Audio Transcript:

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Heavenly father, we have gathered here today to worship you, to worship you Holy Trinity: father, son and Holy Spirit, because you are worthy of worship. We don't do this because we have to, we do it because you are worthy. And Lord, I pray that you make us a people who are bold and fearless. You command us over and over, fear not for you are our God, for you are with us, you are a good shepherd. Lord, we pray for our city, we pray for our country, we pray for the world.

In particular, we pray for your supernatural intervention in curbing the Corona virus COVID-19. We pray Lord, send healing. We pray, Lord, that you stop the growth of this virus. You can, you have healed in the past, you do heal today and we thank you in advance. And we do Lord, thank you for the reminder that life is short. It is temporary, we're not guaranteed tomorrow. Our life is but a breath. We're here and then we're gone. And Lord, your word tells us and experience confirms that there's a virus that is even more lethal and that's the virus of sin.

And Lord, we thank you for coming and curating the medicine for this virus and that's the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, if anyone's not yet a believer, not yet a Christian, not yet a child of yours, I pray, send the gift of repentance and the gift of faith. Lord, bless our time in the Holy scriptures. Holy spirit, we welcome you into the space. Speak to us, minister to us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

So we're in a sermon series that we are calling Stratagem Know Thy Enemy in which we are exposing and revealing the playbook of the evil one of Satan and the demonic and we're looking at different strategies that Satan uses to pull us away from God. Today we're looking at Satan, the deceiver. Kanye West, and a long time ago, he said, I know that Satan is alive. I can hear him breathing. And when Satan breathes, he breathes out lies. Satan is a liar. He is sly, he is sneaky. He is a schemer and he's shrewd in pulling us away from the Lord.

Scripture teaches that Satan uses at least three forms in order to attack humans. He uses the form of the subtle serpent. He did that in the garden with Adam and Eve. He uses the form of the roaring lion and that's what pastor Shane talked about so compellingly last week. Today we're going to talk about Satan when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come with lies, his blatant lies, he covers them up. He masquerades his lies and presents them as truth with a capital T. He's a master of spiritual propaganda. He is a master of spiritual disinformation. He's a master at using the illusory truth effect.

The illusory truth effect is when "facts seem so good", they taste so good and they're repeated so often that they become plausible. We begin to believe them and we believe them because we want to believe them. He comes to us and offers us trues that are so compelling. There is no God, there is no Satan, there is no sin. You are in control of your own life. Your life is your own. Enjoy, enjoy your life. And we end up bamboozled. Today we're looking at second Corinthians 11 verses one through four and second Corinthians 11 verses 13 through 15 in which St. Paul reveals to us that Satan when he comes, he comes off through people, people of reputation, people that we look up to, people who are authorities in our lives and behind these ideas of these false prophets is the evil one. Would you look at the text with me?

Second Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through four. I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. That's the reading of God's Holy infallible, authoritative word, may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together. First, we'll look at the fact that Satan is a liar. Second, we'll look at Satan's top 10 lies and third, Jesus is the truth.

First, Satan is a liar. We're told over and over in scripture this is true. Revelation 12:9, Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. The words of Christ in John 8:44 he, Satan, was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. Satan can't but lie. This is his very nature and he speaks out of his nature and his strategy in order to undermine God's word, God's truth is threefold.

First of all, he comes in and he questions God's word. "Did God really say?" He asks Eve. After that, he denies God's word. No, no, no, you will surely not die on the day that you partake of this sin. And it doesn't stop there, he doesn't just deny, he doesn't just question, he also substitutes. He removes, supplants God's truth with a capital T with his own version, and he says, "For God knows that the day that you eat of it, you will be like God's. Your eyes will be open knowing good and evil." And here one of the things that we see, Satan's goal is to pull us away from a relationship with God.

God is a source of love, light, of everything perfect, of true beauty, of truth itself, and Satan wants to disconnect us from God or keep us from connecting with God. His goal is to make sure that we do not desire God, that our hearts aren't connected to God, but he doesn't often, and especially in a place like Boston, he doesn't start with affections. He doesn't start with desires, he starts with the mind. He starts with lies. He starts with planting different versions of truth. And what we see from this text is that the battlefield for your soul is your mind.

The battlefield for your soul is your mind. That's what St. Paul says in verse three, but I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And it begins with these fallacious thoughts, by which Satan pulls our devotion away from God. And what is this devotion that St. Paul is talking about? He says in verse two, I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

And here he's using the metaphor of marriage and betrothal from the ancient world in which the father of the bride and the best man, the friend, the best friend of the groom, their job was to protect the bride during the season of betrothal. Betrothal was this important in that culture, it wasn't taken lightly and unfaithfulness during the time of betrothal was considered spiritual adultery. And Saint Paul says, I introduced you to Christ and I'm here during this betrothal period while Christ hasn't come as the true groom, he says, I'm the bride of Christ.

I want to make sure that the bride of Christ, that her heart is continually connected to Christ. And he says, you're flirting with spiritual adultery because of these sinful thoughts, because of these lies that you are believing. And this is how Satan operates. Second Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ was the image of God. Satan blinds the truth with his own version of truth. He blinds the light with his own darkness so that people can't see that the gospel is true.

It's true in its nature and its veracity. It's a fact, but also it's true in its preciousness. That this is the only way to salvation, that God is worthy of our worship. And what we see is in this tactic as he attacks the mind, he doesn't present a lie as a lie. He doesn't present evil as evil. He doesn't present unrighteousness as unrighteousness. He masquerades lies and presents them as truth. He masquerades darkness and presents it as light. He masquerades evil and presents it as good.

That's why verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. Now, how does this apply to us today? Sometimes, yes, Satan does come through religious authorities and they preach a different Christ, but he's not saying be careful that these people come with lies. It says, be careful, they actually preach something plausible. It's something that's truly desirable in our belief.

And then also he says, these people are people that you respect. These are authority figures. These are people in your life that you look up to. These are people who are successful seemingly. And when they speak, their words resonate in our hearts because our hearts long to believe some of those lies. So he says, be careful. And the reason why Satan's lies are so plausible, so powerful is because they're always half truths. He presents this truth as a half truth, as a quasi truth, and presents it as the full truth.

And whenever a half truth masquerades as the whole truth, it becomes a total lie. I swear that I will speak the half truth and nothing but the half truth and a little truth and anything besides the truth to make sure that we stop asking questions. The greatest lie is when it's presented as the full truth. It's almost true, therefore it's got to be the full truth. The poet Tennyson says, a lie that is all of a lie can be met with and fought outright, but a lie that is partly the truth, is a harder matter to fight. That's what makes it so attractive. There's just enough.

He raps his lies in just a little truth. It's like putting bacon bits on a salad, just enough to make it palatable or digestible. If you're a vegan and vegetarian, the bacon is the evil. That's how he operates, it's just enough. And when he comes to us as a roaring lion and seeks to devour us, it's scary of course, but not nearly as dangerous as when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come knocking on our door and say, "Good morning, I'm Satan. I'm here to destroy your present and your future. I'm actually here to destroy your eternal life. I'm here to pull you away from God." Rarely does he act like that.

Instead, he says, "Good morning. I'm your friend. I'm someone that you look up to. I'm an authority figure. Perhaps I'm someone that you want to emulate and I want to introduce you to something that's alluring, that's exciting, that's fulfilling. It's going to make your life less boring. It's going to give you that little thing, that little extra, that little buzz that you're looking for and can't afford to miss it." And he speaks lies about God, about reality and about our nature. So Satan is a liar. And what are some of the top lies that he speaks? I'll give you 10 of Satan's top lies, and particular in a place like Boston.

First of all, there is no God who judges, there is no Satan. There is no sin. There is no truth. Stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. Eight, Jesus died so that you can sin. Nine, you don't need the church and 10, and God doesn't have a mission for you. And the most effective way to battle Satan's lies is to expose them as lies and to counter them with the truth which we try to do here in rapid fashion.

First of all, there is no God. In particular, there's no God who judges. Statistically, there's not that many atheists and particularly in the United States, not that many. You're talking about 1 to 2% of the population that are militant atheists confirmed in their atheistic worldview of their atheistic faith. Most people are agnostic or I would say just apathetic, ap-atheistic, I call them. Where it's like we don't know enough. I don't care enough. Perhaps there's God. We probably didn't come from nothing. Perhaps there's a God, but we don't know who he is. So there is no God. Or there is a God, but he's definitely not a God who judges.

He's definitely not a God who's going to make me give an account for my life, for my decisions, for my actions. And this is how the lie starts. God is love, period. God loves you, period. And as I go through this list about these Satan's lies, there's just enough truth where you're like, "Yeah, but no. Yeah, but there's more. Yeah, but let me explain." And Satan puts the period where God puts a comma or a semi-colon. God loves you the way you are and then he keeps going. He says, "God loves you the way you are, so you don't need to change." And you keep going. You say, "God doesn't care about sin per se. God just wants you to be happy. God accommodates sin."

This is the lie of tolerance. The God tolerates any single one of your decisions or your actions. Jesus talked about the way that leads to destruction's wide. It's tolerant, it's unchallenging, it's uncritical, it's uncaring. Jesus does love you, God does love you. But he loves you so much, he gave his one and only son to die on the cross for your sins. That's how much he loves you. God is a God who loves you so much that he wants the best for you, and the best for you is to be forgiven of sins and to be released from the power of sin.

So yes, God loves you and yes, come as you are to the cross of Jesus Christ and receive his grace. Colossians says that Jesus Christ took our sins, the record of debt against God and he nailed it to the cross. Our sins need to be nailed to the cross. Yes, new life is a gift. Forgiveness is a gift, but it has to be received. You can't be born again without first dying to self, dying to sin, dying to your old life. Our sin needs to be brought to the cross, so come as you are and repent of your sin. All your sins will be forgiven because God is and God judges by his judgment, his mercy come together at the cross.

Second is there is no Satan. And some of us, perhaps you're a little uncomfortable that we're talking about Satan and the devil in church today, especially in a place like Boston, and some of us were uncomfortable talking about transcendent evil or a personification of evil like Satan. Because when we think of Satan, we think of a guy in a red suit, pitchfork with horns and a tail. It's ridiculous, it's absolutely ridiculous, it's ludicrous to believe this on the one hand. On the other hand, if you are Satan and you've tried many of your strategies and you're like, "They're not that effective. I've demon possessed people. And then there's the Holocaust and then 30 million died during the Soviet Union, not that effective."

And Satan hires someone to help him come up with a new strategy, Bain Consulting for example. And no offense if you work at Bain Consulting, there was a guy in the morning service that works there. Sorry, I'm not saying they're diabolic, but I'm saying if Satan were to hire someone who would hire them. So if Satan hires a consulting firm and you're like, "Please help me with a new strategy in 2020." Or in this new postmodern post postmodern era, you know what they would tell him? Convince the world that you don't exist by mocking yourself, by ridiculing even the idea that you exist.

From the movie Unusual Suspects, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist and like that he's gone. If we can't even have a conversation about transcendent evil or personification of evil, how can we even understand the world? And this started with liberal new testament scholars. German new testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann over a century ago emphatically denied the existence of anything supernatural. He said they're all myths in the new testament and we need to demythologize the new testament. He said we can only understand what our five senses show us and reveal to us about reality and there's nothing else. The material is all there is.

And what happens is once we get rid of evil, personification of evil happens, we actually lose the resources to begin to understand the world as it is. Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University wrote a book called The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. The first line in the book is, a gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. We know that deep down and we know there's transcendent evil. If we get rid of this concept of personified transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand the world?

If you don't believe in Satan, I challenge, you go to Auschwitz, go to the concentration camps and stand there. You feel it, that it's palpable there. If there is no safe, if there is no transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand true systemic evil, racism, sexual trafficking? It begins with lies. Porn is harmless. That's a diabolical lie. Abortion is healthcare, that's a lie. It all begins with the demonic. Hitler's Superman, that whole ideology, that's a diabolical lie that led to the death of millions. Satan is and Satan is a liar.

The third lie is that there is no sin and similar to the first one, it begins with God loves you therefore, there is no sin. God loves you therefore, he wants you to be happy and happiness is whatever you define. God loves you and he doesn't discriminate against your life choices and it begins with a truth from scripture, God is inclusive. God's love is inclusive, he welcomes everybody. In Christ Jesus, there is no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, slave nor free. The lie comes in when Satan begins to link clearly sinful lifestyles to that list and our hearts willingly accept that lie because we have a sinful flesh. And this poisonous lie that masquerades as liberating truth begins to slither into our hearts and causes destruction.

In that same context, St. Paul says, "Yeah, there is no, in Christ Jesus, no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female." And then in that context, those are things that we can't control, but there's things that we can't control. He says, "If a thief comes to faith, let him steal no more, but let him instead work with his hands." There's got to be a transformation. When we meet the God of the universe and he forgives us of our sins. He doesn't just long for us to keep sinning, he wants to release us from the power of sin, but also from the presence of sin.

Richard Niebuhr in the book Kingdom of God in America, he said, a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the administrations of Christ without a cross. Many, many modern churches, this is what they believe is false gospel. And it begins with getting rid of a God who judges, getting rid of Satan, getting rid of sin. Once you do all of those things, you don't need a God dying on a cross for sin, bearing the wrath of God and there is no more Christianity.

Fourth is there is no truth. And this is where you could talk about this in the very beginning in Genesis three, he comes and he questions God's truth. He denies God's truth, but then there's no vacuum. There's no truth vacuum. This is how truth works. If you nullify truth, you have to replace it with another truth. If you say there is no truth, that now becomes a truth statement. And this is where we are, there is no truth. Relativism is all there is. It's just your truth and my truth. I'm going to live my truth.

Your opinion is valid as my opinion and that just keeps going and deepens where, "Well, my opinion is what I want and what I desire, what my feelings are and my feelings are reality. My feelings are truth. My life is my own." Jesus Christ comes and he says, "No, we are not God. We didn't create ourselves. We don't sustain ourselves. Our life is not our own. In creation, our life is not our own in redemption." If you're a Christian, you belong to Christ twice because he redeems us from our sins. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, capital T, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. He says I'm the, there's a definite article. I am the way, the only way. There's no other ways to God.

If there were other ways to God Jesus, the son of God, the second person in the trinity would not have had to die. He would not have had to bear the wrath of God on the cross for our sins. It's an absolute statement and it's an exclusive statement. And we know about the living word of God, of Jesus and the written word of God in the Holy scriptures which have proven themselves to be efficacious and powerful and they've self authenticated themselves in our own experience and throughout the experience of church history by transforming people's lives.

Number five is stop thinking, enjoy yourself. Usually Satan begins with these epistemological, existential questions one through four, but I think the most effective one in particular for young people is this one. Yet we can't know anything, so why even ask questions? Just stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Think about the things that you can control, don't think about the things that we don't know anything about and just enjoy yourself. And God wants you to be happy, right? If he exists and he's a good God and you define happiness as you want to define it, and usually that starts with happiness, but then it gets relegated to pleasure and says, "Just go, just enjoy yourself."

And what happens is we begin to numb ourselves with things that we think causes pleasure short term. Be it intoxication or substances, entertainment, comfort, what have you. And this is perhaps one of the most convincing lies. I mean, everyone around us is pursuing this route. And he diverts our attention for the most important questions about God, about the universe, about life. And we believe it because often we want to feel so good in the short term. And then scripture comes in and says, "No."

You never get from pleasure what you long to get from pleasure. In pursuit of happiness and pleasure, you never get what it promised you. It doesn't satisfy. C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters... If you haven't read it, it's a phenomenal little fictional work about the strategies of Satan. In this chapter about pleasure, this one line stands out. He says, an increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Whatever your thing is to get pleasure, you get a little pleasure and what it does, it increases your crave. You want more of it and you're chasing that first high, that first buzz and it gives you less and less, more diminishing pleasure.

The lie within the lies that pleasures the path to satisfaction to ultimate fulfillment, it's not. Happiness is in the mind, pleasure's in the body, but there's something so much deeper. There's something in the soul that we're longing for and that's fullness of joy, that's satisfaction, that's fulfillment and nothing physical can give us spiritual satisfaction. Only God can, fellowship with Christ can. Aldous Huxley says, facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. So even if you're just constantly pushing away these thoughts about God, these questions of where did I come from? What is my life? What is the meaning of life and where am I going? The facts remain, the questions remain.

Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seize the day, you only live once. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Check off your bucket list. While you're alive, just have fun, enjoy yourself and because there's nothing left. I remember I was trying to share the gospel with a coworker of mine back, I used to work in the FBI for a little bit and my office was in a closet thing, there were no windows and my coworker smoked two packs a day. He would just smoke all the time. So he reeked and I was like, "Bro, I think you're going to die soon. So I got to share the gospel with you." And then I'm like, "So what happens when we die? What do you believe about that?"

And I'll never forget his answer. And he says, "You get buried and then you push up daisies." So there's nothing else. Most of us, we don't just believe in annihilationism, that everyone just disappears. Most people what they believe is, there is an afterlife, but it's only heaven. And the only thing you got to do to go to heaven is die. That's the only qualification. You die, you're going to heaven. Where do we get these ideas? You go to a friend's funeral, everybody says the same thing. They get up and they say, I know that this person is where? In a better place. How do we know this? What is that based on? Did someone come back and tell us?

There's only one person that ever came back and told us about the afterlife and that was Jesus Christ when he came back from the dead. And what Jesus Christ told us is there's heaven and there's hell. Heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of the presence of God. And when we're disconnected with God because of our sin, this is where you spend all of eternity. A lot of people say, "Only God can judge me," and he will. Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, rejoice young man or young person in your youth and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment.

The words of Christ in Matthew 10:28, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus said that in order to awaken us from our spiritual stupor. These are incredibly words, that we will die and we will stand before God and the question is will you spend eternity in God's presence or apart from God in a place called hell? Jesus Christ came and he said that the only way into heaven, into the presence of God is by faith in Jesus Christ. Repent and believe, and those who believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and savior have eternal life.

You can either live once and die twice. Die physically, and then you spend eternity in a place called hell, that's eternal death. Death isn't just separation from... it's not cessation, it's separation from the body. You have an internal soul. It's either you live once or you die twice or you live twice. I'm born, I'm alive, but then I'm born again. I die to my former self. I'm born again. I live twice and I die once, and you do that by denying your sin, denying your former life and coming to Christ. C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces says, die before you die. There is no chance after die to sin, die to self reliance, selfishness, pride, and be alive to God.

Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. This is, works righteousness, self-righteousness. This is at the heart of every single religion except for Christianity, and a lot of Christians believe this too. They believe that the way that you can be made righteous before God is by helping yourself. God helps those who help themselves. We think of grace as just extra credit or a little fudge fact. I remember I had a teacher of chemistry in high school and on every test he would grade on a curve, but if you brought him chocolates, he would give you a little fudge factor. That's what he called it. I'll always finished with an A.

That's what a lot of people, they think, "Okay, I'm going to try hard. I got a 70 on the test and thanks Jesus for the little grace, a little fudge fact." No, that's not how Christianity works. The Christianity says there's nothing that we can do to make ourselves righteous before God. We come to God. The only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. We can't make ourselves righteous and we can never atone for our evil deeds or sinful deeds by doing good because even when we're doing good, we're just doing what was expected of us.

Eight is Jesus died so you can sin and this is more for people who have accepted Christ and have had some kind of spiritual experience, but it's very shallow. They have an understanding of cheap grace, that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, past, present, and future. He forgives you of the penalty of sin. And if you sin again, he'll just keep forgiving you because that's his job so you can keep on living in sin. And this is a lie from the pit of hell. Romans 6:1 through 2, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means how can we who died in sin still live in it?

When Jesus saves us, he doesn't just save us from penalty of sin, he wants to save us from the very presence and power of sin and he does that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Nine is that you don't need the church. In our radical, individualistic society, this is a lot of people. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Personal meaning private, it's just me and Jesus and that's all I need. And again, yes but no, right? All you need for salvation is a relationship with Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ loves the church and gave himself for her and the church is the body of Christ. So if you want Christ, you cannot want to be part of the church, which is his body, which is the one whom he loves. It's his bride. That's number one.

Number two, Satan wants to pull us away from the church because by doing so, he pulls us away from the means of God for our growth and our health. We grow when we push one another in the faith when we edify one another, when we hold each other accountable. We need community. A lone soldier is a dead soldier, and at best, a useless soldier. And this brings us to 10, God doesn't have a mission for you. If Satan can't get you to be faithless, he'll do everything he possibly can to get you to be fruitless and useless. Where, yeah, we're secure in our salvation with the Lord, but we make zero impact for eternity. We make zero impact for the kingdom of God.

We just live for ourselves in a little waiting room until we go to heaven. And this isn't God's plan for us. God's plan for us once he gives us the Holy Spirit is to lock arms with brothers and sisters in a commitment to a church and further God's mission, build God's kingdom and God through us bears fruit. Finally, point three is that Jesus is the truth. This is how we counter the lies of the evil one. Second Corinthians 11:3, St. Paul says, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

And I love the word here for sincere, it's a word that means sincerity, authenticity, but also the primary definition of this word is simplicity. It's haplótēs which means simplicity, meaning purity. This is the unadulterated form of faith, simplicity and pure devotion to Christ. This is the main thing of Christianity. This is the heart of Christianity, the main thing of Christianity is to keep the main thing the main thing. And this is what Satan does. Satan complicates everything including religion, including Christianity. And this is how he operates. It begins with a lie.

The lie is, "Well, because we're so complicated and life is so complicated. God is greater than us, so God has to be even more complicated. Greater in complication or complex." And this is the truth of scripture, that God is basically simple. And by simple I do not mean simplistic. It means that God is understandable. There are things about him that are absolutely clear, unadulterated, truth about God. And St. Paul says, I think Satan's pulling you away from the simplicity in Christ. The reason why he does that is because that's what transforms us and makes us effective.

Thomas à Kempis says, by two wings, man is lifted from the things of earth, simplicity and purity. The truly godly life as a simple life. And this is why the reformation was so important. The reformation looked at the Catholic church and said, "It's gotten way too complicated, let's get back to the scriptures. Let's get back to the gospel." And it simplified not only religion, but all of life. And what is the simplicity? Simplicity and purity in Christ. He's talking about a daily companionship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you sense the Christ is yours all day long? If you're in love, you know that feeling of being in love? My wife and I are coming up on 14 years of being in love. And you know the feeling of being in love of you wake up in the morning and first thought is like, "Still got it." Still got the little buzz and the first thing is you want to contact that person. You want to send a text, you want to phone call, send a meme just to brighten up their day, something. There's something there where even if you're far apart, there's this connection. That's what he's talking about. This fellowship. He's talking about the simplicity and purity and devotion to Christ.

A lot of Christians, they complicate this. By the way, this is what makes Mosaic Mosaic. Our values, are love Jesus and what? Simple. We're talking about this essential, the most important thing is our relationship with the Lord. Christianity isn't a creed, it's a relationship. And the danger for many Christians is you come and you start adding things to the relationship with the Lord. I need to grow in my faith therefore, I need another book. I need a course. I need a seminar. I need a conference. I need something else to supplement my faith because I don't feel like I'm growing. And the reason why we're not growing is because we're not deepening our relationship with the Lord, our fellowship with the Lord. First Corinthians 1:9, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is a living Lord, he's not dead. He's not just for Sundays, he's for every single moment of every single day he is with us. If you're a Christian, you're in Christ, you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You have access to Christ. This is why St. Paul says, for me to live is what? Christ. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I die, I just get more of Christ. Every single moment of every single day I have access to Christ.

Karl Barth was a grateful theologian, wrote tremendously effective studies, in particular on the book of Romans, revolutionized theology for decades. And he was at a conference at Princeton Seminary and he was asked the following question, what is the greatest theological thought that has ever crossed your mind? And people are ready for some kind of abstract answer that you don't even understand what he's talking about and this is what he said. He said the greatest theological thought that's ever crossed my mind, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

It does not get deeper than that. That's the essence, that's the simplicity of our devotion to Christ. It's easy to lose, especially in the midst of the business of our life. We get pulled away by lies. We get pulled away by pressures and anxiety of daily life. Then we get pulled away by sin, et cetera. Second Corinthians 11:4 he says, if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than we proclaim, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily. Just be careful.

Another Jesus, another sphere, another different gospel... And the message of St. Paul, the message of the Holy scripture, the message of Christ is very simple. It was that Jesus was crucified for our sins and he rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit is given to whomever believes. And anyone who accepts the gospel of Jesus Christ, who receives this through simple repentance and simple faith is reconciled with God, becomes a child of God, becomes a Christian. Simple, but it's not easy.

Repentance is simple, but repentance is extremely difficult for two reasons. Number one, because we like sin, sin feels good. Sin has an allure. And to die to sin, reject sin, that's painful. Number two, it's painful to admit that you have been wrong. It's painful to admit that you have been taken, that you have believed a lie, in particular, a lie about the most important fact of the universe. And there's something in our ego that would rather believe a lie than accept an uncomfortable truth, than accept the fact that God is God and God is in control and that we have to relinquish it and that we have to release it. But when we come to Christ, Christ gives us grace.

Christ gives us this balm for our souls to remove that pain and replace it with peace and comfort. Satan is and he is a liar, but he will not win. And how do we fight Satan? We fight Satan by holding on to Jesus Christ, he is our only power. He's our only path to victory. First John 3:8, the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Hebrews 2:14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

Colossians 2:15, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Before I moved to Boston to plant Mosaic, I believed in Satan. After a decade of ministry, I really believed in Satan. And I really believed his lies are incredibly compelling. They're incredibly plausible, but they lead to death and destruction. And Jesus Christ said that you can know the truth and the truth will what? Will set you free. And the truth that he offers us isn't just an abstract theory. It's a person that we can have fellowship with.

So how do we fight just practically here at the very end? Number one, he wants to pull you away from your devotion to Christ, and he does it through lies. So fortify your mind with the Holy scriptures, fortify your mind with the truth. Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect. Philippians 4:8, finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever's just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

And second Corinthians 10:4 and 5, I'll close with this. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. I have divine power to destroy strongholds, destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Satan is a liar and Jesus is the truth. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the Holy scriptures, what a gift they are. And we feel Lord, that your word is powerful, that you would cut through the lies that are so plausible. And Lord I pray that you make us a people who are not outwitted by the enemy. I pray you make us a people who are not naive toward his schemes, will make us a people who know the truth and are transformed by the truth and give us the power of the Holy Spirit to live in a manner worthy of this truth. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.