Matthew chapter four, verses one through 10. This is God's word. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry. And the tempter came to him and said to him, if you are the son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Then the devil took him into the holy city and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you. And on their hands, they will bear you up so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, on the other hand, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these things I will give you if you fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, go Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Thus ends the reading of God's Word. And then one more passage, Genesis chapter three, just the first four verses of Genesis three, and then just leave your finger there in Genesis three. Genesis three, verses one through four. Genesis three, one through four, this is God's Word. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. The serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die. May God bless the reading of this holy word, let's pray. Father, we pray that you would bless us and help us to understand one of our enemies that we have in this world, the devil and demonic forces. Help us to understand the true nature of spiritual warfare. It's a battle for truth, not territory. Help us to see that clearly here and to understand this one of our enemies, the devil and his ways, his subtleties, his craftiness. And we pray that you would equip us to recognize him and his work in this world so that we might do battle against it with the truth. We ask in Jesus's name. Amen. If we would conduct spiritual warfare biblically and not according to modern fads and trends and sensationalist documentaries like Come Out in Jesus's Name, which is on Amazon Prime, I still haven't rented it. I'm not sure if I can stomach it. We've got to know our enemies. But notice I said we have to know our enemies, plural. And by that, I don't mean merely Satan and demons. Our enemies are threefold in the world. The world itself, our sinful flesh, and the devil. The world, the flesh, and the devil. And we're gonna look at each one of those enemies, but I wanted to cover the devil first because so much of what is believed about him and demons these days is false. He is one enemy, but the devil and demons are not our most powerful enemy. The fact is our own sinful hearts and our personal struggle with evil desires will in fact consume most of the battle that we face in this world. Our biggest enemy is ourselves, is our own sinful hearts that often lead us astray. The devil and demons are definitely an enemy, but not our biggest threat or our most powerful enemy. The other one that we're gonna talk about is the world or worldliness. That is a sinful enemy that we face, that the scriptures tell us to watch out for. Watch out for the world. Do not love the world, we're told, or the things in it. What does the scripture mean by this? It means an ungodly way of thinking. We're always going to fight worldliness in that sense. There's a seductive attitude of our society and culture that seeks to make us think according to its pattern rather than according to God's word. And I really believe that what is portrayed in media, in movies, internet shows, and series that we often like to watch, novels that we read, books that we like to read, and pretty much all forms of entertainment bombard us constantly with this worldliness. How do they do it? They do it this way, listen closely to me. They do it by telling their stories, telling their jokes, presenting their interesting characters that we can identify with a little bit, who all live their lives and do their thing in the world without even a single word or a single thought about God, about sin, about Christ, about salvation. All the stories are told as if none of those things matter. None of those things are real. Everyone who dies in the movies and in the books that we read and the stuff that we see that's produced by the world, everyone that dies goes to this strange, nebulous, better place. Or they're absorbed into the force in Star Wars. Or they become ghosts who wander around the Earth watching over us and spend all of eternity doing what they dreamed of doing in this life, but were never able to. I remember as a teenager watching the movie Field of Dreams. And apparently baseball players, when they die, no matter how they lived, they just play baseball in Iowa cornfields forever after that. All of that is worldly. What is the truth of the matter? It is appointed to man to die once and after this to face judgment. So no matter how many tear-jerking documentaries there are and how many emotional stories there are, that's still the truth. Jesus told that parable in Luke 16, the rich man and Lazarus. He says, so it was the beggar, the beggar that died and was carried by angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried and being in torments in Hades. He lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And then he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. Dear congregation, you will never hear that from the world. Never. We see, we read, we hear, we listen to so much stuff that leaves out the most important things that a human being can talk about or ever think about. That's worldliness. That's purposeful. The day of judgment is the thing nobody wants to think about. A desire to be rid of that has no bearing on its reality. Jesus' words in that parable, they're ominous, they're soul-stirring to consider. He goes on in that parable to say, in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this between us, there is between you and him a great gulf fixed so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us. That's what people leave out of worldly discourse. That's what's left out of the movies, left out of music, left out of the dramas, the TV series, the fantasy world. When you die, you go either to a place of ultimate blessedness or a place of unutterable woe. The worldly way of thinking around you pushes that far out of sight, far away. More on that later. Who is the devil? That's what I want to talk to you about this evening. Who is the devil? I'd like to discuss him and his work in this world by looking at those two passages that we just read. But before we walk through them, we need to discuss what little we do know about his origin and how he came to be evil. We know God did not create demons. He did not create the devil as an evil angel. Everything that God created was good, including the angelic hosts, and Lucifer, or Satan, was at one time a glorious, righteous being who rebelled and fell, just like man was a righteous and upright creature who rebelled and fell. Now, while many theologians and Bible commentators do not look at Isaiah 14, 12 to 14, or Ezekiel 28, 12 to 15, as referring explicitly to the fall of Satan, since the passages say explicitly that they're about the king of Babylon and the king of Tyre, I do think that these passages probably are, at least secondarily, about the fall of Satan. I think that a lot of Bible commentators leave some things out here, are missing some things. What is said in each passage goes far beyond anything that could describe just a mere earthly ruler. So I want you to look at these two passages real quick before we dig into the two I read. Look at Isaiah 14 verses 12 through 14. Turn in your Bible to Isaiah 14, 12 to 14. Isaiah 14, 12 through 14. Isaiah 14, 12 to 14, listen to God's word here. How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, sun of the dawn. You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations. But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. And I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. Now that definitely is about the King of Babylon, but I do think the star of the morning, that could be a reference to the devil. And one other passage, Ezekiel 28, turn to that one, please. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, one of the major prophets, Ezekiel 28, 12. Ezekiel 28, 12. Now in Ezekiel 28, I do think the first part of that passage, without a doubt, is just about the King of Tyre, but this section seems to go a bit beyond him. Look at verse 12. Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, thus says the Lord God, you had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and beauty, and perfection and beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, the ruby, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the lapis lazuli, the turquoise, and the emerald, and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets was in you. On the day that you were created, they were prepared. You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until righteousness was found in you. Now, I think that there's definitely something, too, that this may very well be about the devil. It says, you were in Eden, the garden of God. I mean, it could be an expression of pride on the part of the king of Tyre to say, I was in Eden, the garden of God, but I've never heard anyone express pride that way. I was in Eden, the garden of God. So Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 are passages that people look to about the fall of Satan. But I want to tell you, It's important for us to understand, it's far more important for us to understand the works of Satan than the exact circumstances of his fall. We do know that he fell and that he is evil, that he is dead set opposed to God and that he hates humanity and hates the church and hates the truth. So we need to focus on the works of Satan. What is his goal in the world? Satan's goal is to dishonor God by destroying God's images in man. and to harass his blood-purchased church in this world. That's what Satan is all about. 1 Peter 5.8 says he prowls around looking for somebody to devour. His target is primarily humanity, his people, and especially the church. Satan hates humanity because we are God's images. Destroying us, deceiving us, murdering us, that's the only way that the devil can express his hatred against the holiness and supremacy of God himself. So what does he do? How do we know when we see the work of the devil in the world? The devil is a plotter. He is a schemer. He's very cunning. He lies. He engages in subtleties of speech. He murders. Jesus said in John 8, 44, John 8, 44 is a key passage about who the devil is and what he does. Jesus said he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies. So lying and murder, that's what the devil is all about. And what are his methods? What are his tricks or his devices? Paul said that we don't want to be ignorant of his devices and we're gonna see them on display in these two passages. Look at Genesis 3. Hopefully you're still sitting there in Genesis 3, verse 1. A lot to be seen here in the opening four verses. There's a lot more in this passage, but we're just going to get through the first four verses. Look at verse 1a, the first half of verse 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." Okay, stop there. The Hebrew word there that's translated as more crafty is the word arum in Hebrew, arum. And it simply means cunning, crafty. And that Hebrew word is also used by our Lord to describe the disposition that we need to have in facing the plots of the world around us. That we need to be as cunning as serpents. We need to be as crafty as serpents, says Jesus. And the Greek translation of the Old Testament translates that Hebrew word with the Greek term, phronomos, which means cunning, crafty. We need to be that way ourselves so that we can stay ahead of the devil. We need to be as cunning as the devil, as cunning as a serpent, we're told, smarter than he is, ahead of his tricks, ahead of the games that he plays. We have to know them so that we are not tricked by them. And I want to tell you, with 2,000 years of history behind us, you're not gonna see any new tricks. Everything being said today was said 100 years ago and 100 years before that and 100 years before that. Every kind of false doctrine you're hearing now, we've heard it all before. There is nothing new under the sun. We've got to know these things. Remember the book of Nehemiah? Nehemiah did not end up murdered and he did not end up tangled up sitting at negotiation tables with his enemies. Why? He was as cunning as a serpent. He understood his enemies. He was smarter than them. He understood their plots and their schemes. He out thought them. He stayed ahead of them and their cunning plots, their schemes and their games. Nehemiah fell into none of his traps. And what was the end result? Nehemiah was faithful to the word of God. He didn't waste any time. He was faithful to his mission. They finished the wall quickly. They had a national worship service. The Bible was read. The people were given the sense and meaning of scripture and good teaching and instruction and a massive revival broke out. And I really believe one of the reasons that we are stuck in such dark times is we are not as cunning as serpents. We are unbelievably naive. We're too trusting. We're always looking for ways to keep the peace, keep unity. Folks, we're at war. We're at war with a very crafty enemy. who has agents that do his work, that push his subtleties of speech, that push his falsehoods. We need to understand those things. The enemies of God have infiltrated the church and are spreading doctrinal poison everywhere while the leaders are sleeping. When J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism, he said, let me explain the real problem here. The real problem is the Christian church in our day has allowed great companies of unbelievers into its ranks and even into its pulpits. They're not even Christians. He was, that's why he wrote Christianity and liberalism. He was saying, liberalism is not just, you know, a different point of view. It's not the Christian religion at all. And we've allowed these people to be teaching in our seminaries and teaching in pulpits and pushing this stuff. The serpents and his agents in the world are more crafty. That word arum in Hebrew, that translated into Greek as phronomos, Jesus used it. You've got to be equally cunning. You've got to be equally crafty. You've got to think dark. You've got to understand your enemy and his ways in the world. Satan was able to trick and deceive an unfallen woman. Look at the second half of verse one. Look at how he does this, incredibly subtle. And he said to the woman, indeed, has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? What's the right answer to that? What should he have said? No. And that's the end of the conversation. Did God really say this? No, he didn't. End of conversation. What a crafty way of putting that. What did God actually say? Adam either didn't report it to Eve correctly, because she didn't even exist yet. She hadn't been created when God gave the covenant of works to Adam. He didn't report it to her accurately, or he did and she forgot about it. Look back at Genesis 2.16. You see it? Genesis 2.16. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. Look at Satan's representation of what God said right next to what God actually said. Satan asks if God said there in verse 1b, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. But what did God actually say in verse 16? From any tree of the garden, you may freely eat. What does Satan emphasize in his cunning representation of God's words here? Look how restrictive God is. Eve, did he really tell you, you can't eat from any tree in the garden you want? But what did God say to them? He said, from any tree of the garden, you may freely eat, except that one. Satan emphasizes the restrictiveness. Look at how restrictive God is. If you eat from that one, you will surely die. You see how Satan portrays God? Does he still do that today? Do the devil and his agents try to make God seem more restrictive, more of a kill joy? Yes, of course. Christians know that God's laws are wonderful. They are the path that we run in so that we can glorify God and be happy in the world and have peace and joy and good relationships and be blessed and prosper and abundant in the world. That's where God's commandments take us. They're not restrictive. That's where there's freedom and there's joy. Satan presents them as to how they'll make sure no one ever has a good time. H.L. Mencken, H.L. Mencken was an atheist and a contemporary of J. Gresson Machen, a very interesting writer, very interesting social commentator, but he succumbed to the same deception that Eve succumbed to. He defined Puritanism, the atheist Mencken, not Machen, Mencken, it's weird how their names rhyme. He defined Puritanism as quote, the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy. And that caricature came from propaganda, not from reading the Puritans themselves. They were the happiest people who ever lived. They were into fashion. They were into wearing nice clothes. They were into good food and good chocolate and good wine. And they didn't dress the way that they're portrayed in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which I had to read in high school. Those are lies. Remember Satan's words here from Genesis 3.1. They'll help you listen to Satan's followers in your own lives, in your kids' lives, and in your grandkids' lives in the future. Satan makes God seem like a killjoy. He doesn't want you to have any fun. So as to provoke outrage that he would put any restrictions on us at all. But isn't it loving that God gives us restrictions? Isn't it good that he tells us not to sin, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covet, not to lie? Look at verse two. The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. Did God say they couldn't touch it? He didn't say that. If only Eve could have responded with what God actually said, she should have said, no, that's not what he said. He said, of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat, except that one. But Satan says, did God really say you can't eat from any tree that you want? But Eve gets the not eating from the tree, right? But she adds something to it. She says, or touch it. God didn't say that. God did not add that. God never said they couldn't touch it. But it seems like legalism was a tendency even before the fall happened. We must never add to or subtract from God's word. That's another ploy of the devil. But then Satan does what he always does. He just straight up lies to her. Look at verse four. Servant said to the woman, you surely will not die. Now there's a lot more to the passage, but Satan's lies to God's images, to humanity, to get them to believe and act on that which is false, is what we need to remember here. Deception is really the greatest enemy we have. Remember, spiritual warfare is not about me having power encounters with demons. It's not about me walking down the road and holding my hand up over an area and saying, I order all the demons to leave this area. That has nothing to do with God, nothing, nothing. It's about what's true versus what's false. And I want to tell you, if you think that spiritual warfare is about binding demons and throwing them out of buildings, you yourself have succumbed to demonic deception. Because you're not going to be effective at all. It's a truth war. It's a truth war. Deception is the greatest enemy we have in the church at any given moment. Why was Europe enslaved to the false theological system of the Roman state religion? Why were they enslaved to that? Deception. Deception. People believed their baptism, put them in a right relationship with God, and as long as they were, generally speaking, faithful, decent people, they'd go to heaven. I mean, if I was the devil himself, that's what I want everybody to believe. This ritual makes you right with God. It puts you in an objective covenant relationship with God. Just be a decent person. Don't kill anybody. Don't do anything really bad. And you're good to go. Yeah, you might get scrubbed down in purgatory for a while, but you're good to go. You're going to heaven. That's the devil's religion, folks. That's the devil's religion. Satan tells her, you won't surely die. He's a liar, he lies. Anyone who teaches justification by baptism, final salvation or future justification by works is also a liar. If people teach that and say, you will not surely die, no, no, no, you'll go to heaven. They're liars just like the devil himself is. You will die in your sins and spend eternity under the righteous condemnation of God. Lies about the gospel, about how sinners can be saved, are a specialty of the devil. In my short lifetime, I have been astonished at the number of books and scholarly tomes and treatises and distortions of the meanings of literally every word and phrase in the Bible related to how you go to heaven. There are tens of thousands of pages of books written by scholars about what the word justification really means, about what the word justified really means, about what works are, what works of law really means, about what the church is, about what it means to be saved, about what salvation is, about what the word gospel means. And every one of them, if you believe what those scholarly tomes are saying, you're lost. I used to think the Mormon religion was pretty bad when they used to do interviews with major news outlets like Newsweek Magazine and Time Magazine, and they would interview a member of the Mormon religion, and they would ask them doctrinal questions. They would ask this representative of Mormonism, do Mormons believe in the Trinity? And they would answer, yes, we do. We believe in God, the eternal father and his son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. And you've got to dig a little further to find out what do they mean by God, the eternal father? They're talking about a dude that lives in outer space, who's six feet tall, weighs 200 pounds and lives on a planet near a distant star called Kolob with his harem of wives. Is that what we mean? Is that what Christians mean by the Trinity? Do we believe Jesus is the offspring of a resurrected humanoid that lives in space with one of his harem of wives? Is that who Jesus is? Of course not. The redefinition of terms, the devil is a master redefiner of words. They believe the second born child of God, the father and his harem of wives was Lucifer who becomes the devil. So Jesus and Satan are just brothers. Do they really believe in the Trinity? No. When people say they believe we're justified by faith alone and they redefine faith in that phrase to mean our personal faithfulness to God, do they believe in justification by faith alone? No. When people redefine the phrase works of law to be referring only to ceremonial works and not the 10 commandments, do they really believe the biblical gospel? No. Dear congregation, Satan is a wordsmith. Satan plays with definitions. He plays word games. He does this because words and sentences are the conduits through which God communicates truth to man. And if he can get you to affirm words that are redefined, he can get you to be lost. And that's why catechesis and in-depth Bible study and theology is so important. Theology is life. This is why we study the history of heresy, and we study the history of theology, and we study the history of the devil's works in this world. Satan's tricks are effective, and they tend to work very well, but as I said, none of them are new. Satan is a redefiner of words. He is a master equivocator. Subtleties of speech are what he does. His servants in this world, most of whom, the majority of whom, the most effective ones are pastors, ministers, they do exactly the same thing. Constantly redefining words, massaging biblical concepts, equivocating on meanings so as to deceive the simple-minded. You need to know theology, you need to know it well. You need to know our catechisms, the scriptural proofs of those precious life-giving gospel truths. Truth is what sets us free. People are in bondage when they believe things that are false. What is the devil all about in this world? He's about lies. He's about false teaching. It's not about binding Satan and throwing them out of this building or that building. It's about what's true and what you believe. How are we transformed? How are we sanctified? By the renewing of our minds, by the way we think. No one has ever been saved by a false gospel. I wanna warn y'all about something. The devil is much more of a legalist than he is an antinomian. While antinomianism, you all know what that is, that's easy believism, it's the idea that you can walk the aisle, pray the magic prayer, and then live out of wedlock with someone for years and years and years, never crack open a Bible, never have any desire for discipleship or to follow Christ or to be part of God's church or want the Lord's supper, and you're good to go, you're going to heaven. That's what antinomianism is, that's easy believism, that's just as much of a false gospel as gospels of worse righteousness. but the devil is far more effective at being a legalist. He's far more effective at subtly adding things to Christ, subtly adding things to faith, changing the definition of faith to faithfulness or faith bears the fruit of good works and our good works are attached to faith or it's inside of our definition of faith. All of those kinds of things, those are the devil's works in this world. Subtle forms of legalism are the devil's masterpieces, the devil's masterpieces. Now turn to Matthew four, I want you to see this passage. We see a little bit different angle on the devil's work here. Matthew chapter four, this is a critical passage. a passage of God's word, because remember, after Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, what immediately happens? He's driven out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for 40 days. Look at verse one of Matthew four, one and two. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry. Now it's interesting, Satan here is called the tempter. Satan has had his watchful eye on the genealogy of Jesus for all of human history. And that's why there are rivers of innocent bloodshed all around the genealogical line to Jesus. Satan knew that one of these descendants would one day crush his head. He was there when God promised that to Eve and to Adam and to the serpent. He told him, well, the seed of the woman is gonna crush your head. And so Satan is following along there. And he tries his best to murder, to extinguish that line to Jesus, but he fails. But his hatred of humanity is the reason he works so hard to murder the seed of the woman. Remember the order when the Israelites were in captivity in Egypt to kill all the male children? That's the work of the devil. You see murder going on there. He's trying to stop the coming of Christ. Murder is what he does. He fails. Herod's order to exterminate all the male children that are two years old and younger in Bethlehem and all its surrounding districts, that's also satanically inspired to try to kill Jesus. That's the devil trying to stomp him out before he can come into the world and crush his head. He knows the Messiah is coming. He tries to prevent his birth. He fails. God incarnate now stands upon the earth. with his divine rescue mission in his heart. And that mission includes the destruction of Satan and the destruction of Satan's works in the world. So what's left for the devil to do? He wasn't able to stop him from coming into the world, but if he can get the last Adam to sin, just once the whole plan of redemption falls flat and the entire human race would die in its sins and join Satan in hell. He already knows he's lost. He already knows he's hell bound. Even the demons, when they saw Jesus, begged him not to torment them before the time. Isn't that soul-stirring? Have you come to torment us before the time? They know their time is coming. The devil and his fallen angels know it, but so reckless is their hatred of God and their hatred of humanity. They want to bring as many images of God to hell with them as they can. But if Jesus commits one act of treason, just like Adam did, Satan's works of destruction to humanity will prevail. Yes, he still loses ultimately, but all of God's images, all of humanity would be hell bound if he can just get the Son of God to sin once. And so he's called the tempter. He's gonna give it his best shot. I'm gonna try my best to trip him. And as always, when he stands against God's plan to save his people from their sins, praise God, Satan fails. Look at verses three and four. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Just like Israel was caught out of Egypt, so was Jesus. Just like Israel goes into the wilderness and is tempted for 40 years and fails, Jesus spends 40 days being tempted. Israel's first temptation was hunger, and they immediately grumble and complain, Jesus does not. Jesus is entirely reliant on his father to keep him alive and sustained in the face of piercing hunger. And he uses Deuteronomy 8, verse three to combat this temptation. And we need to be armed with scripture just like this in our own temptations. The first temptation, a very hungry Jesus says, no, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Look at verses five through seven. Then the devil took him into the holy city there in Jerusalem and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you and on their hands, they will bear you up so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. In verse seven, Jesus said to him, on the other hand, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And here Satan quotes Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12 and misinterprets it. Poetic books, like the Psalms, are often the private playgrounds of false teachers. So are parables. So is wisdom literature. Jesus, of course, was very good at the science of biblical interpretation, and he knew not to interpret such a passage in a literal, wooden sense, as if that means we can jump off of buildings or bridges and God will send angels to keep us from hitting the ground. So Satan pitches his second pitch down the pike there, strike two. Look at verses eight through 10. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all of these things I will give you if you fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, go Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. And here, the devil's telling Jesus, just forgo the cross and take the nations now. But Jesus knows He's got to die for them first. He's got to remove the judgment of God from them first. He's got to propitiate the wrath of God to purchase those nations. There's no way around the cross. It will be at the cross that the devil's grip on humanity will be shattered. Forgiveness and the imputed and meritorious righteousness of Jesus will be achieved and given to God's elect people as the gospel goes all the way around the world. Then the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever, Revelation 11, 15 says. So Satan tried his best. He tried his best to get Jesus to sin. He threw everything at him that he could have thrown at him when he was at his weakest, when he was his most hungry and his most vulnerable. Praise God, our Lord stood his ground, leaned upon his father and his father's word, the Bible, for everything and those temptations. Adam gave in to temptation while he was righteous, living in paradise, experiencing no pain and not being hungry at all. Jesus' circumstances are horrifying, and yet he maintains his righteousness in the face of all these temptations. Why? He loved his Father. He loved his church. He would not let either of them down. Not ever. So Satan failed to trick and to deceive Jesus into sinning. Jesus went to the cross, finished that great work, John, the apostle, wrote in 1 John 3, 8, the Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil, and he did so. So what's left for the devil to do now? What's left for him to do now? He's defeated, he knows it, tried to stop Jesus from coming into the world, he failed, tried to tempt him to sin, he failed. What's left for him to do now? Prevent people from hearing the true gospel. Tempt people to sin now. Destroy churches from the inside by false doctrine. Divide people by sowing discord. We've learned from these two passages about the primary works of the devil. He redefines words. He makes God seem restrictive. Remember those lessons. Satan likes to redefine key words and he likes to massage language. He is a wordsmith. When you see people being murdered, there is the work of the devil. The serpent was crafty, subtle, cunning in his approach. He's a smooth talker. He's a wordsmith. He redefines and massages language. The apostle Paul warned the church at Rome. At the very end of the book, he gives them a very clear warning, Romans 16, verses 17 and 18. Listen to the Holy Spirit. No, I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances, contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ, but of their own appetites. And by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. False doctrine that's smooth, that's flattering, that's made to sound good, made to sound biblical, using biblical terminology. Paul says that they say things that are contrary to what we taught you. Turn away from them. They're not serving our Lord. They're serving their own appetites. And by their smooth speeches and flattering words, they're deceiving the hearts of the unsuspecting. And Satan is still a tempter. Listen to two other passages. Paul says this clearly, 1 Corinthians 7, 5, to married people, stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Can Satan tempt us to be sexually immoral and impure? Apparently, apparently he can. We're told to watch out for it. 1 Thessalonians 3.5, for this reason, when I could no longer endure it, I also sent to find out about your faith for fear that the tempter might have tempted you, and our labor would be in vain. In other words, the tempter might have come and sown false doctrine that you believed, and then our labor was in vain. If you believe false doctrine, that means you were never saved to begin with. So the tempter can still tempt people. He still tempts us to false doctrine, still tempts us to sin, to be impure, to be immoral. And so that's what he does now. He lies, he plays word games, he tries to make false doctrines sound biblical and smooth, and he tempts people to sin, tempts them to be sexually immoral, tempts them to embrace falsehood. But as I said, Satan is not the only tempter. I think scripture teaches clearly our biggest problem is us. Listen to James 1.12, listen to the Holy Spirit. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. For once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone, but each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lust. Now, he could have said each one is tempted when they're carried away by the devil or by demons, but it's our own lust, our own hearts. That's where so much of the problem comes from. To summarize. Satan hates humanity. He hates the redeeming truth of God. He twists words to deceive and lie. Reflect on Genesis 3. And the serpent was more cunning. He was more arum, more crafty than any beast of the field. And he tries to make God sound more restricted. Did God really say you can't eat from any tree you want? When God's commandment was of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. But this one tree you can't eat. He hates humanity, he will lie outright. He tells Eve, you won't die. You will surely not die. What happened, they died. He tempts, if we would know our enemy, let us remember these terrible words that the scriptures tell us here, tell us about these works that he's constantly doing in the world, temptation and deception and lies. False doctrine is the primary arena that you see him operating in. He's the master redefiner of key biblical words and concepts. Many people don't know this about church history. I remember when I took church history in seminary and we studied the history of the Arian controversy over the deity of Christ. And the defenders of the full deity of Christ were really, really frustrated at this council, the council of Nicaea, because what they kept saying, the Arians who denied the deity of Christ and said Jesus was created, kept agreeing with them. They kept agreeing with them. They'd put a creed on the table. Jesus Christ is God in the full sense of the word. Oh yes, we believe that. We believe he's Jehovah. Oh yes we do, in a representative way. But we do believe that he is. No matter what they said, they kept affirming it. They kept saying they agreed with it. And the Christians knew they didn't. And you know what's interesting, Dr. James, Frank James, who taught church history to us, he said, to this day, we don't know for sure who suggested it. But somebody leaned in and said, see if they will affirm that God the Son is the same substance as God the Father. So they put that on the table and put it on the table and all the Aryans backed away from it. They wouldn't affirm it. And guess what word we use to this very day? That's the word that made the cockroaches go away. And so we still use it now. Jesus Christ is the same substance as God the Father. But you know what? They were always willing to affirm the words of scripture. Oh yes, we believe. We believe that Jesus is God. Oh yes, in the fullest sense. And they're just like, what can we say to make it clear to everyone that they really don't agree with us? Folks, those are the kinds of battles we have to fight. Satan doesn't follow any rules at all. He contradicts himself. He'll say he believes this. His agents will say, oh yes, we believe this. And then behind the scenes, they're subtly adding this out of the other thing. We've got to be as cunning as the devil himself to understand his ways. And we can praise God. We have a high priest who is tempted just like we are in every way yet without sin. We too have been tempted in all things, but we're very, very sinful. We often give into our temptations, either in our minds or in our own actions. And this is why we rest upon the finished work of Jesus Christ alone for our salvation. But folks, even that is a doctrine that is easily distorted. And we need to trust in His personal obedience to God, His cross as the sole basis of being right with God. And the lives that we live in obedience to Him, the lives of good works that we live, that is the fruit of our salvation, not the cause of it in any way, shape or form. Please keep that clean in your thinking. That's being distorted in every way in our time by the devil and his agents in this world. So please remember that. We rest on him. Praise God, we have a savior who never ever bowed to or was tricked by any of Satan's devices. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the finished work of our Lord. We thank you that you've shown us the way he operates, that he is a master redefiner of key words, that he lies and deceives and engages in subtleties of speech. He tempts to sin, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, Satan can tempt us to be sexually impure. And he can tempt us to false doctrine. Help us to stand our ground against him with the godly weapons of the truth that you've given to us to pull down those strongholds. Help us understand that's where the battle is. It's a truth war, not a battle over territory. I pray you'd help us to see that, in Jesus' name, amen.