If you’re sinking in quicksand, Satan will gladly pat you on the head. - Adrian Rodgers
Satan, or the devil, is always trying to beat us down and to steal our life. The Christian vocalist Carman, in his song called “Slam,” stated of the devil, “You tried to break me, tried to shake me; tried to take me with your lies. You tried to drop me, tried to stop me; tried to chop me down to size. You tried to crush me, tried to hush me; tried to rush me and attack; but Jesus Christ is in my life, and now I’m coming back.” Satan tries to rob us of life – both eternal life and abundant life – through his lies and deception, and if we listen to him, he will steal away life as a thief in the night.
In addition to being a thief, Satan is also called the “wicked one.” In Matthew 13:19, Jesus stated, “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.” If we hear the voice of the wicked one over and above the Word of God, and if we choose to listen to his voice and take action based on what the devil says, then we – whether knowingly, or not – are serving the devil; and serving the wicked one leads to death, loss of joy, loss of fulfillment, and loss of abundant life.
This evening we will look at how the devil deceives people into serving him; and we’ll also learn how serving the devil will suck the life right out of us; or as we will discover, it will steal the life away from us, being that the devil is a thief! I hope we will begin to see that in order to have true life in the Lord that we must listen to the voice of the Shepherd over and above the voice of the thief.
In Jesus are Green Pastures (v. 9)
9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
Jesus was speaking of Himself as being the Shepherd to His sheep, or His people (John 10:2-4). Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved.” Jesus is the door that leads to “salvation,” which is a term meaning, “to be rescued from our sins.” The Bible teaches that all people have sinned ((Romans 3:23); and we need to be rescued from our sins, because the penalty for sin is spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Jesus is the door leading to salvation and eternal life, and He is the door to spending eternity in heaven with God the Father. He said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Jesus is the only way, and the only door, that leads to salvation and eternal life and we must enter by Him.
If you grew up on a farm, perhaps you noticed the cattle out in the field. It never fails; when you turn a herd of cattle loose in a perfectly green pasture with abundant grass to eat, you will see one big fat cow leaning heavily on the fence, about tearing it down, to snatch a blade of grass from the other side. To that cow, the grass appears greener on the other side. If we choose to enter by Jesus, then when we do, we will find that the grass really is greener on the other side, for He tells us we will “find pasture.”
Jesus, the Shepherd, desires to bring us to green pasture, and in Psalm 23 we learn that this pastureland is a place of still waters, a place of restoration for the soul, a place of righteousness, a place where we will not be afraid of evil, a place where a table is continually set before us and our cup will overflow in abundance, and it is a place of goodness, mercy and life. Jesus wants to lead us to good pasture and a place of abundant life – both eternal life and true life in the here and now.
Jesus not only says that His sheep will find pasture; He adds that they “will go in and out,” and this expression illustrates the abundance of life that He offers. One commentary says that “the one who enters by Jesus has the [freedom] to come in and go out.”(1) Matthew Henry says, “True believers are at home in Christ; when they go out, they are not shut out as strangers, but have liberty to come in again; when they come in, they are not shut in as trespassers, but have liberty to go out.” Both of these commentaries use the terms “freedom” and “liberty.” Freedom is the main idea communicated in the phrase, “[they] will go in and out,” and freedom is a quality of abundant life.
Jesus said in John 8:36, “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” We are free in Jesus’ presence, and His presence is with us everywhere we go. As long as we abide in the presence of the Shepherd, and look unto Him in all that we do, we can have abundant life. For example, if we are abiding in the Shepherd, we can walk into a worldly workplace and not lose our joy or our light. The Shepherd will lead us into green pastures daily, and we will have abundance.
In the Devil We Find Death (v. 10a)
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.
Back in John 10:1, Jesus stated, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” The devil is a “thief.” He tries to climb into the sheepfold to “steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” He is like a hungry wolf, and 1 Peter 5:8 warns that “your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” In John 8:44, Jesus told us of the devil that, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
Let me remind us that Satan uses lies and deception to lead us away from the sheepfold and into his snares. For example, in 2 Timothy 2:26, Paul said that we should do our very best to lead people to “come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.” The way that Satan seeks to trick us and devour us reminds me of the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” that my school librarian would read to us when I was a child.
The story goes that Little Red Riding Hood went to deliver a cake to her grandmother, and as she was going through the woods, she met a wolf that had it in mind to eat her, but he changed his mind when he heard some nearby woodcutters working in the forest. When the wolf found out where she was headed, he ran on ahead of her and got to her grandmother’s house first. The story continues that the wolf knocked on the door, counterfeiting Little Red Riding Hood’s voice; to which the grandmother told him to come on in. The wolf then immediately attacked the grandmother and devoured her.(2) The devil, like this wolf, will utilize deception to enter the house of our spiritual lives, and when he gets inside he will devour our life.
The devil utilized deception to trick Adam and Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which led to death (Genesis 3:1-7); and he does the same thing today. He seeks to rob us of joy and life through the knowledge of good and evil, for it is the knowledge of what’s right and what’s wrong that allows us to see all the bad things in life that get us down and suck away our joy. Satan will whisper in our ear the lie that so and so did us wrong and cause a root of bitterness to spring up inside to poison those streams of water by which we walk. Satan will distract us from the source of life, which is Jesus, and he will tempt us to focus on things that fail to bring about life.
The devil also uses deception to steal our identity in Christ. Phil Ware says that in such a time where we have so much identity theft, “it is helpful for us as Christians to think about our identity [in Christ] and how desperately Satan is trying to help us lose it! He is the original master at identity theft. His desire is to make us doubt who we are and Whose we are. He wants us to doubt our future and our citizenship. [Satan] wants us to question our ultimate victory because of our occasional failures. Most of all, he wants us to doubt the love of our King and our Father.”(3)
In the Garden of Eden the devil tempted Adam and Eve to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), instead of just “abiding in God.” Even today, the devil will tell us that we can’t be fulfilled or happy until we attain a certain goal or object. He doesn’t want us to be satisfied by simply being a “follower of Christ.” The joy of the Lord is to be our strength (Nehemiah 8:10); not titles or positions, or possessions.
A. C. Johnson tells us the point behind the devil’s lies. He says, “When the devil finds that he cannot steal your eternal life from God’s hand, he will try his best to steal the time which God has given to you on this earth to serve Him and fulfill the purpose for which you have been created . . . The devil steals our prime-time to use it as his crime time.”(4) Jesus offers us green pastures, but the devil offers a deadly wasteland.
The devil not only seeks to steal abundant life in Christ, but he seeks to steal away eternal life – not from believers, but from the lost. The way in which the devil steals eternal life is to deceive the lost into believing that they’re okay without Jesus. He whispers in their ear, “You don’t need Jesus, for you’re a good person. You know that you have helped more needy people than your neighbor who is a Christian.” The devil says, “Because you’re good, you’ll surely go to heaven.” We must come to realize that there is only one way to enter heaven, and that is through Christ alone (John 14:6).
I shared Matthew 13:19 in our introduction, but I wish to read it again: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.” The devil keeps the lost confused, and not understanding, by causing them to question God’s Word. He might interject in their mind, “How can I trust the Bible? Wasn’t Jesus just a prophet and a good person? How can I believe He was God’s Son, and arose from the grave?” Because of their confusion, they do not know what to believe, and so they never choose to believe in Jesus as Savior. The way the devil steals eternal life is to deceive the lost into staying lost.
The devil seeks to kill and take away life. He also seeks to enslave us in the fear of death; however, Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us of our victory, for we read that Jesus Christ came to “destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
In Jesus We Find True Life (v. 10b)
I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Jesus Christ is our Shepherd, and He desires to provide us with spiritual food and sustenance, for He said that He came to bring us life. In Jesus we find pastureland with a crystal clear stream to lie down beside, and a beautiful tree to shelter us. Jesus represents the water of life (Revelation 21:6) and the tree of life (Revelation 22:1-2). He is the source of life (John 1:1-4) and the author of life (Acts 3:15, NIV).
Jesus came that we might have life, and this life was made available to us when He gave away His own life on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. John 3:16 declares, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God gave away His own Son’s life so that we might possess life, and He wants us to reach out and take hold of this life. Romans 6:23 tells us, “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and a gift is something you simply reach out and receive, and cherish.
Jesus wants us to have everlasting life for all eternity, but He also wants us to have true life right now. A. T. Robertson states that John 10:10 can also be translated as, “that they may keep on having life,” and because of the repetition found in the original language, the end of the verse can read, “that they may keep on having abundance.”(5) The life that Jesus offers is something that we can “keep on having.” It never fades away for it is everlasting and eternal; and Jesus says that He wants us to “have it more abundantly,” or “keep on having” abundance.
So, what is abundance? The NIV translates John 10:10 as, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Abundance is “life to the full,” life overflowing (Psalm 23:5), and we “keep on having it,” and it never stops coming our way. Jesus offers us salvation and eternal life, and He offers us true, abundant life now. All we have to do in order to receive this “life to the full” is to ignore the deception and lies of the enemy, and accept the gift that Jesus so freely offers.
Time of Reflection
I recall years ago hearing a Brownsville Revival song that said, “I went to the enemy’s camp and I took back what he stole from me.” If you have come to realize this evening that the devil has stolen something from you, and taken away part of your life, then come and take it back.
If you are a Christian and you’ve lost your joy and fulfillment, then come and reclaim your identity in Christ. Jesus declared in Luke 10:19, “I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
And if you are lost, never having confessed Christ as Savior and Lord of your life, then I wish to encourage you to stop listening to the enemy’s lies, in which he says that you don’t need Jesus. You do need Jesus, for without Him you cannot enter into heaven.
Jesus is the way to life (John 14:6), and I wish to encourage you to receive that life now. If you are lost, come and receive eternal life; and if you are saved then truly take hold of the abundant life that Jesus promised, or reclaim what the enemy has stolen. Come and receive true abundance in our Shepherd, Jesus Christ!
NOTES
(1) Inter Varsity Press New Testament Commentary, taken from the Internet in August of 2007 at http://www.biblegateway.com.
(2) Taken from the Internet in August of 2007 at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333. html#perrault.
(3) Phil Ware, “Identity Theft?,” taken from the Internet in August of 2007 at http://www. heartlight.org/articles/200312/20031201_identitytheft.html.
(4) A. C. Johnson, taken from the Internet in August of 2007 at http://www.healingfacts. org /testimonies/drjohnson.html.
(5) A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures of the New Testament, taken from the Internet in August of 2007 at http://bible.crosswalk.com/Commentaries/RobertsonsWordPictures/.
