Satan's Tactics

I worked for a radio station in Austin, Texas. Not for very long, because I realized I didn't like it. I worked in small markets before that in management. I loved working in small market radio. I mean, when I walked down the street, everybody knew you. You were part of the community. Every businessman, you'd go in and you knew their business. You knew how to write commercials for them. You knew how to produce commercials, which I love doing. Just everything. The news that would go on. The radio station was the hub of this community. I'm in Austin at the number one radio station in a top 50 market. It's a whole other world. One of the things they did when I got there was they gave me a book. They said, read this book, and this is how you should approach business. And it was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Now, Sun Tzu, no one knows if he quite really existed or if he's a compilation of people. All we know is somewhere around in the fifth century BC, a book appears in Chinese that tells you how to fight war. So that book becomes famous in Chinese history. It gets translated into different languages. And even to this day, it is used in some militaries, and it's used in business. I've talked to numerous people, oh yeah, I was given that book by my boss. This is how you approach the war of doing business.

But the book is fascinating in its understanding of tactics and strategy, both the bigger picture of war and the little details of war. According to the Bible, you and I are in a spiritual warfare. We know that, right? We talk about that. Satan exists. We know that that we struggle with sin. So we say, yes, I'm in a spiritual warfare. But I'm going to talk today about what that really means, what it really means to be in a spiritual warfare. This isn't just something like, oh yeah, I have to fight some sins, or I have to deal with the fact that I don't obey God sometimes, or obeying God is difficult sometimes because I'm not like the rest of my friends. But those are just skirmishes in what's really going on. You and I are involved in a real spiritual warfare, and the Bible has a lot to say about it, especially in the New Testament, where it's written to people who have God's Holy Spirit. Let's go to Ephesians 6. Ephesians 6.

And we know this passage. I'm not going to read all of it. Part of this passage is sort of mesmerized. In fact, the last part of this passage we had a sermon in on here not too long ago here in Nashville. So let's start in verse 10. Paul writes, finally, my brother, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. So he moves from one thought to another here, and the connector between these thoughts is what I'm going to talk about next. You have to be strong in what God does in you. This has to do with God in us, with his power, something we don't have on our own. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. So this has to do with the spiritual war that we're involved in with Satan. Wiles there is sometimes translated schemes. In other words, there's an actual cognitive conscious attempt to do something to you. It's hard to think that Satan, this brilliant being created by God, one of the three archangels, would care about you and me, right? I mean, we're not famous. We're not important. We're just a bunch of people. But he sees us differently because of the relationship God has called you to participate in. And this is a reality. This isn't mythology. If you believe in the Scripture, you believe this warfare is going on, and you believe there are schemes. We have to understand there's actual schemes or tactics that are used to try to defeat us. We're going to talk about his attempts to defeat us, take us away from God and away from God's purpose in our lives. He says in verse 12, for we, he's talking about all Christians, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. He says we are fighting a war with the great fallen archangel and with the fallen angels who went with him. There is a war going on, and you and I are part of that. It's an existential war between God who is goodness and these fallen angels who are evil. And in that war, you and I are in the middle of it. You know, we think of life as being, oh yeah, I get up, I get my job, I do this. No, no, you, by the act of your calling by God, are involved in the center of the war of existence, the war of the existential war between God, Christ, Satan, his demons on this side. And we're in between that. Now, that doesn't mean we're all going to be demon-possessed, or that's not what I'm talking about. We have to go through and understand how this war takes place. What are the tactics of evil against us? We're going to look at that today. He says, therefore, verse 13, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. This is how you can stand. This is how you can win. Then he goes on and talks about putting on the armor of God. So, as I said, that was just covered recently. So, this leads up to that discussion of putting on this armor, because the whole point that Paul's making is, understand this is real. This isn't some nice theological concept. Or, oh, that was a nice sermon about spiritual warfare. I need to just go pray more. Now, we need to understand what's actually happening in this world around us, and that we are involved in.

We intellectually know that Satan exists.

We know he's called the prince of the power there. He's called the god of this world.

Which is the reality is that the societies around us that we live in are influenced by Satan. This isn't the world God designed. Satan did steal this from God. Oh, he's so powerful. He just stole humanity from God. No, God allows him to do this. There's coming a time, and we're told there's going to come a time, it stops. God says it's enough, and Satan's not there anymore. He's taken away, and the demons are taken away. He allows us to live in this as we learn to choose. We learn to choose between one way and another way. God's way and Satan's way. That's really what this comes down to. The simplicity of this is we're choosing between the two. But the problem is, all of us have already been affected by Satan. You know, you hear me talk about corrupted human nature all the time. All corrupted human nature is, the fact that every one of us has a nature that has absorbed part of Satan's nature. Every one of us already is in a tune to him, just in different ways. That's why we all have different problems. We have different sins. We have different things that mess us up. It's because we're all in a tune to him. That's the way children become at a very early age. As they grow up, you see different, not only their personality, but you see the parts of them that wants to do bad. And it's different in different children. So we absorb part of Satan's nature. All of us have. Every single one of us. God comes along and says, I want to pull you out of that so that you become my child. So you're going to have to fight the war of going between being the children of wrath, as it's called, to being the children of God. And that process of moving from here to here is a war. It's a struggle. You say, wow, I like these Christmas messages that tell me, wow, obey God. You get lots of money and good jobs and good cars and everything's perfect. The reality is whether we like it or not, when God called you, we were put into a war.

The world out there has already been defeated until God calls them. We're called out of it. So this battle exists whether we like it or not. And we have to accept it. We have to accept what it means. And we have to accept what it means in the whole context of our lives. When does this war end? When Christ returns and we're changed. Wow, that's discouraging. No, no. Your choice is very simple. Stay under Satan's control or be changed into a child of God. There's only two choices. To be changed into a child of God means you enter into a war with Satan who does not want to let go of you. He doesn't want to let go of any of us. His purpose in being is to destroy any human being, all human beings. That's what he wants to do. And the thing that's most disgusting to him and most just unbelievable is that a human being would choose God. These little nothing, these dirt balls, these hairless apes are going to be changed by God into something greater than he is. That's just how can that happen? When you said yes to God, when you said yes to God, you said no to him. That's reality. That's the principalities and powers and a heavenly host. And you know, that's what this means.

Little old you and me, you know, we just go through our lives. The average person around us, my neighbors don't think, wow, like he's in a war. He's just a guy that doesn't always grass enough, right? And we're saying, I'm always grass a little more.

Now, we're involved in an existential threat, an existential war.

Now, what I want to do is talk a little bit about Satan's tactics to come after us. Now, I say with Satan's tactics, I'm not saying that we're, you know, Satan's going to possess us. Make us do anything. He can't make us do anything. But he influences us.

And we have to understand that that influence is real.

Sun Tzu had a whole list of things on how to prepare for war, how to conduct war. He even had a chapter on how to train spies. But one of his number one principles was always attack where the enemy is weak. If you attack where the enemy is strong, you have a good chance you will fail. So always find the weak place. It's interesting if you study just the history of warfare. Many armies have failed because they attacked a strong point. And many times the ones who are successful is because they found a weak point. They attack the weak point. So this is one of his major advice. If you are a general, if you're an officer, you find the weak point to attack.

Now, Satan knows every one of us personally. Now, I'm going to give you an opinion here because I get asked this all the time. I got asked this morning in Murfreesboro, do you think Satan can read our minds? I don't think so. But let's face it. You watch us, our conduct and our behavior, we're really not that hard to figure out.

Okay, it doesn't, we're not that difficult to figure out. So we get figured out very easily, which means he understands our weaknesses. So he is going to attack where we are weak. Let's go to James 1.

Because this here, James, really goes into detail and explaining how this happens.

Okay, how this happens inside our minds.

Verse 12 says, blessed is the man who endures temptation. Now, temptation can either mean, in Greek, you're being tested. Here's a test. Let's see what kind of grade you make. But temptation can also mean to be drawn towards something bad or something evil. James here is using this in terms of being drawn towards or pushed towards. You know, something's drawing you towards doing something evil or something's pushing you towards doing something evil. That's how he's using this word in Greek. So that's what this means here. Blessed is the man who endures, who fights the battle of being drawn towards doing something wrong. For when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him. So he's saying the ultimate goal in this battle is to learn to struggle against temptation. And we're going to see. Sometimes we fail, don't we? Sometimes we fail.

That doesn't mean God automatically throws us away, and we'll show why. A war isn't one battle. A war is battle after battle after battle after battle. Verse 13, let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. Okay, God may put a trial upon us or sometimes allow a trial.

You know, God doesn't cause all trials. It's like sickness. God doesn't cause all sickness. I mean, he can in some cases, but most of the time we're sick because why? Well, we weren't taking care of ourselves. We ate too much sugar. We didn't get enough sleep. We got sick. We broke physical walls. And or sometimes it's just because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody sneezed on you. There wasn't some kind of spiritual principle involved.

Your physical, the germ is physical and you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, once again, God doesn't save us from everything. We live in this physical world. So there could be a lot of reasons for things, but he says here, God never looks at you and says, I'm going to push them as close as I can to sin and try to draw them in the sin.

What would he do that for? I'm going to draw you into sin. What? Punish us? God never tries to draw us into sin. God never tries to give us something that he knows that's going to destroy him. You know, they'll end up wrecking their lives because I'm going to push them into that. That's not what God does. No, he's talking here, remember, about to people who have God's Holy Spirit who are already called out of this world. But each one, verse 14, is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

Okay, so we got to figure this out a little bit. The temptation comes because you have a desire. If you are tempted in something that you have no desire for, it's not a temptation. I've known people that cannot figure out why anyone would drink a beer or a glass of wine or any strong drink. They hate alcohol. They're very flavored. They hate it.

They have their whole lives. And it's like, why would people even drink this? Here, you drink this. This is a real temptation. You're going to get drunk, right? It's like, I can't even stand the taste of it. Get it? I know people that the only time they have wine is at Passover and they hate to taste.

Trying to induce them to get drunk is no temptation at all. For others, it's a big temptation. There's a desire. So we already have a corrupted nature. We have desires for things that aren't right. See what I mean? We're already corrupted. We are already in our nature have elements of Satan's nature. We already have elements of Satan's nature in us. It's already there. So if he figures out what part of his nature we have, he knows how to pull that. Now, sometimes just using alcoholism, a person can become an alcoholic because physically they're actually physically can't drink. It's not just a mental thing.

You know, he knows that too. He figures these things out. It doesn't matter to him why you're motivated to do wrong. He'll do anything he can that gets you to follow that motivation. So if a person has a physical addiction to alcohol, he doesn't care. If he can draw you to do that, that's what he'll use. So there's a desire there. The temptation comes to pull us towards the sin, to pull us towards the action. And then verse 15, then when the desire has conceived, in other words, the temptation pulls our nature, whatever it is, and whatever sin, and we could list 50 things here.

Anger, envy, sexual issues, just start listing sins, and we can just make lists. Whenever the temptation Satan uses pulls the desire we have, there's a point where it becomes conceived. We think of an action. We're really in bad position at that point.

The attack now is hitting us pretty hard. Desire, temptation, conception. It's here. I have an action I can take, an action that I want to take. It's part of my desire. And it says, it gives birth to sin. So now this desire, temptation, we wrestle with it, we conceive it, and many times, unfortunately, this is where we lose the battle in the conception part. We conceive it, and now we want a desire. And now we're fighting, not doing what we've already conceived to do. I mean, how many kids in the backseat of a car have ended up where they didn't want to go? Desire, temptation, conception. We could do some things. It won't go that far. It goes that far.

This is the process. And we're conscious of this. As Christians all along the way, it says, then when the desires can see that it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death, these things kill us. They take away our ability to live, and they take away our eternal life, unless we turn to Christ, receive forgiveness, and receive the power to change, to fight this war. This means Satan figures out your weaknesses, and he knows really directly how to come after you. And it's very individual, because he knows some of you will be tempted by some things, and he knows that some of us are tempted by other things. That's why it's so easiest to look at somebody else's sin and say, how in the world did they get caught up in that? Well, that's because it's not something you would be tempted in. Of course, as you say, well, that just shows they're not a good Christian. That just shows that they're rebelled against God. Well, God might be saying, ah, Satan might be saying, ah, your weakness is being judgmental.

So he'll get you wherever it is. And of course, all of us have multiple points to be tempted on. It'd be nice if it was one thing. Multiple points to be tempted on.

We all have these weaknesses. Let me show you an example. Acts 5. Here's a person who is tempted and God is very harsh in his judgment. This is a New Testament example. This is a person in the church. This is a person in the church. Acts 5 verse 1, and a certain man named Ananias with the fire of his wife sold a possession. Now, if you read what happens before this, of course, they had this revival, this pouring out of God's Spirit on Pentecost. There's thousands of people in Jerusalem, thousands of them. And the church is going through this incredible growth period. Incredible things are happening. And people didn't go home. There were people that just didn't go back to where they just stayed in Jerusalem. So you have this huge church. And, you know, there was, they needed places for people to stay. They needed money to take care of people. They were a huge church that was becoming an impoverished church. So people started selling some of their goods or their property to be distributed. Well, Ananias sees the attention, and he wants the same attention. Here is his desire. I want the same attention everybody else is getting. I want to be somebody special in the church. I want to be honored the way Barnabas, because Barnabas was just honored as a great man of God. They even changed his name because he had given so much to help people. And this is now his desire. And it says, and he kept back, he sold a possession. He kept back part of the proceeds, verse 2, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet. So he brings it in, he lays it out, and he says, I've sold everything I have. And he waits for the acclaim to happen. So you see what's already happened. He had a desire, the temptation. He was pulled towards the temptation. It was conceived. He thought out the actions. He did the action. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan, okay, now we see there's, where did the temptation come from? Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you, interesting word, why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. Satan tempted, but who did God blame?

He blamed Ananias because he gave in to the temptation, carried it out, committed the sin. Because this was done in front of the entire church, God actually killed Ananias. It's any place in the New Testament where a New Testament Christian is killed by God. He's making a point. You can't play this game with Satan. And, I mean, this is the greatest example of hypocrisy and pretend to be a Christian. But you see how it happened. So we know that he picks his ground. I'm sorry, he picks your weakness. He picks your weakness. Now the next thing he does after he picks my weakness, your weakness, he picks the battlefield. He picks the ground in which he's going to fight on. He puts you in a situation or tries to get you into a situation where now your weakness will come out. We'll always be putting a situation where a weakness comes out. You start looking at your life and realizing what Satan's doing, you'll see it. I see it in my life. He brings out my weaknesses. He knows how to set it up. He's fighting on a battleground I do not want to fight on. He leads us to a battleground that's not good for us. Well, you find an enemy's weakness, you pick the ground. You pick where the battle's going to be. Pick the ground.

You know, the greatest example of this in the scripture is Joseph, back in the Old Testament. He is sold by his own brothers. He is kidnapped. He is taken to a foreign land where he's made a slave. He's a young man. He has no hopes. He has no wife. He has no children. He has no wealth. He's a slave! He's nobody. And the rich slave owner's wife says, you know what? You're a fine stud.

Now, the thing about his life, it's not like he had a lot of, you know, oh yes, I have all these goals in life. His only goals was to follow God and do what he was ordered to do. I mean, he had no advancement. He had no way to promote himself. He had, you know, he had no freedom.

I mean, he's going to come up if, okay, this temptation comes in. Does he have a desire to be married and be with a woman? Yes. Was that sin? No. But can be made into sin, is can it? See, Satan, it's not just about our desires and our good desires, because any good desire can be turned into something evil. So he'll, he can play on our goodness, if you will. So you have a good desire. He plays on this with the temptation. Now, he could have started reasoning through that, and it could have been conceived in his mind. Once it was conceived, he'd have been figured out how to make it work. And then we can figure out what the end would have been, right? Instead, he ran away. We don't fight on this ground. No, no, no. I don't fight on this ground. This is not where I make my stand. I move out of this. You and I have to learn the times to walk away. Satan's going to put us on a ground where we can't win, but we will be motivated by some desire. Even if the desire is to win, I'll show you God's with me. I can withstand any woman. No, man. You see how he could have reasoned that out and did it when he conceived? Because, oh no, I can't. So what do I do now? Run. Leave the battlefield. Don't play the game. Leave the battlefield.

Because he picks the ground very carefully. He wants to know where your weakness is and where that weakness can be exploited. Now, another thing Satan does, he targets something. You know, to make an attack, you have to target very specific things. All planned attacks are all planned attacks that target the things you have to wipe out the first, right? At first. There's two major places this battle takes place, and so he attacks both of these places at the same time. One is our emotions, and next is our thoughts.

Sun Tzu said that the greatest victories didn't come through battle. The greatest victories was in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting, and they just gave up.

You just break them down, and they give up.

So he will come at us emotionally. He will come at us in our thoughts. Now, once again, there's no... he doesn't possess us. You know, it's not like there's thoughts coming in your mind that he's trying to grab control, take control of you. Now, that does happen with people sometimes when demons try to do that, but most of us, that's with God's Spirit, that's not what's happening to us. What's happening is feelings, for one thing.

He wants to manipulate our emotions so that we're motivated by our emotions and not the concepts of biblical truth. We get motivated by our emotions and not the concepts of biblical truth.

I read an article the other day, well, there's a couple articles, on why people had come to the conclusion you can't believe the Bible, and it's because no loving God would do fill in the bike. The God of the Bible can't be real because he wouldn't do this. With no concept of God's goods... Yeah, no concept. I was going to talk about one I read today or this week, but it's to take too much time. No concept of God's goodness, just that no God would do this.

That this can't be a true being. By what standards? In other words, we deny God and we create our own standards. Based on our emotions, let me show you an example. Ephesians 4. Once again, we could list two dozen emotions that he'll work with. If you're an envious person, he'll get you with envy. If you're a greedy person, he'll get you with greed. I've never had a desire to commit adultery. I have cheated 37 people to get my wealth, but at least I never committed adultery.

See, he'd take these desires, which a lot of times are emotionally based, and he'll take these desires and he'll always come at them with the temptation, specifically on that desire. Because he already knows the motivation, he already knows your weakness, and he already has picked the ground. He's going to try to get you in a situation and where that weakness can be exploited. Ephesians 4.26.

Now, this is a memory verse. Many of you can just spout this off by heart. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Now, we know that. Don't just hold on to anger. Don't go to bed angry. That's always said about marriage, and that comes from this. Don't just let anger sit there. But the rest of the sentence is really important. Nor give place to the devil. Remember what I already said? The great danger is, is that our nature has already absorbed part of his nature. He is an emotional wreck. He's brilliant, but his mind is fragmented and crazy. He's crazy, but he's brilliant. Don't give place to the devil. Anger is something he feels all the time. He's never not angry. So when we lose our tempers, you know, how many—I won't ask for a show of hands—how many in this room have lost your temper over something or said and did something so unbelievably stupid you couldn't believe it? Yes, sir. You don't have to raise your hands.

I always use the example of just punching some kid one time, knocking him down on the ground and then thinking, that was not a good idea. Because I wasn't mad anymore, and he was going to get up.

Fortunately, he didn't. He just looked at me like, that was—what are you doing? Yeah, I don't know. But in that anger, you lose it. That's where he does his work. The desire has conceived, you see? The temptation is—because our anger isn't wrong—it's taking that anger one step further, one more step, and then that temptation pulls us into doing something wrong. So having the anger of itself is not sin.

Getting mad at the guy who weaved in front of you and rammed in his car with your car—that's sin! So here's just one example, and you can take all the various emotions we have, and you can see how each one of them can be pulled towards sin—these desires that we have. And it doesn't take much sometimes. There's another example where—this is interesting—where a man of God is pulled to do something wrong. God is not tempting him. God is not testing him. But he's pulled. And I want to show you where the pull came from. 1 Chronicles 21. Because we have to understand what's his motive. What is his weakness that's being played on here? 1 Chronicles 21. David is basically at the height of his power. He and his army have defeated nation after nation—the Amorites, the Syrians, the Philistines. So they killed all the Philistine giants. His nation is at the height. He has all 12 tribes together. They have power. They are wealthy. They're at the crossroads of the Fertile Crescent, where they all the—from Egypt up into Babylon. That's where all the caravans come through. And they're sort of the big middlemen of the world. They're at the height of an enormous empire that Solomon would make even greater. So they're not—it's David and Solomon that they reached this height. And David looks at this, and he decides to do something. You think, okay, this makes sense. As the king, and you're defeating everybody, you'd say, how big is my army? What kind of army do I have? I mean, look, just battle after battle, we're winning. How big is my army? God—the only problem is, God had told them not to do that. He said, trust in me, not in the size of your army. He was commanded not to. But you see, David, in this pride, over victory after victory after victory, sort of slipping like, forgetting God—yeah, God's with me because I got a big army. Okay. He's slipping in this desire, in this pride. So now we have the desire, it's pride. He's slipping. So look what happens here. Now Satan stood up, verse 1, against Israel and moved David to number Israel. It doesn't say he made him. He didn't possess him. He didn't force him. He tempted him. He played on his desire to show what a great king he truly has become. That God is giving maybe the biggest army in the world. You know, I mean, my own army maybe is bigger than Egypt's, or maybe bigger than a serious—where we're going to show who we are. So David said to Joab, Joab was his general. Joab wasn't a very ethical man, but he was a good general. So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, go number Israel from their Sheba to Dan and bring the number of them to me that I may know it. And Joab, the man who is not real righteous, says to him, may the Lord make his people a hundred times more than they are, but my Lord the King, are they not all my Lord's servants? Why then does my Lord require this thing? Why should it be a cause of guilt in Israel? Why would we do this when we're told not to? And David doesn't listen to him. And David finds out he has a big army.

So what does God do? He does the worst thing he could ever do to David. He took the lives of some of his people and said, I could kill them all. And David has to repent because it's his guilt that's the issue. He is guilty. Now God's going to resurrect those people. So that wasn't an eternal judgment on those people. They hadn't done anything wrong. The issue is with David, the issue is he had a desire. He was tempted. He pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled until he conceived, figured out what to do, said, let's do it. Even Joab said, don't do this. God won't be happy. He did it anyways. Now God spared him. God forgave him. But it just shows how this works.

Our emotions and our thoughts are being subject to temptation. So much the time we don't even know it. Frustration. If you're frustrated easily, there's going to be constant things thrown at you to frustrate you.

If you have a hard time forgiving people, boy, are you going to be offended.

It's just going to happen over and over again. And you're going to be more and more sensitive to your weakness. There's the great danger. We get so sensitive to our weakness that we're absorbed with our own weakness. We get absorbed with our own weaknesses, which is not a good place to be. We should be looking towards God and his strength and what he does in us. Instead, we get we become absorbed with our own weaknesses. And then we end up usually having some kind of emotional mental crash because we're absorbed with our own weaknesses.

Now, don't, this isn't like, oh, I might just won't give up. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just showing you the process. God saves us from the process. God's the one that works us through it.

You know, the reality is, like I said before, you and I are in an existential war. We're doing good and evil. And when you said yes to God, you're in it. I'm in it.

That's the way it is. And we're in it till we're changed. The only other option is just to go back and let Satan be the winner. Go back and live under his vicious, ugly, evil rule. Is that what we want? Do we really want to go back and live under Satan's cruelty? That's the choice. Or the choice is, keep moving towards victory. And there's a lot of little battles along the way. Sometimes we lose one. In this, Satan then targets our faith. Sun Tzu taught that victory is achieved before the battle is fought through preparation and training.

In other words, if you're the most prepared, most trained, you will probably win.

Our preparation is, oh, okay, I'm going to figure out 10 ways to beat Satan. No. Our preparation goes back to the first scripture we read. It's in the power of God. It is humility before God. It's a constant on our knees before God. It is a constant looking at the scripture and learning. It's a constant dedication to living this way, no matter what the price. Because you're in a war, and all wars cost something. All wars cost, it costs people who fight wars to win. It costs us something. I guarantee you the prize is worth it. The victory is worth it. But right now, right now, the cost has to be paid. We can't wait to the future to pay it. You're alive now. You're in the war now. And so we have to keep fighting. And there's lots of good things in life. There's a lot of good things in life. There's even good things in the world. And God gives us blessings, all that physical blessings, spiritual blessings. So yeah, this isn't like, oh, let's just feel bad because we're in a struggle. No, the reality is you're in a struggle. So look for the good things because those are encouragements. You can't escape the struggle. Satan wants you to. He wants you to think there isn't a struggle. I'm okay. God's got me.

That's bad ground to fight on. I'm okay. The moment you say that, you're fighting on bad ground.

Preparation and training. So let's look at a couple ways to defeat Satan.

Preparation and training is constant learning and faith and humility before God. And you know, we all have peaks and valleys of faith and usually it's in a valley we get hit hard, doesn't it? It's when our faith is low that you think, why is things going bad? Well, just because your faith is down and it's good ground for him to pick. He knows it's a weakness. And you have to go ask God to increase your faith. You say, well, I'm going to work out more faith. I have no idea how you do that. If you come to me and say, how can I work up more faith? I'll say, I don't know. I know how to ask God to help me have more faith. That's all I know to do. But I don't know how to work up faith.

So it's this constant preparation that we must be in. Now we get times where the war seems to slack off. There's rest times. God gives those to us. We have, as David said, our wide spaces. When we're not all hemmed in, we, oh, I get a breathing space here. God gives those to us.

And God, every day there's something good that happens if we just look for it. Right? There's good something. There's something good in life every day. I'll tell you what mine was this morning. Watching a squirrel in a brown thrash fight over a bowl of food. It really wasn't a fight. It was like, until the squirrel finally took over the bowl and said, get out of here. The thrash kept pretending to charge and jumping around. Finally he had to leave. Okay. I know that sounds silly. For three minutes this morning, I sat there and laughed, watching a squirrel. Squirrels make me laugh, anyways. And a bird said, at a brown thrash, decided they were going to fight over a little bowl of seeds.

There's all kinds of little moments all the time. We just look for them.

You know, every time I come to church and some little kid comes up and, and, hi! Sinks my hand. Yeah. That's a good moment, right? That's a good moment.

So, look for the good moments. Enjoy life. But understand you can't escape that struggle. It's reality. We live in it every day. Hebrews 2. So in that struggle, remember this. Hebrews 2.

When we think, I can't do this anymore, or I have failed, God's giving up on me.

Remember this. Verse 14, in as much then as the children have foretaken a flesh and blood, okay, that's us. Now, everybody has the potential. Every human being in this world has the potential to be a child of God. And knowing about the second resurrection gives us an enormous hope. But right now, we're the ones who are partaken of the flesh and blood. We're the ones who are receiving this blessing. He himself, Jesus Christ, likewise shared in the same that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death. That is the devil. Satan's already defeated. The moment Jesus Christ was resurrected, well, he goes before that. The moment Genesis 3.15 in the Garden of Eden told about how there would come a seed of the woman who would defeat Satan, it was already there. In Psalm 110, when it says that he will bring the king and bring him up to the right hand of God and he will sit beside him and rule all nations, it was already declared. It's happened. It's just this now finalized it. He came here because he said, you can have this. Satan, you can have them for a while. Limited. If it wasn't limited, humanity would have died off. Satan would have made sure we killed each other. So you can have limited control here for a time period. One of my favorite translations. It's not exactly. Matthew says it a little different. Luke, of course, wasn't there, so he's taking what other people said. But when Jesus said, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you, in other words, I'm here as the representative of the kingdom of God, he uses that he's here by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Luke, hearing the story, said it means the same thing, but it's probably not exact. He said, and so he was there by the finger of God.

I sort of like that. I know that's probably not even... Matthew's probably more accurate because Luke's years later. But he said God's finger came down into humanity. When you look at Daniel, when you look at all... you look at Abraham, you look at Noah, you look at Sarah, you look at all the great men and women of the Bible, what is it? The finger of God coming down into humanity. Just here. Nope, you're not going to do that. No, you're not going to do that. Satan never gets his way. He has this limited power. You are the finger of God. If you have a God spirit, you're the finger of God that's touching now and doing what he's doing. The finger of God has come into the world. Not in the same way he did with Jesus, obviously, but in a limited way. It's here. I just like the way Luke wrote it. The finger of God comes into this world.

So he says, to release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed, he does not give aid to angels, but he does give aid to the seed of Abraham. And of course, anyone who comes into the church and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and repents and is baptized is spiritually the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things, he had to be made like his brethren that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. He became like us so that he could fight everything and win everything. He could fight the battle and win everything. Win every skirmish, win every little battle, win every confrontation, and finally say, Satan, you can't win. Understand you can't win. I can come here as a human being and you can't win. And he becomes a propitiation. And as I mentioned many times, propitiation in the ancient world, pagan world, was what you had to do to earn the favor of the gods. The dance, the chanting, the songs, the money you brought, or the sacrifice you brought, that was the propitiation so that you could have the favor of the gods. It's only Christianity where the propitiation is supplied by not the worshipper, it's supplied by God. The propitiation for our sins so we can have God's favor is Christ. He supplies the propitiation. It just turns the pagan world upside down. He doesn't. To make propitiation for the sins of the people, for that he himself has suffered being tempted, he's able to those who are tempted. He says there's nothing you and I can't face or don't or face that he didn't face. He faced it all. He won every time. We're not going to win every time. He didn't say that. He said your propitiation for not winning all the time is the one who did win all the time, who won every battle and won the war. This is important to remember that as long as we understand who God is as our Father and we understand who Jesus Christ is and we accept his propitiation, he wins. You and I don't win. Oh, we do, but we win because he wins. We don't win because we win. You understand? We don't end up victorious because we're riding the white horse. Who comes on the white horse? Jesus Christ comes on the white horse. Who comes on the white horse? We don't get the ride out of the sky on a white horse saying, look, I'm the leader of the armies. I'm the leader of the people of God. No, we're just followers in this. He's already won. The only question is, will we believe that enough to stay with it? Do we believe that enough to stay with it? And then our last point is in James 4.

James 4. So we're looking at what we must do. And the first thing we do, we understand the process. I had two people come up to me in Murfreesboro this morning and say, wow, I'm an absolute expert at that process. I said, so am I. So is everybody in the room. We're really good at that desire, temptation, being pulled towards it, conceiving it, working out the actions, doing the action. And we can stop it along the way, but the closer and closer you get to the action, the harder and harder it is to stop it. That's the process.

So we understand the process. We understand that Christ has already won, and he is the propitiation, the bring us to God so that he will give us the help to win. If we want it, and we hold on to it. James 4, verse 6.

It's breaking in the middle of a thought, but you'll see where we're going here. He says, but he gives more grace. Therefore, he says, God resists the proud that gives grace to the humble. So the point being made here is, is that the more pride we have, the more arrogance we have, the more God resists us. He's not helping us in our battles. We're really on our own, which is sort of scary because when you're motivated by your pride, you think you're winning. The more we're motivated by our pride, the more we think we're winning. And he says, no, the more you're motivated by your pride, the more you're losing because God isn't helping you. Therefore, verse 7, submit to God. That's the only answer. It is total repentance and submission to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. He will break ranks and run away.

He will break and run when confronted with the power of God. That's what we've got to remember. He's never impressed with you and me. He is impressed with God. So what we have to do is be close enough to God that what he sees is Jesus Christ. That's what we have to be. And he flees from us.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your heart, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. In other words, he says, this isn't going to be easy. He's now talking about the war, the struggle. In other places, James talks about the greatness and wonderfulness of the Christian life. But here he's talking about the struggle.

Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. And here's what's important here. And he will lift you up.

He will lift you up. He will save you in the battle. He will change you.

He will make it happen.

So, of all the wars being fought on the earth today, there's a lot of wars. There's little wars going on all the time in which hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of people are dying and you and I never even know about it. There are parts of the world nobody cares about. Unless you're the person living there, then you care about it. But in the United States, we don't care about a lot of those things. But there's big wars going on. Europe is beginning for the first time since the 1930s to arm itself for war. Ukraine and Russia is at war. There could be a war between China and India, although the Chinese society is collapsing. I don't know how long, it's longer, they'll actually last. It'll be scary if they do collapse. Israel's at war. Half the world's on one side, half the world's on the other side.

Of all those wars, those are all Satan's wars. He's the leader on both sides. Of all the wars being fought, the most incredible one, the one with eternal consequences, is the one being fought in you, in your hearts and minds. That's the most incredible one.

Because it's existential, it has to do with eternity, it has to do with meaning and purpose, it has to do with why we're here, it has to do with God saying, no, in Satan's world, you all can follow me. Come on, let's win this war. Let's win this battle. That's what he says.

Christ has already defeated Satan. He's just coming back to kick him out. When Christ comes back, Satan has, it's like, what's he going to do? No, I'm not going to go.

He has no power. Just the limited power he has over us. We must follow Christ's lead. We must be aware of our adversary's tactics because he's going to fight this war with us. Even if we try to pretend it's not happening, he's going to do it. And we must draw close to God. And when we do, remember, even at times when you feel like you're failing, even at times when you suffer some kind of setback, some kind of defeat, that when you stay close to God, he promises, he promises to give you victory.