THE POWER OF SATAN

Dr. W. A. Criswell

1 Peter 5:8-14

9-18-60     7:30 p.m.

In the service tonight we close the preaching through the Book of Simon Peter, the first letter.  This morning we preached on the benediction, the prayer that closes the epistle.  And tonight we preach on the Satan, the devil, the adversary, the accuser, the destroyer, "who as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour" [1 Peter 5:8]. 

Now, let us turn in the Bible to 1 Peter chapter 5.  Let us begin at verse 8, and read to the end of the chapter, and the first two verses are the text.  First Peter, chapter 5, beginning at verse 8.  And all of us, let’s read the text together almost to the end of the Bible; 1 Peter, the last chapter, chapter 5, verse 8 to the end.  Now together:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

Whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.

But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.

To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.  Amen.

By Silvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose, I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand.

The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son.

Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity.  Peace be with you all that are in Christ Jesus.  Amen.

[1 Peter 5:8-14]

Now I notice, and it is always been that way, and it finally dawned on me why:  in reading the Psalms, "selah" is an unknown; apparently, a musical notation.  As they sang those Psalms, "selah" meant the basses come out or strong, or the sopranos pipe down, or the altos cheer up, or some kind of a thing.  We have no idea what "selah" means.  So when you read the Psalms, you ought to leave it out. Now, when we read the New Testament, of course, often you come across that word "amen"; and our people shun it as though it might be another word like "selah," no, you don’t know what "selah" means; but everybody knows what "amen" means.  So say it.  When you read the Bible, say it.  "Unto Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.  Amen" [1 Peter 5:11].  Say it.

Now our text tonight, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:  Whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world" [1 Peter 5:8-9], that is, you are not the only one fighting him, you are not the only one having to meet that gentleman; everybody’s got to meet him, everybody knows him.  And the admonition here is to resist him:  "Be sober, be vigilant; because he walks around as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" [1 Peter 5:8].  Our Savior did some remarkable things, both in His own life, and through His apostles, and finally and ultimately in the Revelation.  Our Lord drew back the curtain from that other world, and we see in the vistas of glory the marvelous things God hath prepared for those who love Him.  And we preached about that this morning, the glory, the eternal glory to which God’s people have been called.  "And the Lord unveiled," that is the word for, in the Greek it is "apocalypse," "the unveiling," "the Revelation" you have it translated, "the apocalypse." The Lord unveiled the glories that are yet to come for His children.  But when the Lord drew back the curtain of that other and nether world, we also looked in and saw a vast people, area, extension, a land of woe and darkness and waste. 

And on the inside of that darkened land, there are innumerable, uncounted intelligences.  They are called diamonioi; "demons" you have it translated.  And they have a king, they have a leader; he is definitely set apart in the Bible and in the Revelation of Christ.  He is called diabolos.  He is called Satan.  And there is a word that is the same in Hebrew as it is in Greek, as it is in English:  Satan.  His name is Satan in Hebrew.  His name is Satan in Greek, and his name is Satan in English, diabolos, "devil," and he goes about the text says, "as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" [1 Peter 5:8].

First of all, may I speak of the beauty of his person?  Where did we get the idea that the devil, that Satan, is a vicious looking creature with cloven hoof, with horn, with scales, with a bright red suit, with a forked tail, with a pitchfork in his hands?  Where’d we get that idea?  Well, it came from the miracle play in the medieval ages.  As they went about all over Europe, depicting, dramatizing the stories of the Bible, Satan always appeared, and the devil was always on the stage with all kinds of crude makeup; and he looked vicious, and he looked bad, and he looked mean, and he looked terrible.  Why, bless your soul, you know this, if Satan looked like that, and if Satan were like that, nobody would do other than shun him. 

But Satan is the opposite of that.  In 2 Corinthians, the eleventh chapter, we are told that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light [2 Corinthians 11:14].  I cannot imagine the glory, the beauty of an angel of light.  But when you’re looking for Satan, don’t you look for a cloven-hoofed sort of a fellow that goes around with a pitchfork in his hands, spouting fire and venom and poison.  He is a beautiful creature, and he looks like, Paul said, "the very angel of light."

You have in the Book of Ezekiel, in the twenty-eighth chapter of that book, you have a description of the person of Satan:

Thou sealest up the sum of wisdom, and thou art perfect in beauty.  Thou wast in Eden, in the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, gold, onyx, jasper, the diamond, sapphire:  the workmanship prepared in thee was in thee from the day thou wast created.  Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; I have set thee so:  and thou didst walk in the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire.

[Ezekiel 28:12-14]

Can you imagine what he looked like?  The most glorious creature that God ever made, and as he walked among the holy of God’s people, he sparkled and he shined as he reflected the iridescent brightness and beauty of the diamonds and gems that covered his glorious person; "in the midst of the stones of fire.  Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty" [Ezekiel 28:16-17].  That doesn’t sound like the devil with a forked tail.  That doesn’t sound like the devil with a pitchfork.  He was the most beautiful creature God ever made.  He was the wisest of all God’s creations.

You know, he’s called in the Bible "the serpent."  He’s called "that old dragon" [Revelation 12:8], not because that he looks that way, but he’s called that because of the vile, iniquitous, wicked, damnable work that he sowed in God’s creation.  I can illustrate that; that’s as common as life itself.  In the days, especially of a war, there are beautiful women, beautiful women, with every art, and every coy device; and they entice the officers of the enemy, and they seduce them, and they get secrets from them, and they tell or sell those secrets to a foreign government.  And when you see a creature like that, beautiful, and enticing, and lovely, and gracious, very, very attractively dressed, with manners fine, can move with grace in the most acceptable and social society, and yet she induces our officers to confide in her, and then she sells those secrets to the enemy, to a Russian!  And because of the traitorousness of her life, our men are destroyed, and our armies are defeated.  Why, when you look upon her, do you see her beauty any longer?  Do you see her gracious manner any longer?  Do you see the grace by which she moves in society any longer?  Why man, she has used her loveliness, and her grace, and her wit and her sparkling wisdom, she’s used it to damn us and to destroy us.  And the language doesn’t contain words to describe the filthiness and the hatred and the contempt by which we look upon a beautiful woman like that who has sold out our country to the enemy.

 Now that’s exactly what happens in our regard and in our description of the devil.  Because of the villainy of his life, and the rascality of his life, and the wickedness of his life, and the damnableness of his life, he’s described in those terms of being serpentine and dragon like.  But don’t you ever think that applies to the person himself.  The devil arrays himself in the most gorgeous of robes.  He equips himself with the finest of conversational style and language.  He’s keen, he’s witty, he’s smart, he’s brilliant, he’s bright, he’s wise, he’s everything that anybody could ever desire!  He’s an angel of light, the beauty of his person [2 Corinthians 11:14].

May I speak now of his illimitable, almost, and his omnipotent, almost, power?  I don’t know of a better way to illustrate that than this verse in a book that I’ll soon be preaching.  Listen to this out of Jude:  "Yet Michael, yet Michael the archangel," I don’t know the power or the dignity or the office or the place of an archangel, but this is the greatest archangel of them all except one.  "Yet Michael the archangel, when disputing with diabolos, he, when contending with diabolos, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord God rebuke thee" [Jude 1:9].  Think of the power of this archangel in his beauty and in his glory.  When he was disputing about the body of Moses, Michael, the great, the great emissary of God dared not rebuke Satan.  So great in his power, so mighty in his presence, Michael could only say, "The Lord God rebuke thee" [Jude 1:9].

Now there are several areas in which you can find well illustrated the vast extensiveness of the power of the devil, of diabolos, of Satan.  One is found in the extent of his kingdom, in the vast realm over which he reigns as a king.  He is first the king of hell.  "And they had a king over them," this is in the Revelation – we’re going to be in the Revelation at the first of the year, and what a marvelous, marvelous thing that’s going to be for us and for me.  I’ve never studied the book as such in my life.  I was never taught it.  It was never taught to me.  I’m looking forward to these days when we come to the final climactic book of the Bible, the great Apocalypse, the unveiling, the Revelation – "And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, in the Greek tongue it is Apollyon" [Revelation 9:11], it’s destroyer, it’s Satan, it’s diabolos.  There’s a king, there’s a king over the hosts of hell; and it’s that prince made in the glory and beauty of God Himself.  And in that kingdom of darkness and night, where he presides over those hosts of the diamonioi, those demons, in that vast place of dreary darkness and waste, there he presides over the damned, doomed, lost souls of mankind, of humanity.  That place wasn’t made for mankind; it was made for the devil and his angels [Matthew 25:41].  But when men refused Christ, and they blasphemed God, and they spurned the overtures of mercy, and they say no to the preacher, and no to the Holy Spirit, and no to the invitation, then there is one great vast eternal destiny for men who refuse the salvation of Christ.  And that is they give themselves to the unbelief and the darkness of that netherworld, and they spend an eternity in that place prepared for the devil and his angels.  And he’s their king; and they bow to his will completely.  Oh, oh it staggers the imagination what Satan will do to the soul that is lost and that is damned forever in hell where he presides as king and lord over all.

Think of a life, a soul committed to Satan, wholly:  no Holy Spirit, no God, no Christian people, no prayers, no anything but the weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth [Matthew 8:12, 13:42, 13:50, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30; Luke 13:28], where the fires are not quenched and the worm never dies [Mark 9:44-47].  The only thing that I could illustrate that that would even come near it, wholly in the will of Satan:  when we die, there in that awful and dark and miserable place, subject to his will, whatever Satan wants to make out of us, however he wants to twist us, and how he wants to cripple us and hurt us and damn us forever in his hands:  the only thing that I could think of that would be like it is this; as you know, in the days of the Greco-Roman Empire, a man that didn’t want his child – and hardly any of them wanted a girl baby – a man that didn’t want a child, when the child was born had the privilege of disposing of it as he pleased.  That was the law of the Greeks; that was the law of the Romans.  And it was all over that ancient Greek world, the ancient Roman world. 

And you know they took those unwanted children by the thousands and the thousands, and they exposed them, placed them anywhere where a jackal could eat the child, where a dog could eat the child, where a wild animal could devour the child, or where the heat of the sun would destroy it.  And many, many, many, many, uncounted many of those children that were placed in exposure to die, unwanted, many of those children were picked up by unscrupulous families.  And they would take the child, and they would warp, and they would destroy, and they would cripple, and they would break its bones, the bones of its legs, and the bones of its arms, and the bones of its body, and they would raise up the thing that had lost its image to the likeness of God, and they’d raise that cruelly crippled, awful thing, they’d raise it up.  And then when the thing was big enough to be placed on the side of a street or on the side of a road, where the army, or where the people passed by, they’d put a tin cup by its side in order that somebody might take pity upon so horrible, pitiful, so tragic a life, and maybe drop a coin in.  And that was all over the Greco-Roman world.  Why, to think of it brings horror and chill to the marrow of your bones!  And yet that’s but a small illustration of what our soul shall suffer when Satan has the rule over us, and there’s no Holy Spirit, and there’s no prayer, and there’s no Jesus to intercede between us and the will of diabolos.  O God that we might be saved, that we might be delivered.

He’s not only the king over hell, he’s not only the lord over the damned, lost spirits of men, but in 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul calls Satan "the god of this world," the god of this world.  This world does not belong to Jesus, not now.  The kingdom has not come, not yet.  He is the god and the ruler of this world; and he rules it in his totalitarian governments, and his totalitarian ecclesiastical governments, and he rules it in the idols that he makes people worship, and he rules it in the heresies and in the lies and in a thousand ways does he keep the power of this world, the god of this world.  He offered it to Jesus:  "You fall down and worship me, and all the kingdoms of this world and all their glory will I bestow upon Thee" [Matthew 4:8-9].  He’s the god of this world [2 Corinthians 4:4].

We see the awful power of Satan in his ableness to turn the elements and the diseases against mankind, whom he hates as he hates God.  There in the first verse of the Book of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" [Genesis 1:1], and in the second verse, "And the earth became waste and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep" [Genesis 1:2].  That’s what Satan did; that’s what sin did; that’s what his rebellion did.  He plunged this whole universe into chaos and into ruin.  Those old stars that are burned out, those planets without life, these great ashen heaps of the sidereal universe, and the blot that we find on the face of the earth, the great deserts, the lack, the waste, all of that is the fruit of Satan.  And when God recreated this world in the garden of Eden, there that same great enemy, in the inscrutable permissive will of God, there he is again [Genesis 3:1].  And there is repeated that same terrible story of waste and destruction [Genesis 3:1-21].  O Lord!  And God said to him, "Have you considered my servant Job?" [Job 1:8].

"Why yes," said Satan, "I have considered him."

"Well," said God, "what a man, what a man Job is."

"Oh yes," says Satan, "no wonder he serves Thee; he gets a return out of it, You have hedged him about.  You let me go down there, and he will curse You to Thy face" [Job 1:8-12]. 

And Satan has in his power to cast down lightning from the clouds; and he cast down lightning from the clouds, and he destroyed all the property that Job had.  And then Satan has power over the winds; and he threw those winds from the four corners of the four corners of the house, and it crushed all of Job’s children.  And then he went down there, finally, and he bowed Job, that saintly man, in the ashes and in the dust, afflicting him with sore, running boils, corrupting sores from the top of his head to the sole of his foot [Job 1:13-2:7].

That woman that had been bowed down for eighteen years in the Book of Luke, the Book of Luke says, "She was bound down with infirmity by Satan" [Luke 13:16], Satan did it.  And when Paul says, "I was given a thorn in the flesh, to buffet me," he said, "the thorn in the flesh from Satan to buffet me" [2 Corinthians 12:7].  He sows this world down, down, down, with disease, and hurricane, and tornado, and destruction, and death; it’s all the work of diabolos, that evil one.  And we see his power in the facility with which he enters our hearts and our minds.

Everywhere, everywhere, he’s not omnipresence, but he is faster than lightning, and he has his intelligences all over this earth; and they report to him in the flash, in the twinkling of an eye, in a second.  There, there is Satan.  And he aids, and he abets, and he encourages all kinds of doubt and unbelief; and he sows it in our hearts and our souls, in our lives.  And he gets in the church, and he gets in the people, and he gets in the deacon, and he gets in the preacher, and he gets in the choir, and he gets in the singer, and he gets in the business administrator, and he gets in my assistant pastor, and he gets everywhere, everywhere we let him get in.

Yeah, but the fellow says, "I don’t believe in Satan.  I don’t believe there is any Satan."  And the fellow replied, "You know what?  If you don’t believe there is any Satan, you just try to resist him for a while and find out."  And another fellow said, "Why do you believe in the devil?"  He says, "I believe in the devil for two reasons.  One: because the Bible says so, and two: because I’ve done business with him."  All you’ve got to do is resist him, and you’ll find out where there’s a personal Satan or not.

I read this poem.  I hadn’t heard it in a long, long time; despaired of ever finding it.  And I want you to know today I found it, found it, just before I came to church.

Men don’t believe in the devil now, as their fathers used to do;

They’ve forced the door of the broadest creed to let his majesty through.

There isn’t a print of his cloven hoof, or a fiery dart from his bow,

There’s not one to be found in earth, or air; for the world has voted it so.

,

Won’t somebody step to the front forthwith, and make his bow, and show, How the frauds and crimes of a day spring up?  We all want to know.

The devil was fairly voted out, and of course the devil’s gone;

But some simple people, of whom I’m one,

Some simple people would like to know who carries his business on.

[from "Don’t Believe in a Devil," Alfred J. Hough]

Don’t have any devil anymore.  But there’s not any lie without a liar.  There’s not any fraud without a cheater.  There’s not any murder without a murderer.  There’s not any sin without a sinner.  Did you ever see a cop chasing the principle of thievery down the street, did you?  Did you ever see an officer of the law chasing some kind of ephemeral intangible spirit of wickedness down the street, did you?  No sir.  These things are real.  They are in us.  They are around us.  And we must stand to face these awful foes that we have, that enter our hearts, and enter our minds, and enter our souls, and enter our lives.  Everywhere, he’s everywhere, everywhere.

What is his chief business?  Just that: let me read it to you out of the Book.  Over here in the third chapter of the Book of Zechariah, "And the Lord God showed me Joshua the high priest standing beside the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him" [Zechariah 3:1].  There he is!  Don’t you wish he had flesh and blood so I could kick him?  So I could hit him?  So I could bite him?  Don’t you?  There he is.  "And the Lord God showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Lord, standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him" [Zechariah 3:1].  And he’s always there.  He’s right there.  He’s right there at your right hand all day and all night and all in between time.  And he sows the seed of doubt and mistrust and every kind of villainy and wickedness.  You don’t get rid of him by denying his presence.  There he is.

And in the garden of Eden, he enticed our parents [Genesis 3:1-6]; and then having succeeded in that, he redoubled his efforts, and finally the whole world was in the power of sin and of darkness except one family [Genesis 6:5-8].  And finally, he debauched that one godly man until he was drunken and naked before his own family [Genesis 9:21-24].  And then he destroyed Israel and sent them into captivity.  And when the Lord God came unto the earth, he tried to slay Him with the sword of Herod [Matthew 2:13-16].  Then he attacked Him in the pride and jealousy of the Pharisees [Matthew 12:14, John 8:44].  Then finally he nailed Him to the cross [Matthew 27:32-50].  And he thought he’d triumphed.  But out of the grave there arose the Son of God [Matthew 28:5-7].  And then he persecuted the disciples of the Lord [Luke 22:31].  And when he found that every time he slew a martyr, a thousand disciples were raised up in the ashes of the dead disciple of Jesus.  Then he turned his strategy, and he loved the church.  And he made the adulterous union between the church and the state, and he corrupted the house of God and sowed it down with false doctrine, and false heresy, and every other worldly compromise that the mind could think of [Revelation 3:9].  And he approaches us today.  He comes in that back door, and he crawls through this congregation, and he sticks his forked tongue in my face, the devil, standing at the right hand to resist.

Well, I must close.  I, we’ll be here all night.  I’m full of my subject.  Once in a while our pastor can say the cutest things.  What do you do?  What do you do?  "Whom resist, be vigilant, be sober" [1 Peter 5:8-9].  Now, following my text, give me just a moment.  Resist, resist [1 Peter 5:9].  When I was a youngster, my sister, who was a lot older than I, was going with a young fellow whom she later married.  And an evangelist came to town.  You know, we had a little bitty town.  He put a tent right in the middle of the town and held a revival meeting.  Well sir, that evangelist did something that stayed in my little childish mind to this present day.  He took that prospective brother-in-law of mine, great big fellow, he took him up there, and he put a thread around him, and he put another thread around him, and he said, "Break the thread!"  And that great big hunk of a brother-in-law prospective, he broke the thread; it was just nothing.  So he said, "Now you come back here and sit down."  And he put that thread around him, then he put it around again, then he didn’t stop.  He put another thread, and another thread, and another thread, and another thread, and he took that whole spool and just thread at a time, he put it around, around, around, around him.  And then when he got through, he said to that big hunk of a brother-in-law, he said, "Now break it asunder."  And he was like Samson with his locks shorn [Judges 16:17, 19, 21]: he couldn’t even budge it.  He couldn’t budge it.  If you don’t break that thread, if you don’t resist, he will bind you!  He will bind you in his hand!  He’ll bind you!

There was a fellow going along followed by a pig.  It was funny.  Going along followed by a dog, you wouldn’t think anything about it.  But he was followed by a pig.  And a fellow walked along and looked at him.  "How in the world do you get a pig to follow you?"  Well, the fellow had an ingenious way:  he was dropping a bean here, and another bean here, and another bean here, and another bean there, and that pig was following him.  Eat the bean here, eat the bean there, eat the bean there, eat the bean there.  And finally the guy went up to him in amazement and said, "Where are you going with that pig?"  And the fellow said, "I’m leading him to the slaughter house."  That’s what Satan does with us!  Here, and then here, and then there, and then there, and he leads us to the slaughter house!  There’s a little bitty thin sliver of a rail by the side of the main track, and yet that little sliver – thin rail is what takes the train off of the track, off on the side track.  Resist!  Resist!  "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" [James 4:7],"Be vigilant" [1 Peter 5:8],"Put on the whole armor of God" [Ephesians 6:11],"And be sober, be sober" [1 Peter 5:8].  I want to say just a word, and then I must quit.

What is it to be sober?  It’s like Paul says, "Be not filled with wine, drunken with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Holy Spirit, sobriety" [Ephesians 5:18].  Now I think he means this:  when you sit down, as you’re seated now, in the calm of an hour of a decision, make you a sober judgment.  Am I going to follow the beans to the slaughter house?  Am I going to let him bind me in unbelief until I am damned in soul and life and in body?  Make a sober judgment.

I sat one day on a big rock.  If you’ve ever been in Yosemite, the biggest rocks, mountains of rocks, solid granite in the world, are there in Yosemite.  I was seated on a rock, and I was watching the placid stream flow by in front of me, just before it went over that oh, I don’t know how many thousand feet that thing falls down to the floor of the valley.  And as I sat on that big rock, it was at a time when just a few days before two men had gone over that terrible precipice.  Oh, it frightened you just to think of the abysmal death that lies below.  And then I got to thinking thoughts like this:  seated on a rock, seated on a rock, and that stream flowing by just before the precipice, and suppose a fellow were to come along in a raft, and he sees me, and he says, "Say friend, come and ride on the raft with me!"  I look at him in all sobriety and I say, "No thank you, for I am planted on the Rock."  That is a sober judgment.  And that’s the judgment that we can make in the presence of God tonight.  When Satan invites us on his raft, "Come and ride with me!" and just beyond, or just beyond that, or just beyond in God’s known day and time, there’s that inevitable abyss, and when he invites, "No thank you, no thank you.  For my feet are on the Rock.  I have found a friend in Jesus.  He is all the world to me.  Rock of ages; I’ve planted my soul, and I’ve planted my life, and I’ve planted my destiny, I have planted myself on the Rock," a sober judgment, be sober [1 Peter 5:8].  "Think this thing through," says God, and decide for Him.

And that’s our invitation to your heart tonight; giving your life to Jesus, giving your soul to Jesus, giving your days to Jesus, giving your destiny to Jesus, "Here I come, and here I am.  Put my feet on the Rock, on the Rock."  And that Rock is Christ  [1 Corinthians 10:4].  Come, come, come.  Somebody give his heart to Jesus, come.  Somebody put his life in the church, come.  A family you, come.  From that topmost balcony, come.  Down one of these stairwells at the front or the back, come.  Into the aisle and down here to the front, come.  "The Spirit and the bride say, Come.  Let him that heareth repeat the invitation, Come.  Let him that is athirst come.  Whosoever will, let him come" [Revelation 22:17].  Come, come.  While we sing this song prayerfully and earnestly, make it tonight, make it now, while we stand and while we sing.