Sermon for HCBC (30 August 2020). To listen use the audio player below or click here. Also available on your favorite podcast app (“Hunting Creek Baptist Church”).
Introduction
When I was around seven or eight, my parents woke me up in the middle of the night because the house next to ours was in flames. I’m not sure what the distance was between the houses. Maybe 50 to 100 feet. But the concern was that these flames would not be satisfied with devouring only one house but would also desire to devour our house.
That is a helpful metaphor to think about our topic this morning. This morning we continue our series on spiritual warfare, and we are looking at the devil’s destroying plan. The devil aims to destroy God’s good creation through any means possible. He is seeking to devour and destroy.
We are going to break from our typical pattern today. I’m not going to work through a single passage of Scripture as usual. Instead, I am going to construct a picture from several places in Scripture.
Creation Corrupted
I want to begin in Genesis 3 again. By now, you know the story. The serpent lies, deceives, and corrupts God’s good creation. Let’s look at the results in a couple of verses. Genesis 3:16: “To the woman [the LORD God] said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband but he shall rule over you.’” The serpent’s efforts result in increased pain in childbearing. Something good and beautiful and life-giving is now difficult and painful. Also, rather than the harmony we see between man and woman at the end of Genesis 2, now we have tension between them. Again, something good and beautiful and life-giving is now difficult and painful.
Now look at vv. 17–19: “And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’” The result of the serpent’s temptation is the corruption of creation. The ground is cursed. “In pain you shall eat.” The Hebrew word for “pain” is repeated from v. 16. The ground will produce thorns and thistles. Again, something good and beautiful and life-giving is now difficult and painful. Sweat and toil and labor are required.
We will come back to the end of Genesis 3 toward the end of our time this morning, but for now, let’s continue to trace the story in Genesis 4. Adam and Eve have two children—Cain and Abel. Cain is a farmer and Abel is a shepherd. Cain shows little devotion to the LORD. The LORD speaks to him in Gen 4:7: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” I just want you to notice how sin is this force that has a desire to destroy. And that’s precisely what happens in the following verses. Cain and Abel are in the field, and Cain kills his brother. What’s fascinating is the LORD’s response to Cain in vv. 11–12: “And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength.” Again, the ground is cursed as it is soaked with the blood of a life destroyed.
Now I do need to clarify something. So far, human sin, stemming from the serpent’s temptation, has resulted in curses on creation. These curses have been given by God. This continues into Genesis 6. God looks at humankind and he sees great evil. He determines to judge his creation. You know the story. The flood comes. Noah and his family are spared. When the waters subside, Gen 8:21 says, “The LORD said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man.” I point all of this out to you to show you that sin corrupts God’s good creation, and even in God’s judgment and cursing of creation, his restraint is a demonstration of his grace. We will see more of his grace in a few minutes, but for now we have to ask: Where does the devil fit into this?
The Devil’s Destructive Agenda
The devil is the catalyst for the corruption of creation, and as we observe the story of Scripture, we see his continued efforts to destroy creation. Before we look at four specifics, listen to what Jesus says in two verses in John. In John 8:44, Jesus says to the religious leaders, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning.” Jesus characterizes the devil as a murderer. What do murderer’s do? They destroy God’s creation. Similarly, Jesus says in John 10:10 that “[t]he thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Steal, kill, and destroy—that is a description of the devil’s work. Let me show you four examples.
First, we can go back to Cain killing Abel. First John 3:12 says Cain “was of the evil one.” In other words, that murder was motivated by the devil. Cain’s hatred for another human being is evidence of the devil’s work.
Second, the OT has numerous examples of children being sacrificed to pagan gods. The notion of child sacrifice is roundly rejected by the God of the Bible. For example, Jer 32:35 says, “They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.” Psalm 106:37 understands these sacrifices as given to demons. We all know that the destruction of children is a great evil. It is part of the devil’s destroying plan.
Third, the exorcism stories are especially illuminating. In Mark 5, Jesus meets a man with many demons. This man lives in the tombs, cutting himself with stones. Self-harm is part of the devil’s destroying plan. When the demons see Jesus, they beg to be cast into a herd of pigs. When Jesus permits this, the demons enter the pigs, and immediately they rush off a cliff into the water and 2000 pigs drown. Another one is in Mark 9. Jesus’s disciples are unable to cast out a demon in a young man. Jesus asks the father how long this has been happening to his son. The father says, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him.” Notice the demon’s desire is to destroy life.
Finally, there is the devil’s desire to destroy the church. John has a vision in Revelation 12 of a great red dragon knocking down a third of the stars with his tail. Then, he pursues a pregnant woman, John says, in order to devour her child. After this, a cosmic war breaks out. The dragon is thrown down to earth. And John says he comes down to the earth in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. He continues his pursuit of the woman. In Rev 12:17, we read, “Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”
Obviously, this passage is difficult, and interpreters make different suggestions. Some see this as a future event. Others, like myself, are inclined to take this as a description of the past, and, in some ways, the present. But the principle is the same. The devil wants to destroy God’s people, the church. This is precisely what Peter says in 1 Peter 5, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.”
So it should be apparent that the devil desires to destroy God’s creation. He can do this through direct intervention as in the case of demon possessions or he can do it through coercion as in the case of Cain or through deception as in the child sacrifices to pagan gods or through suffering as in the persecution of the church. But in spite of all of this, God’s grace will overcome.
The Destroyer of the Devil
Let me take you back to Genesis 3. Judgment has just happened. Creation has been corrupted. But God in his grace, clothes Adam and Eve. Then in v. 22, he says, “Behold, humankind has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, let they reach out their hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—.” Then we read, “[T]herefore the LORD God sent them out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which they were taken. He drove out the humans, and as the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” Even death is part of God’s grace. Eating from the tree of life and living forever would result in continued corruption, so the Lord expelled humans from the garden and in his good grace, he protected them by ensuring that they could not come back in.
We tend to think of death as a tool of the devil, and certainly in some sense it is, but God is sovereign over death. Death is a necessity on the road to redemption. God intends to redeem his good creation from corruption. The devil may have successfully introduced chaos through his destroying plan, but it is the LORD who is the real consuming fire. He will not rest, he will not sleep, until he has wrested his creation back from the devil’s hands.
And this is exactly what he does through Christ. Listen to Hebrews 2:14–15: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, Christ himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” God takes on flesh in order to destroy the devil and his destructive agenda.
And here we have the great contrast between the devil and Jesus. Jesus says in John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan has this picture of a wall burning in a room, but there is a man constantly tossing water on the wall, trying to put out the fire. In spite of his efforts, the fire continues to burn. When he goes to the other side of the wall, he sees a man pouring oil on the fire. He says that the devil tries to extinguish the fire of the heart, but the one with the oil is “Christ, who continually with the Oil of his Grace maintains the work already begun in the heart.”[1] The devil seeks to steal, kill, and destroy, but Christ knows who are his, and he will not lose them. How does Jesus keep those who are his? He lays down his life. Other shepherds might flee when the wolf comes, but not Jesus. He dies to dismantle the devil’s destructive plan.
Luther described what Jesus accomplishes this way: “[Christ] has redeemed me from sin, from the devil, from death, and all evil. For before I had no Lord nor King, captive under the power of the devil. I was condemned to death and entangled in sin and blindness … the devil came and led us into disobedience, sin, death, and all misfortune. As a result, we lay under God’s wrath and displeasure, sentenced to eternal damnation, as we had merited it and deserved it. There were no resources, no help, no comfort for us until this only and eternal Son of God, in his unfathomable goodness, had mercy on us because of our misery and distress and came from heaven to help us. Those tyrants and jailers have now been routed, and their place has been taken by Jesus Christ, the Lord of life, righteousness, and every good thing and every blessing. He has snatched us, poor lost creatures, from the jaws of hell, won us, made us free, and restored us to the Father’s favor and grace. As his own possession he has taken us under his protection and shelter, in order that he may rule us by his righteousness, wisdom, power, life, and blessedness.”[2]
Look at the preciousness of Christ’s sacrifice. He has opened the door to life. He frees us from slavery and bondage. He pays for the sin that keeps us in pit of destruction. He satisfies the demands of the law so that our guilt is gone. He defeats the evil one. He rises again to offer us new life—a life incorruptible, imperishable, and immortal. How could we speak lightly of the gospel? How could we find this boring or anything less than breathtaking? My encouragement to you is to look upon Christ who died to set you free from the destruction of the devil. Behold the kindness of God who has determined to redeem his creation from corruption. Think upon, meditate on, his kindness to us.
For a discussion guide click here.
[1] Pilgrim’s Progress, 39–40.
[2] Book of Concord, 434–35.