I want you to turn back in your
Bibles tonight to James chapter 4. If you remember, last week we
looked at the fact that it says here in verse 6 that God gives more grace. And the Apostle here is led by
the Spirit not only to instruct us, and not only to warn us, but
also to remind us of this very encouraging thing. He gives more grace. And this grace is to enable us,
according to what he says here, to resist what we are by nature. And as we see in verse 7, the
onslaught of the devil. Look down at that seventh verse
where he says, Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil. and he will flee from you." That
last command is given in the active and the imperative. Resist the devil. And that means something like
this. Take a stand against the devil. And in that one sentence, we
have a command and also a promise. And there are two things in this
tonight that I want us to examine. Two aspects of what he says here. Number one, who is the devil? And number two, how are we to
resist the devil? Now, I'd say that there probably
is not an individual, a being, that there is any less understood
about than this one that he calls the devil. the very thing that men think
about him and his way of operation, it is exactly the opposite of
what men think by nature. And after looking at so many
of these verses concerning him for the last few days, I am that the reason we have this
warning here is because his chief field of operation is against
the people of God. You see, the Scripture says that
he has everyone else captive at his will. But he offers this
active, continuous, conflict against the people of God. Now, he is called here the devil,
and that is diablos. And it simply means something
like this, false accuser, slanderer, one who attacks the reputation
of another by slander or libel. Now, that's why I say that I
believe his chief field of operation is against the people of God,
against those who are brethren in Christ, against the church
of the Lord Jesus here in this world. As a matter of fact, he
is called the accuser of the brethren. And he acts in this
role as the devil, accusing them before God. And not only that,
I believe, accusing them before each other. And for that reason,
the Apostle is led here to give us this command and this warning
and to make us see why it is that we need more grace, and
it is to resist the devil. The devil is a real created being
and was once high among the angels. He is not some weak, insignificant
being that the likeness of ourselves can move around or do what we
want to or resist in any way we want to, he is a mighty and
powerful being. And he was cast out of heaven
when pride was found in him And he led the rebellion against
God in which one-third of the angelic hosts was also cast out
and imprisoned in darkness. If you will hold your place right
here and turn back to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah. Now, some make more of the devil
than they do God. And that certainly can't be right,
and most assuredly can't be right concerning His Christ. But nevertheless,
we ought never to sell Him short. If you look back here in Isaiah
14, beginning with verse 4, The prophet is told that thou shalt
take up this proverb against the king of Babylon. And what
you find, especially in the New Testament, is that God uses some
wicked earthly king, speaks concerning him that which he speaks against
the devil. Thou shalt take up this proverb
against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor
ceased? the golden city ceased? the Lord hath broken the staff
of the wicked, and the scepter of the rulers? He who smote the
people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations
in anger, is persecuted and none hindereth. The whole earth is
at rest and is quiet. They break forth into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at
thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down,
no feller is come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved
for thee to meet thee at thy coming. It stirreth up the dead
for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth. It hath raised
up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they
shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as
we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the
grave. and the noise of thy vows, the
worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art
thou fallen from heaven?" What are they all talking about? The
oppressed, even what seems to be the very creation itself. Who is it that they are talking
about? And what is it they are saying about Him? How art thou
fallen from heaven, O Lucifer? son of the morning? How art thou
cut down to the ground which did weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart,
I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars
of God, I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation
in the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down
to hell." to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall
narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this
the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms,
that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof,
that opened not the house of his Is this the one that did
that? But look at him now. This is
Lucifer, the son of the morning, fallen, brought down. Turn over also to Ezekiel chapter
28. Ezekiel chapter 28, and look
down at verse 12. He says to the prophet, Son of
man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto
him, Thus saith the Lord God, Thou sealest up the sum, full
of wisdom, and perfect in beauty, Thou hast been in Eden the garden
of God." And that's why he is called also that old serpent. They're in the garden with our
first parents. They're doing his damage. They're
speaking his lies. They're bringing them down. Every
precious stone was thy covering. the sardius, topaz, and the diamond,
the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald,
and the carbuncle, and gold, the workmanship of thy tabrets
and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast
created. Thou art the anointed cherub
that covereth. And I have set thee so. Thou
wast upon the holy mountain of God. Thou hast walked up and
down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in
thy ways from the day thou wast created till iniquity was found
in thee." Pride. I'll be as the Most High. I'll be as God. And for that reason, He's called
the God of this world. By the multitude of thy merchandise
they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou
hast sinned. Therefore I will cast thee as
profane out of the mountain of God, And I will destroy thee,
O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine
heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. Thou hast corrupted
thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings,
that they may behold thee." That's the devil. And you look in Revelation chapter
12, it says this. I'll just read this to you. And
the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil,
and Satan, which deceived the whole world, he was cast out
into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. He is the enemy of God, and is
therefore the enemy of all the people of God. He is our adversary. Listen to Peter's word. He says,
be sober, be vigilant, Because your adversary, the devil, you
say, I don't have any enemies. You better have this one. And
he is such that again and again we are told, we are warned of
his cunning and such. And Peter says, be sober. That
means be serious. Be vigilant. Be watchful. Because your adversary, the devil,
as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour. He'll never devour one of God's
children in the sense of taking him. Job. In his beginning there in the
book of Job, he's standing there on the earth. And here is the
devil. He comes and approaches God. You can read it. He approaches
God and asks permission. And that's what he has to do.
And that means he can only do what God allows him to do. But
he asks permission. to literally devour, if you would,
Job. And he is told by God, you can
afflict him, you can take his family, you can take these things,
but you can't take his life. You know what happened? Exactly
that. All that, but no more. No more. You remember Simon Peter? Here
is Simon Peter, and he is a bit cocksure, if you will, overconfident,
unaware of the great danger that he is in, and saying to our Lord
what we say, I'm afraid, every day in a lot of different ways. He was saying, I'll follow you
to my death. All the rest of them may leave
you, but I won't." And our Lord said to him, Simon,
Satan hath desired to have you that he might sift you like the
wheat and the chaff. He said, he's desired to just
have you And you know what? The Lord obviously
allowed that to a degree. Because as soon as they came
for the Lord Jesus Christ and the time of that hour to stand
and be counted for Him, as soon as that came, Peter denied the
Lord three times. He didn't know he was that weak. Why didn't he finally Completely
deny the Lord and be given over to Satan. Because the next thing
the Lord said to him is this. He said, but I prayed for you. I prayed for you that thy faith
fail not. But if you look over there at
Simon Peter, after he has denied the Lord three times, he's laying
over there bruised and wounded. He looks like a lion has just
nearly torn him to shreds. He's all but dead. He's the adversary. And he does
not operate in the way men think. It's with regard to the things
that are attributed to him in this world, which is all the
darkness and the pornography and the murders and all these
things, the devil's work. Well, they may be to a degree. But the Apostle Paul warned concerning
men. religious men. And he said, for
such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves
into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, no wonder, for
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. How did he deceive Eve in the
garden? It was as an angel of light,
as a giver of truth, as one showing her a better way, as one playing on her pride. and saying something that amounts
to this, has the Lord said this to you, don't eat that tree?
Well, He's really hiding something that will be better for you.
There's something better over here. There's something better
in this. He played on her pride. And it
says that she was deceived. By whom? One who is transformed
into an angel of light. He says, therefore it is no great
thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers
of righteousness whose end shall be according to their works. What are their works? Just exactly
that, their works. And their end is going to be
according to their works, which God hates and he'll destroy. Lucifer, the name Lucifer, which
is that other name, another name for the devil, it means something
like Daystar. And yet the Bible says that Christ
is the Son of Righteousness, the day star, but here over here
is one who is a pretender to be so. So Paul says to the Galatians,
but though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel
unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be
accursed." He doesn't say, well, he probably
doesn't know any better. He says, let him die the death,
eternal death. Let him be anathema, maranatha,
Let him die the death, Jesus is coming. And I say from this
context here in James 4, I say that here it is, this fear in
which he operates against the Lord's church in deceit, and
that as the accuser of the brethren among the brethren, Because he says here, he gives
grace to the humble. Now, what was found in Lucifer? Pride. I'll be as the Most High. I'll do what I will. I'll dictate
my being. I'll do all of this. Nothing
but the very root of almost all sin, which is pride. To know better than God. And so we are in ourselves so
full of pride, so prone to pride and envy and whatever else might
be the fruit of it. He says, resist the devil. Now, that's the second thing.
What is it to resist the devil? I can tell you this, to seek
to do so or to imagine that we are doing so in the strength
of our flesh is to fall right headlong into his trap. I guarantee you. Paul, when he wrote to the Corinthian
church, they had lots of problems. They had dissension. They had
this, that, and the other. He said this. He said, to whom
you forgive anything, I forgive also. Now, what would ever keep – think
about it – what would ever keep one sinner from forgiving another
sinner. Pride. Pride. He said, To whom you forgive
anything, I forgive also. For if I forgave anything, to
whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave it I in the person of
Christ. Now, he said, you forgive lest. Lest Satan should get an advantage
of us. For we are not ignorant of his
devices. Sometimes I think, boy, I don't
know about that. It seems like we are often ignorant
of his devices. What is it that he works in?
What is his device? Pride? Playing on our fallen
nature? Tricking us again and again? James says we are to resist him.
That means to stand against him by the grace and strength of
Christ as if a soldier. My friend, we're in a fight. If you think that this is like
a big hallelujah hayride to heaven, if you don't think that on every
hand that it's a fight until our Lord
comes for us, you've missed all of this. Paul says to Timothy, he said,
Endure hardness as a good soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
that would be a soldier for Him entangleth not himself in the
affairs of this life. Why? Because it will hinder in
the fight. In the book of Jude, we ought
to get a little glimpse of the difficulty. When the Apostle
Jude says, Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil,
he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against
him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke you. He's no average foe. He's no
weak being. He's likened to this line. And his objective would be to
devour us every one. So he says, resist him. Resist
him. Turn over to Ephesians 6. We either resist Him, we're either
found seeking the grace and help of our Lord to resist Him, or
He already has us. We've never escaped His snare.
But look here in Ephesians 6. When Paul is closing out this
letter to the church at Ephesus, he says in verse 10, Finally,
my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His
might." You don't have any strength.
And you say, I don't have any strength in myself. But he says, be strong in the
Lord. He's the Mighty One. And in the
power of His might. Now notice, what he says. Surely
this is a warfare. Surely there is a conflict and
a battle going on. All right, look at what he says.
Put on the whole armor of God. He didn't say look at it and admire it. He
said put it on. He didn't say, put your armor
on. He said, put on the armor of
God. Do you remember when David was
about to go out and stand before Goliath, and Saul offered him
his armor? He said, it doesn't fit me. I've
never tried this armor. And just like the armor of God,
the armor of David, on that occasion is just the opposite. the armor of God, which is just
the opposite of the humanly, fleshly way of trying to resist
the devil. What did he say? What did David
say? He said, I come not with sword or shield or any of these
kind of things, but I come in the name of the Lord. All right, listen. He said the
whole armor, all of it. Put on the whole armor of God,
that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." What does that mean, the wiles
of the devil? He is cunning. He is slick, as we say. He is
tricky. And you know that ahead of time.
You'd better be prepared for it. He's not coming at you in
the way you think. Absolutely. That you may be able
to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against principalities against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places. This has got to do with more
than flesh and blood and people. It has to do with truth. It has to do with doctrine. It
has to do with practice. It has to do with heart matters.
It's got to do with spiritual things. Three or four times in just this
Short portion here in Ephesians 6, he keeps talking about stand. Stand fast. And all that means
is just what he means in James. Take a stand against the devil. He said it's the wiles of the
devil we face. It's spiritual wickedness. It's the darkness of this world. It's the powers of this flesh. Spiritual wickedness. But we don't combat it by the
flesh. You can't march against the devil.
You can't sign a petition against the devil. You can't fight him
on such grounds as that. That's to meet him on his own
turf. Paul says to the Corinthians again, he said, for though we
walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal or fleshly, natural, but
mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting
down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself
against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every
thought to obedience, to the obedience of Christ. Well, if that's not the armor
we use, if that's not the weapons we use, what do we use? He says,
"...wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God, that ye may
be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand therefore, having your
loins girt about with truth." having your loins gathered about
with truth." I think there's a picture in those words of those
long flowing robes that they wore in Paul's day. But a man, when he was going
to do some work or if he was going to do some conflict, he'd
take something like leather cords and he would wrap them around
his leg and wrap his garments close to his leg so he'd be able
to move fast or run or do whatever he needed to do. We're to be wrapped in the truth
of the gospel. we're to be ready to respond
and resist with the truth, the word of truth of the gospel of
Christ who is himself the truth. And then he says, "...and having
on the breastplate of righteousness." That has to be a picture of the
priest, a high priest. You remember he had that breastplate
on him, which had the stones that represented all the people
that he went to stand before God before? And so, here we are, our breastplate
of righteousness is Christ. His righteousness imputed to
us. That's the only one we have. Then in verse 15 it says, And
your feet shod covered with the preparation of the gospel of
peace. Oh, it's all got to do with truth.
We stand and we resist the devil with truth. Above all, taking
the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to
quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Faith. Let them throw them. Let them
fire. will believe God. Then he says, and take the helmet
of salvation. In another place, the hope of salvation is called
the helmet of salvation, and Christ is our hope. The devil brings hopelessness
to us in every way, but we have hope. Why? Because we have the
good hope of grace, the grace of God in Christ. And if you
notice, all these pieces and parts of this one armor, the
whole armor of God, it's all defensive. Helmet keeps somebody from bashing
your head in. Shield keeps the spears and the
fiery darts But he gives one offensive weapon. He says in verse 17, "...and
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Now, when our Lord came and lived
on this earth on our behalf, as a man, It is and was as a
man that he dealt with everything, even the devil. If you turn over to Matthew 4, and look at this. Matthew 4, it says, "...then
with Jesus, lit up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted
of the devil. And when he had fasted forty
days and nights, he was afterward a-hungered. He went forty days
and nights without food. And it is in this condition of
human weakness, as far as the body is concerned, that he went
to meet the enemy. And when the tempter came to
him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these
stones be made bread, What do you mean if you be the
Son of God? You know full well that I'm the
Son of God. How are you going to respond
to that, Lord? Well, He answered the devil and
said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God." How does he deal with him? With
the Word of God. Then the devil takes him up into
the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, Cast thyself
down, for it is written." Now, he's seeking to use the word as an angel of light, but not
in truth. "'For it is written, He shall
give His angel charge concerning thee, and in their hands they
shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against
a stone.'" And Jesus said unto him, it is
written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again the devil taketh him up
into an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms
of the world and the glory of them. And he saith unto him,
All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down
and worship me. They weren't any of them his
to give. Then saith Jesus unto him. Why didn't he at that point just,
as we would say, just blow him into hell right then? Because
we wouldn't be able to do that. But it says, He said unto him,
Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship
the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Now, you look
at that next verse. Then the devil leaveth him, and
behold, angels came and ministered unto him. Now, what did James say? Is not the promise that was given
after the command of James to resist the devil, Wasn't the
promise the same thing? And He will flee from you. That's what it says. Resist it
with this armor, which James says is also this, or rather
Paul says this, praying always. with all prayer and supplication
in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication
for all the saints." He said, you better be praying
for yourself, and you better be praying for
your brethren, because they are facing the same thing. Praying. Pleadings. That's what
supplications mean. Pleadings. Watching. Lord, don't let the devil, don't
let him run over me and near devour me like a roaring lion. Give me an eye to see His devices,
what He does, how He divides, how He makes me proud, how He
makes me envious. Help me to know. Give me that
grace that humbles me. There is little David. There
is no way he can make it against Goliath. He's the least, he's
the lowest, he's the devil's bragging and boasting in a picture
in Goliath on one side, and David is, I'm just coming in the name
of the Lord. All I've got is this armor, these
weapons he gave me. Bang. He'll flee from you. And we'll be enabled by God to
resist him because he gives more grace. I don't know if you noticed
that armor or not, and in the description of it, it was all
for the front. So you only have armor if you're
resisting him. What Paul says when he closes
out Romans chapter 16, he says, And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your
feet shortly. He'll bruise Satan, crush him
under your feet shortly. Next words, the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Resist the devil. He will flee
from you. Our Father, we pray and thank
you tonight for these warnings and these
commands. And yes, Lord, for these precious
promises also. Give us more grace. that we might realize who our
adversary is and realize how he works through our pride and
foolishness. And when he has, Lord, stirred
up our pride and our envies and things like that in us, he has
the rule of us. But you give us more grace. You
give grace to the humble. We pray that you'd keep us. Watch
over us. Make us watchful. Cause us to
persevere in prayer and pleadings on our own behalf and our brethren
who are in this same conflict. Help us, Lord, not only to pray
for each other, but, Lord, to encourage each other to stop
by a soldier wounded at our side to give them aid and help them Keep us, we pray, from the evil
one. We pray in the name of Christ.
Amen.