"The Prince Of The Power Of The Air" Series

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”

In a British radio broadcast circa 1943, reading one of his own essays, C. S. Lewis was discussing some of the basic Christian beliefs. In talking about the personal existence of the devil, Lewis anticipated the scoffing of the so-called enlightened modern thinkers who would relegate the idea of a devil to just a symbol of immorality, or a myth upon which to lay blame for one’s wrong behavior. He said, “I know someone will ask me, ‘Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil - hoofs and horns and all’? Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is ‘Yes, I do’. I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, ‘Don’t worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you’ll like it when you do is another question’.”

- Mere Christianity

“What Christians Believe”

I will not waste my time in preparation, or your time in listening to/reading this sermon, arguing the existence of the devil. Anyone who sincerely wants to know the scriptures and is willing to believe that what God’s word says is true, will see that the Bible makes the personal existence of the devil very clear. He has a name. In fact, he has several names. He talked to Jesus and Jesus talked back.

Anyone who will deny his existence is ignoring the preponderance of scriptural evidence, and they are either deliberately and willfully ignorant, or do not intend to believe the bible anyway. So as I said, I won’t waste my time and yours.

The problem is, there are many churches today; the liberal churches; the ones that have adopted the theology of the world system, that teach that there is no actual person that is the Devil (capital “D”), and I have to admonish you to stay away from those false teachers. They will lead you into error. They are dangerous.

I think today we should just begin with the premise that Satan is real, he is a person, a created angel who was cast from Heaven when pride filled his heart, has this world and the hearts of men as his domain; and let’s talk about what his key objectives are.

In II Corinthians 2, Paul tells his readers that forgiving one another is important so that no advantage be taken of them by Satan, and he says, “...for we are not ignorant of his schemes”.

And without taking that thought out of context, I believe we can take as a wise bit of advice, that we also should not be ignorant of Satan’s schemes.

So let’s put him on the hot seat today and see what he’s up to.

THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR WANTS TO FRUSTRATE LIFE

I have often said that man’s fallen condition makes him ‘backwards’ in respect to the things of God. Not that I’ve come up with anything new there; it is just the way I express the truth, that apart from God we are really the opposite of God.

And of course, the man in sin is serving sin, doing the will of Satan, so we can say that Satan, in his very essence, is opposite, or diametrically opposed, to God.

Now I want to be careful here that I do not lead you to think that I am preaching error. I don’t want you to get the impression that I am putting God and Satan in some kind of New Age equal-but-opposite-plane theology.

That would be to take away the personality of both, and say that the idea of God is the representation of the good side of the universe, and Satan is the representative of the bad side.

Or going even farther, for those who do not want to concede to any absolute good or bad, but see all things as relative, then we would say the “God concept” represents light, and the “Satan concept” represents dark.

That is where George Lucas and those of the same belief system get the Light side of the Force and the Dark side of the Force, of ‘STAR WARS’ fame.

But when I say that Satan is the opposite of God, I do not mean those things. What I mean is that since he, and all mankind in sin are diametrically opposed to God, hateful rebels against His Lordship, then the fruit you will see in the lives of men and the acts of Satan, are opposite of God.