If you turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 9, I believe this is the 35th sermon on Joshua. We're making our way slowly through this book. Joshua 9, first 15 verses. And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan in the hills and in the lowland and in all the coasts of the great sea toward Lebanon, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite heard about it. that they gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors, and they took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves, and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, we have come from a far country, now therefore make a covenant with us. And the men of Israel said to the Hivites, perhaps you dwell among us, so how can we make a covenant with you? But they said to Joshua, we are your servants. And Joshua said to them, who are you and where do you come from? So they said to him from a very far country, your servants have come because of the name of the Lord, your God, for we have heard of his fame and all that he did in Egypt and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to Sihon, king of Heshbon and Og, king of Bashan, who was at Ashteroth. Therefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us saying, take provisions with you for the journey and go to meet them and say to them, we are your servants. Now therefore make a covenant with us. This bread of ours we took hot for our provision from our houses on the day we departed to come to you. But now look, it is dry and moldy. And these wineskins, which we filled, were new. And see, they are torn. And these, our garments and our sandals, have become old because of the very long journey. Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. So Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live. And the rulers of the congregation swore to them." Father God, as we consider this inspired history this portion of what Joshua was engaged in. I pray that we would learn from it, that you would anoint my lips as I preach, and that we would grow. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We don't have to live very long to know that life is not static. It is always changing. And certainly, the attacks and the strategies that Satan's kingdom uses against us are always changing as well. We could wish that we, you know, could coast along and not always have to be on guard. But 1 Corinthians 16.3 tells us to watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. The Greek tense indicates we need to keep watching and we need to keep standing fast. 1 Timothy 6.12 tells us to keep fighting for the good fight of faith. And the reason is that Satan's kingdom will never give up. And that means neither should we. Demons will constantly be looking for weak areas in our lives that they can take advantage of. And if they fail to defeat you in one way, they're going to look for another way in which they can get you down. And I believe Satan was behind the two new strategies that he was using to try to get Israel down in this chapter. Satan was already successful in getting Israel to be defeated in chapter seven, but much to his frustration, Israel repented, and they actually came out of that experience much stronger. And by the time they were done with the covenant in the last few verses of chapter 8, they were very strong in the Lord. They had become a formidable foe. And so it's not surprising to find Satan's kingdom doing its utmost in this chapter to bring Israel down once again. and the first four verses juxtapose two wildly different approaches to get Israel to compromise. We're only going to look at four verses today. Satan's first approach is to expose Israel to fear and intimidation in verses one through two. And he then exposes Israel to flattery, praise, and admiration in the following verses. And I tried to capture the essence of what's going on here with the expression, bad cop, good cop, or you can invert that, but we're going to follow the order in this chapter here. The bad cop, good cop expression refers to a psychological technique used by some law enforcement officers to interrogate a suspect. I do not think it is an ethical approach to gathering information at all, but it's commonly used. So what happens is that two law enforcement officers will purposely assume two opposing roles in order to elicit information from a suspect, maybe even gain a confession. If one approach doesn't work, perhaps the other one will. So the officer pretending to be the bad cop will take a very aggressive and confrontational approach to the suspect using all kinds of intimidation and threats to put pressure on him. And sometimes the suspect will cave at that point and just give them what they want. If not, the other officer will come in and pretend to be the good cop. He will act like he is sympathetic with the plight of the suspect, trying to help him, giving him reassurances, sometimes even promising rewards. And the purpose of the second cop is, you know, through niceness, to make this person more inclined to cooperate in the hopes of getting off easy. Either way, they hope to get some good information. Well, verses 1 through 2 show the bad cop technique of intimidation. And I should point out, Satan uses this all through the Scripture. It's a very common technique. Peter talks about him walking about as a roaring lion. You know, having grown up in Africa, I know that a roaring lion can be pretty intimidating, especially if you're on foot. Anyway, starting to read at verse 1. And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, in the hills and in the lowland and in all the coasts of the great sea toward Lebanon, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite heard about it, that they gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. Now, Israel was going to have a tough time taking these tribes on one by one. But when they're all ganged up against Israel together, that is going to be very, very difficult. And you can imagine that this could potentially put fear into the Israelites. And what does fear produce? What did fear produce in Peter when he was walking on the water? You know, he was very intimidated when he started looking at the waves. that led to doubt, and the doubt led to faith wavering. And without faith, it's impossible to please God, which means you're going to lose your battles. And so you can see that intimidation is a very effective ploy of Satan. Fear is a big enemy of Christianity. And I ought to know, this was one of my besetting sins all through my growing up years that I had to battle against. As long as we are intimidated, we're not going to take the conquest as God intended us to do. Instead, we're going to just settle for symbolic gestures of opposition. So Satan knows how to use intimidation very, very effectively. Let's take a look at each phrase. First of all, notice the degree to which these pagans were unified. If you know anything about this period of history, you know that this is a remarkable statement. Verse one mentions all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, so that means on the west side of the Jordan. And then, lest we not get the point, he specifies the kings who were in each of the three geographical regions that were west of the Jordan, highlands, lowlands, the coastal regions, that covers everything north, central, and south. And then, lest we think, maybe this is hyperbole, he reiterates the same point a third way. All the kings are the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites. Canaan was riddled with independent city-states that had different languages and different nationalities. And if you know anything about their history, even the people within tribes often were at each other's throats. They were not friends, not at all. So why would they put aside their squabbles and enter into this alliance? Well, the when the word when at the beginning of the verse finds its finishing phrase in the last three words, it was when they heard about it and the it refers back to the events of chapter eight, the defeat of AI and the radical commitment that all Israel made in the last verses of chapter eight. So the it, you can circle and put an arrow back to the previous chapter. First, the defeat of Israel at Ai made them realize, hey, Israel is not invincible. They might not have realized the reason for that defeat. It was compromise in their midst. But they thought, if little Ai could defeat at least one time Israel, maybe if we're all gathered together, we might have a good chance at doing so. But whatever the case, since Jericho and Ai had now fallen, they realized they will be easy pickings if they don't hang together. But I believe the main thing that the it refers to was the covenant that had just been made in the last verses of chapter 8. The Canaanites no doubt had their scouts and their spies, and after they got wind of how committed Israel was to God's covenant and how they had affirmed God's curses for anybody that agrees with the sins that were common in the land there, they began to realize this is a religious war that is meant for keeps, okay? There was not going to be any negotiating. The Israelites were fighting against them on principle, not pragmatism, but on principle. And so they're motivated to put down their differences with each other to oppose God's people. So they're able to compromise. There's no reason why they couldn't compromise with each other, but they know Israel's not going to compromise. They could see Israel was on fire for Yehovah. Tremper Longman says of this verse, when righteousness becomes aggressive and bent on an objective, it has a way of uniting the forces of righteousness and the enemies of righteousness. So Israel was united around a cause in a powerful way, that's good, but that very unity around God's cause made their enemies realize they need to be united as well. Anytime you see God's people rallying around a God-sized cause, whether it's in China or India or Uganda, Nigeria, wherever, you will see the enemies of the church putting aside their differences and beginning to unite in their common hatred for the crown rights of King Jesus. You can see this principle in the Gospels. As the followers of Christ began to grow in numbers and they passionately embraced his teachings, what do we find? We find the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians who were always at each other. They were enemies of each other. They are united together in their opposition. Now, they had quite different philosophies, different practices. When you read some of their writings, you realize those three groups literally hated each other. But as Jesus and his followers began to become more and more of a threat to all three factions, those three factions united in their opposition to Jesus. They intuitively recognized that they needed each other if they were going to be effective in destroying Christianity. And that has been true in every age. Many are predicting increasing persecution in America as the church, more and more in the church, begin to embrace God's law. And that is happening. Praise God, it's happening across America. Though pagans hold wildly different views from each other of reality, and they might ordinarily be at each other's throats, they're going to be more and more opposed to us because they realize we are opposed completely, in principle, to their sexual perversion and abortion and government education and radical environmentalism and laws against home births. We're against feminism, and gender fluidity, and critical race theory, and wokeism, and the COVID vaccine, and fake climate change agendas, and restrictive gun control laws, and collectivism, and ungodly taxation. I mean, there's all kinds of hot-button issues out there. And they may not agree with each other on every one of those issues. They don't, okay? But because they now have a common enemy, they are more and more likely to jointly attack us. It's odd how many big corporations and small corporations are willing to lose customers in order to align on the wrong side of many of these issues. Thrivant and Chick-fil-A are the most recent and, for me, the most puzzling of the corporations who have gone soft on sodomite issues and, in the process, they have the potential of completely wiping out a very conservative customer base. It's irrational, which to me, anytime I see irrationality out there, I smell the demonic, you know, that's behind it. Demons don't mind leading people to irrational conclusions. And then you've got the schools and media and government agencies and others who have been picking on Christians. And even some from the left have been surprised in the last year to see how aggressive the FBI and the IRS have been and going after politically incorrect organizations and individuals. In any case, what seems to be the only uniting force to hold some of these coalitions together is a hatred for God's infallible Bible and God's infallible pronouncements against their ridiculous positions. They see it as a threat. Just like, you know, Jack Ryan was a threat in clear and present danger. He was a threat because he couldn't be made to compromise. And any Christians who are unwilling to compromise begin to become a threat. Now, what's the purpose of this coalition? Verse two says that they gathered together to fight with Joshua in Israel. So they sought to flex their muscles. Perhaps a united front will enable them to eradicate the problem. But even if that's not possible, I think they're hoping that through intimidation, they will keep Israel away from more coming closer to their cities. And so a show of force was designed to intimidate. And Satan knows if he can bring fear, fear will evaporate faith. Without faith, they're not going to be able to win. So it is a very, very frequent strategy that he uses. And there does seem to be a similar strategy of intimidation that is being used against Christians today. Any Christians who are willing to go to the front lines of the battlefield. Even Newsweek magazine, two weeks ago, published an article that expressed utter amazement and surprise at the way that the FBI has been weaponized. Let me quote from them. It said, millions of Americans find themselves shocked and appalled by the weaponization of the federal government to crush legitimate political dissent. Specifically, the use of the FBI by the Department of Justice against parents, Christians, and pro-life advocates grows more intense by the day. Now, I was really surprised to see this in Newsweek, because they're kind of a centrist magazine. But one of many examples that they cited was the arrest of Mark Houck. Newsweek said, recall that the FBI last year sent more than a dozen agents to arrest pro-life advocate Mark Houck at gunpoint in front of his wife and children. They carted Houck off in handcuffs and a belly chain as if he were a violent criminal and then forced him to endure a lengthy, humiliating public trial with the threat of an 11-year prison sentence looming over his head. The case against Houck was so flimsy that the Philadelphia District Attorney declined to file any charges, and courts additionally threw out a civil lawsuit against Houck filed by the clinic escort. Yet the FBI proceeded anyway. Houck was ultimately exonerated of all charges, though why he was singled out and why the Department of Justice chose to go to trial remains a mystery. The heavy hand of federal police power has gone missing when it comes to violence against Catholic churches and pro-life care centers. Since 2020, more than 300 incidents of vandalism, arson, and destruction of Catholic churches have been recorded. There have also been almost 90 incidences of firebombings, vandalism, and other attacks on pro-life organizations that offer free resources, support, and care to women and children in need. The Department of Justice has taken little to no action to stem this ongoing violence, yet decided to indict at least 11 pro-life advocates under the FACE Act a law that protects abortion clinics as well as churches and pro-life pregnancy centers. Anyway, I won't go more on that, but as they were puzzling through why would the federal government be doing this, the conclusion they came to, they said, is the only conclusion we can see is that they're trying to intimidate any future people from being involved in these kinds of activities. It seems like the recent attacks against the midwives in Nebraska has been for exactly the same reason. They know they can't win in court. It's ridiculous they bring it to court. The only reason I think they are doing this is to intimidate. And it is intimidating to have to go to court. And so we need to be praying for these people that God would help to sustain their faith and courage. But I think another lesson to be learned can be found in the last phrase of verse two. It says, with one accord. But if you look at the margin, you'll see that the literal rendering of the Hebrew is with one mouth. They all parroted the same false propaganda within and among their tribes. Hebrew clears. They're all saying the same thing. And I think a very literal modern example of this is seen in Pandemic 3, The Great Awakening, where Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and President Biden and the President of China, the Chancellor of Germany, and all of these other heads of state are parroting exactly the same line that has been promoted from the World Economic Summit, that we absolutely need a global reset. And it's word for word identical, it's not by accident. Anyway, I think World Economic Summit is engaging in the same kind of conspiracy against the remnants of Western civilization. Now, as I already mentioned, previously these nations had been enemies. They distrusted and feared each other. They warred with each other. So why are they friends now? It's because they are confronted with a consistent Christianity. The point is that compromised Christianity is not much of a threat. They will sometimes attack even that, but it's not much of a threat to humanism or atheism. Bill Maher, who is an atheist television host, one who drives me crazy, I have a hard time watching more than half an hour, but anyway. He put on a show where he ridiculed the idea that Christians are being persecuted today, and as proof that they're not being persecuted, you know, he points to Jesse Jackson and he points to all of these different liberal Christians who don't even believe the Bible and says they're not being persecuted. Well, that's the point. That's the point. If Satan can get Christians to compromise, they're no longer a threat. So down through history, all humanists have always had one common enemy, a vibrant, uncompromising, aggressive Christianity. That will unite humanists like nothing else will. Look on the internet, you will find traditional enemies united and what they exclude. Not just in America, you know, like the cartoon and your outline shows, but you'll see it worldwide. You'll find Hindus and Muslims in India who hate each other's guts. And yet when it comes to opposition to vibrant Christianity in India, they're united. They don't tend to unite in hatred for nominal Christians, but it's a vibrant Christianity that is sweeping that nation that has aroused their anger. It's demonic. And here's why I am not discouraged by that in the least. And this is the next point. First, this coalition's lack of inner coherency guaranteed that they would eventually be at each other's throats again. And they were. Commentators point out that this coalition didn't last long enough to be able to have even one battle together. Not even one battle. By chapter 10, a whole bunch of this coalition bailed. There were still a few that were gathered together. Same was true in chapter 11. It wasn't a true unity, and because there is no inner worldview coherency in the modern persecutors of Christianity, I think God can easily dismantle them as soon as he desires to. Second, the very fact that there was opposition rather than repentance, I think shows the dread that Satan had of a group of committed believers. If you are getting persecuted, it probably means that Satan sees you as a threat. Okay, which means your life is counting for something. Your witness is counting, it's doing something, be encouraged. If Satan takes notice, that's probably a good sign. Third, the enemies of Christ do not have a leg to stand on. They lack the power of God, they lack consistency, they lack rationality, they lack a vibrant faith. They are not as formidable as they might at first appear. And then fourth, with God on our side, we're on the winning side of history. God guarantees it. American Humanist Association seems to intuitively recognize this better than a lot of Christians do. They have over and over cited us, cited a rising breed of Christians who are utterly unembarrassed by anything in the Bible. Doesn't matter what they throw at us from the Bible, it's like they're not embarrassed. They call them out as Reformed Reconstructionists, and after describing the consistency of our worldview, the comprehensive application of Scripture to all of life, post-millennial optimism, and the confidence that the Bible provides answers that the pagans cannot, This article said, it is a formidable theology designed to take on all comers. And it is. Praise God, it is. A reformed faith can really take on the world. We've got to have faith in God, though, and in his word and not be intimidated by their attacks. By the way, the guy's name was Frederick Clarkson, who wrote the article. He seems to have way more confidence in our power than we do. It's kind of an odd thing. But the reality of the principles of verses one through two need to drive us to trust God's grace by faith, not be intimidated. So brothers and sisters, don't be discouraged by persecution. Recognize Satan's tactics as the desperate tactics of a loser. The Bible guarantees he is losing and will progressively lose in history. But this is the second main point. Satan is clever. He doesn't just use one or two or three or four strategies. He comes up with all kinds of what Paul calls devices. In these first four verses, he uses two strategies simultaneously. His thought probably is that if one doesn't work, perhaps the other will. In verses three through four, he offers a covenant of friendship between Israel and one of the enemies. And if he can get Israel to covenant with God's enemies, then God's no longer gonna fight for Israel, right? That's the strategy. Now, God is going to actually make this backfire on them because it appears that at least down the road, these Gibeonites eventually sincerely believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. God had already numbered them among his elect, and we're not gonna get to that today. That's in the future. Right now, I just wanna focus on the dangerous temptation that Satan brings, starting at verse three. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors, and they took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended. And that's as far as I'll read today. We'll pick up on the rest of the interesting story next time, but let's analyze three things that Satan was working on in order to sideline Israel. First, Satan made sure that the Gibeonites knew more about Israel than Israel knew about the Gibeonites. Now, even though the leaders of Israel are kind of skeptical in verses six and following, they don't know much about these Gibeonites. But the Gibeonites knew all about Israel's previous battles. Now they don't want to give away the fact that they're near, so they don't mention any of the recent battles. They only mention the battles that were done months before on the other side of Jordan, and the crossing of the Red Sea, and all of the miracles in Egypt. So they're selective in what intel they speak about. They've done some pretty good research. They knew they cannot win an all-out battle. They'd have to take advantage of Israel's naivete. And that is a strategy that gets many a Christian down. Naive Christians go to college, and without even realizing it, they succumb to hostile ideologies. And by the way, the most dangerous teachers in the universities are not the ones that you know, that are arrogant and, you know, attack you full force. Those people aren't liked by anybody and they're not going to be very effective with a Christian. It's the professors who care about you, you know, and are very empathetic to your needs and speak quite well of your Christianity. But then they try to expand your horizons, you know, so you have a more fulfilled life and give you some more ideas. My 11th grade English professor used praise of my Christianity together with empathetic words and thoughtfulness and warmth and caring to introduce me to his existentialist ideas. He was far, far, far more dangerous to me than my biology teacher who on day one of my stepping into his biology class said, everyone who is a Six Day Creationist here, please stand up. And I'm the only one in the class that stood up. And he spent the next half hour berating me, humiliating me, telling me what a raving lunatic I must be to believe in Six Day Creationism. Well, you can bet your bottom dollar he had very little influence in my life. I knew he was an enemy, right? I knew he was an enemy. But my very kind English teacher sowed all kinds of seeds of doubt in my mind. Now, thankfully, I happened to be living with my brother John at that time, and he had been studying presuppositional apologetics, so he took time to train me in presuppositional apologetics. By the end of that semester, I knew more about my professor than my professor knew about his own worldview, I think. And that's what presuppositional apologetics will do for you. By the way, there's a class going on, presuppositional apologetics. Is it done? Or is it still going? No, it's still going. Okay, I got the heads up back there. It really is important for us to understand presuppositional apologetics. So when kids go to college, they are confronted by Gibeonites who often know more about Christianity than the Christians in college know about the other false worldviews. So just saying. Now, the second thing that Gibeon did was to deceive. Verse four says, they worked craftily and went and pretended. The word for craftily means to be cunning, be crafty, be deceptive, be shrewd. In Luke 16, verse eight, Jesus said, the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. Well, that means that we Christians who tend to be trusting, you know, we can easily be taken in and fooled. And next week we'll look at the precise ways that the Gibeonites fooled the Israelites. There's a lot we can learn from those verses. But this is why it is not good for our children to be interacting with total strangers on social media. Those total strangers can pretend to be good and friendly and trustworthy. And in Christian circles, we aren't used to lying and deception being a normal part of life. And so when we encounter it, even if we do have our guard up, it's natural for us to want to believe what the other person says, and demons can take advantage of that. Now, generally speaking, Satan likes to be covert. I've already mentioned there are times where he feels it's appropriate to be frontal in his attacks, and he will do that. But 1 Corinthians 11, 4 says he generally likes to appear as an angel of light to believers. The next verse in 1 Corinthians 11 says, therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works. How can a demonically possessed man transform himself into an instrument of righteousness. Well, let me illustrate that with a person that I knew. I knew one American Baptist minister who was, I believe, one of those angels of light. When I was in my early 20s, he was constantly lending me books that I believe he hoped would put doubts into my mind that questioned the scriptures. Now, he was the nicest guy. You could not have asked for a nicer guy. And he was actually a good preacher. He was just an amazing preacher. Wow, could he preach. I sat in on an Easter sermon one time that he was preaching, and it was amazing. It was spot on. Everything that he said was exactly correct. And what puzzled me is I knew he did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. He did not believe even in the sinlessness of Jesus. He didn't believe in the deity of Jesus, did not believe in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. And so I went up to him after the whole service was finished, and I asked him, don't you feel like a hypocrite preaching something that you don't believe? And he and I, we already knew where each other stood. And he said, nah, it's a psychological crutch that they need, and that's what I'm here to give them. He was an angel of light that was infiltrating his denomination and infiltrating the people and turning people away from the ways of righteousness. There are many professors and seminaries, and I've had to coach and counsel some of the students who have called me and said, what about this? And I've had to tell them, okay, here's where that's deviating from the scripture, and here's some of the arguments that you can use. But there are professors and seminaries who lead students away by being as gracious and as flattering as these Gibeonites were. Mainline denominations are full of preachers who preach things they don't believe. They're going to eventually undermine the very things that they are preaching. And the reason they're preaching it is because they wouldn't have a pulpit otherwise. But they use their positions to gradually undermine the denomination until the denomination as a whole goes liberal. The third thing the Gibeonites did was to try to make a peace treaty. First sentence in verse four ends by saying, and pretended to be ambassadors, or as the margin says, as envoys. Either way, they pretended to be from a far country to have the authority to enter into a covenant peace treaty with Israel on behalf of that country. And again, next time we'll look at the details of that. But here it's enough to say that we do need to be careful what ambassadors we allow into a priest treaty with our own homes. Let me just give a very common example of how we can do this. When you, what you watch on TV, can imply a peace treaty with the worldview of the movie you're watching, or the talk show host that you find so entertaining, unless you have a discussion afterwards of what you disagreed with it, what went wrong with that. You turn it into an educational opportunity, and that's appropriate. There's a place for that. But children especially can be vulnerable to this. The unstated assumption that children might make when you state that you love a movie is that you endorse everything in it. And we must be very careful with our children that they can see what we are at peace with and what we are still at war with, okay? They need to understand a clear antithesis that we have with the world. But let me sum up with four lessons that we can take home. First, Satan never stops fighting, and we must never let down our guard. The moment you stop moving forward, the likelihood is you're gonna start drifting backward. Second, we need to realize that Satan changes his tactics to get us off guard. You know, you may have had a major success, and then in weariness, he let down your guard, and during your tiredness, you know, a demon gives an oblique attack, and he gets you down once again. Third, Satan loves to make us fearful since fear robs us of faith. And if you're a fearful person, you have got to systematically eradicate fear from your life and replace it with confidence, love, joy, faith, and a sound mind. And then fourth, Satan loves to woo us into a peace treaty with people and things that are still at war with God. Don't do it. Now, I'm making you aware of these things, as Paul worded it in 2 Corinthians 2.10, less Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. And as we go through these chapters, it is my hope that you'll be able to say, yes, I am not ignorant of Satan's strategies. Don't be taken in by the good cop, bad cop techniques of Satan. Resist him on all angles. Amen. Father, we thank you for this Word and the warnings that are in it, and the illustrations all through the Scripture of how we can so easily be diverted from the path of righteousness. Father, apart from you and your Spirit guiding and directing us and protecting us, we too can fall. We recognize there, but for your grace, we would go. And so I pray that each one here would have your protective hand upon them, that you would send your warrior angels to encamp around about us, to guard our ways, that you would enable us to become more and more consistent in our worldview, and that you would enable us to be effective as we try to be on the front lines of the battlefield in various ways and opposing some of the huge idols that are in our land. Would you protect us and enable us to be effective? We desire to be your foot soldiers. We desire to do so with faith and not with fear. And so we ask for your blessing to that end. Upon this your people in Jesus name, Amen.