Congregation we will be in the Catechism again tonight that same Lord's Day in a moment on page 61 you find Lord's Day 48 We gave attention to the first two statements of that answer this morning, and we'll pay careful attention to the second part of Answer 123 in a moment and then this evening but first we turn again to Romans 16 and Where also we were this morning Word of God in Romans 16, and if you don't mind, I'm just gonna read from verse 17 on that Challenge that sometimes comes to pastors has to do with the voice and there seems to a bit of challenge with that today So if you'll not mind too much, I'll just begin our reading at verse 17 and you'll pray along while I'm preaching so that perhaps God would give us a Blessing in the sermon as well But then the blessing comes first and primarily through his word and so to Romans 16 and we'll begin at verse 17 The Apostle continuing I urge you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way That are contrary to the teaching you have learned keep away from them for such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites and By smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you, but I want you to be wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Thus far dear congregation God's glorious word and our attention is going to be especially on verse 20 the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet the grace of our Lord Jesus Be with you to help us Understanding that properly congregation this evening. Let's turn then to the summary of the teaching of the Word of God as we have it Again in the Heidelberg Catechism and again that Lord's Day 48. This is page 61 in the back of our Psalter hymnal. So congregation, what does the second request mean? Thy kingdom come means rule us by your word and spirit in such a way that more and more we submit to you. Keep your church strong and add to it. Destroy the devil's work. Destroy every force which revolts against you and every conspiracy against your word Do this until your kingdom is so complete and perfect that in it you are all in all What a beautiful petition and requests that we bring to our Lord and our God Let's do more of that just now in prayer and let's ask his help together. Shall we? Let's pray Father, already this evening in prayer, we have considered the need that we have as mere creatures, as we confront one who is stronger and in his wickedness, smarter than we are. And yet, Lord, nowhere near as smart and strong as you. And so we submit ourselves to you, even in the moments of the hearing of this sermon, that we would hear experientially, Lord, that is, we would be ready to put into practice what it is you would have us to know. Bless us then in your word this evening, Lord, as we take up these things, we pray asking in Jesus' name, amen. Well, dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we began to sketch out this morning, Romans 16, if I can put it now this way, is a kingdom chapter in the Bible. Now we could say that about most every chapter in the Bible, that each is, in one way or another, a kingdom chapter. And yet some are that way more overtly and in a more obvious way. We consider this morning some of the names and some of the ways of the Lord's working in his people in Corinth and in his writing through Paul to the Church of Rome. And we consider those names of people being kingdom workers. That is of great benefit. And then we turn a corner when we come to verse 17 in Romans chapter 16 to say, to learn that this kingdom is not in a neutral position. The apostle Paul in verse 17 urges at verse 17 a alert, a warning, a concern because of that position of defense. because we have an enemy, because there is one who seeks to cause harm and destruction to the kingdom, and most particularly noting that we have an opportunity to answer. We have, by way of obedience, a defense, and we need to look into that this evening. In all of this, we realize That Satan's aim, as we considered it in our prayer, is against the Lord's church. We ought to assume then, as Paul knows these things and we know these things, that there is a way of response. The catechism gets at this, and we come to the matter then now. This petition for the raising of Christ's kingdom is also for the destruction of Satan's kingdom. This petition from the catechism, as the word is teaching us, is for the raising of Christ's kingdom and also for the destruction of Satan's kingdom. Well, let's notice then this petition, this prayer first, that it pertains to the church and Christians. Now really, when we get down to it, we're going to understand that this entire sermon actually rests on very clear words of Romans 16 and verse 20. The whole sermon, the whole matter of our protection rests on these words. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. We could simply say, well, that's the truth. And we as a church can find encouragement in that. The whole matter is summed up that way. And it will happen that There's a bit of a problem in our last point as it has somehow come across in your handout there. The fourth point should read like this. This petition pleads for what most certainly will happen. I don't know how the word help got in there. It's the wrong word. Most certainly will happen. And this teaches us then that what we are called to pray for is what will actually happen. But we are called to pray for this. And I want to give us, at least initially, three reasons why we, the church, should be praying for the God of peace to crush Satan under our feet. Well, the first reason that we, the church, should consider this our duty and obligation is because the world won't. Now when I say that, perhaps you realize and that you would say, well, of course. But beloved, saying that, we have to wrestle with the fact that most of our friends and neighbors and coworkers and the people we interact with do not have an interest in Satan's destruction. Now you'll say, well, that's because they aren't aware of that. Well, that's also true, isn't it? And because they're not aware of Satan's strategies and his attacks, and because they're not concerned about that, and because they don't care about that, because they are ignorant about that, it then falls to the church. It falls to Christians to pray for Satan's demise. And that's the first thing. The world won't, so the Christian must. But secondly, We must consider it our duty and responsibility because our Lord commanded us to make these petitions. We are thinking of this place in the catechism. It is the place of praying, Lord, thy kingdom come. And what we hear in Romans 16.20 is that indeed the kingdom has come and will in a certain way to crush Satan under our feet. And we're gonna get to that phrase, under our feet, and it is very significant. The Lord commanded us to pray for Satan's demise. Well, thirdly, thirdly, we are the your of verse 20. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. We are those ones I wonder what you think about when you read such a verse in the Bible like this one and you hear the word your at that place. Do you place your own name there? Do you consider your life there and your situation there? Do you realize that by the Spirit's inspiration, God is addressing you and me there? We said it this morning and we took a little bit of time with this. We said that the church is the apple of God's eye. We are the recipients of his affection. We are his tower of strength in the world. We are the ones whom he is most interested in and he is using us in all of the various ways. We consider that this morning. That is to say there is a functionality of our feet. We're gonna come back to it, but we need to assert it now. that God crushes Satan through means here our feet, an allusion probably to Genesis 3.15, but by which prayer is included. And that tells us something about our position and our situation as Christians. We think of that in terms of the word militant when we say church militant because we are not yet, we here today are not yet the church triumphant. We are still the soldiers of Christ. But soldiers with great privileges and great blessings that come to us. But they come, those privileges and blessings, with great responsibility. We must pray. You see, God ordains every event that shall come to pass, and he ordains every way that every event that comes to pass is gonna be dealt with, and that includes, then, the responsibility of our praying. God has decided that in his good wisdom and perfect knowledge, our praying is an absolutely essential component part to what result we see here in chapter 16 and verse 20. The God of peace will soon crush Satan Under your feet. This means you and me beloved. We do pray in Christ's name and through his office of. Of high priests now. We need to pause and consider something more general right now, but very applicable right now. And that is simply to ask what is our prayer life like? Before we can go on and apply that issue of prayer to the specific matter of our enemy and his assaults and strategies, we need to consider the general question just for a moment. It's a bit of a rhetorical one, but it comes to each one of us. Are we regular in prayer? Are we consistent in prayer? Are we earnest in prayer? Do we think of the various passages of the Bible that talk about being immediate in prayer, being ready in every season to be prayerful, prayers of immediate concern and regular longer prayers of our daily devotions? Beloved, are we praying? Are we thinking in these ways? Are we considering these things? Now, really what we're doing just now is we're setting the stage, you see, what the text wants us to understand. We're laying some foundational pieces here, because I've said to us already that the final matter is that what God will do, we need to understand how he has ordained to do that, which is why the prayer as the catechism puts it, of thy kingdom come means something. It means praying. We're praying. Destroy the devil's work. Destroy every force which revolts against you and every conspiracy against your word. This is our mode of attack, namely prayer. Well then, secondly, this petition makes clear Satan's opposition. If we didn't already get that, we need to grasp it now that Paul, writing, as we said this morning, from Corinth to the church in Rome, coming from his apostolic perspective, it is surely clear to Paul how active is Satan. I kind of teased us a little bit ago in saying that sometimes when we conceive of wickedness and evil, we think of it in terms of movies, I said Hollywood, or maybe video games, and we think of evil and wicked in these kind of bland, sanitized ways. And we have to understand, beloved, that this is unfortunate and part of the enemy's strategy. If he can get people, especially now Christians, thinking that the worst possible horror movie is the best possible presentation of wickedness and evil, then we have fallen to his trap. We've taken the bait. He is far worse than that. far more vile, far wiser in his wicked strategies, and far more vicious in his desire to devour us. And Paul says that that is a serious matter. I urge you, verse 17, to watch out. Watch out for Satan's backdoor strategies through those who cause divisions and put obstacles in the way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. And then he simply states it, have nothing to do with them. Keep away from them, why? Such people, verse 18, are not serving the Lord Christ, but their own appetites, that is to say, they have a different God. They have a different plan, a different purpose, a different desire, all of which comes from the grand liar, the grand deceiver, the grand manipulator, the grand strategist, Satan. Now if we back up and realize again, Paul writing from Corinth is well aware very practically of the effect Satan had in the church in Corinth. You can't read the first several chapters of 1 Corinthians without realizing the great woe that Satan had caused there in the church and the significant work that was to Paul and others helping him to undo that work. And of course it came into Rome as well. Satan's enemies, attacks, the enemies raging. But it leads to an interesting question. We can say these things historically. We can nod our heads if we're not doing it actually, you're maybe doing it in your heart, that yeah, enemy was attacking Corinth, the enemy was attacking Rome, but we need to ask the more pertinent question for us, is the enemy also raging against the church in Oak Lawn? Ask, what does Satan hate What does he want to stop? What is he trying to cause problems with? Let me give us four primary things to consider here. What is Satan seeking to stop? First of all, he is seeking to stop a people-loving God. Now that may seem a bit broad, but beloved, it is the first and primary matter. It is the case that the first and greatest commandment is what? We said it this morning. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So when the enemy sees a people striving to do that, he rages against it. He does not want us loving God. He wants us loving self, or think of all of the idols of the world and put your idol that you're thinking of right in that place. That's what Satan wants us loving, not God. So he rages against the people loving God, that's first. Secondly, he rages against the people loving God's word. You can have Christians who say, well, I'm a Christian and I go to church, but that Christian never picks up his or her Bible. Satan is not too interested in that Christian because they will have little effect and little fruitfulness. But when you have a people who love God's word and read it and study it and memorize it and meditate on it and are striving to know it better and live it out more fully, Satan hates that and he is going to rage against it. Why do you think the apostle says here that the God of peace is soon going to crush, we'll get to that, crush Satan? It is because he needs to be crushed in terms of all of these attacks that come at us, including the attack that comes at those who love God's word. But thirdly, Satan hates a people who love one another in Jesus Christ. We dealt with this significantly this morning, didn't we? If I can put it this way, and I hope you don't mind me saying it like this, Satan hated that sermon this morning. Because in such a word were we called and told and encouraged about a practical way to love one another. Hospitality, for example. Enemy does not want us loving one another in Jesus Christ. He wants us to be ruthless in our greed and in our pride and that it's all about me and look how well I'm doing and look how I'm better than that other person and all of those things. And then fourthly, the enemy hates a people loving their neighbor like themselves. The enemy hates that. I'm thinking of that more broadly now. He hates it when we go out and try to evangelize, when we go out and show somebody at work or in our neighborhood of the glories of being found in Jesus Christ. The enemy roars against that. He will rage against that. He will stop at nothing to stop our missionary efforts and our evangelistic purposes. He will not be neutral about these things. So you see, beloved, when we are thinking about the petition of the catechism reminding us, we are praying, destroy all of those works. The enemy wants to cause us trouble in all of those categories. I wonder, though, how is the attack of the enemy obvious to you in your life? We could think of a possible answer to such a question of how am I aware of the enemy's attacks in my life. We could say, I don't think he's actively attacking me. Now you could say that, you would be wrong. You might answer this way, I'm unaware of how he's coming after me. That's probably true, we don't know all the ways. But do we know some of the ways that he's coming after you? Or we might answer the question, well, I don't have too much worry about how Satan's coming after me personally. And that would be a very dangerous position, wouldn't it, to say, I'm not concerned. Now, I'm not saying that we don't believe that God has us in his hands and that the Lord Jesus is much stronger and is able to preserve and protect us. Of course, all of those things are true. But that doesn't mean we're not concerned. Now, I'm speaking individually, but let's make it Corporate, let's think congregationally. Are we aware that the devil is seeking to cause us, this congregation, great harm? Do we, the Lord's Church in this place, have any concerns from the wicked intentions of the greatest demon, who is Satan? Do we think in those ways? Now again, we're sort of laying groundwork here. We're building a little bit, but one of the ways we're building groundwork is from the text, which asserts something, that if we don't reason from the text, we will not be convinced about it, and that is the need, the need shown to us in this text for God to crush Satan. Do we believe that as a need? Are we convinced of these things? Well, let's look at that more particularly in the third thing. This petition correctly admits then our need. So now we need to pick up something that we began to consider and look at it more carefully, and that is our feet. I'm not asking you right now to look at your feet, but if you want to do that, that's fine. But the text says something here interesting. It's by analogy, isn't it? It's an illustration, but of what? What's the consideration and the concern here? God will crush Satan, but to do that, he has decided to use our feet. What does that mean? Well, beloved, surely we must understand that we need feet shod with the gospel of peace, don't we? As Paul said it in Ephesians. That is to say, and more generally, that we need feet that do something, that go somewhere, that are active, that are doing. And that brings in the whole broad consideration of being not only hearers of the word, but doers of the word. And the first thing we do in the making of disciples, before we ever go to make disciples, is to pray. There's a very simple maxim that if we're not praying first, we will never be evangelizing second. I might even want to tweak that to say that if we're not praying first, we're really not interested when we come to church to worship God. And so that teaches us, as wicked as the enemy is in his strategies, that he's not going to go after the second or the third level thing that we may or may not be doing, but he's going to go after the first level thing, the initial thing. And beloved, again, that initial thing is prayer. Our worship is built on prayer. It is why almost always in the Friday emails that I send out, I conclude that email by saying to us, pray, pray, pray. It's why we have a prayer meeting now, like we're going to have this evening once a month. Pray, pray, pray, because beloved, this is the foundation. Our evangelistic effort is that movement of the feet into enemy-occupied territory. But it's even before that, by prayer, our worship goes into enemy-occupied territory, doesn't it? What we are doing right now in corporate worship is seeking to address matters of a biblical nature in all areas and spheres of life. We want Christians, by the help of corporate worship, listen now, to enter into the culture, to go into ethics, to address science and law and politics and government and economics and psychology and all of the rest of it with the gospel. But all of that going, all of that crushing of Satan, which God does by our feet, means we need help. Which help begins tonight. as it did this morning, and every Lord's Day. Because you see, we can't go into any of those places of any enemy-occupied territory. Do you think that science is neutral today? Really, honestly, do we think that? I hope you say, of course it isn't neutral. Neither is economics, or politics, or government, or entertainment. Oh my, entertainment neutral? Do we go into those areas? Yes, by the gospel. But in prayer, we seek help first. And the prayer that we must first do is for biblical, glorious, vital corporate worship. So that we can say here in worship that we might then say there where we go to our workplace and to meet those individuals who do not know Christ, we may say, put over those things the words, thy kingdom come. So our need is realized initially by our activity. Though God's grace is the leading energy, so to speak, our activity by God's grace is praying. But if we are not praying, we will not receive what we need. As James put it in James chapter four, verse two, you do not have because you do not ask. And here's the significant place. So if you don't mind me kind of adding to the analogies, I'm going to say it this way this evening. Let's all be ants. And I don't mean the opposite of uncles. I mean the creatures that race along the ground. Because in Proverbs chapter 6, verses 6 through 11, we are told to consider the ant. and to be like the ant. That is to say, diligent, workers, busy, engaged, going. And in that way then we need to stop and ask the Lord by prayer to help our feet, if you want to think of that as ant's feet, to be busy crushing Satan. Well, what will we be praying for then? Look at again what the catechism tells us that we will be praying for. Lord, destroy the devil's works. Lord, destroy every force which revolts against you and every conspiracy against your word. And how many of those do we hear about on a daily basis? If you listen to a podcast, if you read a Christian magazine or read that Christian magazine online, if you're attuned to what's going on in the culture around us, you will quickly come to the conclusion that these kinds of forces revolting against God come in waves again and again and again and again and again. Did we think that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was going to automatically just whisk away any concern about the vile wickedness of abortion? Of course we didn't think that. And it has proved to be exactly that. Now states are trying to pass constitutional amendments, like Michigan did, a vile constitutional amendment to secure the right to slaughter their unborn children. They did that as a state constitutional amendment. Michigan did. And so you see, beloved, that every force that comes against God, revolts against his word, every conspiracy against his word, comes constantly. Satan does not get tired. And so we must not grow tired in our praying for God to grant us strength and help in the calling we have to have Satan crushed under our feet. And then fourthly, this petition pleads for what most certainly will happen. Notice it again in the text, the God of peace will crush Satan soon. The God of peace, says the text. by which we remember that everything that pertains to God is peace. You'll get a Christmas card this year probably from somebody that will quote a scripture verse telling us that at this time of the year, God sent his son to what? To bring peace. Peace on earth, right? These things. God is peace. He promotes peace. He promotes peace, by the way, in his moral law. That moral law is supposed to bring about a peaceful society, especially as the Christians live this way, but we know the fall has made that so complicated. He provides peace through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. To all of those who will bend the knee and receive the Lord Jesus Christ, that peace comes. Satan's continued existence is contra against peace. And so what the text is telling us here is that God is going to work out the ultimate fulfillment and culmination of his peace, the peace of Christ, when the crushing of Satan's head comes. It began at the cross, Genesis 3.15 promised. It will be completed when the Lord Jesus Christ returns in the clouds of glory with the trumpet blast. God loves peace. And God will. Do this. This is the central truth. Or if I can put it now a little bit differently than what we were saying earlier, I hope you understand these things are not opposed, but we need to have a priority. God will. We won't. God will. World peace won't. God will. Governmental policy can't. God will. Church unity can't. God will, for only he is powerful enough to bind the strong man and to make peace. If we only wanted to focus on a couple of words of this text, I would submit and suggest that we focus on the two most important words of the text. God will. But he will crush. The word in the Greek means to destroy unto complete uselessness. It's used in a couple of other places in the Bible. For instance, Mark chapter five, verse four, where we are reminded that the demoniac shattered and tore apart his shackles. Or in Mark chapter 14 verse 3, where we haven't come to it yet, but Mary Magdalene shattered an alabaster jar filled with pure nard. And we think of that beautiful passage. But it's the same word there. Here's my point. Shattered. The jar wasn't usable anymore after that. What God is going to do is he's going to completely crush and shatter and destroy Satan. It's not a question of maybe, you know, maybe like in the movies of the two forces, good and evil, how they fight it out, and we're wondering at the end, on the edge of our seats, how it's gonna turn out, and maybe evil is actually gonna triumph over good, though it never does in most Hollywood movies. There's no question like that. It's not open for consideration. God is going to destroy Satan. And Satan, who is he? He's the liar, he's the deceiver, he's the enemy to all that is good, and he is our own wicked foe. I don't mean to disturb you, but I'll say it very bluntly, Satan hates you, and he wants your destruction. And he hates the church. And he wants us in turmoil. If he can get us fighting, if he can get us deceiving one another and thinking the worst of each other, he will be very happy. God will crush him. And soon. There's a word that we struggle with because we know that these words were written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul many, many years ago. But we must understand by those words that the timing belongs to the Lord. It is God's timing, not our timing. But because it says soon, we should pray expecting a quick answer. That is to say, that's how we are instructed in prayer. Not to pray thinking, well, it's never going to happen, or to pray thinking, well, God's never going to be able to do this, or God's never going to accomplish this. It's going to be the same situation to my great, great, great, great, great grandchildren as it is to me. We don't pray that way. But we pray, Lord, this is your promise and your word, and we need this promise to come to pass now. And so, beloved, what we are left with is Confidence. Confidence in God's promise, which pushes us to action. The Catechism has this same confidence. Notice the last statement of this particular answer. It just exudes that confidence. Do this until, O Lord, your kingdom is so complete and perfect that you are in it and you are all and all in it. That's not a doubting, that's not a wondering, that's not a questioning. But it is drawn, for example, right out of a passage like this one. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. This, beloved, should drive us. If I might say it, beginning tonight, Let's pray with this confidence. By the way, I don't mean to offend anybody because I know we're not beggars and we think sometimes about the word beggars, but do you know who the best, most effective beggars are? They are the beggars who know where to beg. which corner to be at, which door to knock on, which person to ask. And as that applies to us, we see the connection, don't we? We ask the God who is our Father, who loves us. We beg at the door of the one whose answer to us is yes. And we say, O Lord, crush our enemy under our feet. Amen. Well, Father in heaven, tonight we submit to receiving confidence from you through your word. But Lord, we pray that we would begin to apply that and use it and live it. Well, Heavenly Father, we do not live in a neutral world. There is not entertainment that comes to us that is devoid of the impact of the enemy. And most of what comes to us in these different realms and spheres is saturated with wickedness. And Lord, we see the implications of that in our own hearts. Sometimes we think the world's thoughts. We participate in the world's activities. Lord, we do not realize sometimes that we are playing with fire and sipping poison. Grant, O Lord God, that we would be more concerned, more aware, more interested, more vital in our praying, believing that you will bring about the destruction ultimately of Satan under our feet. Grant us mercy and help in this confidence we pray tonight, Lord asking in Jesus' name, amen.