 It's great to meet you all. We love my myself, my family. We love Shure Foundation. Pastor Thompson and I have gone way back and we both came as satellite leaders out of Verity Baptist Church, so we'll always have that to kind of, you know, obviously we have a lot of things to bond us together, but I love Shure Foundation's churches, all of them. So it's one of my favorite things to do is visit different churches just in general, especially Shure Foundation. So it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. So what you're going to do is you're going to keep your place in 1 Kings chapter 20. There's a little bit of a confusing story. There's a lot going on here. Maybe we will be here for two hours because we're going to go through this whole thing tonight, all right? So you're going to understand this. I'm going to show you some things from this story that we can apply to our lives tonight. You're going to keep your place in 1 Kings chapter 20. We're going to get back there in just a few minutes, but go to Ephesians chapter 6 as you bookmark 1 Kings chapter 20. Go to Ephesians chapter 6 as you bookmark 1 Kings chapter 20 because we're going to go back and forth throughout the whole sermon to 1 Kings chapter 20. Ephesians chapter 6, that's where you're going. Look at verse number 11 and I'll just give you the premise for the sermon this evening. Ephesians chapter 6, look at verse number 11. The Bible says, put on the whole armor of God. So of course we know the armor of God. You know this has been, I've done sermons on this. Many pastors have done sermons on this, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, our feet, our shod with the gospel of peace. But what I want to focus on is the last part of this verse tonight. The Bible says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, the wiles of the devil. That's actually the title of my sermon tonight is the wiles of the devil. You say what does that mean? The wiles of the devil. So the word wiles means like a trick or a strategy, a strategy of, you know, to intend it to ensnare. All right. So basically what this is saying in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse number 11 is that we need to be aware of the wiles of the devil, meaning the strategy of the devil that he's going to use to try to ensnare you. All right. So what I'm going to do this evening is I'm going to show you from 1 Kings chapter 20 some strategies that the devil uses to ensnare us. All right. So, you know, we've been playing a lot for some reason at our church, we've been playing a lot of, we have like this thing where we go into these, we have like these games, like these fads of games. And right now the game fad is chess. Okay. And I can't say that the smartest person wins at chess every single time. But I can say for sure that the person with the best strategy wins every single time. The person that has the best strategy and then is able to execute that strategy will win a game of chess every single time. Hands down. All right. So some people are very good at strategy. It's very clear that some people are very good at strategically playing chess. I mean, they're not just, just reacting. They're not just, you know, doing one thing, you know, like, I think I'm going to beat, take that on right now, though they have a major strategy that they're trying to, you know, envelop a certain area or come at your, your, your, your players or your opponents or whatever. So the point is the devil has a strategy. The devil doesn't just come at us with a demon or a, you know, a person that's working for him a son of a wild and just say, Hey, come worship me, you know, come to my side. The devil has very intricate strategies. And that's what the Bible is saying here when it talks about the wilds of the devil. All right. So let's, let's, I'm going to help the kids with some book reports tonight too. All right. So let's talk about, you know, a typical story because this, this, this really fits a typical story. If kids, if you've done book reports before in every story, there's what? There's a struggle, right? There's a struggle of some kind in every story worth reading anyway. There's a struggle and the two people that are generally struggling are called the protagonist and the antagonist. Now the protagonist is what we would typically, you know, you got to think of what's pretend we're in America 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Okay. The protagonist would be what you typically think about as the good guy. All right. He would be the guy that's, you know, the good guy. When we were kids, we played cowboys and Indians who probably can't play that anymore. But, you know, the cowboys were like, I'm not trying to offend anybody, but the cowboys were the good guys and the Indians were the bad guys. All right. That's just the way it was in 1980s. All right. And then, you know, a lot of kids play cops and robbers. The cops are the good guys and the robbers are the bad guys. Right. So in every story, you have a protagonist and an antagonist and there's some sort of struggle. Okay. Now this is a problem with America today. Let's talk about Hollywood for a second. They completely messed this up. Right. You wonder like, how do we get where we are in this country today where up is down and down is up and nobody knows what anything is anymore and it's all backwards. Right. Well, throwing Hollywood into the story and what they've done is what they've done is they've created an anti-hero. They've created this protagonist. They create these movies, these stories where you find yourself cheering for someone who's bad. Am I right? Yeah. I mean, think about this. Think about this. You find, I mean, think about how many love stories that you've seen. You know, hopefully you don't watch movies, but I mean, I mean, back in the 80s or whatever it was, it was starting back then as well. But I mean, it used to be where you would go and watch an older movie from the 50s and 60s or whatever. It was that it was some strong prince that went and defeated the bad guys and he got the virtuous girl and they got married and that was the end of the movie. Right. But now, I mean, that was a typical protagonist antagonist. Now we see you're, you're led into these stories where maybe it's a love story where it's actually adultery. There's adulterers and you find yourself, you know, wanting to, you know, they make the movie to the point where the protagonist is two adulterers, for example. So what they're doing is they're, they're mixing up this idea of good and evil. You find yourself cheering for the murderer in the movie. You know, think about like Bonnie and Clyde and all these stories that have been romanticized by Hollywood. These people were just their murderers. They were fornicating murderers, wicked people and they're in hell. But you find yourself, Hollywood takes this idea of good versus bad, this protagonist antagonist and they twist it all up and they get you cheering for the wrong people. You wonder why people don't know what's right and wrong anymore when they just poison themselves with this garbage. Here's a good one for you. Star Wars. Look, I'm not even talking, I don't even know how many Star Wars movies there are now. I'm talking about the original Star Wars like Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker. If you haven't seen it, don't watch it. But what you have in Star Wars is a rip off of a Messiah story. You have a rip off of a Messiah story where there's a wicked emperor and they're waiting for some sort of Messiah to defeat this emperor. But it's not a Jesus Messiah. It's a dark evil Messiah. The Messiah was actually Darth Vader. You see they just twist this idea of the protagonist and the antagonist. You say, how do they do it? Well, they do it through music. They do it through music. They do it through cinematography. They do it through what they play on your emotions. They play on your emotions and they get you to believe that what's wicked is actually good. Look, it's very powerful and it's not something that should be ignored, which is why you should keep far away from all of these things. Now, here's the nice thing about the Bible though. Here's the nice thing about the Bible. The protagonist in the Bible is always God or the man of God. It is always God or the man carrying God's truth every time in the Bible. It's not twisted around ever. You're never going to be reading the Bible and find yourself cheering for the bad guy. Even in cases, look, even in cases where God's man messes up, you see it. I mean, think of David. Think of David. He's God's man. He's a man after God's own heart. He messes up badly. He commits murder. He commits adultery. Even when God's man messes up, the real protagonist doesn't change because another man of God comes in and corrects. Nathan comes in and corrects the man of God. The protagonist is always God in the Bible. You don't get this mixed up twisting of the truth. You never end up cheering for the bad guys in the Bible. If you do, you might want to talk to your pastor. Look, antagonists. Who's the antagonist in the Bible? In Colossians chapter 4, Satan is called the God of this world. Just like God is the real protagonist always in the Bible. Satan is really the underlying antagonist in the Bible always. Or what? The men working for him. The people working for him. The sons of the wild. The people that God is trying to what? God's trying to destroy them. That's the struggle. That's the struggle. So that's the nice thing about the Bible. The Bible says in Isaiah chapter 5, this read to you, it says, woe unto them they call evil good and good evil. That's what's happening today. That's why we should stick to the Bible and keep our face out of anything else coming our way on TV screens or whatever it is. So now we know that. Go back to 1 Kings chapter 20. Let's do a book report. Let's do a book report on 1 Kings chapter 20. 1 Kings chapter 20. So really, we know who the protagonist and the antagonists are already in this story. But this story, just to break down the story, there's a lot of little confusing parts in this story. God is the protagonist. We know that. God is coming after somebody in this story. And his name is Ben Haydad. This king of Syria is invading Israel with these 32 kings, this massive army. And he comes. Ahab really isn't that important until the end of the story. But we do see some character traits of Ahab at the beginning, right? Ahab's pretty much a coward at the beginning. This guy, Ben Haydad, the antagonist comes up to Ahab and he's like, give me your wives and all your children. And he's like, okay. And then he's like, I'm coming to get them. So Ahab was a coward and he's a liar because he wasn't really gonna, he's probably gonna only give them the, I don't know, the ugly children or something, whatever it was. But he says I'm gonna actually come and get them. I'm gonna come and get there are no ugly children. All right. All the children are beautiful. All right. But the point is that Ahab was a liar because when he said I'm actually coming to get those things, Ahab is still a coward. He goes to his, then he goes to his elders or his leaders or his under shepherds or whatever they are. And he says, what should I do? Like, look, men, here's just a point before we can get started. Somebody says I'm coming for your wives and your children. We're fighting now. That's how that goes. Okay. Don't have to tell that to anybody here. But anyway, so there's two battles. All right. There's two battles that happen here because God basically says I'm taking this thing. I'm going to defeat this guy. And Ahab's just kind of along for the ride here. We get into Ahab towards the end. But the protagonist is God. And the antagonist is Ben Haydad. But God says, notice how God says at the end of the chapter in verse number 42, he says that Ben Haydad is a man who I appointed to utter destruction. This is a, this is a person that God is done with. This is a person that is what we would call reprobate. This is somebody that is just working for Satan at this point. God's like, you're done. I'm destroying you. Like, this is the same thing that God did with the nations of, you know, the Canaanite nations. This is the same thing that happened there as well. They're just done. God's going to utterly destroy them. All right. So God's the protagonist. Look at verse number 13. Look at verse number 13. Let's prove that. Verse number 13 says, and behold, there came a prophet under Ahab, king of Israel, saying, thus saith the Lord, hast thou seen all this great multitude? Behold, I will deliver it into thine hand this day, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord. God comes and says, I'm taking this fight to him. Yeah. He tells them, yeah, you have to order the battle, but I'm fighting this battle. God says. Verse number 28 in the second battle, he says exactly the same thing. God says, and there came a man of God and spake unto the king of Israel and said, thus saith the Lord. Because the Syrians have said, the Lord God is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys. Therefore, why deliver all this great multitude into thine hand? And you shall know that I am the Lord. God says, I will deliver. And you will know that I am the Lord. So God is the protagonist here, for sure. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw some comparisons using God as the protagonist. Satan is the antagonist represented by Ben-Hadad here and show you some strategies that Satan uses that happen in this chapter. All right. But there's lots of, there's lots of, you know, Ben-Hadad, we can have Ben-Hadad representing Satan here because God wants to utterly destroy him. We can realize that he's evil. There's several Ben-Hadads in the Bible. I think two, maybe three in the Bible, but we'll focus on this one. God wants to destroy several people in the Bible, several, you know, groups of people. Deuteronomy 20 in verse number seven, he tells them to utterly destroy, you know, all the people that they could meet going into the Promised Land. In Genesis chapter, why? You say why? Because in Genesis chapter 15 and verse 16, he said, you know, their iniquity was not full yet, but it was full at that point when they went into the Promised Land. It's like, God's like, I'm done here. All right. So God is going to destroy them. The battle of Gog and Magog at the, at the end of the millennial reign when Satan is loosed from his prison, you're going to see a similar thing where God is going to come down and Satan's going to be loosed from hell and he's going to gather this great army and it's going to be devoured by fire by God. So it's a very good picture of, you know, Satan's forces, you know, gathering themselves together and then God wanting to just utterly destroy them. You know, it doesn't happen here. We'll look at that towards the end. Let's look at some lessons of the wiles of Satan, lessons of the wiles of Satan. Look at verse number 17. Here's the first lesson right here. So this is the beginning before the battle even starts. Look at verse number 17. So God tells him, numbers some people and he sends out 232. There's 7,000. There's 7,000. So obviously there was hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Okay. And God tells them, you know, numbers some people, he has 7,000 people, Ahab does in his army and he sends out 232 first against hundreds of thousands of people. Okay. Look at verse number 17. It says, in the young men of the princes of the province, provinces went out first. This is the 232. And they, Ben Haydad sent out and they told him saying, there are men come out of Samaria. So Ben Haydad is sitting with his 32 kings getting drunk. He doesn't take these people seriously. And they see these 232, you know, captains and princes of Ahab writing out to him. And this is his reaction. And he said, verse 18, he said, whether they come for peace, take them alive or whether they come out for war, take them alive. The first lesson I want to show tonight on the wiles of the devil, the strategies of the devil is this. Ask yourself, why did he want them alive? He didn't care if they came out for war, if they came out for peace. And the first strategy of the devil is this. He wants you alive. He wants you alive for the same reason that Ben Haydad wanted these men alive. Why? To draw the others out. Because when he captures these 232, he shakes the group. He puts doubt and fear into the larger army by capturing these 232 alone. Look, he'll have more influence on the whole by capturing these 232 alive. This is why Ben Haydad does it. And look, this is why Satan wants to capture you alive. Look, the devil can't kill your soul. Saved Christian. The devil can't send you to hell. He can't take you to hell with him, but he can take you alive. He can take you alive. You know what he can do? This is his strategy with Christians right here. This is his strategy with the kings and the priests right here. He takes one down and he can instill doubt and fear in the majority that remains. This is the same thing that Ben Haydad was trying to do. Look, it can have a major impact on the larger group. When you see someone in their Christian life fall, it can have them. It shakes people. It shakes people in their Christian life. And this is why the devil does it. And look, the bigger names he can get, the more it'll shake people. The more of a Christian with the better testimony or whatever that he can bring down, the more damage he can do to the people that haven't left the gates yet. This is why he wants to take you alive. You think about that when you want to be a leader in your Christian life and you want to be a leader in your church, the devil wants to take you down harder. He wants you more because it will cause more damage to those you're leading. Father should think about that. The father gets taken down. He gets taken down by sin. He gets taken down in his Christian life. You'll shake the whole family. This is how Satan operates. This is one of his main strategies. You think about an individual that falls into sin. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. You think about it. Just somebody that falls into sin. Maybe just gets out of the Christian life. Maybe they get kicked out of church because of a sin. That's what happened in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Somebody got put out of the church because of the sin of fornication. You know, turned over to Satan, the Bible says. Isn't that interesting? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse number 5. To deliver, talking about this guy that was in open fornication in the church. The Bible says this. It says to deliver. Paul is telling them, deliver such and one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh. It's not saying go and he's going to go to hell or lose his salvation. It's just saying, look, he's got to be put out and he's got to be put out of the church and just like let him just deal with the consequences of his sin. You know, basically, you know what this is saying? Satan's got him alive. That's what this is saying. Satan has captured him alive. The spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven, leaven at the whole lump. So this guy through sin allowed himself to be taken alive in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. But you know what? It's better one is destroyed than the whole church. Yeah. So that's what God is saying. God's pragmatic. I mean, God's pragmatic. He tells us, like, I mean, that's, that's the Old Testament right there. He tells us, here's how you should do it. Well, that's hard. Don't get that too hard. But he tells us how we should do it. But then he's like, oh yeah, but if you don't do it that way, here's some backup, you know, things that whatever, he's protecting the church here. Okay, God is protecting the church. But look, it's still not easy watching someone fall. You all know this. If you've been in the Christian life for more than five minutes, you know that it is hard to watch someone get taken alive by Satan. You know that. You say, so, you know, what's the answer? What's the answer? Well, the answer for the individual is don't be taken alive. Well, how do you not get taken alive? You go down fighting that time. You go down fighting. You never stop fighting. You never let him take you alive. You're aware of his strategy that he wants to get you. You're aware as a father that I can't be in my home, you know, preaching all these things about the Bible and then going around and doing it on myself because it's not going to work because that's how Satan gets you. And then when he gets you, he shakes everybody else. He instills fear and doubt. If my dad can't do it, and who can do it? If that strong leader can't do it, if Satan got him, what chance do we have? This is what it does. This is how important this is. You go down fighting is the answer. You know what? God will fight with you. God will fight for you in this story. People taken alive do great damage to the army of God. That's the first point. Go back to 1 Kings chapter 20. You're going to go down fighting and you're going to pray and God is going to answer that prayer. God is going to fight with you. God will fight for you with those battles. Look at 1 Kings chapter 20. Look at verse number 13. Here's the second strategy. Here's the second wiles of Satan, the second strategy of Satan that we can take from this story in 1 Kings chapter 20. The second one is this. He will come for you in the valleys. Look at 1 Kings chapter 20 in verse number 13. You see there's two battles. There was two battles in this story in 1 Kings chapter 20. There was the first battle. We're going to start with the second battle and work it back. But there was two battles. There was one in the hills that was the first battle and then there was one in the valley. And Ben Hadad was sure he would win in the valley. He was sure of it. Everybody assured him that he would win. Look at verse number 13. And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, their gods are gods of the hills. Therefore they were stronger than we but let us fight against them in the plain and we shall surely be stronger than they. Look at verse number 28. And there came a man of God and spake unto the king of Israel and said, thus saith the Lord God, because the Syrians have said the Lord is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys. Therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Satan will come for you in the valleys. The low points in your life are Satan's playground is the point I'm trying to make here. This, this was Satan's argument. Look, this was Satan's argument to God about Job. What a joke, chapter one. Satan operates, that's his conventional playground, is when people are in the low parts of their life and they're having the hardest times of their life. Satan even told this to God about Job. Job was this man, let's just read it. Job was just man, he had everything, he had all these children, he had all this wealth, everything was going for him in his life. Look at verse number seven of Job chapter one. Satan said as much to God and the Lord said unto Satan, whence cometh thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, as thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Job feared God for naught. Has not thou made an hinge about him and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side, thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance has increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. You know what Satan is saying here? The only reason that I can't get Job is because he's got everything going for him. You put him down in his life, you put the valley in his life, you put him down in the valley in the plane, and he'll curse you to thy face. He tells God, because Satan's like, that's my house down there. When there's no blessings that are visible from God, Satan's like, that's where I operate right there. That's the conventional wisdom of Satan right there. Look, think about it. When do people turn to drugs and alcohol in their life? They're in low points of their life, they get into sin, then just like they turn away from God. They do what? They do something Job didn't do. They foolishly charge God. They blame God for things being for themselves, being down in that valley, just like Satan said he would curse him to his face. Job of course never did this. But look, turn to Romans chapter 8. This is why God spent so much time telling us that there will be valleys. You ever wonder why he does that? Because he doesn't want Satan getting you down there. God tells you constantly, there's going to be valleys. And 1st, 2nd Timothy chapter 3 says, yea, all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, valley. John 15, 18, if the world hate you, know ye that it hated me before it hated you. Jesus is saying, look, people are going to hate you. Everything's not going to be nice all the time, being a Christian. Look at Romans chapter 8 verse 35. This is a really good one. The Bible says here in Romans chapter 8 verse 35, it says, who shall separate us? This is why God tells us over and over and over and over again. There's going to be valleys in your life. Who shall separate us from the wealth of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? What? It is Satan that will try. It is Satan that will try to get you to fall away, to try to get you to backslide when all these things happen. You're under tribulation from the world. You're just, you're stressed out. You're under persecution. You don't have anything to eat. You don't have anything to wear. You know, you're in peril. You're in danger. People are literally violently trying to hurt you here in Romans chapter 8 and verse number 35. What God is saying, you will experience these things in your Christian life. God's trying to warn you, as Jesus said, so that you're not offended. So you don't turn on him when these things happen. Look, your life isn't going to be all good times. You know, this is what the Bible just tells us again and again. And again, this is why, by the way, raising kids. I mean, it's like people raise kids and they just want to like have kids just have all good times all the time. No, like your kids need to understand that what your kids need to know and learn how to do hard things. You say, what do you mean? What do you mean hard things? I mean, mentally hard things. They need to understand how to do that. Physically hard things. Hard things where they're doing these things and they're like, this hurts. I don't want to do this. Chores, learning things. Look, you know what? It's a lot easier. It's a lot easier when you're raising kids and maybe if you're going to have your kids help see like nobody, you know, raising a bunch of pansies today. I'm sorry. Not us, but the world is. You just you accidentally sneeze and these these kids fall over. I read a t-shirt a few weeks ago. My wife showed it to me and it said, it said, you can't hurt my feelings. I used to hold the flashlight for my dad. And I'm like, bam, that was me. I mean, you know, I'm working out. We live in town now. We didn't used to live in town. So when I yell at the kids, there wasn't any neighbors to hear it. But when I'm out in the backyard and I'm working and I got one of my kids helping me, there's some yelling going on. And look, here's the thing you need to understand. It might be easier just to do it yourself. It's not really helped when they're eight. You know, it's like they're messing stuff up and they're coming out and you know, why do you have one shoe on? You know, dress the work. Let's go. The neighbors are like, this guy is a psychopath. The point is this, like kids need to understand that there's going to be difficult times. Turn your bibles a second. First Corinthians chapter 10. First Corinthians chapter 10. You know, they got to understand that, you know, I mean, here's the thing, you know, people have done hard things. You know, you know, you realize after you've done something that's hard, I can do hard things. You know, so it might be easier, you know, when something's messed up and it's not level and it's screwed together wrong or whatever, it might be easier for me just to be like, zip zip zip, and just fix it myself. And like, no, we stand up for an hour until you get it right yourself. Why? Because it can't do hard things. You know, we're talking on the way over here just like how, you know, everybody gets a trophy today. If you can't, but here's the thing, in life, here's how it really operates. There's winners and losers. If you go and do it wrong every day at work, you're fired. That's how it works. Stick well, at least at this point. Then it stops working that way. The entire economy just crashes and we're done. America was a good run. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Look, it's the low times when Satan comes for us to hardest. It's the low times. We got to understand that there will be low times and low times are hard. And we need to raise our kids to understand that, you know what, sometimes studying is hard. Sometimes I don't understand it. Sometimes maybe I have to do something 10 times. When I started my first job 23 years ago, my first real job, I thought I was an idiot for two years. But you just keep going. It's hard. It's hard. But if it's hard, you're growing. If you keep going and it's hard, you're growing. And that's why God tells us this. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Look, it's the low times. It's the valleys where you're like, does God care? Satan can swoop in. It's the low times. It's the valleys where you're like, does God love me? Does God hear these things that I'm praying for? You're like, I'm praying for all these things. I'm going through this terrible time and I'm praying and praying and praying and praying and praying. Does God even hear what I'm saying? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Look at verse 13. Does he hear my prayers? He took my friends alive. He took one of my friends. He took two of my friends alive. I'm praying for him to help me through this valley. Does he even hear me? Look, everyone has doubts in their Christian life. This is why God tells us things like this. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and look at verse number 13. It says, There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you're able, but it will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you're also able to bear it. Look, there are two promises here to help you get through these valleys. Like real life, like promises. Like this is a promise. First of all, he says, Nothing will come to you that hasn't happened to other people. And you say, What's the point? Well, there's that gives a lot of comfort right there. Going through tribulations and trials in your Christian life and knowing that you know what? A friend of mine, a pastor I know, all these things, they've gone through things like that and they made it. Because what did they do? They didn't get taken alive and they kept fighting. So you remember the kind of testimony and the kind of value that is necessary for this first promise to come true here. There's got to be somebody that made it alive that didn't get taken alive here. For this to be true. It's like it gives great comfort. If they can make it, so can I. See? That's how powerful, that's how powerful a church is. Somebody said, This is a small church. I like small churches. I have a small church. It's, it's like, as long as it's filled with people that aren't going to be taken alive. That's, that's what you need. I don't care numbers. I don't take, I don't take censuses. But there's two promises. The first one is, is that there's nothing that you're going through. There's nothing that you've gone through that other people have not gone through and made it through. That's the first one. Look, that is very comforting to me. And that would be very comforting to you as well. But the second one's even better. The second promise in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13 to help you get through those valleys. It says, basically what it says is you will have the ability to handle it. You will have the ability to handle it. Look, it doesn't mean you will handle it if you start going into sin and start doubting the Lord and just start doing things that you shouldn't be doing. But it says, if you stick with it, if you follow the Bible, you will be able to handle it and it will not last forever. It will be over. You just keep walking. You put your head down. You know that, you know what? Other people, look, other people have gone through, I don't care what you've gone through. Other people have gone through way worse than we have. Read Hebrews 11. I got to put this thing, talk about how Christians throughout history were tortured in the worst possible ways. You got to read it in stages. You can't read the whole thing. Just like people have gone through a lot worse than us and they professed Christ all the way to the end. They went down fighting all the way to the end. We can take it. We can take it. So look, Satan's going to come at you in those times. But God tells you those times are coming. Those times are coming. He's like, you can deal with it. You can deal with it together. Other people have gone through it. They've gone through worse. You can do it. Here's the third one. And this sounds bad. Here's the non-conventional attack. This is the first battle. He's also going to come for you in the hills. A lot of the valley. Like a lot of the valley, he's coming for you in the hills too. The conventional attack is in the valley. But when you're in the hills, he's coming for you too. God also warns us about this. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 17. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 17. This is the first battle. It was in the hills. So we need to be cautious of the wiles of the devil in good times because he's coming after us there as well. And look, there's examples in the Bible. We'll look at a couple tonight about people that have taken down in those times. But God warns us against this. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 17. Look at verse 15. Deuteronomy chapter 17. Look at verse 15. The Bible says, Thou shalt in any wise set him a king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose. One from among thy brethren shall thou set a king over thee. Thou mayst not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother, saying, you know, set a someone who's saved over you. But he shall not. Now there's a word here that's used four times. We're going to focus in on this word. He shall not multiply horses to himself. This is talking about the king, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses. For as much as the word has said unto you, he shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself that his heart not turn away. Neither shall he greatly multiply silver and gold to himself silver and gold. Four times the word multiply is used here. It doesn't say don't have a wife. It just says don't multiply these things. You say, well, this is for the king. Well, Revelation chapter one says your king's in priests. And I'm talking to you tonight. So this applies to you. It's talking about multiplying four times. It says multiply, multiply, multiply. You know, here's a problem with people. Here's a problem with people we think. We think like, one's good. Six hundred must be way better. But here's the thing. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way with wives. It doesn't work that way with pickup trucks. It doesn't work that way with anything. We had this rental car today. I'm like, I'll never have a vehicle like this. But if I had a vehicle like that, I would really appreciate it. And look, God's not saying don't ever have a new pickup truck. He said don't multiply pickup trucks. Because you know what? Here's the funny thing though. God's kind of for us here, isn't he? Because if I had a hundred brand new pickup trucks, I wouldn't appreciate any of them. What's applied to our wives? To Ecclesiastes chapter seven. Here's the funny thing. Solomon tried this. Solomon's like a test case for this. All right? He tried to multiply everything. He tried to multiply everything. And I just want to focus in on the wife part. Because look at Ecclesiastes chapter seven. Let me turn there myself. Ecclesiastes chapter seven. And look at verse number 28. So first of all, let me give you a little context here. Okay? Solomon wrote Song of Solomon. Just read the first page of Song of Solomon. It's just like, it's just like, it's like, it's these two, these two people, oh, you're the best, oh, I've never heard you, oh, it's just husband, like, husband, like just fawning all over his wife. And this wife fawning over husband in just every possible way you can think. And you're just like enough already. You know, can I skip this part in my Bible reading? But you should. And here's why. Because now look at Ecclesiastes chapter seven in verse number 28. That was Solomon's first wife, by the way. In Ecclesi, or not Ecclesiastes, in Song of Solomon, he's writing to his first wife. Now look at Ecclesiastes chapter seven in verse number 28. Now Solomon's at the end of his life. He's at the end of his life. And look what he says. He says, which yet my soul seek it, but I find not. He says, one man among a thousand have I found. Like he's saying, even a rare friend, even a rare brother is hard to find. At least one amongst a thousand of those I have found. But a woman among those have I not found. Isn't that sad? Yeah. That's where his marriage went. After Song of Solomon, after he married hundreds and hundreds of wives and had hundreds and hundreds of concubines, all of a sudden all the blessings went away. All the happiness went away. So look, that's just a side point. Multiplying, it doesn't work. God is not saying the king can't have a wife. God is not saying the king can't have, you know, a pickup truck or king can't have whatever. He's saying, don't multiply these things. And really the reason why is why, because it'll steal your heart away. You won't get the happiness that you thought you would get. You're like, I'm really happy with my wife. I want this time 600. No, you won't have any happiness. Ecclesiastes 7 chapter 1, verse number 28. You won't have any of it. And you know what? You'll see that. You'll see a trend with that are all the men that married multiple wives in the Bible. You find me one of those men that had a loving relationship with one of those women. You won't find it. That's right. All they had was trouble and strife. The happiness completely went away. Why? Because they didn't listen to God first of all. Yeah. Amen. Just listen to God. You don't have to understand it. Just listen and it'll be better for you. But really multiplying all of these things will steal your heart away from the Lord. If you're multiplying these things, you know, you're going to get it. You're going to get up on this hill and you'd be like, look at all these options. Look at all these options that I have. Turn to Mark chapter 4. Turn to Mark chapter 4. The Bible puts it this way. In Mark chapter 4, Mark chapter 4, verse number 19, the Bible puts it this way. If you're multiplying all these things, your heart goes to these things. That's why, you know, Solomon went and built all these altars to all these different gods and all these different wives wanted built and all this. His heart was taken away from the spiritual things. Mark chapter 4, verse 19 says this in the cares of this world and the seedfulness of riches. And you see how it says deceitfulness there? It's deceitful. The thing I got one, if I have a hundred, I'll be happier. No, that's, it's deceitful. It's deceitful to multiply things and the loss of other things entering in, what will they do to the word of God? What will they do to your spiritual life? They will choke it. And that's when Satan swoops in when you're on the hill. They choke the word and it become unfruitful. There's a saying out there, you know, can you, you know, there's a saying that, you know, we used to say when we were kids, like, can you take a punch? You know, can you take a punch? I wasn't like very big and I wasn't even really the toughest kid, but I could take a punch when I was a kid. I was actually like the smallest kid. We were just talking about wrestling. When I was a freshman in high school, I wrestled 103 pounds and you had to weigh at least 92 pounds to wrestle 103. And I weighed 88 pounds. Everybody else was running around in rubber suits and I'm drinking water to try to make weight. And I was pretty, I was a pretty small kid and, you know, tell my junior, you're a high school, but, you know, a lot of people gave me trouble for that. But I was just like, I figure I could take a punch. No problem. I had some big guy that was giving me trouble sometime and he's coming up to me when I got into high school. And he was a junior or something and he's picking on the freshman or whatever. And I'm just like, all right. I was like, we can fight. I was like, you know, I don't know if you'll win or not or if I'll win or not, but it's going to hurt. You know, it's going to, you're going to have to work for it is what I was telling this guy. So there's this question of just saying, can you take a punch? Let me ask you this. Can you take a blessing? Can you take a blessing in your life? Can you take a blessing in your life without it knocking you down? Can you take a blessing in your life without it pulling you out of the Christian life? Can you take a blessing? Can God, can God do something nice for you without you turning your back on it? Because Satan's coming after you in the hills too. And this is how he's going to do it. You got that new car. You got that big raise. You got, I mean, you got success in every way. Praise God. You got a new, you got a new baby. You got a new life. Just one. These things are, these things are huge blessings in your life. And then does that mean I'm going to reprioritize things in my spiritual life? No. Does that mean, look, some things, some blessings you know are not blessings just for this reason alone. If you're like, okay, there's no way I can take this blessing without reprioritizing my spiritual life. It's not a blessing. That's Satan trying to make you think you're up on a hill trying to capture you alive is what that is. You're like, man, if I take this night shift, if I take this night shift, you know, then I can make a lot more money, but I can only go to church once a week. That's not a blessing. That's not a blessing. Keep the money. Yeah. A blessing is something that God gives you and rewards you and you should just, you know how you take a blessing. Here's how you take a blessing one at a time. That's it. You take a blessing one at a time and you take a blessing one day at a time. Hey, I'm really happy I got this race. I hope I still have it tomorrow. But if I don't, whatever. Right. Hey, I'm really happy that this is happening to me in my life and things are going well. I hope that they still go well tomorrow. But if they don't, what God told me that they wouldn't always go well. You should tell your kids that too. And you're going through good times and you're up on those hills. You should tell your kids all the time and you're on that vacation. You tell your kids, this is God's blessing us right now, but it may not always be this way. At least give them that head knowledge that it's not always going to be happy happy because it's not going to be. Don't change your priorities ever because tomorrow could change. If your spiritual life was number one and then blessings come in, it should still be number one. I mean this isn't that hard, but this is how you can take a blessing. Don't be one of these people that God blesses. I mean think of Solomon. God blesses and then you take those blessings, turn your back on God and now God's got to beat you and go from beating to blessing to beating to blessing and just live this cycle over every year or whatever. So look, if a new opportunity comes along and your spiritual life has to be downgraded, it is not of God. Take a blessing. Go back to 1st Kings chapter 20. Here's another part. You know, friends can be a blessing. Friends can be a blessing or not. Let's read 1st Kings chapter 20. Let's look at verse number 29. This is where Ahab really makes himself, I'm going to say infamous in this chapter here. Look at verse number 29. This is a sub point to blessings and those hills. Look it says, they pitched over against the other seven days and so it was that the seventh day the battle was joined and the children of Israel slew of the Syrians and 100,000 footmen in one day. This is the second battle, the battle in the valley. But the rest fled the AFAC into the city where a wall fell upon 27,000 of the men that were left and Ben Hadad fled and came into the city into an inner chamber. So he, the wicked, our antagonist runs away and hides in this town and his servant say unto him, behold, now we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings. Let us, I pray, he put sackcloth on our wounds and ropes upon our heads and go out to the king of Israel. Peradventure he will save thy life. So he's kind of a coward too. He sends out these servants first to see if this works. It's like you guys go, you try it first. They girded sackcloth on their winds, put ropes on their heads to humble themselves in front of the king of Israel and came to the king of Israel and said, thy servant Ben Hadad said, I pray thee let me live. And he said, this is Ahab and he said, Ahab speaking now, is he yet alive? He is my brother. You're like, wow, that was fast. He was quick to just align with him. Look at verse 33. Now the men did diligently observe whether anything would come from him and did hastily catch it and they said, thy brother Ben Hadad. Then he said, go ye bring him, then Ben Hadad came forth to him and he caused him to come up into the chariot. So now he comes up into Ahab's chariot and Ben Hadad said unto him, the cities my father took from thy father, I will restore. Now shall make streets for thee, Damascus as my father made in Syria. Then said Ahab, I will send thee away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him and he sent him away. Ahab makes a deal with the devil basically is what he does here. So the point I'm trying to make in this last point is that sometimes Satan will disguise himself as your friend. Sometimes, you know, the people that you think are your friends are not of God. You know, I mean, or your brother. I hate to break that to you. You say why? I mean, you say, why do I need to be careful of, you know, friends and people that say they're my brother and say all these things? Go to verse number 42. Now this prophet, you know, it's a little confusing what this prophet does, but this prophet basically doesn't think that Ahab will hear from him. He doesn't think that the king of Israel will want to hear from a prophet. So he has somebody beat him up basically. He has somebody beat him up so he looks pitiful. And he comes up to the king of Israel with this story of, oh, I was told to watch this guy and if I got this guy got away, I had to pay this money. He comes to this, the king of Israel and comes to Ahab with this sob story just to get in front of the king just to get his attention. And then when he has his attention, he drops this one on him right here. Look at verse 42. He says, and he said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, because thou hast let go out of the hand of man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life and thy people for his people. And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased and came to Samaria. Ahab just became the new antagonist for Satan here is what happened. God says, since you made affinity, you made a covenant with this man who was trying to utterly destroy. Now I'm coming for you. A similar thing happens with Jehoshaphat and Ahab except God just says, I'm going to punish you Jehoshaphat. He doesn't have to destroy you. But Jehoshaphat, a good king makes affinity, makes friendship and goes to war with wicked Ahab in just a couple chapters down the road here after God has already said, Ahab is against me. And that's when Jehu in 2nd Chronicles chapter 19 comes out and says, you know Jehoshaphat, healthy and godly and love them that hate the Lord, therefore is wrath upon thee. So God, he's saying God's mad at you now for this. But here he tells, he tells Ahab in 1st Kings chapter 20, he's like, now I'm going to destroy you because you made a covenant with this man. Look, think about this, think about this. God goes and he fights for these people. He fights against this satanic force coming against them. He fights for these people on the hills. He fights for these people in the valleys. And then they get to go and they just, they just make a covenant with him. He's enemies of God. Hey, this is what God thinks of these churches and these leaders and these Christians that don't stand on his word. I don't care if they have the right gospel, they don't stand on his word. They won't, they won't preach against the sickness and the perversion and the child abuse that's happening today. They won't preach on the sodomites and they won't preach on all these things because, but you know what, that's what God thinks about them because they will not stand against, they're making a covenant with people that they hate him. That he's trying to utterly destroy. They're making covenants with these people. I mean, God says, I mean, God says, he says to him, I spent all my time fighting these people. He tells us, he's like, he's like, God gives us, you know, all these churches and these leaders today is like, I've given, I've given you my word. I've given you the Bible. I preserved it for you and you go and you make a deal with the devil. This is how, this is what God thinks of this today. This is exactly what God thinks. And you know what he says? You know what he says to them? He says, now I'm against you. He says the same thing today. God forbid we don't preach everything in the Bible. God forbid we don't stand up against the enemies of God. God forbid, like God would be against us. He'd be mad at us. His wrath would come against us. So look, the devil attacks, the devil attacks in all places. The devil is going to attack you at the worst times in your life. He's going to attack you in those valleys. He's also going to attack you in those hills and his goal is to what? His goal, he can't, he can't give you the second death. He can't make you unsafe, but he can take you out of this Christian life and he can rattle everybody you left behind. And it's a powerful thing, folks. There's a lot of lessons to be, to be learned from this story. So the answer is, you know, I mean, but just remember, God said, he's fighting. He's fighting for us. You know, they thought that God, oh yeah, he's the God of the hills. And oh, he's the God, he's not the God of the valleys. No, he's the God of everything. Which means he'll be with us in the hills. He'll be with us in the valleys. We should have the knowledge of the things that he tells us in the Bible. But don't get these ideas that, you know what, God's not here for me right now. You know, don't get these ideas that are going through a hard time right now and God's here. No, he hears you. Other people have dealt with this. You just keep the muscle memory going and you will come out of that valve. Because God will fight for you and he's made, look, that is a promise that those things are common to man and that you will be able to take it. That's a promise. Certain things in the Bible are like, God says this, and you can take, I mean, you can, you can bank on it. And look, there's no deals. There's no deals. We fight in the Christian life. We go down fighting. We go down fighting. Maybe, maybe I have blessings one day and maybe if I, you know what, maybe if I fight, maybe if I fight for God, maybe some of those blessings go away, then God didn't want me to have them because he doesn't want me making deals. Right, right. Those things, those blessings that stopped me from fighting become curses at that point. That's what we need to understand from this story. And while the antagonist changed here from Ben Haydad to Ahab, really it was always Satan, the protagonist, still the Lord. Amen. Love the Bible. Let's bow our heads and have a word for it.