Have you ever heard the expression, “Keep your friends close to you and your enemies closer to you?” I don’t agree with that, but I do think that if I am devoted to loyalty to Jesus, giving some thought to how his enemy, Satan, tries to undermine our allegiance to Jesus makes sense. This episode identifies from Scripture some of the tactics Satan uses to get us to betray our Lord.
Today, we conclude our 4-part April series, Worthy of Our Allegiance. We saw numerous ways that Jesus summoned allegiance from the heart of Peter and took a practical look at what our Commander-In-Chief said was to be our highest priority—furthering the rule of his kingdom of righteousness in our own heart attitudes and over the earth that he claims as his own. We noted that despite the present feeling that we are losing at the moment, history shows that the resurrection not only happened, but that Christ’s kingdom has grown from a mustard seed to cover the earth, as Jesus said it would. Today we examine the way our Lord’s enemy seeks to undermine our allegiance to him. We identify four names of the Evil One that give clues about his strategy, examine Satan’s strategy against Eve and Job, and then what his temptations of Jesus can teach us.
SATAN’S IDENTITY GIVES CLUES ABOUT HIS STRATEGY
1. Father of lies. He (the devil) was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). The nature of sin is to darken our understanding, causing us to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. In contrast, Jesus said, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (Jn 8:31-32). The more biblical truth we know, the better equipped we are to go into spiritual battle and resist the lies of Satan that permeate our minds.
2. Adversary. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Pet 5:8). The name, Satan, is the Greek form of the Aramaic word for adversary. An adversary is an opponent who is hostile to you. Our calling is to seek the rule of Jesus’ kingdom of righteousness over our heart loyalties, heart attitudes, and every sphere of our lives. We are resisted every step of the way, by the prince of the rulers of darkness. We know from Scripture that Satan has already lost the spiritual war. But every time he gets a Christian to give up on God and pursuing righteousness, Satan wins a spiritual battle.
3. Accuser. The Greek word for devil, DIABOLOS, means accuser, slanderer. Revelation 12:10 describes the defeat of Satan, And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.” God created the human conscience as a dashboard for our hearts with warning lights that come on when we are about to sin or have sinned. The red lights flashing for pasts sins are a path to discovering the gospel, Christ’s forgiveness for our sin. When we repent and come to faith in Christ—the old flashing lights are destroyed. That is called grace—being and feeling fully forgiven. Then our conscience can work correctly, warning us of future danger, when we are about to sin. But one of Satan’s strategies is to accuse us night and day—even though the blood of Christ the Lamb has covered us. He knows that flashing lights of false guilt constantly on will cause us to hate the dashboard lights and steal our love for the creator of the dashboard. We need to be sure grace has traveled from our heads to our hearts, causing us to know we are fully forgiven. If we don’t, the moral law, instead of being a wonderful guide to life, becomes either a tyranny of legalism or forgotten guide neglected by antinomianism.
4. Destroyer. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit… In Greek he is called Apollyon (Rev 9:11). This name means destroyer. The same concept is conveyed when Satan is called a wolf and a lion. David Jeremiah in his book, The Spiritual Warfare Answer Book describes the intention of Satan to destroy. Satan is a great destroyer. He wants to destroy your life through adversity and by blocking the work God wants to see manifested in your life. Satan does that by discouraging you, by dissipating your time and energy, and by making a frontal assault on your weak areas that lead you to sin. Satan wants to disrupt your walk with God, ruin your testimony, and destroy your life.
CAUSING YOU TO DOUBT GOD’S GOODNESS
When we read God’s history of mankind—the Bible, we’ve barely gotten through creation in the first two chapters when we encounter Satan planting the one idea into Eve’s heart that is responsible for more human destruction than any other idea—the lie that God’s goodness can’t be trusted. When this wrong idea captured Eve’s heart, she rebelled, Adam rebelled with her, and humans have been rebelling against God and his law ever since. Satan’s chief strategy to inspire rebellion in Eve’s heart was to make her doubt God’s goodness. Let’s take a moment to study again this tactic of Satan used on Eve.
The Serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:2-5).
1. Notice that Satan actually begins the temptation by planting a complete fabrication into Eve’s mind, i.e. the possibility that this unfair God might have put all the delicious fruit trees in the garden just to make them miserable by not permitting them to eat ANY of them. His words, again, Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree. Even though God never said that, as Eve pointed out, Satan still planted the idea that God was the kind of being who could have done something so completely unfair.
2. Satan further undermined Eve’s confidence in God’s goodness by taking her focus off all the wonderful fruit God had given them to enjoy throughout the entire garden and directing her focus on one apparently unfair restriction. EVERY SINGLE other tree in the garden, with its lush fruit for Adam and Eve to enjoy proved God’s GOODNESS—his desire to bless them with GOOD gifts. Later, Jesus would remind us of this wonderful benevolent nature of God: Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:9-11).
3. Satan’s attack on God’s goodness continues, For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” Satan insinuates that: 1) God’s motive is selfishness—he is keeping something good from her and Adam, all to himself, i.e. the knowledge of good and evil, and 2) God’s moral law is fundamentally a restriction on our happiness. Both undermine her confidence in the goodness of God. The truth of course is that his law is given to us out of his goodness—to guide us into blessing. King David said, I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life (Ps 119:93).
Satan’s tactics to destroy the faith of Job are different—he has the power to inflict enormous physical, emotional, and spiritual pain on Job. But his strategy is the same—to try to get him to curse God instead of trusting him. Job learns some humility, but Satan fails. In the midst of unfathomable pain, Job, says, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him (13:15). And God’s goodness, hidden for a season of affliction, bursts forth, again in the closing chapter of Job with the words, And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job….And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before (42:10) Inscribed on the shield of faith we need to raise against Satan’s attack on God’s goodness are the words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” In the great 8th chapter of Romans, Paul argues:
- The Holy Spirit is FOR US: the Spirit himself intercedes for us (vs 26)
- The Father is FOR US: for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (vs 28).
- Christ is FOR US: Christ Jesus…who indeed is interceding for us (vs. 34).
In the midst of these claims, Paul asks rhetorically, If God is FOR US, who can be against us?
SATAN’S TEMPTATION OF JESUS
1. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Mt 4:3-4). I believe this is the temptation to use your power, abilities, or status selfishly to satisfy your physical appetites. I can not think of any instance in which Jesus used his miracle working power selfishly. The return of Jesus’ appetite after fasting meant that he would soon die if he did not eat. Israel wondered forty years in the wilderness, during which time, they had to trust God everyday for their bread—the manna God supernaturally provided. Jesus had fasted forty days. Somehow, Jesus knew that he would not be listen to “the words that come from the mouth of God,” if he used his power selfishly.
Stated positively, I believe Jesus is teaching us, always trust your physical appetites to God. Do not meet them in a wrong way but wait upon him to meet them. This has application to our masculine hunger for sex. When we have no wife, she is unavailable, or uninterested men can rationalize looking at porn for sexual release instead of choosing the harder path to communicate better with his wife, and wait upon God to satisfy his yearning. The same principle can apply to our need for physical rest. Most men I know return from work exhausted—and many wives do as well. Better to trust God with our need for rest and serve our wife than to be selfish. Again, this doesn’t mean being a martyr who is unwilling to talk frankly with our spouse about our mutual needs. That may be God’s solution for our need of relaxation or sex.
2. Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Mt 4:5-7). I believe this is the temptation to expect God to make his path for you easy. It would have been so much easier for Jesus to gain a following by jumping off the pinnacle of the temple—and God had promised that the angelic host would protect him.
The reason I believe this is the temptation is the background surrounding the Deuteronomy 6:16 text, which Jesus quoted warning Israel not to put God to the test. The Deuteronomy 6:16 text included the words as you tested him at Massah. That incident was recorded in Exodus 17:1-7, where we read, The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?...they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Saying, the Lord is not among us because he has not made our way easy seems to be what is in view in putting God to the test.
Once again, this seems so realistic to me. The way for the messiah to be crowned was the path of suffering. He humbled himself by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him (Phil 2:8-9). On my better days, I realize two things about complaining. First it is disloyalty to God who has ordained the circumstances of my life that I can’t control. Second, it is based on a lie that if God loved me, he would make my life easy.
3. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (8-10). I believe this is the temptation to let the greatness of the objective we are trying to reach cause us to make one small moral compromise. All Jesus would need to do is genuflect once—just hit the knee once. Think of all the good Jesus could do for the world if he ruled it, instead of Satan. Achieving the spiritual prosperity, we long for—the spiritual land of milk and honey—doesn’t come from being a pragmatist. In fact, we need to realize that prosperity doesn’t come from aiming for it. Rather, it is the by product of serving the Lord our God and worshipping him only. Achieving our great goals for God means less to him than obedience. To defeat this temptation, Jesus quoted a passage from Deuteronomy 6 that is preceded by the warning not to let the prosperity that God brings his people lull them into loving the prosperity!
And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. IT IS THE LORD YOUR GOD YOU SHALL FEAR. HIM YOU SHALL SERVE AND BY HIS NAME YOU SHALL SWEAR. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you (Dt 6:10-14).
Men are created to work—to be productive. God wants to bless that work with prosperity because fathers give good gifts to their children. But we must keep first things first, setting and keeping our affections on him—and never on the blessings. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Ps 37:4).
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Which of Satan’s names seems to you to most reveal his tactics and purpose?
- What did you learn about how Satan tries to undermine our confidence in God’s goodness?
- Which of Satan’s temptations to Jesus did you identify with most. How can you learn from how Jesus responded?
