Realm | Week 3

If you woke up and you were like, Dude, I hope they're preaching on the devil today, you are in luck because we are preaching on the devil today.

The services have been crazy. Air conditioner kicked on last night and I thought it was a demon screaming and I jumped. I came out last service and my mic pack was turned off somehow. Basically, Satan is trying to win but we're actively fighting against him. Don't worry, we will win this battle. Amen?

I do think it's kind of funny because I had said yes to preach these two weeks before I knew what the topic was going to be, and then I found out that we were going be in a spiritual realm series, and Bill was going to talk about God and angels, and he was going to let me talk about the devil and demons. I was like, awesome, Thanks, Bill. Appreciate that. And he he texted me yesterday and said, just remember I asked you to speak on the devil and demons because you're covered in tattoos, I know you're much more familiar with the dark realm

and you have the ability to speak into it. Was like, that totally makes sense. So I get it. Truthfully, I am excited. If you haven't caught the first two weeks in this series, let me try to catch you up a little bit. We're essentially talking about the spiritual realm that exists that we don't

talk about a ton but is very real, very much there and it's not something that we need to be afraid of, it's something the scripture talks a lot about

so Bill essentially the first week talked about the fact that the realm is real, that it exists, that it's here and then last week he talked about these things that are called the guardians of the realm and they're angels. There's these created beings that God made for a very specific purpose and today we're gonna look at the enemy of the realm because scripture is very clear that though Jesus came to give us life and life to the full, that there's an enemy that is out to kill, steal, and destroy us. So we're gonna talk about who this enemy is, what the enemy of this realm's goal is, what his tactics are, we're gonna kind of cover next week. And so I just, as a disclaimer, have to tell you, this is a subject that we could spend weeks

talking about. There are so many different theological rabbit trails that we could go down and I'm not going to really go down many of them this morning, at least I'm going to attempt not to just because we don't have time. Even though we're going to be here for three hours, it's still not enough time to cover it all together.

So

just know I'm not avoiding certain things. If you have questions, I would love to answer them after service. I just don't have enough time to go into all of the specific details but part of what I have to tell you is that if you're coming today, that means you have to come back next week because I'm going talk about the enemy and his tactics and his goal to destroy us but I'm not going to really teach us how to defend ourselves against him until next week. So you've got to come back next week if you're here, otherwise you're just going be in a battle and not know how to fight it. Amen?

So all week, I've been thinking about stories that I can share, and again, it's not very easy to tell light hearted stories to make the subject of the devil a little bit more, like, palatable for people, and then things got even more difficult because all the stories that I was going to tell you, I can't share now because my mother-in-law came in town and I'm like, she's gonna be offended if I tell those stories.

No, I'm just kidding. She's actually gonna be here next service. She gave me permission to say that. My wife is like, are you inferring that she's the devil? And I was like, kind of. Don't don't dig into the details. Okay? Don't semantics. But but truthfully,

I I I do wanna tell a story to kind of illustrate and set this up. Okay? So I'm from California. I'm not a native Arizonian and the San Diego Chargers ripped my heart out when they left and so I've met I have been trying to be a Cardinals fan, but holy cow, they suck. Like it is

it has been the most boring. I'm like, if I just wanna watch a team that has a dismal offense that is going to lose week after week, I would have just continued to be a Chargers fan. And I tried to the free agency and it's not working, but now I'm here and if you're not from California, you've never experienced, and I know Arizona gets them a little bit but I don't think they're as bad as they are in California, these wildfires that we get. So in California, there's these wildfires that when you've been in the middle of them, it is like you are literally in the apocalypse. It is the craziest thing to watch. Just an entire hillside burning, entire parts of your community just torched to the ground and there's this really bizarre thing that happens when you're in these natural disasters, especially these fires because unlike hurricanes and stuff where they know the path that they're going to take, with wildfires,

they can change in a moment's notice. With the winds will shift and ember will jump across a road or across a mountain range and all of a sudden the fire is in a completely different place and so what they end up doing just to be above board and try to have an abundance of caution, they just evacuate

homes where it almost makes no sense why they're evacuating it because there's times when you're looking all around you, you don't see fire anywhere, yet there's a police officer driving down your street and blaring on the siren that you have to get out, this is the final call for evacuations

and that if you don't leave, first responders aren't coming back to save you, that you have to get out.

The hard part is if you're just looking at what's happening around you, it seems like you're not in danger because there's no fires but they know that the fires could shift at a moment, the winds could shift and all of a sudden you could be right in the pathway of the fire,

Yet it happens every time, we're watching it right now with these hurricanes in the Florida Panhandle. Always there are people who make the decision that they're going to stay despite all of the danger. I don't know if it's pride, ignorance,

arrogance or a combination of all of it, but for some reason they believe it's not going to happen to them or maybe they can defend themselves or maybe they'll be the exception to the rule, but they decide to stay and then they expect to come back and save them from their stupidity, it's like dude, you're on your own, this is just natural selection happening, okay, you

should have gotten out when you could have. Back in 2006 we had some of the worst fires where I'm from that we had ever had, Our houses were in

that section of area where there wasn't a fire immediately around us, yet we were called to be evacuated.

Most of us did the smart thing and we left, but my brother's best friend in high school and his family decided to stay. They decided they weren't going to evacuate. They thought that they could fight it and they literally were out there fighting this blazing fire with a garden hose and you have to understand if you've never been around these fires, they're intense, they are crazy, it's not like a little campfire that just happens to burn the house down, these fires come in and it is like a

tidal wave that just crushes through everything in its pathway and all of a sudden the wind shifted and they did exactly what the firefighters were afraid of, the wind shifted the fire and it made our houses right in the path of destruction.

My brother's friend and his dad were trying to get out but it was too late to use any of their cars so the only way they could attempt to get out was to get into the last fire engine with all the firefighters as they were trying to leave, the problem was the fire had come so quickly that it engulfed

the entire fire truck.

It took the entire fire truck and it actually froze the engine and it started to burn the fire truck so everybody had to jump out and my brother's best friend jumped out one side and his dad jumped out the other side and his friend literally watched his dad burn to death right in front of him. He lit on fire and had to get tackled by a firefighter and get put out and was covered like 90% of his body in burn wounds and then to this day is in excruciating pain, was in a coma for two months as they did skin grafts over his whole body,

all of it was something that was avoidable if he had just really believed that the danger was real even though he couldn't see it, here's why I tell you that, I think the greatest tactic as we look at the enemy of the realm, I think the greatest tactic that the enemy has convinced you and I of is that he doesn't exist,

that you're not in a fight, you're not in a battle at all, everything is cool, he's for you, maybe some little temptation here and there but it's no big deal, he really doesn't want that bad of stuff for you, that I think the majority of people walk around and we just assume

that the enemy is not real. We are quick to believe that Harry Potter magic is for real real, but Satan is hogwash, that's crazy. The idea of there being this bad guy that is out to hurt us and harm us, it's not real and if you hear nothing else I say this morning, here is this,

scripture is abundantly clear, even if you think the Old Testament is crazy, Jesus said it multiple times, Satan is real, he's out to kill, steal and destroy you, your family, your kids, your job, your reputation, your character, he wants to steal, destroy and kill everything

that God wants to do in your life and you better realize it because here's the big idea that we're going work from today, you can't defend against an enemy that you can't identify.

If you can't even identify who the enemy is, how do you expect to defend against him? That if I told you tonight, hey, got inside information, I had somebody that came and told me there was an informant that let me know that there's a robbery attempt that's going happen at your house between eight and 09:00.

Here's what I know that you would do because you're Arizonians and you all have guns, you would load your guns, right? If I was in California, like, hey hippies, get guns, okay? We got to defend ourselves. They're not bad. They they're self defense, right? Like, but at least you guys have guns. You can defend yourself. You can watch YouTube videos on like Chuck Norris defense moves and figure out how to protect your family.

Because if somebody was coming to hurt your family, take everything that you've worked for, I know that this instinct inside of you to fight against it would come out. My simple goal this morning is to begin to initiate that to happen against the devil as well because I'm telling you, he's real. We not

the people who lose this fight, we have an incredible weapon that God has given us, we don't fight for victory, we fight from victory but if you walk around and think that you're not under attack, he's got you exactly where he wants you. He's got you convinced and fooled that there's nothing happening,

just keep doing about your life, go about everything and he will slowly get you to do exactly the things that he did. Here's what we're going do, we're going look at two passages both in Ezekiel and Isaiah that are the two passages that show us who the enemy of the realm is, who Satan is, where he came from, how he came to power and then we will talk a little bit about what his goal is. If you have a Bible turn to Ezekiel

chapter 28, as you turn there I will pray for us, Father, we need you, God, we need you almost as badly as the cardinals do this morning, would you help them, would you bless them, would you let us walk out of here this morning being closer to you,

let us understand the tactics of the enemy so we can do what Paul said in Corinthians that we would not be deceived by his schemes. Father help us see the truth of who you are this morning. In Jesus' mighty name, said amen. Ezekiel 28,

if you don't have a Bible the verses will be on the screen but we mostly do that to see who's looking at the screen because then we know you didn't bring a bible to church and we'd secretly judge you. I guess it's not so secret now, Ezekiel

28 verse 11, it says, then this further message came to me from the Lord, Son of man, sing this funeral song to the king of Tyre. Give him this message from the sovereign Lord. Before we need the next before we read the next verse, I I I gotta tell you this passage. Okay? It's kind of weird. Ezekiel is a prophet and he's going to this king and he's rebuking him for a bunch of things that this king did wrong but all of a sudden the conversation is going to shift and it's almost like God through the prophet Ezekiel is going to address the enemy behind the enemy.

This is like a high school boyfriend and girlfriend, they're having a conflict, but they don't want to talk to each other so they get their friend and they tell their friend why they're mad at the other person and that friend has to tell girlfriend

why they're mad at them and then they get a response and they go back and go, hey, this was her response, they're having a fight through their friend. This is what's happening between God and Satan through the mediums of Ezekiel the prophet and this king Tyre.

All of a sudden Ezekiel is addressing this king but he's going say things that make it clear he is no longer talking about a king in the natural realm, is talking about the king who is the king of the enemy in the supernatural realm, here's what he says, you were the model of perfection, full of wisdom

and beauty you were in Eden, the garden of God, you've been around since the garden of Eden. Your clothing was adorned with every precious

stone, and then he goes on to list a bunch of stones that I can't pronounce so we'll skip that part, He says, They were given to you on the day you were created, here's the first thing that Ezekiel tells us about this enemy of the realm he was a created being God made him

God didn't wake up one day and say, what? Where did this come from? God made this enemy. He's a created being which means his power is limited by the Creator because just like you and I, he is created which means that God at any point can stop His control,

is a created being, here's verse 14, I ordained and anointed you as the mighty angelic guardian, some of your translations will say the mighty cherub angel, When most of us hear the word cherub, if you're like me you think it's a little fat naked angel that's flying around, that's

not a cherub in the Old Testament that's our modern day rendition of what a cherub angel is. A cherub angel is a powerful angel it was a protective

angel. If you look in the Old Testament, the presence of God was confined in this thing that was called the Ark of the Covenant, it literally was a box that the nation of Israel would carry around and that's where God's presence dwelt. On that box was inscribed two cherub angels,

their job was to guard the mercy seat to protect the presence of God, when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden in Eden, he put two cherub angels in front of the garden to make sure that they didn't come back and do some real damage to themselves.

These cherub angels in heaven would have been responsible for protecting the very presence of God. These would have been the modern day equivalent of like a worship pastor, which goes to show we should not trust the worship pastors, okay? Chair of angels are the worship pastors in heaven.

They're mighty, they're powerful, they're strong and they're created for a very specific purpose this is who this enemy of the realm is. Are you guys tracking with me? Sweet, two of you are. It says, You had access to the holy mountain of God and you walked among the stones of fire.

Here's an important verse, says, You were blameless in all you did from the day that you were created until the day that evil was found in you. Bill said last week that angels were created good for a purpose, even the enemy of the realm is an angel that was created good until the day that evil was found in him.

Here's the thing you have to understand, a lot of people struggle with the idea of God, how could God be good, why does evil exist? If God was good, He wouldn't create evil. Here's what you have to know, God didn't create evil. God did not create evil, but here's what He did do,

He did create the scenario from which evil could be born. He did create a situation from which evil could be birthed because here is what God did, God created you and I as people who have free will, He created the angels with free will, unlimited free will and here is the problem with free will

free will allows us to choose a will that is anything other than God's and evil in its most basic definition will manifest itself in a ton of different ways but its most simple definition of evil is it's choosing a will that is not God's and

here's what begins to happen in heaven because here's what God ultimately wants from the angels and what He wants from us, He wants us to choose Him, he wants us to love him but if he forces us to love him, it's not real love. Forced love in our society is a crime.

God doesn't want to force you to love him, he wants you to choose him but he knows the only way to get you to do that is to give you the option just like he gave the angels the option to not choose him and we see this enemy of the realm, he introduces what we know as evil. Most of us believe that evil entered the scene when Adam and Eve sin and eat from the tree of good and evil but it's not when it entered the scene,

it entered the scene when the enemy of the realm, this unnamed angel up until this point, decides to create evil and we're going begin to see the thing that caused him to choose evil was pride. It's this really simple, subtle enemy that is a really slow and dangerous sin

that we can be convinced of and look what happens as we keep reading, verse 16, your rich commerce led you to violence and you sinned so I banished you in disgrace from the mountain of God, I expelled you, O mighty guardian, from your place among the stones

of fire. Your heart was filled with pride because of all of your beauty. That is a temptation I understand, I get that one.

Kind of kidding. Your wisdom was corrupted by your love of splendor, here's what verse 17 shows us that is important to note, it gives us the key to understand what caused this enemy of the realm to rebel from God and his pride.

He said you let your heart for yourself, your obsession with yourself come in and plant a seed of pride in your heart. Flip over to Isaiah because Isaiah is another prophet that is going to give us a much more pinpointed picture of what happened when this whole fall happened. In Isaiah 14,

here's what Isaiah says about this fallen angel. This is where we're going get the name Satan, this is where we get the name of this angel. Isaiah fourteen twelve starts off and says, How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning. Some of your translations right there instead of O shining star,

it says Lucifer, you have to remember any time you see a star in the Old Testament it's in reference to an angel, stars in the Old Testament are angels, he says you O shining star, he gives him the name Lucifer and this is important to note because Lucifer is only, he's one of only three angels named in the entire Bible.

There's only two other angels that we know of besides Lucifer, we have Michael and we have Gabriel, okay? Michael was the guardian angel, he was the protective warrior angel, it was his job to go and fight the battles for the nation of Israel, to protect the nation of Israel. Gabriel was the messenger

angel, it was his job to go out and deliver the messages to the people of God. When Mary is told that she's going to give birth to the Messiah, it's the angel Gabriel that shows up and gives her that message and then you have this other angel named Lucifer and he's in a position of power, influence, authority

and his name literally means the adversary or the deceiver. Satan and Lucifer are the same thing and they both mean the deceiver and the adversary. Let's keep reading, it says, You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world for you said to yourself, watch what he says five times, will

ascend to heaven and I will set my throne above God's stars I will preside on the mountain of God far away in the North, I will climb to the highest heavens and I will be like the most high. Five times Satan says, I will do this. He says I want to put my chair above all the stars. Stars

are angels. He's saying I know I'm in charge of a third of them, but I should be in charge of all of them.

He says I want to be up in the North, it's a phrase that the angels would use because it's where they believed God to dwell. They believed that he was in the North. And so he says, I wanna have my seat above all of the stars in the North. He's essentially telling God, I wanna be equal with you.

It's important to note the thing that causes this angel to fall is not that he believes that God is wrong and that he should be in opposition to God, that he should rebel against God because God's an idiot, that's not what he does. He just says, I want to be like God. I should be God. And he does something that seems crazy

but it's the same thing that we do all the time. It's the exact same lie that we fall for. The number one struggle that we have as humans is giving something or somebody else to control the reins of our life because we at the very core believe that we're pretty good gods of our own life.

We believe that we should be able to do whatever we want with every single thing that we have.

Don't tell me what to do with my money, don't tell me what to do with my time, it's mine, this is my kingdom, I rule and God steps in and goes, hey, I have a plan for your life, it's better than your plan for your life but here's the catch, it's going to be counterintuitive

to you because you have a limited understanding of the way this entire kingdom operates. You don't see the full picture. Here's the number one struggle that you will have if control is an issue for you, you are not God.

There is going to be an element, you could study God, you could give your life to studying the scriptures and you will come to the same conclusion that everybody does, man God is awesome and there's a lot that I don't understand.

One day in heaven, it will all make sense but there's a lot of stuff, like people get really bent out on theological stuff and the truth is, you and I could disagree theologically on certain issues and the truth is you might be right and I might be right or we might both be wrong because the hard part is there is a lot of stuff in scripture that is not black and white, there is a lot of stuff that we can infer, There's a lot of things that we can actually draw seemingly

logical conclusions but the truth is we don't know because God is outside of our understanding and you will never be able to fully intellectually wrap your mind around the concept of God because if you could, he wouldn't be God, he would be a created being inside of your head.

If you can realize that not being able to understand God is actually a huge sign that he is actually able to be in control of our lives because he's smarter than us, he's been around longer than us, he's got a good plan for our lives and then we won't begin to fall for the simple lie that Satan fell for and it's a simple one.

At the very core of every sin, the very core of what Satan fell for was believing that God was withholding something from him. He thought there has to be something better that God's keeping from me and here's, we do the exact same thing, we go, you know what man, church just wants my money,

they want from me, they don't want for me. God tells me to give 10% to the church, yes, because he knows that the moment you do that,

you turn over control of your life and your finances to him and then he comes in and he can bless you and he can come alongside of you. What he's not trying to do is take your money because he just needs your money. Do you know God invented the concept of money? Like God at any point could just make it rain money?

What God is trying to do is He's trying to unlock the places in your heart that you refuse to give control over in. He knows that the things that you hold most tightly to are the things that the enemy is going to use to get you to move away from God.

The things in your life that you struggle with the most ironically are going to be the carrots that the enemy is going to dangle in front of your face. He's going to uniquely fashion his attacks for you based on the things that he knows you struggle with most and we see this powerful thing called pride,

if not dealt with, what happens over an extended period of time and Satan tells God five times, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to this, I'm gonna do this, it's like this little kid that's whining going, I will, I will, I will and I love God's response, look at what God says after Satan says, I will five times, he says, instead you will be brought down to the place of the dead down to its lowest depths.

It's like this little kid is whining, I want ice cream before I go to bed, want ice cream, want ice cream, he's like no, brush your teeth, you're stupid. He just literally goes, you're done, you

are out of heaven, go and he banishes him and throws him out of heaven. We see in Revelation 12, which we're not going to turn to, but if you look at Revelation 12, it's this epic battle that happens as Satan is thrown out of heaven. We see Michael the Archangel come in and there's this massive collide and it says through a prophecy that there's a dragon and as the dragon is taken out, his tail takes down a third of all the stars with him. Stars again are angels, so in this prophecy we see that when Satan falls, he is the dragon that falls and is thrown out of heaven. The scariest part of the story,

the part that worries me the most is not that Satan fell and that Satan believed a lie but that he was able to convince a third of all of the angels to go with him. You and I have to realize that if you're here this morning and you go, oh man, Satan is crazy, I would never do anything like that.

Do you know a third of all of the angels did the exact same thing and they are smarter than us? They've seen God in the fullness of His glory, in the fullness of His majesty, they were in heaven with Him, they saw what He did, they saw the miracles

and yet still they came to the logical conclusion in their mind that God was withholding something from them and Satan was right,

that God was trying to keep something from them, that God wasn't good, that God wasn't for them and that what they should do is they should take their own life into their hands and they should leave heaven, and then we see what are created as demons.

All of the things that exist within the spiritual realm are angels the only thing that exists in the spiritual realm are angels good angels and bad angels. God has angels, Satan has angels, and then Charlie has angels those are the only people that have angels other than that, there's no angels.

I'm not going go too far down but I'm going to answer the question that a lot of people ask during these series and they go, what about ghosts? Where do ghosts fall in the spiritual realm? Aren't they demons? Aren't they tied to the demonic?

We don't believe in ghosts. Scripture is abundantly clear, there is no such thing as ghosts in this understanding.

If you believe that you die and that somehow some people get stuck in this like limbo phase and they just hang out and then their job is just like mess with people and turn lights on randomly for the rest of their existence, that's that's not biblical. Okay? The bible is very clear that if you die,

you go in one of two places. The moment you die, you go to heaven or you go to Apache Junction, k? Those are the only No, just kidding. I'm not I've never even been there, if you're from there, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.

The Bible is clear though, if if you die to be to be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord. K? There is no in between holding ground that you can get stuck in. So then people always refute that with, well, what about the people that are able to talk to the dead and then they know things about like my dead aunt Sally that they wouldn't have known unless they talked to my cousin, there's no way that they would have known that stuff, they now have information that they don't know. We're talking about mediums now, what do mediums do because some of the information that they get is pretty accurate?

The Old Testament is very clear, if you find a medium, run. If you see a medium, head the other direction because it's not ghosts that they are dealing with, it's demons. It's abundantly clear that yes, you can get information not from ghosts but from demons.

That they are real and you go really a demon is going to tell this lady about my dead aunt Sally, that's got to be a ghost, there's no way it's a demon. I know it sounds silly which is why we're not going completely down this rabbit trail but here's essentially the goal of Satan,

he wants to steal God's glory, he wants to above everything else, if he can't destroy you, distract you. The greatest tactic that he's going to use to get you away from God is simply to distract you and if he can get you infatuated like he has with a lot of our culture with ghosts and make

you want to sign up for celebrity ghost hunters and be on all those stupid television shows where they fake being scared and act like there's ghosts around, it's all made up. If we all get super scared, we can convince ourselves of anything. If he knew that he could send you down that path and you would pursue

ghosts instead of God, can a demon find out some information about a dead relative that you have? Absolutely.

They've been around forever they're smarter than us they were at one point angels that were in heaven with God, they see things that we can't see, they've been around way longer. It is not illogical to think that a demon can find out information that's going to send you down a path not because it's going to answer any questions from you but it's going to keep you from pursuing the author and perfecter of your faith who is God.

He will distract you but ghosts are not real, amen? Here is the other thing you have to know as we talk about Satan, he is very real but you also have to know his power is very limited.

Is another thing that we could spend weeks talking about but Satan can't do anything, his demons can't do anything without God's permission.

Like put that in your spin dry and let it go for a couple turns, right? Satan is here, he's able to torment, he's able to do things but not without God's permission. Read the story of Job. Job is essentially this guy and Satan tells God, Job worships you because you give him everything, his life is perfect, if you took away all of his blessings, he would leave you just like I did. And God is like try it bro, he's not going to. He says you can do anything you want to and just don't kill him.

Wait, God, you let him do what? You killed his wife, his kids, his business, he took everything. But it's important to note that he could not do anything without the permission of God.

The enemy wants to convince us that he is powerful, that he is equal to God but he is not. We are not talking about equal adversaries,

This story that happens in Revelation 12 where he's thrown out of heaven, it's not like God had to come back in the bottom of the ninth inning and make this incredible comeback to beat this enemy that was about to win. This

battle in heaven is essentially the equivalent of watching like a chess master play chess with a child and the chess master just progressively lets this kid make a bunch of moves and then he finally just goes, okay, checkmate, you're done, you lose. They're not equal. God is supremely

more powerful than Satan. He will at some point crush the head of the enemy. He knows his time is limited. He knows that his reign is going to come to an end but the other thing that I need you to hear is you and I are not equal adversaries with Satan either.

He is more powerful than us. He is stronger than us. He's smarter than us. He's been around longer than us and that's why you have to come back next week so we can talk about how do we fight this battle. If this battle is real, scriptures map

out a plan that goes, hey, if we do it this way, if we fight spiritual warfare like this, we can win and we can actually fulfill what scripture says that we can be in a situation where not a single temptation can overcome us because we'll always have a way out

If we actually begin to understand how to fight in the spiritual realm, we can win because we have the secret weapon and it's this thing called the Holy Spirit.

God has given each and every one of you the spirit of God that rose Jesus from the grave that's alive and active in you and the devil knows that when that spirit comes to its full power, when you realize what's in you, you will realize that he who is in you is greater than he who is in this world and you will begin to realize, yes, we are in a battle but we fight not for victory but from victory.

That we because Jesus' penalty on the cross that he crushed the power that Satan would ever have and the prophecy in Revelation 12, that dragon, it says that there's going to be a birth and at some point this birth is going to crush the head of the dragon,

that we look forward to the day where the devil and the demons are thrown into the Lake Of Fire but until that day, we better be on alert, so the question this morning, why does this matter for you? What is his goal?

What is his goal for each and every one of us as we walk out of here? So we go, hey, we've got a bunch of head knowledge, we know who he is, we know where he came from, he's a fallen angel that was powerful,

his power is limited but his power is real, what does he want to do with you and I? It's pretty simple. The greatest news about my job is telling you that his tactics have not changed since the very beginning. He's attacking humanity the same way that he's always attacked humanity.

He's doing the exact same thing today that he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden. The easiest way to understand Satan's goal for you is to look at the story of creation in Genesis chapter three. When you look in Genesis, Adam and Eve were created

in this perfect union, in this incredible place called Eden, where there was no pain, there was no suffering, there was no evil, they had a perfect marriage, they never fought, they always chose the same restaurants, they always were like, yes, let's just choose wherever, right? Like they imagined

for a second a perfect relationship with each other and then add on top of that, they got to walk with God in the cool of day, they got to enjoy

God, they were just with Him and they were experiencing His fullness and God said, you can do whatever you want in this garden but there's one tree that you can't eat from. There is just one tree you can't eat from and here is the problem, because God is going to create a situation with free will, with choice

that allows them to make a choice other than God's will for their lives and then we see Satan come in on the belly of a snake, he comes in the form of a snake and he goes to the woman, I don't think it's ironic that he goes to the woman and not the man but that's a sermon for another day, that he goes

to the woman and he says hey, check this out and you have to see what he says, he says hey, did God really say this? And what Eve does, we'll talk about more next week, is she actually misquotes what God said, God said to not eat from the tree, she says God said not to eat or touch the tree.

And then Satan says, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's doing that because he's trying to keep you from becoming like him. He knows that if you do that, you're gonna get so much more

and He introduces to humanity the first shortcut we've ever seen but it's the exact same way that He's going to attack you. He's going to find the areas in your life that you're weak and He's going to come in and He's going go, hey, did God really say that?

Didn't God also say that nobody's going to judge you, that they can't judge you in church, that you deserve this stuff, it's not really a sin, it's just a conversation with a girl online, it's not like you're meeting in person

and here's what you have to understand, what he's always going to do is get you to take one small step away from God because if he can get you to take one, he'll get you to take two, he'll

get you to take three and everybody that ends up in the spot saying how did I end up here, they always started with one small step away from God. If you have your Bible, want to end right here in Genesis chapter three, we're going look at exactly what happens to see his goal and then we're going to pray. Genesis chapter three

in verse six, Satan convinces the woman and it says in verse six that the woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious and she wanted the wisdom that it would give her.

So she took some of the fruit and ate it and she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it too. At that moment their eyes were opened and they suddenly felt something that they had never experienced shame.

One of the most powerful human emotions that we experience, shame. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves, when the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden so they hid from God among the trees and then God called to the man and said, where are you? I heard you walking in the garden so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.

God said, who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat? And the man's response is one of my favorite passages in scripture, it just goes, it was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit and I ate it. Notice that Satan has to come up with this whole plan to slowly deceive the woman that's got creativity

involved and there's a strategic plan to get the man to fall, he just goes, dude, if his wife is naked and has an apple, he'll eat it. Trust me. It's

simple. If we can get her to fall and then she presents the apple, he's going to take the bait. Right? Adam's response is God, this is really your fault, you created the woman, she fell, this is kind of on you, not me.

Then verse 13 says, The Lord God asked the woman, what have you done?' She said, the serpent deceived me and she replied, 'That's why I ate it.' Here's what you have to see in this story, Satan's goal is really simple, it's not complicated, this is not going to be profound,

he wants you to settle for sin because he knows that once you say yes to sin, what's going to follow is shame. What he will not advertise with the shortcut is the consequences that will come with it and the consequence that comes with it mainly that is the most divisive and the most destructive to you and I is shame,

guilt and condemnation because the moment that we experience this powerful thing called shame, it gets us to do things we never thought we would ever do and one of the first things that we see that happens that breaks God's heart the most is it causes Adam and Eve to run and hide from God.

They're hiding from God because they believe at this point that God's not for them, that God's mad at them, that God's gonna be upset with them,

that he knows, Satan knows that if he can get you to take one small step, you will feel the weight of shame and condemnation and judgment and separation between you and God will be there and then you will start to search and grab for things to fill the gap and to fill the void in your heart and you will reach

for the same low hanging fruit that you just ate from. He knows that if he can get you to take one small step, it will cause separation between you and God and ultimately, it will do the same thing to your natural relationships that it did to Adam and Eve, it will cause separation between them as well.

For the first time, they've never had a fight, they've never had an argument until sin enters the picture and then they start blaming each other, it's her fault, it's his fault and they got to experience what all of our marriages are like most of the time but we see for the first time,

separation enter the picture between humanity and God and humanity and each other. That is Satan's goal for all of us, he knows that he can't hurt God, he knows that he can't get to God so he knows the best way to hurt him is to hurt his kids,

If you couldn't hurt me, the best way to hurt me was to hurt my kids and he knows that if he can cause us to be separated from God in heaven, that we will eventually do and have the same fate that he does. That we will eventually try to just become our own gods and say we can do this without him But here's the good news that you have to walk out of here this morning with, it's the gospel. It's that you can't earn the love of God. And the best news about you not being able to earn it means that you can't lose it either. It doesn't matter what you've done. You have not too far gone to be redeemed by God. His heart is still for you. His heart is still running after you. That he is like the father who is a far ways off looking for his son to return and the moment he gets a glimpse, man, he comes running and he says, I'm glad you came home and he doesn't judge you, he doesn't want to beat you up, he just wants to forgive you and place you back in right standing with him and to begin to give you the promises that he had for you from the very beginning but you can't believe the lie that you can get it on your own.

Satan is going to convince you, man, you can look out your windows and just because you don't see fire doesn't mean you're not in danger. The enemy is real. He's attacking.

He wants to destroy you. My prayer and my hope this morning is that you would realize that God is good and He is for you. He's not keeping something from you.

I promise you if you're in a season right now where you look around and you don't understand why God would be letting what's happening to you happen, I promise you if you can just hold on, if you can just make it through,

there will be a day that you can look back on this and you will see what Romans eight twenty eight says that God is working out all things for your good and it might not seem good right now but there will be a day that you can look back on this and you will see exactly what God was doing and how God used things that weren't good for your good but you just have to hold on. Don't in the moment believe the lie that you can get out of this yourself because it's what Satan did and it's what he wants you to do as well. Would you pray with me, Father?

We thank you God so much for who you are, God we thank you that you are a God of grace and mercy, that you came and you saw us while we were a far ways away, that even our good deeds were like a filthy rag in the eyes of a holy God, that Lord you made a way back to you when we had no way

and that God, religion says that it is our job and our abilities that earn us the right to have a relationship with you but that's not the message of the gospel. The gospel is that we couldn't earn it and you stepped in and put grace in front of us to cover our brokenness, to cover our mistakes

and father, I know that I'm speaking to a room full of people who have all taken the shortcut, who have all fallen short of the glory of God because scripture says we're all in the same boat. Some of us feel like we're worse than others but we all stand before holy God condemned

and the only thing that we have to do to be placed back in right standing with you is to believe that Jesus came and lived a perfect life, He died a death that was the death that we should have died because the Bible says that the penalty of sin is death but if we put our faith in Him who conquered death,

that we can have eternal life and even more importantly, we can experience the fullness of the promises of heaven today. Jesus, I pray that every person here this morning would believe that you're for them no matter what their life is currently telling them.

God, would we not allow our situations and our circumstances to dictate the theology that we believe about you, that God we refuse to believe anything other than you're good and that you're for us and that you're redeeming us and when things don't look good, we hold on knowing that good is coming.

Jesus, we trust you, we need you, we love you and it's in your mighty name that everybody said, amen.