The Prince of Darkness Grim

Our Father, we ask that you would be honored this morning, and that your rule would be extended this morning in our hearts and minds as your word is preached. We ask that you would feed us with your word through your Spirit, for we are hungry and needy. Forgive us, Lord, for the ways we at times do not posture ourselves to receive your word preached, and we pray that you would activate our minds and help us in the weakness of our flesh to receive from you and your spirit. Protect us from the devil who would want to distract us and pluck your word from our minds before we even leave this building.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Let me just ask, how does our culture normally think of the devil or when they hear the word Satan? Probably some picture like this comes up in their minds, a pitchfork and a horn and tail and, and things like that.

And there are people that are actually, quite frankly, shocked that there's still people in this modern world that believe in such a character called the devil. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Supreme Court Justice Scalia expressed his belief in The devil in an interview with New York Magazine. And have you guys heard about this? OK.

Some people have been talking about it. Most of the quotes that I've seen online, they take a little snippet, try to make Scalia look as foolish as possible. but Christianity Today picked up the article and quoted him more full. Jennifer Senior, the one who was interviewing him after he had admitted that he believed in the devil, she comes back and says, Isn't it terribly frightening to believe in the devil?

Scalia was shocked by Senior's incredulity, and he goes on to say this, you're looking at me as though I'm weird. Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the devil? Jesus Christ believed in the devil. It's in the Gospels.

You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the devil. Most of mankind has believed in the devil for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the devil. So I think it's pretty well put by one of the Supreme Court justices.

And yet, if we believe what Barna says, not even the majority of Christians today believe in the devil, whatever Christian means, according to Barna. 97% of evangelicals, according to an AOL, AP poll, believe in literal angels, which would include the devil in 2006. But it is important for us to consider this topic, Because Whatever people believe out in the world, the Bible is very clear that there is a being called the devil, there is a being called Satan. And he's not a nice guy.

And he's a very powerful individual. So I want to start us off with the definition. We're going to give some qualifications, then we're going to make basically 5 points. we're going to do a whole systematic theology of Satan in about 45 minutes.

All right? Let's start with a theological definition, and this is really our main point this morning, and that is that Satan is a real Personal, created spirit being. Who, having opposed God with demonic forces and human captives, has unwittingly performed God's decrees. There's a lot in here.

Let me just pick a little bit of this apart and then hopefully we'll expose it or exposit it in the message. First of all, Satan is real. Whatever Jennifer Senior wants to say, whatever people in the world want to say, the Bible is very clear that Satan is real. He's personal, which means he has relationships, he's relational.

He speaks, he moves, he relates himself to other beings. He's created. He's not a co-equal with God. he is a spirit being.

He does not take a form ordinarily. He is in the spirit realm. And he has opposed God both with his demonic forces and with the human captives that are in his realm called the domain of darkness. And even with all of that and all of his schemes and wiles, he unwittingly performs the decrees of God.

his greatest scheme was to kill Christ. And in doing that, he did exactly what God had ordained to be done. And so we need to take a look at this enemy if we want to be advancing in our warfare against darkness, if we want to extend the kingdom of God, it is important for us to know something of our enemy. We don't want to be obsessed with our enemy.

In fact, I want to offer this qualification with CS Lewis, as he says in the screw tape letters. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

They themselves are equally pleased by both airs and hail a materialistic or a magician with the same delight. It's interesting that in our culture today we really have both extremes. We have total materialists who their whole philosophy and worldview is just empiricism. If you can't sense it, if you can't taste it or touch it, it doesn't exist, and they just laugh at the concept of the devil.

And at the same time in our culture we have people that are very spiritual who are just obsessed with the devil. And all you gotta do is just look at Hollywood and see some of the movies that are coming out and it's interesting to me that I'm not a big horror film guy. I don't really like horror films. Anything that's too close to reality, I'm not too interested in.

but typically what you see, right? What, what, what do you, what do you get in these plots is there's some priest. Or some pastor that's shaking as he walks into a room and then these powerful demons come and like just whip up on everybody and, and the end, and the end story is normally that the devil's super, super powerful. One time I was down in Mexico, staying in a hotel, we're on a missions trip and we got to see a, a Spanish-speaking horror film.

And I'll tell you what, the, the Roman Catholics down there, they, they portrayed a little differently. this priest was just whipping up on the demons, and he was using his holy water and his cross and everything, and the demons were just running for cover. And I was like, what, I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I like this plot a little better. We need some good biblical Protestant movies that move in that direction.

Anyway, so we do want to, in this particular message we're not going to be able to get into every nook and cranny. This study will not be exhaustive, but it may exhaust you. we are not going to get into the origin of the devil. We're not going to get into the origin of evil, the problem of evil, where did evil come from?

If you want a good message on that, you can go to desiringgod.org. John Piper has a message called Why Does God Allow Satan to Live? It's an excellent message. what we're going to do is basically try to cover 5 basic points about the devil's relationships.

He's a personal being. We're going to talk about the way he relates himself to God, the way he relates himself to angels, to unbelievers, believers, and finally, Christ. And so let's first of all talk about Satan's relationship with the triune God. And the first thing that we would say about his relationship with the train God is that he is a created being.

Ezekiel chapter 28 is an interesting chapter because in Ezekiel, like so many aspects of prophecy, it's mysterious. Ezekiel starts to talk about a historical figure, the King of Tire, but then begins to look behind that historical figure to someone that is clearly not the king of Tyre. So he starts off in verse 12, about this lamentation over the king of Tire, but then in verse 13, he says, you were in Eden, the Garden of God. Well, the king of Tyre most definitely was not an Eden.

Every precious stone was your covering. On the day that you were created, they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian at cherub. I placed you.

You were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you. And just about every Christian theologian through the ages has seen this as speaking of the beginnings of Satan, his creation, the fact that he was blameless, and the fact that at one point, unrighteousness was found in him. So he's a, he's a created being.

So therefore, as a created being, he is not equal to the Creator. We can derive certain things from this doctrine about Satan. He is not omnipresent. He's not everywhere.

He can't be at all places at all times. He's limited to one place at a time, and, and we'll look at some other passages later that demonstrate that definitely. With the demons. he does not know all things.

He is not the yin and the yang. This is not a dualism in Christianity where you have this eternal struggle between these co-equal powers like Superman and Lex Luthor. No, this is God who is in control of all things, who has created an angel, who is rebelled against him as a created being. The second thing that we can say about the relationship of Satan to the train God is that Satan is controlled.

he is not out and able to do anything he wants. We see in the book of Job that he comes and presents himself before God, and has to ask permission of God to have anything to do with Job, right? We're going to look at what he says about Peter a little bit later. When Jesus shows up on the scene, we'll look at it right here.

Jesus says to Peter, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission. Some translations say he has asked to sift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you, when, once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. So the devil in the spirit realm, and we don't understand the spiritual realities, but the devil had come and said, I want to go after Peter.

And Jesus Christ, obviously is God is aware of this and says, but I've prayed for you, Peter, and you don't have to worry. When you come back, here's what you're going to do. And so the devil had to go through the proper permissions to be able to have anything to do with Peter. Everywhere Jesus is going, you find demons or demon possessed people just falling on their knees before Christ and proclaiming Him as Christ, begging him not to condemn them before their time, asking if they can go into swine or what have you.

In Luke 4:41, demons also came out of many crying out saying, You are the Christ, the Son of God, and he rebuking them, did not allow them to speak, for they knew that he was the Christ. So the devil and his minions are underneath the powerful control of God and Christ. We don't have two coequal forces who are arm wrestling. This is a popular picture that you'll see online.

And I guess one of the positives of this picture is you don't see Jesus straining, so maybe they're trying to show that he's not straining in this arm wrestling match. At the same time, the devil looks pretty buff, and so you're like, OK, who's going to win, the good side or the bad side? And no, this, this would be just, Jesus would have a finger up. there's just no comparison.

The devil would be groveling before Christ saying, can I please, can I please? That's the picture that we have of the devil before Almighty God. And then thirdly, Satan is already condemned. Jesus, in fact, the first John says that the Son of God appeared for this purpose.

This isn't the only purpose, but clearly this is an important purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. We see in Revelation chapter 12, this is a really crazy chapter to get your mind around because there's, there's replays of the past and then there's you're shooting out into the future, but at least here in Romans 12:9, we see, so the great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old called the devil, and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ has come for the accuser of the brethren who accused them before God, Dan Knight has been cast down. And wherever we place this in the history of redemption, at the very least, this, this guarantees the defeat of Satan, right?

he is a defeated foe. He's running around, trying to Continue his rebellion, but we know that his, his defeat is sure. even when we just consider the lake of fire and its purpose in the sheep and the goats passage in Matthew 25, Jesus says, then he will also say to those, or this is speaking of Jesus, he will say also to those on his left hand, depart from me, you cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for whom? The devil and his angels.

So there's a fire that has been created by God that is everlasting. We call this the lake of fire in other places. And the very purpose for which it was created was for the devil, the devil and his angels. It's a place where he is going to live forever and ever and ever, as we see in Revelation chapter 20.

And so he is a defeated foe. He is condemned. As an aside, the whole concept that somehow the devil controls hell, it's his realm, like Far Side cartoons. He's the one down there poking people.

I have really no clue where that came from., some medieval writings, I'm not sure. But hell is for the devil. It's his pun place of punishment. We're gonna see in a little bit here that the devil has some realm on the earth.

But God is the one that throws people into hell. His angels, his elect angels throw people into hell. the devil will be thrown into hell. It's not some realm that he rules, where he's down there, punishing or poking souls or whatnot.

I should have brought up a Far Side cartoon. Secondly, so, so how does God relate Himself? To how does the devil relate himself to God? He is a crushed enemy.

He's created, right? He's controlled. but the devil also has relationships with other created beings, other angels, and we'll just talk about this quickly, that Satan, first of all, rules over fallen angels. we see that he has called in places the ruler of demons, Belzebub, a title that used to be used of a Philistine God, but then over time, God began to be applied to the devil himself as a ruler.

of demons. We see these types of words being used on the pages of scripture. and then the devil also relates himself to elect angels. And just one such passage where we see this type of relationship, between Michael, for instance, and the devil and Jude 1:9.

Jude says, yeah, Michael, the archangel in contending with the devil when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring an accusation or against him a reviling accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke you. There's some mysterious stuff going on here that's difficult for us to figure out. But at the very least, one of the things that we see here is that Michael, who's a pretty heavy dude, respects the power of the devil. And doesn't try to revile Satan.

In fact, he calls upon the Lord to do the damage. And part of the lesson that Jude's trying to point out here is these false teachers over here are trying to do face to face battle with the devil, and that's stupid because Michael doesn't even do that. And this can be implied in all kinds of ways today with people who are trying to practice spiritual warfare and the way that they're trying to command demons and things like that. Learn from Michael, this guy is a powerful dude.

You don't want to mess with them. But Christ is so much more powerful. So just hang with your buddy Christ, right? Hang with Jesus, Jesus will take care of them.

Don't try to face him face to face. So that's the relationship that we see on the pages of scripture between Satan and the angels. Thirdly, Satan's relationship with unbelievers. we see that Satan rules the world in some sense.

First John 5:19 says the whole world lies in the power of the evil 11 translation says the whole world lies in the lap of the evil one. He is called by Jesus the ruler of this world in John 14:30. And so in some sense, Satan has jurisdiction over this realm, until at least he's bound for 1000 years, right, in the bottomless pit, then he'll be released again, we'll look at that a little bit later. And then he'll be cast into the lake of fire.

But for now, he, he roams in this realm, And he is ruling the world. When we use the term world here, we're not talking about like the Earth and the planets and the stars. We're not talking about nature. He's ruling the bears and the birds and the bees.

We're talking about this world system, this evil world system that is opposed to God, right? There's an organized system. And, and the devil is one that has schemes and he has wiles. And so he has some strategy and with that he has organized.

He's organized in opposition. He's, he's an adversary against God. And so he has some control. and we see this.

In just our next point, the fact that part of his control involves the captives that he has taken. he, there are people that are taken captive by the devil. Now people are taken captive in a couple of different senses. One, people are born into the domain of darkness, right?

Colossians tells us that people need to be moved from the domain of darkness into light, and that happens by being born again. If you're not born again, you're in the domain of darkness. So anybody who's not born again is captive to the devil. So in one sense, everybody's captive to the devil if they don't know Christ.

and then there's also that there's also people who can be especially oppressed or possessed by the devil and attacked by him. In 2 Timothy 2, verse 24 and following, there Paul gives some instructions to Pastor Timothy about how to deal with false teachers. He says, and the Lord's bond service must not be quarrelsome. And actually, let me not say false teachers, those who Timothy is trying to instruct in the ways of the Lord, but they're opposing him.

They haven't got the, they haven't come to see the truth yet. So he says the Lord's bond servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all able to teach, patient when wronged. With gentleness correcting those who are in opposition. So Timothy, be gentle with those that are in opposition to your teaching.

If God perhaps may grant them repentance, leading them to the knowledge of the truth. And they may come to their senses. And here's the point we want to focus in on an escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. Think about what he's saying.

Timothy, you're, you're teaching the gospel and you have people that are opposing your teaching, and it could be very tempting to just get really riled up and to get impatient and to not be gentle. But Timothy, just know that first of all, God has to grant them repentance. And so yes, they are responsible for their choices, but we're waiting for God. We're waiting for the Holy Spirit to grant them the ability to respond to the preaching of the gospel.

Secondly, realize that these folks are in a snare. You guys know what a snare is, right? You think of these big old huge bear traps that will catch big animals or what have you. People are captured by the devil, and they have been captive to do his will.

The devil has a will, he has a volition. And people that oppose the gospel are doing his will, partially because they're captive. They're in chains, and they don't have any other choice. This totally runs against the grain of what the average person in the world wants to believe about themselves.

Just take the average American. Who rebels against the truth and rebels against the church and Christianity, they think they're running around free and they have a free will and they're running around doing whatever they want. The reality is, the epistemological reality is, is they're bound. By the devil to do his will.

And when we're speaking the gospel to them, we're not just dealing with logical consistency. We're not just trying to help them see the logic of the Christian worldview. We're not just trying to provide rationalistic or empirical arguments for the Bible. We're this is a spiritual warfare.

We're dealing with God who must grant repentance and who must break the bonds of demonic captivity. And so people that you're engaged in conversations with, think of your unbelieving family members or workmates or friends. This is not just let's have a logical conversation. These are people that are captured by the devil to do his will.

And so that should, that should work in our hearts, actually compassion for them, right? We should hate the devil for it, right? And it should make us vigorous in our fight against his kingdom. But we should actually find welling up in our hearts, a compassion for, think about it, a compassion for atheists, a compassion for those that are opposed to biblical marriage, a compassion for people that are rebelling against God's design.

Right, because they've been taken captive. And so Satan rules the world and he has taken captives. And he also uses deceivers. So he takes some of these people who he has captured, and then he begins to use them for his purposes.

He uses them to spread his lies. For instance, 1 Timothy chapter 4. Again, Paul speaking to the pastor Timothy, he's prophesying here when he says, now the Spirit expressly says, That in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. What are doctrines?

This is teaching. There's, there's, there's teaching that's going on. It's, it's, it's emanating from demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. Now Paul gives an example of some of the things that they're teaching forbidding to marry.

Don't get married. And many times in history, people have been taught to not get married because it will make you more holy. Other times people say don't get married because then you can live it up and really enjoy life. Forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God has created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

And he goes on to argue that all foods are good if they come from God. It's interesting to me that both in biblical times you had people trying to argue about certain dietary regulations that were supposed to make you more holy. If you didn't eat this and if you didn't eat that, then you could be more holy and more righteous before God. That's still going on today.

It's interesting to me, it seems like it's taking a new form, and I'm, I'm somewhat surprised at how many young people I run into. that are really, really caught up in a gospel-like fervor over not eating meat. Or some such type of dietary regulation. Now I don't want to suggest that there's no good reasons for vegetarianism or there's no reasons to not do this or not do that, but there I'm discerning a religious fervor in our culture of gospel-like intensity where this seems to be an issue for some people that is the issue.

And if you eat this type of food and if you eat that type of food, you're damaging the environment and it's a terrible thing to do to animals and you're going to die early and God, and then they throw it and God doesn't want you to do that. And Paul comes along here and says this, there's nothing new about this stuff. There's nothing new about any of this. These all, all these types of teachings have an origin and, and the devil has his people.

Paul, when he left the church at Ephesus, he told the guys there, the elders, he said, Now when I leave, here's what's going to happen. Wolves are going to come in from outside. Seeking to devour the church, and they're going to rise up from within, and they're going to seek to devour. And the elders and the pastors were given a charge by Paul.

And to this day, elders and pastors are given the charge to watch out for, for demonic movement from without, and from within. Those that would want to gain a hearing from out and come and teach things that are contra contradictory to the gospel, and those that would want to come from within and teach things that are contradictory to the gospel. We are called to be vigilant and be aware of the devil's activities. and to realize that, what, we're not super smart.

We need to be careful and realize that the devil's been doing this for a long time, as AW Tozer says, the devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still. He knows what he is doing. And he's not so dumb to just come straight out and feed you a lie. I remember that, one of the first times I preached the gospel in front of a, a larger audience, I think I was probably 18 or 19, I was playing in some music band and got up real nervous to share the gospel and I was thinking 3 or 4 sentences ahead of myself and everybody's smiling.

Look at this young guy up there preaching the gospel. And then I said, and you need to receive the devil into your heart. And I had no idea that I had said that. I just all of a sudden everybody stopped smiling.

And afterwards somebody had to tell me what I just said. I was thinking 3 or 4 sentences ahead, got my words all mixed up. And so somebody could have easily come up to me and said deceiver., the devil does his crazy work, but we need to understand that as smart as we think we are, This guy is this guy's a smart guy. And we need the gospel.

We need each other. We need our pastors. We need the spirit as we try to resist Him. Let's talk about 1/4 thing.

So we've talked about how Satan relates himself to the triune God. He's got a relationship with angels, both elect and fallen. Unbelievers. He's controlling this world, right?

And he's taking captive people and he's actually using false teachers to go out and spread his doctrines of demons. But then how does he relate himself to believers? I want to suggest three different things we could talk about more. But one of the things that he does is he seeks to discourage us.

Seeks to discourage believers. And in 2 Corinthians, we get a hint at this, but it's a, we're gonna kinda come in through the back door here. Do you guys remember, the Corinthian church had fallen into, Antonomianism, meaning like, we're just going to be merciful and gracious. And yeah, there's a guy over here who's in sexual immorality, and he hasn't repented, repented, and he keeps coming into our meetings and hearing the word preached and he's partaking of communion, but we want to be loving, so we're going to keep him here.

Paul says, don't do that. Kick him out of your church, deliver him unto Satan. When Paul says deliver him unto Satan, the idea is put him outside of the protection of the Church of God and its pastors, so that the devil can deal with him in his realm with the hope that he'll be driven back to the fold. And that's exactly what happened is this guy gets driven back to the fold, but then there's another error that the church seems to start to fall into, and that is legalism.

This guy wants to come back and repent, and from the text here it appears that they're, they're laying it on thick and they're being pretty harsh. And so Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2, starting in verse 6, this punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man. So, so that on the contrary, you ought rather to forgive and comfort him, less perhaps such one be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore I urge you to affirm your love to Him.

And then as we, as we look at the grammar and see the context, skipping over to verse 11, you need to affirm your love to him. Why? L Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. I, I hear that, I've used that term so many different times, we are not ignorant of his devices.

But the context here is that Paul is arguing that the Corinthians need to show mercy to a repentant brother, lest he get too sorrowful. And, and the devil take advantage of that situation. How could the devil take advantage? Well, he could discourage this guy who's come and he's repented.

he could also build within the church a sense of righteous indignation that's not justified. These guys could become more and more legalistic and haughty in their judgmentalism, like, wow, we really showed him we better keep it and lay it on thick, otherwise he's going to go sin again. and so Paul seems to recognize both dangers, the antinomian danger of, hey, well, this guy's in our congregation, he's in sin, but it doesn't really matter. And then the other danger of legalism.

And so Paul warns them of this, this discouraging effect that Satan can bring about. Another thing that the devil's in the business of doing is deceiving us. Peter was such a one that fell into this type of deception, so much so got off track of, of the real purpose for Christ, that he begins to rebuke Christ and Christ has to turn to Peter and say, get thee behind me, Satan, you've now been duped by the devil, you're in alignment with his plan, not with my plan. And so this can happen to believers.

I want to just use one example. There's so many different examples we could use, but I want to use the example of 1 Corinthians 7:5. I'd ask you to open up there if you don't mind, or you can read it on the screen. But 1 Corinthians 7:5.

And just this is a fascinating passage. The context here is Paul's talking about singleness and marriage, and while he's been commending singleness for the reasons of you can serve the Lord and so on and so if the Lord grants you the ability to remain single and not you're not struggling with temptation to desire, that's a good thing you're married to Christ, so on and so forth, but for the vast majority of us, it's, it's good for you to get married. And as you're married, do not deprive one another sexually.

And so he says in verse 5, do not deprive one another except with consent for a time that you may give yourself to fasting and prayer.

And come together again so that I would have never thought to say this. I don't think I would ever have thought to say this. think about it. Husbands and wives, make sure you guys are practicing good marital faithfulness in your sexual relationships.

You guys want to get together and pray and fast for a little while, that's fine as long as it's not too long. Come back together and have your sexual relationships before the Lord. This is, this is created. This is good by, it's created by God.

But here's why. That I, I don't want you to stay apart too long so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. A couple of interesting things there. One, Paul doesn't have a whole lot of faith in us.

He's like, you guys don't have very much self control. And I don't think Paul's just speaking to the Corinthians here. He's by the Spirit, speaking something that's true of, of humanity, and even in Holy Spirit filled Christians, that God knows something about you, that you're made in a certain way to fulfill marital duties in a godly way. And that when you're not fulfilling those marital duty duties, that you are prone to temptation, and the devil knows that.

And he can tempt you. Now some of the single people are just like, what the heck? Why would anybody not want to continue their marital relationships? But all you married people are like, yeah, I can understand why that's a temptation.

There's things that happen in life, right? Kids, and there's all kinds of stuff. You get mad, at each other and anger and, here's just the example of prayer and, and stuff like that, but And I, I just think on the pages of scripture, There is an argument that can be made that the devil, one of his schemes is to attack sexuality, human sexuality in general, but also sexuality within the church, and within marriages. and so he knows where to attack.

And Paul knows that the Holy Spirit knows that. And so he's saying, hey, prayer and fasting, that's great, you guys, but get back and have relationships. There's nothing ungodly about that. And in fact, that's a godly spiritual thing.

And it's good, and it'll protect you from the devil. We need to receive that message, brothers and sisters. Malachi chapter 24 to 6, 14 to 16. Here's one of the reasons why I, I think this is such a big deal, both from God's perspective, and then, and then we'll evolve, we'll develop here why it's such a big deal from Satan's perspective.

Malachi's given a prophecy to the Israelites, northern tribes, but you say, Why does he, why does God not regard my offering? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? That's an interesting verse.

And what was one God the one God seeking? What was it that God was seeking in bringing a husband and wife together and making them one? Answer godly offspring. How, what is this?

What is, what is going on here? What is God's program for the development of His kingdom? I think we see some profound things here. God is the one that has created marriage.

God is the one that has created sexuality between a man and a woman. He wants to bring a man and a woman together to develop families. He's put within us this godly desire for sexual relationships that we'd enjoy one another, be able to express our love for one another the way God expresses His love for Israel and Christ for the church. And then as we are brought together, we produce children, godly offspring.

Why does God want godly offspring? God wants godly offspring to spread His love and kingdom throughout the world. The devil does not want godly offspring. The devil wants to destroy godly offspring, and there's lots of ways he can destroy it.

He can destroy it by getting parent, mom and dad not to have sexual relations so they don't have kids. You wonder how many, I wonder how many kids have not been born because mom and dad held a grudge for years and so kids were not born. God desires godly offspring. how many kids' lives have been tragically thrown into a circle, an endless circle because of adultery, because of fornication that affects marriages?

Rio de Janeiro, you go down to Brazil, one of the most godless countries in the world, there's 500,000 street children at the last tally. Why do we have 500,000 street children in Rio de Janeiro? It's because of immorality, prostitution, fornication. It's one of the sexual capitals of the world where people fly in to go in and just have free sex, unfettered sex without consequences.

Yeah, no consequences. 500,000 street children, 4-year-olds sniffing glue on the street. That's part of the devil's plan for children. That's part of the devil's plan for families.

We had a lady who was sharing her testimony in our Sunday school class last week how at 9 years old, her dad left the home and went off, committed adultery, went and left with another woman, sent her life reeling. She got into drugs and all kinds of terrible things for years and years, decades. Her life was just in ruin till the Lord reached down and saved her. How many homes God desires godly homes.

He desires godly offspring. He desires to see His kingdom spread throughout the world so that His glory can be spread. If pagans want to go and stop having children, if pagans want to go stop and commit fornication and adultery. But God desires godly offspring.

there's cults that recognize this false religions. Islam knows it. Islam is taking over the world with its ungodly offspring. Mormonism knows it.

They're taking over America with their offspring. Christians don't completely get this, that this is part of the plan. God has a plan, and the devil has a plan. And part of that plan involves the spread of godly offspring through this thing called marriage, and sex is key to the whole thing.

So why is God, why is going out, why is God or why is the devil going after people with fornication, adultery, masturbation, homosexuality? Why is that the attack of the day? It should be obvious. The devil hates godly offspring.

God wants godly offspring. This is part of where the battle rages, and it's been raging since the garden. This is not new to our age. And so the devil's in the business of deceiving.

And then ultimately the devil's in the business of devouring. He doesn't just want to deceive, he wants to devour. He wants to devour us as a lion devours its meal. But we are called to be sober and diligent.

are vigilant, and we can resist him as we stand in the gospel. And so that brings us to our final point, and that is Satan's relationship with Christ. As we, if we were to consider our relationship with the devil all by ourselves, we would be in a mess, right?, Mighty Fortresses our God. It's an interesting hymn that we sing, like, That whole song is about the devil, right?

it's about God, but it's about God and the devil. he says, for still our ancient foe to seek to work as woe. His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate on earth is not as equal. That that line is not about God.

That's about the devil. On earth, there is no equal to the devil. And then he goes on in the next verse. Did we in our own strength confide?

Our striving would be losing, we would, we would lose. We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Just ask who that may be Christ Jesus, it is he, Lord Sabbath, his name from age to age, the same, the same, and he must win the battle. That's Old King James for he's going to win.

There's just no doubt about it. He's the winner. And so as we consider Satan's relationship with Christ, we see that first of all, Satan failed to destroy Christ. In Revelation chapter 12, back in that mysterious apocalyptic scene, we see this dragon that's coming out that tries to swallow up the child and the child is referring really to the birth of Christ.

This woman who would be Israel as being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great fiery red dragon having 7 heads and 10 horns and 7 diadems on his head. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to earth, and the dragon stood before the woman.

It was ready to give birth, to devour her child as soon as it was born. She bore a male child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Who's that? Christ, and her child was caught up to God in his throne.

So in that one little section, we see, really, virtually all of Old Testament history. is that the devil was all about trying to just destroy Israel, knowing that this child is coming, this child is coming. And then when Mary becomes pregnant, he's, he's after the child through Herod and so many different means. And God is guiding through angels and all kinds of ways, and the devil fails.

He tries to destroy Christ, and he can't. And then he tries to kill Christ, thinking that he has succeeded in the ultimate powerful move. And yet he does exactly what God had designed. God had ordained it.

In fact, now we can't, I was going to turn to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2, can't remember where it is like 44 somewhere in there. you see right there that God had predetermined that Jesus Christ would die on the cross. And so these guys that went and put him on the cross, they did exactly what God had predetermined to do.

And so the devil and all of his, his wiles and his scheming just goes about and just falls right into God's plan. You ever see, some of those old comedies where the bad guy is just always falling in to the plan that the good guy has already set up? That's what the devil's doing. In a very scary sense, this is a comedy, right?

The devil's out trying to do everything he can to destroy God and His plan, and then he trips over and falls in and does exactly what the Lord wants. And God wins in the end. He tried to tempt Jesus. And it utterly failed.

Hebrews 4:15. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but was in all points tempted as we, and yet without sin. You and I have been tempted numerous times by the devil and his demons. We'll talk about that phrase in a second.

And, and we have failed, but Jesus Christ never failed. He never failed one time and, and praise be to God, we are dressed in His righteousness. Now, the reality is, is the likelihood is, is that nobody in this room has ever been personally tempted by the devil. When the Bible speaks many times of the devil, it's using a figure of speech called a metonym where the devil's representing all of his minions.

It's almost like saying, General Patton attacked Hitler. OK, if I say General Patton attacked Hitler, we don't picture Patton and Hitler duking it out, right? It's General Patton sent forces into Germany and attacked Hitler's forces. And many times when the Bible uses the term Satan or the devil, we're talking about a real person, but that term is being used metaphoric or in a figure of speech to speak of the devil's forces, his demons.

The likelihood is you and I have, we are tempted and tried. Hundreds of times by demons. But Christ went face to face with the devil. And one And one on our behalf.

So he was tempted and succeeded. And Satan will ultimately be crushed by Christ. This was promised back in Genesis chapter 3, even in the fall in the sin of Adam and Eve. Where God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, speaking to the serpent between your seat and her seed.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. He's going to crush your head, devil. And even the death of Christ on the cross is nothing more than a bruise of the heel. That's what Jesus Christ was prophesized to do, and that's what He has done, and He will one day throw the devil into the lake of fire.

In Revelation chapter 20 you can open there quickly. I don't want to read this. At length Revelation 20, starting in verse 2. The angel laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old who is the devil and Satan and bound him for 1000 years, and he cast him into the bottomless pit, shut him up.

And set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till 1000 years were finished, but after these things he must be released a little while. Now when the 1000 years have expired, Satan will be released from prison. He will go out and deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They will, they went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and there's a huge battle that breaks out.

It goes on for years and years and years, 100 year war. No. Fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured him. End of story.

Then because these are ultimately eternal beings in the sense that they will live forever, the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever the end. That's the destiny of your adversary and mine. He will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. And we will praise Almighty God, and we will praise Jesus Christ for his punishment of this evil, evil being.

How can we finally Resist the devil. I'm going to leave a lot of this just for your care group discussion. But some things from the, from the scriptures pray. Part of the Lord's Prayer is that we would ask the Lord to lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from, I think best translation, the evil one.

Deliver us from the evil one. This is a prayer that we should pray regularly. Just about every night I pray for my kids and I say, Lord, I pray that you protect them from the enemy, the devil. That you would cause them to extend your kingdom and to do great damage to our enemy's kingdom.

Despite every night, I pray something similar to that. Not just that they would be able to resist the devil, but they, they would do damage to the devil. And that God would use them to do damage to His kingdom. Romans 16:20 says that the devil will soon be crushed under our feet.

That we will actually be used by Christ to crush the devil's works. Secondly, believe the gospel, all that gospel, all that armor stuff in Ephesians 6, those are all just synonyms for the gospel. Just believe, trust that Christ has been tempted and yet has survived, and that we, like, like Zechariah's picture in Zechariah, I think chapter 4, we've been dressed in that righteousness. Our adversary has been sent away, and we are dressed in that righteousness.

And people, the devil may accuse us, but is there anything that can separate us from the love of God? In Romans 8, no, neither principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of our Lord. And then thirdly, stay within the flock. this is something as American Christians we need to hear because so often we have this individualized concept of our Christianity and as part of the homeschool movement this is really rampant throughout homeschoolers.

We all like get together in our little home school clubs and we talk, we talk about the Bible and talk about things that we're all going to do as a home school community and then we like almost belittle the church. Well, the Bible's real big on the church. Jesus is real big on the local church. The devil's real big on attacking the local church and getting people away from the local church.

The Bible says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as is the manner of some. That's not just go have your own little personal Bible study with the people you like. That's come together into the local church and stay within the flock. What happens to sheep that get separated from the flock?

They're targets, right? And even if there's a few sheep off away from the flock, they're targets of the devil. So learn what the Bible says about being The flock, and then, and then lastly, submit to your shepherds. God has placed pastors and churches for a reason.

According to Acts chapter 20, 1 of the reasons is so that pastors can protect the flock from wolves from within and wolves from without. What does that say about the sheep? Part of what that says is that we need pastors. We need We need shepherds.

All of, all of us in this room have been given different gifts, but Jesus Christ Himself has given the gift to the church of pastors and teachers, and one of the reasons he's given pastors and teachers to the church is so that they can protect the flock from deceivers and even protect, help protect us from ourselves, because we have remaining sin. And so it's to your advantage to stay within the flock and to be underneath your shepherds. Hebrews 13:17 says, Obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls as those who must give account.

Let them do so with joy, not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.

And so this is, these are some of the ways that we can resist the devil together in prayer, in the gospel, in this flock, and then thank you, Lord, for placing us in a place where we have shepherds that are looking out for us. I'd encourage you to be in prayer. For this church, how can you pray for our church in light of this morning's message? We'll be praying this afternoon.

We're going to be praying next week, Sunday evening, so we can pray for the families of this church. We pray for the marriages, the children, the godly seed that God desires to see grow up. The past, pastor's protection from the devil. There's so many things that we can be praying for, for this church.

Let's go ahead and go to prayer right now. And we'll have the guys come on up to To lead, lead us in song. As we do, we'll also have a time for our offering. we'll have our men and women come on down to take up our offering.

This is part of our worship as we give from the resources that he has provided to provide for the spread of the kingdom to this local body. for providing the sustenance of its pastors, it's preachers, to minister to the poor in our community, minister to this congregation. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you so much for your word.

We pray, Lord, that You would cause it to sink deep in our hearts, protect us from the devil that would want to take it away before we even leave this room. We thank you, Lord, that we do not need to fear our enemy, though he is strong, and though he is mighty, and though we dare not face him ourselves, Christ is our mighty warrior, and he will defeat our foe, and he will crush him under our feet. We thank you, Lord, for how your word gives us comfort. While we are warned this morning, and while there may be good reason for us to tremble, There is good reason for us to have joy and hope.

We thank you and we long for that day that you will complete your work, that you will extend your kingdom, that you will rule over the entire world, that the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire with all of his minions. Be with us the rest of this day. Hear our praises now, receive our offerings in Christ's name we pray. Amen.