The Devil No.6 - His Tactics (ii - the wiley serpent)

Our reading this morning is taken from the Gospel of Luke and chapter 4. We've been talking over the last couple of Sundays about the devil, how he uses his power and how he directs it at us. Well, in the passage that we're going to read, we find that Jesus was tempted three times by the devil and that the devil's power was directed at Jesus at a time when he was very down, very low. For 40 days or 40 nights he hadn't had any food and he was really, on a human level, he must have must have been pretty, pretty low.

But Satan realized the weakness of Jesus and he came to him and he tempts him three times. So, with that in mind, let's continue from Luke chapter 4 and verse 1. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them he was hungry.

The devil said to him, if you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man does not live on bread alone. The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.

And he said to them, he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to. So, if you worship me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered, it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully. They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

Jesus answered, it says, do not put the Lord your God to the test. When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. Well, trust that God will bless that reading to us, as Mr. Sargent expands that by the prompting of the Spirit later on.

Let's turn our attention to Ephesians, in chapter 6. These verses which are becoming so familiar, we could almost recite them. And read with me the 10th through to and including the 13th verse. Ephesians 6, if you've got an NIV, join me.

If you've got an AV, take particular care, especially when we get to verse 12, because I think that's quite significant in the AV, as I'll comment in a moment. Come then. 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. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

I wonder if you think that there's a danger in the pulpit at the moment of overstatement. After all, I've brought you to these verses, not just during the past couple of weeks, but almost every week since Christmas, pausing only for guest preachers who've occupied our pulpit, and occupied it well, I might add. The danger of overstatement? You know, he's on again about the devil, about Ephesians 6. Why doesn't he give it up? Why doesn't he move on? Why can't he just summarize all these things and be done with them inside a week or so? Well, I'll tell you my friend.

I challenge you this. Tell me the last time when you heard a series of addresses on the doctrine of the devil. Tell me the last time, prior to this occasion, when you ever studied the reality of the evil one, how he came into being, the effects that he has on our world today, and the even greater effects that the Lord Jesus Christ had.

You see, there are very few doctrines that are as neglected as this one, and if this series and the use of these tapes can help to bring about a balance, then God be praised. I can't tell you the burden that I feel upon my soul at this moment to bring this word from God. I humbly believe it is from Him to this congregation.

I've dispensed with my overhead projector. I want you to listen to what I have to say. If I make a quotation of a verse and you can't get it down or you can't locate it immediately, then don't let that worry you.

Get hold of the tape. I'd rather the tapes go out free this week, than for anyone to have missed something and to be, in any sense, reluctant to get back which is what is shared. Now, I don't say these things lightly.

I say them because I've carefully been calculating them during the hours of this past night. No, there's no danger of overstatement. We are following the Captain of our salvation, even Jesus Christ our Lord, and the path that He took on planet earth was a lonely path.

Inexorably it took Him to Calvary, and Calvary was the most desolate spot that there has ever been. But the nails that fixed the feet of our Lord Jesus to that Roman gibbet did not stop Him from bruising the head of Satan and eventually bankrupting the latter of His power. The arms, the hands which were pinned to the cross piece of the gibbet did not prevent our Saviour from tearing from Him all those evil and hostile forces that were railed against Him.

And ultimately on the third day He's raised from the dead and 40 days later He goes back into heaven. And the writer of this epistle tells us that He goes beyond all principalities and all powers and there He is, the Father's right hand, given the name which is above every name. He's out of the grasp of Satan.

Satan can no more penetrate heaven than I could literally at this moment reach down into hell. The time for the encounter, for the struggles between Jesus the captain of our salvation and Lucifer, the one who has the effrontery to take to Himself the position of God, are through. Jesus is untouchable.

But, and this is what brings the whole doctrine into practical relief. There is that on the earth which belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, which in its own power is very vulnerable indeed. I refer to the church.

How do you understand the church? Well, if you've been listening to these many, many weeks of exposition prior to coming to chapter six, you will recognize that the church is none other than the body of Christ on earth. There is something of the Lord Jesus in you if you are a Christian. We are conformed to His image.

We are sealed by His Spirit. He owns us and identifies us as part of His family circle as much as my dear old father used to identify my brother and myself as part of his. How did you get at my father? Get at the kids.

How does the devil get at the Lord Jesus Christ? I put it bluntly, don't misunderstand me, through the kids, through the sons, through the daughters, through all those who have been called to belong to Him, still making their way through the journey on planet earth and vulnerable at their own strength, in their own strength to the schemes, to the evil exploits of the devil. And so, He rears His ugly head against us and He hisses as a serpent hisses, and He ejects His venom towards us. His purpose is to eclipse the glory of God amongst the redeemed community, to bring them into bondage, to deceive them, to take away the joy of their salvation.

Now, do you believe this? Do you believe when Paul tells you to be strong in the Lord, when he speaks about a struggle against the devil, that he means what he is saying? Gone are the times when Christians play the role of a civilian as though there is no war. We are called as soldiers of Jesus Christ to endure hardness. The path that He took is the path along which we go.

We place our feet in the footprints that He left, and the struggles and the assaults that were made upon Him, they likewise we will have to experience. And the whole thing would be so frightening, so terrifying, that I would not be a Christian. I mean this.

Apart from verse 10 of this chapter, finally be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, for I don't go forward in my own ingenuity and stamina, or else confusion would face me. Do you know what it is I say to struggle against the devil? Or are you into a sort of, to use a modern word, into a situation of detente, you know? That means sort of pretending that no problems exist, coexistence, getting alongside one another, but not creating too much problems for each other, that's detente. You get it in the Soviet Union and the United States with their differing philosophies, endeavouring to find some way in which they can exist side by side.

Now detente may be a good thing politically, I'm not qualified to judge, but detente spiritually is disastrous. If you say that you are not troubled by the devil, then my answer is simply this, the devil is not being troubled by you. For he does not leave alone those who are members of the body of Christ, who go yard by yard, mile by mile, day by day, month by month, year by year, within the purposes of God.

Those people are spot ball for the devil. We wrestle not, verse 12, authorised version, against flesh and blood. And my friends, sometimes I feel that there are some Christians whose spiritual experience are summed up within those first three or four words of Ephesians 6, 12, in the authorised version, for we wrestle not.

You don't, but you should. Wrestle not against God, like Jacob did, and the purposes of God in his life. Some of us are like that, we've wrestled more against God than we have wrestled against the devil.

No, we are called to a warfare against Him. And you see, once you're involved in the purposes of God, then trouble comes. This is why Paul, writing to the Corinthians, the second letter that he dashed off, says this in the eighth and ninth verses of the first chapter, we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we endured in the province of Asia.

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. And then he writes to the Thessalonians, he said, we intended to come, but Satan stopped us. Has Satan ever stopped you doing something? Then if he hasn't, maybe you never really attempted to do something that embarrassed him.

I was talking in Northern Ireland this past week to quite a number of Presbyterian and Church of Ireland ministers and what have you. One brother named Tom Shaw got up and he said, he ministers in Belfast and the church is packed on a Sunday. He had a call at three o'clock in the morning from the Satanist movement in Northern Ireland, telling him that they were praying for him to fall, for his ministry to lose all credibility.

Why? Well you see, because he's impeding the work of Satan in that place that needs so much of our prayers, Belfast. Here's a man, and there were many men like them, like him, who are endeavouring to stand true for the Lord Jesus in an area where there's great conflict, I have no need to describe it to you. And I tell you, whether it's the tabernacle pulpit, whether it's the Sunday school teacher who's just left this sanctuary, who is endeavouring to instruct others with the gospel of Christ, Satan impedes.

These are not just words that pour from my mind. I wish I could convince those of you who are sceptic, beware of activities which don't bring us into close combat with the enemy. He doesn't trouble you if you don't trouble him.

How does he attack? These schemes, these traps referred to in Timothy and in Corinthians, I gave you the lesson, the, the quotations last time, look them up in the notes. How does he set those traps? I would be a fool if I suggested to you that I, I understand the psychology of the devil, but there are certain indications of the way that he attacks my life that enable me at least to sketch out certain things. I can say with Paul, I'm not truly ignorant of what the devil's about in this congregation, in the body of Christ, and in my own experience.

How does he attack us? What are his schemes that constitute our struggle as we endeavor to, to miss them? Well, what about the mind, the assault on the mind? A namesake of mine wrote a book, a very important book, psychologically speaking, on the battle for the mind. And this is, is the arena of conflict. Your mind, it's that which distinguishes you, I've said it several times from this pulpit, that which distinguishes you from any other animal being, no matter how high he may be in the animal kingdom, you have a mind, and the mind is like a mirror, and the mirror can reflect the glory of God, or it can be shattered.

And if you shatter the mind, you break the man. Into the mind, the devil insinuates doubts. Dealing with a man dying of cancer, age of 51, just a few, two weeks ago, and he said, Mr. Sergeant, can you give me anything that will stop me from doubting my salvation? Insinuates doubts.

What else does he do? Well, I suggest to you, he invades our minds with fear. Don't continue to be a Christian. Be afraid of what's going to happen in the world.

How are you going to cope as you're a pensioner? So many fears. Don't tell me I'm exaggerating. I've been at the death side of too many people.

He infects our minds with lust. There you were, perhaps even reading your Bible, or you went home after Sunday, and it had been a good Sunday, it's occurred to me. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, into my mind, come the most horrendous thought.

Where did they come from? Psychologically, I defy you to explain it. Where do they come from? Well, the Bible talks later on in this passage of Scripture about the fiery darts, the fiery arrows of the evil one. You see, the mind is one of the most vulnerable things about the psyche.

I've just been beginning to learn, and I hope I'm not being fanciful here, the reason why when Jesus was crucified, the place was called the place of the skull. It was shaped like a human head. And where is the greatest conflict in your life? In the skull.

In the mind, is it not? And Jesus, it seems to me, spiritually at any rate, is saying that if you want peace of mind, if you want to control your mind, then you need my power. You need my power. Old Testament, thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.

New Testament, Philippians, the God of peace shall garrison military words, stand sentinel over your mind. Why do you need him? So to do, because your mind is so vulnerable, so very, very difficult, I argue, to control. When our Lord Jesus went into the wilderness, what was the attempt of the devil on him? If you boiled it all down to its summary form, what was he battling for? His mind.

It was a mental thing, wasn't it? There he is, after the waters of the baptism of the Jordan have gone over him, have immersed him. Even at the brink of Jordan, Satan nibbles the feet of Jesus. Take these stones, turn them into bread, be a miracle worker.

The temple, cast yourself off, let them all see you as a Jewish Superman. The kingdoms of the world, they're all yours, they belong to me, I give them to you. Worship me.

What did Jesus do? He had laced his mind with the Word of God. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every utterance that proceeds from the Word of God. It is written, it is written, it is written.

The threefold formula Jesus employed to send the devil cowering back. And it's exactly the same, my friend, today. He'll come and he'll insinuate the doubts, he'll infect your mind with the most obscene thoughts.

And the way to cope is the way that Jesus coped, by making your mind a storehouse of the Word of God. That is the sword of the Spirit. As Amy Carmichael puts it, one thing matters in moments of conflict, and that is to throw all energies of our being into the faithful use of the precious blade.

How does the devil attack? He assaults the mind. Moreover, he assaults the will. You see, you can sometimes win in the area of the mind and lose in the area of the will.

The will means determination, resolution. It's a soldier putting into convictions, or putting into practice the convictions he's received. Speaks of submission, preparation for the execution of duty.

Putting into effect the orders of the high command. Now, do you do that? I think that 90% of the people who come into the tabernacle are convinced, or I convince them. But I've long since learned, speaking to students around the south of England, that to win an intellectual argument is not by any means to be successful in winning the soul.

See, it's not just the mind, it's the will. Can I be hurtful? Not because I want to be, God knows. My heart is not a hurtful heart, it's a sensitive heart, particularly to all the beloved friends who come into the tab.

And I'm not speaking sentimentally there, as God knows. What are these instructions that the Lord gives to us in terms of putting them into practice, that sometimes we fall down on? Everyone examine yourself. Forget who's alongside you, your husband, your wife, your sweetheart, whoever.

Forget that. Just the Lord and His Word through my mouth, speaking directly to you. Listen to the high commands that come from the headquarters of heaven itself.

Neglect not the assembling of yourselves together. I'm giving you just four or five. Bring all your tithes into the storehouse.

Prove me now. This do in remembrance of me. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

What do soldiers do when in the barracks? They share experiences. What do they do when they're on parade? They're not fighting on parade. They are preparing for war.

They're mulling over strategy. And here are Christians called together to assemble themselves in the mighty corporate function of praying with one another. How long since you were at a prayer meeting? You say, there he goes again.

Well, not he, the Bible. Neglect not the assembling of yourselves together. How long since you were last on your knees alone before a holy God? How long since you recognized the principle of Scripture? Freely you have received, so freely give.

Because miserliness and irresponsibility in the use of our finances is one of the major ploys that the devil has utilized down the centuries. God's not impoverished by you not giving. Don't think that God can't move other people's finances.

He can. I believe that ultimately the whole of the exchequer is His. But it's to your eternal loss when you fall short on on scriptural principles which are designed for your spiritual good.

Prove me now, says God. Damn it. Could you live on nine times more than you've put in the offering today? Because that's what you should be living on, as a soldier of Jesus Christ.

At least a tenth. Does the communion table often bear witness to a vacant place where you should be sitting? When the commander of our salvation says, this do in remembrance of me, but you know 9 30 is so difficult for me to get into the church once a month. And at 12 10, well you know there's the there's a roast that's in the oven and I must go or I've got to walk the dog.

I once heard a person apologize for not coming to church because their cat was sick. And I'm not exactly the least loving person towards cats, as you probably know. And you know in the evening, well we don't go out.

But if I invite you to my home for my wife's unparalleled hospitality, you'll come. At least the majority, apart from my very very older category of friends, who of course have to be exceptional to the things that I'm bringing for you to see this morning. You see, when you put all these things together, there are many more, I've just given you one or two ideas.

They are an indication of in your mind being convinced, but in your will being far from convinced. Yes, I believe in prayer. The prayer house of the church, the power house of the church.

All right, well why not pitch in on a Wednesday afternoon or on a Thursday morning, if you can't make it in the evening. I think God will judge us for our use of time. Now you see, these examples that I'm giving you, they are illustrated even better by our Lord, because here he is convinced that he is the Son of God, and yet there is an attack now on his will.

I'm moving into the Garden of Gethsemane, where our Lord is caught between two conflicting forces. The determinate will of the Father and the evil conniving of men. Now it's night, only illumination comes from the moon.

The angels hover, but no one can come to the assistance of Jesus. This is his personal struggle, and see him alone. The days man, the arbitrator, the go between God, humanity reacting against his divinity.

God's will being willed in heaven, and a man facing that will on earth, and the nature of the impact is so enormous that bloody sweats drop down his brow, until he comes to that point, where he is able to let off the salvo that still echoes around the world today. Not my will, but yours be done. And the mind of Christ, along with the will of Christ, is directed into the achieving of salvation.

But there's a struggle first of all, you see. It's the struggle of the will of God, as a soldier consents to the decrees of the Lord. And when he's able to say, your will be done, the consequences as a result, his kingdom will come on earth, as it is in heaven.

That's the raison d'etre, you see. That's the reason why he's here, for the kingdom of God to come amongst men. How does it come amongst men? By their mind, and by their will being merged together, so that God can achieve his purposes through them.

Now Jesus, as I say, is our great illustration of a man who brings together all the directives of God upon his life. He has this struggle. It's not a struggle against flesh and blood, it's against, it's a struggle against all those hellish forces.

They come to him in one way, and then in another way, nibbles his heels, as I say, at the River Jordan, and they're there even at Gethsemane. But our Lord is victorious. The will, the assault of the devil against the mind, against the will, and also against the spirit.

How does the devil war against the spirit of our Lord Jesus? How does he war against your spirit? Well, by masquerading, by coming in a different guise, by insidiously making his way into your experience, and fooling you so that you don't realize that it's the devil who is directing his attention at you. Let me give you an example of this. Who is our Lord's closest disciple? Well, there were three.

Peter, James, and John. You remember? Peter, the lovable Peter. And on one occasion, what happens as far as Peter is concerned? Well, he comes up to the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's heard all about the impending death of Jesus in Jerusalem, and so what does he do? He turns full circle, and he says to the Lord Jesus, sorry, one of our brothers here has been taken ill, let's just try and regain our attention. He turns to the Lord Jesus and endeavors to deflect him from achieving his Father's purposes, and Jesus turns around to Peter, and he says, get thee behind me, Satan. Do you know, there's all the difference in the world between a pastor and a preacher.

You see, a preacher will declare the Word, and a pastor will apply it. Now of the two, in one sense, I'd rather be a preacher than a hurt, so much by listening to the preacher addressing 500. Where the hurt comes is when the pastor puts his arm around the brother and sister and says, hey, this applies to you, and then he runs a mighty risk.

They might emotionally explode. They may no longer have anything to do with him at all. He's pointed his finger, not at 500 in general, but one in particular, and it takes a brave man to do that.

But here is Jesus, and he turns round to beloved Peter, and he says, get you behind me, Satan. What's happened? Well, you see, Satan is using Peter as part of the conflict against the Lord Jesus Christ, and so our Savior has to reveal Peter for who he is at that moment. And today, the devil masquerades in many forms, in many disguises.

The Bible talks to us about seducing spirits that will come in the last days. A woman of spirit, do I hear talked about in Worthing? Does that astonish you? Why not read your New Testament? Song Myung Moon and other folk who pretend to be God, does that surprise you? Read Jesus speaking in Matthew before the final day, many shall come saying, I am the Christ, and deceive many and lead them astray. And what about that perfectly, oh so respectable member of the church, never open to a seducing spirit, always regular, always rigid, but no life.

Jesus turned to the Pharisees one day, and he censured them, not because of their orthodoxy, but because in spite of their orthodoxy, they'd never entered into life eternal. You see, the devil can come in so many disguises, so many subtle forces. He's a good actor, and he's got bait that's ready for the most difficult pallet for him to satisfy.

Let me bring these things to a conclusion. Does what I say distress you? I hope it doesn't. You see, because all that I've done this morning, I've related to our Lord Jesus Christ.

I mean, He knew this triplet of assaults on the mind, on the heart, and on the spirit. Now, that helps us, because we pin in at verse 10, finally be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Listen, no, nothing that Jesus used to defeat Satan is unavailable to us.

Nothing that Jesus used to defeat Satan is unavailable to us. The story in the Old Testament speaks of Joseph, who during the seven good years, caused all the corn to come into Egypt, and to be stored. For what? For the seven bad years.

My mind is a storehouse. I thank God for every Sunday school teacher who early in my life made me learn Scripture. I never forgot what I learned in my earlier years.

I find great difficulty in memorizing now. It's the utterances of God's Word, the use of the Spirit, which slay the devil. Now, this is true in any area where He insinuates doubt, as He infects lust, as He brings to you conflicting circumstances, and you have to make a decision.

There's the Word of God. Jesus appealed to it, and you can appeal to it also. And the wrestling that we engage in, my friend, it's not a wrestling that we do of our own initiative.

We wrestle not from a position of impending failure to one of ultimate victory. We wrestle from the triumph of Jesus on the cross. And He's despoiled principalities and powers.

Our Lord Jesus is in the heavens, but He's not out of contact with the church. There's more than just a telephone line of communication. The whole generating system of heaven is repositioned within the church.

So, the power of Jesus is available to men and women today. Don't talk to me about the baptism of the Spirit. If all you mean by the baptism of the Spirit is something that helps you to worship God culpritly with four or five hundred people, that may be one of the consequences.

And in no way am I decrying spontaneity in worship. I've spent so many years arguing for that. But you see, it's not just in the meeting where the struggle becomes real.

It's out in the wilderness. I have no difficulty being sanctified amongst five hundred people in Worthing Tabernacle on a Sunday, at least not normally. My struggle's on a Monday.

My struggle's the rest of the week. My struggle's when I'm on my own. Here, I can give a pretense.

There, I can't fool God as He looks down. And it's there that the devil's much more likely to come to me, you see. And this is why I need that mighty baptism.

This is why I need that mightier flatters of the Spirit so that it's not Tony Sargent in and of himself. He's got to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. He's got to put on the full armor of God.

We haven't communion. I've time just to go on for two minutes or so longer, I think. If I haven't, just slip out.

I don't know whether to tell you this, but I will. When I was twenty years of age, I used to go into Soho, a student of my first theological college. We went on a Friday night from ten o'clock through till half one or two on a Saturday morning.

We went trying to reach some of the people in that sin-infested place with the gospel. Now I'm twenty, and I'm unmarried, and I have every, every natural desire like any other twenty-year-old had. And perhaps Soho was the worst place on God's earth, at least in London, for someone to go with a group of fellows.

But I tell you this to the eternal credit of God. I never remember one of those long times of evangelism in Soho when I ever knew a fiery arrow of the devil getting through to me, ever once. No exception whatsoever.

Why? Well, because we went closed in the power of his might. It was a calculated thing that we did. We were going as ambassadors for the king, and he doesn't leave you in the moment of conflict.

Now here's another story, and it doesn't do me so proudly. I'm older, fifteen years older. And I'm in Kathmandu, and I've got half day spare.

And I'm told that the king of Nepal is going to a complex of temples known as Monkey Temple, but on one of the tributaries that lead into the Ganges. And armed with my camera, I'm ashamed to say, I went as a tourist and looked around, idle curiosity, taking some photographs, leaving aside the more savage stuff. What happened to me that night, I've never publicly revealed before.

But I can see even now, with my head splitting, I moved on to a place called Pokhara. Those little shafts of light at the back of my mind, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, just like some Catherine Wheel, spinning round and round and round, with the faces of Hindu gods on them, and then exploding into ten thousand pieces, and then the whole thing going over and over again, until I thought I would be deranged. What had happened? Well, you see the forces of evil are real, my friend.

And here was a man who should have known more, who should have known what it is to clothe himself in the power of the Spirit of God, before ever going into a bastion where Satan holds sway. And so I put it to you afresh, the devil is real. He assaults the mind, he assaults the will, he assaults the spirit.

And he did it all to Jesus. And as our Lord was victorious, so we can be victorious, for he is still head of the church, and his power is available through his body. So let's go to it.

Yielding to the commands that come from headquarters, putting ourselves right in some of the areas I've suggested, and there are many, many others, and ensuring that as soldiers of Jesus Christ, we are delivered from what someone has called the smothering absorption of civilian life. We go to it, to serve our Lord Jesus in the power of Calvary, enclosed with the power of the Holy Spirit. Now Father, I want to pray as part of the pastoral team here, for every member of this beloved fellowship.

Help us to realize the enormity of the struggle, the tremendous dangers, yet the dimensions of the grace and the love of our God. And let's move out, Lord, to serve you. Pray for the brother who was taken ill.

We don't think that that disturbance was just in by accident. Bless this man. May he know, Lord, your healing touch we ask of you.

And bless us all as we go out to minister for you, clothe us in the righteousness of Christ, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Let's conclude with the doxology.

The grace, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.