Sunday 7 September 2025

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons. Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 7^th September 2025

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: The Unseen War

Scripture Reading: James 1:12-18

 Today's Bible reading is from James chapter one, verses 12 to 18. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. Because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone, but each one is tempted.

When by his own evil desire, he's dragged away and enticed. Then after desire. Has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full. Gro gives birth to death. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the Heavenly Lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

He chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

Thank you, Wendy, for that reading. If we could put the, the first slide up. So we're coming almost to the end of our look at the Lord's Prayer. That will be next week. We'll look at the doxology that's in Matthew's gospel. Our sermon series is planting seeds, and so as I've already shared, as we pray, we want to plant seeds for the future of this church.

Our focus today is Matthew chapter six, verse 13. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil. One Title of my message, make sure I'm Switched on, is the Unseen War. Let's commit this time we have to the Lord. Father, we thank you for the power of your word. We thank you that the Spirit breathes through it into us to bring us life.

Father, we ask and pray. May life come to us today. We thank you that we can gather as your people. Bless us, we pray in Jesus' holy name, amen. Macias Lewis is. Quite possibly one of the greatest Christian minds of the 20th century. The guy was basically an intellectual genius. One of his most famous works is a book on spiritual warfare called the The Screw Tape Letters.

Now, can you see the little devil's horns on the top there? Okay, this is a book about spiritual warfare. Now, if you know the book, it's a collection of fictional letters between a senior, a demon named, uh, Screwtape, and his young nephew, who's named Wormwood Now. Screw Tape, basically has been entrusted with the responsibility of mentoring his young nephew on how to corrupt the man that he's been appointed to.

His goal is to, you know, tempt this guy, you know, to, to kind of lead him astray, to deny the Christian faith, and ultimately steer him towards damnation. It's interesting, the tactics that he suggests in the book. Now, rather than focusing on dramatic sins, screw tape encourages wormwood. He says, I need you to learn from me.

What you need to do is not, you know, tempt people with these, you know, great overt major sins. You need to exploit them with subtle little habits. Things like pride. Get them to think it's okay, God, I've got this. I can do this on my own. You need to tempt them with things like distraction. Now, how many people get distracted these days?

Tempt them with things like complacency and spiritual laziness. You know, focus on these things that subtly creep in under the radar and lead people quietly away from God. Now, the purpose of the book is to show how Christians are constantly under unseen spiritual attack, not through these grand temptations, but through everyday compromises.

It was written in 1942, and for CS Lewis, this was more than some mere academic exercise. In his later writings, he speaks openly about the intense spiritual opposition he faced during World War ii. Now understand at the time he was both a professor of literature at Oxford, as well as being a leading voice in bringing spiritual encouragement to the people of Britain, okay?

This is a time when people were tired from war. They needed spiritual encouragement, and CS Lewis was one of the main voices. And Lewis speaks about how dark and oppressive those days felt for him, not because of the bombs and the fear of death, but because of what he described as the shadow of the enemy.

Lewis believed that he was under constant personal spiritual attack. Now he's laid letters from that period revealed that despite having a supreme intellect, now understand the guy was a genius. Despite this major incredible intellect, he battled with waves of self-doubt. If I'm so smart, I'm not doubting myself, I'm thinking I'm the man.

But this guy suffered from wave upon wave of self doubt. He also suffered from unusual fatigue and overwhelming fear and get this, it would often hit him right before he's scheduled to give a national broadcast or a lecture about the power of the Christian faith right before he is about to step up to the microphone and deliver for the nation about the power of God, the power of faith.

He's getting hammered by these spiritual attacks. And his close friends commented about how physically and emotionally drained he will be afterwards, despite the fact he stepped up and delivered and spoke truth with clarity and power. So how do you cope with all this instead of caving in? Lewis said he learned, he leaned into prayer and Christian fellowship and it was part of what he called resistance against the devil's propaganda.

He said he had to constantly remind himself that the strength he has doesn't come from his own resolve. It doesn't come from his giftedness, but it came from Jesus Christ alone and it was out of this intense time, this intent, you know, spiritual battle that he wrote the screw tape letters. He later admitted that this was, and I quote the easiest book to write, but the one I hated writing the most, all because of the unusual oppression he suffered while writing it.

Now let's step back and process this. Here is a man considered to be among the greatest Christian minds of our times. This guy was a spiritual giant. Many people who heard his wartime broadcast, they testified that it was his talks. His talks have pulled me back, both from the brink of despair and on that pathway to atheism.

They're thinking, where is God in all this? I can't believe in a God who loves us and cares for us with all these stuff happening. But his words were the words that pulled people back from the brink of that journey to atheism, and yet he was plagued by intense spiritual oppression. Years later, Lewis came to understand that his own struggles were part of the cost of being used by God to strengthen the faith of others.

That's what happens. You step out for God, you wanna strengthen the faith of others, your faith is gonna be tested. So Lewis, he's a learned man, but he's also a man who understood spiritual realities. This is a guy for whom it's not all up here in the head. Some of us, we know stuff, but we don't really understand the spiritual realities behind us.

Behind it. Rudolph Boltman, he was a, a German theologian. He too was a very, very learned man. You can read his works. They're hard to understand. He's a smart guy. He argued that it would be foolish in this modern scientific era to hold onto what he called the mythological worldview of the Bible. Okay?

Basically, we can't enjoy modern conveniences like electricity and medicine, and simultaneously believe in angels, demons, and miracles. Now, do you hear what he's saying? He's saying, we know better than those primitive sheep, you know, herding, caved, dwelling. You know, people from ancient of days, we know better than them 'cause we're enlightened and we have science.

And because science can explain the world around us, we no longer have need for these ancient superstitions about supernatural beings and the unseen world. That's what he was arguing. And the this is, you know, prevalent in the modern Western mindset. The Lord's Prayer doesn't deny the existence of supernatural evil.

Jesus taught us to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Now, some versions of the Bible will say, deliver us from evil, but that's not really an accurate translation of the Greek text, nor does it align with the promise of scripture. Okay? The reality is God doesn't always shield his children from danger, disasters, or the ugliness of this world.

He doesn't always deliver us from evil, but he does promise to protect us from Satan, the evil one. Amen. Now, when we understand that evil is found in a person, we realize it doesn't just happen randomly. We believe that Satan is at work in this world against those who align themselves with God. People like CS Lewis, people like us, okay?

We have an enemy, and that's why we need to pray. Now, it's interesting when we think about this line in the Lord's Prayer in relation to the previous one, we looked at this last week. Jesus has just told us to pray. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. We then pray, lead us not into temptation.

John Kelvin commented like this, he said. Our need is not only for pardon, but for power. Not only for cleansing from sin, but for for protection, from falling into it again. In other words, having fallen into sin, we want to do our best not to repeat the cycle. You ever done that been your experience? You're praying, you're praying, God, forgive me.

Forgive me for what I've done, and, and, and before you know it, bang, you've fallen back into that same sin again. Has that ever been your experience? Yeah, I'm glad it's not just me, you know? You know the whole rinse, wash, repeat cycle. This can be us. We don't wanna repeat the cycle. Now, you may have heard this prayer before.

Dear Lord, so far today, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, I haven't lost my temper. I haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent, and I rejoice in that. But in a few minutes, Lord, I'm gonna get outta bed, and when I do, I'm gonna really need your help. Okay. The struggle is real. Yeah. Now we can laugh about sin and temptation, but listen to this catalog of verses from the New Testament.

Firstly from Peter, he says, dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to abstain from the sinful desires which wage war against your soul. Don't just gloss over that. Do not just gloss over that we have desires which wage war against our soul. The struggle is real. He says again in second, Peter, God has given us his great and precious promises so that through them you may escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires and from Paul put off your old self, which has been corrupted by its deceitful desires.

Evil is not just something out there, evil is something that lurks within. Now, can you see the word that's repeated in each of these three verses? It's the word desires. We're told our desires are sinful, they're evil, they're deceitful. And what that final adjective means, deceitful. It means that our desires are gonna seek to trick us into believing that sin is actually good for us.

That's what it means. And the danger of deceit is you don't know you're being deceived. If you knew you were being deceived, it wouldn't be deception. Your desires will seek to trick you into thinking, I am sin and I'm good for you. I'm not so bad. And that's ultimately what temptation is. No one's ever tempted by something that doesn't appeal in some way.

Yeah, it's true. You're not gonna be tempted by something that has no appeal to you. I found this quote, if temptation brought chains to bind us, we would resist it on our own. Instead, it entices us with promises of life, prosperity and unbounded freedom. Ain't that the truth? Only God can keep us from its charms.

This is what temptation does. Temptation says, I've got something good for you, something good. It holds out the the promise of life and joy and freedom, but it enslaves us. All of this makes two things clear. The first is this. No one is ever beyond falling. No one is ever beyond falling. No one here is above yielding to temptation in all of its various forms.

Not me. Not you. No one. The second thing it makes clear is this, it means that every single person here is fighting an unseen war.

I love this quote from me, Christianity. C. S Lewis, again, he says this, no, no man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good. That is profound. The person who says I, when I became a Christian, I met people say, I'm not so bad. It's like, well, you better try to be good, and you'll see just how bad you truly are.

A silly idea is current that good. People do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. You can only know how strong something is when you try to resist it. When I was a Christian, I wasn't trying to resist. I went along with the flow and it was easy.

You realize how hard temptation is to fight when you stand against it, and sometimes what I have done is I give up after five minutes, but if I, if I, if I go for an hour, it's even harder. You are with me. It doesn't matter. Please, it doesn't matter how spiritual someone may look on the outside. Every single person here is fighting an unseen war against sin and temptation.

Your spouse, the person sitting next to you, your pastor. Now just pause for a second and think about this. We know the things that we struggle with. Okay. I know my heart and my heart scares me. I, you know, we know, we know what we struggle with. We know the doubts, the fears, the anger, the lust, the, the jealousy, the unbelief.

We know those things that cause us deep spiritual anguish and cause us to turn inwards on ourselves in shame. Let me ask you to do this. Look around the room right now. Look around. Look at every single person. Every single person you see is fighting this same battle. We don't see it, but it's there and it's hidden within struggles and temptations that we know about ourselves.

But no one else can see desires which wage war against our souls and, and often what it is, it's different things for different people. Now, let this reality sink in. It's gonna cause us to see people differently with compassion. You know, I saw a great quote recently. It says, it says, we judge ourselves by our intentions and other people by their actions.

I, I didn't mean to hurt you. Do you get the expression? Everyone's going through this unseen war? The good news is Jesus said he came for the sick, not the healthy. Amen. He came to call sinners, not the righteous. And I am a sinner. I'm the chief of sinners. Paul says, I, I've taken the crown. He also calls us though to fight, and this is what it means to pray.

Lead us not into temptation. It means that we've gotta step up and fight this unseen war. Lemme bring this back to our reading from today. It's from the book of James. He says, when tempted, no one should say God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when they're dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.

Then after Desir is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown, gives birth to death. It doesn't mince his words. Let's first consider verse 13. Then I wanna look a little bit in depth that the imagery in verses 14 and 15. Now, when we pray, lead us not into temptation. It doesn't mean that God's the one who takes us by the hand and leads us there, and we have to somehow pray, Hey, God, don't, don't, don't, don't leave me into temptation.

Don't leave me there. That's not what it means. James makes it clear from these verses that God does not tempt us. He may allow us to be tested, but he does not tempt us. Now, the, the way it's said by Jesus is actually an example of a figure of speech where he expressed something positively by stating it in the negative.

Now, lemme give an example. If you walked up to me and said, Hey, Jamie, how you doing today? I said, yeah, yeah, I'm not bad. Okay. It actually means that I'm good. I, I'm doing quite well, but I've expressed something positively, but saying it in a negative way, do you get that? So when we pray, lead us not into temptation.

What we're actually saying is this, God, you are our protector, God, you are our deliverer. So please don't allow me to come under the sway of any temptation that's gonna overpower me and crush me and cause me to sin. God, you are my protector, my deliverer. Please don't allow the enemy of my soul to ambush me and catch me in one of his traps.

That's what we're praying now before his conversions in Augustine, he famously prayed, oh Lord, make me chaste, but not yet. Okay, now that's a real honest prayer. The Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray the opposite. Lord, protect me now, not later. Protect me now. Not later. A preacher once compared temptation to a canary hopping out of its cage while a cat was, you know, prowling nearby.

And he compared that left open cage door to negligence and prayer and he said, what we're called to do is, is to pray for God to shut that door before we wander out into danger. We need to pray because temptation is part and parcel of living life in a fallen world. Yeah. It's an inescapable, unavoidable part of human existence.

There is no one here, no matter how old you are, even. Age wiser in the faith that will not face temptation. It's a daily reality. Martin Luther said You can't keep birds. Sorry. You can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. Temptations will come.

So we need to pray for God's help not to let them settle and not to let them take root. Temptation that's all around us. And James actually makes it clear why we're tempted, the problem's not primarily out there, the problem's in here. In verse 14, he says, each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.

He's got a way with words. Have you ever felt the pull of sin? Have you ever felt the pull of sin? Like it's dragging you, wanting to take you somewhere. There's a good example of this in Pinocchio. You remember Pinocchio? It's Italian. I didn't realize that. Now, Pinocchio and all the other stupid little boys, as they're called in the film, they're deceived by these characters on the left.

You know the, you know, the smooth talking of honest John and Gideon, they're lured to a place called Pleasure Island. So can you see? There's honest John, and he's not. He's a fox. Fox is a sly, and there's the dopey guy named Gideon. So they're, you know, they're, they're lured and enticed to pleasure island.

When they get there, they indulge in laziness, gluttony, and all sorts of mischief. They can basically do whatever they like. Now, as a young boy, you're under discipline. You don't get to do what you want to do under mom and dad's roof, but suddenly, here they are. They're given this freedom to do whatever they please, and, and they're doing it, smoking, gambling, breaking things.

But the enticing promise of freedom hides a trap, and the boys are slowly turned into donkeys. That's what you see, and when that happens, they're enslaved and sold off. Think of the life of a donkey. You're kicked, you're beaten, and you are made to carry heavy loads. That's not freedom, that's slavery. This entire scene was a parable of temptation.

It shows us that when we give into sin, it dehumanizes us and it robs us of true freedom. That's what it's saying. We become less than human when we give ourselves over to sin. And for Pinocchio, it all began when he's enticed by this promise of life and liberty a lie. James says, we're enticed not by outside agents like you know, honest.

John and Gideon. We're enticed by our own evil desires, which drag us away. Now think of people coming, a raiding party, coming into a village to, you know, drag people away as slaves. That's the imagery that James is using here. They come, they raid, they take, you are gone. He's using that same imagery in verse 15.

James says, then after desire has conceived, he gives birth to sin. And sin when it's full grown, gives birth to death. Now, do you see something here? Do you see something James has represented the entire lifecycle. Life begins a conception child's conceived, it grows in the womb, and then comes birth, and the child starts off small and then it grows.

You know, you've seen this if, if you're a parent, okay, you're holding them as an infant, you know, in your arms. Suddenly they're in kindergarten, primary school, teenage years, and then they grow into being a, you know. An adult, and like every life, it ends one day in death. And this is the imagery that James is using here.

He says, temptation begins inside of us, this unseen war where we wrestle with our desires and sin is conceived. It's conceived. When we give ourselves over to our desires, it's like we say, Hey, you look pretty good. You look pretty hot. Let's make love. Okay. We make love and then we give birth, and then sin grows in our life.

And if left unchecked, it deforms us until eventually we feel dead on the inside. Now, I've done this in the past using children, you know, you know, as an object lesson using children. What I do is I use different size children to illustrate just how sin grows in our lives. And so it starts off small. So what I do is I pick this small child and because I'm big, I can walk up to that child.

I can just push 'em around and I can think, Hey, sin sins only little, it's small. I got this. I'm in control. I can just push it around. I can do whatever I like with sin. Okay? But this is the lie of sin. You know, we think it's okay to dabble. We think, you know, a little bit of sins not gonna hurt me. I'm in control.

I can stop any time. But here's the issue. Sin grows. James says, and so what I do to illustrate this is I choose a bigger child. A child that's not as easy to push around, but I can still feel like I've got this, I still feel like I can walk away anytime. Sin doesn't really control me. And then I choose even bigger children.

And, and as they get bigger, they get more difficult, you know, to, to push around. More difficult to struggle. And at that point I may not feel overpowered, but it's harder to budge them and push them around. And if I want to shift them, then it actually becomes a fight. And then eventually I choose an adult and the bigger the better.

Okay. I once did it with a guy who was a Swiss farmer, six foot three, built like a brick house, and at the end of demonstrating, just trying to push him around, pushing him around, not scripted as I'm, you know, giving the, the point of the object lesson from behind. He just picked me up and lifted me over his head.

Okay. A great way to demonstrate that when sin is fully grown, I'm not in control. I'm not calling the shots. Now imagine if I did this here. I could start with Little Gene. I could call Little Gene up and you know, I could, I could push her around, knock her about thinking sins little, it's no big deal in my life.

And I could end with someone like Jeff. Okay? And here's the point. When sin is fully grown, it calls the shots, it becomes entrenched, we get enslaved, and then it dictates the entire course of our life. Now, the clearest example of this is someone stuck in addiction. Have you ever met someone? Stuck in a cycle of addiction, drugs, alcohol, sex, porn.

Okay. It controls and destroys their lives. Someone once said that addiction is a banquet in the grave. Isn't that a great metaphor? Addiction is like having a party in a graveyard. You're in the midst of death and here you are celebrating it. Addiction presents this temporary illusion of life and joy, but spiritually it brings nothing but death and decay.

Now, you might say you're not addicted, but the same is true of any sin that grows in our lives to the point where it now calls a shot the shots. And just like those stupid little boys in Pinocchio, it deforms us and it turns us into brute beast. Have you ever had an outburst of anger, for example, and said, I, I felt like a brute beast.

You ever done that? You've given yourself into sin and you feel you're actually less than human. You feel like a, a brute beast. This is what James means when he says, says, when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. Here's a reality. We can flirt with sin. We can invite it into our lives, and we can think we can handle it.

I can assure you there is always a price to pay. There's always a price to pay. This is why Jesus teaches us to pray. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. That's why this line is in that prayer. We have evil desires within, and we have the evil one without, and we need to be real about this.

Satan may be unseen, but he does exist. Yeah, Satan exists. Yes. And just because he doesn't manifest like he does in the Hollywood movies doesn't make him any less real. And remember, once having a student from Thailand, he says to me, you know, here in the west we don't see Satan manifest like we do back home.

Why is that? And I said, because we believe he doesn't exist. And if he reveals himself to us, we'd have to take him seriously. And if he exists, we'd also have to believe that God exists. That's the reality. He hides himself from us to deceive us. Now, there's a great line in the film, the Usual Suspects. I love this film.

Anyone seen this film? Good on you, Phil. Oh God bless you guys. It's not just me with good taste in movies. So the authorities are looking for this evil criminal mastermind named Kaiser. So you know, they're saying his name, Kaiser Soze. Now what they don't realize is that they have him right there in police custody, but he's got him fooled and they're thinking, this guy can't be the guy, you know, he can't be the guy, the guy on the right, they're thinking he's not the, you know, the mastermind criminal.

He's just some stupid cripple, that's what they call him in the film. But here he is hiding in plain sight. And then he makes this very interesting statement. He says, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. This so-called stupid cripple. He's tricked the authorities into believing.

Not only is he not the super bad guy, but the, you know, the fact that the super bad guy probably doesn't even exist. Don't fall into that trap when it comes to the devil. Listen to this reflection from a theologian on life in post-war Germany. He was a man who had eyes to see. He said, there is a dark, mysterious spell binding figure at work.

Behind the temptation stands, the tempter behind the lie stands the liar behind all the dead and bloodshed stands the murderer from the beginning. If you wanna see that same dark, mysterious spell binding figure today, you know, just, just watch the six o'clock news. Satan's fingerprints are all over the stuff we're seeing going on in the world right now.

Yeah. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, let me bring this back to some wisdom from CS Lewis. From the introduction to the screw tape letters, he says this, there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about. The devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

They themselves are equally pleased by both errors. You see that there's two unhealthy extremes. One is we deny, and the other is, that's all we focus on. Okay? Both of which he says. Please, the devils think of it like this. The Lord's Prayer acknowledges the existence of evil, one of the evil one, but its entire focus is directed to who.

Our father in heaven, a focus that begins with us, magnifying with us, making him big, not the devil. Don't make the devil big. Magnify the Lord. Yeah. An unhealthy preoccupation in devils and demons is precisely that unhealthy. Our call is not to be fixated on all this stuff. Our call is to be spiritually mindful.

I like what the apostle Peter says. Be self controlled and alert. That's what it means to be spiritually mindful. Your enemy, the devil, p prowls around. He has to remind them. Remind them. Understand guys, your enemy, the devil's prow, prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. What he's saying is be attentive.

Know when you're vulnerable. Know those moments. When you are weak and vulnerable, susceptible to attack, you know what triggers you understand this stuff. This is what it means to be self-controlled and alert. We see something similar. In Ephesians chapter six, Paul speaks clearly about the unseen war that's going on outside of us, and he tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

He said, be aware. Understand it's out there, the solution. Pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert, spiritually mindful, and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. We didn't need to go out of our way to, to hunt demons. That's not what we're called to do.

If you read Ephesians six, four times in three verses, Paul says, we do all this so we can stand. Do this so you can stand so you don't get knocked about, pushed around, shoved over. Martin Luther always had a way with words he wrote. We must all practice violence. Oh yeah. To practice a bit of violence, we must all practice violence.

And remember that he who prays is fighting against the devil and the flesh. Satan is opposed to the church. The best thing we can do, therefore, is to put our fists together and pray. Amen. Understand that willpower and human resolve will never be enough. If you are being tempted, don't think you can do it on your own.

This is a spiritual battle. And spiritual battle requires what? Spiritual resources and spiritual weapons, and that's what prayer is.

Prayer is not weakness. It's the opposite.

Lemme bring this back to something practical. Billy Graham began his evangelistic ministry in the late four 1940s. And just like everyone else who steps out to do something for God, him and his team, you know, they soon came face to face with spiritual opposition, along with the usual temptations that come from a high profile public ministry.

At one point they were holding rallies in a place called Modesto, California, and things had gotten to the point where they realized, we need to be proactive. We need to take steps and act. So Billy Graham and his team, they, they came together. They asked themselves this. One of the four biggest temptations that dis destroy Christian leaders, and they identified four.

The first one was financial dishonesty. You know, misusing funds, exaggerating attendance to solicit money. I've seen both of these in a mission context. I've seen groups go out and you know, they report to donors. Back in the US we had a thousand people come to our rallies over four days. The reality is you had the same 250 people each day.

Okay? That's, that's financial dishonesty. You're trying to solicit funds. Number two, sexual Imma immorality. Self-explanatory. You know, being careless in relationships, falling into private sin. Number three, exaggerating results. You know, you can boast about how many people you're, you're reaching to look successful.

And number four, pride and criticism. You know, tearing others down to elevate ourselves. Now we can talk about the usual suspects. What have we got here? Money, pride, sex and power. Now instead of waiting until temptation overtook them, they, they were proactive and they made a covenant called the Modesto Manifesto.

It's got a certain ring to it. Now, in this covenant, they pledged, number one, we're gonna be transparent with finances. Number two, we're we are never gonna be alone with a woman who's not our wife. And it's rumored that Billy Graham, when he was in an elevator by himself, if a woman stepped in, he would step out.

Okay? He didn't want any hint of scandal. Any accusations. Number three, we're gonna honestly report numbers. We're not gonna inflate to look good. Number four, we're gonna honor other churches and leaders rather than compete. We're all on the same team. Yeah, we're not competing with other people. We're all on the same side.

Now this one decision is Modesto Manifesto. You know, it was born out of recognizing both how temptation works and how the tempter works, and this protected Billy Graham's integrity for the next 60 years of public ministry. And unlike many other high profile Christian leaders, Billy Graham finished, well, not because temptation never came, but because he took it seriously and he built in guardrails.

The best guardrail we have is to pray. When we pray, lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. We are recognizing that we are weak, that Satan is a powerful enemy, but above all that we are pleading, we are pleading on our knees for the greater power of our Heavenly Father to be unleashed and revealed.

Amen. Amen. Now let me close by. I'll bring this full circle, the opening words from our reading today. Blessed. Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. This is why we resist, and this is why we fight.

We do it out of love for the Lord and for a crown of life. Amen. This is why we fight. Let's pray. Let's pray

on the night he was portrayed. Jesus prayed for those who would follow them. Uh, follow him. He said, father, my prayer is not that you take them outta the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. He prayed that prayer for us. Father, keep us from parts of temptation. Strengthen our hearts to resist the enemy and guide us by your spirit.

Help us to be constantly self controlled and alert. Father, help us to be awake to the ways in which our desires can lead us astray and deliver us from the evil one that we may walk faithfully with you to receive that crown of life one day. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Amen.