in considering this morning, verses 8-14. If you're following along in a pew Bible, you can find that on page 1017. If you're trying to find it on your app, you should know where it's at. But if you could follow along with me, 1 Peter 5, verses 8-14, listen carefully, for this is the Word of the living God. The Apostle Peter says, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. By Silvanus, a faithful brother, as I regard Him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark my son. Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ. As far as the reading of God's Word, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the Word of our God stands forever. Let's ask the Lord one last time for help as we come to the ministry of the Word. Would you bow with me? Father, we pray this morning that You would open our eyes, for we want to see Jesus. Open our ears, for we want to hear His blessed voice through the ministry of Your Word. Father, even as we read on the screen right before we came into the ministry of the Word this morning from Ezekiel 28, it was that picture of Satan being thrown down from his original position. He wanted to ascend to the heights of the mountains. He wanted to be You. And he was furious that he was not. He was furious that he didn't have Your authority. He was furious that he didn't have Your power. He was furious that he was not in control And Father, we confess to You this morning that sadly, we fall along the same mindset at times. We want something better or more or even less than what You've given us, Father. But Lord, may we even learn from this example of Satan that his demise came as a result of his pride, his unwillingness to submit to You. Father, would You help us to resist this ancient adversary? Would You help us to stand firm in our faith? Would You help us, Father, to make use of the resources You have given us in Your Word, in the Gospel, in the Spirit who dwells within us, that we might, for the remainder of our sojourn here on earth as we travel to that celestial city, be able to withstand Him and having done all to stand. Give Your servant help this morning, and we ask these things in Your Son's name. Amen. Well, believe it or not, we've come to the end of 1 Peter. I think I counted. This is the 42nd message. And it's kind of hard to end this book. I mean, I was thinking about it this week, and it's kind of like saying goodbye to an old friend. We've been tracking along in this epistle for a number of months now, and the Lord through this epistle has shown us many things. But what is interesting to me is that what you had read in your hearing this morning was basically the closing exhortation of Peter. It's basically him summing up in so many ways everything that he said in the letter in a short, compact range of verses. And I just want you to notice very quickly that he does some random things here that I feel compelled to highlight before we get to the main idea. But he does mention Silvanus, through whom he wrote the letter. This was common with Paul and with Peter and with other writers, but often they would have what is basically a secretary that would write down what the Apostle Peter dictated. Peter didn't necessarily physically write the whole letter, but Silvanus did. Peter was maybe walking back and forth with his hands behind his back, just speaking out what he wanted Silvanus to write. And Silvanus was not only copying it down, but probably editing when maybe Peter got a few things off, or maybe Silvanus was given a few rhetorical flourishes in the letter, but Peter signals that. But then he says in v. 13, he says, she who is at Babylon greets you. Who is this? She who is at Babylon, the Chosen One, v. 13, is a reference to the church. And what's interesting is, he notes that she is in Babylon, which is a reference to Rome. So the church, the chosen one, who is in Babylon, which is Rome. Why would Peter use that kind of code language? Well, the reason why, if you step back and look at the whole book, remember that Peter addressed his letter to sojourners, exiles, foreigners even, those who were amongst the dispersion, those who were cast out. And if you think of the history of Israel, it's when Babylon came in 586 BC and took Israel captive and spread her throughout all the realm of the earth. Some she took captive, some she put in this dominion, some she left in Judah. But Babylon was the power of the day, the dominion of the day, and now Peter is making a spiritual analogy or connection. Just as Babylon was the power and dominion that was in 586 BC, so now Rome is the power that is reigning over all the inhabited earth. but just as Israel was the people of God then, so now we as the church are the new Israel of God. We are the ones who have been dispersed into all the earth because of the oppression of Rome. And so I think it's interesting, but also helpful to remember we are the new Israel of God. We have been dispersed throughout all the world. You have brothers and sisters throughout this international globe who name the name of Christ, who are part of the new Israel of God. But then in verse 14, he tells the church to greet one another with the kiss of love. Paul calls this the holy kiss, and I'm obviously not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I would just hasten to underline that while Peter wants this greeting to be normative, that we greet the saints is normative, but how we greet the saints may not be normative. I saw all of you coming in today, and I didn't see anybody giving a kiss of love. But this kiss in the first century, there was nothing romantic about it. It was just the typical cultural greeting in the Greco-Roman world in the first century amongst churches throughout the world. And we should not exegetically or hermeneutically say, well, He says to give a kiss of love, so we must do that today. There are cultures that still do that. But that's not Peter's point. His point is that there is a greeting that brothers and sisters give to one another that exhibits the love they have for one another in Christ. And by the way, can I just say that's really important? It's really important to greet your brothers and sisters in the Lord, whether you do that with a handshake, whether you do that with a front hug or a side hug, or whatever the case may be. You know, one of the ways that we can preserve unity in the church is by keeping love for one another hot. By keeping it central. By keeping the gravity of love amongst us strong. It's really hard to strike out at one another, to gossip about one another, to be mean and nasty to one another when we are constantly greeting one another in love, isn't it? And so the fellowship among the saints involves greeting them. But now, what I want to spend the rest of our time on this morning, the brief time, is what we see basically in verses 8-11. And here's what we have in verses 8-11 as Peter culminates this letter and gives us a culminating exhortation and promise. I want you to see his exhortation, which is very simply that we resist Satan and his hordes. that we resist Satan as the general and all the dupes and the lackeys and the cronies that he sends out to do his work. It is a call to watchfulness. It is a call to be vigilant. It is an exhortation to be aware of Satan's schemes and his designs and his plans. But Peter doesn't just give an exhortation, he also gives a promise. And that promise is that if we stand firm in our faith, the Lord will preserve us until the end, and He will bring us into that promised rest of Jesus Christ that, by the way, He predestined that we would be called into before time began. So the main idea here is very simple. We as Christians, as sojourners, as those who are part of the dispersion, who are on this journey to the celestial city in this thing called life, are to be vigilant. And we are to persevere under the attacks of Satan and his hordes through what? by clinging to the promises through faith. And I'm going to outline that in just a moment. So let me ask a question this morning. The exhortation is given. We are to be vigilant. How are we to be vigilant? How are we to be vigilant against Satan and his schemes? Let me give you a number of thoughts this morning, and the first one is this. The most important thing that you need to know in being vigilant against your enemy is actually very simple, even if practically it is difficult, and that is to know your enemy. You have to know your enemy. And Peter says this, he mentions the enemy, our principal enemy, the arch enemy, if you will, is Satan. And the first thing we need to just get right off the docket is this, Satan is real. Now some of you are like, man Josh, is the rest of the sermon going to be these Captain Obvious observations? But the fact of the matter is, not everybody believes that Satan is real. Some people believe he's a fairy tale. In fact, in the early 20th century, 1920s, 1930s, when higher critical scholarship in the academy invaded the church, and what we now know today as theological liberals started to take authority and power and prominence within the church, one of their chief teachings was that Satan was not real. Satan was a metaphor. Satan was a figure for evil in the world. In fact, Satan was a metaphor and a figure of speech for evil even within us. But God never intended Satan to be understood as a real figure. He certainly was not an entity or a person who possessed a serpent to come and deceive Adam and Eve in the garden. We don't believe that he's real. We don't believe that Adam and Eve is real. We don't believe the garden was real. The Bible is just a bunch of moral sayings to kind of help us along in life. If that teaching of the liberals were a political ad, at the end of that political ad, Satan would come on and say, my name is Satan and I approve this message. Because more than anyone, Satan wants us to think what? That he's not real. I mean, you talk about tactics, you talk about guerrilla warfare, the optimum guerrilla warfare tactic is your enemy doesn't exist. So the first thing that we need to keep in mind is that Satan is real. And by the way, as we read in Ephesians 6 this morning, Paul highlighted this, did he not? He said, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and power in the spiritual realm, in the heavenly places. I think it is so easy for us as 21st century Western Christians, with electricity that's everywhere and nowhere, right? Electricity here, even in this building, it's everywhere but it's nowhere, nobody sees it, it's in the walls. A century in a time when we have internet, a century in a time when we have nuclear power, to think, oh, this Satan stuff can't be real, that was just a fairy tale. But Satan's attacks are even more powerful than the nuclear stockhold that we have here in this country. And the enemy will do all that he can to leverage liberal, theological liberal views to get you to deny his existence in order to benefit him as he assaults you. But here's the second thing that we need to remember. We know that Satan's real, we gotta know our enemy. But the other thing is this, and maybe you haven't given much thought to this. Satan is not omnipresent. What does omnipresent mean? That he's everywhere all the time. There's only one being that's omnipresent, and that's God. But you know, oftentimes, sometimes when I hear Christians talk about Satan, they're like, man, I dropped my coffee on my shirt, it was Satan. or I tripped on my shoestrings because they weren't tied and it was Satan. Well, no, that was probably your fault, okay? But here's the other thing. Satan's not omnipresent, but so often, sometimes Christians will talk about how, oh, the devil is here and he's amongst us and we need to cast him out and all this stuff. I hope this isn't a blow to your pride, but Satan can only be one place at a time, and if he's going to attack anybody, it's probably going to be somebody with some high spiritual clout. If you look in the Bible, Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. Now, if you could bring David down, King David, a man after God's own heart, you're going to inflict some pretty heavy damage, right? Not only that, but Satan personally opposed Job. Not only that, but as we heard this morning in the responsive reading with Mr. Crawford, Satan personally came to Jesus. You topple David, You've got a bunch of points on the board. You toppled Jesus, you got a bunch of points on the board. Not only that, but Jesus told Peter that Satan's desire was to what? To sift Peter. Now, We, even as Protestants, have a high esteem of Peter. We believe in Matthew 16, which says, Peter, who am I? And he says, you are the son of the living God. And Jesus said, that is true. And on this, that is his confession, I will build my church. Peter is an important figure. If Satan can cause Peter to stumble, he's going to cause all his other people, his brothers and sisters, to stumble. But I hope it's not a blow to your pride when you are actually afflicted by a spiritual entity in the spiritual realm. More than likely, it's not Satan. It's probably one of his dupes and one of his lackeys. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have your guard up. Why? Because Satan, as the general of the dark spiritual realm, has had a long time to craft his art and strategy of attacking you. And one of the things that He does is He studies you. He studies your proclivities. He studies your inclinations. He studies your habits. He studies your patterns. And the crazy thing about Satan is that he or his hordes can so infiltrate your mind that they can actually turn something good into something bad. What do I mean by that? Well, have you ever been struck in any instance in your life where maybe normally you respond to something, some opposition, some persecution, some whatever, with anger or hatred or spite or you blow up, and then in this instance, by God's grace, you respond to it well. You respond to it humbly. You respond to it patiently. And then you start to think to yourself, man, I did pretty well. I was pretty humble on that. I was pretty patient. What's happening? You're starting to get prideful about your humility. Isn't that interesting? You're getting prideful about your humility. Jedi mind tricks. It didn't start with Luke and Yoda and all them. It started with Satan. They can work their satanic Jedi mind tricks on you by turning a good thing into a bad thing. What is another good thing that we should all strive for? Zeal, right? We should all be brimming over, as Paul says in Romans 15, with zeal, just brimming over with zeal for the Lord, zeal for His people, zeal for truth. But sometimes, for example, in our zeal for truth, we become this mind-sweeping steamroller that just runs roughshod over people's feelings without even caring about them. And there's a balance there, isn't there? We need to love truth, but we need to also love grace and mercy as well. And so Satan knows us, Satan and his hordes know us. The second thing, therefore, we need to know after identifying our enemy is we need to secondly know our enemy's schemes. As I've been saying, Satan is incredibly skilled at playing the angles. Have you ever known somebody like that? Somebody who, maybe they're a bit of a shady character, maybe they're in your family, maybe they're you, but they're just incredibly manipulative. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, they use it and angle it and leverage it toward their benefit. But Peter says two things about Satan here that I think give us some insight into how he operates. He says that Satan is a roaring lion prowling about seeking whom he may devour. Now, I just want you to think of that image for a second because I think we may get the impression that he roars and he prowls at the same time. But think about that for a second. Have you ever watched Animal Planet? When's the last time you saw a lion prowling up on the prey and roaring? It doesn't work that way. What's he going to do if he's prowling, sneaking up on the prey and roaring at the same time? He's going to let that prey know that he's there and if that prey cares about its life, it's going to run away with all its energy. So it's not that Peter is saying he does these things at the same time. I think he's highlighting some of the characteristics about the enemy's scheme. Sometimes he roars. Sometimes he roars. And I think there's a few different ways we could think about this. Number one, I think that Satan roars in his persecution. I don't know how Satan's activity works within the world. I don't know how. I don't believe, because the Bible teaches against this, that Satan forces anybody to do anything. That's just not how sin and temptation works. James says that falling into sin comes when we are tempted with a desire and we give ourselves over to that desire and then it gives birth to sin. So whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, Satan and his hordes are going to put things before you, but it's then up to you how you take them up and proceed with them. But one of the ways that, let's say, the world, the flesh, and the devil converge in this three-man camaraderie against Christians in the church is that he persecutes the church. In fact, the whole book of Revelation I think is three different ways of talking about this age between the ascension of Christ and the return of Christ. And through all those different cycles of descriptions of this age, it's always talking about basically the city of man or the city of Satan, if you will, persecuting the city of God. It uses the figure of a dragon, it uses the figure of fire, it uses the figure of horsemen, but they're always coming after the people of God through persecution. And Satan throughout history has roared through persecution. But then there's other ways in which he roars. His wars are, I think, most clearly seen in culture. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4 that Satan has blinded the eyes of men such that they call good evil and evil good. The murder of babies is not about babies, it's about women's reproductive rights. Isn't that interesting? You just play a different angle and it becomes a completely different conversation. The definition of male and female is determined by feelings and not by facts. We don't look at X and Y chromosomes within the body, we look at what I think I am. The definition of marriage is determined by happiness and not consent, not God's design from the beginning. This is one of the ways in which Satan roars in the world. In many respects then, Satan and his hordes don't have to try hard with unbelievers. I think with unbelievers, it's incredibly easy for Satan and his hordes to deceive them. But the powers of darkness whisper lies into the ears of the unregenerate, and the unregenerate, they just eat it up. It fits with their agenda. But with believers, the powers of darkness have to be a little more subtle. And I think that that's what Peter's getting at when he gives this figure of this lion prowling, right? How does a lion prowl? Adverb, very carefully, very subtly, very circumspectly. What does he do? Well, with God's people, Satan takes God's Word and he twists it. This is what he did with Adam and Eve in the garden. In fact, in 2 Corinthians 11.3, Paul says to the Corinthians, listen to this very carefully, 2 Corinthians 11.3, but I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." Satan comes in with us, and you know what he does? It's what he did with Jesus in the wilderness. He didn't try to tempt Jesus with extra scriptural realities or promises. You know what he did? He took scripture itself and tried to give it a different meaning. That right there should sit up red flags for us all over the place. When we realize, and this is true, and this is one of the things that saddens me greatly, somebody could take the word of God and make it mean whatever they want. They can take the Word of God and make it mean whatever they want. This is why hermeneutics is so important. How to interpret scripture. This is why confessions are so important. Confessions of the faith, like what we have here at Grace Covenant Church, they're like referees and boundary lines to keep us within orthodoxy. If you ever find yourself coming upon a particular view on anything in the Bible, I don't care what it is, and you look back through 2,000 years of church history and no one has held that view, you should be suspect. Satan can use Scripture and twist it. Paul says that he's cunning. Cunning means one who is working all the angles. Have you ever met somebody like that? Maybe you've even seen it in yourself. Are you familiar with what a con man is? A con man offers you a deal that you can't refuse and then makes off with your money or possessions. You know what con and con man stands for? Confidence, man. That's what they're there to do. They're there to gain confidence from you. They all of a sudden care about things in your life that nobody else cares about. My wife and I were once in Florida on the most disastrous, epically horrible vacation we've ever had in our whole entire life. And one of the things that made it epically disastrous is that we decided, in my naivete and poor leadership, to sit in on one of these timeshare presentations. Have you guys ever done that? Oh, the Lord would give me the wisdom to remember this experience in the future. But we were watching this movie and then the guy told us, you know, we're gonna go out and we're gonna look at these timeshares that hopefully you're gonna invest in. You know, it'll only be about an hour. It'll be under an hour and then we'll give you a dinner certificate that you can go and eat at this restaurant. We're like, okay, whatever, just an hour. And we get into the car and this guy shows us a picture of his cat. He's like, that's my cat. And we're like, oh, that's not, he's all, she's dead. Okay, man, I'm sorry for your loss He's all and then he's pointing to another picture on the dash and it was a picture of his wife. He's all that's my wife We're like, oh, that's nice. I like it. She's dead. Okay Yeah, I've had a hard life And I mean, this guy is just trying to pull on our emotional heartstrings the whole time. And telling us, like, you can't pass up... I mean, he was a con man, that's what he was. Satan is exceedingly more con-ish than that. And he is going to work on your pride, he is going to work on what you value to be valuable and helpful, and he is going to twist it. He knows your tactics for fighting against sin, and He will use it against you. He will actually, He and His hordes, take your past failures and throw them back in your face. He's been doing this for a long time and he knows how to do it well. So, we need to know our enemy. We need to know our enemy's schemes. But then, here's something very interesting that I was thinking about this week as I was preparing for this. You know, the Bible gives us many examples of both men and women of the faith. I think of Hebrews chapter 11, that hall of faith that we aspire to be like these people. But you know what's also interesting? In some sense, Satan is an example to us as well. He's an example to us as well. Of what is he an example to us? He is exceedingly watchful. He is exceedingly cunning and consistent and more than earnest. And my question for us this morning is, if Satan is exceedingly watchful in devouring us, how much more? How much more should we be exceedingly watchful in our fight against him? You know that Peter says he's a roaring lion that goes about seeking whom he may Devour. You know what he's talking about there? Satan isn't concerned about making you handicapped. Satan isn't concerned about taking things away from you for the sake of taking things away from you. You know what Satan's concerned with? He's concerned about leveraging all those things in your life such that you count your faith to be worthless. He wants you to abandon your faith. That's what Peter means by devouring your faith. He wants to devour your faith and see trust in Jesus Christ as worthless. That's what he's doing. So Peter gives us a strategy for resisting Satan. So let me thirdly now, highlight that we need to know our strategy for resistance. Let me suggest to you from the text here four ways that we can resist the devil and his hordes, okay? How do we resist the devil and his hordes? Four ways. Number one, Resisting the devil requires a sober mind. Look at verse 8a. Be sober-minded, he says. Sober-minded. Throughout the book of 1 Peter, he's constantly exhorting us in different ways and with different phrases to prepare our minds. Sometimes he says, gird up the loins of your mind for action. Other times he says, be sober-minded. Other times he says, arm yourselves with the same mind as Christ. This is incredibly important, you see. He's exhorting us to be sober-minded. He's exhorting us, just as Jesus withstood the attacks of Satan in the wilderness, to use Scripture. Note well that every time Jesus was tempted with sin, He responded with, Thus saith the Lord. One of the things we need for resisting Satan is very simply this. We need right thinking. We need sober thinking. We need our thinking to be anchored in the Word of God, listen to me very carefully, and not our emotions and not in our pride. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Sometimes in our lives, as we face temptation, as we face affliction, as we face persecution, circumstances and feelings tend to intoxicate a sober mind. What do I mean by that? Well, when we consider Jesus withstanding the attacks of Satan with Scripture, we say, Amen. We read that and we're like, yeah, that's what we need to be about. But I think sometimes instead what we do is instead of following Jesus' example when temptation comes to us and saying, no, thus saith the Lord, no, it is written, we say, thus says my circumstances and thus says my feelings. You know that most of my counseling is nothing more than an attempt to anchor people's thinking in the word of God. Can I give you some examples? And I'm not necessarily thinking of any of you with this particular example. you know, rest assured. But I have heard people in the course of my ministry throughout the years, whether it's a wife or a husband, take this line of reasoning in their marriage. In a bad marriage, in a horrible marriage, in a rotten marriage. But nonetheless, in a marriage that does not have ongoing hard-hearted adultery or abandonment as part of the makeup of that marriage. Either the husband or the wife will say something like this, I'm not happy in my marriage. God wants me to be happy. Therefore, I'm going to divorce my spouse. My question is, where in the Bible does it give not being happy as an exception to the divorce clause in the Bible? It doesn't! But people think, well, my circumstances are different. And my question is, is God not so sovereign that when He wrote to us, to all His people in all peoples, all times, and all places, He wasn't savvy enough, He wasn't sovereign enough to take into consideration your circumstances? Can I say this? It's not the case that God knew your circumstances before He inspired holy men to write the Bible. It's that He determined the boundaries of your circumstances. And having been sovereign in determining the boundaries of your circumstances, He gave us His revelation, which gives us the boundaries for what we should and should not do. People say, well, I'm going to get a divorce because I'm not happy, and until you've walked a mile in my shoes, in my marriage, my marriage, you can't judge me." To which I respond, Jesus was never married. An argument can be made that Paul was never married, and yet both Jesus and Paul gave vivid descriptions of how we are to approach our marriages. Should we not listen to them because they were never married? Or people can say, I just can't handle this temptation that I'm in. It's too much for me." Have you ever said that to yourself? Have you heard people say that to themselves? Lord, what you're giving me is too much, but what does the Word of God say? The Word of God says no temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So, congregation, this is what I'm getting at. We have to resist Satan with a sober mind. And a sober mind is cobbled together by the worldview that Scripture gives us. And we do not have the right, based on our circumstances, to say, well, I know God says this, but I'm going to go ahead and do this over here. We just don't have that right. One of the biggest things I deal with in counseling is walking with people down the path of forgiveness. And so often, not only in the people that I counsel, but also in my own life, I get this approach, which basically says, what this person has done to me, it is so incredibly horrible, that even though they're asking for forgiveness, I just cannot find it in myself to forgive them. You know what we're forgetting when we say that? We're forgetting the gospel. If you added up all the offenses that that person did to you, and then on this side of the scale, you added up all the offenses that you've given to the triune God, these are gonna pale in comparison to what you've done. And yet, what does God say? If you turn from your sins and believe in Jesus Christ, I forgive you. The power of forgiveness is found in the nuclear center of the gospel. If I understand all that which I've been forgiven of, how can I, when somebody comes to me with tears in their eyes, as bad as it may be, and asks for forgiveness, can I say, no, I will not extend it to you? I think we have not understood the power of our own forgiveness. But another intoxication of a sober mind is this. Pride. I once confronted a very dear man in my life, I won't say who it is, but it was a family member, and he was embroiled in the sin of drunkenness. and the family had confronted him, and I was then asked to confront him, and I did, and it was very hard because he was older than me physically, he was older than me spiritually, he'd been walking with Jesus longer than I had, but I believed in Matthew 18, I believed in what the Bible said, I knew also that it wasn't going to be easy, I knew that there was going to be blood, metaphorically speaking, But after I went to this man and showed him from Scripture, first off, how concerned God is about this sin, how serious this sin is, how devastating it could be, and called him to repentance, after showing him all these relevant Scriptures, he just turned to me with this weird look on his face, and he says, you know what, Josh? I'm an independent thinker. I'm kind of like a free bird, you know? I know God says this stuff, but I kind of walk my own path. And on the one hand, I was thinking to myself, how grateful I am that you're being honest right now. There's a difference between somebody that says, oh yeah, yeah, you're right, and I'll do those things, and then they walk away, and they don't lift a finger to do it. Then there's other people that say, no, I'm not going to do those things, but then they walk away, they feel repentance, and they actually do it. Here was a man who was being honest with me. He just said, I love the bottle more than Jesus. I'm going to do whatever I want. But can I remind you that he thought his way was better? He was thinking independently. And there is a way, the Proverbs say, that seems right to a man, but in the end it will lead to destruction. To think independently of God's Word is actually the strategy of Satan. This is what he did in the garden with Eve. At the end of the day, a sober mind is consumed with Christ. A sober mind is consumed with Christ. At the end of the day, sober thinking asks this question, is Christ enough for me? If you get that question right, you will be able to sustain anything in life, and I mean anything. Sometimes we romanticize about the martyrs and how they were willing to give up their lives rather than compromise Christ. And it's so beautiful and it's so tragic all at the same time to consider the lives of these martyrs. They gave up their lives and we say, oh what faith, oh what valor. And yet at the same time, I think for most of us, normal people, it's hard for us just to live for Christ. It's hard for us just to say, Christ, I'm gonna love you more than my own pride, I'm gonna love you more than my own comfort, I'm gonna love you more than the bottle, I'm gonna love you more than drugs, I'm gonna love you more than pride, because you are my all in all. Is that your heart this morning? is your heart this morning that Christ is your all in all, and there's nothing in this life, I don't care if it's pride, prestige, materials, money, clout, whatever it is, sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, Christ is more beautiful than those things. Because if you have that strategy, that's a strategy that Satan cannot get around. A deep-seated love for Christ that permeates itself into the rest of your life. I'm just gonna stop there this morning, because I think that that's something good for us to think through. Is Christ enough? And when we return next time, we'll consider these other three strategies for resisting Satan. Let's pray.