Dr. Kevin DeYoung | When the Bad Guys Win (For Now)

Sunday Morning, September 14, 2025
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor
Christ Covenant Church

When the Bad Guys Win (For Now)
Sermon Text: Ezra 4

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Transcript

Our Father in heaven, we come before you again asking now directly that you might give us grace to be not only hearers of your word but doers that by the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit, though the words will be through very human lips and very imperfect messenger, that yet you might give to us just the word we need to hear, speaking directly to each heart, giving us correction, reproof, comfort, training in righteousness. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. 

Think of Jesus in the Upper Room with his disciples. It's Thursday evening of Holy Week. Jesus knows that he will soon be betrayed, put to death. He gathers his disciples together for a last supper, and for one last sermon; you can read it in John 14, 15 and 16. And in that Upper Room discourse, he talks about the Holy Spirit. He talks about going ahead to prepare a place. He talks about the sorrow that is coming upon the church, and yet that this sorrow will turn to joy. He talks about love – love for God, love for his commandments, love for others. He also, you may have forgotten, talks about hate. We read these words from Jesus in John chapter 15, verses 18-25. He says, 

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’” 

I chose the title for this sermon – you can see it in your bulletin – When The Bad Guys Win, in parentheses, For Now. I chose that Tuesday morning. You know this text was set out weeks ago – Ezra 4. And this was the title before the events of this week made it an especially poignant title as you'll see when I read the chapter in just a moment, Ezra 4 ends with the bad guys winning. Now that will change. Lord willing, we'll come next week to Ezra 5. But at the end of Ezra 4, we see the adversaries of God's people have gotten their way. The rebuilding of the temple has stopped, and it did for many years. Sometimes the bad guys win, at least in the short term. I did not line up this passage for the events of this past week. I didn't even choose the title with the death of Iryna Zarutska in mind. Who was to think on Tuesday as I was – we were talking about that, and I was at a cross-country meet – what a horrible story. The video is horrible. How tragic. How wicked. Who knew that it was only the beginning of the evil that we would see and hear about this week? This sermon is not going to be commentary on the news. Though we're all thinking of the news, I imagine some of you knew nothing about Charlie Kirk before this week. Maybe you had heard of him. Maybe didn't agree with everything he ever said. Some of you here – teenagers, maybe students, Gen Z-ers, young millennials, others – though, followed him closely, appreciated his respectful, unflinching defense of many unpopular truths. If you'd never heard of him before, might shock you to learn that his videos were viewed over one billion times in 2024. A lot of people were listening to him, and for good reason. He told college students to get married and have children. Imagine that. He told people to go to church. He told people to get off their phones sometimes, which might be a good idea for me, for many of us. He told people to take a Sabbath. He talked about the biological reality of male and female, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that unborn life ought to be protected. And in recent years, he became even more outspoken, not just as a conservative, but as a Christian. One of his last tweets, I'm sure you've seen it, passed around, simply said, "Jesus defeated death so you can live." 

But you don't come to church on Sunday, I hope, to get more commentary on the news. Now, don't get me wrong, it's good to be informed. We don't pretend that we're living at a different time or moment or place in history. Yet, most of us have probably spent hours online or scrolling our phones or in front of the TV, and what we need this morning is a word from God. And providentially, that word for us, at least the bulk of it, that word comes from Ezra chapter 4, which reminds us that there will always be opposition to God's word and to God's work. There will always be opposition to God's word and to God's work. Follow along as I read from Ezra chapter 4. 

“Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, ‘Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here.’ But Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, ‘You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God, but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us.’ Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia.”

Now, I'll go back and explain this in just a moment. What I want you to notice here is we are fast forwarding the chronology from verse 5 to verse 6. That doesn't seem obvious to us because most of us aren't real familiar with the chronology of the kings of the Medes and the Persians, but they would have known instantly, ah, we are talking now generations later breaking off this story about the temple and now we’re going to look at other opposition that God's people faced. Verse 6, 

“And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. In the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam and Mithredath and Tabeel and the rest of their associates wrote to Artaxerxes, king of Persia. The letter was written in Aramaic and translated. Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king as follows: Rehum the commander, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the governors, the officials, the Persians, the men of Erech, the Babylonians, the men of Susa, that is the Elamites, and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river. This is a copy of the letter that they sent.”

All of that very elaborate introduction. We have one of the evil people with an interesting name in verse 10. Osnappar, there he is. He's a bad guy. Here's what the letter says:

“To Artaxerxes the king: ‘Your servants, the men of the province beyond the river, send greetings. And now be it known to the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. Now be it known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired. Now, because we eat the salt of the palace, and it is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king, in order that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers, you will find in the book of the records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from of old. That was why this city was laid waste. We make known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province beyond the river.’ The king sent an answer: ‘To Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe and the rest of their associates who live in Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river, greeting. And now the letter that you sent to us has been plainly read before me and I made a decree and search has been made and has been found that this city from of old has risen against kings and that rebellion and sedition have been made in it and mighty kings have been over Jerusalem who ruled over the whole province beyond the river to whom tribute, custom, and toll were paid, therefore make a decree that these men be made to cease and that this city be not rebuilt until a decree is made by me, and take care not to be slack in this matter. Why should damage grow to the hurt of the king?’ Then when the copy of King Artaxerxes’ letter was read before Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their associates they went in haste to the Jews at Jerusalem and by force and power made them cease. Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia.”

As I mentioned, in order to make sense of this chapter, we need to understand some chronology. Keep this in your head, or if you'd like to keep notes, you can even write down these, these four kings of Persia mentioned in this chapter. First, we have Cyrus. There's no test. His reign was 539 to 530 BC. Then we have Darius, Darius, 522 to 486. Then we have Ahasuerus, who is sometimes in other literature called Xerxes. He reigned from 485 to 464. And then we have Artaxerxes, just to make it confusing, he reigned from 463 to 423. So Cyrus, Darius, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes. As I mentioned, the story breaks off at verse 5. You see verse 5 – all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, until the reign of Darius, king of Persia. So remember, we are dealing with they laid the foundation of the temple. The exiles have returned. They have orders from Cyrus. They're to rebuild the temple and they rejoiced. The foundation was laid. And now they have some adversaries who don't want them to continue. And we break off in verse 5 that because these opponents came to them and they bribed counselors against them, they frustrated their purpose, they had to stop for many years, all the days of Cyrus through his reign until the reign of Darius. Now look at verse 24. Verse 24 picks up right where verse 5 left off. The work of the house of God, so the temple, stopped, ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia. Verses 1-5 and verse 24 are about the opposition God's people faced, which put a temporary halt to rebuilding the temple. Verses 6-23 jump into the future. Now, it's very confusing to us, but they didn't have subheadings. They didn't have brackets. They – it's not a movie, that they could obviously do a flashback or a flash forward. So, you have to know some of your Persian kings, which we don't, but they would have. It's like if somebody were talking about American history, I hope it would be obvious to you, if they talked about, well, the frustration we face in the days of George Washington until the days of Andrew Jackson. And then, let me tell you about that time when Abraham Lincoln was president and then when Teddy Roosevelt was president. I hope you know enough American history to know that all ain't at the same time. Well, that's what's happening here. 

And so, though it seems confusing to us, the chronicler here is really making it plain. He gives these markers. Verse 6, we're in the reign of Ahasuerus. And then verse 7, now we're fast forwarding to Artaxerxes. So, what we have in verses 7 through 23 is this episode. Now, we're not talking about the temple, but we're talking about rebuilding the walls and the city. We see that in verses 12 through 13. What the author has done is group together these stories because they fit a theme. It's not like we – there's not a mistake. Nobody was led to believe that these things all happened at the same time. He's grouping them together with a theme. He's saying the people were pushed around when they tried to rebuild the temple, and oh by the way, remember that later they were pushed around when they rebuilt the walls, so let's now go back to the story about the temple. It's putting these two stories together. The point of the chapter is to recall the opposition they faced in rebuilding life in Jerusalem – first with the temple and then generations later with the walls. The good guys at the end of chapter 4 are frustrated. The work stopped. The bad guys got their way. As Christians, we know the war has been decided. The outcome is secure. You want to be on the winning team – team Jesus. But in this life, it doesn't always look that way. And it doesn't at the end of every day, every week, every year, or every decade, it doesn't always go that way. Unequivocally, Jesus and the side of justice and righteousness and grace and truth wins out. But this story in Ezra 4 shows us a moment in time that we can resonate with where you go, wait a minute, wait a minute, but they really stopped the work at least temporarily. And how grievous it must have been to these returning exiles. I mean, they want to build a temple which is for their worship and what Cyrus gave them permission and commanded them to do. Then they want to build a wall because they want to be secure. They're not building a nuclear reactor. They're doing what Cyrus gave them permission to do. 

But there's opposition. We read the opposition comes from the people in the land. More on that in a moment. And from these leaders, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, the kings Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes. It must have been infuriating, appalling to see their noble plans, doing the right thing, going about it in the right way, and it gets undone by lying, by conniving. Look at what we have here. Verse 4 – the opponents of the work resort to intimidation. They're discouraged. Made them afraid. Then bribery, some financial gain. Verse 6, false accusations. They wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah in Jerusalem. We go to verse 15. There's exaggeration. Oh, these hurtful kings. Well, isn't this how it often works? There's a grain of truth here. It's true that Solomon sat over a kingdom that included some of the realm over which these kings are now dwelling. But that was like 500 years ago. This is a bit of a hyperbole to think that these people in Jerusalem were just about ready to take over the region again. You see that the opponents work by flattery. Verse 10 – the rest of the nations, whom the great and noble Osnappar, or verse 14, now because we eat the salt of the palace. It's a strange idiom, but we're close in. We're insiders here, and it's not fitting. We do not want to see the king's dishonor. Then they resort to out-and-out lying in verse 13, verse 16. There's nothing to suggest that the returning exiles had plans to try to avoid the tribute and the custom that they knew they had to pay. Even if they had any designs to it, they had absolutely no wherewithal to be the superpower in the region. So verse 13 and verse 16 not only are building on exaggeration and hyperbole and a glorious past from 500 years ago, but they're just lying about what the Jews intend to do. And here's the frustrating part. It works. Sometimes it works. Crime doesn't pay. Except sometimes it does. Sometimes people lie, cheat, flatter, bully, or worse, and they get their way. They hit their target. There will always be people who will oppose the work of God. 

Now, let me give you two dangers here for us, Christ Covenant. There is a danger on a day like this and a sermon like this to walk out of here and think everyone everywhere is against us all the time. And so, you'll get to November and someone in Starbucks will say, "Happy holidays." And you'll feel like now I know what it's like to carry my cross. Now I understand the hatred of the world. No, let's not exaggerate. Let's not be sniffing our nose for all of it. Let's not walk around with a defeatist, woe is me, everyone is out to get me. Let's not be the Eeyores of the world. There's a danger. And then there is a danger of thinking that no one is against the church and that there are not principalities and powers. Perhaps we don't talk enough about the warfare that is truly at work as we – Revelation pulls back the curtain and says, "You want to know what's really going on in the world? You want to know what's really happening? What you won't get in your news feed, at least not most of them, to tell you that there is a great spiritual battle, and there's a dragon, and he has a beast, and he has a false prophet. There's a bride, and there's a groom. There's a woman and a son. There's Christ and the church. And the dragon hates Christ and the church. I don't know what the devil thinks about the United States of America. I bet there's some things he hates. And I bet there's some things he says, "Don't you?" He's at work. Bet there's some things he's pretty happy about. I do know this from God's word. We know that the devil hates the faithful church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

So let us understand in this text who the adversaries are. You see chapter 4, verse 1, the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin. If you go back to chapter 3, verse 3, it talks about those who were the fear of them because of the peoples of the land. So who are the peoples of the land? Well, you see there in verse 2, we have this king of Assyria, Esarhaddon. He's the son of the great Sennacherib. Read about Sennacherib, when Assyria approached Jerusalem during the days of Hezekiah, but they get wiped out by the angel of the Lord. This is his son. He was king of Assyria in the 600s. And in keeping with Assyrian policy, they repopulated the conquered land. So Assyria wipes out Israel, and then 150 years later, Babylon wipes out Judah and Benjamin in the south. The Assyrian policy was to repopulate the conquered land with people from other lands. Now, if you just turn for a moment, keep a finger there and go back to 2 Kings 17, because 2 Kings 17 explains this. Now, this isn't maybe immediately, but this explains the Assyrian policy and what the returning exiles were facing now in the land. Look at 2 Kings 17. You see, verse 24, you see Assyria resettles Samaria. This is what they did. The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, Sepharvaim, placed them in the cities of Samaria. Instead of the people of Israel, they took possession of Samaria and they lived in their cities. So this is what Assyria does. We're going to repopulate this land, but we're taking people from all these other places. Now, what happens is lions come in and devour these people because they're not sacrificing to Yahweh. They are not worshiping the God of Israel. And so the king of Assyria, go to verse 27, commanded, "Send one of the priests whom you carried away. Let him go and dwell there." So they say, "This isn't going well. Lions are devouring the people. They're not doing the right religion. So send a priest. Teach them what they're supposed to do." Verse 29: Every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived. And so go down to verse 33, here's the result: they feared the Lord, Yahweh, but also serve their own gods after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. So you see what happens? Assyria resettles people in the land. They don't worship Yahweh. Says, "This isn't going to work. Get a priest." The priest teaches them, "This is how we do things here in Israel. This is what it looks like to worship the Lord." They say, "Cool. Let's worship the Lord. They do some of that, and they just bring it all together in a great big grab bag of religious options. These are the people in the land. 

And this explains the hostility when the people of the land say to the leaders – now go back to Ezra 4:2, they approached the Zerubbabel and they said, "Let us build with you. We worship God as you do." Now, if you don't know the background of how Assyria does that, you think, "Wow, these Jewish leaders are being a bit intemperate." The people there in the land say, "Can we come? Can we help build? We're doing the same thing. We love Yahweh, too." Probably not sincere; even if sincere, definitely mistaken. So, they know this, which is why they're met with such an immediate, hard no. You are not worshiping the same God. You may call upon him with the name of Yahweh, but we are not really on the same team. They did not worship him in the right way and they did not worship him alone. That's why they say, "Nope, this is not all. We just have a great conference of world religions. And isn't this wonderful? You call upon Yahweh, so do we. We must be worshiping the same God.” No. Because of this, they turn to bitter opposition against God's people. And for a time, they win. That's what we see in this chapter. Often, we see it here, the opposition to God's people comes through the rulers, the government. They accept bribes to pervert justice. They're willingly manipulated. Sometimes the opposition to God's people comes from false teachers, schismatics, divisive people, institutional cowardice, compromise. Been reading through the space trilogy and about halfway through That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis, and if you know the book it's very prescient – came out in 1945 at the end of World War II – and what Lewis does so well is show that the new face of evil may look more different, less sinister in a technocratic, bureaucratic age, and yet it's often through that cowardice, through that vanity, through that desire to have to be in the inner ring, to be someone special, to be important, to have a little group of people that you want to love you, to give you the kudos you think you deserve. Lewis saw what was coming and how often it is an overbearing state or a crushing bureaucracy or a syncretistic religion or the amalgamation of education, entertainment, even religion itself, which opposes the work of God. 

And so the building of the temple stops. That's how the chapter ends. And I thought about, even before the events of this week, do I end at chapter 4 or do I go on to chapter 5, because you don't want to think that the bad guys do win. And yet, providentially, I already had it planned to end with chapter 4, verse 24. We'll get to the rebuilding of the temple and what God does to reinitiate the work. They don't just lie down forever. They don't just take it. They keep going, and they accomplish what God gave them. But it is important before we turn a literal page on injustice in chapter 4 to come to the end and see that there is real opposition, and sometimes they seem to get the best of God's people. Sometimes there is a Bishlam, a Mithredath, a Tabeel, and they come in and they kiss up to the king and they get their way and God's people are frustrated. And the work doesn't go their way, and there doesn't seem to be a happy ending after all, at least not in this moment. And that's what it must have felt like. It's easy for us to go chapter 4, chapter 5, but if you're living at the end of chapter 4 for many more years, you have to say, "God, but why? What? You brought us here. You sent us back into this land. You promised us this land. We're doing a good work. We're rebuilding a temple. And now it's going to stop for some 15 years." They would be harassed in Cyrus's reign, and they were still harassed a hundred years later. We read about that in the book of Nehemiah. And so we must be realistic. 

Jesus said in John 16:2, "Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God." This is a grim reality. And Jesus told his disciples about it. Be one thing if people do what is evil and they know it's evil. They know it's bad and there's a wrestling. It's another thing when people do evil and they believe from the bottom of their heart they were on the right team. The side of truth and the side of justice, the side of love. Now Jesus disciples must have been thinking some of what you might be thinking this morning. What a grim message. Can you give us something more, Jesus? Of course, that's not the last thing he says to them in John 16. But we need to meditate on what Jesus says there. Not to go out looking for trouble and stirring it up, not to feel sorry for ourselves, not to play the victim at slight offenses, but really, truly, to understand that as they hated Jesus, people will hate those who love him. Ezra 4. Here's one way to think about Ezra 4. Not many people are preaching on Ezra 4 this morning, but it's right here for us because Ezra 4 is an illustration of what Jesus taught in John 15 and John 16. There it is. Do you see how the people of God and the work of God are sometimes temporarily thwarted by the opponents of God? And you and I need to know this. Why did Jesus tell this message to his disciples? Why am I underscoring this message to you? Here's one thing. You get up and preach on a Sunday like this. And there are – the Bible's a big book and there are hundreds of appropriate messages that one could give. Could be a sermon about the promises of God. It could be a sermon about providence. It could be a sermon about justice and the magistrate. It could be a sermon about weeping with those who weep. There are a hundred different wonderful biblical truths. 

What I want you to notice is just one thing that Jesus says. Why does Jesus tell his disciples in John 15 – those two paragraphs that I read at the beginning of this sermon – that the world will hate you? Why did he tell them that? Why must you and I know? Here's the answer: John 16:1. “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.” That's why Jesus told them that. Do you know what a danger is in the world? You think the world's a dangerous place? It is. Has been. You know another danger? The dangers we face out there can be scary. The worst dangers are eternal dangers. Don't lose your faith. Don't leave the faith. That's what Jesus says. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. To know – I'm telling you, I'm telling you, that some people will hate this. Do not leave the faith. Do not make shipwreck. Do not leave what Christ has done for you. 

And maybe you're listening this morning, and you're blurry, you're fuzzy on what all of this Christ business is and what all this Christianity is about. Well, the word of God tells us. It has good news, bad news, good news, better news. That our God, apart from any other agent, created this world. It was good, perfect, and Adam and Eve sin, plunging this world into sin and rebellion. And each one of us, how do you explain the darkness in our world? It's the darkness in the human heart. The prophet Jeremiah said, "Can a leopard change his spots?" You can't. You cannot do it. You cannot make yourself new. In the fullness of time, God sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the things his son taught on earth is that you must be born again, that the spirit of God must so work in your heart. And you say, "How can I make myself be born again?" Well, you can't. But you can listen and you can have ears and the sheep will hear the voice of the good shepherd and God's people will know. Maybe even right now, you know that God is telling you something. He's been trying to tell you something. CS Lewis once said that God whispers to us in joy, and he shouts at us in pain. That God sent his son that whosoever believes in him might have eternal life and will not perish for his sins, but his life for yours, his punishment for you. And so he calls us to repent and believe. You can do that this morning. To repent and believe. Surely the word that must go out across this land and across the world in light of all that is facing our nation and all the events of this week and this month is the message that Jesus proclaimed so clearly: turn. It's not too late to repent of those sins, to turn from the darkness that cuts through. Not right, left, but through every human heart, and then believe. There's nothing you can do. You can't earn it. God doesn't say, "Come and prove yourself." He asks for the faith of an empty hand, the faith to receive, to say, "I have nothing. Would you fill me?" Then you follow him as Savior, as Lord, to obey, to love, to be filled with his spirit, to follow his word, to do whatever he says and say, "Lord Jesus, you now are savior for my sins and lord of my life, and what you tell me is good and right and true and beautiful, and I love it, and I will share it with anyone who will listen and even with those who won't." 

People have always hated some part of this message. It changes from time to time, culture to culture, and some people will hate it now. And the temptation will be to hold on to the attractive parts and lose the unpopular parts and to fudge and to get blurry and to get fuzzy at that moment. And God's grace hopefully it will not be called upon for us to die as martyrs, but in whatever way we must count the cost. You think in that moment as simple as a friend or a classmate laughing at a joke or asking you to believe what you know is not true or your boss telling you to go along with what you know is a lie. And you are apt to think in those moments, oh God, it's all falling apart. And Jesus would have us think, no, this is going just as he said it would. God's timetable for delivering his people from earthly afflictions is quite variable. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – immediately, angel in the fiery furnace, you're saved. Daniel, a night in the lion's den. Peter, imprisoned for several days. Joseph, in a prison for several years. Hebrews 11 says, "Many waited a lifetime, and some only received the deliverance in death." Israel waited 400 years before they were set free from slavery in Egypt. So, we don't know how long we will wait. The good guys don't always win, but they never ultimately lose. So, at the end of the discourse in John 16, Jesus reveals one more reason for his sermon, and you'll want to remember this one, too. I have said these things to you that in me – in Jesus. You hear that? In Jesus. Not in anyone else. Not in anything else. Not in any job. Not in any vague spirituality. Not in any particular political movement or moment. Though we don't have to be naive to what is going on around us. He says, "No, in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world. Let's pray. 

Our Father in heaven, we give thanks for this your holy, inspired, inherent word. Guard us, keep us, equip us, comfort us, forgive us, convict us, strengthen us. We know the prince of darkness is grim, but we tremble not for him. For we know that one little word shall fell him. Keep us close to your word. May we always be people of your word, trusting in your word, that your word is more than sufficient to accomplish all the work that you wish to do in our broken world, so loved by God. In Jesus we pray. Amen.