Satan's Strategies for Your Surrender
1 Thessalonians • Sermon • Submitted
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Prayer
Introduction
Introduction
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
If you are lost tonight, the devil hates you. Christ said that Satan is the spiritual father of the lost, but Satan does not love his children. He does not act according to love, but hate. He desires that you be condemned forever. I believe that this desire of his is motivated by two basic things. First, he hates mortals, because he is totally perverse and sinful, and cannot truly love anything. (1 John 4:8 — “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”) It is impossible for the devil to desire anything truly and eternally good. Second, he desires your condemnation because he hates God above all, and desires to thwart all of God’s purposes, including the rescue and redemption of your soul. You and I are the objects of God’s love, and Satan hates that! The devil desires to destroy us and bring God’s condemnation upon our own head.
If you’re saved tonight, the devil has failed in getting God to condemn you. Instead, you are God’s child! I believe this makes the saints even greater targets of Satan, and more hated and despised. All the vitriol of his being cannot dislodge you from God’s family, and so he is trying his hardest to cause you to go astray in this life. Your eternal home is settled, but your eternal rewards are not, and the effects of your life on others—especially on the lost—are still in progress. As long as Satan can negatively impact these things, he will persist in trying! We see his deadly persistence and consuming hatred in the fact that he accuses the brethren “before our God day and night.”
Of course, God doesn’t want us to be destroyed under the devil’s attacks. He warns us of this many times, but two particular verses come to my mind.
But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.
The saints must be sober in mind, watchful in attitude, and busy in prayer! In this verse, we see this important reason: the end of all things is at hand. The devil is working frantically to achieve victory. Of course, God is also working, and there isn’t much time left! We must be sober, watchful and praying, because at any moment we may be taken up to meet our Lord. We will be accountable for our life choices.
Peter exhorts sobriety and vigilance again, in chapter 5.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
We must be sober-minded, not only because Christ is coming back soon, but because the devil is tirelessly searching for saints to devour. He is constantly coming up with plans for your demise! How foolish it is for us to forget that and cease to be sober and vigilant. Tonight, from 1 Thessalonians, I want us to see the devil’s design for your destruction. He has many tactics he uses to attempt to defeat us, but we see some important and foundational ones in Paul’s epistle.
I. Our Defeat Can Only Come by Surrender
I. Our Defeat Can Only Come by Surrender
The child of God is already a victor, because of Christ.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Satan has already irreversibly lost the battle for your soul! And because of the Holy Spirit in the saints, Satan is at a fatal disadvantage.
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
Satan can do many things, but Satan cannot win the spiritual battle in your life; God won’t let him! However, Satan does try to convince the saints to surrender to him. But why would anyone surrender to the enemy, when the victory over the enemy is guaranteed? Satan’s only gamble is to try to convince the saints that either defeat is certain, or that victory is not worth the struggle.
In his remarkable allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, author John Bunyan records how Christian and his companion Hopeful wander off the King’s Highway, and into the territory of Giant Despair. They are discovered and caught by Despair, and are locked deep in his dungeon. They are given no food and water, and the giant visits them daily, and beats them mercilessly. Listen to this excerpt.
“So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them, that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison; for why, said he, should you choose to live, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness?”
“So when the morning was come, the giant goes to them again, and takes them into the castle-yard, and shows them [the bones and skulls of those that he had already dispatched.] These, said he, were pilgrims, as you are, once, and they trespassed on my grounds, as you have done; and when I thought fit I tore them in pieces; and so within ten days I will do you: get you down to your den again.”
The book records Christian’s and Hopeful’s conversations in the dungeon. They are in great suffering, and fearful of what Giant Despair threatens to do to them. Finally, we read this:
“Well, on Saturday, about midnight they began to pray, and continued in prayer till almost break of day. Now, a little before it was day, good Christian, as one half amazed, brake out into this passionate speech: What a fool, quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle. Then said Hopeful, That is good news; good brother, pluck it out of thy bosom, and try.”
When Christian uses the key of Promise, it opens every lock in Doubting Castle! He and Hopeful walk out, free, and resume their journey along the King’s Highway. This is an entirely accurate picture of the devil’s power over the child of God. He can bring suffering into your life, but he cannot bring defeat! He cannot overpower you! As Job’s example shows us, God moderates everything the devil is allowed to do. He cannot overpower us; his only hope is to get us to surrender. And that is what he was trying to accomplish in the church in Thessalonica.
II. Satan’s External Afflictions
II. Satan’s External Afflictions
Last week we looked at some of Satan’s methods of spiritual battle from 1 Thessalonians 2, and we saw how their very nature identify them as Satan’s, and not God’s.
Satan afflicts the saints, to try to convince us that living for Christ isn’t worth it
God’s chastening/purging brings joy and greater fruit. Satan intends to bring despair.
Satan turns our countrymen, friends and family against us
Christ endured this affliction as well!
Satan threatens us with great loss—finances, health, reputation, and even our lives
Satan’s servants are wicked men, who please not God
Satan’s servants are proud and selfish men, who are themselves contrary to all men
Satan hinders the preaching of the Gospel
Satan attempts to bring God’s judgment on the saints
Satan hinders God’s servants
All these identifiers help us to KNOW that it is Satan at work, not God. Are these things happening in your life? Then you can be sure that God is not bringing those things into your life. He does not oppose His own purposes. He may oppose our purposes, but it is Satan that opposes God’s purposes.
All of these Satanic methods are external to us. They attack us from without. Sometimes the attack is sudden and violent—it comes like a clap of thunder, deafening and intimidating us, and then is gone. Sometimes Satan’s attacks are like a dull roar—constant and unrelenting, but less violent. We may be cowed by the violent attack, and we may be ground down and worn out by the unceasing attacks. In either case, we will only lose if we surrender, because greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world! Don’t look at the storm, Christian! Look to the Lord!
III. Satan’s Internal Afflictions
III. Satan’s Internal Afflictions
In 1 Thessalonians 3, we see a different sort of afflictions that Paul was concerned about, and that the Thessalonians likely experienced. Satan was working to keep Paul from returning to Thessalonica, as we read in 1 Thess. 2:18.
Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.
Why did Satan hinder Paul? Chapter 3 gives us some clues. While Satan is happy to
A. Satan wants you weak
A. Satan wants you weak
Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone; And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:
“To establish you...”
Establish: to strengthen; to make fixed; to make steadfast.
Satan is worried that the saints will become steadfast in walking with God!
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
When do you fall to temptation? When you are spiritually weak. When do you snap at your spouse or your neighbor? When you are not walking with God. When do you get your life’s priorities out of balance? When you are not spiritually strong. Satan wants you weak, and Paul’s desire was to strengthen the Thessalonians.
B. Satan wants you isolated
B. Satan wants you isolated
And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:
“To comfort you concerning your faith...”
Comfort: to beseech; to exhort; to intreat.
These things can only be done when at least two people are together! And so Satan wants us to be isolated. He wants us to feel that no one understands, and that no one can help. He wants to us to think that no one cares. He wants us to think that we are a special case, and that even God can’t do much for us. He wants us to indulge in self-pity. All this isolates us from each other, and from the Lord. We are not going to seek the Lord when we feel deserted by Him! We are not going to pursue after God when we feel like we’re beyond His reach. We’re not going to work at being a blessing to others when we feel that they have withdrawn from us. Satan wanted the Thessalonians to feel isolated. Paul desired to comfort them.
C. Satan wants you discouraged
C. Satan wants you discouraged
When you are discouraged, you begin to believe you have failed. When failure comes, we start to consider changing things…sometimes we think about changing everything.
That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto. For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.
Paul is encouraging the saints to remember that the afflictions of the devil were not unexpected. In fact, they are evidences that God is working!!!!! But when we become discouraged, we are in danger of changing direction. That is a condition that is described as being double-minded.
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
As Christian did while in the dungeons of Doubting Castle, remember the key of Promise that your Heavenly Father has given you!
D. Satan wants you destroyed
D. Satan wants you destroyed
For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.
“Tempter” and “tempted” are translated from the same Greek word, which appears twice in this verse! Satan is the tempter, and he is always tempting! We read in chapter 2 that he exerted great pressure to keep souls from being saved, and a church from being started in Thessalonica. Even though he failed in those things, he hadn’t given up. Child of God, just because you have “passed from death unto life” doesn’t mean the devil will leave you alone! He is the tempter, and if the leopard cannot change his spots, then certainly the devil cannot and will not stop being the tempter. He will continue until he is chained in the lake of fire forever. Satan cannot destroy your life, and so he tries to get YOU to destroy it by giving in to temptation!
E. Satan wants you disheartened
E. Satan wants you disheartened
For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.
Isn’t it disheartening when people who seem to be “on fire for the Lord” end up falling by the wayside? Paul was concerned first for the saints in Thessalonica for their sake, but also he didn’t want his labor to be in vain. When this happens, we feel great loss, the name of Christ is blasphemed, and the devil is happy. But even if this happens, Christian, don’t lose sight of the promises of God!
III. God’s Plan for You
III. God’s Plan for You
In tonight’s text, we see just a few brief things that God intends for His people.
A. Increasing and firm faith
A. Increasing and firm faith
But now when Timotheus came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity, and that ye have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you:
Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
We need faith to please God, and so God wants it to be permanent and growing in our lives!
B. Fervent charity among yourselves
B. Fervent charity among yourselves
True charity is perhaps the most Godly of traits.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
How can we say we love God if we do not love the people that He loves? This includes first the saints, but also the whole world! This is God’s plan for His people.
C. Comfort amidst our affliction
C. Comfort amidst our affliction
Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith:
Paul and his companions were in near-constant persecution and hardships. That was hard to endure. But you know what would have made it harder? It would have been an additional trial to hear that the Thessalonian believers had been discouraged, defeated, and had surrendered to the attacks of Satan! True servants of God aren’t most interested in their own objectives; they desire most to hear that others are faithfully serving God.
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.
God greatly encouraged the hearts of Paul and Silas when they heard Timothy’s report of faithfulness among the Thessalonian believers. And God desires to bring you comfort and joy in the midst of your affliction. We would prefer God’s comfort taking the form of removed affliction, but often God gives grace and comfort alongside the affliction.
Adoniram Judson once said, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” And those promises of God can open every lock in Doubting Castle. The Giant Despair cannot destroy us, and so he tries to induce us to destroy ourselves. Satan cannot defeat us in Christ, and so he tries to convince us to surrender. He attacks from within. Don’t believe his lies, Christian! Stay focused on the promises of God. He will bring you through.