Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
What it means to be initiated into the secret of the mystery. Part 59. How the ruler of the world deceives.
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Satan wants to set up principles that promote creatures getting credit.
Here is Satan with his own talent and own ability, which was God-given, trying to supersede God in function as well as in person.
There never was, there never will be a believer whoever earned or deserved anything from God.
Anything we are by way of success, any victory we have depends entirely on who and what God is, never on who and what we are.
1CO 4:7 For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?
We end up getting in God’s way - we start helping God and then He stops working.
He would like to have the attributes of God and the essence of God, but the very nature of his sin frustrated any possibility of him reproducing any part of the character of God.
Since he could not reproduce any part of the character of God and he still wanted it, the only thing he could do was to imitate or to counterfeit God.
Satan is not only the original conspirator, but he is also the original counterfeiter.
What makes Satan so mad today and frustrates him more than anything else and makes him grind his teeth is that any believer with a little bit of smarts and doctrine in the frontal lobe can do what Satan always wanted to do and never could, imitate God.
EPH 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;
GAL 4:19 My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you -
GAL 5:16 - humans can “walk by means of the Holy Spirit” - Satan cannot!
EPH 5:18 - humans can “be filled with the Spirit” - Satan cannot!
Outside of the gospel there is nothing that Satan hates as much as spirituality by grace.
The filling of the Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit and the character of God, and Satan with all of his activity and all of His work and his evil nature cannot produce it.
Satan promotes morality as spirituality because even he can be moral.
They will end up saying things like David did -
PSA 51:11 Do not cast me away from Thy presence, And do not take Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Rather than what the apostle Paul said -
EPH 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed until the day of redemption.
In spite of the universal impressions that Satan is unlike God, he is very much like God overtly.
It refers to God as the “possessor of heaven and earth,” GEN 14:18-19.
This does not mean to be like the character and nature of God, but it is a reference to the title “Most High”possessing heaven and earth, GEN 14:19, 22.
GEN 14:19 And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth;”
GEN 14:22 And Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have sworn to the Lord God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth,”
Satan is not only the original conspirator, but he is also the original counterfeiter.
The essential evil character of sin here, as everywhere, is an unwillingness on the part of the creature to abide in the precise position in which he has been placed by the Creator.
GEN 3:5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“The day of the Lord” can include the Rapture, the last half of the Tribulation, Second Advent, and Millennium, totaling 1007 years; also used for any portion of this period, ISA 2:12; ISA 13:6; Joel 1:15, 2:1; ZEC 14:1, 1TH 5:2; 2PE 3:10.
Apostasia = a departure, it could either refer to the departure from the faith or the departure of the saints, verse 1.
There was to be the manifestation of the man of sin or the lawless one, Rev 13.
Satan does not have the character nor the personality to control all types of creation even though he is called the ruler of the world.
Anyone who is going to run the universe has to be faithful and loyal to his creatures, to those who belong to him.
Like Satan, who has no sense of loyalty or love or faithfulness to any member of the human race, many members of the human race follow the same system of thinking.
He made a deal with Judas Iscariot and he actually indwelt Judas Iscariot.
MAT 27:5 And he threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself.
ACT 1:18 Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.
Sorcery - pharmakeia = medication, drugs, that which poisons the mind - Plato, Polybius, and others.
Satan wants glory but he does not have the ability to provide glory even for himself.
The kind of glory Satan wants is the glory of the person who controls the universe - and that type of glory comes through grace.
GEN 3:13 - The serpent deceived you and you ate.
PRO 4:24 Put away from you a deceitful mouth, And put devious lips far from you.
PRO 12:17 He who speaks truth tells what is right, But a false witness, deceit.
JER 9:8 “Their tongue is a deadly arrow; It speaks deceit; With his mouth one speaks peace to his neighbor, But inwardly he sets an ambush for him.”
EPH 4:14-15 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ,
1PE 2:22 who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth
When TLJC was on the earth Satan offered Him the kingdoms of the world and Jesus Christ turned him down flat.
When you start learning something about grace, you not only have a wall of fire around you from the grace of God, but you also have a wall of fire around your soul, Bible doctrine.