From a “Pastor’s Weekly Briefing” provided by Focus on the Family -
“A large share of people who attend Protestant or Catholic churches have adopted beliefs that conflict with the teachings of the Bible and their church, according to Barna Research Group
35% believe that it is "possible to communicate with others after they die."
50% of all adults argue that anyone who "is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life will earn a place in Heaven."
44% percent contend that "the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths."
59% reject the existence of Satan, calling him merely a symbol of evil.
The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come to give you life and that more abundantly. JN 10:10
Satan is the ultimate eavesdropper and a constant gate crasher. As far as he is concerned we are like E.F. Hutten when we pray.
Whenever and wherever we invite God to come we can be sure that Satan will also show up.
Satan came to our revival last week. He was excited to be here because he had lots to do.
He had hearts to harden. He had minds to make wander.
He had seeds of truth to steal away before they took root in people’s lives.
He brought a full bag of tricks and the schemes that worked best on people who did not think they could be fooled. The ones who thought they were safe. Probably the people who did not see themselves truly in need of revival. They remained the same
I think that when we one day get beyond this world and know as we are known and see many things in a new light that we will be shocked at how much our lives were influenced.
We will then see how the things we did, the attitudes we had and the words we said were deeply rooted in lost spiritual battles. I think there will even be a long list of times we thought we were serving God or even listening to God when we were actually caught up in the influences of the demonic.
Revival changes not only the individual us but also the us we are as Holly Brook Baptist church. Those who came together in revival also left together more one than they came.
This past week we saw a church on its knees together. Satan saw that too.
This week we saw many who broke down some personal walls. Satan saw that too.
This week some people stopped thinking about what other people thought.
This week some people realized they belonged to a body of believers together.
A good definition of a successful revival is when God gets a whole lot more accomplished than Satan does. If that happened this week in your life or in the life of our church then Satan failed in our midst.
The thief comes(he came) to STEAL and to KILL and to DESTROY…
That was and is Satan’s will for your life and for the life of our church.
That is his will for this morning, for this week, for the rest of this year and for the rest of your life.
GOD’S WILL is much different: I have come(God comes/Christ came) that you may have LIFE and that more abundantly.
What an amazing contrast in wills we find in this one verse. Few people realize they have such an enemy but so few also seem to realize that God has such an amazing plan for their lives.
Consider the activity of Satan in the life of Job. Job was an amazing man. Job was a very godly man.
JOB 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.
There is not a person here who would not like to be described in this manner.
Job was a man who was blessing on the inside with a great and godly character but he was also blessed on the outside.
2-3 Seven sons and three daughters were born to him. His possessions also were 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants; and that man was the greatest of all the men of the east.
Job was not only a great person in God’s sight but also had favor and status before men.
Job had a problem that many godly people surprising have in this life. People like Lot, David, Adam and Eve, Samuel, Solomon, Eli the priest, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even the godly father of the prodigal. He had a family that had made room for Satan in their hearts. Job was a very godly man but his children seem to have ‘gone wild’.
4-5 His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, "Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually.
Job carried in his heart a burden for his children’s life choices. He spent a large part of his time going before God in his concern for their behaviors. Job would approach God on their behalf regarding their choices to sin and even that they in their hearts might be offensive to God.
Satan will pick the targets in your life that he can find. Have you ever gone to a shooting gallery where there are all kinds of different targets either standing still or moving around?
Job was a hard target but it seems that his children weren’t. Satan continually attacked Job through his children but the story teaches us that they weren’t the big prize that Job was.
The more godly Job grew the more Satan worked in the lives of his children but the end result was the Job grew closer in his relationship to God because of his burden for his children.
Billy Graham would certainly have been a feather in Satan’s cap. In the midst of the time that Billy Graham was having the greatest spiritual impact upon this world, Satan was also running havoc in the life of his son Franklin.
Years ago I read the biography of Franklin Graham called ‘Rebel With A Cause’. Billy and Ruth Graham, like Job, must have carried a great burden in their heart and spent much time bringing Franklin’s name before God’s altar.
Franklin said that one time while his father was away that his mother Ruth took he and his sisters to get a hamburger in town. Franklin was such an obnoxious pest to his Mom and sisters that Ruth stopped the car halfway to town and put him in the trunk. She drove the rest of the way into town with Franklin back in the trunk as he described it, ‘counting the wires that went to the taillight’. Ruth pulled up to a Sonic type burger place and ordered food for the family. When the food came she took out Franklin’s portion and walked back to open the trunk. She opened it, handed him his food and closed the trunk back.
When older Franklin fell in love with motorcycles and used to love racing them on Sundays. This was a major issue between him and his mom Ruth. He says that one day she spoke to him and said, ‘Franklin, I’m praying that the Lord will do something to get your attention – break your leg or put you in the hospital. I have prayed, ‘Lord, don’t kill him, but do whatever it takes to get his attention’. Franklin writes that a few weeks later while riding his motorcycle he couldn’t believe it but he broke his foot.
Franklin’s life finally turned around when he picked up a New Testament and read Romans 8:1. ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’. He had come to the point of realizing that he had no power over the sin that had taken over his life.
Instead of going to the bar to drink beer and smoke one night he stayed home and read John chapter 3. He said, ‘I felt like I was a Christian, I was the son of Billy Graham, I had gone to church and even memorized Scripture. What more did it take?’.
In John 3 Jesus told Nicodemus(a very religious man) ‘you must be born again’.
There was much more than Franklin thought. He said, ‘I put out my cigarette and knelt down beside my bed. I am not sure what I prayed but I poured out my heart to God, confessed my sin. I told Him I was sorry and that if He would take the pieces of my life and somehow put them back together that I would be His’. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
My years of running and rebellion ended. I got off my knees and went to bed.
IT was finished. The rebel had found a cause.
Satan could not have been more unhappy because instead of getting rid of one Billy Graham he now had another one just like him to deal with. Franklin has been greatly used since that night.
Job prayed for this to happen for his 7 sons and 3 daughters. His story would end different than Billy and Franklin Graham’s but the struggle he went through evidenced who he was and made him an even more godly man.
God presents an idea for Satan.
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, "From where do you come?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it."
Just like when God said, ‘Adam where art thou’ and really knew where Adam and Eve were hiding or to Cain ‘Where is your brother?’ God also knew where Satan had been. Satan was doing what he had always done and would continue to do. Satan is all about opportunity.
He roams, he walks about seeking a heart that is open or a will that is willing.
I PETER 5:5-9 …clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Peter describes Satan’s activity like a prowling lion. Satan is a spiritual predator who like a lion is after those who are unaware, sick or unprotected. The context of these verses warns us about what puts us in spiritual danger.
What is Satan looking for as points of opportunity against us?
1) PRIDE: GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time. Some of us give to Satan the perfect blindside.
We have no idea our needs are so great or our spiritual problems are so large.
The thing we are most proud of is how good we are at being a Christian.
Some came to the revival this week expecting nothing and that is what they got.
The saw no need in their life and they left with no need met.
2) ANXIETY: casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
Some have given Satan so many ingredients to make a stew in their lives that there is little room left in the pot. You are worried, fearful and anxious about many things.
3) UNAWARE: Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. For some here today the last thing they are thinking is that there is a contest for your heart going on this morning. You have just been worried about getting out of the parking lot before others and getting to the restaurants before the Methodists.
Centuries ago the circumstances of one's baptism would come on Easter eve at midnight. In the semidarkness, he or she would disrobe and descend into the waters to be immersed 3 times, in the name of the Father, then the Son, and finally the Holy Spirit. The newly baptized would then be anointed with oil and don a new garment of white and then return to the church to partake of communion for the first time. Perhaps the most crucial feature occurred before entering the water when he or she would turn to face the west and then clearly renounce, revile and literally spit at-the devil. Then he or she would turn to face the east to confess total faith in and promise complete allegiance to Christ. This was considered a legally binding transference from one master to another.
This would leave no question about whose servant they now were.
God then said to Satan a phrase that, in my flesh, I really don’t want my name to ever be a part of.
8 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered My servant Job?
Job must have felt a divine burning in his ears. His name and his life were being discussed in God’s throne room. God was suggesting targets to Satan.
I think that the operative blank to fill in this sentence is not the name. I don’t think the name made the difference but the two blanks before it. MY SERVANT. I think that any true servant of God’s is on the table as a target because God knows that a true servant will only become more usable and gain a greater testimony through any activity of Satan against their lives.
I don’t think God ever suggested to Satan, ‘Have you consider my CASUAL FRIEND Barney? or Have you thought about My apathetic church member Pricilla?...Satan here is a list of Baptists that are planning to show up at a church this Easter that you might be interested in’
God describes Job this way: For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil."
Job was blameless and upright before God. Job had a greater fear in his life for what God thought than what other people did. Job lived a life that demanded a constant turning.
A godly life will have to constantly turn away, change a channel, excuse themselves from a punch line or choose to stand alone.
Are you comfortable with there being ‘no one like’ you? No one like you at your job? At school? Even in your family? Most of us are not and that is why so many professing Christians have learned to assimilate themselves into the world.
The fact is we never stand alone. We either stand with the crowds or stand beside Christ. Jesus said, ‘Lo I am with you always’ but that was under the assumption that our lives were living out the Great Commission.
9 Then Satan answered the LORD, "Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 "Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
There were two who knew Job better than he knew himself. There are two who know us better than we know ourselves. One is God. The other is Satan.
Satan knew Job very well. He knew where all Job’s hedges were and how strong they were. He knew how much God had blessed him.
Satan knew he had no chance with Job unless God gave him permission.
Although Satan knows us better than we know ourselves he still does not know us better than God knows us. Satan thought he knew what would work with Job.
11 "But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face."
Satan has some ideas of how to make us fall. He underestimated Job but rarely is he wrong with most others and he has found out that it takes much less than what he used on Job to get many to abandon God’s will in their lives.
For many people Satan does not have to touch ‘all that they have’ but just ‘ANYTHING THAT THEY HAVE’ to make them angry at God.
I remember years ago when we were living in Tulsa, OK. Our house was right on a turn so that if we left our garage open a person turning could see inside of it. Whenever I would go golfing I would put my clubs in my trunk and then when I returned would take them out and put them in the corner of my garage. In their special place. One day when I was about to go golfing I went to my golf altar, (I mean the place I put my clubs), and they were gone. Somebody had stolen my golf clubs. It must have been Satan behind it because God would never have had a problem with my golf addiction.
Do you think that any of the ‘all that you have’, if messed with or taken, would make you angry with God? Satan probably thinks it will. Your phone, computer, car, house, boat, day off? clothes? health? finances?
God did not allow Satan to touch any one thing but God left the decision to Satan about what he would touch.
12 Then the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, ALL that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him." So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD.
Satan attacked four areas of Job’s life: Family, Finances, Fitness and Friends.
Job’s testing not only showed that God was right about Job’s character and godliness but it also made evident:
1) What God thought of Job’s rebellious children: They had made life choices that left them vulnerable to Satan’s attack and the day came that it happened.
2) Job’s wife: While Job refused to curse God his wife was more than ready to. What Satan did to Job also affected her family and finances as well.
3) Job’s friends: Like many who watch others go through struggles Job’s friends had no idea what was really going on and had nothing but wrong answers based upon human reasoning and not godly insights.
The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come to give you life and that more abundantly. JN 10:10
Satan tried to steal all Job’s possession, killed his family and tried to destroy his life, marriage and friendships. He wants nothing less from our lives.
What has Satan stolen from your life lately? The Greek word for steal is ‘klepto’.
A kleptomaniac is someone who steals not knowing they do so.
Satan steals from our lives in ways we don’t know that it is him doing it.
What in your life is Satan trying to put to death? Prayer life? Your walk with God?
The Greek word is the word used for killing a sacrifice. A sacrifice was something very special that was taken and killed. Satan would love nothing more than to take that which is most precious to God in our life and put it to death.
What is Satan presently trying to destroy in your life? Marriage? Testimony? Your church or your place in it? Destroy – put out of the way, render useless, be ruined or lost.
God worked in so many lives this past week. But often when God’s work is done then Satan’s work begins.
A passage in Matthew 13 explains this:
MATTHEW 13:3-8 Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. "Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. "But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
"Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. "And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty
Jesus describes four types of people who receive God’s truth:
1) Those casually hear it and see no more value in it than anything else along the paths of life.
2) Those who hear it with joy but it is only a surface truth than cannot provide any strength for their life when the storm comes. A nice bumper sticker or wall plaque.
3) Those who hear it but are overwhelmed with other things in life that are choking out what God would have for them. God is just too far down the list of priorities and concerns to make a real impact in their lives.
4) Those who hear, embrace and apply God’s truth in their lives. It goes in so deep it can be stolen, stormed out or strangled away. It begins to make huge differences in their life.
19-23 "When anyone hears the word oand does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road……"The… rocky places……hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away.
"And the one ….among the thorns……hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. "And the one……on the good soil……hears the word and understands it; bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty."
We had a revival here last week. What difference did it make in your life? What difference is it making in your future? How did it change the kind of member you are of Holly Brook Baptist church? Who won in your life last week? God or Satan?
Locked gates, tall fences and snapping dogs present challenges for meter readers in rural Oklahoma, where they are required to read all meters: no estimates are allowed. One worker succeeded in getting past a particularly vicious dog tied to a chain that was long enough to give it sway over the entire yard and driveway. Later, the man was questioned by his boss:"The customer called and was curious how you were able to get past that dog? "That’s easy," the meter reader replied. "I parked on his chain." We need to know how to ‘park on the devil’s chain’, how to limit what he can do.
1 Peter 5:9(passage on Devil as prowling lion says) But resist him, firm in your faith, Ephesians 5 says to that deals with Satan’s work against us we need to ‘put on the full armor of God’.
James 4:7 says we are to ‘resist the devil and he will flee from you’.
Our power against him comes from keeping on a full armor, living firm in our faith and in resisting his work against us.
In his book, "How Great Generals Win", Bevin Alexander tells of "The General Who Beat Hannibal". One of Hannibal’s most effective tactics was the use of elephants in battle. For years Roman soldiers and horses were ineffective against the elephants - until a Roman general made a decision to startle Hannibal’s elephants with trumpets and cause them to retreat in fear. Until that defeat of Hannibal the Romans could not make the move toward a world empire. Now they could.
Satan uses intimidating tools to win spiritual battles against us. We must stand against him with the weapons that even he cannot counter: truth, righteousness, the gospel message, faith, salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. Paul said these are the ones that will work. Satan’s success against us in the past can become another history lesson as we move into a victorious future.
