Proverbs 6

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.

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.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be with you in person. It's good to be with you online. Thank you for continuing to join us in that way. As Michelle just said, it is nice to have faces. They're hidden behind masks, which gives me the benefit of pretending like you're all just smiling at me the whole time. So that's how I'm picturing you. It's just nice and friendly and kind, so I appreciate that. Last week, we started our series called Vapor, which is a study through the book of Ecclesiastes. So I would actually say this, if you're catching up later this week, if you're listening to this on like a Tuesday, or you're watching online and you didn't catch last week, stop. I would encourage you to stop and go back and listen to last week. Do it on double speed, or if you really want a good laugh, listen to my voice on half speed, because that sounds funny. But listen to the last one and then catch up with this week. Because again, this is a series and it's not really made to stand independently of one another. We kind of need all of the parts to understand the four separate parts. And so last week was a downer. Last week was a bummer. I warned you ahead of time that you're not going to feel good at the end of that sermon. This one is not much different, all right? So just buckle up. This is Ecclesiastes, and I think it's good and ecclesiastical for us to sit in the difficult sometimes, for us to sit in hard reality sometimes. And what we said is that this is the bleakest book for the bleakest month. And I don't think I need much of a backup. This winter has been terrible, just gray and dark and rainy. It's the perfect time to go through Ecclesiastes. Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes, and he writes it towards the end of his life and just hits us with some stark realities. And I continue to contend that on the other side of these realities, if we can accept the reality that we talked about last week, which is the idea that most Americans, most people in our culture are wasting our lives. He calls it vanity of vanities of striving after the wind. It's vapor. That's why the series is called Vapor. It's that Hebrew word, a hevel, that means vapor or smoke. Here one minute, gone the next. Seems like you can reach out and grab success or grab happiness or grab something worth pursuing and that when you get to it, it's gone. It slips through your fingers and we don't have it anymore. So the difficult reality that we confronted last week was just that, that most of life is vapor. Most pursuits, when we get to the end of them, we will find them to be empty. That's a difficult reality, but it's an essential one. We're going to face another reality this week, and I continue to believe if we will face these bravely, that what we'll find on the other end of them is this immutable joy, this joy that can be untouched by circumstance. I believe that we'll find the satisfaction on the other side of these realities that really is abiding. I think that we'll become more grateful for God and more desirous of Jesus for him to come and for our relationship with him. And so we're going to wade through these things as a church. Now, I ended last week with that thought, that it's my belief that Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, would tell most Americans, a vast majority of people in our culture, that you're wasting your life. You're chasing vapor. And then I said, well, God gives us something that is worth chasing. What is that? And I said, we're going to talk about it next week. And then I prayed and we went home. Or, well, I went home. You guys just stayed where you were. So this week we want to start off by answering that question that we left off with. What is the thing worth pursuing? If it's not ambition, if it's not career, if it's not pleasures, if it's not monuments to ourselves, if it's not security, if it's not the book knowledge and general wisdom, what is it that's worth investing our life in? Well, I think that Solomon would answer that question like this. He concludes, based on my reading of Ecclesiastes, Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. The best investment of your life, the best way to spend your days and get to the end of your years and not wonder, did I waste my life, is to spend those days pleasing God. The best way to reach joy, to grab onto something that's not vapor, that is substantive, is to spend your days pleasing God. That's what he says. And I believe that he intends that because he says it multiple times throughout the book. Look with me at what he writes in Ecclesiastes. We'll start in chapter 8 and then we'll be in chapter 12. He says, And then in chapter 8, And then he ends the book this way, Ecclesiastes 12, 13. He sums up all the teachings and he says this, Fear God, keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. If you were to go to Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, and say, what's worth it? What should I do? He would say, fear God and keep his commands. We can talk about everything. We can talk about all the different pursuits. We can talk about all the different realities. We can be confronted with all the difficult things in life. We can accept the problem of pain and the vexation of wisdom. We can do all of that. But at the end of the day, here's what matters. Pursue God, keep his commands. This is the whole duty of man. That's what we are to do. That's what he has tasked us with. And this is Solomon's, I think, tip of the cap. It's his acknowledgement of what's called in theological circles, proverbial wisdom. Solomon also wrote the book of Proverbs. And in the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of if-then statements. If you do these good things, God will bless you with these good things. If you make choices like this, you will reap blessings like this. If you do dumb things, you will reap a bad harvest. If you choose folly, if you choose foolishness, if you choose sin and indulgence, then you will reap a harvest that is equitable to those indulgences. One of the ones that I think of is there is a verse in Proverbs that I've always loved because I truly believe in that phrase, you show me your friends and I'll show you your future. We're the average of the five people that we spend our most time around, all of that stuff. There's a verse in Proverbs that says that the companion of the wise will become wise and the companion of fools will suffer harm. And that's generally true, isn't it? If you hang out with people who are wise, who make good choices, eventually you're going to start making good choices like them. If you hang out with knuckleheads who make bad choices and have bad priorities, eventually you're going to start making bad choices like them. And the result of their bad choices and the result of your bad choices is going to be the harm that you suffer. And so in general, that's true, isn't it? That if we hang around with good people who we want to be like, we look at them and they have things in our life that we want, we'll begin to adopt their values and we'll take on some of their characteristics. Similarly, if we spend our time with people that don't share our priorities and make bad decisions, we're going to continue to make those bad decisions. Some of you guys have lived this out in your life, right? I mean, for some of you, your story is you were hanging out with people who are not bad people. They just have different priorities than someone who's just become a believer. And you become a believer, and now you have different priorities in your life, and you come to the painful realization of, gosh, I need another set of friends. I don't want to just walk away from these people. I love these people, but I need other folks speaking into my life who share the priorities that I do. For many of you, that's why you found church. Not that your friends are bad people. They just no longer share your priorities. And so you want to hang out with other people who do share your priorities. And Proverbs tells us that if you'll be the companion of wise people, that you'll be wise. If you'll be the companion of foolish people who make bad choices, then you're going to suffer the consequences of those choices. Likewise, all throughout Proverbs, another one of those if-then transactions is. I don't have a specific verse. I should be a better pastor who looks one up, but I didn't, so just go with me. It says in plenty of places the idea that if you work hard, if you put your head down and work hard and be humble, then at the end of your life, you will reap a harvest of wealth and security. If you work hard, you do your job, consider the ant that works even when it doesn't have to. If you'll do that, then by the end of your life, you will have amassed and built up, and God will honor your good work and your toil. Likewise, if you are lazy, a little sleeping, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like an armed man, okay, says Proverbs. So if you're lazy and you just kind of want money to come to you, you just feel entitled and you deserve all this stuff, then you're never going to reap the benefit of wealth and security. And so here's what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes. That proverbial wisdom, if you please God, your life will go better for you. If you surround yourself with wise people, then you're more likely to prosper. If you do work hard and put your head down, then you're likely to build up. You're likely to be successful. Solomon acknowledges that. The end of the matter is this. Fear God, keep his commandments. Pursue him, do the right things. Honor that proverbial wisdom. But then he gives us this other reality. Then he gives us this caveat to that. Because what we know is that we need a caveat there. Because plenty of us know people who have hung around good friends, who are surrounded with wise folks, and have made terrible choices. Plenty of us know good people who are surrounded with other good people who have experienced what we would consider an unfair amount of pain, pain that seems like it would be waiting on folks who invest their lives around bad people. Likewise, we all know people who spend their time around knuckleheads and seem to be doing great. We also know people who have worked really hard, who have kept their head down, who have done their part. They get to the end of their life and they're still living hand to mouth because of a bad deal or because of a child that costs a lot of money or because of difficult diagnosis or whatever it is. And we know people who have been lazy and do seem prosperous. And that causes us to go, what gives? What do we do when proverbial wisdom doesn't ring true to us? We turn to Ecclesiastes, where I think Solomon writes this book later in his life. And what he says is, yeah, proverbial wisdom, those traditional accepted teachings of living a moral life and God honoring that and us being honored for it, that's true. But he wants us to know something. Even if you live that life. There's a whole section in my Bible where it says the vexation of wisdom, where he says, I even pursued wisdom. I did the right things. I honored God. I kept my nose clean. I walked the straight and narrow. I pursued purity. And even in that, you know what I found? A degree of vanity, a degree of vapor, a degree of chasing after the wind. And so the other reality that I want us to confront this morning in Ecclesiastes is this. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Somewhere in our faith and in our churches, we've gotten this idea that the more I clean, I keep my nose, the more God will protect me from pain in my life. The more I walk the straight and narrow, the agreement is, God, I'm gonna follow your rules and you're gonna offer me protection. This is why when someone who is good and is wonderful and is loving and seems to be all the things that maybe we feel like we're not, when we watch them get sick or we watch them pass away or we watch bad things happen to them, we kind of feel this sense of unfairness, right? We kind of feel this sense of, why is that allowed to happen? Well, Solomon says it happens because our obedience does not protect us from pain. It doesn't opt us out of it. It doesn't opt us out of struggle. I think one of the most dangerous, pernicious lies in Christendom is that the more I honor God with my life, the more He'll protect me with His sovereignty. And it is not true. We do not get that idea anywhere in the Bible. As a matter of fact, this is what Solomon says. This is what he has to say. And this is why I believe that that's his point. He makes this point that obedience will not protect us from pain multiple times in the book. He says it over in chapter 5. I'm sorry, chapter 9, verse 11. He says, You think you're really smart and that's why you're successful. No. You think you're dumb and and that's why you can't seem to make a way. No. Time and chance happen to us all. No one dodges the raindrops of tragedy and pain in their life. He says it over and over again in the book, but the best way he says it, the most profound way he says it, in chapter three, the first eight verses of chapter three. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to look at that passage with me. And normally I don't read eight verses in a row in church service because I find it disengaging sometimes when pastors do that. But this is so beautiful and so poignant and so important that it felt unfair to you guys to pick out one as a synopsis. So we're going to read it all together. Not aloud, that would be weird. I don't do that kind of weird stuff, but we're going to read it together as I read. Ready? For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast stones away and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, like pandemics. A time to seek and a time to refrain from embracing like pandemics, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. It's such a beautiful, elegant truth that he details out for us there. And there is a place where I want us to land, but there is another takeaway from there. It's not the point of the sermon, but I thought I would be remiss if I didn't make this point as we go through this beautiful passage together. There's a time for everything, and we ought to let those seasons have their time. We shouldn't jump from one to another. What makes me think of this is this. This last fall, I had a bunch of buddies come in town, and we all kind of took a weekend and just hung out. It's just a guy's weekend. We were supposed to golf most of the time, and it rained, so we just sat around. But it was fun. My friends and I, that's what we like to do anyways. We're just old men. But I have one friend named Dan, and Dan, he is the opposite of me. He is enthusiastic. He is on fire all the time. He loves to yell and be loud and celebrate things and cheer and be happy. He never meets a stranger. Dan is a weirdo that talks to people in elevators and I'll never understand it. He'll just chat up whoever is around him, right? And I love Dan. I had lunch with Dan the other day, but on that particular trip, Dan at the time had a pregnant wife and three small children and had just moved across the country. And both he and his wife were looking for jobs, and they're looking for houses, and they're trying to figure out how to get their kids in school. So when he came to that weekend, his life had been a pressure cooker, and he needed to release, right? So Dan wanted to dance, and he wanted to yell, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to be be excited and I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to sit there and be quiet and have no one ask me any questions. And Dan's like, Nate, come on, let's go. And we're watching some dumb game and he wants me to be invested in it and I don't care. And there was a tension there. And I felt in my soul, as I frequently do, my grumpiness well up. And all I wanted to do was say, Dan, why don't you shut up for like maybe 30 minutes, dude? Can we just chill out? But I kept talking myself out of doing that. Because what I realized is, Dan's my buddy. And what he needs is to blow off some steam. It's his time to dance. It's his time to yell and be boisterous. It's his time to be loud and to laugh and to be joyful. That's his time. And if I rain on that parade, I am the worst of friends. If I don't recognize in myself that it's his soul's time for those things, and I don't allow him that time, I am the jerk of all jerks. So I just sucked it up, and now we joke around about it. Likewise, when someone around us is sad, when someone around us is mourning, when someone around us needs to cry, shame on us for robbing them of that time too. And shame on you for attempting to rob yourself of that time. You guys know that we just walked through something pretty difficult as a family, and that we lost Jen's dad. And there were days when she would just look at me and she would say, I'm sad. I'm just sad. And I would say, then be sad. Then today's the day to be sad. And that's all right. And there will be more days when we're sad. Our souls need those days. They're cathartic for us. They're required by us. And shame on us if we try to rob our friends and our loved ones of the sad days that they need too. Those ought to take their time and have their season. I think what we try to do is we try to skip the bad ones, right? We try to skip past, I don't like this time of mourning. I want to skip to my time of laughter. I don't like this time of stillness. I want to skip to the time of dancing. I don't like this time of sadness. I want to skip to my time of joy. And what Solomon is saying is, no, there's a time for both. You can't experience true joy if you don't let yourself walk through true grief. The dancing isn't as joyful if you haven't set in pensive silence. Right? So I didn't want to move past this passage without making the point to you guys, without imploring you, let the seasons have their time. When it's a time for dying, let it be a time for dying. When it's a time for birth, let it be that. If someone you love needs to be sad, let them be sad. Don't be the clumsy moron that tries to convince them that what they're going through is not that sad. Our souls need the good times and the hard times, and we shouldn't skip them. But what I really want you to see from this passage today is that if what he writes is true, there's a time for mourning, and there's a time for joy, and there's a time for gladness, and there's a time for sorrow true, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy and there's a time for gladness and there's a time for sorrow and there's a time for dancing and there's a time for stillness. If that's true, then all of those times are coming for all of us. Do you understand? It doesn't say for the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous there are more times to laugh. For the righteous there are more times to build things up. For the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous, there are more times to laugh. For the righteous, there are more times to build things up. For the righteous, there are more times for embracing. No, it just says that this is objectively true. Everybody walks through these seasons. The righteous and the unrighteous. The godly and the ungodly. The devout Christian and the militant atheist. All of us walk through these seasons. And it may feel weird to you that I'm hammering this point home that like, hey, guess what, guys? At some point or another, life is cruddy for everybody. But it is. It's also joyful for everybody. But no one dodges the raindrops of pain and tragedy in their life. Nobody. And if we will accept that, then what we can learn and see from this passage is pain is not punitive. Pain, hurt, struggle, hardship, that's not punitive. That's not God exacting revenge on you for a failure in your morality somewhere. That's not God punishing you. Pain is not punitive. It is the result of brokenness. We don't experience pain and hardship in our life because at some point in our past, we displeased God with the choices that we make, and now he's exacting his revenge on us. That's not how it works. Pain is not punitive. Pain is a result of brokenness. We've talked about this before, but God created heaven and earth, and he created it perfect, and then sin ruined that perfection. And ever since then, the world is broken. And in a broken world, divorces happen and abuse happens and people get cancer and we have to watch Parkinson's and all these other diseases eat away at people that we love. In a broken world, cruddy things happen. And what Solomon is acknowledging is not only do they happen, but they happen to everybody. And yes, in general, proverbial wisdom is true. In general, if you honor God in the way that you make your choices, then you will be honored as well. But just understand that that isn't a blanket insurance policy against pain because time and chance happen to us all. And we walk through all these seasons equally. And it's important to know when we get there that that pain is not punitive. That pain isn't something that we warrant with our behavior. This actually shows up in the New Testament. Someone is blind, and the disciples look at the blind man, and they say, what happened to him? What did his parents do that he's been blinded like this way? They thought pain was punitive. They thought his actions warranted, or his parents' actions warranted what he did. And Jesus says, now this world is just broken. He says what Solomon says. In this world where we wait for Jesus to come back, like Romans 8 talks about all of creation groans for the return of the Savior, for the return of the King, for Jesus to come and make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And spoiler alert, this is where we're going to finish the series. But while we wait, we all walk through these seasons. And it's so important for us to understand that pain is not punitive. Here's why I think this. I don't know if I have permission to share her story. If I don't, I'm sorry. Kay Gamble also sits on our finance committee and approves my expenses on a monthly basis. So, you know, she has a way to nail me if she doesn't appreciate me sharing this story. But Kay is a wonderful lady who goes here and a few months ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor looked at the breast cancer and said, I think it's offerable. I think we can get it. I think it's going to be okay. She went in. She got it. And Kay, if you know her, she's quiet. Of course, she doesn't tell anybody about this. I only hear about this after the fact. They go in. They get it. Everything's good. Doctor says, we got it all. I think you're going to be in good shape. You don't have to do chemo or anything like that. We're going to give you a pill to kind of be on the safe side. You'll take that for five years, but you're good. You can go on with life as normal. So there's some pain and then a relief. Everything's good. Then she gets a call a couple of days later. The doctor said, hey, we took another look at that cancer, and it's the kind that likes to spread a lot. So we're going to have to be pretty aggressive with this, and we're going to need you to start doing chemo. Man, we're all old enough to know what chemo is. We know what that does. We know what that looks like. And we know the kinds of days that Kay is facing. And that stinks because Kay's good. And I want her to know that those cruddy days that she has to walk through are not God punishing her. That's not punitive. She doesn't have to search her soul and say, God, what have I done in the last 10, 20 years of my life to warrant this pain? What have I done to warrant this bad news? How did I disappoint you? How did I displease you? What would you like me to do now, God? Would you like me to give more, serve more, or love more? Which the answer is always yes to that. He would always like us to give and love and serve more. But not as a shield to pain. And how crushing would it be to go through life thinking that every time we experience some form of difficulty, some form of grief, that that was somehow God turning the screws on us so that we learned our lesson better. What I want Kay to understand in this season of cruddiness amidst the chemo is that it's just simply her turn. It's her turn. Her life stinks for a little bit. And guess what? All of our lives stink for a little bit sometimes. They have before, and here's the fun thing, they're going to again. It just will. It's Kay's turn. Recently, it was our turn. For some of you, it's still your turn. I know stories of people and loss and tragedy that we've experienced just in this church. And I just think that there is something tremendously comforting about looking at a season of grief with the understanding of, it's my turn right now. It's my time to mourn. But what I know is, eventually it'll be my time to sing. It's my time to tear things down. But eventually, if I put my head down, it'll be my time to build things up. And in this way, and I think that this is beautiful, Ecclesiastes empathizes with our experiences. It actually empathizes with us. It's a brave, bold thing to say. To admit, yeah, we should obey God. We should pursue the proverbial wisdom. But what a wonderful admission in the Bible that actually syncs up with our experience to say sometimes bad things happen to good people. I've told you before, I had a roommate in college who was a better person than me in every way possible. He graduated. He became a pastor. He was leading churches before I was, and I always admired him more than I cared to admit, and he dropped dead at 30 of a widow-maker heart attack playing ultimate frisbee with his friends. It will never make any sense to me how he left and I stayed, and how his wife Carla and his boys had to walk through that. I remember his five-year-old knocking on his coffin wondering when he was going to wake up. But what Ecclesiastes says is, it was Chris's time to die. It was Carla's turn to walk that hard road. Sometimes bad things happen. And even though the best possible investment of our life is to pursue God and godliness, we need to do it eyes wide open knowing that that does not protect us from tragedy. We're never told that it does. That time and chance happen to us all. What a difficult thing it would be to have to try to sync up my faith to somehow explain away Chris's death as deserved. What a difficult thing it would be to try to help Carla find a path back to faith, which she has found, if part of that explanation would be, well, you guys deserve this because of your behavior. Ecclesiastes looks around and goes, yeah, sometimes life doesn't make sense. Sometimes it seems unfair. And sometimes it's just our turn. And we understand that everybody takes a turn. But here's the thing. I have been kind of sitting in that reality for a while in my personal life. It's been our turn recently. Our turn's still not over. And I've been studying this book, which is stark, man. But somehow, despite all of that, in thinking about what awaits us in the next two weeks and allowing my life to sit in that. And we're going to come back next week. Next week's going to be happy, I promise. Next week's going to be great, all right? We're going to cry some happy tears next week. It's going to feel better than this. In the midst of everything that we have been walking through, because of the promises that are in Ecclesiastes and because of the encouraging things that he writes that we're going to talk about next week. I can honestly tell you that for me personally, I am sitting in the middle of a time of more profound joy than I think I've ever experienced in my life, of more gratitude for my God, more gratitude for my Savior, more of a desire for Him. And I want you guys to experience that joy too. And so next week we're going to come back and I'm going to tell you all about it. Let's pray. Father, life's hard sometimes. We are so thankful that you gave your servant Solomon the courage to admit that. Father, we all have to hurt sometimes. We are thankful that we have a Jesus who weeps with us in our pain. Lord, if it is someone's season to be sad right now, I pray that they would just be sad. And that that would run the course that it needs to run. God, if it is someone's time for joy right now, let them be joyful. Let them be exuberant. Let them feel your presence and your joy. For those of us who are walking through a hard time, Lord, I pray that we would be comforted by this stark knowledge that sometimes it's just our turn. And I know there are folks who feel like, gosh, it feels like it's been my turn a lot lately. Lord, I pray that you would give them lots of turns of joy too. Let all of this, our pain, our triumph, our struggle, and our joy, draw us near to you. Either in gratitude or in need, Father, draw us near to you. And Father, I pray that in that drawing that we would find what David describes as the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Help us see more and more our gratitude for you and our need for you. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be with you in person. It's good to be with you online. Thank you for continuing to join us in that way. As Michelle just said, it is nice to have faces. They're hidden behind masks, which gives me the benefit of pretending like you're all just smiling at me the whole time. So that's how I'm picturing you. It's just nice and friendly and kind, so I appreciate that. Last week, we started our series called Vapor, which is a study through the book of Ecclesiastes. So I would actually say this, if you're catching up later this week, if you're listening to this on like a Tuesday, or you're watching online and you didn't catch last week, stop. I would encourage you to stop and go back and listen to last week. Do it on double speed, or if you really want a good laugh, listen to my voice on half speed, because that sounds funny. But listen to the last one and then catch up with this week. Because again, this is a series and it's not really made to stand independently of one another. We kind of need all of the parts to understand the four separate parts. And so last week was a downer. Last week was a bummer. I warned you ahead of time that you're not going to feel good at the end of that sermon. This one is not much different, all right? So just buckle up. This is Ecclesiastes, and I think it's good and ecclesiastical for us to sit in the difficult sometimes, for us to sit in hard reality sometimes. And what we said is that this is the bleakest book for the bleakest month. And I don't think I need much of a backup. This winter has been terrible, just gray and dark and rainy. It's the perfect time to go through Ecclesiastes. Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes, and he writes it towards the end of his life and just hits us with some stark realities. And I continue to contend that on the other side of these realities, if we can accept the reality that we talked about last week, which is the idea that most Americans, most people in our culture are wasting our lives. He calls it vanity of vanities of striving after the wind. It's vapor. That's why the series is called Vapor. It's that Hebrew word, a hevel, that means vapor or smoke. Here one minute, gone the next. Seems like you can reach out and grab success or grab happiness or grab something worth pursuing and that when you get to it, it's gone. It slips through your fingers and we don't have it anymore. So the difficult reality that we confronted last week was just that, that most of life is vapor. Most pursuits, when we get to the end of them, we will find them to be empty. That's a difficult reality, but it's an essential one. We're going to face another reality this week, and I continue to believe if we will face these bravely, that what we'll find on the other end of them is this immutable joy, this joy that can be untouched by circumstance. I believe that we'll find the satisfaction on the other side of these realities that really is abiding. I think that we'll become more grateful for God and more desirous of Jesus for him to come and for our relationship with him. And so we're going to wade through these things as a church. Now, I ended last week with that thought, that it's my belief that Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, would tell most Americans, a vast majority of people in our culture, that you're wasting your life. You're chasing vapor. And then I said, well, God gives us something that is worth chasing. What is that? And I said, we're going to talk about it next week. And then I prayed and we went home. Or, well, I went home. You guys just stayed where you were. So this week we want to start off by answering that question that we left off with. What is the thing worth pursuing? If it's not ambition, if it's not career, if it's not pleasures, if it's not monuments to ourselves, if it's not security, if it's not the book knowledge and general wisdom, what is it that's worth investing our life in? Well, I think that Solomon would answer that question like this. He concludes, based on my reading of Ecclesiastes, Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. The best investment of your life, the best way to spend your days and get to the end of your years and not wonder, did I waste my life, is to spend those days pleasing God. The best way to reach joy, to grab onto something that's not vapor, that is substantive, is to spend your days pleasing God. That's what he says. And I believe that he intends that because he says it multiple times throughout the book. Look with me at what he writes in Ecclesiastes. We'll start in chapter 8 and then we'll be in chapter 12. He says, And then in chapter 8, And then he ends the book this way, Ecclesiastes 12, 13. He sums up all the teachings and he says this, Fear God, keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. If you were to go to Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, and say, what's worth it? What should I do? He would say, fear God and keep his commands. We can talk about everything. We can talk about all the different pursuits. We can talk about all the different realities. We can be confronted with all the difficult things in life. We can accept the problem of pain and the vexation of wisdom. We can do all of that. But at the end of the day, here's what matters. Pursue God, keep his commands. This is the whole duty of man. That's what we are to do. That's what he has tasked us with. And this is Solomon's, I think, tip of the cap. It's his acknowledgement of what's called in theological circles, proverbial wisdom. Solomon also wrote the book of Proverbs. And in the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of if-then statements. If you do these good things, God will bless you with these good things. If you make choices like this, you will reap blessings like this. If you do dumb things, you will reap a bad harvest. If you choose folly, if you choose foolishness, if you choose sin and indulgence, then you will reap a harvest that is equitable to those indulgences. One of the ones that I think of is there is a verse in Proverbs that I've always loved because I truly believe in that phrase, you show me your friends and I'll show you your future. We're the average of the five people that we spend our most time around, all of that stuff. There's a verse in Proverbs that says that the companion of the wise will become wise and the companion of fools will suffer harm. And that's generally true, isn't it? If you hang out with people who are wise, who make good choices, eventually you're going to start making good choices like them. If you hang out with knuckleheads who make bad choices and have bad priorities, eventually you're going to start making bad choices like them. And the result of their bad choices and the result of your bad choices is going to be the harm that you suffer. And so in general, that's true, isn't it? That if we hang around with good people who we want to be like, we look at them and they have things in our life that we want, we'll begin to adopt their values and we'll take on some of their characteristics. Similarly, if we spend our time with people that don't share our priorities and make bad decisions, we're going to continue to make those bad decisions. Some of you guys have lived this out in your life, right? I mean, for some of you, your story is you were hanging out with people who are not bad people. They just have different priorities than someone who's just become a believer. And you become a believer, and now you have different priorities in your life, and you come to the painful realization of, gosh, I need another set of friends. I don't want to just walk away from these people. I love these people, but I need other folks speaking into my life who share the priorities that I do. For many of you, that's why you found church. Not that your friends are bad people. They just no longer share your priorities. And so you want to hang out with other people who do share your priorities. And Proverbs tells us that if you'll be the companion of wise people, that you'll be wise. If you'll be the companion of foolish people who make bad choices, then you're going to suffer the consequences of those choices. Likewise, all throughout Proverbs, another one of those if-then transactions is. I don't have a specific verse. I should be a better pastor who looks one up, but I didn't, so just go with me. It says in plenty of places the idea that if you work hard, if you put your head down and work hard and be humble, then at the end of your life, you will reap a harvest of wealth and security. If you work hard, you do your job, consider the ant that works even when it doesn't have to. If you'll do that, then by the end of your life, you will have amassed and built up, and God will honor your good work and your toil. Likewise, if you are lazy, a little sleeping, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like an armed man, okay, says Proverbs. So if you're lazy and you just kind of want money to come to you, you just feel entitled and you deserve all this stuff, then you're never going to reap the benefit of wealth and security. And so here's what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes. That proverbial wisdom, if you please God, your life will go better for you. If you surround yourself with wise people, then you're more likely to prosper. If you do work hard and put your head down, then you're likely to build up. You're likely to be successful. Solomon acknowledges that. The end of the matter is this. Fear God, keep his commandments. Pursue him, do the right things. Honor that proverbial wisdom. But then he gives us this other reality. Then he gives us this caveat to that. Because what we know is that we need a caveat there. Because plenty of us know people who have hung around good friends, who are surrounded with wise folks, and have made terrible choices. Plenty of us know good people who are surrounded with other good people who have experienced what we would consider an unfair amount of pain, pain that seems like it would be waiting on folks who invest their lives around bad people. Likewise, we all know people who spend their time around knuckleheads and seem to be doing great. We also know people who have worked really hard, who have kept their head down, who have done their part. They get to the end of their life and they're still living hand to mouth because of a bad deal or because of a child that costs a lot of money or because of difficult diagnosis or whatever it is. And we know people who have been lazy and do seem prosperous. And that causes us to go, what gives? What do we do when proverbial wisdom doesn't ring true to us? We turn to Ecclesiastes, where I think Solomon writes this book later in his life. And what he says is, yeah, proverbial wisdom, those traditional accepted teachings of living a moral life and God honoring that and us being honored for it, that's true. But he wants us to know something. Even if you live that life. There's a whole section in my Bible where it says the vexation of wisdom, where he says, I even pursued wisdom. I did the right things. I honored God. I kept my nose clean. I walked the straight and narrow. I pursued purity. And even in that, you know what I found? A degree of vanity, a degree of vapor, a degree of chasing after the wind. And so the other reality that I want us to confront this morning in Ecclesiastes is this. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Somewhere in our faith and in our churches, we've gotten this idea that the more I clean, I keep my nose, the more God will protect me from pain in my life. The more I walk the straight and narrow, the agreement is, God, I'm gonna follow your rules and you're gonna offer me protection. This is why when someone who is good and is wonderful and is loving and seems to be all the things that maybe we feel like we're not, when we watch them get sick or we watch them pass away or we watch bad things happen to them, we kind of feel this sense of unfairness, right? We kind of feel this sense of, why is that allowed to happen? Well, Solomon says it happens because our obedience does not protect us from pain. It doesn't opt us out of it. It doesn't opt us out of struggle. I think one of the most dangerous, pernicious lies in Christendom is that the more I honor God with my life, the more He'll protect me with His sovereignty. And it is not true. We do not get that idea anywhere in the Bible. As a matter of fact, this is what Solomon says. This is what he has to say. And this is why I believe that that's his point. He makes this point that obedience will not protect us from pain multiple times in the book. He says it over in chapter 5. I'm sorry, chapter 9, verse 11. He says, You think you're really smart and that's why you're successful. No. You think you're dumb and and that's why you can't seem to make a way. No. Time and chance happen to us all. No one dodges the raindrops of tragedy and pain in their life. He says it over and over again in the book, but the best way he says it, the most profound way he says it, in chapter three, the first eight verses of chapter three. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to look at that passage with me. And normally I don't read eight verses in a row in church service because I find it disengaging sometimes when pastors do that. But this is so beautiful and so poignant and so important that it felt unfair to you guys to pick out one as a synopsis. So we're going to read it all together. Not aloud, that would be weird. I don't do that kind of weird stuff, but we're going to read it together as I read. Ready? For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast stones away and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, like pandemics. A time to seek and a time to refrain from embracing like pandemics, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. It's such a beautiful, elegant truth that he details out for us there. And there is a place where I want us to land, but there is another takeaway from there. It's not the point of the sermon, but I thought I would be remiss if I didn't make this point as we go through this beautiful passage together. There's a time for everything, and we ought to let those seasons have their time. We shouldn't jump from one to another. What makes me think of this is this. This last fall, I had a bunch of buddies come in town, and we all kind of took a weekend and just hung out. It's just a guy's weekend. We were supposed to golf most of the time, and it rained, so we just sat around. But it was fun. My friends and I, that's what we like to do anyways. We're just old men. But I have one friend named Dan, and Dan, he is the opposite of me. He is enthusiastic. He is on fire all the time. He loves to yell and be loud and celebrate things and cheer and be happy. He never meets a stranger. Dan is a weirdo that talks to people in elevators and I'll never understand it. He'll just chat up whoever is around him, right? And I love Dan. I had lunch with Dan the other day, but on that particular trip, Dan at the time had a pregnant wife and three small children and had just moved across the country. And both he and his wife were looking for jobs, and they're looking for houses, and they're trying to figure out how to get their kids in school. So when he came to that weekend, his life had been a pressure cooker, and he needed to release, right? So Dan wanted to dance, and he wanted to yell, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to be be excited and I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to sit there and be quiet and have no one ask me any questions. And Dan's like, Nate, come on, let's go. And we're watching some dumb game and he wants me to be invested in it and I don't care. And there was a tension there. And I felt in my soul, as I frequently do, my grumpiness well up. And all I wanted to do was say, Dan, why don't you shut up for like maybe 30 minutes, dude? Can we just chill out? But I kept talking myself out of doing that. Because what I realized is, Dan's my buddy. And what he needs is to blow off some steam. It's his time to dance. It's his time to yell and be boisterous. It's his time to be loud and to laugh and to be joyful. That's his time. And if I rain on that parade, I am the worst of friends. If I don't recognize in myself that it's his soul's time for those things, and I don't allow him that time, I am the jerk of all jerks. So I just sucked it up, and now we joke around about it. Likewise, when someone around us is sad, when someone around us is mourning, when someone around us needs to cry, shame on us for robbing them of that time too. And shame on you for attempting to rob yourself of that time. You guys know that we just walked through something pretty difficult as a family, and that we lost Jen's dad. And there were days when she would just look at me and she would say, I'm sad. I'm just sad. And I would say, then be sad. Then today's the day to be sad. And that's all right. And there will be more days when we're sad. Our souls need those days. They're cathartic for us. They're required by us. And shame on us if we try to rob our friends and our loved ones of the sad days that they need too. Those ought to take their time and have their season. I think what we try to do is we try to skip the bad ones, right? We try to skip past, I don't like this time of mourning. I want to skip to my time of laughter. I don't like this time of stillness. I want to skip to the time of dancing. I don't like this time of sadness. I want to skip to my time of joy. And what Solomon is saying is, no, there's a time for both. You can't experience true joy if you don't let yourself walk through true grief. The dancing isn't as joyful if you haven't set in pensive silence. Right? So I didn't want to move past this passage without making the point to you guys, without imploring you, let the seasons have their time. When it's a time for dying, let it be a time for dying. When it's a time for birth, let it be that. If someone you love needs to be sad, let them be sad. Don't be the clumsy moron that tries to convince them that what they're going through is not that sad. Our souls need the good times and the hard times, and we shouldn't skip them. But what I really want you to see from this passage today is that if what he writes is true, there's a time for mourning, and there's a time for joy, and there's a time for gladness, and there's a time for sorrow true, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy and there's a time for gladness and there's a time for sorrow and there's a time for dancing and there's a time for stillness. If that's true, then all of those times are coming for all of us. Do you understand? It doesn't say for the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous there are more times to laugh. For the righteous there are more times to build things up. For the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous, there are more times to laugh. For the righteous, there are more times to build things up. For the righteous, there are more times for embracing. No, it just says that this is objectively true. Everybody walks through these seasons. The righteous and the unrighteous. The godly and the ungodly. The devout Christian and the militant atheist. All of us walk through these seasons. And it may feel weird to you that I'm hammering this point home that like, hey, guess what, guys? At some point or another, life is cruddy for everybody. But it is. It's also joyful for everybody. But no one dodges the raindrops of pain and tragedy in their life. Nobody. And if we will accept that, then what we can learn and see from this passage is pain is not punitive. Pain, hurt, struggle, hardship, that's not punitive. That's not God exacting revenge on you for a failure in your morality somewhere. That's not God punishing you. Pain is not punitive. It is the result of brokenness. We don't experience pain and hardship in our life because at some point in our past, we displeased God with the choices that we make, and now he's exacting his revenge on us. That's not how it works. Pain is not punitive. Pain is a result of brokenness. We've talked about this before, but God created heaven and earth, and he created it perfect, and then sin ruined that perfection. And ever since then, the world is broken. And in a broken world, divorces happen and abuse happens and people get cancer and we have to watch Parkinson's and all these other diseases eat away at people that we love. In a broken world, cruddy things happen. And what Solomon is acknowledging is not only do they happen, but they happen to everybody. And yes, in general, proverbial wisdom is true. In general, if you honor God in the way that you make your choices, then you will be honored as well. But just understand that that isn't a blanket insurance policy against pain because time and chance happen to us all. And we walk through all these seasons equally. And it's important to know when we get there that that pain is not punitive. That pain isn't something that we warrant with our behavior. This actually shows up in the New Testament. Someone is blind, and the disciples look at the blind man, and they say, what happened to him? What did his parents do that he's been blinded like this way? They thought pain was punitive. They thought his actions warranted, or his parents' actions warranted what he did. And Jesus says, now this world is just broken. He says what Solomon says. In this world where we wait for Jesus to come back, like Romans 8 talks about all of creation groans for the return of the Savior, for the return of the King, for Jesus to come and make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And spoiler alert, this is where we're going to finish the series. But while we wait, we all walk through these seasons. And it's so important for us to understand that pain is not punitive. Here's why I think this. I don't know if I have permission to share her story. If I don't, I'm sorry. Kay Gamble also sits on our finance committee and approves my expenses on a monthly basis. So, you know, she has a way to nail me if she doesn't appreciate me sharing this story. But Kay is a wonderful lady who goes here and a few months ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor looked at the breast cancer and said, I think it's offerable. I think we can get it. I think it's going to be okay. She went in. She got it. And Kay, if you know her, she's quiet. Of course, she doesn't tell anybody about this. I only hear about this after the fact. They go in. They get it. Everything's good. Doctor says, we got it all. I think you're going to be in good shape. You don't have to do chemo or anything like that. We're going to give you a pill to kind of be on the safe side. You'll take that for five years, but you're good. You can go on with life as normal. So there's some pain and then a relief. Everything's good. Then she gets a call a couple of days later. The doctor said, hey, we took another look at that cancer, and it's the kind that likes to spread a lot. So we're going to have to be pretty aggressive with this, and we're going to need you to start doing chemo. Man, we're all old enough to know what chemo is. We know what that does. We know what that looks like. And we know the kinds of days that Kay is facing. And that stinks because Kay's good. And I want her to know that those cruddy days that she has to walk through are not God punishing her. That's not punitive. She doesn't have to search her soul and say, God, what have I done in the last 10, 20 years of my life to warrant this pain? What have I done to warrant this bad news? How did I disappoint you? How did I displease you? What would you like me to do now, God? Would you like me to give more, serve more, or love more? Which the answer is always yes to that. He would always like us to give and love and serve more. But not as a shield to pain. And how crushing would it be to go through life thinking that every time we experience some form of difficulty, some form of grief, that that was somehow God turning the screws on us so that we learned our lesson better. What I want Kay to understand in this season of cruddiness amidst the chemo is that it's just simply her turn. It's her turn. Her life stinks for a little bit. And guess what? All of our lives stink for a little bit sometimes. They have before, and here's the fun thing, they're going to again. It just will. It's Kay's turn. Recently, it was our turn. For some of you, it's still your turn. I know stories of people and loss and tragedy that we've experienced just in this church. And I just think that there is something tremendously comforting about looking at a season of grief with the understanding of, it's my turn right now. It's my time to mourn. But what I know is, eventually it'll be my time to sing. It's my time to tear things down. But eventually, if I put my head down, it'll be my time to build things up. And in this way, and I think that this is beautiful, Ecclesiastes empathizes with our experiences. It actually empathizes with us. It's a brave, bold thing to say. To admit, yeah, we should obey God. We should pursue the proverbial wisdom. But what a wonderful admission in the Bible that actually syncs up with our experience to say sometimes bad things happen to good people. I've told you before, I had a roommate in college who was a better person than me in every way possible. He graduated. He became a pastor. He was leading churches before I was, and I always admired him more than I cared to admit, and he dropped dead at 30 of a widow-maker heart attack playing ultimate frisbee with his friends. It will never make any sense to me how he left and I stayed, and how his wife Carla and his boys had to walk through that. I remember his five-year-old knocking on his coffin wondering when he was going to wake up. But what Ecclesiastes says is, it was Chris's time to die. It was Carla's turn to walk that hard road. Sometimes bad things happen. And even though the best possible investment of our life is to pursue God and godliness, we need to do it eyes wide open knowing that that does not protect us from tragedy. We're never told that it does. That time and chance happen to us all. What a difficult thing it would be to have to try to sync up my faith to somehow explain away Chris's death as deserved. What a difficult thing it would be to try to help Carla find a path back to faith, which she has found, if part of that explanation would be, well, you guys deserve this because of your behavior. Ecclesiastes looks around and goes, yeah, sometimes life doesn't make sense. Sometimes it seems unfair. And sometimes it's just our turn. And we understand that everybody takes a turn. But here's the thing. I have been kind of sitting in that reality for a while in my personal life. It's been our turn recently. Our turn's still not over. And I've been studying this book, which is stark, man. But somehow, despite all of that, in thinking about what awaits us in the next two weeks and allowing my life to sit in that. And we're going to come back next week. Next week's going to be happy, I promise. Next week's going to be great, all right? We're going to cry some happy tears next week. It's going to feel better than this. In the midst of everything that we have been walking through, because of the promises that are in Ecclesiastes and because of the encouraging things that he writes that we're going to talk about next week. I can honestly tell you that for me personally, I am sitting in the middle of a time of more profound joy than I think I've ever experienced in my life, of more gratitude for my God, more gratitude for my Savior, more of a desire for Him. And I want you guys to experience that joy too. And so next week we're going to come back and I'm going to tell you all about it. Let's pray. Father, life's hard sometimes. We are so thankful that you gave your servant Solomon the courage to admit that. Father, we all have to hurt sometimes. We are thankful that we have a Jesus who weeps with us in our pain. Lord, if it is someone's season to be sad right now, I pray that they would just be sad. And that that would run the course that it needs to run. God, if it is someone's time for joy right now, let them be joyful. Let them be exuberant. Let them feel your presence and your joy. For those of us who are walking through a hard time, Lord, I pray that we would be comforted by this stark knowledge that sometimes it's just our turn. And I know there are folks who feel like, gosh, it feels like it's been my turn a lot lately. Lord, I pray that you would give them lots of turns of joy too. Let all of this, our pain, our triumph, our struggle, and our joy, draw us near to you. Either in gratitude or in need, Father, draw us near to you. And Father, I pray that in that drawing that we would find what David describes as the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Help us see more and more our gratitude for you and our need for you. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be with you in person. It's good to be with you online. Thank you for continuing to join us in that way. As Michelle just said, it is nice to have faces. They're hidden behind masks, which gives me the benefit of pretending like you're all just smiling at me the whole time. So that's how I'm picturing you. It's just nice and friendly and kind, so I appreciate that. Last week, we started our series called Vapor, which is a study through the book of Ecclesiastes. So I would actually say this, if you're catching up later this week, if you're listening to this on like a Tuesday, or you're watching online and you didn't catch last week, stop. I would encourage you to stop and go back and listen to last week. Do it on double speed, or if you really want a good laugh, listen to my voice on half speed, because that sounds funny. But listen to the last one and then catch up with this week. Because again, this is a series and it's not really made to stand independently of one another. We kind of need all of the parts to understand the four separate parts. And so last week was a downer. Last week was a bummer. I warned you ahead of time that you're not going to feel good at the end of that sermon. This one is not much different, all right? So just buckle up. This is Ecclesiastes, and I think it's good and ecclesiastical for us to sit in the difficult sometimes, for us to sit in hard reality sometimes. And what we said is that this is the bleakest book for the bleakest month. And I don't think I need much of a backup. This winter has been terrible, just gray and dark and rainy. It's the perfect time to go through Ecclesiastes. Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes, and he writes it towards the end of his life and just hits us with some stark realities. And I continue to contend that on the other side of these realities, if we can accept the reality that we talked about last week, which is the idea that most Americans, most people in our culture are wasting our lives. He calls it vanity of vanities of striving after the wind. It's vapor. That's why the series is called Vapor. It's that Hebrew word, a hevel, that means vapor or smoke. Here one minute, gone the next. Seems like you can reach out and grab success or grab happiness or grab something worth pursuing and that when you get to it, it's gone. It slips through your fingers and we don't have it anymore. So the difficult reality that we confronted last week was just that, that most of life is vapor. Most pursuits, when we get to the end of them, we will find them to be empty. That's a difficult reality, but it's an essential one. We're going to face another reality this week, and I continue to believe if we will face these bravely, that what we'll find on the other end of them is this immutable joy, this joy that can be untouched by circumstance. I believe that we'll find the satisfaction on the other side of these realities that really is abiding. I think that we'll become more grateful for God and more desirous of Jesus for him to come and for our relationship with him. And so we're going to wade through these things as a church. Now, I ended last week with that thought, that it's my belief that Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, would tell most Americans, a vast majority of people in our culture, that you're wasting your life. You're chasing vapor. And then I said, well, God gives us something that is worth chasing. What is that? And I said, we're going to talk about it next week. And then I prayed and we went home. Or, well, I went home. You guys just stayed where you were. So this week we want to start off by answering that question that we left off with. What is the thing worth pursuing? If it's not ambition, if it's not career, if it's not pleasures, if it's not monuments to ourselves, if it's not security, if it's not the book knowledge and general wisdom, what is it that's worth investing our life in? Well, I think that Solomon would answer that question like this. He concludes, based on my reading of Ecclesiastes, Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. The best investment of your life, the best way to spend your days and get to the end of your years and not wonder, did I waste my life, is to spend those days pleasing God. The best way to reach joy, to grab onto something that's not vapor, that is substantive, is to spend your days pleasing God. That's what he says. And I believe that he intends that because he says it multiple times throughout the book. Look with me at what he writes in Ecclesiastes. We'll start in chapter 8 and then we'll be in chapter 12. He says, And then in chapter 8, And then he ends the book this way, Ecclesiastes 12, 13. He sums up all the teachings and he says this, Fear God, keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. If you were to go to Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, and say, what's worth it? What should I do? He would say, fear God and keep his commands. We can talk about everything. We can talk about all the different pursuits. We can talk about all the different realities. We can be confronted with all the difficult things in life. We can accept the problem of pain and the vexation of wisdom. We can do all of that. But at the end of the day, here's what matters. Pursue God, keep his commands. This is the whole duty of man. That's what we are to do. That's what he has tasked us with. And this is Solomon's, I think, tip of the cap. It's his acknowledgement of what's called in theological circles, proverbial wisdom. Solomon also wrote the book of Proverbs. And in the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of if-then statements. If you do these good things, God will bless you with these good things. If you make choices like this, you will reap blessings like this. If you do dumb things, you will reap a bad harvest. If you choose folly, if you choose foolishness, if you choose sin and indulgence, then you will reap a harvest that is equitable to those indulgences. One of the ones that I think of is there is a verse in Proverbs that I've always loved because I truly believe in that phrase, you show me your friends and I'll show you your future. We're the average of the five people that we spend our most time around, all of that stuff. There's a verse in Proverbs that says that the companion of the wise will become wise and the companion of fools will suffer harm. And that's generally true, isn't it? If you hang out with people who are wise, who make good choices, eventually you're going to start making good choices like them. If you hang out with knuckleheads who make bad choices and have bad priorities, eventually you're going to start making bad choices like them. And the result of their bad choices and the result of your bad choices is going to be the harm that you suffer. And so in general, that's true, isn't it? That if we hang around with good people who we want to be like, we look at them and they have things in our life that we want, we'll begin to adopt their values and we'll take on some of their characteristics. Similarly, if we spend our time with people that don't share our priorities and make bad decisions, we're going to continue to make those bad decisions. Some of you guys have lived this out in your life, right? I mean, for some of you, your story is you were hanging out with people who are not bad people. They just have different priorities than someone who's just become a believer. And you become a believer, and now you have different priorities in your life, and you come to the painful realization of, gosh, I need another set of friends. I don't want to just walk away from these people. I love these people, but I need other folks speaking into my life who share the priorities that I do. For many of you, that's why you found church. Not that your friends are bad people. They just no longer share your priorities. And so you want to hang out with other people who do share your priorities. And Proverbs tells us that if you'll be the companion of wise people, that you'll be wise. If you'll be the companion of foolish people who make bad choices, then you're going to suffer the consequences of those choices. Likewise, all throughout Proverbs, another one of those if-then transactions is. I don't have a specific verse. I should be a better pastor who looks one up, but I didn't, so just go with me. It says in plenty of places the idea that if you work hard, if you put your head down and work hard and be humble, then at the end of your life, you will reap a harvest of wealth and security. If you work hard, you do your job, consider the ant that works even when it doesn't have to. If you'll do that, then by the end of your life, you will have amassed and built up, and God will honor your good work and your toil. Likewise, if you are lazy, a little sleeping, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like an armed man, okay, says Proverbs. So if you're lazy and you just kind of want money to come to you, you just feel entitled and you deserve all this stuff, then you're never going to reap the benefit of wealth and security. And so here's what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes. That proverbial wisdom, if you please God, your life will go better for you. If you surround yourself with wise people, then you're more likely to prosper. If you do work hard and put your head down, then you're likely to build up. You're likely to be successful. Solomon acknowledges that. The end of the matter is this. Fear God, keep his commandments. Pursue him, do the right things. Honor that proverbial wisdom. But then he gives us this other reality. Then he gives us this caveat to that. Because what we know is that we need a caveat there. Because plenty of us know people who have hung around good friends, who are surrounded with wise folks, and have made terrible choices. Plenty of us know good people who are surrounded with other good people who have experienced what we would consider an unfair amount of pain, pain that seems like it would be waiting on folks who invest their lives around bad people. Likewise, we all know people who spend their time around knuckleheads and seem to be doing great. We also know people who have worked really hard, who have kept their head down, who have done their part. They get to the end of their life and they're still living hand to mouth because of a bad deal or because of a child that costs a lot of money or because of difficult diagnosis or whatever it is. And we know people who have been lazy and do seem prosperous. And that causes us to go, what gives? What do we do when proverbial wisdom doesn't ring true to us? We turn to Ecclesiastes, where I think Solomon writes this book later in his life. And what he says is, yeah, proverbial wisdom, those traditional accepted teachings of living a moral life and God honoring that and us being honored for it, that's true. But he wants us to know something. Even if you live that life. There's a whole section in my Bible where it says the vexation of wisdom, where he says, I even pursued wisdom. I did the right things. I honored God. I kept my nose clean. I walked the straight and narrow. I pursued purity. And even in that, you know what I found? A degree of vanity, a degree of vapor, a degree of chasing after the wind. And so the other reality that I want us to confront this morning in Ecclesiastes is this. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Somewhere in our faith and in our churches, we've gotten this idea that the more I clean, I keep my nose, the more God will protect me from pain in my life. The more I walk the straight and narrow, the agreement is, God, I'm gonna follow your rules and you're gonna offer me protection. This is why when someone who is good and is wonderful and is loving and seems to be all the things that maybe we feel like we're not, when we watch them get sick or we watch them pass away or we watch bad things happen to them, we kind of feel this sense of unfairness, right? We kind of feel this sense of, why is that allowed to happen? Well, Solomon says it happens because our obedience does not protect us from pain. It doesn't opt us out of it. It doesn't opt us out of struggle. I think one of the most dangerous, pernicious lies in Christendom is that the more I honor God with my life, the more He'll protect me with His sovereignty. And it is not true. We do not get that idea anywhere in the Bible. As a matter of fact, this is what Solomon says. This is what he has to say. And this is why I believe that that's his point. He makes this point that obedience will not protect us from pain multiple times in the book. He says it over in chapter 5. I'm sorry, chapter 9, verse 11. He says, You think you're really smart and that's why you're successful. No. You think you're dumb and and that's why you can't seem to make a way. No. Time and chance happen to us all. No one dodges the raindrops of tragedy and pain in their life. He says it over and over again in the book, but the best way he says it, the most profound way he says it, in chapter three, the first eight verses of chapter three. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to look at that passage with me. And normally I don't read eight verses in a row in church service because I find it disengaging sometimes when pastors do that. But this is so beautiful and so poignant and so important that it felt unfair to you guys to pick out one as a synopsis. So we're going to read it all together. Not aloud, that would be weird. I don't do that kind of weird stuff, but we're going to read it together as I read. Ready? For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast stones away and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, like pandemics. A time to seek and a time to refrain from embracing like pandemics, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. It's such a beautiful, elegant truth that he details out for us there. And there is a place where I want us to land, but there is another takeaway from there. It's not the point of the sermon, but I thought I would be remiss if I didn't make this point as we go through this beautiful passage together. There's a time for everything, and we ought to let those seasons have their time. We shouldn't jump from one to another. What makes me think of this is this. This last fall, I had a bunch of buddies come in town, and we all kind of took a weekend and just hung out. It's just a guy's weekend. We were supposed to golf most of the time, and it rained, so we just sat around. But it was fun. My friends and I, that's what we like to do anyways. We're just old men. But I have one friend named Dan, and Dan, he is the opposite of me. He is enthusiastic. He is on fire all the time. He loves to yell and be loud and celebrate things and cheer and be happy. He never meets a stranger. Dan is a weirdo that talks to people in elevators and I'll never understand it. He'll just chat up whoever is around him, right? And I love Dan. I had lunch with Dan the other day, but on that particular trip, Dan at the time had a pregnant wife and three small children and had just moved across the country. And both he and his wife were looking for jobs, and they're looking for houses, and they're trying to figure out how to get their kids in school. So when he came to that weekend, his life had been a pressure cooker, and he needed to release, right? So Dan wanted to dance, and he wanted to yell, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to be be excited and I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to sit there and be quiet and have no one ask me any questions. And Dan's like, Nate, come on, let's go. And we're watching some dumb game and he wants me to be invested in it and I don't care. And there was a tension there. And I felt in my soul, as I frequently do, my grumpiness well up. And all I wanted to do was say, Dan, why don't you shut up for like maybe 30 minutes, dude? Can we just chill out? But I kept talking myself out of doing that. Because what I realized is, Dan's my buddy. And what he needs is to blow off some steam. It's his time to dance. It's his time to yell and be boisterous. It's his time to be loud and to laugh and to be joyful. That's his time. And if I rain on that parade, I am the worst of friends. If I don't recognize in myself that it's his soul's time for those things, and I don't allow him that time, I am the jerk of all jerks. So I just sucked it up, and now we joke around about it. Likewise, when someone around us is sad, when someone around us is mourning, when someone around us needs to cry, shame on us for robbing them of that time too. And shame on you for attempting to rob yourself of that time. You guys know that we just walked through something pretty difficult as a family, and that we lost Jen's dad. And there were days when she would just look at me and she would say, I'm sad. I'm just sad. And I would say, then be sad. Then today's the day to be sad. And that's all right. And there will be more days when we're sad. Our souls need those days. They're cathartic for us. They're required by us. And shame on us if we try to rob our friends and our loved ones of the sad days that they need too. Those ought to take their time and have their season. I think what we try to do is we try to skip the bad ones, right? We try to skip past, I don't like this time of mourning. I want to skip to my time of laughter. I don't like this time of stillness. I want to skip to the time of dancing. I don't like this time of sadness. I want to skip to my time of joy. And what Solomon is saying is, no, there's a time for both. You can't experience true joy if you don't let yourself walk through true grief. The dancing isn't as joyful if you haven't set in pensive silence. Right? So I didn't want to move past this passage without making the point to you guys, without imploring you, let the seasons have their time. When it's a time for dying, let it be a time for dying. When it's a time for birth, let it be that. If someone you love needs to be sad, let them be sad. Don't be the clumsy moron that tries to convince them that what they're going through is not that sad. Our souls need the good times and the hard times, and we shouldn't skip them. But what I really want you to see from this passage today is that if what he writes is true, there's a time for mourning, and there's a time for joy, and there's a time for gladness, and there's a time for sorrow true, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy and there's a time for gladness and there's a time for sorrow and there's a time for dancing and there's a time for stillness. If that's true, then all of those times are coming for all of us. Do you understand? It doesn't say for the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous there are more times to laugh. For the righteous there are more times to build things up. For the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous, there are more times to laugh. For the righteous, there are more times to build things up. For the righteous, there are more times for embracing. No, it just says that this is objectively true. Everybody walks through these seasons. The righteous and the unrighteous. The godly and the ungodly. The devout Christian and the militant atheist. All of us walk through these seasons. And it may feel weird to you that I'm hammering this point home that like, hey, guess what, guys? At some point or another, life is cruddy for everybody. But it is. It's also joyful for everybody. But no one dodges the raindrops of pain and tragedy in their life. Nobody. And if we will accept that, then what we can learn and see from this passage is pain is not punitive. Pain, hurt, struggle, hardship, that's not punitive. That's not God exacting revenge on you for a failure in your morality somewhere. That's not God punishing you. Pain is not punitive. It is the result of brokenness. We don't experience pain and hardship in our life because at some point in our past, we displeased God with the choices that we make, and now he's exacting his revenge on us. That's not how it works. Pain is not punitive. Pain is a result of brokenness. We've talked about this before, but God created heaven and earth, and he created it perfect, and then sin ruined that perfection. And ever since then, the world is broken. And in a broken world, divorces happen and abuse happens and people get cancer and we have to watch Parkinson's and all these other diseases eat away at people that we love. In a broken world, cruddy things happen. And what Solomon is acknowledging is not only do they happen, but they happen to everybody. And yes, in general, proverbial wisdom is true. In general, if you honor God in the way that you make your choices, then you will be honored as well. But just understand that that isn't a blanket insurance policy against pain because time and chance happen to us all. And we walk through all these seasons equally. And it's important to know when we get there that that pain is not punitive. That pain isn't something that we warrant with our behavior. This actually shows up in the New Testament. Someone is blind, and the disciples look at the blind man, and they say, what happened to him? What did his parents do that he's been blinded like this way? They thought pain was punitive. They thought his actions warranted, or his parents' actions warranted what he did. And Jesus says, now this world is just broken. He says what Solomon says. In this world where we wait for Jesus to come back, like Romans 8 talks about all of creation groans for the return of the Savior, for the return of the King, for Jesus to come and make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And spoiler alert, this is where we're going to finish the series. But while we wait, we all walk through these seasons. And it's so important for us to understand that pain is not punitive. Here's why I think this. I don't know if I have permission to share her story. If I don't, I'm sorry. Kay Gamble also sits on our finance committee and approves my expenses on a monthly basis. So, you know, she has a way to nail me if she doesn't appreciate me sharing this story. But Kay is a wonderful lady who goes here and a few months ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor looked at the breast cancer and said, I think it's offerable. I think we can get it. I think it's going to be okay. She went in. She got it. And Kay, if you know her, she's quiet. Of course, she doesn't tell anybody about this. I only hear about this after the fact. They go in. They get it. Everything's good. Doctor says, we got it all. I think you're going to be in good shape. You don't have to do chemo or anything like that. We're going to give you a pill to kind of be on the safe side. You'll take that for five years, but you're good. You can go on with life as normal. So there's some pain and then a relief. Everything's good. Then she gets a call a couple of days later. The doctor said, hey, we took another look at that cancer, and it's the kind that likes to spread a lot. So we're going to have to be pretty aggressive with this, and we're going to need you to start doing chemo. Man, we're all old enough to know what chemo is. We know what that does. We know what that looks like. And we know the kinds of days that Kay is facing. And that stinks because Kay's good. And I want her to know that those cruddy days that she has to walk through are not God punishing her. That's not punitive. She doesn't have to search her soul and say, God, what have I done in the last 10, 20 years of my life to warrant this pain? What have I done to warrant this bad news? How did I disappoint you? How did I displease you? What would you like me to do now, God? Would you like me to give more, serve more, or love more? Which the answer is always yes to that. He would always like us to give and love and serve more. But not as a shield to pain. And how crushing would it be to go through life thinking that every time we experience some form of difficulty, some form of grief, that that was somehow God turning the screws on us so that we learned our lesson better. What I want Kay to understand in this season of cruddiness amidst the chemo is that it's just simply her turn. It's her turn. Her life stinks for a little bit. And guess what? All of our lives stink for a little bit sometimes. They have before, and here's the fun thing, they're going to again. It just will. It's Kay's turn. Recently, it was our turn. For some of you, it's still your turn. I know stories of people and loss and tragedy that we've experienced just in this church. And I just think that there is something tremendously comforting about looking at a season of grief with the understanding of, it's my turn right now. It's my time to mourn. But what I know is, eventually it'll be my time to sing. It's my time to tear things down. But eventually, if I put my head down, it'll be my time to build things up. And in this way, and I think that this is beautiful, Ecclesiastes empathizes with our experiences. It actually empathizes with us. It's a brave, bold thing to say. To admit, yeah, we should obey God. We should pursue the proverbial wisdom. But what a wonderful admission in the Bible that actually syncs up with our experience to say sometimes bad things happen to good people. I've told you before, I had a roommate in college who was a better person than me in every way possible. He graduated. He became a pastor. He was leading churches before I was, and I always admired him more than I cared to admit, and he dropped dead at 30 of a widow-maker heart attack playing ultimate frisbee with his friends. It will never make any sense to me how he left and I stayed, and how his wife Carla and his boys had to walk through that. I remember his five-year-old knocking on his coffin wondering when he was going to wake up. But what Ecclesiastes says is, it was Chris's time to die. It was Carla's turn to walk that hard road. Sometimes bad things happen. And even though the best possible investment of our life is to pursue God and godliness, we need to do it eyes wide open knowing that that does not protect us from tragedy. We're never told that it does. That time and chance happen to us all. What a difficult thing it would be to have to try to sync up my faith to somehow explain away Chris's death as deserved. What a difficult thing it would be to try to help Carla find a path back to faith, which she has found, if part of that explanation would be, well, you guys deserve this because of your behavior. Ecclesiastes looks around and goes, yeah, sometimes life doesn't make sense. Sometimes it seems unfair. And sometimes it's just our turn. And we understand that everybody takes a turn. But here's the thing. I have been kind of sitting in that reality for a while in my personal life. It's been our turn recently. Our turn's still not over. And I've been studying this book, which is stark, man. But somehow, despite all of that, in thinking about what awaits us in the next two weeks and allowing my life to sit in that. And we're going to come back next week. Next week's going to be happy, I promise. Next week's going to be great, all right? We're going to cry some happy tears next week. It's going to feel better than this. In the midst of everything that we have been walking through, because of the promises that are in Ecclesiastes and because of the encouraging things that he writes that we're going to talk about next week. I can honestly tell you that for me personally, I am sitting in the middle of a time of more profound joy than I think I've ever experienced in my life, of more gratitude for my God, more gratitude for my Savior, more of a desire for Him. And I want you guys to experience that joy too. And so next week we're going to come back and I'm going to tell you all about it. Let's pray. Father, life's hard sometimes. We are so thankful that you gave your servant Solomon the courage to admit that. Father, we all have to hurt sometimes. We are thankful that we have a Jesus who weeps with us in our pain. Lord, if it is someone's season to be sad right now, I pray that they would just be sad. And that that would run the course that it needs to run. God, if it is someone's time for joy right now, let them be joyful. Let them be exuberant. Let them feel your presence and your joy. For those of us who are walking through a hard time, Lord, I pray that we would be comforted by this stark knowledge that sometimes it's just our turn. And I know there are folks who feel like, gosh, it feels like it's been my turn a lot lately. Lord, I pray that you would give them lots of turns of joy too. Let all of this, our pain, our triumph, our struggle, and our joy, draw us near to you. Either in gratitude or in need, Father, draw us near to you. And Father, I pray that in that drawing that we would find what David describes as the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Help us see more and more our gratitude for you and our need for you. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.