This Means War

We trace Revelation 12 to show Advent as a story of conflict and hope: a child pursued by a dragon, the church sustained in the wilderness, and accusation broken by the blood of the Lamb. Light is winning, not because life is easy, but because Christ has already won.

• Revelation 12 read and framed for Advent
• Advent as invasion of light into darkness
• Satanic assault through accusation and deception
• The flood of lies and the need for discernment
• Scripture as anchor against misinformation
• The woman as the people of God in the wilderness
• Divine protection and provision in hard places
• Abiding in Christ as safety and courage
• Heavenly victory; the accuser cast down
• Conquering by the blood and our testimony
• Courage, endurance, and certain hope

“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”

Chapters

• 0:02 The Sign In Heaven
• 4:18 War In Heaven And Its Meaning
• 6:35 Advent As Conflict, Not Comfort Alone
• 7:54 Revelation Clarifies The Real War
• 8:59 Satanic Assault And Global Scope
• 12:30 The Flood Of Deception
• 16:20 Discernment And The Word As Defense
• 19:46 The Woman In The Wilderness
• 22:00 Staying Near To Christ For Safety
• 25:15 Heavenly Victory And Broken Accusation
• 29:05 Living With Courageous Hope

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:02

After reading Revelation 12, a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with sun, with moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant with and tried and cried out with pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its head. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who would rule the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness, a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,268 days.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled down to earth and his angels with him.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah. For the accusers of our brother, for the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, but they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore, rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them, but woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you, and he is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, and he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given two deep wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach. And then from his mouth the serpent defeated water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away with a torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowed the river to the dragon had defeated out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, and those who keep God's commands and hold fast unto their testimony about Jesus. Father, as we light this first candle, kindle in us a deeper hope when we feel the darkness pressing in. Remind us that the light has already come, the war has already been decided, and our lives are hidden with Christ. Give us grace this advent season to watch and wait with courage, and to resist the evil one by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony, and to love not our lives even unto death. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Shine your light in our hearts, in your church, and in all the world. In your mighty and merciful name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_04: 3:50

Before I begin, I will go ahead and dismiss kids ages two through second grade can go downstairs and be part of kids' church. Or also, as always, you're welcome to stay up here with us. Happy to have you either way. As you heard, um, our scripture reading today comes from Revelation 12, and uh this is how we will do the scripture readings throughout the Advent season is we will have families light the advent candles and do those readings. So we have already done that. There's a famous exchange at the end of the first season of True Detective, which to me is the the best uh that television has ever done, where there's a conversation between Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey at the very end, and it goes like this Didn't you tell me one time at dinner that you used to make up stories about the stars? Yeah, I was in Alaska under the night skies. I didn't watch TV until I was 17. There wasn't much to do out there except look up at the stars and make up stories. Stories like what? Oh, it's just one story. The oldest, light versus dark. Well, I know we ain't in Alaska, but it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory. Yeah, you're right about that. But you're looking at it wrong, at the sky. How's that? Well, once there was only dark. So if you ask me, the light's winning. And that's how it ends. It's a surprisingly hopeful moment in what's otherwise a bleak story in the face of what looks like overwhelming darkness. The insight is simple, is that we forget that the light wasn't always there, the little light that there is. Once there was only dark, and yet the light broke in. And if you look at the story through that lens, then the light is indeed winning. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It's a season typically where we remember that a great light has dawned, a great light has entered into a very dark world. And Christmas is usually branded by peace and joy and light, and I hope that you have a peaceful and joyful and light-hearted Christmas season and Advent season this year. But there's something else about Christmas that we often fail to appreciate. And it's that Christmas is really a story of conflict. It is a story of peace on earth and goodwill to men, but it's a story of light versus dark. It's a story of Jesus Christ invading a world which is under the control of evil powers. And those evil powers fight back. They resist the appearance of the Savior, they resist the coming of the Lord. So that's what we want to look at this Advent season. We're going to look at the stories surrounding Jesus' birth, but with an eye on the conflict and the resistance that surrounds his coming. Because understanding that conflict and that ongoing conflict helps us understand our place in it. The conflict did not end with his birth. It began there, but it continues until his return. And discipleship means knowing how to engage in that conflict. So this morning we begin with Revelation 12 because it gives us the most vivid, symbolic, and comprehensive picture of that conflict, of the war behind Christmas. Jesus will indeed bring peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But until that day, Scripture says that there will be a bitter conflict between good and evil that requires faithful endurance from us, and yet Revelation tells us that the final victory is certain. Revelation is what we call apocalyptic literature, which means that it pulls back the curtain and it shows us what's really happening behind the scenes. When we look at our world, things seem murky and gray and confusing, and it's not all black and white. But Revelation is so wonderful because it clarifies what's actually happening behind all of the confusion. As one commentator puts it, Revelation 12 shows the two sides stripped of all inconsistency and confusion, so that we may better understand the nature of our warfare. And when we look at it that way, when we look behind the veil, Revelation 12 shows us three things more clearly. Number one, satanic assault. Number two, divine protection, and number three, heavenly victory. So satanic assault, divine protection, and heavenly victory. First, satanic assault. Satan and his demons seek to devour God's people through deception. That's one of the things Revelation 12 is teaching us. Revelation 12 introduces us to a cast of characters, and we'll go through them as we're able to, but let's just start with the identity of the dragon. He's pretty uncontroversial. John tells us plainly in verse 9 who the dragon represents. He says, That ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan. So the dragon is a symbol of Satan. The dragon appears right at the moment of the child's birth. Verse 4. The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. Satan attempts to destroy Christ and to stop his appearance and his advent, but he's not able to. Verse 5 tells us she gave birth to a male child, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne. So in that brief verse, John passes, he begins with the birth of Jesus, but he passes over the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the ascension of Jesus in this single sweeping movement, not because those things are unimportant, but because the point that he's trying to make is that Jesus is now beyond the reach of Satan. That he has conquered, he has ascended to heaven, he's beyond Satan's reach. So what does the dragon do? He turns his fury then on to the people of God. In verse 12, it says, Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. And then in verse 17 it says, Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God, and hold to the testimony of Jesus. So this is the key. Revelation is teaching us that if Satan cannot devour the Son, which he can't, then he will devote himself to devouring the saints. And John wants us to notice two things about this. He wants us to notice the scope of Satan's assault, and he wants us to notice the method of Satan's assault. So very briefly, first, the scope. Verse 3 describes the dragon, and it says that he is a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. Why seven heads? Why does John add that detail? In apocalyptic literature, multiple heads usually represents multiple manifestations of one power. That there's many manifestations. There's not just one. And if you cut off one head, it's replaced by others, is the idea. And the number seven indicates fullness or completion or pervasiveness. So together, all of this means that Satan's influence is universally pervasive, that there is no corner of human life that is untouched by his attempts to distort and to destroy. The dragon rears his ugly head everywhere we turn. There's no safe quarter in education, in government, in entertainment, in social media, in medicine, in technology, in false religion. And yes, even in institutions that call themselves churches, but have compromised or have abandoned the gospel of Jesus, the influence of the dragon is pervasive. His influence can be found everywhere. So that's the scope. There is no safe place on earth. And then we should also notice the methods. Revelation 12 highlights three primary weapons, and if you continue to read in Revelation, there are even more, even more information is given. But the three that we see here are accusation, persecution, and deception. And we don't have time to look at all of them, but we're just going to focus on deception. In verse 9, the dragon is called the deceiver of the whole world. Or the Jar family, the translation that they chose says, the one who leads the whole world astray. Verse 15 says that the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth. So we have this river coming from the mouth of the dragon to sweep her away with a flood. The flood from the dragon's mouth is a flood of lies, a flood of false teaching, of misinformation, of heresy or distortion or confusion, a river of deception meant to overwhelm and to mislead the saints and to drown them spiritually. And all of this forms a vivid picture that God's people live in a world where Satan actively seeks to overwhelm and devour the church through deception, through misinformation and confusion and heresy and false teaching and all kinds of deception. That is the true nature of the warfare that we're engaged in. That's the conflict behind Christmas. One image that comes to mind to me immediately is fishing. I love fishing. I love deceiving and outsmarting those helpless lake bass, the largemouth bass. I'll take any of them. Fishing is all about deception, if you think about it. You use different lures depending on what you're trying to catch. A lure is a beautiful imitation of something that the fish thinks that it wants. And the way that it moves, the way that it appears, the way that it, the way that even the scent that it emits, all of that is designed to attract and to entice and to uh to get a bite. But as we all know, the lure is not what it seems. Even when it is live bait or real food, there's still a catch. There's still a hook that is hidden that the fish cannot see, or that we hope the fish cannot see. The thing that looks desirable is actually dangerous and deadly. And in the same way, Satan is a devouring dragon who, according to Paul in 2 Corinthians, disguises himself as an angel of light and is able to appear or to present things to us in a very alluring fashion, things that look very good. His lures are everywhere, everywhere we turn. He promises the very things that we long for freedom, wealth, companionship, pleasure, popularity, whatever it is that you long for. Satan is well aware of that. His demons, I don't know how many there are, but they are well aware of the things that tempt you and allure you, and they know how to present those things to you. And his message is the same as it was in the very beginning in the garden: that you can have what you want without God. And as a matter of fact, that if you submit yourself to God, God will withhold from you the very best things of this life. That was that's always been his message. That's the primary lie, is that God does not love you, but is withholding from you. And that's those are the lures that he places in our path. Don't be lured away. Don't let him get his hooks into you because he is a liar and the father of lies. So what are we to do in light of this satanic assault? We must become, all of us, must become, people who are highly discerning. If Satan wages war primarily through deception, and that's one of his primary weapons against us, then discernment is our greatest defense. The primary way that we guard ourselves from the flood of satanic misinformation is by becoming anchored in God's word, by knowing God's word in a deep way, in a sophisticated way, in a personal way. There is simply no substitute for personally knowing the scriptures. Um I've I've been to seminary, I've studied the Bible pretty deeply throughout my life. But for you, when you're in the midst of a moment of temptation, when you're being lured, my knowledge of the Bible cannot help you. Um all of us must personally know God's word. Uh God must help us through his word personally in those moments. There's no greater investment that you can make in your spiritual resilience than to read and study and meditate on God's word over the course of your life. And likewise, there's no greater inheritance or no greater gift that you can give to your children than to plant the Word of God deep in their minds and in their hearts. And what does that mean? What does that look like? I mean, that of course that can mean family devotions. Not all of us are good at that, not all of our that doesn't work for everybody, but somehow we have to find a way to do what Deuteronomy commands in Deuteronomy 6. These words that I command you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise. Uh, we that is an inheritance that that belongs to our children, that we give to our children. We're when we need to be diligent to do that. There's nothing, nothing more important than we can give to them. The only antidote to deception is truth. And God has given us truth in an accessible way. It's not a secret. He's given us a book that we can hold and we can study and we can wrestle with and we can store in our hearts. If we do not know God's word well and personally, then we are vulnerable to the assaults of the dragon who will flood us with deception and misinformation, who rears his head in every arena of life. There's nowhere safe from even if you go to church and you hear a word from a pulpit, even that is that place is not safe from the influence of the enemy. You have to know God's word. You have to weigh what is said and discern the truth of what is said according to the word of God. But if we do know it, if we are steeped in it, if we are shaped by it and armed with it, then the flood of deception will be less effective. It cannot sweep us away because we are anchored in the word of God. So that's number one, satanic assault. Number two, divine protection. God's people are not only assaulted by the devil, but also divinely protected and provided for in the wilderness. So now let's consider the figure of the woman. Verses one and two, it says, A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and in the agony of giving birth. So here the woman is a bearer of light. There's many sources of light surrounding her. She's adorned with the sun and moon and stars. She radiates glory, she brings the Savior into the world, and she is assaulted by the dragon, yet she is also protected. In verse 6, we read that God prepares a place for her. It says that the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for twelve hundred and sixty days. That's repeated again in verse 14. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness to the place where she is to be nourished. Now here's a different period of time, for a time and times and half a time. John is telling us the same thing twice. He says, God brings his people into the wilderness, and God sustains them there. And in Revelation, just know that every number in the book of Revelation is a symbolic number. These numbers, 1260 days, 42 months, three and a half years, time times, and half a time, those are all symbolic ways of speaking about the same period of time. It's all the same number if you do the math. And that period of time is the entire period between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ. It's the age of the church, the inter-Advental period represented by those numbers, the era that we're living in right now. And then creation itself helps the woman. Verse 16 says that the earth came to the help of the woman and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. So what does all of this mean? Well, I've already tipped my hand a little bit, but the woman really represents the people of God, the church, God's people, both from the Old Testament now, even into the New Testament. Like Israel in the wilderness, the church is in the wilderness, the church is delivered, but not yet home. The church is redeemed, but still being tested. The church is under assault, yet sustained miraculously by God. So we are a wilderness people, protected, nourished, upheld, and preserved by God Himself. And what about the earth coming to our aid and swallowing up the river of lies? Well, the good thing about satanic deception is this is that lies just simply do not work in God's world. In creation, the world that God has created, lies don't work. They may seem to work for a time, but they do not work for long. They cannot ultimately stand. They cannot sustain life, and they collapse under the weight of reality, and they reveal their own destructiveness. So the lies of Satan as they play out break down. They cannot endure or last. But sadly, humanity has a poor memory, and we don't know history very well, and so we we repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, and Satan can just fool us again, the next generation, with the same lies. But that is an advantage, is that they break down. So, yes, God's people must stay alert to the schemes of the dragon, but we're not alone, we are not unprotected, and God is with us in the wilderness and will preserve his church. Just uh over this weekend, as we enjoyed our holiday weekend, um, it was uh 5 30, so it was getting very dark out, and Lucy decided that she wanted to take a walk. So they wanted to go to the park, but it was too dark, so she said, Well, let's take a walk. So her and I, just just her and dad, walked from our house, we live up on McMicon, down here to Finley Market, and we got a hot chocolate and we walked back. It's it's maybe two miles or maybe three miles altogether. And you know, we have to it Finlay Market is you know fairly safe part of town. Our block is fairly safe part of town, but we have to walk through um some pretty rough parts of town in order to get from one place to the other. If she were to have done that herself, just alone, without dad, I mean we would never, never have let her do that. That'd be very dangerous for her, no matter how confident she is. Or, I mean, she's a uh she's a greenbelt in Taekwondo now, you know, so she has a lot of confidence in her own abilities, but uh she would have been in great danger, and it would not have been difficult for an evildoer to overcome her. But because she's with dad, and I train in the art of eight limbs, um she she's safe. We can walk through the dangerous part of town, and as long as she's with me, nothing can hurt her. That's why she needs dad. That's why little kids need dad. As long as dad is close, she has nothing to worry about. She can be bold and free as she wants to be because I'm right there to protect her if she needs it. But when she starts to wander too far, as sometimes she's wont to do, especially in crowded places like Renfair or or elsewhere, I have to kneel down and I have to gently remind her. I say, Lucy, I love you. I can only protect you if you stay near me. If you run off, and if if I can't see you, if I don't know where you are, if you're on your own, as much as I love you, I won't be able to protect you. So stay close to me. And every time I say that, I think of what Jesus said in John 15. He said to his disciples, Abide in my love, stay in my love. And then he said this if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Jesus is not saying there, if you disobey me, I will stop loving you. That's not what he's saying. He's saying the only way to stay safe in this world is to stay near to me in obedience. If you obey me, you will abide in my loving care and protection. So stay near to me. We are small and susceptible. We are journeying through a world that is full of dangers, full of the agents of the enemy. And on our own, we are no match for the dragon and his schemes. We will be easily overwhelmed. If you think you can do it on your own, you're simply fooling yourself. But if we stay near to Jesus, if we abide in him, Satan may harass us, he will harass us, but he cannot overcome us because of who is with us. So we get burned when we run off on our own. We know the commands of Jesus, we know what we're supposed to do, but but we are confident in our own ab overconfident in our own ability to handle life on our own terms. We become arrogant and disobedient, we dabble in sin, we flirt with temptation, or we allow a certain amount of sin into our lives without repentance, and we just we make peace with it. We tell ourselves that we're the exception, that though this sin or this behavior or this addiction or whatever it is, though this though it has ruined countless lives, somehow it will not ruin mine. I will be able to manage it, I will be able to handle it. We have no fear of God and no fear of the enemy who comes to steal and kill and destroy. But we should. You should. You should fear God and stay near him, and you should fear the evil one, but if you stay near to God, you will have nothing to fear from the evil one. In fact, the evil one, as the scriptures say, may come to fear you. As James teaches us, he says, resist the devil, and he will flee from you, which is an absurd thought that you know I'm I'm a helpless human being in the in this angelic being fleeing from us if we resist him in the power of Jesus. See, the devil is looking for easy targets, as all tyrants do, as all bullies do, they're looking for people that are off on their own. They're looking for people who are defenseless, who have no one to help them. He prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking for someone to devour. But when we stay near the Lord and when we resist in the strength of the Lord, and when we fight back, he has no interest in that. He will flee from you. Divine protection. And then finally, we also see point three, heavenly victory. Because of the victory of Jesus, Satan has already been disarmed of his most deadly weapon. Satan has many schemes and many strategies that Revelation continues to explore and teach us about, and we can't get into all of them. But his most devastating weapon is accusation. We read in verse 10, it says, The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. Does that remind you of any stories in the Old Testament? In the Old Testament, there are stories of Satan appearing before God in heaven and accusing the saints. For example, Satan accuses Job, saying To God, God says to Satan, he says, Have you considered my servant Job? Look at how righteous he is and how he stays near to me. And Satan accuses him and he says, He only loves you because you bless him, because you've given him wealth and children and a wonderful life, and that's why he loves you. But if you take those things away, he will curse you. This accusation. And the most devastating thing about Satan's accusations is that he's right. He's got a point. All of us have been compromised. We have all been deceived into joining Satan's rebellion against God. He's compromised all of us, like some intelligence agency, and he has dirt on us. And we're all guilty before God. And Satan calls attention to our guilt and demands that God would justly punish us. Because after all, how can God condemn Satan without also condemning those who have been compromised by him, those who have joined in his rebellion? But the good news is that a decisive victory has been won for God's people. Satan has been cast out of heaven, and he can no longer accuse the saints. If you ask, if you read Revelation 12 and ask, what did the dragon lose in Revelation 12? He lost his access to the throne room of God and his ability to accuse the saints. Verses 7 through 10 describe a war in heaven. Michael the archangel fights for the cause of Christ, and Satan is defeated and cast out of heaven, and he has been disarmed of his most powerful weapon against God's people. And how is that? Verse 11 tells us it says, They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb. The death of Jesus has disarmed Satan of his most powerful weapon. Paul says in Colossians 2, he says, You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Jesus, having forgiven us all of our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross, and then it says, He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. It's through the death of Jesus that the enemy has been disarmed. On the cross, Jesus took the guilt of our sin. He, the accusations that would rightly fall upon us, he took them upon himself, and all of the fiery darts of the devil designed for you and me pierced him. And the devil has nothing left, and now the devil is disarmed. And this means that as believers in Jesus, Satan can tempt us, he can lure us, he can harass us, he can persecute us, he can discourage us, but he can never, never, never separate us from the love of God. The lion's teeth have been utterly broken. It's like Voldemort in Harry Potter, if you're a fan of Harry Potter. Voldemort cannot be defeated because his life force has been divided among the whorecrux, or I don't know what the plural of whorecrux is, but his life force has been divided among them. And as long as those items are safe, Voldemort cannot be defeated. So Harry goes on a quest to destroy them all, find them and to destroy them. Unbeknownst to everyone, Harry himself is the final whorecrux. So at the end, he surrenders his own life, and thus the final whorecrux is destroyed. And Voldemort thinks that Harry's death is a great victory for him, and he marches in through the gates of Hogwarts, holding what he thinks is his dead body. But it actually spells his doom. Harry attains resurrection and he fights against an enemy who has now been disarmed, who has now been made mortal. He's still a menace and still very dangerous, but now he's mortal. Now his teeth have been broken. And in similar fashion, our enemy may have thought that the death of Jesus was a victory for him. But it is the death of Jesus that disarmed the enemy of his most dangerous weapons. And now our enemy is still dangerous. He's filled with fury and with rage and is seeking to harass and devour the saints. And he can harass us and discourage us in many ways, but through the blood, through the blood of Christ, he can be conquered. So what does this mean? Well, let's review as we conclude. To be a Christian means to be engaged in a battle, engaged in a struggle, light versus dark. This battle takes place in our own minds and hearts, in our own lives, and in the world around us. And one of the most important weapons that we can equip ourselves with is the sword of the Spirit, a personal knowledge of the Word of God and knowing how to handle it well. As God's people, God is with us. He walks with us through the dangerous places, and we enjoy his protection. And as long as we stay near him, no weapon fashioned against us can succeed, because of he who is with us. But no matter how bitter the conflict might get, we have to remind ourselves that the most decisive part of the battle has already been won, and final victory is certain. It was won two thousand years ago outside the gates of Jerusalem on a Roman cross. For a moment, it looked like the darkness had conquered. But you and I both know that the light is winning. So what this means is that nothing can separate you from the love of God if you believe in Jesus and belong to Him, that His love and His blessing is with you no matter what should happen. If someone should abuse you or mistreat you, God is with you and He will somehow turn it into a blessing. If you should lose a job or lose a home, God is with you, and He will provide for your needs, and He will increase your dependence upon Him, and you will gain, you will gain from it, you will gain a closer relationship with the Lord. If death should take a loved one, we grieve, but we don't grieve as the world does. We grieve with a certain hope that we will see them again. And even if you, even if you should be your own worst enemy, and even if you should sin against God and cast his word behind your back and rebel against him, even if you should do that because the devil has deceived you and you turn from him and tell him you want nothing more to do with him, even for a moment, even your sin, your own sin, cannot separate you from the love of God because God has taken all of our sin and put it on his son Jesus and taken it to the cross and dealt with it. So be strong and courageous this Advent season. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. To that end, let us pray. Our Father, we pray that you would help us to appreciate these images that we see in the book of Revelation and to know that we live, um, we live in a time of conflict and war. Lord, you give you give peace, not as the world does, but you give us peace in our hearts and minds. You help us to be peaceable people, but we are engaged in a conflict. We're engaged in a personal conflict, in a conflict in our family, uh in our neighborhood, in our culture. We live under the dominion of the evil one. And yet, from the time that you appeared, that we celebrate this Advent season, you have in you have been invading the domain of darkness and transferring people into the kingdom of light. And more and more light has shown into this world in which you are working your salvation. So we pray that you would help us. Help us to stay near to you, to be equipped with your word, uh, to be dependent upon you, and to rest in the gospel, knowing that there is no accusation that can stick to us because Jesus has taken it on our behalf. All of this we pray and we thank you for, and we ask for your help in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Stand with us.