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This is Glyndale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled, "Busy as a Devil." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

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Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourselves or others is heartily encouraged. And here for a personal word before the message is Dr. Thielman. Although the chances are that we have not met personally, I would still like to call you friend.

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Just a few weeks ago, I returned from a trip to Africa. During that time, I visited some of the major African game reserves. I was at Ambrosili, at Ngorongoro, at various places in Tanzania, and in Kenya. There I had the opportunity to study at length the African lion.

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And I learned that when Peter describes the devil as a roaring lion, he uses a most vivid and apt description. I want to share with you on this tape some thoughts about the devil as the lion who prowls through our lives and seeks to devour us. The subject is rather formidable, but it is crucially necessary to the successful living of the Christian life. In a few minutes, I shall share these words with my people, and I hope that they will bring blessing to them and to you, my friend, as well.

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Let us continue in our praise by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word. As it is recorded in a portion from the second chapter of the book of Job, and in some verses from the fifth chapter of the first epistle of Peter. Reading first from Job.

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Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, "Whence have you come?" Satan answered the Lord, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it."

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And then continuing our reading from the fifth chapter of 1 Peter. "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you. Be sober, be watchful.

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Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,

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who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen." And may God bless to us these readings from his word.

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Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. There are five steps to a fabulous future. The first step is to be born from above,

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to repent of one's sins and to receive into one's life the gift of Jesus Christ and the salvation that comes with him. The second step is to begin to live in the company of the faithful, to have the experience of learning from those who believe and teaching those who believe,

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to lift up your life and their lives into an attitude of constant and continual reverence and devotion, to let life flow into your life so that your experience is exciting, and to love through the Christ who is now living in you. The third step is to confess any sin in you

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in order that the power of the Holy Spirit given to you in baptism might flow through every dimension of your experience, to open yourself both to God and to another, that the channels of divine energy from the dynamo of the Trinity, the Spirit,

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might become part of you and your life might become a powerful testimony to the reality of God in your experience. The fourth step, that step which we ponder closely this morning, comes as a word of caution.

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It concerns the fact that the closer one draws to Christ, the more one experiences the power of the Spirit, the more one devotes oneself to the company of the fellow committed. One can expect the attack of evil.

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Let this be a word of caution to all of us. The more we follow after God, the more Satan seeks to dissuade us. As long as we do not take steps one, two, and three, we are virtually immune of his attack.

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We are, you see, already part of his kingdom. We have bowed down either consciously before him or unconsciously before him because of our adoration of ourselves. But the moment we offer ourselves to God,

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the moment we become a part of the fellowship of God's family, at that instant we offend evil. And evil begins to pursue us, as Peter says, "like a lion prowling about, seeking to devour us."

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The fourth step then toward a fabulous future is to learn how to tame that lion, or better, how to capture and contain him. I would suggest that the first thing to remember is this,

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"The devil is." One of the things you learn very quickly after entering lion country is that it's very hard to see lions. A few weeks ago I was traveling in the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania.

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We were looking for lions, four of us in a Land Rover with our guide. We came to a wide and beautiful field. The guide said, "Quiet. Lions." We looked about and saw none.

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"Where?" "I don't see any lions." "Right over there. Lions. Look. Watch. You'll see them." I looked. I watched. I didn't see them. I waited. I looked. And I watched some more.

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And suddenly, where before I had seen only the sunburnt African grass, I saw no less than 13 lions, nine of them full grown. I would have walked into the very midst of a company of the world's cruelest killers, the top predators of the animal kingdom,

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had the guide not said, "Watch." Almost impossible to see, so low in the grass, so silent in their movements, so camouflaged by their colors. A long time ago, the devil, the roaring lion, got behind a proposition

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in which he asked men to vote that he no longer existed. And the sophisticated and the learned and the educated all voted for the proposition. They suggested that the devil was just another name for our own bad impulses. They argued that the existence of Satan is a caricature brought over from the Middle Ages

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and the cosmology of that time. But it is not so. The poet was closer to the mark when he wrote, "The devil is voted out, and of course he's gone,

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but simple people would like to know who's carrying his business on. Someone is about it." This is how Jesus votes on the question. He says, "The devil was a murderer from the beginning

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and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." When you hear someone from pulpit tell you there is no devil, remember the devil lies. When you hear someone from lecture desk or podium argue that there is no evil one,

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remember that the devil is the father of lies. When anyone presents to you argument or debate to suggest to you that there is no devil who wears a long red suit, has a pointed tail, horns, and carries a pitchfork, don't make the mistake of forgetting that the devil is the prince of liars.

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Think for a moment of your own personal experience, of the way in which evil attacks you, of how you can go out on a beautiful morning feeling great and then suddenly feel a tap on the shoulder and a subtle voice asking, "Buddy, can you spare a soul?"

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Think of how it is as you plan great things and fail to do them, or of how you catalog to yourself the things that you ought not to do and then proceed to do them. Think of how evil is organized in the world, how multitudes are ready to say, "Yes, civil rights is a problem, but I don't want to get involved.

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Yes, narcotics is a difficult thing in our day, but don't ask me to dirty my hands." Walk through a slum. Study, if you will, the last note of a suicide victim. Sit with me while I talk with someone captured by heroin. Go into the fellowship shattered of a broken home,

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and then tell me that evil is not personal, that evil is not organized, that evil is not persistent. Tell Jesus he was wrong when he called the devil the father of liars. Tell Jesus he was wrong when he called the devil the one who steals the seed of the gospel. Tell Jesus he was wrong when he said to Peter, "Beware, Peter, for the devil will sift you like wheat."

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Tell Peter that that experience he had when he was sifted like wheat and brought to the place where against every fiber of good sense and moral strength within him, he denied three times that he even knew the Son of God. Tell Peter there is no devil.

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C.S. Lewis, who perhaps explained to us the nature of evil better than any other man who has ever written, says in his little masterpiece, The Screwtape Letters, "This is the counsel of every little devil to every other devil. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in the mind of a human being,

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suggest to him some silly picture of something in red tights and persuade him that since he can't believe in that, he therefore can't believe in the devil. The devil wants you to think he looks like nothing more than that little five-year-old who will come to your doorstep on Tuesday evening for a candy bar.

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But don't you believe it, for the devil is." And another thing to be remembered about him is this. The devil is busy. We have a saying which goes, "Go to the devil."

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It's an unnecessary saying. He's quite willing to come to you. Read these words in the Book of Job. God says to Satan, "Where have you been?"

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He replies, "I have been busy going to and fro and up and down on the earth." And how does Peter describe him? As one who is prowling about. It was 5 a.m. on a beautiful morning in the heart of Central Africa.

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I was at the Ambrose Sully Gang Preserve. I'd had a breakfast of zebra steak, which is tough but tasty, and trimmings. And we felt great. When we left the tents, Mount Titiminjaro was just being touched by the sun.

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And when the sun's rays touched the snow on its summit, it glowed pink. There were giraffe and zebra all about, some baboons at the side of the road throwing half-eaten fruit at us. It was a beautiful day, and we had beautiful thoughts,

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and started out first on a first-level road, then to a more remote second-level road, then to a third-level road, and finally off the road and into the bush. We came to a marshy area, and standing ahead of us,

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silhouetted against the marsh grass, was an aurix, a beautiful animal, somewhat like a deer, only larger, soft gray in color, not heavily antlered. He was standing stock still at attention.

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At first we thought he was concerned because he heard the sound of our Land Rover, but then we realized it was something else. For charging out of the marsh grass came six lions. The lion is the only cat which hunts together with its companions,

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the only cat that hunts in company, all the more deadly, therefore. A lion can go at over 40 miles an hour on its first charge. In less than a minute, they had the aurix. I wish I could tell you that the animal died in less than a minute, but it did not.

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When we pulled alongside, the animal was still kicking, though they had already ripped open its soft belly and were devouring its vitals. And Mount Kilimanjaro still glowed pink in the morning dawn, and the marsh grass was green, and the giraffes and the zebra went by,

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and I suppose the baboons were still throwing fruit while the aurix suffered and died. The devil is busy. The Prince of Liars moves about the earth in every day and in almost every conceivable way. About a hundred years ago, a man fell overboard in the Niagara River.

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The current carried him toward the falls, but just short of the edge, there's a black rock which sticks up out of the water on the American side. He got a foothold on that rock and managed to retain that hold. It wasn't long until great crowds gathered on the shore, watching him there,

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trying to figure some way in which they could get him safely to the shore. Remember, this was a hundred years ago. They did manage to get food to him by floating it down the river, but across the days, unable to bring him to the shore, he weakened.

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And finally, before the eyes of assembled thousands, he lost his grip and hurtled to his death over the edge. There they were, multitudes standing, watching a man's body die. The life expectancy of a body is approximately 70 years.

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But what would happen if I were to announce today, what I could in fact truly announce, that somewhere in this city this day, the prince of evil, the devouring lion, will come charging out of the beautiful dawn, or the green, green grass, of someone's experience and kill a soul?

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Would multitudes gather to watch? Oh, no. They would reply, "You cannot see the devil. You cannot see the soul. But is the death any less real? And not a life expectancy of 70 years, but a life expectancy of all eternity.

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The battle that is being fought in the world is the battle between good and evil. The uglinesses which we see in the world are but manifestations of it. Vietnam, racial conflict, generation gaps, the narcotic problem, divorce, the family falling apart, these things are but symptoms of what is essentially a spiritual and theological problem.

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Paul put it this way to the Ephesians, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against wickedness. This is the conflict in which we are engaged. The devil is busy."

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So the question becomes, "How busy are we?" Peter, after describing the devil as he does, goes on to suggest further that there are five methods that we must use in opposing him. He puts every one of these methods in the imperative mood.

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That is, these are not options for the Christian. They are vital necessities. His first suggestion is this, "Learn to cast your anxieties upon God." He suggests this in verse 7 of the fifth chapter.

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To cast one's anxieties upon God is to learn to pray. I came across an interesting story about a hunter in Africa who, overwhelmed by the heat one evening, moved his sleeping bag from the tent out into a clearing beside the tent,

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erecting over him nothing but a mosquito net, and went to sleep in the somewhat cooler circumstances. Sometime about the middle of the night, not knowing what it was that wakened him, he did waken and felt afraid.

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He did not move, but just slightly, rolling his head to one side, and there, coming at him out of the darkness, he saw a lion. Not one lion, but two. Not two, but three. Staying as still as he could, he watched them, and they approached him.

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They came so close to the mosquito net that their breath actually caused the net to quiver and to move. Again and again they approached and retreated, but finally, they moved away.

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Though that net was thin, it had saved his life. As long as the Christian stays within the net of prayer, within the compassing experience of casting his anxieties upon God, he is safe from the devouring lion.

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For you see, Satan has been defeated once and for all. On Calvary, he did the worst thing he could. He murdered the Son of God. But on resurrection morning, the Son of God rose again from the dead,

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testifying thereby that the worst the devil could do, God could undo. The most severe blow the devil could strike, God could rise above. Victory belongs to God and to all those who with victory belong to God. You say, why then has God permitted the devil to continue to exist?

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Because God never violates freedom. It is of the essence of his nature. He does not even violate the freedom of the evil one. But the death sentence has been pronounced.

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When the end of all things occurs, the devil shall be cast forever from the sight of God, and his death shall be forever, while all those who are children of light shall go on to spend eternity with the Father who is himself eternal. This is what makes the devil so severe, so cruel, so perverse, and so persistent.

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He knows that in the end he dies. He knows that no person who belongs to Christ can be defeated by him. So he swishes his tail in an agony of frustration, and he throws himself all the more horribly and terribly at the task.

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But hold fast always to this, Paul's word to the Corinthians and to us. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

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Oh yes, the devil is a roaring lion. But I remember that when I was in Africa, the only lions I saw were in game preserves, in areas where they were under restraint and contained. So the devil is.

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And as long as a man holds fast to God, the devil can never hold fast to him. Peter's second instruction, be sober. Consider the ferocity of the one you are up against. I had a long talk this week with Pat Quinn,

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who is the director of lion activities at Lion Country Safari, a little south of us. He gave me frightening statistics about lions. They are the top predators in the world, the only cats that hunt in packs. The average weight of a full-grown lion is between 400 and 450 pounds.

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They can move between 30 and 35 miles an hour, over 40 miles an hour on the first charge. They are the only cat that is cannibalistic. Every detail that you find out about them makes them more fearful. We've got to recognize what we're up against and stay within the net.

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Be sober about this, Peter says. It's not a matter about which to be casual. Have you ever had the experience of sitting down with a man who has just lost his brother through death? You're trying to comfort him.

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You're trying to give him words of support and encouragement and counsel. And then suddenly he begins to tell you the kind of man his brother really was. He tells you that his faith was nothing but a hypocrisy, that the garments of godliness in which he wrapped himself were nothing but filthy rags,

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that he was rotten to the core, a fornicator and an adulterer, that he pawed the bodies of women, that he went again and again into homes where he had no right, thus devouring and destroying those homes, that he made himself into not much more than an animal where things like sex were concerned,

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that he offered himself on the altar of every conceivable sexual promiscuity, that he was a fake father to his children, permitting them to call him father, but all the time living the kind of ignoble life which made him unworthy of that name, that he cursed God and that he died.

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And then to have this brother say to you of his brother gone, "His soul is lost." Lost. Every joy you've known in that day and every hope you hold for that day shrivels into nothingness

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when you hear someone say of their brother, "His soul is lost." No eternal fellowship with God and his holy angels forever. Lost. No kinship with those who are part of the company of the divine.

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Lost. You can read of it in scripture. You can preach of it from the pulpit. You can argue it or debate it theologically.

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You can talk of it in sacraments or in fraternity bull sessions. You may discuss it in any way you wish, but when you hear a man say with tears of his own flesh and blood, "My brother is lost,"

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then you sober. The testimony of scripture and the testimony of that man's life cannot be denied. He was and is lost. And in affirming this, we are but being obedient to that one

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who loved men more than any other who ever lived, but who said, "What? What shall it profit a man? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

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Peter says, "Be sober and be watchful." That's his third word of counsel, to be watchful. Our guide Bondo said to us, "When you are with lions, never look away." Don't think because you are a Christian that you are thereby out of the devil's attention.

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A cat does not chase a dead mouse. He chases a live mouse. He wants the excitement of the chase. He wants the excitement of the kill.

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That oryx, I suppose, had walked long across the Ambrose Sully Park that morning. There's not much water there. It had been probably a hot and thirsty journey. At last he came to the edge of the marsh.

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Here was the cool water he was seeking. It was in that moment when he bent down to drink, in that moment when he forgot to watch, in that moment when he was careless that they came at him out of the grass.

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This is the reason Scripture says to us, "He that endures to the end will be saved." We must never stop watching. I am sure that Peter had in mind as he wrote these words,

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the last night when the disciples were together with the Lord, Jesus with them there in Gethsemane, turned to Peter and he said, "Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation."

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And Peter fell asleep. And Jesus came to him again and said, "Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation." And Peter fell asleep.

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And somewhere nearby a cock ruffled its feathers. And within hours Peter had done what Peter thought he would never do, what Peter in fact had sworn he would never do. "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.

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I will never deny you." And then while the cock was crowing, "I know not the man." This is that of which Peter thought when he wrote to every Christian,

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"Watch." And then went on to say, "Resist." That's his fourth imperative, "Resist the devil." They can be very playful, you know, these lions.

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We came across a pride of them, a group of lions is called a pride, about 13. They were playing together, rolling in the grass,

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the little cubs pouncing on one another, gnawing on one another with their tiny teeth, big cats just lolling about in the sun. I remember one big she-cat on her back,

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kind of bemusedly pawing the air. Our guide had told us, "Under no circumstances put any part of your body outside of the Land Rover." We were a distance of about six feet from them.

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And yet there was one lady in our group who was convinced that these couldn't be the same kind of lions who had torn that Oryx to pieces. I mean, and what a shot, you know, to get that she-cat on her back, pawing the air. Wouldn't that make a wonderful movie?

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So she just announced that she was going to step up on the seat of the Land Rover, and then through the opening in the top, she would look out and take just a picture or two of the friendly lions. She had no sooner put her head and arms above the top of that Land Rover

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than that she-cat rolled, poised, and pounced, and hit the side of that car like a tank. The guide, as soon as the woman had spoken, had turned and grabbed her, so she was not all the way out, as it was.

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She only lost $550 worth of camera equipment. But she could have lost her hand, or her face, or her life. I read in Volume 18 of the 1966 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that when lions are at play, they are really at practice.

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That is when they develop the skills which are theirs to pounce, to kill, and to destroy. Resistance means to be on your guard at every moment. Resistance means to oppose at every instant. John Bunyan, in his The Holy War,

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has a conversation which is carried on between Christ and an emissary of the devil. Christ has been besieging the soul of man, which has been in the control of the devil. He's now ready to take the city. The devil, realizing that he's lost, sends an emissary.

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He's lost the war. He's going to try to win the peace. The emissary comes and says, "My master agrees that we should propose to you that we split man's soul in half. You take either half that you'd like." Christ replies, "I want it all."

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"Well, if that is your choice, so be it. But my master would ask you to give him at least a part." "There will be no part. I have bought this place with my blood. It all belongs to me."

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"Well, then, you drive a hard bargain. But suppose that we just permit some relatives of my master to continue to reside within the city." "No."

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"Can it be, then, that maybe my master can visit on occasion?" "You certainly can't object to that." "I object." "Can he then send gifts?"

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"No gifts." "Letters, just an occasional letter?" "No letters." "A note?"

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"No notes." "Sometimes, you know, the soul of a man wants to do business, and it's the kind of business in which my master is quite expert. Could they then meet, perhaps, outside the city,

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just for brief conversations?" "Any business that the soul of man has to transact, he may offer with prayer and thanksgiving to my father, who has given to me this man.

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And he is not welcome here, this master of yours." And the emissary, putting on his gloves and preparing to leave, says, "I shall give my master your answers." "I mean your answer."

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"The answer is no. There is to be no point of contact. There is to be constant and continuing resistance. The whole armor of God is to be put on.

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The helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, the study of the Scriptures, and of other books that can strengthen you. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis,

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the best book on the analysis of evil that's ever been written. I suggest you pick it up at the book table as you leave this morning. Or Victorious Living by E. Stanley Jones, a series of devotions that show a man or a woman

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how to gain victory in the Christian experience overall that besets. And another weapon is to be a part of the brotherhood. That's the last word that Peter says. Be a part. His fifth word of advice, his fifth imperative,

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be a part of the brotherhood of belief. We never would have made it through lion country there in Africa had it not been for our guide. Had we not been able to depend upon those

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who knew more about those situations than we did. That's the reason it is so important that the Christian remain part of a living fellowship, a living family of God.

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When they go out to hunt lions, a great group goes and they begin to beat the grass and to chase the lions toward some point where at that point the one hunter stands against the lion

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in the moment of truth, the moment of conflict, the moment in which one of them will die. Now understand that that battle can only come between one and the lion.

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So you, you may gain all of the support and counsel of God and the angels of God and be safe because of it. But in the end, you are the one who will either be defeated or will defeat the devil.

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But you can have all of these beaters. You can have all of these other Christians about you who strengthen you, who support you, who encourage you, who share with you their experience.

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Haven't you noticed as we have examined each one of these steps to a fabulous future that the body of believers plays a crucial part in each one? You are born into the family of God.

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You learn, you love, you live, you lift within the family of God. You gain the power of the Holy Spirit in your life when you confess to God and to another. That takes place within the family of God.

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And here, in the conflict with temptation, the emphasis again is being on part of a fellowship that joins with you in your battle. I am not saying to you this morning

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that we are meant to crawl through life. But I am saying to you that it's not yet time to dance. I'm not saying the future is here. I'm not even suggesting to you

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that the future will be here in an instant. It is not something to which you just add water and serve. The future is something which is bought with blood and sweat and many, many tears.

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For we have an enemy that pursues. It is true, one little word shall fell him. And that word is Jesus, the Christ. But before we gain strength at saying,

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"Get thee hence, Satan," when we first say those words, they come out weak and squeaky. But as we remain part of the fellowship,

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and as others say it with us, the sounds of our voices together make the command to get thee hence strong and powerful,

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so that he slinks away, tail still switching but slinking away, roaring but slinking away, his death once more assured,

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our lives once more assured. We are to be as busy as the devil. We are to recognize his existence, to cast our anxieties on God in prayer,

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to approach him soberly, watchfully, resisting him at every turn, and standing fast with our brothers in the battle. We are to do it beginning today.

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For once Satan gathered about him all of the emissaries of evil, and with a scepter of wickedness in his hand said to them,

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"Who will go to earth and persuade men to give their souls to me?" And one demon crawled forth and said, "I will go."

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"What will you tell men?" "I will tell men there is no heaven." "Man will not believe you, for heaven is written upon his heart."

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"Who will go and persuade men to give their souls to me?" And another dark and loathsome thing slithered to the front,

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"I will go." "And what will you tell men?" "I will tell men that there is no hell." "Men will never believe you,

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for hell is written upon the conscience of a man." "Who will go and persuade all men?" "Who will go and win men for me?" "Who will go with argument that appeals to young and old,

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to those who are wise and those who are foolish?" "Who will go and debate with those who are of every economic class and every strata of society?"

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"Who will go and win men?" "Who will bring them here to me forever?" And from the darkest, darkest corner of that dark place,

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there came forth one more, too horrible to be described, and he whispered in the ear of Satan, "I will go."

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"And what will you tell men?" "I will not tell them there is no heaven." "I will not tell them there is no hell." "Instead, I will tell them

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that there is no hurry." And Satan stood and said, "Go." And so persuaded men that there is no hurry. And those who heard the sound of his voice say

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that it was like a lion roaring. Let's pray. O God, this is a fearful truth, one that does not give us joy,

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except in the knowledge that as we are in Thee, we are in Thee forever. It is one that gives us caution, and grant that we might be in all of our lives

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so close to Thee that nothing can ensnare or trap us, and protect us, and grant that we might have wisdom and strength enough

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to protect ourselves, that altogether, the company of believers, the family of faith,

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and Thou our Father, might know eternity and infinitude of Thy peace. And the Lord bless you and keep you.

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The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love

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His peace. Thank you for watching this Dota 2 Guide.