The Defeat of Evil (part 2)

The Utter Sovereignty of God at the Cross

Jesus died… just about every theologian and historian agrees on that point. Was Jesus a victim at the hands of lawless men? Before Peter lay blame on those gathered at Pentecost, he said something very peculiar. He said that Jesus was delivered up to death “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God…” In other words, those who successfully had Pilate condemn Jesus to death by crucifixion were only able to do so because it was God’s plan. Not only did Peter see Jesus’ death this way, but so did the first Christians, for when they faced certain religious persecution, they gathered together to pray: “…for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28).

Do you know what Acts 2 and 4 is saying? Peter preached and the first century Christians understood that God killed His Son and He used wicked people to do it! One of the most staggering passages in the Bible for me is found in Isaiah 53. Hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born; these words were written about One who would come:

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

These verses cause me stagger into grateful and humble worship over the great price Jesus paid on my behalf because He alone bore my grief’s and carried my sorrows, he alone was wounded for my transgressions, He alone was crushed for my iniquities, upon Him alone was the chastisement that brought me peace with God, and by His stripes alone am I healed. But what staggers me more than anything else is what I read in the verses that follow, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—everyone—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all…. Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief” (vv. 6, 10). The murder of Jesus was premeditated.

As you recall, in Genesis 3 God promises that a deliverer would come who would fatally crush the head of the serpent (Satan) for his role in tempting Adam and Eve to sin against Him. It would be through this deliverer that God would reverse the curse of sin that has plagued all of creation since that terrible day in the Garden. From Genesis all the way through Malachi the Old Testament not only prophesied that this deliverer would one day come, but even spoke of the nature of His suffering leading up to His death. In other words, God was even involved in the details of His Son’s death; consider the following verses:

• Jesus would be rejected (Psalm 118:22; Matt. 21:42)
• Jesus would be hated (Psalm 35:19; John 15:25)
• Jesus would be abandoned by his own friends (Zech. 13:7; Matt. 26:31)
• Jesus would be pierced without any of his bones being broken (Psalm 34:20; Zech. 12:10; John 19:34-37)
• Jesus would be betrayed by a close friend (Psalm 41:9; John 13:18)
• Jesus would be handed over for 30 pieces of silver (Jer. 19:1-13; Zech. 11:12-13; Matt. 27:9-10)
• Jesus understood the details and reason for His impending death (Isa. 53:3-10; Mark 10:33-34)

There is a popular story used to illustrate John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should no perish but have eternal life.” The story is about a bridge operator who brought his son to work one day. The operator thought his son was fishing and didn’t realize that his son was playing by the gears that open and close the bride for boats to pass through. The bridge was opened for a boat to pass through, but while it was opened his son fell into the gear room. The son could have been rescued had not it been for a train full of passengers making its way towards the bridge that was still up. So, the operator was faced with a horrible decision: save his son and allow the train with all the people to perish or kill his son by closing the bridge for the purpose of saving the people on the train from certain doom. The bridge operator chose to save the people on the train by closing the bridge and killing his one and only son.

There is only one problem with that very touching and emotional story. Jesus’ death was not a last minute decision made by God the Father for the purpose of saving the likes of us from certain doom in hell. Unlike the bridge operator, God planned the death of His Son long before this world was ever cursed, long before Adam and Eve rebelled in the Garden. As John Piper put it so well: “God was at work in all the circumstances that brought Jesus to the cross. Behind the spitting and flogging and mocking and piercing is the invisible hand and plan of God.” [1]




[1] John Piper. Spectacular Sins (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books; 2008), p. 103.

The Defeat of Evil (Part 1)

Introduction
About three weeks ago, I wrestled with the nature and origin of evil and suffering in the first three blog posts. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. On the 6th day, God created two human beings in His image unlike anything else He created previously. In Genesis 3, both Adam and Evil fell into sin; Eve was deceived, but Adam fully understood what he was doing when he took the forbidden fruit and ate. There are three answers to the origin of evil and suffering: (1) Satan is alive and well on planet earth, (2) We are a sinful and cursed race, and (3) All of creation is cursed. The good news is that God is using Satan, sin, and a cursed creation to accomplish His purposes by defeating evil.

In Genesis 3:15 God promised to defeat evil: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Someone will come who will destroy the devil and his works; that someone was Jesus Christ. But how did He do that? What I would like to do is see how the utter evilness of evil, the utter goodness of God, and the utter sovereignty of God all come together at the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. What I would like to do is look at the death of Jesus from the three vantage points that we see in Acts 2:22-24.

The Utter Evilness of Evil at the Cross
In his sermon to 3000 plus people in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, Peter gives three reasons why Jesus was nailed to the cross. One of those reasons is placed upon those gathered for the day of Pentecost: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst… you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

When we behold Golgotha the day Jesus died, we see evil at its worst. Jesus, an innocent man, was sentenced to death in the most humiliating and horrific way. All throughout Jesus’ life, people were trying to kill him. When he was a toddler, Herod had all the children two years old and younger murdered in Bethlehem in an effort to keep Him from growing up. When one reads the four Gospels in the Bible, we learn of many attempts made by the religious leaders to take his life. And of course, you recall that it was Judas who betrayed him by accepting a bribe of 30 pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to them.

It wasn’t because Jesus was a criminal who deserved to die that led to the persistent attempts by others to take His life, for He was totally and completely innocent. In fact, after Jesus was condemned, Judas brought back the 30 pieces of silver he received from the religious leaders saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4); he then committed suicide by hanging himself.

Think for a moment of the magnitude of Judas’ sin. He witnessed the many healings; saw Jesus hush the stormy seas to sleep; after Lazarus was buried, Jesus raised him from the dead. I am sure Judas was shocked when Jesus took the two fish and five loves of bread and feed more than five thousand people… Judas even helped pass out the baskets! Judas was also well aware of the intentions of religious leaders to have Jesus killed when he betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver… the price of a common slave. Judas handed over not only an innocent man to be killed, he handed the Son of God, the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of Glory, the spotless Lamb of God to be murdered by lawless men.

Judas gathered a band of soldiers and some officers to take Jesus by force. Upon finding Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas pointed out Jesus to the soldiers with a kiss. Jesus was arrested and tried… illegally.

Jesus faced six trials; none of the trials were performed according to the laws of the land. The first person Jesus is brought before is Annas (who was still upset that Jesus drove the people and money-changers out of the temple –Annas oversaw the money changers). Jesus was not required to answer any of Annas’ questions, but when he did answer he was struck by one of the soldiers… something that was forbidden during a Jewish trial. Annas then sent Jesus to Caiaphas the high priest where some false witnesses were gathered to incriminate Jesus (still under the cloak of night).

Up to this point Jesus remained mostly silent, when Caiaphas got frustrated he asked a question in such a way that any pious Jew was required to answer: “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt. 26:63). So, Jesus answered the high priest: “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64), which was a direct reference to him being the Messiah as promised in Daniel 7. So, they got what they were hoping for… words from Jesus’ lips that were in their opinion blasphemous. Caiaphas condemned Jesus, a violation of Jewish law that required the whole council to vote, and the gathered people spit on him and beat him.

Jesus... tired, beaten, humiliated and bleeding, faced a third trial before the Jewish Supreme Court known as the Sanhedrin. This was the shortest of the three Jewish trials; they asked Him if he was the Messiah, to which He answered “yes.”

The final three trials Jesus faced were not justified either. In Rome there was a three phase process that led to either an acquittal or punishment: (1) accusation, (2) interrogation, and (3) a verdict. In Jesus’ fourth trial Pilate heard the accusations against Jesus but upon interrogating him, found him to be innocent. To get out of the jam he found himself in, he sent Jesus to his life-long enemy Herod, but the only thing Herod felt Jesus deserved was humiliation and mocking; this was Jesus’ fifth trial. Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate to receive a sixth and final trail.

It was at Jesus’ sixth and final trial that Pilate found himself trapped. He really believed Jesus was innocent. Pilate tried several avenues to get out of declaring Jesus guilty, so the first thing he offered was to have Jesus chastised and beat. Jesus was taken to a place for flogging where they stripped him naked before a whole group of soldiers. Two soldiers trained in the art of scourging flogged him with what was called a Cat-of-Nine-tails; each tip was laced with sharp bone and metal for the purpose of tearing apart the flesh. Jesus was flogged; his skin and muscle was torn to pieces, and when Pilate brought Him before the people he was one bloody mess.

If you thought things could not get any more worse, they did. It was the Passover and it was customary to release one prisoner, so Pilate gave the crowds a choice: (1) Jesus of Nazareth, or (2) Barabbas: a notorious criminal guilty of murder. When given the option, the crowd chose to free Barabbas. When Pilate asked why, the only response that he received was a riotous crowd screaming: “Let him be crucified!” “His blood be on us and our children!” Jesus was handed over to die in the most violent, humiliating, and painful death known in human history – crucifixion. As the soldiers prepared Jesus for death, they took his bloody and torn body, put a scarlet robe on him, placed a crown of thorns on his head, put a reed in his right hand, and mocked him by bowing down and saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They then struck him on the head, spit on him, and led Him away as He carried His cross. On His way to Golgotha, as He carried His cross, he was further mocked, spit upon, and beaten. When he finally reach the place where He would be crucified, they stripped him naked again, nailed him to the cross, all in a manner to amplify intense humiliation and pain for all to see. Even while on the cross the Son of God was further mocked by the religious leaders as well as the two criminals crucified next to Him. Shortly before His death, Jesus cried “It is finished!” The Bible tells us that he gave up His Spirit and died. Man had committed the ultimate evil… he killed the Son of God.

To download the sermon, The Defeat of Evil, right click the following link and select "save target": http://bootes.websrvcs.com/clientimages/29768/sermons/thedefeatofevilacts1722-24.m4a

The Nature of Evil and Suffering (Part 3)

Creation is Cursed... But Not For Long!

When Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible tells us that not only that we as a human race were cursed, but creation was cursed as well. When God created everything, he brought order out of chaos, order out of disorder. Before the fall, everything was in harmony; I can say this because of what God promises when He creates a new earth (see Isaiah 65:17ff.) The Bible says that not only will we be in harmony with God, but all of creation will be at peace with itself; why else would God promise that a day is coming when the Child will play with the viper and the wolf and the lamb shall graze together?

When Adam and Eve rebelled, Adam rebelled as one commissioned to care for earth. Because of the curse the peace of creation has been disturbed, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, droughts, famines, and tsunamis are not natural; they are all products of a cursed earth. But guess what? God is not going to leave things the way that they are, for in Genesis 3:15-16 He promised a deliver who would crush the head of Satan, while Satan would wound that promised deliver. That promised deliverer is Jesus Christ; the wound that was delivered unto Him occurred on a hill called Golgotha upon a wooden cross.

It is through Jesus that God promises to make all things new, and He has begun to make all things new by rescuing sinners like you and me from an impending judgment in Hell. How did Jesus do that you may ask? He did it, the Bible says, by “redeeming us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). One day those who have placed their faith and trust in Jesus, that is those who have become His followers will be freed from the curse of sin. When this happens, the Bible promises that all of creation will soon follow (Romans 8:18-25).

So why do bad things happen? We live in a sin cursed world as creatures who are cursed with a nature to sin. Is God somewhere off in the distance removed from His creation? Absolutely not! He “sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever” (Ps. 29:10). He is the King and Creator of all that exists. The mystery is that He is using a sin cursed creation to accomplish His purposes. I must trust that in His goodness, He always will do right because He is not only perfectly good, loving, gracious, and merciful, but perfectly just and perfectly holy.

Perhaps Christopher Wright is able to say it better than I can in drawing this subject to a close:

...for the moment, I grieve and lament, I weep and I feel intense anger, and I do not hesitate to tell God about it and to file my questions before his throne.... However, I express all this protest within the framework of a faith that has hope and a future built into it. For the present state of creation is not its final state, according to the Bible. And in the resurrection of Christ we have the first fruits of a new creation in which the old things will have passed away. I cannot claim to understand this great biblical hope terribly well either, but I draw enourmous comfort from the earthiness of the Bible's visionof the ultimate destiny of creation.... So my cry against the disasters of the present is not just a candle in the dark or spitting into the wind. It is much more akin to the agonized longing of the Psalmists: "How long, O LORD, how long?" They were certain that God would do something, but they were consumed with longing that he should do it, sooner than later. [1]

[1] Christopher Wright. The God I Don't Understand (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan; 2008), pp. 54-5.

To listen to the sermon "The Origin of Evil and Suffering" right click on the following link and select "save target as": http://bootes.websrvcs.com/clientimages/29768/sermons/audiosermons/theoriginofevilandsufferinggenesis3job24.wma

We are a Sinful and Cursed Race

The hatred of Satan for humanity is most clearly seen in Genesis 3. God created all things and ended his creation work with two human beings made in His image. Everything in the garden was given to Adam and Even for their managing, but from the fruit of one tree they were prohibited from eating. When we come to Genesis 3, we find Eve with Adam before the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil talking to a serpent. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” the serpent asked. The very first thing he got Adam and Eve to do was doubt the goodness of God by getting them to focus on the one thing God kept from them as opposed to the rest of the garden he gave for their enjoyment.

After a brief conversation about what God did and did not say: Satan deceived Eve into eating the forbidden fruit while her husband watched. After she ate, Adam ate what his wife gave to him. Donald Grey Barnhouse had a way of putting the Bible into perspective; in one of his sermons on what happened in the Garden of Eden, he said:

Adam’s choice was an act of rebellion, the equivalent of a declaration of independence…. Adam, in effect, said, “I am tired of having everything north, south, east, and west of this tree. I will be independent. I will run my own affairs.” It was not a request that God share the throne of government with man; it was an ultimatum to Him to abdicate and leave full control to man. (Donald Grey Barnhouse, “God’s River,” Romans vol. 2; p. 17)

Now you may say, “How can you know for certain Adam actually thought these things?” I would say to you that he knew full well what God had commanded him concerning the tree; and not only did he stay silent while she was being tempted, but took some of the fruit and ate also… after Satan commented that if they ate of the fruit they too could be like God. Doesn’t that sound a bit similar to what we read in Isaiah 14 earlier? It is almost as if Adam said in his heart: “I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

In Romans 5 we learn that it was through Adam’s sin that we inherited our sin nature. Every single one of us was born into the world with sin, with a natural disposition to rebel with the same type of rebellion Adam was guilty of. Somehow the curse of sin was spread from Adam’s sperm cell to Eve’s fertile egg transmitting sin from one generation to the next. I guess you can say sin is a sexually transmitted disease that affects the entire human race. We run from God like vampires run from the sun light. This is our nature and that is why the Bible states very plainly: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:10).

Satan is not the cause of most of the world’s evil and suffering, his demons are not the cause for most of the evil and suffering in the world… we are the cause of most of the evil and suffering in the world. Sure, we may not cause the Tsunami nor are we able to prevent the Tsunami, but how much more evil and suffering come by way of our sinful pride, arrogance, selfishness, lust, and greed. It is mostly human wickedness that results in the amplification of preventable diseases, world hunger, poverty, trafficking of children and women as slaves, and so much more. Think of all the wars and genocides governments invited into the world that resulted in the murder of not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of people.

All Satan and his demons need to do is entice us to carry out the desires of our heart. Think about it, how do marriages break up? Why do children run away? What causes a nation to go to war with another? What motivates a corporate executive or CEO to pocket what belongs to another? Why does one take a life? I am convinced that Satan has to do very little when it comes to evil and suffering in the world.

The older I get and the longer I follow Jesus, the more I realized that I am my worst enemy when it comes to evil and suffering. I am lazy when it comes to taking care of my body, so I have had certain health problems – it’s my fault! I know if I do not guard what I look at and think about, my heart could be tempted to betray my wife, son, and the church I pastor because I have to battle the lust of my own flesh. I have a temper problem at times; when left unchecked I have said or done things that I regret. There is a war that wages in my own soul and mind that wages in you that can bring all kinds of sorrow and pain. Is this not why Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away…. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matt. 5:29-30).

This still doesn’t completely answer the question regarding evil and suffering in the world. Sure our own wickedness is to blame for many of our planet’s woes, but what about natural disasters? What about the 2004 Tsunami? What about the Earthquake that hit China that killed nearly 70,000 people or Cyclone Nargis that snuffed out an estimated 146,000 lives in Myanmar? This leads me to a third and final reason for the evil and suffering of our world that I will attempt to give in the next post.

To listen to the sermon "The Origin of Evil and Suffering" right click on the following link and select "save target as": http://bootes.websrvcs.com/clientimages/29768/sermons/audiosermons/theoriginofevilandsufferinggenesis3job24.wma

The Nature of Evil and Suffering

On December 26, 2004 an earthquake measuring around 9.1 on the Richter scale hit off the coast of Indonesia creating the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in modern history. No one knew it was coming; in fact there are pictures that have been recovered of children gathering some of the fish left on the ocean floor as the waters receded as a towering Tsunami approached. It is reported that some of the waves of the Tsunami measured in upwards of 100 feet high and moved towards the various shores at around 500 MPH. Nearly 230,000 people died on that day.

For the atheist, deist, polytheist, and open theist… December 26, 2004, or any other day bringing evil or suffering, poses no problem. But for the one who believes the words of the Bible to be true, “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever” (Ps. 29:10), has a potential problem. How do we have a potential problem? If God is good and if he is completely sovereign… how and why did He allow the Tsunami of 2004, the cyclone that hit Myanmar in 2007, and such much more to happen? How is it that He allows so much evil when he is the measure of all that is holy and good? There seems to be a great gape between the God we read about in our Bibles and the world we live in. Christopher Wright acknowledges this in his book, The God I Don’t Understand, and points out that men and women in the Bible who followed God lovingly and passionately struggled with this seemingly irreconcilable problem:

Such radically inexplicable disasters fill biblical believers with desperate,passionate concern for the very nature of God. So they cry out in vertigo above the chasm that seems to gape between the God they know and the world they live in. If God is supposed to be like that, how can the world be like this?

For us who share the faith of these biblical believers, this is an agonizing emotion precisely because we too love God In such moments we can even understand those who hate God, and our anger and pain could easily make us shake our fists with them. But we don’t, because our whole lifetime of trust and love for God and gratitude for his limitless goodness and mercy toward us in Christ cannot be overthrown in the day of disaster. But the pain remains, and the pain is acute.[1]

One such example is found in Job 24. As you know, the story of Job is one of a righteous man who loses everything but his life because Satan thought he could get him to curse God. The book serves as a template for God’s people when it comes to dealing with the type of pain brought by evil and suffering in one’s life. Job’s kids and home were destroyed, his wealthy was depleted, his body was filled with blisters, his friends were an annoyance instead of a help, and his wife wanted him to throw in the towel of his faith. This man could have written a very good country song. In the middle of all his suffering, he asked what we not only seeing the Psalmist ask, but what we ourselves ask from time to time if we are honest:

Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days? Some move landmarks; they seize flocks and pasture them. They drive away the donkey of the fatherless; they take the widow's ox for a pledge. They thrust the poor off the road; the poor of the earth all hide themselves. Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert the poor go out to their toil, seeking game; the wasteland yields food for their children. They gather their fodder in the field, and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man. They lie all night naked, without clothing, and have no covering in the cold. They are wet with the rain of the mountains and cling to the rock for lack of shelter. (There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast, and they take a pledge against the poor.) They go about naked, without clothing; hungry, they carry the sheaves; among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil; they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst. From out of the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries for help; yet God charges no one with wrong.

Have you not asked similar questions in your own life? The first time I sat at the bedside of a person I cared about as she lay dying of cancer, I kept asking God why he allowed her to linger for so long. Watching the woman struggle for air, seeing her facial expressions as she lay very uncomfortable while her body shock in periodic convulsions rocked my faith as a young Christian; I just could not understand why a God who with the breath of his nostrils could part the Red Sea, but did not remove this woman’s cancer nor allow her to die a quick painless death. I still do not know why He allowed this woman to die the way that she did. I am sure you have stories of your own as well as questions you still wrestle over concerning the actions of a good and loving God.

I am not going to pretend that what I write here will give you any real satisfactory answer because the Bible only answers this question to a certain point, but leaves what is unanswered for us to believe by faith that all that God does is shaped by His love for you and me. Permit me to offer some answers that the Bible does give.

Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth
I want to be very clear that the Bible is also very clear that Satan is not the cause of most of the evil and suffering in the world. He certainly hates good and loves evil, He has command over the thousands of demons who operate under him, and He despises God and His people with deep hatred. The Bible points to him as the originator of evil, suffering, and sin.

Satan at one time was known as Lucifer. He was the highest ranking angel with the title of “Guardian Cherub” (Ezek. 28:14). We are told very little of what went wrong in Lucifer, but we are given some idea in Isaiah 14,

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

When he rebelled, we learn from Revelation 12:7-9, that he convinced one-third of the angels to help him sit on God’s throne by rebelling alongside of him. I am not sure how many one-third equaled out to, but currently there are millions of Angels who did not rebel against God, which means there are probably hundreds of thousands of demons. Lucifer was not created evil, he chose to be evil; God knew what Lucifer would become, yet He created him anyway. We are not told how long Lucifer existed as God’s “Guardian Cherub”; it could have been hundreds or thousands of our earth years that he served God before he fell. However, the Bible does say that, “He was guilty of sinning from the beginning” (1 John 3:8).

Lucifer is not just known as Satan, but he is given a whole host of names such as the Accuser (Rev. 12:10), the Adversary (1 Peter 5:8), the Beast (Rev. 14:9-10), Beelzebub (Matt. 12:24), the Deceiver (Rev. 12:9), the Devil (1 John 3:8), the Dragon (Rev. 12:9), the Enemy (Matt. 13:39), the Evil One (John 17:15), the Father of lies (John 8:44), the God of this age (2 Cor. 4:4), the Lawless One (2 Thess. 2:8-10), Murderer (John 8:44), the Prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:1-2), the Ruler of Demons (Luke 11:15), Ruler of this World (John 12:31-32), Serpent of Old (Rev. 12:9), the Tempter (Matt. 4:3), Thief (John 10:10), and the Wicked One (Eph. 6:16).

There are other names for Lucifer, but the one we must always remember, for I think it embodies all his other names, is found in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Understand this dear friends; Lucifer wants nothing but harm for you. If you are a follower of King Jesus, he knows that he cannot touch your soul, but he wants nothing more than to see you rendered impotent for the Kingdom of God. If you are not a follower of Jesus, then he will do all that he can to keep you from seeing and knowing the truth of the Good news of Jesus Christ. Know this friends: we are warned that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light; the demons and all of his other servants do the same (2 Cor. 11:14).

Satan tried to tempt Jesus to sin, tried to keep Him from the cross, and when handed over to die, poured out all he had to make sure His suffering was ruthless. I believe he had a heavy influence on the likes of Hitler and Stalin, as well as other leaders in the past, present, and future. He is strategic, wise, cunning, crafty, and very intelligent. He has had the opportunity, along with his demons, to observe mankind for thousands of years which makes him all the more dangerous. I believe he targets God’s people, especially pastors, evangelists, and all those in places of leadership in the Church and has the demonic “man” power to do so. As followers of King Jesus, we ought to respect who Satan is – a very dangerous and intelligent adversary that hates you and me with the deepest of hatred.

All that being said… you must also understand that Satan is a defeated foe whose doom is sure to come. When you fall into sin or things do not go your way, understand that it is most likely not Satan tempting you or frustrating your plans; he is one person and cannot be everywhere at once. There are 6.8 billion people for him to choose to directly harm, and the chances are you are not that person. Now with that being said – On Tuesday morning I was mostly done writing my sermon having just made this very point. I took a break to write on my Facebook profile: “Finishing up my sermon... heavy, scary stuff: The Nature of Evil and Suffering. Right now I am writing the part of my sermon on the nature and character of Satan. Praise God that Jesus will squish Satan's head like a grape.” About 15 minutes later my computer crashed and I had to reformat my hard drive, losing my entire sermon in the process. I am not saying that Satan possessed my computer, but I did find a bit of irony in the timing.

When it came to the suffering of Job, we are told that it was Satan who approached God seeking permission to harm him. What the Bible makes emphatically clear is that Satan’s power is limited, and should he chose to bring harm upon God’s people, he must first seek God’s approval.

[1] Christopher Wright. The God I Don’t Understand (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan; 2008), p. 53.

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