Schemes of the Devil - Jon Harris

Good morning everyone. It is always an honor to be with you, and it was a beautiful drive this morning, more than most mornings.

It's always beautiful, but a fresh coat of snow. I didn't know how many people were going to be here, so I'm really grateful to see you all this morning.

And it reminds me of the verse in Isaiah chapter 1 that says,

And we're going to be talking about spiritual warfare a bit this morning. One of the things though that came to my mind as I was crossing the mountain and coming over here, of course

I come from Highland so I have to go through New Paltz, is how there is a realm of the invisible.

There's a feature of our existence that we can't see with our eyes. We all know it's there, though.

We all sense it. I think the more spiritual you are, the more you grow in Christ as a

Christian and you know Him, the deeper that spiritual understanding becomes.

And even on the drive, so often when I go through certain regions, towns,

New Paltz, there is a darkness I can sense despite how beautiful it is there.

And it is beautiful. I actually love going to that particular place. There's a lot of good memories there.

Some of my favorite coffee shops to sit in while I write or study are there, but there is a heaviness.

And there's so many places like that, not just towns, houses. Sometimes you even sense it in which it shouldn't be, but there's a tension and you don't know as an outsider sometimes why it's even there.

You just know it's there. Our spirit senses it. And I'll tell you what, just to give you a compliment this morning,

I don't sense any of that darkness. I sense just light here this morning. And there's a comfort that comes when you walk into a place and it's just light.

When you know that the people there love you, love the Lord. There's a,

I don't know how to describe it, but it's a spiritual thing, right? And it's sad to me that so many people don't have that, right?

Can you imagine living life and all you ever experience is heaviness, darkness, not exactly sure where it's coming from, but just tangled up in it all the time.

And that's the existence of a lot of people, people that we even love. And we want to be, as Jesus said, lights in the world.

We want to spread the good news of the gospel that you could be made right with the Lord, because as Paul says, he is not far from each one of us.

And when we become closer with him, when we walk towards him, we gain the benefits of being in that light.

We reflect him more. And so as we talk about some darkness this morning,

I want to remind ourselves of that before we examine the devil and his activities.

There's also, as we just sang in the song, there's a God of angel armies. There's light, good will win, even when it seems bad.

And boy, sometimes it seems really bad. Some of you know, I have a podcast.

I talk a lot about theological issues and political issues. And right now I sense a great darkness in this country, despite the fact that there's some things on a political level that I'm actually pretty appreciative of.

I still feel like we're sliding somehow, like there's still a darkness. Sometimes I can't even quite put my finger on it.

Sometimes it's even coming from self -professed Christians. And later on,

I'll realize that's what it was. There's a moral failure there, or there's a theological issue there.

But I think as we grow in Christ, our spirit senses those things more and more. We get a fine tune instrument of spiritual discernment.

And we have an adversary. We have the devil, right? We have our flesh. We have the world.

As if that weren't enough, we also have the devil working against us because he works against the purposes of our

Lord. And if you want to turn to the passage, Ephesians 6, 10 through 12, it's a familiar passage.

It describes how we are to stand in opposition to the darkness of this world.

Paul writes in chapter 6, verse 10 of Ephesians, finally, be strong in the

Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

There was a poll that came out in 2020, and it showed that 51 % of people in our country have a traditional view of God.

In other words, when they think of God, their concept is someone who is the creator, someone who knows all things, is all powerful, right?

The God that scripture describes, that's somewhat similar to the God that they think of.

That's just over half the country. 56 % on this particular poll believed in the devil.

And so Barna, who conducted the poll, said more people believe in the devil than believe in God. And that was in 2020, that may be an outlier.

I'm not sure I haven't looked at polling since then, but I thought it was an interesting observation that so many people believe in the devil.

Even people who don't have a traditional view of God think the devil's out there. I remember last summer

I met one of my neighbors for the first time. He was a Vietnam war vet, and we struck up a conversation.

And he talked about how fellow veterans had returned with missing limbs and mental issues from Vietnam.

And I sensed an opportunity as he was sharing this to bring up the things of the Lord. And I said to him, even people who do not believe in God believe in the devil after they go through something like that, don't they?

And he nodded and said, yes. Yes. Because when you stare evil in the face, you know it exists.

And I think there's so much evil in this world that people, they realize it.

Even non -Christians realize it. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. And how do you make sense of all the wrong, right?

Well, that's a sad place to be in if that's all you see. But there's more to the story, right?

There's more to the story. There's obviously God, and there's a right. And in order to even understand what evil is, we have to understand what good is.

We have to understand what the world looks like when it's right on some level and to even know that there's a problem there.

So we have these forces lined up against us, lined up against God. And the devil is one of those major forces.

Now, let me give you a brief description of who the devil is according to what the Bible says, not according to what people think in the popular culture, but what does the word of God actually say?

How does God describe the devil? Well, the Greek word diabolos refers to a slanderous or adversarial one.

He is called Satan, which means adversary. Lucifer, which means day star.

Beelzebul, which means lord of the flies. Think of a garbage dump where the flies all kind of.

Apollyon, which means destroyer. These are all terms that are attributed to who we know as the devil.

Jesus described the devil this way in John 8, 44. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

Not even one little thing, one little kernel of truth, nothing. He's just characterized by lies, right?

How do you know the devil's lying? His lips are moving, right? That's how scripture describes the devil.

We find in Isaiah 14, 12 through 15 that he fell from heaven and now his mission is to usurp

God, discredit God, replace God, make you worship him and not

God, get you off track. That's his goal. Though he is already judged according to John 16, 11, and he's on his way to hell according to Matthew 25, 41, he leads one -third of the angels in his works of deceiving the world, destroying people, and accusing believers.

And we're going to get into some very specific detail from scripture about the strategies or schemes that the devil uses in your own life because I think you should be aware of those schemes.

If we're going to detect them and defeat them and oppose them, we have to know what they are.

But I will note if any of you in this room do not know Christ as your

Lord and Savior, now is a good time to be thinking about that because unbelievers are helpless in this cosmic war that we all find ourselves in.

And you can't avoid it. The war is upon you whether you want it to be or not. 2

Corinthians 4, 4 says, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

There's a blindness that you had if you were a Christian before you were a Christian and not quite understanding even though the truth was in front of you.

Scripture says that's the devil's work. He wants to blind people. He wants to conceal the truth from them.

Jesus told Paul his mission was to, in Acts 28, open the Gentiles' eyes so that they might turn from the darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God.

So this extends not just to Paul. This extends to us. This is not just an apostolic thing.

We are lights of the world. We go out there and we expose the truth, the truth that the devil is working actively against us to expose.

He wants people to be blinded. We're trying to tell them the truth. And that what is the truth, right?

That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God will forgive your sins.

That's the truth. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he suffered, that he was buried, that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures.

That's the truth, right? The gospel, the power of God to salvation, right? We are proclaiming reconciliation that the world doesn't have to live this way.

They can actually have the joy that we have. They can experience light. They don't have to be blinded by the devil. And at every turn, he works against that message.

Now, the devil is a lot more powerful than you are. And so if you don't have God, if you don't have as the song we sang, which was a great pick, the

God of angel armies surrounding us, you're a sitting duck and you will continue to be blinded.

You'll continue to go down dead end roads. You won't know what hit you. You'll stumble in the darkness. And that is the life that scripture describes of the unbeliever.

Now for believers, we need to take the devil seriously. Even though God's on our side, we need to understand the tools that God's given us to oppose the devil.

And we need to use those tools. And if we disobey, then the devil can destroy us.

But the devil is limited. The devil is limited. That's the first thing we need to understand about the devil.

He cannot take your eternal salvation. No matter what, if you're a Christian, I don't care how disobedient you become in your walk,

God has to get your attention and you have to repent. The devil cannot take your salvation from you.

That's up to the Lord Jesus Christ. He holds you in his hand and he will lose none. As the gospel of John says, you are secure in that.

But he can do a lot of other things, right? He can destroy your life. He can destroy your family.

He can destroy your church. He can destroy your country. Satan persuaded King David, right?

King David in the Bible, a man after God's own heart. King David who followed the Lord, who wrote so many of the

Psalms. Satan somehow, that man was able to persuade, to number

Israel. He took a census, right? And this might sound like a small thing. What's the big deal?

Figuring out, counting how many people are in your kingdom? Doesn't that seem like a logical thing for a king to do? Well, actually, kings were forbidden from doing this.

This actually was an attempt of David to sort of size up how strong he was so he could compare himself to the other kingdoms and see if he had an army that was big enough.

And the Lord wanted David and all kings of Israel to rely on him. Said, look, I will fight for you.

The odds have always been against the people of God, and they come through because they rely on the

Lord. That's how Gideon, with 300 men, was able to defeat a larger, very much larger army.

And so David does this thing, and it's Satan. Satan basically convinces him not to trust

God, to trust in horses and chariots instead. And the result was 70 ,000 men of Israel fell, meaning 70 ,000 people in David's kingdom died as a result of David's decision.

Now, maybe that doesn't seem fair to you. It's like David made that decision. We don't have time to get into all that. But people suffer for the decisions of their rulers.

And David was repentant about this, but he couldn't take back the consequence for the sin.

And the sin came from first listening to the devil. And I'll say this.

There's nothing in scripture that says the devil came to him audibly with a voice, stood next to him, like you see in the cartoons, right on his shoulder.

Said, David, guess what? You need to go take a census. You need to trust in your own might, not in God. That didn't happen.

At least we don't have a record of that happening. Satan can take form like that, right? Didn't he do that with Eve? He infiltrated the snake and then used the snake's tongue to deceive

Eve. But often it seems that the devil works in more subtle ways.

He puts things in our path. He suggests things to us. And I don't even know exactly how that works.

So I'm not going to try to explain it fully. I just know that's what the picture, that's what we have in scripture.

He somehow is able to steer us in different directions than the path that God has us on.

He influenced Ananias, Acts 5, to lie to the

Holy Spirit. Ananias lied to God regarding the price of his land. Remember the story

Ananias and Sapphira, it's their early church. Everyone's giving their money to the church, this new institution.

They're helping the poor. And Ananias comes in, he gives his money, and he lies about how much. He says, well,

I'll give you the full amount from the sale of my house. It wasn't the full amount. He kept some back. Now, that was fine to keep some back.

There was nothing wrong with that. He could have kept some of it, but he wanted to look good. And it says that he lied to the

Holy Spirit. He tried to convince God that he was good. He thought he could lie to God. Well, he didn't just come up with this idea.

This is something that the devil was active in steering him towards. And because of it, he lost his life.

Paul tells us that the devil will tempt believers towards vice, 1 Timothy 3, sexual sin, 1

Corinthians 7, 1 Timothy 5, and theological error, 1 Thessalonians 3.

Think of Job. He destroyed Job's family. He caused physical sickness in the crippled woman that Jesus healed in Luke 13.

And he asked God's permission to sift the apostles like wheat.

The devil is limited, but he can do a lot of damage. The fact that he had to ask

God's permission to go after, I think it was Peter, actually. The fact that he had to ask

God's permission to go after Job. Remember that story? Job is his servant of the

Lord. And God says, have you seen my servant, Job? And the devil says, ah, he'll curse you. You just got to take away all the blessings.

That's the only reason he loves you. And it was a test. And his wife, I mean, I'm glad I don't have a wife like this.

His wife said, just curse God and die. Real encouraging wife. And then his friends come to him, all his buddies.

And they said, you know, Job, you must've done something bad. You got to be a bad person for this to happen. Job's like, I can't think of anything.

I didn't do anything. And he was never given a full answer, but he got an answer.

It was an answer that he could not apprehend with his logical mind fully, but he knew there was one that existed.

And the answer was, my ways are higher than your ways. And God blessed him. He didn't see what was going on in the heaven.

He didn't see the exchange between God and the devil. He didn't see the battle that he was part of, but it happened.

And he had to keep his faith in the midst of that, that God was actually good. And it was hard.

It's hard when you're sitting there with boils, your family's dead, and you're wondering, why did this all happen to me?

So Satan can do many things. Despite all of that, though, we should not be afraid of Satan.

Jesus said, fear not those who killed the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,

Matthew 10, 28. So God has given you what you need to oppose

Satan, as we read in Ephesians 6. But you must understand his strategy in order to do that.

So we're going to dive into some of the specific threats from the devil that scripture reveals.

So first one quote, and I'm a little disappointed.

Don's not here. I was going to quote Don, so I'll quote him. Hopefully, maybe he can watch this on the recording.

But I heard Don say once that some people say the devil is behind every bush because he is.

I've heard him say that a few times, I think, which I wasn't expecting. I thought he was going to say something like, that's ridiculous.

He's not behind every bush. And he said, no, because he is actually. How do

I know something is the work of the devil? Well, I think that's a good quote because anything could be the work of the devil.

Anything that's sinful, I guess the sky's the limit as far as temptation. How many things are you tempted by?

The devil could be behind a lot of those things. So Don's right. 1 Peter 5, 8 says to be of sober spirit beyond the alert, your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

Now, the term devour means to utterly destroy. What kinds of things destroy you? What kinds of things destroy the people you know?

I mean, you're going to just rattle off a list, right? Well, I know alcohol could do it. I know drug addiction can do it.

I know sexual indiscretion can do it. I know now social media and phone addictions can do it.

I know unforgiveness can do it. You just go down the list. How many things can destroy someone?

Well, it just takes one sin and you just keep going down that path and it destroys you eventually.

So what are the nature of the devil's schemes? Well, they're deceptive. First of all, he justifies evil, makes you rationalize it, makes you think it's not really evil or I'm just doing it once.

It's not a big deal. They're variable. They're tailored to our weaknesses.

I don't have the weaknesses you have and you don't have the weaknesses I have. There are some things that will appeal to me that will not appeal to you and vice versa.

The devil knows that. He's been observing human nature for longer than you've been alive and he knows exactly what makes you tempted.

Now, the schemes of the devil are also defeatable through the armor of God, right?

So they are deceptive. They can vary. They are tailored to you, but they are also defeatable.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be given the instruction to stand firm, right? If you couldn't stand against it, if you were helpless, why would there be an instruction to stand firm?

So let's get into some of the specifics here and I'm going to break this down into just a few categories and they're all based on lies.

The devil tells you lies about others. He tells you lies about yourself.

He tells you lies about God and he tells you lies about himself, right?

Those are the four categories the devil operates in. So first of all, lies about others.

They are too evil to be forgiven, those bad guys, right? Those guys I don't like. They're so evil, no one can forgive them.

I can't forgive them, maybe even God. Second Corinthians 2, 10 through 12,

Paul said, if I have forgiven anything, I did so for your sake in the presence of Christ so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan for we are not ignorant of his schemes.

Now in this passage, I'm kind of dropping in there, let me give you the context. Paul is saying that he forgives a man who sinned against him and the reason is so that Satan would not exploit unforgiveness and turn it into a despairing thing.

If you read first Corinthians, there's the example of a man who was caught in a sexual sin. Paul says you can't tolerate that.

The man repents. Second Corinthians, he comes back. He said, I was wrong and Paul says you need to forgive that man and guess what?

I'm going to lead the way, I'm going to forgive him. I'm going to set an example here and you know why? Because if I don't forgive him, the devil's going to come in.

The devil's going to use that. The devil uses unforgiveness an awful lot. Now I will point out the man did repent, okay?

So the man was confessing. Forgiveness is, as Jesus says, something we do regularly.

70 times 70, right? And I don't think he meant 490. He meant you keep doing it.

If someone sins against you and they repent, you forgive them. So one of the lies that the devil uses is you shouldn't forgive them.

They're too evil. They breach something that's too bad, you can't forgive them. Now notice I'm not saying trust.

Paul didn't say now you got to trust him and make sure he's the leader of your church. He didn't say that. He just said, we're not going to have bitterness here.

That'll just destroy you and the devil will use it. How about another lie?

They exist for my pleasure. That's why those people exist. They don't exist because God gave them their own mission, responsibilities.

He loves them. They exist for what they do for me. John chapter 13, verse 2 and then verse 27 says, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray him,

Christ, and after the morsel, Satan entered into him. So who was behind Judas' betrayal of Jesus?

It was Satan. And what was the lie? Well, I can, I didn't read this part, but I'll just mention it for context.

I can tilfer the offering. What was given to the poor, I can take a cut of that for myself.

It exists for me. It's for me. Jesus and all the energy around the movement that he's creating and stuff.

I can get in on this. I can build trust with the disciples. They'll give me the money box. And ultimately for 30 pieces of silver,

I can even make more money off of betraying Jesus. Why did Jesus exist for Judas?

For his own personal gain. Jesus is in the upper room, teaching them to be servants, washing their feet.

And Judas is just thinking about what he can get. It's the opposite of Jesus' message because he viewed people the opposite of how

Jesus views people. Jesus looks at people and he thinks, what can I do for that person? How can I give?

How did God, I mean, what does it say? That the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life for ransom for many.

That's how Jesus wants us to view other people. How did Judas view them? They exist for my pleasure. That's a lie.

How about this lie about others? They do not deserve what they have. Oh, how many times have you thought that?

Man, that person, they got, I never known anyone who wins the lottery, but I'm sure if I ever do, that's going to be my first thought.

They didn't deserve that. They can't manage that, right? They don't deserve what they have.

How worse is it when that kind of thinking envelopes around someone that we actually love?

Maybe like husbands, wives, family members. James 3, 14 through 15 says, but if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, this wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly natural.

And he says, demonic means its source is from demons. So if you are jealous, if you are selfish, if you think you deserve, they don't,

I'm going to covet their stuff. He says, you know where that comes from? Yeah, your flesh, but demons, the devil, that's exactly what

Satan did with God. He thought I should be God, not him. Be careful of that. Now, Satan also puts in our way lies about ourselves.

Lies we say to ourselves about ourselves. How about this one? I am too evil to be forgiven by God.

I did too much. It was such a bad sin. God can't even forgive it. Revelation 12, 10 calls

Satan, the accuser of our brethren, who accuses them before our God day and night, meaning constantly, meaning

Job was just a little bitty window into what Satan does. He's doing this all the time. He's going to God all the time.

He said, punish that guy. He's not good. He says he trusts in you and that he's a good

Christian. He's not a good Christian. Look at this, that, and the other thing. And Jesus is our advocate saying,

I paid for all that. I gave my life for that person. This is a back and forth that apparently is happening quite regularly in the halls of heaven.

But this is a lie that we start to believe sometimes ourselves. Jesus can't forgive what

I did. It was so bad. It was so egregious. I'm shocked that I did it. That just reveals how good we think we are sometimes.

We have a standard in our mind for how we think we should be, and we fall short of that. Well, all have fallen short of God's standard, okay?

So we're all bad. Jesus is good, and he's the one that if there's anything good in us, he's produced it.

But we can be forgiven. God can forgive anything. God forgave Paul. Paul was murdering Christians. You don't think

God can forgive you? It's a limitation on God, too. It's a lie about God, but it's also a lie about us, that what we do is so bad it exceeds

God's mercy. Here's another lie, and this one's directly specifically applied to marriage.

I am not required to serve my spouse. 1 Corinthians 7 .5 says, stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time.

This is intimacy. So that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self -control.

I'm not required to serve my spouse. I don't need to have an intimate relationship. And oftentimes, things that show up in the bedroom in a marriage have deeper things outside the bedroom that caused it.

Conflicts over sometimes stupid things, frankly. And this is the perfect opportunity for the devil to slip in there.

The devil will say, you know that person, your spouse, they're not giving you what you really want. They take you for granted.

They don't value you the way that they should value you. You don't have to value them. You don't have to serve them anymore either.

And boy, how many marriages have been destroyed because of a little lie that grows and grows and it snowballs with other lies attached to it.

Here's another one we tell about ourselves. I am better than I am. Acts 5 .1

-3. We talked about this story before about Ananias. When Peter confronts

Ananias about the sale of his land that he lied about, he says, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the

Holy Spirit and keep back some of the price of the land? Now, the answer to that question is because Ananias wanted people to think that he was a good person, that he was giving more of a percentage of his income than he actually was giving.

That's why. It was such a simple thing, really, at the end of the day. There's really no shame in him just giving a percentage and not all of it, but he wanted everyone to know that he was a really good person.

That's what happened. And he lied to himself about who he really was. How about lies about God?

We talk about lies about others, lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves. How about lies that we tell ourselves that Satan influences about God?

Here's one. Jesus is not God. 1 John 4 .1. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone into the world.

And by this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

Now this book of 1 John was written from Ephesus, right? We just read it from Ephesians about standing firm, putting on the armor.

This was written from Ephesus. So this instruction has in mind what's probably going on there locally as well, that there are people that are bringing in heresies, that are bringing in false teachings, that are denying who

Christ is, and we have plenty of people like that today. We have Mormons.

We have Jehovah's Witnesses. We have this cult that's down in New Windsor. I think it's called the

Church of God, but they say God is a woman. I don't know if you've ever run into them.

They're around, but mostly from Newburgh to Poughkeepsie, we sometimes run into them in the malls.

Frankly, this is modern Judaism, all right? They reject the Messiah. They reject that Christ is

God. This is so fundamental to just about every cult. That's one of the first things.

They get Christ wrong. They see Jesus as someone who is not actually God. So that's one of the lies that Satan tells.

He doesn't want Jesus getting any credit. He doesn't want you to think that Jesus is God. He wants you to think that Jesus is maybe just a good person, an example, a good teacher, but not the

Lord of the universe, not the person who will judge, not the person who's coming back with a double -edged sword. That's a scarier

Jesus. That's a Jesus that actually has authority. That's a Jesus who conquered death. That's a Jesus who can save you, and he doesn't want you to be saved.

How about this lie about God? God does not want your best. You are trying to cut out, make a living in this world, and God's just against you.

He doesn't want the best for you. Genesis 3 .1, this is how the serpent came to Eve.

He was crafty, it says, more crafty than any beast of the field. And he said to the woman, indeed, has

God said you shall not eat from the tree of the garden? Now, what does the snake go on and say?

He just knows that your eyes are going to be open. That's why he doesn't want you to do it. He wants you to miss out. This is a lie that I think can justify just about any sin.

Why is that rule there? They seem like they're having fun. I'm going to go with my wisdom and not

God's, which is against everything that scripture teaches. Proverbs opens that way.

Trust in the Lord, not in your own wisdom. But we want to trust in our own wisdom, and Satan encourages that kind of thinking.

Here's another lie. God's plans wrong. God's plans are wrong. They're going to produce a bad outcome.

Matthew 16, 21 through 23. Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised on the third day.

So what does Peter do? Peter took him aside. Never want to do that to the Lord. Hey, Lord, let me give you something you might not have thought of,

God. Let me tell you. So Peter does this, and he says, God forbid it. This shall never happen to you.

But Jesus turned to Peter, and he said, get behind me. Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests but man's.

This was Satan's goal from the beginning. From Matthew 2, Jesus is being tempted in the wilderness, and what does he tempt

Jesus with? If you just worship me right now, you can have all the kingdoms of the world. You don't have to go through the cross to get any of that.

You don't have to execute the plan God's told you to execute. All you have to do is this one simple thing here and now, no pain, no suffering, no drops of blood in the garden, no nails, no death.

You can have it. That was Satan's plan, and Satan works through Peter when he couldn't do it directly with Jesus.

Peter's trying to convince Jesus, not the cross. That's not a good idea, Jesus. You don't need to do that, and he did.

Jesus did need to do it, it required suffering, and Jesus is in the garden, and he's praying, and he says,

Lord, not your will but mine. If there's any other way, I mean, that's his human side coming out.

If there's any other way, I would love to do it, but I know there's not.

There's only one way that humankind can be reconciled to you, and that's they need a perfect lamb, a substitute for their sins, so if that's only me, there's no one else, and so he fulfilled his mission.

But Satan tried to get him off mission, and he tried to get him off mission through Peter, saying that God's plans were no good, so these are some lies about God, and lastly, some lies about himself that the devil tells.

One of the lies is that Satan will win. He tries to convince you, I'm actually going to come out on top, and this is what

Isaiah 14 relays, just in the description of Satan, that he's fallen from heaven,

O star of the morning, sun of the dawn. You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations, but you said in your heart,

I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. Nevertheless, you will be thrust down to Sheol, which is the place of the dead, to the recesses of the pit.

This is Satan's lie. Satan believes that lie about himself, and he wants you to believe that, that if you're on team

Satan, that you're actually going to come out on top. Another lie is that Satan himself is good, actually.

Second Corinthians 11, 14, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Remember a few years ago,

I went to that awareness shop in New Paltz. You ever seen it? With all the, I don't know what you would even call it, purple and flowery kind of insignia on it.

And there's a lot of incense and crystals and things like that in there. And there's a lot of demonic activity,

I'll put it that way. Some of the rooms in there for palm reading and stuff look like it's straight out of Harry Potter, like a movie set.

But I remember when I, and I should probably mention why I was in there. I wasn't in there to take part in any of the services or buy any of the things there.

I was there because a friend of mine wanted to go in and share the gospel. He said, well, if anyone needs it, they would need it.

Let's go. And then in the parking lot, he tried to chicken out, and I made him go in. So we went in, and remember the guy behind the counter, he started sweating drops of sweat, just pouring down his face.

And it's like we were having a conversation, even though we hadn't even shared words yet. Like he knew, we knew, and he was stuttering.

I asked him what he believed about the afterlife, and he just couldn't even form a sentence.

And he goes and he calls this witch, his words, not mine, from the back to come forward, and she's going to talk to us.

And you know what her main message was? Satan's a good guy. He's been misunderstood by the

Bible. And all of our festivals are really pagan in origin, which isn't true.

But because of that, we are the latecomers. Our faith is not real, and we have it all upside down.

Good is bad, bad is good. That was basically her message. And I remember thinking at the time, it's actually a little refreshing that I'm not dealing with someone who's like justifying, and we're not trying to, it's not like some heresy that you got to pinpoint.

She's just saying, you know what, God's bad, Satan's good. I'm like, yeah, that's about what

I thought you'd say. Of course, our message was the opposite. No, Satan's deceiving you.

Satan wants you to think that because he wants you to be lost in your sins. You need a savior.

Who's going to save you when justice comes? Satan's not going to do it. He's going to be in the same trap you're in. And there was really no answer to that, because in that world, there is no sin, which is kind of a frightening world to be in.

No sin, no standard, no justice. Evil is good. Good is evil. Satan is good.

That's one of the lies. How about this one? This is the last one. Satan is more powerful than he is. 2 Thessalonians 2, 9 through 10.

This is about the Antichrist coming. It says, that is, the one who is coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all the power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness of those who perish.

Well, we spent a fair amount of time talking about Satan, and we only have a few minutes. So I'm going to give you in our very short period of time here, what defeating

Satan looks like, because if we just left it here, it'd be pretty depressing, wouldn't it? But there is a way to defeat

Satan. Satan's an adversary, Peter says. He comes to us seeking someone to devour.

It even describes him in 1 Peter chapter 5 as a lion. And the whole, look at that, think about that word picture.

The whole picture here is of someone who is examining you, looking for the right angle, the right time, the right strategy to use, because if you're looking, if you're aware, he won't be able to do it.

He's got to get you when you're not paying attention. That's what a lion does.

And in military history, there are endless examples of this happening on the battlefield. One of the ones that I like the most is when the

Hessian soldiers on Christmas day are, they've just been drinking, and they're partying, and then

George Washington decides, you know what, we're going to attack him right then. He defeats them. That sounds like what's happened over the weekend in Venezuela.

They weren't ready. They weren't ready for Americans to come down there and capture their chief executive. And when you're not ready, the attacks can get you by surprise.

So the key is to be ready. That's really the main key here, is to be ready. So how can we be ready?

Well, I'm glad you asked. We can be ready through the armor of God. Ephesians 6 .10,

which we read at the beginning, says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. What Paul essentially teaches in verse 10 and 11 is that God makes his power available to us through the instrument of his spiritual armor.

And the armor is not like ordinary physical armor that sometimes can fail to protect you. This armor comes with a guarantee on it.

And the tag says, you will be able to stand firm. That's what it says. No ifs, ands, or buts.

You will. There's no way that it will fail you. I like the way

Young's Literal Translation puts it. Put on the whole armor of God for your being able to stand because it communicates there's an ongoing action.

You got to keep putting it on. You got to keep standing. You don't just do it once. You got to keep doing it. Every day you wake up.

There was someone I knew who did this. Every day they woke up. The first thing they did is they put on the armor of God. Now how did they do it?

I asked. Well, I go, I pray. I pray and I think through every individual piece of armor.

I say, Lord, I trust in you. Lord, I believe in your word.

Lord, I'm ready to share the gospel with any unbeliever out there. Lord, I submit to you and I have faith in you.

Every individual piece, every morning. That's how they started their day. Not a bad idea, is it? Says to put it on.

How do you put it on? Well, prayer. Put on clothes. This is what's called an aorist imperative in the

Greek, which really just means Paul wanted them to start doing something that they were not in the process of doing.

He's saying, you're not doing it. Start doing it. And if you're not doing it, you need to start doing it.

Put on the armor of God. The word be strong means to be strengthened within.

That is an internal strength that God makes available to us. And the strength is represented by these different pieces of armor, but it is accompanied with all prayer and petition.

So here's the real, where rubber meets the road, defeating Satan activity.

It's on your knees. It's where you fight Satan. That's where Jesus fought Satan.

Simon, Simon, Luke 22. Behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. Now, what does

Jesus say next? He's God. Jesus, he could say, oh, I told him no. What does Jesus say?

But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

Jesus prayed for Simon Peter. That's how we have to pray for our friends and for ourselves.

Satan's out there. We defeat Satan. That's it. There's, if you really want to understand all the pieces of the armor, which we have no time to go into, and I didn't really intend to get into, we could do a whole nother sermon on it, but these are all pieces of virtue.

These are all things God cultivates in us as we walk with him. But they are all expansions on really what

James 4, 7 says, which is submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. Submitting to God is putting on the armor.

Having your loins girded with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, shod your feet with preparation of the gospel of peace, taking up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Are you submitting to God's will? Are you having faith in God's will? It happens through prayer.

And are you in his words? Trust and obey. There's no other way. So I know that's probably something that all of you, you're saying to yourself, well,

I knew that. That's just walking with Christ, and you would be right, but we need to be reminded of that.

It is just walking with Christ. I don't know how many of you have New Year's resolutions, but my resolution every year is basically the same.

I want to walk with him more and closer than I did last year. I got up this morning early.

I prayed for like 45 minutes, and it's already changed my whole day. It's amazing how that works. I'm not going to be able to have 45 minutes every morning, but this morning

I did. It might be because of my cat. I'm not sure why I got up at 5 .30, but I thought, well,

I will start off the day on my knees. And you know what? I'm not saying it works this way every single time, but you develop a pattern like this, you're not going to be open to the temptations of the devil.

I don't want to speak harshly to my wife. I'm not going to look at things that tempt me.

I'm not going to participate in things that I know will put me in a bad place.

I'm not going to use language that isn't something God would want me to say.

Whatever the issue is, you're not going to do it when you're walking with the Lord every day. It's something that you have to repeat, something that you do all the time.

You put on the armor of God, and the result is you're able to stand against the devil, and you're not afraid of him.

You're not afraid of him because, as the song that Aaron so wisely picked says, we have the