Speaker: Hey man, please seat.
As we're facing technical difficulties, we're talking about spiritual warfare
this morning, so, um, apropos, but hey, what a, what an awesome worship set.
Um, this is the second time I heard it and I said the same thing, first
service, and I just felt the same way.
The second service, uh, such a good thing.
I mean, think about what you just said.
The God of angel armies is always by my side.
Do you believe that like the, the God of angel armies, not just by your side,
indwells you with the Holy Spirit?
That's phenomenal.
I'm fighting a battle.
He's already won.
No matter what comes my way, I will overcome.
Do you believe that this morning where you sit as a Christian, if
you're in Christ this morning?
I hope you do.
I hope.
I hope those weren't just words that were just mindlessly coming outta your mouth.
Those are our powerful statements of truth that are.
Our hope that we have yes.
And, and, and connected back to the scriptures, rooted in our hope in Christ.
But what a glorious reality that is for us this morning.
And I hope that's good news.
I hope you're fired up by that this morning.
Uh, Jordan Lowe was fired up.
He carried my pulpit up by himself this morning.
This thing's heavy too.
If you haven't picked this thing up, it's, it's beefy.
Um, he just brought it up here by, its by himself.
So, thanks, Jordan.
Hey, we lived in Arizona for a while and, uh, and in Arizona, we, we quickly
found out that there's scorpions there.
And, and not like the scorpions that are out in the desert
that, that Steve Irwin sees.
And they're, they're big and you can see them coming from a mile away.
No, these are, these are creatures that I have to believe came
into existence after the fall.
These are what are called bark scorpions, and they're about an inch
long when they're an adult and they're the same color as track home carpet.
Okay, so my wife and I, we, we move into this home in Arizona that we're
renting and, and, uh, she's pregnant with Luke at the time and a little while
into our stay there, I, I get woken up in the middle of the night she was in
using the restroom and she calls for me and I walk in and about six inches
from her foot is a scorpion and it's our first encounter with a scorpion.
So I did what any self-respecting man would do.
I got a shoe and I smacked it.
I didn't know what was gonna happen.
Thankfully it died.
And then I, I did a, another manly move.
I got some toilet paper and I, I bunched it up and I, I grabbed it and I threw it
away and, and I felt good about myself.
Well, then we turned around and we found two or three more
in our bathroom that night.
So we did not sleep forever after that, until we left Arizona.
No, we didn't sleep the rest of that night.
'cause we're going, where, where are the rest of these scorpions?
Why are they here?
And scorpions are insidious creatures.
Because you can't spray for them.
They have an exoskeleton that any insect spray doesn't penetrate.
So you can put like diatomaceous earth out around your house and things, but
you really have to just call for the priest to come and bless your house.
'cause that's the only way the scorpions are leaving.
Uh, went to the church the next morning.
That happened to be a Saturday night, and I told one of our elders, I
said, Hey, you'll never guess what I found in my house last night.
He's a native Arizonan, by the way.
I was like, I, we had a scorpion in our house.
And he just was like, yeah.
I said, we have like four scorpions in our house.
And he said, yeah, you've probably got thousands in your house.
I'm sorry, what?
You didn't cover this in the interview.
This was not part of the job offer package.
It wasn't come be a pastor of this church and take your life into your
hands every night with scorpions.
He told me there was a scorpion that climbed up the wall over the,
the top of his bed in the middle of the night, fell into his bed
and then started stinging him.
Excuse me.
He said, you guys are about to have a baby.
You should probably take the wheels off your crib and put it up on Glass Bulls,
because Scorpions can't climb Glass Bulls, otherwise they'll end up climbing up the
legs of the crib and sting your baby.
So I quit right there.
You should No, no, I, I didn't.
But man, leaving with scorpions is, is such an uncomfortable thing.
'cause you don't know where they are.
They, they're, they're subtle.
They blend in.
The difference though, between the threat of scorpions and the threat that we're
here to talk about this morning is that scorpions don't hunt, at least not people.
The threat that we're here to talk about this morning is
another threat that can be subtle.
It's another threat that can blend in.
It's another threat that's easy for us to forget about, but the difference
this morning is the threat that we're here to address this morning.
Unlike a scorpion, the threat that we're here to talk about today does hunt.
The threat that we're here to talk about today is the threat of Satan.
In the life of a believer, we can fall prey into forgetting about
what the Bible is gonna tell us this morning that Satan is real.
And not only is Satan real, but he's active, he's on the
hunt, and you're on the menu.
And so as we come to this passage in one Peter this morning, it's good for us to
remember that the devil is indeed real.
But the good news is, as Christians, even though the devil is on
the hunt, you and I can resist.
We're not pray to just roll over and wait for him to attack.
If we're in Christ, we can resist.
And Peter's gonna give us the roadmap for that here in one Peter
Chapter five, verses eight and nine.
So if you've got your Bibles open up to one Peter, chapter five, and
we're gonna start here in verse eight.
Peter writes, be sober minded, be watchful.
Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring
lion seeking someone to devour.
Before we get any further into the text, I want us to talk
about the devil for a minute.
And, and, and it's good for us to do that because I don't know what
your conception is of him, but the devil is not the cartoon figure
that the world has put out there.
The, the world pictures Satan as this horned figure that has a pointy tail
and that, uh, has uh, a pitchfork in his hand and he's waiting at the
welcome desk to hell to check people into perdition as they get there.
That's actually not the devil at all.
Uh, Satan is not in charge of hell.
That's probably a helpful clarification point.
God is, Satan is not the one that is ruling in hell.
God is, Satan is ultimately gonna cast into the lake of fire, along
with all the inhabitants of hell.
But, but Satan right now is actually prowling as the text is saying here
in one Peter around this earth.
Paul says in Ephesians chapter two that before we come to faith in
Christ, that we were following the prince of the power of the air.
We were following the course of this world.
Paul's gonna say in Second Corinthians chapter four, that Satan is the God of
this world who is blinded the eyes of the lost, so that the domain of Satan is here.
The domain of Satan is this world, along with all of his demons.
But I want us to talk about Satan.
Not so much about his nature or who he is, but I I want us
to talk about what he does.
Because if we do have an enemy and we do, and if he is a threat to us
and he is, then it would help us to understand the threat itself.
What are his strategies?
How does he attack?
What are his methods?
What are the ways that he goes about hunting us as his prey?
Point number one this morning is just that, know the strategies of the devil.
Know the strategies of the devil.
Again, Peter says he prowls around like a roaring lion.
He calls 'em our adversary, that that's a word that means enemy.
It's used in Luke chapter 18, verse three of the woman who
goes before the unjust judge.
The widow says there was a widow in that city who kept coming to
him, the unjust judge saying, give me justice against my adversary.
And so it can even carry a, a courtroom idea that they're the one on the
other side of the docket from you.
An adversary is our enemy, it's our opponent, and that certainly is the devil.
The devil is the opponent of Jesus, and because we belong to Jesus, because we
are followers of Jesus, then the devil by implication, is an enemy of us.
He's our adversary.
The word devil is a word that means accuser or slanderer.
He's the one that wants to see us fall.
He's our opponent.
He's the one who tempted Jesus in the wilderness.
He's the one who snatched the word from the rocky path that we talked
about as men this last weekend.
He's the one who possessed Judas in order to cause him to betray Jesus.
He's the one who enticed Ananias to lie to the Holy Spirit.
This is the devil, the adversary.
The slanderer.
The accuser.
And Peter says he prowls around.
It's the word for walks, but it's applied here to one who is said to be a, a lion.
So I want you to get the picture of National Geographic with the the lion
prowling and crouching in the tall grass as it's looking for the prey.
That's who Peter says the, the devil is.
In this context, he's prowling around like a, a roaring lion, and
so Peter is still continuing the flock in the shepherding imagery.
Remember, he began that back at the beginning of chapter five with his
instructions to the pastors to shepherd the flock of God that is among you.
He's carrying that forward because at this time, the lion was a great
threat to the shepherd in his flock.
For you and me today, lions don't pose much of a threat.
We go to the zoo and we see lions behind the bars.
We go to the zoo and we see them and they're, they're, they're over
there and we can admire them and we can be impressed with their
strength, but we don't fear them.
During this time though, the lion sent a chill down the spine of every shepherd.
David had to face lions as a shepherd.
First Samuel chapter 17, as he's talking to King Saul, when Saul looked at him
and said, you can't fight Goliath.
David appealed to his tracker because he said this, but David said to Saul, your
servant used to keep sheep for his father.
And when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I
went after him and I struck him, and I delivered it out of his mouth.
And if he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him.
So the lion was a threat to the sheep.
A lion was a threat to the shepherd.
And hearing the roar of a lion would've sent a chill on the spine
of the shepherd and the sheep alike.
And so Peter's continuing this imagery, and he's saying the li the lion
here in this context is the devil.
You have an adversary.
You have somebody that's after you, the devil and his demons are hunting you and
you are on the menu, but he's not just after scaring you, he wants to devour you.
That's what Peter says next.
He's prowling around like a Loring roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
He's searching for you.
He has his sights set on eating, and he wants to eat and devour and destroy you.
You think of the lion again in the weeds.
Sniffing, catching the scent of the flock, looking through the weeds, trying
to find the straggler, trying to find the one that he can set his sights on.
The one that he can attack.
The one that he can pick off.
That is what Peter says Satan is doing with us and his demons.
That is, and I want you to see that it's in present tense.
Your enemy, the devil, prowls around.
That's current.
That means that, that he's doing that right now.
Him and all of his demons are doing that right now.
He's, again, not the cartoon image of of, of Satan in hell with the
pitchfork waiting to check people in.
That's not him at all.
He's not there.
He's here.
He's on this earth with all of his demons, and they have you in their sights.
They want to take you out.
They wanna cause as much damage to the name of Christ as they possibly can.
It,
but what does that actually mean?
What threat does Satan pose to us?
What can Satan do before we get to what he can do?
I want us to first say what he can't do.
What can Satan not do?
Well first, Satan can't possess a Christian nor can any of his demons.
A, a believer.
According to the Apostle Paul in one Corinthians, chapter six
is in dwelt by the Holy Spirit.
A believer cannot be in dwt by a demon, so a Christian cannot be demon possessed.
Demon harassed, sure, but not possessed A demon cannot take up
a residence within a believer in, in exercise control over them.
One John four, four says, little children, you are from God
and have overcome the world.
For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
The spirit who dwells in you is greater than any demonic
force that would be out there.
So there's no demon that can move into you and say to the Holy Spirit, see you later.
And so a Christian cannot be demon possessed.
Second, uh, Satan cannot touch a Christian, harass a Christian, afflict
a Christian, apart from the sovereign permission and purview of God.
Think of job Satan appears before job and or before God.
That is.
And, and God says to Satan, where have you come from?
And Satan says, I've been roaming.
It's just like our text, right?
I've been prowling.
I've been looking, and God says to Satan, have you considered my servant job?
There's none like him in all the earth.
Satan says, well, of course there's none like him in all the earth.
You've set a hedge of protection around him.
You've made his life easy.
But then what does Satan say?
Satan says, let me, let me afflict him and then we'll see what happens.
Christian Satan is not nor any of his demons.
They're not capable of doing anything to you apart from
the sovereign purview of God.
Satan's not gonna wake up or God's not gonna wake up 'cause God never slumbers.
But God's not gonna wake up and, and, and look all of a sudden into
your life and be like, whoa, what's going on with this spiritual warfare?
Who okay, this, he's sovereign over it.
And so Satan can't do anything to you outside of the sovereign purview of God.
Third, he can't make you sin against your will.
And so there goes the old excuse, well, the devil made me do it.
He can't do that.
That's not how it works.
Satan contempt you.
But what does James say?
James says that we are enticed and lured by our temptation.
And when temptation gives it, conceives it.
It gives birth to sin.
We don't sin because the devil made me do it.
We sin because we wanted to sin.
So Satan can't force you to sin against your will.
And then finally, Satan is not omnipresent.
He's not omniscient, he's not equal with God.
Satan can't act like God.
And so this is an important point because Satan is not everywhere all at once.
So Satan is spatially confined somewhere in this earth at this point in time.
If he's here, he's not at the church down the road.
If he's right now over in Iran, he's not in Africa, he's not in
United States, he's not in Canada.
Satan can't be everywhere at once.
And so what does Satan have?
Well, Satan has all of his demons.
By the legions of them at his disposal.
They can reach anyone anywhere.
And, and so we can't think that Satan is after everyone, all in
the, the same form or fashion because Satan is a creative being.
He's spatially limited.
He's not omnipresent, nor is he omniscient.
He doesn't know the end from the beginning, and he is
certainly not equal with God.
And so all of those things are important for our framework of
understanding how a Satan, how Satan threatens a Christian, what his
strategies are, and how he attacks us.
And so we wanna know what he can't do, but also we then need to shift
and say, okay, so then what does Satan do in a Christian's life?
I'm about to put up a slide.
I know our, our diligent note takers out there.
You guys sometimes panic when I've got a slide with a lot of words on it because
you're like, I gotta get all of it done.
It's gonna be up here for a minute.
And so you can either write it down or you can take a picture of the slide.
That's fine too.
But, uh, I don't want you to miss what we're talking,
we're gonna walk through it.
I'm gonna talk through these things, so.
This is what Satan does.
Okay?
First let's just talk about this.
He deceives and distorts the truth, man.
He's been doing that from the very beginning.
Satan in scripture is called the father of lies.
Lying is his native tongue.
Satan comes to Eve in the garden, and what does he say to God to eve?
He says, did God really say that you shouldn't eve from the tree?
The knowledge of good and evil?
See, Eve had received the word of God, and so had Adam, don't eat from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Satan comes along.
Did he really say that?
Surely he didn't actually mean that you can't eat of it.
In fact, you know what?
God's a cosmic killjoy.
He doesn't want you to be like him.
Doesn't the tree look good?
Eve?
Why don't you just go for it?
See, from the very outset, Satan has been one that distorts and deceives.
He goes after the truth of God's word.
He openly opposes and distorts and deceives with the, the,
the truth of the gospel.
Right.
We're still under this first point here.
Second Corinthians chapter four.
It says that God has blinded the eyes of the lost the God
of this world that is Satan.
Satan has blinded the eyes of the lost to keep them from seeing the
light of the glory of Jesus Christ.
Satan can pervert and twist and deceive people so that they don't
see and understand that gospel.
Satan can also introduce and empower false teaching.
First John, John, chapter four, verses one through three.
We are called to test the spirits to see whether or not they're truly from God.
Satan can also disguise himself and, and as can I believe, his
demons as messengers of light.
Second Corinthians 11 verse 14, A, a And so in other words, Satan can take
his deception that distorts the truth and he can make it seem like something
that's innocuous, something that's good when really it's something that's evil.
Take for example, the realm of of transcendental meditation.
And that has flooded our society and culture, hasn't it?
It's flooded schools as well.
There's apps that people have an app like the app Calm that's on your phone.
You go, well, what's wrong with that?
It helps me breathe.
It helps me center myself.
It helps me empty my mind.
Well, that's not biblical meditation at all.
Biblical meditation isn't emptying your mind.
It's filling your mind.
The enemy would love nothing more than for you to empty your mind so
that you're vulnerable to fill it with all kinds of things that aren't true.
In fact, even some of the things that are chanted during transcendental
meditation are the evil and demonic names for false gods and goddesses,
and we disguise it under a picture of a beach on our phone, or we slip
it into our classrooms with our kids.
See the, the, the demons are messengers of light.
Disguise themselves as messengers of light.
Paul says this in two Corinthians 11, three through four.
He says, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived eve by his cunning, your
thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
That's what he wants.
He's gonna distort and, and twist and deceive because he
wants to lead you astray from a sincere, pure devotion to Christ.
So he distorts the truth.
He also tempts towards compromise, bitterness, lies, and pride.
He, he can take anger.
Ephesians four tells us, be angry and do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give the enemy a foothold.
Satan can take anger and turn anger into sinful anger.
Through his temptations, Satan can promote unforgiveness in bitterness.
Second Corinthians chapter two verses 10 through 11 says that.
Satan can tempt to deceive and lie.
Acts chapter five, when he led Ananias to lie to the Holy Spirit,
and so Satan can tempt towards compromise, bitterness, lies and pride.
Satan can also afflict us.
He attacks the mind with fear and accusation, paranoia, confusion,
doubt, things like that.
For example, in Luke chapter 22, verse 31, uh, Jesus tells Peter, Satan demanded
to have you, and he's telling that to Peter and the rest of the 12, I think
that's part of what he wanted to do.
He wanted to pressure, he wanted to antagonize the disciples during
this time of intense suffering that they were about to go through.
And yet Jesus said, but I have prayed for you.
Satan can also threaten us.
That's our text one Peter five eight.
He can threaten us, which can lead us to that paranoia and that fear, that
unhealthy fear that can cripple our minds.
'cause he's the roaring lion.
Satan can also try to undermine the truth of God's word by launching the attacks
of the, the quote unquote intellectual realm against the scriptures, which
were called in two Corinthians 10, three through five, to destroy arguments in
every lofty opinion raised against Christ.
That's our job because the enemy's gonna continue to try to come after
us to come after the word of God to try to disprove the word of God.
Guess what hasn't happened since?
At the beginning, the word of God hasn't been disproven.
Satan can also introduce along this lines of, of, of harassing the mind.
He can introduce thoughts into our, our mind.
I believe even take the temptation of Jesus when Jesus is in the
wilderness and Satan comes along and he says, you must be hungry.
Oh, look at that rock.
Why don't you just turn that rock into some bread?
Oh, hey, didn't, didn't something in the Bible say something
about the angels bearing you up.
Why don't you, why don't you jump?
See what happens.
For us, those thoughts might be something like, oh man, I deserve better than this.
I don't deserve what I'm having to walk through.
I don't deserve what I'm going through right now.
I deserve better than this.
Or maybe the thought is, man, these people around me in my community group,
they're, they're not as spiritual as I am.
Did you hear the way they read that?
Did you hear they would pronounce that name in the Bible?
Did you man that question?
Who do these pastors think we are?
This isn't nearly deep enough for us.
Satan could also introduce a thought like, I should be leading in that position.
Not, not them.
I should be doing that.
That should be me.
He can also introduce a thought like, man, what would life have
been like if I never had kids?
I've got one of mine in here, Luke.
I've never had that thought, buddy.
He can also introduce a thought like.
What would life have been like if I had never married that person?
I haven't had that thought, and I hope my wife hasn't had that thought either.
But see, we can begin to entertain these thoughts and all of a sudden it's
like, where did that thought come from?
Sit and can afflict the mind as well through things like drugs
and alcohol, lack of sobriety.
He attacks the mind with fear, accusation, confusion and doubt.
Doubt.
Satan does other things to us.
He harasses people, right?
Ephesians six 16 talks about the flaming darts of the evil one,
the flaming darts of the evil one.
I, I, I believe those are, are things like the, the doubts, the anxieties, the
fears that can creep in and, and even some of the stuff that we think about and
we're like, oh man, that's kind of the realm of the heebie-jeebies, isn't it?
Walter Martin, in his book, the Kingdom of Cults, he writes this
about demon demonic activity.
He says, all of the people involved in these experiences, these encounters
recognize the signs of the demonic harassment, knocking or banging
sounds, severe, repetitive nightmares, colored lights moving across the
room, red eyes, apparitions, and objects moving without any human help.
See, Satan can can do things like that as well with his demons.
The last part, he works, especially where believers grow, isolated,
worldly or spiritually careless.
There's other things too, persecution.
Revelation two 10 says Satan is about to throw some of you into jail.
Worldly affairs, they can govern with an asterisk, meaning they're governing under
God's sovereign purview, but they can control the the events of the nations.
Daniel 10 12, the Prince of the Kingdom of Persia opposed me.
So these are all the things that Satan can do.
And, and here's the thing, I, I can't be overly dogmatic about
this, but sometimes I wonder if maybe you don't have a specific
demon that's been assigned to you.
After all, Satan went after job.
Satan went after Peter.
What did Paul say?
Paul said, I Ivy Messenger from Satan.
A thorn in the flesh.
Joshua, the high priest in Zechariah.
Satan is there accusing him specifically, and then in Luke's gospel, Luke 1316,
it says There was a Jewish woman who was bound by Satan for 18 years.
Whether you have a specific demon or not, Satan knows you.
If you're in Christ, you've got a target on in your back.
He's hunting, you're the prey, you're on the menu, and he will come after you.
Spiritual warfare is real.
And so if he's gonna come after us, we should know what is he after?
Well, it it, we've already seen it in the text.
He, he wants to devour us.
He wants to devour us.
And, and so even though a genuine follower of Christ can't be possessed, can't
lose their salvation, you know what?
Satan can still do a whole lot of damage in the life of a believer if we let up,
and we're about to talk more about that in just a minute, but if we're not aware
of the fact that the threat is out there.
Then he can do a lot of damage in the life of a believer.
But you might say, okay, but why is he still doing this?
Right?
How doesn't he know?
He, he's, we're fighting a battle Satan.
God's already won.
Satan lost.
Why doesn't he just take his ball and go home?
Why does he keep trying?
I think there's a, a couple of possibilities here.
Number one, Satan's not omniscient.
He doesn't know the beginning from the end, God does.
Number two, even though Satan knows the Bible, the demons know the Bible.
The demons have a, a sound theology.
James even talks about that you believe that God is one.
You, you, you do well.
Even the demons believe and they shudder.
Satan has a theology about God.
It doesn't mean that he actually believes that that's sure and
fixed and going to happen.
Satan's not stupid, but he's dumb.
Satan's crafty, right?
So he is not stupid.
He's, he's cunning about what he does.
But he is not the the sharpest tool in the shed either in some other areas.
I totally think it's within the realm of possibility that Satan thinks that he's
going to be able to beat God in the end.
I think it's within the realm of possibility that Satan believes
that he could take out a believer, and so he's gonna keep going.
But even if he doesn't, even if he knows that he can't, and even if he
knows that he's gonna lose in the end, Satan hates Jesus so much that
he's gonna do everything within his power to harm those that love Jesus.
And so if you love Jesus, Satan hates you.
And so you're on the menu.
Satan and his demons are active.
We need to know the strategies of the devil, but then we need to
ask ourselves, okay, but if I can resist, because remember, the the
hope is even though Satan's real, you in Christ can resist him.
How do I resist?
Knowing the strategies is, is one thing, but let's keep going.
What does he say next?
He says, be sober minded.
Be watchful.
Be sober minded and be watchful.
These are two terms that are pretty synonymous with each other and, and
I think Peter's calling us to this.
It's a state of alertness.
It's a state of, of being awake and aware, a readiness of vigilance.
I believe Peter's calling us to that because of what he's just written right
before that, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.
I think Peter then says that that's part of our equation.
We cast our anxieties on the Lord because he cares for us.
But that doesn't mean that our position now is one of fatalism and a kind of a let
go and let God just kick your feet up and just ride it out until Jesus comes back.
Because why?
Because there's an actual threat there.
And I think Peter's saying, cast your anxieties on him.
He cares for you.
He loves you.
He's not gonna let you fall at the same time.
Hey, stay alert, be on guard.
Be wary.
Know what's going on here because you do have an enemy that is prowling around
that does want you to be devoured.
I want you to think of the movie Home Alone for a second.
Okay.
Spoiler alert, it's was from the nineties, so you're late to the game.
Um, but Kevin, he finds out the bad guys wanna come in and rob his house, and
when he finds out the bad guys wanna come in and rob his house, he doesn't just
kick his feet up and be like, it's okay.
It's no big deal.
I'm sure they're not gonna be able to get through the deads on the door.
I'm fine.
He also doesn't call the police.
So there's that element too.
But what does he do?
He goes back home and he goes into a state of watchfulness and sober mindedness,
alertness, and he prepares for what the attack is that he knows is coming.
He begins to set all the traps all throughout the house that
make the movie hilarious to watch.
But he's doing that because he's aware.
And so Kevin, this is the weirdest thing I've ever preached.
Probably, probably Kevin's a picture for us of how we should be when it
comes to the threat of spiritual forces.
That exists out there in the darkness around us.
You didn't expect to come to church and hear some the pastor say,
be like Kevin from home alone.
As I mentioned earlier, I can't be dog dogmatic about it, but, but what if Satan
has assigned a specific demon to you?
Wouldn't that create an even greater sense of urgency for us this morning?
And whether or not you have a specific demon assigned to you, he's got
legions, they may rotate through.
I can tell you for sure they're gonna come after you.
You've got a target on your back because they hate Jesus.
And if you love Jesus, they hate you.
And so as such, that means that we have to be alert because we do have the target.
He is hunting us.
We're the prey, we're on the menu.
And so in light of that, our second point this morning is
this, stay spiritually alert.
Stay spiritually alert.
This is another way that you can resist the devil.
We are at war.
If you think back to, to England during World War ii, and you think the
bombing raids that came through, they would hear the sirens and, and the
sirens would tell them to take shelter.
But for a period of time there, you know, that the sirens were going off
regularly enough that they weren't even waiting for the sirens to think, I need
to be ready to take shelter, and, and they never woke up a day and thought
to themselves, well, maybe they'll just take a day off from the war today.
Maybe.
Maybe I don't need to worry about it today.
Imagine probably even more apt for what we're talking about here.
Imagine being on the front lines.
Imagine being on the front lines during some of the battles of
World War ii and just thinking to yourself, I'm not gonna fight today.
I don't want to.
When you have an enemy that you know is not taking it off and you know
he's got you in his sights, what's gonna happen if you take the day off?
You're, you're a sitting duck.
I was watching this reels about this guy who's sailing his
sailboat across the Pacific Ocean.
It's fascinating.
Uh, but one of the things he talked about was sailing through the shipping channels.
And when they're sailing through the shipping channels, uh, he's sailing solo.
He can't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time, and so he sets an alarm
and after 20 minutes he wakes up, he scans the horizon, he looks for ships,
and then he goes back to sleep for another 20 minutes, and then 20 minutes
later wakes up, scans the horizon for ships and goes back to sleep.
There are so many reasons why I don't want to ever be on a sailboat
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
That's another one.
I like sleep too much.
Why does he have to do that though?
Because he has to keep alert.
He has to be so reminded he has to be watchful because if he lets up, if he
just decides, I'm just gonna go to bed and, and tuck myself in and sleep for
12 hours, if a freighter comes through, guess who's winning that battle?
Not the sailboat
with my kids.
In the mornings we do our, our Bible time together, and recently
we're reading one of the proverbs.
Pride become, pride comes before destruction.
But the Lord loves a, a humble spirit, right?
And so I just ask my kids, so what would you rather have from the Lord?
Would you rather have destruction from God or honor from the Lord?
It was not a trick question, and thankfully they all got it right.
Well, I would rather have the Lord honor me.
Amen.
Yes.
Right.
It's plain, it's simple, it's clear.
Sometimes living out the Bible is hard, but I appreciate the
Bible's clarity in areas, and this is another one of those, right?
Peter says, you have an enemy prowling around like a roaring
lion, and he wants to destroy you.
Man, I wish God would be clear about things like spiritual warfare.
Be sober minded.
Be watchful.
Be alert.
Oh man, I wish God would just tell me what he wants me to do.
What does he expect of me?
Spiritual alertness begins with a proper sobriety as we assess the threat.
Do you believe what Peter's writing here, that that's where we have to begin.
Do you believe that you have an enemy, that you have a target on your back,
that Satan is after you with all of his demons, that you are on the menu?
That he's prowling, that he's seeking you.
Do you believe that being sober minded and watchful begins with
taking the threat seriously?
Last night, you, you probably heard the news, there was a, a, a, a shooting,
and we're not totally clear on all the details yet, but at the, the
correspondence dinner at the White House.
And so you had an event at the White House where all of the, the massively powerful
figures in the United States are there, and the Secret Service was there, and
apparently the guy was hanging out in a coat closet before the event started.
I'm like, how do you not check that?
My wife, when she hears a sound in the middle of the night, I'm checking closets
that haven't been opened in three years.
'cause we just keep things in there that we don't use anymore.
Nobody can fit in there.
I'm still checking the closet.
The guys in the coat closet bust out runs and thankfully our, our secret
service did their job and they, they took him out and I believe the guy
that got shot is gonna be okay as well.
That's one type of response to a, a threat, right?
When it's a threat that catches you off guard.
You gotta be ready in the moment.
There's a different kind of a, a response to a threat too.
Think of our counter-terrorism units.
Think about the headlines that you read, terror plot, foiled,
and then you, you begin to dig into it and you're like, oh, wow.
This was a multi-layered investigation and it didn't ever do anything.
We were protected from it.
Why?
Because we have people in our country who are sober minded and alert and watchful.
For these threats.
They're always on guard against these threats.
They're always monitoring the channels and looking at the different chatter and
they're, they're looking for things that you and I have no idea are evidence that
some plot may be afoot, and yet they see it, they recognize it, and they take
it out before it ever happens to us.
We need to have the CTU mindset when it comes to our lives spiritually.
We need to think about the threat and be able to think, I need to always
be watching the perimeter of my life.
I always need to be available and, and alert to what's going on.
And that begins with examining our own lives, the watchfulness in our own lives.
So, so ask yourself things like, okay, what, what am I being influenced by?
What are the things that I'm, I'm watching social media.
What, what are the, the, the channels that I'm following there?
What TV shows am I watching?
What books am I reading?
Am I opening myself up to the demonic realm in any of those areas?
How about sources of what I would call domesticated evil?
I talked about transcendental meditation earlier.
I think that's one of them.
Yoga.
Not against stretching, but the, the teachings that accompany yoga so often
are rooted again in ancient, ancient near Eastern, uh, pantheistic religions.
The religions of Hinduism and Buddhism.
It's, it's a demonic route to these things.
They may sound innocuous, but they're sources, demonic games, right there,
there are different games, board games, card games that flirt with the demonic
realm, and I would say don't, don't do it.
It's not worth it.
Uh, this one tchotchkes.
What in the world?
Little trinkets.
Maybe you go somewhere and, and you buy something on vacation, you bring it back
and you, and, and you were in a, you know, animistic culture and you bring
back this little totem thing and you think, oh, look at that little cute thing.
But you don't know what's behind that.
I'm not saying that of every souvenir you've ever brought home from vacation.
But we need to be careful.
I talked to a guy after service who told me that his, one of his friends used
to be heavily involved in the Satanic cult, and there's a Renaissance fair
that happens out, I think in Waxahatchee.
And this guy would go to the Renaissance Fair and there were
little totems and trinkets that were sold at the Renaissance Fair.
And this guy as a Satanist would go and he would burn incenses and bless all of those
trinkets that were then sold to the people that showed up at the Renaissance Fair.
Y'all spiritual warfare is real.
And so we just need to be alert.
We need to be on guard.
We need to be guarding the perimeters of our life, not
to open the door to any of it.
Maybe you've got a fascination with the occult.
You're reading books about witchcraft.
You've got a spell book at home.
Get rid of it.
Don't toy with these things.
Even going overboard with decor at Halloween, I hate my neighborhood
at Halloween, we've got some people that decorate more for Halloween
than they decorate for Christmas, and it is grotesque and it is
gruesome, it's filthy, and I, it's just object evil that's on display
that doesn't please the Lord.
You are opening yourself up to realms that you have no idea about your marriage.
If you're harboring bitterness, lack of forgiveness, sinful anger
in your marriage, man, that is a foothold for Satan in your marriage.
If you're actively lying, deceiving someone that's a foothold for Satan.
Isolation.
If, if you've retreated from other believers and you're hanging out
over here and you're, you're going, I don't need Christians in my life.
And you are the straggling sheep amidst the flock.
And which one does the lion pick off first?
The one that's isolated.
Pornography, unconfessed sin, and all of these things open the
door to the demonic realm and the demonic influence in our lives.
And yet my, my fear is this, y'all.
I fear that we read about these things and we're like, oh yeah, spiritual
warfare that happens in the Bible and in third world countries, but we're
evolved past that here in America.
Can I tell you if there's one thing that Satan would love for you to walk out this
morning with, is believing that, believing that there's no such thing as spiritual
warfare here in the United States.
Absolutely there is.
We cannot let up.
We can't take the day off.
We have to be like the soldier on the front line, aware
of the danger at all times.
There are many different ways that Satan attacks.
We need to know a strategies and we also need to stay spiritually alert.
But then finally here, we have to be watchful and alert as
part of our responsibility.
But then there's also this next part about what it looks like to actually now resist.
We're alert.
Now what do we do?
And that's where Peter goes last here in our text.
Look down in your text at verse nine.
Verse nine.
Peter says, resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of
suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
Resist him.
Stand firm.
It's command steadfast in your faith.
This is the hope that we have here.
Peter is saying, you can resist.
He is prowling around like a roaring lion.
Wants to seek someone to devour.
Yes.
And you can resist him.
James four verse seven says something similar.
He says, submit yourselves, therefore to God.
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
The takeaway from James and Peter is Satan can be resisted, which
is great news for us as believers.
They're your enemies out there, prowling around, and you're on the menu.
You're not defenseless against him.
Part of it is stay alert.
Be aware.
The other part of it though, is going to involve you showing up every day
ready to resist, ready to stand firm, which is gonna involve pursuing a
firmness in your faith, a growth in godliness, and holding fast to the word.
Our final point this morning is this, use what God has given you that is
in your battle against the enemy.
Use what God has given you.
I want us to talk about three different things, three different ways that
we can use what God has given us.
First, I, I want us to talk about drawing near.
If you wanna use what God has given you, draw near to God.
That's in James.
There he says, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
In other words, if you wanna stand firm against the the devil and the enemy, the
stronger you are in your relationship with Christ, the less likely Satan
will want to be to come after you.
Satan's gonna pick off the weak ones, the stragglers.
He's gonna pick off the ones that are spiritually anemic, not the ones
that are drawn near to the Lord.
If you want safety draw near to God.
In fact, James says this in James four.
He says, what causes quarrels in fights among you?
Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you, you desire
and do not have so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain.
So you fight in quarrel.
You do not have because you do not ask.
You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.
You adulterous people.
Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world.
Makes himself an enemy of God.
Contrast that he says later on.
Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
Christian, if you wanna stand firm against the attacks of the enemy, you
need to root worldly outta your life.
Get rid of it right and draw near to the Lord John near to him.
Pursue your relationship with Christ through all the things you
hear us preach about so often here.
Spending time in the word of God, spending time in prayer, spending time
around other believers confessing sin.
All right, praying.
We talked about that model last week.
Maybe you, you started to do that.
But the acts model of prayer, adoration, confession, Thanksgiving, supplication.
It's a great way to be drawing near to God.
That's one way that you can stand firm and use what God has given by drawing near.
The second way though is by dressing for battle, by dressing for battle.
You may already know where we're going with this, but Ephesians chapter six.
Ephesians Chapter six, Paul writes this, finally, be strong in the Lord
and in the strength of his might and put on the whole armor of God.
He's gonna say that twice in this passage.
Put on the whole armor of God.
He says, though, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
The word stand against is the same word that Peter uses back in our passage
when he says, stand firm, resist.
Stand against the schemes of the devil.
Put on the whole armor of God.
Well, what is the armor of God?
Well, it begins with the belt of truth.
What is Satan called in scripture?
Satan is called the father of lies.
So if we're gonna combat the enemy, if we're gonna stand firm against
the enemy, we need to have the truth fast and firmly around us.
And where is the truth ultimately found?
But the word of God, we need to have the truth, the belt of truth.
We need to have the breastplate of righteousness because you know what?
Satan's gonna come after you as a believer, and he's gonna wanna heap
shame and condemnation and guilt on you.
That's not yours to bear because why?
Because you are righteous with the righteousness of Christ.
But then you know what else Satan's gonna do?
He's gonna come at you and he's gonna heap a a, a, a holier
than thou mentality on you.
He's gonna tempt you towards legalism.
He's gonna tempt you towards self-righteousness that you need
to be able to battle against that and say, no, no, no, no.
I'm righteous with the righteousness of Christ.
So we fasten on the breastplate of righteousness, not ours, but his.
What else do we need?
As he goes on here, shoes for Your Feet, which is the readiness of the gospel.
What did Jesus tell Peter?
Peter was, was which Jesus had confessed, that he's the Christ and Jesus said,
you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates
of hell will not prevail against it.
What are gates?
Are they defensive or offensive?
They're defensive.
And so what do we need?
We need the shoes of gospel readiness to advance against the enemy.
See, we're not here just playing defense church.
We're here on the offense and the offense.
The greatest weapon that we have on the offensive right now is the gospel.
So we put on the shoes of readiness to go to battle daily in spiritual
warfare, to get the gospel message out there, to take the gospel against the
spiritual darkness, to see people give their life to Christ, and the kingdom
expanded and darkness pushed back.
And then he goes on and he says, in every circumstance, take up the shield
of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.
So those anxious thoughts that tempt you and the fears that creep in, and
the shame and the humiliation and the guilt, and all of those things that
might otherwise paralyze you as a believer, what are you supposed to do?
You pick up the shield of faith.
Faith in what?
Faith in the promises of God.
Faith that there's therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus
Faith that you can cast your anxieties on him because he cares for you.
See daily, we take up the shield of faith against the flaming darts of the evil one.
And then finally, or almost finally, you take up the helmet of salvation.
You take up that thing that's gonna guard your thoughts and cast your
thoughts where not to hear, but to where salvation's ultimately gonna
bring you, which is into the presence of God that you're battling spiritual
forces here that have already lost.
You're fighting a battle.
He's already won.
And one day you'll experience the fullness of that victory.
And the helmet of salvation reminds you that your ultimate
destination is not here but there.
And then finally, you're gonna pick up the the weapon.
You're gonna take up the sword of the spirit, and you are gonna combat the lies
of Satan with the truth of God's word.
Just like Jesus in the wilderness.
When Jesus has tempted, what did he do?
He said It is written.
And then smoke Satan with the truth of the word of God.
And so we pick up the sword of the spirit daily too.
So you gotta dress for battle, you gotta dress for Battle.
King David, when he went out to fight Goliath, right?
He went to Saul.
Saul said, Hey, here's my armor.
And David said, thanks, but no thanks.
Why?
Because it didn't fit well and it, it, it wasn't tested.
Okay?
God has given you and me armor that fits perfectly in his 100% tested for
the, the battle at him, which is the spiritual warfare that we're up against.
So dress daily for battle.
And then finally, the way that you use what God has given
is you fight in community.
You fight with one another.
Remember again, the imagery of the roaring lion.
Who's he gonna target first?
The isolated believer he's gonna go after the straggling sheep.
That's the one that's easy for him to get.
And so for you this morning, you need to make sure that you are leaning into
what the community of, of, of the, the bride of Christ is, that God has given
to you, those believers in this room, that you are fighting with one another.
God has given you brothers and sisters to aid you in your battle and that you would
be able to aid them in theirs as well.
Nehemiah wrote, wrote about this in in Nehemiah chapter four.
This is literal, but we can see the metaphorical connection here.
Nehemiah four 16 through 18 as the rebuilding here it says, from that
day on half my servants worked on construction and half held the spears,
shields, bows, and coats of mail, and the leaders stood behind the whole house
of Judah who were building on the wall.
Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each
labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.
And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built, the
man who sounded the trumpet was beside me.
Y'all, we are on a mission commissioned by Jesus to build the church, and as we
build the church, we have to have the trowel in one hand and the sword in the
other, and we need one another to do that.
That's the image here.
They had each other's back.
Nobody was gonna come after them.
Nobody's building by himself.
They had people that were manning their post and everybody was ready
to do battle for the good, not only of themselves, but also to the
man, to the right and to the left.
Church, we have to fight together.
You have to fight in community.
You'll be stronger against the attacks of the enemy if you lean into the
community of the body of Christ.
If you try to do the Lone Ranger Christian thing, man, Satan will come after you
and he will be successful in slowing you down in your growth in Christlikeness.
You won't be nearly effective, as effective as a believer if you're
trying to do this by yourself, as you will be if you do it within
the context of the body of Christ.
What does that mean?
That looks like join a community group.
I've preached on that so many times and if Yeah, I, and, and it we're,
we don't have stats up anywhere.
Okay.
So this is not, I'm not up here preaching to you saying join a community
group because I, I want my numbers to look better on our community group
participant, nobody knows those numbers.
We talking about 'em as, as pastors, just for our own accountability.
I want you in a community group because I want you to be well protected from
the attacks of the enemy showing up at church and then just going home and
living the rest of your life, the rest of your week, outside of the context of the
local church away from other believers.
And you say, yeah, well, I've got my immediate family.
That's great.
And praise God, if they're believers, not all of you have believing family at home.
But then let me go beyond that and just say, that's just, that's not
what Jesus calls us to in the Bible.
The one another's aren't for those that are under the
same roof as you necessarily.
Uh, this is meant to be life on life together.
That's what God is calling us into.
And so we, we stress community groups here, y'all.
Not because you're not saved if you're not part of a community group, but because
we want you to be able to be secure and to grow in your walk with Christ
and to thrive as a believer of Jesus.
And we want you to come alongside other Christians as well and say, I'm here.
I got your six.
We're gonna fight in community,
so use what God has given man.
When you come to the 11, you don't know what you're gonna get.
I didn't say any of that in the nine.
I said not the whole thing, but you know what I mean.
You know, your enemy has you in his sights.
You are on the menu and, and, and you will be until God calls you home
or Christ comes back for his church.
And, and so what that means, because he doesn't take a day off, is you can't
take a day off you, you can't wake up one day and be like, you know what?
I'm just not, I don't want, I'm not gonna go into the word.
I'm not gonna pray, you know, we got church this weekend.
I don't really feel like going.
I'm not gonna go.
Um.
You know what?
I know the sin that I'm thinking about right now is wrong, but I
just need, I need a cheat day.
You can't do that.
The stakes are far too high.
The damage that could be done to your testimony to the name of
Christ is far too great for us to ever say, I'm gonna take a day off.
Your enemy's active.
He's prowling around like a roaring lion.
Satan is real, so are his demons, and he's after you.
But the good news is.
The good news is, as we've seen from Peter in Christ, there's a game plan.
You can resist him.
Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for that glorious truth that we can indeed know
that, that we can have victory.
Not just resist, but we know we will have victory one day because the battle is
already won even as we sang this morning.
And so God, we still are called to engage.
We're still called to fight.
We're not called to just put our feet up or roll over or, or cast
everything to you and say, okay, well you take it from here, Lord.
We'll just wait until you come back.
For us, we're called to be alert, to be aware, to be engaged, to fight, to
take up the full armor of God daily, to stand firm, Lord, to lean in, to
fight in community, to love one another.
Well in that this is God.
I pray that we would do that as a church, that you would keep us
from the attacks of the evil one.
And that you would help us to be faithful to you until you come back for us, or
call us home to you and we pray this all in Jesus' name, the one who gives us
the victory that we so eagerly wait for.
Amen.