“FEARING SATAN OR FEARING GOD?”
You do understand that fallen men who live without “blood redemption” through Christ alone usually live without any fear of Satan because once he has domination over a life, most men live unassuming lives of the dangerous hold and orders by Satan, being totally oblivious to his schemes, strategies, and ‘saltless lives of any divine truth’, so they continue in their chains and bondage, because all they see around them are men and women demonized just like them!
But, Paul, for years upon years, lived under the ‘religious control’ of that which along with the rest of fallen humanity crucified Christ! But a day came when “fearing God” was birthed in a heart and mind that lived under the assault of Satan without any fear!
According to 2 Corinthians 5:11, Paul wrote: “Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.” But even in Proverbs 1:7 Holy God set in the hearts of ‘wise men’ the blessing of fearing God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction,” and so they live without fear of God but stupefied under the influence of Satan with little or no sense of the need of God’s saving grace!
It was Robert Herrick in his writing, “God’s Price and Man’s Price, saying: “God bought men here with His heart’s blood expense; and man sold God here for base thirty pence.”
Do you remember Paul’s passionate preaching to the Corinthians when in 2 Corinthians 6:12 he wrote them saying, “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections”? And their own affections were poisoned by their ‘false teachers,’ by their ‘corrupted parents and families’, by a ‘religious nation’ walking on its own alienated and separated from Holy God!
I’ve come to the basic conviction that ‘fallen men’, influenced strongly by a “fear of Satan rather than a fear of God”, are diseased and dis-eased by spiritual stubbornness that, yes, breeds spiritual stodginess, birthing “the graceless or inelegant” in one’s mind and heart, void of the absence of divine life within that comes only by “Repentance toward God and Faith in the finished work of Christ at the Cross and the Empty Tomb”!
Yes, there IS a ‘black fear of Satan” that binds one to his world of godlessness, but there is the reality of a “White Fear of God” that so wants, desires, and urges His participation, presence, and power, in washing away the black fear of Satan by the red, shed blood of Christ the Lamb!
And if one, maybe like yourself, who wavers between ‘fearing Satan or fearing God’, tries to avoid “examining your own heart,” one then must be confronted and convicted with the reality of one’s sin and the sin nature that avoids examining one’s need of Him, determined to rest in my own way AND Satan’s way because he/she is not sure he/she wants to yield to the sovereignty of God Almighty, because the Word of God and the Spirit of God says, Isaiah 60:16b, “You shall know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob”; and the “Redeemer” bought us all with a price from our enslavement and bondage, not only from our old sin natures, but from the domination of Satanic control or slavery to the powers of darkness!
But if ever one faces up to the reality of his/her alienation and separation from God, there is the reality of conviction that “I have been more devoted to and serving the world, the flesh, and the devil more than even a thought about God” – and that should break a man’s heart and bring him to his knees before Holy God!
At the same time, it would be vitally important to seriously study and examine what Christ Jesus went through in His agony of Gethsemane! Oswald Chambers was inspired by Holy God in writing in his book, “My Utmost For His Highest,” (p.69), using Matthew 26:36,38 as his foundation. He wrote: (“Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.” Verse 38, Then Jesus said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”
Chambers then wrote: “We can never fathom the agony in Gethsemane, but at least we need not misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and Man in one, face to face with sin (and I say, sin’s consequence!). We know nothing about Gethsemane in personal experience. Gethsemane and Calvary stand for something unique; they are the gateway into Life for us.
It was not the death on the cross that Jesus feared in Gethsemane; He stated most emphatically that He came on purpose to die. In Gethsemane He feared lest He might not get through as Son of Man. He would get through as Son of God – Satan could not touch Him there; but Satan’s onslaught was that He would get through as an isolated Figure only; and that would mean that He could be no Savior.
Read the record of the agony in the light of the temptation: “Then the devil left Him for a season.” In Gethsemane Satan came back and was again overthrown. Satan’s final onslaught against our Lord as “Son of Man” is in Gethsemane. The agony in Gethsemane is the agony of the Son of God in fulfilling His destiny as the Savior of the world. The veil is drawn aside to reveal all it cost Him to make it possible for us to become sons of God.
His agony is the basis of the simplicity of our salvation. The Cross of Christ is a triumph for “the Son of Man”. It was not only a sign that Our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Every human being can get through into the presence of God now because of what the Son of Man went through.”
Sadly, though forgiven through the shed blood of the Lamb of God, forgiven men and women can still choose to go their own way – not Christ’s! And though forgiven, they choose the domain of darkness, not the Kingdom of Light! Jesus’ response to the forgiven who choose Satan’s wide-open door and kingdom of darkness? Matthew 25:41, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels (or ‘messengers’).”
If you didn’t know, Acts 24:15 declares, Paul speaking after being arrested, “I have hope in God…that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust,” with the just graced with a free pass into Heaven’s eternal Presence, but a costly ticket for the unjust and no longer any way to pay themselves out of Hell’s forever darkness, deceit, and damnation!
In the early, early days of church beginnings, after Jesus’ crucifixion, and, of course, after Judas’ betrayal and sad suicide, we read in Acts 1:21-22, “Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” And Verse 26 then says that Matthias “was numbered with the eleven apostles.” In spite of Satan, there is Resurrection Life, Resurrection Power, and Resurrection Hope!
I’m awed every time I read the declaration of Paul about Christ Jesus risen from the dead, and certainly Christ Jesus our only hope of a blessed life in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – the Triumphant Three in One! But I’m also aware that as Christ Jesus prayed in His early days of ministry, in Matthew 6:13 He prayed, “But deliver us from evil,” and no doubt, “deliver us from the evil one, Satan!”
God help us to never turn our minds away from Him, but to abide through Christ in God’s indwelling as He calls His children His temple or His tabernacle! We turn to Him in our weaknesses and in our strengths, we turn to Him when we sense and know that Satan and his soldiers are out to wipe out our faith, surrender, devotion, and allegiance to the God who made us, lost us, and bought us at a price! We turn to Him, because of repentance toward God and faith in Christ’s finished work at the Cross, that, yes, we became citizens of His Kingdom, sons and daughters of the family of God, and that we were commissioned to turn our world to submission to the will of God as revealed through Christ Jesus!
One of the major problems both unbelievers and believers have is that we grew up in our old sin natures in allegiance, whether one understood it or not, of being a part of the kingdom of the flesh, the kingdom of world influences, and the kingdom of the dominion and rule of Satan himself, bruised in what one author described as “manifold seductiveness.”
But “manifold seductiveness” has been exposed by Christ Jesus, and His shed blood has set mankind free from the seductiveness of Satan whether they recognize and accept his defeat or not! In 1 Corinthians 15:12-28 there is a monumental unveiling of Christ concerning the defeat and conquest over every ‘enemy’ you face. Paul wrote:
“Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our pre aching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up – if in fact the dead do not rise.
For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.
For HE MUST REIGN till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For ‘He has put all things under His feet.’ But when He says ‘all things are put under Him,’ it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”
If Satan was and is THE major opponent to Christ Jesus, is he THE major antagonist to the disciples of Christ? Satan lies to you about God as he did to Eve! Satan is antagonistic against any follower of Christ or any church that stands for eternal Truth! Satan is an ‘opportunist’, examining most and testing most at their weakest moment!
In fact, in 1 Peter 5:8, Peter, yes, was inspired to write by God, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” followed by Verse 9 and Peter’s instruction, “Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.”
Are YOU “of the brotherhood in the world”, but you’ve never known demonic testings? Could it be, sadly, that your ‘proposed faith in Christ’ is no threat to Satan? The world, the flesh or old sin nature, and Satan himself are, yes, great threats to those who’ve been chosen and respond to God’s invitation, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest” – and that “rest from” includes Satan’s testings of your faith!
I came across a “treasure” one day in an old book store in Waco, Texas, years ago. It was a book entitled “Mrs. Browning”, authored by Elizabeth Barret Browning from 1826 to 1844, over two hundred years ago. One poem is entitled, “The Soul’s Travailing”, and is about five pages long! I’m only going to share a few lines! She wrote:
“I dwell amid the city. The great humanity which beats its life along the stony streets, Like a strong unsunned river In a self-made course, is ever Rolling on, rolling on! –
I sit and hear it as it rolls, That flow of souls! The infinite tendencies, In the finite, chafed and pent, – In the finite, turbulent! – The long, drear monotone, made of many tones that rise Each to each as contraries! –
The rich man’s ambling steeds – lolling their necks as the chariot comes With its inward gleam of the eddying plumes! – The poor man’s abject needs – The feet that wearily, wearily roam, Unquickened by thoughts of the fire at home –
The cry of the babe unheard of its mother, though it lies on her breast, while she thinks of the other Laid yesterday in tomb! – The whine of voices that have made Their own grief’s sacredness a trade – The curse that ringeth hollowly The crime against the misery – [Several paragraphs down, I’ll close it with a few more words from Browning:],
I dwell amid the city, and hear the flow of souls! I do not hear the several contraries – I do not hear the separate tone that rolls in act or speech, For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly – I hear the confluence and sun of each, And that is melancholy! – The voice is a complain, O crowned city, The blue sky covering you, like God’s great pity! “
Yet, hear me, many “amid the city” where you dwell, are ill-informed, because as one man wrote years ago, “The devil’s ever kind to his own.” (Alexander Brome, “New Montebank”).
There’s an old, old hymn you’ve probably never heard, written by William Pierson Merrill and Aaron Williams. It’s entitled “Rise Up, O Men of God”. It says: “Rise up, O men of God! Have done with lesser things; Give heart and mind and soul and strength To serve the King of kings.
Rise up, O men of God! His kingdom tarries long; Bring in the day of brotherhood And end the night of wrong.
Rise up, O men of God! The Church for you does wait, Her strength unequal to her task; Rise up, and make her great!
Lift high the cross of Christ! Tread where His feet have trod; As brothers of the Son of man, Rise up, O men of God!”
Are you “up” to joining Christ in delivering fallen humanity from the evil one and extending Christ’s “Kingdom-Rule”, yes, over Satan and his evil ones? You don’t “make the best of it as you can” in your battle with the powers of darkness – you Trust Christ to be Himself in you, delivering you from Satan and his soldiers! Christ is Victor over sin and death – and Christ is Victor over Satan! Amen?