The Devil - Part 2

Good evening, welcome back. Looks like David's missing, is he working? Okay, we'll have to get him the recording. He was really interested last night. Well, let me open us up in prayer. If you don't have one of the sheets from last night, Jason has the notes.

It's the same notes for the first two days, which is affectionately called the introduction to the armor of God. And then by tomorrow night, we will get into the armor of God passage more. A couple quick notes. Yesterday, Larry pointed out to me after the teaching, which is what I requested people do, I made a comment that Satan is getting in God's ear and accusing the brethren.

And Larry pointed out that after Jesus ascended, Satan is cast out of heaven. And he's not there like he was in Job, just talking to God in that sense. So while he's still the accuser of the brethren and would certainly be one to bring a charge against God's elect, he's not doing it the way I described. And then David pointed out that in Revelation 12, the woman that we were talking about, who I called Mary, which is true and is one of the theories there.

David pointed out, though, that the woman is the church. And of course, she would also be Israel. The Israel of God is the church. And so good that people are reading the scriptures and thinking about them on their own. So today we will get into the fifth point that I have concerning the devil and that is his devices. Or when we read the passage in Ephesians 6, we are told to put on the full armor of God that we may withstand the schemes or the wiles of the devil.

So let me pray and then we can get into that. Father in heaven, thank you that you are ever present and always listening to your people. We pray tonight that you would use your word by the power of your Holy Spirit to work in our hearts that which is necessary for us to be conformed to the image of Christ. And we thank you that you will do whatever is necessary in our lives and that your wisdom is greater than ours.

In Christ's name I pray. Amen. So quick review. The devil exists. He is a real being. He has a nature.

He is a spirit being. He doesn't sleep, to my knowledge. Certainly sleeps less than we do if he does. I don't think he does though. He has a disposition of hatred towards all humanity, toward God, towards all that is holy, and in particular God's people. And he has an entourage, or he has an army of demons that are, in a sense, at his disposal.

And they will, despite the chaos that demons adore, they find a way to work together to torment God's people. And so tonight I want to look at the various temptations, some of the ways that the devil tempts humanity to sin, to turn away from God, to be ungodly. We won't exhaust all the kinds of temptations that we could think of. And what I want you to consider as we go through the temptations, because we're not into the armor passage yet, but as we look at the ways the devil has shown to tempt humans from the beginning, you think about in your own life ways that you've been tempted to sin both before you became a Christian or after, I want you to be able to also have on your mind, well, how does this armor protect me from this kind of temptation?

So it would make very little sense if the devil tempted us in a number of ways that the armor provided no protection for. Do you see the point? So when God tells us about the devil as the enemy and then gives us the armor to put on, It is very clear to us that the armor is intended to battle the devil's wiles. So a reminder of what the armor looks like.

There's a belt of truth. Verse 14 of Ephesians 6. The breastplate of righteousness. You have your feet fitted with the readiness given by the gospel of peace. So you've got a breastplate. You've got a belt of truth, righteousness, the gospel.

In addition, you have a shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one and the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit. So there's your classic pieces of armor that you have at your disposal. And I submit to you that in context, prayer is not a piece of armor that Paul makes an analogy for, But it is part of your defense against the devil and his schemes.

So as we go through temptations, you can be thinking in your mind how an element of what God described, like truth or faith or the gospel, how that really confronts that temptation. And honestly, they all do. But there may be one that pops out at you. You may have a personal story of how that's helped you. And so feel free to share that if it comes up.

So thoughts of atheism and blasphemy are classically attributed to the devil. And I just want to make a quick note about this because it kind of a new thing for my understanding as well In Reformed theology we believe that our sin begins in the heart And So when we sin we can trace that to something in our hearts that is being tempted and then it comes out So people, and this is something Pastor Tim would be able to explain better from a biblical counseling perspective, But people will ask questions like, well, what about when I have a thought that comes in my mind that is evil, but I didn't ask for it. I didn't put it there, but I thought it.

And maybe, praise the Lord, you actually pushed it away really quickly. So if you entertain the thought and you dance with it a little bit, now you've gotten into sin, whether you put it there or not. But if the thought did not, in your mind, originate with you, if it was a thought that you really are thinking, I don't know how that came from me. There is some types of thoughts that many Reformed theologians and maybe non-Reformed guys, but I don't read too many non-Reformed guys.

And so, for example, thoughts of denying God completely. If you've ever had that thought in your mind, like, well, maybe Jesus isn't really God, you know, even just momentarily. Some people would say that that thought is something that is, in a sense, Satan whispered to you. It's not a thought you had. And so it's not something that you would need to repent of in the same way as other thoughts that may bubble up from within you, in fact.

Certain blasphemies against God. I've seen it suggested that suicide would be one of these, that God has created us with such a natural desire to live, a survival instinct in really in all creatures, right? I mean, even plants want to survive, don't they? And it's, you know, even without sentience, there's a sense that life wants to continue. So to want to commit suicide, even thinking about it, could be something that at least originates with Satan.

Once you eventually do it, that's your sin. And when I think about suicide in this context, I think of Judas is a prime example of a suicide in the Bible. And he was most certainly demonically influenced. The devil himself possessed him. And Saul committed suicide, King Saul, in the Old Testament. And I actually think that King Saul is a prototype of Judas.

He is a betrayer of God's anointed. And Saul was certainly tormented by an evil spirit. And so there are people in the Bible who their activities show a certain level of demonic influence at the very least. And so the devil tempts us sometimes, we'll say, by just whispering an idea in our mind. Turn to Jeremiah 7. It's an interesting commentary on sinfulness of man in Jeremiah 7, verse 30 and 31.

Does anybody have a King James Bible? Not that kind of church. Can you read Romans 1? 30 and 31 in the King James. And then we'll take a look at Jeremia 7.30. But in the ESV it says we're heartless and ruthless and faithless.

Romans 1 around verse 30 or 31, I don't remember exactly. It's describing reprobate people, people that hate God. Okay. Sure. To do those things which are not convenient. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of enmity, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whispers, backbite, haters of God, despicable, proud, boasters, avengers of evil things, disobedient to parents.

Without understanding covenant breakers, without natural affection, it is illusible and merciful to know in the judgment of God that which they commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do good. We know in our society, and that is the woman who would kill her own child in her womb. And so we have an epidemic in our culture of abortion.

And the idea that somebody hates their own child that much to murder them, I think is the kind of thing that almost requires demonic influence to get to that point. In Jeremiah 7.30, God's describing the people of Israel and the sins that they've committed. He says, the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares Yahweh. They have set up their abominations in the house that bears my name and so have defiled it They have built the high places of Topheth in the valley of Ben so they could burn their sons and daughters in the fire So child sacrifice is going on, and this is what God describes it as.

He says, something I never commanded, nor did it even enter my mind. So you have the omniscient God, the all-knowing God, the God who knows everything, It says, this thing did not even enter my mind. And so it's some kind of play on words to teach us that this is such an abomination, that this isn't even something that God considers conceivable. And yet people are doing it at a rate of thousands a day right around us.

And so I think it requires demonic influence. So I think the devil is certainly involved in influencing society. There's some temptations, a second type where he uses God's good creation. So the first one was that he suggests things I think is maybe less common because he's so good at just manipulating systems and getting us to follow. So in Job 1 verse 12, somebody want to read that?

We're going to look at just some of the devil's ability to use creation. And then Job 2.6, if somebody wants to read those two verses, that would be helpful. Job 2.6 The Lord said to Satan, Behold all that he has in your hand. Only against him do you not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out into the presence of the Lord. So in that case, God actually gives Satan power and authority to attack Job's home, attacks his stuff, and he ends up being able to cause this storm to occur, and the wind and the things that broke down the house killed his children.

How about verse 6 of chapter 2? And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand, only spirit of life. Can create nothing at all. All Satan can do is take what God has made and he can manipulate it. He can change it. He can make counterfeits of real things.

And so ultimately what Satan is doing is he's taking good things that God has made and he's twisting them so that they'll be either used improperly or used at the wrong time. So all sin has at some root of it something good that is required of us. And then Satan twists it in a way where now we do it in the way we shouldn't. So easy examples are, you know, we're supposed to wait till you're married to have sexual relations with someone.

It's a very good thing that God gave. It's one of the first things that's mentioned in the Bible there in Genesis 2, I think. You know, when it says they're naked and unashamed, I think there was more than just hanging out, all right? But listen, we've taken that, and by Satan's influence, we've taken a good thing that God gave, sex, and then we plaster it all over the place and do it at the wrong time with the wrong people and things like that.

And so it's always a good thing, and that's one of the things that makes it deceptive, is that there's always some root of good in all of the creation that God's made. And so we have to be able to discern how it's been twisted or made iniquitous. Any thoughts or comments on that? Experiences? What you just referenced, something I can see like God himself.

There's no really good in that, right? Yes. Yeah, but it was hard. Sin is the distortion. Yeah, but there's nothing good about burning babies, but the idea of bringing a sacrifice to God because he's worthy of worship and because God is someone we should come to and bring a sacrifice, that's a very good thing. Worship is an important thing, but what does Yahweh require of you, oh man, he does not require your firstborn son, Malachi 6-7.

And so we take good things like worship and under the influence of Satan's devices, we twist it and we do something that's still worshipful, but we either worship the wrong God or we worship the wrong way or we do both. The wrong God, the wrong way. So Satan promises everything God promises. He promises love, joy, peace, contentment, happiness, good worship.

He promises prosperity, fellowship. He'll promise a right standing with your creator, God. Everything that he offers does have behind it some good desire in the proper context. And his scheme is to make us use God's creation in the wrong way. So very rarely, I guess what I'm saying is you won't find pure evil somewhere. What you'll see is always some twisting of something good because everything God made was good.

In many examples, you have Nadab and Abihu in the Old Testament. Those were the two guys that brought the unauthorized fire or it called strange fire now before the Lord And they got burned They got killed They were worshiping and they were actually using correct elements of worship It's not like they showed up at the wrong temple, or they showed up with the wrong stuff. They brought the wrong stuff, or they brought the stuff at the wrong time.

They weren't doing it the way God had commanded. Balaam prophesied in the Old Testament. He did it with the wrong heart motives, even though he prophesied truly. And he did it for profit, and he didn't do it for God's glory. The golden calf, again, an example of people worshiping. They named it Yahweh.

They attributed the works of God to it. There was an element of worship there. And there's more. All of Jesus' temptations take something good and twist it. 1 Timothy 4.4 reminds us that everything that we receive, if we receive it with thanksgiving, it's good. And so we can eat all foods and things like that.

But we need to be discerning. Yes? 1 Timothy 4 passage is interesting because the teachings of demons there is telling people they can't eat certain foods. Yeah. You can't get married. Marriage.

Yep. That still happens today. Yeah. So that's an interesting passage because, you know, gluttony and fornication are the sort of unrightful indulgences. Good gifts God's given, but not in proper way. But Satan can go the other way too.

Yeah. Causing you to avoid a good thing that God's provided is not glorifying to him either. Right? So there's excess on both sides in a sense, right? Yeah, good point. I think we need to have a spirit of discernment in things too, though, because there's been times where I'm like, I don't know if this is a fiction or if this is, you know.

I like all types of music, and all music inherently sponsors non-dominant lyrics. I'm not necessarily bad at it. But there's been times where I'm like, okay, listen to that, I'm going to go to hell, listen to that. I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, yeah, I know. Yeah, I think that if the fear was we'd go to hell because we committed, we participated in something we shouldn't, then that would be a really dangerous ground to be on.

And so, you know, it's one of the reasons the gospel of salvation, the helmet in the, you know, We have the gospel that tells us that even when you sin unintentionally or intentionally as a Christian, you're still forgiven. But the Christian life is going to be a desire to try to put away things that aren't good for us. And you may feel conviction about certain lyrics of songs that probably you shouldn't be listening to or you shouldn't be supporting.

And then there. But I don't I don't I think some people start to. They don't like entire genres because of what it's associated with. I'm not sure the Bible gives us license to do that. And there we're talking about, you know, conscience issues. Yeah, so I had a seminary professor who said, you know that song before the Lord of God?

And it has that line, in the sacred tomb, speak to you in despair. He tells me how to go and then I look and see him there and made it into all my sin. He said that oftentimes he'll say that when conscience tends to be to despair. Because it may be that you feel like you can't do something because of who knows what. If it's not God's word. How do you think that Satan, you know, or through those means, causes the question?

I told my pastor before that we need to not take a Bible. So that way it has more modern day issues. Did you just read Sunday Bible? Modern day Bible, don't read it. It's probably terrible. I think what you said at first is the key.

We need to have discernment, and that requires study, effort, meditation. You have to inform your conscience with the truth of God's word. Especially with something like music or food or whatever. There's a lot you just pick up from culture, from other people's consciences. You have to have a sermon based on God's words. And there's context for a lot of things as well, where a particular behavior would be wrong in one circumstance, but not another because of what's going on.

So, knowing Satan's devices and the fact that he will use all these good created things to influence, though, is part of how we can start to be on guard. And so he will use the people around you at work. He'll use TV or social media, the music you listen to. He'll use the movies you watch to influence you. So it's just how he'll do it. He'll also, he'll also, or God will also use, for example, the people around you at work who are Christian.

He'll use your pastor. He'll use other church members and people that don't go to your church that are also Christian. And so we have power on both sides. It's working for and against us in a sense there. For us, for God, and against us by Satan. So Satan also uses lies and deception.

This is a big one for him. Ephesians 4.22 tells us that we're to put off our former way of life, our old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. Satan is called the father of lies by Jesus himself. And so Satan will use deception. And it's not always... Outright and clear deception.

Satan's device is to make you question things just a little bit. So if you remember in the Garden of Eden, what did he first say to Eve? Did he walk right up and say, you won't die if you eat that fruit? He started with what some people could just call, well, it's just an innocent question, it sounds like. Did God really say that? Right?

And he got Eve starting to think about something that's just a little bit off of just holding fast to what God had said. And then he started to introduce more. And so Satan's devices are going to be, in a sense, a slow fade. Most of you are never going to walk into a room and see a guy with horns and tights, you know, with raging and fire coming out his mouth.

I'm Satan, obey me. That's just not how he functions. He actually appeals to our desire for good. Turn to 2 Corinthians 11. I will assume that everyone in this room wants to do good. And I think even non-Christians, there's a sense of they know right and wrong and they want to do good sometimes.

I understand what total depravity is and things like that. But in 2 Corinthians 11, 13-15, Paul is exhorting the Corinthians to avoid these guys that he's calling false apostles because they are introducing themselves to the church to enslave people. And basically he says, for such men are false apostles. He says they're deceitful workers masquerading as apostles of Christ.

And so you have people who are actually showing up acting as ministers of the gospel. They're acting as people that are there to speak for Christ. And Paul's saying, even though everything they're saying might sound good, they might look good, and they might even be doing a lot of the things you'd expect them to do, they're false apostles. He says, no wonder that this occurs in verse 14, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

This is a reference to the fact that Satan will not walk into the room and actually look like all the grotesque pictures of Satan that have been drawn and all the images that have been put in movies of him as this nasty. Unattractive being. I've listened to the Bible, and in Genesis I've heard the Bible where they have Satan sound like this real evil, you know, slithery serpent.

He sounds really kind of creepy, and it's like, it's probably not what he sounded like. He probably was rather attractive. In fact, I read one guy that wrote a whole dissertation on how snakes look really beautiful on the outside. And he said that's why he became a snake or took on the form of a servant. But he says it's not surprising if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.

Their end will correspond to their actions. He appeals to our desires for good. And so you're a Christian. You're walking along. You want to do good. You hoping to do good You want to follow Jesus You want to lead people to Jesus You want to worship Jesus And Satan knows this And since he not going to capture you with an image of a naked lady or he's not going to capture you with some other thing like drunkenness or thievery, those things don't interest you anymore.

He knows you have changed desires. He not only has read the Bible, he's seen the change in you. He's seen you resist evil in your life. And so Satan comes along and he introduces good looking things that are masked in a way to make you think, well, this is a good thing. And so then you send your money to the preacher who said a lot of good things. You don't know the guy.

You don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And maybe you're supporting somebody that is secretly not practicing righteousness. Josh? We're reading J.C. Ryle's book, Holiness, right now. Okay.

I was just reading the chapter today on sin, and Ryle says, I fear we do not sufficiently realize the extreme subtlety of our soul's disease. We are too apt to forget that temptation and sin will rarely present itself to us in its true color. Yes. I am your deadly enemy, and I want to ruin you in hell forever. Oh no, sin comes to us just like Judas with a kiss.

And he goes on, he uses David as an example too. That narrative starts with David because he wasn't where he was supposed to be. And he eventually did stumble because he saw a naked lady. But what started that was, he should have been out of the world. He wasn't practicing righteousness. Right, and Rana concludes that paragraph by saying, you know, this is why, I mean, he's so bold as to say this is Satan's false words, but he quotes Hebrews 3.13.

Exhort one another daily, lest you need to be part of my sin and deceit. You need to be here. Amen. It sure would be convenient, though, if Satan could just be like, hey, I'm here to ruin you. How many things? How many things?

Well, convenience is not one of the promises with the gospel, but affliction is. So we'll suffer. We'll suffer. Even the hatred we have in our heart for sin, that's a good thing. It causes us to suffer as we're surrounded by it and then even tempted by it. It makes you loathe your old self.

Did you have more? No, I disagree with that. I just agree with that. I was nodding. Okay, yeah. I disagree, but yeah, I think a large part of Christian suffering is being sinned.

And not sinning the world around us. Yeah, and how better to identify with Christ, but to be a person who loves righteousness and hates sin, and then to be surrounded by it still. To see the root still in you. And then to know it's in you. Yep. Now that's real suffering.

So, you're suffering, but you're suffering that you may be conformed to His image, and you will be glorified with Him as long as you suffer with Him, according to Romans 8. So, Satan appeals to our desire for good. He also appeals to our desire for evil. Romans 7, 18. So, this is meant to give you a brief overview that He really has a lot of different ways He attacks us, and it's pretty much every direction.

If he can get you to get drunk and go to the bar on Saturday night he get you to go to false worship on Sunday morning He try to figure out a way to get you out of what you supposed to do If he can get you to continue in your sin he'll try to get you to rely on your own self-righteousness. And he'll in fact grant, Satan will grant you help to overcome vices in your life as long as he can ensnare you such that you won't glorify God as the result. So he appeals to our desire for evil, Romans 7, 18.

Good discussion, by the way. I know nothing good lives in me, Paul says, speaking of a saved man, I believe, who is still not yet dead. Nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. And praise the Lord that that's most of our testimonies. For many of us, that's how we feel now after some time as a Christian.

But Satan is a master psychologist in a sense. He knows how to use our own hearts against us. He knows our weaknesses better than ourselves. He can take somebody who doesn't want to do bad things, and he can get them to become the most prideful human being on earth if he wanted. He's good at manipulating. And so we need to know these devices, and then we're not going to get into them in detail today, We don't have a lot of detail today, but starting tomorrow we'll see how all of these virtues that God is basically telling us to put on in the armor of God are our defense against these various devices.

And we don't need to focus so much on Satan's devices if we're focused on putting on these virtues. We will become more able to sense his devices and fend them off. Finally, we don't have a lot of time left. He attacks the weak. So 1 Peter 5.8 is one of the verses listed there. Satan prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

And the imagery is this. It's not a lion who's looking at a big pack of antelope that are all hanging out together with the big strong antelope and the babies. It's the lion looking for the one that's 100 yards back away from the pack, I think. And the analogy, I believe, is for the local church. Satan's looking for people that either refuse to continue their attendance and participation in a local church, or whether it's volitional or whether it's somehow unintentional, they're just not as active as they ought to be.

He's looking for the people like that. They're the easier ones for him to tempt and pick off. They're the weak ones. And we're all weak, but if you're going to church every week, Taking communion, confessing sin one to another, listening to the preaching of God's Word, listening to God's Word read, listening to the prayers of saints, singing songs to one another at church.

You're a lot stronger than if you weren't doing that, even if we all confessed our weakness. How did he start? He started with Eve, right? Satan didn't go to Adam, the man. He didn't go to the stronger of the two sexes. He went to the woman.

He started with the weak at the very beginning, and he attacks in that way. And so we need to be aware of his devices. And it's not so much that, okay, so now since I'm a man, that means I'm strong and Janet's weak because she's a woman. The example with Adam and Eve was specific, but the point is he'll attack your weakness. He not coming at you with the thing you starting to really get good at He may but Satan is always attacking He knows how to attack the other thing that you're not even thinking about anymore.

1 Timothy 3, 6 through 7 will end there today. 1 Timothy 3, 6 and 7. Talking even about men who become pastors. Alright, so basically, we're all equal in God's eyes, but there's a pretty high calling to become a pastor. Alright, it's a special thing. It requires special abilities and giftings from God and grace from God.

He says he must not be a recent convert or he may become conceited and fall under the same condemnation as the devil. Furthermore, he must have a good reputation with outsiders so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the snare of the devil. And so in this passage, if you think about it for a minute, you have qualification after qualification of what a man has to achieve in order to be considered an elder in God's church.

And even if a guy had all the other ones, which are a lot, okay, so if a guy did all the other things well, even being a recent convert is enough for God to say, you know what, he's not strong enough yet to withstand the wiles of the devil that are going to attack a pastor. And I, Josh can amen me if he wants, and Larry and Charlie, that if, if you're ever sitting there unsure of what to pray about, pray for pastors. They will always need it.

And they understand, when I get up and talk about the devil, the pastors are like, yeah, I know that guy, you know. So, he hates pastors, he hates deacons, he hates women that show up at church and serve, he hates men that do the collection and pray at church, right Josh? Yeah. Yeah, Satan hates all of it. And so this is how we battle him. So, in conclusion to the introduction, we have an enemy who exists.

He is by nature unrelenting, unresting, and he's entirely opposed to our good. He's disposed to oppose us wholly and enthusiastically. He's accompanied by an entourage of demons. He's a master of deceptive, tempting devices. And we ought to humbly be willing and disciplined to put on this whole armor of God, knowing that we have such a formidable enemy.

And I will remind you that as formidable as he is, he's already been crushed by our God. So you can have complete and utter confidence that the good work that Christ began in you will be completed. And you can walk in newness of life knowing that. Let us pray. Father in heaven, help us to have discernment that we may know how to see the temptations of Satan.

Help us to understand your law and your goodness that we may be able to know what is required of us and what is forbidden. We pray that we would go out from here ready to share truth of Christ with those that we encounter. We pray that the children here this week would be affected by the gospel and that you would grant them faith in Christ. That even today children would be born again here in this building.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.