This sermon emphasizes the devil's primary lie that there are many ways to God, leading unbelievers away from the cross. As believers, we become targets for spiritual attacks, with Satan aiming to reduce us to a level of spiritual mediocrity and prevent us from living in the fullness of God's promises. The goal is to keep us from experiencing real freedom and victory in Christ, maintaining a state of wilderness Christianity instead of promised land Christianity.

We've set a deceiver. Now, he has to tell the unbeliever only one lie to control them, and that is that they don't have to come to the cross. Well, the politically correct position in America is that there are many ways. All religions are about the same. That's the devil's primary lie, and as long as you believe that, you're probably safely in his territory, and he just has to have a maintenance program for you. That's not our problem or what we're concerned about here. We're concerned about what happens when you become a believer. Now, there are those, as we've said, who would say if you're a good Christian, the devil can't do anything to you. I would say that when you become a Christian, you become the target. He only has to have a maintenance program for his people, but you, as a believer, can live to the glory of God, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Satan hates God. He doesn't want God to be glorified, so he's got to reduce you to what I call a level of spiritual mediocrity. This is like the children of Israel in the wilderness. They were still God's children. God was feeding them with manna. God hadn't disowned them, but, and they could say, look how God's blessing us with our shoes don't wear out and so on, clothes don't wear out, and that was true. God was blessing them, but where were they? In the wilderness. Where should they have been? In the promised land. They weren't conquering like they were supposed to be conquering. They weren't occupying the land as God had told them they should. They were in the wilderness because of unbelief and disobedience. Now, those are the two conditions of the covenant that they had broken, and that doesn't mean that God totally disowns you, but it does mean that you are now living at a level of wilderness Christianity instead of promised land Christianity. Instead of winning the victories and going from victory to victory in Christ, you're just existing from day to day and being thankful that God hasn't stopped the flow of food and other things to you. So he's going to try and keep you at this level of spiritual mediocrity, but you can also win people from his kingdom into God's kingdom, and he doesn't want that to happen, so again he has to neutralize you You know, Satan isn't as much interested in turning you into a demonized person that's going to do bizarre things as he is the kind of Christian that people can point at and say, if that's Christianity, who needs it? They don't seem to have any more power than I do. They don't handle their lives any better than we do. You know, there's many divorces in the churches, out of the church, you know, just nothing to commend. The Bible says, be ready to give to every man a reason for the hope that is in you. Most people never get asked that question, so you don't have to worry about giving a reason because they never get asked, and the reason is we're at this level of spiritual mediocrity, but there's even a third reason, and that is that you can get to the place where you can help believers who are in reasonable victory come to real freedom through the kind of ministry that we're talking about in this class, and he doesn't want that to happen. He wants to keep those strongholds in their lives. He doesn't want their strongholds removed.