Address—Rob House
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While we wait for the rest of the people to arrive, if there are anybody.
Else it's coming. Let's sing together 149.
Lord Jesus, we remember the travail of thy soul, when through thy Love's deep pity, the waves did o'er thee roll.
And then in the last verse, from sin, the world, and Satan, we are ransomed by thy blood.
And here would walk as strangers alive with thee to God.
Somebody could start that place.
For help from our Lord Jesus.
Lord Jesus, I come to Thee tonight and I seek help from myself.
And pray for help by thy Spirit to be able to express.
The thoughts I have on my mind.
And I pray that there will be a blessing to everybody who is listening, from the young to the old, and that it will be useful to them in their Christian lives. Lord Jesus, if there is somebody listening tonight.
Who hasn't accepted thee as their Lord and Savior that they would do so because?
They're outside of what we're going to talk about tonight. Lord Jesus, we just ask for Thy blessing, for Thy help, power, and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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The verse I have up on the screen is lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his his devices.
Devices is an interesting word. It's a, it's the way he thinks, it's his schemes, it's his plotting. And I was thinking about that a while back and.
I realized they couldn't really identify what his schemes are, what his plots were, what his strategies were, and spent some time thinking about it and.
Tonight you might get to hear a little bit about that, but.
To give you some background.
A few years back, when I was a little bit younger, some of you might know my nephew Kevin. Kevin House.
We were after a hockey game in the winter time in Ottawa and for whatever reason I decided I was going to teach him how how you would take a person like Kevin and flip him over your back and land him in the snow.
Now, Kevin's a pretty strong lad, but I'm bigger than he is. I figured it wouldn't be too much problem.
And I told him what was going to happen and I proceeded to demonstrate. And as I started the twist to put him over my back, he stepped in front of me and gave a yank and I landed in the snow and he was standing there looking at me. And I said hey. He said, well, I didn't want to land in the snow.
Well, part of the reason why I wanted to talk about not being ignorant of Satan's devices.
Is that we're in a conflict and we'll be talking about that tonight and having 1/2 an idea of what he's up to and what he's doing. I think it's useful. And some of the things I'm going to talk about I have found personally very useful in my own life in trying to live a successful life as a Christian, as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the first thing.
That I want to talk about the word Satan, just who he is. Let's turn to John chapter 8.
And verse 44 Satan is the name of the devil.
John 844 The Lord Jesus tells us about the devil.
Indirectly.
Ye are of your father, the devil, the lusts of your father ye will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.
Our brother Stephen Ruhl mentioned something about the devil. So the devil has two weapons. Anybody remember what those two weapons were?
Thank you.
And they're in this verse violence.
He was a murderer and corruption.
He is a liar and the father of it, so remember that that's fundamentally true about the devil's nature.
Who he is, you know how God is like, and God is love.
Well, Satan is liar and Satan is murderer, and that's violence and corruption.
So.
This is the.
Situation that we're in, this is the enemy of our souls. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter 6.
And we'll read verse 12 and you'll see why my story about Kevin was appropriate.
Ephesians 6, verse 12.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.
Against spiritual wickedness in high places. And the keyword that I wanted to pay attention to here is wrestle.
I know there are some of you in this room that know how to wrestle. I know there's one of you at least that said when he was much younger is exceedingly good wrestler and.
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I never chose to get into a wrestling match with him because I figured it would be extremely humiliating.
But if you look at what comes in, the rest of this chapter talks about the whole armor of God.
And there's a kind of fighting, I think it's mixed martial arts.
And that's.
You know, interesting. There's another kind of fighting called boxing.
And boxing used to be really violent and so.
Lord Queensberry, I believe, put some rules in place to make it civilized. But more recently people have decided that the old kind of boxing was better and they improved it and they call it mixed martial arts. So it's a very, very violent contest, very, very violent wrestling, probably like what the Apostle Paul knew about.
Maybe even a little bit worse, Not sure.
But.
I have a question for you. Even in mixed martial arts.
If you've ever watched any of that.
Have you ever seen anybody arrive at mixed martial arts with a helmet on?
A sword breastplate shield.
Armed with a sword, ready to wrestle. That's what we're called on in Ephesians chapter 6.
So what kind of war are we in? If you think mixed martial arts UFC is violent and it is, and brutal and that they come very close to killing each other, it is.
But.
What we're in, in this spiritual warfare, this struggle with Satan, is far more severe and far more extreme and has far longer consequences than anything, any fighting that ever happened in Greek in the Olympics back in 400.
BC any other fighting that's gone on like that?
This is very strong, very powerful, and when you're wrestling, if you have an idea of what the other person's strategy is and approach.
Then you have a better chance in the fight with them. So I've described Satan a little bit, and now I want to talk a little bit about ourselves, because it takes two to be in a struggle. And when we go through this, I hope we'll have time to learn that there's actually more than two in this struggle that we're in. And.
Let's look at Romans Chapter 7.
And right now I have to take a little stop before I start in Romans Chapter 7.
And I got to explain to you.
That what we're starting on really only applies to people who believe that Jesus Christ.
Died for their sins and that God raised them from the dead according to the scriptures.
Because.
I'm going to be talking a little bit about this conflict. So you may say and you may realize I don't really have too much of a conflict.
And that may be because you don't know Jesus Christ as your own personal Lord and Savior.
And you don't have what we're going to be talking about. So Romans Chapter 7, verse 17.
Actually, to make it more understandable, start at verse 16. If then I do that, which I would not.
I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
This is talking about somebody that actually has a struggle because they know something good to do and they want to do it, but they don't.
They do the wrong thing, they do the bad thing, all right.
Now, if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you probably don't even have any incentive to do.
The right thing you just want to do the bad thing if you don't have any life at all.
I mean, yes, you have natural life, you're breathing, air is going in and out. You ate your supper, your heart's beating. But before God, no life, no reaction, nothing.
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All right, so you can listen and you can find out what your saved brother or your saved sister has so your saved parents have inside them. You're very welcome to listen because it can be yours simply by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. But be assured that the wages of sin is death.
And that after death is the judgment, and that God has created.
A lake of fire for those who.
Don't know the Lord Jesus as their savior? So it's important that you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
And so the problem is in verse 17, it says sin dwelleth in me. And that's one of the first things I'm going to talk about is sin. Not sins as in the bad things I do, but sin as in I was born in sin and shape and iniquity. In other words, I have something unique that when there's an opportunity to do something.
That I want to do if it's contrary to what God wants, contrary to what my parents want.
Contrary to what the teachers at school want. Guess what?
I want to do it.
May not be everything, but there will be certain things that that sin in you wants to do.
Just wants to do it.
Now, what this person discovered is that when he wanted to do something good.
Couldn't do it. So now we're going to turn to chapter 6 and verse 11.
And this is for Christians, because if you're not a Christian, you can't do this.
Chapter 6, verse 11 Says likewise. Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin.
But alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This, of all things tonight, to listen to and hear and understand this is probably the thing that's been most useful to me as a Christian to get an understanding of what this means. So.
In January of this year my father died and he went to be with the Lord.
And some of the people in this room came and they visited at the wake where my father's body was and.
No, these are smarties, right?
And.
They make a nice noise if I took these if my father's body was lying here.
And I took them over top of my father's head.
What do you think he'd do?
Anybody know what he do? Nothing.
That's right, he'd do nothing. And if I say Dad, you want some smarties, what would he say?
Nothing. Nothing, right?
When you get up out of the casket and go get the Smarties. If I put them down when I wasn't looking, No. Why not? Because he's dead.
It says you reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.
Now let's put it this way.
Inside me, from the time I was born, there's this thing called sin.
And now I'm expected to consider myself dead to this sin.
What did my father do if he's dead and I offered him smarties?
Nothing. So when sin offers me an opportunity to do something bad.
Steal a cookie.
How do I respond?
Nothing.
Don't answer, don't agree, Nothing.
But you know, Sin is very much alive, and he jumps up and down and he screams for attention and I know that.
Because even this morning, sin in me was telling me what a great job I was going to do.
Talking tonight.
And you know, I could have spent a long time arguing with myself. That was inappropriate thing to be thinking.
Confessing it to the Lord and trying to make it go away and sin would have been quite happy to have that argument with me.
And I did one round and then I realized this is wrong.
I'm going to be talking tonight about not responding to sin, so I better not do it.
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Just ignore it. Sin came back with another tab, he said. Well, OK, if you're not going to be great, then you're going to be a total failure.
But I figured out what was going on and I decided to just play dead. No response. And thank the Lord you only tried again once in the afternoon on that front. I'm sure he's tried other things throughout the day, but that was the one I went through today that I had to experience and I hope it helps for me to say that now.
Let's turn over to.
One Corinthians, chapter 5.
Sorry, Two Corinthians 5.
And verse 17 There's something else in me other than just sin.
And this is where I'm talking about.
What Christians have that if you're not saved, you don't have?
Says therefore first Second Corinthians 5 verse 17. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
New creation.
God, when you accept Jesus as your own personal Lord and Savior.
Puts a new life inside you.
All right, And if you're listening this morning, you heard somebody talk about psychology and psychology doesn't know what to do with anything other than a sin nature.
So we have this nature in here that is from God. It's the life of Christ inside us.
And that is an incredible thing that we have. Now let's turn to Galatians 2.
And verse 20. Can somebody quote me the last part of the verse?
The Son of God who?
Right loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 220. But the part I want to talk about is the first part.
You got to pay close attention to what this verse says. Listen to all the eyes in it.
I am crucified.
With Christ.
If you're crucified, what happened to you?
What happened to the Lord Jesus Christ when he was crucified? Was he dead?
Right, he was dead.
But you know what the next words say. Nevertheless, I live.
How can you be dead and alive?
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me now. That's what I was talking about.
And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. So inside us I have this in nature.
I have the life of Christ. There's a part of Maine that makes decisions, and that's what this verse is talking about.
That part's job is to respond to the Lord Jesus Christ and say yes.
And to totally ignore sin, all right.
So let's turn over.
To First John chapter 4.
First John chapter 4 and verse 4.
Year of God little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
If you're not a believer, this is something else you don't have.
When you know Christ died for your sins.
That you have that new life inside you. That you're seated in Christ.
God sends his Holy Spirit.
Right down to live inside you, your body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit of God.
That's an incredible thing. So I'm a pretty full person. I got sin in me. That old thing that came for free when I was born and doesn't do anything good at all. I got the life of Christ in me. I've got the Holy Spirit of God in me, and I've got that decision maker in me.
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So if I can put it this way, those are kind of the teams. They're Satan in all his.
Demons trying to do his work.
And then in me there's sin.
And there's the Lord Jesus got his life inside me. I've got the Holy Spirit inside me.
Those are kind of the two teams, if I can put it that way.
So the next verse I'd like to turn back to is Romans chapter 8.
And verse one.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.
And skip to verse 2 for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus have made me free from the law of sin and death.
So that Spirit of God inside me means that there's no condemnation.
I am free to live in Christ.
And that's what the key is to this wrestling.
To understanding that that when sin makes a suggestion, I can totally ignore it.
And say I am dead to it. And yes, Sin is screaming and yelling that I ought to do something that's really, really bad.
And we may touch on some of those things later if we have time.
But.
I can say no, I am living in Christ, I am a new creature and I don't want any of that. And my right response is I am dead to anything sin suggests.
Suggest all at once. I'm ignoring it. What's the response of a dead person? Do nothing?
Don't even say hi. No response.
All right.
Let's.
Set the stage here.
Let's turn to 1St John Chapter 2.
Because the devil has a system that he uses.
It's referred to in one of the questions earlier this week.
About the world.
First John chapter 2 and verse 16.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Is not of the Father, but is of the world. So remember those three things.
The loss of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
We've had the devil's weapons, violence and corruption, 2 weapons, and now he has this system, this machine, if I can put it this way, that he's using.
And it's got three parts to it, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
All right.
Now one last thing just before we go on and talk about that a little bit more, James chapter one, verse 17.
Every good and every perfect gift.
Cometh down is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Where do good gifts come from? They come from God.
Don't try and take them early. Don't try and get them from the devil.
Because what's the devil?
A liar.
He never delivers on his promises. So let's take a few minutes and let's think about some of these cases, OK?
Sometimes you go on, and I had the opportunity this week to see some highlights out of mixed martial arts.
Fascinating struggles. What I want to do is go to.
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Some Old Testament stories and look at some of those spiritual battles that happened and some New Testament.
But because I don't have a lot of time left, I'm just going to tell you the stories. I think you know them. If you don't know them, you can look them up on your own after first one is Adam and Eve. Anybody not know the story of Adam and Eve? OK.
They're in the garden. Eve is walking through the garden. One day there's a snake and the snake says.
Hey.
Has God said he shall not eat of any of the trees?
That was Satan.
What was he doing? OK, so now we're talking about what he's doing.
Taking the truth and he twisted it.
Because what had God said? You remember what God said? Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's what God said. That's what he told Adam. Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So Satan puts out this God said don't eat of any of the trees.
And Eve said well.
Not quite, she said.
Don't eat.
Of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, and don't touch it.
You remember what Stephen rule, brother Steven said.
The other night about the devil. Don't play chess with the devil.
Because he's brilliant. And what's one of his weapons?
Corruption. He's a liar.
What he does now is he takes that little bit of word and justice. Picture this. OK Eve, you just said that if you touch that fruit, God said don't do it. Bad things are going to happen. You'll die. Well, Eve didn't know what dying meant.
Never seen it in her life before.
And all she had to do was go over and touch that fruit. And you know what she just proved?
That God didn't mean what he said, right? Because she didn't die, Because she just touched the fruit and she didn't die. Is that what happened? I don't know for sure.
But she had to touch the fruit in order to take a bite.
And when the devil proved that what he was saying was true, that she could touch it and not die, nothing happened. Nothing changed.
You see, he was right.
But she had added just a little bit to what God said, and the devil very, very, very quickly used it to prove that God was wrong.
Was God wrong? No, because as soon as Eve took that bite, crunch.
Too late. And then Adam came along and he, on purpose, ate more just like her.
And that's why you and I all have a sin nature because of that.
You think about it and what it says there.
I'll just take it so I get it. I'll just quickly look in Genesis chapter 3.
So I get it exactly right what was put in front of Eve.
Eve looked at it.
And she saw it was good for food, the lust of the flesh.
Pleasant to the eyes, the lust of the eyes, and a treated desired to make one wise the pride of life.
There's his system and he's trying out the prototype on Eve, and it worked perfectly. And when Adam and Eve sinned like that, they just lost the first major battle, spiritual battle. They gave over the whole of the Garden, the control of the earth, all their future happiness.
And their life.
Forfeited it, lost it all for what?
A little bit of disobedience, trying to get something that Satan had suggested God was holding back.
See all the lies Satan told.
In just a few short sentences. He is incredibly deceitful, wasn't he? So think about that.
There you have how Satan was working.
He very carefully changed some of God's words.
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He worked on Eve, added to them, used it to demonstrate how God was wrong, and then sucked her in. He didn't tell Eve any of the fine print, that she'd get kicked out of the garden, that her kids would be miserable, that one of them would murder the other one, that the whole rest of human history would be absolute disaster. Wars, Rumors of wars.
Disease, hunger, brutality, all that.
Did he say anything about that? Not a single thing, right? Remember that? That's how the devil works.
He shows you the pretty face.
And doesn't show you any of the problems.
It's not fair, is it?
And remember that he's a liar. He's after violence. He's after corruption.
That's what his nature is and he surely doesn't fight fair. How old do you think he has to be before he starts picking on little kids?
First chance he gets, he's going to start picking on little kids. Now let's take another example in the Gospel of Luke.
This is another battle.
Luke chapter 4, You know this story. Jesus went into the wilderness and he spent 40 days in the wilderness. He was fasting.
40 days. I have managed to fast for four hours. I know other brothers in this room have lasted much much longer than I have.
I have 4 hours. I was very ready to eat 40 days. I can't imagine how hungry you'd be. The devil showed up and he said to Jesus, see those stones? If you're the Son of God, turn them the bread, you know that's the lust of the flesh.
If you could have bread just like that, would you do it? And you're starving, hungry.
But if the price for the Lord Jesus was to go against his Father's will, the answer was no. But he responded with the Word of God.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
So this is another thing with the devil. OK, He never quits.
He lost the first round. He doesn't quit.
So what's he do? He takes the Lord Jesus up on top of a high mountain and he puts on a display form like none of us has ever seen.
He showed him everything there was to see in the whole Roman Empire, showed him everything in Greek. Anybody ever been in Greece, looked at all the old runes, fantastic things they were doing, looked at Nebuchadnezzar's hanging gardens, gone to India, seen all the things they have there, seen China. Well, in a moment of time, the devil showed the Lord Jesus all of that. And he says, you know Jesus.
All that can be yours.
If you fall down and worship me.
What did the Lord Jesus say?
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God.
And him only shalt thou serve. You know, you think about that. That was things to see.
First the lust of the flesh, now he's tried the lust of the eyes.
Did it work with Jesus? No. How did Jesus respond with the word of God?
And then, like I said, the devil doesn't quit too easy. And then he took him to the top of the temple.
And he said, If you're the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee.
And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou shalt dash thy foot against the stone.
You know, you just think of how famous Jesus would have been if he jumped off the highest point on the.
Temple and as he came shooting to the ground just went smooth landing because the angels caught him.
He could have been the news of Jerusalem.
What did the Lord Jesus say? Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Now think about what the devil was doing there.
He was quoting from Psalm 91 on your own. You can go look it up.
It's another one of the devil's favorite tricks. Take just part of the scripture and quote it out of context.
The part where he stopped is fascinating.
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Because he's talking about where the Lord Jesus is going to trample the devil right into the ground. No wonder he stopped there, right?
Like we had this morning. The story of prophecy, the end of it is.
In two words, Jesus wins. I like that this morning well.
Let's take a look at another bow from the Old Testament Joseph.
He had a hard life.
We're praying for the family that their son's been kidnapped. It's absolutely tragic. And that in itself is got to be a satanic Attack Attack. Those people have got to need tremendous amount of spiritual prayer for what they're going through. Just to think of what the devil's feeding to their sin nature and trying to get them to respond to what an incredible challenge that they're facing. But.
Joseph was kidnapped and sold by his own brothers.
Goes to Potiphar's house, starts to do better and Potiphar's wife.
Decides that she wants him for her own man. And what does Joseph do?
He takes advantage of something that God's promised us, that when there's going to be a temptation.
That he'll provide a way of escape. You can look it up.
God will provide a way of escape.
So Joseph left his coat and he fled. He ran. And you know what? He ended up in jail. But that's a spiritual victory.
Yes, he ended up in jail.
But God made sure he ended up ruling right under Pharaoh, the whole land of Egypt.
So if you want to think about that one as a contest, the spiritual wrestling match, by fleeing, Joseph managed to win. But what was it that was put in front of him? Everything that's put in front of so much of us, You know, that idea of a woman presented to a man.
Lost whatever it might be. What was Josephs reaction? He fled. There's the lust of the eyes. Now let's take another man from the Old Testament, David.
Very similar situation, but David was not a captive. He was not forced to work in the situation he was in. He was the king. And David created opportunity for himself by staying home instead of going out to war, made himself a little bit idle. And there's some lessons that we can learn about that too, that we can create opportunities for the sin to get out of control.
David went up for a walk on the roof. Cool. The night happened to see a lady having a bath.
Now he had a way of escape right there. He could have turned his eyes away, gone back downstairs. He didn't. David decided to watch the show. And.
Then it got worse.
And.
He had her brought right into his house and he got her pregnant.
That was a major spiritual loss for King David.
You think that's bad? You know the rest of the story. He had her husband murdered.
No.
Who won those that round? Corruption.
Committing adultery, murder, violence.
Who is David responding to? Satan, right?
He lost. So what was David not doing, not taking the way of escape?
Not confessing his sins and what Satan was doing was just taking circumstances and putting them there.
And David responded to them.
Now let's think about another one. David, later on in his reign, was busy running his Kingdom and.
Satan provoked him.
To count the people.
That one, to me, is fascinating.
To me, it's related to not just the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, but this one is sort of like the pride of life.
I don't exactly know how Satan did it, but it's fascinating because I'm sure David didn't have a conversation with the devil and the devil said to him, please count the people. I want you to. Because if the devil showed up like that, David would have probably figured out, you know, this is probably not a good idea. But somehow the devil planted the idea and I don't know what it might be.
00:45:07
But one thing I do want to point out from this is that not every thought that comes into your mind is you're responsible for the devil can use sin in circumstances to make suggestions to you.
And as a Christian, you don't have to accept them.
How do you respond to sin?
Playing dead. Consider yourself dead to sin while David didn't, he responded.
So David lost another one.
Let's another battle that David lost a spiritual loss.
Well, another one that's close to home is Job.
And it's relevant to us with what's happening in Mexico with this boy that was kidnapped because job one morning had a messenger come.
Messenger said all your cattle have been stolen.
All your another one came said all your camels had been stolen.
And then the last one came and said the house that your kids were in collapsed and they're all dead.
Tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.
Think about it if your job how you respond.
I know what would be coming up by my sin nature would be saying I'd be pretty mad at God for letting all that happen in one day.
My responsibility is to react like a dead man to that. And how did Job respond?
The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's an incredible spiritual victory. You know the patience of Job.
God responded and rewarded Job with.
More than he ever had before and replaced his children.
And I think that gives them a double count of children because I'm sure with a father like Job, his children would probably be in heaven.
When we get there, I'm hoping we see Joel.
His wife.
Twenty children.
Well, one more I want to talk to you about because we're talking about how Satan works. That last one was an example of how.
Satan can work physically in our lives to try and create circumstances to create discouragement.
And.
Cause strife and trouble in our lives.
The last one I wanted to talk about from an Old Testament examples was Daniel.
Daniel started praying one day.
He prayed for 21 days. That's three weeks.
In three weeks.
Messenger came from God and told me your prayer has been heard and the reason I couldn't get to you is because the king of.
Persia has been getting in the way. King of Persia is a demon.
He was hindering that Angel from getting there. And what I'm saying is that the reason why we need the armor of God is because that fight is incredibly brutal and incredibly strong and incredibly real, even though we can't see it. You can't go watch those spiritual fights.
On YouTube they are absolutely real and of more consequence than anything you can watch.
On YouTube.
So.
Daniel persevered in prayer, he got his answer and I think as we look at these, we see how Satan's worked.
And we can see some of the techniques he uses, how he uses violence and corruption, and he works through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
Now think about it for yourselves. You know, I got introduced to *********** when I was in grade 2.
By one of the other kids in my class.
Just the initial idea of it. Was it fair to pick on a 7 year old kid and start putting those ideas into my head?
No, but my sin nature was responding to him. I wasn't even saved then.
00:50:02
And it scarred me.
It caused problems. Didn't I know when I was getting those ideas fed into my head?
What I was going to be in for?
No, I didn't. Does the devil played fair? No. But he's in the corruption, he's in the lying.
He's in the violence.
That's what he's trying to do. So you think about it, *********** where does it lead?
You know how David went from one sin to another sin to another sin? This is why we got to say.
Consider yourself dead to sin, and when sin makes a suggestion, ignore it completely.
If you're like me when I was seven and you don't even have a new life, you can't ignore it because it's all you've got.
But if your faith and trust is in Jesus Christ, you have the life of Christ, you have the Holy Spirit, you can ignore it. And I speak to Christians, that's the path of blessing. You can honestly just totally ignore sin. That's the suggestion.
Not for me. So what comes after ***********? Sex outside of marriage?
Horrible thing.
Horrible, horrible, horrible thing.
Destroys any future purity and things that were our value and just.
Wipes The devil doesn't tell you that doesn't tell you you might get a sexually transmitted disease.
No, that's not part of the contract. He just lets you have that for free. Part of his corruption. And then maybe the girl gets pregnant. Most of those, a lot of those situations, the guy disappears. So what are you going to do?
You all know what the advice is of this world today. Get an abortion.
And that's the devil talking. Think about it.
What do they call a baby?
That our sister Mary had. For the last nine months she's been talking about the baby that's inside her.
But when they want to.
Have an abortion. What are they talking about? They don't talk about the baby, they talk about the fetus.
Because nobody in their right mind would kill a baby.
But a fetus? What's that?
Just take it out.
So you see the demo has taken and justice like he did to Eve twisted the words right, shuffled gods, and so he just changed the words from baby to fetus and problem goes away. But does it? No, because after the abortion you can't change the fact that it was a baby in there and that mother will end up with depression.
Potentially.
Wondering what was it, what could it have been? If there are complications from the abortion and she could never have children, she may regret that. The only child she ever had an opportunity to have. And it just goes on and on. That corruption and the violence that Satan wants to do, it just feeds, just like David's example. So the advice and the learning from that is when sin suggests something.
Play dead.
Reckon yourself dead. Don't respond even the smallest little thing, because the devil just takes a wedge and he dries it in and farther and bigger and bigger and bigger. And just like it starts with something little, it turns into something huge and it's out of control and you're in serious trouble. You can read about that. I think it's Psalm 19 at the end.
Well.
I want to talk about what the devil does with evolution. You know how?
He twisted Eve's words around. He loves to do that with evolution too.
Likes to take the record that God put in creation and explain how God can't even be there.
But he's lying.
And he says you're a fool to believe in God.
And you know, there's people in your colleges, in your high schools and your universities who have dedicated purposes to make you not believe in God.
If you know that, that's what they're there for and that's what they're up to when they start undermining your faith.
Recognize it as that's exactly what the devil is doing. Think about this, all right? You believe in God.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. OK, Now what does your scientist, pH. D from school believe if he's an evolutionist? OK, he believes that there was a Big Bang.
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He can't tell you what caused The Big Bang. He has no idea.
And what's the difference between him, between him believing in a Big Bang?
And you believe in what God said, that he spoke and it happened.
None is there.
Well.
They'll take you, they'll make you question, they'll ask the unbelieving questions, the questions like we had this morning about why did God allow evil in the 1St place? How can God be good if he loves sin?
So like we said this morning, don't go down that path where the devil is trying to take you down, where he's saying, hath God said?
Is God good?
Believe that God is good and that he rewards those that come to Him. Now let's think for a second a little bit about the way the devil works.
Some of you who are a little older may have seen beer ads.
Think hard. Have you ever seen a beer ad where the guy that's drinking the beer?
His eyes are all bloodshot.
His hair is a mess, He's filthy. Half his teeth are missing.
And he's lying on a bench with the beer spilled all over him.
No, you haven't, right?
They always they're having a party, beautiful girls are around, handsome men, everything's fantastic, everybody's happy. Go and read in Proverbs 23 what alcohol does to people. That is the devil's false advertising.
Because the scripture tells us exactly what we all know. If you follow that course and you lose control, which is what the devil is after, and he's telling you lies, you'll end up.
Seeking more and more and more and more. Totally out of control.
Spending all your family's wealth and I picked alcohol could have done the same thing with drugs. Any kind of addiction can drive you there. Well, there's a couple more. There's a dirty side of the broad path that leads to destruction and there's a clean side. And the Christians can get on The Dirty side or the clean side of that same Rd. by listening to sin and not reckoning yourself dead to it.
One of them is First Timothy chapter 6 and verse 9.
And it says.
They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and to many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
The devil tells you a lie that money brings happiness.
That success brings happiness. It's not true. Added earlier last night. I think at the same.
The only person who can satisfy your heart is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, sometimes you look around and you see the wicked prospering.
If you go and look at Psalm 73, you'll see a man that was suffering from that. How come the wicked people are doing so well?
And I'm having these problems.
Well, that man went into the sanctuary of the Lord and the presence of God, and he understood what the end was.
What the Devil's game was how the Devil was taking those wicked people straight to hell.
How he was destroying them and that set him free and it helps.
To understand where that game plan is going. One last thing that I want to share with you with respect to this, and I think it's quite a fascinating thing to think about.
We have a trump card in the contest.
We have the Lord Jesus Christ to God's right hand in heaven.
Interceding for us every single day.
It's like tag team wrestling where you can reach out and tag the Supreme Person and he's on your side. Ask him for help.
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We need to lean on each other. The Roman army, when they fought together, were far more powerful.
Than when they stood alone.
We need each other and then we have the fact that sometimes we fall.
And in a fighting match, it's over once you're pinned. But in this spiritual contest?
It doesn't end until you're dead and the Lord Jesus.
By coming to Him, confessing your sin, we have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus Christ, the righteous, He can set you free again, always. You can go from Him.
So you can tag in with the Lord Jesus and get out from whatever holds the devil's got you in.
No matter how bad that choke is, know how bad or how hard the pin is, the Lord Jesus Christ can always.
Set you free.
So we've been redeemed from sin, the world, and Satan. We've been set free.
By the precious blood of Jesus Christ, let's pray.
Our gracious God and Father, thank you for the gift of thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pray for help.
To put into practice reckoning ourselves dead to sin. We thank Thee for the gift of the Holy Spirit inside each believer. We thank You for the life we have in Christ. We thank you for the Lord Jesus interceding for us in His alone, precious and worthy name. Amen.