Your Enemy...

Transcript S2E9

Your Enemy…

[00:00] 

Hi, I'm Tony Kostas, and welcome to Led Into Love.

Unusually today, I want to speak to you about the devil. I know I refer to him at other times and particularly in relation to the way that he tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God in the Garden of Eden, not long after they'd been created. But I want to focus on him in a particular way today. 

Even as I say that, I also want to say to you that no mature Christian ever has their eye on the devil. In fact, no wise Christian will.

Because to put your eyes on the devil, to focus on the devil, means that you've got to take your eyes off God. And you don't want to do that for obvious reasons.

[01:02] 

But you do need to be aware of the fact that there is a devil. He's not a fantasy and there's nothing spooky about him – but there's something very evil about him. In fact, he's the embodiment of evil.

Just as God is Love itself, the devil is evil itself. He is everything that God is not.

In the Bible, he is called ‘the Prince of this world’ – and he is. But when I say that, I want to distinguish between when the Bible talks about this world or the earth. We're talking about two different things.

The Earth is this planet that when God created the universe and then when he created this Earth. The planet on which we live … the physical planet on which we live. 

And then when He made Adam and Eve in His image … made them with His own hands, breathed His life into them, to live in this place.

[02:11] 

God is not only the King and the Lord of the whole Universe, and the Creator of the Universe. He was also the King of this Earth – and of the world … the world of humanity.

Of course, you might say, “Well, there was only two people”. Yeah, that's true. But those two people were the beginning of the Human Race – the race … the creatures that God made in His own image to be an expression of Him and to live in a love relationship with Him.

When the devil succeeded in leading them into disobeying God and their relationship with God was broken, and those people that were meant to live forever became mortal beings, then he became ‘the prince of the world’ – if you like … of society … of the human race. Not by right, but because he usurped God's place by getting them to obey him instead of God.

So when Jesus particularly … when He talked about ‘the prince of this world’ concerning the devil, then He's talking about this … this evil being who actually rules the world of humankind. Except for those people who choose to respond to God and come into relationship with God.

[03:50]

We read in the Gospels that Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. And the greatest work – the greatest success – the devil ever had was to bring down the human race in the form of Adam and Eve … to bring them down. And from then on, he ruled the human race. And by and large, he does today. 

Except for those people who choose to live in relationship with God. 

Because the fact that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and the fact that He succeeded in doing that, means that there's only one thing that prevents that being effective in any human being's life. And that is whether that person exercises the God given gift of a free will and turns to God. 

When you turn to God, you turn away from the devil and all his works. But when you do that, you also become a target of the devil. 

Now I'm not saying that to scare you, but I'm telling you because it's true.

[05:05] 

Peter the Apostle wrote in the Bible that we should be careful, we should be vigilant. Because our enemy, the devil, goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Just like a ravenous lion goes around looking for prey.

When you are one of God's people, you will be one of his prey. He will seek to devour you. He will seek to destroy you. But I do not say this to make you afraid, because when Jesus died on the cross, He defeated death. He defeated hell. He defeated the devil by His death and by His resurrection. If he had not risen from the dead, that couldn't have happened. He has broken the power of the devil for those who believe in Jesus and come to Him and yield their lives to Him.

[06:06] 

But even at the beginning of His ministry, when Jesus was 30 years old – after His amazing, miraculous birth and living an apparently very normal life for 30 years in Nazareth – and Jesus then knew that it was time for Him to be revealed to the world.

So, Jesus left the safety, security, the known situation, and stepped out to fulfill the reason why He even came into this world. And one of the first things He did – in fact the first major step – was that He went to the River Jordan where his cousin, John the Baptist, was baptizing people. 

John the Baptist, who said that he had come to prepare the way for the one who was to come after him, and that was Jesus. 

John the Baptist came to preach to people about the sin in their lives, to give them an opportunity to be baptized, to repent of their sins. That was to prepare them to receive Jesus for who He was.

And then here's all these people lining up to be baptized … to face and repent of their sins. And then along comes Jesus that we know was the only person who ever lived without sinning once. But to all appearances, He was just another man … another man even in that crowd. But when He came to John to be baptized, John knew who he was. 

And I don't think it was just because he was. Jesus was his cousin. He knew who He was, just as John himself knew that the reason why he'd been born was to be the one who would prepare the way for Jesus.

And at first, when Jesus came to him to be baptized, John said, “Hey, you know, I shouldn't be baptizing you. You should be baptizing me! But Jesus said, “Yep, I know, but this needs to be the way it's going to be now.” So John baptized Jesus.

And as Jesus was coming up out of the water, God's Spirit appeared in the form of a dove. And then the voice of God spoke and said: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” So, there was no doubt about who this was that was being baptized.

[08:36] 

But what was the next thing that happened? The next thing that happened … we read that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit – by God's Spirit – into the wilderness. For what reason? He was led into the wilderness to be tempted … or, if you like, to be tested by the devil.

It's a scary thing. Imagine, imagine, for Him. This is the Son of God, the sinless Son of God. And He knows that the Spirit of God who is in Him, is leading Him to go into the wilderness … into the desert.

And then God leaves Him there. God His Father leaves Him – there not alone, but apparently at the mercy of the most vicious enemy, who has one purpose: to bring Jesus down, just like he brought Adam down.

And if you read about it in the Gospels, the way that the devil tried one temptation after another. Tried to find a way to bring Jesus down. And at every point, he was frustrated. 

But I want to say this to you, particularly if you are a Christian that knows your Bible. Be very careful that you don't for a minute think that it was not possible for Jesus to be brought down by Satan! At that point, just as the devil brought Adam and Eve down, he was capable of bringing Jesus down.

And that's why, like, the devil is too smart to think otherwise. He knew that this was not a charade. He wasn't going through the motions. He knew that he had every chance, and the possibility was always there.

[10:33] 

If Jesus had not been able to sin, then Him coming in your place and my place to bring us back to God would have been a charade, because it couldn't have happened. It would have been like, of course, what's the point? How can he substitute for me if he's not capable of sinning? The only reason Jesus didn't sin was because he chose not to.

I believe the devil really believed he had a good chance. He was not kidding when he saw Jesus as someone that could very well be brought down. But the fact that he didn't allow for one thing, that Jesus – right from the beginning – had one focus and that was to do the will of His Father. He chose to live for His Father, not for Himself. The devil can't relate to that because the devil is the opposite of that. 

For the devil, everything is for himself. He hates God.

[11:39] 

So the devil failed to break Jesus, to bring Him down, to get Jesus to sin, to get Jesus to disobey His Father, God.

Now, if you know about what happened in the desert – Jesus was fasting for 40 days, and He was in the most weakened state when the devil tempted Him. But as soon as He passed that – the most gruelling test … I can't even imagine what it was like for Him. Then not only did angels come then and minister to Him, but we read that just as He had been led into the desert by God's Spirit, He came out of the desert “in the power of the Spirit”. And then He was ready to set people free from the power of the devil.

He had to be tested.

You should never be surprised. The more passionate you are – the more determined you are – you should never be surprised at what the devil might throw at you. But you must never take your eyes off God and look at the devil.

As a young Christian, I remember it was the … you know, there's a bit of a joke that people would say about, “Oh, the devil made me do it”.

But as a young Christian, I was very aware of myself and other Christians always pointing to the devil and saying, “Oh, the devil was behind that,” and, “The devil made that happen”. Not because he may or may not have, but the way we defeat the devil is the way that Jesus defeated the devil. And that is He never ever put his eyes on the devil. He never, ever, gave the devil credence. And the devil hates that, because the devil craves your attention! He craves the limelight because he's worth none of it!

All glory and all praise and honour belong to God!

[13:32] 

But there's one thing that I want to highlight to you here, because it's really a subtle thing – and that is: be very aware of compromise. And don't just be aware of it but beware of compromise! Because compromise is the devil's language, when he tempts you to compromise.

We live in a world, in a society, that is more and more turning its back on anything that is absolute. But God is absolute, and everything to do with God is absolute. And everything to do with God is right / wrong, sin / righteousness, true/ false, light / darkness. The absolutes are there because God is there.

In the world of humanity, where God has been pushed to one side – and in some places pushed right out of the way completely … Humanity, human beings, we don't like absolutes.

[14:49] 

There's something very attractive about compromise, where you can put two things together and say, “Well, maybe there's somewhere in the middle … we can kind of reach some kind of balance.” But not so in the kingdom of God.

You know that light and darkness can never live alongside one another.

The wonderful thing about it is that light always dispels darkness.

Darkness can never dispel light.

You walk into a darkened room and switch on the light and the darkness is immediately gone. You don't walk into a lighted room and switch on the darkness. It just doesn't happen!

And that might sound a bit ridiculous, a bit simplistic, but really we're talking about the same thing. We're talking about the fact that if you are one of God's people and you walk in the light with Him … and you Christians, if you walk in the light with one another, there's no darkness there. “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

[16:11] 

The safest place for you to live – in fact, the only place you should want to live – is in the light. What's that light? The light is the presence of God. Where God is, there is light. And that's the safest place for you to live.

Don't tolerate a life of compromise. Don't tolerate a life of shadows and grey areas. It's often very tempting to slip into some sort of grey area, despite what you kind of actually know in your heart. 

You know, when you belong to God and God's spirit is within you, He does convict you of sin. He convicts you of sin. He convicts you of righteousness. He convicts you of judgment. But he does not condemn you.

Conviction is God's Spirit saying, “You're not where you should be”. “You shouldn't be doing this”. “You shouldn't be doing that.” 

Whatever it is that He's convicting you of, He's pointing you to the difference between where you are now and where you should be … and showing you the way to get where you should be.

[17:30] 

That's different to what the devil will do, because the devil will always condemn you. When the devil has got you and he's got your attention, he will try and lead you into sin. And as soon as he gets you to sin – and what is sin? Sin is anything that's offensive to God and sin is what the Holy Spirit will be convicting you to avoid – And then when the devil can get you to sin, he will then condemn you and he will tell you you're a failure, you're a write-off, you've blown it now.

And on the other hand, there's the Holy Spirit saying, “This is the way. There's a way out of this. Now face what you've done. Face your sin. Face it before God. Repent of your sin.” 

Feel the godly sorrow that comes with repentance and God restores you, because Jesus died for that sin.

[18:31] 

So the worst place you can live as a Christian is in a world of compromise.

You – someone who has yielded their life to God … someone who believes in Jesus, the Son of God, who came and gave his life for you … someone who has God's Spirit within them – you have no need to ever live in any compromise. You will be tempted to compromise, but never, never live in compromise. 

It's written in the Bible that “…if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous..”. That's true, but also note that it doesn't say when we sin. It says if we sin. In other words, please never accept sin as inevitable. Just accept the fact (and I agree with you) it is always possible. Of course it's possible! If it wasn't possible – as with Jesus in the wilderness – if it wasn't possible, the devil would not waste his time tempting you! But it is not inevitable.

[19:42] 

I thank God that God has made the way for me to be forgiven – so that if I sin, I don't have to stay out of relationship with God into that place that I've put myself. 

But I also thank my God that He makes it possible because He has given me a new life … the new life that I hope He's already given you. If He hasn't, come to Him – because He wants to give you this life … this life that puts His life and His power within you, so that you need not sin.

That's a win win situation. You don't need to sin. But, when you belong to God, if you sin, He will forgive you if you face your sin. That's God's way of frustrating the devil for the span of your life.

The day is coming when the devil's reign in this world … when the prince of this world is going to be brought down and he's going to be destroyed. But Jesus came to destroy his works. In the meantime,

never ever let the devil deceive you. And don't be deceived that it is inevitable that you're going to be at his mercy. No, no, no!Don't even believe that it's inevitable that you will sin.

[21:08] 

Believe that you are a new creation in God. And never ever, ever, make the mistake of thinking that it's even possible for you as a child of God … to live in the life that God has given you … and live a life of compromise at the same time. It's not intended to be so.

If you want to know God's will for your life, He will always make it clear. And if you want to do God's will, He will give you everything you need to do it.

All you have to do is be willing – and not just willing but desiring with all your heart to do God's will in the same way that Jesus did.