Sunday Night, January 27, 2019 PM

So people have got to get this straight. It's not that the devil is the direct counterpart to God as if in a kind of a dualistic understanding of good and evil. He's not the dark side of the force, okay.

He's not the guy in the black hat versus the guy in the white hat with pretty equal six shooter skills. There's not equality whatsoever between the protagonist and the antagonist in the story of scripture.

The Devil Is Not Omniscient, Omnipresent, or Omnipotent

What can the devil do? The devil is not omniscient, okay. He doesn't know everything. Devil can't read your mind, know everything about you, know everything in the world. Devil has questions he can't answer.

He is not omniscient. God's omniscient. God knows everything, not the devil, okay. Also, the devil is not omnipresent. He's not everywhere all at once. He's a created being. He's an angel, a fallen angel, but he is not omnipresent.

He's not everywhere. When someone wakes up in the morning and they've had a terrible time of it at night and they wake up and they say to whoever cares to listen that the devil was coming after me last night, probably not, probably not.

You probably don't rank that very high on his list. He's probably got bigger fish to fry. Who knows what was going on that night. There may have been some spiritual problem, but the devil's not omnipresent.

People talk like he is. We talk like he's omniscient and he knows everything going on. We talk about like he's omnipresent and he's not everywhere present. He is not like that. And he's not omnipotent.

He's not all powerful, okay. So he can't do everything that he would prefer to do, okay. He works within limits, limits of his own nature as a created being. And furthermore, under the limits of what God allows him to do.

Satan would love to do all sorts of things, but can't get permission from God. So as is in the story of Job, as you've noticed, Satan could only do what God allowed Satan to do. So he's not omnipotent, couldn't do everything he wants to do.

Satan as Accuser, Deceiver, and Father of Lies

So this is saying what he cannot do, but in answering that, what he cannot do, we're trying to get at what he can do. When we read the scriptures, we can see that he is the accuser of the brethren. He accuses, right?

He's an accuser. He just incessantly has a finger pointed at the saints and saying, you know, guilty. And Jesus continually has the finger pointed himself and he says, no, not guilty. He's the, Christ is the advocate, Satan is the accuser.

You say liar, right? He's a deceiver. So he's always lying. He's the father of lies. Jesus, when he was talking to the Pharisees said that they were liars and they were children of the devil because he's the father of lies.

So mark it down. Anytime anyone tells a lie and is deceptive, is anyone who's trying to run a scam or a scheme or so on and so forth, this person's getting their inspiration. Ultimately trace the little stream back to the river of the devil.

Okay, he's the father of lies, the origin of lies. We don't have to guess where lies came from. We know Jesus said so, comes from the devil. And he was doing that from the beginning. He was an accuser from the beginning.

He was accusing God of not being good. He was a liar from the beginning as he deceived Adam and Eve, deceived Eve particularly about the nature of the fruit and what would happen if she partook in it.

Satan's Assault on the Image of God

All right, what else can the devil do? Right, kill, steal and destroy. Now he, what particularly does he want to kill? What does he want to steal? And what does he want to destroy? Well, that's right, isn't it true?

And indeed the image of God, wherever we may be found, because the image that's the glory of God, and that's what Satan can't stand because he wants the glory for himself. He's opposed to God being maximally self-glorifying, utterly opposed to that.

And so because of that, he can't stand the image of God and seeks to destroy the image of God at all costs. Now, Christ is the image of the invisible God. And so we know that Satan is opposed to him and to all who follow Christ and all who will be renewed into the image of God, all those who are making up the kingdom of God.

But also wherever the image of God is most concretely revealed, Satan is against. So the family, husband and wife and children, he will kill, steal and destroy. The institution of marriage itself, kill, steal and destroy.

An unborn infant made in the image of God, kill, steal and destroy. Wherever we find the image of God revealed, that's a just and orderly society, a healthy and happy church. Wherever the image of God is being revealed, that's where he wants to kill, steal and destroy.

And with the deception, we also should recognize the one who was a tempter. As we talked about before,.

The Greek word for devil, diabolos.

This means through, that means thrower. He's a through thrower. The devil is a pitcher. The devil is a pitcher. He's a pitcher. He has several different types of pitches. He's got them all and he's very skillful with them.

And the whole idea of the pitcher on the mound is to totally deceive and outwit the batter in the box. There's no greater picture in sports of the devil than the pitcher. He's always hiding the ball behind him.

Don't see my hold. And by the time I get the ball to the plate, you'll be totally fooled. And that's what the devil is doing with his lies, with his temptations. He's very crafty and he wants to get lies into us.

He wants us to believe lies. So those are the things the devil can do only if God permits him to do it. Why would God ever permit him to? Yes, Emmett, you have a question? And Emmett has happened upon the point of the whole matter.

Why would he ever create this person, this being, if he knew that Satan would be doing bad things? And so this question has been pondered throughout the centuries by believers and trying to understand what in the world, why would God do that?

So very good question. In some ways, we don't have the full answer yet because when we try to answer that particular question, we're dealing with what we call the problem of evil. If God is all powerful and all good, why did he make a world in which he knew, being omniscient, that man would sin, that Lucifer would fall, become the devil, tempt and deceive Eve, and Adam and Eve would fall, and we'd have the curse and the evil and the sin and everything in the world.

And this is called the problem of evil. Now, it's our problem, it's not God's problem. It's our problem because we're trying to figure it out. God stands at the, God outside of time, not only is from eternity past, but he also stands at the end of everything and is pulling it all to himself in resolutions.

No problem for God, he's got it all in hand. No problem for him. It's our problem, we're trying to figure it out. But God is faithful to tell us some things in the scripture. Number one, that he's a good God and all that he does is good.

That the Lord sits in the heavens and he does all that he ever pleases. And we know that all that he ever pleases is good and right. So these are the things that we know. We know that God will not share his glory with another, and that all that he does, he does for his own glory.

And so in Isaiah 48, 11, in the making of this angel who would fall and sin, ultimately we can say that God did nothing wrong. What he did was good. What he did ultimately is for his own glory. And we don't have the resolution to that particular problem just yet.

We haven't seen the full answer. We don't have the full answer yet because we have not been resurrected and the world has not been made new. And Satan and the demons and all those who oppose Christ and death itself has not yet been thrown into the lake of fire and made one.

But I fully believe that the problem of evil will turn into a glorious answer of God that we will marvel at forever. We just don't have that answer just yet. But that is part delights. God delights in his creature, those made in his image when they live in faith.

When they live in faith, gift of God, but it pleases God. Those who want to please God live by faith. There are all sorts of things in our life that we don't have the answer for yet. Not resolved yet, but it delights God and it glorifies God when we live in faith.

About the angels who fell, yes. Well, there are some passages that I'm trying to remember where they are. Yeah, so in Ephesians, so are you asking a question about how they fell or what scriptures about the fallen angels?

Yeah, I don't know if anything's very specific about that. We do have in Ephesians 6 and verse 12, we'll begin in verse 10. It says, finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm. So we are reminded that our struggle is not against flesh and blood.

And the language being used of the enemy, our spiritual enemy uses hierarchical language, but we're not given any kind of specific details about well, this kind of a fallen angel does this and so on and so forth.

We're not given those specific information that we were told wherever we find demons in the scripture, they are doing what the devil was doing, right? And so at some level. So I know that Jesus tells the disciples he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

And we also have passage in Revelation, I think. Anybody have this off the top of their head? Isaiah 14, okay. That's helpful. In verse 12 of Isaiah 14, says how you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn, you have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations.

But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I'll raise my throne above the stars of God and I will sit on the Mount of Assembly and the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the most high. Nevertheless, you will be thrust down to Sheol to the recesses of the pit. So those who see you will gaze at you, they will ponder over you saying, is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew its cities, who did not allow his prisoners to go home.

All right, so in context, the focus seems to be against the king of Babylon as verse three says, you will take up, or verse four says, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon. Language here though is also used elsewhere and applied to Satan because it's applicable language about one who raises himself up against the most high, seeking the glory, but is thrown down.

Yes, sir. I think that's good.

When we look at the words rulers and world forces in high places, yeah, I think it's important to recognize that these are not random acts of evil or these are not unorganized insurgents or something.

This is a very top-down, very heavily organized, heavily organized thing. So I think that's important to remember. And yet we are told that we are to resist and that we are, if we resist taking up the full armor of God, we are ensured success.

After all, the armor that we're told to take up in Ephesians six is the armor that the Messiah himself wears in Isaiah. So yes, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Then he who is in the world.

First John.

That's right. Somebody said the next time the devil tries to remind him of his future.

That's a tried and true saying. I appreciate that. Yes, Miss Jan. He created the wicked for the day of destruction. Yes. Yes, that's right. And if God raised Pharaoh up and hardened his heart simply to manifest his glory and Pharaoh's destruction, then we have a pattern to know why God allows evil to prevail for a time.

You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

And yet, you serve a God that's in control. Knows what he's doing. Amen. Yeah, it did take many, many years before that became clear. It's hard to kind of conceive sometimes that God is, in the Scripture, just that God is glorified in the punishment and damnation of the wicked.

Yeah. He is in those that are saved.

Well, it's a hard thing to hear, but the only place in the New Testament where the saints cry hallelujah is in Revelation 19 when the wicked are thrown into eternal damnation. That doesn't resonate with, that doesn't resonate usually with our American Christianity.

That why would there be a fourfold hallelujah about that? And I think it just goes to show that our values aren't quite in line with God's values yet. That at a certain point, we will have such of the desire and the holiness and the passions of the good and holy God that we will be in full-throated agreement with the things that he does at the end of all things.

It's hard to conceive of that. I mean, that's really, really difficult. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. The angelic. Nine o 'clock in the morning. What happened in the next morning?

It was nine o 'clock in the morning of the first day. That's what Bishop Usher said in the Middle Ages. It's not said specifically when he spoke the angels into existence. We, by inference, we understand that to be the case.

When we read in, well, in the beginning was, you know, in the beginning,.

God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void, and the waters were over the surface of the deep, and the spirit was hovering over the face of the waters. So what we're told at the very beginning is that, in the beginning, God, and what did he do at the very beginning?

He created the heavens and the earth. That's what we're told at the very beginning. So when God makes, when God creates, when God creates, he begins with the essential substance of the world in which we live now, okay?

The centerpiece, the centerpiece of the creation is the image of God, who is none other than Jesus Christ. But God creates everything in the universe centered around the earth, and then creates everything on earth, all the things that are made, even the stars are a clock for mankind, but everything is centered around the image of God, so that as God's goodness is mediated through us, his glory is manifested in us.

That's his whole plan. And so we're not told in the creation week when angels were made. We're not told that, but they certainly are not, let me put it this way, they are not the main characters, right?

When you read a story, there are the main characters, and there's kind of the sideline, someone who's there to kind of help the story move along a little bit, but then not all that important. Now, we read about angels, and the angels of God and the fallen angels throughout the scriptures, but time and again, they are not the main characters.

In fact, we find them sometimes just staring and wondering, like, what in the world is going on? Like, I don't understand what he's doing. And so, yes, they have more power than we do, but they are certainly not destined for more glory than we are, made in the image of God.

But again, again, the Puritans would say that Satan fell on the sixth day, and that Adam and Eve fell on the sixth day. I don't agree with the Puritans on that, but I think it has to be at least the eighth day.

But there are some things we're not told, you know?

There are some things we're just not told, and so have we.

I hope that's been encouraging. It's been encouraging to me. I just want to tell you, conversing with you all, and then hearing you quote and read the scriptures back and forth has been very fortifying to my soul tonight.

Thank you. Let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology, and then I want to remind the Truth Group that we're meeting just after.