What Satan Wants You To Believe
Edited transcript of a lesson given by Chad Sychtysz on April 29, 2006.
Transcript by Michael Franklin; editing by Chad Sychtysz.
The subject of our meeting here is “God’s Truth About Your Soul.” I want to re-emphasize that we are talking about what God says about your soul. We’re not interested in what you say personally about your soul, as to your personal opinion, because that’s not going to matter to God. We’re not interested in what other people say about your soul because that’s not going to matter to God, either. We want to know what God says about your soul, because that’s what’s going to matter to you in the end, as it will certainly matter to God. So that’s the reason for having chosen this series: “God’s Truth About Your Soul.”
Last night we looked at “Your Most Important Possession,” which is, of course, your soul. Your soul is going to outlast and transcend all other possessions that you have; that’s why it’s worth our time to talk about it. Your soul is the most important, the most valuable, the most enduring part of you. Everything else that you have and everything that you see, including your own body, is not going to last forever. Upon death, everything you see is going to disappear. This is an inevitable, unavoidable fact. Therefore it demands that you take care of the things that are most important—those which transcend this life.
So, with that in mind, we should also understand that there is someone who wants just the opposite for you: it’s not a terrorist, it’s not a CIA agent, it’s not a mafia hit man or something like this. It’s Satan himself. He wants your soul to be completely ruined. He wants to ruin your soul first of all by exposing you to the most, toxic, harmful, deadly element in all the universe: it’s not a virus, it’s not bacteria, it’s not uranium, it’s not poison. It is sin. Sin is the only thing that can kill your soul. And once you are ruined, Satan wants to keep you from the only hope that your soul has for survival: it’s not a drug, it’s not a pill, it’s not an exercise program, it’s not some religious epiphany or something like this, it’s not a secret handshake. It’s the blood of Christ which is accessed through your obedience to Christ. We’ll have a lot to say on this as we go along.
Now Satan knows these things are true, and he’s correct on this. We don’t want to say that everything Satan says is entirely wrong; it’s just that he only tells you half the story. He is correct to say that if your soul is polluted with sin and is never cleansed by the blood of Christ, then you will stand condemned before God. If a person dies in that state, he loses all hope of ever being with God. Now I know that that is a blunt way to start off the morning, but the reality is that Satan wants you to be in a condition in which you will not be saved. That’s an awful scenario to be in, but that awful loss does not have to happen; it can be avoided. That’s really what we’re talking about in this series—how you can avoid that. You personally can avoid all the negative things that we’ve just mentioned.
In 2 Corinthians 2:11, Paul says, “…no advantage ought to be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” In other words, if you and I know the truth about Satan and his lies and his deceptions, then we’re not going to be conned by him—I hope not, anyway! At least that’s the goal we’re striving for.
In John 8:31-32—I’d like you to turn here with me think about what Jesus says, and remember that we’re talking about God’s truth about your soul—listen to what Jesus says here. He says, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Satan cannot offer that. Satan wants you to believe otherwise. Satan wants to give you half-truths and subtle lies. But what we want to pursue this morning is Jesus’ truth and God’s truth about our souls. Satan wants to separate you forever from God. Jesus wants you to be forever with God—that is His mission. Satan’s mission is just the opposite.
What about our mission this morning in our lesson, in our meeting? Our mission is to provide you with information so that you can make informed decisions concerning your most valuable possession. We want God’s truth, but we also at the same time want to unmask Satan’s deceptions and manipulations.
The Truth of Satan’s Existence
Of course, this entire lesson is predicated upon the assumption that Satan even exists at all. Not everyone automatically believes that Satan exists. There may even be some present this morning who do not necessarily believe in the existence of Satan. They might shrug at any suggestion that he deceives the soul because he’s not real to being with.
I read a Newsweek poll several years ago—you know how statistics and polls are, they poll several thousand people and assume that the whole country thinks this way—but of the people polled, some 85% of them believed in heaven, believed in God, believed in Jesus, and believed in all these good things. Then the question was, “Do you believe in Satan and hell?” The statistic was down well below 50%—somewhere around 30%. In other words, people like to believe the good stuff, but they don’t like to believe the bad stuff. Isn’t that how we are? We would rather believe the good stuff. How many people believe they are going to heaven? If you were to ask someone, “Are you going to heaven?” or “Are you going to hell?” or “Do you believe in God?” or “Do you believe in Satan?”—if given those options, what is someone going to say? We want to believe in the most positive things about us. We want to believe our future is a good one, not a miserable one.
There are those who think that Satan is in hell right now, tormenting souls with tridents and other implements of torture, but that’s just not true. Satan doesn’t live in hell. That’s not even a literal place and he’s not confined to a given area anyway. He’s a spirit like God. I don’t mean to imply that he’s on par with God whatsoever, but like God is a spirit [John 4:24], so Satan is a spirit and he is not confined to physical quarters, if you will. So we have to think about Satan beyond a physical or tangible context.
Another person may think that Satan is real, but since that person “got religion” or because he goes to church, and because he once accepted Jesus into his heart to be his personal savior (which the Bible does not teach, but he believes it anyway), he thinks that he’s kind of immune to Satan’s attacks. He thinks that since he’s once been saved, he’s always saved; Satan simply cannot touch him.
But this is just not true. In fact—and this is the irony here—this is all part of Satan’s tactic, to get you to believe all that. He wants to lull you into a false state of comfort and security and complacency so that you will not seriously regard your moral responsibility to God. He wants you to actually think that everything is okay, “peace and safety” [1 Thessalonians 5:2-3], everything’s going to be alright. Just get a little bit of religion in your life and all will be well. Satan loves for people to believe things like that.
Regardless of our personal opinions or conventional wisdom or modern rationalism or the ridicule of (allegedly) intelligent people, the Bible is the only source of divine information that we possess—we talked about that last night. And the Bible says unflinchingly that Satan is real and he wants to destroy you [1 Peter 5:8]. That’s what the Bible teaches.
In Ephesians 6:12, for example, Paul wrote, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Just because you can’t see “forces of darkness” does not mean they don’t exist. There’s a lot of things that you can’t see but you know that they exist because of evidence of their existence. In this case, the Bible has provided you evidence; Christ has provided evidence; the apostles have provided evidence that Satan most certainly does exist.
In Matthew 4:1-11, we read of an actual encounter between Jesus and Satan—a confrontation really. Jesus, for His part, and the apostles later on, never once treated that occasion as an allegory or myth or folklore or anything else that people have since come up with to refute that scenario.
In Mark 4:14, in the parable of the sower, Jesus says that there are many who hear the word of God but they do not believe because Satan maliciously tampers and interferes with the heart of man. The word of God is not always received because Satan is in there trying to dupe and con and deceive the heart of man.
In Matthew 12:26, Jesus admitted that Satan has a kingdom, which implies that he is rather well-organized and has legions of other demons to help him. In other words, he’s not just all by himself. He has a very well-organized army of other demonic entities to help carry out whatever it is that he is seeks to accomplish.
In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, Paul said, “Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” He doesn’t refer to those who are physically dying; he’s talking about spiritually-dying people. “…In whose case the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” I want you to think about the power of that passage. The “god of this world” elsewhere is referred to as Satan whom the world worships in ignorance [Ephesians 2:2, 1 John 4:4-6]. Now the world may not say, of course, “We worship Satan!” Yet the world certainly follows Satan and worships all that Satan provides as an enticement to do Satan’s will. So a person can play the semantics game if he wants to and say, “I don’t worship Satan!” But if he’s doing what he [Satan] says to do, or if he’s involved in what Satan wants him to be involved in, or if he’s loving the things that Satan wants him to love, he’s worshipping him! Paul says that, in this way, Satan blinds the hearts of people who otherwise would receive the gospel.
In 2 Corinthians 11:14-15, Satan and his servants disguise themselves as good things or good people or good entities—as an “angel of light,” Paul says—to further deceive people. In other words, things that look good may well be from Satan if they have not been approved of God.
Now these passages hardly create an exhaustive list, but they are enough to make a point. (We’ve gone through these quickly, I know that, but they’re all in your notes, so you can look them up later.) The point is that God says Satan is real; Jesus says Satan is real; Paul and the other apostles all said Satan is real; the early church believed Satan is real. God is fully aware of Satan’s influence; Jesus has seen Satan; Paul and the apostles have confirmed his existence; the Holy Spirit has confirmed his existence. The apostles have confronted his power directly; Judas and countless others have swallowed the lies of Satan and have lost their souls as a result.
So it comes down to this: when someone says, “I don’t really believe that Satan actually exists,” should you agree with him? What do you believe—and why do you believe it? That’s what we have to ask and those are fair questions, aren’t they? If someone says, “I don’t believe Satan exists”—we must ask him, “Well then, what do you believe? And where’d you get your information?” If a person chooses his own personal opinion or the opinions of other uninspired men (whose agendas are obviously going to oppose any admission of Satan) over that of God’s revealed truth, well, he’s entitled to do that. God gives you and me the right or the opportunity to do that, but that’s a foolish decision to make in light of the evidence that God has provided. I know that sounds blunt, but God says that that’s a foolish decision [Romans 1:21-22]!
A person cannot merely shrug or wave off or deny that Satan does not exist—for no reason other than that belief doesn’t fit his “worldview,” as one person put it. The world is filled with evil and the Bible says explicitly that Satan is its source [1 John 5:19]: the same powerful but wicked entity who wants to destroy you. And how does he destroy you? Well, he destroys you with his lies and half truths. Let’s turn to John 8:44-45—I know it’s a little bit lengthy reading here, but think about what Jesus says here. Jesus is talking to the Jews; the Jews are not just discussing things with Him, they’re confronting Him and attacking Him. Jesus responds to them in this way. He says,
You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in Him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks it from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.
In other words, “You’ve been hoodwinked,” as we say, “by Satan. You’ve been brainwashed by Satan. You’ve been taken in. You’ve been sucked in. You’ve been duped (or whatever expression works for you here). Satan has lied to you and you’ve believed it.”
Now this is some of the most direct information we have about Satan’s character and his ability to prevent otherwise intelligent people from coming to the only source of salvation that exists: Jesus Christ. And Jesus is the One who provides this information. Jesus is infinitely more powerful and intelligent than Satan is, and here’s what Jesus says about Satan: he is the “father of lies”!
The First Deception
The rest of this lesson will be devoted to exposing some of these lies so that you and I will not be duped and thus lose our souls. Remember our lesson series theme is “God’s Truth About Your Soul.” Well, in order to understand God’s truth, you also have to understand what the opposition is saying. You have to know what Satan is saying about you, or saying to you, or wanting to teach you. We want to look at some of these things. We know that Satan didn’t say some of these things verbatim, but he says them in essence, or in so many words, and people most certainly do believe him.
The first lie that we will examine is that sin is fun and therefore it is harmless. Satan wants you to believe that. Much of his propaganda and tactics of persuasion depend upon a person actually swallowing this lie. And the reality is, there is a kernel of truth here, that sin is often fun. How many people are actually going to deny that sin is fun—at least in some cases and in some ways? Of course it’s fun. Why do you think people are doing it? It does provide a temporary thrill or a temporary high or some kind of arousal or pleasure or something like this. This is why so many people do it. The world says, “If it feels good, do it!” And Satan applauds that kind of reasoning; he loves to hear people say things like that; he just loves to hear people give in to that kind of reasoning.
Yet God’s truth about your soul is: sin kills your soul. So whatever “fun” you enjoy for the moment carries an awful price—an unspeakably horrible consequence. In Romans 6:23, Paul says, “The wages of sin is death”—nothing more, nothing less. Your soul dies! And it’s really not just a death experience and then it’s over with. As the Bible portrays this death, it really is a perpetual dying in an awful torment and without any hope of reprieve. No sin is ever harmless. No sin ever does nothing. Sin always ruins something and someone. No soul can sin without consequences. That’s what God says; that’s what God teaches.
The Second Deception
Another lie Satan wants us to believe is that sin is desirable and therefore it is worth pursuing. And the truth is—at least a part of that truth is—that sin is desirable. That’s what lust is all about, right? Lust is a strong desire of the soul to do something. In most cases, lust refers to what the soul wants to do for itself, regardless of what God says otherwise. There is no denying this, of course, but the truth is that feeding or pursuing any ungodly desire is sinful and ultimately leads to the forfeiture of your soul. So, sin may be desirable, but it’s going to destroy you. It may be something that you long for or crave after, but in doing so it will be your ruin.
In James 1:13-16, I think it’s worth reading that passage. James is very blunt here:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil and He does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted and carried away by his own lust (or his own strong desire). Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my brethren.
In other words, don’t be foolish, don’t be duped, don’t be sucked in and taken in by the lies that Satan wants you to believe. Satan knows that a man’s heart is filled with selfish lust. His [Satan’s] desire is that you feed that lust, but doing so leads to sin and sin kills your soul. That is exactly what Satan wants. He wants you to believe that it’s not going to lead in that direction, but he knows that it will.
The Third Deception
The next thing that Satan wants you to believe is that sin is profitable and therefore it is justifiable. Since a person profits from it, there is some sort of “ends-justifies-the-means” rationale to sinning. And the truth is that there is some profit in sin—in some twisted, self-serving, temporary way. People do gain things from sin. I mean, when people lie and get something as a result, or when they steal and get something as a result, and when they commit other moral crimes and get something as a result, there is some kind of profit or gain being realized.
But the truth is that whatever profit sin brings is momentary, while the price the person pays for having sinned [if left unresolved] is eternal and irreversible. Think about what we just said concerning the price that you pay for sin: even though you profit something for the moment, you lose everything in the end. The ultimate price you pay is beyond calculation.
In Matthew 16:26, Jesus says, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits (or loses) his soul?” What do you get out of that? Suppose you gain the whole world and then lose your soul? What have you really gained? You’ve gained nothing. What we gain by sinning is always less than the whole world, and yet we’re going to lose our soul anyway if that is the course we choose. It just doesn’t make sense. But Satan doesn’t want you to think about it; he doesn’t want you to logically process that information. He just wants you to respond and succumb to your emotional desires or the thrill of the moment, or react to the profit incentives put before you. And he wants you to be persuaded by those things instead.
The Fourth Deception
Here’s an interesting thing that Satan wants you to believe: no one has the right to tell you how to live your life. Have you ever heard that before, when someone says, “No one has the right to tell you how to live your life”? What did that person just do? Didn’t they just tell you how to live your life? I mean, do you see the irony here? You know, it’s like someone saying, “You’re not allowed to judge anyone! You’ll be condemned if you judge anyone!” Didn’t that person just judge me? I mean, it’s just one of those conundrums that just doesn’t make sense. It’s what we call in argumentation a “self-refuting statement.” In other words, it falls upon its own sword.
So Satan says, in so many words, that no one has the right to tell you anything, not even God! Such is the voice and attitude of a proud person who wants himself and everyone else to think that he is self-reliant and self-sufficient and independent and doesn’t need the advice of anyone—especially God! “I don’t need that!” he says. “I can handle this myself!”
Satan loves to hear people talking like that. He loves to hear that kind of attitude because he can deal with those kinds of people. He’s already got them; they’re sucked in; they’re hoodwinked; they’re blinded. The truth is: Satan is whispering in that person’s ear, filling that person’s heart with lies and arrogance. And the irony is that this man is listening to Satan, even while he is claiming that he doesn’t need to listen to anyone. Satan laughs at such irony; he laughs at things like this.
Now think about God’s advice compared to Satan’s propaganda. Think about the comparison here. Think about God’s credentials for providing you with good counsel. God is our Father; He is our Creator; He is the supreme God. He’s proven these facts with miracles, and with His Holy Spirit. Think about all the things that He’s provided as evidence of His trustworthiness.
What has Satan offered? What does Satan offer even now? What miracle, or what evidence, or what good thing has Satan ever offered, that we should listen to him? What right or credentials does Satan provide? Even in the beginning, he told Adam and Eve, “Oh, you can defy God! Eat of that fruit. You shall not die!” [Genesis 3:1-7]. He lied to them and he’s lied to men ever since. And he lies to you this morning if you really think that you can handle everything regarding your soul on your own, that you don’t need the counsel of God. If you really believe that, then he’s lying to you and you’re listening to him.
Satan wants us to believe that we are the masters of our own destiny. And there is a half-truth in that: you are responsible for your destiny. But it is impossible that you will be saved from the destination of hell without God’s divine intervention. Oh, and by the way, there are those who don’t believe in hell, which is another one of Satan’s lies that he wants people to swallow—that there is no punishment for moral disobedience. Think about the things that we’re talking about here. Think about the lies that Satan wants you to swallow versus the truth of God—God’s truth about your soul.
The Fifth Deception
Here’s another lie of Satan’s that also has a half-truth to it: you’ll be the laughingstock of the world if you take the gospel and Christ too seriously—so it is not worth taking seriously. Well, actually that is truer than we might want to admit, right? People are going to ridicule you if you become a Christian—that is, if you become a genuine disciple of Christ. This will not necessarily apply to a mere churchgoer, someone who sits on a pew every Sunday morning and really doesn’t participate in the Christian life otherwise. I’m saying, if you’re going to become a disciple of Christ (which is a life that changes who you are, that forces you to become something that you’re not now), then certainly the world is going to ridicule you. The world is going to smirk at you and roll its eyes; it’s going to deride you; it’s going to slander you; it might even persecute you, just as it did Jesus Christ and His apostles.
For example, how many of you were trying to hand out these fliers [for this meeting] to other people and you got a reception like, “Oh, please!” You know the response I’m talking about. Hopefully that doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen, doesn’t it? The world just doesn’t want to hear about religion and moral responsibility. The world scoffs at people who choose those things.
But we should not be surprised at this. In 2 Timothy 3:12, Paul comes right out and says, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” In John 15:19, Jesus is very straightforward and says, in essence, “The world hates you because (since you are My disciple) you do not belong to the world.” You’re an outsider. You don’t fit in anymore. You’re the square peg going into the round hole. You just don’t fit anymore because of your change of allegiance that has changed your life.
The truth is, however, Christians who are faithful unto death will be the ones who are rejoicing in the end [Revelation 2:10]. They will be the ones who are celebrating. They will be the ones who will be ushered into glory while all those who mocked and ridiculed and harmed them will be suffering with unspeakable torment.
See, Satan doesn’t want you to know that! He wants you to believe that mocking Christians and mocking the faith and mocking God is not only legitimate, but is perfectly harmless. You can do this and get away with it. Nobody cares [about such mockery] because there’s not going to be any punishment for it anyway. Yet God says otherwise. What Satan does not want you to know is that there is not a single success story of anyone mocking God or His people who then goes on to eternal wealth and fame and glory and comfort. There’s not a single success story of anyone who mocks God all of his life and dies as a mocker of God and gets away with it. Satan doesn’t want you to know that never happens.
Let’s turn to 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9. Let’s look there, for this is some powerful language. I think this is also some of the most powerful language of this whole lesson. Think about what it is that is being said here in comparison or contrast to what the world teaches. Paul wrote,
After all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution (and retribution basically is payback or vengeance) to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power….
That’s pretty blunt, but that’s what God declares to be true. It doesn’t matter what the world says in response. The world has nothing to back up what it says. The world speaks from its own arrogance; it speaks from its own ignorance. The world is blinded and hoodwinked by Satan and it believes only what Satan has taught it to believe; it says only what Satan has taught it to say. Yet this [Bible passage] is what God says. Who are you going to believe? What is a person going to do about that?
The Bible is explicit that the world is filled with mockers but the world is not going to last and neither will the mockers [2 Peter 3:3-7]. Mockers are going to be the object of divine wrath and fiery judgment and absolute ruin. Now it doesn’t have to be this way for anyone. You can escape that ruin that if you decide otherwise. But if you’re going to die a mocker, this is your end; this is what will happen to you.
The Sixth Deception
The next lie that Satan wants us to believe is that everybody’s doing it (sin, that is), therefore it cannot be bad. Right? This is the argument that “Billions of people cannot be wrong,” or “There is safety in numbers,” or “Majority rules,” or whatever other things we like to believe about situations like this. People tend to find security in the fact that there are many other people who believe like they do—as if by the very fact that their belief is popular, therefore it must be correct.
The truth is that Jesus has already predicted that most people will refuse the gospel. Most people will not obey. Most people don’t have any hope because they have rejected all opportunities for hope. Look at what He says here in Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is small that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” So if you think about it, Jesus has already predicted that it’s not numbers that determines what is right. God is not playing a numbers game; He’s not interested in quantity and multitudes and the majority of people following Him. I’m certain that God would love to have it differently [i.e., with the majority of people following Him], but He understands the reality of the human condition and just how powerful Satan’s influences are upon the human soul. And He knows because of that, and because people are very visibly-oriented creatures, they only believe what they want to see instead of the spiritual things that they cannot see—the eternal things, as we talked about yesterday [2 Corinthians 4:16-18]. He knows that most people will choose Satan over God.
So God is not interested in numbers; God is not interested in being popular; God is not politically-correct, etc. Instead, He desires obedience from those who choose to serve Him above all else. Of course, Satan desires the same thing, that is, to have people serve him above all else. But Satan offers no benefits; he offers nothing worthwhile. He doesn’t tell you the whole story; he just tells you what you want to hear. If you want to do something wrong, Satan will find a way for you to justify it. It doesn’t matter how heinous or wretched or wicked it is, Satan will find a way to get you to believe that and justify that and rationalize that, so that you can live the rest of your life in a comfortable delusion. He will convince you (if you let him) that you can actually do wrong and get away with it.
The Seventh Deception
Finally—for our short list anyway—Satan says to us, in so many words, there’s plenty of time. You’ll get around to being faithful to God someday; meanwhile there are so many other things to do. There’s this story I heard a long time ago (and you’ve probably heard it yourself) where Satan and his angels have come together in a strategy meeting to figure out how they can dupe more people, how they can convince more people to follow them, how they can destroy more souls. And some demon raises his hand, “I know, we’ll scare them with something!” “Ah, no, that’s been done,” Satan says. “How about drugs and alcohol?” says another. Satan shakes his head, “We’re doing that and it’s been pretty effective. We have a good campaign there, but we need something more.” “Sexual vices!” another demon says. “Yeah, that’s pretty good,” Satan agrees, “and we’ll do some of that as well, but there’s gotta be something else—something that virtually everyone will succumb to.” Finally one particularly crafty demon raises his hand and says, “I know what we’ll do: we’ll just tell people that there’s no hurry!” Satan laughs with delight. “Perfect!” he says.
Imagine that campaign strategy: There’s no hurry! You’ve got all the time in the world! There is no sense of urgency. There is no time limit. Satan laughs at people who believe such things.
The truth is that your life is already drawing to a close. James 4:14 says, “Your life is just a vapor.” It’s a puff of steam and then it disappears. And God has not promised you tomorrow. Satan promises you tomorrow, but he cannot perform. He promises a lot of things that he cannot perform.
God says that your soul, and the disposition of your soul, is a matter of extreme urgency. You need to do something about that. Satan says, “No, no, it’s okay, you can do something about that later.” Satan says, “I’m not against you being faithful to God, just don’t do it now!”—because he knows that the longer you wait, the harder it will be, the more distracted you will become, and the less likely you will ever listen to God tomorrow or the day after.
The Need for a Decision
The truth is that Satan does not care about you personally. You’re just a pawn to him, and so am I. We’re just expendable pawns to Satan. What he really wants to do is to inflict as much pain as he can upon the One who has denied Satan what he wants. That “One” is God Himself! God is his real target and he knows that if he can rob God of yet another soul, then that’s another jab against the divine Father Himself. Every soul that is hoodwinked and deceived by Satan is one less soul enlightened by and enjoying fellowship with God.
We should not trust someone that Jesus calls the “father of lies” [John 8:44], yet most people do. Most people trust the “father of lies” and are oblivious to what they’re doing. In Ephesians 6:11, Paul says, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” This is your only successful recourse. This is your only successful recourse! Your protection is not in human philosophy, it’s not in churchgoing, it’s not in pursuing inventions of your own making. It is to choose Jesus Christ, because Satan is no match against Christ. He cannot deceive Christ. He has tried and he cannot.
In John 8:24, Jesus is very direct. He says, “Unless you believe that I am He”—that is, that He is the Christ and the Son of God [Matthew 16:16]—“you will die in your sins.” I don’t think that Jesus could have said a more pointed and succinct message to us regarding our situation. Unless we believe that He is who He says He is, believe in what He offers, and believe in what He says to do, you and I are going to die in our sins. Satan doesn’t want you to know that what Jesus says is the absolute truth.
And every person who is here now has another priceless opportunity to commit his or her soul to the Lord—to respond to His call, to believe in Him, to put his faith in Him, to repent of his sins, to be baptized into Christ according to His name, to choose to follow His word. You have another opportunity this morning. I don’t know if you’ll have another opportunity after this. Satan wants you to think that you will; I don’t know that you will. God certainly doesn’t promise such things. So what are you going to do with that? Satan wants you to believe some awful lies. What are you going to do about them? God says, “Here’s the truth about your soul.” How are you going to respond to that?
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