[Morning Sermon] "Blessed Are the Eyes" (Luke 10:17-24)

I'll invite you to open your Bibles, please, if you have one, to Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Today we're going to look at verses 17 through 24.

Luke 10, 17 through 24.

So my kids are not yet teenagers.

They're 11 on down.

And so that means they're in that stage of life where they still want to talk to me.

Often all at the same time.

Every night at the dinner table, everyone wants to tell me about everything that happened to them that day.

Again, all at the same time.

So much so that they're willing to knife fight each other over the opportunity to share with me what's been going on.

It is often overwhelming.

And I don't always respond to that overwhelm so great.

But it's beautiful.

And I'll miss it when it's gone.

Now, in today's passage of scripture, Jesus has his very own end-of-the-day dinner table moment with his disciples.

They've come together, as it were, at the end of a long day of disciple making, and they are jubilant.

They absolutely rejoice to tell Jesus how it went that day.

Jesus, you'll never believe it.

We cast out demons in your name.

And Jesus thinks that's great.

Gold stars for everybody.

But then Jesus leans in.

That's awesome.

I'm so proud of you.

Good job, guys.

But do you want an even better reason to be happy right now?

Do you even want an even greater cause for joy?

Rejoice in the fact that you're a part of my family.

No matter how your day went.

And as we'll see this morning, that is a wonderful reason to rejoice because it means that we can do big things for the kingdom of God.

We can win great spiritual battles, we can send missionaries, we can build churches, we can do amazing signs and wonders and rejoice in all of that.

But if our faith is in Christ, then our deepest joy will come not from what we do for him, but who we are in him.

And that's good news on the good days, and it's really good news on the bad days.

So with that said, I'll invite you to rise as a read from Luke 10, verses 17 through 24.

Luke 10:17–24

The 72 returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

And Jesus said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

And that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

All things have been handed over to me by the Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Then turning to the disciples, he said privately, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.

For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Father, thank you for your word.

Send your Holy Spirit now, we pray, to help us to understand your word, to be encouraged by it, to be reminded who we are in Christ, so that we might stand on that firm foundation and do what you've called us to do in this world.

Pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So last week we saw Jesus send out the 72.

And before they went, before he sent them out, he gave them words to prepare them, also to prepare us for the mission.

Pray to the Lord of the harvest.

Recognize that you're going out as sheep among wolves.

Expedite the mission by traveling light.

Pronounce peace in those houses that will take you in.

Accept the hospitality that's offered to you.

Reveal the gospel in your words and works, and exit the scene when people reject you.

That was last week.

Now, this week, we see the 72 return, and we hear about the outcome of their mission.

Luke tells us that when they return, again, they're filled with joy.

And joy really is a key word in this whole passage that we're looking at.

It's mentioned four times, along with a closely related word, blessed, in verse 23.

And so this is a joyful passage, and that's the mood from start to finish.

And the joy, of course, begins with the successes that the 72 have experienced on the spiritual battlefield.

Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

There's an almost childlike excitement in the disciples' voice here.

Jesus had prepared them for rejection, and I'm sure they probably experienced their fair share of that rejection, but they don't care about that right now.

All they care about right now, all they're eager to share with Jesus in their joy, is the fact that they have been able to command demons.

Now there's nothing obviously cocky in their voices here.

There's nothing obviously arrogant or prideful or boastful about their joy.

Clearly, they recognize that the power they wield over the demons is one that came only in the name of Jesus.

They know it's Jesus' power and that it's not their power, and they say as much.

The disciples here are simply rejoicing.

And the thing they're rejoicing over is a good thing to be joyful about.

But then Jesus gives them an even better reason to rejoice.

They're not just soldiers, they're sons.

Their names have been written in heaven.

They have a seat at his table, and it's not because they've done anything to earn their seat at his table, it's because of his gracious will.

So it's good to rejoice in our wins, right?

We see that.

It's good to rejoice in our winds, but at the end of the day, again, our deepest joy comes not from what we do for him, but who we are in him.

Not just soldiers, but sons and daughters.

And so those are the two beats we'll consider this morning as we get into our passage: soldiering and sonship.

So let's begin with the soldiering.

At the beginning of verse 9, or sorry, chapter 9, Jesus sent out the twelve.

He sent them out with power and authority over all demons.

And he didn't say so explicitly, but the same applied to the sending of the 72.

Jesus is the Lord.

All authority, all power belong to him.

And yet he empowers people to exercise authority in his name.

And that's exactly what the disciples have been up to.

And when they come to him, rejoicing on account of what they've been able to do in his name, he pulls back the curtain and he gives them a glimpse into the nature of the battle, the nature of the fight that they've been engaged in.

In verse 18, he says to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Now, this is an interesting verse that Christians have wrestled with throughout church history because it seems to refer to something like an original fall of Satan and the angels from heaven.

Maybe as the consequence of some great battle that happened in some unrecorded past of heaven.

Isaiah 14, 12 through 15 is a classic passage.

How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn.

In Latin, that would be Lucifer.

How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low.

You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven.

Above the stars of God I will set my throne on high.

I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high.

But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit.

In context, Isaiah, it's pretty clear, he's talking about the king of Babylon.

But the church fathers and many after them throughout church history believed that this was a kind of type or a recapitulation of the original fall of Satan.

2 Peter 2, 4 says that God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept till judgment.

And Jude 6 says basically the same thing.

And so the idea here is that the angels fell at some point with Satan at their head.

And the natural follow-up to that question is, okay, when?

When did they fall?

Was it before creation?

Well, that would be kind of hard because Satan and the angels are all created beings.

So how do created beings fall before creation?

Let's throw out that answer.

Okay, did it happen in the long space that supposedly existed between Genesis 1-1 when God created the heavens and the earth in 1-2, when he formed the shapeless void of earth?

Well, Genesis doesn't really give us anything to support what's called the gap theory, that there was any kind of space between 1-1 and 1-2.

And so the best answer, I think, is the majority report from church history, from both Catholic Orthodoxy and the Reformed tradition.

This is the view of Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Francis Turitan, right?

All the kinds of people that we would agree with on most of the things.

The idea is that the angel's fall occurred sometime between the end of creation day six, when God said everything is very good, and Adam and Eve's temptation in the garden.

Okay?

What about the why question?

Why did God let them fall?

Well, the first answer to that question was why do they fall?

It's because of their pride.

Why did God let them fall?

I don't know.

There you go, that's what you pay me for.

But it's the question of evil in general, isn't it?

I don't know, we don't know why God allowed evil to enter the heavenly realm and from there to fall into the earthly realm.

All we know is that God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, goodness, justice, power, and truth.

And so God makes no mistakes.

None.

And everything he does is done for his glory and for the good of those who love him and are called according to this purpose.

God is good.

He's always good.

He knows what he's doing, always.

And that's true, even despite the fact that Satan has been allowed to afflict the children of men ever since he fell.

From the beginning to now, he has been the enemy of all enemies.

He has been the dark shadow that influences all who rage against the Lord and his anointed and his people.

So that's the serpent in the garden.

It's Cain, the very first murderer.

It's the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Romans, the Ottoman Turks, the secular humanists, the cultural Marxists, the militant atheists, all the badists that have ever existed and ever will exist.

He is the enemy of enemy in the dark shadow, the searching eye of evil behind them all.

But what did God promise in Genesis 3.15?

He promised that he would one day raise up a seed of the woman to crush that enemy's head and to deliver his people from his oppression.

Jesus is that deliverer.

He is that seed of the woman.

He is that snake crusher.

And when he says that he saw Satan fall like lightning, he's reminding his disciples of that ultimate vantage point he possesses as the one who is there, as the one who possesses all authority, all power over all the powers and principalities of the spiritual realm.

He was there.

But even at that, Jesus is not just talking about what happened way back when at the beginning, when he first saw Satan fall.

The verse here, or the verb here in verse 18, when he says, I saw, it's actually in the imperfect tense.

And that means that it's a past, undefined, kind of continuous activity.

His sight was an over, an open-ended sight.

And so it's not so much that Jesus saw Satan fall that one time back then.

It's that he saw him fall again and again and again and again.

And so that raises the when question again.

And here's the answer to that when question.

He fell in the preaching of the gospel.

He fell like lightning from heaven in the exercising of demons.

Every time his disciples proclaimed his name, every time they revealed the kingdom with spirit-soaked words and works, it was as if the enemy was cast down again as they took new ground in the battle against spiritual darkness.

So Jesus here, Jesus is encouraging his soldiers as their conquering king and spiritual commander.

And he goes on with that encouragement in verse 19.

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Jesus is not like the leaders of some nations today who send, he doesn't send us on a mission to conquer with rusty old trucks and weapons that don't fire.

No, Jesus brings his disciples into the armory and he kits them out with everything they need in order to win the fight.

But of course, that raises yet another question.

This passage is just full of questions this week.

What does Jesus mean when he says that nothing will hurt you?

There are plenty of people in the world, plenty of you, who'd call yourself disciples of Jesus, who have been hurt.

Hurt specifically by those who are operating, as best as we can tell, under the influence of the evil one.

So, what does that mean?

I mean, we see that kind of thing even on the pages of Scripture, don't we?

Paul?

Was Paul a disciple of Jesus?

Yeah, Paul was a disciple of Jesus.

And yet we read of all his personal injuries in 2 Corinthians 10, 39 lashes, beatings, stonings.

Jesus himself.

Jesus said that this is what happened, would happen to his disciples.

We would deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.

We would be rejected and despised.

We would be put down and abused spiritually, emotionally, physically, psychologically.

And so Jesus clearly isn't saying here that he's going to put a force field around his people to protect us from all harm.

So what is he saying?

He's saying that as far as the spiritual battle is concerned, nothing in heaven on earth can stop us in our mission to take ground for the kingdom.

Nothing.

Not even death.

Now, how can Jesus say something like that?

He can say it because he knows what's coming.

He knows that he's heading toward Jerusalem.

He knows he's heading toward a cross, and he knows that on that cross, he will not be conquered, but he will conquer.

He will win the ultimate victory over Satan's sin and death.

In what will look like the enemy's victory, Jesus will deal him his greatest blow.

And so because death had no hold on Jesus, death has no hold on us.

Jesus has taken away the enemy's greatest weapon.

He has defanged the venomous serpent.

And so now in and with him, we are invincible.

We cannot be defeated.

Our message cannot fail.

The kingdom of light will overcome the kingdom of darkness.

And on that final day, Satan will fall from heaven like lightning one final time.

Except this time, he will fall all the way into a lake of fire from which he will never be allowed to emerge ever again.

And on that day, in that very moment, we will see a new heavens and a new earth completely devoid of every last shred of his influence.

The battlefield will fade from our very eyes, and God will replace it with a meadow.

So in between now and then, we occupy a position of infinite power and authority under the command of our Lord Jesus.

No, he hasn't called us to exercise the same kind of demon-slaying ministry that we see here on the pages of Luke.

Our mission looks different on the other side of the cross, and yet we still have access to all the same spiritual resources that the 72, that the disciples had access to.

Everything that Paul says in Ephesians 6 about putting on the whole armor of God so that we might stand against the devil, it applies to us as much as it applies to them.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm.

So fasten the belt of truth, put on the breastplate of righteousness, lace up your gospel boots, strap on the shield of faith, don the helmet of salvation, wield the sword of the spirit that is the word, pray in the spirit, stay alert, proclaim the mystery, even when you find yourself in chains.

You're in the Lord's army.

Somebody say yes, sir.

Maggie's not in the room, she totally would have done it.

Every time we proclaim the name of Jesus, every time we pronounce peace, every time we communicate the gospel of the kingdom, the demons shudder and the devil gets a lump in his throat.

We ought to rejoice in that.

And we ought to come to Jesus in prayer at the end of the day, giddy about all of the spiritual victories that he has let us experience.

When someone turns from darkness to light, when an addict gets set free, when God rescues people from spiritual and physical oppression, we were we should rejoice in things like that, just like the disciples.

In verse 20, don't amen that.

In verse 20, Jesus says, Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you.

Whoops, let's forget everything I just said in the last 15 minutes.

Does it undo everything I said?

No, it doesn't.

Because Jesus actually is not rebuking his disciples here.

Instead, Jesus is making a relative distinction in absolute terms.

This is a common biblical idiom.

This is a common move in Scripture where you minimize a good thing in order to maximize the best thing.

And so here's what Jesus is saying to his disciples.

You guys are pretty jazzed up about the spiritual authority and power I gave you.

I can see it, I can hear it.

Well, let me give you something that will make that seem like nothing.

Let me drop some knowledge that will take the joy you're experiencing right now and crank it up to eleven.

You ready for it?

Here it is.

Your names are written in heaven.

Your names are written in heaven.

This is a common idea in scripture that God would record the names of his people in his heavenly register.

Yahweh and Moses talk about it on Mount Sinai in Exodus 32.

The Psalms refer to it repeatedly, especially Psalm 139 16.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance.

In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet none of them were.

We see the book in the New Testament as well.

In Philippians 4 3, Paul talks about his fellow gospel workers whose names are written in the book of life.

In Hebrews 12, 22 through 23, it says that we belong to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.

The book of Revelation culminates with the great white throne judgment and the opening of the books.

And for those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life, the end of the story is life, joy, peace, and the presence of God forever.

See, this is the glorious truth that Jesus is plugging his disciples into right here.

God has a list of every single person who he has chosen for life in Christ.

He has a register written in eternity past, a spiritual genealogy that extends from creation to consummation.

And Jesus says to his disciples, rejoice that you're on that list.

Rejoice that you have a node in that family tree.

You who are weak, you who are lowly, you who've never been chosen for anything in your life, who come from a broken family, who feel like you're all alone, you who are unwanted, unloved, rejoice that in Christ your name is written in heaven.

You're his, you're chosen.

Your name is written in heaven.

No commanding officer at any point in the history of humanity has ever said anything like that to one of his soldiers.

But it's exactly what Jesus says to every one of his disciples, back then and today.

And right as he says it in this story, Luke pulls back the curtain for us once again, verse 21.

Just as Jesus pulled back the curtain for the 72.

Jesus gave them a peek at the spiritual battlefield, and now we get a glimpse into the glory of the Trinity.

As the Son rejoices in the Spirit and gives thanks to his heavenly Father.

This is a profoundly intimate moment to demonstrate to us what is this family into which we've been invited?

It's a lot like Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, where we see this great moment of intimacy in prayer between the Father and the Son.

And it reveals to us the mystery of revelation itself.

How is it that we come to know these great and glorious things?

How is it that we come to know the truth about who God is and what he has done for us?

How is it that we're given the privilege to follow him and serve in his army?

How is it that we are adopted into the family, written in heaven, and given a seat at Jesus' table?

How is it?

Well, I'll tell you how it's not.

It's not by our wisdom and understanding.

God has not granted knowledge of himself as a prize to the smart and respectable members of society.

He's not revealed himself to the people who have proven themselves worthy of his revelation.

No, he reveals himself not to the high and mighty, the great and exalted.

He reveals himself to little children.

A few weeks ago we saw in chapter 9 this absolutely ridiculous situation in which the disciples were arguing with themselves about which one of them was the greatest.

And Jesus takes a little child and puts it in their midst.

And, you know, this is a visual paradox because in that society, children were not great.

Children were, you know, we keep you in the dark, you don't speak unless spoken to.

And Jesus says, You want to be great?

Be like this one.

Be like this guy.

And so we see the same kind of thing here.

God does not reveal himself to the high and mighty, he reveals himself to the humble and lowly.

Not because they deserve it, but because such was his gracious will.

See, the knowledge of God is a gift of God.

It is not something that we take or discover for ourselves.

It is something that he freely and graciously gives to us.

God is not some inert fact of nature that we go out and discover by way of scientific investigation.

God is not the conclusion to a sophisticated philosophical argument, like all the apologetics channels on YouTube will tell you.

I just said YouTube's such a boomer move.

Sorry.

That's not who he is.

He is the Lord.

And his divine essence is incomprehensible.

His light is so impenetrably brilliant that it may as well be darkness to us.

We do not simply stroll into the presence of God and have a look around.

We cannot barge into God's office, as it were, and go through his drawers and find the blueprint for his eternal plan to create and redeem all things in Christ.

Nobody knows that Son, his Son, Jesus, except the Father.

And nobody knows the Father except the Son.

And as 1 Corinthians 2 fills out for us, only the Spirit is able to know and search the mind of God because the Spirit is God.

The triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit constitute the most secret society that has ever existed.

Incomprehensible.

And what does that mean?

It means that you and I have no right to know God or to know anything about God.

We lack the ability.

There's no decoder ring we can buy, there's no Ouija board we can consult, there's no inside source that we can pay off to give us information.

We cannot know God unless, and there's the key word right there, underline it, put it in bold.

We cannot know God unless He reveals Himself to us.

And that's what He's done.

He's done it in a general way in creation.

Psalm 19:1, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalms 19:1

Romans 1.20, his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

That general revelation is enough of an introduction to know that God exists as our creator.

But it's not enough to tell us who God is as our Redeemer.

And so God has given us special revelation.

At first in speaking to the fathers, but then in having his people write what he said in his word, and ultimately in sending the word in the flesh.

But even at that, not everyone who heard God's word in the Old Testament believed what they heard.

Not everyone who cracks open a Bible accepts its truth.

And not everyone who was around to see Jesus believed that they were seeing God.

They may have seen something about God, but they did not truly see the Father in the Son.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have rejected him.

Again, no one knows the Father, or no one knows the Son except the Father.

And no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Because what we are seeing here, what Luke is giving us a glimpse into when he shares this prayer of Jesus, what we're seeing is the pure, unadulterated grace of God.

We would not know that there was a God if He did not give Himself to be known.

We would not know there is good news unless He published that good news and Jesus gave us ears to hear it.

The mystery of God's plan for the ages, the glory of redemption, the victory of Christ over the forces of darkness, the beauty of the Trinity, our place in God's family, our eternal inheritance, our heavenly hope, all of those things would be completely opaque to us, completely unknown by us if the Father had not sent the Son to reveal to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation.

We didn't discover any of these things for ourselves.

We couldn't have.

God had to show them to us the same way you take a small child by the hand, you sit them down at the table, and you show them how to do math.

The revelation of God, the redemption of Christ, is a gift of God's grace from the start to the finish.

It's not just for the smart people.

We're not the smart people.

It's not just for the extra holy people, the extra righteous people, the people who knew how to look in the right places.

No, it is a gift where God comes and finds us wherever we are, and he says, Here I am.

This is why Jesus says to his disciples in verses 23 through 24, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

The high and mighty, the wise and understanding, the prophets and the kings, the presidents and the dictators and the emperors and the philosophers and the professors, they've all tried to gain insights into the mysteries of the universe.

They've tried to climb up into heaven, often literally.

They've tried to get up there and take a look around, and they've fallen short every single time.

So rejoice.

Rejoice in this incredible blessing.

Rejoice that you have been granted to know the things that elites would give everything they had to know.

Rejoice that you have been given eyes to see things that are more precious than even the riches of Rome.

Rejoice that your names have been written in heaven.

Rejoice that the Father has revealed himself to you by his son and spirit, and that he has given you a seat at his table.

Rejoice.

And as we come to a close, it's important to remind ourselves that even as Scripture calls us to rejoice, where does that joy come from?

It comes from Jesus' own joy.

Yes, the joy that Jesus experiences in the Spirit as He prays and shares these things with His disciples, but also the joy that drove His mission from the beginning to the end.

And when I say beginning, I mean eternity.

There is no begrudging in Jesus' work to redeem sinners.

There is no reluctance on his part to reveal himself to us.

Even when we're weak, even when we're stupid, even when we fail to rightly exercise the power and authority that he's granted to us, even when we fail to learn the lessons that we ought to have learned years ago, even when we make the same mistake again and again and again, there is nothing but joy for us in Christ.

I mean, just look at the disciples.

Oh my goodness, how foolish they've been so far in Luke.

All the ways that they have already failed Jesus.

Even so, bearing with them, even so, he counted it all joy.

All the trials, all the tribulations, all the rejecting he would, all the rejection he would endure, all the suffering, even the cross.

Hebrews 12, 2 tells us that it was for the joy that was set before him that Jesus endured the cross.

The joy of reclaiming a stiff-necked people like you and like me for himself.

And so there's an order of joy in Jesus' ministry that spills out into our own.

Jesus rejoices, legitimately rejoices to reveal himself to us as our Redeemer.

In turn, we rejoice in that redemption.

We rejoice in his revelation.

And following from that, we rejoice in the wonderful things that he does in and through us.

Jesus is the fountainhead from which all our joy flows.

He is the elder brother who sits beside the Father at the end of the table, and instead of glaring at us in all our misguided enthusiasm and scowling at us in our failures, he pours us another glass of wine.

He piles another slice of brisket on our plate.

He laughs at our stupid jokes.

He smiles when we talk all over each other as we try to tell him about our day.

That's who Jesus is, and that's what his joy looks like.

So let the joy of that Lord be your strength.

And when you go out and do big things for the kingdom, when God enables you to win great victories in his name, dude, rejoice.

Feel free to rejoice in what he's doing in and through you.

Do it loud and do it publicly.

Send me an email or a text or a phone call.

Let me know what God is doing, right?

Rejoice.

But make sure that as much as you rejoice in all the great spiritual victories, rejoice even more in what he's done for you.

Rejoice in what he does through you, rejoice even more in what he does for you.

If you are in Christ, then you're not just a soldier.

You are a soldier, but you're more.

You're a son, you're a daughter.

Your name is written in heaven that you're blessed.

Let's pray.

Father, you've called us to great and wonderful things.

You have called us to things that are better than we could ever ask or imagine.

You have given us a place in your kingdom, a role in your spiritual army, even.

You've called us to tread on serpents and scorpions.

And you've promised that one day, soon and very soon, you will crush Satan under our feet.

These are incredible things, Lord.

Who is sufficient for them?

Not us.

And yet, Lord, by your grace and in your strength, you give us everything we need to go out into battle.

And when we see you do the things that only you can do, and we rejoice in those things, you give us an even better reason to rejoice.

That in victory or apparent defeat, whatever happens, whatever it looks like, whether the demons flee or we find ourselves on the business end of a cross, we can rejoice nonetheless, knowing that we are sons, we are daughters, and that our status, our standing in your family is not contingent upon what we do, but what you have done for us in Christ.

Remind us of that, Lord.

May that be the foundation of our joy.

May that be the firm ground on which we stand as we march forward this week.

Give us confidence, give us strength, give us boldness to reveal in our words and works the kingdom of God, to proclaim the name of Jesus and through that mighty name to see strongholds fall, to see people set free, to see your kingdom grow and advance in this world.

And as we do it, Lord, give us the security that comes from looking back and the hope that comes from looking forward.

And remind us that there will come a day when we will all see Satan fall like lightning, and that his influence will be no more as your goodness and glory and light radiate through all creation forevermore.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.