The Salesman

Well, thank you to the octet and the beautiful special music. I love it when voices all come together and harmonize and just such a... it's nice too when you're working with a really well-built song with a lot of harmony in it. Mr. Comodris does a phenomenal job on his music. Very talented man and very wonderful composer. Well, brethren, we leave for Camp Heistier here in about t-minus four days and counting, which... you know, who's counting? Oh, wait, we are! Between now and then, there are a million things to do. It honestly seems as soon as I manage to cross something off of my list, two or three or four or five or sometimes six things get added back to it. And so we're, you know, in the light household, we are just pushing forward trying to get everything wrapped up before we finally hop in the car Tuesday morning and drive to California. You know, I never really realized how much stuff is needed to put on a camp. You know, when they they ask you to do something like this, you know, there's not a description of all the things necessarily that you sign, but if there were, some of this would be in the fine print. Some of this would be down and the stuff you can't quite read, which is just how much stuff it takes to put on a camp. You know, I see Mrs. Sephoric over here nodding her head. Her and Mr. Sephoric did that pre-teen camp for so many years. My dining room is currently in my living room, and in my dining room are boxes upon boxes upon boxes of stuff. All the camp shirts, the staff gifts, the leftover food from last year that's not expired so we can reuse it again this year and save the money.

What? Still good? The boxes of Gatorade, the signage, the banners, all this other assorted gear that has to go back down there. And I really, I wish, I almost wish I would have done a PowerPoint just to be able to show you a picture of my dining room currently. Just boxes everywhere. Just boxes everywhere. So one of the realizations that Shannon and I came to as this pile of stuff got larger and larger and larger was, we have to somehow get this outside of Fresno.

You know, we had this moment of, how exactly are we going to do that? So we drive a minivan right now, we have a minivan, and one of the things that we also kind of came to the realization of is this is not a this year thing.

This is an every year we're directing a camp thing. So this is not just this year, this is potentially forward, who knows, two, three, four, five, ten years? We have no idea at this point. So we kind of realized right now, I think you could take the minivan that we own, fold all the seats down, jam boxes in there with every square inch of space, and still need something more than that. Well, Shannon reminded me we have children, and they're planning on coming too, so kind of ended up going back to the drawing board.

So we kind of, the more we thought about this, the more we looked at it, we kind of came to the conclusion really the limiting factor at the moment is the minivan. You know, we have this car that only seats seven, you know, and it's a captain's seat in the middle, so you couldn't put three in the middle if you wanted to, and so you couldn't all fold all the seats down and get boxes and stuff in there.

It's not like we can just throw a, you know, a trailer hitch on the back of the thing and tow it down there with the minivan. It's, you know, four or five thousand feet of elevation in a hundred plus degrees. That's going to burn your transmission up, especially in our minivan. We've already burned up one car, as you've heard that story before. So, you know, we needed something realistically that could sit all the kids and provide us enough room to put spaces in the box in the back and tow a trailer on top of it.

And so like any sane person with, you know, a camp in less than a week would do, we decided to also tack onto that list buying a car.

So we headed out and started doing some looking around. If I can provide you with any general life advice, I'm just going to tell you right now don't hunt down a car the week before your camp starts. Unreal. Just unreal amount of chaos. It was a bad idea, and I'm just going to own that now. But I've never really, personally, never really cared for the car buying experience. I don't know how many of you actually enjoy the car buying experience. I'm the kind of a person who would much rather spend the time at home researching, comparing, you know, looking at models, reading reviews, talking to people I know, and narrowing it down that way before I ever go look.

And then all I want to do is walk in and go, I want that one right there, and I want it to be perfect and good and work, and I'll take it. Let's go. That way we don't have to mess with any of the other stuff that comes. It's very based off of Proverbs 11.14. Multitude counselors. As much information as possible before you finally go in there. But by the time I'm ready to go take a look at something, I've got it nailed down.

I know what I want. I know what I'm looking for, and it's just at that point a matter of going and getting it. I don't like to window shop. I'm not a big fan of window shopping, especially with regards to cars. But unfortunately, with this time around, one of the issues we ran into was there were not a whole lot of vehicles of the variety we were looking for that were being sold by private sellers, which I love buying from private sellers. That's my preferred method. I'd much rather buy it from an individual than a dealership. But there were none, and so we were stuck with vehicles that were on dealers' lots.

As many of you have done this before, know that with a dealer's lot comes the car salesman. I want to start out by saying I have nothing against car salesmen. Some of them are phenomenal. We interacted with some very good car salesmen who were very willing to listen to us and very willing to look for what it was we were looking for.

We ran into some others who, well, were not. And not so much. So those are the guys you know all that well who take you to the cars you don't want, take you to the cars that you would have to make major concessions on in order to pick up, and realistically just don't really listen to you when you go through the process. So we had a lot of cars that looked great in the online ads. We got there, we got to the dealer, they were in terrible shape. You know, one had a crack, a crankcase seal, leaking transmission fluid all over the inside of it. We were told, oh, you drive for a couple hundred miles, it'll tighten up, it'll be fine. By the way, that's not true.

So, you know, that's the kind of stuff you run into. The unfortunate part of it is, is once you get there and you open that hood and you realize this isn't going to work, you're stuck because you're at the dealership lot and he's right there next to you. And you go, oh yeah, this isn't going to work. And you start to make for your car and they go, well, before you go, what other sort of models were you thinking of maybe? What exactly are you looking for? So you explain, well, we're looking for a mid-sized SUV with towing, gets about 18 to 20 miles per gallon, can seat seven, and is in our price range. Well, what comes back is, well, it'd be considered the Chevy Equinox. Great car, seats five. It doesn't seat seven, it seats five. Well, we have a really great lineup of Chevy Equinox. No, that's not going to work for us. We had another young man. We went and ironically, I won't tell you the dealership, but I'll give you a hint. He works for a Chevrolet dealership.

And the first thing out of his mouth was, well, I don't recommend anybody buy a Chevy. And I had this moment of, I almost almost turned and pointed at the side like, bro, you realize you work for Chevrolet. So he tried to sell us an Escalade.

Not really our thing. It's not ours. But I mean, it's a great car. They're beautiful inside. They're very spacious. Fifty-some thousand dollars, right? So that's out. That's out the thing. Another question that I got that was kind of funny. Well, have you thought about a minivan?

Turns out, yes, that is. But after a while, when you start to have these encounters, what it starts to feel like is all they're trying to do is sell you what's on their lot.

Because they're just trying to sell you what's on their lot. They're trying to move cars. That's their job, right? You know what you want. You've given them your exact specifications. You know that what you are looking for exists. You're focused on getting that one thing. That is your focus. And they are actively working to get you to give up what you're after and to settle for what they want to sell you instead. Often it's an upsell because it's going to be the next price point and they want to make a little bit more money. Well, I know your budget's this, but this is only nine thousand dollars out of your budget. It's not that much in the payments, really.

How many of you had this experience before of car shopping? Right? Everybody's saying, how many enjoy it? Any masochists in the crowd? A couple? Okay. There's a couple. That's fair.

Down in Eugene, Mr. Miller, Wes Miller's hand, shot up. He loves it. He goes in there and just negotiates with them. It's not my thing. I don't enjoy it. But if you don't like it, you're not alone. There was a 2016 study that was done by a company called Beepy Incorporated, which is a great name for a car company. But it's an online marketplace for cars that were really polling people as to their thought process with regards to the car buying experience. The results were telling. They were absolutely telling. More than three in five Americans, 61 percent, feel like they're taking advantage of at least some of the time when shopping at a car dealership. Which means you're already going in with that feeling. Like, they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes. They're trying to cheat me. That's the assumption going in, right? Millennials ages 18 to 34 especially dislike the experience. With 56 percent reporting, they prefer to clean their homes than negotiate with a car dealer. Further, 34 percent of them would rather wait in line at the DMV. 26 percent would rather do their taxes. The dislike also tends to extend to Gen X's. 24 percent of Gen X's said they would rather get a root canal than negotiate with a car dealer.

There's a number of other statistics here. I won't read them all, but what I found very interesting was the quote at the end by the person who commissioned the study. He said, the stereotypical used car dealer is a caricature that Americans have had to deal with for far too long. People don't want to waste their weekends and be upsold when there's an easier, more transparent way to do things. And again, I'm sure hands went up. We've all been there at one point in time before when we've been on the receiving end of a sales pitch.

When somebody has tried to get us to change our mind, to purchase something different, to purchase something that we don't even want, but they're trying to sell it. And they're going to offer you something else. They're going to talk you out of what you came for, and they're going to convince you that what you really want was something else in the first place. Something that's on their lot. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound familiar? Brethren, it's the same basic principle behind how Satan operates with us as followers of Jesus Christ. The title of the second split sermon today is the salesman. And with the time that I have left, I would like to take a look at the concept of Satan's sales pitches and really look at the tactics that we can use to overcome his attempts to really close that deal, to be able to finish up that deal. So to start with today, let's go ahead and turn over to Mark 4. I'm going to jump into Mark 4 here. Mark 4, and in this particular chapter, Jesus Christ gives a parable regarding the kingdom of God to his disciples.

Mark 4, we're going to grab it in verse 1.

Mark 4 and verse 1. The parable ultimately is agricultural in origin, but you know, we've looked at this from different aspects. We've looked at it from a standpoint of the soils. We've looked at it. What I want you to focus on as we read through this today is, look at what Satan is doing in this process. Look at what's present in this process from a standpoint of, once that seed has been sown, what's happening? What's going on with that once it's been sown? So Mark 4, and we'll pick it up in verse 1. Mark 4 verse 1 says, And again he began to teach by the sea, and a great multitude was gathered to him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. So you all know, you know, it's found carries very good across water. It's like old school amphitheater. Put everybody on the bank, stand out on the boat, everybody can hear you real well. It's a pretty ingenious way of teaching, really. Verse 2, Then he taught them many things by parables, and said to them in his teaching, Listen, behold, a sower went out to sow.

And it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched, because it had no root, it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground, and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred. Verse 9, He said to them, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. So now we see the disciples that heard these words that Christ spoke had some questions regarding the interpretation of things. And it's beautiful in this area. We have a section of Scripture where Christ specifically explains His own teaching, where we don't have to guess at the interpretation. We don't have to... I mean, Christ says, this is what I was saying. This is what I mean, right? So we continue on down in verse 10.

It says, But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable, and He said to them, To you it s been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God.

But to those who are outside, all things come in parables. Verse 12, So that seeing, they may see and not perceive. Hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they should turn, and their sins be forgiven them. Quoting Isaiah 6, 9, and 10.

Verse 13, And He said to them, Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sowers those the word. So is the gospel message, right? So is the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.

Verse 16, These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground, who when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness, and they have no root in themselves, and so they only endure for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word sakes, immediately they stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it and bear fruit some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred. And so He explains to them that really it has nothing to do with seed and ground, aside from being the analogy used to deliver the information. The reality is the seed that's scattered is the message of the gospel. It's sown out into the world. Some hear it, they immediately grab ahold of it, and it's taken from them. You can all think of individuals that have become interested or thought, you know, kind of wondered what it was and came in, and didn't stay, didn't stick around. We can think of individuals who came in and maybe it did take root, it started to grow and it sprung up and they were so excited and just on fire. And then life got hard. The trials came, the tribulations came, and their doubts started to kick in. Well, why would God do this to me?

And then suddenly they wilt. We can think of individuals, too, that have, you know, had the seeds sown and then had the cares of the world pull them away, right? We, in this area, you know, Florence, we think about blackberry brambles. We've got blackberries everywhere in the Midwalamut Valley. Have you ever removed stands of blackberry? What's underneath them, typically?

Like nothing. Nothing's growing underneath them more often than not. Just blackberry canes, especially the big, big, you know, patches of them, because they choke out the sunlight to anything down below. So nothing can grow underneath those. So when we have the cares of the world, we have the deceitfulness of riches. When we have distraction, when we have these things, it chokes out the gospel message. So, you know, the first of these scenarios, Satan was specifically identified. He wasn't identified in two and three.

But where do trials and temptations come from? Sometimes our own bad decisions. Must be perfectly transparent. Sometimes we create our own trials. But often they are from Satan. They are meant to discourage. They are meant to destroy. They're meant to get us to give up.

Where do these cares of the world come from? Riches and all these other things. Again, sometimes that's internal, but at times that's a temptation.

So we have to be very, very careful. We have to be very on guard and recognize that Satan's influence can get in there and can really try to convince us that know the truth and that understand the truth and that know what we're looking for, right? That it's not worth it. Satan is trying to tell us that what you want, what you desire, that kingdom, that God has promised you, that eternal life in this kingdom of God, it's not worth it.

What you want instead is this Escalade. Or what you want instead is this Chevy Equinox.

Or what you want instead is, I don't know, some other car at this point.

What Satan is trying to do is get us to give up what we know to be true for an unknown.

To get us to give up what we know to be true, this kingdom of God, for a lie.

He wants us to trade that out. Wants us to take that on, to give it up for something else. And that's how he operates. He did it with Adam and Eve, convinced them to give up the garden, convinced them to give up that intimacy of that relationship that they had with God at the beginning. Did it with Adam and Eve, did it with Cain, did it with Sodom and Gomorrah, did it with Israel, did it with the judges, and the time people and the time of the judges. Did it with the kings. Man, you read the kings. Wow! What went on during that time period.

In those situations, that salesman talked those individuals into walking away from something incredible. Down through time, Satan's convinced many the truth of God's not worth the effort. He's convinced them that he has a better way. The only individual in the history of the world that didn't buy what Satan was selling was Jesus Christ. It's the only one. It's the only one, and that account is recorded for us. Go ahead and turn over to Matthew 4. I toyed with just leaving it at two scriptures in this message because they were all in the fourth chapter of the Gospel. That was why I wanted to keep it there. So you got Luke 4, you got John 4, and Matthew 4 gives you the account of Christ's temptation, and you got Mark 4 for the parable of the sower. It's like, oh, that's perfect. We'll just stay in the fours of the Gospels. It's easy to remember. He wouldn't have to take notes, but then I found more that I needed to add. So, sorry. Matthew 4, we'll go ahead and pick up the story here. We're familiar with the story. Again, this is one that is commonly referenced pretty frequently. But again, as you're reading through these, as you're looking at these, consider Satan working to try to get Christ to exchange the truth for a lie, trying to get him to trade the known for the unknown, to give up something, to settle for something else as opposed to going in and getting what he was specifically looking for, which was the kingdom of God and the plan of God. So, you can find places online. One of the things I did before I decided to go visit these car lots was to go and read up on some of the different things that car salesmen use to try to sell you a car, because if you know what they're using, you can kind of counter that. In fact, one of the things I was reading, there's a common thing called the Benjamin Franklin cell, which basically is just pros-cons list. That's all it is. You put the pros on one side and the cons on the other and draw a line. The guys said, they'll tell you what, the next time you see a car salesman do that, tell him, look, I know the Benjamin Franklin cell. Can we move forward? He said, it's a really awkward moment with the salesman when they realize you know their secret menu. But there's places online you can find the different methods that salesmen use. And there was one very popular Reddit thread that I came across in multiple searches that showed the top three sales tricks that salesmen use to take your money. I thought, well, that'd be an interesting thing to look at. And then it was interesting to me that they basically followed Satan's process of trying to sell Christ. You know, it was like just boom, boom, boom. And we'll walk through it. We'll show you. I'll show you what I mean. Okay, so the first one, emotional manipulation.

Right? Emotional manipulation. So what they'll do is they'll get you to sit in the car. Okay, they'll get you to sit in the car. They'll get you all adjusted. They'll get you in the car and you go, wow, this is a nice car. Oh, why don't you take it for a test ride? Here, listen to the engine.

Oh, that sounds nice. Sounds a lot better than my minivan.

Right? Now, let's go take it for a test ride and go drive it around. And they might at one point reach up and open the moonroof and the wind blowing on your hair or through your beard or whatever. But you, you, they might reach over and turn up the sound system or something so that you can hear the music or whatever. They're trying to get you to emotionally already have bought the car so that you don't want to play the money game when you get back. You just want to go, here's my money, give me my car. That's the goal. And so emotionally, they'll ask you, how are you feeling? Does this car make you happy? Can you imagine yourself driving down the coastal highway in this car looking at that beautiful ocean on the right side and those beautiful mountains on the left? Wouldn't that be incredible? And by that point in time, you're thinking, yeah, it is pretty nice. It is kind of sporty. We drove, we drove one vehicle, the vehicle that we ended up purchasing has two different engine options. One has a 3.6, which is a little sluggish, but better on mileage. And the other one's a 5.7 Hemi. That thing will get up and go. Daddy liked the 5.7 Hemi. I did not, however, like the 12 miles per gallon that it gets for fuel economy. But man, you get out there driving that thing and like, oh, that's nice. Yes, I like that. So that was an emotional moment of like, this is kind of no, no, no, no, no. So Matthew 4.1, how did he emotionally manipulate Jesus Christ? Or try, I should say, to emotionally manipulate Jesus Christ.

Matthew 4 verse 1, then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterward, he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, if you are the son of God, command that these stones become bread. And I think it's interesting. We mentioned this a lot when we go through this account. Satan knew exactly who he was working with. Jesus Christ knew exactly who he was. This was not an if you are sort of situation. This is a situation where there's an attempt to try to manipulate. But he answered and said, it's written, or I'm sorry, now when the tempter came to him, he said, if you are the son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, it's written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. At this point, Christ was tired. He'd been fasting for 40 days. Imagine how you're feeling after a day of atonement during the year fast. He was hungry at this point. I guess it's kind of an understatement.

And Satan is working to manipulate his emotions in a couple of ways, really to play on this situation and achieve an emotional response to achieve his ends. You know, as humans, when we respond emotionally, you know, you've heard of the term hangry, which is where you're hungry, angry, right? You're just you need to eat something. Your blood sugar is a little bit low. When you're emotionally responding to things, when you're hungry or you're tired or whatever it might be, we don't always respond in the most effective ways when we are emotionally in a place operating solely from that emotional place. And partly because we're responding from a place where we're not necessarily in control. We're feeding some of that control to our emotions at that point, and it's not always a good situation. When that happens, when you're in a position where you're responding emotionally, as humans, we often transgress. That's when we sin. That's where we have issues. Many of you have probably seen this online. Those of you that have social media accounts, somebody gets baited into an argument on social media, loses control of any rational decision-making skills, right? You get emotionally invested in that conversation, and you're how dare they, you know, pretty soon this exchange goes, and you're just going, what is happening right now? It's because you're emotionally invested. There's emotion there, and you have to, you know, at some point you either have to respond or lose face. And it comes from a place of a need of emotional regulation. This emotional response is dangerous. It's very dangerous. You know, I worked with middle schoolers for 12 years, 12 years in the classroom, you know, three with the high schools. And there were a couple times in the classroom where the kids managed to push my buttons. And, you know, you know that that's occurred when you have that, your heart starts to race, and you get that, like, catch in your throat. And I knew that if I responded at that time, it was not going to come out right. I would love to tell you that I didn't respond. There were times that I certainly did, and every time I regretted it and ended up later having to apologize, because it did not, it was not, I was not responding in a good place. I was not in a place to really have that discussion. Go ahead and leave a finger here in Matthew 4. Let's go to Proverbs 29 verse 11. Just a reminder, when we start talking about emotional regulation, Proverbs 29 and verse 11, just the sheer importance of this aspect of things, ensuring that we're in control of those emotions. Proverbs 29 and verse 11 says, the fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back. Now, I want to make this abundantly clear. Note it doesn't say bottles them up. It doesn't say bottles them up. It just says, doesn't vent them all.

It doesn't say bottles them up. But you probably know folks who are a constant emotional vent.

They're just always on. They're always on. And it can be very difficult sometimes to interact with people like that. But controlling and managing our emotional response is really working on that fruit of self-control. That fruit of the spirit of self-control is extremely important. It can pay great dividends and really helps that we don't end up playing into Satan's hands when we have an emotional situation or we get emotionally invested into something. The second thing that occurs as I was looking online, one of the things that they try to do is push you towards payments.

Now, why do they push you towards payments? Because when you look at the full price of a car, it's expensive. You know, some of these new pickup trucks, for example, they're running $50,000 to $60,000 for some of the models. And when you take a look at that number, you think, well, when they give you the payment number, you're like, oh, that's not that bad. But you think about the overall total, you're talking about a third or a fourth of a house for the vehicle. And so, you know, what you don't see is when they work the payments out and they make the magic numbers work, how much you really end up paying in the long run on that. So, you know, often what they'll try to do is they'll try to get your mind off of the total price and get you onto, well, here's how much you can afford per month. It's well within that. Or it's only $20 more a month, or $30, or $40, or $100, or $300, or whatever more a month than what your stuff is. But they try to get you to focus on the short term and not see the long term. Throw out the big picture and focus on the right now. Matthew 4, go back to Matthew 4 here. Matthew 4 and verse 5.

We see the next attempt that Satan makes with Christ.

Matthew 4 and verse 5. Then the devil took him up into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple. So think about this for a minute. You're talking the most prominent building in Israel, most prominent building in Jerusalem, the temple, right? This is the big deal. This is the big space. There's people everywhere outside of the temple and inside the temple. This is not a quiet, this is in a back alley somewhere, off in Galilee. This is the top of the temple in Jerusalem. So think about that as we read through this. So he says, The devil took him up into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. And Jesus said to him, It is written again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Again, Christ knew who he was. Satan knew who he was. This wasn't a question in either of their minds. This was a request by Satan for him to forget the big picture, to give into an emotional, small-picture situation, to prove it. Throw yourself off. Let's see what God does. Prove it.

It's another attempt at giving Christ this opportunity to exchange the truth for a lie.

Think about what would have happened had Christ tossed himself off of that parapet.

Takes the opportunity to show everyone down below. God would be forced to save him.

I mean, think about how things would have gone otherwise.

But in doing all these things, he would have played right into Satan's hand. Satan knew the big picture. Satan knew that getting Christ to focus on the short term and not the long term, whether it was the initial piece of, you know, command these stones to become bread or throw yourself from the pinnacle, that getting him to focus on the short term and not the long term would be a way to get him to potentially yield. We as humans struggle sometimes with the time that it takes to get to the end goal. We're not the most patient of beings at times.

And so if we can shortcut it, we will. More often than not, if we can find a shorter way to do it and a faster way to do it, we will. Sometimes that's not always a good thing. And what's hard about this? You talk about the gospel of the kingdom of God. This is a long game.

The gospel of the kingdom of God is a long game. This is not a short-term investment.

This is not going to pay off in this life. It pays off in a kingdom. And so we end up in a situation where, you know, it's hard sometimes to sell that to people, to indicate that to people.

Sometimes we as humans, if the end goal is too expensive or too large or too difficult, we look for ways to make it easier. And so we have car salesmen that will say, look, I know $50,000 sounds like a lot, but what if I told you you could pay for 72 months, $900 a month? What do you say? I'm just making numbers up. I don't know if that's the actual numbers in that situation. But by the time they start playing with the interest rates and the loan payment terms and all those kind of things, they can make it sound a little more appealing. But what they don't tell you is the difference in cost at the end by taking it on that way.

We were discussing with the guy who we bought our car from, and he wanted to roll our DMV fees into the financing. He said, well, we've got cash. We'll pay that. I'm not going to mess with it. But he was saying a lot of people just do. Well, we're looking at the difference in the long run. It was $344.50 for DMV fees. $354.50, which is a ripoff, but no, anyway, whatever. But he said that most people roll it in. And I said, out of curiosity, we're not going to do it, but what would it look like at the end? It added almost $2,500 to the loan for the privilege of rolling $300 in on the front end. Now, imagine what that looks like with a $50,000 car over 72 months.

Right? So it's those kind of little things we can't allow ourselves to become focused on the here and now at the expense of the future. Allowing ourselves to go in this life, well, yeah, it's tough. I know it's a challenge. I'm just going to give up. I'm just going to give into this, whatever it might be. You know, giving in, giving up, it's sure easier than standing strong, but we cannot give in to the passing pleasures of sin. We cannot give in to trade off this fantastic future that God has provided for us. In Hebrews 11 verse 25 talks about that. We won't reference it for sake of time, or we'll just reference it, I should say. It talks about how Moses didn't yield to the passing pleasures of sin. Instead, he looked into the distance, he looked into the future, and he saw what was coming, and he didn't give in to that thing at that time, you know, those passing pleasures. So the last step here, number three, number three, is the finance office. So you've concluded you've got the car you want, you've talked to Mel on the price, everything is great, and then the guy says, well, let's go sign papers. They go when they sit down, and then what happens? Well, how about I give you this much? Well, I've got to go talk to my guy, and then they go walk off, and in the other room, they come back, and my guy says, we can't do that.

Well, what about this? Oh, I've got to go talk to my guy. Back to the little room, does it again. The guy that was talking about this on the thread was actually saying that the instructions they're given is to hold that process up as long as possible to keep you in that seat until you go, I don't care what the numbers are I want to leave. That's the goal of that process. It's the goal of the process. So, one of the things that try to sell you the different things here, the rust coatings, the warranties, the protection packages, all this stuff, the guy was talking about one gentleman that had negotiated the price of the car down to within $100. The dealership actually only made $100 on the car itself. But then when he got in there to the finance guy, he had used all of his stamina in the negotiation process earlier and just gave up and said, whatever, just tack it all on. They made $4,500 off of him in upsells on that because he just couldn't have the energy to finish the negotiation. So, we look at what we see here in this particular situation beginning in verse 8 of Matthew 4. Matthew 4 and verse 8 says, again, the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory. And he said to him, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Jesus said to him, away with you, Satan, for it's written you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. You, Satan, offered Christ everything. Saved the biggest tactic for last.

You know, after 40 days of fasting after the first two encounters, by the third, maybe Satan thought Christ's will would be worn down a little bit and it'd be easy enough for him just to give in and say yes to the cell that Satan really wanted. Stop worshiping God. Stop following God and follow me instead. And what Satan says is, you know what, if you do that, I'll throw in the heated seats, I'll throw in the DVD, I'll throw in the Beats by Dre sound player, and I'll throw in a tow package, I'll throw in, you know, this and that and all these other bells and whistles. All you have to do is sign on the dotted line. And what we see Christ use, his tactic, was the most effective in the arsenal. They call it the walk away. And when they talk about negotiating with car salesmen, they say the walk away is your most effective tool. You go, sorry, not good enough, and just leave.

You just leave. And then what happens? Those of you that have done this before, what happens? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, tell you what, come on back, come on back, have a seat, let's talk here, don't do anything rash, let's talk, let's... it's an effective strategy to walk away. But what ends up happening sometimes is those individuals continue to try to sell. They continue to try to make that deal. They continue to try to make it ultimately work. But there's really nothing that signals the car buying experience is over quite like leaving the lot. But what happens if you stop and look back?

When they try to sweeten the deal, when they try to get you to hold on and not go anywhere, what happens when you look back? You're back on the hook again, and you start the process all over again, this time with a different car that you don't even want? Typically.

Satan operates like a used car salesman, brethren. He tries to sell you things you don't want in the first place. He tries to get you to exchange that which you know to be true and desirable for a falsehood. He tries to get you to give up what you know to be true for something that's a lie, to give up on the long term for short-term temptations and desires, the passing pleasures of sin, as it mentions in Scripture, and really to give up what we're truly focused on, which is the kingdom of God. Some of the tactics that he uses are tried and true sales strategies. He tries to get you to respond with emotion, gets you to fall in love with something, tries to get you to make that decision based on emotion. And there are strategies you can use to counter that. He tries to give you to give in to short-term desires and to throw out the long-term plan, to give up the long-term for the short-term, or tosses in a whole bunch of freebies to sweeten the deal, to make it more appealing, to, again, provoke an emotional response. Oh, I can get the DVD player for free? Oh, all right, I'm in! So where do I sign? Countering these tactics, countering these high-pressure sales tactics, require us to be on guard against them. They require us to know what they are, to recognize what they are, and to remain vigilant. We know that Satan is like a roaring lion seeking those he can talk out of, essentially, eternal life. Those he can sell right out of something God is going to give them. Let's turn over to Matthew 25 to close today. What do we need to do? What do we need to do?

Matthew 25. Matthew 25, and we'll pick it up in verse 1.

Matthew 25 in verse 1 says, Then the kingdom of heaven should be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept, wise and the foolish virgins. And at midnight a cry was heard, Behold, the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and they trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying, No, lest there should not be enough for us and you, but go rather to those who sell and buy for yourself. While they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him, to the wedding, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. Verse 12. But he answered, and he said, Assuredly I say to you, I do not know you.

Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. And that word watch is the Greek word gregoreo. It means to remain alert, to be vigilant, to be prepared and ready for when it does come. You wouldn't set foot onto a car lot without first doing your homework. Right? Otherwise, you're coming home with something you didn't want when you went in there. We don't go into those situations with blinders.

Brethren, think about it in this way. Think about temptation. Think about trials. Think about these sorts of things like a high-pressure sales situation. Think about Satan there saying, well, tell you what, I know you want this. I know you're interested in this car. I know you like this model and this and that and whatever else. But I'll tell you what, I don't have that, but I have this. What do you think about this? All you got to do is sign on the dotted line. Brethren, hold strong. Fight the good fight.