And please turn with me in your Bibles to the first letter of Peter, chapter five, 1 Peter, chapter five, and verse eight, 1 Peter, chapter five, verse eight. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. And our subject this evening is Satan, our adversary. Well, we come to this verse, these two verses. We'll look at verse nine very briefly towards the end of our time together this evening. but this is a teaching of great importance. Many of the things that I will say this evening we know very well, but we always need to be reminded of these things, how we are to deal with our great adversary, the devil. our adversary, our arch enemy. He's the opponent of each and every one of us. As soon as we are born again, as soon as we enter into the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God, we have a wonderful savior, of course, but we have a fierce enemy, and that is Satan, the devil, and we must be mindful and aware of the ways in which he attacks us, the ways in which he opposes us, and of course, we must remember that he always opposes us. God, the Lord, is of course the one who is always for us, who will work all things together for good. Sometimes it doesn't seem as though things are working together for good. Sometimes it doesn't seem as though God is for us at all, but he is always for us. We know this. God is for us. God is supporting us. But by contrast, Satan, the devil, is always against us. There is never a time when Satan is for us, not even for a second, not even for a moment. Satan is always against us. He is full of hatred. Sometimes of course, well certainly if you're an unbeliever, sometimes it doesn't seem that way. Satan will always present himself as one that is on our side, as one that cares for us One that has our best interests at heart, just as he did, of course, in the Garden of Eden. He came alongside Adam and Eve. And how did Satan present himself? Satan presented himself as someone who was on Adam and Eve's side. Someone who will help Adam and Eve, who will give them a better offer than the Lord. This is how Satan presents himself. I am on your side. I love you more than God ever could. But that is a lie. God is, Satan rather, is always our adversary. He means us harm. He meant Adam and Eve harm. He made out that he was on Adam and Eve's side, but actually he was against them. He wanted them to die. He wanted them to take the fruit and then die. He was against them. He wished harm upon them. And so Satan, he presents himself out to be our friend, but he is our adversary. Have no doubt about that at all. He hates us. He means us harm. So that is very clear in the scripture. There is no affection that Satan has for human beings, for us collectively, or as individuals. He is our adversary. He is a fierce and dangerous adversary. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour well he's described as a roaring lion which communicates to us how strong satan is satan is very strong satan is much stronger than we are a lion if you were faced with a lion you would give up because you know there's no match Satan is incredibly strong, supernaturally strong. He has great capacity to inflict damage. Just as a roaring lion can inflict great damage upon you, upon your body, can even murder you. Well, this is reflective of the capacity that Satan has to inflict damage upon your life. He's cruel. He shows no mercy. Mercy, there is no mercy in Satan. Mercy is only something that belongs to God. God has mercy upon us. Satan doesn't have any mercy upon you. Satan, when he attacks you, he will show you no mercy. He will humiliate you even down to the dust. So there is no mercy with Satan, there's no reasoning with him in that sense, no mercy, and he seeks to devour you. We read here, he walketh about seeking whom he may devour. Now we're going to look at these words again in just a few moments, but he devours us. Now of course, when we think of the damage that Satan can do to us, Satan, well, he cannot Satan cannot separate us from the Lord. If you are a born again believer, you cannot fall from grace, you cannot lose your salvation, nothing can pluck you from God's hand, nothing can separate you from the Father's hand or from entering heaven. So what can Satan do? In what sense can he devour us? Well, he can devour us in this sense. He eats up all of your joy as a believer. All the joy that the Lord desires to give us, Satan can eat that up. All the peace. Satan, of course, will lead us into sin, great sin. And that will take away much of our peace. We will always be carrying about a troubled conscience through sin. We will always have that burden upon us, that sadness, because we have been felled by Satan. Our witness can be devoured if Satan tempts us into great sin. and many people see it, well then our witness as a Christian is lost. How can we speak to other people about following Christ when other people know that we have committed great sin and we have dishonored God ourselves? Satan has, he's eaten it up, he's devoured it. That's what Satan has done. And so these things, they deeply affect a Christian's life. They cannot be unsaved. They cannot be separated from God. But they will be, as it were, tortured Christians by Satan because he will devour them. And well, we think of this great Capacity that Satan has to inflict damage. And this is why we have to be on our guard. We can be saved Christians, but we can have many years of sorrow if we allow Satan to have his way with us. And this is very sad. Satan of course, well, he will try everything to separate us from God. If we let Satan have a foothold in our lives and affect us, well, we will never have that close communion, that close fellowship with God. Satan devours relationships through sin, relationships between ourselves in the church, family relationships, Satan can eat that up, but he can eat up our relationship with the Lord to the point where we never pray where we're scared of praying because Satan has caused us to be led astray. And this is, again, very important. This is Satan's great aim, to keep us as far from the Lord as possible. If we are saved, no real communion or fellowship with him, to keep us isolated. And this is how we operate. By the way, the devil, of course, and you know this very well, Satan will only seek to attack those who are most faithful to the Lord. Those who are most faithful to the Lord. those who sincerely seek to follow Him and to serve Him. They are the ones whom Satan will attack. Lukewarm Christians, Christians who don't really care about doing anything or obeying God, Satan will never trouble them because they are not the troublesome ones according to him. The ones that Satan hates, are the faithful Christians who want to serve God, and want to obey God, and want to love God more and more, and want to have a close fellowship. Those are the ones that Satan will target and attack. Not the lukewarm Christians, and by the way not the lukewarm churches, churches where everything is just modern entertainment and light preaching and nonsense preaching, Satan will never attack those churches. He'll just let them be as they are. But a faithful church teaching sound doctrine, and we'll consider that a bit later, Satan will never leave them alone. Just as in the same way, and again we know this, Satan leaves all the other religions alone, or the other religions, well, they have very little opposition. Some of them occasionally, there'll be some mild opposition. But generally speaking, it's Christianity that is the most persecuted religion in the world, by far, in fact, even now. Why is that? Why is that the case? Because Satan attacks the true religion. He doesn't care about all the false ones. Just leave them be. I'm going to attack the true religion. And so this is what he does. It's Christianity that will be attacked. So if we, and the vast majority of us here in this church, well, we endeavor to serve the Lord in the right way, in the right manner, but we will be targeted by Satan because we want to be faithful. And we could speak at length about that. Remember Job. Job was targeted by Satan or was singled out for Satan's attack. Why was Job targeted? Because he was faithful, not because he was lukewarm, not because he was a weak believer. He was faithful, he was devout. Job was exceptional, an exceptional man. That's why he was targeted. And so it'll be the same for us. Because this is what angers Satan so. Those who are faithful, they will be attacked. But how are we to respond? Well, the instructions are given here. Our adversary, the devil, is as a roaring lion, walking about, seeking whom he may devour. The instructions are actually at the beginning of the verse. There are two. Be sober and be vigilant. That's how we respond to this threat of the devil. Be sober, be vigilant. We are to be sober. How are we to be sober? Well, first of all, this isn't just speaking about not drinking alcohol, although of course that's a good thing if we abstain from alcohol. But when we talk about being sober in this sense, in this spiritual sense, well it means a number of things. First of all, we are to not be drunk upon the things of this world. not to be intoxicated by the things of this world we can be so easily intoxicated by the things of this world now of course it is uh it is okay it is permissible for christians to have certain hobbies and pastimes and recreation But we have to be very careful that it's rationed. We don't get carried away with it. We don't get intoxicated by it. All things are lawful for me, said the Apostle Paul, but I will not be brought under the power of any. to be brought under the power of something other than the Lord, to be intoxicated, to be drunken with something other than the Lord. And well, you can mention many things. Sometimes we're intoxicated by a piece of music. or by an album or by an artist. We get carried away with it. This wonderful piece of music seems to have more influence on us than the Lord, than the Word of God. When I'm low, I go to this piece of music. That has more power over me. And Satan likes that. He likes to keep a distance between you and God, between you and the Word of God. Or it could be some movie that we love and take too much time over and are influenced by, some TV series, some sports team. They dominate us. They have the power over us. When these things have dominion over us, Satan can get in. This is what is being communicated here. We are to be sober. Don't get carried away with the things of this world. Make sure the only thing that has the power over you, the ultimate power over you and authority over you is the word of God. That's what it is to be sober. Don't get drunk with the things of this world, because then we will lose our hold upon the Lord. But secondly, in terms of being sober, we must be sober with our emotions and with our feelings. So when we do well, and we know success, we must try not to get overly carried away with it and think to ourselves, we are doing very well and nothing can go wrong now because it is exactly at those sorts of times when we will be complacent. When we think we're doing well, we let our guard down and then, well, Satan will come in. Once our guard is let down, Satan will come in and wreck everything and well, we will be at a loss. So we are sober. When we do well, we are level-headed. We give thanks to the Lord our God, and we seek the continued blessing and protection of the Lord our God. We don't get carried away with ourselves. By the way, in connection with that, to be sober, we don't have too high an opinion of ourselves. Remember that the apostle has been speaking about humility, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God. If you are somebody who has too high an opinion of himself or herself, if you are proud, a proud person is not sober. A proud person does not have a sober, realistic view of themselves. They have an inflated view of themselves. They have an exaggerated view of themselves. They're proud. But you have to be sober. Have a realistic view of who you are. Your strengths, yes, but your weaknesses also. And also we know that we ultimately are weak in all things and we need the Lord's help. So be sober when it comes to yourself. Have that right view of yourself. Don't have too high an opinion of yourself. Don't get carried away when things are going well. But also the flip side of that, don't get too carried away when things go wrong. When there are great disappointments, when things don't work out as planned, well, then we can overreact. We can go into depression, the doldrums, the pits of despair. Again, Satan can attack. Satan can attack us when we're too high. Satan can attack us when we're too low. He's always prowling around. But we have to be sober. Don't get too high, don't get too low. Be sober about these things. And this is where the Word of God is so important. This is why we encourage people to read the Word of God every day, because it's the Word of God that keeps you sober. If you allow yourself to be influenced by things in the world, And people in the world, people in the world are not sober. Unbelievers are not sober people. They're drunk with the things of this world. Not literally drunk, but drunk with the things of this world. They can't see things clearly. They have a wrong view of the world. They have the wrong view of man. They have the wrong view of themselves. They have the wrong view of morality. They have the wrong view of God. Everything is wrong. They are drunk. They're intoxicated with the things of this world. How do we sober ourselves up? We go to the word of God. The word of God sobers us up. It gives us the right view. It gives us the clear view of morality, of the Lord, of man. This is how we are to be sober. So we are to be sober. Don't let our feelings and our emotions carry us away. Be sober. And this is a great part of what it means to resist the devil and to fight against him. But then there's be vigilant. I must hurry. Be sober, be vigilant. Now be vigilant. just very briefly means to be watchful, to be watchful. And this is particularly relevant for the elder, for the pastor of the church. Remember this chapter began addressing the elder. He is the under shepherd. He most certainly has to be vigilant above everybody else, but really it's everybody's duty. to be cautious at all times. Not just sometimes, be cautious. Be cautious at all times, at all times. Because as we've read here, the devil is as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. He walks about, or walketh about. Again in Job, we're not gonna turn to it, but in Job chapter one, Satan is described in very similar terms. He's described as going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it. So he's constantly prowling around. He's watchful. He's ever active. He never rests. We as Christians, we rest. We always want rest. But Satan never rests. He's always active. Who can I attack? Who can I pray upon this day? Who can I bring down? Who can I separate from God this day? He's walking around. He's prowling around. So there's always danger. And in fact, it means more than that. Not just that there's always danger, but there's danger now, right now. It's a clear and present danger right now. So therefore, the shepherd, certainly the pastor, always has to be on the lookout. It's not that there might be danger in a few days' time or a week's time. There's danger now because Satan is always active. And so therefore, we have to be cautious. This is why we are cautious, watchful in everything we do as individuals, as a church, anything that is suggested in the church, we have to be cautious, we have to assess it, we have to examine it. in the light of scripture. We can't just bring anything in. This is the problem with modern Christianity. People are not cautious. They're not vigilant. They just want to bring something into the church. And the attitude is always, oh, what's wrong with it? What's wrong with this? What's wrong with that? We shouldn't be saying, what's wrong with this? We should be examining it to see if there's anything wrong with it. First of all, not just saying, oh, there's nothing wrong with this or that. The Christian says, is there anything wrong with it? Anything that is presented to him, is there anything wrong with it? Because we know that there is a clear and present danger. Satan can get in, Satan can attack. So anything that takes place in our lives and particularly in the church, you have to examine it. What is going to happen if we follow this course of action? If we introduce this thing in the church, what is going to happen? In a few years time, in a few weeks time, you don't just let it happen because we know that we have an adversary. He's constantly working and to ignore that, to ignore that teaching is utter foolishness. and it has been the end of many churches. So this is very applicable for us. Satan is so subtle. Things that seem harmless will actually be to the detriment of the church. But we must move on to verse nine, just very briefly. Satan, he's walking about, he's seeking whom he may devour. But then we read in verse nine, whom resist steadfast in the faith. So even though the devil is so strong and he's so fearsome, we can still resist the devil. We can still resist him. And in fact, in the letter of James chapter four, which we read this morning, he says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. We don't have to be those who flee and who cower before the devil. We can be those who can resist the devil. How do we resist? Well, it's written here, steadfast in the faith. Whom resist steadfast in the faith. In other words, the way to resist the devil is to be faithful to the word of God, to be steadfast, to be immovable, to protect and to esteem and revere sound doctrine. The teaching of the word of God. This is how we resist the devil. Doesn't have to be anything miraculous or signs and wonders or anything like that. The apostle Peter says, be steadfast in the faith. Know your doctrine, know the Word of God. Do not compromise in any way. You must be faithful to the Word of God. You must know your Bibles, otherwise the devil will come in. And we know, of course, that the devil, well, he even likes to twist scripture. The devil will use scripture to try and trip us up. That's how he dealt with the Lord Jesus Christ or how he tried to tempt the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember one of his temptations, he brought the Lord to the pinnacle of the temple and he said, throw yourself off. And he quoted Psalm 91, throw yourself off because God has written, it is written, he will give his angels charge over thee. And they will bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. So the devil is quoting scripture, but the Lord Jesus Christ, he had sound doctrine. He knew his scriptures. He had a correct understanding of scripture. He's not going to twist it. How did the Lord respond to him? Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. He had sound understanding of the scripture. That is what we are to have. People will use scripture in all sorts of ways. The Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses will always come up to you and twist scripture. But if we have a right understanding, then we can resist, then we can remain steadfast in the faith and Satan will not be able to get in and to move us from the fundamentals of the faith. This is what it means to be strong and to put up that resistance. Whom resist steadfast in the faith, we never compromise, not even for a second, And then finally in verse nine, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. Well, this basically is saying to us that all of us, every Christian will have the same struggles against Satan. All the rest of the Lord's people are fighting the same enemy. That in a sense helps us It helps us because so often the devil will come to us and he will try and convince us that it's only us, it's only you as an individual who is suffering. Everyone else is doing fine. Everyone else in the church, they have wonderful lives. It's just you. You who is struggling, you who is being let down by the Lord, you are the only one who's suffering. That's how the devil tempts us, brings us down. But that again is a lie. The same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. Everyone is struggling. Everyone has to resist temptation. Everyone is fighting temptation. And everyone has to use the same means to overcome the temptation of the devil. You are not on your own. You're not a special case. These things, they actually comfort us. The saints, all of those who have gone before us, all the many saints throughout history who have been saved, they've had the same afflictions. And in fact, far more worse than we have to date in our comfortable Western lives. You look at history, so many have been more severely pressed by Satan, far more than we have. The same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. And of course, we remember that our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, he too, he himself, The Son of God, He was sorely tempted by Satan. The Son of God was not spared those same afflictions. And yet we know, of course, that our Lord, He overcame Satan. And this ought to give us the greatest comfort when we struggle against Satan. And it's true that Satan is a mighty warrior. He's a fierce warrior. He's stronger than us. But remember that he is a defeated warrior. He's a defeated soldier, as it were. He's already lost the battle. Christ has come. Christ has scored the ultimate victory, a complete victory over Satan, over death, over hell. So when we think of Satan, yes, he will attack us. Yes, he can bring us down, but this gives us strength. This helps us resist him. He's already lost. He will lose the battle. Christ will come at the very end of time and Christ's victory will be our victory. And so we don't, this is why we don't need to yield. to Satan. This is why we don't need to despair when we are brought under Satan's wiles and malevolence. We don't need to despair. He is conquered. Christ has conquered him. Christ has ultimate everlasting victory. There will be a day when Satan will fall. He will not be able to rise. This is just his short time, his little season, that's all. And so that gives us comfort, comfort. Others have had the same afflictions, but others have had the same victory. because Christ has the same victory. He has won. He has defeated Satan. He has defeated all the walls of Satan for us and for our salvation. So these words, they are words to obey. They are words that we must pay heed to, but they are also words of great comfort because Christ He bore that punishment for our sin and he has saved us to the uttermost. So may the Lord bless these things to us as we go into a new week.