1Peter 5:10
Satan’s Tactics: The Favorite Lures
We have returned several times to the a theme, Satan’s Tactics. The
Bible makes it clear that the devil IS (not was or will be, but IS) a
roaring lion, roaming about, searching for some to devour. That means
every Christian in every generation is in danger. If Satan can find a
weak spot, he will destroy you.
We left off several, looking at some of Satan’s favorite lures.
Satan has many tools he can use to steal, kill, and destroy, but some
of them have been around a long time and many have experienced their
pull. Let’s continue noting them this evening..
I have mentioned two:
I. \\#6\\ Desire - Satan uses our own wrong desires against us.
Ge 3:6 … tree to be desired to make one wise…
A. He knows the human race. He has studied us for thousands of
years.
B. And he knows each of us. He has watched us since birth.
C. He will use the things that we want to get us to do the things
he wants.
II. Discouragement and its big brother, depression.
A. Satan wants to "push down" our spirit, steal our courage, our
hope, our zeal and our zest.
B. Everyone wrestles with them. We must train ourselves to find
encouragement in the Lord, in His Word, and in His service.
C. But even beyond that, Satan spiritually attacks our spirit to
make these conditions worse.
1. That will not happen some of the times. Satan, our enemy,
is always working to take a natural flaws and make them
worse.
2. While it is hard enough to deal with ourselves, we must
not let Satan make things even worse.
a. What do we do?
b. In short, resist him.
(1) Recognize it is a spiritual attack.
(2) Turn to prayer, the Word of God, and faith.
(3) Give new, spiritual behaviors to his attacks.
III. Doubt
A. Doubt is another of the first tools the devil used.
Ge 3:1 Yea, hath God said…
B. I wonder if Satan even knew how far doubt was going to go and
how valuable a tool it would be for him.
1. In the last 100 years, Satan has gone from sowing seeds of
doubt about what God said to growing mighty oaks of
doubt as to whether God even exists—and people are
falling for it almost every time.
a. Years ago, I said few Christians would ever make it
through a secular college without being riddled with
doubt about the Bible and God.
b. In more recent years, I would have said that few
students would make it through public school without
being riddled with doubt.
c. However, today I say that few children will even make
it INTO school before being filled with doubt about
God.
(1) Most families never go to church.
(2) Most homes today don’t have a printed copy of the
Bible in them.
(3) Most kids love the evolutionists view of
dinosaurs.
(4) Then add PBS, secular preschool books, and
television that plants the thoughts that the
world is millions of years old and was formed by
some kind of explosion.
(5) Many—if not most—parents do not believe in God.
c. Under such conditions, most children will never think
twice about God. Doubt of God will be their default
status.
2. But doubt of God’s existence is not the only doubt that
Satan slips upon us.
a. Some "Christians" doubt that portions of the Bible are
true.
b. Even some Christians have been taught to doubt
portions of God’s Word.
c. Others doubt that God hears and answers prayer, that
Jesus will come again, that God will honor His
promises to Israel, that God will provide for them if
they will walk by faith, and the list goes on and
one.
C. Satan has been duped many into making an entire career out of
doubting God.
1. I have never thought of this before.
2. Someone sent a link for me to listen to a series of what
I thought was sermons. They were sermons but not for the
Bible, but against it.
3. Listening to this man for a while showed me how much time,
energy, and effort the devil has put into making people
doubt.
4. But I have never considered how many hours, years,
decades, and centuries of time, energy, and effort people
have put into doubting God, what God said, and God-given
common sense.
D. It is for this reason, the Apostle Paul gave this warning:
Col 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition
of men, after the rudiments of the world, and
not after Christ.
1. The word "spoil" means to ruin, like milk left out for
days in the hot, direct sunlight of an Alabama summer.
2. Our children are being ruined by modern education.
3. I am sorry to have to say this so bluntly, but I am to the
place where I believe it would be better for your
children to have no formal education than to be educated
by our public schools and colleges, as well as, most
private schools and even some of our Christian schools
and colleges.
Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?
4. Some would scold me to say, "Preacher, you would be making
my child subject to ignorance and poverty all of his
life."
a. First, I would rather they go through life ignorant,
poor, and with faith than that they go through life
ignorant (much of what they are being taught is just
plan WRONG!), wealthy, and filled with doubt
concerning God.
b. But with the dropping scores in our public school
day, many are not graduating with any more real
education than what their own parents could easily
provide and if they worked at it, even exceed.
4. Sadly, our education system has become an arm of the
devil and it is useful only in sowing doubt into the
minds of our children.
E. What do we need to do about it?
1. You are going to have to decide is your God a miracle-
working, all-powerful God or not.
a. If he is not, cast him aside. He is not the god of
the Bible.
b. If He is, then remind yourself that God can do
anything except lie and fail.
2. Then, study the Bible.
2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved
unto God, a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
3. After you are well grounded, we need to study what the
devil espouses.
a. Study his doubt theology and mythology.
(1) Not to believe in them, but to debunk them.
(2) That field is called "apologetics." It is the
study of defending the Bible.
b. When we are strong enough, we need to listen to those
kinds of speeches so that we can answer them.
1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your
hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to
every man that asketh you a reason of the hope
that is in you with meekness and fear:
c. Those people are not smarter than us. They just have
more tainted evidence and have been brainwashed.
(1) We don’t need to be afraid of them.
(2) We need to expose them.
IV. Disdain
A. Yet another one of the devil’s earliest tactics.
Gen 3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman,
Ye shall not surely die:
B. To disdain the things of God is to contradict them and to
disobey them.
1. That is exactly what the devil got Eve to do.
2. She KNEW what God had said. She even told the devil what
God had said.
3. She just did not DO what God had said.
4. That is disdain for God, His Word, and God-given common
sense.
C. I find it interesting when Christians are excusing their sin
how often they work in the statement, "I know I should be
doing it, but…."
1. They say that as if to indicate they should get some kind
of credit for at least knowing what the will of God is.
2. Friend, knowing what God wants and then not doing it gets
you no credit.
3. What it gets you is greater condemnation!
4. If you are a Christian, this statement will not apply
do you, but hell is filled with people who knew about
heaven and did nothing about it.
a. Do you think knowing about salvation and then
rejecting it is going to get them a fan in hell?
b. I don’t think so!
c. It may get them some hotter coals but no cooling!
d. Why not? Because to know the truth and then to
disobey it is to disrespect God and His effort to
get the truth to you.
e. It is to disdain God.
D. Disdain for God among the lost and wicked has grown into a
demonic rage.
1. The devil has gotten into mankind’s emotions and stirred
them unto people are without control.
2. I believe it is part of Satan’s end time stronghold on the
world.
Revelation 12:12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens,
and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters
of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is
come down unto you, having great wrath, because
he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and
went to make war with the remnant of her seed,
which keep the commandments of God, and have the
testimony of Jesus Christ.
a. "wrath" and "was wroth" mean was the devil was enraged.
b. The lost world is following the devil’s bad example.
Psalms 2:1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people
imagine a vain thing?
3. People have gone from mere distain to anger, from anger to
bitter, from bitter to hatred, and from hatred to pure
rage.
4. Let’s be careful that we are not caught up in this tool of
the devil.
V. Delay
A. The best Biblical example I know of delay is King Agrippa.
Acts 26:28 Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost
thou persuadest me to be a Christian.
1. The devil is good at asking, "Why do today what you can
put off to tomorrow?"
2. Even more, the devil likes to get you so busy putting out
sage brush fires that you let the whole city burn to the
ground.
B. What must Agrippa have thought as he listened to Paul preach
about heaven, hell, and the judgment of God?
1. He probably thought, "I doubt that there is any truth to
this but if there is, I will look into it later."
2. Did he? Not as far as the Bible says.
3. As far as we know, Agrippa is in hell right now wishing he
had not put off till tomorrow what should have been done
today.
C. Years ago I talked with a man who had told me for years that
he is going to start serving Jesus—one day.
1. On this occasion, the man was in his 40’s, I think.
2. I remember asking him, "How old do you think you are going
to live?" His answer was that he did not know, but he
doubted he would live to be very old. His health was not
the best at that time.
3. Then I asked, "You think your life is already half over?"
He said he hoped not, but that it probably was.
4. I said, "So by your own estimates, you have already wasted
over half of your life. When do you think your some day
is going to come?"
5. That was years ago and to my knowledge that man still has
not gotten serious about the Lord—and because of that,
I question his salvation.
D. Now what about you? How much of your life has the devil
tricked you into wasting?
I believe these are Satan’s tactics, but not just five tactics. I
believe they are his best five tactics. He fires off one and if that
does not work, he reloads and repeats until he finds one that does.
The question I have for you is, "How long are you going to let the
devil make a fool out of you?"
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