You'll turn with me, please, to 2 Corinthians and to chapter 2. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians and chapter 2. Paul is talking in the aftermath of the act of loving discipline that was carried out on someone who had been living in an unrighteous way in the church. And in verse 10 of 2 Corinthians chapter 2, he says, now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ. lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. Let's pray once more. Father, help us now to be wise for salvation through your word, to know what it means to walk in holiness and to engage in spiritual combat for the glory of your name, that we might not be swept aside in this evil world. Lord God, we see so much grief and distress and wickedness around us. Grant that we may not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we might both serve you and do good to others. Amen. In Corinth, Paul was concerned that Satan's devices, Satan's strategies, Satan's wiles, his deceits would somehow trip up the church of Jesus Christ. Now in the context, probably building on what he'd already said in his first letter to the Corinthians, to begin with, there'd been sin in the church and the Corinthians had been quite careless about it. In fact, they'd even boasted about it as if by being willing to have this sin in their midst, they were somehow showing the grace of God. And then when Paul had said, no, you need to deal with this, It seems that perhaps they'd swung to the opposite extreme and now they were trampling somebody who was repenting of their sin into the dust. And Paul is saying to them in effect, do you understand that you are in spiritual combat here? that Satan, our enemy, our adversary, the one who is called by our Lord Jesus, the father of lies, the arch deceiver, the great twister of truth, that he is going to do everything he can in his power to bring you down as God's people. that it is his aim to prevent you coming to Jesus Christ and keeping near the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan wants to take advantage of us. watching and waiting to trip us up, to bring us low. But Paul says that we are not ignorant of his devices. We know the way he works. We know it in general, the way that he's going to twist truth. that as from the beginning when he first said in the garden, has God really said? And then misquotes and half quotes as he did when he tempted our Lord Jesus in the wilderness. Satan spoke Bible. to the Lord Jesus when he tempted him in the wilderness, but not all the Bible, even at the particular points he was quoting. He spoke but left out key phrases that had our Lord not showed that wisdom of which we've just been singing and celebrating, Satan would have tripped him up. And that's what Satan wants to do to us. And as we come to the end now of a brief series looking at some of these tactics and strategies of the evil one, we've been trying to learn to hear Satan's voice. not to listen to it, but to hear it, to learn its tones, to think about the way that he speaks. Not so that we might heed what he says, but we might learn to hate it with holy horror. We can't afford to be ignorant of Satan's devices if we are to live for the glory of God in the world. And we've said that as we enter 2024, Satan has a recipe for disaster for us, that he will do all that he can to ruin our spiritual health. Now if he cannot absolutely destroy God's people individually and God's church as a gathering, then he will at least do all that he can to destroy it, to damage and to divide it. And even those who are under his power and are not yet coming to Christ, Satan wants our misery. He wants your deep distress. He is the most cruel of enemies. So, he is going to whisper in our ears. He's going to nudge us in certain directions. And we've said that we need to do some upside down thinking. You remember the example we used. If you were going to set up a tailor's shop, how would you ruin your business? Well, you'd have a tape measure that didn't fit. And you'd have surly staff, and you'd have substandard materials. And you'd put it somewhere where no one ever wanted to buy a proper suit, for example. Or how would you ruin a restaurant? You'd put it on a back street in a dodgy part of town. You'd have rude waiters. You'd have inaccurate and dirty menus. You'd have filthy crockery. What's the point of thinking like this? Well, if that's how you destroy something, By doing the opposite, you should be pursuing the well-being and the success of something. So when we're asking ourselves, what would Satan have us do? What would the enemy of our souls want us to think like and act like? It is so that we might learn to do the opposite, to resist what he would try and have us do, and to renounce it once and for all. And in this, we need to remember the reality of the spiritual combat in which we're engaged. This is not a fantasy and this is certainly not fun and games. There is an enemy of your souls who wants by all means to damage to the point of destruction the imagery of the roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. We need to gauge the hostility of our enemy. There is no mercy, there is no kindness, there is no love to God or men in our adversary's heart. We need to beware his subtlety. And even as we start to look at some of these strategies, some of these devices, some of these tricks and traps, we need to beware of the layers through which we can work. For example, Satan could make us or encourage us to be very proud that we can see all these tricks and therefore trip us up with the one that we don't see. but we also need to grasp the remedy. My friends, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are not doomed to stumble and fall. because he who is for us is greater than he who is against us. He who is in us, Jesus Christ by his Spirit, is well able to make us to stand. And the point of this then is not to simply to agitate us, but to make us aware, not to bring us to the point of despair, but to establish our feet, so that looking to Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith, we might run with endurance the race that is set before us, and that we might walk with God heavenward. And my friends, it is not just that great remedy. Christ has provided for you ways and means by which you can stand against the enemy of your souls at these particular points. He's equipped you with armour, the armour of God in Ephesians chapter 6. And some of you have, and I'm delighted for it, you have already come to me and you've said, I think battle's being joined at this point or that point. And there are things that God has provided by means of which we can begin to address these things. And it's one of the reasons why I'm not dwelling on this for months at a time. I don't think that would be healthy for our souls. But it is important that we see the kinds of strategies or devices that the enemy will use against us and learn thereby to see it coming and to resist it and to renounce it. So then, with our eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, confident that he is able to uphold us and to keep us and to enable us, what are some of these devices or strategies that our adversary will use to keep you cold and carnal and callous? Here are the ones we've considered already. He wants you to diminish private devotion. He wants you to minimise your engagement with God's Word, private prayer. He wants you to not walk close to Jesus Christ. He wants to keep you at a distance from your pastors. He wants you to feel like you can't come or shouldn't come. He wants you to make excuses why it's not a good idea, or he wants you to believe the worst so that you will be at arm's length, so that the under-shepherd of Christ's sheep will not be at hand when you need me. He wants you to withdraw from the means of grace. He wants you to keep as far as possible from the very things that God has provided as a way to do you good and to build you up. He wants you to avoid fellowship with the saints, not to spend much time with other healthy Christians, to stir one another up to love and to good works. He wants you to cultivate a spirit of discontent so that there's something wrong with everything. He wants you to neglect investment, to minimise the labour that you do for God in his kingdom. He wants you to indulge in secret sins, just to dabble by degrees in things that you know are wrong but that will weaken and undermine you and will drive wedges between you and your God and God's people. and he wants you to cultivate a healthy sense of self-pity, to tell yourself over and over again that I'm special and it's not fair, that I shouldn't be treated in this way, that I'm better than this. And remember, all of these things you should do, says Satan, incrementally. Build them up gradually, by degrees and stages. Because if someone put a bottle in front of you that said poison, you wouldn't drink it. But if someone put a few drops of poison in your water day by day, you might never notice it, and it would kill you all the same. Do it simultaneously. Let these things reinforce one another so that there's nothing so obvious that somebody else would feel the need to step in and help. But be like someone who is constantly putting pebbles in your backpack on the walk. You ever done that to someone? We had a friend, not a particularly wise young man, but one of the things, he could be, you could make almost any suggestion to him and he would take you very seriously. And I do believe that there was one occasion when he was doing something like a Duke of Edinburgh thing with a backpack on and people kept putting extra things in his bag. And he got slower and slower and it got harder and harder. Now if someone had took an enormous rock and stuck it in his backpack would he have noticed? Of course he would. But by putting things in step by step it just got that little bit harder and that little bit heavier day by day or hour by hour and began to drag him down and pull him back. And then we said, do it defensively. Write a narrative where you're the victim and the hero simultaneously. Use passivity and passion, the great weapons, tears and tantrums to stop anybody helping you. Be the sulk and be the hulk. Withdraw and don't let anybody get near to you or if they try to, get angry and teach them that if they touch you where you're sore, this isn't going to go well for them. Train people to stay at a distance because the adversary wants you to drift and slide. Now what are then the last four satanic counsels for 2024? What else would Satan have you do to ruin your spiritual life if that were at all or to whatever degree possible? The first of these mornings would be to resist all concern from those who want to do your soul good. Resist the concern of those who want to do your soul good. Really focusing in on that defensiveness now. Satan will say, react very strongly and very negatively to every expression of concern for your soul. The last thing that you want to do, says Satan, is to have anybody messing with you or getting involved in your life. So be on the defensive. Remember that this isn't anybody else's business, that no one should imagine that they can speak to you. If you think of your life as a series of rooms, then imagine somebody coming into your house and you lock certain doors. No, you're not going in that room. You can come into this room. This is the one I've tidied up. This is the one I've kept nice and clear and clean. But you can't open that cupboard door, and you can't go into that room, and you can't look in there. That's where I'm keeping things that I wouldn't want anybody else to see. And use that sulk and hulk strategy. Train people. Train your wife. if she's a godly woman, train your husband if he's a godly man, train your parents or your children, train your friends and your fellow members, train your pastors, that if they start dealing with you, it will not go well for them. How can you do that? Well, a sour face and a sharp tongue are wonderful weapons. A bit of sustained sullenness, hypersensitivity, And if you're therefore going to react very strongly to the merest hint or suggestion, then people will soon learn their lessons and they will leave you, we use the phrase, stew in your own juice. So you can soak in your sin and you can indulge yourself and you can drift on down that current. After all, says Satan, remember what Cain said when the Lord asked him, where's your brother? Am I my brother's keeper? Well, just flip it. Who do you think you are, your brother's keeper? What business of yours is it to get involved in my life? And if they start to tell you, well, actually, the scriptures instruct us to care for one another and to admonish one another, and if need be, to rebuke one another, as well as to encourage and to assist and to stir one another up. then you make sure you push back quickly and fiercely because the last thing you want is anybody getting into the habit of not just asking at the church door, have you had a good week? But how are things with your soul at the moment? So complain. If someone gives you a call, how are you doing? Tell them that you don't like being chased down. If a pastor says, haven't seen you for a couple of weeks, are you doing well? Whatever you do, don't interpret that as a mark of love and care and compassion. Say, I'm fed up of somebody always watching over me. What, do you keep a register of what I'm doing? What you want to make sure is that you're making very clear that you don't want anybody getting too close and showing real concern for your soul. Oh, and by the way, Saint would say this, the great thing about this strategy is when you've taught everybody to stay at arm's length, then you can turn around and tell them, it's clear that you don't care. This isn't a very loving church. No one has any real regard for me. And the fact that you've spent the last 3 or 6 or 12 months pushing everybody as far away as possible, that doesn't matter. At this stage you'll be able to just flip it whichever way you want. So if you want to ruin your spiritual life, says Satan, if you want part of the recipe for disaster, add this to the mix. Resist all legitimate, genuine Christian concern for the well-being of your soul and learn to use those things that keep everybody at arm's length and certain parts of your life locked off from any kind of Christian engagement. Then the next thing you'd want to do is to eat spiritual junk food. To eat spiritual junk food. Now again, says Satan, don't go straight for the spiritual poison. That's too obvious. And if you're used to eating healthy food and you take a good dose of that, then you'll probably spew it straight back up. So don't just start reading books by Benny Hinn or watching videos by Joel Osteen. or looking on YouTube for Joyce Meyer and people who will tell you these health, wealth, prosperity teachings who will degrade God in your eyes, who will deny the Trinity, who will exalt all manner of wickedness. You want to downgrade gradually. So One thing that Satan says would be really, really helpful, you know that list of videos down the side on YouTube? So when you're watching that one and the algorithm says, well, there's some other Christian stuff here, just start flicking. And you'll soon find people who are much better looking than your pastor, and much smoother talking than your pastor, and don't preach half as long as your pastor, and wear far better suits than your pastor, and give much better offers than your pastor. Don't listen too closely to them to begin with, just let the words wash over your ears. And then click on the next video, and the next video, and the next video. Go for some esoteric stuff, some really random things. If you can, start getting obsessed with questions that really don't matter very much at all. So perhaps you know one of the great questions of the Middle Ages for some so-called theologians was how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? You ever heard that one? Now apparently this was a real debate. Don't worry about the precise terms of it, but what practical relevance does the number of angels who could theoretically dance on the head of a, well, none, but that's the point. You can seem very spiritual, very godly, you're digging deep. Whereas actually you're dwelling on something that is no real relevance. Get obsessed about certain doctrines to the avoidance of others. You see what Satan says is if you can do this, if you can get used to what's light and frothy, then pretty soon the best books will seem like they're way too heavy. And the richest hymns will seem like they're far too dense. And substantial sermons will start to feel oppressive. And as you get used to these things, everything that might do you good will begin to feel very contrary to what you've become accustomed to. So get light, get frothy. Don't put too many demands on yourself, says the evil one. And develop a nice pattern of eating junk food. What happens when you eat junk food? Right, you crave more? How full do you feel? Very. How satisfied are you? Not really. How much nutrition have you taken in? Almost none. And Satan would, if at all possible, have us fill our bellies with froth. and with foolishness and with emptiness. And again, remember, because he's a subtle enemy, he's not gonna say, abandon everything you've always been taught and dive in at the shallowest end of the theological pool, or preferably in the swamp that lies somewhere beyond it. He's saying, by degrees, sink and slide and slip. Until these kinds of things become obnoxious to you, the healthy things become obnoxious. Spiritual colors diluted. Eat spiritual junk food. Another thing that Satan would have you do is to stir up envy. to stir up envy. Envy is one of the devil's great weapons in bringing down our souls. So the enemy would say to us, you need to cultivate a disdain towards other people, especially those who are striving for what is good and are pursuing holiness in the fear of the Lord. Now learn to blame them for this. Tell them that they're extravagant, that they're overdoing it, that they're overexcited. If you can, you can call them bigots of some kind. Carp and criticise, resent and demean. You're taking this all too seriously. Learn to think the way the world thinks. These Christians are fanatics. These Christians are nutcases. No, we're not. We're sensible, reasonable people, but we do have a few hotheads among us who are always trying to go that little bit further. They're endangering their health. They're causing trouble in the community. One of them knocked on my neighbor's door the other day, and my neighbor said to me, do you go to that church? I had somebody knocking on, and he's like, really, you're causing trouble for us. We just would quite like an easy life. Harp upon the faults of other people. Build your own little empire. but be very upset if anybody else gets anywhere. If you're running in a race and somebody runs faster than you, that can be frustrating. But if somebody who started the race after you goes past you, then that can be really annoying. And Satan would have you get upset and angry that anybody can go further or faster. You know what Satan would say to me? That if we had three or four excellent preachers, he'd say to a pastor, you don't want those men stealing your thunder. You don't want those men standing in your limelight. After all, you've been a pastor here for 20 years. Who do these young upstarts think they are? And Satan will say the same. That lady, she's barely been a Christian six months. That guy's only been a Christian for five years. Who does he think he is reading books like that? What makes him think he can do those things? I've never been given those opportunities. I've never had those openings. No one's ever encouraged me or invested in me in that way. And so rather than doing what God would have us do and rejoicing because someone else has graces and gifts to use, rather than esteeming others more highly than ourselves, Satan says, no, that's not on. You want to look down your noses at people. You want to resent those graces and gifts. These are people who are throwing shade on you. Satan loves then to divide. Satan loves to stir tensions and suspicions among God's people. So if you see someone trying hard, discourage them. If you see somebody who excels in one thing, point out how bad they are in another. If you see somebody trying but not doing it as well as they might, tell them there's no point doing it at all. If someone's treading on your toes, kick back. If someone gets on your patch, if someone volunteers, volunteers are annoying, aren't they? The enthusiasm Don't they realize that things have gone on very well for years the way that they've always gone on? Why do we need to do something new? Why do we need to try something better? Why do we need to work any harder? Life is hard enough as it is without some of these people stirring up trouble. So maintain what Satan would call a healthy disposition of envy, a disdain for anyone who is striving and serving, and especially someone who, in your estimation, is throwing shade. And then the last of Satan's counsels, if you want to ruin your spiritual health in 2024, lower your expectations. Lower your expectations. Decide well in advance that nothing is ever going to be particularly useful or particularly helpful to you. Now that could be utterly irrelevant of what's actually going on but if you already know that there's no point then you'll be well primed to derive no benefit. Make sure that you're persuaded and if you can let somebody else know because it's always nice to unsettle others says Satan. that if this changes, it's all going to go to pot, If you can predict frustration and disappointment, then all your prophecies will probably be fulfilled. Nothing will work. There's no point anybody trying. Now, it's particularly helpful if somebody tried it before and it didn't seem to work then, because you can always tell them, no, we've already been down that route and it's worthless. For example, if you had a small group of people who went out knocking on the doors, and it was a really hard Saturday, There's no point doing that again. It doesn't work. No one will listen. Or perhaps you just say, well, look, the day of door-to-door work is gone. That might have worked in the first century, or that might have worked in the 18th century, but that's not going to function now. That's not the way the world is. That's not the way people are. If you've seen decline, predict that that decline will continue. And prime yourself, tell yourself that there's never going to be any blessing from this ministry. I know of people who have said to their pastors, there's no point us ever inviting anybody to these services, no one is going to be converted under this ministry. Now what happens if you've already decided that there's no point in inviting anybody and no one's ever going to be converted? How many conversions, humanly speaking, do you anticipate? Well that's a self-fulfilling prophecy right there. You've lowered your expectations and now the expectations are being fulfilled. Tell yourself in advance the prayer meetings are going to be dull and there aren't going to be any answers anyway. Remind yourself that the people you have to deal with, they're a little bit annoying. You love them, but you don't have to like them, and that the fellowship therefore is always going to be shallow, and that that person's going to frustrate you, and that person's sure to annoy you, and there's really not much point then in getting involved. So whenever you're encouraged to look up, look down. Remember that every silver lining has a dark cloud somewhere nearby and make sure that that's what you concentrate on. Throttle all your hopes. Tell yourself again and again that while blessing came in the past, those days are long gone, that we don't have men like the giants of the past, that we're all spiritual dwarfs and pygmies this day, and we can't expect anything to happen. Take your eyes off God. Crush your confidence. Diminish your expectation of the ordinary means of grace to be channels of blessing. And if you can just decide well enough in advance that nothing is ever going to do you any good, you can almost certainly guarantee that it never will. So my friends, if you want to ruin your spiritual life in 2024, resist all genuine concern for your soul. Don't let anybody come near you, encourage you, exhort you, rebuke you. God forbid that they should challenge you. Make sure that you stay at a distance and you just trot on the way you always have. Start eating some spiritual junk food. I mean, at least for a while, mix it in with the healthy fruits and vegetables, the five spiritual foods a day that will do your soul good. But start reading and listening to and watching things that are frothy, diverting, insubstantial, that introduce new and interesting ideas, people who've got profound insights that no one's ever seen before. This isn't about the questions that we had in the adult Bible class, but I think of a man who got absolutely sucked in on certain questions about angelic ministry. It's all he could think about, all he could talk about, all he could ask about. Now, we know that the angels are ministering spirits. God does send his angels. But there are other things that are clearer and more straightforward. We can rely upon that. We can anticipate that. We can give thanks for that. But it's easy to get sucked into particular notions or ideas. And before long, you're looking at charts of the angelic ranks and the hierarchies of heaven and trying to work out, do we have guardian angels? And if they do, do we get more of them or better ones as we work? Bewildering. You see how that can distract you from the first and the great things. Eat spiritual junk food. Stir up envy. Just be unhappy that other people have got what you want, whether it's spiritual gifts or other blessings. Be unhappy that that person is married and you're not. Or if you are married, be unhappy that they've got a better husband or wife, or better children, or better parents, or a nicer house, or whatever it may be. But just make sure that you're not content and that you think other people have been better dealt with. And then lower your expectations. Go through life without any confidence that God will be true to his promises. Go through life without expecting that you will be blessed. Go through life expecting things to be worse rather than better. Not in some kind of pie-in-the-sky mentality, not with some kind of spiritual rose-tinted spectacles that don't worry, we don't have to worry about anything at all. But don't expect God to be true to his promises. Don't expect Christ to care for you. Don't expect the spirit of God to minister to you. Don't expect the means of grace to be a blessing to you. Expect everything to be hard and sour and difficult and unproductive and unfruitful and pointless. And not only will it be, but pretty soon you and hopefully some others will have stopped bothering altogether. Do you hear the whispers of the evil one? Brothers and sisters, this doesn't come out of nowhere. I hear these whispers. Do you? Are you aware of our enemy's strategies? Do you feel him constantly trying to chip away at your faith, at your hope, at your love, to drive whatever wedges he can between you and your God and between Christ and his people? Satan, by all means, will diminish God in your eyes. Go back to the garden. Has God really said? Satan will do all he can to put you at a distance from God, to distort your view of God. How many times, even in terms of telling people the good news about Jesus, do you hear people say, God is cruel? God doesn't care. Some of us heard it again and again and again, even yesterday. And you're seeking to show them the goodness and the kindness and the mercy of a God who saves a sin-wrecked world. But what they hear and see is the lie of Satan. God isn't there or God doesn't care. And my friends, the same whisper he will use in the Church of Jesus Christ to drop your eyes and to deaden your soul. He wants us to despair of God. There are Psalms that are written about this, about the low expectations that we have of God. And the tragedy is that we can go then through this world and we can live as God's people without actually expecting and anticipating that God will be God to us. I think that despair is one of Satan's great weapons against the Church of Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, you can look back over the last few weeks or the last few months or the last few years And you can make a great list of all the reasons why it's hard and pointless and difficult. But is God on his throne? That's what Satan wants us to forget. Is the Spirit in the Church of Jesus Christ? That's what Satan would have us blind to. He wants you to be cold and sour. And if he can't have you cold and sour, he'll have you soft and stupid. He has no regard for you. There is no mercy, there is only malice. There is no kindness, there is only callousness. And he would have us be like him, lost, despairing, condemned. He will try to puff you up. And if he can't puff you up, he will pull you down. He will have you live as if you didn't need God. And when it's proved otherwise, he will have you live as if God is not there to help you at all. He loves to introduce perversion in the place of purity. He wants you to become a hypocrite and so for your conscience to be hardened. He wants there to be no substantial friendship with the Lord and no sweet fellowship amongst his people. He wants to put you at a distance from the flock. He wants to weaken you and to isolate you so that in the gap between the flock gathered together under the shepherd's care and the sheep that has begun to drift or to stumble or to limp, the wolf can come in and cut you out and do you harm. He wants you to think that human strength is everything. or that it is nothing. He wants you to believe that God is so sovereign that there's no point in trying. Or that we are so powerful that it all depends solely upon us. He will take everything that is true and good and right and clean and pure and he will twist it and he will pervert it and he will destroy it. He will make you drink medicine in the wrong proportion so that it starts to do you harm rather than good. He will drip poisons into what is otherwise healthful in order that he might hinder and undermine. He will drive wedges between you and the people who love you the most so that those who have come to do you good are the very people that you turn away from. I've got a very distressing message. from a brother just last night. Will you pray for us? There's a wolf in the flock. Don't know all the details, but this is real. A man has been brought into the congregation and he showed himself so lovely, so kind. And he began to zero in on the neediest The most ignorant, the most troubled, the most indulgent. He began to say to them, very much like Absalom with David, now if I were caring for you, your life would be better. He began to teach them. He began to say to people who were weary, you need to back off, you need to take things easy. People who would say, I'm finding it hard at the moment to do this and that and the other one. Well, don't worry too much about that. As I say, I don't know all the details. I don't want to read too much into the white spaces. But if you've been long in the Church of Jesus Christ, you've heard those whispers. You've seen those people. and the things that are good and clean and pure and right and the affections are taken off guard and suspicion begins to develop where there should be peace and harmony. Brothers and sisters, Remember the reality. I don't want to keep you to excessive length. I do not intend to multiply examples, but I plead with you as we come out of the first month of 2024 to remember that the spiritual warfare of which I speak is not theory or fantasy. And perhaps the greatest lie that the father of lies would have you believe is that he's not there. and that this isn't real. This is not manga demon warfare. This is not Hollywood's nonsensical notions. This isn't Neil Gaiman's good omens. Some of you may not even know what that is, that's not a bad thing. But my point is this, this is not cartoon spirituality. This is not some kind of fantasy. This is an enemy of your souls who is full of rage and malice and he wants to harm you. And I want you to see him coming. And I want you to learn how he speaks so that when he whispers the lies, you're able to counter with truth. Now if you've been a member of this church for any period of time, you will know that we spend most of our time speaking the truth as it is in Jesus. And that is so when the devil lies to you, you know what is real and good and true. And when Satan says to you, has God really said you're ready to stand up and affirm, yes, yes, God has said this, not as you've twisted it, but as God has spoken it. Remember the reality. Gauge the hostility. Do not underestimate the malice of our enemy. This is real warfare with someone who truly hates you. Would you ever want to see the devil's face? I shudder just thinking about it. Have you ever seen somebody really, really angry? Really full of malice, hatred, violence, full of perverse and wicked thoughts? My friends, it's terrifying. And someone like that, with rage in their soul, with a determination to harm, is in your face and you can feel the hostility. Satan is implacably opposed to you as God's people. and you need to understand that otherwise you will treat too lightly this warfare in which we are engaged. You need to beware his subtlety. Layers upon layers of lies. Half-truths rather than obvious errors. Most dangerous when he seems defeated. Most surprising. when you thought he'd put an arm around you. Some of you know where the word sinister comes from? Do you know where the word sinister comes from? Okay, it's left-handed in Latin. Okay, what's the opposite of sinister? Dexter. Why are sinister men sinister? Because in classical combat, you can rely on a right-handed man to have his sword in his right hand. and his shield on his left. But you know what a sinister man does, don't you? A sinister man can come at you from the left. That's what sinister means originally. You're set up to defend with your shield against the right. The sinister man comes round your defences and plunges his weapon into your side unawares. He is sinister, this enemy of ours. Trixie. Cunning. Cruel. Deceitful. And unless you learn to hear the lies and to discern the ugliness, the twistedness, the deceitfulness, your soul will be ruined. Some of you are listening to those lies. Some of you are listening to the lie that this doesn't matter, that God isn't real, that you've got time, that salvation isn't that important, that the world is so vital, that wealth is worth pursuing above all, that the Bible isn't true, that God isn't real, that Christ didn't really die, that he's not really coming again, that you're better than this. You might not put it in those words, but your life shows that you've bought the devil's lies. So I plead with you to grasp the remedy. You can't win by yourself. You cannot be saved by your own wisdom and power. You cannot stand by human reason and you cannot fight with carnal weapons. If you are not to be drawn into the devil's web, if you are not to live God spare you, die, believing the lie of the evil one, then you need the light of the gospel, the glory of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ. Dead in trespasses and sins by nature, slaves of the prince of the power of the air, who can set you free? Christ. Who can hold you up? Christ. Who can make you stand? Christ. Who can enable you to fight? Christ. Who can keep you safe? Christ. Who can feed you with soul food? Christ. Who can guide you through these devices and snares? Christ. Who can hold you close? Christ. Who can lift you up? Christ. Who can bless you truly? Christ. Remember this is upside down thinking. Satan says, don't bother with your Bible. I say to you, love the word of God and communion with him. Satan says, keep it a distance from your under shepherds. I say, let us love one another and care for one another. Satan says, hold off from the means of grace. I say, throw yourself into the life of the Church of Jesus Christ. Satan says, avoid fellowship. I say, let's draw near to one another with full hearts. Satan says, let's be discontent. The Bible says, let us be glad that God has done us good. Satan says, neglect investment and service. The Bible says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. Satan says, indulge secret sins. God calls us to put to death all transgressions. Satan says, indulge a sense of self-pity. Christ says, live in humble thankfulness. Satan says, resist all concern. The scriptures say, welcome those who will love for faithful are the wounds of a friend. Satan says, eat spiritual junk food. Christ calls you to feed on honey from the rock. Satan says, stir up envy. Christ says, let this mind be in you, which was also in me. Satan says, lower your expectations. God says, believe in all that I have said and done. I will never leave you or forsake you. I will love you. I will keep you. I will bless you. I will guide you. And I will bring you at last to glory. And you shall see this enemy of your souls trampled into the dust, cast out. And in the kingdom of God, in the state of glory, there will be nothing harmful, nothing harsh, nothing dark, nothing cruel, nothing bitter, nothing sour, not around us, not against us, brothers and sisters, not even in us. Thanks be to him who sets us free, from the bonds of Satan and from the law of sin and death that we might live to the praise of God's glory.