Satan - Thief Extraordinaire!

SATAN – THIEF EXTRAORDINAIRE!

Satan, that evil angel with the corrupt mind - is a thief! But he is not just a thief of your material goods; he wants souls! And he wants to steal them from God. While it is the will of the Father that all would be saved, the devil would have it that not a one be saved; so he does what he can to steal souls! Matt. 13:4, 19, Mark 4:4, 15, Luke 8:5, 12 is where Jesus tells the parable of the sower to illustrate how many people don’t absorb the word of God to the point of becoming believers. The devil snatches away those who don’t understand the word of God.

Paul warned of departure and doubt in Heb. 3:12-15, using Israel’s experience. The devil wants you to lose your faith in God. He wants you to doubt, directly opposing Jesus’ instruction in the gospel not to doubt. The devil will use tricks on your mind to give you cause to doubt, and if he can blind you to the truth and lead you astray, then he has stolen your belief, giving you an evil heart of unbelief. If we have faith that He will help us in any needs we have, then our hope will not allow us to commit such an act of faithlessness. We are warned of this work of Satan for a reason in Mark 16:14-16, wherein it is written that Jesus Himself said, “…He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Satan can steal our friends by the power of sin, and this is why we need to edify one another. James 1:12-15 has it that we are blessed if we can endure temptation. James goes further to say not to say that you’re tempted of God, because God cannot be tempted with evil; we are tempted by our own lusts.

2 Tim. 4:10 has Paul commenting that one of his friends, Demas, has forsaken him, having loved this present world, and departed from him. The pleasures of the world are carnal, and at odds with God. 1 John 2:15 explains. It says that if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Satan is in charge of the world, and if one loves what is of Satan, who is God’s enemy, then one is at enmity with God.

Worldliness causes the practice of sin. James 4:1-8 has something of an explanation of this. It starts about where wars come from, but not always meaning over land and property and one of the opposite sex, but also a war to be spiritual instead of carnal, as Paul also alludes to in Rom. 7:23, & Gal. 5:17. When we war with our carnal selves and lose, it is an act of unfaithfulness, and this is where Paul is coming from when James calls his readers adulterers and adulteresses. When he says a person makes themselves a friend of the world, he means that they have gone awhoring after a friendship with the world, thus they have in effect given themselves separation from God. Jesus also spoke of this to His apostles in John 15:19, wherein He said, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Because the apostles were joined to God in a relationship, they were hated by the world. So the consequences of being a friend of the world, being in practice of sinfulness, puts us at enmity with God. Now in order to repair our condition of enmity with God, we are advised to submit ourselves to God, obeying His commandments and statutes. We need resist the devil, and he will flee from us; for greater is He that is in us than is in the world! Amen! Make that decisive break with the old life! Be clothed with humility, and God will exalt you. Do not give place to the devil (Eph. 4:27); in other words, don’t give him an opportunity. And how are you to protect yourself from the devil? Eph. 6:11-18 has the answer, and verse 18 means that we should pray fervently and persistently for one another, because we are all prey of the devil. If he attacks you with a temptation in your mind, tell him to go away in Jesus’ name! Don’t take him on alone. Jesus told him to “…get behind Me, Satan…”

Satan also tries to steal you from God by devotional failure. Perhaps that was what David was concerned about when he wrote in Ps. 119:10-11, “With my whole heart have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” We seek the Lord by reading what He says in the bible. David seemed concerned in this passage that he might wander away from His commandments and into sin. He seems to be saying his acquiring of the Word in his memory will keep him clean from sin, because if David keeps the word of God, how can he sin? Don’t want to be stolen by devotional failure to God! Heb. 10:25-27 has it another way. The unforgivable sin is rejection of Christ’s death for sin, because how else do you get to the Father? Stopping going to church is devotional failure, in that we stop glorifying God in the assembly of the faithful, and being alone at home, or even with our family, how do we edify each other in the Word if we are not joined with other Christians in the study of the bible? And how do we pay God His rightful tithes, and avoid being God robbers, as is written in Mal. 3:8-10? And if we are on death’s door, and have failed in devotion to Him, does one not believe in the everlasting furious fire of hell? Let not Satan steal your salvation in this way, either!

Another failure is called domestic failure, by which I mean, not teaching your family to serve God the Almighty, and remember that you lead by example. If you don’t go to church, why should the rest of your family? And in doing so, you’re not teaching them respect for the Lord. Now in Josh. 24:15 it is written, “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, In whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” By saying this, Joshua is asserting that he will cause his family to serve the Lord. Now he causes this to happen by going to the tabernacle (church) and worshipping God, and reading His word, which at that time was the Pentateuch. “On the other side of the flood” means all those who served not God save Noah and his family of seven. From father to son to grandson, none taught their descendants to fear and respect God, and they were washed away in the flood, save only Noah and his family. So we have a responsibility to teach our children and spouse to be devoted to God, lest Satan steal our family from their eternal life with Christ in heaven.

2 Tim. 3:1-5 tells of the peril of apostasy, or dedicational failure to God. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” “What last days is Paul talking about?” Man has been like this since Adam’s children, when Cain slew Abel; This should mean from since Paul wrote this letter to Timothy until Christ comes again, although thanks to multiple forms of media such as television and the internet and radio, we seem to feel this abounds now more than at any other time in history. There are more human beings in the world now than there ever were, and so all this evil seems greater because there are more men and women to perpetrate all the evil attributes Paul mentions. Some of these types of evil characteristics of people need better clarification. For lovers of their own selves, see Phil. 2:21, where it explains they love themselves more than Christ. Covetous means as in 2 Pet. 2:3, and Peter has a fearful condemnation of those who practice this personal trait. Boasters means those who speak great swelling words, such as in Jude 16. The proud can be found in 1 Tim. 6:4, including teachers of heresy. Blasphemers refers to those who make shipwreck of their faith, such as are in 1 Tim. 1:19-20, and Paul seems to be saying that he ostracized Hymenaeus and Alexander from help or fellowship from the church. Perhaps they were the first excommunicated, and what a dreadful condition it seems they had imparted on them, because Paul says that he delivered them unto Satan. In this instance, Satan has stolen two souls. Disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, means just how you read it. All these things come with divine abandonment, as is explained in Rom. 1:24-32. Heady refers to being reckless in what they’re doing. Lastly, we were all made in the image of God, but not behaving so are those who demonstrate these characteristics.

Lastly, look in Matt. 24:11-12 to find the other way Satan steals souls; when one is overcome with that “don’t care” attitude. “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” Jesus warned of the false prophets, as ravening wolves, in Matt. 7:15 earlier, and as grievous wolves in Acts 20:29-30, to draw people away from the true word. Paul, too, warned of deception by these false teachers in 1 Tim. 4:1, those that would teach that Christ has already come, and Paul warned that these heresies were inspired by demons. Because so much deception and wickedness abounds in the church is not an excuse for not going anymore at all, but it is justification for not going to that church (2 Tim. 3:5)!

So indeed, the devil is as a roaring lion, devouring all whom he can. Thank God that Jesus said of His sheep, “…and no man can pluck them from My hand…”!