The Devil Exists

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Well, tonight we are continuing our study on the doctrine of angels, which is a part of our larger study on systematic theology.
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And as I mentioned, under the category of the doctrine of angels, we said there are those angels which we identify as the elect angels.
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Those are the ones who did not fall, who maintained their proper position.
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Jude 6 says there are those who did not keep their proper position.
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That's referring to the ones who fell.
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So if there are those who did not, then we can, by the necessary inference, understand that there are those who did keep their proper position, and that would be the elect angels.
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And then we have the other side of that, which we would call the fallen angels.
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And under the category of fallen angels, we are dividing that into two parts.
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The first will be Satan, and the second will be demons.
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Now, we took three weeks, I think it was, on the subject of angels.
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Is that right? The elect angels? Did we do three Wednesday nights? OK, well, we were three Wednesday nights on the subject of the elect angels.
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I hate to feel as if I'm going to give more weeks to the subject of the fallen angels, but because there's a dual category, I feel like I'm going to have to, especially since as I was looking at my notes tonight, I realized that there's no way in heaven, unless God so made it happen, that I'm going to get through Satan in one lesson.
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There's just too much material to discuss.
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I do, however, have something I want to share with you.
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I have it in my notebook.
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I found this this week and I thought it would be an interesting thing to share, according to an article that was published.
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This is the title of the article, Lucifer, which, as many of you know, is one of the names of the devil.
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Lucifer tells his own story in new comic book, The Falling Star.
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That is the title of the article, Lucifer tells his own story in the new comic book entitled The Falling Star.
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And here is a picture of the front of the comic book that is published, going to be published, and I think already is, according to this article.
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I just want to read a few things from the article before we dive right into our lesson on the subject of the devil.
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Hypatia Press published atheist and author John Hammond's new comic book, The Falling Star, on June 14th this year.
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According to the friendly atheist, this is the quote from the friendly atheist, quote, Hammond tells the story of the archangel Samuel or Samuel, who reminds readers that history is written by the victors.
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As we learn about Samuel's journey, he grapples with the concepts of free will, subjective truth and predestination.
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While he longs for his own freedom, he constantly is reminded that God controls his destiny.
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It goes on to say this.
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Have you ever wondered what the story of the Bible would look like from the perspective of Satan, perhaps one of the most maligned figures in literary history? The fallen angel known as Lucifer has his own story to tell.
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It shouldn't surprise you to know that it is strikingly different from anything else you've heard on the subject.
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From the back of the book, it says this, The Falling Star is the story of the archangel Samuel, once among the highest angels of the heavenly host, yet forever and remembered as Satan.
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Using the biblical narrative as a backdrop, the story unfolds from the perspective of the supposed villain.
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Samuel's journey is one of self-discovery as he grapples with the concepts of free will, subjective truth and predestination.
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Samuel desperately wants to believe in his own autonomy, that means freedom, yet is constantly confronted with the evidence that God holds the reins, that his supposed free will is, in fact, illusory.
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Join us as we read between the lines, examine the subtext and fill in the blanks of one of the most well-known stories ever told.
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The author is John Hammond and that's spelled J-O-N.
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So I don't know how many of you were here Sunday and remember, but I mentioned in my message on Sunday that we have become quite adept at making heroes out of villains.
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The new popular thing to do in modern media is the idea of the anti-hero.
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The anti-hero is the one who is really the bad guy, but we root for him even though he's the bad guy.
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I mentioned Sunday, a character named Walter White.
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Some of you looked at me with cross-eyed because you never heard that name before.
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Now, I've never watched the television show, but it was a television show called Breaking Bad.
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It was about a chemistry teacher who got cancer and he wanted to be able to provide for his family.
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So he started to sell meth and through the process of many seasons in the show, as again, I haven't seen it.
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I just it's so inundated in pop culture.
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You know about it.
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Through many seasons, he got darker and darker and darker and more evil and more evil and more evil.
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And yet people still rooted for his success.
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It's like Brother Andy, it's amazing what he said tonight because we don't ever conspire to say anything the same.
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We rarely talk, but I mean, we don't we don't sit here and decide what we're going to talk about.
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On Sunday, it was very similar, our Sunday school lesson and the sermon.
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And then tonight he talked about the wicked ones.
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And the honest thing is, anymore, there are no wicked ones.
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The world has painted the wicked with a brush of positivity.
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No, we can't discriminate.
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We can't say anything is evil.
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In fact, the only evil is to say that there's evil.
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The only really bad thing to do is to make any discriminating statement about someone's behavior or or your hater, your bigot, whatever.
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And so Satan has had his day.
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He not only has set himself up as the hero, he's got his own comic book.
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He is the new Superman.
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He has his own television show, Lucifer.
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You know, it was once stated that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn't exist.
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I don't know.
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I think there's a better trick.
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It's convincing people he's the hero.
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Now it's not a matter, does he exist? Now it's a matter, is he really the bad guy? You see, there's really no question about that.
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Many years ago, we knew God was good.
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In fact, we have a song, God is good all the time.
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He put a song of praise in this heart of mine.
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God is good all the time.
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But now the narrative has changed.
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Now Satan is the hero and God the villain.
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Well, you know what I mean, though, for for great for the for the for the great many people.
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And this is what the Bible says.
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This is woe unto them who replace good for evil and evil for good.
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Who make the exchange.
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Yes, they take something good and they say this is bad.
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They take something bad and say this is good.
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And it's an exchange.
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They exchange righteousness for wickedness.
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And then they pride themselves in doing so.
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They say this is good and wholesome and right.
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People who need that coming with us.
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Oh, man, this thing is going to sell a billion copies.
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No doubt.
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So I say that all to simply say we are beginning to study a subject about a person.
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When I say person, I don't mean he's a human being, but a personality, a spiritual being who has greatly deceived the world.
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And therefore, we need to be careful about how we engage this deceitful character.
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Years ago, Billy Graham, when his children were little and he tells this story in his book, I think this was from his book on angels.
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He tells the story of how when his children were little, they would sing the song.
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I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart.
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Right.
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We all know if I started going around.
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But do you remember the next verse? And if the devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack.
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Yeah.
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And Billy Graham stopped his children.
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He heard them singing that song.
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Apparently, it was not one that was popular when he was a child.
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He had not heard that verse.
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And he heard them say, if the devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack.
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And he said, stop.
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And the children said, what's wrong? He said, I do not want you to sing that verse anymore.
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The children said, why? And he said, because the devil is a good devil.
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What do you mean? The devil is good at being the devil.
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He is good at being evil.
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And we do not need to pretend he is a foe to be trifled with.
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We do not need to treat him as a joke or as a toy or as any other kind of silly thing.
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He is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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He is not a joke.
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And so I agree with Billy Graham, Satan is no laughing matter.
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Any good military man, as I mentioned in my prayer earlier, any good military man will tell you that the success in battle is often first predicated on knowing your enemy.
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And so over the next few weeks, we're going to seek to come to know our enemy, not because it really is a blessing in the sense of studying an evil being is a good blessing to the soul.
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But it is a blessing in the sense of it is it's the way you prepare for battle.
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To prepare for battle is to know who you are fighting.
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I want to give you a warning.
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I want to quote from C.S.
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Lewis.
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How many of you have ever read Lewis? OK, C.S.
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Lewis, he's got some question marks on some of his theology, and so I don't I don't recommend him without some hesitation, but he has written some good things.
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And one of the things that he wrote, I actually read this this year as one of just my devotional readings was called The Screwtape Letters.
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The Screwtape Letters is a fictional account of two demons who are interacting with one another.
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And it is a account of their conversations regarding a man, how one of the demons is sort of a protege to this other more experienced demon and how he is going about seeking to bring this man down and to his demise.
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And so much like any good writer, he tells a lot of great picture stories and you read it and you kind of get the picture of what's happening.
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This is one of the things that C.S.
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Lewis wrote.
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I just want to read this quote.
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There are two equal and opposite errors.
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And to which one can fall into about the devils, and he's talking about demons and the devil.
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Yeah.
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One is to disbelieve in their existence.
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The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.
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So we have to balance this to where we don't fall on the side of disbelief, but also where we do not fall on the side of an unhealthy interest to the point where everything we see is the devil.
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And like Flip Wilson, everything we do, the devil made me do it.
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You know what I mean? So we have to be careful and balance our study of Satan with that reality.
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So let's look at your sheet.
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I will take you down the line.
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I'll give you the fill ins for for the first one and the second one.
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I think that's as far as we're going to get tonight.
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We'll look first at the existence of Satan, the existence of Satan, the New York Times and reporting on a survey by the Barna Group.
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I don't know if you've ever heard of the Barna Group.
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They do a lot of surveys, especially religious in nature.
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Well, the New York Times reporting on a survey noted the diminishing belief in the devil among Americans.
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Two thirds of Americans do not believe in the devil as a living entity.
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Two thirds.
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Think of that in the sense of like a pie chart.
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If you take this and you combine, you take it and put it into threes, that would mean if this were a population.
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And again, this is speaking of Americans.
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How many people are in America? Several hundred million people.
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You know, there's a seven billion people all around the world, but most of them are in the Asian continent and the African continent, the lower third world.
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But we say several hundred million people live in America.
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So out of those several hundred million people, if I shaded in this and I shaded in that, we would say those are the people who, according to this survey, do not believe that the devil even exists as a living entity.
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Now, they may believe that there is devilish behavior or that there's some kind of a negative spiritual force.
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You talk to people today that come up with all kinds of silliness.
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You know, there's negative vibes.
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Do you hear that all the time? Good vibes, bad vibes.
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I don't know what that means.
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I know I know I think it means.
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But but it's doesn't matter.
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The point is a real personal devil.
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Two thirds say no go.
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In a nationwide television survey of one thousand randomly selected people, pollsters were asked whether they agreed that Satan is a is not a living being, but a symbol of evil.
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Sixty two percent agreed with that statement, while thirty to thirty percent disagreed.
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And the other eight percent had no opinion.
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And so basically it's about the same, about 70 percent, right? About two thirds disagreed that the devil is a living symbol of evil or a living being, not just a symbol of evil.
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It's interesting because there's a lot more people who claim to believe the Bible than that, especially in the South.
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You understand that when we go out and do the fishing hole, we have a booth that we go to the fair and we meet people.
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And hopefully those of you this year, you'll want to come, especially if you've never been before.
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It's a great opportunity to meet people, share the gospel, hear people say some of the craziest stuff you've ever heard.
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And it's great.
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And Dale's my right hand with the fishing hole.
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I'm so thankful for him.
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And and we go out there and we share the gospel.
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We hear a lot of crazy things.
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People say, but you know what? I've never asked people if they believe in the devil.
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That's that might be a good question this year, because if you ask people if they believe in God, the vast majority of people will say they believe in God.
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Now, most of them are idolaters.
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They have a God they've created in their own mind.
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They've made God.
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And the way you prove that is you start talking to them about scripture and say, what about this? What about that? And I say, well, my God wouldn't do that.
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And so you're right, because your God doesn't exist.
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You have an idol.
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You've made an idol in your mind.
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I said, my God wouldn't wouldn't create hell.
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You're right.
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Your God doesn't exist.
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Can't create hell.
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Doesn't exist.
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But ask if the devil exists.
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They're going to get a lot more answers, a lot more nuanced answers.
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Well, the devil is more of a symbol.
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He's not a real entity.
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He doesn't really exist in the sense of living being.
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But then you ask that same person, do you believe the Bible? Because that's really the that's really the the most important question is if you believe the Bible.
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You really have no choice but to believe in the existence of the devil.
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You say, why do I say that? Well, how many books are in the Old Testament? Thirty nine, thirty nine, thirty nine books in the Old Testament.
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Seven of the Old Testament writers.
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Talk about the devil as a living person, being living, spiritual being.
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You say, well, that's not very many out of thirty nine books, only seven.
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OK, seven's enough, right? How many of them talk about Samson? Just one, and we believe he existed.
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So, I mean, my point being seven out of thirty nine mentioned the existence of the devil.
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Right.
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I may be wrong about Samson.
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He may have come up a couple of times, but one major book in the book of Judges.
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Right.
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So we know the devil seven times out of thirty nine.
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Well, that's not very many, but at least he's there.
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How many times? How many books in the New Testament? Twenty seven.
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That's right.
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Of the twenty seven books of the New Testament, how many books mention the devil as a living being? All of them.
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Every book of the New Testament, even the little bitty ones.
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Rather, let me back up every writer, because John wrote a couple of letters that are short, short.
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But John mentions the devil.
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So John believed in the devil.
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All right, Jude, short book, devil's right there in the first paragraph.
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Go through the New Testament over and over.
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I mentioned this about angels a few weeks ago.
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I said, if you don't believe in angels, you cannot say you believe the whole Bible.
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Remember, I said that I said, if you do not believe in angels, you cannot say you believe the whole Bible because the Bible is is.
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I mean, it is dripping with evidence that angels exist.
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You say, well, that's just your interpretation.
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No, let me explain why not.
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And the angel of the Lord visited Mary and the angel Gabriel visited Joseph.
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And Michael, the archangel, wrestled with Satan over the body of Moses.
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That's what's in Jude, by the way.
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I don't have to interpret any of that.
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I just read it.
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I didn't read it.
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I just said it.
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You didn't have to interpret it.
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Your brain heard it and said, OK, there really is not a debate.
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Say, well, this is where people get dangerous and in trouble.
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And I'm teaching on Thursday night, Sovereign Grace Academy.
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I teach how to interpret the Bible.
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What people often do.
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Is when they do not want to believe in something.
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They come to the text with a presupposition, they interpose or place into the text their presupposition, and then they change the meaning based on that presupposition.
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It's dangerous.
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They do this with every subject, salvation, sanctification, regeneration, baptism, anything, but angels particularly and the devil especially.
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Seven Old Testament books, every New Testament writer refers to Satan.
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But if I didn't have that, I have this, the testimony of Jesus Christ.
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Now, I have said, and we talked about this last week, I believe the testimony of Jesus Christ as written is inspired by the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writings of Paul, who inspired the writings of Peter.
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So I'm not saying that it's more provable because Jesus said it.
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But what I am going to say is this.
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If there's ever any question that the devil exists, just go to Luke chapter four.
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In fact, let's go to Luke chapter four and we'll make this our primary text for the evening and we'll look at it and then we'll look at some other ones.
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But Luke chapter four, this is right after Jesus is baptized.
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Now, the different gospels tell this story in different ways, but we're going to look at Luke's position because I like the way Luke writes out the narrative here.
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But again, you can see this in other places.
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It says in Luke four, And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by a personification of evil, by a symbol of evil.
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It's not what it says.
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It says that he was tempted by the devil.
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Now, if that was it, he was tempted by the devil, some creative thinker might come along and say, well, the devil is simply a picture here of the temptation that attacks us all.
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Doesn't the Bible say that Jesus is tempted like all of us, that he was tempted in every way as we are yet without sin? Hebrews tells us that.
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So what they might come along and say was, see, the devil here is not really a personal spiritual being.
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The devil here is simply a personification of the temptation that we all feel.
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Imagine you were 40 days without food.
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Wouldn't you have a temptation? And this is just the personification of a temptation.
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Well, let's read on and see if that particular if that particular interpretation fits, because it goes on to say.
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And he ate nothing during those days.
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And when they were ended, he was hungry.
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Verse three, the devil said to him, uh-huh, normally symbols don't speak.
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I'm just throwing that out there.
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I mean, I'm not I'm not being a jerk, but, you know, normally symbols don't engage.
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And he said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.
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And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone.
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And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, to you, I will give all this authority in their glory for it has been delivered to me and I will give it to whom I will, if you then will worship me, it will be all or all be yours.
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And Jesus said to him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord, your God, and him only shall you serve.
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And he took him to Jerusalem, set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here for it is written.
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See, now the devil's quoting scripture.
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If you ever wonder.
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All these people that come, oh, I know the Bible, the devil knows the Bible doesn't matter.
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You can know the Bible still be lost.
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You can know the Bible still be wicked.
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He says right here, it is written, he will give command, his angels concerning you, or he will command his angels concerning you to guard you and on their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against the stone.
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And Jesus answered him and said, it is said, you shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.
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And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
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Now we could go through this line by line.
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We could show how number one, he spoke symbols, don't speak.
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We could show number two, how he engaged in a back and forth conversation where he answered and gave answers to a response back and forth dialogue with the Lord Jesus Christ.
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We could say he not only had that ability to engage, but he also had the ability to apparently move space and time because he took Jesus and showed him the world.
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He took Jesus up on the pinnacle of the temple and showed him this opportunity to be worshiped.
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Throw yourself down.
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God will protect you.
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So the devil has not only any left, which tells us something, the devil is not omnipresent.
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He's not everywhere.
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He can go and come.
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God doesn't go and come.
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God always is.
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That's an important reality.
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The difference between God and the devil is God is omnipresent.
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The devil is not.
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He comes and he goes.
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So all that being said, there is no way to interpret this, no matter how creative one might be, unless you say the whole scenario is a parable, unless you say the whole scenario is some kind of a mythological tale.
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But it is not written so.
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The rules of grammar tell us that this comes to us in the form known as the narrative.
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And a narrative, historical narrative in scripture is not written as a myth.
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We have people, Jesus and the devil.
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They are in a certain place at a certain time doing a certain thing.
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This is not a myth.
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This is an event in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ that did happen.
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The Bible is not giving us the option of going any other way on that.
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You have to contort and distort to change it, to make it so.
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So having said all that.
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Oh, and by the way, just a little side nugget.
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This won't cost you anything.
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Jesus responded to all of the temptations of the devil with the word of God.
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That's a good lesson in and of itself.
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It's not meant that's really not the focus of the text.
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The focus of the text is that the Lord did not sin.
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But a side application is that if we are being tempted to sin, the word of God is our defense.
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It's our sword.
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Also, every one of the things Jesus quoted came from the book of Deuteronomy.
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How many of you know Deuteronomy well enough that if you had to face the devil and that's all you had, you'd be able to face death? How many of you ever done your daily devotions in Deuteronomy? Might not think it was enough.
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Oh, maybe this is just too much.
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Jesus used one book of the Old Testament to ward off the devil in that interest.
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All of these quotes are from one book.
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The second giving of the law.
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Just a little side application.
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The Old Testament is powerful, guys.
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And then there's proof right there.
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So we see here Jesus proving to us.
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Well, not Jesus proving the writer Luke proving to us through this event in the life of Christ of the existence of the devil.
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To deny Satan's existence would require that we deny scripture.
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Some people might have a creative workaround, but I've yet to see one that is in any way satisfactory.
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Now, I want to add another thought because I do again, I might not even get past the first line tonight because I'm going pretty slow.
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But I want to just remind you of the first time we see the devil.
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This is this is really the first major appearance in the Gospels.
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I mean, if you think of this, this is in the life of Christ right after his baptism, right before his ministry starts.
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Here's the devil.
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But where else do we see the devil in Genesis chapter three? But I want to make note, I mentioned earlier, Satan has many names.
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He's he's not always called the devil and he's not always called Satan.
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He's not always called Lucifer.
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In fact, only once is it called Lucifer and or is he called Lucifer? And that's in the King James translation.
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Lucifer is not found in more modern translations.
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But the first time we see this spiritual being is in Genesis three.
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And what is his cloak? I say cloak, it means what was he appearing as? The serpent.
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It says in chapter three, now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
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I tell you what, just that sentence gives me a thousand questions.
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Number one, and like on my mental, like, because I think in pictures a lot and I think about like I see things in my mind and I memorize things sort of in pictures in my head, is just what in the world did it look like? Because every time I've ever seen a drawing, it looked like a python wrapped around a tree.
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Every one of you have seen paintings or some kind of a children's book about Adam and Eve.
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It never says the devil, it just says the serpent.
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How do we know it was the devil? Well, in Revelation, chapter 12 and verse nine, it specifically says, and I'll just read it to you, Revelation, chapter 12, verse nine.
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I'll pull it up real quick.
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I thought I had it written down, but I don't.
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What's that? Yeah, Revelation 12, nine says in speaking of the devil, it says in the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.
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He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.
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So it says he was the deceiver.
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He was the one of old and he was the devil.
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And, you know, the serpent, the devil, all those things combined is enough evidence to say, OK, it's talking about the garden, talking about the ancient serpent.
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The one who was.
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And so we see this person, the spiritual being, the serpent taking the form of what appeared apparently is some form of a snake.
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At this point, the snake did not crawl on its belly, though, according to the later part of Genesis three, the serpent is judged and the judgment was that he would crawl on his belly.
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So there are some people who believe that the serpent had legs and those legs were removed.
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There's others who believe that he was up on his sort of like a almost like a cobra up, able to move, not face down like we see most snakes.
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And by the way, I hate snakes.
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Just throwing that out there.
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Saw one the other day in my neighbor's backyard and just thank God it wasn't mine.
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I really just don't like him.
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So we don't know anything about this, but we know what he did.
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That's that's the vital part.
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Right.
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We don't know anything past the point that it was a serpent.
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I don't know what he looked like.
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Don't know how he moved.
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We can we can conjecture to the cows come home.
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But verse two, he said to the woman, right away, I know this is something special because most of the snakes I've met don't talk.
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I mean, I'm not being sarcastic, but this is something different.
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So we know it's not just a regular snake.
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Adam wasn't having conversations with giraffes, not that we know of.
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Right.
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The only other animal I know of in scripture that spoke was what? A donkey.
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And that was an angel speaking through the donkey.
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That's the only other place.
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Numbers, I think, 22.
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Right.
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So this is a unique event.
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By the way, I'm going to be preaching through Genesis starting in September.
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So you're going to hear some of this again.
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Yeah.
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But he said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of the tree in the garden of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
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But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
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Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
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But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.
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For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was a desire to make one wise.
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She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.
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Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked.
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They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
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Now, again, I'm going to talk about this later in the year.
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What all that meant and what the picture there is of shame and covering of shame and the whole idea of what came into the world with sin, which was the concept of having broken God's law, the dirt and in danger of doing such a thing, dirtiness and dangerousness of doing such a thing.
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What's that? The debt? Yes.
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Death and debt and everything.
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But for now, I just want to point to the fact that the devil not only existed.
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But he spoke and he spoke a lie.
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He is called the father of lies.
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And this event changes human history.
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He is the instigator of the fall of man.
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And as a result of Adam's fall, and we always call it Adam's fall, because Eve, though she was responsible, Adam was the head and it was Adam who represented all of his posterity.
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The Bible says in Romans chapter 12, through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin and death spread to all men because all sin.
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That's Romans 5, verse 12.
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We have to understand Adam is the representative of mankind.
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Adam was created first and Adam was the one in first Timothy 2.
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It says Eve did what she did in ignorance, but he did is in defiance.
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He understood what he was doing.
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She was deceived.
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That's first Timothy 2, and it references the fact that Eve was deceived and the implication is Adam was not that he did it in defiance.
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And so we have, again, the situation where the devil is clearly present.
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He clearly exists.
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There is no doubt to that.
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And this is the very first book of the Bible.
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So we have looked at the very first book of the Bible.
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We just a moment ago looked at the very last book of the Bible, Revelation 12 and 9.
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We see his interactions with Christ.
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We know he was written about seven times, seven books of the Old Testament and every writer of the New.
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There is no reason to question the fact that the devil exists.
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Now, we're going to draw to a close and I want to give you the heads up.
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I'm going to give you the fill ins because I know how frustrating it is to have just a big sheet of paper that's just blank.
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So I'm going to give you the fill ins.
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And next week, we'll look at part two.
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The first one we said is the existence of Satan.
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I think we have clearly made the biblical argument tonight that he exists.
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I hope there's no one who leaves doubting that.
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If you do, I ain't leaving.
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Come see me.
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We'll spend some more time.
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But the second thing we're going to look at next time is the personality and names.
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That's number two, personality and names.
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The third is the nature.
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What kind of being is he? That's the question that goes with that.
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The fourth is the fall of Satan.
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And then the fifth is the activity of Satan.
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So all together, one more time, it's the existence of Satan, the personality and names of Satan, the nature of Satan, fall of Satan and the activity of Satan.
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As I said, I'm going to try to ramp it up a little next week.
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Let me get through a couple of these because I want to I don't want to spend too much time on the devil because then we got to go right to demons and that's no fun.
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Oh, and by the way, next week, I won't be doing this.
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So forgive me.
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Next week, Brother Andy will be teaching.
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Next week is karate camp.
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And so during the week of karate camp, I have I have very little energy because I spend all day with the kids here.
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So Brother Andy has graciously asked or not asked.
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I've asked him and he's graciously accepted to teach for me next week.
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I don't know if he's going to want to talk about the devil.
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I'll let that be up to him.
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But but he'll teach next week and you guys are going to be in our new room next week.
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Lord willing, and he'll have to be because we karate kids are going to be in here and this whole room will be mats and everything else.
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Lord willing.
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And yeah, we will be in the next room and you guys will have you'll have a special lesson from Brother Andy.
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So let's pray.
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Let's finish.
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Pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time together.
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Lord, may it be that that we understand the devil exists.
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We have an adversary who is called Satan.
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And that is what he is.
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He he hates the truth and he hates the word and he hates you.
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And by extension, he hates us, Lord God, may it be that simply by knowing he exists.
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That we begin to recognize how he and his angels, those demons are seeking to influence our life, what avenues they have taken in our life.
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Lord, may it be that we stand against him and against his angels.
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With the word of God as our sword.
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In Christ's name, Amen.