Would you turn tonight to Luke chapter 10 to begin, Luke chapter 10. We have an audience from coast to coast listening live via satellite via CSN. Would you please say hello to them, welcome them in the name of the Lord? (cheers)
Several famous people were asked what they felt was the saddest word in the English language. The poet T. S. Eliot answered, "The saddest word in the English language is of course the very word itself saddest." Lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II said, "It's the word but, the small little negative contraction." John Keaths, "Forlorn. The very word is like the toll of a bell." Psychiatrist Carl Meninger said, "The saddest word is the word unloved." Statesman Bernard M. Baruch said, "The word hopeless is the saddest word." Alexander Tolstoy said, "The saddest word in all languages which has brought the world to its present condition is the word atheism." Certainly it's the most hopeless condition of all. Let me suggest that perhaps the saddest word in the language might be the word Satan. Certainly his existence and entrance into history has caused such pain and wreaked such havoc worldwide historically, has done so and will continue to do so. According to the Bible, Satan is the evil one. He is the father of lies. He is the murderer from the beginning, he's the accuser of the brethren, he's the tempter, he is the destroyer. Now it goes without saying that if somebody doesn't believe in God, i.e., an atheist, they probably aren't going to believe in the devil. In fact, that group would say, "The devil is simply a figment of guilty imagination. You had to concoct that up just like you concocted God up and projected him outward, those with guilty consciences and want to explain things like their guilty conscience and evil, relegated to Satan." As the philosopher Carl Yung said, "Satan is simply an archetypical example of evil."
There was a Christian lady who lived next door to an atheist and this Christian lady loved to pray out loud and her neighbor often heard her pray. And he'd listen to her and being an atheist the thought, "What? Is she crazy? There is no God, this is stupid." And so he would even like knock on her door and harass her, say, "You're crazy. Why are you praying? There is no God. Give it up." But she continued to pray and one day her groceries ran out and in typical fashion she prayed aloud that God would provide all the groceries she needed. Well, her neighbor is hearing this and he thinks, "Hmmm, I'm going to fix this gal once and for all." So the atheist goes out, buys her bags of groceries, goes over to her house, puts it on the doorstep, knocks on the door, hides in the bushes. The Christian lady opens the door, looks down and sees the groceries and shouts, "Praise the Lord. Thank you Jesus! You have provided. I knew you would." And just then the atheist jumps out of the bushes and says, "You crazy old woman, God didn't give you those groceries. I bought them for you." Then she really gets excited. She jumps up, walks and runs down the street, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" The atheist runs safter her, catches her and says, "What is your problem?" She says, "I knew God would provide me with the groceries I needed but I didn't know he was going to make the devil pay for them." Love it.
The age in which we live is marked by certainly atheism, agnosticism, relativism, but also it is marked by a sense of spirituality. It's like parallel lines, disbelief and this odd generic belief of some kind. USA Today did a report on teenagers and said that ninety-five percent of American teenagers believe in at least one supernatural phenomenon. Of that ninety-five percent, seventy-four percent believe in angels, fifty percent believe in ESP, twenty-nine percent believe in witchcraft, twenty-five percent believe in ghosts and sixteen percent believe in the Lochness monster.
Now the Bible tells us that there is a God, he has a Son, there is a Holy Spirit that trinity functions together, all three persons. It tells us of the origin of man. But it also tells us of the origin and existence of evil. And so I've had you turn to Luke chapter 10, it's a good place to start, let's just consider Satan's reality. Does he actually exist? Jesus in verse 17 when his apostles, the seventy disciples gather back to him, "the seventy return with joy saying, 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.' And he said to them, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.'" (Interesting statement.) Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. And nothing by shall any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.'"
Today, 2003, to assert the belief in a literal personal devil is tantamount in some circles to committing intellectual suicide, to be a dummy, a twit, an ignoramus. "I can't believe you believe in that." Because Satan has been pictured in the cartoons as this little scrawny guy with horns and a tight red suit and a pitchfork. Or, he's the stuff that songs are made out of. Here's a short list: "Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," "Devil with a Red Dress On," "The Devil went down to Georgia," "Devil in her heart," "Sympathy for the devil," "Run, devil, run," "Devil inside," and "Devil's Train." That's just a smidgeon of them. Or, the devil is made fun of and it's the stuff that comedy skits are mad of. Like the famous Dana Carvey Saturday Night Live church lady, "Could it be Satan?" No one takes Satan literally these days. Two six-year-olds were struggling the existence of the devil. And one said, "There is a real devil." And the other said, "he's not a real person." And the first one said, "Oh yeah he is, he's talked about all over the Bible." The second one said, "But he's not actually real, you know it's like Santa Claus, the devil turns out to be your dad." According to a Gallup poll seventy percent of Americans believe in the devil. Seventy, seven zero. But half of them believe he's a personal being, the other half believe he is an impersonal being. What about believers? Christians, born-again Christians? Well George Barna likes to take polls of that group in particular and he made a statement. You know, the kind of poll where you make a statement and then you ask the person or group, "Do you believe in this strongly? Somewhat? Do you disagree, etcetera. The statement that he made is this: The devil is not a living being, he is simply a symbol of evil. Of those who claim to be born-again Christians, thirty-two percent strongly agree. Eleven percent agree somewhat. Five percent say, 'I don't know.' So the total is, forty-eight percent of that group polled thinks there's not a literal devil or they don't know, who call themselves born-again Christians. Now we just read the words of Jesus and Jesus spoke of the devil as being real. "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Jesus also spoke of the devil as "the malevolent one against the work of the gospel." He said, "The seed was sown in the field." And he said, "The word of God is sown, as soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them." Jesus spoke of Satan as personal, a personal being. He said to Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked for you (desired you) because he wants to sift you like wheat." That's from the Lord Jesus now.
Bhe Bible refers to him as the devil thirty-five times. As the name Satan fifty-four times, as the evil one five times, the wicked one eight times. He's called Appollian, Abbadan, Beliel, Beelzebub and a host of other things. Dwight L. Moody said, "I believe in the devil for two reasons. Number one the Bible says so. And number two because I've done business with him." That's a good answer. I believe in him because the Bible says he exists and number two I've done business with the guy. You can look around the world and you can see apparent obvious evil. If there is no devil, who's doing his work?
Now there's two mistakes that I think we can make concerning Satan. Mistake number one, denial, which we've covered basically. Mistake number two is obsession. People, some people love when you talk about the devil. Now you know even Christians can somewhat deny Satan, live in denial. And what I mean by that is we can become cloistered, we can turn inward. Our life can be all about, "Bless me, God, bless me, bless me." And we forget we're in a spiritual battle because we turn inward to ourselves, we get lethargic spiritually. Somebody once pointed out that the devil is never to busy to rock the cradle of a sleeping saint. But then the other mistake is to be obsessed with the devil, to have an unhealthy fascination. And you know, I think it sort of plays right into his hands because the devil seems to love attention. He loves how he is cast by the film industry. And I think Christians can even make the same mistake. Every now and then I'll get a brochure or I'll read about Christian leaders getting together and having what I would term is a Satan fest. That's right, they're going to get together and they're going to strategize and identify certain demonic rulers over a city, over a state, over a country. And they get together and t hey talk to the devil. They pray to him basically, they tell him 'a thing or two.' And they rebuke him and they bind him and they do all this stuff only to have to do it every, you know if you're goingt o bind the devil, do it for good because he keeps coming back. And I always think it's an unhealthy practice when you start talking to the devil rather than talking to God about the devil. An unhealthy fascination, it's dangerous because a lot of the doctrines of the church are based upon people's experiences like this. They'll say, "Yeah, well we got together and we were exorcising these demons (I don't mean make them do exercises, I mean casting them out.) And as we were doing it, the demons spoke and the demons said..." And they make a whole doctrine based upon what the demons said. Didn't Jesus say Satan was the father of lies. You're going to trust what a demon says? It is dangerous to base one's belief system on superstition or experience only apart from the word of God. Sometimes, because Satan is the perfect scapegoat, we like to blame everything on him. "The devil made me do it." "It's all Satan's fault." True story, in 1999 Scotsman newspaper in Scotland ran a story about a French priest who was pulled over by a police officer for speeding. The priest said that he had been rationally and responsibly but something took over. He said, "The car started going faster," and his explanation is that the car was demon-possessed and that a power greater than himself, an evil force took over the car. Of course, this didn't phase the Scottish policeman who wrote him up anyway.
How did the devil get to be the devil? I want you to turn back with me, after looking at this, go back to Ezekiel for a moment. Ezekiel, Old Testament now. You'll find it. Ezekiel 28, because there's an interesting question as to his rebellion. How did the devil get to be the devil? Or maybe even more fundamentally, Why would God, a good and perfect God, create such a crummy being as the devil? Answer: He didn't You see, in the beginning there was no war, there was no rebellion, there was no animosity toward God or toward his purpose on the earth. God didn't create Satan as evil, he created a good influential and powerful angel. And we're going to read about it. Ezekiel 28m I want you to look at verse 12, "Son of Man, take up a lamentation for the King of Tyre and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord God, 'You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the Garden of God, every precious stone was your covering: the sardius, topaz, diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, sapphire, turquoise, emerald with gold, the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. You were the anointed cherub or angel who covers. I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within and you sinned. Therefore I cast you as a profane things, out of the mountain of God. And I destroyed you oh covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones, your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I laid you before kings that they might gaze at you." Now we read that and we ask ourselves, "Of whom is he speaking? Is this an earthly king. Is this a mere human?" You should know that beginning in verse 1, there's somebody else that is being addressed here. In verse 1, it is the prince of Tyre. And historically we know who the prince of Tyre was, a guy by the name of Eto ba-al the Second, who was a very self-centered ruler who claimed to be God. That's the Prince of Tyre, Eto ba-al the Second. But beginning in verse 1, it's as if the Spirit of God reaches into the very source, the spiritual source of that kind of prideful mentality and speaks to one called the King of Tyre. It's obvious it can't be a human. It's obvious it can't be an earthly king because no earthly king, the King of Tyre, was in the Garden of Eden, as an angel, an anointed cherub who covers. And notice that, "You were the anointed cherub who covers." In other words, you were the guardian literally. To cover is to stand guard presumably at the throne or the mountain of God, this position of high respect and honor as being close to God himself. You were the sum of beauty, the seal of perfection. So what happened to him? Verse 15, "Til iniquity was found in you." Verse 26, "You sinned." Verse 17, "Your heart was lifted up." Instead of covering the throne, he coveted the throne. He was numero uno minus one and it was that minus one that bugged him. He wasn't content in worshipping God. He was close enough and had a free will that he wanted to be the object of worship. And so he lifted up his heart, he sinned against God.
I want you to turn now to Isaiah 14 because you're going to actually see how he fell. Isaiah records the event that Jesus spoke about. When Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven, you're going to get the reference to it. Isaiah 14, verse 12, "How you are fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer son of the morning. How you are cut down to the ground you who weaken the nations. (By the way, the word Lucifer means star of the morning. And he was a star but he wanted to be the director.) And verse 13, "for you have said in your heart I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will also sit upon the mountain of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of clouds. I will be like the Most High.' Yet you will be brought down to hell (Sheol, the grave) to the lowest depts. Of the pit. Those who see you will gaze at you and consider you saying, 'Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms? Who made the world a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open his house, the house of his prisoners?'" Five times it is recorded that Satan exercised self will, "I will," "I will," "I will," "I will," "I will." Folks, in that phrase you have the root of all sin. That's the definition of sin, when self will is exalted over the will of God, that is the heart and root of all sin. And it started with this being here. So, Lucifer became Satan when he in self will exalted himself above God and was cast out of heaven. AT that moment Lucifer was the devil, Satan. And so he has been kicked out as an occupant of heaven. But he seems to return as a visitor from time to time. What do I mean by that? Well in the book of Job chapter 1 we read something interesting, it says, "A day came when the sons of God appeared before the Lord God and Satan was among them. And Satan appeared before God and accused Job right before God." And by the way, it doesn't stop with Job, Revelation 12 says, "He is the accuser of the brethren who accuses them before God night and day." Keep something in mind: This devil has been around along time, predates you and your mother and grandmother and grandparents and forefathers. He's been around for thousands and thousands of years. He has studied human nature. He know our weaknesses. He knows what flesh is, what men and women are made out of.
And Jonathan Edwards reminds us that Satan was trained in the very heaven of heavens. So he as an astute theologian. He knows the Bible from cover to cover and he even quotes it in the New Testament. It's what makes him such a master deceiver. Third question is does he have any friends? Does a being like this have any friends? Well he does. He has several I guess if you can call them friends. Recruits, other angelic beings that fell with Satan, we could call them demons. Like when the disciples came back and said, "The demons are subject to us in your name." Who are demons? They're also fallen beings. Revelation 12 says that Satan with his tail drew a third, it's a picturesque language, drew a third of the stars of heven with him when he fell. You says, "Well that's just a clever picture, Skip." Yeah but then John in verse 9 of that same chapter unlocks what the stars of heaven are. He says, "So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world. He is cast to the earth and his angels (reference to the stars that he drew) were cast out with him." How many demons are there? I mean a third, a third of what? Do you remember also in Revelation when John is before the throne and he's worshipping God and there's these angels all around. And he said, "The number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands." In other words, there's so many angels I could never count them all. Those are the two-thirds that are left. So a third of all the angels of heaven has got to be a bunch, a lot. We don't know how many there are but a lot. These demons and Satan are organized in a very well-organized system. In fact, I believe in Ephesians 6 we get an insight into the rankings of demonic beings. He says, "We don't wrestle against flesh and blood but principalities and powers and rulers of spiritual darkness in heavenly realms. So the insight we get is there's this incredible global conspiracy in heavenly realms of Satan and demonic beings conspiring, strategizing events on earth. And by and large human beings are unwittingly a part of it. They don't know it but they're all a part of it. In fact, John makes an incredible statement in I John chapter 5, "For we know that the whole world lies under the sway of the evil one" (the wicked one). So many people who are just finding their own way and looking for meaning in life. And not coming to Christ, they're just doing their own thing are unwittingly a part of Satan and his demonic scheme. Now some are aware of it. Some are freely and voluntarily aligned with the devil. Listen to this quote from a seventeen-year-old teenager, Californian boy by the name of Wilson Mateo, "I often think Satan is a cool dude. Since he controls one part of the supernatural, he tends to let you be on your own, to do whatever you want. Whereas God wants to put you in a jail cell." In 1966 Anton Lavay founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco, California. And he has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of adherents worldwide. I tried to get an official count, there were none, because nobody wants to admit it for any kind of a census. But it is large. And one group associated with him admitted that their purpose is to counteract the two thousand years or wrong thinking (in other words Christianity). Now I want to bring some balance into this. Because we've seen his reality, Satan is a real person; we've seen his recruits, there's a lot of people with him; we've seen his rebellion, he's against God, was from the beginning. But I want to bring some balance in here, because I think Christians can get awful superstitious whenever you bring the devil up. Here's the bad news: Satan hates you, has a miserable plan for your life. He took with him a third of all of the angelic beings in heaven, brought them down with him and their sphere (their domain) is the earth. So every new person born, a strategy is enacted toward that man or that woman, to keep him from Christ, if he ever comes to Christ to keep him stagnant in Christ, not growing. That's the bad news, a third. The good news is two-thirds are left and they're for you. And that's something we tend to forget. "the devil and all the demons," yeah that's a lot, but two-thirds are left. So Satan's outnumbered and all the demons are outnumbered.
Great story in II Kings chapter 6. Here it is: The children of Israel in one city called Dothan are there with the prophet Elisha. And the Syrian army comes around to root out this prophet and get him out and kill him. The servant of Elisha looks up and sees all around him Syrians and he goes, "We're doomed. The enemy's around us, we're going to lose." The prophet says, "Relax. There are more that are with us than those that are with them." And then he bowed his head and he prayed, "Oh Lord, open up his eyes that he might see." When he looked out again, he saw around the Syrian army thousands, innumerable hosts of chariots of fire, the angels of God encamped around, ready to destroy the Syrian army. "More are with us than are with them." Now keep this in mind. The devil is real, he hates you, he has lots of help but greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Satan an dhis demons even on a good day couldn't match the Lord of hosts and the two-thirs of his angels. (applause) And that's what you ought to keep in mind. I mean if Michael Jackson choses a fight with Arnold Swarzenegger what is it going to be like a big match do you think? And so there's Satan and he's deceiving and thumbing his nose at God but we're talking about God. "And all of the angels," the Bible says, "are sent to minister to us who are heirs of salvation."
The fourth thing I want to look at is something closer to home and that is his rivals. Who are his targets? Well, you know the whole world seems to be his target. The whole world is his oyster you might say. As John wrote in I John 5, "The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one." He wants to do everything he can to deceive the world and keep them from coming to Christ. He'll give them false religions, false philosophies, wealth, anything to distract them. But there seems to be, according to the Bible, four major targets. The first and obvious target would be Christ, because Christ Jesus spells Satan's undoing. That was the one that was predicted way back in Genesis, "The seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent." So the undoing of Satan is Christ. Therefore you see a strategy all the way through the Bible that we talked about Wednesday night, we uncovered it, how that the Messianic line was constantly attacked and almost made extinct by Satanic powers. Even up to Bethlehem where all the babies were slaughtered as an attempt by Satan to get at the seed, the Messianic line. And since Jesus is the only means of salvation you would expect that Jesus would be the object of scorn of the devil. Do you ever wonder why when people really want to swear, they take the Lord Jesus Christ's name in vain. When was the last time somebody said, "Oh Muhammed!" "Oh Buddha!" No impact, that's why. Nothing there, that's why. Satan makes Jesus Christ the object of scorn. Target number two are holy angels. It's easy to understand when you look at the scripture because Satan works at the highest levels. I know we like to think, "He's against me and all the forces of hell are against me." Don't flatter yourself. There's higher fish to catch. And it's even beyond the earthly realm, it's in the heavenly realm. Insight is Daniel chapter 10 where Michael the archangel said that he had been restrained twenty-one days by a demon prince of Persia, who fought with him. It's in heavenly realms. And why did he fight with him? Because what Daniel was dealing with was the future of the world and in particular the future of the nation of Israel which brings us to the third target: the nation of Israel. See God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David. And part of that covenant has yet to be fulfilled in the future, including the Messiah reigning from Mount Zion. So there's a lot at stake in God's plan for the future and the nation of Israel. And if you look at Israel's history, no nations has been persecuted and violated with Holocausts as the nation of Israel has.
And then fourth, we're targets. Believers are targets. Job was a target, Christ was target, Paul was a target. Every follower of Jesus Christ historically has been a target of the devil. The very word devil means slanderer. He is called the accuser. The word Satan means enemy or adversary.
Now can I leave you with this thought? It should make you happy that he's your enemy. Better to have him as your enemy than your friend. That's what Charles Spurgeon said, he said, "There's something comforting in the though that the devil is an adversary. I'd sooner have him for an adversary than for a friend. I'd rather have the devil as my enemy and God as my friend than the devil as my friend and God as my enemy." So that ought to cause you rejoicing. Walk out of here tonight and go, "The devil hates me. He's my enemy." But he's not your friend, that's good news. And so Satan is alive and he lives in this town and towns like it all across this nation and nations like it all across the world. And he's working in all sorts of different levels and ways to deceive people.
Paul Harvey one of my favorite radio personalities, gave an interesting commentary and I close with this: He said, "If I were the devil, I would seize control of t he most powerful nations in the world. I would delude their minds into thinking that their blessings had come from their own efforts and goodness rather than God's blessings. I would do governments into relying gambling for revenue. I'd convince people that character is not an issue in leadership. I'd make it legal to kill babies before they took their first breath and I'd make socially acceptable, attractive and legal and easy to take one's life while making it a crime to confront someone who is doing it. If I were the devil I'd raise the value of animals above that of infants and the elderly. I'd remove God from schools to the extent that the mention of his name would be grounds for a lawsuit. I'd develop drugs that sedate the mind, targeting the young, I would use celebrities to promote it. If I were the devil I'd justify the means by pointing to a desired result. I'd make divorce and free love right and attractive, thus breaking the backbone of the family. I'd call depraved and sick fantasies art. I'd pay premiums to boldly display it, especially if it mocked God, family and character. If I were the devil, I'd convince people that right and wrong are determined by an elite group that can do no wrong and that it's always politically correct. I'd persuade people that the church and the Bible are irrelevant and out of date. And I'd tell people to not get involved, to leave it to the experts for they know best and they will do best for my behalf. If I were the devil I'd dull the minds of Christians into believing that prayer is not important and that faith, trust and obedience are optional. So if I were the devil I guess I would leave things pretty much as they are."
He's very very active, isn't he? To those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, we can see it. So we ought to see it enough, know it enough to realize that we're in a battle. It's not a playpen where we can throw rattles at each other. It's a battlefield. Get your swords ready. Be prepared. "Gird up the loins of your mind," as the Bible says. And let's stop fighting one another. There's a real enemy who wants to destroy you, your family, your soul and this nation.
Heavenly Father, as we conclude we come before you Lord God of heaven and earth, our Creator, our Maker. There's no redemption for the devil. His fate is sealed. You predicted it. He lifted himself up and you will bring him down. You've already done that in part and we see in the tribulation period that he'll go down even further. We know Lord that until that day he is given a chain. We sometimes wonder why it's so long, why he has so much freedom. And sometimes it bothers us, we admit that. But you're sovereign, you know better and we have choices, we can make choices. And we're responsible for our own choices. And so Father, as men and women of God may we make the choice not to sail so close to the lake of fire that our sails get singed, to stay well within your camp, close to you, seeking intimacy that Satan himself once enjoyed as Lucifer in your very presence, the anointed cherub who covers. Lord we realize that ll hell is against us but all heaven is for us. And if God be for us, who can be against us? I pray Lord that in the battle we would employ spiritual weaponry, prayer, the word, fellowship, all of those things that do spiritual damage to the enemy. And Lord may we not shrink back or run but stand firm. Finally, Father, for those who are in t he process of right now being duped by the devil to stay away from Jesus Christ. I pray Lord that you would release the grip and bring many to know you. Some Lord who have been struggling for a long time, fighting for a long time. I pray Lord that, I pray that you would bring them into your kingdom.