We again are studying through Thomas Watson's book, The Lord's Prayer, the sixth petition. And a reminder, I had to go through it looking for some quotes I was trying to find, which I'm not entirely sure I did. But as I went and re-highlighted some things, I thought, oh, that'll be a good use of time to go back and study through this together. And pretty much anything he writes, you always want to go back and share everything you read by him. We've enjoyed it together. As you'll remember, we're right now going through the many subtleties of Satan. Remember, he is cunning. I did start my read through the Bible in two years with my little notes in the back of the Bible. It actually brings you through the Psalms and the New Testament twice during those two years. But of course, I've been in Genesis recently and I was reminded that Satan is subtle. That's what it says in Genesis 3, right? Or cunning, crafty. He's really good at tricking us, okay? To get us to sin. He tempts us we sit when we choose to do or think or say something against God's word. But Satan is very crafty, very cunning. And so right now we're on the 13th subtlety where we begin our study tonight and we'll see how far we get. I remind you there are 27 subtleties, at least as far as Thomas Watson lists them. I'm going to be careful not to try to review much because that can end up being the study, but we're in the middle of his subtleties of Satan. But I do want to remember just the prayer that we're working with. The sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer is Matthew 6, verse 13. I'll just read it for you. And lead us, of course, we could all say it together, why don't we? And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Lead us not into temptation, protect us even from being tempted, but if Satan finds a way to tempt us, deliver us from doing the evil. Deliver us from the evil one, some have said that even means deliver us from Satan. Now I remind you 1 Chronicles 4, 9 to 10, we won't turn there, but that was the prayer of Jabez, preached on that last year. And what was really striking is how much of it seems to look like the Lord's Prayer. And in fact, the last petition is the same as the last petition of the Lord's Prayer. Keep me out of evil that I won't grieve myself. And that's something to remember. When we sin, it isn't just that we grieve the Holy Spirit, but we grieve ourselves with the effects of that sin. Remember, we've had a lot of quotes from William Secker's book, The Consistent Christian, in our bulletin recently, just in terms of where it's fallen, but perfect timing with our study. And he's giving all of these reminders about, you know, sin is like candy on the outside, it has that immediate sweetness and pleasure, but then there's bitterness in the center. It's like that snake that at the end of the tail is a stinger. So we want to remember that it grieves us, so deliver us, Lord, even for our own good, but particularly His glory. Okay, so I'm picking it up with the 13th subtlety, and we'll see how far we get together. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Guided by Thomas Watson. So again, Satan is crafty. The serpent is crafty. He's a deceiver, he's a liar, but he does it in a way that is so crafty and cunning that he's so good at tricking us. I think sometimes we're too happy to be tricked, right? But, you know, tell me what I wanna believe when that's not the truth, right? But he's really good at it. Remember, he masquerades as an angel. He is as an angel of light. He is coming at us like a lion. You don't know the lion's there until he gets you. I heard it on, I think the sermon was repeated recently when I was driving in to church one day to work, but the pastor was reminding us, I think I shared earlier, You know, Peter says, Satan prowls like a lion, seeking whom he may devour. But when do you hear a lion roar? After he has attacked and conquered his prey, and he's eating, not before. Before, there's stealth, right? They come up real quietly and carefully, so you don't see them coming, and bam, they pounce on you. So you can't run away, right? Like the antelope or whatever it is. Funny, when I say antelope, I always have to be careful not to say cantaloupe. I always have trouble with those two words. But we, you know, yeah, I guess a cantaloupe isn't going to run anywhere, right? But you get the idea. Pounce. That's kind of cute. Think about like a little cat. I got the cantaloupe. But back to the real thing, the lion attacking the prey of the animals. roars afterwards. So he's cunning. He knows how to sneak up on us. We don't see it coming. He tricks us. You know, those arrows we've talked about are flying already and we don't even think they're coming. And so many times we let up our guard right when we should still have the shield up. So we've just got to recognize how subtle and cunning he is to get us, to trick us into choosing to sin so that we don't. So the 13th subtlety. The crafty way that Satan tricks us to sin. Satan draws men off from the love of the truth to embrace error. Quote, that they should believe a lie. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 11 he gives us. Let's turn there and look together. 2 Thessalonians. I just want to review these main ideas collected for us. remember the danger after uh... Colossians, Philemon, excuse me I went too far I'm using a different bible so it turns faster second timothy or excuse me not timothy, Thessalonians second Thessalonians chapter two verse eleven And let me start at the beginning of the chapter just to get the feel of it. And I noticed such as verse nine, it's also talking about Satan. So let's get context. We'll end at 11, I think. He's highlighting verse 11. Now we beseech you brethren by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him. that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means. For that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will let. until he be taken out of the way, and then shall the wicked be revealed." Notice that's capitalized, so the idea of the Wicked One. "...whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." It has to be encouraged. The Lord will destroy him in his coming. We're on the winning side, but make sure we're on the winning side. Because it goes on, "...even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." They didn't receive not just the truth, but the love of the truth. And then we're leading into verse 11 that he's drawn us to. And for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. How scary is that? Because they resist even the love of the truth and they love lies, God will allow them to have strong delusion to believe lies. And isn't that something? You see people sometimes, the way they believe lies, it's how can you possibly believe that, right? But they're under delusion. That they, verse 12, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." We could go on, but notice there's this significant section about dealing with Satan, those coming in the last days, the wicked one on Satan's behalf, doing his bidding. This idea of tricking people to hate the truth, not have a love for the truth, and thus being given over by God to delusion that they would believe lies. It'll get to the point where they can't even believe the truth, they can only believe lies. How frightening is that? Isn't that frightening to think that your mind wouldn't work right and you would only believe lies? That's all that you get to the point spiritually that you're wired to do? It's pretty scary. Makes me think of Romans where it says eventually God gives them over right to the searing of their own consciences, into their own sinful lifestyles. Which, by the way, as John MacArthur points out, those specific lifestyles mentioned in Romans is how we know we're getting close. when we get that far, that leads to this searing of conscience, these kinds of things. And as we see our country with recent marriage acts and stuff, we need to really be concerned. They are believing lies. Just have no belief, ability to believe the truth. And this is what Satan does. He would get you to believe a lie. Again, Satan draws men off from the love of the truth to embrace error. Maybe we should recognize that before we continue. And I want to be careful I don't start preaching off the cuff, so to speak, and not continue. But notice, where does believing a lie come from? It starts with what? A lack of a love for the truth. Pray God always gives us a love for truth. It strikes me how often people don't seem to really be worried about that, right? And the jot and tittles and what God really wants and many things. It's like, well, as long as this is good, everything else, it doesn't really matter. God give us a love for his truth and all of his truth. Because if we don't have it, he's gonna let us be deluded to get over to a lie. And how much of the churches today are believing lies and explaining sin with lies, even trying to represent themselves as Christians. Think of certain movements even in reformed churches related to sexuality. Thomas Watson says also, Satan's great temptation is to make men believe dangerous impostures to be glorious truths. You know, make us get to the B where we can't recognize truth because we don't love it, so then lies, they're very, very dangerous, but we embrace them, oh, that's true, that's great, that's wonderful, and get in the place where we are heresies and apostasies, and nobody really wants to challenge it. He also speaks about this, the devil lays the snare of error snare. It's like a trap, children. He's laying in the trap like an animal walks by, you know, and then you can't get away. The devil lays the snare of error because it brings divisions into the church. You start getting people to believe lies about the Bible, the plain, elementary things of the Bible, and they can't see the truth, they don't have a love for the truth, they only have belief in error, well, it's gonna lead to division. How could it not? Because as I think it's the prophet Amos says, God appealing to the church to get back to his truth, can two walk together unless they are agreed. You can't walk together if you're unequally yoked. Truth is truth, lies are lies. Oil is oil, water is water. And so Satan wants to get people to be tricked by evil lies, ultimately to bring division into the church. And isn't it what Paul's main concern, one of his main concerns in Philippians we've been studying, is that we wouldn't be in division. that we wouldn't be divided because as Jesus says, and some of our founding fathers have simply quoted him, a house divided shall not stand. The devil lays the snare of error because it brings divisions into the church, and these bring opprobrium and scandal upon the ways of God. The devil dances at discord. Division destroys peace. Can you imagine that? Division destroys peace, which is the prayer of Psalm 122 for the brethren, right? And so the devil dances at discord. You know, I think a lot of people think they're serving God when they bring up division and discord, but actually the devil is dancing with them. The devil's dancing with them. And even when we're concerned to bring truth and reformation, we should pray that God would allow that the nailing of the theses on the door, so to speak, would have a door open up for discussion, that he would preserve us from splintering and schism. The devil dances when we divide. The devil dances and has a party. when we allow discord because of deceitfulness from Satan about God's truth. Now, there is a place we have to allow or send people away. That's what Paul did a lot because of that danger. But God protect each one of us to stay with a love for the truth and then it isn't gonna happen. Now, I stumbled through one word. I had to look it up. I don't know if you wondered or caught, what is that word? He says, He brings division into the church, and these divisions bring opprobrium and scandal. Now, scandal, the problem is, makes the church look real bad to the world, right? And now today, where everybody likes to cause division, leave. Oh, they love to go to social media, public media, and destroy and make the church look like a joke, right? Lie and misrepresent. Okay, it brings opprobrium. I had to look it up, here's what it means. Harsh criticism and censor. So the devil lays the snare of error because it brings divisions into the church and these brings harsh criticisms and censors and scandal upon the ways of God. You have divisions into the church because you allow, because people allow themselves to be deceived by Satan, and then they want to force that into the church and deny what God's Word says. That brings up scandal, that brings up criticism, censor. Sometimes it has to be dealt with, with discipline. And this brings scandal on the church. The world loves to point and say, oh, they say they are Christians, know me by their love. Look at that, right? The devil dances at discord. I think that needs to be something that, you know, we have lots of ideas of, I think I mentioned a sermon recently, and I'd like to revisit the idea of a session sometime. Maybe what we would have is you enter and leave the church, a scripture on top, go make disciples or other things. Maybe we should have a scripture as you come in that talks about the blessed unity of the church, and as you exalt, as you exit, we should have the saying from Thomas Watson, the devil dances at discord. So as we go out, let's protect our unity. He says this also, the devil's policy is raising errors to hinder reformation. The way he likes to work is to raise errors to hinder reformation. Now, the Lord does allow errors and controversies and heretics, that actually is what the Lord often uses to raise up the truth and have it written down in church policies. the early church councils met to say, no, you heretics are wrong. God is a trinity. Jesus is God. These are things that for the first three, 400 years were really worked out and defended. And so it isn't that God doesn't use heresies, but the devil's intent is to raise the error to hinder reformation. For instance, you could say this, if we have to keep working on these issues, that's gonna hinder us from building upon them. in other areas of growth and peace, because we're having to deal with problems, right? And then when the church does deal with these things and has a unifying document of a creed or confession, that is building unity. We can all sign on that and know it's protected. We can all know what we're saying is Christianity and be built around these main conciliatory truths. But the devil's goal is to get us not to reform, have us distracted. to never get past the elementary things. He also says Satan tempts to error because error devours godliness. Error devours godliness. When we start to allow ourselves to be lazy with God's word, and lackadaisical with what's truth and what really matters, don't forget this, Satan said, read this recently again right in Genesis, starting my reading of the Bible again, did God really say, God didn't really mean that. When we start to allow Satan to do that to us about his clear, he did not speak in any confusion. When we start to allow that, and we start to allow our doctrine to go bad, it will be followed by bad lifestyles. We start to let ourselves go with how we think we're gonna let ourselves go with how we live, which is obviously the devil's intent. He wants to get us to error in theology and belief so that we start to sin more and more in ungodliness because it's the opposite of what God wants. Remember, God's will for us is sanctification. Thessalonians, along with thankfulness. So, of course, Satan wants the opposite. He wants us to be unthankful, and he wants us to be unholy. So the danger is, when we start to get loosey-goosey on what God's Word says, we start to do whatever we want, which is what happened. They ate the forbidden fruit. He gives us Jude 4. Let's turn to Jude 4. Jude verse four. Why don't I read the first few verses leading into it? I'll start with verse one for a feel of context here. Jude verse four, but I'll lead into it from verse one. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called, mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. By the way, that's another verse that relates to the idea of having confessions and catechisms. In verse four, for there are certain men crept in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. It's amazing how much Jude has to say about those things and what happens to such people. It's a pretty powerful letter to preach. But there are people who creep into the church. But they were ordained to be liars and to try to destroy the church. We've got to recognize that. There's the wheat and the tares, but some of them are just going to show themselves to be wolves in sheep's clothing. And some of them are just going to come in, and instead of wanting to be taught and discipled, they're going to want to direct and guide the church. And we've got to watch out for that. There are some who would lead us to be ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, teaching us that a lot of things about lifestyle don't matter. Be Puritans in doctrine, but would you let up on all the Puritan of practice, please? Come on. Well, we're warned about that in Jude, verse four. I think we can get through the 14th subtlety and 15th, they're quite brief, and we'll leave it at that and pick it up with the 16th subtlety next time. So that was the 13th subtlety, a reminder, Satan draws us away from the love of the truth so that we are given over to a disposition that believes lies. I mean, that's what's scary. We believe and stand for, just adamantly for a complete lie. It's incredible. Scary. Now the 14th subtlety. He says, Satan bewitches and ensnares men by setting pleasing baits before them as the riches, pleasures, and honors of the world. I don't see him listing, but I think it's 1 John that speaks about the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life. What's that? We just saw it. We just saw it? Yeah. Where? The lusts of the flesh and the pride of life. Okay. I'm sorry, where did we just see it? Did I quote it already? On the Sabbath School video. Oh, it was in the Sabbath School video. Do you recall? Was it 1 John? Wow, that was fast. Nice job. You get an extra, some kind of scratch sticker here. Nice job. 1 John 2, what did you say? Sorry, I'm just kidding. I won't give you a scratch sticker. I'll give you a holy kiss. 1 John chapter 2, he might take the sticker. 1 John 2, and I'm sorry, what were the verses? 15 through 17. Okay. You know, I don't believe he quotes them by what I've highlighted. Let me read that for us. Actually, he does give us another scripture to look at, but let's go to 1 John. Chapter 2, verses 15 to 17. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Oh, I'm remembering now, it was the Sabbath class video by Dr. Beeky on teaching our children to fight the world. That's where it was? Okay, thank you. It's interesting, the next verse is little children. This is the last time. But notice that, it is the last time. Another place to tell us we're in the end times between the first and second coming of Christ. It's gonna get worse, we need to prepare ourselves. Okay. the lust of the world, the pride of life. Satan bewitches and ensnares men by setting pleasing baits before them, the riches, pleasures, and honors of the world." And isn't that how he steals our children from church? Gideon! Yeah, that kid needs to go back to bed. Thanks for hanging in there. And thank you, Olivia, for helping. It's no offense, but mommy just can't catch him right now with that big growing baby inside her. Yeah, and I think he absolutely knows that and takes full advantage of it. Yeah, mommy's like, yes, he does. So, but we love him, but we have to work with him. But isn't that how Satan steals our children? And often, and don't hear me wrong, I'm college educated, I have a master's degree, but how often do our parents not properly prepare our children enough? We think of college only, right? We think of a job and money. And the next thing you know, they're gone and they never come back, including from Christian colleges. Many Christian colleges is a good place to send your kid to have them lose the faith these days. I'm not against Christian colleges either, but I'm against the world taking them over and we wanna be like the world, try to reach the world by looking just like them and never having that antithesis that we studied. So we've got to watch out for the pleasures of the world and all, we gotta have this, I gotta have that, and once I have all these things, and I have to do this to get all those things, then maybe I'll settle down and have a wife and children. And that keeps moving, right? Well, I still need to have these things, so I'll have the wife and children, and maybe one day I'll actually father them. But I have to be about, do all these things, I'm really busy, I gotta get that, I gotta get that status. You know, just, I'm kinda thinking off the cuff in general things, but Satan will make us desire the riches and pleasures of the world, and you know, one thing I almost want us to have you do is I'll say, pull out your smartphones. And I dare you not to use them for a week. Now we can't do that because none of us have landlines anymore, right? You know, I'm exaggerating to make point, but I'll tell you what, one day last week I left so late, I forgot to bring my cell phone home with me. And when I got home, I'm like, what do I do? It's as if it's tight, wedded to my, welded to my hip. It's as if it's my identity and I can't think without it. How am I going to fall asleep? No problem. I fell asleep. I, you know how I fell asleep? Because I tend to put my earbuds in and get some white noise. I just started praying and reciting scriptures, and I don't remember when I fell asleep. But my point is, I think you can all identify with that, there's a funny clip in a certain TV series I've seen on YouTube, and they make the guy you can't have your cell phone on right now. and he can't do it. He almost has a heart attack. I can't do it, I have to leave. I cannot stop checking my cell phone right now. It can't happen. He almost literally couldn't breathe. So I'm joking to make a point, but I do think that's one of the dangers. We can think of all the real obvious stuff, but how much of that phone and emails and things that we really don't pay enough attention to are sending us things to think about, just controlling us to think so much that we aren't really reading the word that much, right? And it's not even a matter of the wrong things, it's just a matter of not the best things sometimes, right? So the pleasures of the world, right, you know, just getting to where you can put it down and go have a family devotion and the phone's nowhere in the room unless you sign up. I mean, I'll often sometimes use the application for the Bible, don't get me wrong, but I think we always wanna watch out for how much of the world is consuming our attention and time and energy. One thing I've been trying to do is just delete certain apps and certain things that I've observed when I'm honest with myself. It's too much. Maybe not the best influence or just too much time. I'm not only starting this Bible reading plan again. I don't want you to think I'm not reading my Bible, but I'm more deliberate and more meat and just through the whole thing for the whole counsel of God in a more regular setting. But also I'm getting rid of things that tend to take up that time. And they're mostly on my phone. So, things of the world. Now, first, Satan will again bewitch us and ensnare us with all these pleasing baits. Now remember the idea of bait. We saw that, it might have been Thomas Watson earlier, I think it was, if it wasn't William Secker. The hook, we're not gonna put a hook in our mouth. Just let me take a quick survey. Anyone want to put a fishing hook in your mouth? Okay. But what if it's wrapped in a bonbon, and you don't see the hook, and you don't see the line? Or what if it's wrapped in, I don't know, pick your poison, so to speak, right? You know, money, yeah, wrapped in a $20 bill. You know, I mean, that pain that you can't get away, you know, A yummy soda, okay, I'm gonna remind, donut, I'm reminding you you said that, a yummy donut, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've been praying and asking for, I need to start working on something I preached last year about gluttony, I gotta start working on that again, yeah, so I'm glad you said that, now I'm gonna remember that next time there's leftovers from fellowship, and I'm here all along, you know. I'm gonna cast them into the garbage can. But yeah, all these things that can come after us, worldly pleasures, it's so easy to give into a quick pleasure, right? Even if they're not inherently sinful, but they're just easy. It's harder to do the things that are spiritual growth because we're supposed to exercise ourselves under godliness, the Bible says, which means effort and exertion isn't as easy to do that. And the devil say, you know, just go ahead and click on that next video that just came up. You know, You can never have too many videos about cute puppies, right? Now puppies are not bad, but you know what I mean? It's like, how much time do we watch things that just like, okay, one's enough. Like the next one, the next one, coming soon in three seconds, it's time to stop. I noticed that on our television. Anything you watch, if it's part of a series, it's gonna immediately kick into the next episode. I mean, when I grew up, that wasn't an option. There wasn't a next episode until seven days from now. Whereas here, and there was no TV. I mean, there was a certain time where I'm saying a pledge of allegiance to the flag, and then it's a bunch of white mess on the TV, right? And all the kids are like, what is that? What? But now it's just, yeah, yeah. Oh, can I get that again? Shh, that was a very good impression, Mr. Elder. But you know what I mean? It's like, there's just, it's not always evil. It's just that constant draw for our attention with worldly pleasures. Yeah, you know, once in a while, I love to take a break at lunch and watch YouTube video clip or two that make me laugh. But then you gotta remember, that's enough, done. And there's just these natural draws on our time and attention from worldly pleasures. He gives us 1 Timothy 6 verse 9. They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare. The danger for the poor is to always think you need to try to be rich. Those who maybe can tend to be rich are in the danger of a snare because all it takes to have it and keep it, and then all it has to bait us and keep us away from godly holiness, right? And we'll lie to ourselves, Satan will lie to us saying what? This is the life. Ah, we can skip worship this week, we're on vacation. This is the life. You know, we don't need to go to the Wednesday Bible studies. We're gonna go bowling on Wednesday. Don't get me wrong, I like bowling. I'll show you my Buffalo Bills bowling ball. I never buy these things, they're all given to me. But my point is, we gotta know our priorities, and we gotta not be snuck over to just all the pleasures of the world. We've got to have just as much as this or that as everybody else, especially for our children. Oh man, our kids have to have everything. And then they have very little of Christ because we drown it all out with everything they have to have and do, right? We've got to watch out for that stuff. His policy, Watson says, is to tickle them to death. I love that phrase. To damn them with delights. Now, we saw earlier, he dances at Discord, and he loves to tickle us to death. I have fun tickling my kids. A lot of times I say, oh, Mr. and Mrs. Knuckler are coming out. You don't want to do that? And I get them out of a bad attitude. I go to the neck or the thighs and the belly. Actually, it's funny how kids love to be tickled, and they love to be chased. Although, Mommy gets on me, starts tickling me, and then I stop pretty quick. Don't tickle him so much. But the thing is, is think about that. We kind of forget ourselves, right? He loves to tickle us to death. You know, it's just kind of a little here, a little there. You're right, and next thing you know, three hours have passed by and we didn't, whatever, take care of whatever is important. He loves to tickle us to death. He's subtle, remember. He's crafty. He likes to make it like it's a fun, silly game. Oh, have a little more fun. Okay, you're right, one more. One more, although I was probably tipsy five hours ago. You know, whatever it is, right? But then the other part of it is he loves to damn us with delights. He loves to damn us with delights. He likes to bait the hook with something sweet. And after you've bit, he's hooked you. And it's gonna be a very painful thing to resist him, isn't it? Which is why in the Proverbs, at the beginning particularly, the son is warned by father and mother not to go with certain women who will drag you away by your nose, like an animal in farming. They'd usually have something in the nose. The animal doesn't fight too much. You control a huge animal by putting something in their nose. Why? Because if they resist, it's gonna hurt. And so Satan gets the hook in us, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't resist, but let's avoid even having to get off a hook, and the damage that can be done by it, right? He loves to tickle us to death, and he loves to damn us with delights. He likes to bewitch us with the world and all its pleasures. Just as Satan tried to do that with Christ in the temptation. Lastly, and this will be last, the 15th subtlety, Satan intempting pleads necessity. If it isn't like all this excess, it's necessary. As necessary as I have to. He likes to palliate and excuse a sin. It may seem to make a less evil good to avoid a greater. Sometimes the lesser evil had to do it or this would have happened. And I'm going to mention one thing to really be careful for about later, but he likes to make us excuse one sin to pretend that it's for the sake of the greater good, right? And instead we should be thinking about Matthew 27. I'm going to turn there with you as one of our last scriptures tonight and close in prayer soon. Matthew 27, verses 3 through 10, and I'm gonna highlight verse 6 after we read it. Matthew 27, verses 3 through 10. Satan likes to get us to plead the necessity, I had to sin. I had to do that thing that was wrong for the sake of not doing this worse thing, okay? Lesser evil for the greater good is the argument, right? Okay, Matthew 27, and again, he's crafty, he can put us in those situations and circumstances where we don't feel we have a choice. But we're always making a choice, it might be a hard choice, and as Gordon Clark says, with what I'm gonna talk about, we have to trust God's providence. Okay, Matthew 27, verse three. Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, and that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priest took the silver pieces and said, it is not lawful for to put them into the treasury because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called the field of blood unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet saying, and they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued whom they of the children of Israel did value and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me. And Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the king of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest." Now, verse six is what's interesting here. It's not exactly what I was talking about, but notice, the chief priest took the silver pieces. Now, they had betrayed Jesus, who is innocent. They said, what's that to do with us? Judas is feeling bad, because they used him. They tricked him. Now, he set himself up to be tricked, but then he feels guilty. The sad thing is he doesn't repent like Peter. He has a worldly repentance that leads to death. But notice, they said, what's that to us? In verse 6, well, this money that he's thrown on the ground, I mean, we can't put it in the treasury. It's blood money. It wouldn't be right to put blood money in the treasury. So let's go buy this field and try to put it to some good use, right? I shouldn't have gotten this money by whatever that dishonest, evil job was, but to try to make myself feel better about it. But I gave, I gave a large part of it to this orphanage or to that ministry. So for instance, our church should never accept money we know was gotten by evil ways, right? Oh, but we'll put it to good use. No, it was evilly gotten. We will have nothing to do with it, right? I think even churches have to be careful about money raising schemes as well that are not appropriate. But notice they took counsel and they bought the potter's field. Now of course this was to fulfill the prophecy. That's what you see in Matthew, everything's fulfilling the prophecy. I'm reading through Matthew in the New Testament now again, and that's what it's showing us constantly, the fulfilling of prophecy and the coming of Jesus. Though that is the case, they still sinned, and they don't seem to be concerned about it, and they seem to want to make it look like it wasn't such a big deal by putting it to some good use. No, it was sin. You betrayed the innocent one. You know that it's blood money and it's because of you it's blood money and yet you're gonna go buy a potter's field and try to make it look better and lessen the severity of it, but it's still sin. Satan will trick us to think these things. One last comment or two related to the 15th subtlety and we'll close. He says this, oh beware of this temptation. Satan's cloven foot is in it. Nothing can warrant a thing in its own nature sinful. Necessity will not justify impiety. Nothing justifies sinning. I want to challenge you with something as we close, because I hear a lot of Christians talk about this in a way that I think is inappropriate. Rahab, in Hebrews 11, is highlighted in the Hall of Faith. Why is she highlighted? Yeah, but what particularly, why is she given as an example to us? Her faith, not her lying. Okay? People can tend to look at her in Hebrews 11 and make the wrong logical conclusion that in her case lying was okay. I don't know how specifically, and Lord willing, I get to Joshua, I'm eager to not rush through Deuteronomy, but I'm hoping the Lord will allow that I can preach in Joshua. And it's not her lying that is commended, it is her faith. The Bible doesn't commend lying sometimes. I mean, this is the danger it's brought up with hiding the Jews, right? In Germany sometimes from the Nazis. There's lots of stories, I don't mean to be able to say it's an easy thing to work through but as Gordon Clark has pointed out discussing such things and giving this insight about what was highlighted about Rahab in Hebrews 11 it wasn't lying. Lying was not commended or allowed or approved. Because where do lies come from? Who's the father of lies? So the devil will trick you to think it's necessary to lie in this case. There are qualifications to give. We've had them, especially through the larger catechism. Not everything is lying. As Gordon Clark points out, sometimes you don't have to answer the wrong person. Certain information doesn't have to be disclosed. That's not lying necessarily. But the father of lies will want to trick you and me to think that some sin is okay for the sake of what I had to do for this. Now, we're going to be, we can very possibly put, especially in the end days, we can be very likely put into situations where we're going to have hard decisions to make. But the early church said, I'll die for Jesus. The early martyrs died for Jesus. In fact, they wanted to. I read a recent devotion on Place for Truth. A lady, no, I wanna say, I'm forgetting the man's name. It was a man. He was saying, please, don't interfere with me. They're gonna throw me to the lions, let them. And if the lions don't come at me, I'm gonna run to them. I want to die for Jesus. I want to give a witness for Jesus. I wanna go to heaven. So that's kind of another topic, but the way the martyrs were eager to die for Jesus, they were not willing to compromise. One second, Isaac, but remember you and also I think Gabriel had his hand raised earlier and I forgot. So there's gonna be a temptation, I think particularly in our culture, especially with business practices. In a lot of ways, we're encouraged to get around certain this or that's to lie for the greater good. Now I'll give you an example of how the church session And I check with the session and everything. I don't make decisions alone. I already knew the answer, but I wanted to make the decision with them. We were going to get on Google as a nonprofit organization because you can get possibly up to $10,000 a year in free Google ads as a nonprofit. I don't know whether we got that much. And we're going to work with the company we're working with to do this. I had to set us up for a Google account, nonprofit ad account. And it was very simple and really easy. Oh, the last step, just need you to see these three or four things. They're pretty standard stuff. The last one being though, and that you will not discriminate based on your services. or those you'll serve, based on, they don't list anything else, they say, including, the only thing they highlight is including gender, identity, and sexual orientation. And I said, I, I can't click on that. And guys, this isn't like, you know, when we buy anything, it's like, uh, please click on the terms of uses and things. And it's like 9,000 pages of lawyer speak. And nobody reads that. You know, we just click it and say, sure. Cause we get the general gist of things, right? This isn't, it wasn't like that. It was right there on one page. Check here, big, hardly anything to read. I said, you gotta be kidding me. How can any church click that? Brothers and sisters, a lot of churches are, because they're doing Google ads. I asked our person, he says, I think this is something that might have developed sooner. We decided to go a different direction. We're not gonna say, but we gotta be out there, and Google's the biggest. No way. We're not gonna sign on with the beast. We're not gonna sign on with Babylon and expect God's blessing on us. Oh, maybe he'll fill the church. Maybe even the right people, but that blood will be on our hands and at some point it'll catch up to the truth. We're not gonna lie. We're not gonna check on something that is not true and actually wicked. So we didn't, but that's what I'm getting at. There's that temptation to be, well, nobody really. pays attention to that, no one's gonna know I clicked on that, right? We don't really believe that, there's no way to get it. I said, Google, is there any way that we can communicate? No, we can't sign on to that, but you're not gonna discriminate against us? No answer. My point is, we can't justify sin by saying it is necessary, okay? And that's what Satan really likes to make us do. That's the next subtlety of how he'll trick us to sin. When it's sin, guess what? It's still sin. And when we have to face God, we can't say, yeah, but you know, you have to understand the situation. God will say, I know the situation. Why didn't you trust me to be God and trust my power and providence possibly to deliver you, to blind the enemies? Maybe allow me to open your eyes and let you see all the chariots of fire and horses around you. Why did you take providence into your own hands and choose to be God? At the end of the day, Daniel said, I'm not gonna stop praying by my window. And he and his friends said, we're not gonna bow down to the false idol. And God delivered them. But what did they say? God can deliver us, but even if He doesn't, we're not gonna give the false lie that this false idol is God. God is the only true God, and if we have to die, we'll die. And remember, what were they facing? A fiery furnace that burned up even those who threw them into it before they got there. Can't have been imagined. Or a den of lions. But God can make you not burn up, and God, if He wants to, can make the lions little kitty cats to you. But even if he doesn't, we will not lie. And keep in mind especially, I'm emphasizing that because Satan is the father of lies and he'll convince you lying is okay. If you don't mind, let me give Isaac and Gabriel a quick chance to say something and we'll close. Thank you for bearing with me. I'm sorry, I didn't lie. I truly thought I'd ended eight. I truly thought I could end it on time. My apologies for keeping you late. Isaac, real fast. I'm not sure. I understand your question. How about since you're my son you and I chat more afterwards. I make sure I It's not suicide if that's okay. It's a pretty profound question for a nine-year-old. No, it's not suicide if you don't have the power to deliver yourself and you're waiting on God to deliver you and you trust that if he doesn't, then this is his providential plan and he's going to bring you straight to heaven. Yeah, you're not throwing yourself into the fire and you're not throwing yourself to the lions. I think you're picking up on my quote earlier of that fellow that was thrown into the arena. He was going to die. The lions would have eaten him eventually. He's saying, why delay it? I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid to go straight to heaven and give a witness to my Lord. I'm glad you asked that. No, you're right, suicide. And frankly, there are times where Satan will lie to us and maybe even try to convince us that is the best thing to do. No, not suicide. Gabriel, a long time ago you raised your hand. I'm sorry, buddy. I forgot. Do you happen to remember what you were going to say or ask? It might have been a prayer time. What he said, he's going to die on the red line. Red line. Is he going to No, we don't trick God, we're trusting in God. So what that man was trying to express is, I'm not going to be afraid of death. If I can't get myself out of it, I'm not going to deny Jesus. Because the Romans would say, all you have to do is sign up here and say you don't believe in Jesus as Lord, or Caesar and other gods are Lord, no problem. You just have to sign that and then we won't kill you. But he says, I'm not going to sign that. I'm not going to sign something that denies my Lord and acknowledges other false gods. I would rather, if you're going to kill me, then I'm not going to and I can't get out of it, I'm gonna die for Jesus, I'm not gonna lie about that kind of thing. That was a lot of the early witness, yeah. Thank you for your good questions, and I'm sorry for keeping you late. Appreciate your prayers, again, for the kids as they have their speech and debate tournament the next three days. And Lord willing, we'll see you here this Lord's Day. I may go with the topical sermon, I'm not sure, because I have to be pretty involved in the tournament. I'm hoping to get to Deuteronomy and Philippians where we've continued for a while. So I appreciate your prayers for me, too, to have good wisdom about that. Okay, let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for this time together, and we thank you that you do not lie, you cannot lie, for you are truth. Protect us from excusing ourself to sin with the lies of Satan, including that it's necessary, or just the lies of the world, that these are such wonderful things to be tempted and distracted by. or just to lose our love for truth itself and then to believe a lie and to embrace it as if it were truth. Lord, protect us. You say in the Bible when those of your church are straying, my ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. And the context is your thoughts are evil, mine are good. Lord, let us not call evil what you call good, and let us not call good what you call evil. And if necessary, oh Lord, let us be willing to die for you, the truth, Lord Jesus, just as you died for us. And we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and all your people said, amen.