If Satan came and presented himself to us as he really is, and exposed his true plan and his real motivation, nobody would follow him. But today on Truth for Life, we'll learn about some of the subtle schemes Satan uses to draw us into idolatry and away from God. Alistair Begg is teaching from 1 Corinthians chapter 10. We're looking at verses 14 to 22. Christians are able to exercise considerable power.
Considerable power. A lot of stuff that is apparently occultic is doubtless exaggerated, and much of it is fake. But it is not all exaggerated and it is not all fake. A great deal of it is real. And it constantly draws people away into realms of deception and into experiences of darkness. So, for example, a number of people I heard about did certain things for their graduation parties, unable to think up things.
You see how the world is left without the influence of Christ, but some people were having palm readers come to the graduation parties so that they could introduce the youngsters to this kind of thing. Why? What about that? Well, a lot of it's fake, but some of it's force, and if it's force, it's satanic. You can't touch it. You can't fool with it.
Here it is. 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 13. Paul is talking about the people who will be preaching the gospel from the wrong motivation. He says, For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder! For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.
Their end will be what their actions deserve. Because this is the case, says Paul, I do not want you to be participants with demons. Notice that at the end of verse 20. The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. Now understand that, and therefore, do not be participants with demons. You see, presumably people were arguing, as I've said, that since they didn't believe in it, it couldn't harm them. Paul says, Don't be so naive.
It will not only harm you, but it will also harm people who watch you, who will be confused and may in turn be compromised by their actions. The whole argument of verses 14–22 is this. Religious ceremonies, whether pagan, Christian, or Jewish, involve participation of the worshippers. And the worshippers participate with the object of their worship and with each other. Since that is so, it is consequently completely inconsistent for believers to participate in any expression of worship that is apart from and contrary to Christ and the Scriptures. To be in fellowship with Christ means that we cannot be in fellowship with demons.
To be in communion with demons means that we are cut off from communion with Christ. Jesus taught similarly. Matthew chapter 6, he said, No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You can't have it both ways. Were the Corinthians naive? If they were, Paul sounds this warning note. If they weren't naive and they were going about the matter purposefully, then he stirs their response by asking these two final questions in verse 22. He says, Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy?
I mean, are we just doing this to incur the reaction of our Lord? The Lord who had given his command, Exodus 34, 14, Do not worship any other God, because the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. When we speak about the jealousy of God, we shouldn't attach to it any of the imperfections and faults which are part of human jealousy. None of that attaches to God. The jealousy of God is a perfect jealousy—the jealousy that a man would have for the purity and protection of his wife, the jealousy of a mother for her newborn child. She would want no one else to have it, no one else ultimately to hold it. It was her child, and she wanted it.
And so she should. So says Paul, do you think you're gonna sit down at the Lord's table, and then you're gonna run out of here, and you're gonna go and worship in pagan contexts? And you think because of what I've been teaching you about Christian freedom that you're free to do that? Now, he says again, you're sensible people. Work it out. His final question is a kind of argument from absurdity. Are we stronger than he? Are we stronger than God? The answer to that is no. I mean, Job, in the Old Testament, he says, Do I have an arm like God?
No. The very idea is preposterous. We can't outrun God. We can't outsmart God. And God will not allow idolatry, along with other sin, to go unpunished. When the apostle John writes about how God's going to wrap things up, at the end of the day, in Revelation chapter 21, this is what he says in verse 6.
He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. So all we need to be is thirsty.
All we need to know is that we need water beyond ourselves, and it is available to us. I saw a program called Pinnacle. I've watched it two Saturday nights running—not last night, but I did watch it the two previous. It's on the business program, and it features people who've been successful in business. Two weeks ago, it was Mark McCormick of IMG. The last week, it was a fashion designer whose name I do not know. But in the course of asking this fashion designer the reason for her success, the lady said, To what do you attribute your success?
Number one, she said, The encouragement of my husband. Number two, psychics. Psychics. So the lady said to her, What do you mean?
You mean you consult people? Do you really believe in that? This is what the lady said. She said, I know this, that there is something beyond me. I don't know what it is, but it is a force, and I want to plug into it.
Okay? Now, what she's really expressing is a spiritual thirst. She probably knows a Christian somewhere who's missing the chance to read to her. Revelation 21, verse 6, Whoever is thirsty, I will give him to drink without cost the spring of the water of life. Lady, that's what you're longing for.
But you have plugged into fake, and you've plugged into force. And the lady asked her to explain how it was she knew that the psychics were working. And she said, Because I thought that I was going to do perfume before I did men's clothing. And the psychic told me, You do men's clothing before you do perfume.
And I did men's clothing before I did perfume. And look at me! I'm rolling in it! Now, was that the psychic?
No, but we could easily argue that it was demonic activity, because the evil one liked to draw down the vortex, make her believe in that stuff, and give her no hope. Now, says the apostle John, He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. And this is the second death. What really comes down to loved ones this morning is this. Are we going to believe the agenda that the world sets, or are we going to believe our Bibles? To stand for this stuff in the climate of our day is going to make demands on the church such as we've never seen. So let me conclude with one or two points of application.
Here they are. Application number one to the instruction of this teaching, let us check our lives for the compromises that we may be making. Put down a note saying, I've got to check for compromise in my life.
I want to check my Friday nights, my Saturday nights, and my Sundays. And I want to see if I'm sitting at two tables, because the Bible says don't try and sit at those two tables. Compromises in the realm of business, compromises in the realm of morality, compromises in the realm of emotion, compromises.
Let us check ourselves on the compromise meter. Number two, let us be in no doubt, in relationship to what we've discovered about communion, that the significance of our communion lies in our first being incorporated into Christ. It is once we have found Christ to be our all in all that our expression of participation in communion bears significance. Until that time, as I said to you, it neither nourishes us physically nor spiritually, and that's why many of our children will sit around and say, I don't know why we do this. And that is why hundreds and thousands of people will flush through a system Sunday after Sunday after Sunday without it bearing any resemblance to reality in their lives, because they have never been united with Christ. And without union with Christ, there is no significance except to eat and drink judgment to ourselves. Thirdly, let us not kid ourselves external activities do matter.
The Corinthians were saying, Hey, we can go to the temple of idols. It doesn't matter. We're not really into it. Paul says, No, you can't.
No, you can't. The fact that you're not into it, nobody can know your heart. The fact that you're not involved, nobody can know your heart. And if you continue, he says, to engage in external activities such as these, you throw your life and the cause of the gospel into confusion. And you shouldn't do that. Number four, when men and women in the futility of their thinking worship creatures rather than the Creator, then they are ripe for delusion by and involvement in satanic activity.
Okay? When men and women worship the creature rather than the Creator, a la Romans 1, then they are ripe for delusion by and involvement with Satan and his hosts. Where are we at this point in the late twentieth century? We're totally consumed by the notion of worshiping the creature. I mean, there's two flies flying around somewhere on the west coast of California, shutting down the possibility for some kind of business being developed, because somebody said that the lesser-spotted Hoogly Woogly cannot be interfered with because, after all, they're one of, quote, our creatures. Well, I don't want to be unkind to flies, but this is ridiculous, folks. There's more attention being paid to whales and beagle dogs and the proliferation of rabbits than is being considered in relationship to the mutilation of countless children in their mother's womb. How could you have these two things going on at the same time?
I'll tell you how. When a society worships itself and worships creatures, thereby giving up on the worship of the Creator, it lays itself open to delusion by the evil one and involvement with the evil one. Fifthly—this is the last one—when people pay homage to idols, they are not engaging in neutral activity. They are actually flirting with demonic forces.
When people pay homage to idols, they're not engaged in neutral activity, they are flirting with demonic forces. In 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and in verse 11, Paul says, We ought not to be unaware, or we are not unaware, of Satan's schemes. He talks about being outwitted by Satan, his tricks and his plots.
He's a schemer, he's a dreamer, he's a masquerader. We need look no further than the life and ministry of Jesus to understand that the devil is both real and personal. It's not kosher at this point in time to believe in a real personal devil. Even theologians don't believe in a real personal devil, and they haven't for years. It's really just crazy people that live in certain parts of the world who believe in this real personal devil, and it's just such a joke, it's so crazy. Well, Jesus never found it a joke.
He didn't find it crazy. And since the devil himself blinds the men and women so as to secure their allegiance, one of the things he loves to do is to make them believe that he doesn't exist. You've got to think this out. I mean, this is clever. I'm going to get you to believe in me by making you think that I'm not real. Now, you go try and sell that.
That's complex. And he does it! So what he has done is he has made himself in red pajamas, carrying a fork with two things sticking out the top of his head. And every sensible person in the Western world says, You're not going to tell me you believe in that devil stuff with the pajamas and the fork and the thing? And some people say, I don't believe that garbage.
Neither do I. And so, in endeavoring to blind them and suck them in, he recreates himself in a way that makes himself unbelievable. He trivializes his evil in defining himself in this way. And that's why Jesus cuts through it.
And we'll conclude here. John chapter 8 and verse 44. Jesus speaks to the religious people of his day.
Get this. If anybody was religious, if anybody was going to heaven, if anybody had it down, then it was these guys, the Jews and the teaching Jews. They spoke at the conferences, they were the folks who stood up in the synagogue, they were the ones who prayed at the corner, they were the people who had the law of God wrapped around their head and wrapped around their arms, and Jesus is calling them to commitment.
And they are trying to defend themselves on the basis of their lineage. And he's talking to them about their father Abraham, and they're getting all tied up in knots, and then eventually, in verse 42, listen to what Jesus says to them. This is what he says to religious people of his day. If God were your father, you would love me. For I came from God, and now I am here. I've not come on my own.
He sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Do you ever wonder that?
Now, Jesus asks the question. You say, Why is it that I can talk to somebody? And it's as if I spoke another language altogether. Why is my language not clear to you? He says, Answer, because you're unable to hear what I say.
Why are you unable to hear what I say? Verse 44, You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe in me.
You see? That's where our culture lives. Because I tell the truth, you do not believe. Someone spreads lies, and they are absorbed into their system. Think about all the lies that are abroad today as we're about to walk out this door—lies about human sexuality and gender, unimaginable things, silly things and bad things, things that human physiology itself says are absolutely ridiculous, and the lies are pervasive. And the further lie is that the issue of homosexuality is not a moral issue. That's a lie as well.
It's a major moral issue. Think about the lies in terms of what man's real predicament really is. Think about the lies in relationship to truth, that all truth is relative truth, and there is no absolute. Consequently, God's wrath is revealed from heaven. You can read it in Romans chapter 1. Jesus said he's the father of lies. Jesus said he's a murderer from the beginning.
Adam and Eve sin, and what's the first sin that's committed after that? The murder. The murder of a brother with his brother. Think about all the murders. Think about all the murders. Think about your plain dealer this week and the discovery of those bones in an incinerator, whether they're the right bones or they're not the right bones.
And read that stuff! An eight-year-old boy beaten senseless, beaten into oblivion, some little boy called Arthur. A doctor who has taken the Hippocratic oath to save and preserve the lives of men and women, so consumed by his passions and his lusts and driven by the forces of darkness, that he's able to take the lifeless body of an eight-year-old boy and stuff him in an open fireplace and light it. Now, don't try and explain that to me in terms of the fact that the man was brought up wrong or that his granny never brought him candy on the Friday when she promised. That is from the pit of hell. And he may not be doing it because he understands that, but when the records are revealed on the day that we stand before him, it will be seen to have been demonic activity in that man's life. And, loved ones, that is the world in which you and I live. Do not kid yourself for a moment that at the level of music and lyrics and films and so much, you can kid yourself and say, It doesn't matter, because it's just this or that. Behind that—listen to the Bible—behind that is all the force of hell unleashed against God's people.
Well, you say, What are we supposed to do? Well, let's just be biblical. That is, we have to believe all that the Bible says, and also we have to hold it in the proportion which the Bible holds it. In other words, don't get it, go out and start buying yourself Frank Peretti books on the strength of this, okay?
Don't get this as your framework. Don't go out and say, Oh man, demons, demons, demons, demons, because the Bible doesn't do that. The devil doesn't do that. Another time I'm going to come back and teach you about the devil, but I'm going to tell you this. Number one, the devil is defeated. Number two, the devil is to be resisted. Number three, the devil is limited.
You've got to know this. The devil is not omniscient. Only God knows everything. The devil is not omnipotent.
Only God is all-powerful. And thirdly, the devil is not omnipresent. Only God is everywhere.
You ever work that out? Satan isn't everywhere. He can't be everywhere.
He can only do it one at a time. Therefore, the chances are that neither you nor I have ever been tempted directly by Satan himself. Jesus was. Do you ever think that out?
I mean, because after all, how many million, billion people are there in the whole world? And he's involved in doing them one at a time? Do you really think he came to your door?
You say, well, you should see some of the things I got tempted in. Well, maybe he did come to your door, but the fact of the matter is, it's highly unlikely. Why would he come himself when he is so successful, sending one of his boys? Let's pray. Father, these words are so powerful and illuminating in our day in which we live.
We're so bombarded by worldviews and explanations which owe nothing to your word and owe everything to an agenda that doesn't come from truth. And so we pray that you will give us a baptism of clear seeing—not a craziness, not some kind of self-absorbed preoccupation which would delight the evil one all the more, but simply a sanity, biblical wisdom, wise judgments, careful constraints on our children, speedy responses to the approach of sin. I pray that you will teach us as a congregation what these things mean, so that we will participate with Christ and with one another. And gladly, willingly sit down at that table. But help us not to sit at other tables.
For we've understood your word that we can't have it both ways. Be with us now. May the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon each one, now and forevermore.
Amen. That is Bible teacher Alistair Begg, UnTruth for Life, helping us apply the Bible's wisdom so we can avoid compromising our faith. The more we understand about Jesus, the less appealing any idol becomes. I want to tell you today about a book that will help take you deeper into the wonder and magnificence of Jesus. The book is titled The Glorious Christ—Meditations on His Person, Work, and Love. Back in the late 1600s, Puritan writer John Owen wrote a profoundly insightful collection of meditations that explore the glory and majesty of Jesus. Well, that work has been adapted and the language has been updated for this book, The Glorious Christ. As you work your way through these readings, you'll be drawn into the experience of the disciples as they witnessed Jesus' glory firsthand. The goal is to help you deepen your relationship with Jesus and your love for the Lord. Author Chris Lundgaard has made it his life's work to study John Owen's writings, and in this book he has mined the riches of Owen's writing to bring us a book intended to be transformational. No matter how long you've been following Jesus, you'll benefit from the insight of both authors. Ask for your copy of the book, The Glorious Christ, when you donate today to support the Bible teaching ministry of Truth for Life. You can donate through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapine. We are finding out that when it comes to Christian freedom, what is permissible is not always profitable. So how do we manage our freedom wisely? Tomorrow we'll review some ground rules. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
