Ephesians

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. It's good to see you. Thanks for being a part of the Mother's Day service. To the moms, happy Mother's Day. We hope that it is all that you dreamed. I had one mom come up before the service and say, not that you asked for my opinion. She's a dear friend. I said, not that you, she said, not that you asked for my opinion, but just so you know, baby dedication on Mother's Day is not a gift to mothers. We empathize with you, mysterious friend, and I'm sorry, but everybody else really liked it. I don't know what to tell you. And to those for whom Mother's Day is difficult, Jen and I walked through difficult Mother's Days. For those to whom Mother's Day is kind of just a reminder of maybe something that you don't have or that you've lost or that you've hoped for, and that is unrequited. Our hearts are with you, and our prayers are with you. And I always say that in Mother's Day services, and as I look out now, I get to see some babies that I prayed for, that belonged to some mamas that I hurt for, and that's a real blessing. We're taking a break from our series in the letters of Peter this morning for really, I guess it feels silly to say it since I'm the one doing it, but a special Mother's Day message. But this is something that I will confess to you. I'm really excited to share. I feel really strongly and deeply about what I'm going to share with you this morning. And what I'm going to share with you is actually one of my primary motivators in ministry. It is one of my primary motivators to hang in there in ministry. It's one of the things I care most deeply about. And I will warn you, I've come prepared. I've been on the razor's edge of emotion this morning. I was supposed to pray at the end of the service. There's no way that's going to happen. You'll see why. But I bailed out of that before the service started. Because I'm going to sit there next to Jen and feel the freedom to be a mess if I want to be. But I'm going to do something that I don't normally do this morning and just talk to parents. Those of you who dedicated your babies. This is for you. And those of you who are family members, this is for you. And then parents in the room, this is for you. And I don't normally do this because I don't want to exclude any portion of the audience, but I'm going to take the license and the liberty here on Mother's Day to just talk to the parents in the room. And as I do that, I wanted to begin by asking you this question and get you thinking about this along with me. What sort of legacy are you leaving for your children? One day when you're gone and your children, Lord willing, have their own families and their own people in their life who love them, what will your legacy be to them? Because we're all leaving one. Make no mistake about that. We are all of us legacy builders. We all leave behind something. And there are myriad legacies to leave. We could leave an affinity for a sports team. We could leave a legacy of being a Red Sox fan or an unfortunate Panthers fan, whatever your legacy might be. We can leave behind fandom if we like. I'm going to continue to pray for your children, Shane, as you bestow that legacy on them. It's unfortunate. We can leave behind a legacy of generosity, of kindness, of hospitality, of grace. And then we all know, and I think our greatest fear as parents is to leave behind legacies that our children do not want to emulate. To leave behind legacies that wound those who have been entrusted to us. Of sin and struggle and failure. And make no mistake, we will all leave some of those too. But God in his goodness can clean up that mess for us. But we all leave legacies. We are all building them. And I think it's good to remind us of that because it's a sobering thought. It's an arresting thought. And if we just go throughout our days, I don't think that we pay attention to that. I don't think that we are reminded of that. I don't think that we are aware of that. We can be so hurried and harried that we're just trying to get people to the next thing. All kidding aside, getting kids up and getting them bathed and getting them ready to be seen by the whole church and then having the whole church laugh at your child. That was nice. And Jen had to do it by herself. That's stressful. You're not thinking about legacy when you're trying to dry a kid's hair and just get them in the dang car. Can you just sit down? We've been doing this for six years, all right? You know the drill. Get in the car. You're not thinking about legacy. You're not thinking about legacy when you're driving them to soccer practice and when you're picking them up and when they're out of town and when you're just going throughout the day and trying to decide another day what in the world dinner is going to be today. You're not thinking about legacy. But whether we like it or not, realize it or not, we are every day building a legacy for our children to follow and to walk in. And so more pointedly, what sort of spiritual legacy are you leaving behind? What will they learn about God from you? How will they see his love in you? Mamas, how will they watch you love their daddy in such a way that compels them to either find someone like you or be more like you when they grow up? Dads, how will your children see you love their mom? Will it be in such a way that compels them to love just like you did or to demand that someone loves them like you? What sort of legacy of marriage and family will we leave for our children? What sort of legacy of godliness will we leave for them? Will they see you open your word daily? Will they hear you teach them the principles of God as is dictated to us in Psalm 78 and in Deuteronomy and in Numbers? Will they not only hear you teach those things, but watch you walk them out and believe in and trust in your integrity? Will they know in their hearts that who you are on Sunday is every bit who you are on Wednesday night too? And is every bit who you are as you go into and out of your workplace? What sort of spiritual legacy will you leave? Because I am convinced, having watched children grow up in the church for 40 years, Having experienced adulthood myself, having watched my friends and my peers enter into adulthood and into parenthood and go through life, I am convinced that this is true, that you cannot overstate the value for an individual of growing up in a home where that child knows, my God loves me and my parents love me and they believe in me. You cannot overstate the value of that truth in the life of an adult. God, my creator, loves me. My mom and my dad, they love me. And God and my parents, they believe in me. And I want desperately for this church to produce children who know those things are true. I pray most ardently for the families in this church who are raising kids that those kids will grow up and they will know my God loves me, my parents love me, and they believe in me. You cannot overstate the value of those truths and the impact they have on our lives as adults. And to that end, some of us in the room, as we all acknowledge that we build legacies, some of us are legacy carriers. Some of us inherited a rich and deep faith from our parents, and it is our job to pick up that banner and to carry it forward with faith and with consistency and with passion. And we stand on shoulders of people who have come before us, who have chosen to prize Jesus in their life and have bestowed that richness of faith upon us. And our job as the carriers is to pick up the banner and go with it. And if you are a carrier of a legacy, you know the blessing that that is. You know the advantage that gives you. If you lived any life as an adult, you know the wealth that that has to grow up knowing, man, my God loves me and my parents love me and they believe in me. And to enter into adulthood being certain of those things and to have your own children and not have to worry and not have to be confused. What does godly parenthood look like? Because your parents faithfully modeled that for you. So all you do is you take the baton and you run with it. So some of us are legacy carriers. And you know the blessing of what that is. Others of us are tasked with being legacy starters. Others of us have parents, grew up in homes that may have been wonderful, may have been full of love, and maybe your parents bestowed upon you some wonderful traits of kindness and graciousness and generosity, but you did not learn from your parents what it was to love Jesus. You did not see godliness and devotion to Christ modeled in your home on a day-to-day basis. And so you don't know what that looks like as an adult. You're a legacy starter. You're a legacy beginner. You are tasked with making the decision to say, the generations that came before me, they didn't value godliness. They didn't teach the love of Christ in their home. They just were clouded and they didn't see it and they didn't have it. And I've entered into adulthood and I'm gonna draw a line in the sand that from now on, the generations that come in my family that have my last name will know that Jesus loves them. And you make a choice that moving forward, the name that you're giving to your kids is going to mean something different than the name that you got when you were a kid. You're a legacy starter. And for you, I pray the hardest. I don't know if it's fair. I don't mean to neglect anyone else, but you're the ones I love the most. You are the ones for whom I carry the most hope because I know it's hard to start a legacy. I've seen the wounds that you enter into life with. I've seen how hard it is to choose faith when you don't know the way. And I, with you, hope that your kids don't have to figure that out. I hope that they don't have to learn the lessons that you're learning. I hope that they don't have to walk the path that you've walked. I hope that you can walk it for them so that they might be legacy carriers, so that they might carry the baton on from you. And I pray hardest for you because I do think that your path is more difficult and because that's who my parents were. I won't get into the details because it's probably not appropriate here, but for different reasons, each of my parents had to draw a line in the sand and say, our name is going to mean something different when we give it to our children. And it did. And they've said it. And I get the blessing of being a carrier. I get the blessing of standing on shoulders and I've watched them struggle and I've watched them try and I've watched them prize Jesus in our home. And for those of you who are legacy starters, I want you to grow old and look at your children and see the struggles but know that it was worth it. And if you play your cards right, one day, one of your children could be the pastor of a tiny church straddling an aquarium store. And church, as we seek to surround these families. As we seek to surround these families. And at the beginning of the service, we stood, all of us. We are part of building that legacy too. In our small groups and in the ebbs and flows of life. As passions might wane, as other things in life might seek to interfere with the goals of the families and the parents. It's our job as a church to step in, to rally around, to protect, to pray for, to support, to challenge, to convict, to hope, and to see these families through as we all leave legacies. Grandparents, you're leaving one too. Your children will remember how you loved on and cared for their children. It's great if you're the fun one. Be the godly one. Be the praying one. Be the supportive one. Be the one that fights for their marriages. Be the one that loves your children well. And your children will inherit that legacy too. And let us remember remember as we seek to build these legacies, as we surround the parents who seek to leave a wake of godliness behind them, that our goal is not to raise well-behaved 10-year-olds. Big deal. Our goal is to release grown adults into the world who know that God loves them, that you love them, and that God believes in them, and that Christ died for them. Our goal is to raise grown adults who know that God loves them and he cherishes them. When I pray for my children, I pray that they would know God better than I do. I pray that they would love Jesus more than I do. And I pray that I would see things in their walks and in their journeys that inspire and convict me. I pray that they will go further than I do. And to put a fine point on it, what we are praying for is Ephesians 2.10. Ephesians 2.10 says that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And I love that verse because it tells us that God created us intentionally, on purpose, so that one day we might walk in the good works that he has laid out for us, that he has designed us for, that he has gifted us for, that he has turned us towards in our various bents. But as I think about it this morning, it occurs to me that that is the job of the parent, is to know and acknowledge that your children are God's workmanship. And they were created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has purposed them for before the beginning of time that they might walk in them. So as a parent, your role is to raise children who have ears to hear and eyes to see the good works that God has created them to walk in and then have the courage and the faith and the love and the passion and the freedom to walk in those good works. That's what we pray for. That's what we hope for. That we will release out of grace for generation after generation legacy carriers, not starters. That we will release generation after generation at Grace kids into the world who know that they are God's workmanship and they are seeking out the good works that they might walk in that God intentioned and purposed them for. That is our hope and our prayer for the families of Grace. And that is the challenge to the parents of Grace. And in light of that challenge, as we wrap up the service today, I'm going to invite the band up to sing a prayer over us. It's a song called The Blessing. And it's pulled straight from Scripture. It's pulled straight from Scripture most pointedly. You'll hear these words that are written in Numbers chapter six. The author writes this, the Lord spoke to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. You should say to them, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace. This song is an amalgamation of a passage in Deuteronomy that tells us to teach the word to our children, to put it on our walls, to repeat it to them in our coming and in our going. It's an amalgamation of this passage in Numbers and even the passage that we read from Psalms, a generation after generation, that if we can establish a legacy, then generation after generation can take that baton and run with it. And so this song is a prayer. And I'm going to invite you to just sit and let it be sung over you, parents. And in the song, there's this word, amen. And in the case of this song, it means I agree, I affirm that, yes, Lord. So in light of our role as parents, in light of our responsibility to leave behind a legacy worth following, I hope that you'll receive this song as a prayer over you before we go back out into our weeks.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning to all of you. I'm so glad to be here. And as Nate said, I've just gotten to know Nate over the last few months. We did a funeral together. A member of our congregation, my old congregation, had passed away. His daughter was very involved in the youth ministry here. And so that's how Nate and I got to know each other. And just an interesting note, I was a pastor of an Anglican church. And in Anglican churches, oftentimes the senior pastor is called the rector. So I met Nate. I'm like, man, I think you're in the wrong outfit. But anyway, it's really been a pleasure to meet him. And it's really been a thrill because I don't know if you know, Church of the Apostles used to be located on Sumner Boulevard right next to Grace Community. And so over the years, I got to know a little bit about Grace Community and I learned some of the great ways that God has used you all as a church, but I also know that you've been through some heartaches in the last several years. And so I was thrilled to find out that you had a new pastor and a new rector. And what I was even more thrilled about is that I can tell he really loves you guys. He prays for you. He's delighted in you. He loves the gospel and he loves sharing the gospel with you. And I want to encourage you as his people to encourage him, you know, to let him know how much his ministry means to you, not just in the hard times, because he will minister to you in the hard times, but when you're experiencing good things, when you're learning things from him, let him know. I can't tell you how much that encourages a pastor's heart. The second thing before I start, I want to commend you because I know that a number of you also were in Grace Community through those hard years when there was a lot of transition and you weren't sure what was going to be happening. And I bless you for your faithfulness in that time. The Lord is blessing you and he's bringing great fruit to your ministry. And I'm just so glad to be part of it today. So I wanna join you in prayer now and thank God for all these things. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your grace in our lives. We're so grateful for your promise that through Jesus, your son, and the power of your Holy Spirit, you are here right now. You are affecting the words that will be preached and the words that will be meditated on and the word read and the word spoken. That it might be a living word that gets into our hearts and our minds and that it changes us, Lord, that it shapes us for your purposes and for your glory in the world. We offer you ourselves now, Lord, for that. We ask humbly that you would do that, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing and. Ephesians has six chapters, and it's a huge task because literally every chapter you could probably preach about 10 sermons out of. So I'm going to do my best to preach 10 sermons to you today out of Ephesians 1. No, I'm going to focus in really on one specific word, and I'll use it to take us through Ephesians 1. So if you want to turn to Ephesians, there's Bibles in the seats in front of you. I'm going to be reading out of the NIV here. And I want to focus in on this word blessing that Paul talks about, this word blessing. How many of you feel blessed today? Yeah. What does that mean? Have you ever wondered about that? When you ask somebody, how you doing? And they say, oh, I'm blessed. I'm blessed. What are they talking about? You know, so often what we're talking about, what I'm talking about when I say blessed is things are going right in my life. There's material blessings. I can look around and say, man, I've got a wife. I've got two wonderful girls. I've got grandchildren. And by the way, have you ever heard the saying that if I'd have known how much fun it was to have grandkids, I would have had them first. Absolutely true. But you know what blessings they are. People say, I'm blessed because I have a good home. I've got a good job. I'm driving a Maserati. I'm not driving a Maserati, but you know, I mean, people look at the material things in their lives and they say, I'm blessed to the extent that they have them in abundance. And when they lack them, they seem to lack a sense of blessing. Now, this is not bad. In fact, in the Old Testament, the majority of the blessings have to do with material blessings. When it says the Lord bless you and keep you and the Lord be gracious unto you, graciousness is spelled out in the Old Testament by saying, may the Lord increase your flocks, your grain and your new wine. May the Lord increase the abundance of your tribe, your children, and your grandchildren. God speaks very unashamedly about pouring out material blessings on his people. But when we get to Ephesians, Paul speaks of spiritual blessings. And so the question comes, well, what is that? What would it be for us to be a people who, when we answer the question, how are you, can say I'm blessed, not just because of the material things in our lives and not feel a lack of blessing if those material things aren't there, but actually to say, I'm blessed because of the spiritual blessings in our lives. That's what Paul wants to get at right from the start with the Ephesians. In fact, the first three chapters of Ephesians is written in the form of a Jewish blessing, a berakah. So Paul is really intent on them understanding this. And I think it'll be great if we can come away understanding it at least a little deeper today. So let me start with the first few verses. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. I love that. I've always loved that passage. that notion that every spiritual blessing in Christ is mine. But if you'd ask me, what are those spiritual blessings? I said, well, I'm not really sure. You know, joy, peace, love, all those kind of things. But Paul actually spells it out in this hymn of praise, in this song of blessing. And so what I want to do is look at several of those blessings with you. The first is this. It says in verse 4, For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, God had you in mind. God had always planned for you to be here today. God had always planned for you to name the name of Jesus as his daughter or his son from the foundation of the world. This is incredible spiritual blessing and resource. If you've ever felt rejected, if you ever walked into your home and shut your door and just wanted to bury your head underneath your pillow, and then you looked up at the doorframe of your room and there above the door was written these words, if you could imagine, chosen before the foundation of the world. That's who you are. That's the spiritual blessing that is yours. Chosen. That's a big deal. Have you ever talked to somebody who's been adopted? And anybody in here been adopted? Or has adopted? Have any of you adopted kids? It's a fantastic and wonderful thing. But invariably, if you have been adopted or you have adopted children, at some point, somebody comes up to you and says this insensitive thing. They say to you, but who are your real parents? You know, or if you've adopted someone, they say, oh, you're his adoptive mom, but who's his real mom? Which the answer is, please come a little closer so I can smack you. Now, the answer is, please come a little closer so I can smack you. Now the answer is, I'm her real mom. I'm his real dad. Those are my real parents. They chose me. They spend their lives for me. It was costly for them to change their lives to welcome me in. I've been bought with a price. You hear the echoes of the gospel? It was costly for God to choose you. And yet he did it. And the spiritual blessings go on. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Holy and blameless. What a spiritual blessing that is, that you are declared and in God's sight, actually holy and blameless. How many times in your life have you been in conflict with people, a spouse or a boss or a coach or somebody in your life or a peer, and they're assigning blame to you for something. And perhaps some of that blame is real and you can own it, but some of it is unjustified and false. And you argue and you go back and forth with him. That doesn't happen with God. You are holy and blameless in his sight. You don't come to him and his throne and stand before him and he begins to list out all the ways he's disappointed in you, all the ways that you have screwed up and messed up. No, he says, come here, my beloved. You just look perfect today. How our souls need that. That spiritual blessing is ours. And still it goes on. For it says, for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, in love and pleasure, in love and pleasure. Too often we think about God as if he has to do these things, right? Because he's God, he's got to have a system and the world has to operate a certain way and good people need to get their blessings and bad people need to get their curses and all that stuff. But no, the scriptures say that he acts out of love and pleasure. God actually enjoys you. He enjoys his work and what he does. He enjoys us. Pleasure is a big deal. It's a big deal to me. I imagine it's a big deal to you as well. One of the ways it's a big deal to me is I'm a foodie, right? I love like gourmet food. I love great desserts. I love ice cream. And I receive a lot of pleasure in those settings. But I found out several months ago that I had intolerances to wheat, to gluten, and to dairy. I was like, that's pizza. I mean, that's horrible, you know? And it was affecting the ice cream intake and all that. And one day I discovered that Ben and Jerry's has a gluten-free, dairy-free option in Cherry Garcia. I've been eating it like every night. It's awesome. I take great pleasure in it. God, even more, makes such great pleasure and delight in his children, in exercising his will in our lives, in drawing us to him, in teaching us, in filling us filling us and empowering us and pouring out his spirit. God is a being who loves to experience that great pleasure. And it is a great spiritual blessing to us to be on the receiving end of it. And he does this all, it says in verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace. Would you say that with me? Ready? To the praise of his glorious grace. Now, what does that mean? To the praise of his glorious grace. You know, the reformers kind of put it this way. They say that God is the creator of all things. And we as a people tend to want to praise things. If we see something excellent or admirable, we praise it. If we see an athlete that's above the other athletes, we praise him. If we see an artist who produces fantastic works of art, we praise them. When we see somebody in the zone, in business or whatever it might be, we praise them. And the reformers say, it is God who made each and every one of them. It is God who empowered each and every one of them. Therefore, he is the one, the source of all that is beautiful, all that is excellent, all that is praiseworthy, and deserves and demands that praise. But it's good for us to give that praise. John Piper puts it this way. The glory of God is what we were made to see and enjoy for all eternity. Nothing else will satisfy our souls. Therefore, if God does not exalt himself for us to admire and enjoy, then he is unloving. That is, he does not give us what we need. And that's really good. I wouldn't argue with John Piper. But I'm something of an artist myself, you know, and I like to think of things from that perspective on the other side of the brain. And I started thinking, what does this look like, this blessing of praise and of giving praise? What's it look like in our lives? Have you ever been part of a standing ovation? I mean, if you've been to a high school play, you've been part of a standing ovation. And the reason is, is because the person's parents are there in the audience and their friends are in the audience. So they all like spontaneous because they're cheering on their friend. And so you stand up and you cheer. But if you've ever been part of an ovation where you don't know the actors or the musicians who are up on that stage, but they perform so fantastically and so beautifully and so powerfully that you don't even think about it. Before you know it, you're standing on your feet, you're applauding, and you know what's going on in that moment? You're in it. You are not a spectator. You are a participant. That's what it is to live for the praise of his glorious grace. It's to be in the moment with God, praising him for how awesome he is, for the sunset and the power of the thunderstorm and for the music and the wonder and the glory of life. That's what he has for you. And what a spiritual blessing that is. If we can just access it, if we can just be in it, be part of the ovation of God. And the blessings go on. To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one go on. Now here we get to one of the blessings that probably we would have come up with if we'd have just thought, I'm forgiven. I am forgiven. This is a little bit different than the holy and blameless blessing. Because the word that Paul uses here is not the typical word. The Greek word hamartia refers to the condition of sin for which we have been declared absolutely cleansed, holy, and blameless in God's sight. But the word that Paul uses here is the word paraptoma, which is about the plethora of sins, the acts, the sinful acts that John tells us that we continue to commit as Christians, right? He says, if any of you says I'm without sin, he's a liar and the truth is not within him. And what Paul is telling us here is that we have this ongoing, continuous forgiveness of sins given to us by God, lavished on us through Jesus Christ. But it's more than just a forgiveness. It's a redemption. It's a buying back. It's a changing of our very character and nature. James, in his epistle, writes, confess your sins one to another, that you may be forgiven, that you may be healed. That literally, when we take our habitual sins to the Lord, say, forgive me, forgive me, Lord. He not only forgives you and wipes it away, he transforms you. He begins to heal you and change you and shape you to give you a greater love for that which is good and a greater disdain for that which pulls you away from God's absolute best for you. That's an incredible, incredible spiritual blessing that is ours in Jesus Christ. I want to share one more. These are certainly not the only spiritual blessings, but one more. It says, That last spiritual blessing is that you and I would have knowledge of Him and of his plans for us. We had knowledge of him and of his purpose for our lives. In the Anglican church, most Anglican churches have communion almost every Sunday. And communion is best understood as a mystery. not in the sense that you don't know what's going on, but in the sense that you have been invited into something that apart from the grace of God, you could never comprehend. So when we come to the communion table, where the body and the blood of Christ is held out for us, where we enter into the very life of Jesus, who said, if you eat my body and drink my blood, you have a part in me. He's not talking about some kind of gross, you know, literal, physical thing. What he's talking about is spiritually, when we come to communion, we are inwardly reminded to the depths of our being that we belong, that we are his, that he knows us, and we know him. That our lives matter. That they have meaning and purpose. What a blessing. What a blessing to be known in that way. How do you access all of that? That's the big question, right? How do you make it yours for sure? Now, probably many are tempted to say, well, you know, you're a pastor and it's pastor's job to kind of be intimate with this stuff, to know it and to dwell on it. And that's true. And it actually is one of the blessings of being a pastor. But several months ago, I resigned from being pastor. And, you know, kind of held on to God through that. But as that holding on and holding on and holding on wore off, I began to start looking at, all right, Lord, what's next? And that's a hard place to be in, to not know. You have to say, Lord, what would you have me do? Where would you have me go? How am I going to, in the future, provide material blessings for my wife, for my family? And so I've experienced, I think, what many of us experience is those anxieties about those things. And during this time, I would love to say I have just been just the picture of what a Christian ought to be. But it's not true. Times I have been anxious and impatient and short with my wife and lacking faith and all those things. But what I have found is that when I sit back down and take a deep breath and begin to rehearse the blessings I have in Christ, who I am, who he is, the kind of provider he is, the opportunity to trust him, to know him, that he then transforms my attitude toward the material world, toward possessions, toward situations, toward all those things. And I'm not unique. It's true for all of you as well. So what do you do? How do you appropriate it? I believe Paul has that in mind. What I want to do is close out by reading the last several verses of this chapter, because what they are is they're a prayer at this point. Paul in verse 17, prays this of them. And I want to tell you, he's praying it of you as well. I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. I'm telling you, that is what Nate is praying for you guys over and over and over again. That is how you receive it, is by just reaching up into the heavenly realms where the Holy Spirit, where Jesus himself is interceding for you and say, yes, Lord, I receive it. All the wisdom, all the power, all the grace, all the blessing you want to give. That power is the same as the mighty strength which God exerted when he raised Christ from the dead, seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything and every one of you in every way. Your job is just to receive it. Let me close today with a blessing that you might receive and you might receive all that God has for you in Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace and be gracious unto you. May the Lord give you the fullness of the knowledge of Him through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and through the power of his Holy Spirit to the praise of his glorious grace. Amen. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning to all of you. I'm so glad to be here. And as Nate said, I've just gotten to know Nate over the last few months. We did a funeral together. A member of our congregation, my old congregation, had passed away. His daughter was very involved in the youth ministry here. And so that's how Nate and I got to know each other. And just an interesting note, I was a pastor of an Anglican church. And in Anglican churches, oftentimes the senior pastor is called the rector. So I met Nate. I'm like, man, I think you're in the wrong outfit. But anyway, it's really been a pleasure to meet him. And it's really been a thrill because I don't know if you know, Church of the Apostles used to be located on Sumner Boulevard right next to Grace Community. And so over the years, I got to know a little bit about Grace Community and I learned some of the great ways that God has used you all as a church, but I also know that you've been through some heartaches in the last several years. And so I was thrilled to find out that you had a new pastor and a new rector. And what I was even more thrilled about is that I can tell he really loves you guys. He prays for you. He's delighted in you. He loves the gospel and he loves sharing the gospel with you. And I want to encourage you as his people to encourage him, you know, to let him know how much his ministry means to you, not just in the hard times, because he will minister to you in the hard times, but when you're experiencing good things, when you're learning things from him, let him know. I can't tell you how much that encourages a pastor's heart. The second thing before I start, I want to commend you because I know that a number of you also were in Grace Community through those hard years when there was a lot of transition and you weren't sure what was going to be happening. And I bless you for your faithfulness in that time. The Lord is blessing you and he's bringing great fruit to your ministry. And I'm just so glad to be part of it today. So I wanna join you in prayer now and thank God for all these things. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your grace in our lives. We're so grateful for your promise that through Jesus, your son, and the power of your Holy Spirit, you are here right now. You are affecting the words that will be preached and the words that will be meditated on and the word read and the word spoken. That it might be a living word that gets into our hearts and our minds and that it changes us, Lord, that it shapes us for your purposes and for your glory in the world. We offer you ourselves now, Lord, for that. We ask humbly that you would do that, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing and. Ephesians has six chapters, and it's a huge task because literally every chapter you could probably preach about 10 sermons out of. So I'm going to do my best to preach 10 sermons to you today out of Ephesians 1. No, I'm going to focus in really on one specific word, and I'll use it to take us through Ephesians 1. So if you want to turn to Ephesians, there's Bibles in the seats in front of you. I'm going to be reading out of the NIV here. And I want to focus in on this word blessing that Paul talks about, this word blessing. How many of you feel blessed today? Yeah. What does that mean? Have you ever wondered about that? When you ask somebody, how you doing? And they say, oh, I'm blessed. I'm blessed. What are they talking about? You know, so often what we're talking about, what I'm talking about when I say blessed is things are going right in my life. There's material blessings. I can look around and say, man, I've got a wife. I've got two wonderful girls. I've got grandchildren. And by the way, have you ever heard the saying that if I'd have known how much fun it was to have grandkids, I would have had them first. Absolutely true. But you know what blessings they are. People say, I'm blessed because I have a good home. I've got a good job. I'm driving a Maserati. I'm not driving a Maserati, but you know, I mean, people look at the material things in their lives and they say, I'm blessed to the extent that they have them in abundance. And when they lack them, they seem to lack a sense of blessing. Now, this is not bad. In fact, in the Old Testament, the majority of the blessings have to do with material blessings. When it says the Lord bless you and keep you and the Lord be gracious unto you, graciousness is spelled out in the Old Testament by saying, may the Lord increase your flocks, your grain and your new wine. May the Lord increase the abundance of your tribe, your children, and your grandchildren. God speaks very unashamedly about pouring out material blessings on his people. But when we get to Ephesians, Paul speaks of spiritual blessings. And so the question comes, well, what is that? What would it be for us to be a people who, when we answer the question, how are you, can say I'm blessed, not just because of the material things in our lives and not feel a lack of blessing if those material things aren't there, but actually to say, I'm blessed because of the spiritual blessings in our lives. That's what Paul wants to get at right from the start with the Ephesians. In fact, the first three chapters of Ephesians is written in the form of a Jewish blessing, a berakah. So Paul is really intent on them understanding this. And I think it'll be great if we can come away understanding it at least a little deeper today. So let me start with the first few verses. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. I love that. I've always loved that passage. that notion that every spiritual blessing in Christ is mine. But if you'd ask me, what are those spiritual blessings? I said, well, I'm not really sure. You know, joy, peace, love, all those kind of things. But Paul actually spells it out in this hymn of praise, in this song of blessing. And so what I want to do is look at several of those blessings with you. The first is this. It says in verse 4, For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, God had you in mind. God had always planned for you to be here today. God had always planned for you to name the name of Jesus as his daughter or his son from the foundation of the world. This is incredible spiritual blessing and resource. If you've ever felt rejected, if you ever walked into your home and shut your door and just wanted to bury your head underneath your pillow, and then you looked up at the doorframe of your room and there above the door was written these words, if you could imagine, chosen before the foundation of the world. That's who you are. That's the spiritual blessing that is yours. Chosen. That's a big deal. Have you ever talked to somebody who's been adopted? And anybody in here been adopted? Or has adopted? Have any of you adopted kids? It's a fantastic and wonderful thing. But invariably, if you have been adopted or you have adopted children, at some point, somebody comes up to you and says this insensitive thing. They say to you, but who are your real parents? You know, or if you've adopted someone, they say, oh, you're his adoptive mom, but who's his real mom? Which the answer is, please come a little closer so I can smack you. Now, the answer is, please come a little closer so I can smack you. Now the answer is, I'm her real mom. I'm his real dad. Those are my real parents. They chose me. They spend their lives for me. It was costly for them to change their lives to welcome me in. I've been bought with a price. You hear the echoes of the gospel? It was costly for God to choose you. And yet he did it. And the spiritual blessings go on. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Holy and blameless. What a spiritual blessing that is, that you are declared and in God's sight, actually holy and blameless. How many times in your life have you been in conflict with people, a spouse or a boss or a coach or somebody in your life or a peer, and they're assigning blame to you for something. And perhaps some of that blame is real and you can own it, but some of it is unjustified and false. And you argue and you go back and forth with him. That doesn't happen with God. You are holy and blameless in his sight. You don't come to him and his throne and stand before him and he begins to list out all the ways he's disappointed in you, all the ways that you have screwed up and messed up. No, he says, come here, my beloved. You just look perfect today. How our souls need that. That spiritual blessing is ours. And still it goes on. For it says, for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, in love and pleasure, in love and pleasure. Too often we think about God as if he has to do these things, right? Because he's God, he's got to have a system and the world has to operate a certain way and good people need to get their blessings and bad people need to get their curses and all that stuff. But no, the scriptures say that he acts out of love and pleasure. God actually enjoys you. He enjoys his work and what he does. He enjoys us. Pleasure is a big deal. It's a big deal to me. I imagine it's a big deal to you as well. One of the ways it's a big deal to me is I'm a foodie, right? I love like gourmet food. I love great desserts. I love ice cream. And I receive a lot of pleasure in those settings. But I found out several months ago that I had intolerances to wheat, to gluten, and to dairy. I was like, that's pizza. I mean, that's horrible, you know? And it was affecting the ice cream intake and all that. And one day I discovered that Ben and Jerry's has a gluten-free, dairy-free option in Cherry Garcia. I've been eating it like every night. It's awesome. I take great pleasure in it. God, even more, makes such great pleasure and delight in his children, in exercising his will in our lives, in drawing us to him, in teaching us, in filling us filling us and empowering us and pouring out his spirit. God is a being who loves to experience that great pleasure. And it is a great spiritual blessing to us to be on the receiving end of it. And he does this all, it says in verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace. Would you say that with me? Ready? To the praise of his glorious grace. Now, what does that mean? To the praise of his glorious grace. You know, the reformers kind of put it this way. They say that God is the creator of all things. And we as a people tend to want to praise things. If we see something excellent or admirable, we praise it. If we see an athlete that's above the other athletes, we praise him. If we see an artist who produces fantastic works of art, we praise them. When we see somebody in the zone, in business or whatever it might be, we praise them. And the reformers say, it is God who made each and every one of them. It is God who empowered each and every one of them. Therefore, he is the one, the source of all that is beautiful, all that is excellent, all that is praiseworthy, and deserves and demands that praise. But it's good for us to give that praise. John Piper puts it this way. The glory of God is what we were made to see and enjoy for all eternity. Nothing else will satisfy our souls. Therefore, if God does not exalt himself for us to admire and enjoy, then he is unloving. That is, he does not give us what we need. And that's really good. I wouldn't argue with John Piper. But I'm something of an artist myself, you know, and I like to think of things from that perspective on the other side of the brain. And I started thinking, what does this look like, this blessing of praise and of giving praise? What's it look like in our lives? Have you ever been part of a standing ovation? I mean, if you've been to a high school play, you've been part of a standing ovation. And the reason is, is because the person's parents are there in the audience and their friends are in the audience. So they all like spontaneous because they're cheering on their friend. And so you stand up and you cheer. But if you've ever been part of an ovation where you don't know the actors or the musicians who are up on that stage, but they perform so fantastically and so beautifully and so powerfully that you don't even think about it. Before you know it, you're standing on your feet, you're applauding, and you know what's going on in that moment? You're in it. You are not a spectator. You are a participant. That's what it is to live for the praise of his glorious grace. It's to be in the moment with God, praising him for how awesome he is, for the sunset and the power of the thunderstorm and for the music and the wonder and the glory of life. That's what he has for you. And what a spiritual blessing that is. If we can just access it, if we can just be in it, be part of the ovation of God. And the blessings go on. To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one go on. Now here we get to one of the blessings that probably we would have come up with if we'd have just thought, I'm forgiven. I am forgiven. This is a little bit different than the holy and blameless blessing. Because the word that Paul uses here is not the typical word. The Greek word hamartia refers to the condition of sin for which we have been declared absolutely cleansed, holy, and blameless in God's sight. But the word that Paul uses here is the word paraptoma, which is about the plethora of sins, the acts, the sinful acts that John tells us that we continue to commit as Christians, right? He says, if any of you says I'm without sin, he's a liar and the truth is not within him. And what Paul is telling us here is that we have this ongoing, continuous forgiveness of sins given to us by God, lavished on us through Jesus Christ. But it's more than just a forgiveness. It's a redemption. It's a buying back. It's a changing of our very character and nature. James, in his epistle, writes, confess your sins one to another, that you may be forgiven, that you may be healed. That literally, when we take our habitual sins to the Lord, say, forgive me, forgive me, Lord. He not only forgives you and wipes it away, he transforms you. He begins to heal you and change you and shape you to give you a greater love for that which is good and a greater disdain for that which pulls you away from God's absolute best for you. That's an incredible, incredible spiritual blessing that is ours in Jesus Christ. I want to share one more. These are certainly not the only spiritual blessings, but one more. It says, That last spiritual blessing is that you and I would have knowledge of Him and of his plans for us. We had knowledge of him and of his purpose for our lives. In the Anglican church, most Anglican churches have communion almost every Sunday. And communion is best understood as a mystery. not in the sense that you don't know what's going on, but in the sense that you have been invited into something that apart from the grace of God, you could never comprehend. So when we come to the communion table, where the body and the blood of Christ is held out for us, where we enter into the very life of Jesus, who said, if you eat my body and drink my blood, you have a part in me. He's not talking about some kind of gross, you know, literal, physical thing. What he's talking about is spiritually, when we come to communion, we are inwardly reminded to the depths of our being that we belong, that we are his, that he knows us, and we know him. That our lives matter. That they have meaning and purpose. What a blessing. What a blessing to be known in that way. How do you access all of that? That's the big question, right? How do you make it yours for sure? Now, probably many are tempted to say, well, you know, you're a pastor and it's pastor's job to kind of be intimate with this stuff, to know it and to dwell on it. And that's true. And it actually is one of the blessings of being a pastor. But several months ago, I resigned from being pastor. And, you know, kind of held on to God through that. But as that holding on and holding on and holding on wore off, I began to start looking at, all right, Lord, what's next? And that's a hard place to be in, to not know. You have to say, Lord, what would you have me do? Where would you have me go? How am I going to, in the future, provide material blessings for my wife, for my family? And so I've experienced, I think, what many of us experience is those anxieties about those things. And during this time, I would love to say I have just been just the picture of what a Christian ought to be. But it's not true. Times I have been anxious and impatient and short with my wife and lacking faith and all those things. But what I have found is that when I sit back down and take a deep breath and begin to rehearse the blessings I have in Christ, who I am, who he is, the kind of provider he is, the opportunity to trust him, to know him, that he then transforms my attitude toward the material world, toward possessions, toward situations, toward all those things. And I'm not unique. It's true for all of you as well. So what do you do? How do you appropriate it? I believe Paul has that in mind. What I want to do is close out by reading the last several verses of this chapter, because what they are is they're a prayer at this point. Paul in verse 17, prays this of them. And I want to tell you, he's praying it of you as well. I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. I'm telling you, that is what Nate is praying for you guys over and over and over again. That is how you receive it, is by just reaching up into the heavenly realms where the Holy Spirit, where Jesus himself is interceding for you and say, yes, Lord, I receive it. All the wisdom, all the power, all the grace, all the blessing you want to give. That power is the same as the mighty strength which God exerted when he raised Christ from the dead, seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything and every one of you in every way. Your job is just to receive it. Let me close today with a blessing that you might receive and you might receive all that God has for you in Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace and be gracious unto you. May the Lord give you the fullness of the knowledge of Him through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and through the power of his Holy Spirit to the praise of his glorious grace. Amen. Thank you.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's so good to see everybody. I've got a lot of people sitting in seats that they don't normally go in. I don't know what you're doing over there, Zach, DJ, Laura, what in the world? I'm totally distracted. And just, I need to give you a peek behind the scenes before I just dive into the sermon like there's nothing happening in my life. I know I'm jovial now. This is serious. Yesterday, my sister-in-law, Jen's sister, Lauren, was in a really bad car accident and has just a lot of broken bones and is currently in surgery. The doctors say that she will recover and walk again, which is just a wild sentence to hear about your sister-in-law on a normal Saturday. So Jen was doing something yesterday afternoon, got home, grabbed Lily, and fired down to Athens, Georgia. So she's down there. So I've got John. Normally on a Sunday morning, I get up at 5, I shower, I come into the office, I'm locked in at 545, I run through the sermon, and I just kind of steep it and I try not to let anything distract me and I just focus on that. And then at about 930, I come over here and I glad hand you guys and pretend like I'm not trying to think about my sermon. But I'm just focused on that for most of the morning. This morning I was getting John ready, right? And so just all the scramble of that and getting a toddler ready and kind of run through my sermon, juggling Bluey and Lucky Charms and then coming back and trying to go through it. And then at 9.20, I'm like, okay, I'm ahead of the game. This is really good. It's time to go to church. I've got plenty of time. And I go to get all my things, and I'm like, I don't know where my car key is. I can't find my car key. And so I just start frantically looking for my car key and at 935 I called our good friend Anna Johnson and I was like, hey I think I need a ride to church. You have a car seat. She had pulled in the parking lot. She was like, all right coming to get you. And so she came around and as we pulled up I said, Anna park front and center because this is a great look for me to show up with you at church while my wife is out of town. So when I say, I don't know what's about to come out of my mouth, it's honest. All right. And if you're sitting there thinking, is this an elaborate way for him to excuse a potentially terrible sermon? Yeah, that is. All right. It's June. Ride with me. In one way, I'm completely frazzled and off center on the sermon and I'm just really hoping and praying that the Lord will order my steps and my thoughts because I want to do justice to this passage because it's one that I love so much. In another way, and I'm reminded of this by the Holy Spirit from time to time, God's been preparing this sermon in my heart and in my head for 20 years. I love this passage. I love where we are. We are at Moses and the burning bush. And I love it so much that we're going to spend two weeks here. We're going to look this week at the five excuses of Moses and how we can relate to those. And the next week we're going to come back to what God says his name is, I am, because that is an amazing statement worthy of camping on for a week. As we arrive here this morning, what I want to bring to mind is something that we talk about often at Grace, and it's intentional. A few years ago, a good friend of mine was kind of pressing me. What do you want for Grace? What do you want to produce at Grace? What do you want to be about? I knew, based on past church experiences, what I didn't want to be, but he was pressing me into what do you want to be? What do you want grace to be? And that's how I arrived at that phrase that we use here all the time, kingdom builders. At grace, I want to produce a church full of kingdom builders. We have five traits at grace. If you leave, if you go out those doors, on the wall, over the glass windows and over the doors are the five traits of grace. People of devotion, step-takers, partners, conduits of grace, and kingdom builders. Those are all out there. That's who we want you to be. And the apex of that is to be a kingdom builder, someone who builds God's kingdom. And the idea is simply this. We acknowledge at Grace that we all spend our lives building a kingdom. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Are you going to waste your life building your little fiefdom? And maybe you're really good at it, and you leave an inheritance and a legacy that lasts for a generation or two. But eventually it will pass away. Are you going to invest your life building your kingdom? Or are you going to invest your life building God's kingdom? And so at Grace, the goal is to have a church full of kingdom builders. People who understand that every gift, every talent, all the time, all the treasure that I've ever been given is to be leveraged to help build God's eternal kingdom, not my sorry temporary one. That's what we try to press on you over and over and over again. And it's my desire to have a church full of activated kingdom builders who understand that every gift they've ever been given is to be used to build God's kingdom, not their own. It's why I so often return to Ephesians 2.10 that says, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And so the idea here is when God knit you in your mother's womb, he had for you good works for you to walk in. Just like he had good works for Moses to walk in. And it's your job as an adult to find those good works and to faithfully walk in them. Parents, it's your job to help your children identify their good works and encourage them and inspire them to walk in them with trust and fidelity to their God. This is what we talk about at Grace all the time. And when we talk about kingdom builders, I'm talking about things big and small. Some of us have big God-sized dreams that we don't dare give breath to because we're afraid people might judge us or that it's impossible and we shy away from it. Others of us have small God dreams right now of just repairing our marriage or a relationship or just growing in our own faith or just getting to a place where we can actually reliably and dutifully disciple our own children. I don't know what the size of your dreams are and I don't know what God has placed on your heart, but here's what I do know. And here's what I am certain of that. God has given you something that he wants you to do. God is pressing on you to take a step of obedience, to build his kingdom, whether that's through generosity, whether that's through a relationship, whether it's realizing that you have been placed in your workplace to be a pastor there, not to forward and advance your career there. That's secondary to your primary role of being a missionary and a pastor in your workplace. Maybe it's simply to prepare your marriage, to repair your marriage. Maybe it's to start a ministry. Maybe it's to start a small group. Maybe it's to start a Bible study. Maybe it's to volunteer somewhere and get involved in a nonprofit. I don't know what God is pressing on each of you to do, but I am certain that he's pressing something somewhere. And so this morning is only going to work if you can lock into that. If you can lock into what that is, and you can ask God, God, what are you pressing on me to do? What should I think about? What should I consider? What's my next step of obedience? What would you have me start? What would you have me stop so I can start? What would you have me do? What conversation would you have me initiate? What neighbor would you have me reach out to? What Bible study would you have me start? What nonprofit would you have me volunteer with? This sermon only works if you're willing to lock into what God has for you to do to build his kingdom. I kind of feel a little bit this morning, this isn't completely true because I do think it's universally applicable if you'll tap into it and let it be, but I kind of feel this morning that this is almost an old school Marine recruitment tactic. I've heard stories of a guy that signed up for the Marines and there was an assembly at a school and the different armed forces, armed services came and they presented, this is why you should join the Army. This is why you should join the Navy, the Air Force. And they kind of did, this is awesome. You get to fly planes. You get to do this. You get to do this. You get to do this. And the Marine goes last. And the Marine comes up, and a lot of you guys know how this story goes. The Marine comes up, and he says, I've been watching you all. There's three, maybe four of you that have what it takes to be a Marine. If you think that's you, I'll be at my desk. That's it. That's the talk. Who has the most recruits? The Marine. Right. That's what I feel like this morning is. This sermon is not for everybody. Some of you are not ready for it. You're just not. That's okay. But some of you are. And if it's you, I want to press you this morning to answer God's call and to step into the obedience to which he is calling you. So let's press in together and learn from the example of Moses at the burning bush. goes out. Remember, as a young man, he walked out of the palace one day, and he saw Egyptian guards beating some Hebrews, some of his brethren, and he went to their defense, and he was so angry and virulent in his defense that he ended up murdering the two guards that were beating the Hebrew people, and so he had to flee. And he went to a place called Midian, and Midian had a priest named Jethro, and Jethro had seven daughters, and one of them was named Zipporah, and Moses married her. And he spent 40 years in the desert as a shepherd, long gone from his previous life in the palace. And one day he's shepherding, and an angel of the Lord appears to him, and there's a bush that's being burned but not consumed and he walks up to it. And in the subsequent reading, what you'll find is that the bush tells him, take your shoes off. You are on holy ground. And he realizes that he's in the very presence of God and God asks him to go do something. God, in our vernacular, we would say, God says, this is how I want you to go build my kingdom. Go and do this. And he tells Moses, I need you to go to Pharaoh, and I need you to tell him to let my people go. And I know that I alluded to this last week, but I want us to be on the same page as far as this ask, because it's a ludicrous ask, right? For some farmer to come, some shepherd from the wilderness to come into the most powerful palace in the world and walk up to the most powerful man in the world and say, I need you to let your slaves go. Let's understand that it's not just slaves and it's not just the ego of that, but this is his very economy. This is how he gets things done. If he lets the Hebrew people go, it's not just, well, that was a possession that we had and now we don't have it anymore. If he lets them go, it's, this is my workforce. This is how I get things done. This is how I pay the bills. This fundamentally changes the foundation of my country. So it's a pretty big ask. And God says, I want you, Moses, to make that ask. And Moses, in this discourse with God, offers five excuses. And I think that they're, I think that they're wonderful. I think it's a really a delightful discourse if you read it and you open your mind to what it must have been like to be there. And I think that we have this discourse with God, whatever you say, whatever, whatever is in your heart that God is calling you to do, however, God wants you to build his kingdom. And here's what I would say about being kingdom builders. One of the reasons we phrase it this way is some churches are, they're the orphan church at this church. We care for orphans and that's wonderful. At this church, we do prison ministry at this church. We do missions missions. At this church, we do children's. At this church, we do outreach to the unhoused. Whatever it may be, some churches have a specific thing that they funnel everyone to. And that's wonderful and good. And I would not deride any of those. Those are always choices between better and best. But at Grace, what we said is, I don't want to direct you where I think God wants you to go. I want you to walk with God and go where he would have you go. And if you can build his kingdom from here, wonderful. If you need to leave this church to go and build God's kingdom elsewhere, good. Be a kingdom builder. So that's our heart. And I don't know what God is calling you to as he seeks to use you to build his kingdom. But I do know that whatever is in your head and whatever you think it might be, we have some of the same excuses that Moses has at the burning bush. And so here's the first one in verse 11 of chapter 3 after God has told him what he wants to do. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Who am I that I could possibly do this? I'm nobody, God. I'm a shepherd. I've been a shepherd for 40 years. No one's going to listen to me. You've got the wrong guy. And this is our natural instinct too. I know somebody who's very dear to me that every time they think of an idea of what God would have them do, they have this voice in their head that probably needs some counseling that pops up that says, who do you think you are? You're not going to do that. You're not going to follow through with that. You're not actually going to do it. And so I would be willing to bet that even as I pressed upon you, what's your thing? What does God want you to do? How can you tomorrow begin to build his kingdom? What steps of obedience can you take? For many of us in this room, our very first thought, if we even had the guts to identify that and say it out loud, speak it to ourselves, I bet for a lot of us the very next thought was, who do you think you are? Who am I that you would send me to do that? I'm not going to, that person's not going to listen to me. No one's going to come to my Bible study. I can't be a pastor in my workplace. They know who I am. And we begin like Moses to disqualify ourselves. So it's helpful to look at God's response when he says, who am I? And God said, I will be with you. And this will be a sign that it is I who have sent you. You have brought the people out of Egypt. You will worship God on this mountain. He's like, I'm going to be with you. I will come back here. And so if God is calling you to something, he will be with you in it. But that's Moses's first excuse. So Moses says, who am I? And God says, it doesn't matter who you are. It matters who I am. I'll be with you. Don't worry about it. God swats it aside. And Moses says, okay, I've got another one. Here's my other excuse. Here's his next question. Verse 13. I'm just going to read straight through so you guys can get a sense of the passage. And God said, I will be with you. And this will be a sign that it is I who has sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. Verse 13. Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they asked me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? And then this won't be on the screen, but verse 14 is, this is where we're going to spend all of our time next week. It's maybe the most amazing verse in Scripture. God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. This is where we get the name of God. I am. And that's what we're going to talk about next week. This name of God is so powerful that 4,000 years later, Jesus is being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by 300 guards of the high priest. And they go to him and they say, are you Jesus of Nazareth? And he says, I am. And those words knock over all 300 guards. These are powerful words. God says, I am. But let's look at what Moses is asking. Okay, okay, all right, all right. I'm going to go back to my people. I'm going to go to the elders of the Hebrews. I'm going to say, God has sent me from Midian here to free our people, and I need your support as I go to Pharaoh and begin to negotiate our release. When I do that, God, this is something you think is possible, which is ridiculous. When I do that, who should I say sent me? What is your name? We're going to talk about God's answer to that next week. But here's the point of Moses' question for this week. Moses is asking, God, will you put your name on this? Will you put your name on this mission? Is this something you are behind? Is this something you are supporting? Am I doing this in your name or am I doing this in my own name? And when we feel that God has directed us to build his kingdom in a certain way, it is right and good to pause and say, God, are you putting your name on this? Because if God's name is on it, then he will see it through. But if God's name is not, then it is on us. And that is not good. So before we take a step of faith and obedience and walk, we need to be sure that God's name is on it. A few weeks ago in FAQ, I was talking about how can we be certain that we have heard from God? How do we know that we know that we know? And I said, you can test him sometimes. Look at what Gideon did with the fleece. God, make this wet and the ground dry. Okay, God, that was a neat trick. Make this dry and the ground wet. Okay, God, thank you. Now I know that I know that I know that your name is on this project and you want me to go do it. It's good to ask if God has put his name on something before we go. I remember at my previous church, and this is one of those moments where I hope that no one from my previous church is listening to my sermons because it's a little bit disparaging and I don't mean it to be. It's just a good illustration of this. My senior pastor was a guy named Jonathan who gave me tremendous opportunities and is still supportive to this day and is really wonderful as a human. And we, at the time, were running three services, 9.30, 10.30, or 11 and noon or something like that. Yeah, 9, 10.30 and noon. And so we were redlining. And those were pretty full. Noon wasn't very full, but we were redlining as a church. And we had some people who wanted to come, but we had a lot of them in the service industry. And so they weren't able to make it to Sunday morning because they were paramedics or nurses or servers or whatever. And Sunday morning was difficult for them. So Jonathan got the idea, let's do a 5 p.m. service. Let's have a Sunday evening service for folks that have to work on Sunday mornings or just would rather come to that. Betty and Steve Rock would love that. They would be the first to sign up. They bug me about it every week. Sorry, Beth. We're not doing it today. And he said, let's do this. But I don't want to preach it. That's too much work. And I don't want our band to have to do it. That's too much work for our volunteers, which about the second point, he was right. About the first point, come on, man, just go preach. But he didn't want to preach it. So he said, we're going to show a video and I'm going to be too tired to run it. So Nate, you be the campus pastor for the 5 p.m. service. You make it go. Recruit people to set up pipe and drape to make the auditorium smaller for the amount of people that are going to be there. Recruit a band, run it, recruit all the volunteers. You're the campus pastor of that service. You be in charge of it. You make it go. It was a big task. And as he and I were talking about it, I remember one day in his office, I looked at him and I said, I just need to know one thing, Jonathan. Do you feel that this is something that God has directed you to do? In today's language for this sermon, I would say, has God put his name on this to you? Has I am sent you? Because I knew that it was going to be discouraging and I knew that it was going to be hard and I knew that it was going to be a tough sell. And I knew that I was going to have to lean on some relationships and some friendships to make this thing go. And I didn't know if it was going to be successful. But I knew that if God put his name on it, that it was going to flourish. And so in those moments of discouragement, I needed to know that Jonathan felt that God had put his name on this and sent him to do it and said, yes, go and execute this thing. Because in those moments of discouragement, I could lean on that moment. That's what I needed. And so I asked him, is this something that you feel strongly God has asked you to and directed you to do? Because if it is, I can have confidence as I walk into it. And his response was, well, let's just see if it works. And I knew it was doomed. I gave it my best effort. We lasted 10, 12 weeks and we folded up the tent. God's name wasn't on it. It's important to say who is sending me? Whose name is on this? We need to know that. And so God says, my name's on it. I am. We're going to talk more next week about what that name means. But he says, you have me. You tell them I am sent you. I'm putting my name on this mission, on this instruction to go build my kingdom. You go. And so Moses says, okay. And you would think that this would be enough. That Moses says, who am I to go? And God says, don't worry about who you are. You worry about who I am. And Moses says, well, I don't have the ability. And he says, I'm going to supply you with the ability. And God says, well, who should I say, send me? And he says, yeah, I will send you. Okay, put my name on it. You're good. You should think that would be enough. But Moses has another excuse. In chapter 4, verse 1. After this whole discourse, this I am, I'm going to give you the power. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Moses' response, because he's human, is, what if they do not believe me or listen to me and say the Lord did not appear to you? Moses says, no one's going to believe me. No one's going to listen to me. I'm going to go and I'm going to say, hey, God sent me and you guys have been in these moments. Or someone tells you that God has told them to do a thing and because we're jerks, our skeptical minds go, did he? So Moses says, I'm going to go and say that I'm doing this in your name and no one's going to believe me. I'm a shepherd from Midian. No one's going to buy this. What do I do? And God's response is really amazing. God says, do you see the staff in your hand? Moses, we presume, based on the text, is holding a staff. And he says, yeah. And God goes, throw it down. Moses threw it on the ground and it became a serpent. And God said, pick it back up. Moses bends down and he grabs the serpent and it becomes a staff. And God says, that's nothing, buddy. I've got a lot more of these in my back pocket. If anybody needs proof that you're with me, I'll give you a sign when you need it. You're fine. It's this little wink. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to show you. And I believe that God is still in the business of doing these things. I believe that God is still in the business of winking at us. He may not turn your staff into a serpent and your serpent into a staff, but he will show you. If there's something that you think God wants you to do and you're trepidatious about it and you don't even dare breathe it and speak it out loud because it makes you so nervous and it makes you so worried. If there is something that you believe God is pressing on you to do and you're not sure if you should do it, God will give you those staff moments. He will give you those winks where he tells you that he is with you. I've had so many of those at Grace, so many of them. It's not very many times that I've been brought to a place where I'm thinking about maybe I need to quit. This is too hard. This is too difficult. Maybe I just need to get out of the way so they can get a real pastor that actually cares about others and things like that. Thanks. Maybe I need to get out of the way. Maybe I'm not in the right job. Maybe I need to quit. I'm just so discouraged. And the very next day, God turns a staff into a serpent. He encourages me in this uniquely God way. And I go, okay, all right, we're in. I remember, I guess it was last week, I mentioned Memorial Day is very special to me at Grace. And so I always preach on Memorial Day because of how grateful I am for what God has done on Memorial Day. It was the first year that I was here. And when I got here in 2017, it was a bad scene. To say it was a dumpster fire is actually a disservice to dumpster fires. It was really bad. If they didn't hire some poor schlep in April, they were not going to make it out of May. It's just where we were. We were in debt. It was bad. And at the time, we were looking week to week at offering. And when I got here and I saw the finances, I just said, I just made it my prayer, God, please don't let us go into any more debt over the summer. Please just let us get through the summer because the summer is bad giving months, just typically at a church. I said, just let us make it through the summer without accruing any debt. And then maybe we can start to chip away at it in the fall. That was my prayer. And we were coming to the end of May. Memorial Day is the last weekend of May. And we needed, I don't remember the numbers, so just go with me, but I think we needed about $11,000 a week to stay afloat. I have no idea what it is now. Probably $47,000. That's how much we need every week. Just give it. But we needed like $11,000 to stay afloat. And that particular week, we needed $13,000 to come in. And again, don't quote me on these numbers, but these are approximate. We need $13,000 to come in just to not go into debt and be able to pay our bills in May. And I remember praying that week, God, please allow $13,000 to come in, which on its face is an absurd prayer because Memorial Day in church world, we all know it's one of the lowest attendance attended and lowest giving Sundays of the year, Memorial Day and Labor Day. So the idea that we would need to bring in whatever it was, 15, 10 to 20% more on a particular week. That was a holiday weekend where nobody comes and nobody gives was an absurd prayer. It was a miracle in and of itself, but I remember praying it. God just let $13,000 come in. And we get to the Tuesday. Tuesday is when I learned what the giving was from our finance director, and I'm just refreshing my email, waiting for it to come in to see if God delivered on this prayer. And I got the email and I frantically click on it and $13,000 did not come in. $28,500 did. It was the largest Sunday of giving of 2017 until December. It was amazing. And I saw God turn my staff into a serpent. And then my serpent into a staff. And he said, I'm here. I got you. I'm with you. Let's go. You're in my hands. And there have been other moments. And so now what I say about grace, Aaron Winston likes it when I say this, God likes grace. I don't know why. He just does. Look at us. Who would have thought? He just likes us. And he's just rooting for us. And he's with us. And he shows up in these amazing ways when he turns our staff into a serpent and our serpent into a staff. And if God is calling you to do something and you have a moment's hesitation about it, I'm certain if you pray for it and if you look for it, he will turn that staff into a serpent for you too. And he will turn that serpent into a staff. Just give him a chance to show up and wink at you. But once he does, walk in faith. Once he does, walk in courage. But don't be like Moses, because Moses saw that cool trick and he's like, yeah, great. But how about this? Fourth excuse. Exodus 4, 10. Moses said to the Lord, I mentioned this last week, Pardon your servant, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue. This is a legitimate gripe. We talked about last week that scholars believe that this probably indicates that he had a speech impediment of some sort, that Moses more than likely stuttered or had some other thing that kept him from speaking eloquently. He was not silver-tongued. He was not charming. Moses was not the guy. There's some people that when you go to dinner and they sit on a certain side of the table and you're on the other side of the table, you're bummed out because all the fun's down there and I have to talk to stupid matt down here you know it's just a bummer you want to be with this guy moses wasn't that guy moses for the sake of this illustration was matt sorry matt that's what you get for sitting on the front row pal he wasn't eloquent he wasnspoken. And how is he supposed to go in to the most powerful man in the world and make these negotiations? How is he supposed to do this? God, you've called me to this thing, but it's not in my skill set. That's not what I'm good at. You want me to be like Chief Shepard? We can talk about that. You want me to go negotiate with the most powerful man in the world? I'm not silver-tongued. I can't do this. So he says, I'm not qualified. I don't have the skill set for that. And I would be willing to bet that if there's something that God is pressing on you, something you need to start, something you need to stop, a conversation you need to initiate, a relationship that you need to patch up, a step of obedience that he wants you to take, I'd be willing to bet that for a lot of us, we kind of go, we disqualify ourselves. We go, I don't have the right skill set. God, you've got the wrong person. Those are not where my talents and abilities lie. I don't think I can do this. That's what Moses said. And you know what God said to Moses? Hey, pal, I made you. I made your mouth. I made your brain. I'll give you the words. Don't worry about it. And later we see, I'm also going to give you your brother Aaron, who is silver-tongued and is good at doing it. I will put, not only will I give you what you need to do to get this done, but I will put people around you who can help you get this done. This is an amazing thing that God does as he sends us to build his kingdom is not only does he give us the skill set that we need to get it done in his goodness and in his grace, but he also surrounds us with the right people who supplement us where we are weak. I can't tell you how blessed I feel in the decisions that we make as a church that at every decision, at every turn, every big thing that we we do, I am surrounded by people both in my elder board and in my friendships and in my advisors and on our committees who are smarter than me about that particular area. They're not smarter than me in general, okay? I'm not willing to concede that. But they're smarter than me in that particular area. And we lean on their expertise and they advise us, God, I am weak here. I can't guide the church in this way. Great. Here's five people to surround you that know more than you about that, and probably are, in reality, smarter than you. You should listen to them. God does this. He doesn't just equip us for what he calls us to, but he surrounds us with the right people that we can lean on and trust as we walk into that. And so that's Moses' last excuse. I don't have the skill set. And God says, I know. I do. I made you. I'm calling you to this. I've put my name on it. I've winked at you. You can go. I've got you. And then we get to Moses' final excuse, which is frankly hilarious. Exodus 4, 12 and 14. Now go. I will help you speak and will teach you what to say. This is what God says to Moses. But Moses says, pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else. Now we're just at the heart of it, right? Like the rest of it was smoke and mirrors, you know? When you ask your kid to do something and they give you all the reasons why they can't do it. And you're just like, yeah, you just don't want to do it. You're just being lazy. Like, yeah, I know. And then they have to go do it. All the smoke and mirrors are gone. Now we get to the heart of the issue. Oh Lord. Fine. I hear what you're saying. Please send someone else. Like I'm comfortable. I've got a life. I'm fine. I don't want to upset the apple cart. I'm used to this. I've been a shepherd for 40 years. This is normal to me. This is what my life is. I'm old. I'm in my sixties. I'm like really old. You know, we're just coasting until the retirement home at this point. When you hit 65, like you're just waiting, right? I'm good. I'm comfortable. Please don't make me do this. Which is what we say. God, my relationships are good. My life is good. My life is comfortable. Don't make me upset the apple cart. Don't make me be the weird one at work. Don't make me be the weird one in the neighborhood. Don't make me rearrange my, I'm 40. Don't make me rearrange my life around those things. That's not how I set things up. God, please, God, send someone else is what we tend to say. And this is the first time this happens, and I think it's amazing. Verse 14, then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. And he said, what about your brother Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He's already on his way to meet you. He'll be glad to see you. So Moses says, I want to have. I've placated you. I've put my name on it. I've given you a sign. I've assured you that I'll be with you, that I created you, that I'll give you the words to speak. I'm even bringing your brother Aaron to go with you. Go do the thing you're supposed to do. And whenever I read this, my thought is, may the wrath of God never be kindled against me because after all the assurances in the world for the thing he wants me to go do, I still have the response of, oh Lord, please send someone else. No! You go do it. You do it. You do it. I don't know what God's pressing on you. I don't know what he would have you start or have you do. But here's what else I know. Or here's what I do know. Moses, from this moment at the burning bush, goes on and becomes, this is true, one of the most known figures in human history. You understand, every tribe and every nation and every tongue virtually that has ever existed from this point on knows the story of Moses. They know who he was. They know what he did. Moses had no idea at the burning bush that the first five books of the Holy Bible would be called the books of Moses. He had no idea that he would bring God's law down from Mount Sinai and give it to the people and that that law would echo through the centuries for Jesus to satisfy it. He had no idea that in eternity he was going to appear with Jesus at the transfiguration on top of a mountain thousands of years later. He had no idea that God is going to use him in Revelation as one of the two witnesses. He had no idea what was in front of him. All he knew is that he needed to do the next thing that God asked him to do. Very quickly, I want to tell you this story because I think it's relevant. I'll try to go fast because we're at the end of our time. I have a friend who was on staff with me at my last church at Greystone, a guy named Jim Hollinsworth. Jim was the associate pastor, executive pastor there. And one Christmas, his small group received something from a sort of co-op that provides things for people in need. And there was a stack of papers of families that were in need and they needed some Christmas gifts that year, much like we do with the tree that we do every year. And him and Melinda at Small Group picked up a piece of paper and there was a family on it that happened to live in a particular trailer park down the road. And all of the families that their small group picked were located in that trailer park. So Jim and Melinda said, gather your stuff and we'll go drop it off. We'll be fine to do that. And so they go to drop it off. And I was talking to Jim this morning because I wanted to get the origin story right. And he said they felt his word was icky going the first time which makes sense but they went anyways and they dropped off these gifts and they dropped off this gift with a single mom and it happened to be in a trailer park where the population was 95% Mexican immigrant and they made they made a good connection with this mom and they kept in touch and so they just followed up to see how she was doing, see if she needed anything in January. And through conversation, one of the things she said is, you know, my kid's going into middle school. I don't speak English. They're struggling academically, and I don't know how to help them. Can you help them? And Melinda said, sure. And so she started showing up at the community center and tutoring this kid after school a few days a week. Well, that kid's friends found out. Another mom started sending more kids to Melinda. And then Jim started going. And then they got a volunteer to start working with them. And then it grew and it grew and it grew. Within a couple of years' time, it became a ministry known as the Path Project. They bought a trailer in that trailer park. They served out of there full time. Melinda quit her job to do this full time. Jim went halftime at the church to give time to Path Project. And then there were more needs and an after-school program and then ESOL for the parents so they could go be advocates for their children in the schools. And then this remarkable thing happened. The company that owned that trailer park reached out to Jim and he says, I don't know what you're doing, but I will give you a free trailer in any trailer park that I own across the country because crime is down, graduation rates are up, rent payment is up. Things are more consistent. This is across the board better for the community. Can we do more of these? Then you fast forward five years and I'm in a gala where things are being auctioned that I can't afford at all. I'm just watching rich people compete with themselves to support Path Project. It's amazing. Jim does it full time. They're nationwide. He didn't have the skill set. He was not a fundraiser when God called him to do this. There was not a vision in there in Jim and Melinda's mind that we're going to go nationwide with community centers and trailer parks to do after school programs and ESOL and offer haircuts and just general hygiene. That was not in their mind. All they did is take the next step. They didn't know at their burning bush what God was going to do. They just knew that they needed to buy some gifts for this family. And then while they were there, they needed to talk to her. God is pressing on you to do something. And maybe it's so big, this is what excites me. There's somebody in here. It's not everybody, and I don't know who. But there's something in your head that's so big that you're scared to say it out loud. You're who I'm preaching to. Do it. Take the step. Do the thing. Let this be your burning bush. Allow God to push you into obedience. Ask him if his name is on it. Watch him turn staffs into serpents and serpents into staffs. Let his assurance wash over you. And when it comes down to you admitting that you need to do it, don't be like Moses and say, oh Lord, please send someone else. Just go do the thing and let's see what God does with a church full of kingdom builders that he is enabling and equipping for his ministry. The last point is simply this. If God is calling you to something, he will equip you for it. If there is something God is pressing on your heart to do, do it. And let's see what happens. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for stories like Jim and Melinda's. Thank you for Moses. Thank you for keeping for us a record of this discourse at the burning bush. For us to see how you give assurances, how you wink at us, how you put your name on things. How you give us the skills that we lack and how you provide for us the people that we need. God, I pray that this can be a burning bush moment for some people in here who will go and do the thing, who will start the ministry or reach out to the people or begin to take the steps. God, make us a church full of kingdom builders, full of people who seek to allow their lives and their time and their talents and their treasures to be used by you to further your kingdom. Give us a distaste for our own such that all we want to do is build yours. Equip us to go, point us in the direction, and wind us up and sustain us as we run towards you. Use us, Lord. Make us kingdom builders. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's so good to see everybody. I've got a lot of people sitting in seats that they don't normally go in. I don't know what you're doing over there, Zach, DJ, Laura, what in the world? I'm totally distracted. And just, I need to give you a peek behind the scenes before I just dive into the sermon like there's nothing happening in my life. I know I'm jovial now. This is serious. Yesterday, my sister-in-law, Jen's sister, Lauren, was in a really bad car accident and has just a lot of broken bones and is currently in surgery. The doctors say that she will recover and walk again, which is just a wild sentence to hear about your sister-in-law on a normal Saturday. So Jen was doing something yesterday afternoon, got home, grabbed Lily, and fired down to Athens, Georgia. So she's down there. So I've got John. Normally on a Sunday morning, I get up at 5, I shower, I come into the office, I'm locked in at 545, I run through the sermon, and I just kind of steep it and I try not to let anything distract me and I just focus on that. And then at about 930, I come over here and I glad hand you guys and pretend like I'm not trying to think about my sermon. But I'm just focused on that for most of the morning. This morning I was getting John ready, right? And so just all the scramble of that and getting a toddler ready and kind of run through my sermon, juggling Bluey and Lucky Charms and then coming back and trying to go through it. And then at 9.20, I'm like, okay, I'm ahead of the game. This is really good. It's time to go to church. I've got plenty of time. And I go to get all my things, and I'm like, I don't know where my car key is. I can't find my car key. And so I just start frantically looking for my car key and at 935 I called our good friend Anna Johnson and I was like, hey I think I need a ride to church. You have a car seat. She had pulled in the parking lot. She was like, all right coming to get you. And so she came around and as we pulled up I said, Anna park front and center because this is a great look for me to show up with you at church while my wife is out of town. So when I say, I don't know what's about to come out of my mouth, it's honest. All right. And if you're sitting there thinking, is this an elaborate way for him to excuse a potentially terrible sermon? Yeah, that is. All right. It's June. Ride with me. In one way, I'm completely frazzled and off center on the sermon and I'm just really hoping and praying that the Lord will order my steps and my thoughts because I want to do justice to this passage because it's one that I love so much. In another way, and I'm reminded of this by the Holy Spirit from time to time, God's been preparing this sermon in my heart and in my head for 20 years. I love this passage. I love where we are. We are at Moses and the burning bush. And I love it so much that we're going to spend two weeks here. We're going to look this week at the five excuses of Moses and how we can relate to those. And the next week we're going to come back to what God says his name is, I am, because that is an amazing statement worthy of camping on for a week. As we arrive here this morning, what I want to bring to mind is something that we talk about often at Grace, and it's intentional. A few years ago, a good friend of mine was kind of pressing me. What do you want for Grace? What do you want to produce at Grace? What do you want to be about? I knew, based on past church experiences, what I didn't want to be, but he was pressing me into what do you want to be? What do you want grace to be? And that's how I arrived at that phrase that we use here all the time, kingdom builders. At grace, I want to produce a church full of kingdom builders. We have five traits at grace. If you leave, if you go out those doors, on the wall, over the glass windows and over the doors are the five traits of grace. People of devotion, step-takers, partners, conduits of grace, and kingdom builders. Those are all out there. That's who we want you to be. And the apex of that is to be a kingdom builder, someone who builds God's kingdom. And the idea is simply this. We acknowledge at Grace that we all spend our lives building a kingdom. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Are you going to waste your life building your little fiefdom? And maybe you're really good at it, and you leave an inheritance and a legacy that lasts for a generation or two. But eventually it will pass away. Are you going to invest your life building your kingdom? Or are you going to invest your life building God's kingdom? And so at Grace, the goal is to have a church full of kingdom builders. People who understand that every gift, every talent, all the time, all the treasure that I've ever been given is to be leveraged to help build God's eternal kingdom, not my sorry temporary one. That's what we try to press on you over and over and over again. And it's my desire to have a church full of activated kingdom builders who understand that every gift they've ever been given is to be used to build God's kingdom, not their own. It's why I so often return to Ephesians 2.10 that says, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And so the idea here is when God knit you in your mother's womb, he had for you good works for you to walk in. Just like he had good works for Moses to walk in. And it's your job as an adult to find those good works and to faithfully walk in them. Parents, it's your job to help your children identify their good works and encourage them and inspire them to walk in them with trust and fidelity to their God. This is what we talk about at Grace all the time. And when we talk about kingdom builders, I'm talking about things big and small. Some of us have big God-sized dreams that we don't dare give breath to because we're afraid people might judge us or that it's impossible and we shy away from it. Others of us have small God dreams right now of just repairing our marriage or a relationship or just growing in our own faith or just getting to a place where we can actually reliably and dutifully disciple our own children. I don't know what the size of your dreams are and I don't know what God has placed on your heart, but here's what I do know. And here's what I am certain of that. God has given you something that he wants you to do. God is pressing on you to take a step of obedience, to build his kingdom, whether that's through generosity, whether that's through a relationship, whether it's realizing that you have been placed in your workplace to be a pastor there, not to forward and advance your career there. That's secondary to your primary role of being a missionary and a pastor in your workplace. Maybe it's simply to prepare your marriage, to repair your marriage. Maybe it's to start a ministry. Maybe it's to start a small group. Maybe it's to start a Bible study. Maybe it's to volunteer somewhere and get involved in a nonprofit. I don't know what God is pressing on each of you to do, but I am certain that he's pressing something somewhere. And so this morning is only going to work if you can lock into that. If you can lock into what that is, and you can ask God, God, what are you pressing on me to do? What should I think about? What should I consider? What's my next step of obedience? What would you have me start? What would you have me stop so I can start? What would you have me do? What conversation would you have me initiate? What neighbor would you have me reach out to? What Bible study would you have me start? What nonprofit would you have me volunteer with? This sermon only works if you're willing to lock into what God has for you to do to build his kingdom. I kind of feel a little bit this morning, this isn't completely true because I do think it's universally applicable if you'll tap into it and let it be, but I kind of feel this morning that this is almost an old school Marine recruitment tactic. I've heard stories of a guy that signed up for the Marines and there was an assembly at a school and the different armed forces, armed services came and they presented, this is why you should join the Army. This is why you should join the Navy, the Air Force. And they kind of did, this is awesome. You get to fly planes. You get to do this. You get to do this. You get to do this. And the Marine goes last. And the Marine comes up, and a lot of you guys know how this story goes. The Marine comes up, and he says, I've been watching you all. There's three, maybe four of you that have what it takes to be a Marine. If you think that's you, I'll be at my desk. That's it. That's the talk. Who has the most recruits? The Marine. Right. That's what I feel like this morning is. This sermon is not for everybody. Some of you are not ready for it. You're just not. That's okay. But some of you are. And if it's you, I want to press you this morning to answer God's call and to step into the obedience to which he is calling you. So let's press in together and learn from the example of Moses at the burning bush. goes out. Remember, as a young man, he walked out of the palace one day, and he saw Egyptian guards beating some Hebrews, some of his brethren, and he went to their defense, and he was so angry and virulent in his defense that he ended up murdering the two guards that were beating the Hebrew people, and so he had to flee. And he went to a place called Midian, and Midian had a priest named Jethro, and Jethro had seven daughters, and one of them was named Zipporah, and Moses married her. And he spent 40 years in the desert as a shepherd, long gone from his previous life in the palace. And one day he's shepherding, and an angel of the Lord appears to him, and there's a bush that's being burned but not consumed and he walks up to it. And in the subsequent reading, what you'll find is that the bush tells him, take your shoes off. You are on holy ground. And he realizes that he's in the very presence of God and God asks him to go do something. God, in our vernacular, we would say, God says, this is how I want you to go build my kingdom. Go and do this. And he tells Moses, I need you to go to Pharaoh, and I need you to tell him to let my people go. And I know that I alluded to this last week, but I want us to be on the same page as far as this ask, because it's a ludicrous ask, right? For some farmer to come, some shepherd from the wilderness to come into the most powerful palace in the world and walk up to the most powerful man in the world and say, I need you to let your slaves go. Let's understand that it's not just slaves and it's not just the ego of that, but this is his very economy. This is how he gets things done. If he lets the Hebrew people go, it's not just, well, that was a possession that we had and now we don't have it anymore. If he lets them go, it's, this is my workforce. This is how I get things done. This is how I pay the bills. This fundamentally changes the foundation of my country. So it's a pretty big ask. And God says, I want you, Moses, to make that ask. And Moses, in this discourse with God, offers five excuses. And I think that they're, I think that they're wonderful. I think it's a really a delightful discourse if you read it and you open your mind to what it must have been like to be there. And I think that we have this discourse with God, whatever you say, whatever, whatever is in your heart that God is calling you to do, however, God wants you to build his kingdom. And here's what I would say about being kingdom builders. One of the reasons we phrase it this way is some churches are, they're the orphan church at this church. We care for orphans and that's wonderful. At this church, we do prison ministry at this church. We do missions missions. At this church, we do children's. At this church, we do outreach to the unhoused. Whatever it may be, some churches have a specific thing that they funnel everyone to. And that's wonderful and good. And I would not deride any of those. Those are always choices between better and best. But at Grace, what we said is, I don't want to direct you where I think God wants you to go. I want you to walk with God and go where he would have you go. And if you can build his kingdom from here, wonderful. If you need to leave this church to go and build God's kingdom elsewhere, good. Be a kingdom builder. So that's our heart. And I don't know what God is calling you to as he seeks to use you to build his kingdom. But I do know that whatever is in your head and whatever you think it might be, we have some of the same excuses that Moses has at the burning bush. And so here's the first one in verse 11 of chapter 3 after God has told him what he wants to do. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Who am I that I could possibly do this? I'm nobody, God. I'm a shepherd. I've been a shepherd for 40 years. No one's going to listen to me. You've got the wrong guy. And this is our natural instinct too. I know somebody who's very dear to me that every time they think of an idea of what God would have them do, they have this voice in their head that probably needs some counseling that pops up that says, who do you think you are? You're not going to do that. You're not going to follow through with that. You're not actually going to do it. And so I would be willing to bet that even as I pressed upon you, what's your thing? What does God want you to do? How can you tomorrow begin to build his kingdom? What steps of obedience can you take? For many of us in this room, our very first thought, if we even had the guts to identify that and say it out loud, speak it to ourselves, I bet for a lot of us the very next thought was, who do you think you are? Who am I that you would send me to do that? I'm not going to, that person's not going to listen to me. No one's going to come to my Bible study. I can't be a pastor in my workplace. They know who I am. And we begin like Moses to disqualify ourselves. So it's helpful to look at God's response when he says, who am I? And God said, I will be with you. And this will be a sign that it is I who have sent you. You have brought the people out of Egypt. You will worship God on this mountain. He's like, I'm going to be with you. I will come back here. And so if God is calling you to something, he will be with you in it. But that's Moses's first excuse. So Moses says, who am I? And God says, it doesn't matter who you are. It matters who I am. I'll be with you. Don't worry about it. God swats it aside. And Moses says, okay, I've got another one. Here's my other excuse. Here's his next question. Verse 13. I'm just going to read straight through so you guys can get a sense of the passage. And God said, I will be with you. And this will be a sign that it is I who has sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. Verse 13. Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they asked me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? And then this won't be on the screen, but verse 14 is, this is where we're going to spend all of our time next week. It's maybe the most amazing verse in Scripture. God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. This is where we get the name of God. I am. And that's what we're going to talk about next week. This name of God is so powerful that 4,000 years later, Jesus is being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by 300 guards of the high priest. And they go to him and they say, are you Jesus of Nazareth? And he says, I am. And those words knock over all 300 guards. These are powerful words. God says, I am. But let's look at what Moses is asking. Okay, okay, all right, all right. I'm going to go back to my people. I'm going to go to the elders of the Hebrews. I'm going to say, God has sent me from Midian here to free our people, and I need your support as I go to Pharaoh and begin to negotiate our release. When I do that, God, this is something you think is possible, which is ridiculous. When I do that, who should I say sent me? What is your name? We're going to talk about God's answer to that next week. But here's the point of Moses' question for this week. Moses is asking, God, will you put your name on this? Will you put your name on this mission? Is this something you are behind? Is this something you are supporting? Am I doing this in your name or am I doing this in my own name? And when we feel that God has directed us to build his kingdom in a certain way, it is right and good to pause and say, God, are you putting your name on this? Because if God's name is on it, then he will see it through. But if God's name is not, then it is on us. And that is not good. So before we take a step of faith and obedience and walk, we need to be sure that God's name is on it. A few weeks ago in FAQ, I was talking about how can we be certain that we have heard from God? How do we know that we know that we know? And I said, you can test him sometimes. Look at what Gideon did with the fleece. God, make this wet and the ground dry. Okay, God, that was a neat trick. Make this dry and the ground wet. Okay, God, thank you. Now I know that I know that I know that your name is on this project and you want me to go do it. It's good to ask if God has put his name on something before we go. I remember at my previous church, and this is one of those moments where I hope that no one from my previous church is listening to my sermons because it's a little bit disparaging and I don't mean it to be. It's just a good illustration of this. My senior pastor was a guy named Jonathan who gave me tremendous opportunities and is still supportive to this day and is really wonderful as a human. And we, at the time, were running three services, 9.30, 10.30, or 11 and noon or something like that. Yeah, 9, 10.30 and noon. And so we were redlining. And those were pretty full. Noon wasn't very full, but we were redlining as a church. And we had some people who wanted to come, but we had a lot of them in the service industry. And so they weren't able to make it to Sunday morning because they were paramedics or nurses or servers or whatever. And Sunday morning was difficult for them. So Jonathan got the idea, let's do a 5 p.m. service. Let's have a Sunday evening service for folks that have to work on Sunday mornings or just would rather come to that. Betty and Steve Rock would love that. They would be the first to sign up. They bug me about it every week. Sorry, Beth. We're not doing it today. And he said, let's do this. But I don't want to preach it. That's too much work. And I don't want our band to have to do it. That's too much work for our volunteers, which about the second point, he was right. About the first point, come on, man, just go preach. But he didn't want to preach it. So he said, we're going to show a video and I'm going to be too tired to run it. So Nate, you be the campus pastor for the 5 p.m. service. You make it go. Recruit people to set up pipe and drape to make the auditorium smaller for the amount of people that are going to be there. Recruit a band, run it, recruit all the volunteers. You're the campus pastor of that service. You be in charge of it. You make it go. It was a big task. And as he and I were talking about it, I remember one day in his office, I looked at him and I said, I just need to know one thing, Jonathan. Do you feel that this is something that God has directed you to do? In today's language for this sermon, I would say, has God put his name on this to you? Has I am sent you? Because I knew that it was going to be discouraging and I knew that it was going to be hard and I knew that it was going to be a tough sell. And I knew that I was going to have to lean on some relationships and some friendships to make this thing go. And I didn't know if it was going to be successful. But I knew that if God put his name on it, that it was going to flourish. And so in those moments of discouragement, I needed to know that Jonathan felt that God had put his name on this and sent him to do it and said, yes, go and execute this thing. Because in those moments of discouragement, I could lean on that moment. That's what I needed. And so I asked him, is this something that you feel strongly God has asked you to and directed you to do? Because if it is, I can have confidence as I walk into it. And his response was, well, let's just see if it works. And I knew it was doomed. I gave it my best effort. We lasted 10, 12 weeks and we folded up the tent. God's name wasn't on it. It's important to say who is sending me? Whose name is on this? We need to know that. And so God says, my name's on it. I am. We're going to talk more next week about what that name means. But he says, you have me. You tell them I am sent you. I'm putting my name on this mission, on this instruction to go build my kingdom. You go. And so Moses says, okay. And you would think that this would be enough. That Moses says, who am I to go? And God says, don't worry about who you are. You worry about who I am. And Moses says, well, I don't have the ability. And he says, I'm going to supply you with the ability. And God says, well, who should I say, send me? And he says, yeah, I will send you. Okay, put my name on it. You're good. You should think that would be enough. But Moses has another excuse. In chapter 4, verse 1. After this whole discourse, this I am, I'm going to give you the power. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Moses' response, because he's human, is, what if they do not believe me or listen to me and say the Lord did not appear to you? Moses says, no one's going to believe me. No one's going to listen to me. I'm going to go and I'm going to say, hey, God sent me and you guys have been in these moments. Or someone tells you that God has told them to do a thing and because we're jerks, our skeptical minds go, did he? So Moses says, I'm going to go and say that I'm doing this in your name and no one's going to believe me. I'm a shepherd from Midian. No one's going to buy this. What do I do? And God's response is really amazing. God says, do you see the staff in your hand? Moses, we presume, based on the text, is holding a staff. And he says, yeah. And God goes, throw it down. Moses threw it on the ground and it became a serpent. And God said, pick it back up. Moses bends down and he grabs the serpent and it becomes a staff. And God says, that's nothing, buddy. I've got a lot more of these in my back pocket. If anybody needs proof that you're with me, I'll give you a sign when you need it. You're fine. It's this little wink. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to show you. And I believe that God is still in the business of doing these things. I believe that God is still in the business of winking at us. He may not turn your staff into a serpent and your serpent into a staff, but he will show you. If there's something that you think God wants you to do and you're trepidatious about it and you don't even dare breathe it and speak it out loud because it makes you so nervous and it makes you so worried. If there is something that you believe God is pressing on you to do and you're not sure if you should do it, God will give you those staff moments. He will give you those winks where he tells you that he is with you. I've had so many of those at Grace, so many of them. It's not very many times that I've been brought to a place where I'm thinking about maybe I need to quit. This is too hard. This is too difficult. Maybe I just need to get out of the way so they can get a real pastor that actually cares about others and things like that. Thanks. Maybe I need to get out of the way. Maybe I'm not in the right job. Maybe I need to quit. I'm just so discouraged. And the very next day, God turns a staff into a serpent. He encourages me in this uniquely God way. And I go, okay, all right, we're in. I remember, I guess it was last week, I mentioned Memorial Day is very special to me at Grace. And so I always preach on Memorial Day because of how grateful I am for what God has done on Memorial Day. It was the first year that I was here. And when I got here in 2017, it was a bad scene. To say it was a dumpster fire is actually a disservice to dumpster fires. It was really bad. If they didn't hire some poor schlep in April, they were not going to make it out of May. It's just where we were. We were in debt. It was bad. And at the time, we were looking week to week at offering. And when I got here and I saw the finances, I just said, I just made it my prayer, God, please don't let us go into any more debt over the summer. Please just let us get through the summer because the summer is bad giving months, just typically at a church. I said, just let us make it through the summer without accruing any debt. And then maybe we can start to chip away at it in the fall. That was my prayer. And we were coming to the end of May. Memorial Day is the last weekend of May. And we needed, I don't remember the numbers, so just go with me, but I think we needed about $11,000 a week to stay afloat. I have no idea what it is now. Probably $47,000. That's how much we need every week. Just give it. But we needed like $11,000 to stay afloat. And that particular week, we needed $13,000 to come in. And again, don't quote me on these numbers, but these are approximate. We need $13,000 to come in just to not go into debt and be able to pay our bills in May. And I remember praying that week, God, please allow $13,000 to come in, which on its face is an absurd prayer because Memorial Day in church world, we all know it's one of the lowest attendance attended and lowest giving Sundays of the year, Memorial Day and Labor Day. So the idea that we would need to bring in whatever it was, 15, 10 to 20% more on a particular week. That was a holiday weekend where nobody comes and nobody gives was an absurd prayer. It was a miracle in and of itself, but I remember praying it. God just let $13,000 come in. And we get to the Tuesday. Tuesday is when I learned what the giving was from our finance director, and I'm just refreshing my email, waiting for it to come in to see if God delivered on this prayer. And I got the email and I frantically click on it and $13,000 did not come in. $28,500 did. It was the largest Sunday of giving of 2017 until December. It was amazing. And I saw God turn my staff into a serpent. And then my serpent into a staff. And he said, I'm here. I got you. I'm with you. Let's go. You're in my hands. And there have been other moments. And so now what I say about grace, Aaron Winston likes it when I say this, God likes grace. I don't know why. He just does. Look at us. Who would have thought? He just likes us. And he's just rooting for us. And he's with us. And he shows up in these amazing ways when he turns our staff into a serpent and our serpent into a staff. And if God is calling you to do something and you have a moment's hesitation about it, I'm certain if you pray for it and if you look for it, he will turn that staff into a serpent for you too. And he will turn that serpent into a staff. Just give him a chance to show up and wink at you. But once he does, walk in faith. Once he does, walk in courage. But don't be like Moses, because Moses saw that cool trick and he's like, yeah, great. But how about this? Fourth excuse. Exodus 4, 10. Moses said to the Lord, I mentioned this last week, Pardon your servant, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue. This is a legitimate gripe. We talked about last week that scholars believe that this probably indicates that he had a speech impediment of some sort, that Moses more than likely stuttered or had some other thing that kept him from speaking eloquently. He was not silver-tongued. He was not charming. Moses was not the guy. There's some people that when you go to dinner and they sit on a certain side of the table and you're on the other side of the table, you're bummed out because all the fun's down there and I have to talk to stupid matt down here you know it's just a bummer you want to be with this guy moses wasn't that guy moses for the sake of this illustration was matt sorry matt that's what you get for sitting on the front row pal he wasn't eloquent he wasnspoken. And how is he supposed to go in to the most powerful man in the world and make these negotiations? How is he supposed to do this? God, you've called me to this thing, but it's not in my skill set. That's not what I'm good at. You want me to be like Chief Shepard? We can talk about that. You want me to go negotiate with the most powerful man in the world? I'm not silver-tongued. I can't do this. So he says, I'm not qualified. I don't have the skill set for that. And I would be willing to bet that if there's something that God is pressing on you, something you need to start, something you need to stop, a conversation you need to initiate, a relationship that you need to patch up, a step of obedience that he wants you to take, I'd be willing to bet that for a lot of us, we kind of go, we disqualify ourselves. We go, I don't have the right skill set. God, you've got the wrong person. Those are not where my talents and abilities lie. I don't think I can do this. That's what Moses said. And you know what God said to Moses? Hey, pal, I made you. I made your mouth. I made your brain. I'll give you the words. Don't worry about it. And later we see, I'm also going to give you your brother Aaron, who is silver-tongued and is good at doing it. I will put, not only will I give you what you need to do to get this done, but I will put people around you who can help you get this done. This is an amazing thing that God does as he sends us to build his kingdom is not only does he give us the skill set that we need to get it done in his goodness and in his grace, but he also surrounds us with the right people who supplement us where we are weak. I can't tell you how blessed I feel in the decisions that we make as a church that at every decision, at every turn, every big thing that we we do, I am surrounded by people both in my elder board and in my friendships and in my advisors and on our committees who are smarter than me about that particular area. They're not smarter than me in general, okay? I'm not willing to concede that. But they're smarter than me in that particular area. And we lean on their expertise and they advise us, God, I am weak here. I can't guide the church in this way. Great. Here's five people to surround you that know more than you about that, and probably are, in reality, smarter than you. You should listen to them. God does this. He doesn't just equip us for what he calls us to, but he surrounds us with the right people that we can lean on and trust as we walk into that. And so that's Moses' last excuse. I don't have the skill set. And God says, I know. I do. I made you. I'm calling you to this. I've put my name on it. I've winked at you. You can go. I've got you. And then we get to Moses' final excuse, which is frankly hilarious. Exodus 4, 12 and 14. Now go. I will help you speak and will teach you what to say. This is what God says to Moses. But Moses says, pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else. Now we're just at the heart of it, right? Like the rest of it was smoke and mirrors, you know? When you ask your kid to do something and they give you all the reasons why they can't do it. And you're just like, yeah, you just don't want to do it. You're just being lazy. Like, yeah, I know. And then they have to go do it. All the smoke and mirrors are gone. Now we get to the heart of the issue. Oh Lord. Fine. I hear what you're saying. Please send someone else. Like I'm comfortable. I've got a life. I'm fine. I don't want to upset the apple cart. I'm used to this. I've been a shepherd for 40 years. This is normal to me. This is what my life is. I'm old. I'm in my sixties. I'm like really old. You know, we're just coasting until the retirement home at this point. When you hit 65, like you're just waiting, right? I'm good. I'm comfortable. Please don't make me do this. Which is what we say. God, my relationships are good. My life is good. My life is comfortable. Don't make me upset the apple cart. Don't make me be the weird one at work. Don't make me be the weird one in the neighborhood. Don't make me rearrange my, I'm 40. Don't make me rearrange my life around those things. That's not how I set things up. God, please, God, send someone else is what we tend to say. And this is the first time this happens, and I think it's amazing. Verse 14, then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. And he said, what about your brother Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He's already on his way to meet you. He'll be glad to see you. So Moses says, I want to have. I've placated you. I've put my name on it. I've given you a sign. I've assured you that I'll be with you, that I created you, that I'll give you the words to speak. I'm even bringing your brother Aaron to go with you. Go do the thing you're supposed to do. And whenever I read this, my thought is, may the wrath of God never be kindled against me because after all the assurances in the world for the thing he wants me to go do, I still have the response of, oh Lord, please send someone else. No! You go do it. You do it. You do it. I don't know what God's pressing on you. I don't know what he would have you start or have you do. But here's what else I know. Or here's what I do know. Moses, from this moment at the burning bush, goes on and becomes, this is true, one of the most known figures in human history. You understand, every tribe and every nation and every tongue virtually that has ever existed from this point on knows the story of Moses. They know who he was. They know what he did. Moses had no idea at the burning bush that the first five books of the Holy Bible would be called the books of Moses. He had no idea that he would bring God's law down from Mount Sinai and give it to the people and that that law would echo through the centuries for Jesus to satisfy it. He had no idea that in eternity he was going to appear with Jesus at the transfiguration on top of a mountain thousands of years later. He had no idea that God is going to use him in Revelation as one of the two witnesses. He had no idea what was in front of him. All he knew is that he needed to do the next thing that God asked him to do. Very quickly, I want to tell you this story because I think it's relevant. I'll try to go fast because we're at the end of our time. I have a friend who was on staff with me at my last church at Greystone, a guy named Jim Hollinsworth. Jim was the associate pastor, executive pastor there. And one Christmas, his small group received something from a sort of co-op that provides things for people in need. And there was a stack of papers of families that were in need and they needed some Christmas gifts that year, much like we do with the tree that we do every year. And him and Melinda at Small Group picked up a piece of paper and there was a family on it that happened to live in a particular trailer park down the road. And all of the families that their small group picked were located in that trailer park. So Jim and Melinda said, gather your stuff and we'll go drop it off. We'll be fine to do that. And so they go to drop it off. And I was talking to Jim this morning because I wanted to get the origin story right. And he said they felt his word was icky going the first time which makes sense but they went anyways and they dropped off these gifts and they dropped off this gift with a single mom and it happened to be in a trailer park where the population was 95% Mexican immigrant and they made they made a good connection with this mom and they kept in touch and so they just followed up to see how she was doing, see if she needed anything in January. And through conversation, one of the things she said is, you know, my kid's going into middle school. I don't speak English. They're struggling academically, and I don't know how to help them. Can you help them? And Melinda said, sure. And so she started showing up at the community center and tutoring this kid after school a few days a week. Well, that kid's friends found out. Another mom started sending more kids to Melinda. And then Jim started going. And then they got a volunteer to start working with them. And then it grew and it grew and it grew. Within a couple of years' time, it became a ministry known as the Path Project. They bought a trailer in that trailer park. They served out of there full time. Melinda quit her job to do this full time. Jim went halftime at the church to give time to Path Project. And then there were more needs and an after-school program and then ESOL for the parents so they could go be advocates for their children in the schools. And then this remarkable thing happened. The company that owned that trailer park reached out to Jim and he says, I don't know what you're doing, but I will give you a free trailer in any trailer park that I own across the country because crime is down, graduation rates are up, rent payment is up. Things are more consistent. This is across the board better for the community. Can we do more of these? Then you fast forward five years and I'm in a gala where things are being auctioned that I can't afford at all. I'm just watching rich people compete with themselves to support Path Project. It's amazing. Jim does it full time. They're nationwide. He didn't have the skill set. He was not a fundraiser when God called him to do this. There was not a vision in there in Jim and Melinda's mind that we're going to go nationwide with community centers and trailer parks to do after school programs and ESOL and offer haircuts and just general hygiene. That was not in their mind. All they did is take the next step. They didn't know at their burning bush what God was going to do. They just knew that they needed to buy some gifts for this family. And then while they were there, they needed to talk to her. God is pressing on you to do something. And maybe it's so big, this is what excites me. There's somebody in here. It's not everybody, and I don't know who. But there's something in your head that's so big that you're scared to say it out loud. You're who I'm preaching to. Do it. Take the step. Do the thing. Let this be your burning bush. Allow God to push you into obedience. Ask him if his name is on it. Watch him turn staffs into serpents and serpents into staffs. Let his assurance wash over you. And when it comes down to you admitting that you need to do it, don't be like Moses and say, oh Lord, please send someone else. Just go do the thing and let's see what God does with a church full of kingdom builders that he is enabling and equipping for his ministry. The last point is simply this. If God is calling you to something, he will equip you for it. If there is something God is pressing on your heart to do, do it. And let's see what happens. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for stories like Jim and Melinda's. Thank you for Moses. Thank you for keeping for us a record of this discourse at the burning bush. For us to see how you give assurances, how you wink at us, how you put your name on things. How you give us the skills that we lack and how you provide for us the people that we need. God, I pray that this can be a burning bush moment for some people in here who will go and do the thing, who will start the ministry or reach out to the people or begin to take the steps. God, make us a church full of kingdom builders, full of people who seek to allow their lives and their time and their talents and their treasures to be used by you to further your kingdom. Give us a distaste for our own such that all we want to do is build yours. Equip us to go, point us in the direction, and wind us up and sustain us as we run towards you. Use us, Lord. Make us kingdom builders. In Jesus' name, amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. This is the fourth part in our series that we've launched the year with called Things You Should Know. The idea is that as Christians or as church people, there's things that we talk about, things that get mentioned that we all kind of nod along with and seem to understand, but maybe we've never stopped to slow down or had the courage to ask the questions that we have about these things. So we wanted to take a month and just kind of look at some of the different topics that come up in church world, that come up in Christendom, but maybe we have never delved into on our own, and maybe we have some existing questions about those things. Last week, we looked at the Sabbath, and I hope that your view and framework around the Sabbath was changed and that some of you are coming off enjoying one of those yesterday or have chosen today as your Sabbath, and I hope that it goes very well for you. This morning, we want to talk about the devil. I think that there may be one other time when I have preached about Satan. It's not a fun topic. It's not fun research to do. If someone got a hold of my browser history this week, they might be really worried about Nate and all the things that I've Googled that have to do with Satan and his influence. So it's not something that we talk about a lot, but it's something that we definitely need to address. I think in church circles, we hear about Satan. We hear about the enemy. We know that he's called Lucifer. We know that he's against us. We know that he hates God. We know that he hates us. But maybe we don't know very much beyond that, beyond what's maybe been put forth in pop culture or something like that. And so I thought it would be good to take a week and focus on Satan, focus on the enemy, on who he is and what he does and really what he wants, what he wants with you and what he wants with me. The best place to do this clearly is scripture. So one of the things I did this week is I sat down and I just started keeping a list of all the places where Satan shows up in scripture or references to him are made in scripture. And I made a master list of all of those and then looked at that list and found the commonalities and tried to distill down some of the essence of what the Bible has to say about the enemy. And so I found four passages that I think sum up who Satan is in an effective way, and I wanted to look at those. And then I wanted to ask the question, okay, that's who he is. How does he accomplish his goals? So to understand who Satan is, one of the first things we want to do is look at his origin. And it's worth saying that we're not exactly positive where he came from or what he does. Now, we think that we know. We think we know where he came from. Most scholars agree, but it's important to point out, and I need to be intellectually honest and say that there's no one explicit place in Scripture where it says for sure this is where Satan came from. But our best guess is found in Ezekiel and then more pointedly in this passage in Isaiah. This is what Isaiah writes. He says, This is primarily where we get the origin story of Satan. It's believed that Satan was an angel. His name was Lucifer. That's what Odaystar means, morning star. That's what Lucifer means. And we believe that he was one of the archangels. He may have even been in charge of worship in heaven. He was a powerful angel, which means if you could see him, you would see that he was beautiful and intimidating and mighty and incredible. He looks very little like the cartoon depictions of him. And one day he told a lie to himself that he could be like God. He looked at God ruling over heaven and he said, I could do that. As a matter of fact, I could rule over you. And so he decided that he was going to lead a coup or an insurrection against God to overtake heaven. And it's believed that Satan was cast out of heaven along with a third of the angels that then became demons. And that began this war, this tension that's existed for all of time that you and I find ourselves in the middle of where Satan and God the Father war over our very souls. And it's interesting to me that the first lie that Satan believed is the lie that he told us. It's the first lie that we believed. It's the lie that we continue to believe. It's the fundamental lie of all of sin, which is, I could be like God. I don't need him. I can do this myself. I can call the shots. Isn't that what he whispered into the ear of Eve? Didn't he go down and slither up to her and say, you know, he's told you not to eat of this tree because he doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want you to know what he knows. He grabbed her and he said, you could do that. You could be him. You understand? If you get nothing else out of this sermon, just please understand, that's the fundamental root of all sin, is deciding, you know what? I think I could be the boss of myself. I don't really think I need his standards. I think I can figure this out on my own. That's the root of all sin. And it was the root of Satan's fall, who fell from heaven and set about for all of time, warring against the Father. And in Hebrew, actually, in the language of Hebrew, his name means accuser or adversary. He is the accuser of us. He is the adversary of God. He is opposed to God and all the things of God. And so that means he is your accuser and that he is your adversary. And the sneaky and scary part is he accuses you to you. He runs you down to you. God doesn't believe what he's saying, but you might. So he accuses you and he brings shame and guilt on your conscience and he opposes you. In the New Testament, we get a little bit clearer picture of who Satan is and what he came to do. Jesus says in the book of John, he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he lies because lying is his native tongue. It's all he knows how to do is to lie and to deceive. And it's important that we point out that these aren't simple lies. These aren't dumb, foolish lies that anybody could see past. It's not lies like the ones in this commercial that I'm reminded of from a few years ago. I think it originally started as a Super Bowl commercial, but I'm not certain. But it makes me chuckle every time I see it. There's this dad, and he's sitting in the living room, right? And his back's against the couch, and he's got the coffee table in front of him, and there's Cheeto dust everywhere. Just this orange dust explosion. It's on the couch, it's on the floor, it's on the toys, it's everywhere. It's all over the place. And he's looking at that, and you can hear kids in the distance, and one of them, looks like about a four-year-old boy, comes running through the living room past his dad and he's got a Cheeto explosion all over himself. Face, shirt, pants, hands, the whole deal. And his dad grabs him and he points at the Cheeto explosion in the room. And he says, do you know anything about this? And the little kid goes, nope. And runs off. And I love it. I think it's great. Satan doesn't tell lies like that. He doesn't tell lies with Cheeto dust everywhere that are easy to pin on him. His lies are far more pernicious. The thing to understand about him that might make us uncomfortable and should make us uncomfortable is that if he's an angel and he's eternal, he's a lot smarter than us. He's a lot smarter than we are. He knows how to manipulate you. His lies look a lot less like, no, I don't know what's going on with the Cheeto dust, and a lot more like, who do you think you are? Why do you think you could ever do that? Why do you think they would ever listen to you? What would make you believe that they could ever believe you? What could make you think that that sort of sin was okay? How could you ever possibly justify that? You are the worst. His lies are a lot more sneaky and pernicious, I think, than we give him credit for. He's excellent at lying and at convincing us of things that aren't true. In part, and this is interesting to me, I almost pulled this thread and preached about this this week, in part because in the lies and the things that he offers us, they're a little bit true. They look like the truth. He very rarely offers us something that we don't have or that we won't get. He just offers it to us right now or just offers it to us in a package that seems more attractive. He's an incredibly effective liar. And then in Peter, we see him say something. And I think it's interesting that Peter chooses to talk about the devil. Because if there was anybody in Jesus's inner circle who wouldn't show as much concern for Satan, it had to be Peter. Peter is the guy who's talk first, think later. Peter's the guy who jumped out of the boat and walked on water. Peter's the guy that when Jesus said to his disciples, you will all betray me and leave me, Peter's the one that stepped up and said, no, I won't, never, God, I will die before I leave you. And we know that he did betray Christ in this really poignant scene. But my point is that Peter was the hard charger. He was the one out in front. He was the one that was all bluster and gusto. And even Peter, who if anybody would say, don't worry about Satan, we got Jesus, he's not a big deal. It would be Peter. But listen to what he says at the end of his life in his letter. 1 Peter 5, verse 8. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Listen to me. Listen to me. We don't want to think about it. We don't want to acknowledge it. But there is an active and effective and intelligent and efficient enemy of your soul who is prowling about seeking to destroy you. There is an enemy stalking around your children and around your marriage and around your husband and your wife and around your friendships and your church and your small group and the things that you hold dear, there is an enemy prowling around you seeking to destroy those things. And shame on me for not bringing that to your attention more often. It's an uncomfortable thing to talk about Satan. It's certainly not a fun thing. But based on the frequency with which he's mentioned in the Bible, it seems reasonable to think that God desperately wants us to be aware of His presence. Can I tell you for what it's worth that even as we were starting up this service this morning, things started going wrong with my microphone that have never gone wrong, not since Steve got here anyways. The Lord knows what used to go wrong with it. But things started happening and distractions were going and we came right up to the minute when we're supposed to launch the service like we really haven't in a long, long time. And I really just think it's because Satan would prefer you not think about him. He would prefer I never did this. He would prefer to continue to operate in the shadows, to continue to prowl about like a roaring lion, ever there, ever present, but never aware of him. And shame on me for not bringing him to our attention more often. But the reality is there is an incredibly effective enemy prowling around our families trying to figure out who he can pick off. So I think it behooves us to ask the question, how does he do that? How does he devour us? How does he lie to us? What's his goal? How do we know when Satan is acting in our lives? How do we know when it's just us, just our nature, just circumstance, or Satan is at play here? Well, I think that there's a really interesting conversation that Jesus actually has with Peter that sheds some light on this. And it's really made me reshape the way I think about satanic influence in our life. But towards the end of Jesus's ministry, towards the end of his life, Jesus gathers the disciples around and he tells them, hey, I've got to go to Jerusalem. They were in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. And he says, I need to go south to Jerusalem, to the hub, to where everything's going on. And when I go, they're going to arrest me and they're going to try me and they're going to kill me. And Peter, totally altruistically, with pure motives, says, well, then don't go. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. We've got a good thing going up here, man. Just stay up here and don't die. How's that? And there was no sin there. It wasn't like Peter said, Jesus, we could really monetize this miracle thing if you wanted to. Stick around a little bit. There's some hay to be made here. It doesn't say stay and do these things with us that you shouldn't do. He's not trying to convince him to not follow what he understands to be God's will. He's just trying to convince him to preserve his life. It's a good, honest, altruistic encouragement from a friend who wanted what was best for Christ. And yet, this is Jesus' response in Matthew chapter 16, get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. It's always struck me that Peter didn't mean evil by his plea. Please just stay with us, Jesus, so that you don't die. That's a good, kind, loving thing to want for anybody you care about. But because his will was not the Father's will, Jesus calls him Satan. Get behind me, Satan. You're a hindrance to me, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. So it occurs to me, based on this passage, that to Jesus, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will, which really opens up this wide swath for how Satan acts. Jesus, I think to him, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will. It's something that pushes you away or pulls you away from God. I think what Jesus would argue is that there are no neutral forces in our life. There's not things that are blatantly bad and satanic and blatantly good and godly and then all this gray area in the middle. To Jesus, it seems rather binary. Things are either godly and pushing you towards God or they're satanic and pulling you away from him. There's no middle ground. And because in this instance, Peter was exerting influence over Jesus that wasn't pushing Jesus towards God's will, his influence was satanic in that moment. So it makes me think that his forces are at play far more often than we give him credit for. And I think where we should want to settle in is to ask the questions, okay, Satan is there. He's prowling about. He is the enemy. He is the accuser. He wants to destroy me. He wants to take me away from God. He wants to hurt God the Father by rendering me useless, by taking me away from him. How is he going to do that? How is he going to exert his influence in my life? This morning, I want to look at four big ways he does that. Now, if you're looking at the notes and what will appear on the screen, you're going to see this phrase, Satan's greatest hits. And I just got to level with you about something here, okay? A little peek behind the curtain. I don't know why I did that. I don't know why I call them Satan's greatest hits. It doesn't really fit into the sermon. I type these notes up on Thursday. I sit in my office. I think, yeah, that's good. That's going to work. And then I type it up, and then I email it to Steve, and then he makes slides. And every now and again, I get here on Sunday, and I think, why did I say it that way? But I usually just go with it because it's fine. But this morning, I looked at Satan's greatest hits. And listen, I got to tell you, if that seems dumb to you, it seems dumb to me too. But we're just going to roll with it because we put it in there on Thursday, and it's too late now, baby. So let's look at Satan's four greatest hits, how he really influences us, okay? The first one I want to look at is isolation. I think one of his greatest ploys, one of the things that he loves is isolation. Think about it. If he's a prowling lion seeking who he may devour, who do the lions devour? Well, they devour the ones that are off by themselves. They devour the ones that have wandered away from the flock. And if what he does is speak lies to us, if he's a liar and the father of lies, when are we most likely to believe them? When there's no other voices in our life to tell us that he's wrong. If Satan is whispering into our ear that we are unlovable and there's no one in our life that tells us that we are, we're far more vulnerable to believe that lie. When Satan is whispering into our ear that we're not good enough, when he's whispering into our ear that we're not worthy, when he's whispering that we shouldn't try that or that we shouldn't do that or that so-and-so doesn't like us or that they only said that nice thing to you because they're trying to get you to do this. They're only treating you that way because they're trying to manipulate you. When you begin to read the worst into everyone and everything and you're totally isolated and have no other voices in your life, how easy is it to convince you that the voice that you do hear is correct? If we play this isolation out to its ultimate end, we can talk about things like school shootings, can't we? Every time one of those things happens, it's an act of atrocious evil from the very pits of hell that somebody could walk into a school and open fire on children. But look at what they have in common. Who's perpetuating that evil? Young, isolated white dudes. Isolated guys who are either in late adolescence or are coming out of adolescence, whose story is the same. They don't have friends. They don't have people around them. And so they got radicalized by thoughts and whispers. And because they don't have a community, because they don't have anybody around them, they become more and more convinced that these lies that they're being fed are true until they act on them. And it is abhorrent evil. That evil is born out of isolation. And while I don't think anyone listening here is in danger of becoming that, it's a sobering reminder of how isolation works. And I think of why this pandemic is so very dangerous. Let me just implore you, if you've found yourself in this pandemic increasingly isolated, if you've left your small group because Zoom meetings are lame, I totally get it. Or you're missing church, or you just can't have people around you because you don't want to get sick. Whatever the reason may be, if you found yourself in COVID becoming increasingly isolated, can I just tell you in all candor that you're one of the ones he's circling? Can I encourage you to join a small group? Can I encourage you to reach out to some friends? Can I encourage you to pick up the phone today and just have a chat? Can I encourage you to find someone to say, hey, here's what I've been thinking. Can you help me make sense of this? And let's not let the enemy's lies grow in isolation. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm good. I'm not isolated. So far, I've made it. Great. I'm happy for you. I don't feel isolated either. Let's look for the ones who do. Let's think of our friends who might have begun to feel that way. Let's reach out to folks that might feel forgotten. If anybody is in your circle, is in your orbit, your atmosphere, can we just take some personal responsibility and make sure that they don't feel isolated? Can we yell at them as they wander away from the herd? Hey, come over here. Let's do lunch or something. Let's do like a Zoom call. Let's have a Zoom happy hour, whatever you want to do. Hey, come hang out. Can we help thwart the plans of the evil one in that way by making sure no one among us is isolated? The second thing that Satan loves to do, the second greatest hit, the secrets. Satan loves secrets, man. He loves the shadows of your life. He loves those nooks and crannies. Man, when you're hiding things, he can whisper stuff to you like, no one will ever forgive you for that. No one will ever understand those choices. No one can ever offer you grace in this situation. And then he whispers things to you like, just keep it tight. Just keep it there. You'll figure it out. You're going to defeat it. You're going to beat it. You can do it. Sure, that same sin that's been chasing you around for 10, 20, 30 years. But yeah, now's the time when you're going to draw the line in the sand and by a sheer force of will, now's the time you're going to beat it. Satan loves secret sin and he loves convincing you that no one can understand it. And he loves convincing you that you have it under control. Because here's what he knows. Secret sins are a cancer in our lives that will eventually claim it. You understand? Secret sins, those things that we do that if our friends found out about, they would not think the same of us. At least that's what we have ourselves convinced of. Those things that we have tucked away that we don't tell anyone, that we carefully monitor, that we carefully watch, that we make sure stay in the shadows and never see the light of day, those sins, Satan loves those sins because they are a cancer in your very life that will lead to it being claimed. Proverbs says it like this. He says, no man can hold hot coals against his chest and not be burned. Those secret sins, those are the ways that families are broken and that lives are destroyed. If you're dealing with one of those, you're probably sweaty right now. But if you're dealing with one of those, can I just tell you as a friend and a pastor, you're right where he wants you to be. If you have a secret sin in your life that nobody knows about, first of all, I get it. I've been there too. And anybody who tells you they haven't, 95% chance they're a liar. Everybody's dealt with those things. We all have ours. But if you continue to persist in yours, he will get you. It will get worse. It will come to light. You can choose to bring it to light or it will bring itself to light. And when it does, it will tear you down. I just want you to know because I care about you. If you're fostering a secret sin in your life, you are exactly where the enemy wants you to be. The other thing I would say is, when you do the thing that you're so very fearful of, and you allow some light to be shed into that dark corner of your life, certain that this is the end of your life, what you will find is more grace and joy and freedom there than you've ever experienced in your life. This belief that I could never shed light on what I am ashamed of because no one will think the same of me is simply not true. When we do that in a Christian community, we are met with grace and with love and with affirmation, and I want you to be met with that. And I want you to believe for the first time in a long time that this sin doesn't have to define me and it doesn't have to beat me. Shed some light on that and defeat the enemy. Disappoint him and let him slither back into his hole and find another way to get you because that's not going to work anymore. Let's claim some victory this week. If you have a secret sin in your life, I was praying for you before I came up here that you would have the courage to take the steps to shed some light on that so that we are no longer in his crosshairs. Now, you may be thinking, I'm doing great so far. I'm not isolated. I got no secret sin going on right now that I'm ashamed of. I'm an open book. And I would say, good for you. That's a healthy life, and you ought to feel that way. But I think his third greatest hit is one that's going to hit pretty close to home for a lot of us. It's simply distraction. Just distraction. Listen, Satan wants you to be as ineffective as possible. He wants to tear you away from God. If he can't tear you away from God, then he wants you to be useless in his kingdom. He doesn't want you to bring anybody one step closer to God. So how does he do that? Well, he's going to try to isolate you, but that hasn't worked. Good for you. He's going to try to get you to develop this secret sin that you can't share with other people. That hasn't worked. Good for you. Well, if I can't do those things, you know what I'll do? I'll just distract them. I'll put a dang cell phone in their hand. I'll give them a TV and a gossipy neighbor. Listen, I'm not even talking about the distraction of what if I've lived my whole life for the wrong things. I'm not even talking about the distraction of getting to the end of our life and wondering if we've invested in it properly. That's priorities. I'm talking about literal distractions, just literal nothingness that keep us from doing anything. So that maybe we think about our life and we think our life is on a good trajectory. We're doing good. We're good people. We're reading our Bible when we can. We're coming to church when we can. We're disciplining our kids or enjoying relationships with our kids the way that we should. We have good, healthy friendships in our life. And on the whole, the trajectory seems good. But on a day-to-day basis, how are we spending our days? It's Sunday. If you have an iPhone, you got a screen time report this morning. What does it say? How much time have you lost doom scrolling Twitter since November 1st? I would not like to share that with any of you, what my answer is. How much time do we lose to the algorithms that try to keep our attention? Scrolling Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. How much time do we lose to the news? That's very likely, and I'm guilty too, just an echo chamber for what we already believe. How much time do we lose to sports? When we wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off or we just simply come to and we wake up, what's the first thing we do? Is it grab our phone and invite in? What distractions do you have for me today, Satan? I am convinced that so very many of us go through our lives convinced that we're doing the right things and that we're good people. And we're right. But we allow so much of our day to be stolen from us with stuff that doesn't matter that Satan has effectively rendered us totally ineffective in God's kingdom. How often, this is for me included, do we put our head on the pillow at night, tired, because I was a good servant of the Lord today. I served him the way he wanted me to serve. And how many of us go to bed distracted and thinking about all the new distractions that await us the next day? I think distraction is Satan's number one strategy to render us ineffective. How distracted are we in our lives? How much of our daily attention do we give things that just at the end of the day don't matter and definitely don't help us build the kingdom of God? The last one I wanted us to look at this morning is division. Satan loves division. He loves to divide us. He loves to pit one against the other. Scripture is replete with God's will that his church be unified, that his people be unified, that we be of one body, of one mind, of one accord, that we march forward and have one plan. There are no limits to what a group of people who love Jesus and who love one another can do. And Satan hates that. He's terrified of it. He does everything he can to make sure that the people of God don't unify under a single banner. He wants to drive as many wedges between us as he can. He wants us to judge other people, even in our church, for stupid things that they do or say or that we take out of context. It is Satan's will that we be divided. It is Satan's will that we choose to not like other Christians. It's God's will that we be unified. This is why I think Satan loves our current political climate. I think he's just eating it up, man. I don't think politically things could be going better for Satan because all he cares about is driving a wedge between those who call Jesus Savior. And right now what we have is this culture where Christians on both sides will make judgments about other people's spiritual health based on how they vote. Christians on both sides of the aisle will hear that so-and-so voted for so-and-so and judge who they are spiritually based on a vote that they cast. With no context, with no discussion, they just assume that what I think of that side of the aisle is what you are, and what I think of that side of the aisle must be what you are. And because you voted that way, you must be ignorant, or you must not believe what I believe, or you must be swept away, or you must be convinced by the media, or you must be convinced by social media, or whatever it is. And Satan just sits back and folds his arms and is happy and grins because, look, I've set in motion this system that's going to cause division in the church. And now, within our churches, we have groups of Christians that are judging each other based on how they voted with as little information as possible. And it's the scheme of Satan. You understand that, right? He chuckles with glee when we do that. He delights when we scroll Facebook, pick and fight. When we pick up our phone and we go, look at what Sansa said. There's such a lemming. We show it to whoever's around us. Can we just do this, Grace? Can we just say not today, Satan, on that one? Not here. Not here. Can we just give each other the benefit of the doubt? When we see someone post pro something that we didn't vote for, can we just say, you know what? I know that person. I know their character. I know they're godly and that they have a thoughtful reason for voting that way, for thinking that way. And I also know that we have in common our Savior, Jesus, and my allegiance is to him. And there is nothing else. There is no other tertiary issue that could break away my allegiance to Jesus and loving other people with that same allegiance. Can we do that? Can we start to be gracious with each other, Grace? Listen, I want to be careful. I'm not saying that I've seen this happening. I'm not thinking of any particular instance in grace. What I am acknowledging is this culture that we exist in now where to pick a side is to claim so much about your life and who you are. And can I just ask that in this place, in this bubble, that we not do that? That we not let that strategy of Satan work? Can we remember that the other people of grace, the other partners of grace, the other people in our orbit who know Jesus are children of God? That they love him? That Jesus died for them? And that everything we know about them is thoughtful and good and that may be the way that they're aligned politically is too. And can we sweep that aside as a tertiary issue and focus as a primary issue on the fact that we love Jesus and our neighbors need desperately to know him? And why don't we be part of our culture that sweeps the rest of that stuff aside and quits letting Satan be so effective in that arena? There's an encouragement if we'll do this. There's an encouragement if we will seek others and not isolate ourselves and if we will not allow ourselves to be lied to. It's not just all bad news when it comes to Satan. You know, I referenced Peter earlier and I said that he tells us that we need to be sober-minded and watchful because Satan prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But what I didn't do is read you the rest of that passage. This is the rest of this Yeah, he's against you. Yes, he's going to try to isolate you. Yes, he's going to try to get you enslaved in secret sin. Yes, he's going to try to divide us. Yes, he's going to do all those things and try to distract you. But if you'll resist him, if you'll refuse to become isolated, if you'll refuse to allow God's church, his bride, to become divided over silly things, if you'll fight off distraction in your life, if you'll have the courage to shed light on the secret sins in your life, if you will hold fast to God, then he promises you that after you have suffered for a little while, which is a kind thing for God to do to acknowledge that this is hard, resisting all of that is difficult and challenging. He says, if you do it, then the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Ephesians 6. He says, He acknowledges what we're talking about today. And he starts off this passage on putting on the armor of God, and he says, when you have stood firm, therefore, stand firm. When you've stood up, keep standing. When you've fought, keep fighting. When you're tired, keep going. And when we do that, when we persist, when we acknowledge the satanic influences in our life, and we do everything we can to resist those, the God of peace will be with us. He will guard us, protect us, and have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us, but God, we are so grateful that you have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us. But God, we know that you have won the battle. We know that for every lie he whispers in our ear, that you are blaring truths into the other one. If only we will listen. Give us the ears to hear your truth. Give us the eyes to see his lies. God, if any of us has a secret sin, would we just shed some light on that this week? Give us courage. May we be met with grace. Let us see light and believe the first time in a long time that we can be done with those things. God, if we are a part of the divisiveness in our culture and in your body, I pray that you would give us grace, patience, wisdom, and peace, that we would not be a part of that scheme. God, if anyone is isolated, bring your angels around them. Let them know that they are loved, that they are not alone. Let them know that they are seen. And God, for those of us who are distracted, would you give us the courage and the desire to be focused every day on what matters most in our lives, on the things that you've placed in our lives and the opportunities that we have to influence people towards you? We thank you for winning this war. We ask you for the strength to stand firm in it. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. This is the fourth part in our series that we've launched the year with called Things You Should Know. The idea is that as Christians or as church people, there's things that we talk about, things that get mentioned that we all kind of nod along with and seem to understand, but maybe we've never stopped to slow down or had the courage to ask the questions that we have about these things. So we wanted to take a month and just kind of look at some of the different topics that come up in church world, that come up in Christendom, but maybe we have never delved into on our own, and maybe we have some existing questions about those things. Last week, we looked at the Sabbath, and I hope that your view and framework around the Sabbath was changed and that some of you are coming off enjoying one of those yesterday or have chosen today as your Sabbath, and I hope that it goes very well for you. This morning, we want to talk about the devil. I think that there may be one other time when I have preached about Satan. It's not a fun topic. It's not fun research to do. If someone got a hold of my browser history this week, they might be really worried about Nate and all the things that I've Googled that have to do with Satan and his influence. So it's not something that we talk about a lot, but it's something that we definitely need to address. I think in church circles, we hear about Satan. We hear about the enemy. We know that he's called Lucifer. We know that he's against us. We know that he hates God. We know that he hates us. But maybe we don't know very much beyond that, beyond what's maybe been put forth in pop culture or something like that. And so I thought it would be good to take a week and focus on Satan, focus on the enemy, on who he is and what he does and really what he wants, what he wants with you and what he wants with me. The best place to do this clearly is scripture. So one of the things I did this week is I sat down and I just started keeping a list of all the places where Satan shows up in scripture or references to him are made in scripture. And I made a master list of all of those and then looked at that list and found the commonalities and tried to distill down some of the essence of what the Bible has to say about the enemy. And so I found four passages that I think sum up who Satan is in an effective way, and I wanted to look at those. And then I wanted to ask the question, okay, that's who he is. How does he accomplish his goals? So to understand who Satan is, one of the first things we want to do is look at his origin. And it's worth saying that we're not exactly positive where he came from or what he does. Now, we think that we know. We think we know where he came from. Most scholars agree, but it's important to point out, and I need to be intellectually honest and say that there's no one explicit place in Scripture where it says for sure this is where Satan came from. But our best guess is found in Ezekiel and then more pointedly in this passage in Isaiah. This is what Isaiah writes. He says, This is primarily where we get the origin story of Satan. It's believed that Satan was an angel. His name was Lucifer. That's what Odaystar means, morning star. That's what Lucifer means. And we believe that he was one of the archangels. He may have even been in charge of worship in heaven. He was a powerful angel, which means if you could see him, you would see that he was beautiful and intimidating and mighty and incredible. He looks very little like the cartoon depictions of him. And one day he told a lie to himself that he could be like God. He looked at God ruling over heaven and he said, I could do that. As a matter of fact, I could rule over you. And so he decided that he was going to lead a coup or an insurrection against God to overtake heaven. And it's believed that Satan was cast out of heaven along with a third of the angels that then became demons. And that began this war, this tension that's existed for all of time that you and I find ourselves in the middle of where Satan and God the Father war over our very souls. And it's interesting to me that the first lie that Satan believed is the lie that he told us. It's the first lie that we believed. It's the lie that we continue to believe. It's the fundamental lie of all of sin, which is, I could be like God. I don't need him. I can do this myself. I can call the shots. Isn't that what he whispered into the ear of Eve? Didn't he go down and slither up to her and say, you know, he's told you not to eat of this tree because he doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want you to know what he knows. He grabbed her and he said, you could do that. You could be him. You understand? If you get nothing else out of this sermon, just please understand, that's the fundamental root of all sin, is deciding, you know what? I think I could be the boss of myself. I don't really think I need his standards. I think I can figure this out on my own. That's the root of all sin. And it was the root of Satan's fall, who fell from heaven and set about for all of time, warring against the Father. And in Hebrew, actually, in the language of Hebrew, his name means accuser or adversary. He is the accuser of us. He is the adversary of God. He is opposed to God and all the things of God. And so that means he is your accuser and that he is your adversary. And the sneaky and scary part is he accuses you to you. He runs you down to you. God doesn't believe what he's saying, but you might. So he accuses you and he brings shame and guilt on your conscience and he opposes you. In the New Testament, we get a little bit clearer picture of who Satan is and what he came to do. Jesus says in the book of John, he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he lies because lying is his native tongue. It's all he knows how to do is to lie and to deceive. And it's important that we point out that these aren't simple lies. These aren't dumb, foolish lies that anybody could see past. It's not lies like the ones in this commercial that I'm reminded of from a few years ago. I think it originally started as a Super Bowl commercial, but I'm not certain. But it makes me chuckle every time I see it. There's this dad, and he's sitting in the living room, right? And his back's against the couch, and he's got the coffee table in front of him, and there's Cheeto dust everywhere. Just this orange dust explosion. It's on the couch, it's on the floor, it's on the toys, it's everywhere. It's all over the place. And he's looking at that, and you can hear kids in the distance, and one of them, looks like about a four-year-old boy, comes running through the living room past his dad and he's got a Cheeto explosion all over himself. Face, shirt, pants, hands, the whole deal. And his dad grabs him and he points at the Cheeto explosion in the room. And he says, do you know anything about this? And the little kid goes, nope. And runs off. And I love it. I think it's great. Satan doesn't tell lies like that. He doesn't tell lies with Cheeto dust everywhere that are easy to pin on him. His lies are far more pernicious. The thing to understand about him that might make us uncomfortable and should make us uncomfortable is that if he's an angel and he's eternal, he's a lot smarter than us. He's a lot smarter than we are. He knows how to manipulate you. His lies look a lot less like, no, I don't know what's going on with the Cheeto dust, and a lot more like, who do you think you are? Why do you think you could ever do that? Why do you think they would ever listen to you? What would make you believe that they could ever believe you? What could make you think that that sort of sin was okay? How could you ever possibly justify that? You are the worst. His lies are a lot more sneaky and pernicious, I think, than we give him credit for. He's excellent at lying and at convincing us of things that aren't true. In part, and this is interesting to me, I almost pulled this thread and preached about this this week, in part because in the lies and the things that he offers us, they're a little bit true. They look like the truth. He very rarely offers us something that we don't have or that we won't get. He just offers it to us right now or just offers it to us in a package that seems more attractive. He's an incredibly effective liar. And then in Peter, we see him say something. And I think it's interesting that Peter chooses to talk about the devil. Because if there was anybody in Jesus's inner circle who wouldn't show as much concern for Satan, it had to be Peter. Peter is the guy who's talk first, think later. Peter's the guy who jumped out of the boat and walked on water. Peter's the guy that when Jesus said to his disciples, you will all betray me and leave me, Peter's the one that stepped up and said, no, I won't, never, God, I will die before I leave you. And we know that he did betray Christ in this really poignant scene. But my point is that Peter was the hard charger. He was the one out in front. He was the one that was all bluster and gusto. And even Peter, who if anybody would say, don't worry about Satan, we got Jesus, he's not a big deal. It would be Peter. But listen to what he says at the end of his life in his letter. 1 Peter 5, verse 8. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Listen to me. Listen to me. We don't want to think about it. We don't want to acknowledge it. But there is an active and effective and intelligent and efficient enemy of your soul who is prowling about seeking to destroy you. There is an enemy stalking around your children and around your marriage and around your husband and your wife and around your friendships and your church and your small group and the things that you hold dear, there is an enemy prowling around you seeking to destroy those things. And shame on me for not bringing that to your attention more often. It's an uncomfortable thing to talk about Satan. It's certainly not a fun thing. But based on the frequency with which he's mentioned in the Bible, it seems reasonable to think that God desperately wants us to be aware of His presence. Can I tell you for what it's worth that even as we were starting up this service this morning, things started going wrong with my microphone that have never gone wrong, not since Steve got here anyways. The Lord knows what used to go wrong with it. But things started happening and distractions were going and we came right up to the minute when we're supposed to launch the service like we really haven't in a long, long time. And I really just think it's because Satan would prefer you not think about him. He would prefer I never did this. He would prefer to continue to operate in the shadows, to continue to prowl about like a roaring lion, ever there, ever present, but never aware of him. And shame on me for not bringing him to our attention more often. But the reality is there is an incredibly effective enemy prowling around our families trying to figure out who he can pick off. So I think it behooves us to ask the question, how does he do that? How does he devour us? How does he lie to us? What's his goal? How do we know when Satan is acting in our lives? How do we know when it's just us, just our nature, just circumstance, or Satan is at play here? Well, I think that there's a really interesting conversation that Jesus actually has with Peter that sheds some light on this. And it's really made me reshape the way I think about satanic influence in our life. But towards the end of Jesus's ministry, towards the end of his life, Jesus gathers the disciples around and he tells them, hey, I've got to go to Jerusalem. They were in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. And he says, I need to go south to Jerusalem, to the hub, to where everything's going on. And when I go, they're going to arrest me and they're going to try me and they're going to kill me. And Peter, totally altruistically, with pure motives, says, well, then don't go. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. We've got a good thing going up here, man. Just stay up here and don't die. How's that? And there was no sin there. It wasn't like Peter said, Jesus, we could really monetize this miracle thing if you wanted to. Stick around a little bit. There's some hay to be made here. It doesn't say stay and do these things with us that you shouldn't do. He's not trying to convince him to not follow what he understands to be God's will. He's just trying to convince him to preserve his life. It's a good, honest, altruistic encouragement from a friend who wanted what was best for Christ. And yet, this is Jesus' response in Matthew chapter 16, get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. It's always struck me that Peter didn't mean evil by his plea. Please just stay with us, Jesus, so that you don't die. That's a good, kind, loving thing to want for anybody you care about. But because his will was not the Father's will, Jesus calls him Satan. Get behind me, Satan. You're a hindrance to me, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. So it occurs to me, based on this passage, that to Jesus, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will, which really opens up this wide swath for how Satan acts. Jesus, I think to him, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will. It's something that pushes you away or pulls you away from God. I think what Jesus would argue is that there are no neutral forces in our life. There's not things that are blatantly bad and satanic and blatantly good and godly and then all this gray area in the middle. To Jesus, it seems rather binary. Things are either godly and pushing you towards God or they're satanic and pulling you away from him. There's no middle ground. And because in this instance, Peter was exerting influence over Jesus that wasn't pushing Jesus towards God's will, his influence was satanic in that moment. So it makes me think that his forces are at play far more often than we give him credit for. And I think where we should want to settle in is to ask the questions, okay, Satan is there. He's prowling about. He is the enemy. He is the accuser. He wants to destroy me. He wants to take me away from God. He wants to hurt God the Father by rendering me useless, by taking me away from him. How is he going to do that? How is he going to exert his influence in my life? This morning, I want to look at four big ways he does that. Now, if you're looking at the notes and what will appear on the screen, you're going to see this phrase, Satan's greatest hits. And I just got to level with you about something here, okay? A little peek behind the curtain. I don't know why I did that. I don't know why I call them Satan's greatest hits. It doesn't really fit into the sermon. I type these notes up on Thursday. I sit in my office. I think, yeah, that's good. That's going to work. And then I type it up, and then I email it to Steve, and then he makes slides. And every now and again, I get here on Sunday, and I think, why did I say it that way? But I usually just go with it because it's fine. But this morning, I looked at Satan's greatest hits. And listen, I got to tell you, if that seems dumb to you, it seems dumb to me too. But we're just going to roll with it because we put it in there on Thursday, and it's too late now, baby. So let's look at Satan's four greatest hits, how he really influences us, okay? The first one I want to look at is isolation. I think one of his greatest ploys, one of the things that he loves is isolation. Think about it. If he's a prowling lion seeking who he may devour, who do the lions devour? Well, they devour the ones that are off by themselves. They devour the ones that have wandered away from the flock. And if what he does is speak lies to us, if he's a liar and the father of lies, when are we most likely to believe them? When there's no other voices in our life to tell us that he's wrong. If Satan is whispering into our ear that we are unlovable and there's no one in our life that tells us that we are, we're far more vulnerable to believe that lie. When Satan is whispering into our ear that we're not good enough, when he's whispering into our ear that we're not worthy, when he's whispering that we shouldn't try that or that we shouldn't do that or that so-and-so doesn't like us or that they only said that nice thing to you because they're trying to get you to do this. They're only treating you that way because they're trying to manipulate you. When you begin to read the worst into everyone and everything and you're totally isolated and have no other voices in your life, how easy is it to convince you that the voice that you do hear is correct? If we play this isolation out to its ultimate end, we can talk about things like school shootings, can't we? Every time one of those things happens, it's an act of atrocious evil from the very pits of hell that somebody could walk into a school and open fire on children. But look at what they have in common. Who's perpetuating that evil? Young, isolated white dudes. Isolated guys who are either in late adolescence or are coming out of adolescence, whose story is the same. They don't have friends. They don't have people around them. And so they got radicalized by thoughts and whispers. And because they don't have a community, because they don't have anybody around them, they become more and more convinced that these lies that they're being fed are true until they act on them. And it is abhorrent evil. That evil is born out of isolation. And while I don't think anyone listening here is in danger of becoming that, it's a sobering reminder of how isolation works. And I think of why this pandemic is so very dangerous. Let me just implore you, if you've found yourself in this pandemic increasingly isolated, if you've left your small group because Zoom meetings are lame, I totally get it. Or you're missing church, or you just can't have people around you because you don't want to get sick. Whatever the reason may be, if you found yourself in COVID becoming increasingly isolated, can I just tell you in all candor that you're one of the ones he's circling? Can I encourage you to join a small group? Can I encourage you to reach out to some friends? Can I encourage you to pick up the phone today and just have a chat? Can I encourage you to find someone to say, hey, here's what I've been thinking. Can you help me make sense of this? And let's not let the enemy's lies grow in isolation. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm good. I'm not isolated. So far, I've made it. Great. I'm happy for you. I don't feel isolated either. Let's look for the ones who do. Let's think of our friends who might have begun to feel that way. Let's reach out to folks that might feel forgotten. If anybody is in your circle, is in your orbit, your atmosphere, can we just take some personal responsibility and make sure that they don't feel isolated? Can we yell at them as they wander away from the herd? Hey, come over here. Let's do lunch or something. Let's do like a Zoom call. Let's have a Zoom happy hour, whatever you want to do. Hey, come hang out. Can we help thwart the plans of the evil one in that way by making sure no one among us is isolated? The second thing that Satan loves to do, the second greatest hit, the secrets. Satan loves secrets, man. He loves the shadows of your life. He loves those nooks and crannies. Man, when you're hiding things, he can whisper stuff to you like, no one will ever forgive you for that. No one will ever understand those choices. No one can ever offer you grace in this situation. And then he whispers things to you like, just keep it tight. Just keep it there. You'll figure it out. You're going to defeat it. You're going to beat it. You can do it. Sure, that same sin that's been chasing you around for 10, 20, 30 years. But yeah, now's the time when you're going to draw the line in the sand and by a sheer force of will, now's the time you're going to beat it. Satan loves secret sin and he loves convincing you that no one can understand it. And he loves convincing you that you have it under control. Because here's what he knows. Secret sins are a cancer in our lives that will eventually claim it. You understand? Secret sins, those things that we do that if our friends found out about, they would not think the same of us. At least that's what we have ourselves convinced of. Those things that we have tucked away that we don't tell anyone, that we carefully monitor, that we carefully watch, that we make sure stay in the shadows and never see the light of day, those sins, Satan loves those sins because they are a cancer in your very life that will lead to it being claimed. Proverbs says it like this. He says, no man can hold hot coals against his chest and not be burned. Those secret sins, those are the ways that families are broken and that lives are destroyed. If you're dealing with one of those, you're probably sweaty right now. But if you're dealing with one of those, can I just tell you as a friend and a pastor, you're right where he wants you to be. If you have a secret sin in your life that nobody knows about, first of all, I get it. I've been there too. And anybody who tells you they haven't, 95% chance they're a liar. Everybody's dealt with those things. We all have ours. But if you continue to persist in yours, he will get you. It will get worse. It will come to light. You can choose to bring it to light or it will bring itself to light. And when it does, it will tear you down. I just want you to know because I care about you. If you're fostering a secret sin in your life, you are exactly where the enemy wants you to be. The other thing I would say is, when you do the thing that you're so very fearful of, and you allow some light to be shed into that dark corner of your life, certain that this is the end of your life, what you will find is more grace and joy and freedom there than you've ever experienced in your life. This belief that I could never shed light on what I am ashamed of because no one will think the same of me is simply not true. When we do that in a Christian community, we are met with grace and with love and with affirmation, and I want you to be met with that. And I want you to believe for the first time in a long time that this sin doesn't have to define me and it doesn't have to beat me. Shed some light on that and defeat the enemy. Disappoint him and let him slither back into his hole and find another way to get you because that's not going to work anymore. Let's claim some victory this week. If you have a secret sin in your life, I was praying for you before I came up here that you would have the courage to take the steps to shed some light on that so that we are no longer in his crosshairs. Now, you may be thinking, I'm doing great so far. I'm not isolated. I got no secret sin going on right now that I'm ashamed of. I'm an open book. And I would say, good for you. That's a healthy life, and you ought to feel that way. But I think his third greatest hit is one that's going to hit pretty close to home for a lot of us. It's simply distraction. Just distraction. Listen, Satan wants you to be as ineffective as possible. He wants to tear you away from God. If he can't tear you away from God, then he wants you to be useless in his kingdom. He doesn't want you to bring anybody one step closer to God. So how does he do that? Well, he's going to try to isolate you, but that hasn't worked. Good for you. He's going to try to get you to develop this secret sin that you can't share with other people. That hasn't worked. Good for you. Well, if I can't do those things, you know what I'll do? I'll just distract them. I'll put a dang cell phone in their hand. I'll give them a TV and a gossipy neighbor. Listen, I'm not even talking about the distraction of what if I've lived my whole life for the wrong things. I'm not even talking about the distraction of getting to the end of our life and wondering if we've invested in it properly. That's priorities. I'm talking about literal distractions, just literal nothingness that keep us from doing anything. So that maybe we think about our life and we think our life is on a good trajectory. We're doing good. We're good people. We're reading our Bible when we can. We're coming to church when we can. We're disciplining our kids or enjoying relationships with our kids the way that we should. We have good, healthy friendships in our life. And on the whole, the trajectory seems good. But on a day-to-day basis, how are we spending our days? It's Sunday. If you have an iPhone, you got a screen time report this morning. What does it say? How much time have you lost doom scrolling Twitter since November 1st? I would not like to share that with any of you, what my answer is. How much time do we lose to the algorithms that try to keep our attention? Scrolling Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. How much time do we lose to the news? That's very likely, and I'm guilty too, just an echo chamber for what we already believe. How much time do we lose to sports? When we wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off or we just simply come to and we wake up, what's the first thing we do? Is it grab our phone and invite in? What distractions do you have for me today, Satan? I am convinced that so very many of us go through our lives convinced that we're doing the right things and that we're good people. And we're right. But we allow so much of our day to be stolen from us with stuff that doesn't matter that Satan has effectively rendered us totally ineffective in God's kingdom. How often, this is for me included, do we put our head on the pillow at night, tired, because I was a good servant of the Lord today. I served him the way he wanted me to serve. And how many of us go to bed distracted and thinking about all the new distractions that await us the next day? I think distraction is Satan's number one strategy to render us ineffective. How distracted are we in our lives? How much of our daily attention do we give things that just at the end of the day don't matter and definitely don't help us build the kingdom of God? The last one I wanted us to look at this morning is division. Satan loves division. He loves to divide us. He loves to pit one against the other. Scripture is replete with God's will that his church be unified, that his people be unified, that we be of one body, of one mind, of one accord, that we march forward and have one plan. There are no limits to what a group of people who love Jesus and who love one another can do. And Satan hates that. He's terrified of it. He does everything he can to make sure that the people of God don't unify under a single banner. He wants to drive as many wedges between us as he can. He wants us to judge other people, even in our church, for stupid things that they do or say or that we take out of context. It is Satan's will that we be divided. It is Satan's will that we choose to not like other Christians. It's God's will that we be unified. This is why I think Satan loves our current political climate. I think he's just eating it up, man. I don't think politically things could be going better for Satan because all he cares about is driving a wedge between those who call Jesus Savior. And right now what we have is this culture where Christians on both sides will make judgments about other people's spiritual health based on how they vote. Christians on both sides of the aisle will hear that so-and-so voted for so-and-so and judge who they are spiritually based on a vote that they cast. With no context, with no discussion, they just assume that what I think of that side of the aisle is what you are, and what I think of that side of the aisle must be what you are. And because you voted that way, you must be ignorant, or you must not believe what I believe, or you must be swept away, or you must be convinced by the media, or you must be convinced by social media, or whatever it is. And Satan just sits back and folds his arms and is happy and grins because, look, I've set in motion this system that's going to cause division in the church. And now, within our churches, we have groups of Christians that are judging each other based on how they voted with as little information as possible. And it's the scheme of Satan. You understand that, right? He chuckles with glee when we do that. He delights when we scroll Facebook, pick and fight. When we pick up our phone and we go, look at what Sansa said. There's such a lemming. We show it to whoever's around us. Can we just do this, Grace? Can we just say not today, Satan, on that one? Not here. Not here. Can we just give each other the benefit of the doubt? When we see someone post pro something that we didn't vote for, can we just say, you know what? I know that person. I know their character. I know they're godly and that they have a thoughtful reason for voting that way, for thinking that way. And I also know that we have in common our Savior, Jesus, and my allegiance is to him. And there is nothing else. There is no other tertiary issue that could break away my allegiance to Jesus and loving other people with that same allegiance. Can we do that? Can we start to be gracious with each other, Grace? Listen, I want to be careful. I'm not saying that I've seen this happening. I'm not thinking of any particular instance in grace. What I am acknowledging is this culture that we exist in now where to pick a side is to claim so much about your life and who you are. And can I just ask that in this place, in this bubble, that we not do that? That we not let that strategy of Satan work? Can we remember that the other people of grace, the other partners of grace, the other people in our orbit who know Jesus are children of God? That they love him? That Jesus died for them? And that everything we know about them is thoughtful and good and that may be the way that they're aligned politically is too. And can we sweep that aside as a tertiary issue and focus as a primary issue on the fact that we love Jesus and our neighbors need desperately to know him? And why don't we be part of our culture that sweeps the rest of that stuff aside and quits letting Satan be so effective in that arena? There's an encouragement if we'll do this. There's an encouragement if we will seek others and not isolate ourselves and if we will not allow ourselves to be lied to. It's not just all bad news when it comes to Satan. You know, I referenced Peter earlier and I said that he tells us that we need to be sober-minded and watchful because Satan prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But what I didn't do is read you the rest of that passage. This is the rest of this Yeah, he's against you. Yes, he's going to try to isolate you. Yes, he's going to try to get you enslaved in secret sin. Yes, he's going to try to divide us. Yes, he's going to do all those things and try to distract you. But if you'll resist him, if you'll refuse to become isolated, if you'll refuse to allow God's church, his bride, to become divided over silly things, if you'll fight off distraction in your life, if you'll have the courage to shed light on the secret sins in your life, if you will hold fast to God, then he promises you that after you have suffered for a little while, which is a kind thing for God to do to acknowledge that this is hard, resisting all of that is difficult and challenging. He says, if you do it, then the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Ephesians 6. He says, He acknowledges what we're talking about today. And he starts off this passage on putting on the armor of God, and he says, when you have stood firm, therefore, stand firm. When you've stood up, keep standing. When you've fought, keep fighting. When you're tired, keep going. And when we do that, when we persist, when we acknowledge the satanic influences in our life, and we do everything we can to resist those, the God of peace will be with us. He will guard us, protect us, and have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us, but God, we are so grateful that you have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us. But God, we know that you have won the battle. We know that for every lie he whispers in our ear, that you are blaring truths into the other one. If only we will listen. Give us the ears to hear your truth. Give us the eyes to see his lies. God, if any of us has a secret sin, would we just shed some light on that this week? Give us courage. May we be met with grace. Let us see light and believe the first time in a long time that we can be done with those things. God, if we are a part of the divisiveness in our culture and in your body, I pray that you would give us grace, patience, wisdom, and peace, that we would not be a part of that scheme. God, if anyone is isolated, bring your angels around them. Let them know that they are loved, that they are not alone. Let them know that they are seen. And God, for those of us who are distracted, would you give us the courage and the desire to be focused every day on what matters most in our lives, on the things that you've placed in our lives and the opportunities that we have to influence people towards you? We thank you for winning this war. We ask you for the strength to stand firm in it. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. This is the fourth part in our series that we've launched the year with called Things You Should Know. The idea is that as Christians or as church people, there's things that we talk about, things that get mentioned that we all kind of nod along with and seem to understand, but maybe we've never stopped to slow down or had the courage to ask the questions that we have about these things. So we wanted to take a month and just kind of look at some of the different topics that come up in church world, that come up in Christendom, but maybe we have never delved into on our own, and maybe we have some existing questions about those things. Last week, we looked at the Sabbath, and I hope that your view and framework around the Sabbath was changed and that some of you are coming off enjoying one of those yesterday or have chosen today as your Sabbath, and I hope that it goes very well for you. This morning, we want to talk about the devil. I think that there may be one other time when I have preached about Satan. It's not a fun topic. It's not fun research to do. If someone got a hold of my browser history this week, they might be really worried about Nate and all the things that I've Googled that have to do with Satan and his influence. So it's not something that we talk about a lot, but it's something that we definitely need to address. I think in church circles, we hear about Satan. We hear about the enemy. We know that he's called Lucifer. We know that he's against us. We know that he hates God. We know that he hates us. But maybe we don't know very much beyond that, beyond what's maybe been put forth in pop culture or something like that. And so I thought it would be good to take a week and focus on Satan, focus on the enemy, on who he is and what he does and really what he wants, what he wants with you and what he wants with me. The best place to do this clearly is scripture. So one of the things I did this week is I sat down and I just started keeping a list of all the places where Satan shows up in scripture or references to him are made in scripture. And I made a master list of all of those and then looked at that list and found the commonalities and tried to distill down some of the essence of what the Bible has to say about the enemy. And so I found four passages that I think sum up who Satan is in an effective way, and I wanted to look at those. And then I wanted to ask the question, okay, that's who he is. How does he accomplish his goals? So to understand who Satan is, one of the first things we want to do is look at his origin. And it's worth saying that we're not exactly positive where he came from or what he does. Now, we think that we know. We think we know where he came from. Most scholars agree, but it's important to point out, and I need to be intellectually honest and say that there's no one explicit place in Scripture where it says for sure this is where Satan came from. But our best guess is found in Ezekiel and then more pointedly in this passage in Isaiah. This is what Isaiah writes. He says, This is primarily where we get the origin story of Satan. It's believed that Satan was an angel. His name was Lucifer. That's what Odaystar means, morning star. That's what Lucifer means. And we believe that he was one of the archangels. He may have even been in charge of worship in heaven. He was a powerful angel, which means if you could see him, you would see that he was beautiful and intimidating and mighty and incredible. He looks very little like the cartoon depictions of him. And one day he told a lie to himself that he could be like God. He looked at God ruling over heaven and he said, I could do that. As a matter of fact, I could rule over you. And so he decided that he was going to lead a coup or an insurrection against God to overtake heaven. And it's believed that Satan was cast out of heaven along with a third of the angels that then became demons. And that began this war, this tension that's existed for all of time that you and I find ourselves in the middle of where Satan and God the Father war over our very souls. And it's interesting to me that the first lie that Satan believed is the lie that he told us. It's the first lie that we believed. It's the lie that we continue to believe. It's the fundamental lie of all of sin, which is, I could be like God. I don't need him. I can do this myself. I can call the shots. Isn't that what he whispered into the ear of Eve? Didn't he go down and slither up to her and say, you know, he's told you not to eat of this tree because he doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want you to know what he knows. He grabbed her and he said, you could do that. You could be him. You understand? If you get nothing else out of this sermon, just please understand, that's the fundamental root of all sin, is deciding, you know what? I think I could be the boss of myself. I don't really think I need his standards. I think I can figure this out on my own. That's the root of all sin. And it was the root of Satan's fall, who fell from heaven and set about for all of time, warring against the Father. And in Hebrew, actually, in the language of Hebrew, his name means accuser or adversary. He is the accuser of us. He is the adversary of God. He is opposed to God and all the things of God. And so that means he is your accuser and that he is your adversary. And the sneaky and scary part is he accuses you to you. He runs you down to you. God doesn't believe what he's saying, but you might. So he accuses you and he brings shame and guilt on your conscience and he opposes you. In the New Testament, we get a little bit clearer picture of who Satan is and what he came to do. Jesus says in the book of John, he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he lies because lying is his native tongue. It's all he knows how to do is to lie and to deceive. And it's important that we point out that these aren't simple lies. These aren't dumb, foolish lies that anybody could see past. It's not lies like the ones in this commercial that I'm reminded of from a few years ago. I think it originally started as a Super Bowl commercial, but I'm not certain. But it makes me chuckle every time I see it. There's this dad, and he's sitting in the living room, right? And his back's against the couch, and he's got the coffee table in front of him, and there's Cheeto dust everywhere. Just this orange dust explosion. It's on the couch, it's on the floor, it's on the toys, it's everywhere. It's all over the place. And he's looking at that, and you can hear kids in the distance, and one of them, looks like about a four-year-old boy, comes running through the living room past his dad and he's got a Cheeto explosion all over himself. Face, shirt, pants, hands, the whole deal. And his dad grabs him and he points at the Cheeto explosion in the room. And he says, do you know anything about this? And the little kid goes, nope. And runs off. And I love it. I think it's great. Satan doesn't tell lies like that. He doesn't tell lies with Cheeto dust everywhere that are easy to pin on him. His lies are far more pernicious. The thing to understand about him that might make us uncomfortable and should make us uncomfortable is that if he's an angel and he's eternal, he's a lot smarter than us. He's a lot smarter than we are. He knows how to manipulate you. His lies look a lot less like, no, I don't know what's going on with the Cheeto dust, and a lot more like, who do you think you are? Why do you think you could ever do that? Why do you think they would ever listen to you? What would make you believe that they could ever believe you? What could make you think that that sort of sin was okay? How could you ever possibly justify that? You are the worst. His lies are a lot more sneaky and pernicious, I think, than we give him credit for. He's excellent at lying and at convincing us of things that aren't true. In part, and this is interesting to me, I almost pulled this thread and preached about this this week, in part because in the lies and the things that he offers us, they're a little bit true. They look like the truth. He very rarely offers us something that we don't have or that we won't get. He just offers it to us right now or just offers it to us in a package that seems more attractive. He's an incredibly effective liar. And then in Peter, we see him say something. And I think it's interesting that Peter chooses to talk about the devil. Because if there was anybody in Jesus's inner circle who wouldn't show as much concern for Satan, it had to be Peter. Peter is the guy who's talk first, think later. Peter's the guy who jumped out of the boat and walked on water. Peter's the guy that when Jesus said to his disciples, you will all betray me and leave me, Peter's the one that stepped up and said, no, I won't, never, God, I will die before I leave you. And we know that he did betray Christ in this really poignant scene. But my point is that Peter was the hard charger. He was the one out in front. He was the one that was all bluster and gusto. And even Peter, who if anybody would say, don't worry about Satan, we got Jesus, he's not a big deal. It would be Peter. But listen to what he says at the end of his life in his letter. 1 Peter 5, verse 8. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Listen to me. Listen to me. We don't want to think about it. We don't want to acknowledge it. But there is an active and effective and intelligent and efficient enemy of your soul who is prowling about seeking to destroy you. There is an enemy stalking around your children and around your marriage and around your husband and your wife and around your friendships and your church and your small group and the things that you hold dear, there is an enemy prowling around you seeking to destroy those things. And shame on me for not bringing that to your attention more often. It's an uncomfortable thing to talk about Satan. It's certainly not a fun thing. But based on the frequency with which he's mentioned in the Bible, it seems reasonable to think that God desperately wants us to be aware of His presence. Can I tell you for what it's worth that even as we were starting up this service this morning, things started going wrong with my microphone that have never gone wrong, not since Steve got here anyways. The Lord knows what used to go wrong with it. But things started happening and distractions were going and we came right up to the minute when we're supposed to launch the service like we really haven't in a long, long time. And I really just think it's because Satan would prefer you not think about him. He would prefer I never did this. He would prefer to continue to operate in the shadows, to continue to prowl about like a roaring lion, ever there, ever present, but never aware of him. And shame on me for not bringing him to our attention more often. But the reality is there is an incredibly effective enemy prowling around our families trying to figure out who he can pick off. So I think it behooves us to ask the question, how does he do that? How does he devour us? How does he lie to us? What's his goal? How do we know when Satan is acting in our lives? How do we know when it's just us, just our nature, just circumstance, or Satan is at play here? Well, I think that there's a really interesting conversation that Jesus actually has with Peter that sheds some light on this. And it's really made me reshape the way I think about satanic influence in our life. But towards the end of Jesus's ministry, towards the end of his life, Jesus gathers the disciples around and he tells them, hey, I've got to go to Jerusalem. They were in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. And he says, I need to go south to Jerusalem, to the hub, to where everything's going on. And when I go, they're going to arrest me and they're going to try me and they're going to kill me. And Peter, totally altruistically, with pure motives, says, well, then don't go. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. We've got a good thing going up here, man. Just stay up here and don't die. How's that? And there was no sin there. It wasn't like Peter said, Jesus, we could really monetize this miracle thing if you wanted to. Stick around a little bit. There's some hay to be made here. It doesn't say stay and do these things with us that you shouldn't do. He's not trying to convince him to not follow what he understands to be God's will. He's just trying to convince him to preserve his life. It's a good, honest, altruistic encouragement from a friend who wanted what was best for Christ. And yet, this is Jesus' response in Matthew chapter 16, get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. It's always struck me that Peter didn't mean evil by his plea. Please just stay with us, Jesus, so that you don't die. That's a good, kind, loving thing to want for anybody you care about. But because his will was not the Father's will, Jesus calls him Satan. Get behind me, Satan. You're a hindrance to me, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. So it occurs to me, based on this passage, that to Jesus, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will, which really opens up this wide swath for how Satan acts. Jesus, I think to him, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will. It's something that pushes you away or pulls you away from God. I think what Jesus would argue is that there are no neutral forces in our life. There's not things that are blatantly bad and satanic and blatantly good and godly and then all this gray area in the middle. To Jesus, it seems rather binary. Things are either godly and pushing you towards God or they're satanic and pulling you away from him. There's no middle ground. And because in this instance, Peter was exerting influence over Jesus that wasn't pushing Jesus towards God's will, his influence was satanic in that moment. So it makes me think that his forces are at play far more often than we give him credit for. And I think where we should want to settle in is to ask the questions, okay, Satan is there. He's prowling about. He is the enemy. He is the accuser. He wants to destroy me. He wants to take me away from God. He wants to hurt God the Father by rendering me useless, by taking me away from him. How is he going to do that? How is he going to exert his influence in my life? This morning, I want to look at four big ways he does that. Now, if you're looking at the notes and what will appear on the screen, you're going to see this phrase, Satan's greatest hits. And I just got to level with you about something here, okay? A little peek behind the curtain. I don't know why I did that. I don't know why I call them Satan's greatest hits. It doesn't really fit into the sermon. I type these notes up on Thursday. I sit in my office. I think, yeah, that's good. That's going to work. And then I type it up, and then I email it to Steve, and then he makes slides. And every now and again, I get here on Sunday, and I think, why did I say it that way? But I usually just go with it because it's fine. But this morning, I looked at Satan's greatest hits. And listen, I got to tell you, if that seems dumb to you, it seems dumb to me too. But we're just going to roll with it because we put it in there on Thursday, and it's too late now, baby. So let's look at Satan's four greatest hits, how he really influences us, okay? The first one I want to look at is isolation. I think one of his greatest ploys, one of the things that he loves is isolation. Think about it. If he's a prowling lion seeking who he may devour, who do the lions devour? Well, they devour the ones that are off by themselves. They devour the ones that have wandered away from the flock. And if what he does is speak lies to us, if he's a liar and the father of lies, when are we most likely to believe them? When there's no other voices in our life to tell us that he's wrong. If Satan is whispering into our ear that we are unlovable and there's no one in our life that tells us that we are, we're far more vulnerable to believe that lie. When Satan is whispering into our ear that we're not good enough, when he's whispering into our ear that we're not worthy, when he's whispering that we shouldn't try that or that we shouldn't do that or that so-and-so doesn't like us or that they only said that nice thing to you because they're trying to get you to do this. They're only treating you that way because they're trying to manipulate you. When you begin to read the worst into everyone and everything and you're totally isolated and have no other voices in your life, how easy is it to convince you that the voice that you do hear is correct? If we play this isolation out to its ultimate end, we can talk about things like school shootings, can't we? Every time one of those things happens, it's an act of atrocious evil from the very pits of hell that somebody could walk into a school and open fire on children. But look at what they have in common. Who's perpetuating that evil? Young, isolated white dudes. Isolated guys who are either in late adolescence or are coming out of adolescence, whose story is the same. They don't have friends. They don't have people around them. And so they got radicalized by thoughts and whispers. And because they don't have a community, because they don't have anybody around them, they become more and more convinced that these lies that they're being fed are true until they act on them. And it is abhorrent evil. That evil is born out of isolation. And while I don't think anyone listening here is in danger of becoming that, it's a sobering reminder of how isolation works. And I think of why this pandemic is so very dangerous. Let me just implore you, if you've found yourself in this pandemic increasingly isolated, if you've left your small group because Zoom meetings are lame, I totally get it. Or you're missing church, or you just can't have people around you because you don't want to get sick. Whatever the reason may be, if you found yourself in COVID becoming increasingly isolated, can I just tell you in all candor that you're one of the ones he's circling? Can I encourage you to join a small group? Can I encourage you to reach out to some friends? Can I encourage you to pick up the phone today and just have a chat? Can I encourage you to find someone to say, hey, here's what I've been thinking. Can you help me make sense of this? And let's not let the enemy's lies grow in isolation. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm good. I'm not isolated. So far, I've made it. Great. I'm happy for you. I don't feel isolated either. Let's look for the ones who do. Let's think of our friends who might have begun to feel that way. Let's reach out to folks that might feel forgotten. If anybody is in your circle, is in your orbit, your atmosphere, can we just take some personal responsibility and make sure that they don't feel isolated? Can we yell at them as they wander away from the herd? Hey, come over here. Let's do lunch or something. Let's do like a Zoom call. Let's have a Zoom happy hour, whatever you want to do. Hey, come hang out. Can we help thwart the plans of the evil one in that way by making sure no one among us is isolated? The second thing that Satan loves to do, the second greatest hit, the secrets. Satan loves secrets, man. He loves the shadows of your life. He loves those nooks and crannies. Man, when you're hiding things, he can whisper stuff to you like, no one will ever forgive you for that. No one will ever understand those choices. No one can ever offer you grace in this situation. And then he whispers things to you like, just keep it tight. Just keep it there. You'll figure it out. You're going to defeat it. You're going to beat it. You can do it. Sure, that same sin that's been chasing you around for 10, 20, 30 years. But yeah, now's the time when you're going to draw the line in the sand and by a sheer force of will, now's the time you're going to beat it. Satan loves secret sin and he loves convincing you that no one can understand it. And he loves convincing you that you have it under control. Because here's what he knows. Secret sins are a cancer in our lives that will eventually claim it. You understand? Secret sins, those things that we do that if our friends found out about, they would not think the same of us. At least that's what we have ourselves convinced of. Those things that we have tucked away that we don't tell anyone, that we carefully monitor, that we carefully watch, that we make sure stay in the shadows and never see the light of day, those sins, Satan loves those sins because they are a cancer in your very life that will lead to it being claimed. Proverbs says it like this. He says, no man can hold hot coals against his chest and not be burned. Those secret sins, those are the ways that families are broken and that lives are destroyed. If you're dealing with one of those, you're probably sweaty right now. But if you're dealing with one of those, can I just tell you as a friend and a pastor, you're right where he wants you to be. If you have a secret sin in your life that nobody knows about, first of all, I get it. I've been there too. And anybody who tells you they haven't, 95% chance they're a liar. Everybody's dealt with those things. We all have ours. But if you continue to persist in yours, he will get you. It will get worse. It will come to light. You can choose to bring it to light or it will bring itself to light. And when it does, it will tear you down. I just want you to know because I care about you. If you're fostering a secret sin in your life, you are exactly where the enemy wants you to be. The other thing I would say is, when you do the thing that you're so very fearful of, and you allow some light to be shed into that dark corner of your life, certain that this is the end of your life, what you will find is more grace and joy and freedom there than you've ever experienced in your life. This belief that I could never shed light on what I am ashamed of because no one will think the same of me is simply not true. When we do that in a Christian community, we are met with grace and with love and with affirmation, and I want you to be met with that. And I want you to believe for the first time in a long time that this sin doesn't have to define me and it doesn't have to beat me. Shed some light on that and defeat the enemy. Disappoint him and let him slither back into his hole and find another way to get you because that's not going to work anymore. Let's claim some victory this week. If you have a secret sin in your life, I was praying for you before I came up here that you would have the courage to take the steps to shed some light on that so that we are no longer in his crosshairs. Now, you may be thinking, I'm doing great so far. I'm not isolated. I got no secret sin going on right now that I'm ashamed of. I'm an open book. And I would say, good for you. That's a healthy life, and you ought to feel that way. But I think his third greatest hit is one that's going to hit pretty close to home for a lot of us. It's simply distraction. Just distraction. Listen, Satan wants you to be as ineffective as possible. He wants to tear you away from God. If he can't tear you away from God, then he wants you to be useless in his kingdom. He doesn't want you to bring anybody one step closer to God. So how does he do that? Well, he's going to try to isolate you, but that hasn't worked. Good for you. He's going to try to get you to develop this secret sin that you can't share with other people. That hasn't worked. Good for you. Well, if I can't do those things, you know what I'll do? I'll just distract them. I'll put a dang cell phone in their hand. I'll give them a TV and a gossipy neighbor. Listen, I'm not even talking about the distraction of what if I've lived my whole life for the wrong things. I'm not even talking about the distraction of getting to the end of our life and wondering if we've invested in it properly. That's priorities. I'm talking about literal distractions, just literal nothingness that keep us from doing anything. So that maybe we think about our life and we think our life is on a good trajectory. We're doing good. We're good people. We're reading our Bible when we can. We're coming to church when we can. We're disciplining our kids or enjoying relationships with our kids the way that we should. We have good, healthy friendships in our life. And on the whole, the trajectory seems good. But on a day-to-day basis, how are we spending our days? It's Sunday. If you have an iPhone, you got a screen time report this morning. What does it say? How much time have you lost doom scrolling Twitter since November 1st? I would not like to share that with any of you, what my answer is. How much time do we lose to the algorithms that try to keep our attention? Scrolling Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. How much time do we lose to the news? That's very likely, and I'm guilty too, just an echo chamber for what we already believe. How much time do we lose to sports? When we wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off or we just simply come to and we wake up, what's the first thing we do? Is it grab our phone and invite in? What distractions do you have for me today, Satan? I am convinced that so very many of us go through our lives convinced that we're doing the right things and that we're good people. And we're right. But we allow so much of our day to be stolen from us with stuff that doesn't matter that Satan has effectively rendered us totally ineffective in God's kingdom. How often, this is for me included, do we put our head on the pillow at night, tired, because I was a good servant of the Lord today. I served him the way he wanted me to serve. And how many of us go to bed distracted and thinking about all the new distractions that await us the next day? I think distraction is Satan's number one strategy to render us ineffective. How distracted are we in our lives? How much of our daily attention do we give things that just at the end of the day don't matter and definitely don't help us build the kingdom of God? The last one I wanted us to look at this morning is division. Satan loves division. He loves to divide us. He loves to pit one against the other. Scripture is replete with God's will that his church be unified, that his people be unified, that we be of one body, of one mind, of one accord, that we march forward and have one plan. There are no limits to what a group of people who love Jesus and who love one another can do. And Satan hates that. He's terrified of it. He does everything he can to make sure that the people of God don't unify under a single banner. He wants to drive as many wedges between us as he can. He wants us to judge other people, even in our church, for stupid things that they do or say or that we take out of context. It is Satan's will that we be divided. It is Satan's will that we choose to not like other Christians. It's God's will that we be unified. This is why I think Satan loves our current political climate. I think he's just eating it up, man. I don't think politically things could be going better for Satan because all he cares about is driving a wedge between those who call Jesus Savior. And right now what we have is this culture where Christians on both sides will make judgments about other people's spiritual health based on how they vote. Christians on both sides of the aisle will hear that so-and-so voted for so-and-so and judge who they are spiritually based on a vote that they cast. With no context, with no discussion, they just assume that what I think of that side of the aisle is what you are, and what I think of that side of the aisle must be what you are. And because you voted that way, you must be ignorant, or you must not believe what I believe, or you must be swept away, or you must be convinced by the media, or you must be convinced by social media, or whatever it is. And Satan just sits back and folds his arms and is happy and grins because, look, I've set in motion this system that's going to cause division in the church. And now, within our churches, we have groups of Christians that are judging each other based on how they voted with as little information as possible. And it's the scheme of Satan. You understand that, right? He chuckles with glee when we do that. He delights when we scroll Facebook, pick and fight. When we pick up our phone and we go, look at what Sansa said. There's such a lemming. We show it to whoever's around us. Can we just do this, Grace? Can we just say not today, Satan, on that one? Not here. Not here. Can we just give each other the benefit of the doubt? When we see someone post pro something that we didn't vote for, can we just say, you know what? I know that person. I know their character. I know they're godly and that they have a thoughtful reason for voting that way, for thinking that way. And I also know that we have in common our Savior, Jesus, and my allegiance is to him. And there is nothing else. There is no other tertiary issue that could break away my allegiance to Jesus and loving other people with that same allegiance. Can we do that? Can we start to be gracious with each other, Grace? Listen, I want to be careful. I'm not saying that I've seen this happening. I'm not thinking of any particular instance in grace. What I am acknowledging is this culture that we exist in now where to pick a side is to claim so much about your life and who you are. And can I just ask that in this place, in this bubble, that we not do that? That we not let that strategy of Satan work? Can we remember that the other people of grace, the other partners of grace, the other people in our orbit who know Jesus are children of God? That they love him? That Jesus died for them? And that everything we know about them is thoughtful and good and that may be the way that they're aligned politically is too. And can we sweep that aside as a tertiary issue and focus as a primary issue on the fact that we love Jesus and our neighbors need desperately to know him? And why don't we be part of our culture that sweeps the rest of that stuff aside and quits letting Satan be so effective in that arena? There's an encouragement if we'll do this. There's an encouragement if we will seek others and not isolate ourselves and if we will not allow ourselves to be lied to. It's not just all bad news when it comes to Satan. You know, I referenced Peter earlier and I said that he tells us that we need to be sober-minded and watchful because Satan prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But what I didn't do is read you the rest of that passage. This is the rest of this Yeah, he's against you. Yes, he's going to try to isolate you. Yes, he's going to try to get you enslaved in secret sin. Yes, he's going to try to divide us. Yes, he's going to do all those things and try to distract you. But if you'll resist him, if you'll refuse to become isolated, if you'll refuse to allow God's church, his bride, to become divided over silly things, if you'll fight off distraction in your life, if you'll have the courage to shed light on the secret sins in your life, if you will hold fast to God, then he promises you that after you have suffered for a little while, which is a kind thing for God to do to acknowledge that this is hard, resisting all of that is difficult and challenging. He says, if you do it, then the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Ephesians 6. He says, He acknowledges what we're talking about today. And he starts off this passage on putting on the armor of God, and he says, when you have stood firm, therefore, stand firm. When you've stood up, keep standing. When you've fought, keep fighting. When you're tired, keep going. And when we do that, when we persist, when we acknowledge the satanic influences in our life, and we do everything we can to resist those, the God of peace will be with us. He will guard us, protect us, and have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us, but God, we are so grateful that you have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us. But God, we know that you have won the battle. We know that for every lie he whispers in our ear, that you are blaring truths into the other one. If only we will listen. Give us the ears to hear your truth. Give us the eyes to see his lies. God, if any of us has a secret sin, would we just shed some light on that this week? Give us courage. May we be met with grace. Let us see light and believe the first time in a long time that we can be done with those things. God, if we are a part of the divisiveness in our culture and in your body, I pray that you would give us grace, patience, wisdom, and peace, that we would not be a part of that scheme. God, if anyone is isolated, bring your angels around them. Let them know that they are loved, that they are not alone. Let them know that they are seen. And God, for those of us who are distracted, would you give us the courage and the desire to be focused every day on what matters most in our lives, on the things that you've placed in our lives and the opportunities that we have to influence people towards you? We thank you for winning this war. We ask you for the strength to stand firm in it. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. This is the fourth part in our series that we've launched the year with called Things You Should Know. The idea is that as Christians or as church people, there's things that we talk about, things that get mentioned that we all kind of nod along with and seem to understand, but maybe we've never stopped to slow down or had the courage to ask the questions that we have about these things. So we wanted to take a month and just kind of look at some of the different topics that come up in church world, that come up in Christendom, but maybe we have never delved into on our own, and maybe we have some existing questions about those things. Last week, we looked at the Sabbath, and I hope that your view and framework around the Sabbath was changed and that some of you are coming off enjoying one of those yesterday or have chosen today as your Sabbath, and I hope that it goes very well for you. This morning, we want to talk about the devil. I think that there may be one other time when I have preached about Satan. It's not a fun topic. It's not fun research to do. If someone got a hold of my browser history this week, they might be really worried about Nate and all the things that I've Googled that have to do with Satan and his influence. So it's not something that we talk about a lot, but it's something that we definitely need to address. I think in church circles, we hear about Satan. We hear about the enemy. We know that he's called Lucifer. We know that he's against us. We know that he hates God. We know that he hates us. But maybe we don't know very much beyond that, beyond what's maybe been put forth in pop culture or something like that. And so I thought it would be good to take a week and focus on Satan, focus on the enemy, on who he is and what he does and really what he wants, what he wants with you and what he wants with me. The best place to do this clearly is scripture. So one of the things I did this week is I sat down and I just started keeping a list of all the places where Satan shows up in scripture or references to him are made in scripture. And I made a master list of all of those and then looked at that list and found the commonalities and tried to distill down some of the essence of what the Bible has to say about the enemy. And so I found four passages that I think sum up who Satan is in an effective way, and I wanted to look at those. And then I wanted to ask the question, okay, that's who he is. How does he accomplish his goals? So to understand who Satan is, one of the first things we want to do is look at his origin. And it's worth saying that we're not exactly positive where he came from or what he does. Now, we think that we know. We think we know where he came from. Most scholars agree, but it's important to point out, and I need to be intellectually honest and say that there's no one explicit place in Scripture where it says for sure this is where Satan came from. But our best guess is found in Ezekiel and then more pointedly in this passage in Isaiah. This is what Isaiah writes. He says, This is primarily where we get the origin story of Satan. It's believed that Satan was an angel. His name was Lucifer. That's what Odaystar means, morning star. That's what Lucifer means. And we believe that he was one of the archangels. He may have even been in charge of worship in heaven. He was a powerful angel, which means if you could see him, you would see that he was beautiful and intimidating and mighty and incredible. He looks very little like the cartoon depictions of him. And one day he told a lie to himself that he could be like God. He looked at God ruling over heaven and he said, I could do that. As a matter of fact, I could rule over you. And so he decided that he was going to lead a coup or an insurrection against God to overtake heaven. And it's believed that Satan was cast out of heaven along with a third of the angels that then became demons. And that began this war, this tension that's existed for all of time that you and I find ourselves in the middle of where Satan and God the Father war over our very souls. And it's interesting to me that the first lie that Satan believed is the lie that he told us. It's the first lie that we believed. It's the lie that we continue to believe. It's the fundamental lie of all of sin, which is, I could be like God. I don't need him. I can do this myself. I can call the shots. Isn't that what he whispered into the ear of Eve? Didn't he go down and slither up to her and say, you know, he's told you not to eat of this tree because he doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want you to know what he knows. He grabbed her and he said, you could do that. You could be him. You understand? If you get nothing else out of this sermon, just please understand, that's the fundamental root of all sin, is deciding, you know what? I think I could be the boss of myself. I don't really think I need his standards. I think I can figure this out on my own. That's the root of all sin. And it was the root of Satan's fall, who fell from heaven and set about for all of time, warring against the Father. And in Hebrew, actually, in the language of Hebrew, his name means accuser or adversary. He is the accuser of us. He is the adversary of God. He is opposed to God and all the things of God. And so that means he is your accuser and that he is your adversary. And the sneaky and scary part is he accuses you to you. He runs you down to you. God doesn't believe what he's saying, but you might. So he accuses you and he brings shame and guilt on your conscience and he opposes you. In the New Testament, we get a little bit clearer picture of who Satan is and what he came to do. Jesus says in the book of John, he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he lies because lying is his native tongue. It's all he knows how to do is to lie and to deceive. And it's important that we point out that these aren't simple lies. These aren't dumb, foolish lies that anybody could see past. It's not lies like the ones in this commercial that I'm reminded of from a few years ago. I think it originally started as a Super Bowl commercial, but I'm not certain. But it makes me chuckle every time I see it. There's this dad, and he's sitting in the living room, right? And his back's against the couch, and he's got the coffee table in front of him, and there's Cheeto dust everywhere. Just this orange dust explosion. It's on the couch, it's on the floor, it's on the toys, it's everywhere. It's all over the place. And he's looking at that, and you can hear kids in the distance, and one of them, looks like about a four-year-old boy, comes running through the living room past his dad and he's got a Cheeto explosion all over himself. Face, shirt, pants, hands, the whole deal. And his dad grabs him and he points at the Cheeto explosion in the room. And he says, do you know anything about this? And the little kid goes, nope. And runs off. And I love it. I think it's great. Satan doesn't tell lies like that. He doesn't tell lies with Cheeto dust everywhere that are easy to pin on him. His lies are far more pernicious. The thing to understand about him that might make us uncomfortable and should make us uncomfortable is that if he's an angel and he's eternal, he's a lot smarter than us. He's a lot smarter than we are. He knows how to manipulate you. His lies look a lot less like, no, I don't know what's going on with the Cheeto dust, and a lot more like, who do you think you are? Why do you think you could ever do that? Why do you think they would ever listen to you? What would make you believe that they could ever believe you? What could make you think that that sort of sin was okay? How could you ever possibly justify that? You are the worst. His lies are a lot more sneaky and pernicious, I think, than we give him credit for. He's excellent at lying and at convincing us of things that aren't true. In part, and this is interesting to me, I almost pulled this thread and preached about this this week, in part because in the lies and the things that he offers us, they're a little bit true. They look like the truth. He very rarely offers us something that we don't have or that we won't get. He just offers it to us right now or just offers it to us in a package that seems more attractive. He's an incredibly effective liar. And then in Peter, we see him say something. And I think it's interesting that Peter chooses to talk about the devil. Because if there was anybody in Jesus's inner circle who wouldn't show as much concern for Satan, it had to be Peter. Peter is the guy who's talk first, think later. Peter's the guy who jumped out of the boat and walked on water. Peter's the guy that when Jesus said to his disciples, you will all betray me and leave me, Peter's the one that stepped up and said, no, I won't, never, God, I will die before I leave you. And we know that he did betray Christ in this really poignant scene. But my point is that Peter was the hard charger. He was the one out in front. He was the one that was all bluster and gusto. And even Peter, who if anybody would say, don't worry about Satan, we got Jesus, he's not a big deal. It would be Peter. But listen to what he says at the end of his life in his letter. 1 Peter 5, verse 8. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Listen to me. Listen to me. We don't want to think about it. We don't want to acknowledge it. But there is an active and effective and intelligent and efficient enemy of your soul who is prowling about seeking to destroy you. There is an enemy stalking around your children and around your marriage and around your husband and your wife and around your friendships and your church and your small group and the things that you hold dear, there is an enemy prowling around you seeking to destroy those things. And shame on me for not bringing that to your attention more often. It's an uncomfortable thing to talk about Satan. It's certainly not a fun thing. But based on the frequency with which he's mentioned in the Bible, it seems reasonable to think that God desperately wants us to be aware of His presence. Can I tell you for what it's worth that even as we were starting up this service this morning, things started going wrong with my microphone that have never gone wrong, not since Steve got here anyways. The Lord knows what used to go wrong with it. But things started happening and distractions were going and we came right up to the minute when we're supposed to launch the service like we really haven't in a long, long time. And I really just think it's because Satan would prefer you not think about him. He would prefer I never did this. He would prefer to continue to operate in the shadows, to continue to prowl about like a roaring lion, ever there, ever present, but never aware of him. And shame on me for not bringing him to our attention more often. But the reality is there is an incredibly effective enemy prowling around our families trying to figure out who he can pick off. So I think it behooves us to ask the question, how does he do that? How does he devour us? How does he lie to us? What's his goal? How do we know when Satan is acting in our lives? How do we know when it's just us, just our nature, just circumstance, or Satan is at play here? Well, I think that there's a really interesting conversation that Jesus actually has with Peter that sheds some light on this. And it's really made me reshape the way I think about satanic influence in our life. But towards the end of Jesus's ministry, towards the end of his life, Jesus gathers the disciples around and he tells them, hey, I've got to go to Jerusalem. They were in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. And he says, I need to go south to Jerusalem, to the hub, to where everything's going on. And when I go, they're going to arrest me and they're going to try me and they're going to kill me. And Peter, totally altruistically, with pure motives, says, well, then don't go. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. We've got a good thing going up here, man. Just stay up here and don't die. How's that? And there was no sin there. It wasn't like Peter said, Jesus, we could really monetize this miracle thing if you wanted to. Stick around a little bit. There's some hay to be made here. It doesn't say stay and do these things with us that you shouldn't do. He's not trying to convince him to not follow what he understands to be God's will. He's just trying to convince him to preserve his life. It's a good, honest, altruistic encouragement from a friend who wanted what was best for Christ. And yet, this is Jesus' response in Matthew chapter 16, get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. It's always struck me that Peter didn't mean evil by his plea. Please just stay with us, Jesus, so that you don't die. That's a good, kind, loving thing to want for anybody you care about. But because his will was not the Father's will, Jesus calls him Satan. Get behind me, Satan. You're a hindrance to me, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. So it occurs to me, based on this passage, that to Jesus, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will, which really opens up this wide swath for how Satan acts. Jesus, I think to him, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will. It's something that pushes you away or pulls you away from God. I think what Jesus would argue is that there are no neutral forces in our life. There's not things that are blatantly bad and satanic and blatantly good and godly and then all this gray area in the middle. To Jesus, it seems rather binary. Things are either godly and pushing you towards God or they're satanic and pulling you away from him. There's no middle ground. And because in this instance, Peter was exerting influence over Jesus that wasn't pushing Jesus towards God's will, his influence was satanic in that moment. So it makes me think that his forces are at play far more often than we give him credit for. And I think where we should want to settle in is to ask the questions, okay, Satan is there. He's prowling about. He is the enemy. He is the accuser. He wants to destroy me. He wants to take me away from God. He wants to hurt God the Father by rendering me useless, by taking me away from him. How is he going to do that? How is he going to exert his influence in my life? This morning, I want to look at four big ways he does that. Now, if you're looking at the notes and what will appear on the screen, you're going to see this phrase, Satan's greatest hits. And I just got to level with you about something here, okay? A little peek behind the curtain. I don't know why I did that. I don't know why I call them Satan's greatest hits. It doesn't really fit into the sermon. I type these notes up on Thursday. I sit in my office. I think, yeah, that's good. That's going to work. And then I type it up, and then I email it to Steve, and then he makes slides. And every now and again, I get here on Sunday, and I think, why did I say it that way? But I usually just go with it because it's fine. But this morning, I looked at Satan's greatest hits. And listen, I got to tell you, if that seems dumb to you, it seems dumb to me too. But we're just going to roll with it because we put it in there on Thursday, and it's too late now, baby. So let's look at Satan's four greatest hits, how he really influences us, okay? The first one I want to look at is isolation. I think one of his greatest ploys, one of the things that he loves is isolation. Think about it. If he's a prowling lion seeking who he may devour, who do the lions devour? Well, they devour the ones that are off by themselves. They devour the ones that have wandered away from the flock. And if what he does is speak lies to us, if he's a liar and the father of lies, when are we most likely to believe them? When there's no other voices in our life to tell us that he's wrong. If Satan is whispering into our ear that we are unlovable and there's no one in our life that tells us that we are, we're far more vulnerable to believe that lie. When Satan is whispering into our ear that we're not good enough, when he's whispering into our ear that we're not worthy, when he's whispering that we shouldn't try that or that we shouldn't do that or that so-and-so doesn't like us or that they only said that nice thing to you because they're trying to get you to do this. They're only treating you that way because they're trying to manipulate you. When you begin to read the worst into everyone and everything and you're totally isolated and have no other voices in your life, how easy is it to convince you that the voice that you do hear is correct? If we play this isolation out to its ultimate end, we can talk about things like school shootings, can't we? Every time one of those things happens, it's an act of atrocious evil from the very pits of hell that somebody could walk into a school and open fire on children. But look at what they have in common. Who's perpetuating that evil? Young, isolated white dudes. Isolated guys who are either in late adolescence or are coming out of adolescence, whose story is the same. They don't have friends. They don't have people around them. And so they got radicalized by thoughts and whispers. And because they don't have a community, because they don't have anybody around them, they become more and more convinced that these lies that they're being fed are true until they act on them. And it is abhorrent evil. That evil is born out of isolation. And while I don't think anyone listening here is in danger of becoming that, it's a sobering reminder of how isolation works. And I think of why this pandemic is so very dangerous. Let me just implore you, if you've found yourself in this pandemic increasingly isolated, if you've left your small group because Zoom meetings are lame, I totally get it. Or you're missing church, or you just can't have people around you because you don't want to get sick. Whatever the reason may be, if you found yourself in COVID becoming increasingly isolated, can I just tell you in all candor that you're one of the ones he's circling? Can I encourage you to join a small group? Can I encourage you to reach out to some friends? Can I encourage you to pick up the phone today and just have a chat? Can I encourage you to find someone to say, hey, here's what I've been thinking. Can you help me make sense of this? And let's not let the enemy's lies grow in isolation. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm good. I'm not isolated. So far, I've made it. Great. I'm happy for you. I don't feel isolated either. Let's look for the ones who do. Let's think of our friends who might have begun to feel that way. Let's reach out to folks that might feel forgotten. If anybody is in your circle, is in your orbit, your atmosphere, can we just take some personal responsibility and make sure that they don't feel isolated? Can we yell at them as they wander away from the herd? Hey, come over here. Let's do lunch or something. Let's do like a Zoom call. Let's have a Zoom happy hour, whatever you want to do. Hey, come hang out. Can we help thwart the plans of the evil one in that way by making sure no one among us is isolated? The second thing that Satan loves to do, the second greatest hit, the secrets. Satan loves secrets, man. He loves the shadows of your life. He loves those nooks and crannies. Man, when you're hiding things, he can whisper stuff to you like, no one will ever forgive you for that. No one will ever understand those choices. No one can ever offer you grace in this situation. And then he whispers things to you like, just keep it tight. Just keep it there. You'll figure it out. You're going to defeat it. You're going to beat it. You can do it. Sure, that same sin that's been chasing you around for 10, 20, 30 years. But yeah, now's the time when you're going to draw the line in the sand and by a sheer force of will, now's the time you're going to beat it. Satan loves secret sin and he loves convincing you that no one can understand it. And he loves convincing you that you have it under control. Because here's what he knows. Secret sins are a cancer in our lives that will eventually claim it. You understand? Secret sins, those things that we do that if our friends found out about, they would not think the same of us. At least that's what we have ourselves convinced of. Those things that we have tucked away that we don't tell anyone, that we carefully monitor, that we carefully watch, that we make sure stay in the shadows and never see the light of day, those sins, Satan loves those sins because they are a cancer in your very life that will lead to it being claimed. Proverbs says it like this. He says, no man can hold hot coals against his chest and not be burned. Those secret sins, those are the ways that families are broken and that lives are destroyed. If you're dealing with one of those, you're probably sweaty right now. But if you're dealing with one of those, can I just tell you as a friend and a pastor, you're right where he wants you to be. If you have a secret sin in your life that nobody knows about, first of all, I get it. I've been there too. And anybody who tells you they haven't, 95% chance they're a liar. Everybody's dealt with those things. We all have ours. But if you continue to persist in yours, he will get you. It will get worse. It will come to light. You can choose to bring it to light or it will bring itself to light. And when it does, it will tear you down. I just want you to know because I care about you. If you're fostering a secret sin in your life, you are exactly where the enemy wants you to be. The other thing I would say is, when you do the thing that you're so very fearful of, and you allow some light to be shed into that dark corner of your life, certain that this is the end of your life, what you will find is more grace and joy and freedom there than you've ever experienced in your life. This belief that I could never shed light on what I am ashamed of because no one will think the same of me is simply not true. When we do that in a Christian community, we are met with grace and with love and with affirmation, and I want you to be met with that. And I want you to believe for the first time in a long time that this sin doesn't have to define me and it doesn't have to beat me. Shed some light on that and defeat the enemy. Disappoint him and let him slither back into his hole and find another way to get you because that's not going to work anymore. Let's claim some victory this week. If you have a secret sin in your life, I was praying for you before I came up here that you would have the courage to take the steps to shed some light on that so that we are no longer in his crosshairs. Now, you may be thinking, I'm doing great so far. I'm not isolated. I got no secret sin going on right now that I'm ashamed of. I'm an open book. And I would say, good for you. That's a healthy life, and you ought to feel that way. But I think his third greatest hit is one that's going to hit pretty close to home for a lot of us. It's simply distraction. Just distraction. Listen, Satan wants you to be as ineffective as possible. He wants to tear you away from God. If he can't tear you away from God, then he wants you to be useless in his kingdom. He doesn't want you to bring anybody one step closer to God. So how does he do that? Well, he's going to try to isolate you, but that hasn't worked. Good for you. He's going to try to get you to develop this secret sin that you can't share with other people. That hasn't worked. Good for you. Well, if I can't do those things, you know what I'll do? I'll just distract them. I'll put a dang cell phone in their hand. I'll give them a TV and a gossipy neighbor. Listen, I'm not even talking about the distraction of what if I've lived my whole life for the wrong things. I'm not even talking about the distraction of getting to the end of our life and wondering if we've invested in it properly. That's priorities. I'm talking about literal distractions, just literal nothingness that keep us from doing anything. So that maybe we think about our life and we think our life is on a good trajectory. We're doing good. We're good people. We're reading our Bible when we can. We're coming to church when we can. We're disciplining our kids or enjoying relationships with our kids the way that we should. We have good, healthy friendships in our life. And on the whole, the trajectory seems good. But on a day-to-day basis, how are we spending our days? It's Sunday. If you have an iPhone, you got a screen time report this morning. What does it say? How much time have you lost doom scrolling Twitter since November 1st? I would not like to share that with any of you, what my answer is. How much time do we lose to the algorithms that try to keep our attention? Scrolling Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. How much time do we lose to the news? That's very likely, and I'm guilty too, just an echo chamber for what we already believe. How much time do we lose to sports? When we wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off or we just simply come to and we wake up, what's the first thing we do? Is it grab our phone and invite in? What distractions do you have for me today, Satan? I am convinced that so very many of us go through our lives convinced that we're doing the right things and that we're good people. And we're right. But we allow so much of our day to be stolen from us with stuff that doesn't matter that Satan has effectively rendered us totally ineffective in God's kingdom. How often, this is for me included, do we put our head on the pillow at night, tired, because I was a good servant of the Lord today. I served him the way he wanted me to serve. And how many of us go to bed distracted and thinking about all the new distractions that await us the next day? I think distraction is Satan's number one strategy to render us ineffective. How distracted are we in our lives? How much of our daily attention do we give things that just at the end of the day don't matter and definitely don't help us build the kingdom of God? The last one I wanted us to look at this morning is division. Satan loves division. He loves to divide us. He loves to pit one against the other. Scripture is replete with God's will that his church be unified, that his people be unified, that we be of one body, of one mind, of one accord, that we march forward and have one plan. There are no limits to what a group of people who love Jesus and who love one another can do. And Satan hates that. He's terrified of it. He does everything he can to make sure that the people of God don't unify under a single banner. He wants to drive as many wedges between us as he can. He wants us to judge other people, even in our church, for stupid things that they do or say or that we take out of context. It is Satan's will that we be divided. It is Satan's will that we choose to not like other Christians. It's God's will that we be unified. This is why I think Satan loves our current political climate. I think he's just eating it up, man. I don't think politically things could be going better for Satan because all he cares about is driving a wedge between those who call Jesus Savior. And right now what we have is this culture where Christians on both sides will make judgments about other people's spiritual health based on how they vote. Christians on both sides of the aisle will hear that so-and-so voted for so-and-so and judge who they are spiritually based on a vote that they cast. With no context, with no discussion, they just assume that what I think of that side of the aisle is what you are, and what I think of that side of the aisle must be what you are. And because you voted that way, you must be ignorant, or you must not believe what I believe, or you must be swept away, or you must be convinced by the media, or you must be convinced by social media, or whatever it is. And Satan just sits back and folds his arms and is happy and grins because, look, I've set in motion this system that's going to cause division in the church. And now, within our churches, we have groups of Christians that are judging each other based on how they voted with as little information as possible. And it's the scheme of Satan. You understand that, right? He chuckles with glee when we do that. He delights when we scroll Facebook, pick and fight. When we pick up our phone and we go, look at what Sansa said. There's such a lemming. We show it to whoever's around us. Can we just do this, Grace? Can we just say not today, Satan, on that one? Not here. Not here. Can we just give each other the benefit of the doubt? When we see someone post pro something that we didn't vote for, can we just say, you know what? I know that person. I know their character. I know they're godly and that they have a thoughtful reason for voting that way, for thinking that way. And I also know that we have in common our Savior, Jesus, and my allegiance is to him. And there is nothing else. There is no other tertiary issue that could break away my allegiance to Jesus and loving other people with that same allegiance. Can we do that? Can we start to be gracious with each other, Grace? Listen, I want to be careful. I'm not saying that I've seen this happening. I'm not thinking of any particular instance in grace. What I am acknowledging is this culture that we exist in now where to pick a side is to claim so much about your life and who you are. And can I just ask that in this place, in this bubble, that we not do that? That we not let that strategy of Satan work? Can we remember that the other people of grace, the other partners of grace, the other people in our orbit who know Jesus are children of God? That they love him? That Jesus died for them? And that everything we know about them is thoughtful and good and that may be the way that they're aligned politically is too. And can we sweep that aside as a tertiary issue and focus as a primary issue on the fact that we love Jesus and our neighbors need desperately to know him? And why don't we be part of our culture that sweeps the rest of that stuff aside and quits letting Satan be so effective in that arena? There's an encouragement if we'll do this. There's an encouragement if we will seek others and not isolate ourselves and if we will not allow ourselves to be lied to. It's not just all bad news when it comes to Satan. You know, I referenced Peter earlier and I said that he tells us that we need to be sober-minded and watchful because Satan prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But what I didn't do is read you the rest of that passage. This is the rest of this Yeah, he's against you. Yes, he's going to try to isolate you. Yes, he's going to try to get you enslaved in secret sin. Yes, he's going to try to divide us. Yes, he's going to do all those things and try to distract you. But if you'll resist him, if you'll refuse to become isolated, if you'll refuse to allow God's church, his bride, to become divided over silly things, if you'll fight off distraction in your life, if you'll have the courage to shed light on the secret sins in your life, if you will hold fast to God, then he promises you that after you have suffered for a little while, which is a kind thing for God to do to acknowledge that this is hard, resisting all of that is difficult and challenging. He says, if you do it, then the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Ephesians 6. He says, He acknowledges what we're talking about today. And he starts off this passage on putting on the armor of God, and he says, when you have stood firm, therefore, stand firm. When you've stood up, keep standing. When you've fought, keep fighting. When you're tired, keep going. And when we do that, when we persist, when we acknowledge the satanic influences in our life, and we do everything we can to resist those, the God of peace will be with us. He will guard us, protect us, and have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us, but God, we are so grateful that you have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us. But God, we know that you have won the battle. We know that for every lie he whispers in our ear, that you are blaring truths into the other one. If only we will listen. Give us the ears to hear your truth. Give us the eyes to see his lies. God, if any of us has a secret sin, would we just shed some light on that this week? Give us courage. May we be met with grace. Let us see light and believe the first time in a long time that we can be done with those things. God, if we are a part of the divisiveness in our culture and in your body, I pray that you would give us grace, patience, wisdom, and peace, that we would not be a part of that scheme. God, if anyone is isolated, bring your angels around them. Let them know that they are loved, that they are not alone. Let them know that they are seen. And God, for those of us who are distracted, would you give us the courage and the desire to be focused every day on what matters most in our lives, on the things that you've placed in our lives and the opportunities that we have to influence people towards you? We thank you for winning this war. We ask you for the strength to stand firm in it. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. This is the fourth part in our series that we've launched the year with called Things You Should Know. The idea is that as Christians or as church people, there's things that we talk about, things that get mentioned that we all kind of nod along with and seem to understand, but maybe we've never stopped to slow down or had the courage to ask the questions that we have about these things. So we wanted to take a month and just kind of look at some of the different topics that come up in church world, that come up in Christendom, but maybe we have never delved into on our own, and maybe we have some existing questions about those things. Last week, we looked at the Sabbath, and I hope that your view and framework around the Sabbath was changed and that some of you are coming off enjoying one of those yesterday or have chosen today as your Sabbath, and I hope that it goes very well for you. This morning, we want to talk about the devil. I think that there may be one other time when I have preached about Satan. It's not a fun topic. It's not fun research to do. If someone got a hold of my browser history this week, they might be really worried about Nate and all the things that I've Googled that have to do with Satan and his influence. So it's not something that we talk about a lot, but it's something that we definitely need to address. I think in church circles, we hear about Satan. We hear about the enemy. We know that he's called Lucifer. We know that he's against us. We know that he hates God. We know that he hates us. But maybe we don't know very much beyond that, beyond what's maybe been put forth in pop culture or something like that. And so I thought it would be good to take a week and focus on Satan, focus on the enemy, on who he is and what he does and really what he wants, what he wants with you and what he wants with me. The best place to do this clearly is scripture. So one of the things I did this week is I sat down and I just started keeping a list of all the places where Satan shows up in scripture or references to him are made in scripture. And I made a master list of all of those and then looked at that list and found the commonalities and tried to distill down some of the essence of what the Bible has to say about the enemy. And so I found four passages that I think sum up who Satan is in an effective way, and I wanted to look at those. And then I wanted to ask the question, okay, that's who he is. How does he accomplish his goals? So to understand who Satan is, one of the first things we want to do is look at his origin. And it's worth saying that we're not exactly positive where he came from or what he does. Now, we think that we know. We think we know where he came from. Most scholars agree, but it's important to point out, and I need to be intellectually honest and say that there's no one explicit place in Scripture where it says for sure this is where Satan came from. But our best guess is found in Ezekiel and then more pointedly in this passage in Isaiah. This is what Isaiah writes. He says, This is primarily where we get the origin story of Satan. It's believed that Satan was an angel. His name was Lucifer. That's what Odaystar means, morning star. That's what Lucifer means. And we believe that he was one of the archangels. He may have even been in charge of worship in heaven. He was a powerful angel, which means if you could see him, you would see that he was beautiful and intimidating and mighty and incredible. He looks very little like the cartoon depictions of him. And one day he told a lie to himself that he could be like God. He looked at God ruling over heaven and he said, I could do that. As a matter of fact, I could rule over you. And so he decided that he was going to lead a coup or an insurrection against God to overtake heaven. And it's believed that Satan was cast out of heaven along with a third of the angels that then became demons. And that began this war, this tension that's existed for all of time that you and I find ourselves in the middle of where Satan and God the Father war over our very souls. And it's interesting to me that the first lie that Satan believed is the lie that he told us. It's the first lie that we believed. It's the lie that we continue to believe. It's the fundamental lie of all of sin, which is, I could be like God. I don't need him. I can do this myself. I can call the shots. Isn't that what he whispered into the ear of Eve? Didn't he go down and slither up to her and say, you know, he's told you not to eat of this tree because he doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want you to know what he knows. He grabbed her and he said, you could do that. You could be him. You understand? If you get nothing else out of this sermon, just please understand, that's the fundamental root of all sin, is deciding, you know what? I think I could be the boss of myself. I don't really think I need his standards. I think I can figure this out on my own. That's the root of all sin. And it was the root of Satan's fall, who fell from heaven and set about for all of time, warring against the Father. And in Hebrew, actually, in the language of Hebrew, his name means accuser or adversary. He is the accuser of us. He is the adversary of God. He is opposed to God and all the things of God. And so that means he is your accuser and that he is your adversary. And the sneaky and scary part is he accuses you to you. He runs you down to you. God doesn't believe what he's saying, but you might. So he accuses you and he brings shame and guilt on your conscience and he opposes you. In the New Testament, we get a little bit clearer picture of who Satan is and what he came to do. Jesus says in the book of John, he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he lies because lying is his native tongue. It's all he knows how to do is to lie and to deceive. And it's important that we point out that these aren't simple lies. These aren't dumb, foolish lies that anybody could see past. It's not lies like the ones in this commercial that I'm reminded of from a few years ago. I think it originally started as a Super Bowl commercial, but I'm not certain. But it makes me chuckle every time I see it. There's this dad, and he's sitting in the living room, right? And his back's against the couch, and he's got the coffee table in front of him, and there's Cheeto dust everywhere. Just this orange dust explosion. It's on the couch, it's on the floor, it's on the toys, it's everywhere. It's all over the place. And he's looking at that, and you can hear kids in the distance, and one of them, looks like about a four-year-old boy, comes running through the living room past his dad and he's got a Cheeto explosion all over himself. Face, shirt, pants, hands, the whole deal. And his dad grabs him and he points at the Cheeto explosion in the room. And he says, do you know anything about this? And the little kid goes, nope. And runs off. And I love it. I think it's great. Satan doesn't tell lies like that. He doesn't tell lies with Cheeto dust everywhere that are easy to pin on him. His lies are far more pernicious. The thing to understand about him that might make us uncomfortable and should make us uncomfortable is that if he's an angel and he's eternal, he's a lot smarter than us. He's a lot smarter than we are. He knows how to manipulate you. His lies look a lot less like, no, I don't know what's going on with the Cheeto dust, and a lot more like, who do you think you are? Why do you think you could ever do that? Why do you think they would ever listen to you? What would make you believe that they could ever believe you? What could make you think that that sort of sin was okay? How could you ever possibly justify that? You are the worst. His lies are a lot more sneaky and pernicious, I think, than we give him credit for. He's excellent at lying and at convincing us of things that aren't true. In part, and this is interesting to me, I almost pulled this thread and preached about this this week, in part because in the lies and the things that he offers us, they're a little bit true. They look like the truth. He very rarely offers us something that we don't have or that we won't get. He just offers it to us right now or just offers it to us in a package that seems more attractive. He's an incredibly effective liar. And then in Peter, we see him say something. And I think it's interesting that Peter chooses to talk about the devil. Because if there was anybody in Jesus's inner circle who wouldn't show as much concern for Satan, it had to be Peter. Peter is the guy who's talk first, think later. Peter's the guy who jumped out of the boat and walked on water. Peter's the guy that when Jesus said to his disciples, you will all betray me and leave me, Peter's the one that stepped up and said, no, I won't, never, God, I will die before I leave you. And we know that he did betray Christ in this really poignant scene. But my point is that Peter was the hard charger. He was the one out in front. He was the one that was all bluster and gusto. And even Peter, who if anybody would say, don't worry about Satan, we got Jesus, he's not a big deal. It would be Peter. But listen to what he says at the end of his life in his letter. 1 Peter 5, verse 8. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Listen to me. Listen to me. We don't want to think about it. We don't want to acknowledge it. But there is an active and effective and intelligent and efficient enemy of your soul who is prowling about seeking to destroy you. There is an enemy stalking around your children and around your marriage and around your husband and your wife and around your friendships and your church and your small group and the things that you hold dear, there is an enemy prowling around you seeking to destroy those things. And shame on me for not bringing that to your attention more often. It's an uncomfortable thing to talk about Satan. It's certainly not a fun thing. But based on the frequency with which he's mentioned in the Bible, it seems reasonable to think that God desperately wants us to be aware of His presence. Can I tell you for what it's worth that even as we were starting up this service this morning, things started going wrong with my microphone that have never gone wrong, not since Steve got here anyways. The Lord knows what used to go wrong with it. But things started happening and distractions were going and we came right up to the minute when we're supposed to launch the service like we really haven't in a long, long time. And I really just think it's because Satan would prefer you not think about him. He would prefer I never did this. He would prefer to continue to operate in the shadows, to continue to prowl about like a roaring lion, ever there, ever present, but never aware of him. And shame on me for not bringing him to our attention more often. But the reality is there is an incredibly effective enemy prowling around our families trying to figure out who he can pick off. So I think it behooves us to ask the question, how does he do that? How does he devour us? How does he lie to us? What's his goal? How do we know when Satan is acting in our lives? How do we know when it's just us, just our nature, just circumstance, or Satan is at play here? Well, I think that there's a really interesting conversation that Jesus actually has with Peter that sheds some light on this. And it's really made me reshape the way I think about satanic influence in our life. But towards the end of Jesus's ministry, towards the end of his life, Jesus gathers the disciples around and he tells them, hey, I've got to go to Jerusalem. They were in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. And he says, I need to go south to Jerusalem, to the hub, to where everything's going on. And when I go, they're going to arrest me and they're going to try me and they're going to kill me. And Peter, totally altruistically, with pure motives, says, well, then don't go. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. We've got a good thing going up here, man. Just stay up here and don't die. How's that? And there was no sin there. It wasn't like Peter said, Jesus, we could really monetize this miracle thing if you wanted to. Stick around a little bit. There's some hay to be made here. It doesn't say stay and do these things with us that you shouldn't do. He's not trying to convince him to not follow what he understands to be God's will. He's just trying to convince him to preserve his life. It's a good, honest, altruistic encouragement from a friend who wanted what was best for Christ. And yet, this is Jesus' response in Matthew chapter 16, get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. It's always struck me that Peter didn't mean evil by his plea. Please just stay with us, Jesus, so that you don't die. That's a good, kind, loving thing to want for anybody you care about. But because his will was not the Father's will, Jesus calls him Satan. Get behind me, Satan. You're a hindrance to me, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. So it occurs to me, based on this passage, that to Jesus, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will, which really opens up this wide swath for how Satan acts. Jesus, I think to him, satanic influence is anything that doesn't pull you towards God's will. It's something that pushes you away or pulls you away from God. I think what Jesus would argue is that there are no neutral forces in our life. There's not things that are blatantly bad and satanic and blatantly good and godly and then all this gray area in the middle. To Jesus, it seems rather binary. Things are either godly and pushing you towards God or they're satanic and pulling you away from him. There's no middle ground. And because in this instance, Peter was exerting influence over Jesus that wasn't pushing Jesus towards God's will, his influence was satanic in that moment. So it makes me think that his forces are at play far more often than we give him credit for. And I think where we should want to settle in is to ask the questions, okay, Satan is there. He's prowling about. He is the enemy. He is the accuser. He wants to destroy me. He wants to take me away from God. He wants to hurt God the Father by rendering me useless, by taking me away from him. How is he going to do that? How is he going to exert his influence in my life? This morning, I want to look at four big ways he does that. Now, if you're looking at the notes and what will appear on the screen, you're going to see this phrase, Satan's greatest hits. And I just got to level with you about something here, okay? A little peek behind the curtain. I don't know why I did that. I don't know why I call them Satan's greatest hits. It doesn't really fit into the sermon. I type these notes up on Thursday. I sit in my office. I think, yeah, that's good. That's going to work. And then I type it up, and then I email it to Steve, and then he makes slides. And every now and again, I get here on Sunday, and I think, why did I say it that way? But I usually just go with it because it's fine. But this morning, I looked at Satan's greatest hits. And listen, I got to tell you, if that seems dumb to you, it seems dumb to me too. But we're just going to roll with it because we put it in there on Thursday, and it's too late now, baby. So let's look at Satan's four greatest hits, how he really influences us, okay? The first one I want to look at is isolation. I think one of his greatest ploys, one of the things that he loves is isolation. Think about it. If he's a prowling lion seeking who he may devour, who do the lions devour? Well, they devour the ones that are off by themselves. They devour the ones that have wandered away from the flock. And if what he does is speak lies to us, if he's a liar and the father of lies, when are we most likely to believe them? When there's no other voices in our life to tell us that he's wrong. If Satan is whispering into our ear that we are unlovable and there's no one in our life that tells us that we are, we're far more vulnerable to believe that lie. When Satan is whispering into our ear that we're not good enough, when he's whispering into our ear that we're not worthy, when he's whispering that we shouldn't try that or that we shouldn't do that or that so-and-so doesn't like us or that they only said that nice thing to you because they're trying to get you to do this. They're only treating you that way because they're trying to manipulate you. When you begin to read the worst into everyone and everything and you're totally isolated and have no other voices in your life, how easy is it to convince you that the voice that you do hear is correct? If we play this isolation out to its ultimate end, we can talk about things like school shootings, can't we? Every time one of those things happens, it's an act of atrocious evil from the very pits of hell that somebody could walk into a school and open fire on children. But look at what they have in common. Who's perpetuating that evil? Young, isolated white dudes. Isolated guys who are either in late adolescence or are coming out of adolescence, whose story is the same. They don't have friends. They don't have people around them. And so they got radicalized by thoughts and whispers. And because they don't have a community, because they don't have anybody around them, they become more and more convinced that these lies that they're being fed are true until they act on them. And it is abhorrent evil. That evil is born out of isolation. And while I don't think anyone listening here is in danger of becoming that, it's a sobering reminder of how isolation works. And I think of why this pandemic is so very dangerous. Let me just implore you, if you've found yourself in this pandemic increasingly isolated, if you've left your small group because Zoom meetings are lame, I totally get it. Or you're missing church, or you just can't have people around you because you don't want to get sick. Whatever the reason may be, if you found yourself in COVID becoming increasingly isolated, can I just tell you in all candor that you're one of the ones he's circling? Can I encourage you to join a small group? Can I encourage you to reach out to some friends? Can I encourage you to pick up the phone today and just have a chat? Can I encourage you to find someone to say, hey, here's what I've been thinking. Can you help me make sense of this? And let's not let the enemy's lies grow in isolation. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm good. I'm not isolated. So far, I've made it. Great. I'm happy for you. I don't feel isolated either. Let's look for the ones who do. Let's think of our friends who might have begun to feel that way. Let's reach out to folks that might feel forgotten. If anybody is in your circle, is in your orbit, your atmosphere, can we just take some personal responsibility and make sure that they don't feel isolated? Can we yell at them as they wander away from the herd? Hey, come over here. Let's do lunch or something. Let's do like a Zoom call. Let's have a Zoom happy hour, whatever you want to do. Hey, come hang out. Can we help thwart the plans of the evil one in that way by making sure no one among us is isolated? The second thing that Satan loves to do, the second greatest hit, the secrets. Satan loves secrets, man. He loves the shadows of your life. He loves those nooks and crannies. Man, when you're hiding things, he can whisper stuff to you like, no one will ever forgive you for that. No one will ever understand those choices. No one can ever offer you grace in this situation. And then he whispers things to you like, just keep it tight. Just keep it there. You'll figure it out. You're going to defeat it. You're going to beat it. You can do it. Sure, that same sin that's been chasing you around for 10, 20, 30 years. But yeah, now's the time when you're going to draw the line in the sand and by a sheer force of will, now's the time you're going to beat it. Satan loves secret sin and he loves convincing you that no one can understand it. And he loves convincing you that you have it under control. Because here's what he knows. Secret sins are a cancer in our lives that will eventually claim it. You understand? Secret sins, those things that we do that if our friends found out about, they would not think the same of us. At least that's what we have ourselves convinced of. Those things that we have tucked away that we don't tell anyone, that we carefully monitor, that we carefully watch, that we make sure stay in the shadows and never see the light of day, those sins, Satan loves those sins because they are a cancer in your very life that will lead to it being claimed. Proverbs says it like this. He says, no man can hold hot coals against his chest and not be burned. Those secret sins, those are the ways that families are broken and that lives are destroyed. If you're dealing with one of those, you're probably sweaty right now. But if you're dealing with one of those, can I just tell you as a friend and a pastor, you're right where he wants you to be. If you have a secret sin in your life that nobody knows about, first of all, I get it. I've been there too. And anybody who tells you they haven't, 95% chance they're a liar. Everybody's dealt with those things. We all have ours. But if you continue to persist in yours, he will get you. It will get worse. It will come to light. You can choose to bring it to light or it will bring itself to light. And when it does, it will tear you down. I just want you to know because I care about you. If you're fostering a secret sin in your life, you are exactly where the enemy wants you to be. The other thing I would say is, when you do the thing that you're so very fearful of, and you allow some light to be shed into that dark corner of your life, certain that this is the end of your life, what you will find is more grace and joy and freedom there than you've ever experienced in your life. This belief that I could never shed light on what I am ashamed of because no one will think the same of me is simply not true. When we do that in a Christian community, we are met with grace and with love and with affirmation, and I want you to be met with that. And I want you to believe for the first time in a long time that this sin doesn't have to define me and it doesn't have to beat me. Shed some light on that and defeat the enemy. Disappoint him and let him slither back into his hole and find another way to get you because that's not going to work anymore. Let's claim some victory this week. If you have a secret sin in your life, I was praying for you before I came up here that you would have the courage to take the steps to shed some light on that so that we are no longer in his crosshairs. Now, you may be thinking, I'm doing great so far. I'm not isolated. I got no secret sin going on right now that I'm ashamed of. I'm an open book. And I would say, good for you. That's a healthy life, and you ought to feel that way. But I think his third greatest hit is one that's going to hit pretty close to home for a lot of us. It's simply distraction. Just distraction. Listen, Satan wants you to be as ineffective as possible. He wants to tear you away from God. If he can't tear you away from God, then he wants you to be useless in his kingdom. He doesn't want you to bring anybody one step closer to God. So how does he do that? Well, he's going to try to isolate you, but that hasn't worked. Good for you. He's going to try to get you to develop this secret sin that you can't share with other people. That hasn't worked. Good for you. Well, if I can't do those things, you know what I'll do? I'll just distract them. I'll put a dang cell phone in their hand. I'll give them a TV and a gossipy neighbor. Listen, I'm not even talking about the distraction of what if I've lived my whole life for the wrong things. I'm not even talking about the distraction of getting to the end of our life and wondering if we've invested in it properly. That's priorities. I'm talking about literal distractions, just literal nothingness that keep us from doing anything. So that maybe we think about our life and we think our life is on a good trajectory. We're doing good. We're good people. We're reading our Bible when we can. We're coming to church when we can. We're disciplining our kids or enjoying relationships with our kids the way that we should. We have good, healthy friendships in our life. And on the whole, the trajectory seems good. But on a day-to-day basis, how are we spending our days? It's Sunday. If you have an iPhone, you got a screen time report this morning. What does it say? How much time have you lost doom scrolling Twitter since November 1st? I would not like to share that with any of you, what my answer is. How much time do we lose to the algorithms that try to keep our attention? Scrolling Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. How much time do we lose to the news? That's very likely, and I'm guilty too, just an echo chamber for what we already believe. How much time do we lose to sports? When we wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off or we just simply come to and we wake up, what's the first thing we do? Is it grab our phone and invite in? What distractions do you have for me today, Satan? I am convinced that so very many of us go through our lives convinced that we're doing the right things and that we're good people. And we're right. But we allow so much of our day to be stolen from us with stuff that doesn't matter that Satan has effectively rendered us totally ineffective in God's kingdom. How often, this is for me included, do we put our head on the pillow at night, tired, because I was a good servant of the Lord today. I served him the way he wanted me to serve. And how many of us go to bed distracted and thinking about all the new distractions that await us the next day? I think distraction is Satan's number one strategy to render us ineffective. How distracted are we in our lives? How much of our daily attention do we give things that just at the end of the day don't matter and definitely don't help us build the kingdom of God? The last one I wanted us to look at this morning is division. Satan loves division. He loves to divide us. He loves to pit one against the other. Scripture is replete with God's will that his church be unified, that his people be unified, that we be of one body, of one mind, of one accord, that we march forward and have one plan. There are no limits to what a group of people who love Jesus and who love one another can do. And Satan hates that. He's terrified of it. He does everything he can to make sure that the people of God don't unify under a single banner. He wants to drive as many wedges between us as he can. He wants us to judge other people, even in our church, for stupid things that they do or say or that we take out of context. It is Satan's will that we be divided. It is Satan's will that we choose to not like other Christians. It's God's will that we be unified. This is why I think Satan loves our current political climate. I think he's just eating it up, man. I don't think politically things could be going better for Satan because all he cares about is driving a wedge between those who call Jesus Savior. And right now what we have is this culture where Christians on both sides will make judgments about other people's spiritual health based on how they vote. Christians on both sides of the aisle will hear that so-and-so voted for so-and-so and judge who they are spiritually based on a vote that they cast. With no context, with no discussion, they just assume that what I think of that side of the aisle is what you are, and what I think of that side of the aisle must be what you are. And because you voted that way, you must be ignorant, or you must not believe what I believe, or you must be swept away, or you must be convinced by the media, or you must be convinced by social media, or whatever it is. And Satan just sits back and folds his arms and is happy and grins because, look, I've set in motion this system that's going to cause division in the church. And now, within our churches, we have groups of Christians that are judging each other based on how they voted with as little information as possible. And it's the scheme of Satan. You understand that, right? He chuckles with glee when we do that. He delights when we scroll Facebook, pick and fight. When we pick up our phone and we go, look at what Sansa said. There's such a lemming. We show it to whoever's around us. Can we just do this, Grace? Can we just say not today, Satan, on that one? Not here. Not here. Can we just give each other the benefit of the doubt? When we see someone post pro something that we didn't vote for, can we just say, you know what? I know that person. I know their character. I know they're godly and that they have a thoughtful reason for voting that way, for thinking that way. And I also know that we have in common our Savior, Jesus, and my allegiance is to him. And there is nothing else. There is no other tertiary issue that could break away my allegiance to Jesus and loving other people with that same allegiance. Can we do that? Can we start to be gracious with each other, Grace? Listen, I want to be careful. I'm not saying that I've seen this happening. I'm not thinking of any particular instance in grace. What I am acknowledging is this culture that we exist in now where to pick a side is to claim so much about your life and who you are. And can I just ask that in this place, in this bubble, that we not do that? That we not let that strategy of Satan work? Can we remember that the other people of grace, the other partners of grace, the other people in our orbit who know Jesus are children of God? That they love him? That Jesus died for them? And that everything we know about them is thoughtful and good and that may be the way that they're aligned politically is too. And can we sweep that aside as a tertiary issue and focus as a primary issue on the fact that we love Jesus and our neighbors need desperately to know him? And why don't we be part of our culture that sweeps the rest of that stuff aside and quits letting Satan be so effective in that arena? There's an encouragement if we'll do this. There's an encouragement if we will seek others and not isolate ourselves and if we will not allow ourselves to be lied to. It's not just all bad news when it comes to Satan. You know, I referenced Peter earlier and I said that he tells us that we need to be sober-minded and watchful because Satan prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But what I didn't do is read you the rest of that passage. This is the rest of this Yeah, he's against you. Yes, he's going to try to isolate you. Yes, he's going to try to get you enslaved in secret sin. Yes, he's going to try to divide us. Yes, he's going to do all those things and try to distract you. But if you'll resist him, if you'll refuse to become isolated, if you'll refuse to allow God's church, his bride, to become divided over silly things, if you'll fight off distraction in your life, if you'll have the courage to shed light on the secret sins in your life, if you will hold fast to God, then he promises you that after you have suffered for a little while, which is a kind thing for God to do to acknowledge that this is hard, resisting all of that is difficult and challenging. He says, if you do it, then the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Ephesians 6. He says, He acknowledges what we're talking about today. And he starts off this passage on putting on the armor of God, and he says, when you have stood firm, therefore, stand firm. When you've stood up, keep standing. When you've fought, keep fighting. When you're tired, keep going. And when we do that, when we persist, when we acknowledge the satanic influences in our life, and we do everything we can to resist those, the God of peace will be with us. He will guard us, protect us, and have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us, but God, we are so grateful that you have defeated the enemy for us. We are frustrated that he continues to fight, that he continues to try to claim us. But God, we know that you have won the battle. We know that for every lie he whispers in our ear, that you are blaring truths into the other one. If only we will listen. Give us the ears to hear your truth. Give us the eyes to see his lies. God, if any of us has a secret sin, would we just shed some light on that this week? Give us courage. May we be met with grace. Let us see light and believe the first time in a long time that we can be done with those things. God, if we are a part of the divisiveness in our culture and in your body, I pray that you would give us grace, patience, wisdom, and peace, that we would not be a part of that scheme. God, if anyone is isolated, bring your angels around them. Let them know that they are loved, that they are not alone. Let them know that they are seen. And God, for those of us who are distracted, would you give us the courage and the desire to be focused every day on what matters most in our lives, on the things that you've placed in our lives and the opportunities that we have to influence people towards you? We thank you for winning this war. We ask you for the strength to stand firm in it. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.