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The Attack on the Woman
BD17-02© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1971)
We are speaking concerning the subject of the enemy of our
souls, the archenemy of our souls, Satan, the fallen angel of God. I’m very much encouraged to see such a goodly
number in attendance this morning. Whenever we begin speaking about the subject of Satan, you may
anticipate any number of frustrations, any number of attempts on his
part to keep you from getting this information. So, I can tell you now that in the immediate weeks that are before you,
you will have more reasons for not attending these morning Bible study
services than you have ever had in a long time. People who have been in regular attendance, you will begin noticing, are
not in attendance. People who are not in
attendance for a while, when we have passed this subject, will suddenly
show up again. Satan has a way
of keeping the people who most needed this information from being present. However you don’t have to go very long in the
Christian life before you discover that this is one of his devices. It is fantastic how often a message will come
up in the normal course of the exposition of the Word, and somebody who
would be strategically blessed, informed, and oriented by that message is out
of town, or is away, or stays home for one reason or another, and that
service they miss.
That’s not without reason. These are not
accidents. This is because this tremendous personality Satan has that much power and that
much control over your life through the demonic world that he can guide, and
thereby direct you and what you do so that you operate on his will instead of
God’s will. Please remember there are two
wills in the universe. There once was only one, the will of God. Now there is
the will of God and the will of Satan, and both are constantly on appeal to
you.
We have been studying about the spiritual maturity structure
which the Word of God calls upon every believer to build in his soul. It
has five basic facets, so we may think of
it as a pentagon within our souls, for our defense against Satan, and
from which we conduct our spiritual combat and warfare against him. You
should have a pretty clear idea of what
it is to be a mature Christian in five major respects. As
you read the Word of God, you will
discover that you will constantly be coming across information that
tells you a little more about each facet of the pentagon of this defense. This
is something that you must develop. The
bible uses the word “edify.” God
the Holy Spirit is the agent who edifies. What he edifies
is building up of the spiritual maturity structure, and it’s a process of
building. Satan is your opponent, and you have no
defense against him unless you have this structure built in your soul.
We found in Ezekiel chapter 28 and Isaiah 4 information
concerning this angel called Satan. We
found that this passage goes beyond speaking of the immediate context
of the King of Babylon and the King of Tyre, and goes on to speaking about
someone who is more than human. The things that
these passages say indicate that the person is somebody more than a
human being—that
the prophet has leapfrogged from the immediate situation of the king
concerning whom he was prophesying, and has passed over to the agent behind the
king, namely Satan.
We found from these passages that Satan was created by Jesus
Christ as the archangel, and he was in the cherub class of angels which
is the highest order of angels. His original name
was Lucifer, which means “bright and shining one.” He
was in the service of Jesus Christ as the
personal attendant of the Lord Jesus Christ. For this reason,
he was called the anointed cherub, for Christ is the
anointed one; i.e., the messiah. He,
in effect, was the guardian of the throne of the glory of God. He
was created as the most beautiful and most
intelligent of all the angels. Everywhere
that he looked, he saw nobody equal to himself except God. He
has an invisible body made of a light-like
substance with soul qualities, including the power of choice. He
is clothed, we’re told, in garments of
translucent gems, and he has a most impressive voice when he speaks. He
was a perfect angel, and he was fully at
ease In God’s presence in God’s presence in the
third heaven, the throne room of God.
One day he began observing, as the years went by. We
don’t know how long this was, how many
centuries went by. Maybe it was for millions
of years that he was in this state of positive volition toward the will
of God. One day he began putting thing together in
his mind. He observed that there was
nobody in all creation that was his equal. Everyone was
under him, all the angels were underneath him, everyone was
in a lower category, and everyone was of a lower quality, except that
only God was above him. He began to think, “Wouldn’t
it be nice if there were nobody above me—if I could be number
one in this magnificent universe that God has made?” With that act of
pride, negative volition was triggered within this magnificent
archangel. He rebelled against the will of God. His rebellion, we
found, was expressed in five specific statements:
1) He said, “I will ascend into heaven.” This
meant that he was going to revolt
against God, move into the third heaven, and take over the throne room.
Heaven
2 Corinthians 12:1-4 indicate to us that there are three
heavens. The first heaven is the
atmosphere that surrounds and envelopes the earth. The
second heaven consists of the interstellar spaces. Beyond that—billions
of light-years beyond that—is the third heaven where God
Himself dwells. Ephesians 1:20-21 and Ephesians 4:10 speak
about this place where God Himself dwells. It seems that the
angels, by and large, are confined to the first and
second heaven—the atmosphere and the interstellar spaces. However,
they of course have access into the
presence of God as Job 1:6 indicates that there are times when they
report into God within the third heaven.
Satan, as the archangel and personal attendant of Jesus
Christ, had access to this third heaven. When he rebelled,
one-third of the angels decided to go with him. We
don’t know how many angels there are—millions
or billions of angels. But one-third of
all the angels that God created, all at one time, decided to join Satan
in his rebellion and they fell with him (Revelation 12:4). These
were removed from the presence of God along with the archangel. Satan is now
confined to operating mainly in the first and second heavens, and it is
from here that he rules the earth. Luke 4:5-7
and John 12:31 indicate that he is the dominant personality in control
of this world. All believers, interestingly
enough, now go to where Satan wanted to take over. When
a person dies, his soul and spirit
immediately go into God’s presence in the third heaven. The
Christian immediately enters the throne
room. In John 14:1-3, the Lord tells us
about going and preparing dwelling places (apartments) for us in the
third heaven.
So, here you Christians sit with the magnificent destiny
before you that you are someday going to enter the throne room as your
permanent place of residence. Satan has
now been excluded from it except for certain reporting occasions.
So, he said, I will ascend into heaven. I’m
going to move in, kick God out, and take
over.
2) He said, “I will exalt my throne above the stars.” “Stars”
in the Scriptures refers to angels. In Job 38:7 and Revelation 12:3 we read about
the stars singing at creation. The physical stars don’t sing. This
is a reference to the angelic hosts that were there praising as they watched
God in his creative work. The lust for
power and to rule supreme over the angels is what Satan means by this
statement, “I will exalt my throne above the stars. I’m
going to take over, full control, direct authority over the angelic
world.” His pride led him to ambition for power over
others. This is what happens to people. The person who
rises up with pride is the person who begins to ambitious. He’s
the person who starts getting pushy because he’s wanting to
take over and run things and have authority over people.
3)
Satan said, “I will sit upon the mount of the
congregation…” This
refers to sitting upon God’s throne as the ruler. Literally, it
says, “… the mount of the
assembly…” We have a
reference to this in Psalm 48:2
where there is the place where the Jews assembled. What
he is saying here is that he wants to
rule the planet earth and its inhabitants, both the original and the
recreated earth. He will sit upon the mount of the
congregation in the place where people assemble.
4) He said, “I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds.” About two-thirds of the references to clouds
in the Bible have to do with the presence of God, such as in Exodus
16:10 and Exodus 40:38 where God moved with the children of Israel and let them
in the clouds and in the pillar of fire. What
does Satan want to do here? He says,
“I want to assume the place of the absolute sovereign of the universe. God
is sovereign in the universe. He is the king. He
is supreme. Satan said, “I want to sit upon his
throne. I want to play the role of being
sovereign.” Of course, he lacks the
divine essence and the personality of deity, so he can’t
possibly control creation or maintain it.
5) Finally, Satan said, “I will be like the most high.” This
sums the whole thing up. That was his ambition. What
does he mean by that? He wants to be in the tradition of the
essence of God. He wants to have God’s
character, sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life,
omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, immutability, and veracity. But
he can’t have this character of God, so
what does he do? He counterfeits it. He produces
religion for people to follow so he can be like God. He
produces human viewpoint so people will act nice. By
their human viewpoint, they will pursue human good.
There are a lot of Christians who are phased in to human
viewpoint which Satan is dispensing, and they’re creating
human good. It looks very nice and other people are very
impressed. There are plenty of men in the
ministry who spend their whole lives cranking out human good because
they’re functioning on human viewpoint. They are
purportedly agents for the blessings and benefit of humanity. They
pursue various programs that they feel
very warm and very glowing about. They
feel themselves to have arrived at a higher level of achievement than
some poor character that stands up and says that the highest virtue in the
Christian life is Bible doctrine.
Many local church Christians like to play this same game of
power and lust. They’re
motivated by ambitions of pride and their abilities, and by their lust for praise. So
they want to be in the position of being
like God. The rest of the congregation may
consider them to be very wonderful people because they wear a certain
covering of self-righteousness. Yet these same
people are shot through with envy. They’re
shot through with competition. They’re
shot through with proving themselves. They’re
shot through with Satan’s sin, the sin of pride. This
is why in local churches we begin to
have the conflict of pushy people, because Satan uses human viewpoint. He
says, “Friend, why don’t you get up there
and be what you should be. You’re
something special. You’ve
got abilities. You can show them
how it should be done.” That’s
exactly what Satan said he was going to do. He was
going to show the angels what God could really have done with this
universe.
Well, Satan is doomed to the lake of fire and brimstone
which has been made for him and his angels and for any human being who
chooses to follow him. Satan’s banishment from
the throne room of God resulted in his taking over the planet earth. Consequently,
the planet earth deteriorated into chaos and darkness. Once the earth
was restored by the recreation of God and man was placed upon the
earth, Satan moved in to take over again. This is the
phase that we’re going to begin to look at this morning.
Turn with me please to Genesis 3. Let’s
think back to the condition of man in
the Garden of Eden. Here we are at
the very beginning. Man has been
created. The first man
name was (in the
Hebrew language) “adam.” This
simply means “man.” When
you transliterate it
(transpose the Hebrew letters into English letters), it (still) comes
out as “Adam.” So
he was called Adam which is really just
the Hebrew word for man.
There were three things done to this man that God
created. First, in Genesis 1:27, the Word of God says, “For God created man in his own
image.” This is the
Hebrew word “bara.” “Bara”
means to call into existence out of
nothing—by the word of God to command into existence. Man
was created. Now the question
is, what was created about man. How was man
created? We know where his body came from. God
didn’t speak his body into existence. He put that
together out of materials from the earth. So, God created
man in his own image. It is the image
part of man in which God did his creative work on man.
If you’ll turn to Genesis 2:7, we’ll see what part of
man was created. Genesis 2:7 says,
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life.” The word
“life” should be plural because that’s what it is in the
Hebrew—it is “the breath of lives.” It looks like
this in the Hebrew: “chayin.” The singular form
is “cha,” and that’s not what is there. It
is this plural word. God breathed into the nostrils (and that
happens to be plural too, and you can see why that would have to be
plural) of man the breath of lives.
Now this is very important. What did God
breathe into man? Well he breathed
two kinds of lives into him. First, he
breathed soul life into man. Secondly, he
breathed spiritual life into man. He breathed a
spirit and he breathed a soul into man. That’s
why the word is in the plural. This refers to
the image of God of which Genesis 1:26-27 speaks. “And
God said let us make man (that is, the
trinity, make man in our image) after our likeness.” The
image of God refers to the soul
life. When the Bible says we are made in
the image of God, that’s the soul. That
is what God breathed into man. When it
says “likeness,” that includes the totality here
(and man has another part, the
body), this is the likeness here, in that God is a trinity and man is a
trinity. So, he’s made in the image of
God in the fact that he has a personality, and that’s the soul.
Verse 27 says, “And God created man in his own image. In
the image of God created He him, male and female, created He them.” Man
had a mentality. He has a soul. Therefore, he has a mentality in that
soul. He is able to reason. That mentality
has self-awareness. He knows himself. You
sit here this morning and you can
distinguish yourself from the person next to you. When
you leave here, you’ll know where you
should go home. You
won’t end up in
somebody else’s house and ask, “How did I get
here?” or “Who am I?” He
also has a conscience in his soul in which
he has values and a set of standards. His soul also had
volition so that he could choose. He
also had emotions, and all of this was
part of his soul, and consequently he could appreciate things. He
could appreciate God. He could
appreciate Eve, his right woman. He could
appreciate the perfect
environment in which God had placed him. There was no old
sin nature at the time that distorted the soul. That’s
what the old sin nature does. It distorts our
soul so that all of our
mentality, our volition, and our emotions are contrary to the will of
God rather than being tied into that will.
So, the first thing we have said that happened to this man
Adam was that God “bara’d” him. God
created the man. He called out of
nothing into being the immaterial part of man which constituted his
soul and his spirit. A second thing that God did
to man is found in Genesis 1:26 where it says, “Let us make
man in our image.” This is “asah.” “Asah”
is to make something out of something. Now what does
that refer to? Well obviously “asah” refers to the
body of man, for the body of man was made out of the materials of the
earth. It refers to the mechanical
functioning of man’s body, and God produced that out of the
materials of the ground—the physical man from natural materials.
The third thing that happened is found in Genesis 2:7. This
is to give us a general introduction to
this man who is in this garden that Satan is going to approach. “And
the Lord God formed man of the dust of
the ground.” This Hebrew word
is “yatzer.” This
one means “to fashion,” or “to
mold,” with outward form. This speaks of
the symmetry of the body. God formed man so
that he had an outward appearance. He
had the distinctive appearance of Homosapiens. He looked like a
human being. He was distinguished in his appearance from all of the animals, though he
had certain common structural features with the animals. This
emphasizes the outward form of man.
When God finished with doing these three things with man
(these three words that describe what God did), man was perfect, like
all the rest of God’s creation, and he was in a position of innocence
relative to sin. Everything that man needed for his
life, for his provision, and for his pleasure had been provided in the
Garden of Eden. Man had been forbidden only to
eat of one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This
was the knowledge of human good and of
sinfulness. He was told that he was not
to eat of this tree. This tree was no
special tree. It was just a tree. It had a fruit on
it. What the fruit was we don’t know. It was just a
tree and he was not to eat of
this one. It was simply a testing point
of his will against God’s will. The
knowledge of this tree would bring an old sin nature.
The man was in perfect environment in fellowship with God
through the human spirit, and in fellowship with his woman through his
soul. Man was dominant over creation and
he was locked on position volition to the will of God. Satan,
through whom this beautiful planet
earth had gone to wrack and ruins, viewed this magnificent recreation. It
was a perfect environment, it was a
perfect man, and it was a perfect wife, with the best combination you
could ask for—the right particular man with his right particular woman,
with nothing to do but to enjoy fellowship with God which is exactly what they were
experiencing. The Bible tells us that every day God met with him. The manifest
member of the Godhead, the person that we see that reveals God to us is Jesus Christ
who is called Jehovah, along with the other members of the trinity, but mostly
it applies to Jesus Christ.
So
the Lord Jesus Christ met with him every day. What
was he doing? He was teaching the man what he needed to
know about doctrine. He was giving him
doctrinal studies. He was filling
this man’s human spirit with the knowledge of God, and
consequently Adam was not
only a magnificent physical figure, but he was also a magnificent
spiritual figure. He was tied in to
the full knowledge of the living God. You and I
sit here and we are really paupers comparatively. I
don’t care how much you know about the Word
of God. You have to admit
that we are comparatively paupers. There’s
so much we don’t understand. There’s
so much of the Word of God that we have never really entered into. We
have no real appreciation of what Adam had
in his relationship with God and in contrast to what we lack. Thank
God that we can keep plugging away at
it, and it can get better day by day as we make it our business to
learn the Word.
But Satan looked at this and he said, “I want that earth
back. I want to be in control of this
earth.” There’s this man, and the Bible
tells us that man was made a little lower than the angels. Man
doesn’t have the angel’s body made up of
light substances that can travel at the speed of light and is not
restricted by time and space anywhere in the human verse. And Satan said,
“Why should I let this man have this up when he
isn’t even up to my standards. I’m
going to get this earth back again.”
So, he proceeded to bring man onto negative volition to tie
into the will of Satan. There were two
wills in the universe. He said,
“I’m going to get these two people off of God’s will and onto my
will. Then every child born to these two people
will also automatically be in my camp, for they will be born with an
evil nature and consequently be separated from God.”
Now you would have thought that he would walk in and say,
“I’ll ruin their perfect environment.” No,
that’s not the thing he wanted to do. He
didn’t go around busting up things all over again. He
didn’t attack the environment but he was
going to destroy the environment by capturing a very strategic part of
man’s soul, his mind. This is what
Satan always works on. This was the
point of attack. This is the point
of attack for you today. Every day this
week Satan will be hitting you here. That’s
why it is important to have information that is God’s point of view
cycling up to your mentality all the time. The only place
it can come from is your human spirit. And the only way
it can come from there is that you put it there in the
first place.
But he’s going to approach man and put him on Satan’s
will. But how is he going to do
that? He’s not going to go in and destroy
man’s fellowship. He’s
not going to go in to promote some immorality or violence. He
doesn’t want that. He wants to
be like God. He wants people
running around promoting religion and human good. But how can Satan
get into the mind of Adam? Adam’s
human spirit is full of doctrine. He
meets Jesus Christ. He learns the
Word. How is he going to hit this man with an idea
so as to make him a sinner? Sin begins with the mind. Proverbs 23:7
tells us that we are what we think. 2 Corinthians
10:5 and James 1:14-15 tell us that it start internally, in our
thinking.
Satan decided to break into the perfect environment through
the woman. He said, “I’ll never get to
first base with Adam. I’m going to
bypass him.” He sat there and leaned his
chin down on his elbow and he watched this woman and he analyzed her. Because
he was so brilliant, he finally devised a plan. He
couldn’t get to first base if he approached Adam. If he
approached Adam, Adam would have cut him down with a blink of his
eyelash. Had Adam been there when Satan approached the
woman, Adam would have cut him down. He
would have exercised his authority as the spiritual leader. He
would have made the decision for himself
and his wife.
But Satan discovered what a lot of men have not yet
discovered today. He discovered that the
woman was a responder, and that she has to react from her own volition
or she cannot be productive of anything desirable. Her femininity is
structured upon being able to react from her own
volition. Something has to trigger that response. That’s
why unless a woman is
really married to her right man, she’s not responding. But
once she meets her right man, she can never
forget him. She will always respond to
him. There will always be the longing to
respond to her right person.
So, Satan had to get some false doctrine into this
woman. He knew that he could not do it
through the man, but he could use Eve as the agent because Eve,
apparently, was not as careful about doctrine as Adam was. And Adam was
overwhelmed by his right woman. So, Satan said,
“I’ll get at Adam’s spiritual
maturity structure by getting at the woman and I’ll use the
woman as my agent.” Man knew what was
at stake in this negative volition. Genesis 2:17
tells us that after God had created the man and before the woman came on the scene,
God said, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat. For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt die.” So, Adam was well aware of what was going to happen.
I
want you to notice something about this expression, “thou
shalt die.” Literally in the Hebrew it’s
something else. The word “die” here in
the Hebrew (“muth”) is repeated. It’s
declared twice so that what the sentence is actually saying is, “dying
(the first use of the word die—a participle) thou shalt die (used a second
time—in the future tense).” So, what God said
to the man was, “dying (the first death), you will consequently
experience a second death.” What is the first death? Well Adam did die
because the Bible says that “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou surely shalt die.”
It is amazing how many Christians are never bothered by that
phrase. Many Bible teachers will teach
this passage and they will associate man’s death primarily
with his physical death. Then some bright
little kid puts his hand up and says, “Hey, it says here that ‘in
the day’ that you eat of it you will die. He
didn’t die that day.” Any you should hear how Sunday school
teachers will stumble around with their answer, such as,
“Well that just means a long time. A day sometimes
is a long time.” Well, it’s nothing like that at
all. Adam and Eve dropped dead right on
the spot the minute that they bit into that fruit because the first
death here was spiritual death. They immediately
died spiritually. Subsequently, out
of spiritual death flows physical death. That came later
for Adam when he was 930 years old.
So, man knew what was going to happen. Romans 6:23 speaks of death, and this is
again spiritual death. “And the wages of
sin is death.” This is spiritual death. He had,
incidentally you notice, to have a human spirit. Let me give you a
couple of words here: trichotomous, dichotomous. These are two big
theological words. All of the seminary students here know these
words and they love them very much.
There is a view among theologians: Is man three
parts, or is man two parts? Does man have
three parts to his being or
does he have two parts to his being? You
might say that is a silly argument. It
seems like the Bible is very specific. In 1
Thessalonians 5:23, the apostle Paul says, “And the very God
of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul
and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” God the Holy Spirit does not repeat words
uselessly. Those are no meaningless
words. The Bible tells us the Word of
God it’s like a sword that can divide asunder between the
soul and the spirit. That’s exactly what the Word of
God does. It distinguishes between the
soul and the spirit.
I
think it’s interesting that when man died spiritually, I
think it is evident that when man died spiritually, this is another
evidence that trichotomy is indeed the position of the Word of God and that
dichotomy is wrong. Man is not two parts. He is three parts, because when man died,
what died within him? The Bible tells us
that when a person dies physically, what leaves the body? The
soul. It is the soul that leaves the body. Now the spirit
does too, but if you’re an unsaved person you have a dead
human spirit. Consequently, it is the
soul that is living that keeps the body alive. When an
unbeliever dies, it is his soul that leaves, and he dies. The
Bible indicates it is the soul that
leaves and makes the body die. What left
Adam, because he died the very day he ate? Obviously not his
soul, or he would have dropped dead physically on the
spot too. Something died in him. It could not have
been his soul. It had to be something else, and it was his
spirit. This is another evidence that
man is spirit, he is soul, and he is body.
So, Adam knew what was going to happen. God
said that if he ate, he would die
spiritually and in time he would die physically. You
and I receive our physical death,
consequently, directly from Adam because you were in him in
God’s eyes, and when he ate of that fruit, you ate with him. That’s
why you die physically, because you ate the fruit with Adam. We
die spiritually because of something our
parents gave us—the old sin nature. We
inherit spiritual death directly from our parents through our father. We
inherit physical death directly through
Adam.
This separation of man from God by spiritual death was Satan’s
goal. To do this, he had to foul up man’s
thinking with some human viewpoint, and here’s how he
proceeded to do it:
First of all, in Genesis 3:1, we read, “Now the serpent was
more subtle than any beast of the field.” Satan is going to
approach the woman, and he uses an agent because Satan
uses the technique of a disguise, and he always uses an agent. This
word for “serpent” comes from two
words. One word means to hiss, and the
other word means to shine. The serpent
was not the kind of a creature that you and I are associated with
today—that creates a response of loathing within us. One
of the things that God placed in judgment upon the animal the serpent, for
his part of being used by Satan in the fall of man was that God said,
“Henceforth you will crawl on your belly and eat the dust of the ground.” This
indicates that this is not the way he moved before. The serpent actually moved
in an upright position, and it was a very attractive animal.
As you read the Scriptures, it seems obviously evident that
Eve was used to having animals around her, and she was used to seeing
serpents around her. Furthermore, the
serpent apparently had some ability to communicate, because she did not find it
unusual that he could come up and begin a conversation with her. He
could talk, probably better than a parrot
or a mina bird. But there was
some ability to communicate. Satan decided
that he was going to use this attractive animal to approach the woman.
Now you might say, “Well why didn’t Satan just stand up
in front of her? He’s a beautiful fellow himself.” But in the Garden
of Eden there were nothing but animals, and the only other intelligent creature
was her husband. So, if suddenly this person with
the ability to reason in the form of the archangel Satan stands before
her, even though he is very handsome, and even though he had a beautiful
mellifluous voice, she would have been somewhat put on her guard wondering,
“Where did you come from?” Immediately she
would not have been totally at ease.
Satan is so clever, he says, “Now I’m going to approach
this gal, but I’m not going to get her nervous in any
way.” So, along comes
this snake, slithering along
on his tail, bouncing along, and he comes up to her. Inside
is Satan making his approach making
his approach to the woman. He is subtle. The serpent, by
natural capacity, is an animal, we’re told, that was more subtle and
more clever than all the other beasts of the field. He
had a natural quality of cleverness about him. Satan wanted to
use the subtlety in order to implant a false idea.
Once the idea has been implanted, and once he gets this
woman to choose negative volition toward God, and to go on
Satan’s will, then the man is going to be in a very difficult place. He’s
going to walk up and he’s going to be forced to make a choice. He’s
going to realize that he is going to have to choose between his right woman Eve,
and go with her into sin, or else he’s going to have to choose God
and stay on positive volition to the will of God and lose her forever. Now
here’s a fantastic attachment between a
particular man and his particular woman, for Adam, as you know, chose
to go with her. But the only way that Satan
could set this in motion was to get into the woman’s mind.
2
Corinthians 2:11 refers to the devices of Satan. The
word “devices” here means the plot, or
the designs of Satan. It’s the Greek
word, “noema.” It’s
the word that is used in 2 Corinthians 10:5 for “thought.” So, the devices of
Satan have to do with thinking. We are not to be
ignorant of his devices. 2 Corinthians 4:4
tells us that he blinds the minds of the unbelievers so that they cannot receive the
truth of the gospel. The Bible is full of
examples of how Satan gets at one person through another. That’s
what he was doing here. He’s going to get at the man through the
woman.
This is why the Bible gives you so many instructions and
guidelines as to how you should deal with people. Human
relationships are constantly laid out in the Word of God. This is why
it’s important to have a relaxed mental attitude. If you do not
have a relaxed mental attitude, you cannot be on a right
level on the human plane of relationships with people. You
may confess the fact that you have mental
attitude sins, but they still bear a destructive effect on your
personality and on your relationships to people. Satan
uses the lives, even of Christians, to get at you. If
you don’t have a relaxed mental attitude, you’re
going to be impressed by religion, and you’re going to be
impresses by spiritual phonies. That’s
why we have a lot of Christians going around practicing religion, and practicing a
lot of sweetness and light spiritual phonies. This is where
Pentecostalism appeals with its tongues and its healing,
and there is vast production of human good out of Pentecostalism which
makes it look very impressive to people who are uninformed about doctrine. Satan’s
angels are presented as angels of truth (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). They’re
attractive and they’re warm. We have
preachers who are willing to take church members who like to major on
sweetness and light, and they like to make over these people, and it makes good
membership numbers. It makes a bad congregation, but it helps your numbers.
We have a lot of people who are sitting in other churches
this morning, even Bible churches, who used to come here, who found
that they couldn’t get away with sweetness and light. They
couldn’t get away with their phony fronts. Because
they were exposed to themselves, they
decided it was too hot in this kitchen, and they found themselves
someplace where somebody would make over them. Satan is going to
appeal to the old sin nature to produce all the human
good that you can.
So, we’ve got sentimentalism, sincerity, do-goodism,
brotherhood, ecumenism, and social action involvement, but only
doctrine can preserve you from a misconception of the subtlety of Satan. If
you’re here without a relaxed mental
attitude this morning, you will be prone to sit here having all kinds
of critical comments about how some people here are dressed, or how some
people here are wearing their hair, or how some people are talking, or how
some people act—any number of things that are not basically your
responsibility or business, for everyone will answer for himself before the Lord. If
you’re not careful, Satan will use other
people to get at you and to destroy your usefulness.
That’s the subtlety of his approach here to Eve. 2
Corinthians 11:3 equates the serpent to Satan so that when the serpent spoke, it was actually Satan who was
speaking. Genesis 3:1 says, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God
had made.” I want you to notice the phrase, “the
LORD God” (with capital “LORD,” and
“God”). This is the Hebrew for “Jehovah Elohim.” This is the
creator God, particularly the name which is regularly used
for Jesus Christ, and it refers to Jesus Christ here in Genesis 3:1 for
He is the creator. It says the serpent was more subtle than anything else that Jesus Christ had made—the
LORD God. He’s using the serpent for his technique of
orienting people to his line of thinking.
He goes on and says to the woman, “Yea, hath God said ye
shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Notice something
about the word that he uses for “God.” He
chops off “Jehovah,” and he says, “Has
Elohim said…?” Here is a principal that
you can learn about the devices of Satan.
Some people think that Satan doesn’t believe in a Supreme
Being, or that he doesn’t wasn’t people to believe
in a Supreme Being. They’re
wrong. He wants people to believe in a Supreme
Being, and he wants to be that Supreme Being. But he does not
want you to say “Jehovah,” because the word
“Jehovah”
refers to Jesus Christ as Savior. He
wants you to believe in God. He wants
you to think that all these religions of the world are leading to the
same place. They’re all reaching out to the
same God. He knows that without the
savior you will be doomed. That’s
why he promotes religion. That’s
why he promotes the idea that if you believe in a Supreme Being, all will be
well with your soul.
The question that he asks the woman is a question that is introduced
by two Hebrew words which are an expression of surprise. So
you read this in terms of, “Is it really a
fact that God has prohibited you from eating from all of the trees of
the garden?” He says it in
such a way that, “I’m
really surprised at that. That’s
not very nice of God.” The implication
is that God is doing something very mean and wrong.
Sometimes Christians do this. They come up to
you with that surprise—an intriguing
inquire that makes you think, “You know, somebody is doing
something wrong. They shouldn’t do that.” “Is
it really true that God has prohibited
you from eating from all of the trees of the garden?” What
is the woman’s reaction going to
be? We’re going to pick the story up there next week.
What we wanted to establish today is that Satan uses agents,
he comes in disguise, and he will use other people to manipulate your
mind. He approaches the mind, and he
leads into sin by getting at your thinking. It is your
thought life, which is guided either by doctrine or by human
viewpoint, that makes the difference. How
many times have some of your snotty Christian friends dropped remarks
to you to bestir your mind to make you think that you’re suffering some
injustice, or that you’re being denied a fair shake? This
is what Satan was doing with Eve toward God. What do you think
she’ll do? What decision do you think she’ll make. Will
she eat of the fruit or not? Come back next week and find out.
Dr.
John E. Danish
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