Unmasking Satan (2)

Unmasking Satan

It’s all a trick

Good morning CHURCH!

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles.

Let’s go to the book of 2 Corinthians for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

2 Corinthians 5:9-10 ESV

9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

The message behind this verse is that believers in Christ should focus on pleasing God.

We must realize that there is no eternal value in the things of the world or the ways of the world.

“Only what you do for Christ will last.”

Series Title:

Unmasking Satan

Last week:

Revelations 12:7-9 ESV

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back,8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

Revelations 12:12 ESV

Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

Satan is mad at God for kicking him out of heaven, so he wants to take it out on God’s greatest creation, mankind.

Side bar:

You may have thought at one time or another, why does God allow Satan to have access in the earth to trick and deceive mankind.

“Doesn’t God love us?”

“If I was God, I wouldn’t let the devil have that kind of access to my children.”

(There is no love without a choice.)

Today’s message title is:

It’s all a trick

Remember the parable of the possum.

(Satan is like a landowner trying to catch a possum. He uses the possum’s own desires to ensnare him.)

If the possum would stay out of the landowner’s trash and find food in the wild, he would never be trapped by the landowner.

Our passage text for today is from 1 John.

1 John 2:15-17 ESV

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the father but is from the world.

17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

My three points today will come from this passages of scripture.

Point #1

You can’t have your cake and eat it too

This is an idiom that is probably more understood if you reverse it.

You can’t eat your cake and still have it too.

1 John 2:15 ESV

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The world” here means the evil organized earthly system controlled by the prince of the power of the air who is always against God.

Just as Israel in the Old Testament repeatedly had to decide between allegiance to God and allegiance to the pagan nations around them.

You can’t be in love with the way the world that opposes God operates and still consider yourself in love with God.

When it says the love of the Father is not in him, it is saying his life/desires are not ruled by God.

Satan knows this, so he wants to see to it that your cravings are for the same things that his world craves.

(The world has all the fun.)

Sin has pleasure for a season.

I didn’t put this in the lesson prep but look at James 1.

James 1:13-15 ESV

Let no one say when his is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

What desires are you pregnant with?

And are your desires pregnant by God or by Satan?

Let’s look at the principle of focus in the book of James.

James 1:8 ESV

8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

You can’t focus on two things in the total opposite direction at the same time.

If you turn to focus at one, you have to turn your back on the other.

And if you turn to focus on the other, you have to turn your back on the one.

If I give away my rights to live my life the way I so choose to follow the way Christ wants me to live, so that I can inherit the benefits of eternal life and the benefits of the kingdom of God; I can’t then suppose that if I still choose to do my own thing, that I’ll still inherit the said benefits I would have inherited by doing things his way.

Principle of focus.

I can’t really think that if I point a bow and arrow in the direction of a target that is to the North, that I will hit a target that is to the south.

Satan knows that we can’t focus on God if we are chasing the things the world dangles before us.

Point #2

The flesh always craves more cake

1 John 2:16 ESV

16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the father but is from the world.

The propensity we have to sin is so closely tied to the physical aspect of mankind that the Bible refers to it as “the flesh.”

We learn most of our fleshly desires from those that influence us. (Parents, siblings, television, social media etc.)

However, there is one desire that we seem to be born with that came from our ancestors Adam and Eve, and that is the desire to please ourselves.

This desire of the flesh is in direct contrast with the original desire Adam was born with which was the desire to please God.

Galatians 5:19-20 ESV

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,

Galatians 5:19-20 The Message

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

The Lust of the eyes.

The desire/lust of the eyes is when we see something visually that is not for the purpose of pleasing God, and we have to have it.

The pride of life.

The pride of life is that desire in us to be the boss or our own God.

The pride of life leads to arrogance, self-promotion and greed.

Point #3

You can’t take your cake to heaven

1 John 2:17 ESV

17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

This is why you shouldn’t focus on the love of the world.

Everything you spend all of your efforts and energy to accumulate is just going to pass away.

Satan knows this and he has just been tricking mankind since the garden of Eden.

With all this recorded data, are you still going to let him trick you into spending eternity with him?

If you’re watching online or here in the room, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is Holy Spirit saying to you right now?