SERMON: Singing Is Warfare

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherd's Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. And we pray that as we declare the word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith and you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word and may the Lord be with you. Well, this morning, we're gonna step away from our wisdom series for one week and Lord willing, we're gonna return to it next week.

Singing as Spiritual Warfare

But throughout this week, something else has been pressing heavily on my heart. And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that this was something our church needed to hear today, especially talking about all that we've talked about so far with warfare.

And not because we're failing at this thing that I wanna talk about. Not because of that at all, but because we should actually always be striving towards it. And you'll know that I also asked Don if I had eaten a bad burrito or if this was a good idea and Don said, you may do it.

And I said to him, okay. This is something that we do every single Lord's day. In fact, we've already done it several times this morning. We do it so regularly that I actually fear that familiarity can creep in and that this can actually become more ordinary than it actually is.

What is it? Well, we stand up, words appear on a screen, we open our mouth in the same familiar way as last week and for several minutes, the gathered congregation sings. There's nowhere else on earth that's like it.

And in some ways it's weird. We come here every week and we stand together and we sing. Where else do you do that? I mean, maybe at football games, I guess, or at the Red Sox, sweet Caroline. That's also weird if you think about it.

But we do it every week. And I wonder actually if we truly understand what we're doing. I wonder if we understand just how dangerous singing is. I wonder whether we really understand the weapon that God has actually placed inside of our mouth when we sing.

Because according to the Bible, singing is not merely something a church does because it's beautiful and spiritual. It's not some liturgical filler to get us through the awkward parts of service. It's not the Christian magical mood music that will set us into the right emotional tone to be able to hear the sermon.

It's not religious entertainment where gifted musicians on stage perform and all of us get to listen. According to scripture, singing is warfare. And I mean that much more literally than I suspect many of us have ever considered before.

Throughout the Bible, God repeatedly puts songs into the mouth of his people at the precise moment where kingdoms are being overthrown, where armies are being destroyed, where enemies are being scattered, where prisoners are being liberated, where frightened saints are being strengthened, where children are being prepared for future battles, and where God is advancing his kingdom in the midst of darkness.

Again and again, God joins the singing of his people with conquest. He joins the praises of the saints with warfare. He joins worship with dominion, regardless of our sensibilities. Somehow the modern church has found a way to do this as cowardly and as incorrigeously, I know that's not a word, as possible.

Somehow managed to separate singing from warfare in the modern megachurch, in the modern church even, to make singing the job of a 40-year-old metrosexual on stage who's trying to fit into his high school skinny jeans with a harem of women swaying their hips beside of him.

I wish I were joking. I grew up in a church like that in my early adulthood. We've taken singing and we've turned it into something soft, something effeminate, something emasculated, something neutered instead of instruments of warfare.

We've taken one of the sharpest arrows in the means of grace, one of the sharpest arrows a Christian can ever fire, and we've turned it into something largely private and emotional. We've taken the nuclear warhead of psalm singing and we've turned it into something that exists primarily to tell God how we feel about him.

But when we open up the songbook of the Bible, the one that God actually wrote and authored, when you examine the actual tunes and hymns, songs and spiritual songs that are written in the Bible, you walk away with a completely different vision for what singing actually is.

You discover something much more dangerous, much more muscular, much more masculine than maybe you thought. For instance, David Chilton once observed in a book called Restoring Paradise. It's a great book.

In the Psalms, you will find, if you go looking through them honestly, conquest, war, victory, and the dominion of the saints. Open this altar and look for yourself. There are enemies everywhere, wicked kings conspiring against God, nations rising up against Christ, armies surrounding Jerusalem, liars scheming and plotting against the righteous, tyrants sitting on their throne, false gods demanding worship, and standing over all of them is Yahweh, God of war, laughing at them, judging them, scattering them, crushing them, establishing his kingdom, commanding us to sing.

As he turns his enemies into a footstool for his feet. After all of the victories, and after Jesus has put down all of the enemies, after he's vanquished all of his foes, after he's put all of them down, history ends with people singing.

Which means that if we're gonna take singing and the Psalms seriously, we have to reckon with the fact that they are at least in part, a very large part, I would argue, masculine war anthems that are meant to steal up our spines to do God's will in a world that is continuing in rebellion, but will be one day put under Jesus's feet.

That's why James Jordan once said, if you start singing the Psalms, you eventually get iron in your bones. And as a result of that, the reason why there are so many limp noodles in Christianity today is because we stopped singing the Psalms.

Psalms give Christians a spine. They teach frightened men how to think, they teach children whose world they live in, they teach churches how history ends, therefore, how do we labor in light of that?

They teach Christians that Jesus Christ is not struggling for control over the world, he's Lord over it. They teach Christians that the devil is not the king of history, Christ is. They teach Christians that the nations are not Satan's inheritance, they're Christ.

That means that when God's people gather on Sunday morning and they begin singing those truths together, we are doing something far more significant than having a kumbaya with Jesus. We're announcing to the world who owns it.

We're singing against our own fears. We're reminding the world who rules it. We are harmonizing in front of our children about who owns their future. We're declaring to kings and kingdoms the one who is supreme over all.

And we are announcing to all the fiends of hell that a crucified Nazarene walked out of his grave and ascended to the right hand of God with all authority in heaven and on earth, and he will have dominion from sea to shining sea.

This is why Martin Luther once famously said, our songs and our psalms sorely vex and grieve the devil. Of course they do. The devil and all the hordes of hell would much prefer a silent language church or an effeminate entertainment driven church where wet noodles disguised as worship songs are thrown around like candy.

He would much prefer that than a church that sings songs of his judgment and downfall, of God conquering the nations, of God spreading his dominion. Songs with wrath, songs with kingship, songs that are not primarily ending with my personal lived experience and feelings.

Those kinds of songs do very little damage to the stronghold of hell, but you give a congregation Psalm 2, you give a congregation Psalm 46 or 68, or Psalm 110, Psalm 149, you teach fathers to roar that at their dinner table, you teach mothers to sing that over their baby's cradle, you teach children to memorize those psalms, they become dangerous before they can even spell the word.

And you do that for 50 years, and what you're gonna produce is a different kind of Christian people than what we currently have. You're gonna begin producing Christians who understand that they're members of the church militant, Christians who understand that history belongs to Christ, Christians who expect the gospel to actually win, Christians who are capable of not just talking about building, but actually building, households, churches, schools, communities, laws, cultures, and eventually civilizations who bow the knee to Christ, which is why what we're talking about this morning is not a peripheral issue, it's a central issue that we must consider again and again and again.

Why do we sing? Because it's our weapon in war. That's what we'll be looking at this morning. And I wanna show it to you from five different vantage points. Number one, songs carry his word into battle.

Number two, singing interprets his victories. Number three, singing goes before his armies. Number four, singing makes war upon our fear. And number five, singing represents, or looks to the true singer who sings as he wins the world.

So if you will join me as we look at, we're gonna begin in Psalm 149. So turn with me there. I'm gonna bounce around a little all over the place like a biblical pinball machine. It'll be okay. Psalm 149 verses one through nine is gonna be our main text this morning.

And this is what it says. Praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song. And it's praise in the assembly of the saints. Let Israel rejoice in their maker. Let the children of Zion be joyful in their king.

Let them praise his name with dance. Let them praise, let them sing praises to him with the timbrel and the harp. For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. For he will beautify the humble with salvation.

Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two edged sword in their hand. I'm gonna read that again. Let the high praises of God, let the high praises of God, let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two edged sword in their hand.

To execute vengeance on the nation and punishments on the people. To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron. To execute on them the written judgment. This honor have all the saints.

Praise the Lord. Let us pray. Lord, this great honor you have put on our lips to sing, to sing your praises, to announce your name, to sing of your glory, your renown, your fame and your beauty. And we know Lord as Psalm 149 tells us that it executes vengeance.

It praises you for your glory. It punishes the wicked. It binds the kings. And it's our honor to do it. Lord help us as we learn what singing is to unleash it. Help us to learn or as we learn what singing is to deploy it.

Help us to learn not to sit around in rooms strategizing how can we win the world with all of these different complex and complicated plans. Let us just remember that we are singing people and singing is how you win the world.

Let us march, let us sing, let us declare and let us rebel in your power at work. And may New England bow to Christ as heaven already is doing and let it be through the songs of your faithful men and women.

Songs Carry God's Word Into Battle

Jesus name we pray, amen. The first thing I want us to notice today is that singing actually brings God's word into the battle. And Psalm 149 destroys our view of what singing actually is in a modern context.

Modern Christians have been trained to think about worship not as warfare. In fact, those two concepts are in completely separate universes for most Christians. Worship is supposedly a gentle, contemplative, emotional and inward experience.

Warfare is obviously strong, confrontational, dangerous, bloody and very outward. And yet Psalm 149 puts them together. The praise and the sword emanate from the worship. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand.

The high praises of God are both the words in their mouth and the sword that is wrapped around their fingers. That's what the high praises of God are, both and not either or. Which means that the singer and the soldier are joined together inextricably in one person.

It's what Charles Spurgeon described in his commentary on Psalm 146, or Psalm 149 .6 says, a happy blending of the quaestor and the crusader, which is, Ike Spurgeon always does, said better than anyone else.

The quaestor and the crusader, the singer and the soldier, the worshiper and the warrior. They're not divided in the Bible. Now we need to be clear because we're not Old Testament Israel. And the nature of our warfare is a little different.

The church is not a geopolitical nation. Jesus didn't commission pastors to raise up literal armies, although it'd be better than what's going on today to force pagans at the baptismal font at sword point.

He didn't command us to do that. 2 Corinthians 10 .4 makes that clear. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal by, but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. Paul doesn't say that we're supposed to go jihad, but he also doesn't say that the warfare's over.

He doesn't say that we put down our weapons. He said that we have weapons. They're just not the ones he used to have. Swords have been beaten into plowshares. Now you've got words. Now you've got songs for the tearing down of strongholds.

He says the war is continuing, but the weapons changed. The enemies are still there. Strongholds are still there. The conquest is still needed, but the weapons now are no longer the swords you hold in your hand, but the words that come out of your mouth.

Paul continues explaining the battlefield this way. As we sing and as we declare God's word, we cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. That's our battlefield.

That's where we war. We war wherever there lies. We war wherever there's unbelief. We war wherever there's false religion, demonic doctrine, sexual perversity, Epstein, cowardice, materialism, statism, pornography, child trafficking, abortion, fatherlessness, lawlessness, philosophies, worldviews, institutions, aberrant customs, foolish arguments and every other satanic pretension underneath heaven.

That's where we war. We war everywhere against everything that stands up against the rightful kingship of Jesus. We declare war on that. We go to battle against that in contradiction of many rancid flavors of cotton candy Christianity today.

We don't lie dormant in our churches. We don't let the world walk on us like a sanctified doormat. We fight, we conquest, we're crusaders, but not with swords, with songs. We fight with what Ephesians six calls the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

When John sees the glorified Jesus in revelation who is the word of God made flesh, what does he see? He sees a sword coming out of his mouth, a two-edged sword, a sword that speaks against kingdoms and they tremble, a sword that speaks against sinners and they're converted, a sword that speaks and lies collapse, a sword that speaks and dead men live.

So when Psalm 149 says that we sing God's word, that the praises of Yahweh are like a sword in our hand, we remember that we wield in Christ the same two-edged sword that makes empires fall in Him. We sing in the same breath that we strike.

We sing truth against the enemy's lies. We sing that Christ is Lord over history. We sing God's laws against a culture that is lawless. We sing Jesus's forgiveness. We sing at Faneuil Hall in the middle of an abortion, abolition rally and watch them kick us out because we see Jesus making war through song.

That's not less than warfare, that's explicitly warfare. That's the sort of warfare that Paul describes where strongholds are pulled down, thoughts are taken captive, kingdoms are collapsing, one melody at a time.

That's the first thing, singing brings the word of God into the battlefield. And when that happens, the enemies fall and collapse. Singing is very powerful in the hands of Christians. The second thing we need to see is that singing actually interprets his victory.

Singing Interprets God's Victories

That theme is a theme all throughout scripture. I want us to go and look at one example of it in Exodus 15, which is the very first example in the Bible of corporate singing. That's the first worship service in the Bible.

It's ironic, but it is. If you remember, Israel had just spent generations, 400 years in fact, beneath the heel of Egypt's boot. Under the Pharaoh who controlled their labor, their movement, their means of production, he was the first socialist as well.

The greatest empire in the world wrapped its hand around Israel's throat and Egypt looked completely untouchable to everyone. And yet Yahweh came and he made war with Egypt. He turned the Nile into blood.

He had frogs infest the land, gnats crawl on everything, flies descend, livestock die, boils erupt, hail pulverize the fields, locusts consume whatever remains, darkness smothers the land. When you study all of those, those are actually attached to an Egyptian god.

So God is literally making war with their gods, decimating them one by one until one horrific night when he kills all the firstborn in Egypt. You know, I wanna know how interesting that is. It's stuff that you, it's hard to know.

You have to look it up. It's interesting in Egypt though. The Egyptians believe that the Pharaoh on the night that his firstborn son was conceived, that the spirit of Ra came into his body. And it was Ra himself that produced the child, not him, so that the firstborn son of Pharaoh was the son of God.

And here Yahweh makes war and kills the firstborn son because he's a counterfeit firstborn son and he will not stand before Yahweh. Isn't that amazing? Yahweh goes to war. When Pharaoh finally lets his people go, he regrets it and he chases them all the way to the banks of the Red Sea where Yahweh does his final act of warfare, saying to Moses, do not be afraid, which is so funny.

You think about these passages in the Bible, like do not fear. There's like 5 million Egyptians chasing me. Okay, we don't have any weapons because oh, we were too busy making bricks. We didn't even get to take any of the bricks.

We have straw, that's what we have. You tell me not to be afraid, okay. But he says, do not be afraid, stand still, stop moving and see the salvation of the Lord. At that moment, you know, God divided the waters.

Israel walked around or walked through it on the dry ground. Egypt followed them into the sea. The walls come crashing down like a nuclear bomb and Egypt is no more. The chariots are submerged, the horses drowned, the soldiers disappeared like Jack beneath the waters.

Exodus 14, 30 tells us exactly what happened as a result of all of this. Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. The men who terrorized them are now corpses. The army that seemed invincible is now floating dead in the surf.

Here's what I want you to notice about that. God had already won the battle. Pharaoh was already defeated. Israel did nothing to cause the battle. They were told stand still in the corner and watch. They didn't lift a finger to do anything.

And yet God tells them in that moment to sing. And he tells them to sing because they need to remember why they won. They need to remember who's the victory actually is. They need to remember what Egypt is now in light of the power of God.

They need to remember and their children need to remember for generations. That is why they sang. That is why Exodus 15, one says, and then Moses, when they saw the dead bodies washing up on shore, then when the chariots were drowned, then when God destroyed Egypt, then Moses and the children of Israel sang to the Lord.

Then they sang. And listen what they sing. You won't find this in modern day worship hymns. I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider was hurled into the sea. They sang the Lord is a man of war.

The Lord is his name. God is a man of war. It's one of his names. The very first song of redemption and the very first corporate act of singing was when God decimated hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Egyptians, dead.

That's the context. Dead bodies all around. Let the bodies hit the floor. Sorry, I just remembered that song right now. But it's true. And then there, God called them to sing. And that song was to explain to them what God had done.

Because guess what? In that moment, they were wide-eyed and bewildered. What just happened? They didn't understand it. So God tells them to sing so that they would understand it. Not today, but tomorrow and every day.

This is what Yahweh has done for you. Pharaoh's downfall was not an accident. It was not a gift of your military prowess. Yahweh went to war. Yahweh judged Egypt. Yahweh redeemed his people. Yahweh triumphed gloriously.

And God gave them song so that they could give him, he could give them a theological interpretation of that event for their generation so that they would remember and never forget. You imagine an Israelite boy standing there beside of his father, a father who he'd only seen ever get whipped or make bricks.

And now he sees that father singing because Pharaoh has been decimated. That would have taught him that Yahweh is God. Yahweh is powerful, and he is the one we worship from now and forever. And I'm gonna teach my children what we did here.

And he's gonna teach his children what we did here. The song divinely asks in the most melodic key, who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? And the answer is no one. Songs don't merely communicate victory, they interpret them.

They tell us what God has done. They tell us what his actions mean in this world. They tell us who won, who rules. And in that way, songs are uniquely powerful because they stay inside of you. Listen, I'm gonna give this sermon today and a year from now, you're not gonna remember it.

And that's true. You probably won't remember it next week. You can listen to a lecture and you're not gonna remember it. You might remember a line at best. You might remember when I started singing Drowning Pool.

Drowning Pool, it is a metaphor for Red Sea. I'm now convinced actually, I've talked myself into it. Anyway, you're not gonna remember this, maybe that part, but nothing else. But what you're gonna remember 50 years from now is the songs you had as a child.

You hear someone singing a song that you haven't sang in decades and then automatically the beat comes back to you because God deposits truth and interprets reality in songs and he deposits them down in your bones so that you and your children will know them forever.

Songs are powerful and you know it's true. All of us have songs that we haven't heard in 30 years. Well, not all of us, if you're over 30, most of us. And yet they're lodged so deep inside of us, they live inside of our memory, they occupy our imagination, they become a part of the furniture of our soul.

That's why God commands his people to sing because in singing, we celebrate his victory in a way that we will remember for decades, in a way that children will actually grow up and learn forever. That's why singing at your table is really important.

I didn't know this growing up. I didn't have a family that sang around the table. I didn't have a family that did family work. I didn't have a family that did worship except at Christmas time when we lit a couple of purple candles, a white one and a pink one and nobody knew why.

I think my mom thought it was fancy. And yet, when you sing to your children, when you catechize them with song, when you find online, like Brian Sovey's got the catechism questions in song, when you find them and you teach them, you can sing them to your children in a moment and they'll remember them, even before they'll remember the words.

Singing catechizes people into the victory of God. Singing interprets His victory and singing puts His victory inside of you. That's the second thing I want us to see. And that's so important because that's what we do every week.

We sing. That's why singing is not frivolous. When we sing that Christ has been raised from the grave, that He's defeated death, that He's ransomed us into the faith, we're singing things that we're gonna remember for a lifetime.

He's depositing things inside of our soul that we are to remember and cling to even more than you remember the sermon. Sermons are important, but singing is powerful. Singing is a means of grace that God uses to strengthen you and solidify you and put iron in your bones.

Do not look down on it. He puts His melodies of victory in song. That's the second thing. The third thing is that singing goes before armies or singing happens before the victory even occurs. We just looked at a situation where the singing happened after the victory occurs, where the singing interpreted the victory.

Singing Goes Before the Armies

Now I want you to look at a couple examples or one example in particular of how singing happens before the battle. 2 Chronicles 20 is a fascinating scene. Jehoshaphat receives terrifying news that a massive coalition of multiple nations are coming and marching against Jerusalem.

Moabites, Ammonites, forces from Mount Seir, they're all coming. They've all combined together. Their powers and their will to destroy Judah. They have no hope of actually winning. The text tells us plainly, it actually says three words, Jehoshaphat was afraid.

Really? We would be too. And yet in his fear, Jehoshaphat does something astounding because he knows his military is not gonna win. He knows he can't muster enough horses. He knows he doesn't have enough spears and whatever else, he knows he doesn't have it.

So what does he do? He gathers the men, the women, the children and the littlest ones and he tells them this. He prays, oh Lord God of our fathers, are you not God of heaven? And do you not rule over all the kingdoms of all the nations?

And then he says, for we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us. Nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. That's a magnificent prayer by the way. Because when we're weak and we have no idea what to do, we say, God, we don't know, but you do.

That's the heart of a faithful prayer. But then what does the spirit say? Through Jehoshaphat, do not be afraid nor dismayed Jehoshaphat because of this great multitude for the battle is not yours, it's God's.

And then the morning comes, Judah prepares for war and Jehoshaphat makes one of the strangest military decisions in all of human history. Right up there with Hannibal fighting on elephants. 2 Chronicles 20, 21 says, he appointed not chariots, not horses, not bowmen, not Calvary, not infantry.

He appointed those who should sing and who should praise the beauty of God's holiness. And they went out before the army. They went out before the army singing. What a ridiculous plan. Not an army on earth that does that.

Hey, where's the infantry? Okay, they're right there. Where's the Calvary? Right there. Where's the cannons? Right there. Where's the singers? And that's exactly what they do. And it's so funny what happens because it says in verse 22, now, when they began to sing and to praise, when they began to do this, the Lord set ambushes against the people of Amnon, Moab and Mount Seir and he destroyed them.

They couldn't defeat them in their own strength and their own might. And yet they sang a song, boom, done. Done. Judah praised God and their enemies collapsed. The opposing armies fell into chaos and ruin and began destroying one another.

Before Judah's actual soldiers arrived, while they were just getting to the second chorus. Scripture tells us that there were dead bodies all over the field, falling on the earth. No one escaped. It even tells us that Judah spent three days gathering up the spoil from the battle.

And on the fourth day they gathered and they sang again. And praise God. They sang before the battle. They sang during the battle. They sang after the battle. And God is the one who brought the victory, which ought to tell us the centrality of singing to our God.

The centrality of communal singing to fighting warfare. There wasn't anything magical about the sound waves. We don't have any kind of new age biblical mysticism where proper musical frequency is gonna do stuff.

That's, I'm not gonna say what that is. God used their foolishness and their weakness. God put a song on their heart. God authored the song on their lips. And then God delighted to hear the song he put there.

And then he answered the song that he put there by destroying their enemies. He commanded them to sing. And then he conquered because of them singing. Which means that the power belongs entirely to God.

God repeatedly loves to manifest his mighty works apparently in weak and very foolish means like singing in front of a battle. God uses singers to bring down Jericho's walls. You say, no, he didn't. Yes, he did.

They shouted and they blew trumpets. That was ancient metal. And then the walls came down. It was. Then Gideon, his 300 singers, went out and they cracked a few clay pots. They blew a couple of trumpets.

They shouted. And then Midian destroyed themselves. They sang at the downfall of Egypt. Barak and Deborah in Israel sang at the downfall of Sisera. Singers were singing all throughout the Old Testament in front of the enemies of God.

David says that God himself in a song laughs at his enemies. Psalm 68 says, let God arise. Let his enemies be scattered. We're supposed to sing those words. Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.

Who are his enemies? Everyone is opposed to him. We're supposed to sing that and believe that. God regularly chooses means like singing to make human boasting look ridiculous so that everyone on earth knows who won the battle, not us, him.

And that should really encourage us, shouldn't it? Because when you look around, we look at giant institutions like Planned Parenthood or like the evil Democratic Party or the evil Republican Party in its own peculiar evil.

We look at all of the different evils around us and all the billions and billions of dollars they have. The pornography industry, the entertainment industry, Hollywood, the financial systems, educational bureaucracies stacked and bankrolled with trillions of dollars.

And we look at that and our ordinary little selves and we say, how can we do anything with our ordinary family, our ordinary little church, our ordinary fathers and mothers, our ordinary means of grace that we gather every ordinary Lord's day.

How can we do anything to stop that? Well, stop complaining and sing. We sing, we pray, we preach, we eat, we drink, we baptize. That's how we win wars in the kingdom of God. That is the point. God loves winning when he can alone get the credit for it.

God doesn't need our impressive skills and weapons. He needs faithful people who have enough faith to sing a chorus in the middle of a gunfight and believe that he can actually deliver you. That's the third way that singing is powerful, singing is warfare, is that number one, he brings his word into the battle.

Number two, he interprets the battle for us and puts it into our heart, puts his victory in our heart. Number three, he uses singing to actually win the war. Number four, singing also doesn't just wage war on our enemies, but it wages war on our flesh, wages war on our fears, wages war on our fickle, shallow heart.

Singing Makes War on Fear and the Flesh

Before songs can be aimed at enemies, they actually have to first be aimed at us because the greatest enemy that you will ever face is not out there, it's in here. You always hear people say, the devil made me do it or praying that God would deliver them from the devil.

I'm gonna be honest with you, no one here is important enough to get the devil. Like he's with someone else. You and I have a low level demon at best, probably someone who's on the B team. That's how important we are.

It's better to actually recognize it. Don't let it hurt your pride, repent. Anyway, the devil is not your biggest enemy. The world is not your biggest enemy, your flesh is, you are. There's no one in your life who lies to you more than you do.

There's no one in your life who hates you more than your flesh does. There's no one in your life who gives up, who taps out, who hates truth and who lives in sin more than you. Your biggest enemy is you.

And you believe all kinds of lies like I do. Your children are gonna grow up and abandon the faith. You live in fear of that. Your church is gonna eventually die. Your culture is gonna be lost. The wicked are far too powerful.

Your obedience doesn't matter. You can't overcome that temptation that you've been struggling with. You're never gonna be able to overcome it. You can't endure the suffering that you're going through.

You can't forgive that person for what they did to you. You can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't. That's you. That's you telling you what you ought to believe. And if you listen to that voice long enough, you become as, you become polluted by it, toxified by it and you end up repeating it and believing it.

But if you will actually open your mouth and say different things, say the Psalms, for instance. If you'll say Psalm 46, one, God is my refuge and my strength, very present help in time of trouble. Therefore, we will not fear.