Deliver Us From the Evil One

Have you ever been going through your day, just the normal routine? Going to workshop and getting up, cleaning the house, whatever it is you do, and you just happen to look down and you find a sniper's scope, their laser on your chest? Suddenly, your day changes a little bit, doesn't it? You start being a little more observant. You think, whoa, what's going on here? And so you check around and you find you got three more on your back, six on your head. What's going on here? I am in somebody's sights that wants to kill me. Well, you know, the point is we don't always sense the killers that want to see us dead now and forever. I say we don't always see them, the ones I'm talking about, we never see because they're invisible. But there is a whole host of evil beings that want you and me dead. And some of them are so evil that they are chained and they are restrained from harming us until a certain time in the future. Jesus said to you and me in Matthew chapter 6, as you pray each day, here's an outline. And that outline includes, deliver us from the evil one. Deliver us from the evil one. Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you prayed desperately to God to deliver you from Satan? Could be. It might have been a while. Could be you didn't really realize that that was important. In looking at that part of the prayer, I've had to ask myself this last couple weeks, what's up with that? You know, we don't see the sniper red dots on us from the lasers. That's invisible to us. And so we think, oh, well, we're with Jesus. You know, we're saved in a sense from, we've been called out and saved from the death penalty by his blood. We're with him. We're with God. And yet he says, you pray every day. Do not let us be led into temptation and deliver us from the evil one. Now, is that just some words, some flowery speech that we're supposed to put in our prayer that we're not just those words only, but to expand on and build into a part of our prayer, beseeching God for help. Don't let us fall into those things and to deliver us as if we need rescuing now. Not back at just baptism. I thought I came out of the baptism tank and I'm fine. I thought I was freed from slavery and therefore the devil will, you know, he's somewhere else. What's up with that? We can't see what's going on in the spirit realm. Those are unseen beings, unseen forces. Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 12 tells us something that's also a little bit unusual to us. Paul says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and against the rulers, plural of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts, plural of wickedness in the heavenly places. How many of you all been fighting those this week and praying for help as you wrestle with them? This sometimes kind of goes to the back of our thinking, perhaps. Sometimes we don't have the urgency and the supplication as we pray to realize or remember or even be cognizant of the fact that we are trying to be killed all the time. We are trying to be kidnapped back. We are trying to be inspired, deceived, encouraged, tempted to do things that will get us the eternal death penalty. And yet Jesus, out of his love for you and me, puts it right there in a very short outline. Those are two principal parts.

Why is that? You know, Paul made a statement, deliver that church member to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Yikes! We've got Jesus Christ having us pray, deliver us from the evil one. And Paul saying of a member of the Corinthian congregation, deliver him to Satan for the destruction of his body.

You remember what Satan did to Job? Jesus Christ's directive got me wondering, why is he telling us to pray for deliverance from Satan on a daily basis in a passionate way? And to expand that out and to think about it. I thought he was handling that. Really, you know, in my mind, you go through the day and you pray and you know you kind of think you're in lockdown, you got the angels, everything's fine, God's taking care of the invisible stuff. I just got to deal with my stuff. But here we're told to include that topic in our regular prayer and not just mumbling it out, you know.

Deliver us from the evil one, kind of like knock on wood. Got that said. I've got the shield around me because I said the words. What does Jesus Christ know as a spirit being that necessitates you and me to ask him or ask the Father deliver us from Satan? This present evil age is deteriorating quickly. The lawlessness is beginning to really abound in ways that I don't think anybody can ignore. The devil has a short time and in a certain time when he is cast down, he will have a very short time, just three and a half short years in order to do his worst, the very worst that he can do.

And the objective there is to eliminate anything that's living. Today, let's learn from Scripture what Satan is up to with you and me and how we go about wrestling and winning against him. The sermon title is Deliver Us from the Evil One. In the Bible there's the plan of God, of course, and within that plan we see a couple of gods, don't we? We see the true God and his son Jesus Christ now, but we see the false God, the God of this world, and we see those two in competition for Adam and Eve. Essentially, they're God's children because he made them, but Satan came along and tried to kidnap them and make them somehow sort of like his kids.

Get him to think like him with the objective that God said, if you do this, you're gonna die. And Satan got him to do it, to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ha! Set man up for sin and for death. These two rivals have been competing all along. It's been a fairly fierce rivalry. At one point, God the Father sent his son down here.

The rival Satan went after him. He went after him as soon as he was born. Tried to kill him by killing the first, you know, two-year-old kids in the land there. He went after him several times. He went out, when he started his ministry, you know, he tempted him and tried to get him to sin so that he would not be able to die for the sins of you and me.

There would be no advocate. There would be no atonement for sin. And a sinner, the Father, would not evidently be able to resurrect. That would shut down Satan's rival. Jesus Christ championed in that situation. He overcame. He won that battle. And consequently, the two rivals remain. You have currently the God of this world, but you have Jesus Christ coming back to replace him.

And he's going to be the God of this world. And the current God of this world doesn't want that. And so the end time is going to be this dramatic fight, pulling out all stops from Satan's side. But of course, Jesus Christ has the greater power and aided by the angels and aided by the saints.

The firstfruits certainly has the greater power. But when you look at those two, you see one that wants you dead forever and nothing to do with you. And the other wants to be unified at one with you and have you live with him and the Father forever. These are two poles. They both want you. The plan involves you and me choosing which one we want.

Do we want the one that somehow is more attractive to us? It's going to get us killed. You know, like an animal going into a trap. Oh, this looks good. Or do we want the one that really is life and blessing and good? It's a choice you and I have to make. Not just a decision. It's something we have to believe in. We have to embrace. We have to follow the leader. In either case, we have to follow the God, either Big G or little G. We have to follow the God and go down that course, that path.

Paul said in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 2 and 3, that path in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the Power of the Air. Prince of the Power of the Air, we didn't know we were following him. Mr. Armstrong used to say that, you know, until the invention of the radio, you could never understand what the Prince of the Power of the Air was. It's like our heads are radio receivers and we've always been getting the signal. But the signal doesn't necessarily dictate what you'll do, but it certainly influences you. And you can change the stations, you can turn up the volume, but you have this influence from God through the Holy Spirit, through Satan the Devil, through temptation, all kinds of things. It says, the Spirit which now works in the sons of disobedience among which we were all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. This is the important key. It was about us, it was about me, what I can get, what I can do, what I can have. And we're by nature children of wrath. Children of wrath. Now, the term wrath comes from the Greek, which means in the sense of punishment. And my assumption here, children of wrath means, you know, the wrath of God that's going to come on sinners. We are guilty, we are headed for the death penalty. So we're children of death in the sense of punishment. So somehow humanity is ended up right where Satan wants, just heading down the path, deserving death, the lake of fires, the future, unless something changes.

Let's look at the initial setup by Satan and then let's look at God's solution to that. Adam, the first Adam, gave us physical life. And through Adam and Eve, we were supposed to also have access to spiritual life. The tree of life was in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve and their children were invited to participate in that tree and engage in a process of life. And the first Adam should have led us towards the God that walked with them in the Garden. But he didn't. That's not what happened.

Instead, in Romans 5, 12, it says, through one man sin entered the world and death through sin. And thus death spread to all men because all sinned. That's what happened. Adam led us down through his choices, Eve. And so, instead of being led to life by that Adam, we've been led into death. But wait! What happened to people led by God?

You know, that could happen to you and me, too. Just because it happened to Adam. Adam was in the Garden of Eden walking with God and he fell for that. What about you and me?

Is this is this Satan only a historical figure or only for people in the world? Can't say that Adam was in the world or Eve was in the world. They were right there with God.

See, we don't make this, God, please deliver us from the evil one. Protect us from deception through deceit, temptations. We need to make that a priority that it really deserves.

You know, in the model prayer outline, Jesus actually gave us something that is new.

It's profound. It's vital for our survival. He didn't say this to anybody else. He didn't go back and didn't say it to David or Moses. He's telling it to you and me in the New Covenant.

Now, what do we do with that? Do we think about it once in a while? Do we kind of wonder, well, I don't know what that is. I can't really see the spirit universe. I just trust that that's taken care of. I'll get to the give this day my daily car and house and clothes and all the stuff that I want and feel good. If so, we play right into Satan's hands. Do you understand how precious that statement within the model prayer outline is? How revealing, how important, how new, how exciting. There were only three writers in the Old Testament that ever evidently knew about Satan, that ever mentioned the name Satan, that ever used the name Satan in the entire Old Testament. Three writers. You think of who they were? I'll give you a hint. They probably all knew each other. They may have been friends. Three writers. They all lived in the fifth century, the 400s BC.

They were the last writers of the Old Testament, the very close of the Old Testament.

Expositor's Commentary dates the book of Zechariah at about 480 BC. It dates the book of Job, written by an unknown author. Somewhere in the 400s is a speculative guess.

The book of Ezra dates at 440 BC. Ezra wrote the book of 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, and the book of Ezra. He may have also written the first chapter of Genesis as an introduction. Ezra canonized the Bible, put all the scrolls together. He ended up the last, probably living, individual of that era. And God inspired him to pull together the Old Testament as we know it.

So the only writers that God inspired to use the word Satan closed out the Old Testament.

The very, very end. The implication of that, from what I can see, and I could be wrong, is that throughout the Old Testament period, Satan was unknown. He was invisible. He operated unseen. You know, when Ezra wrote 1 Chronicles, he said that Satan led David to number Israel.

Ezra wrote that, the last writer of the Old Testament, way, way after the fact. Now, when we realize that it's at the end, way, way, way at the end, when everybody else had been in, had gone off into captivity, into Syria, and then the Jews, into Babylon, we're talking writing well after that, a long time after that, over a hundred years after that, maybe. We're talking some time there. You're down to a few individuals now that are writing. Don't know if this stuff really got that published or that distributed, that others would know it. Then you have to ask the question, to whom did God intend to enlighten about Satan? You know, only 4% it is speculated, of the Jews that went into captivity at Babylon, ever came back. 96% stayed in Babylon for the next 1100 years until they ran into problems in 500 BC with the Arabs. Only 4% came back to Jerusalem.

To rebuild the temple, etc. It's possible that the Israelites never knew about Satan.

Just think about that. When Moses wrote Genesis chapter 3, he said, the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field. Moses' understanding may just have been that the serpent that talked to Adam and Eve was more cunning than the rest of the animals in the field. When you consider for a minute that there's nothing, no evidence in Scripture, that Abraham, Moses, David, the patriarchs, the prophets, the high priests knew about Satan. What does that say about Jesus' words in Matthew 6? For you and me to be knowledgeable of the deceitful practices and pleading for help that this being who is after those who have God's Holy Spirit, to be protected, to be saved, as it were, on a daily basis.

Say an example of what people saw in the Old Testament. We could go to Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 16 and 17. Deuteronomy 32, verses 16 and 17. Only a few times are there scriptures that would mention something like a demon or a he-goat, etc., etc. This passage uses what is called parallelism. It's common in some parts of Hebrew. Parallelism is when you say one thing and then you say another thing just like it using a synonym. Another word that's like it. They're similar words. You say, you know, we went out to eat bread and there was warm bread and there was soft bread and there was tasty bread and all kinds of nice breads. What have you said? You're talking about bread. Well, here, let's notice in Deuteronomy 32, verse 16, grouping these synonyms and antonyms together, he says, they provoked God to jealousy with foreign gods. Now, we're going to, on this foreign gods, we're going to say all kinds of foreign gods here, kind of like the bread analogy was.

With abominations, they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods that they did not know, to new gods, to new arrivals. Now, what are we talking about here? Well, in parallelism, what we're talking about here is foreign gods and idols from the Canaanites and other groups that were around them, the Egyptians were influencing them with foreign gods. And yet, we see this word, demons, in there. Let me tell you something about or read you something about demons. Demons, that word is a word on loan to Hebrew from Assyrian. Sedu, S-E-D-U, and it means mythical creatures guarding a god of Assyria.

In other words, by Israel, the word often referred to bales.

There's an article called, Demons in the Old Testament, issues in translation by Bratcher. And he writes, in spite of the Bible translation, there is no word in Hebrew equivalent to the English word, demon, nor any word in Hebrew that communicates a benevolent being in service to the devil. Bratcher also says of the Hebrew word, sare, sometimes translated, devils and evil spirits, or hego. The word sare is not used in Hebrew scriptures to mean anything close to our idea of demonic powers, but exclusively to refer to the mythology and idols of the pagan deities who were recognized to be nothing or empty, devoid of any power. Now, if there's no concept or little concept, and we can't go back, transport ourselves back, but when you look in the scripture and you just don't see the explanation and the revelation of the spirit world, the evil side of the spirit world, you're left to wonder, did David have any concept of why he did what he did with Bathsheba, or why he was motivated to number Israel and see 70,000 people get killed?

Isn't it good that Jesus Christ has revealed this to you and me? And shouldn't we be on board, you know, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death with a lot of evil beings wanting to kill us? Shouldn't we be on board asking him, please don't let that happen?

You know, as I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I'm not going to fear any evil because you are with me, you are guiding me, you are leading me, I'm not following that.

And you're going to protect me if I beg you for it, and if I have a mind to resist it, as we'll see in a minute. Jesus knew Satan. He knew him well, and they were rivals.

He quickly tempted him when he started his ministry. He did it in private, but he tempted him, tried to get him to forfeit being the savior of mankind, being the entry point for individuals to have salvation, to have a place in the family of God. Matthew records, as soon as he was tempted by the devil, he turned around and told you and me to pray, not to be allowed to fall into temptation and to be delivered from the evil one. He's bringing us up to what he's fighting. He's bringing us up to his realization on his level as a person led by God's Holy Spirit, a person called to be in a resurrection just as he was, as the first of the firstfruits which we are to be. He's giving us that information and telling us what we really need to be about. Where is the first place Satan is used in the New Testament? Answer, model prayer outline. Very first time.

I think that's profound and also it's a loving savior, a loving elder brother, a loving mediator, the loving one who has life and wants you to live. It's a loving thing to let us know, to clue us into so that we can be successful. For without it, without that knowledge, we would not perceive the target that we have become by being baptized and by carrying God's Holy Spirit. We don't see how the angels are around those who have God's Holy Spirit and the defenses that they put up. That alone, highlighting them, singling them out as wannabe targets, as it were, as the most elect to be killed, if at all possible.

Satan hates Jesus Christ. He was finally allowed to kill him. He was put off and put off and put off and there were miracles that prevented him from being killed. But Jesus was finally turned over into Satan's hands. And just like Satan would do, he put him through the most unimaginable things. He took him right off the Temple Mount there, took him down the hill to where the Roman garrison was housed, and then he took him inside the military building where nobody could see and did things to him there that were unspeakable, that most people would never be able to survive.

And from there, he was taken out and put under continual temptation, continual pressure and trial, until he breathed his very last descent. If he couldn't get him there and he couldn't get him here, he would certainly get him when he was nailed to the stake. And he had people working from the audience trying to trip him up. All he needed to do was say something, think something, and the pressure was on.

Well, what then? Jesus Christ was perfect and he was resurrected. Opportunity missed as far as Satan was concerned. So what's next? Well, if you can't get the main guy, go get his followers. Go get those whom he is discipling, making like himself. And so, Satan hates those who are associated with Jesus Christ. He says in Revelation 12, 13, now, when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. We see in the end times that Satan rose a flood of some kind, perhaps an army after the true church, the part that is being taken into a place of safety. He's repelled from there and so he goes to make war with the remnant of her seed. He goes after them who keep the commandments. And we find in Revelation 12 that essentially the saints that are not in the place of safety are given into his hand, given into the hands of the powers that he is working with. It's a very, very difficult thing. And you can see here as we set this up how unfair, how wrong, how the whole mindset is evil and wrong from the beginning. And yet, boom, boom, boom, so many people down through time, the righteous people have been targets, have been hurt, harmed, killed. You can read in Hebrews 11 some of the faithful and what they've gone through. It's not right. It's not fair. Jesus Christ himself has gone through it. And it's certainly not fair in the great tribulation that the true people have to go through and many of them have to give their lives in the way that they do. You know, sometimes we just have to ask the question, why would God allow that? Why is that in our future? I almost can't deal with that, we might think. Oh, yes, we can. Everybody else has dealt with it, that's faithful. Jesus Christ has dealt with it. Nothing's going to be put on anybody that they can't deal with. We have to have the same resolve that Jesus did. We are not of that God.

And no matter what opportunities he is given, we are not going to succumb to that God because if we do, we die. And that's the end of it. It's the whole idea of it. The booklet from the United Church of God, Is There a Devil? on page 18 says, Satan's immense powers were turned to thwart God's purposes. This creature remains an enormously powerful spirit being and now his powers are used for wicked and destructive means. When we think about Satan, he has various names in the Bible. A couple come from Revelation 9-11, and they are Apollyon and Abaddon. Apollyon in one language, Abaddon in the other language. Both mean the destroyer. The destroyer. That's what he does. That's what he wants to do to everything living that's not him. He wants to destroy it. The Hebrew is a noun, meaning adversary, the enemy, opponent, antagonist, and foe. You know, those three writers at the end of the Old Testament that wrote, they used that Hebrew word which means enemy or adversary, an opponent, an antagonist, a foe.

The Greek for Satan is satanis. It means an adversary, one who opposes another in purpose or act. He's against what you and I are trying to accomplish, in other words. He's against what God is trying to accomplish. The Greek word for devil, diabolos, an accuser, a slanderer. The Greek for the evil one that Jesus used in the model prayer outline, for instance, topononaru, the evil one. There's no good in him. He's all evil. When we think about, again, the model prayer outline, Matthew had just written about Jesus himself fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. It was a big deal for him to be tempted by Satan. Seems like just a few questions. Oh, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Why don't you do that? He got through that pretty easily. No. 40 days of giving himself ready. There was no way he wanted to be tempted and sin. No way. It couldn't. The success of the God family, in fact, his very resurrection back to the throne. I don't see any other way around it, but had he not been righteous and obedient in all things, I don't think he could have returned. And I think the plan would have ended and there would be simply whom we know today as the Father in Heaven. So this was a huge deal. 40 days and 40 nights of fasting went into not being tempted. And then he turned right around and tells us, pray that you are not tempted. You know, and of course, we're all tempted. I'm not saying that temptation should never happen, but there are minds who just say, no, we're rejected. Just like when Jesus was tempted in all things, he said, no, that's not what we're supposed to do. That's not what we're supposed to think. That's not what I'm supposed to feel.

I'm not going to go there. But in Jesus' prayer outline, he puts in there a petition for us to ask God that we be not led into similar temptation and employing the Father for deliverance from the evil of that author of temptation. Deliver us. Now, I've always kind of felt delivered since baptism, haven't you? And so again, I asked the question of myself, what's that doing in the daily prayer outline? Give us this day our daily bread, and whenever you pray, pray like this.

I tell you what, I'm caught short.

Really short.

We need to be self-controlled and alert. Peter says in 1 Peter 5 8 in the new international version, he says, be self-controlled and alert. You know, you need to notice you've got a bunch of laser tags all over you. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. And the tastiest ones have God's spirit, because they're the first enemies he has. We're coming up to the resurrection first.

We are the ones who first are trusting in God. He wants to deal with the rest later.

Consider what Jesus said to Peter. Peter, Satan has asked for you that he may sift you like wheat.

How many times a week does Satan ask for you? Me. Peter, you know, historical thing, one-time deal. Oh, Satan asked for Job. He was the most righteous man on earth.

He got delivered Job into his hand. He asked for Peter to sift him as wheat.

Those were just a couple of examples of righteous people. He sifted a lot of people like wheat. How often does Satan ask for you and me? And so Jesus Christ said, pray, deliver us from the evil one. What's the ramification? If we don't ask for that, well, I wouldn't want to go there.

Satan is out to get us through many ways. Jesus said in Matthew 13 verse 38, talking about the parable of the sower and seed, he said, the field is the world. We all live in the world. Now, you and I know that in this world, there's a lot of booby traps. There's all kinds of landmines. There is, you know, we could stumble and fall and we could go into the world, back into the world, back into the vomit. The Bible calls it easily because it's an attractive thing to our carnal human nature. We live in that world. And Jesus said in Matthew 17 to the Father, I pray that you don't take them out of the world. Leave them there. So it's good for us. It's part of the decision-making process God uses in deciding who's going to be in his family and who's not.

So the field is the world. Now, in this field of the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom of God. Now, you might say, here we are. Good seed. Isn't it nice? Wow, let's just not go outside. Let's stay in here. Doesn't it feel warm and protective in here? Oops. Read on.

The tares are the children of the wicked one. Jesus said there'd be wheat and tares in his church.

We've got problems on the outside. We've got problems on the inside. There's risk everywhere.

Now, who's a wheat and who's a tare? I don't know. Sometimes I think if I allow my carnal mind to get the best of me, I become a tare. If I get away from God and start thinking about me, then I become a tare. I want to change into a wheat. Fast. That's what fasting is about. Repentance. But in other words, anyone could tempt us and say, oh, God tell you, you shouldn't do that.

It's okay. Now, you can do that. Because, I mean, look, there's somebody else doing it, and there's somebody else doing it. And so, let's all sin a little bit and take it a little easier. Well, Satan's after us from all sides, from everywhere.

Are you thankful that Jesus Christ has exposed this evil being in his cohorts to us? Do you appreciate that? Jesus is the one, by the way, that told us he was a deceiver, and he was a liar, and a murderer, and the father of it. It's the Bible that told us that this type of selfish ambition through James, in James chapter 3, is demonic. It doesn't descend from God. It's a different mindset.

There's a common theme in the Bible that Satan wants to derail everybody.

He derailed Adam and Eve, caused David, number Israel. I mean, just a few things where we see Satan pointed by writers at the end of the Old Testament tell us this is of Satan.

Got tried to get Job to curse God, so God would kill him. He opposes Israel's redemption.

He seeks the death penalty for you. Satan goes to God continually seeking the death penalty for you. That's what accuser of the brethren means. It's an illegal court of law. Every time you sin or make a mistake, he said, gotcha! Ha! See that? May have encouraged them to sin a little bit.

And look, they bit, took the hook. Look, God, this person sinned, and the penalty for sin is eternal death. You've got to fry that person. That's what the accuser of the brethren is. He is there to make sure if at all possible you and I have the death penalty over our head.

Okay, I think the point is probably clear now that Satan is the adversary and he wants you and me dead. But there's a bigger question. The bigger question is, right, what do we do about that? We still can't see him. There's no actual laser tags that I can see on my head and chest.

I can walk out of here thinking, oh yeah, I've got an enemy. I need to fight him. What do I do?

I still can't see him. We could have an emotional sort of experience here and say, yes!

You know, wrestle, punch. I don't know. Where is he? If he ever shows up, I'll get him.

If he ever shows up. The point is, he's always around. The question is, how does the invisible Satan come after me?

You know, we feel safe. We feel protected. We feel he can't get at us. And suddenly, we realize Jesus is saying, oh yeah, he can. Oh yes, he can. He gets after all the righteous people. How does he come after me?

1 Peter 5, verses 8-9 can give us a little peek. 1 Peter 5, verse 8, Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Then verse 9, resist him. Steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings that come from Satan are experienced by your brotherhood, who also have to live in the world. This is a common problem that those with God's Spirit are going to have. So we're supposed to resist him. How do I resist him? He's invisible.

How do I resist him? It's very important for us to come to understand what we really have to do.

Jesus Christ gave us a big clue, a really big clue, exactly how Satan works, exactly how he's coming after us, and exactly what we need to be resisting.

Let's go find him. Mark chapter 18, verse 33, might come in the most unlikely spot.

Something you probably not considered. Mark 18 and verse 33.

There is no Mark 18. And verse 33. Okay, I just happened to have written it out, so I'm going to read it to you. You can find it.

Jesus Christ rebuked Peter, saying, Get behind me, Satan.

That's where the clue comes from. Anybody have scripture?

Pardon? Eight, verse 33. Oh, my trusty little computer put a one in front of the eight. Sorry about that. Okay, Mark 8, verse 33. Now, get you behind me, Satan. Now, our minds might be sort of shocked at that. This is Peter. Wow, he said, Get behind me, Satan. And we might close our Bibles and say, Wow, that's pretty. We might not focus on what he says next.

Get behind me, Satan, for or because, notice, you are not mindful of the things of God, but you are mindful of the things of men. What had Peter just told him? Oh, Lord, you said you're going to die. You said you're going to get delivered up and killed. Oh, no, we're not going to let that happen. See, when it comes to protecting me or my friends, we're not going to let that happen. What are the things of God? Jesus teaches us agape, love God, love neighbor, love enemy.

You know, pray for those that spitefully use you. God has a plan. Jesus Christ came.

Peter suddenly shifted into self-protection mode and said, ha, we're going to arm ourselves. We're going to defend ourselves. We're going to do something for us and you. This is not going to happen. See how fast the mind shifts and it can happen to you and me in any situation throughout the day. Something happens. Mind shifts. Self comes first. That's what we do as humans.

Get behind me, Satan, because that's the mind of Satan. He wants you to think about me first every day, every minute, every situation, and thereby disqualify us for sonship in the family of God. Don't think about agape and loving others. No, think about me. Don't think about what God wants you to do and sacrificing for others in God. No, God wouldn't want me to do that. God wouldn't want me to be inconvenienced. God wouldn't want me to feel pain. God wouldn't want me to lose my job. God wouldn't want me to enjoy good tasting food and meats. God wouldn't want me to be inconvenienced as far as time or money or energy or opportunity. God wouldn't want me to opportunity. See? That fruit looks pretty good to me. I think I'll protect myself here and number the troops and see what the potential of winning the war is. I think I'll look at this situation, examine it how it'll best fit me. Satan wants us to do that. And to resist Satan means not doing that. When those temptations come in our mind like, oh, I could do this. I could think that. That would work well for me to say, that's not right. That's not good. That's not what God said. That doesn't love my spouse. That doesn't love my family. That doesn't love any human being. That certainly doesn't love God. And therefore to reject that, just as Jesus said us the example when he was tempted. If you look at the examples of Satan tempting people to put themselves first, one example pops right up. It's Judas. I get 30 pieces of silver. All I gotta do is kiss him on the cheek. That works. And I can wiggle around that because, you know, I've seen him do so many miracles. He's not going to get in trouble. He'll never know. 30 pieces of silver. Ananias.

I'll donate some land like everybody else is. As we're sharing all things in common, I'll sell my land. I'll donate a chunk of money. It's going to really impress people. I'll let it be known that I'm so giving, I've donated all the money. But I'll just keep a few grand in my pocket.

And I'll be able to help people more if I have some money, too. See how that works? It's Ananias. Why has Satan filled your heart with self-promotion? Judas, the devil has entered into you. Go quickly and do what you must do. He constantly tempts us, including today, on how we would keep the Sabbath holy or not. Excuse ourselves. Well, you don't have to prepare, do anything for this holy day and keep it holy. No, just we want you to be lazy and sleepy and, whatever you want, because this week has been so hard on you. And we all say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I can do that.

You know, there's so many things right through our whole lives. Whenever a trial comes up, we shift into protection and go, oh no, I'm having a trial. I'd better shoot, sue, defend, somehow slander, get back, protect my name, defend myself. That's our immediate response. Pull out a sword and cut off the guys here. That's the response, all the way down to personal survival. Some people will defend personal survival, even. They say, well, me or the other person, I have to. When it comes down to you and the beast, either obey God's way or die. He says, well, I have to disobey God's way because I would lose my life.

Well, I could break the Sabbath a little bit if my employer wants me to work over, but when the beast is telling me to work on the Sabbath, because he will, then I won't.

We are developing a character now that either resists the temptation when it's small and hopefully get rewarded by going to the place of safety, or we can keep learning those lessons.

Not that everybody who doesn't go to the place of safety, I guarantee you, won't be high-level, top-notch Christians. It may be the week that go to the place of safety. I'm weak. Can I go?

Because they can't be trusted out there in all the events. They can't be let out into the big league. They get hurt spiritually. They might lose their lives. See, there's that side, too.

Because some big ones, like the two witnesses and others, will be called upon to be a witness and stand up strongly with God's Spirit.

But Satan constantly tempts us.

And the booklet, Is There a Devil?, on page 20, says, God's servants are not to be fearful of evil spirits who are fewer in number and inferior in power to Christ and his angels. Angels are called ministering spirits, in Hebrews 1, verse 14. The whole point is, you've got God, you've got Michael the Archangel, we do as the Church. We have individual angels. We don't know much about that. God doesn't tell us much about that. We don't need to really know about that. They have their role, but their role is not to do it for us. They don't do it for you. They don't do it for me. They don't resist the devil for you and me.

Maybe in an actual, physical way of blocking him, but not the deception, not the things that will get us killed eternally. They may defend him or put him back to keep our physical lives going, like God did for Job. He gave Satan a short leash with Job, but had absolute access to killing him spiritually.

Now, temptation, then, is a personal, private thing for each one of us. Each of us has our own temptation, just like Paul talked about it. And if we let that breed and grow and let the leaven swell and run through us, then sin is going to permeate and captivate and take over.

We have to resist. And the best resistance, the best defense, is pursuing a gape. Just what Jesus Christ told us to do. Just what the Apostle John told us to do. Just what all the writers in the Bible do. Go pursue love for God with all your heart, soul, and might, and love your neighbor and yourself. And anything that comes in and distracts from that, get rid of it.

You know, sometimes you'll find yourself, Oh! I wanted... I meant to love God, my fellow man, but I actually did something that was self-serving. But you recognize that, you're offended by that, you're repulsed by that, you don't want anything to do with that, you ask God for forgiveness. That's part of the model prayer, too. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. That's a daily thing.

We need to see those sins. We need to put them out. But then we... Next, we say, don't let us fall into temptation.

Feed us with the bread of life. Feed us with the Spirit, in other words, of God's Holy Spirit, that produces the fruits of righteousness, of love and joy and peace and stitching together and all the good things of God.

The best defense is pursuing the nature, the mindset of God.

In 2 Timothy, chapter 1, in verse 7, 2 Timothy, chapter 1, in verse 7, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but He's given us a spirit of power and agape and of a sound mind.

That is the spirit that's supposed to flow through our veins and to motivate us. And if we are stirring up that spirit, we have a built-in immunity, as it were, against things that are foreign to that, that want to invade us and have us grow in a different way.

Ephesians, chapter 5, in verse 18, it says, If we're filled with God's Holy Spirit and we're pursuing that which the Spirit motivates us to, which is loving God, loving neighbor, we will have an immunity, a type of immunity. It's not like a shield and nothing can get through, but you understand what I mean. If you're taking a lot of, say, a certain vitamin when the cold is going around, you might have a little bit of resistance to getting that cold that other peoples have. That's what we're talking about.

You're still going to be like Paul, where that which I strive to do, I sometimes fall back from doing.

But you're in the race. You're winning. You're making forward progress. We need to resist Satan. In James 4, verse 7, we know how to resist Satan by putting on this mind of Christ, by putting in the Holy Spirit, by thinking about and trying to live and ask God to fill us with that bread of life, to fill us with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, and for that Spirit to be what's in our thoughts, and not just our thoughts, but our deeds to do God's will, to do God's Word. In James 4, verse 7, it says, therefore submit to God and resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

You're not going to flee from us if we don't resist him. And one way to resist him is not only have this mindset and be pursuing it, but also ask God to help deliver me from the evil one, deliver me from Satan. God will partner with you in that as he mentors you, and he will deliver you from that. Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10 through 18. Of course, we have to be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. We cannot fight Satan on our own. How do you be strong in the Lord? Say, Lord, go get him. No, strong in the Lord means daily bread, unleavened bread or righteousness, unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Eat the Word, the Word of God, the Bible, the truth. Be filling our minds with that. And then with God's help in his Spirit, go and pursue it in our life. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Whoa! Didn't even know we were having all these laser sightings on us.

Now we know, and guess what? The wiles of the devil are against us. We're beginning to be able to stand here because we're aware, we understand his tactics, we know what's coming at us, and we're filled with a defensive type of an immunity helper called the Holy Spirit that's going to help us with this struggle, with his wrestling, with this battle.

We've got to resist him. When you look at the times that we have ahead, the end time, the reason it's the end time is it's essentially the end of anything that lives. That's an end, right?

Now you know that Satan comes and wipes out a third. There's a potential another third that gets wiped out. But you know, of all those living, remember the armies gather to meet Christ, and Christ, and the saints, and the angels come in? What happens to them? They get destroyed.

I don't know how many people are going to be left on earth. Certainly there will be some, but it's a big decimation. And it is really referring not to the end of mankind, which Satan wants it to be, but it's the end of Satan's age, the end of Satan's rule. And it goes out hard.

It goes away very, very difficultly.

You know, Matthew 24, just think about the Olivet prophecy for a minute.

He says that people are going to come in his name deceiving. Then he says there's in the church, the agape, and many are going to wax cold, and then they're going to persecute and turn each other in, going on down, and great false prophets and deception. Then Satan comes after the church, then you go on down, the great imposter will rise with signs and wonders, if possible, to deceive who? The very elect targeted again. And what are we told? Those who endure, not physically, but those who endure in this mindset, this motivation, will be saved. It's a big deal coming up to the end time. And don't let anybody think that, oh, it's not going to be anything. It's not a big deal. Maybe Christ will come tomorrow. He's not coming tomorrow.

You've got three and a half tough years when the false prophet stands in the holy place declaring himself to be God, probably declaring himself to be Jesus Christ with wonders and lights and shining wonders and preaching lawlessness, preaching disobedience to God. It's going to be a tough time. Finally, at the end, you see the persecution of the bride. Well, not at the end, but as it goes through, there's persecution of those who will become the bride of God. There's clashes. There's all kinds of things. And you could be swallowed up in all this and say, wait a minute, look at all this destruction. God really wants me to survive in my little cave. See y'all later, you know? I'll just take care of myself down here, and I'll load up with some shotguns and make sure nobody gets my food. I'm just telling you, people at that time, we see the rest of the world horrible things the prophets mentioned will be taking place. Horrible things. What would the normal human mindset go to? Hiding in rocks, self-preservation? What will the people of God do?

We've got to fight those temptations, don't they?

In Revelation, we find that Satan still wants all humanity dead. Revelation 12 and verse 12.

Revelation 12 and verse 12.

Therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them, but woe to the inhabitants of the earth, all living things on earth. For the devil has come down to you having great wrath. It's bad enough to have wrath. Now he has great wrath because he knows that his time is short. In Revelation 16 and verse 13. Here we find three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophets. Verse 14, For these are spirits of demons performing signs which go out to the kings of the earth and to the whole world to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. Satan wants everyone dead. He's going to gather a man and get God to kill him.

Get him on his side. Get him opposing God. It's a very, very, very tough time. Interestingly, in verse 14 is the last mention of demons in the entire Bible. It's the last time they're mentioned.

Refer to that, perhaps, in a minute.

The final battle is won by Jesus Christ in Revelation 19. Verse 11, Heaven is opened.

He comes in. Verse 14, The army is in heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean. Follow him on horses. Verse 15, Out of his mouth goes a sharp sword that with it he should strike the nations. And he himself will rule it with a rod of iron. He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. It's a very, very, very difficult time. But it is a time where justice is performed. However, most humans get killed. However, we find in Isaiah chapter 9, verses 6 and 7, something happens. Something happens that comes out of all this chaos into something bright and good and wonderful. Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, says, For unto us a child is born unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful and Counselor and Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. It's going to be a wonderful, wonderful time. A new age, a new era opening up. This present evil age will be over. In Micah chapter 4, verses 1 through 4, this new king and his kingdom are going to reign and be established with righteousness. Micah chapter 4, getting in verse 1, It shall come to pass in the latter days.

The mountain of God's house will be established on top of the mountains, top of the nations. It shall be exalted above the hills, above the countries. People shall flow to it. Many nations will come and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain of God, to the house of the Lord of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths. Verse 4, Everyone will sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. That's a beautiful time. This is an ugly time getting uglier. We've got a terrible time when Satan is going to really, really come after. I'd like to just pause and consider something here about God, about God's law. Remember the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth prospect. Remember that God said, for every sin, there is a consequence, and that consequence is death.

Satan became Jesus's rival enemy when he said, I am not going to do your will anymore, but I am going to ascend. I am going to do this. I, I, I. And he became a counter, a being that was counter to the purpose of God, an enemy. Genesis 3, at the end of Adam and Eve when they were being kicked out, God said that you shall bruise his head and he shall bruise your heel. It's talking about this altercation. Jesus Christ would get the best. He would hit him in the head. That's a fatal blow. Bruising in the heel would be a temporary blow. It would cause you to not be able to walk.

Satan the devil got Jesus Christ when he crucified him in the heel. God the Father resurrected him. It was only a temporary setback. We have yet to deal with the head. Satan tried to kill Jesus in his infancy and on and on. He is responsible for killing him, for bruising him.

He's trying to kill the church. He's trying to kill you and me. He uses a large empire to do a lot of the persecution. If you go back in time, you will find that the roots of the Roman Empire, going back into Babylon and Assyria and coming forward into Rome, and even Jesus Christ himself was killed actually by the Roman Empire, an agent of Satan the devil.

That Roman Empire churned up many of the brethren and killed them. It is that same revived Roman Empire that comes after the church. The church is handed over into the hands of that empire, the revival of that empire. It is the principal weapon used by Satan against Christ in the church. You remember Herod, who went after trying to kill Jesus, took out the firstborn. Herod was an agent of the Roman Empire. Now, when we think about all these things, we think about the great tribulation that's coming. Let's just read in Revelation 18, in verse 2, real quick. Revelation 18, in verse 2, The angel cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, Babylon the great has fallen, has fallen, has become the dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit and a cage for every unclean and hated bird. This is what that's about. And this has been unfair. It's killed the prophets. It's killed Jesus Christ. It's killed all down through time. And you and I have to look forward to the prospect of that happening to us. Or at least to the brethren that we love, if some of us are given the gift, if we are prayerful enough and watchful enough in our own life to be given the gift of going to a place of safety for three and a half years. Now, with that said, this is unfair. It's unfair that the people in Hebrews 11 were hiding in caves, on and to, etc., etc. It's all been unfair, and it all has been without penalty so far. Remember, God says there's a penalty, and his system was based on a penalty. And what did he say about himself? This horrible, sinful stuff? There will be retribution, and he is coming back to pay or to have the penalties paid.

Jesus will first bruise Satan at his second coming, Romans 16, verse 20. Let's just notice that.

Romans 16, verse 20. The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly, he says.

We know that Satan is going to be bound for a thousand years. We know that we've already read in Revelation 16 the last mention of demons. What we might not realize is in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 3, it says that we will judge the angels. Notice what it says in Jude, verse 6, right before Revelation. Jude, verse 6, and the angels who did not keep their proper domain but left their own abode, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. What's the great day? The great day of our Lord?

Let's go now to Revelation chapter 20, verse 4 and see who's doing judging.

And I saw thrones, Revelation 24, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them.

These are the saints resurrected to the first fruits of Christ and lived in rain for a thousand years. Yes, all of this has been done. Judgment is going to be passed on them. It is you and I and Jesus Christ that will be pronouncing that judgment on them. And the last time they are ever mentioned is in Revelation chapter 16. I don't know what will become of them. But there in the book of Jude, if you want to know, and I think we're growing as we look in the Bible and we look at what God says, we see that these angels in verse 6 were reserved for judgment.

Nothing is said about what happens to them. We never hear of them again after Revelation 16.

But down in verse 13, where it says, wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever, if you look carefully in the context, that's referring to people, not angels. The angels were way back up in verse 6, and ever since, he's been talking about certain men who have crept in unawares, who feast with you in your love feasts, and for them is reserved whatever it means, this blackness of darkness. Perhaps if it's not referring to fallen angels, then it's just referring to the fact they don't exist, you know, obliterated, burned up in the lake of fire. And that was that. Finally, Satan is removed, and I mean permanently removed, in Revelation chapter 20 and verse 10.

At the end of the millennial period, the thousand rain, it says the beast was, sorry, Revelation 20 and verse 10, says the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet were cast, and will be tormented day and night forever and ever. I don't know what that means. That's a very small scripture, isn't it?

This is not the great lake of fire of the Third Resurrection. This is the same lake of fire, the same fire pit, or whatever where the beast and false prophet were cast. They were human beings. They were human beings. Little is said here. Makes me wonder, though, will God require an ire for I? Jesus said vengeance is mine, and I will repay. Okay? I will repay. Will Jesus require that the same thing that was done to him be done to Satan? In other words, will Satan be made physical and burned in the lake of fire right there? And what will the judgment of the angels be? We don't know.

Some of these things are small and obscure, and frankly, I don't have any conclusion whatsoever in my mind. I just see that this is an evil being, and he is going to be removed and will not harm, and he will be repaid. In conclusion, Satan's risks, many of them, to saints are large. They're real. The little idea I gave you of laser, that may just be small compared to all of the many demons and Satan that would love to see us killed. If we could enter in and see that, we would also see this vast protection of a stronger army with a certain resistance. But at the same time, passing through all of that is a very dangerous deception and a very dangerous set of temptations that makes it right through to you and me. And it's up to us as to what we do about that. Many are called, Jesus said, few are chosen. Why is that? Satan evidently is quite successful. However, there will be a resisting few. There will be those who really do hold firmly the mind of Christ, and they repel and continue to repent of any intrusion that Satan makes into their thinking and their deeds.

And they will reach the goal of being Christ-like and be the bride of Christ. And they will execute judgment on the demons. They will execute with Jesus Christ's direction retribution for offenses that have been made. We need to hang on. We need to endure. We need to go through it and then realize on the other end things will be squared up. What we need to do is be one like the Apostle John speaks about in 1 John 2, verse 14. 1 John 2, verse 14. He says, I have written to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. I have written to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one.

You can be one of the ones that overcome Satan, just like Jesus Christ did. He will help you. He wants to help you. He wants to fill you up with his mindset and he wants you to follow him and he wants to save you. Just make sure that you are one who is beseeching God to deliver us from the evil one.