The Devil
The third enemy we must defeat is the devil. From the beginning the Bible reveals how the devil with his prideful arrogance first rebelled in heaven deceiving a third of the angels of heaven. We will deal with his fall more in chapter seven, but for now, I want to underscore his main strategies in fighting against the saints of God. These are his main weapons that he uses to draw us away from God and His eternal truth: pride, lies, and deception. The devil’s goal is to get us to trust in our own self-reasoning and not to deal with the objective truth of God’s eternal Word. He wants us to give in to subjective feelings that open the door to deception.
We must first look at what the Bible teaches about the devil. Jesus gives a frank statement to the religious leaders of His day:
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44 NASB
In Matthew 13:24–43 Jesus taught the parable of the man who sowed good seed in his field, but then an enemy came at night and sowed tares to choke out the good seed. After Jesus sent the multitudes away, He explained the parable of the tares to His disciples. He told them:
“He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man…the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil.” Matthew 13:37b–39a NKJV
In context, Jesus is referring to people as the seed. All those who are born of the Kingdom of God are sons of the kingdom. The tares are the apostate religious leaders of Israel. In John 8, Jesus identified those religious leaders as sons of the devil. They were motivated by the devil to kill the Son of Glory.
In John 10, Jesus teaches about the thief and the true Shepherd. In verse six, He states that the people did not understand His illustration concerning the thief. He illustrated it again in verse seven by clearly saying, “I am the door of the sheep.” Then Jesus declares:
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10 NASB
TOMORROW WE WILL LOOK AT: Other verses to consider, which we should study and memorize.