Delivered to Satan, Part 2 B

The foundation out of which error comes, the soil out of which error grows is the soil Picture this, it's wartime and you're in the heat of battle, you're well armed in a fortified position, and you have a platoon of well-trained soldiers you can depend on. But what if one of those soldiers you thought was watching your back, fighting for you, was really undermining your efforts, compromising your ability to fight? spiritual warfare.

Now here's John. Sometimes the Lord turns a true believer over to Satan for a positive reason tied to his own sovereignty. And we saw that in illustration in the life of Job.

But today I want to talk about another aspect of it. Being delivered to Satan not for a positive reason, but for a negative one. Because this is the issue in 1 Timothy chapter 1. Let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. In a familiar passage, it's reported commonly, verse 1 says, this is common knowledge, everybody knows it.

Paul says, I've heard it not from one source, but from many sources. There is fornication, that's the word porneia from which we get pornography. There's fornication among you. This is a church, folks. This is the church at Corinth who prided themselves, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ.

Those who thought they were kings, those who thought they knew all the answers. This is a church. And fornication is among you and the kind of fornication that isn't even discussed among the pagans. What kind of fornication is that? Incest, that one would have his father's wife.

Now there are a couple of things you need to know about this. The fact that the word fornication is used, rather than adultery, leads us to believe that it could mean something out of marriage. So that what may have happened here is the father's wife indicates a stepmother, otherwise he would have used the word mother, having sex with your mother. But the father's wife puts it probably in the category of a stepmother. And the father's wife puts it probably in the category of a stepmother.

What does he mean? Put them out. Here's the only other place the terms of 1 Timothy 120 are used. Turn them over to Satan. Which means put him out of the church. Don't let him enjoy the protection of the church.

In the words of Matthew 18, you've gone through the disciplinary process of going to him, two or three going to him, the church going to him. Now treat him like a pagan and a tax collector, like an outsider. Put him out. The instruction comes to mind also in 2 Thessalonians 3, 6, withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly. Verse 14, if they don't obey the word of this epistle, note the man and have no company with him. Put him out.

Turn him over to Satan. That's what church discipline is when it runs to its limit. But I have noticed through my own ministry that there are some people we don't even know about that the Lord puts out. And I often wonder why people disappear and don't show up for long periods of time.

And then I hear about the tragedy of the way their life is going, a messed up marriage, immorality, drunkenness, and all these kinds of things. And I realize that what we didn't know, God knew, and what we couldn't purge, God did. Put him out, he says.

Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? You can't have that in the church.

Purge it out. And then down in verses 9 and 10, he says, I'm telling you not to company with those people with fornicators and covetous and extortioners and idolaters. And I'm not talking about the worldly ones. I'm talking about the ones that are called a brother who are fornicators and covetous and idolaters and railers and drunkards and extortioners.

Don't even eat with them. At the end of verse 13, put away from among yourselves that wicked person. Turn him over to Satan. Now back to verse 5. When you deliver them over to Satan, it is for the destruction of the flesh. Did you get that? It is for the destruction of the flesh. What does that mean?

Hope can mean a lot of things. Heart attack. Cancer.

I've seen that. Venereal disease. AIDS. It could mean adultery in a marriage. It could mean the destruction of a home. It could mean the illness of a family member. Listen, what was it for Job to be turned over to Satan?

All of those things. It could mean the loss of the job, the loss of your career. When you're turned over to Satan, there is no way to project what might happen. But I think we overlook the reality that that goes on a lot more than we are willing to admit.

And we may chalk up diseases and disasters to a lot of other things when they belong in this category right here. The destruction of the flesh. Notice the destruction is limited.

It was limited on Job, and it was limited on Paul, and it was limited on Peter, and it's limited here. Satan can destroy his flesh, but his spirit will be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. That's why I believe you have a Christian here and also the reference to a brother in verse 11. You can't destroy a soul that belongs to God, but you can sure devastate his physical world, his physical life.

It can happen. You don't want to be turned over to Satan as a chastening. I want to show you another passage that speaks to this.

Revelation chapter 2. This is a church. This is a church. The church at the city of Thyatira in Asia Minor. And in writing to the church, the Lord Jesus Christ says, I know your works, verse 19, your love, your service, your faith, your patience, your works, and the last to be more than the first year, very busy church, very active church.

But I have a few things against you, and here they are. You allowed that woman Jezebel, and it may not be a woman literally named Jezebel, but a Jezebel type, an idolatrous, God-hating woman who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication and eat things sacrificed unto idols. This woman came along, led that church into immorality and false doctrine. And He says, I gave her and her followers, of course, space to repent of her fornication and she repented not, immorality and false doctrine. Because there was no repentance, I will throw her into a bed.

Implication, all right. If she wants to be in bed, I'll throw her in a bed, all right. I'll throw her in a bed with Satan, that's what I'll do. All them that commit adultery with her, and that bed will be a bed of great tribulation unless they repent of their deeds, and I will kill her children with death. And all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts, and I'll give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira...watch this...as many as do not have this doctrine...they don't follow Jezebel...and who have not known the depths of Satan. He contrasts those true believers and obedient believers from the ones thrown in the bed of trouble and fornication who have known the depths of Satan. He literally plunged them into the depths of Satan. What a phrase. What a phrase.

Think of it. Turned over to Satan. Now we need to be very cautious. You that are unbelievers in the church who just come for whatever benefit you can gain are in danger of being turned over to Satan for eternal judgment. Those of us who are believers by cultivating disobedience or false doctrine or immorality are in danger of being turned over to Satan for chastening, which can result in all kinds of physical devastation, the disasters that are indicated in all these texts as well as death itself. You see, Peter said, the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may...what?...devour, swallow, consume. And when you're turned over to Satan, you're turned over to his consuming power. Now remember, what is Paul saying? Let's go back to 1 Timothy.

And I think we have it in perspective now. What is he saying here? When he says, I have delivered Hymenaeus and Alexander unto Satan. Most likely they were not believers because they had corrupted the gospel and he delivered them that they might learn the consequence of blasphemy. Now we don't know whether it meant they would die or whether it meant some disease or the devastation of their possessions or the loss of everything they had, whatever devastation Satan wanted to bring within God's allowance would come. But Paul is saying, look, Timothy, you have to fight a battle in leadership in the church.

Remember what we said first of all? You have a responsibility and accountability to the church, verse 18. You have a responsibility and accountability to the Lord, verse 19, to hold faith and a pure conscience. And now you have a responsibility and accountability to deal with the enemy.

And I've given you the example. What I did to them, you're to do to the rest of those who corrupt the church with false doctrine and unholiness. Now let's look at verse 19 and see what he says about them. He calls them some...some, they're the same as the certain ones of verses 3, 6 and 7. They were some pastors at the church at Ephesus and perhaps surrounding churches who were teaching falsely. But these pastors, which some, which refers to a good conscience, were not interested in a pure conscience.

What did I tell you? Bad theology always rises out of bad morals. A man's doctrine is always an accommodation to his morality. And when people reject the truth of the Word of God, they do it because they want to substitute a system which accommodates their desire for sin. So there are some who have no interest in a good conscience. They're not at all interested in that. In fact, which some, having put away, have put away. That word, apotheomai, a very strong word, means to violently reject.

It means to discard aggressively. They don't want anything to do with it. They don't want a pure conscience. They don't want to live for holiness. They don't want to live for purity. They want to live for their own lust, their own success, their own gratification. And as a result, when they throw away a good conscience, they shipwreck the faith. It's like throwing away the rudder.

You're at the mercy of the wind and the sea. They confess to be Christians and pastors and teachers of God's law, but with no interest in purity, no commitment to holiness. They are literally devoid of any truth. They shipwreck the truth because truth does not rise out of an immoral heart.

No, an evil conscience and error always go together. In 2 Timothy 2, we find a note that should be compared with this. It says their word, these kinds of people, eats like gangrene. It kills, of whom our Hymenaeus, here he's mentioned again, and this time another fellow, Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred, have erred. And then in verse 19 it says, let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. So we see error and iniquity again. These men have erred, don't you err, so depart from iniquity. The foundation out of which error comes, the soil out of which error grows is the soil of unholiness. So these men were not interested in a good conscience, they were interested in evil.

And so they threw the rudder away, which is the conscience that gives guidance, and they were at the mercy of the wind and the sea, and they shipwrecked the faith. It names them for all time, Hymenaeus, who's also mentioned, as I read, in 2 Timothy 2, 17. We don't know anything about him, he just mentioned twice. The other one is Alexander. There is an Alexander mentioned in 2 Timothy 4, 14 and 15. There is an Alexander mentioned in Acts 19, 33 and 34.

There is no reason to believe they are the same because the name was as common as the name John is today, a very, very common name. What we have here then are two pastors, self-righteous egotists who wanted to be prominent teachers of the law but didn't know anything about what they were speaking of, substituting myths and genealogies and fables and human reason for God's revelation and living ugly, ungodly lives. And Paul says, I put them out.

And that's the pattern, Timothy. If you're going to be a good soldier in the noble warfare, you understand your obligation to the church, you understand your obligation to the Lord, and you understand your obligation to deal with the enemy. Now when he says, whom I have delivered unto Satan, he means I put them out of the church. I put them out. I put those sinning people away from the protection and insulation of God's people. I put them in the domain of the devil, away from the influences of all that is good and godly.

Why? That they may learn that you can't blaspheme and get away with it. And the word learn, paiduo, is to train through punishment, to train through punishment.

It's a very significant word. It is used in Luke 23 verses 16 and 22. It's translated chastise and it speaks about the scourgings that were given Christ.

It is to train or to punish someone with the inflicting of physical blows. In 2 Corinthians 11, you know that familiar passage, Paul talks about 1 Corinthians 11 rather, the communion service and how some were weak and sickly and some slept. And he says, when we are judged, when the Lord takes our life, when He lets the devil kill us or make us sick, we are chastened of the Lord. That's that same word. We are trained through suffering, just like you have to train a child with physical pain.

And that's what is going to happen to these people. That word is used repeatedly in the New Testament to speak of training through punishment, training through suffering. It's used in 2 Corinthians 6, 9, it says, as chastened and yet not killed. In other words, we get beat around physically, although short of death, again indicating its use that way. In Hebrews 12, it's used in verse 6, 7 and 10 when the Lord chastens. He chastens through punishment, suffering. Now the point is this, you cannot see this word that they may learn without understanding that it carries the idea of physically inflicted punishment. I don't know what disease they got.

I don't know what disaster came into their life. I don't know whether it meant their death, but they were turned over to Satan to be punished as a lesson that you can't blaspheme, a lesson to them and a lesson to everybody else. Blaspheme means to slander God, to ridicule God, to blaspheme the worthy name by which you're called, James 2, 7 says. In the last days, 2 Timothy 3, 2 says there will be blasphemers, but blasphemers, those who ridicule God, who slander God are in grave danger.

Now you say, what do you mean by that? Anything that you do that disobeys God is blasphemy. Anything you say that speaks evil against God is blasphemy and any blasphemy needs discipline. And you or I or anyone who does something against the will and the purpose of God, who acts in an unholy way, who slanders God's character, slanders God's person, or who denies or disobeys God's Word is a blasphemer to one degree or another and therefore susceptible to having to be taught through physically inflicted punishment such lessons as might be necessary to call us away from that. So there are those who by God's sovereign design are turned over to Satan and God has a positive purpose in mind. There are those who under the sovereignty of God and by the direction of the church are turned over to Satan and God has a negative in mind, the inflicting of severe punishment for the sake of ultimate final and eternal judgment or for the sake of temporal chastisement. In either case, they might learn the consequence of blasphemy and blasphemy, I say it again, is any disobedience or any slander or rejection of the person and will of God.

Several things to remember then as we sum it up. To be delivered to Satan may be for God's sake, like Job, for God's sake, for God to make his point. It may be for my own sake, like Paul, that I may maintain humility and dependence.

It may be for others' sake, like Peter, that I might be able to instruct others. It may be for the sake of God's desire to reward and give a crown of life. It may be to produce great praise when such is over. But on the other hand, it may be for chastening sake, like in the case of an incestuous brother in Corinth or Ananias of Sapphira. It may be for chastening sake unto death, as in the case of the church at Thyatira, committing fornication and listening to false doctrine.

It may be also for final judgment's sake, such as in the case of Saul or Judas or Hymenaeus and Alexander. Now, what is the remedy? How do you avoid the chastening part and the judgment part? By receiving the truth and the holiness of God in Christ. And that's really the message.

All of that was to lead to this. It may be that God wants to turn me over to Satan. It may be that for His own purposes, He wants me to suffer some inflicted wound from Satan to one degree or another in one way or another in my life. My only prayer is that it will be for His glory and my good and the strengthening and advancing of His kingdom, not for punishment and not for chastening. And that if it need be that I have to suffer some messenger of Satan, if I have like Peter to be turned over for a period of time, I can only pray that out of it God will gain the greater glory and I'll be a more faithful servant. And that makes it a welcome turning over, if that's God's design, as opposed to being turned over to be physically punished for blasphemy. So as believers, we seek to avoid that by the pursuit of a holy life.

Let's bow in prayer. Lord God, we come with hearts that have literally been stirred because of what the Word has spoken to us today. We know we're in a great supernatural warfare. And we know that as Christians we belong to You. And however You choose to use us as Your soldiers, we want to be used.

Whatever loss there might need to be in order that there can be greater gain, we can accept. But Lord, we seek not to be chastened, to be turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh because of evil doing, because of blasphemy against You, because we have rejected the holy life to which You've called us and for which You have empowered us in Your Spirit. So Lord God, call us to obedience and effect that in us by the power of the Spirit. Draw us away from the world and the subtle sins which appear to us to be not sins at all, but are blasphemies against You.

Show those to us, those secret faults, those presumptuous sins of which the psalmist wrote, that we might know Your hand of blessing in whatever may come. That's John MacArthur helping equip you for spiritual warfare. That's the title of his current study here on Grace to You, Spiritual Warfare.

John, let me ask a kind of personal question as we wrap up this study. You've been a Christian for a long time. You grew up in a pastor's home. You've been yourself a pastor for, now you're in your sixth decade of pastoring. And so you've spent the majority of your life in the church engaged in spiritual warfare. And this year, of all years, the conflicts you've had to face have been more public and more fierce, I think, than ever. So let me ask, has this spiritual warfare become easier over the years or harder?

What's it like? I think there's a sense in which it's harder and there's a sense in which it's easier. It seems to be harder because the culture is so debased. The culture is so profoundly evil. When I started my ministry, there was a kind of Christian morality that was pervasive in the culture.

You could say that there was a kind of commitment, generally speaking, to biblical morality. So in a sense, the battles were easier. They weren't as fierce, and only in the sense that you weren't fighting a massive, massive overexposure to wretchedness that just literally engulfed a world in sort of moral sewage. Now, it's just overwhelming. You don't even know where to begin.

You don't know how to stop this onslaught. So in that sense, it's a much bigger—it's like a global war. You had skirmishes years ago, but now it's like a global war. But on the other hand, it's easier. And it's easier in the sense that I know the Word of God better, and I can analyze it better.

I can see what's coming. That's what we're trying to do in the middle of all of this. We're preaching and writing and doing articles and blogs, even for secular organizations who are saying, help us understand all this.

So I feel like the battle has become much more intense and much weightier. But at the same time, I know now the Scripture well enough to apply the right things at the right point. And also, the third thing I would say is that I have seen God through all these decades and decades and decades. I've seen him work through his providence, through his Word and his providence, and I have no doubt that he is in charge. And I have a lifelong experience of God's overpowering providence, accomplishing his will, so that I feel excited about the triumph of Christ, even in the global character of this sort of pandemic of moral sewage that we're all drowning in.

So my hope has never been brighter. And friend, before we close, let me remind you that for the next couple of days, nearly everything we sell is 25% off the normal price, including the MacArthur Study Bible. To place your order, contact us today. Our number here, 855-GRACE, or visit our website, gty.org. The MacArthur Study Bible has 25,000 detailed notes written by John that can help you better understand the historical, cultural, and theological context of each passage. The Study Bible is available in the New King James, New American Standard, and English Standard versions. And again, it is currently available at a 25% discount, and that includes even the premium leather editions.

But the sale ends this Friday, so order soon. Call 800-55-GRACE, or go to gty.org. And when you visit gty.org, make sure you take advantage of the thousands of free resources you'll find there, including daily devotions, our blog, and Grace Stream. As a continuous broadcast of John's preaching, we begin in Matthew and go verse by verse through the entire New Testament. The website one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television this Sunday, and be here tomorrow when John begins a series on the incredible blessings you have in Christ. New series titled, Richer Than You Think. Don't miss the next half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.