This tape contains the first of six teachings in the series entitled, The Counterfeit Kingdom, presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The title of this teaching is, The Origin and Activity of Satan. It's really hard to know where to begin because we're dealing with a subject that is very controversial and folks are coming from all different kinds of backgrounds and different kinds of experiences. Tonight I think I'm going to be very, very basic and I want to share a couple of assumptions with you at the outset. I suspect that if I were to ask you, most of you, who is Satan, who is the devil, where did he come from, I suspect that the great majority of you could give me the right answer.

Most of you would say that Satan is a fallen angel, and you'd be right. But I also suspect that relatively few of you could support that answer from the scriptures. Now, that's my assumption. I think that's true. Do you bear witness to that?

We have a perception, but we don't know quite where to turn in the scriptures to back that up or to support that or to understand it more fully. I want to try to lay a foundation tonight that we're going to be building on. We're going to be going on into some other very important topics in the succeeding weeks.

And I would ask your prayers for me. As I said in my prayer, the devil really doesn't want this series to go on. And he doesn't want me to be speaking God's truth.

And I would ask you to really be in prayer for me as well as for all of us as we meet together. Let me begin with just a quick look at Revelation chapter 5. Just by way of illustrating something to you.

Revelation 5, I suspect that few, if any of us, few, if any, real Christians would quarrel with the statement that you cannot understand history apart from having an understanding of Jesus Christ's place in it. And you might be able to recount events, but you would have no adequate, you'd have no complete perception of their real meaning and how they fit together unless you had some idea of the centrality of Christ in the scheme of things and the fact that all of history is moving toward a destiny that has altogether to do with him. That's what makes us Christians.

We believe that. We would confess that together. That's what's pictured here in a very vivid way in Revelation chapter 5.

You probably are familiar with it. I saw in the hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll. God is seated on his throne in the heavenlies.

And he has a scroll in his hand. And what is written in that scroll has to do with the will and the eternal purposes and the decrees of God, and it is altogether important. But look what it says.

I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals? And no one. in heaven or on the earth or under the earth.

No one in all creation, and that includes angels and archangels, as well as the noblest of the great saints who have ever lived, no one was worthy and therefore able to open the scroll and look into it. And John says, I wept copiously. It's a fascinating comment.

He sees some pretty awesome things in the book of Revelation, But this is the only point at which he says he wept. I wept much that nobody could open that scroll. Nobody could unfold its contents.

Nobody could declare the real meaning of history, the real purpose of life, what it's all about. Nobody could do that. And then one of the elders said to me, Weep not, lo, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.

And John says, And between the throne and the four living creatures among the elders I saw a lamb. I thought I was expecting a lion. A lion who is a lamb.

A lamb who is a lion. A little lamb standing as though it had been slain. Pitiful, weak, little lamb.

It's been slain and yet it lives again. This is the Lord Jesus. In vivid imagery, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, who is also the root of David, who is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and he is proclaimed as the only one worthy.

And it says, verse 8, when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp and the golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang this song, a new song, Worthy art thou to take the scroll and open its seals. Jesus Christ has the key to the meaning of life. Jesus Christ is the only one who does.

Among all the other things that he did, he came to unfold that to us. He came to show us what it's all about, to put it all together. So I think I'm on very, very safe ground in saying that none of us would quarrel with the statement that you really cannot understand history apart from Jesus Christ.

But I wonder if I were to make a parallel statement to that, whether the agreement would be that widespread. I want to submit to you that you also cannot understand history. You cannot understand life.

You cannot understand its meaning. And you can't understand your own place in it, apart from having some understanding of Satan. And I suspect that that statement would not have anything like the universal assent that the first one did.

About ten years ago, about a decade ago, there was a widely reported attempted exorcism in England that rather than leading to a successful, lovely deliverance, ended instead, tragically, in suicide. And that hit the papers, and by the way there have been numerous instances like that which is one of the reasons why I have constantly said that you better know what you're doing if you start getting into that ministry. You better know what you're up to.

But that particular one hit the front page of the London Times and was reported all over the place and the Bishop of Exeter in England called together a commission to do a serious study and publish a report on the subject of demons and deliverance and exorcism. And do you know that as soon as that was announced, there was a tremendous groundswell from many of the leading theologians and churchmen, bishops, priests, and others, who utterly deplored the possibility that anybody in the 20th century could take any of that seriously. Just dismiss it out of hand.

We understand these things in psychological terms today. We don't believe in a personal devil anymore. We don't believe in evil spirits who inflict themselves upon human personality.

We instead now understand personality derangements and we understand psychological problems. They dismissed it out of hand. And you would find that that is, that remains, an incredibly widespread viewpoint within the church among people who are otherwise quite orthodox in their faith.

My point in mentioning all that is not to get into a quarrel with the liberal theologians tonight, but simply to say, let's get to the very basics. What does the scripture have to say on the subject? We live in a generation in which vast numbers of Christians aren't even sure if the devil is real, let alone have any idea how they're supposed to deal with him.

In 1975, a man by the name of Oz Guinness, who was a former associate of Francis Schaeffer's, wrote a little booklet, and it's still in print, a very helpful booklet, I commend it to you. It's called The Encircling Eyes. And he started out with this little image that just as you go into the forest and you build a campfire, the light of that fire will drive back into the forest or back into the jungle the predatory animals who would come to devour you.

But if you let that campfire burn down, you let it wane just down to dimly glowing embers, all of a sudden in the chill of the night, you're going to look up and realize that you are encircled by the eyes of those same creatures that have come scrambling back out of the darkness. And Guinness said, I submit to you that that's what has happened in our culture. The truth of Christianity blazed forth and to a very significant extent, we drove some of the forces back in our culture to the point that people stopped believing in them.

But then, as Christian faith began to die in significant ways, those same malevolent forces have come scrambling back. So that at the very point at which the secularists thought that we were going to have the triumph of atheism, instead of that, we have the triumph of the occult. We've got more people dabbling in the occult today than ever before in history.

We're encircled by the eyes. Emerson made a comment. He said in a poem, he said, the half-gods go when God arrives.

But they come back if he departs the scene. So that's where I begin tonight. That faith has ebbed.

we have a lot of people going to churches and we have lots of things happening but in terms of the impact of Christianity on our culture we're in a secular society and all of a sudden rather than that being the death of these forces we find ourselves absolutely encircled by them once again what should we do? run in fear? no, rebuild the campfire turn a few pages to the left and find 1 John chapter 3.

The first letter of John chapter 3. I want to look at a remarkable statement. It's two sentences in one verse, verse 8.

I want to take the second of them first John says the reason the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil there are lots of other ways that you could put it there are lots of other things you could say about why Jesus came he himself said I am come that you might have what life and have it in all of its fullness or all of its abundance okay you might see the Father. Thomas says, Lord, show us the Father and we'll be content. And Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

I have come in order to make you a family and part of the family of God. There are lots of ways that you could express what it is that Jesus came to do. But one of them, thoroughly adequate, absolutely basic, this is the reason that the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.

To destroy the destroyer. That's why he came. Did you ever think of it that way?

That's why he came. He came to destroy the works of the destroyer. Look at the preceding sentence.

He who commits sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. Now, if you just unravel that statement, You're going to see an awful lot of things. First of all, sin is of the devil.

Sin is of the devil. Therefore, when we sin, we are doing the work of the devil, even if we say we belong to God, even if we do belong to God. When we sin, we're doing the devil's work.

We're on his territory. Sin is utterly alien to the character, to the purpose, to the will of the high, holy, creator God, whom we call Father. And yet, it says here that sin has been there from the beginning.

From the beginning of what? From the beginning of our experience. From the beginning of our history.

from the beginning of the world as we know it. In other words, sin predates human experience. Sin predates human experience.

And when you understand that, you'll be pretty far along the way to understanding the devil and all of his works. Sin predates human experience. Somebody define sin for me.

What is sin? Separation from God. What did somebody over here say?

Rebellion. Disobedience. Lawlessness.

It says sin is lawlessness. 1 John 3 verse 4. What else?

Missing the mark. All right, it certainly includes that. Illusion, walking into the darkness rather than the light.

All unrighteousness. All right. There you go.

Anything that displeases the Lord, or the way that the book of Romans puts it, is whatsoever is not of faith. Whatsoever is not of faith. Whatever doesn't proceed from faith is sin.

But I just said to you that all of that, all of those definitions, all of that which is sin predates human experience. you follow me we don't usually think of it that way we usually think of it in terms of our fall as recounted in the book of Genesis but it predates that all of that that we've just defined in other words before man ever entered the picture there was someone in God's creation who sinned and yet if sin is utterly alien to God then God didn't create him that way. Do you follow me?

I think all of that comes right out of those two sentences. It's not as if there were two equal and opposite powers one good and one bad both existing from before all creation. It is not as if that were so.

It is that God who is absolutely perfect created a world, a universe, a creation that was absolutely perfect, and it got spoiled. It went wrong. Someone in God's creation started all of that, and that someone predated us.

Now, there are two remarkable passages in the Old Testament that I think bear witness to exactly that. Most Christians are quite unfamiliar with them. I want to look at them tonight.

The first is in Isaiah chapter 14. let me pick up from verse 3 when the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve you, Israel, will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon Babylon was one of the great powers that was oppressing Israel and Judah and eventually led to the Babylonian captivity of Judah. When all of that is over, the prophet says, there will come a day when Babylon's oppression comes to an end.

And when that happens, you'll take up this sort of a taunt against the king of Babylon. How the oppressor has ceased, the insolent fury ceased, the Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers that smote the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows, that ruled the nations in anger with unrelenting persecution, The whole earth is at rest and quiet. They break forth into singing.

The cypresses rejoice at you. The cedars of Lebanon saying, Since you were laid low, no hewer comes up against us. Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come.

It rouses the shades or the shadows to greet you. All who were leaders of the earth, it raises from their thrones. All who were kings of the nations, all of them will speak and say to you, You too have become as weak as we.

You have become like us. Your pomp is brought down to Sheol. The sound of your harps, maggots are the bed beneath you, worms are your covering.

Real nice picture, isn't it? You will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon. He's speaking, he's saying that you will be addressing yourself to a human figure who has been the force of oppression against you.

All right? Then all of a sudden, in the midst of that taunt, that gloating, The language becomes extreme and excessive. It goes beyond what we could ever legitimately speak to a human being.

All right, you follow me? Verse 12, How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn. Who is he talking to now?

He's talking to the king of Babylon. What's going on? All of a sudden, in the midst of talking to the king of Babylon, it's as if he looks right through him.

and sees somebody else who in some way is controlling him or acting through him or who is motivating him or inspiring him or using him in this process of oppression. How you are fallen from heaven, if you have King James Version, it says Lucifer. RSV says, O day star.

Lucifer, the light bearer or the shining one. how you are fallen from heaven oh shining one oh day star son of dawn how you are cut down to the ground you who laid the nations low you said see here's what we were hearing what the king of Babylon said now there's an echo of that you said in your heart I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God I will set my throne on high I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the Most High. And there you have it in a nutshell. One created by God, not as a prince of darkness, but as a prince of light.

In fact, it sounds as if, I wouldn't want to be absolutely dogmatic about this, but it sounds as if he may have been the greatest of God's creation. The highest of the archangels. The most resplendent in glory.

The one who most closely resembled the Creator Himself. I don't know if you ever stopped to think about this. I think that most of the time we would tend to think, you know, God is up here.

Satan is down here. You know. an infinite distance between them.

It's much more subtle than that. God is up here and Satan is just a little bit beneath him. So like him that in a terrible moment of pride, in essence he said, who needs God?

I'm so much like him, who needs him? I'll be God. That's what it says.

And now that's reflected on down through history and various people who have said essentially the same thing, among them the king of Babylon, Julius Caesar, Brezhnev, you know, name your favorite. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I'll set my throne on high.

I'll make myself like the Most High. But instead, you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you.

Is this the man who made the earth tremble? Who shook kingdoms? Who made the world like a desert?

The language here isn't altogether clear, is it? Is he talking to the king of Babylon or is he talking to the one behind him? It's sort of both.

Can you think of an instance in the New Testament where something like that happens? Exactly, sure. Remember, when Peter is talking to Jesus and Jesus says, who do men say that I am?

Jesus says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus says, you're absolutely right. Now that you understand who I am, let me tell you what I've come to do.

He says, from that moment, he began to teach them that he would go to Jerusalem and suffer and die. And Peter says, God forbid, Lord, this will never happen to you. And Jesus whirls around and says, get behind me Satan.

See? That doesn't say Peter is Satan. It's as if Jesus is seeing through him.

Peter at that moment, even though he didn't mean to be, Peter at that moment is the instrument of Satan. He's the mouthpiece of Satan. He's urging Jesus to forsake his God-appointed mission and ministry.

He's tempting Jesus. He is the tempter. and Jesus speaks through Peter to Satan.

That's very much what's going on here. The other passage, I think, is even more vivid. Ezekiel 28.

Very similar. That's to the right. Ezekiel 28.

the word of the Lord came to me son of man say to the prince of Tyre thus says the Lord God because your heart is proud and you have said I am a God I sit in the seat of the gods in the heart of the seas yet you are but a man and no God who is he talking to at this point he's talking to the prince of Tyre there are lots of men who have said I am a god the Caesars said they were gods the pharaohs said they were gods father divine in this country said he is god Maharaji said he's god lots of people have said they're god he said he was god he's a man with delusions of grandeur because your heart is proud and you have said I am a god yet you are but a man and no god though you consider yourself as wise as a god you are indeed wiser than Daniel no secret is hidden from you. By your wisdom and your understanding you have gotten wealth for yourself and have gathered gold and silver in your treasuries. By your great wisdom and trade you have increased your wealth and your heart has become proud in your wealth.

Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you consider yourself as wise as a God, therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon you. The most terrible of the nations, they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. They shall thrust you down into the pit You shall die the death of the slain in the heart of the seas.

Will you still say, I am a God, in the presence of those who slay you, though you are but a man and no God in the hands of those who wound you? You shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of foreigners, for I have spoken, says the Lord God. All of that perfectly clear in being addressed to a human being.

But again, exactly the same thing. Verse 11, Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre. Who is the first part addressed to?

Prince. I don't think that's an insignificant change. Behind this prince, there is one who is king, the real authority over Tyre.

Raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre and say to him, Thus says the Lord God. This following passage could never be addressed to a human being. All right?

You were the signet of perfection. See why I said the highest of all creation? Full of wisdom.

Perfect in beauty. You were in Eden. Prince of Tyre was never in Eden.

Nobody's been there since Adam and Eve were kicked out. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, topaz, jasper, chrysolite, beryl, onyx, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald.

Wrought in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created, they were prepared. With an anointed guardian cherub, I placed you.

You were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you. There you have it.

That is the biblical perspective. That's about all we have that directly addresses the issue of the origin of Satan. Now you can find a number of things in the Apocrypha which may or may not be fully accurate but as far as the canonical scriptures that's all we have on the origin of Satan but it really is a pretty clear picture.

God created him Not as Satan, but as Lucifer, which originally was not a bad name at all. Beautiful name. Resplendent in glory.

The light bearer, the shining one, the glorious one. I think the imagery here is figurative. I think so.

All of these precious stones. It simply means the glory, the beauty, the richness, the unimaginable splendor of him. So like God.

put away you know the horns and the pitchfork in the little red suit that's part of the reason that people don't take this seriously I mean who could take that seriously Satan does not appear dressed for Halloween Satan the scriptures tell us masquerades as an angel of isn't that interesting he pretends to be what he was originally he pretends to be what he was originally in other words he's not going to come and present himself to us as some grotesque horrifying hobgoblin we'd run in terror he's going to come and present himself to us as the most beautiful the most wonderful the most seductive of tempters it's interesting you know think about that episode in the garden he comes right into the midst of the fellowship there Adam and Eve and he suggests that they do exactly what God has forbidden and to do so because God has lied and they need to trust their wisdom rather than God's. He's urging them to do exactly what he did. He sinned from the beginning. And he's been inducing others to do the same thing ever since.

But it says that Eve looked at the tree and says this, When she saw that the fruit was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise. She took the fruit and ate it and gave it to her husband as well. It wasn't something ugly and horrible that she was asked to do.

It was something beautiful, wonderful. It appealed to her aesthetically, intellectually, and physically. A delight to the eyes, good for food, desired to make one wise.

And do you know what she said in her heart of hearts? How can anything so beautiful be wrong? And there it is.

He doesn't come and ask us to do ugly things. He comes and asks us to do beautiful things. How could anything so beautiful as having an affair with my secretary be wrong?

I love her. I love her as I never loved my wife. How could anything so beautiful be wrong?

It doesn't tell us to do ugly things. It tells us to do beautiful things. That's the bait.

There's a hook in the bait. He says first to himself and then to anyone else who will listen, I've got the real story. God has said this, but he's wrong.

He's lying. Let me tell you the truth. He comes claiming to bring truth, beauty, wisdom, power, glory.

Ezekiel goes on, In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, And the guardian cherub who was there originally to guard him now drove you out from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty.

You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.

By the multitude of your iniquities and in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries. So I brought forth fire from the midst of you. consumed you and I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you.

All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you. You have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever. That's how God sees this.

That has yet to be fully played out in history. Perfect creation, full of beauty, full of wisdom, blameless till iniquity was found in him. So the origin of Satan is clear.

He was created by God as a virtually perfect being. So like unto God that you might have had trouble distinguishing him from the creator. Is it live or is it Memorex?

So like God. So not, you know, right up here, right next to God, so like God that you would have had trouble distinguishing him from the Creator. And he had trouble doing that.

And he's the first narcissist. Became totally infatuated with himself. And in an instant, whenever that happened, whenever he crossed that line, he went from being Lucifer, the light bearer, to Satan, which means literally the adversary.

The adversary. And that defines what he's about as well. Whatever God is for, he's against.

He is the adversary. Whatever God is against, he's for. And he would seek to spoil the work of God in whatever way he can.

And it doesn't take very much. That's the important thing that we've got to see tonight. It doesn't take very much.

What's wrong with eating a piece of fruit? That's not a very big, horrific thing. What's wrong with turning stones into bread?

He came to Jesus and tempted him. What's wrong with turning stones into bread? Nothing.

Except my father didn't tell me to do that. Just a little, tiny diversion out of the way of God is enough. I mean, if he can get you to sleep with your secretary, I mean, that's great.

But if he can get you to be proud of not having done so, that that might serve. You follow? Huh?

That's right. What was the problem with the Pharisees? They never slept with their secretaries.

They were proud that they never slept with their secretaries. And that was enough. Jesus said, you are of your father the devil.

Whatever God is for, he's against. Whatever God is against, he's for. And in essence, he has set up a total counterfeit kingdom.

There's evidence, and we'll come to it in the next couple of weeks, that when Satan fell, he took with him a portion. Many have said a third of the angelic host, who in essence followed him as a defecting army. And we'll see some of the names of principalities and powers and thrones and dominions and so on.

Those in Satan's train who are submitted to him. There's a counterfeit kingdom, and he seeks to get us to be part of it. I'll take a couple of minutes and mention the names that are used, or at least some of the names that are used in Scripture.

Because you know that biblical names are always important. They're not arbitrary. And as you begin to understand the names, you're going to understand a little bit more about who we're talking about.

Principal name, I've already mentioned, Satan. Satan from the Hebrew. It means adversary.

Or it also means the accuser. The accuser or the slanderer. In the book of Revelation, he's called the accuser of the brethren.

Fascinating name, isn't it? The accuser of the brethren. He would accuse us and bring us into a bondage of guilt.

The Holy Spirit convicts us, Satan accuses us. Have you ever known anybody, or maybe you yourself, that got into a thing where they felt so guilty, so dirty, and they began confessing their sins, and confessing their sins, and confessing their sins, and as many sins as they confessed, it just seemed as if more were popping up in their memories and condemning them, condemning them. They could never get clean.

That's what really eventually led Martin Luther to his conversion, was he was under that kind of incredible sense of guilt. But that's the accuser at work. When the Holy Spirit convicts, he puts his finger very specifically, firmly but gently, on the thing that's wrong.

Not to make us wallow in guilt, but that we might bring it to God, be cleansed of it, and move on in victory. But Satan comes and accuses and accuses and accuses, so no matter how much confessing you do, You're still bound in guilt. You're paralyzed eventually.

He's the accuser of the brethren. It's interesting. There are only three places in all the Bible where the words of Satan are recorded.

We read about him and we know what he's up to, you know, all through the story. But there are only three places where we actually hear him speak. The first is in the book of Genesis, when he speaks to Eve.

And in essence, what he's doing is he's accusing the character of God. Has God said? Come on, you don't believe that.

God is lying. You're not going to die. God is jealous.

He knows that if you eat this fruit, you're going to become like Him and He doesn't want that. He's a jealous God. He's accusing the character of God.

Second time is in the book of Job. Incredible passage. The day came when the sons of God which in that instance means the angelic host came into the throne room of God and Satan was among them.

Incredible picture. What's he doing among them? And he says you think that Job is your pretty boy.

That's just because everything's going well for him. Let me get my hooks on him for a little while and we'll see how quickly he defects. he's accusing Job to God first instance he's accusing God to man second instance he's accusing man to God and the third instance is when he's with Jesus at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the wilderness and he is seeking an occasion to accuse the God-man only he's foiled can't find one tries, tries, tries and Jesus is victorious.

Jesus is the victor. Jesus, God's son. He's the accuser.

He accuses God to man. He accuses man to God. He tries to accuse the God-man, but he's unsuccessful.

The adversary, the accuser, the slanderer, or even, this would be a legitimate translation of Satan, the gossip. and we smile but that tells you something about the nature of gossip doesn't it? and whose work we're getting involved with when we gossip hmm in Greek Satan the Hebrew Satan becomes Diabolos from which we get in French Diable and in English, devil.

So it means exactly the same thing. It's a transliteration over into English. It means the accuser, the adversary.

Strictly speaking, we should not speak, as the King James Version does, of devils. There's one. King James talks about Jesus cast devils out of this man who had the legion.

No, demons, evil spirits. There is a devil. There's legions of other spirits under him.

The devil is Satan. He's called the tempter. We've just seen that's how he came to Eve.

That's how he came to Jesus. That's what he's called in the Gospels. That's what he's called in 1 Thessalonians.

He's called the dragon. Daniel 7, Revelation 12. The serpent.

Genesis 3, Revelation 12. In Revelation 9, he's called the destroyer. Apollyon in Greek, the destroyer.

Begin to get a picture. He destroys everything that he can of God's creation. He wants to pervert it.

He wants to destroy it. He wants to corrupt it. Jesus calls him a murderer from the beginning.

In John chapter 8, he's called Belial, which means the worthless one. The worthless one. In Matthew 10 and 12 and elsewhere, he's called Beelzebul, which means, anybody know what that means?

Literally, Lord of the Flies, which is where that novel got its name from. Beelzebul, the Lord, what does that suggest to you? Pollution, corruption, rotting.

You know, a piece of meat begins to rot and the flies come around. He has to do with putrefaction. He's also called this, the prince of the power of the air.

Ephesians 2 the prince of this world John 12 John 14 John 16 the wicked one 1 John 5 the god of this world 2 Corinthians 4 you begin to get a sense and I don't again I don't want to push this overly far I don't want to go beyond what scripture actually says but I think there's a hint here that when he was initially created his perfection and all of his beauty. He had a special role of superintendence over this world. Kind of like a guardian angel over the earth.

Prince of this world, the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air. That's a favorite theme of C.S. Lewis and many others as well.

It may give a certain legitimacy to his offer. Remember in the midst of the second temptation, when he said to Jesus, if you'll just bow down and worship me, I'll give you, what? All the kingdoms.

I've always asked, were they his to give? If he is in fact the prince of this world, then there's a sense in which they were. Again, I don't want to take that overly strongly because he's also a liar.

Yeah? And the father of lies. He's called the evil one, the enemy, the plaintiff against us.

He's called a roaring lion in 1 Peter. Your enemy, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion seeking those whom he may devour. That's what he wants to do, friends.

You better believe we've got an enemy. He wants to eat you up. Okay?

That's who we've got to begin. We have an enemy. We've got to learn something about spiritual warfare.

And it begins with taking him very seriously. But the most important thing for the Christian, the thing I want to end with tonight, is that he's a defeated enemy. He's defeated already.

The proper response to him is not terror. Please don't belittle him. Don't laugh at him.

Jude talks about not presuming to pass a judgment on him, but in fact say, The Lord rebuke you. He's a power greater than I. But I know one who is greater than he, and he's a defeated enemy. Look at Matthew 12.

I think you know this passage. I'll pick it up in verse 22. A blind and dumb demoniac was brought to Jesus, a man possessed by or inhabited by evil spirits.

Jesus healed him. That healing, not all healings involved casting out evil spirits, but that one did. The dumb man spoke and he saw and all the people were amazed and said, Can this be the son of David?

That looks like the kind of thing that Messiah would do. Can it be? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, It is only by Beelzebul, Lord of the Flies.

It is only by Satan, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, words that are always attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln quoted Jesus, Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, then he is divided against himself, and how then will his kingdom stand?

And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, Then by whom do your sons cast them out? You see, others were already into exorcism. There were those who were in the business of casting out evil spirits already.

Therefore, they shall be your judges. Get this next sentence. But if it is by the Spirit of God, one of the other passages says, by the finger of God, the Spirit of God is as God's own finger doing this work through Jesus.

If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Jesus comes as victor over all of those forces, all of those powers, and over Satan himself. And then this image, he sums it up, verse 29, Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man?

Now the strong man is Satan. And his house is this world, you see. It's under his dominion.

Jesus says, I've come to plunder what is his, to steal it away out of his grasp. And in order to do that, first of all, I've got to tie him up. That's what I've come to do.

I've come to tie him up. Then indeed he may plunder his house. And so on.

Jesus says, he is a strong man, but I've come as one stronger still. Look over at John 16. Jesus is telling his friends that he's about to leave.

This is shortly before the crucifixion. They're in despair over the thought of that. Verse 7, he says, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.

for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, who?

Who? The Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes, he will convince, or that could be convict, he will bring conviction, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

If you read that very closely, you're going to see three very startling definitions concerning sin because they do not believe in me. I asked you earlier, what is sin? Sin ultimately is the refusal to believe in Jesus.

The refusal to believe in God. Not just that he exists, but in the sense of putting my trust, putting my faith in him. I'm rejecting what he's come to do.

I refuse, it's not that I'm not yet convinced, I refuse to believe. All sins, in the plural, are expressions of that sin. The refusal to believe in God.

The refusal to believe in Jesus whom he has sent. Of sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no more.

Do you know what righteousness is? My righteousness is a matter of Jesus having gone to the Father. What did he say?

My righteousness is not anything that I have ever done. My righteousness is that Jesus did it all. He completed his work and he went to the Father for me.

That's my righteousness. You see, those two are obverse sides of a coin, aren't they? If my righteousness is what Jesus did, and I'm trusting that.

when I get there and St. Peter says, why should you come in? I say, because Jesus did it all. I put my trust in Him.

To refuse to believe that is to cut myself off from it. Right? Concerning judgment.

Because the ruler of this world is judged. The judgment is already defeated. He is already a nobody.

He is already a has-been. Okay. And any judgment of God that will ever fall on any human being is simply because that human being has refused the grace of God, the mercy of God, the gift of God, the salvation of God, and therefore allied himself with the evil one.

It's not really a judgment for us. There's a judgment for Him. But we can choose to participate in it.

But the important thing is He is judged already. He is a defeated enemy as of the cross. And I want to end with this verse in Colossians chapter 2.

let's pick it up at verse 13 you who were dead in trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh God made alive together with Jesus having forgiven us all our trespasses having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. And as he did that, he disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him, or in it, in the cross, triumphing over them in his cross. The imagery here is of a Roman general coming back from a successful battle.

And as he came into the city of Rome to be greeted by the emperor and to be greeted by the adoring masses, preceding his chariot would be all the folks that he's just defeated. He just parades them through the city. They are absolutely stripped of their glory, their authority, their power.

And that's the imagery here. He disarmed the principalities, the powers, the thrones, the dominions, all those forces of evil. He made a public example of them, triumphing over them in his cross.

That's the work of Jesus. So the proper response of the Christian then is certainly not to belittle Satan, certainly not to consider this nonsense, to take it very seriously indeed, but not, therefore, to be horrified by it and to be intimidated by it and to be gripped by fear. The proper response is exactly that of Martin Luther.

the prince of darkness grim we tremble not for him his rage we can endure for lo his doom is sure one little word will fell him defeated enemy has no power unless you let him have it Jesus has defeated him we need not to fear the devil we may need to learn how to deal with him and that's where we'll be going in the next couple of weeks. Let's stand and pray together. Louisa, would you lead us? Father, thank you that you give us the power of this. Father, thank you that we can with triumph in voice to say, Satan is defeated. Amen. Thank you for teaching that leads us in that way. Father, help us go out tonight knowing that you are victorious in everything that we have to do. Through your name, amen. Amen. Amen.