The Devil's Devices

Providence Baptist Church

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Amen. As you turn to Ephesians 6, you need no one to tell you that the

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Christian life is hard. It's hard.

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It's often hard because of our own remaining sin.

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The Spirit tells us, actually, through the Apostle Paul in Romans 8, 13, meaning that we are to put to death the deeds of the body.

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The deeds of the body, not the deeds of Satan, not the deeds of the world.

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But in Romans 8, 13, the deeds of our own flesh.

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Too often, and most often, it is simply our own sin, our own sinful inclinations that get us in trouble.

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So let me just say that we need to take seriously the due diligence required to mortify the deeds of the flesh.

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Now, with that being said, listen carefully here. The church today is foolish if we neglect another sobering reality.

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And that is, in Ephesians 6, Paul teaches us that the church has a great enemy.

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Okay, so two ditches, if you will. On one side of the ditch, people's always talking about Satan.

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They get into superstitions and weird things. And they're always talking about, and they blame

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Satan for their sin and all that. We reject that. But there's an opposite ditch that maybe we might be prone to fall into.

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And the opposite ditch is you forget that Satan's real. You forget that there's this real, personal, spiritual being out there.

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There's a real thing out there. There's a real being out there. The Bible calls

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Satan, or the devil. We are foolish if we forget this. So Paul says that Christians, in our text, are to put on the whole armor of God so that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

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And this is a command I'm telling us that we must take seriously.

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So what we did last week is we looked at Ephesians 6 -11, and we looked at Satan's influence in the life, in the individual.

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And today, we're going to look at his influence in the world at large and in the church.

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So let's take up and read. Would you stand with me as we are in Ephesians 6 -11? I don't have this written down.

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I believe this is week 119 of Ephesians.

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Paul says, command here, command imperative, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

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Father, we thank You for this text. We pray, Lord, that You would bless the preaching of Your Word today, that Christ would be honored.

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This isn't a message about the evil one. This is a message about Christ and ultimately how we stand against Him.

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And we pray that Christ would shine through every aspect of this message and that we would seek to obey what the text says and put on the whole armor of God.

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We thank You, Father, for the Bible. We thank You for Your local church. We thank You that Christ is working today in our world and that our enemy is already defeated, even though we have to continue with his rage.

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His rage we can endure, for we know his doom is sure. We pray that we would rest in Christ, exalt

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Him. Speak to us, O Lord, through Your Word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated.

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Now, we're not going to rehash all of last week, but I will just say this for those who weren't here or we need a refresher.

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Satan is at work in individuals with these various efforts that we talked about, his efforts to deceive, his efforts to bring about doubt, to darken human minds, to entice towards disobedience, devouring mankind, distracting.

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So, consider this reality. Now, remember that our sin is the problem, and Satan wants us to press deeper into sin.

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So, no one goes to hell because Satan made them go there, right? Our problem, your problem, our greatest issue today is our sin.

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And Satan seeks to pounce on that and push us deeper into that. So, the

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Holy Spirit here in our text, through Paul's writing, is calling the church to remember this great enemy.

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And so, therefore, to put on, the text says, to clothe ourselves, is what it means. We talked about it several weeks ago.

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To clothe ourselves in the whole armor, the complete armor of God. So, let me begin this morning's sermon with a warning.

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William Gurnall, which I commend his writing to, the Christian in complete armor.

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William Gurnall writes, a soul that refuses to put on Christ, declares himself a rebel, and makes himself the enemy of God.

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Whoever is God's enemy must be Satan's friend.

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So, hear me, church. Hear me, guests, visitors, children. If you refuse, like if you take

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Ephesians 6 -11, you say, whatever, don't care about that, not gonna do that. You make yourself a friend of Satan and an enemy of God, because there is no neutrality.

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There's no neutral position here. You either put on the armor of God, and are in the kingdom of God, and are fighting in the

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Lord's army, as it were, or you refuse to put on the armor of God, and you find yourself a friend of the devil.

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You give yourself over to his influence.

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This is a hard and sobering truth, but it's one that you must listen to carefully. This is not meant to disparage any other church.

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It's not meant to disparage our church. But the devil has his hand in many churches by those who feign neutrality.

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By those who pretend to be neutral. The devil is at work. Consider this analogy, if you will. America, suppose

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America's at war with a foreign country. And you say, well, I'm not gonna be in America's army, but I won't be in the other country's army either, but I'll just send the other country foreign aid.

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I'll just send them some money to that country. And you say, I'm not actively fighting for any country, but everyone would know by your actions where your true allegiance actually lies, not with the

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United States, but with a foreign power. So similarly, think of it this way. There are only two kingdoms today.

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There's the kingdom of Christ and there's the kingdom of this world. And these kingdoms are very much at war with one another.

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And it is impossible, there is no Switzerland in this war. There is no no man's land in this war.

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You are either, there's no neutral territory. Those who are not in God's armor today are ultimately friends with the enemy.

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So here's where I wanna begin the sermon and with a gospel call, if you will, children, adults, every rational being in this room today.

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Here's the question I have for you as we begin this sermon. Are you by faith putting on the whole armor of God?

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Now, listen to me. Don't tune out here. Don't begin thinking about lunch.

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Don't begin letting your mind wander on these other thoughts. Think very clearly about what the text is saying.

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Put on the whole armor of God and now ask yourself this. Are you by faith, are you doing what this text says?

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Are you putting on the whole armor of God? Are you putting on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes that are ready to share the gospel?

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Have you taken up the shield of faith? Have you taken up the helmet of salvation?

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Have you taken up and are you wielding the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God? Are you keeping alert in prayer and supplication?

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Are you this morning by faith putting on the whole armor of God? Have you put on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who took on human flesh, who was born of the

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Virgin Mary, who was obedient to the point of death, who fulfilled all righteousness?

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He is the covenant keeper who died for covenant breakers.

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He bore God's wrath against our sin on the cross. He died and rose again on the third day.

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He is seated now in heaven ruling. The Bible says until all his enemies shall be put under his feet.

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As we begin this sermon, you must consider, have you repented and believed the gospel?

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Because if you haven't, you are not neutral.

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You are an enemy of God and you are friends with the devil.

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But why not begin this sermon in this way? Repenting of your sins.

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You ever thought about that? We often think about that at the end of a sermon. Oh, now I've heard the sermon, I'll repent and believe the gospel.

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No, no, why not listen to the sermon as a Christian? Why not repent now of your sins and put your faith in all that God has done for you in Christ and then seek to submit your life now to God putting on the whole armor?

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There is no neutrality. Jeremiah 2 .19 says, know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the

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Lord your God. The fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts. There is no neutrality.

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Unbelief, let me put it this way. Sometimes people present to you unbelief as though it's a victimhood.

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So people will talk about lost people as though they're victims of sin. Now you can certainly be a victim of sin, but lost people aren't ultimately victims of sin, they are perpetrators of sin.

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Unbelief is not a condition, right? It is rebellion.

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To not believe what God has done for us in Christ is to reject him and it's not neutral.

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And if you are in this camp this morning, will you come out of Satan's dominion and come into the light?

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Will you come to Christ even as we begin the sermon as your only suitable and all -sufficient

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Savior? And now a word to the church and then we'll get into the outline.

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If we were to picture the army of God today and the army of the evil, and if you picture these two great armies and these two great camps, well, by numbers, this army of the world,

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Satan's army, if you will, would appear to be much larger. The Bible says things about the church like you are a little flock.

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You are a city on a hill. The idea is we're surrounded by darkness.

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So what I'm saying to the church today is we must take heed to our text. We must put on the whole armor of God.

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And as William Grinnell notes later, doubt your own strength, but never doubt Christ's. Now the point of what we've tried to do in last week's sermon and what we're trying to do again in this sermon is consider this second half of verse 11, the phrase, the schemes of the devil.

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The word schemes in the King James is wild. It's always negative.

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So you can use the word scheme today for something good. Gunner will appreciate this one, but you can have a defensive scheme in football, right?

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You're not really using scheme negatively there, but this Greek word is negative. It has a negative connotation.

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It has the idea, scheme in our text has the idea of something malicious.

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Paul means an evil and wicked strategy that Satan has. The wiles of the devil, the schemes here of the devil are wicked and evil and malicious against the church.

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And so what we're trying to do today is consider the devil's devices so that we will seek to heed what

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Paul says here and put on God's armor. If we can kind of think about some of the ways that Satan operates in the world today,

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I think it will help us as we put on the whole armor of God to stand against his scheme.

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So consider now the devil's devices in the world. So we talk about the individual, now the world.

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Paul says, 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 devil is active in the world today. He roams around like a roaring lion, the

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Bible says. Now there'll be some overlap with last week here. There'll be overlap in both of these points, but we're moving here from Satan's strategy with the individual now to the world at large.

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We can't possibly cover all of his devices, but I'm gonna give you four overarching points.

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Number one, first, depravity. So how is Satan scheming in the world today?

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Number one, depravity. Now listen to this. Satan does not create depravity. He does not create unbelief.

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We are born in sin, inheriting the guilt and nature of Adam's rebellion.

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Sweet little Margie, who we're gonna meet in October, has already inherited the sin nature of Adam.

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Satan doesn't create rebellion in the hearts of men or unbelief, but think of it this way.

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Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Your grandmother did not create pumpkins.

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She did not create sugar. She did not create pie crust.

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However, she has a knack for taking these elements, putting them together, and coming out with a wonderful creation for you to consume at Thanksgiving dinner.

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Similarly, except much more diabolically, of course, the devil doesn't create unbelief, but he knows how to use it to his own satanic advantage and facilitate corruption.

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So here's what I want you to think about today. Do not think for a moment that behind some of the most wretched things in our world today, there is someone standing behind these things, some of the greatest depravity of our day.

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Yes, Satan doesn't have to create these things in our hearts. This is our own sinful depravity and rebellion against the holy and righteous

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God, but Satan knows how to fan the flame, if you will. So you have pornography.

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You have child trafficking. You have homosexuality. You have abortion.

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You have corruption in our government, and the list goes on and on and on. Illicit drug use or the abuse of alcohol.

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The list goes on and on and on, and we could talk about these things for days on end, but the point is you need to understand there is an evil one standing behind these things.

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He doesn't have to force people to do these things, but he is involved in perpetuating it.

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More I could say there, but let's consider secondly, destruction. How is Satan active in the world today?

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Depravity. Secondly, destruction. Jesus says it this way in John 10, 10. The thief comes only to kill, sorry, only to steal and kill and destroy.

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So much I could mention here, but just think through these things that you see happening in the world today.

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The breakdown of the family. The family is under attack in the world today on so many different fronts.

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By the way, Satan did that in the garden. You realize that? It's not coincidence that Satan went to Eve first and not

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Adam. He did that to overthrow God's created order. Adam first and then

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Eve. So Satan tries to turn it on its head to attack the family even in the garden. And this hasn't ceased today.

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The breakdown of the family unit or seeks to make how we see children being sought to be made disciples of the state.

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Like there are people, there are politicians, there are people in higher powers in the government today who think that our children are owned by the state.

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Where does that come from? Well, I'm saying that there's satanic strategies here.

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Or to seek to normalize anything that is against God's design of the nuclear family.

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We've seen that for decades, the breakdown of the family. We see even worse today.

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And why is Satan doing these? Why is he, what's his design? He is after the destruction of the society.

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If family falters, society falters. He's after the destruction of the church. He's after the perpetuation of false gospels.

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He's after the ruining of souls to hold out the false hope of drunkenness and let it ruin lives.

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To hold out the false promise of feminism only to see many women in our day who are now past the age of childbearing.

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They never married, they never had children. They're getting older. They pursued a career with everything they have and now they're miserable.

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Or to hold out the false promises of continued adolescence to men. And now you have men who are in their 40s who are living in their parents' basement who are playing video games all day.

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They never had a wife. They never had a home. They idolized boyhood. They dismissed manhood. And we see the destruction of the family.

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There's so many more things I could say. But please know that the things that you see happening in our world today, they are not by accident.

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They are not going to ultimately be solved politically.

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Right, so next year, hey guys, by the way, let me tell you something. You might not have known this. Did you know that next year is a presidential election?

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2024, so now you know. You know that I'm gonna vote the conservative candidate.

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You know that. I do not believe that can be in the Christian conscience any longer to be able to vote for sure nationally for the

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Democratic Party. However, I want to say clearly that the problems that we have in our world today will not ultimately be fixed politically because the enemy that we face is not flesh and blood.

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He's not a political enemy. Thirdly, I'll just briefly mention demonic activity.

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Now, we're gonna get into this more next week, but this goes right along with what I was just saying. Look at verse 12. So I wanna spend a week on verse 12 next week.

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But Paul says, for we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

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But Paul's saying there, it's not flesh and blood. Now, sometimes it's manifest, the evil is manifest through flesh and blood, but our ultimate enemy, as it were, is not flesh and blood.

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But he's saying there's a spiritual realm, there's this unseen realm, as it were. So it's not just Satan active in our world today, but even fallen angels, demonic activity.

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But we'll look at that more next week. Fourthly, so we have depravity and destruction, demonic activity.

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Fourthly, I just wanna mention it this way, disconnectedness. Now, let me see if I can kinda lay that out for you.

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I just mean that Satan is so subtle, he's so crafty. Remember that we were created for a purpose, to glorify

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God and enjoy him forever. This world is a created world.

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This world is God's world. Everything that you see, the changing of the leaves, the beautiful, the other night there was what we call a harvest moon, beautiful.

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The beautiful frost that at some point, I know summer's hanging on tightly, right? But I'm telling you, by the end of this month or maybe the first of next month, or for sure by January, there'll be a frost, right?

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We'll see a frost and you wake up, you hit the ground, like all of these things are for a purpose, what? They're a giant arrow pointing at the greatness and the glory of God.

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Now here's what Satan does. He's very crafty in seeking to disconnect this world from its reality.

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So from helping focus our attention on the created things over and above the creator, to help numb our senses, to make us think that the world is all about us.

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It's all about our pleasure. It's all about jobs or sports or money or career.

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It's one of Satan's many devices to disconnect us from reality, to get the world so focused on something other than God that we forget we have an immortal soul.

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Do you believe in hell? By the way, Satan doesn't rule hell.

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This time of year, or used to be popular, I don't know if it's anymore, I'm kind of disconnected from the youth ministry world now, but used to, during this time of year, there was called hell houses.

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And you would go and you would, kind of crazy now that I think back on it, but you would go and you'd see this wreck or something, and then they would say, oh, now look, this is what hell's like.

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And in all these scenarios, Satan would be ruling hell. That's not biblical.

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Satan doesn't rule hell. Satan is going to the lake of fire. He will burn in the lake of fire for all eternity.

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But what he tries to do is to disconnect your mind from remembering that you have an immortal soul, so that you'll just kind of float through life, loving your sin, loving the things of the world, and then one day you'll die and you'll stand before God, and you'll have put off coming to Christ and loving your own sin instead of turning to him for salvation.

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So disconnected. So much more we could talk about. Let's move now to the church. So we talked about the devil's devices in the individual and in the world.

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Now let's talk about the church. Again, verse 11, this is for the church.

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So when Paul says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, he's not talking to the individual per se,

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I mean only, and he's not talking to the world. He's talking to who? The church at Ephesus.

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He's talking to the local church. Now, listen to this. Satan hates all persons.

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Why? Because he hates God. So why does he hate people? Because people are made in God's image.

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But you need to hear this morning that Satan has a particular hatred for the church.

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He hates the church. It's quite amazing in the providence of protection of God that the church is even able to gather like we gather because Satan hates it so much.

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Why does Satan hate the church? If I could just offer two reasons. One reason I would say is this, because we used to be in his army.

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I mean, think about that. Every born -again person in here, every single redeemed soul,

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Ephesians 2 says that you were once walking as a child of disobedience.

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You once were a friend of Satan, but by grace alone,

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God has brought us out of darkness and into light, and we have turned our backs on the devil.

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And now we are, if you want to use the analogy still, friends of God. Of course, there's another reason

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Satan hates the church, and that is because, and this might be hard for some to hear, it shouldn't, the church has a special place in God's heart.

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There's a sense that you would say God loves the world, certainly, but there's another sense that you would say

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God loves his own, God loves the church in a special way.

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Turn in your Bibles for just a moment to Old Testament, Zephaniah, Zephaniah.

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So it was like the fourth book from the end in the Old Testament. Let me turn there.

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It's got Malachi, Zechariah, I'm going backwards, Malachi, Zechariah, Haggai, Zephaniah.

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Zephaniah, chapter three. Zephaniah, chapter three, verse 17.

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This is ultimately about the church. Listen to this, Zephaniah 3, 17. The Lord your

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God, Yahweh your God, is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.

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He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love.

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He will exult over you with loud singing. God is a singer, and he sings loud.

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He sings loud for who? He sings loudly over the church.

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The church is the bride of Christ. The church holds a special place in the heart of God. He loves the church, and therefore, what

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God loves, Satan hates. So what are some of the devil's devices in the church?

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I'll give you four. One, disunity. Now, I'll read from Ephesians 4 for just a moment.

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Paul says, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager, now here's it, to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

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Now, I'm gonna kinda have two points that deal with one point, but let me just explain this point this way.

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By disunity, what I simply mean here is not unified. So let me illustrate it this way.

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There are tons of churches today that they'll gather just like we're gathering, and they're not fighting.

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They're not at each other's throats. Business meetings are uneventful. Sunday mornings, they come and they go on and on and on without hostility, yet upon closer examination, they're not unified either, right?

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Or perhaps they're unified, but it's not around Christ. They're unified around a style.

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Maybe they're unified around a preference. Maybe they're unified around nostalgia or tradition or something like that.

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I'm gonna say it to you this way. A lot of churches in the Southern Baptist Convention are just unified around SBC stuff.

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They can't even imagine getting out of the SBC just because it's what they've always known.

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It's become tradition for them. It's become idolatry. But Satan is very crafty at seeking to have churches unified just not around the glory of God.

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Let me put it very personally to you this morning. I can't answer this, so you need to think.

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Did it cross your mind this morning at all? Think about it just a moment. Because you can get into this habit of just, what's the word

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I'm looking for? Autopilot, routine. Did it cross your mind at all this morning that the chief purpose of what we're doing here is meeting

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God? Did you just get up, get dressed, yell at the kids, brush your teeth, forget to brush your teeth, jump in the car, argue on the way over here, and then get in to church and sit down like you're supposed to without ever one time letting it cross your mind and your heart that the chief reason that we are gathering here this morning is to meet with God?

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That what we seek here above all else is God. So many churches

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I'm saying gather on Sundays. They're not fighting, but they don't have this focus either.

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They're not unified around God. They don't have a hunger for God. And I'm telling you, the evil one is very crafty at putting our focus away from Christ.

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Maybe I could have called this point diversion. That is, Satan takes our focus off of Christ, off of his mission, off of unity in Christ, off of God's glory, and puts our focus elsewhere.

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A church that's unified but not unified around Christ is really worthless.

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But secondly now, so first, disunity. Secondly, I'm gonna press this point deeper. And that is we move from disunity, like maybe we're unified but it's not around Christ.

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Now I wanna talk about division. So Satan is crafty at creating disunity, but even to press the point further, number two, division.

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Now Paul says in Ephesians 4, we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the

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Spirit and the bond of peace. Unity is something the church must take extremely seriously.

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It's the Holy Spirit who creates it as he brings our hearts from death to life, as he grafts us into Christ, the church's head, as he knits us together as the body of Christ.

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Listen to me, church, Satan loves a divided church. Yes, it's a strategy of his to have the church simply not unified.

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So churches today that are not fighting, but they're together, but they're unified around the wrong things,

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Satan's happy with that. But what he loves even more is to have a church actively hostile toward one another, a church that is full of gossip and slander, a church full of jealousy and strife and schism.

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And maybe you would say, Quatro, why are you preaching this?

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We're not a divided church. So why are you telling us this? And my response would be, amen. Can I tell you this, share this from my heart?

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We are the most unified church that I have ever personally been a member of.

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I have never been a member of a church that is more unified than Providence Baptist Church.

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And I praise God for such unity.

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But I also want to say this, do not think for one second that Satan is not ready to have this place torn apart, to have this place divided, to have you, even this morning, easily offended at a brother or sister, to have you too heavy -handed on a brother or sister, or to have you too passive with sin, or to have you envious of one another's lot in life.

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They got this new thing, why don't I get that new thing? Or to have us argumentative or angry.

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Churches divide over the craziest things. A beautiful thing that happened in the history of the church is in 1689, there was the

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General Assembly of the Particular Baptists. Had to get that out right.

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And they had this beautiful thing, and there was unity, and it was really beautiful.

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Well, one of these brothers who I love, Benjamin Keech, in his church, this was like 1691, 1692, so not very long after 1689.

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They have a controversy in the church. The church has division over this thing.

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Wait for it. The singing of hymns.

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Not over the doctrine of election. Not over politics. Not over the trinity or something like, over the singing of hymns.

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Satan, again, these people are responsible for this division and it's not as though Satan made people do something against their will, they didn't.

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But Satan saw an opportunity and helped this church find division over something that should be beautiful.

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What I'm saying is you must stay on your guard. And the only way that the church will stand against such satanic strategies is by listening and obeying by faith what

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God has told us here in our text, to put on the whole armor of God.

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We must be active every day in putting on God's full armor.

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By the way, this armor, that's what I'm saying, it's not something you just put on and you're like, okay, I'm done with it. No, no, every day we wanna put on this armor to be watchful, to be sober, to be vigilant, to contend against Satan together.

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So disunity, division. Thirdly, if we were playing, oh,

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I forgot the game, but if we were playing that one game, this would be a double word score. Doctrinal downgrade, scategories.

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Doctrinal downgrade. I had to pull that in because you're gonna be thinking about that and you're like, what? Listen, here's one of Satan's strategies in the church today.

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Doctrinal downgrade. Satan loves to minimize truth.

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Satan loves to distort our view of God. Satan would have us go soft on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

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Is that really that big a deal, really? By the way, this is Reformation Month. We stand, the church stands or falls on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

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I am not justified by my faith and my works. I cannot stand before God based on what

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I have done, but all of what Jesus has done on my behalf. I am saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

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How you wanna get Quatro fired up? Let's talk about Reformation Month. But we don't minimize these truths.

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We don't minimize or weaken the doctrine of God's sovereign rule. Some people may not like that, that God is in control of all things.

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It doesn't matter, we stand on these truths. Satan would have us think, do we really need to be so serious here about doctrine?

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Do we really need to worry about all this stuff with confessions and distinctives and catechisms and scripture memorization?

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Is all this stuff really necessary in the church? Yes, it is. And I would even say this, even that, it's not enough.

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You can go to liberal churches today and they'll still recite the creeds. So even that in and of itself is not enough, but definitely all this stuff is necessary.

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Now, I understand it makes us stand out a little bit in this community. Frankly, I'm just gonna tell you, you're just a little bit weird.

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Me too. Not only do we have a confession of faith, but like we read it on Sunday mornings.

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We study it. We recite the Bible together. We recite catechism together.

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We are like crazy people that really, really, really are taking truth and doctrine seriously.

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We love and we teach sound doctrine. You got people in this church that wear around T -shirts with sound doctrine, right?

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Reform theology, 1689, like you're doing these things. Why? Because we love God, He's precious to us.

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And Satan would have us minimize truth. Hey, why don't you just be like everybody else?

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Why don't you, don't be so serious about God's worship. Don't be so serious about memorizing the

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Bible or taking this historic faith and really diving into it, learning it and teaching it to your children.

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Why don't you just keep things surface level? And if people wanna get serious, they can have their own little small groups.

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And we say absolutely and resoundingly no. Why? Because truth matters.

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It's precious. We stand here because a church never drifts, a church never drifts into deeper doctrine.

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A church never drifts into faithfulness. You understand what

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I'm saying? What I'm saying is a church not serious about these things, always drifts, not into more faithfulness, but error.

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When a church stumbles, she does not stumble into being a greater doctrinally centered church.

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She stumbles always into error, always into downgrade, always into infidelity.

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So we say here, we stand against the schemes of the devil.

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We will not let him minimize doctrine. We must also be aware of his distorting doctrine.

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Satan is very crafty at taking the law of God and turning it into legalism, or taking the grace of God and turning it into licentiousness or antinomianism.

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Or I wanna mention this one thing this morning, distorting the doctrine of assurance of salvation.

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So Satan's very crafty at this. So sometimes it is Satan's strategy to have you doubt that you are a child of God.

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You are a Christian, but Satan wants to bring doubt to paralyze you. If that's you, then

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I say to you, look to Christ, stay plugged in with the local church, resist the devil, don't quit, and seek the

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Lord for assurance. But sometimes, and I wanna say it this way because I don't think this is even a category in some people's minds.

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So listen to me very carefully. You were told, maybe, when you became a

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Christian, maybe you were told to write a date in your Bible and never let

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Satan make you doubt that you're saved. Now Satan does bring doubt, I just said that.

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However, I also think Satan works this way. Sometimes he brings about what you might term as false assurance.

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And so what I mean is, you're living contrary to the word of God, you are living in sin, you're not really following God.

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I mean, you give lip service, but you're not actually surrendered to God as your king.

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But you continue to say, oh, I walked an aisle, I said a prayer, surely

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I'm saved. And you listen to Satan's lies and you refuse to repent.

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What I'm saying is, Satan may take a Christian and deceive them and make them doubt their salvation.

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But don't look past that he can also take a lost person and introduce into their mind thoughts that, oh, well, maybe

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I'm really a Christian, I'll continue to live in rebellion. No, you must be wary of the devil's devices.

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You seek to stand against him and you must put on Christ and you judge, you're like, how do we know? How do

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I know if Satan's deceiving me or not? It's the book. We judge our life by the standard of God's word.

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All right, many more strategies I could mention, but let me just say one more. The church has a great enemy, an enemy that would seek to bring disunity, division, doctrinal downgrade, and then finally,

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I'll just mention this one, discouragement. Paul says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

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And I don't want to dismiss this morning the weakening power that discouragement can have upon a church.

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To think that the church is on an island, to think that all the gospel efforts that we have are in vain, to think that God perhaps has abandoned us.

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If Satan cannot bring disunity or division or doctrinal downgrade into a church, he can often, even in the healthiest of churches, sneak in discouragement.

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And in his church, his goal for the church in that way, his goal in bringing discouragement in is to have the church look inward instead of upward.

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That we begin to look in, we begin to think about ourselves, we begin to have a selfish focus instead of setting our eyes on the

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Lord Jesus. We begin to focus on circumstances instead of Christ. But the church must remember her

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God and her King. We must remember the lamb who was slain is worthy to receive the full reward of his suffering, which includes healthy churches.

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Have you heard this one before? Christ is worthy of a healthy church. And he's worthy of a healthy church in Peru and Pakistan and in Perry County, Arkansas.

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Christ is worthy of a healthy church. And if God sends to this church 10 people or 10 ,000 people, our focus must be on the glory of God and the worthiness of his son above all else.

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What I mean is we don't ultimately focus on numbers here. We ultimately focus on the honor and glory of Christ.

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And listen, don't misunderstand me. I want numbers, I pray for numbers. I go knock on doors because I want to see souls redeemed.

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I'll be preaching Saturday weirdest thing ever at the Goat Fest in Perryville, Arkansas because I want to see people saved.

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I want to see people come to our church. I want to see people love sound doctrine. I want to see more people baptized like we're doing next

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Sunday. I want to see all of these things, but I am resolved. My feet are shackled right here on the

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Bible, on the word of God. I am resolved that come what may and Pastor Jacob and I are together on this, that come what may,

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Jesus Christ is worthy of a healthy church here. And so we must not be discouraged.

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Whether God brings seasons of blessing or if there are times of seasons of maybe you would call dryness, we must never let discouragement pull us away from our duties.

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Oh, if we don't soften here, these people may not come. If we don't start doing this, these people may not come.

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No, no, no, no. Set your eyes on Christ. Discouragement must never pull us away from our duties.

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Our duties to doctrinal fidelity, our duties to pure worship, our duties to a healthy church, our duties to evangelizing this community and to the ends of the earth.

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And there'll be hard things that come up sometimes. Can we allow so -and -so to use this building?

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Well, so -and -so is connected to so -and -so and they're friends of so -and -so and they're family of so -and -so.

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And so we have to think which way, like, no, no, no. We will protect the purity of this church.

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We will protect the doctrinal integrity of this church. We will protect the worship of this church.

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We will protect the membership of this church. Why? Because Christ is worthy of a healthy church.

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And we must stand against Satan's devices, one of which includes bringing discouragement on us for these things.

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Paul says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

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Certainly, we have not covered everything that Satan does in our world today, but what I've tried to do last week and this week is to show us some of the devil's strategies today in individuals, in the church, in the world, so that we could see that Paul here, he's not playing around.

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He's not just, you know, he's like, you know what? I don't got anything to say. What can I talk about now? Let me just talk about spiritual warfare.

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No, no, no. He has a cis charge to the church, and the charge is we cannot become complacent in these matters.

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There is a great dragon, as it were, hovering over even this place, ready to devour us, and we must, by faith, believe our text, and then, by God's grace, do what it says and understand that the ultimate protector of the church is not our resolve, but God.

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And we rest in Him. Are you arrayed today in the whole armor of God? That's the question.

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Is verse 11 something you're doing? Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

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You have no excuse not to do this. There's no reason this morning that any of us in here can offer to justify disobedience to this text, so the question is, will you heed it, and will you commit to helping one another in this church to put on our armor together for the glory of King Jesus and to march on toward the celestial city until we get home?

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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Let us not take lightly what this text teaches us.

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Give us the grace we need to listen to what it's taught us and to put on the whole armor of God.

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First and foremost, I pray for those here who have never put on Christ. They stand today naked and exposed and wicked and depraved against a holy and righteous

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God, and yet, even this day, even during the prayer, here is Christ before them.

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Put Him on, I pray. I pray, God, they would. They'd repent and believe the gospel.

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I pray the church would stand ready. We would see the armor before us, and we wouldn't just look at it.

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We would put it on, and we wouldn't just parade in it, but we would fight.