Tactics of the Accuser (Part 2) | Theocast

Hi, this is Jon, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are picking up our conversation from last week on the tactics of the adversary.

This week, we're going to be specifically talking about two areas, one, temptation and how he uses our flesh against us, and also how he distracts us from our mission, something that might be good and even noble, how it becomes our aim and our focus, and now we are not pursuing that which we have been called to pursue, which is the kingdom of God.

It's a helpful conversation, we hope you enjoy. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, plus we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to definitely find your rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed confessional and pastoral perspective. You want to know what we're trying to do around here?

Well, we're trying to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom. That's definitely what we're doing. Tell them what we're doing,

Jon. That's what we're doing. What we're trying to do. Hey, this episode is coming out on a Wednesday, and let's see if my timing's right, this means we'd be landing in San Diego the next day.

Yeah, tomorrow. But we're recording this in November. So Lord willing, this episode never airs and we are all glorifying our

King in his presence. But if that's not the case, we hope this is encouraging you as a pilgrim and as a sojourner in God's kingdom.

Today, your hosts are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. I am pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

We're doing a double dip today, which means my tongue is all tied. I probably should have refilled my water. A lot of good things.

We're thankful that you're here and we have a lot to say. So we're going to jump into it. Today is part two of a particular subject that I am and Justin are very passionate about.

In today's episode, probably as to quote my dear friend, Mike Gamondroth, might be a little picey.

So picey, we'll see. Justin, I know I'm all jacked up. I was a little, well, you clearly are jacked up on something.

I was enjoying your, you want to know what we're trying to do around here? And anyway, because I immediately am like, what are you trying to say?

You know, that's where I go. All right. So let's talk about our show today. This is a part two of two.

So yeah, double dipping. We already recorded part one. We're flying hot, coming in hot for part two.

And so last week, tactics of the accuser, part one. We consider the reality of spiritual warfare.

The fact that the scripture is plain, that we do not wage war against flesh and blood, and that Satan is real and the forces of darkness are real.

And we need to pay attention to these things. We're called to be sober minded as the saints. And none of this is contradictory to the fact that we've been given rest and eternal security in the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so we talked about that and acknowledge that. And then we got into perhaps the first great tactic of Satan.

The title bears this out. He is the great accuser of the brethren. And so he accuses us. What does that mean?

He fires these darts at us to cause us to question our standing in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We question whether or not God's our Father. We question whether or not Christ is our Savior. We question whether or not there really is mercy and grace for sinners and wretches such as we are.

There may be mercy and grace for others, but is there really mercy and grace for me? I haven't done enough.

My affections aren't where they should be. The list goes on and on. And Satan accuses us. And often that results in despair or it results in people just ready to punt the thing.

I'm hitting the button, and we're done. And so we talked about all of that and how Satan seeks to rob us of peace and rest and joy and hope and all of the things that not only give us that assurance in the

Lord Jesus, but help us to be more effective in the cause of the kingdom of Christ. So that was last week.

And we also were very clear. This is why we get geeked up about the clarity of the gospel. And this is why we get upset when clutter is thrown on top of the gospel and Christ is obscured for the saints.

Today, in part two of the conversation, we're moving on to consider some other things that are also very important.

We'll spend a little bit of time talking about the fact that Satan tempts us. He is the great tempter. God tempts no one.

And there's the corruption of our flesh. We don't really need help sinning, but Satan does tempt us. And then we're going to spend the bulk of our time talking about the ways that we're distracted.

Because this is critical, John. You and I were before in our pre -recording conversation, we were talking about a number of these things.

And this distraction comes in multiple forms, and we're going to get into that later on in the show. We hope to convey again how

Satan, in doing all of these things, pulls us away from the purpose to which we've been called.

And he pulls us away from the mission of the kingdom of Christ, because we're just mired in all of this stuff.

We're distracted. We're tempted. We're accused. We're struggling. We're doubting.

We've got no peace. All of these things. This is the tactic of the enemy. He's already lost. The war is over.

But he is a wounded animal, and he is doing what he can do to bring reproach upon the cause of Christ.

So let's touch on temptation really quickly, John. Immediately, of course, we go to James chapter one. God tempts no one.

Let no one say when he is tempted that God is doing this, because God himself can't be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

Where does this really come from? It comes from your corrupt desires. It comes from the things that are already within you.

On the one hand, we don't need help sinning. Yet at the same time, the biblical witness, does it not, bears out the fact that Satan does tempt us.

This begins in the garden with Adam and Eve. Satan manifests himself as a serpent and tempts

Adam and Eve to transgress the law of God, to break the covenant that God has made with Adam, most pointedly.

Then we see this a number of other times. Job chapter one and two, we see how

Satan is going to assault a child of God so that Job might curse God and die effectively.

We know how that went and how the Lord kept Job, and he's faithful to keep us. But then there's a lot of ink spilled in the

New Testament, too, about how Satan seeks to devour us. A lot of that we did talk about last week. He attacks and assaults our faith and our standing in the

Lord Jesus, but he does tempt us unto sin and to do things that are wicked.

To do things that obviously can bring reproach upon the cause of Christ, but then also do things that wrecks our lives.

Thoughts on that? Justin Perdue There's a lot of titles given to the evil one.

Devil is actually one of his titles. It's not his actual name. That's why it's in lowercase. Often the devil is a title.

Jon Moffitt And even Satan, the name means adversary. Justin Perdue Our adversary, the Satan, our adversary.

Think about that for a moment. What's an adversary? Someone who opposes you. It goes against you. Jon Moffitt He wants your bad, not your good.

Justin Perdue That's right. I just got done preaching through Ezekiel, and I talked about the fall of the king of Sidon.

It's really a description of this battle between Satan and, at that time, an angel.

And you have to understand that he hates God. He hates everything about him, and therefore he hates the children of God.

Jon Moffitt And he hates the church. Justin Perdue That's right. Because there's this warfare mentality from the other episode,

Satan's going to use our weaknesses against us. James just pointed out a weakness that we have.

Our flesh is frail. Jon Moffitt That's a good way to put it. Justin Perdue So he's going to throw out every kind of trap, and every kind of distraction, and anything that can wound our faith.

Because our faith is what keeps us strong in Christ, right? And how is it that our faith grows?

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Well, if you're not hearing God's Word and you're hearing the lies of Satan, what happens to our faith?

Our faith diminishes. It becomes weak. It becomes wounded. And so I've been trying to teach my children this.

Listen, guys, if you're not listening to Christ, it doesn't mean the volume of life shuts off.

If you're not focusing and hearing of Christ, the accuser has got the volume blasting at you.

Jon Moffitt Yeah, because he doesn't relent. Justin Perdue No, he does not relent. And so this is why there's a sober -mindedness keeping our thoughts captive.

There's almost this sense of spiritual hands over the ears going, I cannot listen to the lies of Satan because he wants my eyes.

He wants my heart. He wants my mouth. And I can't let him have them because they are dedicated to the

King for his glory and his advancement. Jon Moffitt The hope in this is that God will keep us.

That is certain. We're promised this. The confession—we, again, use the Second London Confession, but the

Westminster and others are going to—in Heidelberg, all of it's going to use similar language about these realities.

I mean, the Lord will keep us unto salvation, and Satan will not be able to rip us and rend us from God's hands.

That's true, and that's our hope and confidence. But the confession is also very clear that when we fall into sin, it can be a result of a number of things.

It can be our own negligence. I mean, that's certainly true, and the neglect in particular of the means the Lord has given us.

But then it can be due to the temptation of Satan. The confession uses that language explicitly, and then it talks about how that brings all kinds of bad things—devastation—into our lives.

Reproach upon the cause of Christ robs us of joy and peace and assurance. Even the felt presence of God, in terms of His benevolent presence, oftentimes that's affected when we are mired in sin.

So, nothing good comes when we encounter temptation, and there's the corruption of our flesh, and all of these things give birth to sin.

It leads nowhere good, and it's detrimental to us. The hope, again, is that the

Lord, even in all of that, just like He was in Job's life through the work of the enemy there, the

Lord has good and holy purposes. We can trust that, and at the same time, we live a vigilant life, and we live with sober mindedness, realizing that the enemy is always out to assault us, and he is always out to tempt us, that we might stumble in ways that will harm us and harm those who love us and depend upon us, and potentially bring reproach upon the cause of Christ in the church.

So, this is a serious thing that we need to be mindful of. None of that is contradictory to the fact that we have rest and peace forever in the

Lord Jesus, but this is something that we need to live mindful of. Can I just really quote? This is

Romans, where he says, For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who are the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoptions of sons, the redemptions of our bodies.

That's really what James is getting at, is that your bodies have not been redeemed yet, and Satan knows that, and he's going to come after it to affect your mind, which is going to affect your faith.

And so, be aware of that tactic. Justin Perdue And the ultimate hope here is that Jesus was tempted in every way, just like we are, yet He did not sin.

And so, the first Adam failed, the second Adam, who is Jesus, succeeded most obviously in his triumph over Satan in the wilderness in Matthew 4 and Luke 4.

He is our hope and confidence in the midst of temptation. Now, we pivot. Let's talk about the ways that the accuser,

Satan, distracts us, John. And this is huge. This is something that I think everybody's going to hear this and be like, yeah, this happens in my life.

Because it happens in mine, it happens in yours. None of us are immune to these things. There's really two big streams, two big prongs to this conversation that we want to talk about.

Do you want to start? I think we're going to start with the self -righteousness, piousness kind of stuff.

Let's start there. So, think about what the message of the kingdom is.

So, we are to be seeking first the kingdom of God and proclaiming that message.

And that message is the opposite of everything of this world.

This world promotes self, and the gospel frees us from self.

This world promotes power, and the gospel frees us from the self -power.

Justin Perdue The world promotes power, and the gospel says, blessed are those who are poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness that they don't have, by the way. Blessed are those who effectively are meek and receive from the

Lord everything they need. So, what's so freeing about the good news of the kingdom is that we get to proclaim,

He was tempted in all ways and did not fail. He took on our sin. It's Him, Him, Him, Him, Him.

We're pointing to His righteousness. We're pointing to His obedience. We're pointing to His power. And what self -righteousness does is the exact opposite of that.

It's pointing to our abilities and our capacities and what we have done. Justin, what we end up doing is taking the weapons of warfare and we turn it on each other.

It's so insane. We're firing at each other. Justin Perdue It's like we're all being wounded or killed by friendly fire.

Jimmy Buehler Friendly fire. It's like we're here to build each other up into Christ's righteousness so that others might discover

Christ's righteousness. Instead, we are looking to our own righteousness and then firing at other people saying,

See, you don't have what I have. If you had what I had, you should question yourself because you don't have what

I have. This is insanity. I think it's a brilliant tactic of Satan to allow us to become boastful and prideful in who we are.

It completely detracts from the kingdom of light. Justin Perdue Hearty amen to everything you just said.

I agree. The analogy of friendly fire is helpful here. This stuff is a distraction.

What we're trying to highlight right now is more obviously spiritual stuff. This is the very pious sounding stuff that is peddled in the church perpetually, it seems.

The emphasis is on you. The emphasis is no longer third person.

It's first person. It's I or it's second person. You need to do this. Again, we believe in the three uses of the law.

We're all for imperatives here, but what we're discussing right now is when the tone, the tenor, the warp, and the woof, the tincture, all those old words, the emphasis is on you or is on us, our performance, our discipline, our diligence, our effort as though that is what will win the day.

Those among us who are disciplined and diligent are of a higher class and those among us who are not are of a lower class.

And we end up comparing righteousness left and right. We're measuring things like we would a kid's height against the wall.

It's all of this. We're like peacocks. We walk around just wanting to show off how righteous we are and how well we're doing.

We got our merit badges out. We got the sashes on. We're like little boy scouts, little girl scouts running around and we got a merit badge for this and a merit badge for this and all of it's very pious sounding stuff.

But again, our eyes as a church are not on Jesus. My eyes are on me and my performance, and then

I am going to bludgeon if I'm a really disciplined, achiever person. Full disclosure,

I am one. I'm a disciplined guy, and I'm an achiever, and I am prone in my flesh to look down on other people and to think that they're not doing it as well as I am.

I'm just going to out -discipline and out -tough everybody. I'm not alone in this.

If you're that kind of person, it's like, all right, give me the disciplines and I will crush these things to the detriment of my wife and my kids, and I will do it, and then

I will look down on everybody else who's not, and I probably deep down am going to be thinking, if you were more like me, you'd be doing better.

That's what we do. Or you're the person who just really is not disciplined at all, and you either despair all the time, or you become cynical, and you become jaded, and you only can think of any imperative or the law as a terrible thing, and then you just plug your ears and run off screaming as far away from the law and any kind of imperative as you can, and you're making opposite errors.

This is bad, man. I know I kind of went in on my own personal view, but what's interesting is that I say all that about myself, but then

I am very prone to doubt and to struggle with assurance because in my mind, if I'm not crushing it,

I should be afraid. If I'm not doing well, I should be afraid. It's just so toxic to us as individuals and then what we do to other people with it.

Justin Perdue Self -righteousness is demonic. It just is.

Think about where it comes from. It is taking your eyes off of the power of Christ and putting it in the power of the flesh.

That's just what it is. I find it nauseating, spiritually wanting to vomit.

When I hear pastors get up and just berail people from a self -righteous position, I agree with you.

Think about it. When I get behind this microphone, Justin, I'll just say this right now. When I get behind the microphone, in many ways,

I'm trying to encourage the warriors out in the field. Like, hey, listen, you're getting beat up. You're getting shot at.

You're getting shot at by friendly fire. Let me remind you why you're in the trenches. This is us heralding from the radio station over here.

You're not crazy. Yes, this is hard. And let me remind you what you're fighting for because you're not fighting for your own salvation.

Okay? You're not fighting for your position. That's right. You're not fighting for your rank. Your rank is child of God. Can't get any better, right?

Brother of Christ. You're not fighting for your life. It's not one of those where you're being told, like, go out there and fight like crazy so that you'll finally be saved.

We are on a rescue mission, okay? But unfortunately, because we are trying to rescue somebody from the enemy that doesn't want to let them go, we're going to be shot at.

And it's a great tactic to get the enemy to shoot at each other. Yeah, man.

Can't let that happen. Yeah, a few other comments before we pivot to maybe the second part of this distraction piece.

You know, people think that nominalism, Christianity in name only, or even like carnal

Christianity to use that term, people think that that's the epidemic that plagues the church. I completely disagree.

The epidemic that has plagued the church throughout the history of the church is effectively, it's this, we need to cooperate with God piece.

It's God in us. What does that manifest itself as? Self -righteousness, right?

Or effectively moralism. Those things, I mean, read the New Testament. It's all over it in terms of how we are right with the

Lord. Those are the epidemics that have always existed. And nominalism and easy -believism and all these things are bad fruits of revivalism, which is also whack.

And we don't need to make errors in trying to correct that one. That's another pod for another day.

In saying what I did a minute ago, I want to clarify some stuff too for those out there who are listening, who may resonate with some of the things

I've said or John has said, even personally. When you think about a man like Martin Luther, Martin Luther despaired of his righteousness before God.

And Martin Luther at the same time was as disciplined as anyone. I mean, he was a monk of monks. And so I know for myself personally,

I resonate a lot with Luther because of this, because I see in him someone who's kind of like me. A little

OCD and really disciplined, trying to do it all right and has to be done right.

It's like, this is not good enough. It's not enough. It falls short of the bar.

And for everyone listening out there who is like that, who might be able to crush disciplines if you're told that that's what you need to do to be right with God, let that nonsense go because you will never be disciplined enough to merit anything from the

Lord. And so what we need is to have our minds and hearts reoriented that Christ is our righteousness, our whole and only righteousness today and forever.

And now everything that we do, we do in freedom, and we do it out of love and joy and gratitude.

We're not doing it to earn something in God's bank. We're not doing it so that he would finally approve of us, and we're not doing it so that we can measure ourselves against our brethren.

Let's just let it go. And Satan, he doubles down. He uses our constitutions against us in these ways.

And then for people that maybe have a different constitution, he comes at it at a different angle. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called

Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

slash primer. This is brilliant.

I love this. This is from 2 Peter, chapter 2. I've been watching this British show, so everything's brilliant.

Brilliant, dude. 2 Timothy, not Peter, 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 1,

Paul says, You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Can we just stop and just say, praise

God, amen? Yes. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Can we stop and just say, amen? Then, I love this. This is kind of the distraction section.

Paul gets a warning to Timothy and says, hey, bud, pay attention. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No soldier gets entangled in civil pursuits. Or actually, re -read that. That's incorrect.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

Whoa. Can we just say distraction is another way of saying getting entangled?

What does entangled mean? It means that it's restricting you. It's withholding you.

It's holding you back. Can we go to Hebrews, chapter 12, right? Laying aside the weights. That's literally where I was going.

Go ahead. No, you're good. Laying aside the weights that entangle us and hold us down.

I would recommend a brilliant podcast that came out this week. Michael Horton was interviewing

David Van Drunen. Towards the end of the podcast, he was talking about how we as believers definitely are involved in the love of neighbor.

That includes civil pursuits and things like politics. But there's a difference between being involved and entangled.

That's what Paul is talking about. You as a soldier of Christ—that's not my words.

Those are his words. You as a soldier of Christ who has been enlisted by Christ, don't get entangled by other pursuits, distracted by what you should be focused on.

What did our king say?

Seek first the kingdom of God. When he said, seek first the kingdom of God, if you back up to Matthew 6, he says in the prayer,

Lord, please lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one. What he means by that is sometimes people get confused and compare that with James 1.

What Jesus is saying is this, as you guide and direct me,

I'm asking you, I'm requesting of you to guide and direct me away from things that might be good, that are good, that aren't sinful, but they could become useful for Satan.

Therefore, deliver me from him, that he may not take what is good and entangle me in them to keep me from what

I should be doing, which is pursuing the kingdom. Justin Perdue has a number of thoughts on the two kingdoms piece.

It's hard not to have this conversation about this kind of distraction without talking as two kingdoms guys, which we are.

A reformed doctrine of two kingdoms, you could look into that more. We've done some podcasts in the past. We had

David Vendronen on our show as well to talk about it. We do think it's a helpful way to think about life in the common kingdom.

I'm just going to say this now and get it out of the way. It is good for believers to be involved for love of neighbor in the political realm, in the social square, in business, and all kinds of vocation.

So, that is not debatable, but like you said, there's a difference in being involved there for my neighbor's good and being entangled or distracted by those things.

The common kingdom stuff—life, property, politics, business, society—these things are not inherently evil.

They're not inherently immoral, but they can become very much a detriment to us in our

Christian lives if we obsess over them. I think it's very clear. I'm happy for you to jump in here.

Justin Perdue wanted to give an illustration. I'll hand it back over to you. We had talked about it before, but my wife and I prayed last night.

We were trying to sell our house, and both of us were feeling this anxiety. We both just said, Lord, lead us not into temptation.

If this is not for your honor and glory and it's going to distract us, then we're going to trust you with that. I think that's what he means.

Justin Perdue is a guy who had really tight living circumstances for years. We worked to build a home.

The pandemic happened. All these things, even since we moved in, whether it's getting the house ready or the landscaping or whatever it is, there's all this stuff, even at the level of your own household, that can be a distraction.

Let's just be real. These things aren't bad. They're good, but they can distract us. How much more so—listen to podcasts, read books—it's evident that Christians in the states, in particular, that's our most immediate context, and in the

West in general, have hitched their wagon to social and political causes for centuries.

The church as an institution has done this, and that is not of the Lord. We'll just go ahead and say that.

It is the work of the evil one that the church would distract itself willingly with social and political action.

This has been rampant in our day. It's rampant right now. Look at the divided nation in which we live.

We can all agree on that. I was having a conversation. I'm happy to say this.

Al Mohler's The Briefing is a podcast that many people listen to. Today, the day on which we're recording, there was a podcast released because the

Senate has now passed a bill that is making same -sex marriage the law of the land.

Well, that's a big deal. Nobody's saying it isn't a big deal. It's a six. Of course.

Myself and McKenzie, the guy on staff here with me at CBC, we were talking about it. We want to think well about this stuff, and this is an interjection, but I think it will serve the purpose.

We want to think well about this stuff because this is bad for society and it's bad for human flourishing, but the arguments that we make against same -sex marriage in the public and political square need to be grounded in natural law and the law of creation.

Whereas in the church, it's different. We're all about the redemptive kingdom, and we speak about the scriptures redemptively in the church because the mission of the church needs to be maintained and kept pure.

Where in the church, we are preaching Christ, the word of Christ, and we're administering the sacraments.

We're doing all of this for the salvation of God's elect, and that's the mission, narrowly defined but rightly defined.

It's very clear, John, that all of these common kingdom considerations about morality or politics or the society or the culture or just life in this world can distract us from what we've been called to do, which is to love neighbor and herald the message of Christ for the salvation of God's people and to rescue.

Justin Perdue We're not going to get into this. Obviously, we're at the end of the podcast, and I'm going to mention a little bit of this but we're going to do an episode later this year on this.

But Justin, I just want to say this right now. I think we get distracted by things that are not bad, and I think things that are good because we're not convinced that the purpose of our life and what

God has called us to is a good calling, is sufficient, is worth dying for. That is an amazing tactic of Satan.

It's brilliant. It's so good. It's brilliant. We live by sight, not faith.

This has been on my mind for the last nine months, probably. I find myself praying pretty often, like,

Lord, may I live by faith and not sight, because we all are prone to live by what we see.

It's supernatural to hope for things unseen, and we don't live in light of the plan of God from all of eternity in the ways that we should.

We don't live in light of the book of Revelation, the end of the story, the fact that this is where we're going, and that the new heavens and the new earth await, and we're going to be with Christ and with each other.

We don't think about that. That's not on our minds. I've said this before. Again, we're having a conversation.

Let's do this. Dead giveaway that the church is earthbound in the way that we think about the mission is the fact that there have been so few hymns written in the last 50 years about eternity.

There just aren't. There aren't good hymns written in the 20th century, by and large. Now, there have been some lately.

Praise the Lord. I'm thinking about some of the stuff from City of Light or Matt Boswell and Matt Papa. Some of these folks have written some good things.

I can only imagine, brother. I put that in the category of I'll fly away. You know,

I mean, anyway, but the point is made that the church is very earthbound in her thinking because we've been duped by the evil one into thinking that if we can transform

America, that's what the church is here for. Can I just keep going? Yeah, and I've got one closing thought when you're done.

So again, I'm not going to convey any details here, but some members of our church have family members who go to a church in a different city.

And this church, a large church in a big

American city, a conservative church, three months ago, so leading into election season 2022, the lead pastor is doing a sermon series for months.

I'm going to give it away if I say the name of the series, so I'm going to try not to do that. But literally, for months, all the dude is preaching about is conservative, populist political ideology from the pulpit.

He wants to prepare his congregation for the voting booth so that the church can be the church and America can be

America again, basically. Dear God, help us. It's like, Lord, have mercy on us. I mean, but this is the kind of thing that happens all over the place in American evangelicalism.

Thank God more and more people's eyes have been opened to this and see how wicked this is. That's maybe an extreme example, but it is an example of what we're talking about.

That is the work of Satan, not God, to distract the church into thinking that the church's mission is to somehow transform the political situation in the

United States. Lord, help us. Last comment for real, and I'll throw it over to you and you can close us out.

Mike Horton's book, Christless Christianity, I would commend it to people. Mike has a chapter in there where he begins, and obviously this shouldn't be taken to its logical end, but I think he makes a really provocative point.

He asks the question, what would the world look like if Satan ruled it, like just ruled it, ruled it, without the restraining grace of God and the work of the

Lord, et cetera? He says most people would respond by that and think that the world would be characterized by just every form of debauchery to the nth degree.

He offers this suggestion, and I think he's onto something. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

He's the great deceiver. What would Satan rather have than a culture and a society full of people who are morally upright, who understand themselves to be good, yet see no need of the

Lord Jesus Christ? Again, a provocative example. We don't want to nail it to the wall, but it is thought -provoking in that if we are distracted by Satan in the church toward things that we put all kinds of effort and energy and time and all this into, and we are thinking all the while about those things, and if we can just do this and accomplish this objective, then we're good.

We're doing something. All the while, our gaze has been taken away from the Lord Jesus Christ and our desperate need of him.

That's not the work of the Lord. Justin Perdue I'll close with this thought. Think about what

Jesus says on the mount in Matthew 6. He says, this is how you're to pray daily.

Think about what prayer does. Prayer is a calling to remembrance and dependence upon the Father. Justin Perdue And to inform our wills to his.

Jon Moffitt The way I like the word is that it's the washing of his will over our will. This is what he says.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Make your name the greatest thing in our life. Your kingdom come.

Justin Perdue Where is he focusing us? Your will be done. How is your will done? In heaven, on earth, as it is in the earth. By loving the

Father and loving neighbor. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into... Think about what he's telling you to do every single day. Take your eyes off of this world and put your eyes on the next.

And then he says, while you live in this world, I'm going to forgive you of your debts. I'm going to feed you, and I'm going to make sure

I protect you from being led into the traps of Satan. Deliver us from the evil one. So I just want to encourage all of us to be reminded that don't, as Paul told

Timothy, don't be entangled with the civilian pursuits. This is not what we hear.

I'll give one last illustration. I love how he says you're a good soldier, civilian pursuits.

This is like when you're at war, you're not there to go find a lady and marry her, sit down and build a family and build a house.

That's what he's talking about. It's not a bad thing, but that's not what we're here for. We're not creating roots here.

Justin Perdue Even when you're overseas at war, you can't be entangled with things back home, because you're not going to be an effective soldier.

Jon Moffitt That's right. So this is all kind of introductory work for some things that we're going to be working on this year.

We're kind of expanding some of the topics that we've covered to help you understand what do resting

Christians focus their attention on. So we're clarifying the gospel and reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom.

This is a great introduction for this year. Thank you guys so much. I have a ton of more thoughts. So does

Justin. And we do a second podcast every week called Simple Reformanda, Always Reforming. It's a part of a ministry that we have started called

Simple Reformanda. And it's a way for you to support what we're doing on a monthly basis. And part of this community that we've built is not only a podcast, but we have an app.

And inside that app, there's all kinds of questions and communication. Justin and I try our best to hop in there every week and interact with everybody, post some additional thoughts.

We do live events once in a while. We did one earlier this year when we were in Asheville together. We did a

Q &A and some podcasts about concerns that we have. We're probably going to do something definitely in January when we're together in California.

So stay tuned for a live SR app event there as well. So you can go to theocast .org to learn more about that.

And if you haven't been encouraged daily by our new podcast called Everyday Grace, you can go to every podcast app that you can find or YouTube and subscribe there.

And that's just a simple way to get two to three minutes every single day of being reminded of the gospel from my sermons and Justin's.