1 Peter 5. We're going to read verses 8 and 9. 1 Peter 5, verse 8. Let's hear God's Word. Be sober, be vigilant, Because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. And God will bless the reading of his word, for his name's sake. Please bow with me for a moment, and let's seek the Lord together. Father in heaven, in Jesus Christ's name, we come to Thee and pray that Thou wilt look down upon us, see what Thy people need from Thy treasure chest of truth and power. We pray that Thou wilt supply that need. Give me, Lord, the power of the Holy Ghost, the liberty that comes when the soul is energized by heaven. Grant me to know the application that should be made. Give that grace to interpret the word of God aright. And Lord, as thy people listen, we pray that it's the heart that will be listening carefully. They will have a spirit of humble submission, to whatever their God would have to say to them. And, Lord, be not silent to us, we pray. Lest, being silent to us, as the psalmist said, we be like them that go down into the pit. Speak, Lord, we ask Thee. In Jesus Christ's name, amen and amen. As this world rushes on towards its inevitable end, the Bible tells us that there are, among many truths, there are three subjects to which God's people should give special attention. The first of those subjects is deception. I say that because in Matthew 24, where the Lord is dealing with the question from the disciples about the end times, The Lord states that there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, and is so much that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. So that verse plainly tells us that the spiritual deception toward the end of time in the last days will be very great, so great in fact that if it were possible, Jesus said, it would deceive even the elect. The elect, those that have been chosen by God to be the sheep of his fold, a sheep he has promised to protect all of their days. the sheep who are in the hand of the shepherd, and no one is able to pluck them out of his hand. Is it possible that they would be deceived and led astray from the truth? Is the thought of that phrase, it is not possible? Or is it saying, if the situation was right, they will have the power to deceive even those among the elect of God? While men of God have offered opposing interpretations on that phrase, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. And by that, I mean that it's very possible that Christians can be deceived by false teachers, and false doctrine, in that sense, led away from the truth. But if they belong to God's elect, they can never be deceived into the point where they are led away to a place where they actually apostatize from God and end up denying the very truths that they had professed to believe. That seems to be a popular thing in this current climate. Men who have written books, had become very popular, Christian authors, Christian pastors and teachers are now saying, I am no longer a Christian. Joshua Harris comes to mind, just walked away from it all. But that's what you can expect in the last days. If they actually walk away from it all and deny what they profess to believe, they have apostatized. there is no hope for the apostate. There is no hope for the apostate. The fact of the matter is that church history affords us many, many examples of Christians who were deceived by false teachers and false doctrines. The churches of Galatia come to mind. They were duped. They bought into the lie of those Judaizers who came in and said, yes, you're saved by grace, but really, you need to be circumcised if you want to know full salvation. And they bought so much so that Paul said, I am shocked that you're so soon moved from the gospel. Therefore, the point that we want to note is that one of the areas that Christians must Pehitu, especially in the last days, is that of deception. You all know that what makes deception so dangerous is that it is the admixture of truth and error. The lie, the blatant lie, you would recognize immediately. But when it's blended with truth, you know to be as sound as the Bible itself. that's when there's a proneness to be deceived. So it's of the utmost importance—if I can just remind you once again of the evening message the past two Lord's Days—it's so important that you have a very firm grip upon the Word of the Lord, that you know your Bible, you know the truth, because you've studied the truth, You've experienced the truth. And that truth has a grip upon your own soul, your own heart, your own mind. That's the greatest safeguard I could ever give you, to being led away from the truth. A second area to which Christians in the last days, according to what Jesus said in Matthew 24, they must give special attention is that of their own devotion. Their own devotion to the Lord. I say that because Jesus Christ said that one of the signs that we would be in the last days is that the love of many shall wax cold. Literal rendition of the Greek, the love of the many shall wax cold. That definite article is critical. The many. It's a clear reference to the Lord's own people, because only Christians could ever have a true love for the Lord that could grow cold. If they haven't been saved, then they never had a love for the Lord to grow cold. But it's when they have been saved that there is love in their heart, but that love grows cold. And why does it grow cold? The Lord says, because iniquity shall abound. lawlessness shall increase." Lawlessness. They will be surrounded more and more like never before—surrounded with godlessness and temptations and vice. And that has this power to draw them, move their hearts, chill their love for the Lord. Sure, you know that, though, don't you? Tell me you've walked away from watching some Hollywood movie two and a half hours, and you haven't felt the effect of that on your devotion to the Lord. If you're honest, there's no way you're going to, doesn't faze me at all. Utter bunkum. I'm not speaking theory. I know right well what it does. You're going to abound. that devotion's going to grow cold. That was the big problem in the church at Ephesus. Oh, they were fundamentalists. They were separated. They took their stand against all the false teachers and all the apostates, and the Lord Jesus commended them for that. But I've got one thing against you—you've left your first love. I think that'll be one of the outstanding sins of the church in the last days. Devotion dies. Love grows cold. We need to be well aware that this is a problem that you and I face in these last days. Lawlessness is abounding. There's a third area of study to which Christians must give their attention, especially when in the last days the church will have to face severe persecution and tribulation, fiery trials. That subject is the devil. You see, it's not only this deception that we must guard against, and it's not only our devotion that we have to give attention to so that we're not taken in by the lawlessness that's all around us and find, at the end of the day, our hearts toward Christ have grown cold. But there is a devil whom we must resist all our days. We must wrestle with him. And it's especially difficult when you're facing persecution. And that fact brings me to my text that I read in verses 8 and 9. Here in these two well-known verses of Scripture, Peter is describing the devil as a roaring lion. And that one thought right there sets before us certain critical truths about this ancient enemy of the church, the ancient enemy of the church. Let's break that down, please, for a moment. I want to speak first on the description of this ancient enemy—the description. While I say our enemy, the enemy of the church, because Peter describes this enemy as your adversary, the fact remains that Satan is the friend of none and the enemy of all. No one—no one—is Satan's friend. He's the enemy of everyone. He has deeply injured human race, even those wicked men whom he uses to further his plans to extend his kingdom of evil—those men he hates. They are not his friends. He despises them. They are part of God's creation, and he hates them. He'll use them, but he hates them. They're in his army, doing his bidding, serving him, but he detests them. His heart is malignant, perverse, evil, full of enmity, hatred. He used, for example, Nero, but he hated Nero the whole time. He used Hitler, but he hated Hitler the whole time. The wicked may well be a friend of the world, but they are not a friend of the devil, because the devil has no friends, only fallen angels or fallen men whom he uses to do his own bidding. Whether it's fallen angels or fallen men, they're not his friends. They're just his instruments to accomplish his purposes. He's friendless, and he's ruthless. You can't imagine a more hateful, malignant being than Satan. But Satan is especially the adversary of all those who have rebelled against him and chosen Christ to be their king. They've joined the other side. And The other side is in this world, because this is the goal of their captain now, their king now, the other side is in this world to destroy the works of the devil. To advance the kingdom of God that is against his kingdom, to deliver as many as possible from Satan's captive chains. So they're especially a target. an object of his wrath. That's why he is especially their adversary, and will do anything he can, therefore, to try to get them to abandon Jesus Christ, to try to get them to give up. And if he can't do that, he will seek to make them as miserable as he can in this life, because he knows he will have no opportunity to do that in the next life. This is it. It's right here and now. once they get to heaven, it's over. So make them as miserable as he can, as unhappy as they can, discouraged and defeated as he can. Peter uses three terms to enlighten us about this ancient enemy of God's people. Your adversary, Two, the devil. Three, a roaring lion. What does that teach us about this enemy of the church? the first place, you're going to see that he is a slanderous enemy. Slanderous. That word adversary is a legal term, and it brings us into a court of law. The word speaks of an opponent in a lawsuit who brings accusations. He's the accuser of the one, and that's who the devil is. The word devil means false accuser, slanderer, In Revelation 12, he's called the accuser of the brethren. There's an interesting translation of this word in Titus chapter two, verse three. Paul tells Titus that the older women in the church were to conduct themselves in such a way that becometh godliness and not to be false accusers. The word there is devils. Diaboloi. False accusations are diabolical. So bound up with this word devil is the idea of spreading malicious gossip or spreading false accusations. put those two ideas together, your adversary, the devil, and you discover the devil seeks to oppose God's people, seeks to try to get them to abandon the faith, to walk away from Christ, or to make them as miserable as they can by bringing accusations against them—legal accusations, which means it's in the law courts of God that he's doing this. So picture this enemy that we have to face. just that these persecuted believers had to face in Peter's day, but that you and I have to face. He tempts us to sin and go against the law of the Lord, and immediately he brings all of these accusations against us for those very sins that he has tempted us to commit. The real power in his slander is lies not so much in the fact that we have sinned. We can acknowledge the sin, and we do, but it's the conclusions he seeks to implant in our minds where he does his most damage—the conclusions he wants us to draw from the fact that we sin. He loves to find fault with God's people. You can know one thing for sure, that if you or someone loves to find fault with people, you're devil-like. That's what he does. He loves to find fault. He looks for them. He appeared before God one day and accused Job of being a hypocrite and of serving God for the good life that God had given to Job. There he was in his role of accuser. In Zechariah 3, you find in one of the prophet's visions that Joshua, the high priest, is standing before the Lord, and guess who's at his right hand? Here's what Zechariah says, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. You see, the devil was right there before God, accusing Joshua of his many sins and corruptions. How do you think that made Joshua feel? He's the high priest. He does the same with you and me. If he's not accusing us to God, like he did with Peter—you know, that one that says that they're just chaff, they're not the real thing—they're hypocrites, they're counterfeit! Deal with them! He's not doing that. He's certainly whispering accusations in our ears. He knows what we've done. And I say he, and the devil is not ubiquitous. He's not, can't be in all places at the same time, but he has a whole host of angels who pretty much make him ubiquitous. They know what we do. They know how we fail. He knows the temptations that He puts into our minds, and when we succumb to the temptations He puts into our minds, He knows that. And in that courtroom, he argues that, based upon these corruptions and all these failures, that God is against us, and he is not going to bless us, he's not going to accept us, and that we're not his at all. As a matter of fact, if we would happen to come across Romans chapter 8 during this time period, and we read what Paul wrote, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Am I one of those? Because those who have the Spirit of Christ walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. But it seems like I'm walking after the flesh. Does that mean I don't have the Spirit of Christ? And does that mean that I'm none of His? That's how it works. He's the great accuser, the slanderer of God's people. Secondly, we gather from these titles given to him that he is a very subtle enemy. He likens him to a lion, a lion hunting prey. Few animals, you know, in God's creation exercise stealth in finding, surprising, and attacking their prey than the lion. Few animals. Stealth. Stealth mode until the time for the attack. Satan was very cunning when he came to Eve with his lies about God, about his word, and about her and Adam. It wasn't as a lion then, it was as a serpent, but the whole emphasis upon the subtlety of it all, his subtlety. The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field. Paul told the Corinthians that the devil beguiled Eve through his subtlety. So he's a master at deception. That's why Peter speaks in Ephesians of the wiles of the devil. I don't believe for one moment the devil has this ability to read our minds and hearts, because that really is the prerogative of God alone. What did he say? I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins. That's my domain. Yet he carefully observes our behavior. He listens. He watches for our weak spots. And then he custom fits a trap for us. He knows where we're likely to fall. He does know which buttons to push. Your buttons are not my buttons, and mine are not yours. But He knows them. It's always the same allurements to sin, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life. It's always the same. But He comes at us with the same temptations in a thousand different ways. And after stalking us, not even aware of what he's doing, just setting it up step by step, little by little, setting the whole thing up, stalking us like a lion, he stays out of sight as much as possible until the attack. The Lord tells us we have to be aware of his subtleties. Paul was able to say that he was not ignorant of the devil's devices. I don't know that we could say that. I just don't know. What makes him all the more dangerous is that he is a sleepless enemy. He walketh about seeking whom he may devour. All those words are in present tense. He's constantly walking about and constantly seeking for prey. I go back to Job chapter 1, where we read that the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down the net. What in the world do you think he was doing as he was going to and fro and walking up and down? Seeking whom he may devour. You remember that text I mentioned a moment ago, Revelation 12, the accuser of the brethren, who accuses them day and night. So we see that he never tires, unlike us. He never tires, he never sleeps. He's always on the lookout to pounce, to trap. attempt. So when we think that we are safe from his reach, his snares, his temptations, that he has left us alone for a season, he's already deceived us, he's not going to bother us again, we're above that, it's folly. But we act like that at times. I mean, you and I are going to behave differently if we think there's someone crouching out the door, and when they're not. We're just gonna think differently. We're gonna behave differently. He returns again and again and again. You think because you resisted him one time and he fled, that he's not gonna come back? After tempting the Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness, we read that the devil departed from him. for a season. That means he kept coming back to him to tempt him. We don't have the record of it, but he kept coming back again and again to tempt the Lord. He's also a very strong enemy. Solomon said, did he not, that the lion is the strongest among beasts. There really is no animal in God's kingdom that has as much muscular power as the lion for its size. Satan stood before his fall as the highest of the archangels. He belonged to a class that were obviously superior in strength. And while he fell morally, There is no reason to conclude that he lost his physical strength. And the maniac of Gadara, who was possessed of a legion of demonic spirits, proved the point. They could bind him with the best chains they could, but he just broke them like they were nothing. The Gospel writer in that parable likens him to the strong man, and Luther put it well, his wrath and power are great, and armed with cruel aid, on earth is not his equal. So, you know, I really don't have a whole lot of time for these charismatic preachers who want to try to paint the devil—their power over the devil in sometimes a very comical way. They don't have any idea what they're talking about. We have no idea the kind of power he has. I'll tell you one thing the devil's doing when he hears those clowns, he's laughing up his sleeve. They're clowns. It's a show. They have no clue as to what they're talking about. Michael, the archangel, when disputing over the body of Moses, he said, the Lord rebuke thee. He didn't say, I rebuke thee in the name of, no, the Lord rebuke thee. If we're going to deal with this lawlessness that's abounding, so that our love and our devotion does not grow cold and that we are not duped and we are not deceived. We need to realize that we are up against a very, very powerful enemy, and we'd better plan accordingly. You see, human strength, human sagacity is not going to do here. It's going to take divine strength. It's going to take heavenly armor if we're going to be able to stand. And having done all to stand, that's what it's all about, that we can stand in the evil day It seems to me to be fitting that Peter, Peter is the one who is cautioning these people about the devil's power. Because Peter was the one who in his folly did not take into account what Jesus said to him, Peter, Peter, Satan hath desired thee to sift thee as wheat. That was a warning. Peter, I'll die with you. And you know what happened. What about the design? That's the description. Let's move on to the design of the enemy. What is the aim of the devil? Well, seeking whom he may devour or swallow up. It's in black and white. What the devil wants to do is to destroy. He wants to destroy, of course, the souls of all men in eternity. He wants to bring as many as he can down to hell with him, but he also wants to wreck and ruin the people of God as much as he can. He doesn't want to see a happy Christian. He doesn't want to see a victorious Christian. He doesn't want to see a Christian living by faith, not walking by sight. He wants to see the very opposite of what the Scripture says. Here's what Christians are, and here's how they are to live. His mindset is the very opposite. Well, that's what God wants, that's what I don't want, and I'm going to work against it. God wants them to be full of faith. I want them to be full of unbelief. He wants them to be full of joy, which is their strength. I want them to be full of misery. He wants them to be useful. I want them to be useless. He wants them to be an asset to the work. I want them to be a liability to the work of God. He'll never rest content unless he's seeing the Lord's people overwhelmed. and living in contradiction to their profession of faith. What's he looking to destroy? Well, one thing I know that would head his list is our hope. Our hope. Our faith in God. particularly our faith in God's Word. The attack upon Eve was in that very department. Hath God said? He seeks to instill doubts in our minds about what the Lord has declared to be true in His Word. He has no compunction at all about calling God a liar. telling you that this is not true at all. Because that's what it comes down to when you're brought to a place through this temptation where you are putting a question mark over what God has said verily, verily, verily, verily, truly, truly. He's gotten you to question the truthfulness of Jehovah, and he relishes that. You take away your hope, Since we live by faith, you take away your hope, then you don't, you just exist in this world. You go in from one day to the next, and you're just getting by. He doesn't want you hoping in the cross. Doesn't want you hoping in the atonement. Doesn't want you hoping, leaning upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He seeks to destroy our helps. And by that, I'm referring to those means of grace the Lord has given to us to help us along the way in this battle we have with the devil. He will work continuously to keep you from your knees. He is the greatest distractor that I know of. Just distract you. Fill your hands and your day with things that need to be done, but He will convince you they need to be done first, before you ever pray. And that's what you'll do. And you won't pray. You'll say, tomorrow it'll be different. But tomorrow comes, and the same things fill your hands and your head. You find yourself getting easier and easier not to pray. The longer you are not praying, the easier it gets not to pray. The longer you go on neglecting the Lord's Word, the easier it gets to neglect His Word. You can just lay it aside. And some actually believe that you are getting by He wants to destroy our homes, the Christian home he despises. He doesn't want a godly marriage. He wants an ungodly marriage. He doesn't want peace. He wants warfare. He doesn't want a husband and a wife working together in the Lord's cause. He wants them working against the Lord's cause. He will introduce anything he has to introduce into the home in order to destroy it, in order to wreck and ruin any godly atmosphere, any spiritual atmosphere, where it is nothing but rank carnality. And I have to say he has done a masterful job in that category. When the salt is lost, its savour, it's useless. Christian homes, salt of the earth. He also seeks to destroy our heart, and by that I mean our love for the Lord. He comes with the temptation to get us to set our affection on things on the earth and not on things above. And if that was not a very real possibility, there would be no reason for Paul to write that to the church at Colossae. Set your affection, fix your affection on things above. The word affection actually means mind. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. Jesus had to tell his disciples to don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where rust and moth doth corrupt and thieves do break it and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Why do we have to do that? Because we have the tendency, do we not, to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth. And they become so important to us. seeks to destroy our humility. He knows the power of pride. It's been the ruination of much usefulness in many a child of God—pride. The self-importance, the self-centeredness, the unwillingness to take the position of a humble servant and do whatever the Lord would want him to do is It's pride that's held back. Pride. It casts Satan down from heaven, and it has cast down many, many an eminent believer from a place of usefulness in the church. If he's not beating us down with how awful we are, he is puffing us up with how great we are. He also seeks to destroy the harmony in the church. He knows that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Christ said that's—the devil knows that. And the devil would continually—continually looking to bring disunity Anywhere, anywhere there is the unity of the Spirit, anywhere the truth is declared and believed and followed, He wants to bring about disunity. Breakdown in relationships. Why do you think He's doing that? What's He after? Reckon to ruin. Of course, you understand he wants to destroy your happiness. He is the master of misery, and he loves the company of misery. You understand his happiness is nothing but hellish misery. You talk about a miserable creation, Satan is the most miserable creature in the universe. He loves, therefore, to dwell in the midst of misery. He will go about Using the sin, the accusations, the broken relationships, the heart growing cold, take away all the helps, ruin your hope. What's he after? Just wants to make you so miserable. Live in fear, downcast, discouraged. What's there to hope for? There aren't better days coming. It's all bleak and barren. You can know there's a devil behind it. He also wants to destroy our harvest. We're here in this world to give light. And the purpose of giving light is to lighten the darkness of those who sit in darkness. He wants you to keep that light under a bushel. Doesn't want you saying one word to any lost soul. Not one word of testimony, don't give them one tract, don't send them one CD, don't give them one invitation to come to the house of God, anything to kill the harvest. Because you see the harvest, means that he's losing his subjects. And as Bunyan put it in Pilgrim's Progress, Apollyon said, I do not lightly lose my subjects. That's his design. It's destruction. Now the defense. against it all. How do we defend ourselves against this? How do we deal with this powerful enemy? Well, Peter tells us, does he not? Whom resist—first off, verse 9—whom resist—it means set yourself against—oppose him, hold your ground. But how do you do that? Well, he says, be sober. You don't take that to heart, being sober, that's gonna be very hard to oppose the devil, to withstand his attacks. That word speaks of self-control. It means temperate, giving no place to the devil, not allowing him an entrance through these areas that—self-indulgence, no place to him. It could be as simply as making an inordinate use of something that is fine in itself. When they're overindulged, they tend to take over, and they have this tendency to create a habit within us, and we have to have the thing, and the devil just launches. The more we feed, the more you and I feed upon the things of this world, the weaker we're going to become and the stronger that flesh is going to become. It's a bottom line principle. I've said it before and I'll keep on saying it. You know it from experience, the more you feed. And say, what's the food then? Well, if the food deifies the world, if the food makes the world something so wonderful to be wanted and followed after, you'll know it's not of the Lord, it's feeding the flesh. I've never in all my years had my spirit edified and built up, encouraged and strengthened and blessed by watching a Hollywood movie. It's never happened. It's never ever happened. I have found it's always fed my flesh. I have found it's been an inducement to worldly thoughts. strengthening of worldly desires that are already within the soul because the old man is alive and well. Whether it's — it doesn't matter the media, it doesn't matter the source. I — you know, folks, unless we are really, really bad off, unless we have lost all discernment, we know when something is feeding our flesh. I believe that. But we often just turn a blind eye to it and say it's okay. And it's not okay. And the devil has just been mightily at work deluding us and deceiving us. The more we feed the flesh, the stronger it gets. The more you feed the new man, the stronger he gets. The stronger becomes his desire for the things of God. The more interest he has in the Word of God, the more longing he has to meet with God in prayer. He's being fed. And so why would we? It makes no sense. It's completely illogical. Apart from being sinful, it's completely illogical to feed the enemy that's within. The lawlessness is abounding. And I see the consequences. The more we feed the flesh, the less able we are to discern the devices of the devil. When you lose discernment, you lose that ability to resist him when he comes, to oppose him. He also says, be vigilant. The Greek word is very simple. Watchful. Stay awake. Don't close your eyes. Don't sleep. Remember, he's tireless. And surely that means that part of this resisting not only is defensive, but it's offensive. I'm vigilant, I'm on my guard, not only to defend, but I'm on my guard so that I can oppose him. So in other words, when the devil comes and tempts us to not pray, we actually redouble our efforts to pray. We go on the offensive. When he comes and tempts us, for example, to be stingy with our giving to God's work, then you know what? We double down and we give more than we would normally. That's opposing him. When he tempts us to worry, and to be afraid because some trial has come into our life. We count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations. That's opposing him. It's not just, Lord, help me to get through this. But I will bless the Lord through this. I will stand up and bless the Lord. When he tempts us to be prideful, we proclaim louder than ever, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord. When tempted to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, we must double down on our resolve to be in the house of God and give more undivided attention to his worship. That's what he's after. That's what he's after. I know what that's what he's after. Okay, buddy, I'm going the opposite direction. The opposite. Our thinking must be that for every temptation to sin that he comes up against us with, we must view it as a means of progressing in holiness. Every temptation he comes at us with to sin, I will look upon this as a means that I might become more holy in the very thing he wants me to sin against God in. Be sober, be vigilant, be steadfast in the faith. Steadfast, immovable, refusing to budge, stubborn. Refusing to budge from what? The faith. This is the truth of the gospel. This is Jesus. It's the faith concerning Jesus Christ. It's the faith concerning his truth, as opposed to the lie of the devil. You see, it's not enough to have believed the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. We must continue believing the truth. We must continue holding on to the truth. We must continue defending the truth. We must continue propagating the truth. That's how you resist the devil. because he keeps coming. Brothers and sisters, every attack, every temptation boils down to this. He's coming at us with a lie. He's coming at us with a lie. He's trying to get us to believe something that simply is not true, that's contradicted by the word of God. Every time he comes to attack, to tempt us to sin, to believe something, it's something that's exactly the opposite of what's in God's word. Sin's gonna make you happy. Sin's gonna satisfy you. Sin's gonna gratify you. Every time he comes with a lie. And the way you resist the lie is the truth. Steadfast in the truth. That's the ancient enemy. And this is the old way of fighting him. May God write his Word on our hearts for his namesake. Let's bow our heads in prayer and seek the Lord. Father in heaven, we know we're in a battle. We have certainly felt at times, it seems like, the breath of Satan down our necks—temptations, allurements, believing the lies that he's been throwing out for years, millennia. And today we stand before thee as a people confessing that in ourselves we have no strength. On earth is not his equal. Should we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing. We're not the right man on our side—a man of God's own choosing. We thank you that Jesus Christ is on our side, and we are on his side. And today we pray, Lord, that what we have heard from thy truth will embolden us, that will instruct us on what we need to deal with anything and everything that would feed the flesh. Lord, give us the grace to put it to death, to take the sword of thy truth and to hack it into pieces. For, Lord, we know that We know what happens if we don't. We become foolish, undiscerning, unbelieving. Save us from that, we pray. And may this day be a day of victory for us all. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, in his name we pray. Amen.