The Devil No.4 Two Falls - the Devil's and Adam's

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil.

He had seven sons and three daughters and he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen and 500 donkeys and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them thinking, perhaps my children have sinned and curse God in their hearts. This was Job's regular custom.

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? Satan answered the Lord, from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it. Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him.

He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. Does Job fear God for nothing? Satan replied. Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land, but stretch out your hand and strike everything he has and he will surely curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan, very well then, everything he has in your hands but is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger. Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said, the oxen were ploughing and the donkeys grazing nearby and the Sabaeans attacked and carried them off.

They put the servants to the sword and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking another messenger came and said, the fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking another messenger came and said, the Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off.

They put the servants to the sword and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking yet another messenger came and said, your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house. When suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house, it collapsed on them and they are dead and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.

At this Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

May the name of the Lord be praised. In all this Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word as we consider it later together.

The Lord is the light of our salvation. Then indeed we have no need to fear and I think that encapsules what Paul is teaching us in Ephesians and chapter 6. So let's turn to these now well known verses of Scripture. Ephesians 6 and 10.

Finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

I want to take a more relaxed study this morning and perhaps just put back into next week I have actually prepared in some detail to bring before you. I get the impression that I need to take one or two things afresh. Just look at them from a different fashion by way of some revision and then get ourselves ready to proceed further into looking at the subject specifically of the wiles of the devil.

So if I don't break open new ground at least not very much it's simply because that's the impulse that I feel from the Spirit of God right at this moment instead of opening out what I have prepared in some detail to bring before you. I had a note from East Africa that landed on my desk just a couple of weeks ago and it spoke actually of a church in Canada in London Ontario where there happens to be, if you can believe it, a church named as the Church of Satan. Satan worship is not something that is unknown in our country, quite the contrary.

I remember as a boy back in Sheffield coming across the Church of Judas. Now this church in London Ontario decided that they would make as their target four or five of the leading evangelical pastors in that city. And their prayer that was that each one of them might in some way so disgrace his life personally that his ministry would be discredited.

And according to the information I received from a very sound evangelical source reporting on this in East Africa exactly that occurred. And you can go to London Ontario Canada today and discover that four pulpits or five pulpits have had to be replaced as far as men are concerned in the ministry. Now I say that bearing in mind what David has just brought to our attention.

If the Lord is the light of our salvation of whom shall we be afraid. Though that is true and there is the mighty power of our Lord Jesus that accompanies all those who trust in him. We are never to take for granted our security as believers and think to ourselves that in some fashion we are immune from the temptations of the devil.

Now let me remind you that last week when I brought you to this particular passage of Scripture, speaking of the devil and his tactics, I felt it was necessary for me to set in relief something of what Scripture teaches us about the origin of evil itself. You see there are those in society today who believe that evil is just an absence of good. In other words it's not headed up in one personality.

And what is more by the evolution of society ultimately we will get to this point where there will be the obliteration of all that is wrong and unacceptable in our world. By education by meeting the needs of ordinary people you will eliminate evil. Evil is not so much a force headed up, as I say, in one personality.

It is purely the absence of good. And there are those people, more primitively in their thinking, who believe that evil actually refers to the God of evil over against the God of good. The Greeks used to teach this.

It's what's known as dualism. Here we have the beginning of time, if one can speak in such terms. The good God and the evil God.

And there were some in Christian circles in the second century who came out with the absurd notion that the evil God was the God of the Old Testament, and the good God was the God of the New Testament. And so there is a sort of war, if you like, between these two gods. Well it's an utter nonsense to suggest that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are different, that they have opposing characteristics.

That just shows an utter ignorance of Scripture. And if you try to suggest that evil was perpetual in our world, then you've got the problem of trying to discover which of these two gods is the more powerful, and which of these two gods was before the other, and so on. So many illogicalities in this idea that you have to dismiss the notion.

The primitive notion that there was an evil God always existing, and a good God always existing. And the modern notion that evil is just the absence of, of the good, and there is no personality that heads up evil in our world. Well I say that just by way of comment.

But what does the Bible have to tell us? Well I reminded you last week that the Bible indicates that evil has its origin before the foundation of our world. And the notes, to which I'm only making reference in passing, you can read them yourself during the oncoming hours of today, the notes at the back of our news bulletin, reminds us, as a summary of what I taught last week, of the person, the personality of Lucifer. Lucifer was the original name of the devil.

The word devil and Satan, as I have told you before, are more recent terms. They mean traducer, accuser, slanderer. But that wasn't the original name of the devil.

His original name was Lucifer, translated in the NIV rendering of Isaiah's prophecy as the Shining One. And if you were to read back into Isaiah's prophecy, and also the prophecy of Ezekiel, you get some hints, some indication, as to who Lucifer originally was, and what he did. For instance, I turned to him, perhaps by way of revision, we can go back to Ezekiel chapter 28.

I turned you to this passage of Scripture, which historically has to do with the King of Tyre. Would you find that please? Ezekiel chapter 28. It historically has to do with the King of Tyre, a very evil agency, at the time when Ezekiel was prophesying, was ministering to the people.

Now there are certain things about the King of Tyre, which are recorded in this chapter, and there are other aspects of information that are given, that transcend, that go beyond the King of Tyre. This king was a very evil person indeed, and sometimes evil can manifest itself, the person of the devil can so manifest itself in the person of a human being, that the two almost become one. Now that's a very terrible thing to have to argue, but you remember this was the possibility for Peter.

He came at one time alongside the Lord Jesus, and tried to deflect him from doing the Father's wishes. And Jesus spun round on him and said, and he said, get you behind me Satan man, get you behind me Satan man. Now fortunately for Peter, because he was within the Lord's overall protection, the evil that Satan would have done in his life, was brought to its termination.

And by the salvation of the Lord Jesus, Peter becomes one of the great warriors of the Savior. But he's never immune to the attacks of the devil. However, I digress.

There are other people in our world who I would suggest to you were Satan men. How do you understand Adolf Hitler? I'm bold enough to say this. How do you understand Idi Amin? Now there's a man who's still alive today, and yet what he has done in Uganda still causes terror to come into the hearts of people.

If you went to the West Nile region of Uganda, you would see mound upon mound of graves, Christian graves. One of the biggest massacres of history of Christian people in these last four or five years, there in Central Africa. How do you understand these men? Well they're Satan men, men who give their lives open and over to Satan.

So did the King of Tyre. But when Scripture speaks about the King of Tyre, it also gives us certain information that suggests it's not just describing him, but the one who has been operative in his life. And so in the 13th verse of Ezekiel 28, for instance, it says, you were in Eden, the garden of God.

Verse 14, you were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. Now obviously this doesn't apply specifically to the King of Tyre. And sometimes in Scriptures, I tried to show you last, last week, there is an immediate application, and a long-term, a more bold, a more indirect application.

David is referred to in the Psalms, but sometimes when David is referred to, it really has in mind the coming of the Lord Jesus, and what the Psalms depict is fulfilled absolutely in Christ. Well here, in a very negative, a very frightening way, we have reference to the King of Tyre, but beyond the King of Tyre, looking at the back of him, within him, so to speak, is also none other than Lucifer. And you've got these flashings of information as to who this Lucifer was.

Well in the beginning, he was there in Eden, in the garden of God. Look at verse 14, you were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount.

Look at verse 15, indicating the holiness of the devil, as he originally was. You were blameless in your ways, from the day you were created. So this is Lucifer, the shining one, before the creation of the cosmos, the world, and the universe as we now know it.

The Bible declares that there was another creation, in the heavenly realm. These principalities and powers, to which Paul refers in Ephesians 3, as well as in Ephesians 6, and touches on in Ephesians 1, they're all part of this, this pre-cosmic creation. And one of the greatest, if not the most glorious, of all these beings that God created, was none other than Lucifer.

Created to reflect the very glory of God, blameless in all your ways. Now what did I teach you about Lucifer last week? Well, along with all the other angelic beings, he had the gift of free will. Free will means an ability to obey, or not to obey.

To worship, or to refrain from worship. And the Bible makes it clear in Revelation, and touches of information are given in the Gospel of Luke, that Lucifer determined the latter course. And instead of bringing honor and glory to God, he snatched honor and glory for himself.

And there is a rebellion in heaven. Lucifer, who has authority and power, is expelled from heaven to earth. Jesus says in Luke's Gospel, I saw Satan fall.

John on the Isle of Patmos, writing the Revelation, says Lucifer, the devil, and a third of his hosts, were expelled from heaven. And they take up residence in the atmosphere, above the world, influencing the affairs of ordinary people. But the reason for the expulsion of Lucifer, is indicated in the seventeenth verse of Ezekiel 28.

Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor, so I threw you to the earth. Now isn't it very interesting, my friend, that when you come to Genesis and chapter 3, and you start to read of the story of man, you find how likewise, man falls in the same way as Lucifer. Lucifer has become Satan.

Lucifer has become the slanderer. Lucifer has become the one who has endeavored to snatch the glory of God, and as a result, he has been expelled from the very presence of God. Now here is man.

Whatever your books on evolution might tell you, my dear young friend, I acknowledge this fact from Scripture, that behind the creation of man, is God. And the greatest of all God's creative activities, is man. He has abilities that are far superior to even the noblest animal of the animal kingdom.

He has that innate within him, which even angels do not have. He is there to reflect the image of God. And if God is to be glorified in one of his beings throughout the whole of the universe, throughout the whole of the heavenly realms, then he elects Adam as to be the one who shall reflect his glory.

So you see, here is Lucifer, Satan, expelled from heaven, with influence operating now in these spheres above the earth, and within the earth. And here is Adam, on, in Eden, on the earth, created to reflect the glory of God. And what happens? Well, Satan comes alongside, and he tests Adam.

What would you say was the reason for Lucifer's fall? Listen to this phrase, what bedeviled Lucifer? Well, the Bible makes it clear in 1st Timothy, that the, that the, the overwhelming characteristic of Lucifer, as far as his sin is concerned, was his pride, taking the glory of God for himself, believing that he was better than God is. Now he slides alongside Adam, and alongside Eve, and he beclouds their minds. Paul tells us in 2nd Timothy, in chapter 4, I think it is, the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who don't believe.

You know the expression, bringing the shutters down? Now this was exactly what the devil endeavored to do. His tactics in the New Testament era are precisely the same as I shall show you next week, as his tactics at the beginning of time, because there is that strategy within the devil that never changes, beclouding men. But what is the real nature of that beclouding activity? Well he tempts them in the same way as he allowed himself to be tempted by his free will, to pass judgment on the authority of God.

Did God say, or in the old-fashioned words of the Authorized Version, hath God said you shouldn't take of the fruit of that tree? Now within the very suggestion is this drugging possibility that man can pass judgment on God. Hath God said, in other words, don't accept what the Lord has said, think it through yourself. Don't submit yourself to the law of God, declare UDI, and operate on your own.

Which is precisely what the devil did, as Lucifer in heaven. Hath God said? And think this one through. If you do take of that which is forbidden, it won't be to your harm.

No, you will become as God. You see the pride there? To outwit God. That's the possibility that's dangled before Eve, dangled before Adam, outwitting God, declaring UDI, and living as though you were God yourself.

Precisely what had happened in heaven, before the temptation comes on earth. You see there's a correspondence. The fall of man, corresponds to the fall of the devil.

And as Lucifer trips over his pride and his desire to be as God, so man does exactly the same. Now you will say, well this is utterly ridiculous. I've never heard so much nonsense.

All right, let's inquire into this nonsense for a little bit, and let's ask ourselves, how is it that we understand the world today? Now I'd be glad if all you folks, including you young folks in the, in the gallery here would listen, because this is so important. How do we understand man today? The great problem that man is in. I mean after all, not only in the 1980s, but down the decades, down the centuries, man has got himself into some terrible problems.

You can't say that man was originally created to get into the mess in which he finds himself at this moment. Now what is the nature of his difficulty? Well, he doesn't seem to be able to control his environment, indeed he doesn't seem to be able to control himself. Why is this? Well I suggest to you that you're in great difficulty if you try to understand man, outside of the biblical framework.

You see the Bible says that man, instead of reflecting the glory of God, has moved into an area that can be described of as living in darkness. This is what Paul has to say, is it not? When he's writing to the Ephesians in the passage, or in the chapters prior to the passage that I've just quoted, he speaks of the Ephesians before they were converted, and he says of them that once they were darkness, chapter 5 and verse 8, but now they are children of light. In verse 17 of chapter 4 he describes again the three conversion experience of those who then didn't love the Lord.

I insist on it, in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They're darkened in their understanding, and separated from the life of God. So this is how the Bible describes men, and women, after the fall.

They are in the world, expelled from Eden, where God makes his, where God makes his presence directly known. And they live east of Eden, where there is a great deal of spiritual darkness. And man is under the influence of these principalities and powers, to which Paul makes reference, here in the 12th verse of Ephesians 6. Our struggle, it's not against flesh and blood, you've got to see the difficulty that man's got.

But you go beyond those difficulties, and you begin to appreciate that the devil, having been expelled from heaven, with all his hosts, with all his forces, one-third of the angelic realm, have been, have been moved out as he was. Now hover in this world, in the very atmosphere, bringing about their wish, warring against God, and using man, manipulating him, as a tool. So that instead he, instead of bringing about the glory of God, he shames the very God, who made him.

Now, when our Lord Jesus came into this world, what did he come to do? Well, how do you describe the Lord Jesus on occasions? How do you find, at any rate, the descriptions of, in Scripture, he is referred to as the bread of the world, yes, the water of life, but also he is described as the light. You've come across the expression, have you not, he's seen the light. I think I referred on some occasion, a couple of years ago, once to giving evidence in the quarter sessions, over in, over in Chichester, and the, the, the bespeckled elderly judge, as I was giving evidence on behalf of some young fellow who was in trouble, and it indicated that this man was beginning to change his personality.

As I was trying to put this in non-spiritual language, his honour directed his gaze towards me, and he said, what you mean is he's seen the light. And much to the amusement of the barristers, I said, yes, your honour, that's precisely what, what I do mean. Now, when does a man see the light? Well, he sees the light when he responds to the Lord Jesus.

When the Apostle Paul receives his great commission to, to take the gospel, and to proclaim the gospel around the Roman world, he defines what the Lord Jesus had given him, in terms of his gospel mandate, as he's speaking before Agrippa in Acts chapter 26, verse 17. He says, I will rescue you, this is God speaking to the Paul, I will rescue you from your own people, and from the Gentiles, I am sending you to open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and a place amongst those who are sanctified by faith in me. Now, this may stick in your throat, and I can't help it, but the Bible declares that unless you're a Christian, you are in the kingdom of Satan.

Physically, you may have light as we have at this very moment, but spiritually, it's as dark as the blackest night. Physically, you may be alive, as indeed you obviously are being present in this congregation, but physically, but spiritually, you're as dead as the rotting corpse in the cemetery at Durrington. Purple language, you say, of a pulpiteer that's taken bereft of his senses? Well, if you criticize me, my friend, you're criticizing the Bible.

Ephesians 2 verses 1 and 2 describe the condition of men outside of the gospel. As for you, you were dead. You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live, when you followed the ways of this world, and of the ruler of the kingdom of the heir, Lucifer, Satan, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

You see, you might criticize what I'm having to say, but what you cannot dispute is that what I'm saying is a reflection of what the Bible is most clearly teaching. Let's have another run at it. Let's go to Colossians and chapter 1. Here is Paul and he's describing the, the effects of the salvation message on the part of his readership.

What has Jesus Christ done for you? Well, he answers the question in the 13th verse. For he has rescued us, includes in himself, with the readership. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

So, you see, as there are two falls, the fall of Lucifer in heaven, and the fall of Adam on earth. So, here in this environment we call the world, there are two kingdoms. There is the kingdom of darkness, controlled directly and indirectly by Satan and his forces, explaining the phenomenon of an Adolf Hitler, and all the rest of the certain men.

And over on the other side, you've got the kingdom of light. Thomas Goodwin was professor of Magdalene College in Oxford, and years ago that godly man said this, there are basically two men in history who have importance. One is Adam, and the other is Jesus.

And he was referring to Adam in the context of someone unregenerate, though I think that that's possibly disputable. But for the purpose of the argument, I accept that. And he says, from those two men, all mankind dangle from their girdle strings.

In other words, you're in Jesus, or you're in Adam. You're in the kingdom of darkness, or you're in the kingdom of light. You acknowledge, willingly or unwittingly, the lordship of Satan, or you acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ.

So, you see, this is what Paul has at the back of his mind, when he's writing to the Christians in Ephesus, and as he pens these words in Ephesians 6. Becoming a Christian has not made you immune from the attacks of the devil. This is what I want to go on to next week, which I was going to share this week, but felt that I ought to bring this more explanatory, simplified word. Because you are Christians, you are still up against the forces of evil.

The devil has seen you taken from his snare. He's taken you, he's seen you taken from the kingdom where he has supremacy, because the whole world lies in the dominion of the devil, says John, in the first epistle that bears his name. Now having come out, you're not immune, you're still exposed to him, to the attacks of the devil, therefore you struggle.

You struggle not against flesh and blood, not against human organizations, not basically. Your struggle is beyond them, behind them, the devil and his schemes, the devil and his enemies. And he has great concerns to bring all hell to bear against the church.

You see, at the beginning of creation, the devil mounted an attack on Adam. Why? Because the glory of God is in the balance. Midway point in history, the devil loses all hell, against whom? Jesus Christ.

Why? Because the glory of God is in the balance. He miserably failed in the second challenge. Now the third challenge, is that community that Jesus brought into being.

What is that community? It's the church, you, me. Why the church? Well the Apostle Paul says, the church's function, it's raison d'etre, it's reason for being, is to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, glory to our God forever, Ephesians 3, verse 21. And that is what the devil does not want.

He doesn't want glory in the church. He does not want the reflection of glory, to be ascribed to God, through these regenerate people, who have been brought to God, through Jesus Christ. And so he continues his struggle.

He's on the losing side, but he doesn't recognize it. He's like Adolf Hitler, there in Berlin. All the Allied forces are marching in upon him.

The Russians, they're coming down. There is not one chance in hell, that Adolf Hitler can escape. But like the megalomaniac he was, he still continues as though his rack, will last for a thousand years.

Those whom the gods would use, they first make mad. The madness, however, is encased within the devil himself. But the day is coming, when he shall recognize forever, that his power has been thwarted, like a sheep with its wool shorn.

So the devil shall be reduced to insignificance, like a Samson that's lost its strength. For ultimately, the kingdoms of this world, that he controls, shall become the kingdoms of God's Christ. And he shall reign, forever and ever, as the world is returned to what it was intended to be.

The very domain, where man shall worship and glorify the Lord God. And that shall occur, when Jesus Christ returns. But until that point, the struggle is on.

Wrestling against the devil, and his power. He puts his wiles down. He puts his traps.

He sets his snares. And next week, we shall focus in on what the snares of the devil are. And how he endeavors to trip Christian people, so that if it were possible, he would rob them of their very salvation.

May God bless this message to our hearts. Amen. Father, we come to you as those who have known a work of God, beginning in our lives.

And we thank you that what you've begun, you will bring to completion. We thank you that by the power of the Holy Spirit, it can be said of us, greater is he who is in you, than the one who is against you. And so we come, aware of the problems that confront us as Christian people.

But believing and clinging to the might, the mighty name of the Lord Jesus. Send us out, Lord, into this world, to live for him. And to be able, in the day of evil to stand, having done all, to raise a great testimony for the honor and glory of our God.

Work out your purposes amongst these people, and help us, Lord, to know more and more what it is to be on the Lord's side, for his sake. Amen.