"SATAN HATES YOU AND HAS A TERRIBLE PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE"
Revelation 12:7-12
Introduction:
In the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford portrays Explorer/Archeologist/Adventurer Indiana Jones. The movie records the fictional tale of Indiana Jones’ search for the lost Ark of the Israelites. The story takes place primarily in Egypt during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Jones and his party believe they have discovered the location of the Ark in an Egyptian tomb. As they remove a stone plate covering the tomb the sunlight exposes the perception that the floor is moving. Jones throws a torch down and discovers, "Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? I hate snakes."
If there is one of God’s creations that has caused me personal fear it is snakes. I am not sure why I have been so afraid of snakes. As a boy I played in creeks and ponds and have seen my share of water moccasins, black snakes, chicken snakes, green snakes, king snakes, copperheads & rattlesnakes. I only was close to being bitten once but other than that I have never been threatened.
Put me in the woods in the dark and I get sweaty. When I am stressed I have imagined snakes in my bed and falling out of the ceiling fan. Now I realize that snakes are a display of the creation of God but it is just hard for me to have the same affection for a copperhead as I do for a kitten.
Like it or not, the snake has never had a very positive reputation. I am sure that this has something to do with the biblical record’s use of the term serpent to refer to our enemy as a believer—Satan. In our text this morning John refers to the devil and Satan as the "serpent of old." He reminds these Christians that they are in a spiritual war with an enemy who desires not merely to make them uncomfortable and their life unpleasant. His desire is to cripple and destroy believers and their witness for Jesus Christ. The truth is Satan hates you and has a terrible plan for your life. He is an enemy who actively seeks to destroy us. The good news is, as we will see this morning, that in Christ we have the power to repel his assaults until his final defeat!
Before we dig in this morning I want to review very briefly just who the Bible says Satan is. Unfortunately, just as the Bible nowhere presents an argument for the existence of God, it nowhere gives us an obvious explanation of who Satan is or where he came from. Jesus’ reference to "the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), John’s account of the war in heaven between Michael and his angels and "the dragon and his angels" (Rev. 12:7), and the possible reference to him in Ezekiel 28:14 as a "guardian cherub" have led many to the conclusion that he was a high-ranking angel who rebelled against God and led a group of the angels to follow him in rebellion.
Paul tells us that the coming of the lawless one at the end of this age "will be in accordance with the work of Satan." This imposter under Satan’s control "will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple…proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thes. 2:4; 2 Thes. 2:9). Satan was acting out this ambition to be God when he tempted our Lord to fall down and worship him in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world (Matt. 4:8-9).
We know that Satan will never achieve his goal of being like God, and he knows it. Revelation 12 describes a vanquished Satan and his angels at some point in God’s plan. It tells us, though, that regardless of when this occurs Satan knows that he has a limited time to pursue his diabolical purposes (Rev. 12:12). Yet spiritual warfare is a fact of life as long as this enemy is still loose on the earth and the final victory of the Kingdom of God is in the future. For His own purpose God allows Satan to retain his power and operate as a part of this world. Yet God’s sovereignty over the world is not in question. God is able to use the work even of this enemy to accomplish His own purposes—to make us stronger rather than weaker.
The bottom line is that Satan is a powerful angel who rebelled against God and now sees God and God’s children as his special enemies. The other angels who went along with the rebellion are what we now call demons (Jude 6).
How do we as believers encounter Satan and his temptation in our lives? I want to give you three ways that I find true in my own life.
I. One way I encounter the serpent Satan is when I forget that his key weapon is deception.
(Rev. 12:9)
John says that "the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world." The very first story we have of Satan as the serpent is found in Genesis 3 (Gen. 3:1-7). There he deceives Even into rebelling against God’s commands. Jesus would hear the taunts of Satan in the wilderness as he tried to deceive Him to avoid God’s purpose for His life (Luke 4:1-13). Jesus would say with authority "For you are the children of your father the Devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning and has always hated the truth. There is no truth in him. When he lied, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44). Paul would say about Satan: "Even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14). Satan is the master of disguise and deception and to our own destruction we forget that.
Melissa and Robert Alton live in Carlyle, Illinois. They have a hobby that, as weird as it may seem, is very popular: They have pythons as pets. Sometime a few years ago the police were called to their home to help apprehend a python that escaped from its cage. Not quite getting the message, the Alton’s got another python that grew to a length of over seven and a half feet. Pythons that size feed on small mammals in the wild. In captivity they are fed on live rats, chickens and rabbits.
The Altons kept the African Rock Python in a homemade aquarium. They kept the aquarium in their house. The Alton’s had a three-year-old son Jesse. I say "had" because on August 29 while the family slept the snake escaped through a two-inch wide hole in the lid of the homemade aquarium and crushed their son Jesse to death. The judge cleared the Altons of child endangerment. The python expert said that python attacks on people are rare. It doesn’t change the fact that regardless of where you keep it or what you keep it in an African Pythons mature is to destroy its prey. There are some traits of animals that can’t be domesticated. If you sleep in the same house with a 7 ½ foot African Python, you can get killed.
You and I do the same thing with Satan and his temptations. We try to pretend that his schemes, ploys, deceptions and traps are for someone else but not us, that we can peacefully co-exist and not be harmed, and that evil really isn’t evil, it’s just misunderstood.
You are sleeping with a snake when:
The tools of Satan are lies, light and deception. We are foolish to think we can outsmart him when we so eagerly participate in his game. The question is what snake is sleeping in your house?
II. There are times when we put ourselves in Satan’s hands. Yet there are other times when we
are the innocent victim of one of his attacks. (Rev. 12:10)
John says that the key task of Satan is to point his finger at Christians in God’s presence and accuse us of sin and disobedience. It’s a picture of the enemy continually brining up accusation after accusation of which we may or may not be innocent in order to bring God’s judgment upon us. John says he does this "day and night." Peter will say in I Peter 5:8-9, "Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour. Take a firm stand attains him, and be strong in your faith."
What this tells us is that there is a need to be constantly alert to becoming a victim of Satan’s attacks. This isn’t a case where we deliberately put ourselves in his clutches, but it’s those sudden confrontations or temptations.
Angela and Terry Wiseman, along with their 11 year-old daughter Hannah and three-year-old son Benson, live in the north of Australia in a tropical area around Queensland. On March 26 the Wiseman’s were asleep in their small house when Hannah heard her brother Benson whimpering in his sleep. She reached under his covers to comfort him and felt something scaly and hard. She knew immediately it was a snake. It turned out to be an 11-foot scrub python, the biggest in Australia. The snake had half of little Benson’s arm down its throat. When Hannah screamed, the snake slithered away. Hannah’s Dad, Terry, pinned it to the wall of their home with a pick and knocked it unconscious with a piece of steel. Benson is going to be fine and the python was captured and destroyed.
As Christians we can forget not only that Satan is a deceiver, but also that we are also vulnerable to his attacks. It’s not as though we go looking for a fight. We are living life, serving God, being obedient when "bam!" We are victimized by his attacks.
None of us can live life without being tempted or attacked by Satan. It’s not the temptation or the attack that’s the problem; it’s forgetting we are vulnerable. Peter tells us to be alert and to resist him when he attacks. Don’t wait until he has you in his corner to remember he wants to ruin you!
III. There’s one more way that we encounter Satan, the serpent, and that is when we are being
faithful to the will of God. (Rev. 12:11)
John says that as believers we overcome Satan. Now the word for "overcome" is the word "nike," which means to conquer, prevail or come out victorious. Now what that tells you is that you do not overcome unless there is a battle. John reminds us that as believers who choose to obey God’s will that we will be opposed by Satan. That opposition occurs especially when we seek to claim for God’s kingdom a piece of Satan’s turf.
After Jesus sent out the seventy disciples in Luke 10, they returned with stories of their victories. They say in Luke 10:17, "Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!" "Yes," he told them, "I saw Satan falling from heaven as a flash of lightning! And I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you" (Luke 10:18-19). There are opportunities where we take the battle to the enemy rather than waiting to be attacked.
A cable TV show that I have become a fan of recently is The Crocodile Hunter. The Crocodile Hunter is a show that features the adventures of Steve Irwin and his wife Terri. Steve Irwin is the director of the Australian Zoo in Queensland. Steve and Terri are avid naturalists and preservationists who travel the world with the hyperactive Irwin relocating rogue crocs, chasing Gila monsters over rocks and picking rattlesnakes up by the tail.
This season’s first episode was titled "Africa’s Deadliest Snakes." It showed Irwin running around in the bush, turning over rocks and climbing trees to get his hands on the slithering critters. He grabs a snake called a boomslang, holds it about eight inches from his face and says, "This is the notorious boomslang. He’s a diurnal predator. Huge rear fangs. People who get bitten by them start bleeding from the eyes! Right in the corner of the eyes! And the nose. Internal bleeding is one of the ways you die from this snake."
It’s a hoot to watch Irwin not wait until the snake finds him but to go find the most deadly snake he can!
As believers we are challenged to take the fight to the enemy’s turf. Far too often we are in the defensive mode rather than offensive. There are countless places where as Christians we should aggressively combat the lostness of our world as well as the evil around us.
How do we survive when we take the battle to the enemy? John says in Rev. 12:11, "And they have defeated him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of their testimony. And they were not afraid to die." We do it by the power of our Savior’s blood, the truth of the Gospel story and the willingness to sacrifice any and all for the person of Jesus Christ. Taking the battle to the enemy will mean war but it’s a war we have already won!
Conclusion: What do these snake stories and their comparison to Satan have to teach us?
When we lived in Lewisville, Arkansas, our house was near a heavily wooded area. Our neighbor across the street, Mrs. Moore, called me from my yard to hers to look at something. Crossing the street I could hear some rustling at the base of a large bush. Looking closely, I saw something I never witnessed before. What I saw was a King snake that had in its mouth the head of a Copperhead and its body coiled around the Copperhead. Over the next couple of hours that King snake gradually swallowed that Copperhead. It took a long time but once he had the head the battle was over.
My friends, when it comes to Satan because of the Cross of Jesus Christ, you and I have the victory. We are no longer helpless victims but victorious soldiers of faith. The writer of Genesis records God’s curse upon Satan and his ultimate defeat by Jesus. "He (Jesus) will crush your head, and you will strike His heel." Once he had the head the battle was over!
Sunday, April 30, 2000
Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor
First Baptist Church
Jonesboro, Arkansas