Delivered to Satan, Part 1

There comes a time when God will reward the faithful person, but for a time, mark it, the Lord in His sovereign purpose may choose to turn one of His own over to Satan for his own purposes so that the world will see people who love God not for what He gives but for who He is. As a great Puritan preacher once explained, the purpose for what is known as church discipline is to ensure the continuance, increase, and preservation in purity, order, and holiness of the church.

And sometimes that discipline has to get extreme. A rebellious church member receives the maximum punishment. The Bible calls it being delivered to Satan. You could also call that the saddest aspect of spiritual warfare, having to deal with an apparent enemy of God in the midst of your own church. Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur helps you understand what it means to be delivered to Satan, and why churches sometimes have to take that final step. It's part of John's continuing study titled Spiritual Warfare, and now follow along as John starts the message. I want you to open your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 18 through 20. Let me read these three verses to you and then get into what it is that the Lord has given us for today. 1 Timothy 1.18, this command I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to thee, that thou by them might war a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some, having put away, have made shipwreck concerning the faith, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Now the word deliver in verse 20, paraditome, means to hand over, to give over, to commit, or the best translation to get the sense here, to abandon, to abandon. Hands off is the idea, to remove protection and abandon someone to Satan. First Corinthians chapter 5 speaks of a person who is guilty of a form of incest in the church, and it says in verse 5 of this person, this person living with his father's wife in a fornication relationship, verse 5 enjoins the church at Corinth to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Those two places, 1 Timothy 1.20, 1 Corinthians 5.5, are the two places in the New Testament where we have the idea of abandoning someone to Satan, explicitly stated in that way.

Now listen carefully to what I say because it's essential that you understand this. There are some people who go around today and say there are no conditions under which any Christian should ever be subject to Satan. I hear that from charismatic people continually, and that is not what the Scripture teaches. The Scripture clearly teaches that not only is it a possibility to be handed over to Satan, but it is a ministry of the church to do that. There are times and places and circumstances under the plan of God in which individuals are definitely to be turned over to Satan.

And there are times and occasions when God Himself does that very thing. Now listen carefully as we analyze this biblically. Being turned over to Satan in both of these references that I have mentioned to you has the idea of being put out of the church, of being disfellowshipped, or in the old terminology, excommunicated. It has the idea of being cut off from any further association with the saints of God and the Lord's table.

It would be in the terms of Matthew 18 to take one who has by continual sin been put out of the church and treat them like an unbeliever. It is to say then that to turn someone over to Satan means that prior to that they were not fully in his power, else there could be no turning over. There could be no committing and no abandoning to Satan if they were already in his power. Now 1 John 5 19 says, the whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one.

The world is already in his hands. The world has already been delivered to him by sin. The instruction to the church to turn someone over to Satan means that that someone is not at that time fully in Satan's control. So we must therefore be talking about people who are in one way or another under the umbrella of protection provided by the church. And there is in the church the insulation and the protection and the care and the love and the blessing of God. So we're talking here about people who are under the care of the church or within the community of redeemed people, under the protection of God, a part of the pouring out of His blessing who are at some point in time put out of that protection and left fully exposed to Satan. Now this could be true of believers or unbelievers.

You say, how so? Because there are unbelievers in the church as there were unbelievers within the community of the redeemed in Israel who by virtue of their association with the people of God were therefore under a certain amount of protection. And by virtue of a splash effect, people who are around those who are receiving the showers of blessing are also going to get wet. And so God has given even to an unbeliever by virtue of his proximity to or his involvement with the redeemed community a certain amount of protection, a certain amount of blessing. The church has unbelievers in it who by virtue of just being in the church visibly by attending and associating are therefore the recipient of the blessing that the Lord pours out on His church in a secondary sense. Now it is important to note then that for someone to be delivered over to Satan means that they are put out of the insulation and protection of that believing community. And they are given over fully to Satan, God withdrawing all of His hand of protection which they to whatever degree have enjoyed. Now I want you to understand how this works, so I want to go back to the Old Testament and I want you to see as well as the New Testament that God has, listen carefully, for His own reasons personally put people out from under the protection of the believing community and into Satan's control.

God Himself has done that. So let's go back to the book of Job and this is where we begin, the book of Job. In Job chapter 1, we are introduced to this man who was perfect and upright and feared God and shunned evil. It describes him as a man who had ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred sheasses, a great household.

This man was the greatest of all the men of the east. His sons went and feasted in their houses every one his day and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of their feasting were finished, that Job sent and sanctified them and rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts, thus did Job continually. This man was so spiritually conscientious that he not only kept his heart right before God, but he offered sacrifices for his children on just the presumption that they may have thought something in their heart that was wrong and he wanted to be sure that sin was covered.

This is a good man, the best of men, as well as the most prosperous man in the east. Now in verse 6 there is a day when the sons of God, that refers to angels, came to present themselves before the Lord. Now we don't know what day it was, we don't know what the occasion was, we don't know what the circumstances were, that's as much as we know, that angelic beings came before the Lord and Satan came with them. He being that fallen one Lucifer, he came and the Lord said, Satan, where did you come from? And Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it, which tells us where he spends his time. And the Lord said unto Satan, Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?

Have you considered My servant? You see, Satan is always wanting to diminish the work of God, always wanting to destroy the work of God, always wanting to show God up. And I'm sure he was there to make some accusation against God before all the rest of the angelic beings that were there. He wanted to make God look bad.

That's his desire. And so God says, Have you looked at My servant Job and what a good man he is? And Satan answered the Lord and says, Does Job fear God for nothing? You think he loves you and trusts you and believes in you the way he does for nothing? You think he does that just because it's in his heart to do that? Why, you made a hedge around him and around his house and around all that he has on every side and you blessed the work of his hands and his substance is increased in the land. Why do you think he worships you? Because he's a pragmatist. He knows who's delivering the goods.

I mean, it's simple. He knows how to open the floodgate. He does his thing for you and you unload on him all the blessings.

Of course he's good, but not for nothing. Hmm. Put forth your hand now. Satan says in verse 11, touch all that he has. He'll curse you to your face.

Take away his stuff and he'll curse your face. And the Lord said to Satan, follow this. Behold, all that he has is in your power.

Underline that. Behold, all that he has is in your power. God turned Job over to Satan.

No question about it. God turned Job over to Satan. That was a divine act by the sovereignty of God. Only upon himself, don't put your hand.

You can do anything you want to his stuff, but don't touch him. So Satan went out of the presence of the Lord. He was turned over to Satan. And there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house. There came a messenger to Job and said the oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them and the Sabeans fell upon them, took them away.

Hmm. They have slain the servants with the edge of the sword and I only am escaped alone to tell you. And while it was yet speaking, there came also another and said the fire of God has fallen from heaven and has burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them and I am only escaped to tell you. Satan did several things. He got inside and infused hatred into the Sabeans. They came and wiped out some of his animals. Satan got some people to start a fire, burned up all his crops and all of his sheep. The Chaldeans came. He motivated the Chaldeans.

You see, Satan moves upon all kinds of human agencies. They fell on the camels, carried them away, slew the servants with the edge of the sword, lost it all. Verse 19, there came a great wind from the wilderness, smote the four corners of the house where everybody was having a banquet.

It fell on the young men and they're dead and I'm the only one escaped. Just wiped him out. Just wiped him out. All of his crops, all of his animals, all of his sons. And Job tore his mantle, shaved his head, fell on the ground and cursed God.

Is that what it said? Fell on the ground and what? Worshiped. And said, naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Listen to this line.

What? Blessed be the name of the Lord. And in all this, Job did not sin nor charge God with some kind of folly. See, what's the point? The point is this. God made a point to the devil and to the whole world of people who've ever read that account. And the point is this, that true saving faith is not dependent on positive circumstances. That's the point.

What a point. See, the devil thought, well, these people follow you because you give them all the stuff. And what the Lord is saying is, I'll tell you this, that when I redeem a life and when I transform a life and when a soul is converted and when a man truly loves me, that love is not built on circumstances. And in a sense, Job is just almost superfluous to the point here. God is making a point with Satan and to make the point He uses Job and the point is to show the strength and the continuity and the unwavering character of true saving faith, true love for God.

Tremendous. I hear all the time out of the book of Job that Job is to teach us how to deal with suffering. Job, the whole point of Job is to show the character of a godly man. And the character of a godly man is that he loves God and worships God, not because of what God has done in giving him things, but because of a pure devotion alone.

He trusted God. Satan came back another time. There was a meeting in chapter 2 and Satan goes through the same conversation.

God says, have you considered my servant Job? And he says, let me at him again. And so in verse 6, chapter 2, the Lord said to Satan, behold, he's in your hand. This time you can hit him, but you can't kill him.

You can't kill him. Satan went right out of the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown. Mark it, folks, Satan can bring disease.

Satan can bring disease. And here is Job with a broken piece of pottery scraping off the scabs and boils as he sits in the ash pile. And that was a symbol of his mourning and his sadness. And his very helpful wife, who was not a Proverbs 31 woman, comes up and says, curse God and die.

And he said to her, you're a foolish woman. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not receive evil? And all this did not Job sin with his lips.

This is incredible. And God is making a monumental point about the nature of true salvation, about the nature of true godliness, about the nature of a really upright heart. The person who really loves God is not the person who loves God because of what he gets, but the person who loves God because of who he is. That's the point. And you say, well, it wasn't very fair to make Job the illustration just to make a point. Oh, you've got to see beyond just the life of one individual to the fact that God was making a point for all eternity.

He has the sovereign right to do that. Well, you know how the rest of the story goes. He has a bunch of well-meaning friends who come over and give him a bunch of baloney from chapter 4 to chapter 37. That's, you know, 33 or 34 chapters of double talk. In the middle of it all, Job is sad and he's heartbroken, chapter 3 through chapter 10 chronicle Job's sorrow and he's really hurting. He's in pain. Oh, that my grief were thoroughly weighed and my calamity laid in the balances, chapter 6 verse 2. Chapter 10 he says, my soul is weary of life.

And he says in verse 2 of chapter 10, God, do not condemn me, show me why you're contending with me. What are you doing to me? I just want to know what's going on. I can't understand it.

I can't explain it. I've lost my crops, my animals, my sons, my home. I've lost my health.

All I've got left is a wife that I'd really like to trade in for a few of the other things that I lost. And in all of this I don't have any clue about why this is going on. Why are you doing this? There's no answer. The heavens are vaulted.

They're absolutely silent. And in the vacuum of the silence of God come all these other people with their wrong answers. Finally, wonderfully, in chapter 38, God speaks. And it says, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. You know what the Lord said? The Lord didn't say, well, look, Job, I want to tell you about this.

Now here's why I'm doing this. See, first of all, Satan came up there one day and he said, listen, Job didn't know that until he read this book later, which he probably never did. He didn't know. He didn't know what was going on in chapter 1 and 2. That happened in heaven. He didn't know that. And when the Lord comes, the Lord doesn't tell him.

The Lord just says, in effect, why are you even asking those kind of questions? Where were you when I made the world? Where were you when I laid out the foundation? Where were you when I created mountains and seas? Where were you when the morning stars, the angels sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy at the creation? What do you know about life?

What do you know about death? In other words, what he's saying is I'll do exactly what I want. Who are you to question me? And he just reveals himself, his omnipotence, his character. And finally Job gets the message in chapter 42. And Job answered the Lord and said, oh, I see.

I get it. You can do everything and no thought can be withheld from you and who's ever going to hide counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that which I understood, not things too wonderful for me which I knew not.

You know what he says? God, I understand. You're God. You're sovereign. You can do anything. You know everything.

You have all the privileges. I'm a fool for even opening my mouth. I apologize. I've been talking about things far beyond my understanding which I knew not.

Too awesome for me to understand. So hear me, Lord. Hear me. And this is what I want you to hear. I had heard of you with the hearing of mine ear, but now my eye seeth you.

What does he mean by that? I knew about you only from hearing. Now I know about you from personal experience. I've seen you in action and I hate myself and repent in dust and ashes. This dear man showed his godliness. He had the right response. Oh, God, he said, the sin in all of this is my sin for not recognizing your sovereign right to give and take away.

What I said in the beginning is true. The Lord gave, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Who was I to ever question? God, you had every right to do what you did. Listen, the whole point of this book is to show the character of genuine godliness, is to show the unbreakable reality of a redeemed soul, that under no pressure will he abandon his God. Under no pressure will he deny his God.

Under the loss of everything he stands true. If nothing else, it demonstrates the character of true conversion, see, of true love for God. And it led Job from a limited understanding of God to an even greater understanding for God. And of course, God poured out blessings starting in verse 7, gave him back more than he had to begin with. God blessed him with tremendous abundance and he died but not until he was old and full of days, verse 17 says. He had the most beautiful daughters. God gave him the most handsome sons.

God gave him the finest crops. Yes, there comes a time when God will reward the faithful person. But for a time, mark it, the Lord in his sovereign purpose may choose to turn one of his own over to Satan for his own purposes. If for nothing else than to demonstrate to a watching world the strength and character of genuine conversion so that the world will see people who love God not for what he gives but for who he is. And our weak, insipid, shallow, top theology of today is ignorant of that. Job was used by God to prove the character of true love for God, true devotion to God.

What a thought. And it was not without great benefit to him because he learned about God's sovereignty and he learned a deeper love of God. He found in himself some sins he didn't know he had and he understood the necessity of submitting himself to divine rule no matter what it involved. A true believer then can be given over to Satan to bring greater glory to God. But Satan has limits to what he can do, right? First, God said to him, you can't touch him. The second time around you can touch him but you can't what?

You can't kill him. There's always a restraint even when one is turned over to Satan. Do not be surprised, beloved, if within the church of Jesus Christ there are some who, unable to find any reasons why, end up in a situation where it looks like God has totally removed his hand of protection and blessing. And they are in the same quizzical confusion of a Job. They cannot understand why it happened.

They cannot humanly explain why it happened. And the answer is somewhere on a divine level which may or may not become known to us. But God has his holy purposes. And in his grace, there will come a restoration and a time of great blessing. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is a pastor, a prolific author, and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He's titled his current study, Spiritual Warfare. John, today you spoke about that act of turning people over to Satan, a church that actually disfellowships one of his members. Excommunication.

For some listeners, that's a concept that is foreign to their thinking. They might even think it's borderline fanatical. Are churches today supposed to be handing people over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh? Yeah, well, that's what Scripture says. In fact, if you go back to the Gospel of Matthew, the first thing the Lord ever said about the life of the church was in Matthew 18 when he said, if someone sins, go to him and confront him. And if he repents, you've gained your brother. If he doesn't repent, go get two other people so that two or three of you can confront him.

And if he repents, you've gained your brother. And if he doesn't repent, go tell the whole church. So you tell the church, and the church goes after him. And if he still doesn't repent, you publicly denounce him as if he were an infidel, and you put him out of the church.

So that is from the lips of our Lord. And interestingly enough to me, that is the first instruction given directly to the church. The first thing the church ever hears from Jesus is, if someone won't repent, tell the church. That is because sin has to be exposed to be dealt with. While, you know, that's not what churches do, typically, that's what all churches should do.

And you know, I was committed to that from the beginning of ministry because it was so clearly revealed in Scripture. It does result in turning someone over to Satan when you put them out of the church, and that's what Paul's talking about. You put them out of the church. And you might say, well, that's a terrible thing, no, because you don't want that sinning person in the church because it's like leavening the whole lump. The Lord wants a pure church, so you confront sin, people who don't repent, you put them out of the church for the sake of the purity of the church, and for the discipline that is then brought on that sinning person, hopefully to bring that person to real repentance. But doing that was so alien, people said, you'll empty the church. Just the opposite has happened at Grace Church, because people who are converted want holiness. They want to fulfill their love to the Lord by obedience. And that kind of expectation that you could be confronted lovingly about your sin is a safe place for true Christians, not a safe place for false Christians.

But we've seen the Lord bless that. We are our brother's keeper. We are our brother's keeper. Let me just say at the end of this little discussion that the teaching on Matthew 18 is available to you on a download called My Brother's Keeper.

You can go to the website and get it that way. John's series, My Brother's Keeper, looks at what church discipline is, how to practice it, and why it's so crucial to maintaining the church's purity. To pick up John's study, My Brother's Keeper, contact us today. As John said, you can download all the sermons from the My Brother's Keeper series for free at our website, gty.org. Or if you'd like to put this study in your church's library, it's available on a 7-CD album. And right now, the album is 25% off the normal price. To order My Brother's Keeper, call 800-55-GRACE or visit gty.org.

Also keep in mind that 25% discount applies to nearly everything we sell. So if you'd like to purchase our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible, or any of John's 34 New Testament commentaries, or the MacArthur Daily Bible, or a daily devotional book like Strength for Today or Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, I would encourage you to get in touch soon and take advantage of these sale prices. Call our toll-free number 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. That's our website. One more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace to You television this Sunday, check your local listings for Station and Times, then be here Monday for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.