Book of Esther - Part 20

Park Meadows Church

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Good morning, everyone. Good to see all of you. All right, so Esther chapter 7.

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Turn with me, if you would, to verse 5 and we won't take a lot of time to review. I know some of you haven't been going with us.

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We're going verse by verse through the book of Esther. And so you've missed quite a lot if you haven't been here.

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But we're at a chapter 7 now and just to sort of frame this passage that we're in today,

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Esther was raised by a godly man named

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Mordecai. Her parents died when she was maybe an infant, possibly, and this man had raised her.

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And he was Jewish, Esther is Jewish, but the entire nation of Israel had been taken captive by the

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Babylonians and they were slaves, basically. And what happened, though, is that the king

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Ahasuerus, which if you look at secular history, he's known as Artaxerxes, one of the most powerful kings in world history, was the king at this time, and he literally controlled the entire known world of his day.

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And his wife, the queen, Vashti, got cross -grained with him. So he eliminated her.

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Now, fortunately for her, he didn't take her life, which he could have, but he banished her and he sent the men out all over the kingdom to find the next queen.

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And guess who it was? It became Esther, this young Jewish girl. She was chosen over all of the most beautiful virgins of the land.

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She was chosen. She was chosen for many reasons. She was beautiful, but she had been raised in such a way that she was witty, and she was bright, and she understood the things of the world so that she could converse with this king, and she was interesting to him.

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There were many reasons that he chose her to be his queen. And so she finds herself the queen of the most, of the entire world, actually, at that time, and living in the palace.

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And then, while this was going, there was an evil man named Haman, who is of the lineage of Esau, which, biblically, that pictures the flesh in the bad sense of that.

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You know, we have three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Well, in the sense of that, like your flesh being your own enemy, that line of Esau pictures that physically.

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It's a physical, that spiritual thing in the Bible. And so this man, Haman, they had always hated the

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Jews, and the king had passed a rule where everyone would have to bow down when Haman walked by, because Haman rose to the highest level.

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He was like the king's right -hand man. And the king passed a law that when Haman walks by, you've got to bow down and worship him.

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Well, Mordecai wouldn't do it, being a Jew, because they had been taught not to worship anything or anyone other than the one true

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God. So he refused to do it. It made this man, Haman, so angry that he decided not only to kill

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Mordecai, but to kill every Jew in the entire nation, which was basically in the world. And he plotted, and he made a plan, and he brought it forth to the king, and he had this sense about him where he was such a great deceiver and such a likable person that he talked the king into doing it.

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And the king just passed law, said, you can do it. Then he also talked the king into financing it. So the king said, okay, here's the money.

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You can pay people to kill the Jews. It's done. Now let's go have a feast. And so Haman, as you study this, you find that these people are picturing something spiritual.

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You know, the New Testament tells us that the Old Testament is given to us for end samples.

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Do you know what that old English word means? It means that every story that you read in the Old Testament has a spiritual component that it's teaching.

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It's an example, an end sample, an example. Or we call it a type. A type and then the antitype is the spiritual part.

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So you can look at these Old Testament stories and they are like object lessons that teach us spiritual things.

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And what we find if we look at this is that this king Ahasuerus, or Artaxerxes, is a picture, at least in this story, he is a picture of the bridegroom, which is

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Jesus. And the queen Esther is a picture of the church, which is the bride of Christ.

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And Haman, guess who he pictures in this story? The devil. And he's a very good picture, by the way.

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We can learn a lot about Satan by studying this man and the way he works, the way he speaks, the way he conducts himself, and his goals and motives.

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So that's the background. Now let's start with about verse 5 here in chapter 7. Then the king

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Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do this?

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Esther had brought to the king's attention finally, after some time, and according to her own plan, she brought to the king's attention that there was someone in his kingdom who had plotted to kill her.

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The man who raised her, we'll just call him her father, and her, and all the Jews. And the king was furious about this.

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He said, what kind of man would do this? What is his name and where is he? And we talked about this last

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Sunday, that when you get under attack from Satan, or the world system, or even your flesh, and you're under attack, you can go to the

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Lord Jesus in prayer, and you can just tell him the same request that she made to her king.

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She said, the only request I have is my life, that you save my life, and that of my family.

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And immediately the king answered and said to her, who is this person, and where is he?

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And so when you get in trouble, and you have an enemy attacking you and your family, all you have to do is go to your king,

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Jesus Christ, and pray, and say what the problem is, and guess what his answer is.

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It is typified right here. It's as if the Lord Jesus steps back and says, tell me the name and where he is, and I'll take care of it.

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Do you get that? Do you see the power in that? Who is he, and where is he? And all she had to do was tell the king, and the king took care of it.

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So she does. In verse 6, Esther said, the adversary, now we're going to take off on that word, and do a little bit of study on who the adversary really is, because this man is a type, or a picture of Satan, who is called our adversary in the scripture.

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She says, the adversary, the enemy, is this wicked Haman, and she points at him, because she had arranged for him to be in the room at this banquet.

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It was only three of them, her, the king, and him, and she points him out right there. The king at that time got so angry, he stood up and went outside for a while,

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I guess to cool off, but when he came back, he never had cooled off, and he accused this man, and his servants immediately put a hood over his head, took him out, and hanged him on the very gallows he had built to hang

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Mordecai. Now there's a picture in that as well, because Satan actually erected this thing called the cross.

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He brought this into the minds of the Romans several hundred years before Jesus was ever born, this idea of crucifying people on a cross, and Satan had devised this whole plan in his mind to attempt to destroy this one called the

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Messiah that he knew was coming. And on the day when Jesus was placed on that cross, and they drove those nails into his hands, and into his feet,

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I'm sure Satan thought he had won this battle. But a three short days later, when

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Jesus Christ came out of that grave, Satan trembled, because he then realized that the very gallows he had built to destroy the

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Savior destroyed himself. And that is all pictured in this story, because it ends up here as we study this, it says the adversary, this wicked one

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Haman, and Haman was afraid, and so forth, and the king in verse 7 arose, and he went out in anger as we discussed, but look down at verse 10, how this ends, this little passage ends.

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So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.

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So, so much is pictured here about our enemy, the devil.

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Last week we read just a little bit out of the book of Isaiah, I believe in chapter 14, where it spoke of the very most ancient mention of Lucifer.

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Talked about that a little bit, so you may remember that from last time. We may review a little bit of that today. But in 1

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Peter chapter 5, verse 8, it calls this one, Lucifer, the devil, it calls him the adversary.

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It says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

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So he's known as the adversary. And it's interesting because in the

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Greek language, this word for adversary comes from two little Greek words, anti, which means against, to be against something, and then the word decay, which means right.

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So the word adversary means to be against that which is right. And that is the name that's given to Satan here in 1

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Peter chapter 5. So, I want to just do a little study here today, this morning, based on this type, or this typical picture of Satan that we see in Haman.

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Now remember, he had already convinced the king that it would be in the king's benefit to destroy every

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Jew in his nation, to kill every Jewish person in the nation. He said, because of this, he said, look, they're scattered everywhere.

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They're just commingled within your nation. And he said, but their laws are strange and different than our laws, and they don't keep your laws.

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None of that was true. They did keep the king's laws, and their laws are not strange and different.

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Their law comes from the scripture. It was a lie and a deceit, but the king believed it.

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And that tells us so much about how Satan works and how his people work. So, let's talk about, you know how you can go through the

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Bible and study the names of God and learn a lot about God? Have you ever noticed that? Like Elohim and Jehovah and all the different names.

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Even Jesus has, I don't know how many, maybe more than 30 different names in the Bible. You can study each of those names and learn a little bit about a different characteristic of God.

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Did you know you can do the same thing with Satan? So, let's take a look at this. The first name that he has is the adversary.

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We find that in 1 Peter chapter 5, 8. And it instructs us to be sober and vigilant because we have such a thing as an adversary.

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Now, you know the world today doesn't want to believe that. When I was growing up, you know, it was really different than it is now because I was born in a different dispensation.

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I'm that old now. But when I was growing up, you didn't see things like a lot of demonism and so forth in this nation.

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In fact, to talk about it, you talk about stuff going on in Africa usually is what you would say. Oh, yeah, you know, we hear missionaries come back from India and Africa and talk about demonized people foaming at the mouth, things like that.

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I mean, that didn't happen here, did it? And now all of a sudden you see demonized people all around us in this nation.

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So, so things are changing in this country. But the thing is, Satan, when I was first, you know, came into this world, the way it was here in this country is like he tried to make himself invisible.

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He didn't want anybody to even believe in him. You know what I'm saying? Anybody my age or older agree with that? It's like he wanted the predominant thought among American Christians even was that Satan really is an idea.

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He's not a literal being or a person, a spiritual being who exists. And demons kind of an idea, something that happened in Jesus' time.

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Maybe it was a mentally disturbed person. Maybe it was this or that. Who knows what it was, but it certainly doesn't exist today.

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I mean, that was kind of the mindset back in the fifties and the sixties. And that has changed a lot because Satan has made himself where he's just, he's bold now.

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He's not trying to hide himself even in our nation anymore. You know, we went out, traveled out,

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Dave, your son, Dave, and I, there he is right there, traveled out to Port Angeles, Washington to do a seminar.

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And we found out when we're there that Port Angeles is like the third largest seat of witchcraft in the world.

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And the city's not as big as Mahea, maybe six or eight, well, maybe 10 ,000 people there. And very strange aura in that city because of that.

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So Satan is not bashful anymore. He doesn't try to hide this thing. But the thing God wants us to know is that he is an adversary.

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What is an adversary? It is an enemy. And we walk around our lives as if that is not true sometimes.

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And sometimes I speak more to the men about these issues of spiritual warfare, because God holds the man responsible in the home.

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Why is that? Because the woman was more easily deceived, the scripture teaches. And she still is more easily deceived.

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She has more of an emotional attack to things. I'm not saying women are not intellectual.

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They certainly are, but they will sometimes look at the thing emotionally first and then bring in the intellect. Whereas men will look at it intellectually first.

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And some of you women say, and they're never emotional. I don't understand that, you know, and I understand that we're different.

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But Satan chose to attack the woman because of that emotional makeup of the woman.

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And he succeeded. And by right of conquest, he took over the kingship of this world, which had been given to Adam.

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And that's why Satan is now called the little G, God of this world. The prince of the power of the air is another thing he's called.

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He is not God, but he is the God of this world because he took it by conquest.

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Now a lot of people don't understand that when Jesus came out, actually when he said it is finished, and we studied in Sunday school this morning, he said it is finished, and he died on the cross, he actually by right of conquest took that back.

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He is now, he is, you know, Adam was called the first Adam, Jesus is the last Adam. He took back that lordship.

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But what's interesting about Satan is he is a lot like King Saul in the Old Testament. When David had already been made the king by God himself and by God's man,

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Nathan, Saul stayed on the throne anyway, didn't he? He stayed on the throne for many days after he'd already been kicked off by God, and he usurped that authority.

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That is a perfect picture of Satan and what he is doing in this 2 ,000 year period, some odd period, between Jesus' first coming and second coming.

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So Satan has already been cast aside. He is not the God of this world now, but he acts as if he is. He usurps it.

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He's still on the throne of this world. Isn't that interesting? From God's viewpoint, he's already been defeated, and yet he is still here, if you haven't noticed.

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He is, in fact, your adversary. He hates everything about you, especially your marriage, because marriage is a type or a picture of the relationship between Jesus, the groom, and the church, which is the bride, and so when

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Satan can destroy a marriage, he destroys a type. He hates your marriage.

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He hates your family because it's in the family that God can nurture children to become the next leaders of the world.

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He can have parents teach those children all the principles from the Word of God, and that is far more powerful than what they hear the preacher say.

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And so Satan hates your family. He is the adversary of your family. He hates your wife, gentlemen.

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He hates the fact that you have that relationship with her, gentlemen, and he hates your children, and you should pray over them every night before they go to sleep and throughout the day.

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Second thing Satan is known as in the Bible is the devil. It's interesting that that's found in the same verse.

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First Peter 5 .8 says, Be sober, be vigilant. What does vigilant mean? Watchful. Be always watching.

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What does sober mean, by the way? Well, let me tell you what it means in this context.

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We know what sober means generally, but in this context what it means is you can have a man who drinks too much or a woman who drinks too much, and they can all of a sudden be in their own little world, and they're totally oblivious to everything going on around them, right?

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Not that you would know. Gotcha, didn't I? No, not that you would know. But I mean, you've seen it.

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You've seen it. You know about it. And so they're totally oblivious, and that is used as simply a picture here.

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Be sober. What that means is don't live our lives in such a way that we're like an ostrich with our head in a hole in the ground, and the whole world is turning more and more evil around us every day, and we act like it's not happening and everything is still okay.

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Don't be that way. Don't just live like everything is so wonderful in our home. It's just peace and joy, and just everything's great, and it'll always be that way.

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Don't live that way. Be sober about it. Be aware of the fact that you have an adversary and an enemy who is going to attempt to destroy everything good in your life.

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Now, be sober in that sense. Vigilant means, therefore, if that's true, you better be watchful.

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But it says that we're supposed to be watching for this one called the adversary, and then the second thing it calls him is the devil.

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Now, it's interesting because the devil, if you look at the Greek word, it is diabolos.

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It sounds bad, doesn't it? Diabolos. It sounds evil. What it literally means is a slanderer, a person who makes up something against you that's not even true and uses it to destroy you, a person who would do a character assassination like they did

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President Bush, if you think about it. By the time he went out of office, even those of us that loved him didn't like him that much anymore, did we?

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They had totally annihilated his name by saying lies about him. And so, not that everything was a lie, but you understand what

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I'm saying. They did a character assassination on this man. That's just one example. Satan is like that.

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He will slander all of the time. His name is Diabolos, the slanderer.

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Now, the third thing that we see he is called in the same verse is not only the adversary and the slanderer, but also he is called a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour.

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What does that mean? Well, he is not only the adversary, the enemy, he is not only the slanderer who will lie about you, but he is also a slaughterer or a destroyer.

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He is the destroyer of nations. He is the destroyer of families. He is the destroyer of homes.

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He is the destroyer of churches. He is the destroyer of institutions. And he works at that continually, and he has all the time in the world.

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And he has a huge organization of demons that are very well organized and very similar to a corporate status with the

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CEO at the top who is Satan himself, a few vice presidents, and then hundreds of people under each one of those, and thousands of people under those, and thousands of,

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I say people, demons underneath those. There's a huge hierarchy, very well organized, perfect communication all the way up to the top.

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And so he has the ability to look into your, as an individual, to look into your life and see your weaknesses because he has a demon tracking you.

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And I don't say this to scare you. I say to wake you up and cause you to be vigilant. All right? He is as a lion roaming around your family in a circle looking for the weak link.

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Is it you or is it your spouse or is it one of your children? Because he'll find the weak link. Same way in the church.

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Same way in a society or a nation. He will find the weak link and he will devour and devour and devour until the whole thing crumbles and it's gone.

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He destroys it. That's what his goal is. That's what his desire is.

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And that's why Almighty God put him here. That is his job and he's doing it well. He's serving God and he doesn't even want to admit it.

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Roaring lion, you better watch out. He is always watching.

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He is always looking for the weakness. He's always exploiting the weakness. And be sure your sin will find you out.

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Can't do anything behind closed doors that won't come out into the light. You will get caught.

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Adults are like little children when they get into things. I don't know when I'll ever know I did that.

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We teach our children differently. We think when we're adults all of a sudden we can hide everything, right?

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It's not going to happen. Why? Because you have an enemy that's smarter than you are. You have an adversary who can tear you to pieces.

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Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Let's look at something. We'll start with about verse 4.

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1 Corinthians 10 verse 4. And they did all drink of the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them and that rock was

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Christ. It's talking about the Old Testament people of God, the nation of Israel. But with many of them

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God was not well pleased. You know why? Because some of them were hypocrites. They all claimed to be like we would today if we go to church we claim to be a

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Christian because we're sitting here in church. But we're not all born again, you see. And it was the same in the nation of Israel.

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They all claimed to be Jews but they did not all have the circumcision of the heart. On the inside they weren't all

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Jews, you see. So with those God was not well pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

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There were people that God himself slew in the wilderness and they all claimed to be the people of God but they were not all the people of God.

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Now these things were our examples. Now why would God give us that example in the church today?

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So that we realize that just because we all sit together in church, and I'm not just talking about this little bitty local church here,

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I'm talking about the church at large today and let's take in our country, but in the whole world. We can't just say that just because we're coming to church or we have large churches across the nations here, our nations, the big cities here, 20 ,000 people, 30 ,000 people in attendance on Sunday morning.

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We cannot sit there and say God is well pleased with all that. Because watch what happened here. God was not well pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

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This is given as an example for us today to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.

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So you sit here in church and you say, okay, we're all God's people and everything's going to be okay. And you forget there's an adversary.

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You forget there's an enemy who will try to destroy you and he does it with temptation and he does it with sin and he brings us about.

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And here these people all claim to be the people of God and yet many of them were destroyed because of their sin.

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Look what it starts to name some of these things. It says, neither be idolaters as they were.

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What is an idolater? Somebody that puts something higher than God, whether it be a hobby or a friend or a thing or making money or whatever the thing is.

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It could be any number of things that you put higher than God. That's how these were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

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They worshiped the golden calf naked in idolatry, which was a picture of spiritual adultery.

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And neither let us commit fornication as some of them committed. So they were among the Jews who called themselves the people of God.

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They were people fornicating. And everyone in here that needs to know what that means knows what that means.

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And this was going on. And yet look what happened in that same story. There fell in one day 23 ,000 people that God struck down dead because of that sin.

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You see, we have an enemy and we think that because we're in the church today that we can do those things and it's just fine and nothing will ever happen.

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Now what is one of the things we called Satan earlier? Or maybe we're going to get to this in a minute.

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I think we haven't gotten to it yet, but he's also a deceiver, isn't he?

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Nothing will ever happen. You can do those things because you're a Christian. You can't lose your salvation. So nothing will ever happen.

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And yet if you look at God's people in the Old Testament, 23 ,000 were killed for that one sin in one day.

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And God said, I give this to you as an example. Why? Why does

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God think we need an example if it doesn't matter anymore? You see, we are like ostriches a little bit.

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We stick our heads in a hole and wiggle our rear end out there and just say everything's going to be fine.

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Kind of fluff up our tail feathers a little bit while our head's down in that hole. And there's a line roaming around fixing to bite you right there.

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Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed of serpents.

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Neither murmur you. What does it mean, by the way, to tempt Christ? I've taught this before, but let me remind you that the greatest definition of tempting

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Christ in the Bible is to act like God's not there. You're a person of God and something happens in your life.

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Maybe you get disgruntled about something didn't go right. And you say, I just think God is not here. That's tempting

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God. And it says many of these people that did that were destroyed in the Old Testament times.

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In verse 10, neither murmur you as some of them also murmured and were destroyed by the destroyer.

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Now, who is the destroyer? That's the one we're talking about. That is our adversary.

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That is our enemy. That particular word, when it calls him the destroyer, that's picturing him as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

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People just murmured and they were destroyed. Now, what is murmuring? Now, remember, this is given to us as an example.

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What is murmuring? I'm going to let you participate. Someone raise your hand and tell me what it means to murmur.

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Whining. What's another word? Complaining. It's amazing, isn't it?

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We murmur. I mean, I murmured about my golf score this week. I wouldn't have admitted that if Charlotte were in the nursery.

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But she's in here this morning, so I had to admit that. I almost shot a 39. The key word there is almost.

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So I murmured a little bit. But she was a good wife. She corrected me.

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Think about it. We've got it pretty good as far as the way the world goes, don't we? Do you know that this is an experiment in human history, this 200 some odd years of our nation?

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It's just an experiment, very small time, that all of the rest of all recorded human history, everyone served an earthly king, and they weren't always sweet people.

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Off with his head. And then that's the law, right? We're the only ones that have had this freedom.

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And then we complain. We murmur. Neither murmur ye as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

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What does that tell you? If you get in that attitude of negativism, where we're not thankful for what God has given us, what

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God has done for us, for all that we have, that gives an open door to Satan. Now look at verse 11.

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Now all these things happen unto them as examples for us, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the age are come.

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That's us, ladies and gentlemen. Wherefore let him that thinks he stand take heed, lest he fall.

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There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able.

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Look at all of this as it speaks to us of the enemy. In the very next breath, the

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Word of God gives us the armor that we can use. I mean, God is not going to place us in the presence, face front to an enemy, and not show us the weapons and how to use them, is he?

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He's not that kind of a God. He's not that kind of a father. He has prepared us for this enemy. And the first thing he tells us in this passage is, all of these things you're going to be tempted to do.

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You're going to be tempted to murder. You're going to be murmur. You're going to be tempted to fornicate. You're going to be tempted to be an idolater, and let your heart go after something else other than God in this world.

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And the thing is, I want you to know, I will not allow any temptation to be put before you where there is not a way for you to escape it.

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I will also provide the way for you to escape so you don't ever have to sin. That's what he just said.

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Well, that's empowering just to know that, isn't it? Next time we're tempted, we should remember that and say, okay,

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Lord, where's my out? Where's my out right now? Where's my out? Show me my out. And take it.

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Take the path away from that sin. There hath no temptation taken you, but such is common to other men.

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You know, we get this, like you're talking about the guys marching on Wall Street. Oh, poor pitiful me.

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You know, the government has helped these banks. Well, they don't understand that without banks, you don't have a grocery store. Right, Brother Bill?

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I mean, people, common people, you're not taught that in government school, are you? That without the banks, you don't have a grocery store.

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You don't have a gas station. You don't have anything. You'd be just like people in the darkest parts of Africa running around in loincloths if you don't have banks.

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And that's a fact of history. And so they're attacking something they don't even understand. But what is it they're really saying?

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You said it in Sunday school. They're saying, well, you know, I have college debts to pay. Who's going to pay that for me?

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Well, where does it say it's supposed to get paid for you? They didn't bail out the banks because they, just to be nice to them, they did it to save the economic system so you can still have a grocery store is why they did it.

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But see, when you don't have that understanding, you attack something you don't even understand. It's something God put there to protect you.

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You attack it. And so here, you know, they, they're thinking that there's something here that's just not fair to me.

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And God says, there's no temptation other than those that are common to every other man and woman.

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You know, you're not, your temptation is not greater than anyone else's. You understand what God is saying here? We can't just say poor pitiful me and whine about it.

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There's nothing that we've been tempted with. Listen, you know, we talk about hardships. Did you know that the father allowed his only begotten son to be nailed to a cross alive and sat up and slammed down in that hole and left there to die?

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That's hardship. Bible says, Jesus has been tempted by every temptation such as we have.

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And yet without sin, there's nothing you faced that he didn't face and said no to. And he was a man.

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And that's what God is saying. He will provide a way. We don't have to feel all pitiful and weak.

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He will provide a way, especially for his people. He will not suffer you to be tempted above what you're able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.

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Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee idolatry. Don't you think that's an amazing way to end a passage in the New Testament?

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I mean, we don't worship rocks and trees anymore, do we? Why does it say that? You would think for us, it would say something more modern that we need to flee from.

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And it says the most ancient of sins next to, not the most ancient if you want to go all the way back to Lucifer, but with mankind, one of the most ancient of sins is to worship something other than God.

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It is quite amazing when you take a look at all this. I think it's also pretty great that the

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Scripture tells us, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.

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But the God of all grace, who has called us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ, after that you have suffered for a little while, will make you perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.

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To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. You see that the

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Bible teaches us that even though we have an enemy that seeks to destroy us, and he tells us to resist him and to be steadfast in the faith,

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God shows us that the ultimate victory is he himself. He says, but the

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God of all grace, who has called you, the one who saved you, after you have suffered a little while, does that not teach you the very purpose of Satan anyway?

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Why is there a devil? Why? If God is sovereign, and you really don't need to put the if there, since God is sovereign, why is there a devil?

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Well, undoubtedly if there is a devil and God is sovereign, then God wanted there to be a devil.

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Have you ever thought about that? Apparently God desired for Lucifer to become

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Satan, and he made it to be so. Now, I understand Lucifer was also responsible.

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He had his own sin problem, which we'll discuss next Sunday, the Lord willing, but God was not surprised by the fall of Lucifer, was he?

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Because God placed him here with a purpose, and the purpose that he placed him here was to cause you and me to suffer a little.

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Do you see that in the scripture? Now, I understand men and women, boys and girls, think

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God is evil if he would do something like that. Well, that's a little bit difficult then, because God just said he would do something like that.

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So you think what you want, but if you know him, you know he's not evil. You know he is love personified.

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You know that God is not that God has love. God is love, and God is good.

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So what that tells us is that we're the ones that don't understand things very well. We don't understand why they're suffering or why there needs to be suffering, but let me just say this.

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What if we were to put you and me onto the most lovely island, and here we are in a fallen sinful state.

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We know we were born into this world as sinners, correct? No one disagree with that, and you put us in this fallen sinful state on the most perfect little island with about ten of us there, and let us live forever where we never die.

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Do you know we would be the most miserable beings in the universe before that was over? It wouldn't be over if it lasted for eternity, but you know what

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I'm saying, because you would live in this sinful state forever, and God knows that that's not good, and so what

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God does is he puts us here for a season that we might be instructed by our own what befalls us.

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Let's put it that way. The very things that befall us because of our sin instruct us, and they make us to be molded more into the image of Christ.

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It's the suffering that does it. When things are going great, that's when we get in trouble.

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That's not when we fall down before God and sackcloth and ashes and get right with him and get close to him.

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That's when we're the furthest from him, because everything we got it made. Everything's great, but when things are not working great, and I want to tell you, you have an adversary that can mess things up quickly, and when that happens, do we murmur?

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That just puts us more into his hand. Think about that for a minute. It puts you more in his hand if you murmur about it when it happens, or do we gain instruction from it?

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And the scripture teaches that God, the God of grace, the God of undeserved love and favor, he loves us when we don't even deserve it.

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That God who has called us, called us from what, ladies and gentlemen? I know it's about dinner time, but just listen for a few minutes.

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I'll let you go. How about that for a deal? What did he call us from? What did he call us from?

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Think about it. You're part of a fallen race. You're part of a race that when

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Adam and Eve ate that fruit, it fell and it was all bound for hell. You are part of that race, and you were born in sin and iniquity, and you have followed through with that many times in your life, and you deserve hell, and so does your preacher.

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But we were called from that. You know what that's saying? It's saying that God looked at, Jesus said, wide is the gate to those that are going to enter hell, didn't he?

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And narrow is the way. If you there be that enter into heaven, God has called you out of that huge masses of a fallen, destructive,

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God -hating, hateful, murderous, lying race, and he's pulled you out, and he gave you a new nature and saved you.

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You still have the old nature, unfortunately, but he's given you a new nature, and he saved you, and he called you out to eternal glory by Jesus and with Jesus Christ.

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After that, you've suffered a little while, it says. Isn't that interesting? So from God's perspective, any suffering that you or I do because of the adversary is very brief.

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It's just a little while, God says. And after that, look what it says. He's going to make you perfect.

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That means complete, like Christ. He's going to establish you. Do you know what the word establish means in the

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Greek? It means to turn from one direction in the direction of another way, and to set it in that direction.

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He is going to take you from the direction that that fallen race was turned, and our old flesh still takes us that way way too much moment by moment, does it not?

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And he is turning us away from that towards the way of Christ, and he's bringing you to a place where you will be set in that way for all eternity, and you will never desire to do anything other than what

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God wants you to do. So after we've suffered just a little while, he's going to make us perfect, means complete, mature.

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He's going to establish us in the direction Christ is moving. He's going to strengthen us and make us strong and not weak, and he's going to settle us, which means we'll remain that way forever.

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So therefore to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

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Amen. So the Lord himself places us in a place where we have an adversary.

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He puts us in the middle of a war, a battle, but he gives us armor to use, tells us all about it in Ephesians chapter 6, and he gives us strength, and he gives us a way of escape from every temptation that ever comes in your life so you never have to sin.

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I'm not saying you won't sin, there's a difference, but I'm saying you don't have to sin, and he gives us all of this, and the love of Jesus Christ, and the

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Holy Spirit dwelling within us, and a new nature that's got the nature of Jesus Christ himself.

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We're gened after the genes of God rather than the genes of Adam. All of that is given to us even in this battle, and we ain't seen nothing yet like what he's going to give us when he brings us to this place where we're made perfect, established, strengthened, and settled, but that's where we're headed.

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So we're out of time today, so we'll pick up more on what we can learn from the names of Satan next week.

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The Lord willing, let's stand and have prayer together. Father, we thank you so much for your word.

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We thank you that you've not only told us about our enemy, but you have equipped us to deal with him, and you've taught us to stand against him, and Lord, we ask that you would teach us even more about that in the days to come, that we might be equipped more and more for this battle, and Lord, we thank you that we can give you all the glory for the victory, for it is your battle.

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Lord, thank you for our friendship, our fellowship that we have with one another today. We ask you to bless the meal we're about to have, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.