How Satan Destroys a Church - Part 1 (Guard Your Garden) — Don Courville

Satan’s Deception and the Simplicity of Christ

Well, I'm going to start off with a verse of Scripture, and then pray a couple of verses of Scripture. The first one is in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 3. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtility, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

That subtility, that craftiness, and the corruption actually goes to one word that's translated. That is just to destroy. So your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Be destroyed from the simplicity, and that's the idea of singleness.

And then in 2 Corinthians 11, another verse. Just to pick this verse out. And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. This little series entitled, How Satan Destroys the Church, has, I guess, the encouragement of a father and his son.

And the son wanted me to record these messages, and the father wanted me to put these things in a book. Well, we'll just get them in a message like this first. But after I was challenged on that, some four months ago, I've worked on it for four months.

And now I'm ready to share a little bit about this. Actually, I've got a little subtitle over here, How Satan Destroys the Church. But, more in reality, How Satan Tries to Destroy Christ. Any attack that comes on a church, or on you, or me, or a church, is actually coming to destroy Christ.

And if we are in Christ, we're just going to be right there on the target mark, on the target. So, How Satan Destroys the Church. This comes out of, I guess, probably 42 years of preaching. And even more years than that of watching.

I sort of had a hobby of studying preachers, and studying churches. I don't know, I was probably a young teenager when I began to notice the pastors that we had, and other pastors, and just sort of tucked them away.

And so I've kept that up for many years, never thinking that I would have through that so many illustrations of things that I've learned. And then, all the years of preaching myself, and my own illustrations of failures, and blunders, and things.

And a bunch of my friends get together and compare notes, and look at our scars, and things. It's a warfare. It's a warfare. And I was thinking this morning, before we came here, how sad so many of these stories are.

Because life is real, war is real, bullets are real. And this is just as real as any war that uses real bullets in this area. So, I'm going to share these things. Some of these things as we get in here will get a little bit heavy as we go along.

But after we go through this, I'm trying to get to some principles. Not necessarily to do a lot of teachings, per se. Deep theological teaching, and exegetical teaching, and stuff like that. But to learn some principles that we can use to survive.

And to help our churches survive. So, let's have a word of prayer. Now, Father, thank You for this opportunity. And I pray for Your grace to just hold this thing together. Hold me together. Hold us together to understand what is going on.

Because so many times, Lord, as earlier, we were studying on light. We don't understand what's going on. So, when we get in the darkness, You're teaching us just to trust. We don't understand everything, but many things You do give us understanding.

Satan’s Lure Through Conversation and Compromise

And so, we do ask You to help us understand this subject. Especially in the dark days that we're in. In Jesus' name, Amen. I'll say this again. This subject, it's like... I read a story that we've all heard before this morning about the hunter.

He'd come across the bear. Raises up his gun and fixes the chute. And the bear says, wait a minute. And the hunter drops his gun down a little bit. What did you say? He said, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

What are you going to do? Well, he said, I'm going to shoot you. Why do you want to shoot me? The bear says. Well, he says, I want a fur coat. And the bear says, wait a minute. Can't we talk this over a little bit?

And the hunter said, what do you want? He said, well, I want some meal. Can we just talk it over a little bit? Okay. So, he starts talking. They sit down and they talk it over a little bit. And pretty soon the bear gets up and leaves alone.

And we've all heard this story. He went away with his meal. And the hunter went away with his fur coat. This is what happens when we sit down and we try to communicate with Satan or his demons. They're going to get you every time.

And this is some serious stuff. Now, I don't know everything about this subject. And I wouldn't say that. I do know this. That when I went through my six years of theological training and everything, there were a whole lot of things I didn't learn that I wished I'd been taught.

And this subject would have been one of them. Because we've got a lot of good Bible teaching. A lot of good things in there. But the practicality of it, a lot of it was missed. Now, my last couple years, I had a school that focused a lot on the practical.

And it was very, very helpful to get the practical. But if you take all of the things that I've shared and all these stories, and I'm going to bring in some illustrations from lots of different areas.

Different areas of the country. Some areas of the world. As I've shared, the Lord has been gracious to let me share in three countries. And I guess I counted up about 17 states. Everything from little small groups, homeschooling groups, to some larger areas.

Pretty large sometimes. But those things, all of that traveling around and all those experiences and getting into all those things has begun to give me a picture. And I think what I'm going to share with you in this little series is the most important thing that I've learned.

The most important things I've learned in 42 years. And so let's get going. The first thing we're going to look at, we're going to go to the foundation of this thing. And that's this, how Satan destroys the church.

Guarding the Home and the Garden

He starts off by trying to destroy the home. These are the basic things. We know that. David said in Psalms 121 .5, I think it was him that wrote that, the Lord is thy keeper. That's an interesting thing because if you go back over to Genesis, and I'll be in Genesis a lot, and I'll be in Ephesians chapter 5 a lot.

But in Genesis 2 .15, when God put Adam in the garden, He told him to do something very interesting. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it. We understand that. He's going to take care of that garden.

And to keep it. That's the same word that's used for guard. Now why would, all of a sudden, Adam is in this beautiful place in the garden of Eden, and God would tell him to keep it, to guard what he had.

Well, we know that that means there may be some danger. The first couple that I ever married, when I first started pastoring, the young lady, the wife, came and was complaining a lot about her husband not leading spiritually.

Not wanting to take the lead and not be so prone to lead into going to church and those type of things. He'd have other interests. And it really grieved her. But as time went on, she just sort of began to go his way.

We've all seen this happen. Wear her down. But in time, he got plugged into the Lord and turned around and came back around. He was getting on fire for the Lord. And that's good, isn't it? Yeah, that's good, but it's bad.

Because in the meantime, his wife's heart had already been turned off. And she kept on going the other way. And now it's flip-flopped. And he's coming in and complaining and asking for prayer. Can I help in this and that?

They ended up in divorce. And I got my first rude awakening to the reality of what happens when the serpent gets in. He didn't guard his garden and he lost his crop. It was heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking.

1 Peter 5 .8. If I can go back over. I'm going to have to lay these out so that we understand. That when the Word of God says, Because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.

That means whom he may swallow up, whom he may consume, whom he may drown. This wasn't put here just to have a nice subject. But God tells us to resist steadfast in the faith. Now, this is the same basic thing that the Lord told Peter.

When he said, Satan had desired to have you that he may sift you. It's not the same word. But the word sift means to shake like in a sieve. In a sift. And you're going to get your flour in there. He said, Satan wants to do that with you.

But he said, I've prayed for you. Now, I want to make a statement here. This is going to be my propositional statement in this message. The basis of the home is marriage. The basis of marriage is a lifelong relationship.

And this point here, don't miss it. The basis of a lifelong relationship is agreement. Agreement. You say, I never heard it put forth like that before. Well, I thought it might be interesting if we would use that term agreement.

Because that's how things started off in the Garden of Eden. God laid it out how things were going to be. And He laid it out all it was. And then when God said, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. God was saying, we've got an agreement. You can eat everything you want. Everything's yours except this one tree. So when Adam disobeyed God, he broke the agreement.

He broke that agreement that he had with God. And so the basis of a lifelong relationship is agreement. And we're going to come back to something in a few minutes. We're going to come back to Ephesians.

Marriage, Submission, and Agreement

Let me just lay it out to you. Ephesians 5. So we've got that basis. We're laying the foundation. As we come on in, we're going to get into the principles that we need to learn. But the basis of this lifelong relationship is agreement.

And it starts off in Ephesians 5 .21. Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. The basis of a lifelong relationship is agreement. That we're going to be submitted to God. Both husband and wife are submitted to God.

Submission to God. And then it goes on in verse 22. Wife, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. And that's her part. And then in 25 you get the husband's part. He is to love his wife.

Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. When you have a wedding and you have the vows, that is what? An agreement. We're making an agreement. That we're going to stay together until death parts us.

And when somebody breaks that agreement, trouble follows. When Adam and Eve broke the agreement, trouble followed. Now here's the thing. We make our agreements. And the enemy comes in and tries to break that agreement.

He tries to separate us. And that's going to be my next section when we go into that. We're going to get into the area of division. What happens when division does come. Now I want to back up and share something I learned this week.

I went over and looked at that word agree in Matthew 18 -19. You know where the Lord said of two of you. Let's see if I can get back over to that. I didn't mark it, but it wouldn't take too long. When we're praying together, we're getting together and fellowshipping together.

Matthew 18 -19. I looked up this word agree. Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

It's a very powerful principle that God has laid out. It's better that you have just two of you praying together in agreement than a whole mob of you praying that aren't in agreement. There's more power will come out of the unity.

This word is the word for where we get our word for symphony. And it's pronounced sumpho. Let's see, I don't know if I can say it. Phoneo. Yeah, there it is. Sumpho. Phoneo. If I can read my own writing here.

It means to sound together. Music. Melody. Harmony. It's used in Luke 15 -25 for the word music. Different forms. Sumpho. Phoneo. But I ran into something interesting in this. Last week we went to a nursing home.

And the children go to nursing homes and go to other different places and play. And they had some friends come and they started off in this one song. And I'm not too much on the music, but it didn't sound too good.

There's something not going on right out there. And it took them a little bit and they finally got their act together and got everything back together. But, you know, just being on the wrong page or wrong notes and all this stuff can get things out of harmony.

And it doesn't sound so good, but they got it put together. And so I looked up this word of being of one mind. That you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The principle for the marriage is oneness. One mind. The principle for fellowship with God is being of one mind. The principle of fellowship in the church of unity is of one mind. That is the basic. I'm laying out the basics.

And if we're not following the basics, is it any wonder that Satan comes in and destroys our marriages, destroys our relationship with God, destroys our churches, destroys our nations? Now listen, I ran into something very interesting.

One accord. One accord. Used twelve times. One time it's used for the word of one mind. Then you go into the book of Acts for the rest of them. And it had this interesting thing. I went to my laptop and I looked that up there.

And I had something I usually don't see. I had a little paragraph about this. I said, wow, that's interesting. We usually don't get that much information like that. And here I'm going to just quote it.

It's a unique Greek word, being of one accord. Used ten of its New Testament occurrences in the book of Acts. It helps us understand the uniqueness of Christian community. It is a compound of two words meaning to rush along and in unison.

The image is almost musical. A number of notes are sounded which, while different, harmonize in pitch and tone as the instruments of a great concert under the direction of a concert master. So the Holy Spirit blends together the lives of members of Christ's church.

We're all different. But if we sing, what happens? It sounds beautiful. We harmonize. And we make music. And this is the idea of being of one accord. And in God's ears, it's like this incense in the Old Testament that went up representing the prayers.

It's just beautiful in God's ears. And I guess I could say it maybe energizes Him. Our one accord. This is why it was so powerful to come down and answer prayer in power. Three thousand get saved in the book of Acts.

And then you just go on and on. Thousands get saved. Why? There was so much power in their prayers. They were of one accord. God was free to just work powerfully. And what happens? Well, it wasn't too long into there, and what happens?

In Acts chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira come along. And all of a sudden, the one accord is gone. The prophet's spirits picked this up right away. There's something wrong here. And they dealt with it. It was such a serious nature not to have one accord in the church that they died.

And we are willing in our churches today to go along without it. And what do we do? We die. We have function without unction. We have big crowds, but we don't have many conversions. We've got a lot of entertainment, but God is not glorified.

And we go more and more and more like the world. If we're going to go more and more like God, we're going to go down lower and lower and become humbler and lower in His sight. And we're going to become more powerful, and we're going to become more unified in our spirit.

The Authority Structure of Marriage

Now, with this little bit of basis, let's move into this first little area about the submission of the wife. And we won't need to cover a lot because we know this is the way it's supposed to be. This is the ground rules.

And the basis of it, if I could go back to Genesis chapter 7, not chapter 2, I mean, chapter 2 in verse 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And we know all these things. And you slip down to verse 16 after He told them to address it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden, 17, By the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.

18, The Lord God said, It's not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him. And so 19, He says, Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what He would call them.

And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And so Adam gave names to them. And then He caused a deep sleep to come upon him. He took one of his ribs, in verse 21, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib which the Lord God had formed from the man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. They shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, and the man and his wife were not ashamed.

I need to read that just in case somebody might be listening to this message that doesn't understand. That when God made Adam and Eve, they became one flesh. They were one. So when we have a marriage, we become one.

The man and the woman become one. And the only thing that is to separate that is death. Now the point that's brought out at this point is the woman was supposed to submit to the man. And the man is supposed to love the wife.

And I want to bring out my first major point for a lesson. Submission is broke at the point of disobedience. When Eve ate of the fruit, her submission to God was broke. And the result was the loss of oneness of spirit.

When she submitted, and we're going to come back and look at the details of this serpent. We're going to look at some things here. But when she submitted to the suggestions of Satan, her submission to God was broke.

Her submission to her husband was broke. And she moved into a different realm. She came into the realm of being under the power of Satan. Just like that. An amazing thing. There was a radio preacher many years back that had a woman that sent him a donation of six whole dollars.

Well, back that far back, when John R. Rice shared this story, it was probably a lot of money. But she said something to him. She put a note in there. And she said this. Do not acknowledge it. My husband said never to send money to radio preachers.

Of course, he sent it back and he said this. I could not be a party to her disobedience to her husband. He wasn't going to get involved in that situation. Now, the word submit in Ephesians means to place in an orderly fashion under.

To come under the authority of someone. The wife is to voluntarily submit herself under the authority of her husband. And it shows one's relation to a superior. Not in the fact that the man is more important than the woman.

But it's the relationship of authority, principle of operating in life. God, man, and the woman's under. It's a place of protection. It's a place, it's God's order. And it all works together. Remember, God said it wasn't good for the man to be alone.

So, this is his idea. He needs somebody there to help him. And the woman is also to be under obedience. I was looking back over at 1 Corinthians 14, 34. And it seems like we just have a whole world that's just sort of gone mad.

Against God and against God's word. And we get worse and worse. And we come up with worse and worse ideas on how to fix things. But Paul said, let your woman, under the inspiration of God and the word in 1 Corinthians 14, 34.

Let your woman keep silent in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak. But they are commanded to be under obedience. As also said to the law, this was the principle to be under obedience.

And this is why in our services, our ladies are quiet. A lot of churches you go to, the women speak up a lot. And if you notice, the more they speak up, the less the men do. And I've gone into some of those churches where the women have just about completely taken over the church, if they haven't.

As a matter of fact, I remember one time when I was preaching in a church. And the pastor there was an entering pastor. And he invited us in to share and for the kids to play their instruments and sing and all that stuff.

And we were all getting set up. And I remember I was up at the pulpit just sort of standing there looking at it. Seeing what it looked like from up there. And down the aisle come this inferno of a furious woman.

And the pastor was over here to my left. And I said, uh-oh. And I mean, she stormed down there, took a slight right and went right straight to him. And I sort of backed off a little bit. It was going to be fire, wind and thunder.

I didn't want to get... And she said, what's going on here? And I said to myself, there's the church boss. He had forgot to check with her that he had invited us in there to fill the pulpit. Well, I don't have to go on from there.

But the enemy destroys the church when he can get a woman in control. Or anybody that's not supposed to be in control. The law of the garden was, don't touch or don't eat. And I think probably God might have said, don't touch.

Eve said that. And we said that she added to the Word of God. And I don't know about all that. Let's go on in now. Here's the lesson. Satan destroys the church by destroying the home. He destroys the home by destroying the marriage.

He destroys the marriage by destroying the authority structure. This church I just talked about was destroyed basically from all spiritual power because the authority structure had been undermined and taken over.

Now, I'm not against women. But they're not to be controlling the church. There was one preacher that was asked when he was going to have the wedding ceremony, the young little bride said, Pastor, would you mind leaving out the words obey?

Whoa, trouble from the very start. And the Bible says, Titus 2, 5, to be obedient to their own husbands. When Eve obeyed the serpent, she broke a vital law in God's kingdom. Now, I want to go into this and show you how this happened.

Listening, Reasoning, and Yielding to Satan

Let's go back over to Genesis. And I just want to take you through this just in case you haven't noticed some things. Here's some principles to be observed. First, or A in my notes, is Satan rules over who he can get to obey him.

It's very simple. If you will listen to him and do what he tells you to do, he will rule you. And all he's got is the power of suggestion. Now, there's sometimes if you don't obey him and he's got some others that he's controlling, he will get them to come attack you because you wouldn't obey him.

But that's all he's got. Now, here, Genesis 3, 1, the serpent was more subtle. That means he's more prudent, more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, as God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

Now, here's the first thing. She listened. She listened. She listened. I was looking just before I come up here, back over in 2 Corinthians 10, 4. And this is one we should always remember. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God.

You see, every thought that comes in is not just your thought. It can come from God or it can come from Satan. Come from something you read or something you watched or whatever. But we're to cast down imaginations and every high thing.

I was thinking of sometimes how people get locked up, where sometimes they just are totally incapacitated for functioning in society because they've listened to these thoughts. Somebody, somewhere along the line, you know, there was one little kid that couldn't do very good in school.

How come? He can't do too good. Well, I'm dumb. Who told you you're dumb? Well, so and so said, I'm dumb. You tell him enough and he begins to what? Believe him. You ruin him. And this is what happens.

Satan destroys us by completely programming our mind to think what he's trying to tell us. Now notice, she listened. She listened. And then, after she's listened a little bit, what does she do? Back over in Genesis 3 again.

And he said unto the woman in verse 1, 3, 1, Yea, had God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? First mistake. The woman said unto the serpent. Here she is now. She's talking to a serpent.

She's talking back. We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die.

Now, the Bible tells us that when the enemy comes in, we are to resist. Resist with the word, resist steadfast in the faith, but we're not to fellowship. Talking to serpents is fellowshipping. She has begun to fellowship with a serpent.

She's carrying on communion. God tells us, don't carry on communion, in a sense, with the enemy. He comes in, you resist him. What did Jesus do? He didn't sit down and let's have a talk. No. Thus says the word of God.

It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. It's over. So you resist. Now, Paul got unto the Corinthians for having fellowship with demons in 1 Corinthians 10.

Now notice the progression, the third thing. In verse 4,. And the serpent said unto the woman,. Now he's talking back. Said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Alright, where are we at now? She's listened, she's talked, and now she's reasoning. All the time she's losing more ground, isn't she? And then, what? She's been lied to. She's been deceived. What happens?

In verse 6,. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. We can't go into all of the things here. There's a lot of stuff here.

But she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. So she listened, she talked, she reasoned. And then, she was deceived, and she looked. That means she saw it.

That means she saw with intelligence. She's thinking it over. Sounds pretty good. Sounds like a good deal. What do I sign on the line? Somebody want to try to sell you a timeshare, or a new vacuum cleaner, or something?

But you've got to do it now. That's the time you'd better run. And then notice, she took. When she took, she was hooked. Then the last thing, she shared in the sin. By the way, the Bible says that sin entered into the world through Adam.

Adam got blamed for that. Adam, we're going to get to him in a minute. We're going to get to the man in a minute. But he was in flat rebellion. The woman is deceived. But he was in flat rebellion. Now, here's a key lesson.

Sin, Slavery, and Redemption Through Christ

I'm going to give you a couple of key lessons. This lesson here, Satan became her master when she took. When she took. When you take of the bait that the devil lays out for you, he becomes your master.

And we all know that Jesus said, no man can serve two masters. Isn't that interesting? Became her master. Matter of fact, if I can go back over here. The Bible says in Romans 6. In Romans 6. Listen to this.

In verse 19, I think it is. 16. Know you not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to. What? Obey his servants you are to whom you obey. Whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness.

A tragic thing happened for the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus Christ came and he died on the cross to get us out of this mess. Because it passed all the way down from Adam and Eve.

All the way to us. And so the wages of sin is death. They died. She was lied to and she died. And it's passed all the way down. And if we will not believe God. If we will not accept what God says about redemption through Christ.

Then we will die also. We're born dead in our sins. But we can be born again by the Spirit of God and have life. Now here's another little lesson. And that's this. Children of disobedience are children of Satan.

We're born as children of disobedience. My mom and dad didn't have to teach me to be bad. It just came natural. We're born like that. That's why you have to be born again. And unbelievers that profess to be believers will live in disobedience to the Word of God.

And they'll try to compromise. Well, I think we ought to do this. I'll go find another version. See, this version backs up what I want to do. We listened to a young evangelist preach how one time he opened this book and it had 15 different versions in there.

The author is just going to get things to make it sound like back up what he wants to say. Well, let's see if we can wind down here a little bit. There's a third lesson. It's dangerous to be in a place where you're not supposed to be.

The Danger of Being in the Wrong Place

You shouldn't have been hanging around too close to that tree. Like the little boy. Mama said, now I don't want you going into that pond. Don't go swimming in the pond. So he's going off to school and she says, let me look at your pack.

She looks in his pack and there's his banana. There's his water. And there's his sandwich. And she says, what's this? Well, that's my swimming trunks. What do you got your swimming trunks in your pack?

Were you going to school? Well, in case I come home by the pond and the temptation's greater than I can stand, I'll be ready. Don't make an opportunity for Satan. He'll take it. He'll take it. The most dangerous place to be is where you ought not to be.

You see, when David fell, he didn't fall in battle. He fell in the palace. And we can go all the way down through there. Samson fell messing around in a place where he shouldn't be. Peter, at least if he was going to go in there with Jesus, he should have gone in there ready to die like he said he would.

But through that trial, he found out he was really not as much a man as he said he was. Here's something else. Satan destroys by luring us out of our position. Somewhere around there, Adam was. He said, with her.