Video Transcript: Satan's Main Aim

Day 101 to 110 – Unit 11 Jesus' Resurrection and Reign

There are Two Video Transcripts

Video Transcript: Satan's Main Aim (Dr. Feddes) 

What would happen if Satan took over an entire city? What picture comes to your mind? The thought of Satan taking over? You might picture a city just in shambles with people being cruel to each other and all sorts of horrible things happening. And that might be how things would end up. But maybe that wouldn't be what would happen right away if Satan took over a city, Donald Gray Barnhouse preacher from decades ago once asked the question, what would happen if Satan took over Philadelphia, where he was the pastor? Well, he thought that if Satan took over Philadelphia, all the bars would be closed. Pornography would be outlawed, streets would be safe and squeaky clean. Children would be polite, churches would be full every Sunday, and Jesus Christ would not be preached as God and Savior. 

That's how he imagined the city of Satan took it over. Everything would be nice, the people would be kind and polite, the streets would be clean and Jesus would not be proclaimed. Dr. Barnhouse believe that Satan would be delighted to give us some more of our own righteousness. If he could rob us of Christ and His righteousness. Satan would give us more goodness if he could rob us of God. Just think of Satan strategies throughout history. The religion of Islam burst on the scene with a strict moral code. And with lots of cultural achievements with impressive military strength, with impressive economic strength in its early centuries, it was not just a disaster for everybody where it came it was a mighty and powerful civilization, in Victorian England, and in much of America that fell under the sway of Unitarianism. In the 1800s. They were very strong on morality. They wanted to emphasize good proper behavior and clean living. They were very weak on Christ as God and Savior, but they wanted to make sure everybody behaved nicely. Just take nice clean all Americans Salt Lake City, Utah today, the world capital of Mormonism, one of the beautiful cities one of the cleanest and safest and finest cities you can find, and one where Jesus Christ as God with us, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is denied. So maybe it's not such a terrible guess to say that if Satan took over a city or a Satan took over a civilization, it might seem really quite nice and well ordered. But Christ would not be proclaimed Satan's main goal is to keep us from seeing Jesus. Satan's main goal is to keep us from seeing Christ as the perfect picture of God, the display of the Father's glory. 

The history of Satan's work over the past 2000 years, is in large part a history of groups and movements that detracted or subtracted or distracted from Jesus Christ, Satan might eventually let a city go completely to the dogs and go down the tubes. But if he just had his way, he made life pretty livable without Jesus Christ. Well, as we think about that, let's look at a key passage in the Bible in second Corinthians chapter four. It says, in their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as Your servants for Jesus sake. For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. These words were inspired through the writing of the apostle Paul and the Apostle Paul had once been a man who strongly emphasized morality and proper behavior and good living, and had despised Jesus Christ, but he had come to see the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and he knew what Satan's main aim is Satan's main aim Satan, the god of this world. His main aim is to keep people from seeing the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

When we want to see who Jesus is one of the great passages that Paul wrote about that is in Colossians, chapter one verses 15 through 20. It says Jesus is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross, let's just take this great passage, one of the clearest in the Bible teaching the truth about Jesus Christ, and see some of Satan's counterfeits and attempts to conceal or to twist or distort or to hide what is true about our Lord Jesus Christ. The first thing this passage says is that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. If you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus, because Jesus is God. He's God made visible to us.

The Muslims say that Jesus is not God, appearing among us, but a prominent prophet. So they say Jesus is very important and taught true things. But he's not God. He's not the way we see God appearing among us. The Mormons say that Jesus came from a union between Mary and the visible body of Elohim, the Father, God, the Father has a body and Jesus was the result of the Father's physical union with Mary. And so it's denying that God is invisible, that God does is a spirit and that God Himself God, the Father does not have a body, and it's denying the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church do hold to the full deity of Jesus Christ. And they're absolutely right about that. And all Christians are one in agreeing with that. But a Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox aren't satisfied with Jesus as God's image and resort to using statues and icons as aids, to worshiping God, rather than simply accepting that God is invisible. And the way to know God is through the word of truth about our Lord Jesus Christ. And then, of course, there is the contemporary thing, spirituality. People say, oh, I'm not a religious person, I'm a spiritual person. 

I don't like organized religion, but I like spirituality. And my inner feelings are the best indicator of who Jesus is or who God is, not Jesus as the image of the invisible God, but my vibes are the image of the invisible God. And so there are a variety of ways of denying the fullness of Jesus as the image of the invisible God. Jesus is also according to Colossians, one, the first born of all creation, For by Him all things were created. And it goes on to say again, all things were created through Him and for Him, He's before all things. Now, the heritic Arius, in the early three hundreds said that Jesus Christ is the first creature, he's not God, the Creator, Arius said there was a time when he was not, there was a time when the Son of God didn't exist. Now, Arius believes that Jesus had existed before he became Jesus in a sense that he was a great being before he was conceived in the womb of Mary. He was the first creature made before other creatures, and that's what he believed was meant by the firstborn of all creation. But Scripture teaches that, first of all, creation does not mean that he's actually just a part of creation. Although of course, he is the foremost of creatures in the sense that he's human as well as God, but in His divine nature, Jesus is the first born of God, overall creation. 

He's God's firstborn with the authority over the whole household, and with all the rights over all of creation, that's what's meant, not that he's the first creature and that Jesus didn't exist before he became a man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, but areas taught that Christ is just the first creature a Jehovah's Witnesses teach something very similar to Arius. They say that the Archangel Michael gave up his angel nature, to become Jesus, the man, Jesus was never God. That's a direct contradiction of the doctrine, the trinity of course, which states based on biblical revelation, that Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, that is divine, not just an angel, or even a mighty Archangel, but God himself and the creator of all things. The Bible never says that Michael created all things or the All things were created through Him, or that Michael is before all things. It says that of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, a pantheism takes a whole different approach. There is no creator, or creation, creator and creation of the same thing. The universe is God. And so in saying that everything is divine, it's in effect, also saying that nothing is divine. And that's the whole idea of pantheism, very popular in Eastern religions, popular among some who even label themselves Christian theologians, especially those who are in love with evolutionism. And then there's naturalism, which just says the ultimate reality is impersonal evolution, and not a personal creator. 

Scripture says In the beginning God, in the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth, and that Christ is the ones for whom all things were created. And so before anything came along, that's not personal, or that is material, there was the personal creator. And naturalism just contradicts that completely, and says, ultimate reality is matter and energy. And what we think of as personality just kind of evolved out of random combinations of matter and energy, flat rejection of what the Bible reveals, and another lie from Satan, to detract from the glory of Christ and from the glory of God the Father. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authority. So let's focus on that thrones, rulers, dominions, authorities, part of this statement, these were all created through Christ and for him. It's been something that happens again and again, through history where people begin to worship angels, they feel that they're becoming more spiritual if they're in contact with certain spirit guides. And they don't realize that the kind of spirit guides who tried to take over your personality, or who tried to become a substitute for God are the fallen angels, the fallen and wicked spirits. 

And so they start to worship angels, now real godly angels don't want to be worshipped. And so the only kinds of angels who will receive worship are the bad kind the Satanic and demonic kind. But it's been a popular thing in various people in popular religion, to worship angels instead of the living God. Another aspect of this is tribal religions where they have local spirits that they feel they have to deal with, and the spirits of their ancestors. And they believe that there's a great Creator God who made everything, but they believe that he's kind of in the wholesale business, who lives far away. And really, retail religion is dealing with these local spirits, the spirit of this tree or that forest, or that rock, or this region, where we need some help, or dealing with your ancestors who can really do some harm to you or help you out if those spirits are with you, to accompany you. And these kinds of traditional religions, though they believe in a creator act as though the lesser spirits dominions, rulers, authorities, are the ones that you really have to get along with the Christian religion teaches, go straight to the top, pray to God and depend on him and let his supremacy over all those other things he created be your comfort. 

A Roman Catholics, in a sense deal with intermediate spirits as well because instead of just praying to God, in the name of Jesus Christ, they encouraged communication with the dead in much the way those tribal religions believe the an ancestor veneration prayers to marry prayers directed to patron saints, saints of a particular area, or saints of a particular specialty of life. And so it's not enough to be praying to God alone. But to be praying to these spirit go betweens. It's all part of the same syndrome of denying the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, and looking to spirit intermediaries. Jesus is before all things. And in Him, all things hold together. Again, Satan has come up with various ideas to undermine this or to deny it. Deism is the idea that God got the universe going and then wound up the clock, so to speak, and left it to run on its own. He's not involved with it anymore. He just got it rolling. Scripture says in him all things hold together, and he's upholding it every moment by the Word of His power. That's what it says of Jesus Christ. Deism says no, there is a God, he made things and now he made it according to rational patterns, but it's on its own. And it's our job to figure out the rational patterns and to live according to moral principles. And that's it. God's not engaged with this world and we don't need to engage with God directly. A variation on this is what's labeled Moral therapeutic deism something that sociologist Christian Smith, probably the foremost sociologist of religion in America has labeled the typical American religion. And he summarizes that as God wants me to be nice, that's the moral part. And he wants me to be happy. That's the therapeutic part. But he's a non factor in the real world. And in daily living. 

That's the deism part of there is a God out there somewhere. And he does generally want me to be kind of a nice person, and he certainly wouldn't want me to go through anything difficult. He wants me to be happy at all times. But he doesn't really matter. And I don't really need to worry about having an ongoing daily connection with him. And this is the way many, many people live, they think if you don't kick the dog, and if you overall pursue your own happiness, let God worry about God. That's the way to live. Moral therapeutic deism. It does not recognize that in Christ, all things hold together. And if you're trying to live without Jesus Christ, your life falls apart. And then there's civil religion. Worship of the nation, basically, you use a lot of God talk in your political life, you put Jesus and manger scenes and public displays, you slap the 10 commandments up in a few courthouses. And you count on traditional values holding things together. Scripture says Christ is the one in whom all things hold together. But civil religion wants to hold a society together based on using In God We Trust on our money, making public displays of this and that but not having actually the Word of the living God in our hearts, we want the 10 commandments, in our courthouses, we just don't know what they are.

Hardly any Americans can name what all of the 10 commandments are, even those who call themselves evangelicals can barely name five of the 10. And yet they want the 10 commandments in public life that just indicates a trust in civil religion as something that generally kind of holds things together. So it's not just cults or other religions that can deny truths and realities about Jesus Christ. It's just the way that we handle things and conduct our daily lives. Oh, and he is the head of the body, the church, that's another great truth about Jesus Christ. And another fact about Christ. Another reality of Christ that Satan tries to undermine. The Roman Catholic Church may say that Christ is the head of the church, but in practice, the Pope is the Vicar of Christ. He is Christ's person on earth to have the whole church. 

So in fact, Christ is not treated as the only true head of the church. Oh, but a lot of people aren't Catholics and even many Catholics don't really revere the pope all that much. They believe the customer is king. They're basically consumerists in their religion, and Church exists to please me. And if it doesn't do it, I like I'm going somewhere else, because there will be a church out there somewhere that will scratch my itch ears, and that will satisfy my appetite. And so I'm going to shop around till I get a church that suits my fancy, and very low on the list of important things about a church is whether Jesus Christ is actually exalted there, and whether Jesus Christ is honored as supreme, and whether the way of Christ and the formation of people into the character of Christ is the number one priority of that congregation. No, we want to know whether the parking lots good whether the music pleases our ear, or this or that you name it, almost everything except the centrality and preeminence of Jesus Christ. So don't go around saying, oh, yeah, those Catholics, they've got their Pope and they're denying Jesus as head of the church. Hey, a lot of non Catholics and even some Catholics are far more consumerist. And they're just as surely denying that Jesus is the one and only head of the church. They seem to think the customer and not Christ is king. And then there's the individualist.

Christ is the head of the body. What body who needs a church body? I can experience Jesus anywhere. I've got a personal knee and Jesus relationship and who needs that church thingy? That's another of Satan's denials of the supremacy and the preeminence of Jesus Christ in revealing himself and working in his body, the church. So one way after another after another Satan's got his strategies. Oh, here's another one, the doctrinallist and this is one where I could find myself in danger at times. We are ruled by truths and principles. We want to get our doctrines straight. We want to get our moral principles nailed down. I'm a person who teaches doctrine, I teach ethics. And so getting all of that right, you can begin to start thinking, oh, if we can only get everything written down and figured out properly, who really needs the living Lord Jesus Christ engaged in our lives in a day to day manner, we've got our doctrine correct. We have our teachings about how to behave nailed down, our i's are dotted, our t's are crossed. Who needs the actual involvement of the living Christ by His Holy Spirit in our lives in a daily conversational relationship of prayer and walking with him and seeking His guidance and loving him and worshiping Him? 

We need a connection, a living connection with our head. And unfortunately for the doctrinallist, it's bad doctrine, to pretend that doctrine is everything. Doctrine matters a great deal. But part of true doctrine is saying, we seek the living Christ to dwell in us and to live for him. We as his body, he is our head. He has our life and our day to day director. He's the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent, of theological liberalism is one of Satan's favorite methods lately, it just says Jesus didn't rise. In this age of enlightenment, when we are so scientific, we know that resurrections don't happen. Yeah, right. And then they try to tell us, but what really matters is kind of the Spirit of Jesus teaching and his thought, well, if Jesus is dead, said the apostle Paul, your faith is futile, you're still in your sins. Forget about Christianity, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, but Satan has used theological liberalism over the last couple of 100 years, especially, to say, oh, you can be a Christian and not believe that Jesus rose from the dead at all. Then there's easy believism, which says, you know, I can be forgiven and I can go to heaven. Without Jesus taking over my life. He doesn't have to be preeminent in everything. I can have him and his forgiveness and His salvation, and I can still do my own thing. What a bunch of rot. But that's one of Satan's methods to tell you, you could have Jesus as Savior, but not as Lord. You could have been forgiving your sins but not being preeminent in your life, dream on.

You may grow in your knowledge of Jesus preeminence, and in your application of it to various areas of life as you discover more and more. But if Christ is not your Lord, if you do not worship Him, and if he's not number one in your life, you are not a saved person. Easy believe ism is Satan's lie, that even if Jesus isn't preeminent in your life, you're just fine. And then again, back to consumerism, what I want from a church is and you just fill in your own nice little consumerist blank. And Jesus might even make your list as one of the many things that the customer wants maybe is number 11. On the list, he should feel very fortunate that he made the list at all. Scripture says He is to be preeminent in everything. 

For him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Jesus is divine. He's revealed that in his words, and in his works, and in the truth of the Bible, that he is the very fullness of God, the very image of God. When you're looking at Jesus, you're looking at the father. But Judaism rejected Jesus as Christ. Some Jewish people accepted Christ and many of their earliest Christians were of course Jewish. All the apostles were Jewish, as was Jesus himself. But Judaism as a religion, rejected the deity of Jesus Christ and Jesus as the fullness of God and they crucified Jesus, for blasphemy some of the Jewish leaders did. The Ariens the heretics of the early three hundreds denied that Jesus is fully God. The Muslims deny that Jesus is God. The Unitarians deny that Jesus is God and say that Jesus is just a great man who knew God well and explained great moral principles. The deists deny that Jesus is God. The Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus is the fullness of God. The Mormons deny that they all have one thing in common whatever their differences, Jesus is not God's fullness, united to human nature. That is their claim. The consumerist has it a little different. He may have a sound doctrine of Jesus already might not but the consumer says that focusing on Jesus isn't enough. That doesn't fulfill us. We want something more when it comes to church life. 

So what if it's a Christ centered Bible believing church? We actually have other things on our wish list. And so the consumerist denies by His life, what he professes, perhaps in his doctrine of Jesus deity. And then the next thing about Jesus through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace, by the blood of his cross. It's been very common of Satan throughout history. His main aim is to deny the glory of God in Christ, and where is God's glory in Christ most revealed, whereas God's love in Christ most revealed at the cross in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. And so a denial of the cross. And what it achieved is something that again, and again, Satan, will try to pursue. Muslims say that Jesus did not die at all, Jesus was just a great property wasn't the Son of God. And as a great prophet, Allah would not let a prophet so great, be disgraced or be killed. And so someone else was made to look like him. 

Judas was made to look like Jesus. And Judas was the one who was nailed to the cross. And Prophet Jesus was taken straight to heaven, without ever dying. And so there is no atonement for sin in Islam, in the religion of Muslims, because Jesus never died at all. Scripture says that if righteousness could come through the law, Christ died for nothing. The Muslims teach that you get righteousness, by law by Sharia. And they teach therefore, that Jesus didn't die at all. He not only they say he didn't die for nothing, he, he didn't die. And so this is a fundamental denial of the cross. It is Satan's greatest counterfeit in history, to have a religion of a billion people that says, Jesus is not God, and Jesus did not die. The Legalist is very closely related that many followers of Judaism and Islam are legalist. And some who call themselves Christians are to that by keeping God's law by our own efforts by beating good boys and girls, we can save ourselves. That is a denial of the blood of the cross. If we could save ourselves, would God have sent his own beloved son, to hang on that cross to bear such awful agony to take God's wrath against sin? Would God have done all that if we could just do it on our own?

If we could save ourselves by the works of the law, Christ died for nothing. Galatians two, verse 21. But he died, and he didn't die for nothing. He died because we needed it. He needed to die for us so that we could have peace with God through the blood of the cross. And then there's the pluralist, the pluralist, the religious pluralist says that many paths lead to God. Some of them may say that all paths lead to God in the end. And so it doesn't really matter whether you believe in Jesus, Jesus said, I am the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE but the pluralist says Jesus is a way, a truth, a life, and many come to the Father apart from Him. Jesus still keep saying I am the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE whatever the pluralist may say. And the Bible teaches that the cross is the only way that Jesus has provided faith in his blood, is the only way to be made right with God, the pluralist will deny that they'll say there are many other ways and very often they'll think that this blood stuff and this cross stuff is kind of icky, and kind of primitive. So they'll end up saying all paths lead to God except the cross. 

Well, that's just that old dragon Satan talking. And then, most pluralists are also Universalist. They say all people are saved, even if they don't count on the cross of Christ. And by the way, this is a growing threat within the Christian Church itself. Some of its most popular preachers with 1000s and 1000s. In their mega churches are saying, Love wins. And this means that everybody gets in, in the end. Scripture says that many will be told by Jesus to depart from me into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Those people who are not in Christ, whose sin has not been atoned for by his cross and have not put their faith in him will be lost forever, despite what every pluralist and Universalist says, I don't care how many degrees you have in theology. I don't care how many people you have in the pews of your church. I don't care how many millions the budget of your churches is, I don't care how big your television or radio audience is. If you claim that people are saved without Jesus Christ, if you tell them they don't need faith in the blood of the cross, you are a liar and an enemy of the cross and a tool of Satan. Okay, that wasn't a nice thing I just said. It just happens to be a true thing.

Satan's main aim is to blind people, to the glory of God. In the face of Jesus Christ. And so, if that's Satan's main name, how should we deal with Satan's tricks? Well, my friend Jerry Lorenz, who is our technology, man at Christian leaders Institute has to deal with a variety of things in the work that we do. And one of those is protecting our computers against hack attacks. Our servers, Jerry tells me how to deal with and fend off more than 100 hack attacks every day. 

You see, there are various hackers and programs out there on the internet that are constantly trolling around trying to take over computer server space. And as they do that, you need to be able to fend them off. Now, how do you do that? Do you do that by memorizing a very, very long list of who these hackers are, and what the names of their programs are, and then staying up day and night to watch what they do. Oh, poor Jerry, you know, 24 hours around the clock just staring at the computer screen trying to deal with all these hackers? Well, actually, that's not what happens, Jerry does get some sleep, the best way to protect a computer server against hack attacks is to keep that computer itself healthy and keep that server healthy, and have a strong firewall and have good programming in it that will constantly maintain it and fend off every attempt at an attack. He does not have to know everything that ever goes on by those hackers, he just got to know how to defend a computer and keep it healthy. Now similarly, in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, we do want to know what some of Satan's main strategies are. 

But we don't need to know the name of every demon, or be staying up around the clock wondering what direction that demon is going to come out as from next. And we don't necessarily have to memorize even all the stuff I just talked about in this lecture. I mentioned these things, because I think it is important to be alert to different strategies of Satan and implementing his main strategy. But remember his main aim, his main aim is to keep you from seeing the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so the best way to deal with Satan and his hack attacks is to focus on the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and to have a daily walk with Jesus Christ, in prayer in conversation with him and listening to him in the Scriptures. And that will build a very strong firewall against that devil who is always on the prowl, seeking whom he may devour. You can't keep track of him and all his demons all the time. But if you keep your life focused on Jesus Christ, your firewall is very strong indeed. And you will be able to fend him off. Satan's main aim, we've seen what it is. And so we need to keep focused on Jesus on his cross and resurrection. 

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things were created through Him and for Him, and He is before all things and the any of all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre eminent, For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through Him, to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross, Satan's got his strategy. The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, and those of us who are Christians and those of us who are teachers of the gospel, we need to remember it's not us. It's not our thing. It's not our church. It's not us pleasing the customer. It's not ourselves that we proclaim, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as Your servants, for Jesus sake. For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.