There we go.
Glad you're here today.
If you're happy to be in church, I want to hear an amen.
Amen.
Today we're in the book of Luke chapter number 22 in our final sermon in a sermon series
entitled Backfire, the Death of the Devil.
But before we get to it, I have a very important question, a question that makes sense in the
dramatic nature of this sermon and the passion of this specific passage, a question that
is important for every single one of us in this room, especially considering the day
and age in which we live.
Take this question seriously.
What Saturday morning cartoons did you watch growing up?
I want to find out from you.
What Saturday morning cartoons?
How many of you watch Saturday morning cartoons growing up?
Raise your hand.
How many of you did?
Oh, yeah, very good.
Here's my favorite.
One of them.
I got a bunch.
How many of you watched Saturday morning cartoon and will tell me which one was your favorite?
Who has a favorite?
Yeah, which one was your favorite?
Dragon Ball.
All right.
Very good.
Dragon Ball Z.
All right.
Very good.
And what did you like about Dragon Ball?
Oh, he's talking to his daughter.
Oh, now he's telling his daughter all about it.
It's a long plot.
You have to start from the beginning.
You like the action?
Are you still an anime fan?
No.
Okay.
All right.
Very good.
Yeah.
Which one?
Tom and Jerry.
Old school.
Wow.
And also very violent.
It tells us a lot about you that we needed to know.
He's old school.
He likes old violence.
Not new.
Somebody else.
I think in the back.
Yeah.
Goofy.
What's that?
Goofy.
You like Goofy.
Like the Disney Goofy.
Yeah.
All right.
Very good.
And Mike, the more I know you, the more I can absolutely say that's probably the best
choice.
You love Goofy.
All right.
Somebody else wants to share theirs.
You're like, oh man, this was the one.
Yeah, right here.
Yeah, Joel David.
The Adventures of Johnny Quass.
Oh, okay.
So you just heard, all right, hold on.
He said his thing, which I'll tell you in a moment.
And as soon as I did, I heard a bunch of people go, oh, but they were all older voices.
He said the Adventures of Johnny Quest.
Yeah.
There's a couple of people.
There's a couple.
What's that?
That's it.
I'm gonna say AARP.
Amen.
That's like, these are our favorite things.
How many of you are too young for Johnny Quest?
You don't remember Johnny Quest?
All right.
Very good.
Man, I loved them all growing up.
We watched, man, we watched for hours.
And one of my favorites, obviously, was the original Looney Tunes and Wiley Coyote and
the Road Runner.
And the fascinating thing about these two is that it seems as if one of them is always
going to win.
And it seems like the other is a born loser.
Who is the one that is always going to lose?
Who is always gonna lose every single time you watch an episode?
They're always gonna lose.
Which one is it?
Yeah, the Coyote.
Wiley Coyote.
He's never gonna win.
Now you know that, and I know that, but he doesn't know that.
And what's fascinating as you watch the Road Runner and Coyote is that Wiley E. Coyote genuinely
thinks he's going to win every episode.
Like he gets his Acme box, he's got his new plan, he's got his specific trap, and every
single episode he thinks to himself, this is my moment.
This one's gonna be different than the rest.
How sad to be in a place where you are so delusional that you genuinely and authentically
and truly believe you're going to win when all you've ever done is proven that you lose
and then you lose and then you lose and then you lose.
You say, Pastor, who are we talking about today?
I'm talking about the devil.
I'm talking about Satan.
One of the biggest mistakes that we make as Christians is that we do only study our Savior
and we do not study our enemy.
Aren't you thankful for your Savior, Jesus Christ today?
Amen.
You have an enemy, his name is Satan.
The devil, that old demon, that old dragon.
The Bible says, who arose out of the ranks of the angels and who would eventually be
damned for eternity and doomed to the lake of fire.
We know his story arc, but what we don't know is how he fights.
And we don't study our enemy, and because we don't study our enemy as Christians, we
fall to our enemy.
And so we must understand something about the devil.
We must understand something about Satan, and here it is.
Satan genuinely and authentically believes each time he's going to win.
He thinks he is, he's delusional.
That's why he keeps fighting.
Way back in the Garden of Eden, he thought he was going to win.
When the world became corrupt during the time of Noah, he thought he had won.
During the time of Babel, he thought he was winning.
And every step throughout human history, the devil himself believes himself to have won.
If you do not grasp this about Satan, his story arc in the Bible is going to make no
sense.
How in the world does he go toe to toe against Jesus himself?
And the answer to that question is, because the fool thinks he can win.
And that's where we pick up our story today.
Satan has entered into the heart of Judas Iscariot.
Jesus looked at him in the upper room and said, whatever you're going to go do, do it
quickly.
He turns to the disciples, and when he does, they're arguing about which one of them is
better than the other.
And then he gives them very clear instructions, real talk for real disciples in the upper
room discourse.
And then Jesus takes the 12 disciples out of the room into the late night streets of
ancient Jerusalem at this point past midnight, closer to one o'clock in the morning.
They head through the city, dark as it could be, down a valley called the Valley of Kidron,
across a small brook and up the other side in a hillside that we call the Mount of Olives,
and there was a garden that Jesus liked to go and pray.
And as he entered the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus has a battle with the devil that is
both instructive to who Satan is and how you and I can defeat him every single day.
If you're ready for the sermon today, give me an amen.
Three fatal mistakes of Satan, three fatal mistakes of our enemy, and if you know how
he makes these mistakes, it'll change your life and how you battle them.
Number one, fatal mistake of the enemy in this passage, Luke chapter 22, verse 39.
Number one, Satan, here's his mistake.
He forgot the power of prayer.
I'm going to say number one, you say he forgot the power of prayer.
Number one, he forgot the power of prayer.
The reason why Satan loses in this passage is that Satan forgets the power of prayer.
How many of you believe that God answers prayer if you do say amen?
I know that some of you right now are saying amen, and I get it.
You're saying amen by faith.
You're saying amen because you hope he does hear prayer.
And the reason is because you've been praying to God and you're saying, God, please, will
you answer this?
And part of you wants to believe, part of you does believe, but part of you has held
back and you question, is God going to answer my prayer?
And you're going to see from this passage today that Satan's fatal mistake is that he
forgets the power of prayer.
And so Jesus arrives in the Garden of Gethsemane, and look what it says in verse 39.
Coming out of the upper room, he went to the Mount of Olives as his was his custom, as
he was accustomed.
This is what Jesus would often do.
He would often go in the middle of the night to the same place.
This has already gone away to betray Jesus.
Does Jesus run and hide from Judas?
Does Jesus run and hide from the authority?
No.
He goes to the same place that he's always known to be.
Everybody knew that Jesus spent time in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he knew he was about
to be arrested, but he didn't run.
That'd be like me.
Somebody come to me and say, Pastor, they're after you.
I say, who's after me?
They're going to come and get you.
I say, oh no, I got to get out of here.
And then I go and sit at Starbucks.
Not a good idea.
As was his custom.
You know why Jesus just went?
Because he didn't care.
He knew this was the destiny.
This was God's ultimate plan.
Jesus knew he was headed to the cross.
That's where he was always headed.
He had prophesied it multiple times.
He was not afraid of the cross.
That was his destiny, and he walked toward his destiny.
I'll ask the question.
You give a response.
Was Jesus afraid of the cross?
Yes or no?
No.
That's important for this sermon.
And his disciples also followed him.
So now the 11 disciples following Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane, and when he came
to his place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation.
What is it that Jesus told his disciples to do to avoid temptation?
What is it?
Say it.
Pray.
And who is it that brings temptation?
Who is it?
Satan.
This is a battle between the enemy and his believers.
Come on out.
Listen.
Pray.
My father taught me years ago, for those who don't know, my father is also a pastor.
It's what I do.
It's what he does.
Family business?
I don't know.
He taught me years ago, he said, every day I pray, Father, lead me not into temptation.
Deliver me from the evil one.
He looked at me one time and he said, Josh, I don't pray that God would give me strength
in temptation.
I pray that God would lead me away from temptation.
I don't pray that God would give me power to fight the devil.
I pray that God would lead the devil away from me so that I don't get tempted.
Jesus looks at the disciples and says, you have no idea the battle you're about to face.
Pray so that you don't give into temptation.
Now listen, he says.
Jesus was about to, stones throw away and he knelt down and prayed.
Verse 41 says that Jesus leaves the disciples behind.
He walks just a, I don't know, a few yards away and he says he kneels down to pray.
Now this is significant because this kneeling down, when I kneel down at this point, you
have to understand, this is how you and I think of prayer.
We pray on our knees because of passages like this, but during the days of Jesus, it was
not the custom to kneel when you pray, it was the custom to stand when you pray.
You would stand and you would lift your arms before the Lord in the synagogue, in the temple,
in the marketplace, or in your home or your prayer closet.
You would stand before God to pray.
So the fact that he knelt is significant.
You say why?
Luke says he got to the garden and knelt to pray.
But let me tell you what Matthew says.
The Gospel of Matthew says that when Jesus got to the garden of Gethsemane, he fell on
his face and collapsed in prayer.
So don't think in terms of Jesus got to the garden and he knelt to pray.
Jesus got to the garden and he fell on the ground.
The Gospel of Mark tells us more.
It says that he fell to the ground because he was sorrowful to the point of death.
He was so filled with sorrow that he felt like he was going to die.
Have you ever got to a place in your life where you felt so filled with sorrow like
you were going to die?
Let's stop and look at Satan for a moment.
Satan is smart.
I'm going to call Satan a fool multiple times in this sermon.
Please do not misunderstand me.
I am not saying he's not intelligent.
I am not saying that he's not smart.
I am not saying he is not a worthy adversary.
What I am saying is that he is smart and he's very good at setting multiple traps to snare
his pray.
Satan does not just set out one lure to get you.
He sets out multiple.
And so he did with Jesus.
Satan's ultimate goal was to keep Jesus from claiming the throne of Adam.
We've talked about this for months as we've been studying the book of Luke.
The Son of Man, Jesus Christ, was coming to claim the throne of Adam.
He was coming to be the fulfillment of what Adam never could be, the King of humanity.
That's what Jesus was coming to be.
And Satan's ultimate goal was to keep Jesus from claiming the throne of Adam, which would
establish the kingdom of God on earth.
His first plan was to disqualify Jesus through temptation in the wilderness.
And that's what he did.
If you remember, Satan brings Jesus out into the wilderness and he fasted for 40 days and
40 nights.
Do you remember?
And as he fasted, at the end of it, Satan came and tempted him.
And he said to Jesus, he said, if you turn these stones into bread, you'll be able to
defeat yourself, and Jesus replied, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
And Satan was defeated.
And then Satan took Jesus to very high pinnacle on the top of the temple.
And he said to Jesus, if you throw yourself from here, the angels will come and they'll
capture you.
And Jesus says, you will not tempt the Lord your God.
And then Satan takes Jesus to a very high mountain and he shows them the kingdoms of
the earth.
And he says to Jesus, all of these kingdoms will follow you.
I will give them to you.
I am the prince and the power of the air.
I am the God of this world.
They follow me, not your father.
And if you bow down and worship me, then what I will do is I will give them to you.
And Jesus refused that temptation and stood true against the enemy.
And in doing so, he foiled Satan's plan.
But that was not Satan's only trap.
He next attempted to disqualify Jesus as you study through the gospels.
He attempted to discredit and disqualify Jesus by using the religious elite and the system
of religious elitism.
His next plan was to get all of the religious leaders who the devil is very good at working
with and getting them to go after Jesus and try to pull Jesus down.
The problem was it didn't work.
Why?
Because Jesus kept answering wisely and biblically and truthfully to each one.
You studied the book of Luke with me all year.
His final plan was to kill Jesus.
Satan wanted Jesus dead.
In doing so, he would end the line of kings and the messianic claim to the throne.
And so he convinced one of Jesus's followers to betray Jesus, Judas, for 30 pieces of silver.
And he used one of the disciples that had become disillusioned and discouraged and depressed.
And he convinced Judas to betray Jesus Christ, to sell Jesus to the religious elite.
And so now his plan was coming together.
He would kill Jesus by having him turned over to the authorities.
But now a new opportunity has arisen from Satan's perspective.
Jesus was so burdened down with the difficulties of life that now Satan watches as Jesus walks
into a dark garden and he can't even stand up.
And he falls on his face to the point where he is too sorrowful to the point of dying.
And Satan thinks to himself, well maybe I can take him out right here.
I believe that Satan at this moment attempts to kill Jesus right here in the garden.
He's had many attempts to try to take out Jesus.
If he can take him out right here, he wins.
But Jesus doesn't want to die in the garden.
His entire life has been pointing to the cross.
It was his destiny to go through the cross, to the crown, through the thorns, to the throne.
And in this moment of desperation, there is a battle toe to toe.
Satan versus Jesus, where Satan attempts to strangle the hope out of Jesus' life.
And Jesus fights with prayer.
There are three steps that we see in Jesus' moment of prayer.
You want to know what they are?
Oppression.
Question.
Submission.
In Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, it begins with oppression.
It then goes to question.
And then finally at the end, it goes to submission.
Jesus is in the Garden.
He falls upon the ground.
He cries out to the Father in prayer.
Why?
Because it was all just too heavy.
You say, what was heavy for Jesus?
Let me think about what Jesus was going through.
And think about it for a moment.
He had just seen one of his very best friends in the whole world named Judas.
Look him in the eye and say, is it I, Lord?
And Jesus said, if you say so.
And then Jesus looks at him and says, go and do whatever you do.
Go and do it quickly.
And Judas gets up to sell Jesus.
And he leaves the room.
Then he looks back to his eleven friends.
The eleven friends that are still here.
And I can imagine Jesus looking back with a smile and saying, okay, it's just us.
And you know what they are fighting about?
They are fighting about which one's greatest among them.
He's not only thinking about his disciples and Judas who is just about to betray him.
Peter looks at him and says, I will never leave you.
And Jesus says, buddy, you're going to deny me three times before the sun comes up.
Burdened.
Not only that, he's thinking about the crowds.
The crowds who a few days ago said, Hosanna, the king is here.
Are the same crowds who are about to cry out, crucify him.
We don't want him.
He knows this is coming.
Think about the pressure of what it's like to be an innocent man going to court.
And he's about to go through three trials.
One before the Jewish Sanhedrin.
One before the Romans.
And another before the king.
And in every single one of these trials, he himself, he's innocent, but he's going to
be condemned to die for the guilt of others.
The pressure he was under.
Imagine?
But you don't even understand the essence of the spiritual and emotional pressure he
was under.
Because Jesus Christ was perfect and without sin.
I'm going to ask a question.
You say yes or no.
Did Jesus ever sin?
Yes or no?
No.
He never sinned.
Jesus was the holy vessel that had never tasted sin.
But Jesus, when he went upon the cross, was going to have the sins of mankind poured into
and all over him.
You say, well, big deal.
It is a big deal.
Let me explain.
Do you all know that feeling after you sin?
Not the mistake sins, like the accident sins, like the sins you didn't even know.
The Bible says we are so human and God is so perfect that sometimes we sin and we didn't
even know we sinned.
How many of you, this guy knows.
How many of you have ever done like I have in this guy?
How many of you have ever done one of these sins you're like, yeah, I probably sin all
the time.
I don't even know what a friend's got.
How many of you do some of these sins?
Raise your hand.
I don't know.
A lot of you are really good, so you don't.
Actually, you probably do.
You don't even know.
That's the boy, right?
The accident sins.
How many of you don't just do the accident sins, but you're like me?
Sometimes you see a sin and you know you're about to sin.
You know you're about to sin.
You know it's a sin.
You know you're about to sin.
And then while you're sinning, you know it's a sin.
And then after you sin, you're like, yep, that was a sin.
It's called a high-handed sin in front of God.
How many of you are like me?
You know what that is like.
How many of you have done that many times?
Yeah, come on, Vegas, you know.
Yeah.
So you're like, know what to me, pasta liar.
All right.
You know it's a sin.
It's a sin.
You knew it was a sin.
Okay.
So on the other side of that, remember that feeling?
The guilt, the shame.
Okay.
Jesus, who never felt that, is going to be filled with that shame, guilt, sinful feeling.
The sinless cup is about to be filled with grime and grumb.
Do you understand?
Filth.
You even know the feeling not just when you sin, but when you think about somebody who's
hurt somebody else.
You think, have you ever been so disturbed by what somebody else did to somebody else
and you think, oh, that's terrible.
And you weren't even part of it, but you felt the shame of it.
Jesus was filled with that shame.
The holy deity was covered in the shame of mankind and he knew he was about that pressure.
Imagine.
So much sin would be placed upon Jesus Christ at the cross just hours later that the Bible
says that the holy father God could bear not the iniquity and in doing so turned his back
on the Son of God and was separated from the Son of God to the Father of God for the first
time in eternity's history.
To where Jesus himself cries out when the sin is placed upon him, Eli, Eli, I almost
a bucket tonight.
Which is to say, my God, my God, you've forsaken me.
And Jesus knows all of this he's about to go through.
And so he falls upon the ground in agony, oppression.
Have you ever been to a place in your life where it was just one thing after another,
after another, after another, after another, where you can barely stand anymore?
This is where real prayer begins.
Real prayer begins not with everything's going great.
And so now, oh, Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Real prayer begins with oppression, after oppression, after oppression, and you can't
handle it anymore.
So the only thing you can do is fall to your knees and say, oh, God, you got to do something.
That's what he says in the next verse.
Look at what it says in verse number 44.
And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly.
Then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground.
He was under so much stress and agony that the capillary vessels in his forehead burst.
It's called hematidrosis.
It's a medical condition that you can see even to this day.
It's a condition in which the capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture,
causing them to exude blood occurring under conditions of extreme stress.
And it's described 2,000 years ago in the Gospels.
This is how his prayer began, oppression, but then it leads to a question.
What was the question Jesus brought?
Is there another way?
He says in verse 42, Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from me.
We're ease dropping in on a conversation between God the Father and God the Son.
And God the Son in agony says, okay, Dad, hey, can you please, is there another way?
Let me just stop and say this.
It is not wrong to question the heavenly Father.
Jesus demonstrates that it's okay.
You're so filled with oppression and problems, it's not wrong for you to go to God and say,
God, this is not great.
I don't know what to do.
Is there an alternate timeline we can...
Is there another way?
What was the cup that Jesus wanted passed from him?
This I believe has been misunderstood throughout history.
People sometimes assume that Jesus was saying, God the Father, is there any way I don't have
to go to the cross?
But that makes no sense because throughout the entire story of the book of Luke, all
Jesus has been doing is talking about, I'm going to Jerusalem, I'm going to be lifted
up, I'm going to be crucified, I'm going to be buried and rise from the grave.
No, Jesus was not saying, God the Father, spare me from the cross.
In fact, the book of Hebrews says that he was running toward the cross for the joy that
was set before him.
He endured the cross, despised the shame, but then was set down at the right hand of
the throne of God.
He knew that the only way to the throne was through the thorns.
He wasn't praying that he wouldn't have to go to the cross.
Then what cup was he praying?
Well, I believe he was fighting Satan's plan, the alternate plan, the aha moment plan where
Satan says, maybe I can kill him right here.
Jesus goes to the Father and says, Father, I am sorrowful to death.
Please don't let my life expire here.
Oppression question leads to what?
Submission.
That's what Jesus says at the end of his prayer.
It's so good.
Father, let this cup pass for me.
And then he says, nevertheless, not my will be done.
Thy will be done.
This is how your prayers ought to begin and end.
God, I'm under so much stress, so many problems, so many situations.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
Is there another way?
Can you figure out another way?
These answers, is there another way?
But if there's no other way, then I'm fine with whatever you say.
Submission.
And notice what happens the moment Jesus is done praying.
Look at verse 43.
Then an angel appeared to him from heaven strengthening him.
Notice the moment Jesus prays, the heavens send him comfort.
There's only two times in all of the Bible that an angel comes to comfort Jesus.
The first one was when Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by Satan.
After the 40 days, the Bible says that an angel came to minister unto Jesus.
This is the second time in his entire life that we see in the Bible that an angel comes
from heaven to minister unto Jesus.
Why?
Because he's just battled the devil and he battled him through prayer.
Here's what the devil forgets.
Here's the fatal mistake of Satan.
And don't you dare make the mistake by forgetting the power of prayer.
The way out of your situation is not your mind figuring out the next detail.
The way out of your situation is to bring your oppression before God and ask the question,
is there another way?
And then end in submission that says, whatever you want, I'm fine with because I know you
know what you're doing.
That's prayer.
Because Satan doesn't understand the power of prayer because all he can see is the power
of pride.
Number one, what was it that really messed up Satan?
His fatal mistake, number one, is he forgot the power of prayer.
Number two, he underestimated the love of Jesus.
I'm going to say number two, you say underestimated the love of Jesus.
Number two, underestimated the love of Jesus.
Satan underestimated how much love Jesus had.
So Jesus finishes his prayer and as he does, as he's finishing praying, the Bible tells
us that the enemies led by Judas were coming to take Jesus.
I'll never forget whenever I was a child, it was Easter Sunday and they were doing a
passion play at our church where they had a Jesus guy and a cross and he had blood and
then there was Roman soldiers and they were like hitting them and they're coming down
and I'm sitting like in the back of a church like this and I watched as these soldiers
were coming by and he's carrying the cross and as like a seven year old I got so angry
at these Roman soldiers and I thought to myself, if I could, I would pick up one of these chairs
and hit this Roman soldier.
Now in reality, it wasn't really a Roman soldier, it was like Deacon Bill, you know
what I mean?
Deacon Bill who's like a contractor, he's just trying to help, you know what I mean?
But I'm so bad that Deacon Bill is killing Jesus, you know what I mean?
That's what's going on here.
The enemies of Jesus are not really the enemies of Jesus, there's an enemy behind the enemy,
Satan.
And Judas is filled with Satan and he's leading the temple guards to come and arrest Jesus
Christ in the garden.
Look at what it says in verse 47, and while Jesus was still speaking, behold a multitude,
this multitude in other passages tells us that they had swords and they had spears and
they had torches and it was again one o'clock in the morning, middle of the night, and they
arrive in the garden to come and they were led by a man called Judas, one of the twelve,
before them and drew near to Jesus, notice what it says, to kiss him.
In the other gospels it tells us that Judas looked at the guys, some of them were just
normal police officers, they're just doing their job, they're temple guards, they don't
know who Jesus is, they weren't interested in Jesus.
They had no idea how to identify him, plus it was the middle of the night, dark outside.
So Judas says to them, okay, you won't know who it is, but this is how to know.
The one I go up and I kiss on the cheek, that's the one that is Jesus, arrest that guy.
Imagine betrayal with something as affectionate as a kiss.
And Jesus said to him as he came and kissed him, Jesus looks at him, can you imagine this
moment Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?
Do you know why this was such a terrible thing?
Because Jesus loved Judas.
People hurt so badly because you love somebody so deeply.
But notice the beauty of Jesus, he never allows his love for Judas to turn to hate.
He just asks a question.
Friend, this is the thing that Satan will never understand, because Satan doesn't love others,
Satan uses others.
Jesus has such unfathomable beautiful love that he even loved Judas.
I believe even in this moment Jesus is saying to Judas, buddy, pal, you don't have to go
this way.
The love of Jesus is not only demonstrated toward Judas, it's also demonstrated toward
Peter.
Look what it says in verse 49, and when those arose around him, those around him saw what
was happening, they said to him, Lord, shall we strike with the sword?
Okay, I just love the disciples, especially Peter, because he's such an idiot.
Jesus is going through one of the most emotionally distressing things he will ever experience
as a human.
His close, one of his closest friends betrays him with a kiss, and the guys wake up, and
Peter wakes up, he's got a sword, you know what I mean?
He's got that sword, he's ready to go, and he wakes up and he says, is this it?
Should we get the swords?
We have two of them.
Lord, shall we strike with the sword?
And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.
Now this is interesting to me.
All the gospels talk about this part of the story.
Most of the gospels say one of the disciples.
In the book of John, John says, it was Peter.
If you read all four of the gospels, John always, there's always somebody saying something
dumb, and John's always like, oh, you didn't know, it was Peter.
Peter always is the dumb one.
And Peter does.
He grabs the sword, and he thinks, this is the moment we've been waiting for.
All these years have led to this moment.
Jesus wants us to kill everybody.
That's Peter's plan.
And he grabs a sword, and he goes to swing his sword.
And as he goes to swing his sword, I don't think that Peter was trying to cut off an
ear.
You know what I mean?
Like I don't think he was like, okay, should I go for a finger, a toe, or an ear.
I think Peter was going for the head.
You know what I mean?
How many of you would understand that?
You're that way too.
You're like, I'm not going for the ear.
It's for the head, right?
Some of you love Peter so much.
You're like Peter Pastor.
I just want you to know.
I've had so many of you say, Pastor, I want you to know.
If anything goes down, I'm packing.
Yeah, you and like 400 other people in the room right now are packing.
This is one church I'm telling you, no bad guy wants to come in.
Because I've got like 400 Peters in this room right now.
It's true.
And you're all like, is this the time for the sword?
No, no, no.
They're coming up to ask about coffee and getting saved.
Relax.
Okay, all right.
Okay, just so you know, I'm here.
I got it, Peter.
Thank you very much.
I got it.
Really appreciate that.
I do.
I love Peter.
And Peter goes to swing and as he swings, the guy ducks and as he ducks, the ear comes
off.
And I could just picture Peter like, and Jesus in another gospel corrects him and says, stop.
Peter and Jesus loves Peter so much, he corrects Peter and says, Peter, what are you doing?
Those who live by the sword die by the sword.
And then Peter, then Jesus leans down into the dirt and he says to them, allow this,
please, I'm not doing it.
Just talk.
And he grabs the ear of Malchus.
Say who's Malchus, the guy with the ear off.
And he takes the ear and the very hands that formed Malchus in the womb, put the ear right
back on his head.
Don't you understand in this story, you see the love of Jesus poured out on Jesus.
You see the love of Jesus poured out on Peter, but you also see the love of Jesus poured
out on some random guy named Malchus.
You know why?
Because Jesus was there when Malchus was formed in the womb.
Jesus understood the moment being God that Malchus was born.
Jesus knew little Malchus when he was a little boy.
Jesus knew Malchus throughout his entire life.
And then when he first got that job to be a temple guard and he came home and told his
parents how proud he was that he was going to be a temple security guard to take care
of God's house.
Jesus knew his entire back story and Jesus loved him.
He loved him.
And to you and I, he's just some random name.
And so this was Jesus's moment to show, stop!
I love him!
This is what Satan will never understand.
Jesus loves every single one of them.
He loves all the ones on this side and he loves all the ones on this side.
He loves all of them.
He wants them all to be saved.
I find in life that there are two kinds of people.
There are sushi people.
And there are non-sushi people.
There's no in between.
Not nobody.
How many people are sushi people like I am?
You love the sushi?
Raise your hand.
Hallelujah.
God bless.
Sushi.
It's so good.
How many of you are not the sushi people?
Raise your hand.
See how passionate they are?
Is this raw fish or are you raw fish?
The chef doesn't do his job.
All he does is cut it up, cook the stuff.
My wife is a non-sushi person.
I'm a sushi person.
I converted my children two out of three.
There are now followers of the sushi way.
Amen.
Pray for my wife.
I don't think she'll ever be saved.
I don't.
I remember when I first became a sushi man, my friend Angelo.
He's in heaven now.
He's passed away, but Angelo said to me, he's like, you don't like sushi?
I said, why would I want sushi?
He said, buddy, you got to try sushi.
And I felt like I was being converted.
You know what I mean?
Like he's like, come to Starbucks with me.
I'll explain to you all the reasons why sushi is the way.
So we went to a sushi restaurant and we sat down and he said, try this and try that.
And the first time I'm like, I don't think I want it.
Man.
I underestimated how good it would be because I'd never tried it.
You know what the Bible says about God?
For those who don't know, okay, the Bible says, taste and see that the Lord is good.
He loves you.
He don't you understand?
The reason why you're turned off by him is because you have an image and an idea of what
he is and he's not that thing.
He loves you.
And so whether or not you're a villain like Judas, you're an idiot like Peter or you're
some rando that nobody knows like Malchus.
He loves you.
And here's where Satan messed up.
He messed up because he forgot the power of prayer.
He misunderstood the love of Jesus.
And lastly, in this passage, Satan's fatal mistake, lastly, he ignored the word of God.
Satan was the biggest fool because he ignored everything that was written about this moment.
Look what happens at the end of the story, verse 52.
And Jesus said to the chief priests and the captains and the temples and the elders who
had come to him, so all of this is going on.
It's a very tense moment.
People are drawing swords.
Spears are up.
And Jesus stops them and says, hold on.
Have you really come out as against a robber with swords and with clubs?
When I was with you daily in the temple, you did not try to seize me.
He very calmly says, fellas, you saw me every day in the temple teaching.
And you're taking me like I'm a violent criminal.
And then Jesus says one of the most mysterious and dark things in all of the Bible.
Jesus looks at them.
And I believe he says this not to them, but those who are powerful behind them.
He says these words, but this is your hour, the power of darkness.
This is whose hour?
This is the hour of Satan.
Satan gets his moment in the sun.
This is Satan's opportunity to win.
Satan in this moment is going to get exactly what he's always wanted, Jesus bloodied and
beaten on a tree.
And Jesus is going to let Satan have exactly what he wanted.
And that fool ends up just triggering a trap that himself would be damned because it was
the death of Jesus Christ on the cross that would doom the devil for eternity anyway.
Backfired the death of the devil.
Satan is a worthy adversary.
Yet one night in a series of fatal mistakes in the span of 12 hours, his ultimate plan
became his eventual demise.
As he possessed Judas, he betrayed Jesus and he had him arrested.
This sermon series is the story of the devil's death and the dark plan that famously backfired.
All because Satan didn't read the Word of God.
See all of this was prophesied.
The fool.
All the way back in Genesis chapter 3 in verse 15, God himself said to Satan, God himself
says to Satan, look, the seed of the woman is going to come against your seed and one
day you're going to bruise his heel and he's going to crush your skull.
It's not even that it was prophesied by God himself back in Genesis.
Even the book of Leviticus told Satan exactly how it would happen.
It would be through the shedding of blood.
Leviticus chapter 17 verse 11, God made it very clear.
The life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make
atonement for your souls.
For it is in the blood that makes atonement for your souls.
Satan wanted Jesus bloodied on a cross yet he had no idea that the Word of God very clearly
prophesied that it would be the blood that would actually atone for the souls of men.
He said, well, that's kind of vague.
Satan may have not known that yet he thinks himself so smart.
Why did he ignore the prophecy of Isaiah that came 700 years before the Garden of Gethsemane
when Isaiah said very clearly and very obviously that the Messiah would be despised and rejected
by man, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.
Surely he will bear our griefs and carry our sorrows yet we wounded him for our transgressions.
We bruised him for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we would be healed.
Satan had access to every one of these prophecies but he ignored them because he's a fool.
He lost the game and he lost the war.
Why because he ignored the Bible?
My dear friend, why do I say all this to you today?
Because you need to understand that you fight a defeated enemy.
Look up here.
You should have no reason in your heart to be afraid of Satan.
He's a loser.
We get to October 29th.
Tomorrow's October 30th.
Two days later, November 1st, the Devil's Day.
Some of you are really nervous.
We watched a scary movie when you were a kid and you still think the Devil makes people's
heads turn around and throw up green stuff.
I'm not being funny here.
Some of you genuinely think you need a holy man to come into your house and wave branches
around.
Let's get rid of the Devil.
Friend, the Devil is already defeated.
Friend is a child of God purchased by the blood of Christ.
He has no power over you.
None that you don't give him.
You don't need somebody like me coming into your life saying, get out of here, demons.
All you have to do is a child of God to say, I'm a child of God.
You have no business here.
Out!
You have that power.
You've been freed from sin and death and the Devil and Satan himself.
He has no power over you because he was the one who tipped over the domino that led to
his ultimate defeat.
Because the moment Jesus Christ dies upon the cross and sheds his blood for mankind
is sealed the fate of Satan for eternity.
And now he is declawed and he knows it and he's angry.
But he has no power over us.
Friend, as you go from here, please remember this truth.
The power that you have and ought respect in this world is that of one and one alone,
the God of heaven who sent his son to pay for the sins of mankind.
He has shown the way of defeat and how to destroy the works of the villain.
And all we must do is the exact opposite of what Satan has done.
We must remember the power of prayer.
You must follow the truths of the Word of God.
He must trust this plan every step of the way and in doing so you'll defeat the Devil
too.
Let us pray.
Father, say,