Shall we again ask God's help as we come to his word? Again, O God, will you bless us? Again, we come to you. not simply to repeat an empty request in a formal way, but because, oh God, we desire your help, that we might understand what you would have us to do, that we might grasp the nature of the warfare in which we are engaged, that you would grant to us, Heavenly Father, to walk in the light as you are in the light. We plead these mercies. We pray now for hearts that are sensitive and responsive. We ask, O Lord, that without distraction we may hear your truth and we may do what honours you. For Christ's sake. Amen. Satan hates. He does, he just does. It is his nature. He hates you if you belong to him. He hates you if you do not. He hates you if you are lost. He wants to keep you lost under condemnation. He hates you if Christ has found you, if perhaps even more so, wanting by all means to do whatever damage he can, that if possible, he would destroy. This is the one who goes about seeking whom he may devour, characterized as a roaring lion. And we began last week to try and take account of what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 11, that Satan wants to take advantage of us, and we are not ignorant of his devices. Satan's hatred will manifest itself toward the church in accordance with his character. And we have said that he is a liar and the father of it. Deceit is part of his very being. It's in the warp and the woof of his character. And so he will use these devices, these wiles, these strategies. He will, by deceit and by twisting and by lying and by misrepresenting, even showing himself as an angel of light in order to bring us down into darkness, he will do whatever he can to hinder, to destroy, if he could, to wipe out God's people. And we need then, as Paul, to understand the way that the devil operates and therefore to be able to respond in a right way. And so last Sunday, we began to ask the question, what would Satan say to Christ's church? What encouragements or exhortations might the adversary of our souls offer in order to ruin as much as possible our spiritual health? What would be the devil's recipe for disaster for this church or any church and for the members of it in 2024? And we are pursuing what we're calling upside down thinking. I want to underscore this. Somebody said last week, you've got to really concentrate. Yes, you do. You have to concentrate. Because in one sense, I'm trying to speak to you in Satan's voice. I want you to learn the subtlety of the evil one. I want you to hear the kinds of things that he would say so that you might learn to resist, to avoid and to renounce. So you remember the illustration that we used of this kind of upside-down thinking. If someone wanted to set up a business, you might ask yourselves the questions, how can we ruin this business as effectively and quickly as possible? How could we ruin a new restaurant? Well, we think about its location. We think about the darkest, dingiest, most dangerous part of town. We think about the rudeness and the surliness of the waiters. We think about the most awkward opening hours imaginable. We try and degrade the quality of the food, and pretty soon we'll be able to put that thing out of business. The sense being that if that's what does that kind of harm, then I need to go to the opposite healthy extreme. And so in trying to hear the kinds of things that Satan might want us to do, we should be saying, right, if that's where he wants to pull me, if that's where he wants to drag me, if that's where he wants to pin me, these are the things of which I need to be aware. These are the things that I need to leave behind. And I want to underscore again, we'll do so before we conclude, God willing, that this is not a hopeless case. Satan is powerful, but he is not all-powerful, and he who is for us is greater than he who is against us. And by the Spirit we can learn to discern these wiles of the evil one, so that we won't fall into the trap of our first parents when we hear the ugly whisper, has God really said? So remember what Satan would have you do if he could with regard to these satanic pieces of advice. He wants you to put them into practice incrementally, step by step, to add them and to build them up gradually, degrees and stages. After all, if something rushes in at you, you might see the danger coming. If somebody who was a true friend to your soul saw some sudden change in direction from health to ill health, they might be able to step in. And Saint would say, do this incrementally, bit by bit, so that you barely notice and neither does anybody else. then do these things simultaneously. Again, don't let any one of them be too distinctive and noteworthy, but let them just gently reinforce one another. Death by a thousand cuts, a gradual undermining of spiritual well-being in various respects. You don't need to drop a great big rock into someone's backpack, just Throw in pebbles one after the other, incrementally and simultaneously, and sooner or later you'll slow them down. And then defensively, defensively. If you need to rewrite the narrative, Tell a story where you're the victim and the hero simultaneously. Make sure you keep anybody who wants to deal with these things at arm's length. I think Satan would tell you that two of the best tools here are passivity and passion. If you want it easier, you can call it the sulk and the hulk. The sulk is the withdrawer. The sulk is the one, tears are very good, Satan would tell you, but be very quickly moved to tears if someone, tell them that they're being cruel and hard and unfair and unkind and that you're not finding this very easy. And go and sit in a corner and maybe shut the door of your room and don't have anything to do with anybody. Try the sulk. And if you can't try the sulk, try the hulk. Some of you will remember the Bruce Banner line. Don't make me what? Angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. And if sulk doesn't work, try hulk, because anger is a very powerful tool to control the people around you. If people know that you're going to erupt, if the people know that you're going to be furious, if people know that the volcano could explode at any moment, then they'll be very, very careful to keep at a distance from you so that you are in your little cocoon. So try the sulk and the hulk. Combine them if you need to, but tears and tantrums will be some of your best defences against anybody actually being able to deal with you. So incrementally, simultaneously and defensively, Satan would say, put my counsels into practice if you want to ruin your spiritual life this year. What were the first that we thought of last Lord's Day? Diminish your private devotion. distance yourself from the shepherds of your souls, withdraw from the means of grace publicly, and avoid fellowship with God's people, anything transparent and deep. Here now are the next four pieces of hellish advice that you can follow if you want to destroy your spiritual health in the coming months. The first of them this morning is this. cultivate discontent. If you want to ruin your spiritual health this year, cultivate discontent. Make sure that you think hard often and long about everything that is wrong, especially with the church and its ministry. Develop, above all things, a robust habit of complaint and murmuring. Now, nobody needs to hear it all. You can keep a lot of it inside and it'll do just as much damage there. But if you can make it so there's a constant undercurrent of unhappiness, Then what's particularly effective about that, would say your adversary, is that not only do you become so deeply grieved, but you can unsettle and distress and grieve the people who are around you. So especially the devil would have you listen to anybody who is malcontent. It's better to stir one another up. Now, Satan would say, be careful, because again, if you expose this attitude to someone who's healthy, they might tell you it's not right. So use that radar, remember, to figure out the people who are scowling at the right times and look perhaps as unhappy as you do. One great thing Satan thinks you can do is to steer your way through life in accordance with the wishes of your unconverted children. You can bring a whole church down that way, but you can certainly disrupt and unsettle your whole family. Satan says, look, can you imagine a business? Imagine a business where they get all the new entrants, they don't even understand. Maybe even they used to work for the opposition. And we're going to pay attention to them. We're going to ask them, what do you think we should do? How do you think we should live? So you can really get things messy if you listen to children who don't know Jesus Christ and who say things like, we don't like this preaching, we don't like these people, and we don't like this singing, and it needs to lighten up, and it needs to be a bit brighter, and it needs to be a bit more accessible. Listen to them. Track closely everything that you dislike. It can be the old things that you wish were different, or the new things that you wish were old. But just make sure you keep your eye on anything that upsets you. And then, as I've said, says our adversary, use your unhappiness to unsettle others. Make sure that wherever you have influence, your discontent, your complaints are disturbing, distressing, and drawing down others. sustain a spirit of sour unhappiness at all costs. And if you really want to start showing your discontent, then one of the places you can begin is by withdrawing your financial support from the church. One of the Puritans apparently said that the last part of a man to be converted was his wallet. Well, it's one of the first places that you can show that you don't like what's going on. So just draw back, keep back, but cultivate a spirit of discontent. Be unhappy in and with the kingdom of God. It need not be some great extravagant demonstration, but just make sure that nothing ever satisfies. There's something wrong with everything, and there will be, so just make sure that you concentrate there. Satan wants you to cultivate a spirit of discontent. The second piece of advice that the foe of your soul would give you is to neglect investment in the kingdom of God. Neglect investment in the kingdom of God. Avoid substantial involvement. I mean, by all means be there, keep up appearances, but don't get your hands dirty. Don't get stuck in. Excuse yourself from duties and step away from opportunities. And make sure you think of them as duties and not opportunities. Make sure you understand that anything that might happen is burdensome, it's difficult, it's awkward, it is unreasonable. Never volunteer. Never volunteer. It's a terrible, terrible habit to get into. When the call goes out for volunteers, now again, make sure you don't take a resounding step back, you don't want to stand out, but just be someone who's always got a reason why it can't be you at this particular time. And if someone volunteers you or draws you in, then make things difficult and painful. Now again, you can do this subtly, but just Engage in such a way that no one will ever ask you to do something again. If somebody says, will you help with the washing up? Say, sure. Wash up two plates, break the third one and the fourth one. And then they say, thanks very much. Maybe you could go and do something else. Show a little willing. but in such a way that eventually people won't want you helping and will never ask you again. Be profoundly unreliable. Make promises that sound good but that you don't keep. Don't be where you should be when you said you'd be there. Don't get things done when you assured people you would get them done. Keep things light and distant in the church. Float around, hang around on the fringes, don't get stuck in. Don't develop then any spiritual sensitivity or soul muscle. Remember that by working you get accustomed to work. So whatever you do, don't start the bad habit of serious investment. It's better by all means to hold back and to criticize others. Now let it happen around you. Just stand there while other people are moving. You don't need to totally get in the way, but just don't get involved. I know that the Bible says that the lazy man is a brother to the destroyer, but you're not really destructive, are you? You're not actually doing any harm, are you? Just don't get too involved. Cultivate discontent, says the enemy of your soul. Neglect investment, says the enemy of your soul. Indulge secret sins, says the enemy of your soul. Now again remember Satan is a deceiver. So Satan is not going to counsel necessarily outright public scandalous sin. Hypocrisy is far more effective. So don't go large. That's too obvious. Keep it private. And Satan would say you know the typical ones. Lust. Tell yourself it's not pornography just because it's not a pornographic website. And let your eyes feast on the half-clad men and women or unclad men and women who will populate half a hundred websites that people will call popular. Gluttony. Gluttony is a good one. Or greed. As long as you're indulging your appetites. It doesn't really matter whether it's food or money or clothes or toys or tech or whatever it may be, but just make sure that your energies are directed in that way. Laziness is great. You can't have too much laziness. Laziness across the board is crippling. So if you can just maintain a good standard of inactivity in so many respects, you'll be doing well. But some of those are obvious, so don't neglect some of the rarer ones. There are some beautiful sins in Satan's estimation out there that you can stir up out of sight. Anger. I've already mentioned it. It's a great way of keeping people at arm's length but maintain a kind of bubbling anger in your soul. Make sure the pot is simmering constantly or vengefulness. Keep a list of all the people who've done something against you or people that you like. Make sure that you bear grudges deep and dark and hard and long. They're a great way of keeping at a distance from your brothers and sisters. Drive the wedges hard and deep. Bitterness, ingratitude, everything is wrong. You're the great victim. Build up for yourselves good reasons to keep from God's presence. Make private devotion. We've already talked about private devotion, says the devil. We've already talked about keeping that as low and shallow a level as possible. But a few secret sins regularly indulged will make you feel far too guilty to open your Bible. What will make you feel like you simply cannot go into God's presence. And when I tell you that, listen, because you are now too bad to draw near to him. Keep other Christians at a distance. Secret sins will make you want to avoid the company of the saints. Everybody else will make you feel bad about yourself. Everybody else will, you'll be able to tell yourself that they're doing so much better than you and either they don't want to spend any time with you or you can't afford to spend any time with them. After all, says Satan, the great thing is guilt. To be labouring under a constant sense of guilt. And if you indulge secret sins, and if I can only keep you from the blood of Jesus Christ, if we can make sure that you become persuaded that you cannot go to the cross because you are too bad, and then burden you with a sense of all these griefs and woes, keeping you peevish, critical, desperately unhappy, hypocritical, indulge, please, some secret sins if you want to ruin your spiritual life. And then the fourth satanic counsel that Satan would give you if you wanted to ruin your spiritual life this year, maintain at all costs a sense of self-pity. Maintain at all costs a sense of self-pity. There is little that will drag you down as effectively as a robust self-indulgence. And, says Satan, so there are two things that you really need to hold onto. First, I am special and it's not fair. If you can make those your mantras, you'll be doing well, says the enemy of your souls. I am special. I am unique. There is nobody like me and therefore the rules don't apply to me the way they apply to other people. It's unreasonable and unfair to expect me to be like anybody else. Everybody else may be like that, but I'm the special one. I'm the one who has these particular needs or these particular circumstances and therefore, aligned with that, it's not fair. Because I'm special, it's not fair. But perhaps even if I weren't special, it wouldn't be fair anyway. I'm not treated the way I should be treated. because I'm too young or too old. My teachers don't deal with me the way they should. My boss doesn't think about me the way that he should. I'm not esteemed and valued in the way to which I am entitled. The doctors don't understand me. The people in the council, they don't listen to me. My pastors don't really pay attention to me. I'll tell you one great strategy, says Satan. Tell yourself, no one understands me. Forget the idea they might understand you and not agree with you. If they don't agree with you, they don't understand you. Okay, because if they did understand you, they would agree with you. So if someone disagrees with you, it's because they're insensitive or thoughtless, you are still right. So those normal rules, you can dispense with them. The expectations that God has for Christians, consider those very unreasonable. The kind of standards that the church as a whole is exhorted to pursue, that's not for you. Anywhere you go and everywhere, everything you do, remind yourself, No one has to put up with the things I have to put up with. No one suffers like me. No one has it as hard as I do. Again, it's great for dividing yourself from other people. It's a wonderful way of driving wedges. You just hold yourself at a distance. Now, if you want to develop this, says Satan, if you want to become a real expert in this, then don't just tell yourself that you're special and it's not fair, but extend that to your family and your friends. All of us are special and nothing is fair for us. Again, do what you can to nurture grievances. Hold your grudges long and hard. And if at some point you should begin to think that maybe you're not being serious or sensible and that you're taking this too far, find another complainer. Find another sufferer. and talk to one another about how bad everything is. Confirm one another's worst fears. Stir one another's dread to the highest degree. Is it not fair for you? Yeah, it's not fair for me either. I couldn't help but notice that you haven't been having an easy time. Let me talk to you about how unhappy I have been. Demand special treatment. And every time you don't get it, let it reinforce and confirm the fact of how special you are and how unfair it all is. Now remember, says Satan, don't do all of this at once. Too noticeable, too much like hard work. Let it creep up on you. Let these things be like the one rotten apple in the barrel. Don't get rid of them. Let them fester. Let them develop. Let them breed. A few weeds in the garden and then don't pluck them up. Pretty soon the garden will be all weeds and no flowers. You don't need, says Satan, to work hard with some of these things. You just need to let them go. Don't deal with them. So diminish your private devotion. Don't spend time with God in private. And if you do, let it be as brief and as shallow and as formal as possible. Don't talk to your pastors. Don't bring any problems to the elders. Don't raise these issues if they start to develop. Make sure that you isolate yourself from the men who've been appointed to care for you and help you. Draw back from the means of grace if you have to be there. then do whatever you can to make it as difficult as possible for yourself and others to properly participate. Avoid fellowship. Go early. Come late. Don't go to people's homes. Don't have conversations. Don't write notes. Don't make phone calls. Keep at a distance. Cultivate discontent. Make sure you know often and always the things that are wrong. Dwell there. Become a complainer. Become a murmurer. Neglect investment. Don't exercise your spiritual muscles. Do as little as possible. And when you have to do it, make it as difficult as possible for people to rely upon you and to work with you. Indulge some of those secret sins. Keep things bubbling under in your life. Go back, if you can, like a dog to its vomit, every so often to maintain that sense of guilt, says the devil, in which I delight, in which I know hinders and cripples the people of God. and then maintain a robust sense of self-pity. Tell yourself all the time and in every sense, I am special, it's not fair, and this isn't the way that I deserve to be treated. And says the devil, if you can do those things, you've got a recipe for disaster. Do these things at my encouragement, Devils, I'm not going to command you. I'm not like God. I don't tell you you have to do things. But this is the easy path. This is the simple route. And you can just let these things drift and fester. This is to slide on the current. You don't have to swim anymore. You don't have to fight anymore. Just accept that this is the way it's going to be. and I can chip away then at a life of useful service. I can diminish even if I cannot destroy your delight in God and your confidence in Christ. Are you hearing the voice of the tempter? These are the things that he says to us And such is his deceitfulness. I say again, brothers and sisters, he can make you or can't make you, but he will try to have you think that this is holiness. He will try and tell you that this is spiritual maturity, that this is your understanding, that this is your penetrating insight. He won't tell you that you've become proud. What he'll tell you is that it's a shame that no one else is quite as good as you are. And he might even say, put it this way, I wish they were more like me. if only they could be what I, if only they saw things as clearly as me, if only they were able to do the things that I could do, how much better Christians they would be. And now I feel thankful and humble, all the while shooting down everybody else and putting myself on my own pedestal. Remember then, and let me drop the facade, Remember then these three things, my brothers and sisters. Remember the reality of this spiritual warfare. This is not myth and this is not fable. This is not theory and this is not fantasy. Our adversary is the father of lies. He is the great deceiver and always has been. Now what is the great lie that the liar and the father of it wants you to believe? That he's not there. And that's sadly where most of us have arrived in our society. Lots of people believe in heaven. Very few people seem to believe in hell. We've recast God into the image of someone who just does for us what we want, when we want. And the devil has withdrawn into the shadows of our consciousness so that he can whisper and you think you're thinking for yourself. Remember the reality of this spiritual combat. We are not ignorant of his devices. My friends, we cannot understand his devices if we don't think there's a divisor. We'll be blind to the strategies of the enemy if we've persuaded ourselves that the strategist is out of the picture. There is a real enemy who seeks to destroy your soul and wants to do whatever damage he can to this and every church of Jesus Christ. I still remember an older pastor from this area. This would be going back years and years. There was a local man who was achieving a certain measure of prominence. He was getting a bit of a reputation. He eventually fell into terrible sin. And at one of the local fraternals, One of the pastors said, there is a witch in my town who told me that he and his coven have been praying for the downfall of ministers of the gospel to the devil. Does that put a chill down your spine? It should. Now this isn't looking for the fairy tale monsters under the bed, brothers and sisters. This is being conscious of the fact that there is an adversary against your souls, that you are engaged in spiritual warfare, and that the one who comes against you has spent thousands of years perfecting his craft, with all the deep thought and the intense passion of one who's created to bring God great glory and turned his back upon his creator. You are engaged in combat. The devil wants to hinder you, the devil wants to damage you, the devil wants to restrain you, the devil wants to undermine you. He wants you, anybody near you, and if he can use that to bring down the cause of Christ in a particular place, he will do so. And when you become low, he will put the boot in. The hostility and malice of our adversary cannot be underestimated. Let us not be blind to the fact of the enemy's hatred and the way that he will use these devices. Remember the reality of these things. Then beware the subtlety of these things. Now I think there is one particular danger that I'm aware of in trying to use this approach to give you some sense of the lies of the evil one. And it is this, that you and I might now think, oh we get him now. Now we understand. These are the things we need to be aware of. These are the dangers that need to come in. He is a master strategist. He's a liar and the father of it. He can tell lies about his lies. He can twist a half-truth to become more dangerous than an outright lie. He can draw you into these things while persuading you that you're safe from them. He can make you deaf to these things. He can fill your mind with excuses He can have us all sitting here saying, well, I'm glad that that's not me. I'm glad I'm not a complainer. But I don't see why the preaching has to be like this so often. I don't think I'm special. Those people, they're not special. I'm not like them. Oh, so you're special? He will twist. Brothers and sisters, we have to be on our guard. Have any of you felt Satan's attacks at the very points at which you've already been warned? I have. My friends, I preached on this. and I've had to fight against it this week already. If Satan can't pull you down, he'll puff you up. If he can't bring you to the depths, he'll tell you that you're living on the heights. Pride and despair will be very close companions. This is the way that many of us find it when we come to Jesus Christ in the first place. What will Satan tell you first of all? You don't need Jesus. You're good, you're okay, you're fine. You're a good person. And then what if God by his mighty spirit convinces you of sin and righteousness and judgment? What will the devil tell you then? You're too bad. Jesus won't save somebody like you. The devil loves to have you swing from one extreme to the other. And if in your pride you think you're better than this, And then God, in his mercy, uncovers something in your heart. The devil will tell you straight away, go and live in the pit of despair. That's where you belong. You're worthless. Ignorance, he loves. Overconfidence, he delights in. Alongside of his rage and his malice, there is an ugly cunning, a subtlety that we cannot grasp by ourselves. So remember the reality, beware the subtlety, brothers and sisters always grasp the remedy. Why does Satan bring such things to bear upon our souls? He wants to stop you coming to Christ and he wants to keep you from being near Christ. Either that you never come near, or that having come near, you back off. By whatever means, He wants to keep you from the Lord Jesus. Why? Because there is your peace. Because there is your joy. Because there is your hope. Because there is your strength. And if it was simply a case of a passive God somewhere out in the distance, and it was you versus the adversary, you and I would be utterly lost. You think of the pilgrim's progress, and Bunyan talking about Christian, and he comes into the valley of the shadow of death, and there he meets who? Apollyon. And Apollyon is there in all the darkness and the ugliness and the awfulness of his spiritual might. My friends, the devil should make you tremble. He is awful, he is foul, he is cruel, he is vile, and he wants to do you harm. But there is one who is for you who is stronger than he who is against you. And you, therefore, in the face of the devil's lies, you must come to Christ's truth. When the devil assaults you, who do you have? You have a protector. The Lord is your shepherd. and safe in him, you may walk with him even through the valley of the shadow of death. He has not left you blind to your enemy's strategies. He has not left you naked in this fight. He has warned us that we stand not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. This need not be a shock to us. This might make us fear, but it need not make us utterly overwhelmed, because our King has conquered. And having conquered, He has saved. And having saved, He will keep. And in keeping, He will provide, so that you may have all the armor of God. And the reason why we are looking at these things is so that you might keep your armor bright. My friends, you cannot afford to take the breastplate off. There is no point in this life when you can lay aside the helmet of salvation. You cannot loosen the straps of the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace. You cannot hang the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, as some kind of ornament upon the wall. You cannot put all prayer into a cupboard and forget where it is being placed. You need God in Christ and the strength that he supplies and the provisions that he makes. And he has undertaken that he will not leave you or forsake you. My friends, you can be deaf to the devil. if your ears are full of the truth of God. When the devil whispers to you, you can say if you are in Christ Jesus, I am a free man in Jesus of Nazareth. I do not need to obey you. My friends, the devil will tell you you are doomed to be a certain kind of person. The devil will tell you that you are a weak person, that these sins are so bound into your constitution that no one can ever expect you to be any different. He can drive you into the hole of despair and leave you there, weltering in the juice of your own misery. And he loves to see that happen. But remember that the strong man has taken the spoil from the other man, that the strongest has come. And my friends, no matter how deeply trapped you may be in sin, if you cry out this day to Jesus Christ, he will save you from your transgressions. If you are not so much battling against these things as sunk in the misery of dark slavery, then there is a Christ who can set you free. And my friends, we need to believe that we are not doomed to live as the slaves of any one sin, let alone of sin as a whole. None of us need to say, well, this is just me. You'll have to put up with me. This is the way I am. No, because in you, Christian, dwells the Holy Spirit. Have you called upon him to help you in this fight? Have you looked to the power of God in Jesus Christ in order to hold you up and help you on? Have you drawn from its scabbard, however rusty, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God? Have you poured out your heart before the Lord? My friends, we don't need to believe the lie because we're the people of the truth. We don't need to live in sin because we've been brought up out of the grave and set in the right path. And that lies not in us. The God whom we serve is not a passive observer, hoping that we'll somehow make it. The Christ who has saved you has not left you to make your way to heaven in your own feeble strength. He has made you alive, this God, together with Christ Jesus. He died to sin. that we might live no longer in it. We do not need to listen to the adversary's lies. We are not doomed to live at some low spiritual ebb. We are not condemned to some kind of half-life, not because we're better than everybody else, Not because we read our Bibles more, not because we hold to the confession of faith, not because we maintain certain standards, but because Christ has saved us from our sins. We have come out from the kingdom of darkness. We've been translated into the kingdom of the Son of God's love. So learn the wiles and the strategies of the evil one. Learn to discern his deceits, his twistings. Learn even by God's grace to see when he comes like an angel of light, presenting himself one way in order to turn you another. And believe what God has said. Reckon yourselves dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.