Audio Transcript:

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Good morning and welcome again to Mosaic. We are beginning a new sermon series today that is going to take us through the season of lent all the way up to Easter and really excited about it. I usually go into these sermon series with a lot of excitement, but I am just upfront. This one is a little bit different. I'm excited, but it's a somber excitement. It's a very sober excitement. We have a very serious topic that for the next six weeks we're going to be looking at and what we're going to be focusing on throughout this series is the work of Satan and demons and how that plays a part in our lives and it's not a topic that we enter into lightly nor should we. A scripture frequently pulls back the curtain on physical reality and shows us that there is a spiritual realm and there is a spiritual war that is going on behind the scenes.

Ephesians six, Paul tells the church in Ephesus in verse 10, "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." And so we've called this series Stratagem. That if we are to defend against the schemes of this enemy, we need to know who he is, what he wants, what he is capable of, what are his strategies, what are his tactics? What's his M.O.?

Jesus told his disciples, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That Jesus has a mission, he has a church, and that this church has an enemy and it's not one that we should take lightly. Over the next six weeks, we're going to be looking at some of the ways that scripture depicts this enemy. And so we see that Satan is sometimes depicted as the deceiver, as the tempter, as the accuser, as the divider, as the thief, as the murderer. And today we're going to start things off by looking at his primary title, which actually comes from his name itself, the name in Hebrew, sâtan or in Greek diabolos. It's this idea that Satan is our adversary.

Now, as we start just going to clear the air, acknowledge the elephant in the room, because I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you guys, you're thinking is that guy really going to stand up there this morning in front of a room of highly edumacated Bostonian's and talk about our old cleft foot friend, the devil? Yeah. Maybe we'll get to big foot in the Loch Ness Monster while we're at it. But no this is real. And I understand that a lot of us, especially from more secular or Western cultures, we come to this with a bit of skepticism. Now, others of you perhaps have come from cultures in other parts of the world where you are painfully aware of the physical and the spiritual reality of evil. That you've maybe had personal experiences with the demonic as some of you have maybe even come from cultures that have even an unhealthy preoccupation with Satan and demons. Where people live with anxiety and fear of the spiritual realm.

That really shows us that there's two dangers that we can come to as Christians when we begin talking about Satan and demons. On the one hand, we can overestimate their power and their influence. And so you have Christians who, they see a demon hiding under every rock that everything that goes wrong in their life is spiritual attack. Everything they do wrong, it's like, "Well, the devil made me do it." And that's not biblical or helpful. But on the other hand, we're tempted at times to underestimate the power in the presence, in the influence of Satan and demons, or maybe even to dismiss them to the category of myth and legend and scripture will not allow that either.

And so what does scripture actually say? That's what we're going to be scratching the surface on this morning, and looking at over the next several weeks. And if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up. We're going to be in 1st Peter chapter five primarily today. Looking at verse one through 11 we're going to begin our series looking at how Satan is our adversary and how he is actively... this is one of the ways that he is actively at work in the world today.

So 1st Peter 5:1, "So exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

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."

Let's pray. God, we thank you for your Holy and infallible authoritative word for our lives. I pray today, Holy Spirit, that you would help us to see, to understand, to believe and to obey what you have to say to us. That you would use this word to shape us more into the image of Christ for the sake of your kingdom and glory. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Only have two points today, and the first point is pretty straight forward and it's simply this that we need to know our adversary. When I was in high school, I got really into Taekwondo, into kickboxing and I was always the smallest kid in class, but I was always also one of the fastest and most agile kids in class. And so I really picked the sport up really quickly. My friend and I, we would go and we would train like four or five nights a week. And I was really quick, I was really fast, I could also jump really high. And so my specialty, the thing that I poured the most time into perfecting was the spinning jump kick. I worked on this and actually, I got to the point where I could kick well over my head, six, seven feet in the air about as high as the instructor could hold the pad. And I was thinking about demonstrating that for you this morning, but this was like 21 years ago, I'll break a hip.

Anyways, loved it, got really involved and started entering tournaments. I remember the very first tournament that I ever fought in. It was a touch sparring tournament, which means you're not trying to hurt each other, you're just trying to make contact and score points. And because of that, there was no weight divisions. And I ended up in one of the rounds fighting against another guy who was actually, he was a police officer. He was much older, much, much bigger than me, but it really didn't matter because it was all about speed. It was just about scoring points and so I was just going to town. I was way ahead in the points and I don't know what was going through my head.

I was getting bored. I was like, "This is my moment to shine." I need to Jean-Claude Van Damme, this guy right in the side of the head, in front of everyone. Show everyone just how awesome I am." So I get ready, I square up, I take my step, I jump, I spin in, just perfectly execute the spinning jump kick. Now, here's some advice just in case you ever find yourself in a street fight on the main streets of Brooklyn, this is what you do. If someone comes at you with a spinning jump kick and this is what he did, you ready for it? You do this. They don't show you that in the movies, but if you just move your head like three or four inches, that's all you've got to do and they totally miss. And that's what I did. I totally missed. I land on the ground, my guard is down and he just side kicks me right in the gut and I fly back, literally like fly back out of the ring like 10 feet, so embarrassing.

Here's the point. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, doesn't matter if you're talking about kickboxing, boxing, warfare, sports, business, anything. You need to know your enemy, you need to take them seriously. You need to study the competition and anticipate their moves or you are likely to fail. And that's what we're doing in this series. We're trying to study the enemy so that we can anticipate his moves so that we can defend against his attacks. And now part of the problem is that there's just a lot of bad information, a lot of misinformation out there in our culture, even in spears of Christian culture, about who Satan is and about what he is capable of. So we're just going to begin by just taking a systematic look at what does the Bible say about Satan, about who he is, about where he came from, about what he wants and what he's capable of.

So first of all, who is he? It's important to understand that the Bible was not written to angels and demons, it wasn't written to the spiritual realm, it was written to us. And so the primary focus in scripture is us. It's our responsibility as human beings before God. So there's not a book of the Bible on introduction to Satan and demons. You're not going to find that but what you do find is you just find bits and pieces of information sprinkled in throughout the story of scripture. So, for example, who is Satan and where did he come from? Well, there's passages like 2nd Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6 that tell us that Satan and the demons were originally angels, right? Satan is not God's counterpart, he's not the yin to God's yang. He was an angel that God created, and in the beginning he was good. He was beautiful, he was holy and sinless.

But what these passages show us is that at some point in time between the end of creation, when God looks out and says everything was very good, between that point and the garden of Eden, where the serpent comes to Eve, somewhere in there, a faction of the angels fell under the leadership of Satan. They rebelled against God and they were cast out of heaven. You have passages like Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. These are passages that were prophetic passages and they were written about real earthly rulers who were prideful or rebellious toward God, and inevitably it was prophesying their fall. But when you read these passages, they're using heavenly angelic language and it's very clear that what's going on here is more than just what we see on the surface, that the authors, Isaiah and Ezekiel, the prophets were either using these stories to simultaneously teach us about the story of Satan and his fault, or at least comparing these earthly rulers to a story about Satan that the readers would have been familiar with.

So just for example, look at Isaiah 14:12. It's written concerning the King of Babylon, but this is what it says, it says, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn." Scripture frequently uses the imagery of stars as a metaphor for angelic beings and the day star, it's the last star to disappear from the sky in the morning when the sun comes up. So it's the most bright, it's the most glorious, the most powerful of the stars. And in this context it's talking about the most powerful and glorious of the angels. "How you've fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn." Actually when that was translated into the Latin, Day Star is where we get the name of Lucifer.

"How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will rule over all the other angels. I will set my throne on high and sit on the mount of assembly. I'll have equal authority to God. I'll start running the heavenly staff meetings," so to speak. "I will sit in the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the Heights of the cloud. I will make myself like the Most High. I will make myself God." But you were brought down to Sheol, to hell, to the far reaches of the pit.

Ezekiel 28 is very similar language, angelic language concerning the King of Tyre and I think these passages they're meant to teach us on the one hand that there is a fearful judgment awaiting earthly rulers who defy God, who used their authority in rebellion to God and misused their positions to do evil. Now, I think these stories are also meant to show us that the fall of evil earthly rulers is merely an echo of this original fall of Satan and the demons. That becomes much more clear when we read Revelation chapter 12. Revelation 12:7 says, "Now a war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting back against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down." That ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

So we see that the story behind perhaps these other stories of the King of Babylon, the King of Tyre is a true story. It's something that actually happened, that there was a rebellion in heaven that war broke out, that Satan and the demons were cast down in and that brings us to Revelation 12:12, "And therefore rejoice, Oh heavens and you who dwell in them for the Dragon's been cast down. But woe to you Oh, earth and sea for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows his time is short." That sounds a lot like 1st Peter five, your enemy prowls around like a roaring lion in his wrath looking for someone to devour.

And really I think that is what brings us to Genesis chapter three. That Satan falls, he's cast out of heaven, he fails to take God's throne in heaven. So he sets up a fraudulent throne on earth. He comes to Adam and Eve in the garden, and what does he do? He tempts them. He said, "You don't really believe that God is good, do you? You don't really trust him, right? I mean, he just wants to control you. He knows that if you break his commandments, that you'll actually be set free. You'll be like him, you'll become autonomous. You'll be a law to yourself. Independent. So do what? So join my rebellion, follow in my footsteps." And they do.

Now the irony of Eden is that Adam and Eve had been created in the image and likeness of God and yet Satan convinces them God's likeness is not enough. You need to be completely like God. You need to be fully a lot here. You need to be independent from him, but then when they fall for that deception, they don't find the autonomy that Satan was promising them. Instead, what they find is that now instead of being under God's good, gracious, loving rule in paradise, they come under a curse. They're cast out of Eden and they come under the harsh tyrannical rule of Satan's sin and death. See, Satan's sin was pride in his own glory and his primary agenda today is to kill and to steal and to destroy anything that would bring glory or honor to God. Where he failed in heaven at taking God's crown, he's in a sense set up a throne here on earth and that sounds strange, but you actually see this in scripture.

In revelation two, Jesus is talking to the church and he says, "I know where you dwell, where the throne of Satan is." If you read through the book of revelation, the symbol of a throne, anytime you see a throne in heaven, it's symbolic of God's good and sovereign rule that anytime you see a throne on earth, it's symbolic of Satan's fraudulent tyrannical rule. Satan is now rebelliously ruling the earth. And so we see in the book of job where Satan comes into the heavenly council and they ask him, "Where have you been?" And Satan is like, "You know, just walking around like I own the place." Like to and fro wherever I want to go, all over the face of the earth. Everyone down there bows to me." And God says, "Well, have you considered job?"

2nd Corinthians four, Paul calls Satan the God of this world. Ephesians two, calls him the Prince of the power of the air. Jesus in John chapter 12, John chapter 14, John chapter 16 refers to Satan as the ruler of this world. And we just looked at this a week or two ago, and 1st John five, the apostle John says, "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." That he's called the God of this world. Not in the sense that he's the God of creation, but in the sense that he is ruling over every person, every place, everything that does not bow before God and worship and confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, that Jesus is the true and rightful King. And this shouldn't surprise us, right? Because when you look out at the world around us, are you amazed at just how much of the kingdom of Jesus you see?

Like everywhere you look, it's just like everybody's worshiping Jesus, everybody's humble, everybody's loving their neighbors. No, you see pain, you see perversion, you see chaos, destruction, rebellion. You see the chief virtue of Satan's kingdom, which is pride, everywhere you look. Now, Satan is obviously not God or equal to God in any way, but when Jesus calls him the God of this world, we know what he's talking about. So let's move now from talking about just the world and people in general. Let's talk about the Christians in the church specifically because this is who Peter's is writing to and it's who he's talking about. Peter commands us to be sober-minded and alert to that we need to be aware of spiritual reality and we need to not let our guard down. Why? Because our enemy wants to kill, steal and destroy anything that would bring glory to God. And there are a few things that do that more than his children. So he wants to take us out. Stay with me because I know the first part of the sermon is pretty dark.

And Peter's painting a frightening picture. There's a light coming at the end of the tunnel, but we need to understand the fear of being out and you hear a lion roaring on the prowl but you don't know exactly where it is that it's hunting you down ready to strike. Most of us might have a hard time relating to this, but the closest that I've ever come was one time in high school my family had taken... we were on vacation at a cabin in a Lake in Northern Wisconsin and I was walking through the grounds. I came around the corner of a building where the dumpsters were, and about feet in front of me was a black bear and I just shipped back around the corner and just sprinted as fast as I could in the other direction. I don't want to mess with that. The closest thing we have to that here in, I don't know, is probably the turkeys in Brookline. They're pretty fearsome if you've ever gotten...

Actually this happened a couple of years ago, but I had dropped Owen off at daycare. I was driving home going down Tappan Street in Brookline and I see this high school kid come over the hill and he's just like booking it, running for his life, full sprint about 10 feet behind him and there's massive turkeys. Like fluffed up, chasing him down out for blood. Satan's not a turkey, he's a lion. He's hungry, he's fearsome, he's ferocious. He's roaring. He's looking for someone to devour. Now, here's what we need to know. There are two primary categories of tactics that he uses to attack the children of God as our adversary. And the first is the tactic of stealth. We're going to talk about this in a few weeks. I'm not going to talk about a whole lot now, but sometimes he comes in stealth, concealed, hidden as a serpent. He comes, scripture tells us, as an angel of light, as a Wolf in sheep's clothing, he comes and he seems so harmless. He might even seem good, but he's aiming to tempt and to deceive and to manipulate.

So Satan will use stealth. But here Peter shows us the other tactic, which is the tactic of terror. The Satan is a roaring lion and he wants to tear, a psychological warfare. Or you hear stories of Alexander the great and would ride into battle with war elephants to intimidate the enemy. I heard stories that he would actually have his blacksmiths make these massive suits of armor that were fitted for giant men. For men like eight, nine feet tall and he didn't have anyone that large in his ranks. But what he would do is when they would abandon a camp, they would leave these behind so that if an enemy were pursuing them, they'd come up on their camp and they'd find these massive suits of armor and they'd be demoralized, they'd be terrified of, "Oh, these guys has giants." And he would through this, win the battle before it even began. Satan uses this. He wants to demoralize the children of God. And the way he does this, the roars that he uses are those of suffering and persecution.

Peter talks about that here. And he will use the threat of physical harm for the purpose of doing spiritual harm, to demoralize us, to scare us out of the fight, to scare us away from the battle. So suffering. Now, this includes some of the more bizarre stuff that you think about like demonic affliction, demonic oppression, even demonic possession, nightmares, night terrors. Other things like unexplained physical or mental illness, abuse, alcoholism, compulsive lying, drug addiction, idolatry, death, calamity, disaster. Scripture at times, attributes all of these things to the work of Satan and demons. Now we've got to be careful because scripture doesn't always attribute all of these things to the work of Satan and demons. Sometimes there are other causes.

Primarily you think about like our own fallen bodies. Sometimes what appears to be a physical or a mental illness, it could be demonic and need spiritual attention or it could be physical and need medical attention or it could be both. You need to be wise. You need to be discerning, suffering caused by our fallen body. Sometimes it's caused by our fallen flesh, by our sinful nature that we as human beings are perfectly capable of sinning and doing evil without any help from Satan or demons. Yet 2nd Timothy 2:26, says that Satan can capture people to do his will. It could be our fallen bodies, could be our fallen flesh, it could be just living in a fallen world that creation is fallen, it's groaning and sometimes suffering happens and we don't know why.

And so we should be careful not to attribute every odd or evil thing to the work of the demonic, but we should also be careful not to write that off as a possibility because it doesn't matter where that suffering is coming from. Satan can still try to use it against us and what he wants to do is he wants to pull us away from God. He wants to pull us away from God's mission so that we're not abiding in Christ. Satan also uses persecution. Now, when you study the New Testament, and especially when you read through the book of Revelation, what you see is that there's three primary categories of persecution that the enemy uses against the church. There's social persecution, there's economic persecution, and there's physical persecution.

And so social persecution is, we're talking about when Jesus says, "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven." That if I am living my life as a Christian and if people find out, they're going to mock me, they're going to ridicule me, they're going to exclude me, they're going to slander me, they're going to label me as this or that, and they're going to destroy my reputation. Satan will use social persecution to destroy my reputation.

The second is economic persecution. You read in the book of Revelation that one of the things that the church was facing is that if you wanted to be a Christian business owner and participate in the marketplace, that in some cities they would require you to join their trade guilds and in order to be part of these guilds, you needed to participate in their idolatrous ceremonies to their patron deities. And so Christians had a choice. I can compromise my faith and my integrity in order to keep my business or I can be faithful to Jesus and lose and risk being pushed out of the marketplace, being not allowed where they would destroy my business. This happens in our country still today.

It's economic persecution and then the third is the one we think of most often, which is physical persecution that if I followed Jesus, if I'm truly faithful to him, then people are going to try to harm me or my family. Perhaps even wicked systems of government will seek to have us silenced, arrested, or even killed. Now, this is not one that we face much where we live today, but it's one that's faced by many of our brothers and sisters around the globe even right now. Now this is really important. This is profound. Peter's point is not, "Hey, you need to watch out. You need to be alert so that you can avoid the persecution of the enemy." That's not what he's talking about. He's saying, Satan can destroy your reputation and he can destroy your business or your bank account and he can even destroy your body, but he has no claim on your soul.

So don't lose heart, don't back down, don't compromise. That what he really wants to do is not just to harm us, but to terrorize us and to coerce us into compromising our integrity and denying our faith. That's what he's after. And so there's more at stake in the spiritual realm than even what we see going on in the physical realm. And Peter's trying to help us understand, and he's trying to help a church that's facing this understand. It would be better for you and more blessed for you to die as a faithful martyr for the name of Jesus Christ, than to back down from this terror and compromise. Revelation 12:10 says that the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. You see, we as Christians, we say that we trust Jesus and we say that we trust that he is going to work ultimately all things together for our good and that even in death he is going to raise us up and Satan wants to prove us liars. But you don't really believe that. This is crazy passage in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is talking to his disciples in verse 16 and he says, "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

Beware of men for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them and the Gentiles." And verse 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. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but even the hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not therefore, you are more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my father who is in heaven."

This is one of the most terrifying, encouraging, scary, comforting passages in the whole Bible. But the point is, God loves you. Don't underestimate how much your father loves you. He's numbered the hairs on your head and He is strong. Do not underestimate the power of His sovereignty to work all things together for your good. So love God< Fear Him and you need not fear anything else. 1st John 4:4 says, "Little children, you are from God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." And Peter tells us in our passage today, "Resist him, therefore firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of sufferings are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace who's 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."

That there's nothing Satan can do that God cannot redeem. There's nothing Satan can steal that God cannot return. There's nothing he can destroy that God cannot renew. There's nothing he possesses that God cannot revoke and there's nothing he can kill that God cannot resurrect. Satan's greatest act of defiance and evil was the murder of Jesus Christ in the cross. And yet God in His sovereignty, before the foundation of the earth had ordained that this would be the very means by which he would be most glorified and bring about the redemption of his children. Using Satan against himself. And what we see is that when we look at scripture, we as Christians, we are not called to fight for victory and we are called to stand in the victory of Christ, that the war's already been won and what we need to do now is we need to hold our ground, stand firm and spread the word that the rightful King is coming, that he's offering amnesty to all who would repent and put their faith in him before he does.

So that's like a little bit of the theological framework for the spiritual warfare, and now with that as the backdrop, we begin to see that Peter in our passage today just gives us some super practical instruction for what we need to do as Christians in order to stand firm in this battle. And so we need to know our adversary and point to is we need to know our army. I'm just going to read the first part of our passage again, and Peter says, "So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock and when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders, clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

As I was studying this, I mean, I've read this text so many times, I've studied it before. For some reason I'd missed something hugely important. When we talk about spiritual warfare, we often talk about what we need to do individually as Christians because there are things that we need to do individually as Christians, we each need to, as Ephesians Chapter six tells us, "Put on the full armor of God." Ephesians chapter six it says, "Put on the belt of truth." Right? If you're going to defend against the lies of the enemy, you need to know the truth, you need to abide in the truth, you need to love the truth. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. That personal righteousness doesn't save us, but it does give us protection. That when we're walking in unrepentant sin, we actually give the enemy a foothold in our lives.

It's like we have holes in our armor, and so we need to pursue personal righteousness. Now on the other hand, we're not saved by own righteousness, and so when we mess up, when we fail, when we sin, we rest in the righteousness of Christ that we are saved by grace through faith. He says, put on the shoes of the readiness of the gospel. Be ready to share the gospel. If you're not doing this, then you're not even on the battlefield. The enemy's not... He's already defeated you. The helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and wield the power of prayer continuously for yourselves and for your fellow Christians. We all have a personal responsibility individually to be doing these things as Christians. We also have a personal responsibility though, to not be doing these things alone.

And what Peter shows us is that a soldier without an army and without a commander is like a sheep without a shepherd in a flock and there is a lion on the prowl waiting for just such an opportunity for someone to devour. We need to be soldiers and we need to be sheep. We need to stand firm in the humility that we can't fight this battle by our own strength or on our own. to stand any chance against this line, we need to stay with the flock under the mighty hand of the shepherd. The practical application here, it might be surprising, but it's very clear. We need to be members of a church. We need to be healthy members of a healthy local church. I would say here at Mosaic what that means, you need to be in a community group. You need to be serving with fellow Christians. You need to be building relationships with people who are going to know you and care for you and holds you accountable and encourage you to fight the good fight.

Peter gives some practical applications. First of all, for pastors in the local church. He says, "Pastors, you need to humble yourselves under the authority of Jesus." It's not your church, it's his church. He's the chief shepherd. And so you need to lead the church with a gentle Christ like authority. Don't be passive and neglect your duties and don't be domineering or aggressive and domineer God's people, but steward the authority that you have been given with reverence to Christ leading by example, in order to equip the saints. In order to train, equip, to prepare the soldiers for battle.

In the same way Peter calls church members to humble themselves by submitting to their pastors oversight that they are His ordained means of leading and feeding and protecting his flock, the church. And then to everyone, he says, "Clothe yourselves in humility toward one another and humbly stand under the mighty hand of God." Under the hand of our chief shepherd Jesus Christ. Now, at first that might not seem terribly encouraging because when I think of a shepherd versus a lion, in my mind the lion has the upper hand. There's this epic dialogue in 1st Samuel where King David, when he's a boy, goes out to visit his brothers on the battlefield and when he gets there, everybody is cowering in fear because the Philistines have this giant Goliath they're all terrified of. And Peter's like, "Let me hurt him. I'm going to take them out. Let me go."

And King Saul's like, "No, you're just a boy. He's a massive brute of a man. He's going to eat you alive. And what does David say? In 1st Samuel 17:24, David says to King Saul, listen, "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father and when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and I struck him and I killed him. And your servant has struck down both lions and bears and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them of he's defied the armies of the living God." My first thought when I read this is modern men, we've got some work to do. I've barely killed any lions with my bare hands. And secondly, if a shepherd boy with just an audacious faith can do that, how much more confidence should we have in the object of his faith, which is the mighty hand of God, the good shepherd Jesus Christ.

See, whatever evil may come our way, be it temptation, be it spiritual attack, be it persecution, be it suffering. Romans 8:38, "Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Later in his life, King David wrote what is arguably the most famous song in scripture, maybe one of the most famous passages in scripture. Psalm 23 and he says that, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

John 10 Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd." The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And verse 27 he says, "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one." Peter says, "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of this God and after you have suffered a little while," verse 10, "The God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you."

The culture of Satan's kingdom is one of pride, anxiety, fear, darkness, and ultimately defeat. Christ Kingdom is one of humility, confidence, victory and light. Colossians 1:13 tells us that He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son and whom we have redemption, forgiveness of sins." And James 4:6 says, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." We're going to do that today as we celebrate communion together. This is a time where we as the church of Christ, we draw near to Him as we remember that the bread represents his body that was broken and given for us. The blood represents his blood that was poured out on the cross so that we could be forgiven.

And if you're new to Mosaic, the way we do communion here is the ushers are going to pass out the elements and you can take those as they go by and pass them down the row. Hold on to them once we've all received them. We're going to take communion together. And if you're here today and you're a Christian, we would welcome you to celebrate communion with us. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, we're really glad that you're with us this morning. We would ask that you refrain from participating in communion. It's nothing magical about this. It's not going to do anything for you. It's a sign for Christ in his church, but if you've made the decision today to put your faith in Jesus Christ, then we would welcome you to come, to draw near to Him and to join us as we celebrate our communion right now.

So I'm going to pray and then the ushers are going to hand out the elements. We'll just take some time to pray and meditate individually and once everybody's received it, I'll come back up here and we'll take communion together. So let's pray. Father, your word tells us that while we were dead in our trespasses in slaves to Satan's sin and death, that you made us alive with Christ. You forgive our sins. You canceled the record of debt that stood against us by nailing it to the cross and that Jesus, through your death and resurrection, you have disarmed our spiritual enemy.

You've put Satan and demons to open shame and triumphed over them on your cross, and we thank you that the war has been won. We ask that you give us faith to believe it, to stand firm in the battle as we await your return unflinching in our faith, even as our enemy roars against us. God give us the confidence to know that you alone are sovereign and to share the good news that the true rightful King Jesus Christ has come. He is coming again, and when He does, He will come with total victory and put an end to these powers of darkness once and for all. We thank you, we praise you for this in Jesus name. Amen.