You know I'm going to name off a list of movies right now and I want you to see if you can figure out what they all have in common.
Here we go. Rosemary's Baby, Poltergeist, Carrie, The Amityville Horror, Devil's Advocate, The Witches of Eastwick, Bedazzled, The Omen 1, 2 and 3 and The Exorcist. Now, with the exception of Rosemary's Baby, which I saw in college, I have never seen any of these other movies, but I know, as you do, what they're all about. They are all about the devil, they are all about demons, and they are all about the occult.
Now this is the question that I want us to deal with today. Is this whole devil and demons and occult thing, is this just a fable for making scary movies? Or is there some reality to all of this?
And if the devil is real, then what is his mission here on earth that you and I, as followers of Christ, need to watch out for? Now all of this grows out of an incident in the life of Moses. You know, we're studying his life. And so what we want to do today is we want to wind the clock back 3500 years. And we want to see what happened in Moses' life.
And then we'll wind the clock forward 3500 years and talk about, well, what difference does this make to you and to me? So if you brought a Bible today, I'd like you to open it with me to Exodus chapter 7. Exodus 7, if you did not bring a Bible and you're here in our main auditorium, reach under the armrest right next to you, you'll find a copy of the Bible. We're going to be on page 44 of our copy of the Bible, Exodus chapter 7 in your copy.
And while you're turning, let me give you a little bit of background. Remember that Moses and Aaron, his brother, have gone to Pharaoh and have delivered the Lord's ultimatum to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Well, in response, Pharaoh said, Exodus 5, 2, who is the Lord?
That I should obey him. And when Moses goes to God after this and complains about Pharaoh's refusal to let the Israelites go, God tells Moses exactly why he is delaying the liberation of Israel. He says, Exodus 7, verse 3, I will harden Pharaoh's heart that I might multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. And the Egyptians, when I'm finished, will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out with mighty acts of judgment. In other words, God tells Moses that he wants Pharaoh to resist him so that he, God, can display his power and his might for all of Egypt to see so that God can answer Pharaoh's question.
Who is the Lord that I should obey him? And answer it in a way that Pharaoh will never forget. Well, that's where we are, and now it's time for Moses and Aaron to go back and visit Pharaoh for a second time, so let's look beginning verse 8. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, perform a miracle, then Moses, you say to Aaron, take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh and it will become a snake. Remember, Pharaoh has already thrown Moses and Aaron out on their ear once. They just can't march back in in front of him now and simply repeat God's ultimatum.
They need a sign. They need a miracle, something to prove to Pharaoh that they represent the true and living God of the universe, and God gives them this very sign. Verse 10, so Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just what the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and it became a snake. Now, the word that's used here in Hebrew for snake is not the normal word for snake. It's a different word that means a big snake, a monstrous snake, a mean and nasty snake. Friends, this was not just some little garter snake that Aaron's rod turned into here.
This was one of the big boys. You know what I mean? Like one of those snakes that used to fight Tarzan.
You understand what I'm saying? The kind of snakes they make movies about. And then verse 11 says, Pharaoh summoned his magicians and sorcerers and the Egyptian magicians did the same thing by means of their secret arts. Each one of them threw down his rod and it became a snake. Now, the Bible doesn't tell us how many of these sorcerers Pharaoh called in, maybe six or eight or ten, I don't know. But each one of them turned their staffs into snakes too. And suddenly, the whole floor was full of writhing, twisting, hissing, disgusting snakes. You know, this is one party I'm not sorry I missed.
Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm glad I wanted this one. Well, why did Pharaoh do this? Why did he have his magicians come in and turn their rods into snakes? Well, friends, the answer is because he wanted to prove that the gods of Egypt were just as strong as the god of Moses and Aaron. And at first, it looked like the gods of Egypt had won. I mean, Moses and Aaron only turned their rod into one snake. The Egyptian magicians had made a lot of snakes.
But hey, it's not over yet. Verse 12 continues. But Aaron's staff swallowed up the magicians' staffs right in front of everyone. Aaron's snake devoured every one of these sorcerers' snakes. And the reason for this was not that Moses and Aaron's snake was all that hungry.
It wasn't all that hungry. The reason was to prove to show the supremacy of Moses and Aaron's god. In fact, as we're going to see in the weeks to come, this was the purpose of all ten of the ten plagues that God sent upon Egypt. The purpose of them all was to systematically prove to Pharaoh and the Egyptians that the living god of Israel was superior to the demon gods of Egypt.
More on that in the weeks to come. Verse 13. Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he refused to listen to Moses and Aaron just as the Lord had predicted. Now, folks, what in the world went on here in Exodus chapter 7 there in the palace of Egypt? I mean, did these sorcerers really supernaturally turn their staffs into snakes?
Well, most commentators say no. Most commentators say there was some human explanation for what they did here. There was no miracle here.
There was nothing supernatural here. Some commentators say that these magicians of Egypt actually had these snakes up their sleeves, hidden. And when the time was right, you know, abracadabra, the hand is quicker than the eye, they whipped them out. All I can say is if they had a snake like this inside their robe, these are the dumbest magicians I ever saw in my life.
Some of these commentators say no, no, no. What they did is they had real snakes by the back of the head and they held them so they immobilized them. And they walked pretending they were rods, but they were really snakes. And when they threw them down on the ground, the true character of the snake came to life.
Friends, all of this is ridiculous. The Bible is perfectly clear about what happened here. The Bible says, verse 11, the sorcerers did the same thing that Moses and Aaron did.
Each one of them threw down his rod and it became a snake. These fellows performed a supernatural miracle just like Moses and Aaron did. That's what the Word of God says. That's what I believe and I hope you believe that too. Amen. Excuse me. Amen.
Thank you. Now, we know how Moses and Aaron did this. The question is, how did these sorcerers do it? Well, the Bible gives us a straightforward answer to that. The Bible says, verse 11, they did it by means of their secret arts. The Hebrew word here means sorcery, means witchcraft. These people did it by the power of the occult.
They did it by demonic power, by the power of Satan himself. And you say, okay, Lon, wait a minute, wait a minute. Come on now. You're an intelligent man. You're an educated man. You don't really believe, do you, that there's a real devil running around in this world with horns and a pitchfork and a pointy tail and all that stuff? You don't really believe there are demons in this world, do you? Well, friends, I sure do believe that. I don't know whether they have horns and a pitchfork, but I sure do believe that the devil is real and the demons are real.
And I'll tell you why. It's because the same Bible that assures me Jesus rose from the dead, the same Bible that assures me that I have eternal life when I trust Jesus as my personal savior, that same Bible assures me of the reality and the power of Satan. See, we can't decide which parts of the Bible we want to believe and which parts we don't want to believe.
The Word of God is either all true or none of it is true. Time Magazine had an article a while back entitled Angels Among Us, and one of the questions, they had a poll of the American public, and one of the questions they asked was this. Do you believe in the existence of fallen angels or devils? Well, 45% of the American surveyed said no. In other words, one out of every two people that you and I pass on the street think that we are nuts if we believe there's a real devil somewhere running around in this universe. One out of every two people you and I meet think that all this talk about Satan and demons and the occult is just a bunch of manipulative propaganda that religious hucksters spin out on unsuspecting old ladies and uneducated people from Appalachia, but that those of us here in Washington, the really smart, sophisticated people, we know better than believe this nonsense. And yet Time Magazine in that article had this to say.
Interesting. Listen, and I quote. When we look at the Nazi Holocaust, the purges of Joseph Stalin, the genocide of recent years in parts of Africa, the Charles Mansons and Jeffrey Dahmer's of the world, we are hard pressed, Time says, not to recognize that there is some kind of supra-human evil present in our world. End of quote. Well, folks, God's been telling us that in the Bible for centuries.
Isn't it wonderful that Time Magazine finally caught up with the Bible? Of course, there's some kind of supra-human evil in our world. The Bible says there is a supernatural being in our world named Satan, and the Bible tells us a little bit about him. Isaiah chapter 14 tells us that his original name was Lucifer. The Bible tells us that Lucifer was God's greatest angel. The Bible tells us that something went desperately wrong in the heart of Lucifer, that he rose up, he tried to overthrow God, and that as a result God cast him out of heaven and he became God's mortal enemy. According to 2 Thessalonians 2, Satan's goal ever since he was thrown out of heaven is to oppose and exalt himself against everything that has to do with God.
And right here in Exodus chapter 7, that's exactly what we find him doing, standing toe to toe with Moses and Aaron and opposing everything that God is trying to do here in Egypt. Now that's as far as we're going to go in the passage for today, because it's time for us to stop and ask our most important question. And you all know what that is, right? Yes? Yes? All right, here we go, nice and loud.
One, two, three. So what? Yeah, you say, Lon, so what? Say, all right, so maybe there is a devil in the world.
What difference does that make to me in my life? Well, let's answer that question. You know, friends, what was Satan's purpose here in Exodus chapter 7? Or to put it another way, why would he empower these sorcerers to change their staffs into snakes like this?
Well, the answer is simple. Satan's purpose was to deceive Pharaoh, to convince Pharaoh that Moses and Aaron's miracle was nothing special, to convince Pharaoh that Moses and Aaron's God was nothing special, and most importantly, to convince Pharaoh that he could ignore everything the true and living God was going to say to him through Moses, and he could do it without any penalty whatsoever. Deception, deception has been Satan's goal for the human race from the very beginning. He began with it on Adam and Eve in the garden, Genesis 3. What did he say? He came to them and said, did God tell you that you couldn't eat from this tree or else you'll die? Ah, he says, don't listen to that. God's not telling you the truth.
You will not surely die. Was he lying? Yes, he was. And he succeeded in deceiving them into doing exactly what God told them not to do. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 says that at the end of the age, Satan will display all sorts of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders.
Look, why? To deceive those who are unbelieving so they will believe his lies and be condemned. Now friends, in reality, Satan has a two-fold ministry of deception that he's trying to carry out on the human race.
Let me tell you about it. Part one of his plan is to deceive every non-believing person on earth and convince them to reject Jesus Christ and his offer of salvation. To convince these people that Jesus Christ was not who he claimed to be, God in the flesh. To convince these people that Jesus Christ is not God's exclusive way to heaven. To convince people that there are many ways to get eternal life and get to heaven, not just one. And to convince these folks, just like Pharaoh, that they can ignore everything God says to them in the Bible and they can do it without penalty or without consequences.
May I say that if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way as your Savior, that Satan is out to convince you you don't need to do that. He's using every means at his command. He's using television, radio, the movies. He's using all of the media. He's using public education.
He's using everything he can get his hands on. His most recent tool, the DaVinci Code. And I'm going to be talking about that in three weeks when the DaVinci Code movie opens.
We're going to have a three-week series on the book and on the lies in the book. He's using everything at his command to convince you that Jesus is not the only way to heaven and that you don't need to do what God tells you you need to do in the Bible. I'm here to tell you that's all a lie. I'm here to tell you God's telling you the truth in the Bible about getting to heaven. It's the only truth about how to get to heaven.
Jesus rose from the dead to prove he was telling us the truth about how to get to heaven. And I'm here to tell you don't listen to the lies of the enemy. They will land you in hell for all of eternity. You listen to the truth of the Word of God. And when all the dust settles, you'll be standing on the shores of heaven. Now friends, if Satan loses this battle, part one of his plan, if a person comes to Christ, then he goes to part two of his plan for deceiving people. And that is in part two, Satan is out to deceive every follower of Christ. He's out to deceive us and convince us to disobey God.
Listen carefully to me. Satan is out to deceive us into making disobedient choices, sinful choices, that will ruin our earthly lives and will nullify our impact for Jesus Christ on this world. And it's important for us to realize that Satan is utterly ruthless when it comes to pursuing part two of his ministry here aimed at you and me as followers of Christ. 1 Peter chapter 5 says, Be alert, your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Now these are strong words, to devour somebody. But friends, God wants us to understand that Satan is playing for keeps. He has no mercy. He has no compassion. He has no forbearance, no pity, no grace. When he gets you down, he'll step on your face for good measure. When he gets the knife in your back, he'll twist it to do more damage and he'll enjoy every single moment of it.
Now we're not used to dealing with a being like this. I mean, even the worst human beings love their mother. But Satan doesn't love anybody.
He doesn't love anything. And as followers of Christ, we need to understand his unapologetic goal is to destroy you, your children, your family, your grandchildren, your friends. His goal is to cause you to make choices that will disgrace you, that will ruin your reputation and will wreck your life. And he's out to do it without mercy. Now the good news is that at the end of the age, Revelation 21, 10, God's going to take Satan and his demons and throw them into the lake of fire for all eternity and we're going to be done with them.
That's the good news. The bad news is that in the meantime, Satan is alive and well on planet Earth. And what that means is that as followers of Christ, we need to figure out how to protect ourselves from his attempts to ruin our lives. In that regard, I have three suggestions, three biblical principles I want to give you that will help you and enable you to insulate your life from the impact of Satan on you.
Number one, principle number one is don't dabble in the diabolical. Listen, as followers of Christ, we dare not underestimate the harmful power of Satan's devices. James chapter 4 verse 7 tells us to resist the devil, not play footsie with him. Ephesians chapter 4 says, do not give the devil a foothold in your life, which is what we risk doing whenever we dabble with the things of the occult, things like Ouija boards and seances and tarot cards, fortune tellers and psychics and palm readers and crystals, all the movies that I mentioned at the beginning and all this new age stuff that's out there and Harry Potter movies. Folks, we have no business as followers of Jesus Christ having anything to do with these things. There are some very dangerous demonic things in this world that are not to be trifled with even by followers of Jesus Christ. And that's why I didn't see any of those movies as a follower of Christ.
And parents, may I say a special word to you that I believe we as parents have a special responsibility to guard our children from exposure to these things when they're young because the damage can be incredible in their lives by exposing them to some of this stuff. Principle number two is this, not only should we not dabble in the diabolical, but number two, we need to be very careful not to let Satan lure us into disobeying God. Remember we said earlier, the main way Satan tries to ruin our life and to nullify our impact for Christ is by convincing us to disobey God. And then we bring the consequences of disobedience on our life, we ruin our reputation and he's accomplished his purpose. Now friends, he has a game plan that he tries to follow to get us to do this. He's a very scheming and a very organized being. He used this game plan on Adam and Eve and I guarantee you he's tried to use it on you.
Here's how it goes. Part one, he tries to breed discontent in our life as Christians. He tries to get our eyes off of all the good things God has given us and onto the things God hasn't given us. He tries to get us complaining about what we don't have. We got a junky old car, a lousy old job, our ugly old house, we're single and we wish we were married.
We've got problems with our children or our marriage is bad and we want more money and we want more power and we want more possessions and yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda. Once he gets our eyes on the stuff we don't have, his second part of the plan is to get us to start questioning God. Questioning God's goodness. He whispers in our ear and says, you know what? If God really loved you, he'd have given you this stuff.
You know what? You're serving God and trying to be faithful to him with your life and look how he treats you. He doesn't even give you this, that or the other thing, he's holding out on you. Friend, may I tell you, if there's something you want that God hasn't given you, it's because it's not best for you. God's a good God. If it were good for you, he'd have given it to you.
Satan's lying to you. But this breeds resentment and it breeds anger and it breeds self-pity. And once he's got us there, he delivers the coup de grace. Here you go. He says to us, okay now, come with me, let's do it my way and I'll get you all that stuff. Let's disobey God. Let's take matters in our own hands and let's get what we want. Let's go get that other woman we want. Let's go get that new house we can't really afford. Let's get into that dating relationship we got no business being in. Let's do a little bit of unethical things just to get the money and the power and the possessions we want. And Satan will assure you, just like he did Adam and Eve, that God doesn't really mean what he says about the consequences of disobedience.
Don't worry about it. Now here's the amazing thing. Satan has been using that strategy on the human race for thousands of years. And the most amazing thing is that it keeps working.
It keeps working. Friends, may I tell you what God says about the consequences of disobedience? Galatians chapter 6, verse 7. Do not be deceived, God says. No one makes a fool out of God, for whatever a person sows that is precisely what they will reap, for the person who sows disobedience will reap earthly ruin. That is what God says.
Don't you lie? Let Satan lie to you and tell you different. Friends, God has always attached consequences to disobedience and he always will.
Here in Washington, we've had some bigger than life examples of this in the last few weeks. Sad cases of people who learned this lesson the hard way. Well, you know, David found out this lesson the hard way too. He said, I'm the man after God's own heart. I can go shack up with Bathsheba and hook up with her and you know what? When it's all over, I'll just ask God to forgive me and it won't be a big deal.
Wrong. He suffered the consequences for what he did the rest of his life. Hey, Adam and Eve learned about this lesson the hard way. So did Lot, so did Samson, so did King Saul and Judas and a steady stream of people that I meet with in my office every Tuesday afternoon have learned this lesson the hard way. Satan has been lying to people about the consequences of disobedience since the Garden of Eden, folks.
Don't let him lie to you. You might say, well, Lon, okay, so how then can I fight off his lies? Well, that brings me to my third and final principle and that is that we need to use God's weaponry in resisting Satan. Ephesians Chapter 6 says our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of evil and against spiritual evil, friends, we need spiritual weapons. Now, God has provided those spiritual weapons.
You can read about them in Ephesians Chapter 6. But the only offensive weapon that's in the list is Ephesians 6 17, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. That is the offensive weapon that God has given us to use to defend ourself against the enemy.
And you know, Jesus used that weapon. Matthew Chapter 4. The devil, the Bible says, took Jesus into the wilderness and tempted him, tried to lure him into disobeying God, just like he tries to lure you and me, and how did Jesus fight him off?
Three times. He said to him, Satan, it is written. Satan, it is written. Satan, it is written. Quoted the book of Deuteronomy to him three times, using the word of God as his sword. And then Matthew 4 11 says, after this, the devil left him. Friends, the point is the word of God works.
It is the weapon that will fight off the enemy's deceptions. And this is why here at McLean Bible Church, we work so hard to get you studying the word of God. It is why we work so hard to get you memorizing the word of God.
Because we want you to have the sword of the Spirit, the word of God at your fingertips when you need to pull it out of your scabbard and use it. You can't go looking at that moment through the Bible in concordance and going, I know that is in here somewhere. Hold on, Satan. I will be right back. It is in here somewhere.
Let me find it a second. It does not work that way. He is smarter than that. You got to be ready to fight when he hits you. And when it comes to him luring us into disobedience, so many times I find myself, when he whispers in my ear, quoting Galatians 6 back to him and saying, do not be deceived. Satan, you're not going to deceive me. God is not mocked. Nobody makes a fool out of God for whatever I sow here, I'm going to reap.
I'm not doing that because I don't want to reap what's coming. It's amazing how quickly things lose their attraction when you quote the word of God back in his attempts at you. Amazing. Use God's weapons.
Thank you. Now, you may say, well, Lon, you know, this is wonderful, but, you know, for me, it's kind of like the horse is already out of the barn, Lon, a little bit. I mean, to be honest, I've already allowed the enemy to lure me into doing some disobedience in some areas of my life that I should not have done.
I mean, what about me? What do I do? Well, friends, if that's your situation, let me reaffirm to you that God is a loving God and a forgiving God, and he's ready to love and forgive you on the basis of what he tells us in the Bible when we've disobeyed.
What do we need to do? We need to repent. Repentance, basically the word just means change your mind.
It means you make a U-turn. There are four steps to repentance. Let me tell you what they are, because you may need them. Number one, we have to confess our disobedience to God and ask for his forgiveness. Number two, we need to renounce our wrong behavior and be willing to turn from it. Number three, we have to go make things right with people that we've hurt and we've damaged by our actions.
And number four, we've got to commit ourselves with the help of God that from this point on we're going to obey God in this area of our life. You say, wow, Lon. I mean, that's hard. I mean, repentance takes courage to do all that stuff. You're right.
You're right. Only people who are really serious about being right with God will repent, and you know what? That's why God rewards them with forgiveness and restoration, because he knows you mean business if you're willing to do this. If we repent, what do we get? First of all, we get forgiveness. 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all filth.
And second of all, we get restoration. Joel 2, 25. For I will restore to you, God says, the years the locust have eaten. And friends, may I say to you, if you're here and there's in your life an area that you're involved in or others where you know you're in disobedience to God, I urge you today, repent. God's standing there like the father of the prodigal son, anxious to hug you and take you back in, forgive you, and begin restoring to you the years the locust have eaten. But do what the prodigal son did. He made a U-turn and came home in repentance.
That's what you need to do. It's what I need to do when I disobey God. And the wonderful thing about it is God's always in this posture with His arms wide open when we head back to Him in repentance. Hey, you know, it'd be easy to be really afraid of Satan in light of all we've learned today, but I got a great verse of Scripture to end with.
It says this, 1 John 4, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. And if we will learn to stay away from Satan's schemes, if we will learn to fight his schemes with the Word of God, if we will major in obeying God in our life, we have absolutely nothing to worry about from the enemy because greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. Now, that's the shortest course on demonology you will ever get in your life.
I took a whole semester in seminary to do that for you. But, friends, that, what I've shared with you today is the truth, and I urge you to build your life on it. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the truth today, and I pray for people here that we would build our lives on what you tell us in the Bible about Satan and about his schemes. And if there are people here today who need to repent, then, Father, I pray you would give them the courage to do it and claim your forgiveness and your restoration. Thank you that you are a loving and forgiving God and that you are greater than any force in this world. May we walk with you, Lord, so that we can walk in confidence and without fear. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
