The Unseen War Part I 1 Peter 5:8-11

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I'll never forget that time when I was a child, when my father came home from a men's retreat in northern
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Minnesota, when my mother and brother and sister and I saw my father.
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It was as if he had seen a ghost. But as Christians, we don't believe in ghosts.
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But my father had an encounter with the supernatural, unlike anything he had ever experienced, nor have
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I ever personally experienced. This is how my father tells the story.
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One evening, the men were having a time of confession. There was about 100 men in the room.
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Men were coming forward and confessing specific sins in their lives, and my dad describes it as a powerful time where light was shining in the darkness of people's hearts.
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Then what happened next was a trembling experience for all the men. One man got up to confess his sins, and as he started to confess, the man suddenly fell to the ground.
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And he started flailing his arms and legs. This man who had gone up to confess his sins was now possessed by a demon right before all of them.
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The last thing this demon wanted was for this man to confess his sins, trust in Christ for his salvation.
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True believers cannot be possessed. This demon wanted to continue to occupy this man, and any hint that this man was going to trust in Christ for his salvation was terrifying to this demon and Satan.
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Demons don't like to show themselves, but in this moment of desperation, this demon showed itself to this room full of men.
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This man, as he laid on the ground, spoke, but it was not the man who spoke, but the demon inside the man.
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My father recalls hearing the voice and saying the voice was not human. This man laying on the ground, overtaken by this demon, lasted for about 45 minutes.
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Many men came forward and prayed over him until the demon finally left.
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At this men's retreat in northern Minnesota, my father and every man present got a window into the supernatural that we all live in.
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Now a secular person might say, can you believe his testimony? It is true that some people make up stories to draw attention to themselves, but my father isn't one of those people.
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Getting him to tell this story is like pulling teeth. He's not that kind of guy, which adds credibility to his testimony.
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On top of that, there were numerous eyewitnesses present, about 100 men, who could be asked. The secular world would try to explain this away as some psychological episode.
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But Christians know better. We know what the Bible says. We know that we are at war in this world.
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We know that we live in a spiritual battle. If we could turn the light on in this room right now, we would see that we are surrounded by angels and demons.
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Angels are servants of God's people. While the demons are on the earth to steer people away from the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And instead, He desires for humans to belong to Him.
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Now this morning as we continue our sermon series through 1 Peter, we are going to see
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Peter address the demonic realm, which is led by their leader,
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Satan. He's going to address the reality of their evil presence.
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And also, how we respond to them. We're going to look at this over the next two
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Sundays. So at this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to 1 Peter 5. This two
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Sunday sermon, we'll be looking at verses 8 -11. And if you don't have a Bible, we do have those red
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Bibles that you can open up. The sermon is titled, The Unseen War.
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And we will begin by reading the text, 1 Peter 5, verses 8 -11.
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Be sober minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
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Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
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And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
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To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Here's what this text, what this sermon is calling you to do.
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Understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle with Satan.
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Understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle with Satan. And we're going to see six ways how over the next two
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Sundays. But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we have been. Last Sunday, we looked at the
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Apostle Peter addressed the common human problem of anxiety. And in this text, we were called to humble ourselves to the one who is sovereign, to the one who governs the affairs of our lives.
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And we saw one practice how we are to do this. And that is by trusting the Lord's care over our lives.
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The Lord is writing each of our stories. And as he writes our stories, inevitably there will be difficulty that will come.
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But this difficulty, as Scripture promises, is meant for our ultimate good. Feeling anxious is never worth it.
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As Jesus said, which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to the span of his life?
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All anxiety does is make things worse. When all we need to do is trust the Lord who has everything under his control.
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And we can always trust him because he is a loving and wise God. Now this leads us once again to our text this morning that we've already read, but now we're going to zero in on.
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And I'm going to begin by zeroing in on the beginning of verse eight, where Peter once again writes, be sober minded, be watchful.
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What Peter writes in the beginning of verse eight is these two commands.
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Be sober minded, be watchful. We've already seen Peter give a similar instruction of being sober minded in this letter in 1
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Peter 1 .13, where he wrote, prepare your minds for action and be sober minded.
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Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Then in 1
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Peter 4 .7 he wrote, the end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self -controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers.
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In the first verse, in 1 Peter 1 .13, Peter is saying that it is important to be sober minded, knowing that Christ is coming back.
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And one should constantly be focused on this hope. In so doing, one will live a more faithful life to the
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Lord. What Peter writes in the second verse, 1 Peter 4 .7, is that as a Christian, we must live with the knowledge that Christ's return is on the horizon.
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In so doing, one will live a more holy life before the Lord. And the
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Lord listens to those prayers as we live a more holy life. Now we return to the beginning of verse eight, where Peter once again writes, to be sober minded and watchful.
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Now when we hear the word sober in our everyday language, the first thing that probably comes to our mind is alcohol.
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One who drinks too much alcohol is intoxicated and therefore not sober. One who isn't drunk is considered sober.
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Sober minded. So to be sober is to have a clear mind. It is to have one's mind in the right place.
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In the two previous verses in 1 Peter, Peter was saying Christ is coming back, therefore live accordingly.
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Christians need to understand what this life is. You and I are pilgrims who are passing through.
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We already saw this in 1 Peter 2 .11, where Peter wrote, I urge you as aliens and strangers in this world to abstain from sinful passions which wage war against your soul.
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One who lives this way is not only sober minded, but also watchful. As Peter also writes at the beginning of verse eight, to be watchful is to be vigilant.
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We have bears in our area, and they're probably gonna come out sooner this year, right, with the warm weather.
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Imagine if one of these bears becomes violent and the authorities are unable to track down the bear, the community is going to be told to be watchful, to be vigilant.
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This means making sure your kids aren't being monitored as they play outside. It means not going for a run or going for a bike ride.
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But in a scenario like this, the community would need to be on guard about the danger that is out there.
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In a similar way, Christians need to be watchful concerning the dangers that we face, and the greatest danger that we face is not physical, but spiritual.
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What we're going to see as we go through this text that we've already read, is that Satan and his demons are one of those great dangers.
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But as we address spiritual warfare with demonic forces, let me address the problem inside all of us.
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One of the greatest problems, and Satan knows this, is that we have a sinful nature.
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Everyone is born with it. Isaiah 53, six says, all we like sheep have gone astray.
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We have turned everyone to his own way. Jeremiah 17, nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.
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Who can understand it? We come into this world with sin deeply ingrained in our hearts.
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You see it in children. You don't need to teach children to be sinners. They already know how to sin.
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We teach them to do right. One of the ways that believers need to be sober minded and watchful is that we need to be keenly aware of our sins.
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We should be students of ourselves. We should know our tendencies. What sins are we susceptible to?
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We need to know what we're susceptible to and turn from them. We need to live as pilgrims.
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The land we are going to will be a land without sin. And so while we are here, we need to be those who put the sin in our lives to death.
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As Romans 8, 13 says, but if by the spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
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We need to be sober minded and watchful to put the sin to death. So understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle with Satan.
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And the first way how is through having your mind in a place of vigilance.
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Having your mind in a place of vigilance. The second way how you are to understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle is through realizing that the devil seeks to destroy people.
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And we're going to see this in the middle of verse eight. We need to be sober minded and watchful not only because we sin, but there is an enemy who uses our natural desire to sin to influence people down a horrible path.
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Let's see this in the remainder of verse eight where once again, Peter writes, be watchful, be vigilant, be sober minded.
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Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
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Peter highlights the reality that we have a great enemy in this world.
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This enemy is Satan or the devil. And I'm going to talk about these titles here in a little bit.
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What Scripture teaches us is that Satan was not always evil. In fact, he was once an angel on a similar level as Michael the archangel.
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But he wasn't content staying in his place. Revelation 12 verses one through four describes his fall.
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And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.
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She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven.
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Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and on his head seven diadems.
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His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
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In this passage, the dragon is Satan. And what is pictured is his fall from heaven and the fall of one third of the angels.
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These fallen angels become demons. Peter calls this great enemy our adversary.
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This is what the word Satan means. Adversary. What Peter calls this great adversary in verse eight is the devil.
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A popular culture would recognize it, be more familiar with that. The devil.
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But it is biblical. That's what Peter's calling him, the devil. The Greek word for devil means slanderer.
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A slanderer is an adversary who tells lies about the one they are against.
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So he is an adversary who slanders people. He does this in the courtroom before God and he does this to us personally.
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Revelation 12 .10 says that Satan accuses the believers before God day and night.
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We already saw from Revelation 12 that Satan is called a dragon. Some believe that dragons were a dinosaur that became extinct after the flood.
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But whether dragons are real or mythical, we know what they are.
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They are this large creature with wings and horns that breathes out fire.
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Dragons are terrifying and Satan is terrifying. Scripture also describes
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Satan as a snake. He is described as a snake because he was a snake in the
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Garden of Eden. Revelation 12 .9 describes him as that ancient serpent and so does
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Revelation 20. Now in our text, Peter gives him a different description in verse eight.
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He is described as a lion. Now we don't have lions in North America, thankfully.
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Lions are mostly in Africa. What the animal kingdom knows is that when a lion is around, they are the king of their region.
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We see something similar to this with birds in our area. What bird is king?
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The eagle. One time we were driving by and we saw this roadkill on the side of the road and there was like an order here.
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The eagle got to the roadkill first and then there was all these other lesser birds behind him. Everybody knows the order.
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Now that's the way God made it. And it's this way in Africa. Lions are king.
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Everybody's afraid of them. Every animal is. Many animals are prey to lions and they are always on the lookout for them as lions lurk.
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Now Jesus is described as a lion as well, but in the positive sense.
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Revelation 5 .5 calls him the Lion of Judah. Jesus is like Aslan from the
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Chronicles of Narnia. He is a lion who if you are on his side, you are his friend and you feel safe and secure and happy with him.
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But if you are his enemy, look out. He is ferocious. He will bring justice.
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But Satan is a lion in the most negative sense possible. He is a lion who devours his prey and his prey are humans.
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God's image bearers. And he devours not just unbelievers, but he even goes after believers.
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Peter says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
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That's what he does. He spends his days looking for opportunities to cause problems wherever he goes as he roams the earth.
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In John 8 .44, Jesus said this to the
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Jewish leaders, the very ones who crucified him, the very ones who delivered Jesus up to be crucified. Jesus said this of them.
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You are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.
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When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies.
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So Satan is a liar and he's a murderer. When we think about Satan as a liar and a murderer, think about the issue of abortion that we focused on last
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Sunday, which was Sanctity of Life Sunday. Satan tells the lie that women have the right to choose.
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And then people believe this lie and a human heart is stopped in the mother's womb. Do you realize that a heartbeat can first be detected 18 days in?
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This baby becomes a person at the moment of conception. So every child in the womb whose life ends is murder.
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But this has happened to hundreds of millions of babies all over the world. Satan is like a lion who devours.
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But he also seeks to devour those image bearers of God who live in this world. His goal with unbelievers is to keep them from believing in Jesus Christ.
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Because as long as someone doesn't follow Jesus, guess who they're following? They're following him.
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That's a frightening thought, but scripture describes this reality. We already read that in John 8 44 with the
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Jewish leaders. The very ones who put Jesus on the cross were doing their father's will and their father was the devil.
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And as I mentioned, every unbeliever belongs to the devil. He is their father.
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First John 3 10 says, by this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.
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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
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Sometimes you hear people say more liberal minded people. Everyone is a child of God. Wrong. First John 3 10 says, you're either a child of God or you're a child of the devil.
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So people who live for themselves and reject Christ, these people belong to the devil.
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And in this room right now, my prayer is that everyone here would have a sincere relationship with Christ.
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That you would belong to Christ and not the greatest enemy of the Lord. The devil wants the soul of any unbeliever, but once you have crossed from darkness to light, he never has that authority over you again.
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Now as I say this, the devil does still go after believers. What we see is that he did this with the very one who wrote this letter.
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Peter. In Luke 22, 31 and 32, Jesus told
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Peter, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.
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But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. That's a powerful account.
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The devil wanted Peter. But Jesus prayed for his faith not to fail.
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And we see the answer to this prayer by the fact. This letter we've gone through is evidence of the answer to this prayer.
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Isn't that incredible to think about? Jesus prays for Peter, I pray that your faith may not fail.
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And we know how weak Peter was. Scripture describes his weakness. He betrayed Christ. He denied him three times.
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Before the rooster crows, you'll deny me three times. But look at what Peter is now as he's writing this letter. And Peter would in fact be martyred.
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He refused to be crucified the way that Jesus was crucified. So he was crucified upside down.
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And you think about this great faith that was developed in him. And it starts with the prayer that Jesus prayed, that his faith would not fail.
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The devil's goal is to devour believers. Not in the same way he devours unbelievers, but it still is dangerous what he does.
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As one author said, he and his forces are always active.
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Looking for opportunities to overwhelm the believer with temptation, persecution, and discouragement.
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Satan is a disruptor. He's always looking to cause problems. He wants image bearers to follow him.
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And if he can't do that, he tries to thwart the work of a believer.
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He's a lion that's always on the prowl. Looking for opportunities to raise havoc.
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So understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle with Satan. And the second way how is through realizing that the devil seeks to destroy people.
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And here's the third way how, and this is the last one we're going to look at this morning. The third way how you are to understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle with Satan is through resisting his various tactics.
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Resisting his various tactics. And we'll see this in the beginning of verse nine.
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In the previous point, I explained that he's a lion who devours wherever he goes. And now we are going to look at how he devours and how we need to respond to his tactics.
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Okay, this is what Peter writes. Resist him firm in your faith.
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Okay, resist him firm in your faith. Peter calls his readers to resist.
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If we are going to resist him, then we need to know his tactics. We need to know how he operates.
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This is what we must understand about Satan. He doesn't get that creative. Why doesn't he get that creative?
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Because it works. The tactics he uses works.
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And it's worked for thousands of years. So he uses the same old tricks on people. And so we need to understand what are those tricks?
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In the previous point, I explained that he tries to go after believers through temptation, persecution, and discouragement.
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Those are three important tricks that he uses right there. Temptation, persecution, and discouragement.
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Satan's goal is to make you ineffective in your service to God. So he tempts you with sin.
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If we are sinning, then we're not serving God. And he's a student of you. Because he knows you.
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He watches you. He looks at what has a hold on this person.
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He's going to tempt one person differently than another person. Because some people, if he tempts you with something, no big deal.
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Because that's not a pull on you. But other things, this is how I'm going to get this guy.
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This is how I'm going to get this woman. This is how I'm going to get this child. He knows us. He studies us. He tempts us with sin.
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So that we are on the sidelines, not doing what God has called us to do. And if he can't get you with sin, then he tries persecution.
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He wants to stop the work that God is doing. So he sends persecutors who are intended to hinder the work being done through God's people.
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The problem with this, as seen in scripture and church history, is that when persecution happens, as long as God's people stand strong,
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God's work is not squashed. But quite the opposite. His work spreads like wildfire.
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Another tactic related to persecution is that Satan tries to discourage God's people.
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He will send trials your way to get you down. He wants you to be depressed. He doesn't want you to have the joy of the
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Lord. And that's what the New Testament is Rejoice always. In fact, that's the will of God for you.
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1 Thessalonians 5, 17 and 18. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.
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Give thanks in all circumstances. Satan knows that's God's will for you. So he tries to stop that in you.
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He wants you to be depressed. He wants you to be discouraged. He wants you not to want to do anything. That's what depressed people do.
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They don't have the energy to do things because they're down. He wants you that way.
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He sends trials your way to get you down. The Lord's going to use you greatly if you rejoice, if you trust him, if you push through the discouragement.
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It doesn't mean that we're always like super happy people. But when we are discouraged, we need to remind ourselves of the promises of God and push through.
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And then the Lord's going to use you and Satan's work is going to fail. As we learned earlier,
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Satan is an accuser. He accuses us before God saying, how can you accept this person as your child?
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I see what he does. I see what she does. Look at how sinful they are.
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This is what he does. This is how he spends his days. Get a job. This is what he does.
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Accusing, accusing, accusing. He also accuses God before believers saying something like this.
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If God is good, then why is he allowing so much difficulty in your life? Wouldn't a good
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God just make things great for you? Why are you having to go through so much hardship? If God is good, a good
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God wouldn't do that. If you hear that voice, that's the devil. He also causes conflict between believers.
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Sometimes we wonder, why is there so much conflict with Christians? Why can't Christians just get along?
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Of all people, we should be the ones who get along the best. Satan is in the business of breaking up the unity of a church and the unity of believers, more broadly speaking.
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He is. That's what he tries to do. He tries to divide. As a church, we need to recognize this.
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One thing we need to understand as a church is that we will sin against each other. It's going to happen.
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It's inevitable. We don't want to, but we still find ourselves with indwelling sin, this side of heaven.
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We will sin against each other. So then we need to handle it the way the Bible tells us to.
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We need to confess our sins to each other. We need to forgive each other. And once that happens, we're good.
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It doesn't blow up into something huge. We move on and we live in peace together.
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Healthy churches have repentance and forgiveness present. We understand personally our own sins.
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We understand. We know no sinner better than ourselves. And if we understand our own sins, we're going to be so much more gracious to other people.
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We need to practice Matthew 18 when there is sin. If you are sinned against, don't tell other people about it.
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Honestly, we're good at that. We live in the North country. We're nice to people's faces, but we're not so nice to them behind their back, right?
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Now the East Coast maybe is too blunt, but at least they're more honest. Right? They'll tell it right to your face.
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But we have Minnesota, Wisconsin, nice here. We need to go to people. If we have a problem, don't go tell everybody about it.
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Go to the person. Satan wants us to stir up controversy behind people's backs.
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We can't fall for that. I'm talking to myself as I say this. We all fall for it, don't we? But let's not do that.
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Let's go to the people if we have an issue. Satan loves to see a church full of gossip and slander and conflict, but we need to keep that out.
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We need to recognize his designs. That's actually in the covenant of our church, that we don't backbite each other, but that we pursue unity and love and peace always.
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And the devil hates what is happening at Eureka Baptist Church right now.
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In 2010, this church had 50 members. 15 people, a few of them are in this room right now, in fact.
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And we're so grateful to those people who kept it going. What has taken place in this church since then has been truly wonderful.
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We have seen people come to faith in Christ, baptisms, numerous people pursuing membership.
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We've seen spiritual growth and we've experienced a rich love and unity during that time.
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Satan wants to stop what is happening here. But we need to recognize his designs. We cannot let him advance his agenda.
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So we have to fight Satan as he goes after us. We need to resist him, as Peter writes.
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Resist him firm in your faith. We resist him by turning from the temptation to sin, by enduring persecution, seeing
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God's continued work through the difficulty. And by fighting discouragement, replacing that with encouragement, the joy of the
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Lord. Rejoice always. At the center of this fight is the firm place we hold as followers of Christ.
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And then the kids can tell us about this because they went through this last summer at vacation Bible school.
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Ephesians 6, verses 10 and 11 says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
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The armor that the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6 lists all has to do with the word of God and the gospel, which is found in the word of God.
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He says we need to put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness. Choose for your feet, putting on the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
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The Bible describes this. I mean, the word of God describes itself as a sword.
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It's a weapon against the devil. When Satan attacks, we are to defend and attack him with the word of God and the gospel.
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You were bought by the blood of Christ. You belong to Christ. And your sins are not counted against you, as we sang this morning, as much as Satan would like to use your sins against you.
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And once you belong to Christ, he can't do nearly as much. And when we throw the gospel back at him and we speak the truth of Scripture, then that ends his effort to cause the problems he wants to cause.
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When we speak the piercing truth of God's word, he has no hold over us.
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And as we trust the Lord, he flees. As James 4 .7 says, resist the devil and he will flee from you.
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This is not a physical war. We don't have a real sword in our room that we hold and we fight him away.
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My son Isaiah loves to watch Bible Man and they have all those old Bible Man movies. All those scenes where the guy is fighting the devil away.
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This is not a physical war. It's a spiritual war. It's an unseen war.
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And we fight it with our mind as we fill our minds with the word of God. And then he flees.
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We fight it as we stand firm in our faith. As we recognize what he's doing and we say, devil, you don't belong here.
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Get away. I stand on the gospel. I stand on the word of God. You have no place here.
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My dad tells the story. This is interesting. They went back a year later to the same men's retreat.
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And they brought a guy there who talked about spiritual warfare. And I don't think it was by accident.
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I think it was by design. What happened the year before? Okay, let's address this a year later. And my dad said, everybody left there just terrified.
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What is going on? This is a spiritual battle that we're all facing. My dad said that when he came home after that retreat, he sensed a darkness over his house.
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Now, I want to be careful as I say this. I think sometimes people go way too far with the spiritual warfare stuff where they go off on these rabbit trails.
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So please understand that. I don't want us to go on those rabbit trails. But he did say, you know what? My daughter, he felt like my daughter was being attacked.
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Because Satan loves to go after children. He does. And so my dad prayed over her. And he said he noticed the difference that coming week where there was a peace in the house.
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And so we need to understand we are at war. And we need to know how to fight him.
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When Jesus resisted Satan, as he was tempted in the wilderness,
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Matthew 4, 1 -11 describes, Jesus quoted the truth of God's word back to him.
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And what happened? The end of that narrative says, and Satan departed. He tried to get him.
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I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. And he even misquoted scripture. I will do this for you. I will do that for you.
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And Jesus said, nope. Jesus trusted his father. And Satan could do no more.
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And he left. As we remind the devil who we are in Christ, as we stand on the word of God, as we trust the
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Lord, his efforts will fail every time. And then what the Lord is going to do in our lives is he is going to use you greatly to accomplish great things in this world for his sake.
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We want to be those people that Satan has a really hard time with. Like, oh, this lady is so strong in her faith.
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I never get where I want to get with her. This guy is so strong that he is the hard one to crack.
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This child is mature beyond her or his years. Those are the kind of people we want to be where Satan just has a horrible time with us and God is using you greatly.
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By God's grace, may we individually and may we as a church resist his tactics and be productive servants for the
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Lord Jesus Christ. What great blessing there is for us is we resist the devil and live as soldiers of the cross.
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That's the calling. And may by the grace of God, may we live that. So here's the third way how we are to understand the reality of the constant spiritual battle with Satan through resisting his various tactics.
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And next Sunday, we're going to look at points four through six, where Peter is describing that this is not unique to just us.
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This is happening all over the world. So how do we pray?
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How do we fight this with, not just with the people we know, but the people all over the world?
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And then he's also going to look at the goal of this. Satan does this and God has a design in it.
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And God is glorified through it. So we're going to look at that next Sunday. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer.
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Father in heaven, we do thank you for your word this morning. And it is a sobering topic.
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This is not a rosy topic, but it is the truth.
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It is the reality that the devil is at work. And he's got lots and lots of demons who are all over the place.
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And they have all these plans that they are trying to accomplish all over the world. And they have plans in this community that they want to accomplish.
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And we need to recognize that and we need to fight and help us to fight the way you tell us to fight with the word of God, with the gospel.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would all as a church experience this victory in our lives and that we would see the great unity and love that comes from living this out together as we fight
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Satan and as we follow you. So Lord, apply this to everyone right where they're at this morning.