things. He potentially. And. And people land.

In different areas on this. Because it's unclear. I will tell you. That. You can rejoice. In the fact.

That whenever there's. A random little. Thing like this. That uses a phrase. That isn't used elsewhere. It's not a major point.

Of doctrine. God tried to make everything clear. He came to rescue us. Paul tells us. That Jesus is the mystery revealed. Not that there's new.

Extra mysteries to find out. It's possible. That John has in mind. Because he was a disciple of Jesus. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It's the one sin.

That Jesus mentions. That will not be forgiven. In this age. Or the age to come. So it's possible.

John just says. I understand. There's a category. For a type of sin. That is unforgivable. And basically.

That's not what I'm talking about. I think that's unlikely. But some people say. That they think. That maybe John. Just had that in mind.

I think John. Has in mind. What he's been talking about. This entire time. Which is this. Triangle.

Of what a Christian. Looks like. And I think what he's saying. Is if you have a brother. Or sister. That he's been talking about.

The whole time. And saying. They left. They're liars. They're not really a part of us. But he's been doing this line.

In the sand. Over and over again. I think what he's saying. Is if you're walking. With a brother or sister. And they actually.

Say they're a brother. But they reject Jesus. That they have. What he calls. The spirit of the antichrist. That they.

They reject Jesus. He. First. First John. 2. 22 says.

Who is the liar. But he who denies. That Jesus is the Christ. Then I think he would say. They're committing sins. That put in the category.

Of they're actually. Walking towards. Eternal destruction. Or if he says. If they say. They're a brother.

But they. They. They. They know the father. But they hate the brothers.

Or they know the father. But they're walking in. Unrepentant. Consistent sin. The things that he's talked about. That they just say.

I don't have to repent of this. This is fine. That. And the reason I think. That's what he's walling off here. Is because of the way.

That he words this. In verse 16. He says. There is sin. That leads to death. I do not say.

That one should pray for that. So that. I do not say. That one should pray for that. Is written. In Greek.

Oddly. I don't read Greek. But I read commentaries. Of people who read Greek. And they told me. That sentence is weird.

And here's what they said. John says everything. Really directly. Forcefully. He hasn't. Minded doing that at all.

Some of you have been frustrated. With John. Because he's just been. Really clear. You can't argue. With what he's trying to say.

He just didn't like. What he had to say. Kind of like Raz. On our pastor team. He's really clear. That's what John's doing.

He's just been really clear. This sentence is not really clear. This is actually what it. If you translated it literally. Not concerning that. Do I say he should request.

And what they're saying. Is that he doesn't say. Don't pray for that. He says. That type. Is not what I'm telling you.

To pray about. Which just leaves. This weird opening. That you could pray about it. But that's not what he's talking about.

And the reason why. I think that's what he's saying. Is because. If you look back at verse 16. If anyone sees his brother. Committing a sin.

Not leading to death. Then he gives a promise. He shall ask. And God will give him life. To those who commit sins. That do not lead to death.

So he has this promise. God will give him life. In between. Not leading to death. Not leading to death. And I think the reason.

He specifies. I'm not talking about. This other category. Is because he's promising. God will answer. That's why I think.

It's worded. The way that it's worded. What he's saying is. If you see a brother. Or sister in sin. Pray for them.

And I have beautiful news for you. God in his grace. Leads Christians. To repent. God through the empowerment. Of his spirit.

Brings them. Back. Plead. On their behalf. Because I can promise you. God will not lose.

A believer. But he will bring them back. To eternal life. But. The type of rejection. Of the gospel type sins.

That he's been talking about. He's not mentioning. He's not saying that. For them. Because I don't think. He can promise.

That God will bring about. Repentance. If you're walking with someone. Who rejects Jesus. And is living out. What he calls.

The spirit of the antichrist. His antichrist. Is against Christ. I don't think. He can promise you. That God's going to.

Give him life. I think that's why. He's worded it this way. Now. There are other people. Who would.

Who would approach that differently. But that's my understanding. As I've studied it. That he's basically. Stepping around those. And saying.

If they've been living out. All the things. I've been telling you. Are the marks. Of an unbeliever. Pretending to be a believer.

I can't promise. That they'll repent. But let's not get hung up there. Because what he says. Is actually really beautiful. If you see a brother.

Or sister in sin. Pray for him. Because God in his grace. Is going to give them life. Not because he says he will. So the question for us.

Isn't to raise our hand. And ask John. What's a sin that leads to death. What we ought to do. Is ask ourselves. Do I pray for my brothers and sisters.

When I see him in sin. If you're close enough. With somebody. Their sin is usually annoying. Unless you participate in it with them. There's another category.

Where you don't mind their sin. Because it excuses. You don't do it with them. But you. It excuses some other sin. That you have.

So you're cool with them being a sinner. As long as you're a sinner. And that one's kind of okay with you. But in general. A lot of times. The sin that we have.

In church family. And with our brothers and sisters. With people we're married to. Or room with. It's frustrating. Do we pray for them?

Do we ask God to help them? Do we ask God to grant them repentance? Do we ask for the Holy Spirit. To go to work in them? Or are we just annoyed? This gives us two people.

The Bible gives us two people. That you can talk to. When you see them in sin. Them. And God. Noticeably absent from that list.

Is other people. It's just a bonus. I'm throwing in there for us today. You can go to them and say. Hey I think you're in sin. I think you need to repent.

Or you can go to God and say. Hey would you grant them. That they're fighting. And I. Would you. Would you work for your Holy Spirit.

And the promise is that he will. For those who are genuine brothers. So he says. God hears us when we pray according to his will. And then he says. Let me tell you something.

That's according to his will. Christians repenting of sin. And walking in obedience. Pray for them. It's encouragement. To walk out.

Trusting God. And praying for one another. That we would stay far from sin. And this is what he says. Verse 18. He's going to end.

With three. We know. We know. We know. We know. He says this in verse 18.

We know. That everyone who has been born of God. Does not keep on sinning. But he who is born of God. Protects him. And the evil one does not.

Touch him. Here's another passage. That's extremely encouraging. But we could get. Sideways on. So.

We just need to clarify something. When he says. We know that everyone who's been born of God. Does not keep on sinning. What he means is. Those who've been.

Made new. By faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit has indwelled them. Has renewed them. When he says. They don't keep on sinning.

He does not mean. They eventually get to where they never sin. That's. That's not in line with what he says. In the rest of his book. What he means is.

They do not make a practice. Of sin. In such a way. That they become okay with it. The genuine believers. Are never.

As the Holy Spirit indwells them. Become okay with. Sin. They can't just pick one. And say. This one's fine.

Recently. And culturally. We've had our whole denominations. Pick things that the Bible says is sin. Specifically in. In sexual sin.

And just said. This one isn't sin anymore. And he just says. That's not how it works. We're not allowed to do that. We can't just.

Pick things. And say. This isn't sin. This one's okay. This one's fine for me. He says.

No. Christians will be led to repentance. And this is what he says throughout. So. Christians do sin. First John.

Eight. And ten. I'm just going to read these. I want you to. To listen. If we say we have no sin.

We deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us. If we say we have no sin. Like a current have no sin. And then he says. If we say we have not sinned.

So like past. We make him a liar. And his word is not in us. So John starts off by saying. You're a sinner. But in the middle of those two verses.

He says this. If we confess our sins. He's faithful and just. To forgive our sins. And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We read this earlier.

But he says. I wrote this so that you won't sin. But if anyone does sin. He has an advocate with the father. He doesn't say. And if anyone does sin.

Kick them out. They're not really a Christian. Nobody would be here. I'm glad he doesn't say that. What he says is. In our sin.

We have an advocate. We have forgiveness. We have hope. But then he says this. In John 3. He says it twice.

No one who abides in him. Keeps on sinning. And no one who keeps on sinning. Has either seen him. Or known him. And 1 John 3.

9 Says. No one born of God. Makes a practice. Of sinning. For God's seed abides in him. And he cannot.

Keep on sinning. Because he has been born. Of God. That's what he's saying. In verse 18. We know.

That God. Leads Christians. To repentance. Not. This is the beautiful part. For Christians.

Not to say. That you gain. And lose your salvation. Not to say. That if you're. In the middle of sin.

And on your way home today. You slide off the road. And you hit a tree. And that's it for you. That you had to have been. Perfectly prayed up.

Or perfectly forgiven. Or maybe. You're doing pretty well. Until you started sliding off the road. And then you yelled out. Something very colorful.

That's frowned upon. And that was it. Those were your last two seconds. My grandmother got in a wreck one time. And she shouted out really loudly. Lord I'm coming home.

But for most of us. That's not what we're shouting. Maybe that's you. But for a lot of people. That's not you. And what he doesn't say is.

If you sin. No. What he's saying is. If you make that a practice. If that's a way of life for you. If you just become accustomed to it.

And you grow used to it. And you just say. This is mine. This is fine. I'm okay. That's what he's talking about.

But hear the encouragement here. Some of you. Are in the midst of a battle. With your flesh. And you feel like it's winning. I don't know about y'all.

I get so sick of myself sometimes. It's like. Come on. This again. Really. What is wrong with you.

I really agree with Paul. Where he says. He calls himself. Like he just says. What a wretched man that I am. There's something wrong with me.

If you're in the middle of that. Cling to verse 18. We know. That everyone who has been born of God. Does not keep on sinning. But he who was born of God.

That's Christ. Protects him. And the evil one does not. Touch him. We know. If you belong to Jesus.

Your sin doesn't win. It will not drag you. To hell. That's its claim. That's its threat. That's the power of the enemy.

But Christ has disarmed the enemy on our behalf. Verse 19. We know. That we are from God. And the whole world lies in lies in the power of the evil one. We know that we are from God.

And the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Now that's. That's a claim. Don't miss that. There's a classic movie. With the guy from.

It's a wonderful life. Called the man who knew too much. I've never seen that. I've seen. Bill Murray's. Movie.

The man who knew too little. Which should be a classic. In the man who knew too little. Bill Murray shows up to visit his brother. In London. And his brother doesn't want to hang out with him.

Because he's Bill Murray. If you've ever watched any Bill Murray movies. You wouldn't want him to be your brother either. And so what his brother does. Is he sets him up with like one of the very first. Reality TV shows.

And basically the way it works is. He's supposed to go to this phone booth. Bill Murray's going to get a phone call. And then he's going to be taken into a situation. Where everybody's an actor. And they have hidden cameras.

And he's the only one. Who's just a regular person. And he's supposed to just live out. His. Sesbian dreams. Of being an actor.

And being on TV. And. When he answers the phone. In this phone booth. It's not that group. It's someone calling for a hit man.

And they give him specific instructions. On someone to go murder. And he gets swept up in this very. Dangerous. Multinational plot. And the whole time.

He thinks it's a joke. So he tries to redo scenes. People pull guns on him. And he's like. You'll never pull a gun on me. And he goes.

No that wasn't good. Let me try again. Like he does that. Multiple times. He argues with the cops. Someone's breaking down and crying.

And he's like. How do you do that? How do you make yourself cry? I just couldn't. Do you think about like. Maybe a puppy that died.

And they're like. Really having a hard time. And he's like. My dog died. And he's just trying to. But the whole time.

He just works his way. Through this whole situation. And everything is terrifying. And the stakes couldn't be higher. And he's oblivious to it. And there's a danger for us.

To just skim over. Verses like verse 19. And be oblivious. To what it just said to us. We know. That we are from God.

And the whole world lies. In the power of the evil one. We have a real enemy. And he has real authority. The Bible. Jesus speaks about him.

Having a kingdom. He's called the prince of the power of the air. He's called the God of this world. That he is at work. To destroy. And to rob people of joy.

And to keep people from Christ. And to drag people to hell. And it doesn't say this to us. To make us fearful. His whole point here. Is that we would have confidence in Christ.

That we would have rest in Christ. The Lord. To heal. To make us fyr a part of Christ. The Lord. Right of us.

Paracast. Walter. To. That we would have done it. We would have designed it. For34.

So. The Lord. Was. The Lord. Or after the death. By the death.

Then. The Lord. The Lord. But. During... Do not think so.

Because.

The Devil and the King

The Devil and the King

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be in 1 Peter. We'll be on page 658, if your Bible looks like this. If you have one of the blue and white Bibles from the Rose, we're on page 658.

We'll be in 1 Peter chapter 5. We've been walking verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and we're coming up on the tail end of it. Halloween is coming up this Saturday, and I find that when it comes to Halloween, you've got people kind of in different groups. We're going to take some—we're going to kind of figure out who's in the room this morning. So when it comes to Halloween, there is the group of people that are like, oh, yeah, Halloween was last week.

Like, you were at a place where, oh, look, there's bats on the wall. I guess Halloween's coming. Like, you just don't care. It doesn't even show up on your radar. You could care less about—couldn't care less about Halloween. That's the one that makes sense, that Americans say could care less.

Anyway, raise your hand. You just couldn't care less about Halloween. It doesn't show up on your radar. You don't care. Okay. Cool.

Yeah, we got a handful of people that are in that zone. Who falls in the—there's the other group of people that, like, care maybe too much about Halloween. Like, they're a little too excited. Like, to them in their brain, it's one of the major holidays. Like, it is the—it's a big deal. And so they're going to decorate their house a little prematurely.

They're going to—you're going to have some—when you throw a party, it's like a legit party. Like, people come over, and there's, like, cups with things bubbling out of the top, and they don't even know how you did that. And, like, you just—who's that? Who's that person? Cares a lot about Halloween, is excited about Halloween. Okay.

So I got two more questions that kind of fall along the same lines. If you're invited to a costume party, there's groups of people here. There are the people who get excited and show up, like, make the party good because they're there, because they know how to dress up. They know how to make it amazing. Who's that? Who shows up to a costume party just ready to roll?

Yes. Okay. Cool. I appreciate y'all. I like the people who go to costume parties dressed up. Who says no to a costume party because you don't want to dress up?

Yeah. Okay. I thought there were people there, too. Yeah. Who says yes, thinks they'll dress up, and decides not to, and just shows up anyway? Yeah.

Okay. That's the one I do. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to dress up this year. And then by the time I get there, I'm like, I'm my evil twin. Like, I'm the bad version of me. It's like, but you look the same.

Right. That's what I want to—I'm tricking you. Like, I'm my doppelganger. Like, that's how I go to Halloween parties. All right.

Last one. Horror movies. To be careful how I pronounce this horror. Raz, a friend of mine from Australia, he came over here. I think it was he was dating his now wife, and she asked him, you like horror movies? He's like, what?

He's from Australia, and he pronounces things. Like, actually pronounces things as opposed to Southern Americans who just kind of slur everything together. She's like, you know, horror movies. And he's like, no. Why would I like a horror movie? Why are you even asking me this question?

So horror movies. Who likes horror movies? Scary movies? Who likes them? Gets really excited. Yeah, I find people fall in different camps on these.

Like, they're like, you should see that movie. It's terrifying. I didn't sleep for three days. Why on earth would I want to watch that? I swear, when you get home, there's going to be a small child in your bed. Why would what?

No. You won't be able to walk alone for a week. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Who is the, I have no desire whatsoever to see a scary movie. Not going to watch it. Yeah, that's me.

Like, I do not want to see a scary movie. Unless it's Troll 2, I don't want to see it. Don't care about scary movies. Just don't. Well, we're coming up on Halloween, and we've come to this section in 1 Peter where Peter is going to talk about the devil. And in some ways, it's fitting because this is the time in our culture where everybody just, it collectively, we kind of think about these things.

Creepy things, demonic things, spooky things, ghosts, all that kind of stuff. And so what we're going to do is Peter's come to this section. He's talking about the devil. He's going to encourage Christians on how to respond to the devil. And so what we're going to do this morning, because I think we've been a church plant for going on three years now, two and a half years something, we've never taken a whole lot of time to talk about Satan. Never taken a whole lot of time to talk about the devil, talk about demonic things.

And so what we're going to do is just, in order to even understand what Peter is teaching us today, we have to understand who he's talking about. We have to understand who Satan is, how all that works, what demons are. And so we're just going to read what Peter says, and then we're going to zoom out and get a big overview on who Satan is, what he does, how he works, what the Bible says, big picture. And then we're going to come back to 1 Peter and say, okay, given that that's what, that's who he's talking about, that's what the Bible says about Satan, this is how we get to respond. And so this is going to be a little bit different than most of the time where we just read a passage and talk through it.

And if this is your first time hanging out with us, this is the first time we've ever spent any significant time talking about Satan and the devil and the demonic. So welcome. It's everybody's first time for this kind of a conversation too. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to, we're going to spend, we're going to read 1 Peter and then we're going to kind of zoom out and just spend some time talking about this. So God, we thank you that your word tells us what we need to know.

God, it doesn't always give us all the answers that we want to know, but it tells us what we need to know and we can be confident in you and in your word that you've provided so that we might study your word and know and be equipped with the information that we need so that we might be able to understand the world that we live in. And so God, we just pray that as we study this this morning, that we would learn what scripture says about the enemy and appropriately learn and that you would still get all the glory and it would still be about you. In Jesus name, Amen. Okay, so we're going to read 1 Peter 5, 6 through, no, 8 through 11 and then we're going to just kind of talk a little bit and see kind of big picture who Satan is and what the storyline is here.

So, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Okay, so that's the section in 1 Peter, but he just says, your adversary, the devil, and so if we're not familiar with what he's talking about, it's like, well, what? Like, you just, you just going to bring him up at the end of the letter? Like, you just, I'm just supposed to know who you're talking about? So we're just going to take a second, zoom out, look at this big picture. I do want to read this. This is a, C.S.

Lewis was a theologian and an author in the 1900s in Britain. And this is, this is a quote he says about the demonic, and I think it's helpful. There are two equal and opposite errors in which our race can fall about the devils. There he just means demonic spiritual realm. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive, unhealthy interest in them.

They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. So what he says is there's kind of two ditches on the road of understanding the spiritual realm and understanding the demonic. One is just, they don't exist. It's not a real thing. The other is to be way too concerned, way overly interested, way overly afraid of. The demonic.

And so, I find that in our culture, we have some people who are overly spiritual. You see some of this. You've met the person that everything is like some sort of a spiritual thing. Like Christians sometimes will over-spiritualize things or everything's an attack. So you'll be talking to somebody and be like, yeah, my car broke down, just locked up on me.

And I got out and I said, Satan, get out of my car. Or, because I knew Satan was after me. And it's like, when was the last time he changed the oil? Like, maybe you should just take it to, like if a mechanic can fix it, it might not have been Satan. I'm just saying, maybe, maybe he didn't want you to go to the grocery store. What were you doing?

Like, what? Like, I mean, you've met some of those people that are like, the devil's after me. Like, every time something's happening, oh, the devil's trying to get us, we gotta pray. Like, okay, there's spiritual things, but that's a bit too much. I remember my dad telling me there was a lady that lived kind of out in the country and on some farmland and she worked at their house helping watch them during the day because both of his parents worked. She told him one day, she said, last night, the devil was looking in my window.

And he and his brother said, the devil? The devil was looking in your window? She said, Satan himself. And they went, what did he look like? She said, a cow. They were like, you don't think maybe it was just a cow?

She's like, no, it's the devil. So, there's some people like that, that just everything is some sort of, most of us in this room probably are more on this side. Everything has an explanation. We can arrive at everything through scientific method, through reason, everything can be explained. And even for Christians, you take one step in and you say, yes, in theory, I believe, because I believe the Bible, that there is Satan and demons, but you just, on a real practical level, have no room for that whatsoever. So, you believe it, but actually don't feel like that ever really shows up in any kind of way.

Maybe in other countries or something, but not here, not really a thing here. And so, what we're going to do is just kind of walk through immediately, I think, some of our pushback, and the biggest ones I hear are science and reason why we don't need Satan anymore. Or why we don't believe in Satan anymore, or why we don't believe in this kind of stuff anymore, science and reason. Science is just basically, we have science now, so we don't have the God of the gaps theory. People used to believe, like, whatever they couldn't explain, they just needed God, that we just say, well, we don't understand that, so God must do it.

But now we have science, we've figured it out, we know that it's natural, there's processes, we can test things, we can study things, we know stuff. The problem is, the Bible doesn't have this separation between the spiritual and the natural, so when the Bible says that God sent a storm, or God sent a flood, or God, he does it through natural means, the normal storm system, the normal, he just, he works in it. People say that, like, the reason, when the Bible says that God is the one who gives children, God blesses mothers with children, that they said that because they didn't know where babies came from. But now we know, in the Christmas story, where Joseph is going to divorce Mary because she's pregnant, the reason he was going to divorce her is because he knew exactly where babies came from.

And he knew that one wasn't his. And so he's like, this relationship isn't working, like, we can't do this anymore. And so we, honestly, the Bible doesn't have this gap there. The Bible is very much, God works through natural means, but it's spiritual as well. The Bible's even going to attribute some spiritual, some natural things that happen to demonic things. And if we're willing to believe that there is a God, a good supernatural being, a good personal, real being that is good, it's not too much of a stretch to believe that there is a real personal being that is evil.

So if you believe in a good God, it makes sense that there could also be a spiritual being that is evil. The other one is reason. And when I say reason, what I mean is, not the science side, not the nature side. So what we would say is, well, people couldn't explain nature so they needed science. And then people say, well, people couldn't explain behavior, they couldn't explain evil, but now we have reason. We have, we understand dysfunction, we understand pathology, we understand family history, we understand nature versus nurture.

We can, now, we understand that ignorance is what causes all these things. So what they, would they just say, this person's evil, we don't need that term anymore, like we understand that everything has a cause. And there's a quote from a guy named Andrew Delbanco. He was a, he's a professor and a scholar at Columbia University. And he wrote a book called The Death of Satan. And in this book, he says he's a secular liberal.

He's not, not a Christian, not coming from a Christian book. But here's, in his book, The Death of Satan, here's how he starts it off. A gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. A gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. What he's saying is this, when we got rid of Satan, we lost the ability to explain a lot of the things we now see. So when we just talk about pathology, when we just talk about dysfunction, when we just talk about ignorance, and then we had Holocaust, the final solution, death camps, that came out of one of the most intellectual, civilized, cultural giants in the world.

We have genocide. We have just heinous evil across the board. And if we no longer can use the term evil and we no longer understand that the world has an evil presence active in it, we have a really hard time explaining serial killers. We have a really hard time being able to step in. And that's the point of his book is, when we got rid of Satan, we began to lose our ability to cope with how much evil there is in the world. That we have a hard time explaining death camps without being able to say, no, that's actually evil.

That's actually broken and there's actually something working behind it, active in it, for evil. And so honestly, the Bible's not against science and it's not against nature, not against reason, but it is going to say that the natural and the supernatural are much more blended than we know and that there actually is an evil being at work. And so one of the big storylines in the Bible is war. So there's certain storylines that just kind of go through the whole Bible and one of them is that there's a cosmic war. And so we're going to read a passage from Revelation 12 as we begin to start looking.

We're going to have it up on the screen. We're going to read a passage from Revelation 12 as we begin to start looking at who Satan is, where he comes from. And so this is, Revelation gets misquoted a lot and people take it out of context and they draw big charts, but this is just explaining with some imagery what happened a long time ago. So it says this, Now war arose in heaven. Michael, and that's an angel that is named a few times in Scripture, just apparently a powerful angel created by God. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.

And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And later on it says that there was about one third of the angels rebelled with him. And so we've got this picture of God created spiritual beings. So he created physical beings like us and he created spiritual beings that are angels and some of those angels rebelled against him led by Satan.

This is part of the storyline of the Bible that there was a powerful angel and a few places in the Old Testament are going to be where God's going to be prophesying to specific nations. It's going to seem like he's also talking about some of what happened in this epic battle, but there was a powerful angel that basically believed that he needed more power, more glory, became prideful and fought against God. Now he doesn't actually fight God, he fights more angels and they win. And then he comes to earth. So the idea of Satan hanging out in hell, like that's his base camp, it's not a real thing.

So I know you watch South Park and he's there with Saddam Hussein and that was hilarious or whatever. That's not a real thing. He's actually on earth because he's no longer allowed in the normal realm that he was in and he's kind of trapped in this area where he's been kicked out of and Jude 6 and 2 Peter are also going to say that the angels that went with him that did not stay in their proper place. So Satan led angels to rebel in heaven. That's one of the pieces of the story that we get from scripture. And all demons are just angels, spiritual beings created by God that did not remain where they were supposed to, did not do what they were supposed to, but rebelled against God.

And Satan is just a demon, an angel created by God that rebelled with them and the Bible kind of uses him as a figurehead or it would just say the devil referring to all of the demonic in general or talk about Satan referring to all of them in general, not necessarily just him. Sometimes it is specifically that one angel. But here's the thing. This is just kind of weird for us. Like we don't, we don't talk about this other places. Like the only two places I know that we, we even address this or think about this in our culture is pop culture.

So you have stuff like South Park is going to bring it up. We've got far side cartoons that are going to have jokes about it. You've got the movie Little Nicky where Adam Sandler is Satan's kid but he's the nice one. Like we just got that kind of weird. Then you got all your scary movies that go along with that stuff.

And then nobody else talks about it until you get to the church. And then the church talks about it because the Bible talks about it. You were never in a math class where your teacher was like, or a class in elementary school where your teacher was like, put away your multiplication tables and for the next 30 minutes before we go to lunch we're going to talk about demons. She wouldn't be a teacher very long. She's not allowed to do that. Some of you maybe were homeschooled and you never saw those multiplication tables but you talked about demons a lot.

Welcome. Sorry. That came out meaner than it was supposed to be. But no. Most of us in school we don't cover these things. We cover it in the church but here's the thing.

We got to take what the Bible says about these things and begin to form our picture. Not what pop culture tells us but what scripture tells us and begin to form our picture. And as you study scripture a few things start to come out. A few things start to become clear. First of all God created everything and he created Satan. God and Satan aren't yin and yang.

They're not equals. God is above Satan. Even in what we just read when Satan rebelled he did not fight God. He fought other angels and lost. Now there were more angels on the other team but he lost.

There is a time in the Bible where Satan fights God and that goes like this. It's later in the book of Revelation. So this happened a long time in the past and then there's another time where God fights Satan. It says Satan was released and he leads an army and here's what it says. Fire came down killed his army and Satan was thrown into hell. That's how that fight goes.

When God steps into the ring the fight is over. But at this point he rebels and the angels kick them out and they are sent to earth. Now the story moves. So this war that begins in heaven moves to a new battlefield which is the earth. And that's where we pick up in the book of Genesis. That's where we begin to see the ancient serpent shows up in the garden to lead humanity astray.

And he shows up and he tricks Adam and Eve into rebelling against God like he had. And then God shows up and immediately proclaims the first gospel which is he shows up and tells them there's going to be a male born of a woman. Now that's interesting because throughout the Old Testament genealogies are this man begat this man begat this man or this man was the father of this man was the father of this man was the father of this man. Every once in a while a woman's mentioned but she's always mentioned in relationship to a husband. But what God steps in and says is there's going to be a woman and she's going to have a son.

And he's referring to the only woman who ever had a son outside of a man being present which was Mary who as a virgin had a son named Jesus. And what he says is there's going to be a man who's going to come and you're going to bruise his heel but he's going to crush your head. And he proclaims the gospel over this rebellion that Jesus is going to show up and fix the problem. So Jesus shows up. He's born. As soon as he begins his ministry Satan shows up to tempt him because all he knows from what we can tell from scripture is just Satan knows who Jesus is and that he's got to mess him up.

He's got to keep this from working out. He knows that God is active. He knows that there's been some prophecies. He knows that this is coming and he's just got to mess it up. So he shows up and tries to tempt Jesus into rebelling against God because if he can get Jesus to rebel the plan's messed up.

And Jesus doesn't. Jesus withstands temptation and keeps going. So then Satan works actively through Judas Iscariot to kill Jesus because he's thinking okay Jesus will go to a cross not a throne. Jesus will get only crown he'll ever wear is a crown of thorns. Jesus will be destroyed. Jesus will die and he won't be able to fulfill his plan.

And so he works actively to kill Jesus and in the epic plot twist of all time in the most cosmic twist that God had worked up what Jesus did was he hid victory and defeat. He hid freedom in slavery. He hid life in death and on the cross undid everything Satan was working for. He Colossians 3 tells us that he disarmed Satan by going to the cross because what Satan's power was in sin and death and Jesus took our sin and our death so that it no longer has a hold over us. And so in the cross Satan was defeated because he didn't understand what God was actively after. He didn't understand how great power can be shown through humility.

He didn't understand how God had designed it for Jesus to come and not be exalted on earth but be exalted in eternity and to be exalted fully to show his glory fully through a cross not a throne. And so Satan is defeated but he's not gone. And so then we see how Satan now actively works to disrupt and cause problems until he is fully destroyed. So he's defeated in the cross but not fully gotten rid of until some future date. And as Christians when we became Christians we were invited into this battle. We were invited into this war.

Over and over again scriptures will say that our battle isn't against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spirits in heavenly places and that we're brought from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son that this is a cosmic battle that we've been invited into to see more people meet Jesus. So a few things we need to realize and understand when it comes to who Satan is. One is he's finite created being not more powerful than God not equal with God. He can't be in all places at once. He does not know everything. just the sheer fact that he can't be in all places at once.

Look I think you're wonderful. Did you know that? I think you're very special. I agree with your mom. I think you're special and like a snowflake. But Satan is probably not messing with you.

The actual being Satan himself is probably not messing with you. Now the Bible uses Satan as a covering or the devil as a figure head for all demonic evil activity. So we are attacked by biblically demonic activity but Satan is finite. He's only in one place at one time. He's somewhere on earth but he's only in one place at one time. But there are demonic spirits that work with him to lead to lie to destroy.

So let's start looking at what does he do? If he's already lost in the cross what's his goal? How's he work? What's happening at this point? And so a few things I want us to just kind of see as we walk through. So what we read at first in 1 Peter and we're not going to unpack this yet but we're just going to see one of the things that Peter's queuing us in on.

Lost in the cross what's his goal? How's he work? What's happening at this point? And so a few things I want us to just kind of see as we walk through. So what we read at first in 1 Peter and we're not going to unpack this yet but we're just going to see one of the things that Peter's queuing us in on. Be sober minded be watchful your adversary

The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Okay so he's active and he's trying to seek someone to devour. What does that even mean? And so let's take just a second and just look at a few places in scripture where we begin to see how Satan actively tries to work to destroy to disrupt to deceive.

The first is through sin and disbelief in the gospel. So a few different places in scripture and I included a few references in our community groups this week we'll actually read a good bit just so that all of our information comes from not Little Nicky not South Park but comes from our scripture we begin to inform ourselves through scripture

But we'll spend more time studying these things but I included some reference for people who want to follow up but sin and disbelief in the gospel basically one of the ways that Satan is active is in just leading us to sin because sin is destructive sin leads to death and sin keeps us

From God sin is so he gives us what we want a lot he baits us entices us says no what you need to be happy is this no no your marriage isn't good but this person would make you happy oh if you just made this much money if you just did this like he just leads us

To sin leads us to chase after other things to believe that other things will fill us up bring us joy the other thing that Jesus says specifically is that he tries to get us to not believe the gospel so when the gospel is proclaimed

That Jesus sets us free that Jesus gives us life that Jesus paid for our sin that Jesus makes us whole Satan tries to disrupt that and take that away another one and I don't think we realize this or think about this much

One of the other ways that Satan works actively to lead us astray and to disrupt is through religion and self righteousness okay now when I say religion some people are always like wait I thought Christianity was a religion what we mean

When we talk about religion quite often the Bible does use it sometimes in a good light a lot of times it's using it in a negative connotation we're using it in a negative way to mean the belief that my behavior saves me my behavior is what

Makes me good my morality my actions because all of that is my righteousness my goodness comes from me and the Bible is clear our righteousness comes from Jesus so Satan is active in as long as you trust you that's fine with him so most

Of us think that Satan's only working in harmful things but actually he can work through generosity he can work through really good behavior he can work through morals as long as there's no Jesus that's fine so I'm going to read 2 Corinthians 11 13-15 it's one of the references

But for such men are false prophets deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ Jesus and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light so it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness

There are people who will even say the name Jesus and be pointing you away from him pointing you towards your behavior towards your actions towards your goodness as long as you're trusting you Satan doesn't care there are multiple times where Jesus

Is interacting with the religious elite and he calls them broods of vipers which means you're the child of the serpent he's saying you're sons of hell sons of Satan he says you go over land and sea to get one convert and then make him twice as

Unhell as you are what he's saying is your religion your good work your effort your memorization your hard work like they used to like connect the bible to their wrist and their forehead like you thought your grandmother was religious because her

Bible weighed 47 pounds these people had the bible strapped to them until your grandmother gets a backpack bible she ain't nothing he doesn't care we can be as religious as you want to as long as you're not trusting Jesus actively at work in that another one

Is so he's actively at work in leading people away from Jesus which makes sense actively at work in making people confused about the gospel which makes sense but then he if you become a christian genuinely trust Jesus with your life with your sin then the next thing

He works after is disunity in the church and ineffective christians he just wants you okay if you're a christian well I lost that one but I gotta keep you from helping other people become christians some of the ways he does this is through just letting us be really comfortable I

Think keeping us distracted some of the ways specifically that are mentioned are Ephesians 4 26-27 says be angry and do not sin do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil second corinthians 10 talks about forgiveness and he says if you forgive him I forgive

Him we're to forgive one another and we're not to be ignorant to satan's schemes one of the ways that he works is he he gets you mad at you and doesn't want you to talk to each other that as long as we're frustrated as long as we're infighting as long as we're not sharing the gospel

That's fine whatever we can do to keep us aggravated to keep us frustrated to keep our feelings hurt and to keep us from talking to each other and having unity and being on mission is fine okay satan's a created being who rebelled against God who was

Defeated in the cross and now actively works to keep people from Jesus actively works to keep us in sin actively works to keep us ineffective in sharing the gospel now let's go to first peter and see what he says about him how we're to respond verse 8

Be sober minded that means think clearly think correctly one of the ways that we do that is we have incorrect information that's what we're trying to do just a second ago is get at least some correct information so that we know what we're thinking about how to respond so

Be sober minded then he says be watchful so be on alert just have your radar up for anything that looks like it might be enemy activity so if someone comes and is proclaiming Jesus to you but the whole point is here's how you be good here's

How you behave here's how you be religious here's all the things you have to do have your radar up they're not preaching Jesus they're giving you morality they're giving you religion they're giving you behaviorism they're giving you performance ism but it's not Jesus and

So be aware another one is this say you're hanging out on a Sunday and you think huh that's the second week that person didn't say hey to me I think I just saw a look did I see a look I saw a look I bet they're mad at me why would

They be mad at me I guess because they're a jerk I'm special when mom told me that it can't be my fault and then you'll come up with some reason oh I bet it was this I bet this is what they're thinking I bet they're mad about this you know what I'll do I'll be

Mad at them boom accomplished as opposed to being watchful and going hold on a second one of the things that I know that Satan actively tries to do is get me frustrated I'll go talk to him hey are you mad at me no I'm not mad at you why didn't

You say hey I don't know why didn't you say hey oh good point that person didn't say hey to me did you say hey to them no jerk like that's how that works like have a conversation be watchful know what's going on

Know that these things can happen and have your radar up that's what he says be sober minded be watchful your adversary so he's against you the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking

Someone to devour so we talked about how he works to devour I want you to show you two of the things he does first of all he prowls he's intentionally sneaky people have said well if Satan was

Real why he'd just show himself because that's a terrible plan terrible plan do you know how many anti-gun people would be at the Walmart buying rifles if we confirmed that the zombie apocalypse

Had started I'm so glad I'm in America come on you foot dragon slobber monster like if we found out that werewolves were real you know how quickly we'd be producing silver bullets they're real full moon silver bullet time so as soon

As like if Satan just showed up was like I am Satan you know people would be here next week pretty sure Jesus wins that one didn't realize that was true so he prowls he's sneaky he doesn't want you to know where he's at work he doesn't

Want you to know where he's active he's hiding it which all right let's play a game you're on a safari but you're just walking around it's really tall grass you see a lion over here you do not see a lion over here which one do you run from

The one you saw y'all aren't good at this game you run from the one you see y'all were like I don't know I think you're supposed to play dead I don't think that works with lions they're like sweet I don't have to

Run you run from the lion you see that's how that works this one surprises you you run this way and go dang it hey buddy that's how that works so yeah he's sneaky because then you're not aware you're not paying attention

Your radar is not up you don't know he can be at work he'd love for you to not believe in him that's fine with him he'd love for you to believe there's only natural causes for everything everything can be

Explained he doesn't need you to believe in him one of my dad used to teach us how to fight and one of his pieces of advice was if you're fighting while the other guy is still talking you have a distinct advantage

He said if his mouth is still open when you punch it that's a good start and honestly the enemy's like that if he's already started the fight before you know it started he has a distinct advantage so one of the ways that he does this is he's sneaky and he prowls

Around the second thing though is that he's a roaring lion which I want us to see this clearly Colossians 3 tells us that Jesus has disarmed the enemy that those of us who placed our faith in Jesus he has no power over us anymore because his power was in

Sin and death and Jesus has taken our sin and taken our death and Satan has no claim over us no power over us no condemnation over us any longer so once you do believe in his existence one of the ways he works is through roaring

Hearing a lion roar is terrifying but the roar is actually not the scary part of the lion it's the power that the lion has so when I'm at the zoo and a lion stands up and roar I'm like that was scary but I

Don't run because it's that giant ditch thing like if the lion comes at me I should be like bro you didn't think that through there's a lion in the ditch face looks hurt so when with Jesus having already conquered the enemy one of the

Things he's going for at this point for Christians who believe in his existence is for you to be very scared of him so some Christians don't want to talk about Satan or demons they don't want to bring it up they feel like it

Jinxes them they feel like oh we shouldn't be talking and they're unnecessarily afraid we should be watchful we should be aware we should be sober minded we should think about it clearly we are not to be proud or arrogant the power and authority

Is not in us we are not amazing Jesus is but we're also not to be terrified one of the word glory has several different ways that can be described in several different meanings meanings one of them is weight is weightiness which just means that you

Give things glory by giving them weight or sway in your life so I recently shaved my face I usually have a beard I recently shaved my face and people feel the need to tell me they didn't like it or that I looked like I was 12 it's like oh hi you look like a child thanks good talking to you it's nice to see you too but I do that because my wife and I met in high school and she needs to see my face every once in a while she has more weight

In my life than every person who saw me and told me I look like a child I care more about what she thinks I'm sorry I do also like the beard so I keep it and this time I shaved and she went I see why people like the beard I was like yes we're making progress soon she'll just be like just keep the beard I've seen your face enough but she has weight and so one of the ways that we give glory

To something or somebody is by letting them have some weight some sway some leadership in our lives some ability to affect how we act how we behave and when we are terrified of demonic things terrified of Satan it keeps us up at night we can't talk about him it's like he who must not be named when we do that we're giving glory to a being that deserves none now sober minded watchful

Not prideful not arrogant but also not giving them weight not giving him sway over your life how you act how your emotions work so he prowls and he roars and he's seeking someone to devour so we have an enemy who wants to destroy us let's figure out how we respond that's a good question what do you do with a prowling roaring lion who wants to devour you resist him

What helpful advice Peter should do a self-defense class alright ladies if you're in a parking lot and a man attacks you here's your plan try to get him to stop just resist it's like what that's not helpful I need like show me how to hold my keys with my knuckles give me a whistle something like I need a plan now just just just resist that'll be 50 bucks class is over

Like so resist him how firm in your faith okay cool resist him trusting in Jesus what's our faith our faith is that Jesus has disarmed the enemy through the cross our faith is that sin once had a lot of power over us guilt once had a lot of sway in our lives death was looming over us but now we have been

Rescued by a savior who took our sin who took our death and who set us free and when we are faced with enemy attack we just get to step back and say no I trust Jesus I don't have to be amazing I don't have to be good I don't have to be moral I don't have to accomplish this I don't have to be strong I don't have to be smart I don't have to

Be the best I trust Jesus and we just get to stand firm in our faith which is that Jesus is the ruling reigning king of all and that Satan has already been defeated resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering now let me say this if you are not a Christian place your

Faith in Jesus you have a real enemy out to destroy you out to trick you into trying to be really good to prove something to God and to make him owe you out into tricking you into chasing after a million other things to find

Yourself to prove yourself to have value to be loved to find worth and you have a God who stepped in and rescued and redeemed you trust in Jesus trust the God who gave up his life

For you not the being that's after yours not the one seeking to steal your life but the God the creator of the universe who gave up his life for you he says knowing that the

Same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world what he's saying is realize you're not suffering you're not in this battle by yourself you ever exercise with a partner or go through something

Terrible with another person and you think to yourself I am I'm sorry that you're going through this terrible thing but man I'm glad you're here I remember in football camp watching someone else get cussed out and just being like I'm glad

That guy's here I'm glad I'm not the only one getting cussed at I'm glad I'm not the only one having to run after practice or being stupid there's just something about what he's saying just realize that

You're in a war and all of us are you've got a lot of teammates you're not by yourself the band's going to come back up here and we're going to sing and make much of

Jesus and we've got two more verses to look at here resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout

The world you're not by yourself you're not alone it's not up to you there are others in this battle with you and after you have suffered a little while the God of all grace all freedom all joy all hope all peace

The God of all grace that freely gives freely poured himself out for us the God who went to the cross shedding his blood and giving his life so that you wouldn't have to shed yours or give yours the God of all grace

Who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ he's talking to Christians and he's saying the God of grace that's already redeemed you already rescued you already called you into an eternity where there is joy and peace and happiness

And freedom forever where the enemy is ultimately and finally destroyed who's called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore confirm strengthen and establish you stand firm in your faith and trust that the God of grace is going to

Step in at the right time and make it all right it's going to step in at the right time and fix everything on your behalf to him be the dominion forever and ever amen one of the reasons we haven't talked a whole lot

About Satan one of the reasons we don't spend a whole lot of time on the devil is because the Bible is never about him he is never the focus he is never the point it is squarely on Jesus all the time Jesus is the one who gets the glory forever he's the one

Who has dominion forever he is the creator God that rules and reigns over everything to him be the dominion forever and ever amen to Jesus be the praise to Jesus be the glory to him be the strength to him

Be power to him be the kingdom to him be everything eternally it'll be him that's on the throne it'll be he that reigns and rules over all things forever it'll be him that makes his enemies his footstool it'll be him that is the king and glorious ruler of all

Because he hid life in death because he hid victory in defeat because he hid our sin on himself that he took it on himself so that we might be free so that we might be saved so that we might be rescued so that we might not have to walk around in fear of sin

Or death or Satan ever again it's to Jesus be the glory to Jesus be the kingdom to Jesus be the rule to Jesus be the reign to Jesus be the dominion forever and ever amen