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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.
Bad Cop, Good Cop
Series Joshua
This sermon examines two strategies that Satan uses to make God's people ineffective.
| Sermon ID | 62723120137203 |
| Duration | 37:10 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Joshua 9:1-4 |
| Language | English |
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