Is Satan Really That Dangerous?
1 Peter 5:5-11
More than four out of five Americans claim to be Christian and half as many can be classified as born again Christians. Nine out of ten adults own a Bible. Most adults read the Bible during the year and a huge majority claims they know all of the basic teachings of the Bible. Yet, Six out of ten Americans (59%) reject the existence of Satan, indicating that the devil, or Satan, is merely a symbol of evil. (Barna Research Online: 10-8-02 and 12-17-02)
Since the majority of Americans believe that Satan is just a harmless symbol, let’s insert this notion of Satan into v.8 of this chapter. “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, a mere symbol of evil, prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour. Resist this symbol of evil, standing firm in your faith.” That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Whatever the majority of Americans believe about Satan, it is abundantly clear that the apostle Peter believed that Satan was a real person who could do real, lasting and eternal harm to people. And while I would assume that none of you would deny the existence of Satan, you may deny his active role in the world and his real potential to cause you personal harm. When it comes to the topic of Satan, ignorance is not bliss. In fact, ignorance is hazardous
Dealing with Satan and his army of demons is a bit like the war in Iraq. We have won the war in Iraq. The enemy cannot challenge our authority and victory. But they can, as they have been doing for the past eight months, continue to pick off our troops one by one. The enemy emerges from the shadows, kills a few soldiers and retreats again into the darkness. This is precisely Satan’s strategy. Even though Christ achieved final victory over Satan by the cross, Satan continues to move in and out of the dark shadows, picking off people one at a time. Do you want to end up on the growing list of his victims? Perhaps you are fighting with him at this very moment and are completely unaware of his presence.
This passage in 1 Peter is so helpful because we are not only given fair warning of Satan’s schemes, but we are also told the solution.
5 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”a 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
There are two fundamental errors when considering the influence of Satan: either we give him too much credit and blame all of our problems on him, or else we assume he is not all that dangerous. We must not overestimate or underestimate his power, but rather come to a Biblical understanding which can lead to practical solutions and personal victory.
The first step is to know your enemy. A brief look at the various names for Biblical names for Satan gives us a good glimpse into his evil plan. He is called the devil, the serpent(Rev 12:9), the ruler of this world (Jn 2:11), the prince of the power of the air (Jn 12:31), the evil one (Mt 13:19), the father of lies (Jn 8:44), the deceiver of the whole world (Rev 12:9), the god of this world (2 Co 4:4), and in this passage, a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Pt 5:8).
Satan owns the planet. The world is his dominion. The earth is his kingdom. Let me paint for you a worst case scenario and a best case scenario. The worst thing that Satan could do to Christians is to kill us. Look at Rev. 2:10, Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life. Christians can, and some will, be killed by Satan. Satan is the originator of sin and death so you could make a case that all death is linked to Satan.
That is the worst thing that could happen. A best case scenario is that Satan will run away from you. James 4:7 says, Submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So even though Satan has the strength of a lion and thirsts for our blood, it is possible to resist him so that he runs away like a scared kitty. Most of have probably seen Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer. If you first saw it as a child, you were no doubt a little frightened by the abominable snowman. This creature with gigantic teeth was in the habit of devouring reindeer, elves and anything else he could get his evil hands on. Do you recall what happened when Herbie the elf/dentist got a hold of him? He pulled all of his nasty sharp teeth out of his mouth. The solution was simple: no teeth, no lunch. Satan’s express goal is to devour every human being, including Christians. The only way to keep from becoming his lunch is to remove his sharp teeth from his lion-like mouth. No teeth, no lunch.
But before we learn how to yank the teeth out of Satan, let’s look a little closer at what could happen if Satan gets a chance to clamp his powerful jaws into your flesh.
You know Satan is chomping on your flesh if:
You have envy, pride and selfish ambition. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. (James 3:14-15) Women and young girls, you struggle with envy, don’t you. “I wish I was as pretty as _____” I wish I had nice clothes or a nice house like ______” All of you struggle with either occasional or else consuming thoughts of envy. All of these are obvious bite marks of Satan. Envy is another form of pride, by the way. Men, we struggle with pride. We want others to think we have it all together. We don’t want people to think we are weak. We don’t want others to find out about our secret sins. WE also have this problem of needing to be right all of the time. If someone does point out a fault of ours or even an error in our thinking, we refuse to back down. We claim our right to be right, even when all of the facts tell a different story. These are also obvious bite marks of the enemy.
You have unresolved anger, lack of forgiveness and bitterness. “In your anger do not sin”a: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold. (Eph. 4:26) Anger is the easiest of all strategies of Satan. Being angry is like walking straight into his mouth. This verse tells us that anger gives the devil a foothold. I am an amateur rock climber, but even I know the benefit of a foothold. As you climb a rock face, you are constantly searching for both footholds and handholds. Now a solid handhold is nice, but I am not strong enough to rely on just handholds. If you do you will end up like this person, dangling in space by your fingertips. A really good foothold is what you need. Even if you are a hundred feet up, a good foothold will allow you to rest and continue climbing. When Satan gets a foothold in our life, he is content to stay and rest a while. If the anger is not confessed, the foothold becomes a stronghold. This is why so many struggle with bitterness. If you are bitter toward even one person, then the enemy has set up camp in your soul and he doesn’t have to leave until you tell him to go.
If you feel accused and condemned. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. (Rev. 12:10) Have you ever had a thought that sounded like this? “I’m no good—I can’t do anything right—no one likes me—I’m not worthy—I’m ugly and stupid—I’m a rotten Christian.” We expect Satan to attack us head on like in the movies, but we forget that he quietly and continually accuses and condemns us. He whispers all of these lies into our thoughts, “I’m no good—I can’t do anything right.” These lead to discouragement and then to depression. Then we become fearful, anxious and worried. These dark clouds of worry and depression are all signs that Satan’s teeth have dug into our flesh.
Divisiveness, slander, gossip, rebellion, dishonesty, etc. Basically, any sin can be a mark of Satan’s work in our lives. This does not mean that ALL sin is Satan’s fault. During the Millennium when Christ will rule and Satan will be bound for 1,000 years, sin will still reign and grow in the hearts of people. Satan has a hand in all sin, but we can’t merely brush it off as being his fault. Regardless of how deep his teeth are sunk into our flesh, we are still responsible for our sin. So how do we turn this roaring lion with big, sharp teeth into a harmless kitty who runs away? You might be expecting that his is the part of the sermon where I tell you how to cast demons out of people. Maybe you hope that I will teach you how to cleanse your house of demons. Perhaps you would like to learn how to pray against the chief demon in Viroqua so we can bind him and do the work of God in this city. Maybe you’re hoping I will tell you a story about a pastor who battled all night with a demon-possessed person and how the pastor yelled at the demons in Jesus’ name until they all finally left.
I have heard of many such stories, but I will not tell any of them. This is how a lot of so-called spiritual warfare is practiced in the church today. Instead, I will give you the answer that Peter gave. The solution to turning a lion into a toothless kitty comes in two parts. In v. 6 we are told to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand. Then in v. 8 we are told to resist the devil, standing firm in your faith. Let me show you how similar this is to James 4. Both this passage in Peter and the one in James 4 have these same two elements. Humility and submission comes first, then active resistance of the devil. But if we back up one verse we see the similarities do not end there. Both passages have a direct quote from Prov 3, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
I believe that this is the often overlooked key to overcoming the schemes of Satan: a regular practice of humility and submission to God’s authority. The problem is that people usually try to resist the work of Satan without first submitting to God. The combined force of these two passages makes it clear that it is impossible to resist any attack of Satan unless we first submit to God. But even then our tendency is to make this into some kind of magical formula. We read that if we submit to God and resist the devil, he will flee from us. So the next time we feel some kind of attack from Satan we say a quick, little prayer: “God I submit to you—Satan, go away!”
Submission to God cannot come about through a rapid, formula-like prayer. God’s requirement is that your entire life be increasingly bent toward him in humble submission. Our personal pride flies in the face of our gracious Creator. This text from Proverbs quotes by both James and Peter says that God is opposed to proud people. God’s greatness and perfection makes him alone deserving of glory and worship. But when we are proud, we place ourselves ahead of God. We take on a self-sufficiency and an arrogance that results in God opposing us. We are then in conflict with God. It’s as if we begin to wrestle with God to see who will be the victor.
But not only are we in opposition and conflict with God, but our pride means that God withholds his grace. The humble get more grace, the proud get none. What an irony this is—at the height of our pride and the moment we most need God’s grace, that very grace is withheld from us. Therefore, when it comes to Satan’s many attacks, only the humble person can even begin to resist Satan. The proud person is incapable of resisting. Then Satan uses the weakness of the proud person to incite even more pride.
Haven’t you said something like this before—“Why is it when things are going well that Satan attacks so hard?” The assumption is that the more righteous and humble we become, the harder Satan tries to attack us. I think this is a false assumption. Satan knows better than we do that a humble person who is walking with the Lord is en extremely difficult target to hit. Such a person is clothed with the spiritual armor that Paul lists in Ephesians 6. After all, what does it mean to be clothed with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation and a sword of the Spirit. These are not some tokens of spirituality that we put on just before doing battle with Satan. This spiritual armor is worn by the spiritually humble and maturing Christian. Their spiritual armor is their entire walk with Christ. Their spiritual armor comes from years of a life that is sin-forsaking, Bible-reading, prayer-pleading, love-giving, humble walking, doctrine-saturated, Christ-centered, and God-exalting. It is their whole life, not just their fancy spiritual clothes.
So I don’t think Satan is very interested in attacking a person with such spiritual armor. The humble life they live is in itself an active, on-going resistance to any attack. Satan doesn’t attack such people, but he does attack people who look like they are mature on the outside, but have all kinds of weaknesses and chinks in their armor. How else can you explain the hundreds of pastors and Christian leaders who have moral failures and leadership failures every year. These men and women certainly appeared to have it all together. They had a cloak of spirituality and a form of godliness, but their inner weaknesses went ignored and unconfessed. Satan attacked because they were so weak, not because they were so strong. Satan is not all-knowing and all-powerful like God, but he is organized, has an enormous army of demons, is very experienced and above all, intimately knows your every weakness.
So what hope is there for the average Christian to defeat Satan? There is no hope for the average Christian to defeat Satan. Our only hopes comes from Christ. Here is what you can do:
- Confess and repent of your pride. If you’re not sure of you have a problem with pride, I suggest you ask two people who know you best if they think you have a problem with pride. You cannot defeat Satan when you have a prideful spirit. Satan will attack you and God will oppose you.
- Do not be afraid. If we fear Satan then we are sending a clear message that we think he is more powerful than God.
- Persevere under trial. Peter said that after we suffer from attacks, God’s grace will restore us and make us strong. As I was preparing this sermon, it became clear to me that I have been attacked by Satan this past year through discouragement. I was talking with someone I really respect last week. Every single week this person deals with discouraged Christians and discouraged churches. So I asked him how he was able to do this without himself becoming discouraged. His simple, yet profound answer to me was, “You just have to fight it Rich, you have to fight it.”
If we confess our pride, don’t fear Satan and persevere despite his attacks, we will disarm his power and influence. We will remove the teeth from the roaring lion No teeth—no lunch. It’s just that simple.
Rich Maurer
January 18, 2004