Mark chapter 12 verse 13 and 17. Now my title this evening, I don't always do titles but you have one tonight, is we have here a sobering analogy of spiritual warfare. Tonight I'm not going to deal with the intricate dealings with Christ and the Herodians and Pharisees, we'll look at that next time. But I want actually more to look at the context around this renewed assault on the Son of God and to see again an example, an illustration, an analogy of spiritual warfare because if you're a Christian you are engaged in spiritual warfare. You're engaged in spiritual warfare tonight during this sermon. You will be engaged in spiritual warfare when you go home. You don't understand what you're dealing with. None of us understand the full scope of the danger we face every single day. If we did, no pastors would fall into sin. If we did, there'd be no catastrophes of the Christian life. So we need to really reckon with this, face up to it, and live in the light of it. Because Christ sets us an example. A servant is not above his master. What Christ endured, we will endure in some measure. And we come here to the final week of Christ's life. You know, a lot of you probably think, or you hope, I hope that when I retire I can put my feet up. and my last days be spent in blessedness and peace and tranquility. Reading John Owen Hugh. No, it's perfectly good to read John Owen. But just, you know, the battles of yesterday. But if Christ's life is anything to go by, the battles get fiercer and fiercer and fiercer and the spiritual warfare gets more relentless and the attacks get more devilish and the awareness of your own remaining sin gets more intense and your vulnerability becomes greater. And so we need to understand because Christ's example is an example for us. He faces the greatest onslaught right at the very end of his life. It's interesting, isn't it, that so many men didn't necessarily fall when they were younger, they fell when they were older. Even when I think of some of the great examples of great men that have fallen in the Church of Jesus Christ worldwide, most of them are over 50 years of age. It shows us that there's a danger of losing your watchfulness as you get older in the Christian life. I don't need to watch like I used to. I don't have those youthful passions maybe that I used to have. No, there's always need to watch. Let's pray once more and ask for God to give us a real sense of the spiritual reality that our Savior was facing here. Our Father in heaven, we pray tonight that we would marvel at Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We would be in awe at what he was facing for us, that our hearts might be warmed by that truth, that he did all this for me. and that we would also be comforted to know that he won, he prevailed, he did not fall and so we can look to him in our time of need. Do bless us we pray for Jesus' sake. Amen. Well we saw this morning that nothing so infuriates men and women and boys and girls than to have their sins exposed. Why did they want to kill him? By wanting to kill him, they were doing the very thing Christ said they were going to do. It's astounding, but they were livid, they were furious because they were being confronted by what they were. And that's why they wanted to kill him. They were even willing to prove him as a prophet. If the Pharisees had one method they could have tried, they still would have failed because Christ had been foreordained as the Lamb of God. But they could have said, he's predicted that we're going to kill him, let's not do it. That would have been really clever, wouldn't it? But they are so infuriated and enraged that he's had the audacity to suggest that they are wicked as they are, that they are even, they've even stopped, they're full of rage. And when you're full of rage, you lose all sense of rationality. He's told them in the parable, you're going to kill me, and they want to kill him. Which will ultimately prove his own prophecy, that he's a prophet, that he is who he claims to be. And we come then to the next conflict, the next confrontation. So firstly to me, the timing of the attack. The timing of the attack, oh don't you, aren't you in awe of Christ here? Christ is the true masculine man. What is true masculinity? We've lost this aspect of Christ. We've so emphasised, oh, he's gentle. Oh, he is. Praise the Lord, he's gentle. And masculine men know how to be gentle. But true masculine strength is strength under control. It is knowing how and when to use your strength. It is not an agitate figure who's just brash. No, here is a man who had the power to crush these men to powder with a word. Here is a man who can calm the ocean with a word. Here is a man that has the power over life or death and can say to Lazarus, come forth. Here is a man who can cleanse the leper with a touch. What kind of power are we dealing with? And aren't you just humbled? Aren't you just in awe at how patiently he allows himself to just be assaulted by these wicked men? He doesn't speak a harsh word to them. He doesn't lose his temper once. I mean, I would have disqualified myself from the ministry with the first wave of attack. I'd be out, man. You'd be having a church meeting saying, Tom lost it. He's gone. You can be forgiven, Tom, but you're done for the ministry, my friend. Christ is just a hero, isn't he? He's just unbelievable. Even just the way he deals with these men is evidence of his deity, his holiness, that he is the Messiah. I mean, let's just look at the context of this attack. Monday morning, we're in chapter 11, verses 1 to 11. He comes to Jerusalem to Laod Hazanas. But even that must have made Christ angry, on one level, because these are the same people that are going to cry out, crucify him. And he would have known that. How discouraging it must have been to see these crowds and at one level think, yep, I am him, I am the one you're saying, I am the son of David. But you don't really believe it because the minute you realise I have not come to be a political messiah, you're going to cry out, crucify me. So there must have been in his own soul a level of discouragement at the false praise of the masses. That's Monday morning. He then goes into the temple, verse 11 of chapter 11, and he has a look around and we know what he saw by what he did the next day. How his soul must have been grieved at the hypocrisy and false religion in the temple. And then in verse 12 to 14, he curses the fig tree. And we know that that cursing of the fig tree was a prophetic warning of the judgment coming to Israel. And it was a cursing that he did in light of what he'd seen in the temple. And then he goes into the temple again and he finds people selling and buying money changers who are adding inflation onto the exchange rate so that people are being fleeced to make their sacrifices. A place meant to be a house of prayer and you've made it a den of thieves. How grieved the Son of God was. And then you come to verse 25. So by the way, we're in Tuesday now. We're in Tuesday. and in the cleansing of the temple. So he's close to the fig tree on Tuesday, cleanses the temple Tuesday. Now in the next morning, Wednesday morning, this is the last week of Jesus' life. It is relentless. It is intense. It is ferocious. It is awful. This is not a good week. This is not a good time for the Son of God. Not that any time of his life was good. He was a man of sorrows. His whole life was one of hardship. He had nowhere to lay his head. He had no place to call home. And here he is, the son of God, among his own people who should have been waiting for him and loving him, when Wednesday morning, and he explains the meaning of the fig tree. And then you come to verse 25 and 26, and there's this little exhortation to forgiveness, because he sees the hardness of heart. Here is the son of God, who's come to offer his life to secure the forgiveness needed for those who do not deserve it. And yet he looks in the hearts of his own disciples. He looks in the hearts of the Pharisees and the scribes. People, some of whom he's come to forgive. We know some of the Pharisees and the priests even became obedient to the faith in the book of Acts. Many of them did come to faith. And he sees that though God is bent on forgiveness, they can't bring themselves to forgive anybody. that they hold like we do, grudges, that they fester on things. So he sees like, I've come on this mission of forgiveness, it's Wednesday, on Friday I'm going to give my life and I'm going to pay the price, I'm going to bleed and die so that sinners can be forgiven and you can't even forgive one another. How vast the disconnect between the hearts of men and women and Christ. Do we not see him shining in all of his dazzling holiness, that he is unique, he is not like us. And then Wednesday afternoon, I'm guessing it was Wednesday afternoon, we have his authority questioned in verse 27 to 33. And he has to listen to these arrogant men lecturing him on authority. Where did you get your authority from? Who gave you permission? I mean I would have just been like, I'm God! I don't need your permission. And my works declare that I am God. And he just calmly, and quietly asked them, the baptism of John, was it from heaven or was it from men? And again, we're astounded, I'm just blown away by the wisdom of Christ. I mean, I'm foolish, I'm stupid, I would have fallen into that trap. I mean, here is Christ and he sees the trap, he knows what they're wanting him to do and he does not fall into it. He then makes one last attempt, as we saw, to preach to these men and plead with them. Don't be these people. This is who you are. There's a way. You can stop now. You can throw down your arms now. You can repent. Because if you don't, you do realise that the stone which you're going to eject is going to become the cornerstone and you will have no part of it. But no, they sought to lay hands on him. And so he's confronted fickleness, he's confronted blasphemy in the temple and sacrilegious behaviour, the desecration of a place that was meant to be of his glory. He's confronted hardness of heart, willful blindness. Oh Lord, just finish them now, just. And yet here they are, verse 13. Pharisees and Herodians coming to catch him. in his words. That's the timing of the attack. I want you to now see the context of the attack. Turn with me to Mark 11 verse 18 and you see that their minds are made up that they're going to kill him. Verse 18, they want to destroy him. That's what they're plotting to do. They're just looking for a way to do it. There's no going back now in their minds. We have to kill him We just need to find a moment when we can. And if you turn to Matthew 22, keep your finger in Mark, but go back to the parallel account in Matthew 22. Sorry, yeah, 22 verse 15. So after the parable, of the wedding feast, there was another parable that he also spoke to them that's not recorded in Mark. We read in verse 15 that the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle him in his talk. And so there's behind the scenes, they're deliberating what can we do to trap him so that we might destroy him. In Luke 20, in verse 19 to 20, we read, after the parable we've been considering this morning, the chief priests and the scribes that very hour sought to lay hands on him, but they feared the people, for they knew he had spoken a parable against them, so they watched him. You don't break your heart. Here is the sinless son of God, the one who came to rescue you, and see these predators like a pack of wolves encircling him, they're watching him, plotting how they might tear him limb from limb, how they might destroy him and absolutely be done with him. How do you feel if a loved one of yours was being watched in this way? with a view to do great harm. Here is your saviour, Christian, like a sheep among wolves, like a lamb being led to the slaughter. Such an innocent man, not a helpless man, but appearing as a helpless man. And we know that he doesn't seek retribution, he doesn't seek vindication, he doesn't here seek to, like Superman, almost remove the garment so that people see. He could have had a transfiguration. You know, you think of the transfiguration, how suddenly Peter, James, and John got a glimpse of the glory of the Son of God. He could have done that and could have terrified them all, but he doesn't. He allows them to hunt him. Here is a man who is prey. And the predators are sinful men. And they're hunting him like a pack of dogs. And what has he done? What was his crime? What law did he break? His only offence was exposing their own hypocrisy. His only offence was telling them the truth. His only offence was making them look in the mirror. And so it is today, dear friends. We said this is an analogy. So it is today with people that oppose biblical Christianity. And what's furthermore very interesting is, and I will say more on this next week, but just for the sake of just some clarity here in the context, isn't it interesting that it's two groups that hate one another that come to oppose Christ? You have the Herodians and the Pharisees. They couldn't stand one another. but they had the same enemy. Herodians were worldly men. They were secular political men. They were men who were in league with Herod. They were men who loved the life that Romans had given them. Not every Jew was anti-Rome. The proper Jews who loved the scriptures were quite hostile to Rome, and rightly so in many respects, because they understood that David should be king over his people, a son of David, not Caesar. But Rome did a lot of good. Again bear in mind in this context have you heard of the Pax Romana? stability and peace in the ancient world, that the Romans themselves, we often think about the Romans, yeah they did conquer, yes they did a lot of evil, but once they had conquered they actually set conditions for peace and they built roads and they built infrastructure and they actually enabled people to do well and trade and do things that weren't possible before. Before the Romans you had barbarian tribes in all of Europe and places like that and they would all fight one another all the time, it was very unstable. They brought peace and stability. And so the Herodians were a group of Jewish people that were doing very well out of the Roman system and they didn't want to go back to a Jewish system. And so they were very favourable to Rome and they caught the favour of Rome. Herod was Rome's puppet in Israel. They were the Herodians. And then you have the Pharisees, well of course they had no time for Rome and they had no time for Herod because they saw that as compromise. It was all about loyalty to God. They were often the ones scheming and causing many of the uprisings that happened like Judas the Zealot and one of the uprisings happened under him in 86. And yet, here they, these groups of people that are diametrically opposed to one another, united in trying to kill the Son of God. And we see the same thing in the United Kingdom, don't we? How do you reconcile the secular woke mob waving LGBT flags with Islamists waving ISIS flags and Palestine flags? What is it that these two groups have in common that is leading them to form a political alliance that will ultimately, if allowed to progress, will lead to the total eradication of Christianity, obviously it can't destroy it, but public Christianity from public life. How do you understand those things? It's because the gospel is an offence to both. Christ was an offence to the Herodians because he told them, you're living according to your lusts, you're worldly, you're all about riches, you're all about ambition, you're all about money, you're all about career, you have no place for God in your life, you're man-centred. That was an offence. But to the Pharisees, your religion's a sham. It's dead religion. It's not true religion. Your hearts need to be changed. You need to be born again. You need God to change your life. You need to be forgiven of your sins. And so both groups were offended. And isn't that the same today? What's the offence of Christianity and Islam? It's dead religion. It's outward religion. Praying five times a day. Going to Mecca. Giving offerings. That can't save your soul. You need a saviour. You need one who shed blood to pay for atonement. You don't know the scriptures. The Qur'an is not a fulfilment of the Old Testament because the Old Testament promised one who would come who would pay once for all for sin. And Muhammad hasn't done that. And so if Muhammad is a prophet we're still waiting that next prophet. But apparently he's the final prophet. It is a false religion. And you need to repent of your false religions and turn to Christ. But what about the woke clock? The Bible is against living according to your lusts and your passions. You can't have sex with whoever you want. You can't do whatever you want, whenever you want. The Lord has established boundaries for these things. And so both groups say, he is a threat to our way of life. He is a threat to the way I want to live. And so, nothing has changed, you see. how this book is modern, isn't it? It's ancient yet applicable today. It's right up to date. We have the same thing going on today. How tiring, how draining it must have been for my saviour to endure the contradiction of sinners. I am in awe of him. I have read this gospel many times. I have preached through Luke's gospel, I have not preached through Mark's gospel, I'm on my way through it, but I have come to realise that often you just race to the cross, and indeed, but actually we only often think of his sufferings at the cross, but his sufferings climax at the cross. but his sufferings preceded the cross. How tiring, how agonizingly difficult to endure such demonic and devilish opposition through wicked men. What an example he is to me. What an example he is to you to press on in the will of God. And do you meet discouragements in the way? You ever come to a time or come to moments in your life where you're, I'm just weary of this Christian life. I'm weary of this heart. I'm weary of temptation after temptation after temptation. I'm weary of trial after trial after trial. I'm not sure I can go on anymore. Well, look at your saviour here. Look how he, in order to save your souls and obey the will of God for him and for his people, how he just allows himself to pass from one trial to another trial, from one assault to another assault. Are you above your saviour? Do you deserve a better life than he? What does it say? In Hebrews, we read it at the opening of our worship. I have to always turn to this verse when I think about throwing the towel in. Verse three, well we didn't read this particular verse, we read the first two before it. Consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. There's a lot to make the Christian weary and discouraged in their soul. But the moment you consider him, you realize whatever difficulties we've had in the Christian way, whatever opposition we've had, whatever abuses we've had in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, whatever names we've been called, whatever mockery we've had, whatever evil we've faced, you consider him. and you realize I haven't even known the half, not even a percentage of what Christ knew. Consider him. Do you see the encouragement this is to you, Christian? Because remember, this is where our doctrine of what's called the hypostatic union, I don't mean to be clever, it's a word we use to describe something that is in one sense incomprehensible, the union of the divine nature and the human nature in the one person. And he never ceased to be God, but we have to remember he did what he did as a man. He did what he did as the second Adam. He had to rely on heaven's resources. He had to pray. He had to go, God, I need strength. They're coming again. God, give me the words. Give me the wisdom. Give me the insight. Help me to not fall into this trap. Here your savior is living as a man for you. Here he is overcoming evil for you because we fall into temptation. We fall into sin. We find a noose around our neck from time to time, but not Christ. He did this for you as a man by the grace of God and by the power of God and by the Spirit of God. And we as Christians have received the Spirit of Christ. The same Spirit who kept the Son of God in this last week is the Spirit you've received. And the Spirit who promises to help you. What did Christ say? I will send you another helper, comforter, paraclete, to be with you always. He's the helper. So whatever we've got ahead of us, however difficult the road for each one of us, and however the devil will seek to use circumstances to distract us and discourage us, as he does here for Christ, to destroy us, let's call it what it is. The devil wants to destroy us. He wants to destroy your marriages. He wants to destroy your children. He wants to destroy your Christian testimony. He wants to ruin you. But if you lean on the Spirit, if you lean on the Lord, you can expect help and sympathy. It's such a comfort to me when I consider Christ because I go to one who knows. He knows what it is to be discouraged. He knows what it is to be weary in body and soul. That is why we're told, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses. but was in all points tempted. Here, he's been tempted. He says, why do you tempt me? Test me, verse 15, could be translated tempt as well. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. And that is such an important addition that's there in that text. If he just didn't have that bit, and we go, well, that's comforting in a way, but he can't help me. But he was tempted in every way as I am, yet he's without sin. And so even though I sin, he can sympathise with me because he knows how hard it is. And yet he can also do something about my weakness. I can help you. Lean on me. I can bring you through this. What a patient saviour we have. And our friends, you say, well, I must, he must need to be patient with you, with me. Oh, well, he does. He needs to be patient with your pastor. But I'll tell you what, if he can be patient with these men who had no repentance in their heart, he can be patient with his children. Now, if you're a true child of God, that won't make you sin just to find out if he's patient. The true child of God will hear that and go, I don't want to sin against one so patient. But when you do, know that he is patient, and he will deal gently with you, and he will deal righteously in your life. He who endured, look, your saviour is the one who walks beside you. If he could walk this path, what path can he not help you through? If he could walk this road, what road can he not bring you through, Christian? Be encouraged by your saviour here, what a hero, what a champion, what a masculine man we have here. Thirdly, see with me, we've seen the context of the attack, we've seen the timing of the attack. Thirdly, see with me the source of the attack. I've hinted at this, but let's just be explicit about it here. We are reading our Bibles very shallowly if we only see human agency at work here. As with all outward, coordinated attacks of evil in this world, we must see the unseen mover behind all things. We must see the unseen hand of evil which is at work in all things. I mean, do you just sometimes look at the Western... We live in the West, so we can't help but be where we are. Do you not just look at Western nations and think, how is it that all the nations in the West seem to be falling prey to the same thing? It's almost as if there's a group of people somewhere and there are conspiracies along this line and you can't blame the conspiracies because it seems to be so coordinated so well organised, like this has been a plan hatched once before, and it seems to be like maybe there's this unknown body of authorities that are planning how to bring down the Western nations. When you look at what's going on, do you not sometimes ponder that? Now I don't think men have that kind of organisation ability and power. I don't think sinful men can get on long enough, over 100 years, to catch that kind of plan and follow it through. But that's not to say there isn't a conspiracy. There is a conspiracy and it's true. And that there is an unseen power at work and using men to fulfill his own plans and purposes. And we see this unseen hand here. The Bible says in 1 John 5, 19, the whole world lies in sway of the evil one. How was it that a great nation like Germany, and it was a great nation and it is a great nation, And again, we come back to what I said this morning. Let's be clear about this. English might feel a little bit of superiority to the Germans, and we think there were 10 German bombers in the air and the RAF Leesbourne shot one down. We joke about these things, but we are not superior to the Germans. And people say, well, why did they do what they do? How is it that ordinary bakers and butchers ended up serving the SS and shooting people with firing squads? Because a lot of the people that committed these attacks and these evils and these atrocities before the war, they were normal people. You'd go and get your bread from them at the baker's shop. You go and see them, he was a doctor. How do you explain that? And you see, well, some people say, oh, well, it was because of the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War. You know, we gave them really hard terms, we crippled their economy, we forced economic ruin on them, and so they were ripe for revenge. That's subordinate. That maybe has some truth in it. It does have some truth in it, I'm sure. But how does it still explain how a man who was once a normal man in his village becoming an executor of innocent people? How do you explain that? You can only explain that when you understand that God in some way took his restraint off the German people and allowed the devil to deceive the hearts and minds of millions of people. So they were like breathing in this air where the unthinkable became thinkable. The unthinkable became normal. What does Ephesians 2 verse 2 say? Do we reckon with these truths? This is why, by the way friends, what I'm stressing to you now is why the mission of the church cannot succeed without the power of God. It's why it's silly to say things like, we've tried evangelism before, it doesn't work. It never works, unless God works. What does Ephesians 2 say? We start with verse one, you he made alive, who were, so this is every one of us, you were, we were all like this, dead in trespassing sins, we're spiritually dead, dead to God, in which you once walked according to the course of this world. So it describes that there's a course, there's a direction of travel in this world, there's a current in the world that leads people down the same direction. What moves it along according to the prince of the power of the air? You see, the real issue isn't LGBTQ plus triangle square zero. The real Dane, the real evil here is the devil himself. Whipping up these people to do his own purposes. To destroy the institution of marriage. To destroy the family. To destroy everything that God has said is good and very good. To destroy the church. Why has he brought Islam to the West? Because Islam destroys wherever it goes. Islam destroys every nation it's ever been to and turns it into a squalor. And it will use the woke mob to do its will, and then after it's got its way, it will then destroy the woke mob and start having executions of the homosexuals and throwing them off the buildings. It always happens. Why are they here? Because the devil has brought them here. Now obviously I acknowledge and I hope I've preached enough on the sovereignty of God. The Lord is allowing this and there's a whole level then of other questions that we cannot explore tonight. There's a degree of sovereign permission over this just like as we're going to see the devil was the one working in the Herodians and the Pharisees and the chief priests to destroy Christ and God was allowing it. So let's be clear here, unless you say, well, how could God allow this to happen to our country? That's the wrong question. How could God allow the devil to work in the hearts of men to make a ruin of his son? That's a better question. The true source of attack here cannot be explained by men only. Again, why did they want to kill him? I know we said why at one level, because he exposed the hypocrisy. Fine, he did. But why did they want to kill him? And again, as I said this morning, why so brutally? Why crucifixion? Why not give him a, it'd still be awful, why not give him a clean beheading from a Roman soldier as the Apostle Paul had? Why do they want him to be so publicly lashed and whipped and mocked and a crown of thorns in his head? And why do they want to make him carry his cross on his whipped back up to the hill? And why do they want him to be stretched out and Roman nails hammered into his wrists and into his feet? Why do they want to do this? Why do they want to goad him with a sour sponge to quench his thirst? Why? Pilar even said before the crowds, what crimes has he done? This doesn't make sense why you'd be so bent on such hostility. And it's the same question in one sense we ask at a lesser level. What evil could make six million Jews be slaughtered in gas chambers? What could possess the minds of men and women to do that? Why so barbaric? What kind of evil would make a child, an ideology that would lead children to have bombs strapped to themselves where they run into a crowd and blow themselves up and everyone else up? What kind of evil does that? An evil which hates holiness and hates everything God has made. An evil that is murderous Do you know what some of the names are for Satan? He is the destroyer. He's a destroyer. What is the evil making Hamas go into Israel and burn children in their ovens? This is what they did, by the way. If you don't know this, they did this. Behead the mothers and the fathers. Rape the women. What kind of evil does that? And videos it and sends a video to your mum and dad and says, mum, dad, look what we did. Oh, we're so proud of you, son. Who are they really reflecting there? The devil himself. And it's the same today. Why do people hate Christianity? Why? And again, it's an excuse if people say, well, what about the Roman Catholic priests and the child abuse scandals? Look, we all know that in institutionalised religion, There are many people who have done evil things under the guise of being an angel of light. atrocities that have been committed in the name of Christianity, in the name of religion. But what I'm asking is, what is it that people really have against true Christianity? Bible believing Christianity. What does Christianity do? What does it offer a society? What happens when people believe the gospel and repent before God and say, I want to obey your commandments? Well, what you have is husbands being faithful to their wives and wives faithful to their husbands. What you have are children being taught right from wrong and being raised in stable homes. You have stable Christian homes. You have social good. You have Christians going about doing social good in their communities. It transforms the drug addicts and the alcohol addicts. Christianity impacts absolutely everything for the good. It transforms lives. It transforms the economy. We have forgotten. We don't preach politics, but we apply truth to politics. It's a big difference. And Christianity alone provides the perfect balance between a state-controlled economic system where you have to keep people down lest they get too prosperous, but also Christianity, what it does is it enables a degree of freedom which enables people to make good on what God's given them, but also remembers that importance of taking care of the poor and of trying to lift others out of poverty. So it's not capitalism on steroids where profit, profit, profit, profit is the idol you worship, but it is rather a system based upon the law of the gospel. We consider the poor, we consider the needy. And we seek to do all we can, which is why Christianity, wherever it's gone, it started schools. We've got to teach people to read and write. It has started institutions which have been designed to bring people out of poverty. It is why it is preached fiercely against the wealthy for not caring for the poor. Christianity, dear friends, why do people hate it? What harm has it ever done? Christianity has only been a blessing on any nation it's gone to. The answer is in John 8, verse 44. Why people hate the gospel. Jesus says to the Pharisees, why do you not understand my speech? Verse 43. Because you are not able to listen to my word. Why? You are of your father, the devil. Now this would have been a very hard statement for the Pharisees to soak, to take in, because they saw themselves as sons of Abraham. Abraham's our father. You say that to an Englishman, you know, you're of your father the devil, you're just as bad as the Islamists. I'm English, I'm British. I'm a good person. No, no, no, no. You are of your father the devil and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it. All Satan can do is lie. And so we have a situation where people have been persuaded that A man can be a woman, a woman can be a man. Do you not just see the devil over that? It's just a delusion, it's a lie, but people have fallen for it. What this shows then is you come back to this account before us in Mark's gospel. They want to catch him in his words that they might destroy him. Why do they want to destroy him? Because the devil wants him destroyed. The devil wants him destroyed. Interestingly, the Greek word here for catch, its root word in the Greek language was a word describing to hunt. Hence my illusion of Jesus being hunted. What is the devil described as by Peter in 1 Peter 5? Like a roaring lion. The devil seeks whom he may devour, resist him. So, the devil's fingerprints are all over this attack. The devil is seeking to do his utmost to oppose the Messiah, to stop him from doing what he had come to do. And in the end, the devil would get his way, only when Christ allowed him to. but in the end he would allow himself to be arrested and to be crucified. Fourthly and lastly see what is the application of this to us. If you are going like Christ to seek to do the will of God in your life, if you are determined to not run with the course of this world, to not do whatever's easiest, Too many Christians do this, don't they? They go to the church that has the most childcare on offer because it's easier and they just sit in the service without having to deal with a crying and whingeing child. Christians are so often choosing the path of least resistance. It's easier if you both go and get well-paid full-time jobs, man and wife, and just have your children at a childcare. And you go on more holidays and pay off your mortgage quicker. It's easier to do that. But if you're going to be a Christian that's going to say, I'm not going to choose the path of least resistance, I'm going to ask God every day to show me the way in which I should go, to lead me and my wife and my children, if that's what I have, or as a single man, to show me the way I should go. If you're going to be about your faith, a servant is not above his master. Here's why head knowledge and theology is not enough. It's not enough. We need nothing less than theology and head knowledge, but we need so much more. I'm tired of hearing of great men and women who have fallen, are you? And I'm afraid I could be the next one, but that's the kind of fear we need. Take heed lest we also fall. We need to have that vigilance to the very end. Whenever I am, each day, he's watching me. He's studying me. He's planning and plotting and scheming. What does it say in Ephesians in chapter six about the devil? We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, verse 12, but against principalities against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness. But what did I say in the verse before? That we need the whole armour of God that we may be able to stand against the wiles, the plottings, the schemes of the devil. You are not as wise as the devil. And you don't know yourself as well as the devil. He studied you from the moment you were born and he studied humanity since the time of Adam. He knows where we're weakest. He knows the way into this church, dear beloved. He studies this church. He's always looking for a weak link into this congregation. And if one of you stops watching, you've made the whole church vulnerable. We know that Christians don't take this seriously enough. The devil could come into this congregation if we allow him to, if one of us is passive and thinks we can stand in our own resources, that we don't need to pray for ourselves and for one another. And as I said, when it comes to evangelising Eastbourne and East Sussex, when it comes to wanting to see the gospel spread, you need to understand that the first battle begins on your knees in prayer. The level of coordination then that we're seeing in our nation and in Western nations, the working, the powers that seem to be arraying themselves, and we can see it coming, we can see that they're coming for us, they're coming for Christians, they're coming for the church. Do you know in Greenland, I think it's Greenland, Kat sent me a link this week, it was on the BBC News. They're asking parents to do fitness tests. And the fitness test contains a number of questions, and depending on how well you answer those questions, they take your children off you. Do you see? That's the level of evil that's coming our way, unless God overrules and God works. We can't defeat these powers by just going out and handing a tract. We should hand out tracts. We can't defeat these powers by publishing our sermons online. God must work. But here's the comfort, dear friends. We can't end on that note, because that would make us feel sad and discouraged. Do you see the futility of their attack, both here and even when they get their way? We will look at next week what exactly he does here. It's unbelievable because the trap they set is something else. I mean, again, even in the trap, no human being is intelligent enough to set a trap like this. This is an astounding trap because they're asking him, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? Now, think about this. We'll say on this more next week, but just think about this with me just to see the power of the trap that's being set for him. If he says, don't pay taxes to Caesar, serve the Lord only, the Herodians, what are they gonna do? Caesar, this man's a rebel to your authority, and the Romans will kill him. So Jesus is in trouble there. But if Jesus says, well, you should serve Caesar, you should honour Caesar, you should respect Caesar, and give him your worship, and give him your obedience, and submit to him in everything he tells you to do, including the paying of taxes, what can the Pharisees do? But as for me, idolatry. You shall have no other gods before the Lord. So the way this is being framed, they're thinking, we've got him. He can't answer this question and be clear. We're going to kill him. It's going to happen. And of course, Jesus' answer is a masterclass. It just shows you that he is God, he is omniscient, he knows how to answer them, and he leaves them confounded. So he doesn't fall into their trap. He's completely sovereign, again highlighting his death. Jesus says, no one takes my life from me. but I lay it down. You remember when the soldiers came to arrest him in the garden, and a whole legion of men come to him. Are you Jesus who is called the Christ? I am. They all fell over. As he spoke the divine name, I am, they collapsed. Just to let them know, if you go away with me, it's because I've let you. In one moment, I could kill you. But the devil is seeking to lay a trap for him. The devil wanted Christ to die on his terms. He evaded this trap but he would eventually die only when it served his purpose to die. And so here you see the sovereignty and control of God even over evil. The Lord only allowed Christ to fall into the hands of sinful men when it served his purpose for him to do so. Turn with me to John 13. We're coming to a close in a minute. John 13. We're on Thursday evening now, in the last week. It's the week of Passover. Now, before the feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, you see, now's the time. I will allow myself to fall into their hands. When he knew that his hour had come, that he should depart from the world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And supper being ended, the devil, here you see, he was here all along. This is all the devil's work. The devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him. Why was he crucified? At one level, the devil had him crucified. Jesus, knowing that the father had given all things into his hand and they had come from God and was going to God, rose from the supper. Here we see the death of Christ was not an accident. Here we see that it was not Satan's will that was being done, but Christ's will, and that Satan's will was serving Christ's will, that Satan's will was serving God's will. And the devil rejoiced and thought, I've got him. And I imagine him when he's enduring a Roman lassion, and the devil was there watching chunks of skin be pulled out of his back, and him crying in pain, him just rubbing his feet, and saliva in his mouth, if he had such a mouth, as a predator. Yes! And then he sees him nailed to the cross and he sees him cry out, Father, why have you forsaken me? Yes! But what he doesn't know is that the greatest act of evil he ever committed secured his own doom. You know, this victory goes way back to Genesis, doesn't it? Chapter three and verse 15, right at the beginning of the Bible, when Adam and Eve fell into sin and God made a promise to Eve, our first mother, and said to her, that one of your descendants will have his heel bruised by the serpent, but he will crush his head. And the amazing thing is, was that when Satan was bruising him, Christ was crushing him. Because what is it that keeps us under Satan's grasp and influence? What is it that means that God, in one sense, we can't be with God? The devil can justly say to God, you can't have Tom, you can't have him, he's mine, you can't, because he's a sinner. Here is his record of sin, you cannot have him, you cannot change his life, he's coming to hell with me. If you're gonna destroy me, you're gonna have to destroy your people. But on the cross, according to Colossians, Christ was cancelling the record of debt that stood against us. Christ was relieving us of the handwriting of requirements of the law that demanded us to be cursed. For the word of God says, cursed is he who does not abide in all the things of the law. Cursed is he who hangs on a tree. And so Satan's greatest work secured God's ultimate purpose, which was to rescue and to redeem his own people. A people so numerous, more numerous than the stars of the sky, more numerous than the sand on the seashore, He had come to destroy the works of the devil. 1 John chapter 3 verse 8 says. Every attack then of the devil here serves the purpose of God. Every assault only vindicated Christ and then his greatest effort to have him crucified ultimately secured his doom. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians that had the rulers of this age known what they were doing, when they crucified the Lord of glory, they would not have crucified him. And then he rose from the dead. Three days later. Don't you love this language? You ever hear that phrase in Ephesians? You ever wondered actually what it means? He led captivity captive. Do you understand what that means? We are in captivity by the devil by nature. We want to sin just like he does. But Christ led captivity captive. He took captive what captivated us. And so we're no longer captivated to it anymore. Isn't this wonderful? Now friends, this is a big application on this point for our lives. I'm ending on this last application of this application. This is big theology. Friends, all your trials all your attacks. I'm going to say this because I believe if you're a true child of God you will not abuse this to sin so that good will come. Even your sins, even when the Lord gives permission for the devil to have a filled day with you and to tempt you into sin and you do sin and you fall, all the devil's work in your life will only serve God's purpose in your life which is your holiness and your safe arrival to see him face to face. Everything that happens in my life, whether evil in and of itself, will ultimately accomplish good. Let me illustrate this with a shocking illustration from the scriptures. David's sin with Bathsheba. Was it sin? Yes. Was it evil? Yes. What are the devil's hands all over it? Yes, he's the tempter. But who was ultimately glorified in the final analysis? The God of grace. Read Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, O Lord. Shall we turn there? Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. Use this situation, O God, this great evil I've done, to abound to the magnification of the abundance of your tender mercies. Use my life to declare that God is gracious, that God is merciful. Blot out my transgressions. My sins are as black as the darkest nights. But this is an opportunity for you, O God, to show the greatness of your grace. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me. He's not justifying his sin because good has come out of it. He's doing none of that. Verse 10, creating me a clean heart, O God. and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Verse 13, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners shall be converted to you. How many sinners have been saved by reading Psalm 51? How many sinners have been comforted by the God of grace who forgave David? How many people's lives have been changed by seeing that if God can pardon David, he can pardon me. And so you see, it doesn't mean that David should say, I'm going to have another go at sin so that I can overcome. If that's your response, you've never known grace. But when we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father. And when we do sin, we can legitimately, be confident to say, God will bring glory out of this. God will use this to make me more holy and more watchful. And God will use this to be a help to others. You know, one of the things Satan does when God's children sin, he says, kill yourself, choose. It is always the case in our lives what Satan means for evil, God means for good. And no true Christian in this room will abuse that. I don't need to worry about sin because God will bring good out of it. God's way also chasing you very hardly, very painfully. So don't play with God. But when you do fall, know that you do not need to despair, because remember the cross, remember how evil led to the triumph of God's grace. And that will be true for you, and that will be true for me. Some of us have been through awful things. Maybe you can even think of like, is this true for you? You think of things that even happened in your life before you knew Christ, and you think to yourself, what was the purpose in that? Why did God allow me to go through those things? And it's because he's gonna use all those things to bring you to himself, to bring you to that place where you were willing to hear about a saviour who can save you from a wreckage of a life. You know, we can all look at our own lives and humanly certain things that can bring you to Christ. You know, I can think of things in my life, things that God allowed me to go through that created sort of identity issues. That's a great problem today, isn't it, among our young generation. They don't know who they are. Identity issues. I remember having severe identity issues. And then I come to hear about this saviour who I can be accepted in. This saviour who loves me for who he's going to make me and this saviour who doesn't receive me merely because of who I am but because of who he is and what he's going to bring about in my life and the security of knowing that truth. That there's nothing I can do to make him not love me. That's all I need to live for. Those truths just changed my life. And I thank God now that I went through what I went through because they made me ripe for that message. And so we can thank God for these things. There are people out there that have had lousy parents or whatever it is. And then you come and hear about this father in heaven. who loves you so much that he made a great provision for you when he gave his son to save you. Praise God that what Satan meant for evil, God has used for good. Praise God for these things. Don't you just love Christ? Are you just not in awe of him? He was doing all this for you, bearing all this for you, bearing scoffing and shame and humiliation, how he loves us. Let's pray.