(Matthew 4:1-11)

Do you believe in the devil? Martin Luther did. That great reformer tells that once he saw Satan in his study and threw an inkbottle at him. Gravely, Luther warned: “Let a Christian know that he sits among devils; that the devil is nearer to him than his coat or his shirt, or even his skin; that he is all about us, and that we must always grapple with and fight him.” In his great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” Luther alludes to “the Prince of Darkness grim,” and to “this world with devils filled.” Yes, Martin Luther believed in the devil.

But folks nowadays don’t believe in the devil. Certainly they don’t believe in him as Luther did. In Charles Reade’s novel, The Cloister and the Hearth, two men are shown tramping through Europe in days of peril, and one repeatedly nerves the other to go on by repeating the words, “Courage, my friend, the devil is dead.” For multitudes in the church today, “the devil is dead.” Folks just do not believe in him. We have laughed that old hob-goblin of superstitious minds out of existence.

And yet some pious souls are somewhat disturbed by the repeated references in scripture to the devil. St. Luke and St. Matthew tell of Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the wilderness. St. Peter warns us to be on the lookout for the devil, who goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may destroy. St. John records Jesus’ statement, “I beheld Satan falling as lightning from heaven.” If the devil is dead, if there really is no such being, what are we to do with these portions of our Bibles? Before we make up our minds adamantly, let’s take a look at what the Bible really teaches about the devil.

First of all, a survey of the scriptural references on the devil will reveal, perhaps to our surprise, that the devil does not make personal appearances in the conventional figure, as he is usually depicted in stories and literature. Very definitely, the devil is never described in the Bible as a horrible looking horned creature with cloven hoofs, in red tights, wielding a pitchfork. This caricatured man-monster that has become the accepted pictorial representation of the devil may have his origin in Dante’s Inferno, or Milton’s Paradise Lost, or Dore’s engravings, but he certainly does not spring from Scripture. The Bible doesn’t believe in that old red devil either. The scriptures teach nothing about the physical or bodily appearance of the devil. Symbolically he is referred to a few times as a serpent, or dragon, but the clear teaching of Scripture is that the devil, like God Himself, makes no personal, corporeal appearance. He is the personification of spiritual evil.

David Smith, in commenting on Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the wilderness, remarks that, “It would be an abuse of scriptural language to find here a personal and visible apparition of the evil one. An open solicitation by the enemy of our souls would be no temptation, since it would affright us.” When Satan comes to tempt us he does, as St. Paul says, “fashion himself as an angel of light.” He comes with his temptations through the most appealing, attractive, and seductive of human and earthly forms, not as some horrifying hob-goblin. He insinuates his evil proposals through the counsels of a friend, or the suggestions of an attractive person. It was thus that Satan tried to turn our Lord aside from the painful way of the Holy Cross through the protested concern of his best friend, Simon Peter; and Jesus rebuked him saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”

But the Bible does very definitely teach that there exists in the world an evil spiritual force opposed to God and hostile to man’s highest interests — that this force in its activity strikes at the individual in an intimate, personal way. And therefore the scriptures speak of this oppositional evil spiritual force as a person, or persons — giving it such names as Satan, the devil, or evil spirits.

Yes, the Bible, which reveals to us God and the ways of God with man, also reveals to us this evil spiritual force and gives us insight into the devious ways it operates upon the human soul. To know how to be on our guard against the forces that would bring us to our doom we need to know the fundamental facts the Bible teaches about this evil spiritual force, commonly referred to in the Scriptures as Satan or The Devil, for by whatever name we call it, it is there.

Furthermore, the scriptures teach that this evil spiritual force called The Devil is the arch adversary, the eternal enemy of the human soul. The various Biblical names by which the evil one is called illustrate the destructive forces he brings to play in his attacks upon the human soul. He is called “Satan,” which in the Hebrew means “the adversary,” the one set in predetermined purpose and design to work against God’s plan for man’s salvation and to effect man’s downfall. He is called “The Devil,” from the Greek ________, which means “the slanderer, or the accuser.” He slanders man to God and God to man. He is that spirit of lies and untruth which by deception and falsehood destroys faith. He is called also “The Tempter,” whose purpose it is to tempt men to disobey the righteous commandments of God and bring down the wrath of God upon their heads. He is called in Scriptures “the enemy” of God and man who steals away the good seed of the word of God sown in human hearts, and stealthily sows the tares of evil in the fields of good wheat.

Mr. C. S. Lewis, in his book, The Screwtape Letters, with a keen insight into scriptural truth, sets in bold relief this grim battle which has been joined between the forces of the Kingdom of Heaven and the forces of the Kingdom of Hell for the possession of the souls of men. The fiend, Screwtape, writing in one of his letters to the demon, Wormwood, about the Satanic war aims, says, “Our enemy (who is God) wants to get possession permanently of a soul. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself — creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will qualitatively be like His own — not because He has absorbed them, but because their wills freely conform to His. We (the demons) want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in; He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which our Father below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.”

Dr. L. P. Jacks, the famous British teacher and scholar who spent much time in the United States, on his last trip to this country was asked by a reporter in a western city for a statement of his impression of American civilization. Dr. Jacks replied: “Well, America strikes me as being a country where a terrible struggle is going on between God and the devil for the souls of the people.”

This is clearly the teaching of Scripture — the Bible pictures a world of human beings where a titanic struggle is being waged for possession of the souls of men. Those forces which would enslave and destroy men’s souls, wrecking God’s plans for salvation, are called in scriptural language, the devil and his angels.

The Bible even goes further and reveals the plan of attack of the devil and his angels upon man’s soul. The locus classicus for this revelation is, of course, the gospel accounts of the temptation of our Lord in the wilderness.

The first attack is an appeal to live to gratify the lower animal appetites. “Turn these stones into bread,” says the devil to the hungry Jesus who has fasted forty days and forty nights. It is the appeal to turn one’s life interest into the business of conjugating the verb “to eat,” to make that the all-in-all of human existence. It is the temptation to live one’s life downward, in the lower nature of finding personal physical comfort, instead of living upward toward God in the sublime reaches of man’s immortal soul. This is always the devil’s first frontal assault on a man — to turn him into a beast. With the Savior this attack failed, for He answers with the Scripture truth, “It is written that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

(Cf. Sovokin – famous Harvard sociologist – appalled at modern American preoccupation with sex.  A trend which will destroy our society and our people.)

Then Satan attacks from a different quarter. He attempts to turn by subtlety Jesus’ virtues into vices. “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from the pinnacle of the temple, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” The devil can quote scripture, too. Jesus has just parried one thrust of the adversary with divine truth and now the adversary quotes the scripture to Jesus by way of temptation, giving a false turn or application of the truth. The appeal is for Jesus to turn his spiritual knowledge and power into a show to astonish the multitudes and draw attention to himself. ‘Tis the old appeal to pride in man’s soul. And the devil quotes that beloved passage of comfort and solace to troubled and endangered souls, the 91^st Psalm, to imply that God will take care of His own, send His angels to guard them, even if they foolishly and proudly use what He has given them for their own glory. Jesus’ answer is directly to the point, again a potent passage of divine truth: “It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

The third temptation is an all-out attack aimed at the capture of the citadel of man’s soul itself. “The devil taketh him up into an exceedingly high mountain and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and saith unto him, all these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” This is the devil’s device of bribery; of offering man the fame, the power, the wealth of the world in exchange for his soul.

In mediaeval times men were represented as selling their souls to the devil and signing such contracts with blood. Goethe represents Mephistopheles as saying to Faust:

I to thy service here agree to bind me,

To run and never rest at call of thee;

When over yonder thou shalt find me,

Then thou shalt do as much for me.

This is even yet the devil’s bargain for men. John Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, writes: “High on the desert mountain, full descried, sits throned the Tempter, with his old promise — the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. He still calls you to your labor, as Christ to your rest; labor and sorrow, base desire, and cruel hope. So far as you desire to possess rather than to give; so far as you look for power to command rather than to bless; so long as the hope before you is supremacy instead of love; and your desire is to be greatest instead of least; first, instead of last, — so long are you serving the Lord of all that is last and least.”

The scriptures also clearly teach that never in this life can we be freed from the attacks of this enemy of our souls. No, never. We must always be on our guard. “Has a man, in some high hour of gladness, given Christ his heart? The devil does not take a reverse like that lying down. He does not say, ‘I’m sorry to lose you — but if your mind is made up I suppose that settles it. Go with Christ if you must!’ Nothing so easy as that. He begins the pursuit. It may be he will never stop pursuing. Whyte of St. George’s once described the way temptation and remorse can haunt the soul. ‘You may be saved,’ he cried, ‘but the bloodhounds of temptation and remorse will pursue you up to the very gates of heaven, and leave the bloody slaver of their ugly jaws upon the golden bars!’” (James Stewart — The Gates of New Life)

Some faithful Christians become discouraged by their persistent and intense temptations. Instead of getting easier, the Christian life grows all the harder. “I must be dreadfully sinful,” you say to yourself, “to be tempted as I am.” But instead of a sign of retrogression, this increase and intensity in temptation is a sure sign of progression in your spiritual growth. As Joseph Parker says, the thief who robs an orchard goes when the boughs are loaded with fruit in harvest time, rather than in winter when the branches are bare. “Temptation implies a measure of goodness on the part of the man who is tempted. Your temptations may be, from the diabolical side, but so many indications that you are worth tempting.” The more progress you make in your spiritual growth, the more persistent and subtle will be your temptations.” “My soul be on thy guard, ten thousand foes arise.”

And finally, the scriptures teach us that Satan, like all things else in the universe, is under the control of God. The Lord permitted Satan to try Job but not to take his life. The angels came and ministered to Jesus after he had resisted temptation. St. Paul says, “But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

For there is not only the adversary and enemy of the soul warring against us; there is also that champion of man’s soul, the divine Redeemer, who has taken up the fight in our behalf. There is not only the Adversary, our ancient foe, but also our Helper, the Holy Spirit; not only the slanderer who accuses us of evil, but also our Advocate at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us.

Therefore, O Christian, take courage in the struggle, for —

Did we in our own strength confide,

Our striving would be losing;

Were not the right man on our side,

The man of God’s own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabbath His name;

From age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

PASTORAL PRAYER

Lord of Lords and King of Kings, before whom the nations rise and pass away, who hast appointed the bounds of our habitation and the time of our sojourn, we commend to Thee our nation, the United States of America, that we may indeed be a people whose God is the Lord, ready and useful to fulfill our destiny as Thy willing instrument for world peace and world righteousness.

For Thy servants, the president of our country, the members of congress, the governor of our state, the mayor and councilmen of our city, our public school officials, teachers, and pupils, we pray Thy merciful protection, guidance, and fatherly discipline.

O Thou who hast set us in a life of struggle and tension, where drifting damns the souls of men and nations, where eternal vigilance is the price that must be paid for physical and spiritual security, forgive our lackadaisical spirit, our false optimism, our foolhardy softness. How clearly Thou hast set before us the issues of life: of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, of cruelty and compassion, of sacrifice and self-indulgence, of beauty and ugliness, and we have muddled along, trying to steer a double course, dulling the edge of conscience and courting disaster. Give us, O Lord our God, clarity of vision to see Thy truth as it is, and give us the courage to embrace it at all costs, for Christ’s sake who taught us when we pray to say —