Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: While many people say they believe in God, many of those same people doubt that the devil is real. Maybe that includes you. The Bible describes Satan as a formidable enemy, and today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg explains why it's important to take him seriously. As believers, though, we ought not be preoccupied with his threat. Let's turn in our Bible to John chapter 17.

Alistair Begg: Once again, the devil uses the Bible, misquotes the Bible to try and oppose Jesus. That's his strategy: to destroy what he has come to do, to discredit the word that he speaks. And for a third time, he took him, in verse eight, to a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, "All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me." What's he saying? His strategy is this: to get Jesus to exchange his love of the Father for the worship of Satan.

The strategy hasn't changed. He would rather that you worshipped him, went his broad road to destruction, than that you bowed down before Jesus as Lord and King and Savior. So, it's no question at all that the evil one, by identity and strategy, is the father of lies. He is the father of lies. And as the father of lies, he's very, very capable. I must keep moving, but 2 Corinthians 4, I find that this is helpful to remind myself of this. Why are things the way they are? 2 Corinthians 4 and verse three.

Why is it that when we tell people the gospel, this fantastic good news, you say, "Now, here's the deal. You can't earn this for yourself. Jesus has done for you what you cannot do for yourself. And he has died in order that your debt might be canceled, that you might be forgiven," and people go like, "Hey, talk to the hand. Yeah, sure. Thank you. I can see that it means something to you; it means nothing to me." Why is that? Here's the answer: The god of this world, remember him? The evil one. "I don't actually take them out of the world; I actually keep them from the evil one." The god of this world, what is he doing? What's his strategy?

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And worse still, as you move on through 2 Corinthians and you get to chapter 11, the evil one is so crafty that he employs people in positions such as my own, or positions of significant leadership within the unfolding story of the drama of Christianity, whether in the first century or the 21st century.

Men who are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. Disguising themselves, so saying one thing but meaning something else. Saying that they believe the Bible and it must be upheld, and then saying that it doesn't matter whether marriage is heterosexual or homosexual. That's this week from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. He and his body have finally concluded that it doesn't really matter, that it is equal opportunity irrespective of gender and background. Now, I hate to say it of the Archbishop, but that is false. And if he is really the Archbishop of Canterbury, what about the Bible? What about the Bible? His strategy is disguise.

He intimidates. 1 Peter 5, he roars. The sound of the opposition may seem so loud in the ears of some that they say, "I'm just going to have to go with the crowd, it's roaring so loud." He consumes; he devours. The only response that we have to that is, of course, thirdly, in the victory of Jesus, in the victory of Jesus. In the passages that I referenced in John already, if you go back down through them, you can glean from them help in different ways.

For example, in chapter 12, in that context where Jesus says, "Now is my soul troubled. Father, save me from this hour. No, it is for this hour that I've come." He's talking about the hour of his death. And then he says, "Father, glorify your name." And then a voice came from heaven: "I have glorified it and will glorify it again." It must have been amazing to be there. And John says, and some of the people in the crowd said, "Was that thunder?" And someone says, "No, I think an angel just spoke to him."

And Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. The Father says, 'Listen, listen. I have glorified my son, and I'm about to glorify it again.'" In this is the Father glorified. Remember that section? I hope you do. What does Jesus then say? "Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out." What is he referring to? He's referring to the cross. But from a human perspective, if you had come through Jerusalem and saw the bloodied body of Jesus hanging up on a cross, you would have been prone to say, "I guess that exciting adventure with those fellows has come to a horrible halt. Surely this cannot be the Messiah of God, this here in Jerusalem."

It appears to be abject defeat. In fact, it is the abject, total defeat of the evil one. Because in the cross of Christ we glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time. In chapter 14, Jesus similarly says of the evil one, and I love the phrase, he says, "He has no claim on me. He has no claim on me. He can't force me to do anything. No one can take my life from me." Jesus said, "I have the power to lay it down; I have the power to take it up again. The ruler of this world is cast out."

Well, somebody said to me after the first service, "Well, what does it mean that Jesus has overcome the world? If he's overcome the world, how is it that Satan is the ruler of the world?" Well, he has overcome it in the cross. And eventually all that has been actualized in the reality of that defeat. If you like, in chess terms, it's a long time since I played chess, but you can get pretty quickly to checkmate. And if you do, the person that you're playing, who can't see how you got there, will want to continue to play the other part of the game.

And you can say to them, "Well, you can play the other moves if you want, but you cannot alter the outcome." That is exactly the story of the cross. And eventually the devil and his forces will be cast down into a lake of fire, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. And that has been signaled when, in the cross, Jesus has triumphed over the accuser of the brethren, the one who accuses us night and day, as it says in Revelation 12.

Now, you can see this actually when we have the baptismal services, as we do in every Sunday night. Every time somebody stands up and says in the baptismal service, "I was, but I am," what has happened in their life is that Satan has been cast out. Now, I don't mean that they were oppressed and indwelt by Satan. No, but by nature, we live under the jurisdiction of the evil one. And when I'm no longer under the jurisdiction of the evil one, what has happened? I bear testimony to the fact that he has been cast out.

And that's why I love songs that enforce that reality of what it means that the victory over the evil one is ours in Jesus. Jamie and Carrlon, I love this, I keep it in my things so that I could try and memorize it. But if you are in Christ today, listen to this, absorb this. You are a member of the children of the kingdom of God. You're the chosen ones for whom the Savior came. You're his noble new creation by the Spirit and the blood; you're the church that he has called to bear his name.

So what? And the gates of hell shall not prevail against you. And the hordes of darkness cannot quench your light. And the hosts of God, the armies of God, shall stand and fight beside you till your King shall reign triumphant in his might. When the kingdoms of this world are manifestly the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. This is not in question. His identity is clear, his strategy is cruel, but the victory is absolutely secure.

For example, when Paul writes in Colossians, at the beginning of Colossians, and he's encouraging these people about all that is true of them in Jesus. It's wonderful. Colossians 1 and verse 21: "And you," he's writing to them, "you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach."

So the security of our position in Christ is revealed in some measure in our own personal activity. Because he goes on in that same verse to say, "if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed under heaven and throughout earth." That's why the imperatives of 1 Peter and of James 4, for example, are clear: Stay awake, stay alert, and resist him firm in the faith.

So there is no sense in which we say, "Okay, the identity of the evil one is this, his strategy is that, there is victory in Jesus, therefore we can just relax." No, there is nowhere in the scriptures that we're invited to live a life of dreamy carelessness, that we're invited to say, "Well, it doesn't matter, there's no part that I'm going to play." We'll see that when we get back to the next verse in 17: "Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. Finish what you began in them," Jesus says.

The Westminster Confession of Faith again helps us by reminding us that we have a battle on three fronts. Number one: the corruption of our flesh, i.e., me. Every sin is an inside job. Don't come to see me and tell me that the devil made you do it. He didn't; you did it. So did I. Why? Because although I am set free in Jesus, I'm still a sinner. And there remains within the intrinsic meanness of me the inclination to do wrong things, to choose bad things.

And that is the frontline of the battle: the corruption of my flesh. Secondly: the malice of Satan. And thirdly: the influence of the world. And the crafty one, the evil one whom we've identified, plays his cards straightforwardly. He seeks to bring about our ruin, and what is the weapon that he uses? Sin. Sin. And he employs that to appeal to our fleshly instincts. It's really so straightforward that I'm surprised that we often stumble at this.

We used to sing a chorus: "I met Jesus at the crossroads where the two ways meet. Satan too was standing there and he said, 'Come this way. Lots and lots of pleasures I will give to you today.'" Wouldn't you like some of this? Wouldn't you like that? Don't you realize that he is just trying to destroy you, that he's trying to keep away from you the things that will make you really you? Come on!

But I said, "No, there's Jesus here. Just see what he offers me. Down here, my sins forgiven; up there, a home in heaven. Praise God, that's the way for me." Now, here's the deal. You don't do that once in your life. Sometimes you do that on a daily basis. Sometimes we are aware of the impact of the malevolent accusations of the evil one to the point that we don't even really know what it is we're doing or why we're doing what we're doing. Romans chapter 7: "The good that I want to do, I don't do, and the bad that I don't want to do—oh, wretched man I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?"

If you don't understand that, the chances are you're not a Christian. One day we will see Jesus and be made like him, but it's not today. At least I don't think so, unless somebody died during the last 30 minutes. We live in a world to which we don't belong because our citizenship is in heaven. We live in a dual reality: the reality of no condemnation, Romans 8:1, and the reality of conflict revealed in Romans chapter 7.

J.I. Packer put it marvelously when he said the Christian life is like a house. In the north side of the house, it tends to be chilly; in the south side of the house, if you go to the south side, it's warmer. He says Romans chapter 7 is the north side of the house where we're aware of our conflict, and Romans chapter 8 is the south side of the house where we are secure in the absence of condemnation because Jesus, in his death in casting out the evil one, has borne the curse of our indebtedness by nailing it to the cross, as he says in Galatians.

So let me end in this way. Let me end as John ends his letter. If you turn there, you can just see this so that you can tell it's in the text. 1 John chapter 5, verse 18: "We know that everyone who is born of God does not keep on sinning." It's not the pattern of their life. They don't just do it and do it and do it. "But he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him."

Remember what Jesus said to Mary: "Do not cling to me." That's the verb there. It's not like he doesn't tap you. No, he doesn't get a hold of you. He may come and oppress you; he may come and accuse you, but he doesn't get a hold of you. Verse 19: "We know that we're from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one," or "the whole world lies in the power of wickedness."

What is he saying there? He's saying that the world is in the grip and dominion of evil—the world. And those who don't follow Christ are serving Satan, whether we realize it or not. And the picture you will notice in verse 19 is not a picture of men and women struggling actively to be free from the power of the evil one, but rather quietly lying, perhaps even consciously asleep, in the arms of Satan.

We are this morning not divided by gender, race, intellect, social status, any of the above. We are before Almighty God divided on two fronts, and this is what the Bible says: We are either living under the power and authority of the world rulers of this present darkness and of their commander-in-chief, the evil one—either that—or by God's amazing grace, we are looking to Jesus as our Savior, Lord, pioneer, and perfecter of our faith.

Everyone of us in terms of this closing verses of 1 John 5, every one of us is therefore either of God, born of God, verse 18, or in the power of the evil one. Either of God or in the power of the evil one. There is no third category. So if you're in the power of the evil one, you have nothing at all to look forward to save ultimate destruction, death, and hell, or God's word is a lie.

Nothing to look forward to. If you're in Christ on account of who he is, his triumph, his casting out of the evil one, you have love, joy, security, and the promise of eternity in the presence of his glory. So why would you not trust Christ after I've told you this? Of course, I remember—so do you—because the god of this age has blinded your mind. Well, guess what: you can't unblind it.

So are you stuck? No, because God so loved the world that is under the control of the evil one that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believed in him would not perish but would have eternal life. And if you have any inkling to reach out from the recesses of your own psyche and say, "Lord, I need that," it's when I understand my helplessness that I cry. Do you know how helpless you are without Jesus? God loves you. That's why, despite the fact that you're part of a world that is in rebellion, he came to seek you. He clothed Adam and Eve on the outside of the garden, covered up their shame, and he covers us with all of the blessings and benefits that are ours in Jesus.

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. He'll return in just a moment to close the program. Here at Truth For Life, we receive countless letters from listeners from around the world. And today we want to share a message that arrived recently from a listener in Mexico. He wrote to say, "I first started listening to Truth For Life in 2020 while I was incarcerated in Miami. It was a difficult time as my marriage ended and I was alone. Reading my Bible and listening to your nightly teaching on my prison radio allowed me to cry out to Jesus each day. I just thought it was important to let you know how impactful you have been to my faith."

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Alistair Begg: Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that we can study it, we can go and see if these things are true. Lord, I pray especially for some people who are just nuzzling themselves up to the notion that they can rest quite contentedly in the grasp of the evil one. Lord, help them to see that it is because of your immense love that you come to shake them, to wake them, that you get that light that we were singing about, the ray that Wesley talks about: "Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray; I woke, the dungeon flamed with light."

Lord, flame our dungeons with your light, we pray, that our chains may fall off and we might be free in Jesus. And let this whole world know that there's a great story and a great adventure to be had. Bless us as we sing our concluding hymn, which reminds us that although we face the accuser, our answer is not in a litany of our good endeavors, but in looking from ourselves to Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Bob Lepine: I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we'll consider the question: What is God doing with me? The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.