Well, if you were here last Sunday, we started a new series called Resurrected. We're studying this interesting piece of scripture, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, which make a very bold claim that we used to be dead. That we were dead. And we've been resurrected. And so we began exploring this concept last week. When it says that we were dead, it doesn't mean physically dead, it means spiritually dead. Think about it in the way that you talk about your phone when it has died, right? We all use that verbiage. My phone is dead. What do we mean? We mean it's physically fine. Usually that's what we mean. It's physically fine, but it has no life in it. It has no charge, it has no power. It is unable to do what it's meant to do. Its spirit is missing. And when Ephesians says that we used to be dead, what it's saying is that apart from Jesus, we were not alive spiritually, that we didn't have the power that we need to actually function as we're meant to function. That we were dead, but the good thing is God has a cure for death and it's called resurrection. And the claim is that we have been resurrected through Jesus, that we have this new life now that we can live. And we're going to be exploring what the resurrected life is. We're just going through Ephesians. We're going right through it. In a few weeks, we're actually going to get to where Paul the author begins to tell us hey, hey, this is what the resurrected life is defined by. But before he gets there, he actually does this interesting thing where he spends some time talking about the root cause of spiritual deadness. He spends some time making sure that we understand what's really behind the deadness that we have experienced, or maybe that we see in the world. When we look at the world, we see all the problems and the struggles and all the things that make us scratch our head and go, God, are you there? Are you doing something? Spiritual deadness would be the cause behind it. And Paul he takes some time to teach us what's behind spiritual deadness. And that's what we're going to explore because that's what it says. So we're going to go ahead and jump into Ephesians 2. If you have your Bible, you can turn there, we'll put it on the screens. If you have our mobile app, all the verses are there attached to the message. You can take notes. It's great. Ephesians 2, 1 through 2, here's what it says. Once you were dead. You remember that time, right? When you were dead? Once you were dead, because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. Now, if uh if you would have asked me six months ago, hey, it's it's August. And August just so happens to be a time when a lot of people are kind of coming back from the summer and they're re-engaging and you know there's a lot of momentum and it's exciting. Hey, it's it's it's early August. What do you think about talking about the devil, you know, on a Sunday, early August? I'd be like, I don't know. I think maybe that's a Memorial Day topic, you know, something like that. It's kind of a downer. But what we're gonna talk about this morning is Satan. Because that's what it talks about. We're gonna talk about the devil, and I will say this I have had a very difficult time preparing the message this week. It's been hellish, to be honest with you. I don't know, couldn't resist. No, it has been like a devil of a week, though, because I've just been like, I'm done. I'm sorry, I'm done. I just had it's like impossible not to use those puns, but it has been really difficult because usually, for me, like the first draft of the message, if I have a good week, I'll make some changes to it. There might be, I'm gonna move this around. Okay, that's not quite right, but it's it's fairly close to draft number one. I don't even want to tell you guys what draft this is. It's beyond draft. It isn't like God help me in a mode. But I guess that's maybe what we should be praying when we're talking about the devil. And here's the thing it's kind of a strange concept in the American modern church to talk about Satan. Really is. If you go into most larger modern churches in our country today, you're almost guaranteed to hear very little, if anything, at all about Satan or sin or judgment or or hell or anything like that. That just doesn't, that just doesn't play well. You know, that doesn't that doesn't fall on enthusiastic ears, and so we don't talk about it. We don't want to weird people out. But it's interesting is that you're also very likely to hear little, if anything, about the Holy Spirit, about the power of prayer to heal, about spiritual gifts that God has given us, because that stuff, again, it's sort of like, ah man, I don't know if if that's what we should be talking about. It might weird some people out, and we don't want to, we don't want to come off as weird, even though the Bible does say we are a peculiar people. Right? So we don't hear this stuff talked about very often in the modern church world that we are part of. And I've been thinking about why. I've thought about that a lot over the last few years, to be honest with you. And our church right now is experiencing a really cool shift where I believe that God is opening us up to what he's doing spiritually more than we have before. We're starting to see things happen that are just really cool. People are coming to know Jesus at like just a ton. We have ten people getting baptized next Sunday. Like, ten, this is just awesome. That keeps happening, you know? It's really, really cool. And so I believe God is doing this new thing, like the song we just sang. He's He's pouring new wine on our church and He's opening us up to understanding what's happening spiritually. But you don't hear a lot about the spiritual stuff in church on Sunday mornings in modern America. Why? I think it's in large part because we've done something that Jesus never did. In our minds, we've separated what's spiritual from what's practical. And we've decided that if something is really, really spiritual, well, it's not very practical. And we want to make sure that we're we're giving people something practical, and I believe that. I think Jesus taught very practically, but Jesus never separated in his mind the spiritual from the practical. In fact, from Jesus' perspective, what is spiritual is most practical. Matthew 16, 26, Jesus said, What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but you lose your soul? Is anything, is anything worth more than your soul? And that's one of those questions that has an assumed answer. Like he's not actually asking, hey, is there anything you guys can think of that's worth more than your soul? And someone's like, Oh, my car. Oh yeah, good call, good call. No. Like it's like when your parents ask you, or like, do you think I'm stupid? If you've had a parent, you've heard that question. You're not supposed to answer that question, right? And if you do, you're like, no, mom, you're a genius. Like, and you can't even say that because they'll know you're being sarcastic. So it's just an assumed answer. Is there anything worth more than your soul? No. Another way we might we might phrase that question, is there anything more practical to you than your spirit? If we are spiritual people, if at our core we are spiritual, then what is spiritual is extremely practical. And when it comes to the concept of Satan, of the devil, which is what Ephesians 2, 1 and 2 deals with, if we are spiritual, and if we have a spiritual enemy, is it practical for us to know who that is and to know how that enemy operates, to know what that enemy is all about? I would say, I would say yes. If you have an enemy, it's probably good for you to know that he exists and to understand what he does. And so we're talking uh about the devil in part because that's what the scripture we're studying is talking about, but also because this is extremely practical for us. And honestly, this concept has been missing from the conversation in the American church for too long. It really, really has. And and it will do a little role play. If you were the devil, and I don't think any of you are, okay, but if you were the devil, would you prefer that people talk about you or not? Would you prefer to be to be hidden or to be seen? So we're gonna we're gonna talk about Satan this morning because whatever you bring to light, it's exposed. And when darkness is brought to light, it's extinguished. This is a really practical conversation. And the way we're gonna approach it's really simple. We're gonna answer five questions. We're gonna do our best to answer five questions. Question number one, is the devil real? Question number two, who is he? Question number three, what does he do? Question number four, what has God done to deal with him? And question number number five is what do we do to deal with the devil? And let's start with the first one. Is the devil real? And the answer to that is very simple. It depends on who you ask. It depends on who you ask. You can go poll a lot of people, you're gonna get a lot of different answers. You're gonna have some people who are gonna say, yes, the devil is real. And a lot of people look at those people like they're crazy, like they're nuts. You know? Picture popular media, movies, television. If there's someone on TV who actually believes in the devil or demons, how are they portrayed? As a well-educated, intelligent person? No, never. And as Southerners, this should offend us because it's always someone with this really thick Southern accent that's like, I think there's a devil in them hills, and we're always like, hey, that's not how Southerners are. Thank you very much. And it's like us talking about New Yorkers, like, hey, forget about it, you know, spaghetti. Like, I don't need that was Italian, I don't even know what that is, but it's the same thing, it's offensive. Stop it. But number two, it becomes clear, it becomes clear if you if you look at culture that, oh, to believe in Satan and in the devil, that's so silly. That's so silly, right? You'll have people that that think that way. You'll have people that are like, look, we've made up the devil, he's just a symbol for evil, it's just our way of needing to personify the bad things we see in the world and make sense of it. You'll have this variety of opinions. So is the devil real? It depends on who you ask. But if you were to ask Jesus, and I'm a Jesus follower, so for me personally, his opinion, it it ranks high. It's at the top. If you were to ask Jesus, hey Jesus, is Satan real? He would be like, Absolutely, 100%. He talked about Satan very, very often, very explicitly. Once he was he was having an argument with the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day. They were hypocrites, horrible people, and and Jesus took them to task many times. In John 8, 44, listen to what he says to the Pharisees. For you are the children of your father, the devil. And you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Does it sound like Jesus is speaking metaphorically here? Or does it sound like he's describing someone he knows very well? There's so many times that Jesus talks very, very practically about Satan. Once Jesus was accused by the Pharisees of doing miracles by the power of Satan, actually. And the miracles he was doing was he was casting demons out of people. And we might hear that and be like, oh my gosh, why did I come to church today? But like, whatever. Um, we're gonna talk about that. But but he was he was casting demons out of people, and it's crazy. And if you read the scriptures and you read the story of Jesus, there's some like intense stuff in there. And the Pharisees are like, Well, you're only doing that by the power of Satan. Because they couldn't deny what was happening. People were being healed and changed and delivered, and all kinds of stuff was happening, and it was obvious. And so rather than them just say, Well, clearly he's from God, some did say that, but they were like, Well, it's Satan that gives them that power. And when they said that, Jesus could have said, How could Satan give me this power? He's not real. I'm not casting out demons, they don't even exist. No, what Jesus actually said was, Why would Satan cast out Satan? That makes no sense. If Satan's beginning to cast out Satan, that means his kingdom is divided. So Jesus not only affirms a belief in a being named Satan, called Satan, the devil, whatever word you want to use, but he actually says he has a kingdom. So again, is is Satan real? It depends on who you ask, but if you ask Jesus, the answer is yes. And I know that not all of us here are Jesus followers, and so if you're not a Jesus follower, his opinion won't matter to you as much as it matters to me. I get that. But I would just I would have you think about this for a second. Have you ever felt like there's some force in the world that is out to ruin you? Have you ever felt like it, it's like something is conspiring against me, and it's almost like it is so targeted, it is so perfect, it couldn't just be random. It's like someone knows your greatest weakness, someone knows every little thing you're susceptible to, and they're making it their point to ruin you, and they pick the absolute worst from your perspective, or best if you're an enemy of someone, the worst possible moment to mess with you. You ever feel that way? You might be tempted to believe that you're crazy, you're just making this all up. Jesus would look at you and he would say, Hey, good news. You're not nuts. You're not crazy. There is, there is a force, there is a conspiracy, there's a conspirateur against you, and that's Satan. So Jesus says Satan is real. Well, who is he? And here's the deal we we actually don't know a lot about the origin of Satan. We have a few scriptures that the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah, they have some words that they use that sort of paint this picture, but it's kind of poetic and it's not, it's not like clear-cut, like, let me tell you the story of Satan. It doesn't really do that. So we don't have all this information we can infer, we can we can sort of draw conclusions. Don't have time to get into all of that. What we're actually gonna do though is on Tuesday, we're gonna record a little follow-up podcast. We do this every once in a while, called the cutting room floor. Sometimes we'll have a topic that's just it's too big to fit into one Sunday, and we'll we'll have a little director's cut on Tuesday. You can listen to it on the app or on our podcast, a website, whatever, and get some more info. We'll talk about the origin or the theoretical origin of Satan on there. But we don't know much about his origin. What we do know, what is stated very clearly in Scripture, is who he is right now. And so let's go ahead and read Ephesians 2, verse 2 again. You used to live in sin just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. So it says that Satan is the ruler, the commander of these evil spiritual forces in the unseen world. Q, the southern person on the TV show, going, There's demons in them hills, you know? Like, seriously? An unseen world? Like some unseen world that has that has these forces in it, you know? The Bible describes some of these forces. There's an organization to it, there's like rank and file. Romans, or rather, Ephesians chapter 6 describes it as rulers and authority. So we see like there's some type of structure there, and there's there's good beings. We often call those angels, even though sometimes they're they're it's not the best word to use. Demons, that's what we call the the ones aligned with with Satan. And there's all these descriptions of them. We all we also have all these like these myths that we use to picture these things. Half of the pictures that we have of Satan, of angels, of demons, like they don't come from the Bible at all, at all. They come from pop culture, they come from fictional writing, from movies, from comic books. Yeah, like how many of how many of us picture an angel as like a dude with wings? You know? There's not one description of an angel like that in the Bible. There is a description of an angelic being known as a seraphim that has three sets of wings. Two of those wings cover its face, two of those wings cover its body, the other two wings are flying, and it's entirely, completely covered with eyeballs. Yeah. Who's more excited to go to heaven than you were earlier? Like I want to see one of those things. And I'm I just can't wait. I'm gonna get to heaven, I'm gonna see a serif, I'm gonna say, quit looking at me. Quit it. Stop it. Everywhere I go, looking at me. It's funny because in the Bible, whenever people, whenever people encounter an angel, every single time they fall down and they think they've died. And so it's not just like some dude with blonde hair and wings. We've kind of made that up. We do the same thing with demons in our pictures, we do the same thing with Satan. And sometimes we buy so much into the myth that we've been given that we actually begin to believe it's a myth. But but scripture's clear, there's an unseen world. We can't perceive it, but it's there and it exists and it affects our own. And here's what's really cool. If you think that's crazy, consider this. Recently, a very, very intelligent man named Stephen Hawking passed away. Stephen Hawking is known as one of the greatest scientific minds in history. He's one of the most brilliant men, most brilliant scientific people of modern history for sure. He is a theoretical physicist of complete renown, total genius, like literally one of the most highly regarded scientific minds that we've ever had. And one of the theories, the scientific theories that Hawking contributed a lot to is this theory called the multiverse. This is a scientific theory that is backed by physics, that is backed by theoretical physics and equations and things that I don't understand. But the idea of the multiverse is that, and again, this is a scientific theory, there are multiple parallel universes that exist, like parallel to our own. We can't see them. We might call them alternate dimensions or realities or whatever, but we can't see them, but they exist and may even overlap with our world. We just don't have the ability to perceive them because we only experience life in a few dimensions that we can perceive. And that is viewed as like scientific genius, Nobel Prize. Wow, that's amazing. There's multiple dimensions that we can't see that interact with our own and all this kind of stuff. You guys are so smart. And then the Bible 2,000 years ago says, hey, there's an unseen world and we we can't see it, but it's there and it exists parallel to ours and it even affects our own. And people are like, that is crazy. That is crazy. It's a conversation for a different day, but if you study science, you find that science disagrees with scripture far less than you have been led to believe. Far less. It's a different conversation. So we we even have modern scientific theory that backs up this idea that there might be this unseen world, and scripture speaks to it greatly. And it says that Satan is the commander of the evil forces in the unseen world. That's who he is. Jesus actually took it a step further. Jesus actually called Satan the ruler of this world, of our world, what we can perceive. We see it happen a couple times in scripture in John chapter 12, verse 31. Jesus says, the time for judging the world, this world has come when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. John 14, 30. Jesus said, I don't have much more time to talk to you because the ruler of this world approaches, he has no power over me. So Jesus calls Satan the ruler of this world. And we hear that, and that's kind of like, what? Like I thought God was the ruler of this world, and he's not, he's the ruler of everything. God is the ruler of every world. You know? Like there's a governor in Georgia, and he's the governor of our state, but but there's an authority greater than him that can supersede him if if need be. Okay, but but Jesus actually says that Satan is the ruler of this world. And I think that for us as believers, that's hard to compute. This doesn't quite add up, right? Because we look at the world sometimes and we feel very disheartened because it seems to us from our perspective sometimes like if there is Satan, if there is a devil, he looks like he's winning sometimes. And it would be really comforting for us to go, he has no authority here on the earth, he has no power whatsoever, but Jesus says he does. Jesus was tempted by Satan himself. The very third temptation, Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth. Could you offer him all the kings of the earth if you didn't have the authority to do that? And so we we like to ask ourselves, how in the world would a good God give Satan authority over this world? If Satan's real and he's this evil commander of the unseen evil forces in the world, like all this stuff, why in the world would God hand authority of this world to Satan? And the answer is that God did not hand authority over this world to Satan. We did. If you go back to Genesis chapter 1, very first chapter of the Bible, God creates the earth and then he creates us and he tells us to reign over the earth. He gives us dominion. We were destined to reign. He gives us dominion. He says, govern the earth. So so he has authority, he extended his authority to us. It's like he gave us the keys. As a child, and some of us are teenagers, maybe we're having this experience now. You ever have you ever have a parent give you the keys to their car? And like, here, take it for a drive? Anyone ever have that happen? Come on. Remember back? Your parents gave you the car? Anyone ever abuse that privilege? A little bit? Yeah. So God he hands us the keys, but you only have to read a few more pages to find out what we do with it. We get tempted. We're gonna go into that in a few minutes. We get tempted by Satan, and we end up going with what Satan says we should do. We obey him, and in obeying him, we hand him the keys. Because here's what here's what happens when you obey someone, what are you doing? You're you're submitting to them, right? I spend most of my days trying to get my four children to submit to me. It's like this this huge battle, you know, and it's it's intense, and it involves me often physically picking them up and putting them places, you know. Submit, I can I'm so much bigger than you right now. Like, do what I say. Well, when when you obey someone, you submit to them. When you submit to someone, what are you handing them? Power, authority. And we'll go back again to Ephesians 2, too, because this is kind of hard language. This is not the stuff that, like, there's things in the Bible, I'll just be honest, I'm a pastor. I believe the Bible, I believe it's the word of God, I believe it's authoritative, I love it, I look at my life. And if it doesn't line up with scripture, I don't go, ooh, scripture's really off on this one. If my life doesn't line up with scripture, I'm like, oh man, I need to make a change. But there's things that I wish weren't in the Bible. Like, I wish I could have been sitting there with God and being like, hey, God, I have a different way to word that. If you if you don't mind me offering a suggestion, this will this will play really, really well. But here's what he says. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil. We don't like that. Oh, that one time I obeyed the devil yesterday. Like we don't we don't like that language, but that's what it uses. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. When we when we ignore God, we need to remember that we're obeying someone else. And when you obey someone, you hand them authority. So essentially what Jesus is saying is that we as human beings have handed so much authority to Satan that he's like the ruler of this world. That we've just time and time again, as people said, here, here's some more authority, here's some more power. So who is Satan? He is the commander of the evil, unseen world. He is also the ruler of this world because we've handed him the keys. What does he do? Let's talk about that. Question three. What does Satan do? Again, this is all this is all under the guise of being practical. We want to know who our enemy is. We want to understand how he operates so we can resist, so we can win. Like, are you guys with me? Are you still with me on this? Talking about the devil? Okay, because we need to understand what he does. What does he do? Number one, he hates you. He hates you, and you're like, what did I ever do to him? Well, he hates you because he hates God. And you look like God. The Bible said that you were made in the image of God. And so you remind Satan of God and he and he hates God. And he hates you. You're also the beloved of God. The Bible says that you were created not to love God, but you were created to be loved by God. That we're actually the object of God's love. It's like God made the world and it was awesome. We look at the stars and we look at the universe and space and we look at mountains and we look at oceans and we're like, wow, it's majestic, it's wonderful, and we marvel at it. But of all the things that God created, if you were to ask him, hey, what's your favorite, he'd point to us. We are what he loves most. And when you hate someone, when you hate someone, it's it's it's not uncommon to hate what they love. And so the love of God, in a sense, has kind of put us in the crosshairs. And Satan hates us. And he seeks to destroy us, and he seeks to separate us from our God, from our Father, from the love that God has for us. And how does he do that? Like, what's his approach? I'll say this, it's it's not what we might think. Again, we've have we have all these like mythological ideas of Satan that have been born from literature, like Dante's Inferno is a classic and some other things like that. And they always have Satan kind of the same, right? Like a big horns coming out of his head, he's red, he's got a tail, it's like he's got hooves, pitchfork, that kind of thing. Anyone ever here ever see the 1980s movie Legend that starred Tom Cruise? Anyone ever see that movie? It's kind of an obscure movie now, but Tim Curry is an actor in that movie uh who's uh he's gotta be a messed up dude because he played Pennywise the Clown in the It TV series that my parents let me watch when I was in the fourth grade. Why? Uh also he played he played the devil in this movie Legend. And if you ever see the movie Legend or just look up a picture of it, it's like intense, and he's got this like huge chin, and he's red, and these gigantic horns, and he's huge and tall, and it's scary. And I watched that movie when I was like six, you know? And then I go to church, and then I'm like the devil, and I'm like, oh my gosh, the devil. That's how we picture Satan. But that's not how he comes at us. That's not what he does. He doesn't like, like, what does he do? How does he try to disrupt him? He doesn't like walk up to us as this giant, gross-looking creature being like, hey, worship me and kill someone. That's not what he does. Because if you saw that walk up to you, you'd run away. Like if you saw a giant red, hooved, horned, pitchfork dude coming at you, being like, hey, hey, I got I want to talk to you, you'd be like, no, no, no, no. Uh oh, uh-uh. Like, no, no, no, I got something you're gonna like. You're like, whatever, goat boy, I'm going the other way. No. And Satan doesn't do that. He's sneaky, he's subversive. The Bible says he comes as an angel of light. Right? An angel of light. See, Satan seeks to destroy you, but it's not in this obvious way. It's it's death by a thousand cuts. He is a he's a tempter and an accuser. His favorite way to destroy us is just to get us to destroy ourselves. That's what he takes the most pleasure in. He's a tempter and an accuser. And to tempt us, he distorts and he lies and he twists the very word of God. We actually see that at play in the very first temptation story, Genesis chapter 3. It's the Garden of Eden, and God has created man and woman. He's put them in the garden, he's told them they can eat from all the trees in the garden but one, the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil, and says, He says, Don't eat from that tree, if you eat from it, you'll die. And so the serpent, which is often referred to, it's like a reference to Satan, it's either Satan himself or some emissary on his behalf. The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden? Notice that first thing he does, twist the word of God. Get you to question God. Did God really say that you can't eat any of this? Side note, if you if you read in Matthew, right after Jesus is baptized, he goes and he's tempted, the very first temptations, the first two, Satan does kind of the same thing. He says, If you are the son of God. Like, are you really the son of God? You sure? First, he he twists what God has said to us, because God had just told Jesus when he was baptized, You are my son. I love you, I am pleased with you. And the very first words out of Satan's mouth are, If you are the son. He gets us to doubt God's intention for us, gets us to think that God might be holding out on us. And Eve responds, Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. It's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, You must not eat it or even touch it. If you do, you'll die. You won't die. That's just a bold-faced lie. You won't die, the serpent replied to the woman. God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you'll be like God, knowing both good and evil. What's so ironic about that is in Genesis chapter 1, God says, Let us make man in our image to be like us. Satan is tempting Eve to become something she already is. See, Satan's so crafty. The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit, she ate it, then she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too. By the way, Eve always gets the rap here, you know, but at least she engaged with Satan. Adam's just standing there. He's just like, okay, whatever. You know, he's just like, I'll eat the apple, I don't care. Let's do it. I'm hungry, you know? But they eat together. At that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. If you've ever lived your life in shame, I want you to understand something. God does not shame us. But Satan does. They felt shame at their nakedness, so they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves, and the fashion industry was born. There you go. Weight loss and fashion in one fell swoop. Thanks a lot, Satan, for that. So, what happens here? Well, Satan shows up, and and the temptation is to doubt the love that God has for us, to doubt whether or not we're really who God says we are. God says, I made you in my image. If you really do this, you'll be in the image of God. You'll be like God already am. Like he gets us to doubt that, gets us to believe that maybe God is holding out on us, and then he lies and he offers us something, and he says it's good, but it's not. Again, if you study the temptation of Jesus in the desert, the very first temptation, Satan shows up. Jesus has been fasting for 40 days. He's hungry, he's in the desert. And Satan shows up and he says, Hey, if you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread and eat. If you're hungry, eat. And we look at that temptation, and what is it, what is it that Satan is tempting Jesus with in that temptation? Bread? No. Stones. Satan does not offer Jesus bread. He offers him rocks. He says, Hey, you're hungry, have some rocks. Have some stones. But then he twists it. And we even read that and go, like, oh yeah, he offered him bread. No, he did not. When Satan tempts us, he tempts us with things that he says are good, but they are not. They are not. But he's good at what he does. He's good at twisting. And when we buy into it, watch what happens. Verse 6 the woman was convinced. She saw the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So it became appealing to her. This is the strategy of the devil that very few people ever talk about. Satan does not really care if you worship him. It's only one time in scripture that I'm aware of that that Satan tries to get someone to worship him, and it's Jesus. I referenced it earlier. He actually says, Hey, worship me. It's the only other time. Satan doesn't care if you worship him. What he actually wants you to do is worship yourself. And we're very susceptible to that as people. We are so susceptible to that. If you actually look up the term Satanism, a Satanist is not someone who worships the devil. A Satanist is someone who worships themselves. It's someone who lives entirely to satisfy their desires. The definition of someone who lives completely focused on satisfying their own desires is a Satanist. Because that is what Satan tempts us to do. Hey, it looks good. It looks good. I like the way that looks. I like the way that feels. I want to. I really, really, really want to. What Satan tries to get us to do in temptation is to elevate our own desires above the will of God. God has said this. Yeah, I don't like that. God has said that this is good and that this is not. And what Satan wants us to do is to elevate our own desires above what God has said and to begin picking and choosing what we're gonna do that God says or not do that God says not to do based on what we feel, what we like, our preferences, our desires. We say, hey God, thanks for the advice, but this is what I want to do, and that is how Satan operates. That's the temptation. Place your own desires, your own intelligence, your own will. Put that above the will of God. When you do that, you're actually subjecting God to your own judgment. That's a scary thought. And you lift yourself up, and now you have severed obedience to the Lord. And we all do that. Ephesians 2 1 says that we were dead because of our sins and our disobedience. And if you read other translations, it says our sins and our trespasses. And sometimes when we read Paul, it looks like he's using two words that are the same word just to kind of add emphasis. It's not what's happening. It's two very different words. The word that we translate, sin means willful disobedience. There's an intentionality behind it. We knew it was wrong, we did it anyway. The word that's translated trespasses means like an accidental mistake. It actually literally means to slip or to fall. It's describing those times in life where we thought we were doing the right thing. We thought we were going down the right path, and we didn't realize it was wrong until we were already down it, and now it's too late, the damage has been done. We have all had those moments. We've also all had the moments of willful disobedience. All of us have. And Satan's the one who tempted us into it. He's the one who convinced us that our own desires should be what guides us, that our own beliefs, our own feelings, our own preferences, that's what should guide our decision making. And when we take the bait, what is the result? Shame. Shame on you. He's our accuser. He tempts and he accuses. He provokes and then he he blames. He's like a little brother. You know, like a stupid. Is my little brother here today? Yeah. So last week I told a story about my little brother, and it was kind of like to embarrass him, but he wasn't here. So story number two. Because that's what happens when you miss church. All right, here we go. Like my little brother growing up, that's what he did. He provoked me and then he blamed me when I took the bait. He tempted and he accused. One time for an entire year of my life. When I was in high school, my brother refused to call me by my name for an entire year. He was committed. And instead of calling me Justin, he called me Kabul. You remember that? Remember that year? We drove past some nowhere town in Missouri one day called Kabul. And Aaron went, that's a funny word. I'm gonna call my brother Kabul for a year. And he did. And all day long, every day, hey Kabul, what's up, Kabul? How you doing, Kabul? Olah Kabul. He would switch languages, Olah Kabul. It was the most annoying thing. He'd just come in my room and do it over and over and over again and provoke it. I was patient, but every person has their limit. And one day he called me Kabul for like the 15th time, and I called him something that I can't say right now. Um, and I just let it out, and then what happened? Did he say, hey man, you know, I have been like, I've been getting on your nerves a lot. It's been intentional. I've pushed you to your limit, dude. I'm so sorry. Like, we're cool. No. Like he runs away and tells my mom, and I have to have this whole like conversation with my mom about why I called my brother this. And I'm like, well, because he is one. And you know, and it's like, it did not go well for me. Because that's what little brothers do. They tempt you, they provoke you, and then they blame you. That's what Satan does. He tempts and he blames. Aaron, I am not saying that you're Satan at all. You're a good man. Christina, you married a good man. I love my brother. But when he was a third grader, he sucked. I'm just gonna say that. He was the worst. Satan blames you. And the Bible actually describes him as the accuser. And it's interesting, it's very important for us to realize this, to understand what this means. The word accuser, it's a legal term. And in our day and age, we would say he's the prosecutor. So in the Bible, when it calls Satan the accuser, it's using legal language to describe a prosecuting attorney, and we're the defendant. So Satan is the accuser, we're the defendant, and he has a lot of dirt on us. And that should make us very nervous. Like, really, if you're if you're on trial and and maybe there's a chance you've done some things and whatever, and in walks the prosecutor, and you're like, that's the same dude that sold me the drugs. Like, oh no. He knows, right? And if that ever happens, I'm sorry, if that ever happens, like you better you better hope for two things. If that's a situation you ever find yourself in, you better hope that you have a really good defense attorney, and you better hope that you get a merciful judge. The Bible describes it with very intense language that Satan is our accuser, that he stands before God to accuse us. But let's shift into question four. And guys, I know this one's a little bit longer, but I will let you know that there were times that I practiced this message this week and it was an hour long. So I'm actually doing pretty good. Okay? So here's the deal What has God done to deal with Satan? Right? We know according to Jesus, he's real, that he's the commander of the evil forces of the unseen world, the ruler of this world, because we've given him that authority that he tempts and that he accuses. What are we, what are we supposed to do? We start by understanding what God has done. And here's what God has done: he has stacked the court in your favor. God has essentially rigged the system. Because yes, you are the defendant. And yes, Satan has dirt on you. And by the way, the standard is Jesus. Romans 3 23. All fall short, right? All sin. We all fall short of God's glorious standard. We live in a world where we like to compare ourselves to the worst person possible. That's our standard. Well, I'm not them, I'm not Hitler. That's not the comparison. It's Jesus. And I'm not Jesus. And if I'm trying to stand trial for the glorious standard of Jesus, I am in a lot of trouble. And Satan is my accuser, and he's got dirt, he's got evidence. But in that, in that day and age, in the biblical times, the word for defense attorney was the word advocate. John 14, 26. But when the Father sends the advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit, he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. The Holy Spirit is your defense attorney. It gets better. For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body. Again, we read verses like that and it scares us, but who is the judge? It's Jesus. We just said you better get a good defense attorney, you better hope for a very merciful judge. The judge is Jesus Himself. And the only people who should be freaked out about Jesus being the judge are people who are self-righteous and believe that they're better than everybody else and they don't really need God's help. Those are the only people Jesus had harsh words with. But any person who said, Yeah, I have issues, I have problems, I don't think right, I have all kinds of mistakes in my past, I've done some really bad things. Jesus loved those people. He hung out with those people. He went to dinner with those people, he picked those people to be on his team, to be his followers. He had compassion on those people. He looked at him and his heart broke, and he said, They're like they're like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus is so merciful, he is so compassionate. So, yes, you are a defendant. Yes, you stand trial, yes, you will be judged, and yes, there is lots of evidence against you, but you have the Holy Spirit as your defense attorney, and you've got Jesus as your judge, and here's the results of that. Amen. Amen. Here's the result of that. Colossians 2, 14 through 15. You were dead because of your sins and because of your sinful nature that was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. And then it starts talking about this legal language again. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. And when it says he nailed it to the cross, it means he nailed Jesus to the cross. And Jesus took your sin upon himself, your sin was executed. So he's canceled the record of the charges in this way. He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. He has disarmed our enemy. What's he disarmed our enemy of? Evidence against us. Our enemy, our accuser, has this mountain of evidence against us, and it's all been covered by the blood of Jesus, and it's wiped out and it's gone. And so, what Christ, our judge, has said to our prosecutor is evidence inadmissible. It's wiped away. You cannot bring that evidence into the courtroom. It's gone, it's gone forever. Because Jesus has forgiven you, He has canceled the charges against you because of Jesus. Even though Satan tempts you and you've bought in, yes, like we gotta be honest, we've all handed Satan some authority in our lives. We've all said, Yeah, I know it's wrong, I know it's not what God wants, but I'm gonna do it anyway. And we've all basically said, Hey, Satan, be nice. And he's not. And yeah, even though we've made our mistakes, because of the blood of Jesus, because of what he's done, the court has been rigged, it has been stacked in our favor, and now we know that we have been, we've been redeemed, we've been restored, we've been declared righteous, we've been resurrected, brought back to life by Jesus Christ. That is that is a good day in court, people. That is a good day in court. And Satan has been disarmed. And we're gonna wrap up in worship team, you guys can make your way out. That word disarmed is a very interesting word. And we we hear it and we think about someone who has a weapon, and then that weapon is taken away from them. It's actually not what it implies in the context of the culture it was written in. What it actually implies is in a battle, in an ancient battle, when enemy soldiers had been defeated, there would be someone sent out from the victorious army, and their job was to basically, there were lots of these people, to go out and to find out which soldiers who were who were dead were like really dead. And if there was anyone who was just dying, to go ahead and finish them off, and then to take their weapons and their armor off of them. Because you would never leave weapons and armor on a battlefield. You would take your enemy's weapons and armor, so you would have that for yourself. That was precious stuff. That was what you did. You would disarm the enemy, you would make sure they were dead. If they weren't dead, you would just finish them off with a final blow and then take their stuff, and that's what it says Jesus did to. Satan. That's intense. So he is he is like defeated. Defeated. Now here's the last question. What do we do to deal with Satan? And at this point, it almost seems like this is a silly question because he's been defeated. He's been destroyed. He's been utterly humiliated. He's been shamed. He's been disarmed. So why in the world would we have to do anything? Like, shouldn't we just say, hey, we're done? Let's sing a song. Satan's been defeated by God. Woohoo! Let's get out of here. We're good. We don't have to worry about a thing. But that's not, that's not what Scripture teaches us. It's interesting because at the same time, Scripture uses this language about Satan that he's defeated and done with, but then it also tells us things like in 1 Peter 5:8. He says, Stay alert, watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Jesus said in John 10:10, comparing himself to Satan, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. But I come to give you a rich and satisfying life. Ephesians chapter 6 describes this battle that we have. A final word, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, put on all of God's armor so that you'll be able to stand firm against all the strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you'll be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle, you will still be standing firm. So how can it be that Satan is defeated? And at the same time, we have to like be on guard. Which is it? And the reality is that sometimes the war is over, but there are still battles to be had. I think about it in terms of sports, because it's just like an easy analogy for everything. Sometimes the game is over, but the clock is still running. And it's actually in those moments where things get really interesting. It's when it's over, it's been decided, and the enemy, the opponent knows they're beaten. They know they have no chance. It's over, but the clock is still running, there's still a battle happening, and so it's in those moments that the opponent tends to lash out. The claws come out. And that opponent, that enemy fights as if they have nothing to lose because they know they've already lost. The Bible says that Satan fights like a madman because he knows that his time is short, that his time is running out. And so we need to leave here today understanding that Satan has been completely and totally defeated. That is done. He has no chance, he has no claim over you. You have to understand that if you're tempted with anything, you have no, if you belong to Jesus, you have zero obligation to Satan. He can lie to you all he wants, he can shame you all he wants. He's got nothing. It's hot air, it's nothing. Unless you believe it. He's defeated, but there's still a battle to happen. Herb and I were talking in between services, and Herb reminded me that hey, God promised the the Israelites the promised land. He said it's yours, but they still had to fight for it. So we've got to fight. And as followers of Jesus, we've got to fight. We have to stand firm. We stand, how do we stand firm against him? Go to 1 Peter 5:9. It says, stand firm against him and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are. Stand firm in your faith. We've got to have faith that even when it looks like Satan's winning, he's not. That it's a front, that it's a show. In the early church, John, this disciple of Jesus, was leading the early Jesus followers in a time of great, great persecution. People were coming after them. And in 1 John 4 4, he says, remember this. Remember this. You are the children of God. You belong to God, my dear children. You've already won a victory over those people because the spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. The spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. He's greater than you. I want to give you a perspective on that, and I promise we're almost done, but this is important stuff. And I'll I'll say as a pastor, I haven't talked about this stuff enough, so I'm sorry for that, and you're having to pay for it right now, but you're good people, you'll forgive me. But like, I don't know if you've ever had an encounter with something demonic. I have. This stuff's real. One night at three o'clock in the morning, I woke up and I had I had an actual encounter with something demonic. And I was paralyzed in fear for a few moments. That's a story for another day. I'll I'll do the story in the follow-up podcast. But it was intense, never experienced anything like it. And I know it was not a dream. It was not a dream. I was awake, I couldn't go back to sleep. And I prayed and I asked God to give me strength, and and and it subsided. But me in the presence of one demon, I was afraid, paralyzed, couldn't move. There's a story of Jesus crossing a body of water, and as soon as he gets out, a demon-possessed man comes to him. The man's a lunatic. He's ranting, he's raving. See, see, Satan, he torments us. And when we open ourselves up to spiritual forces that are not good, they can come in and they can destroy, they ravage. And so this man is tormented. And there's not one demon inside of him, there's there's a lot. And Jesus actually says, What is your name? Talking not to the man, but to the demons. And they say, We are legion, for we are many. The word legion was a military term that indicated generally a force that was very large. We're talking between a thousand, perhaps two thousand men. That would make up a Roman legion. So basically, we have this demon saying, There are thousands of us in here. And you might think that because there's thousands of them and just one of Jesus, that they've got strength and number, that they're emboldened, they're like, We're gonna take you down, Jesus. That is not how the story goes. Two thousand demons in the presence of Jesus fall to their knees and beg him not to destroy them. Two thousand demons see Jesus and they are filled with fear, and they fall down and they beg for their lives because that's who Jesus is. So when it says that the spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world, never for a moment forget who you are aligned with. If you are aligned with Jesus, you are aligned with the winner, with the victorious conqueror of death. He has defeated death, he has defeated Satan. Nothing can stand against him, nothing can stop him. That's our God. So be bold, be bold. And when we walk out of this place today, know this we will be tempted. Satan will lie to you, he will lie to you about who you are. Don't believe him. When he lies to you, you know what you do? You tell him to go to hell because that's where he belongs, that's where he belongs. It was created for him. We're gonna finish with one verse. Romans 16, 20. And if you notice, we've used a lot of scripture today, by the way, when it talks about spiritual armor, there's one part of the armor that's offensive our sword, and it's the word of God. And if you want to fight against Satan and have any hope, you've got to know the word. So dive into it, study it, know it, use whatever resource you want. We've got a ton of them on the app. Take the cover-to-cover class that's starting up in a few weeks. Just know the word. But Romans 16, 20. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Whose feet is he under? Yours. I don't know if that means Satan's the doormat that we walk across into heaven or not. But what it means is you have nothing to fear. Take him seriously. Be alert, be watchful, be on guard, armor up, fight, win. But the battle's over. The battle's over. If you belong to Jesus. And if you don't, one prayer, one moment. Lord, I believe in you. I believe in you. That changes everything. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for these amazing, patient people. Thank you for time and your presence, Lord. God, I know that we've been here a little longer this morning than normal. I also know that I say that a lot more often, so maybe this is normal. But you say in your word that greater that better is one day in your house than a thousand elsewhere. And so, Lord, I'm glad that we have the opportunity to come together to worship you, to reflect on who you are. And I pray, Lord, that you fill us with a boldness and a courage that comes from standing behind you, that comes from standing with you, to aligning ourselves with you, Lord. Yes, we have an enemy, but we have a father. And you don't lose. And we love you. And it's in your name we pray, Jesus. It's in your name we worship. Amen. Love you guys.