Dear friends,
Strangely, some people find it easier to believe in Satan than to believe in God. But what they think of Satan can be so different to the Bible as to not be recognisable. Moving to Genesis 3 has given us an opportunity to pause and think about Satan: his character, his nature, and his ways of operation. I don’t want you to enjoy a discussion on Satan, but I do hope you find it stimulating and informative.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News, and I'm speaking to Peter Jensen.
Peter Jensen: Phillip, you and I have the same parents and grew up in the same home, but you're an optimist, and I'm a pessimist. What's the difference?
Phillip: The difference is shown clearly by Professor Seligman, who wrote a book called Learned Optimism.1 He's the father of positive psychology, and he said that the optimist wins in almost every situation. If you are recruiting for a salesman, employ an optimist because they'll do more selling than a pessimist. In every area he could investigate, optimists did better than pessimists except one, where, consistently, pessimists were much more accurate in their prediction of the future.
Peter: I think that's our experience, isn't it? So I think things are not going very well; it’s going to be worse, unfortunately.
Phillip: If that is what you think, that’s what’s going to happen. But I don't believe it. I think things will go well. However, today we're talking about Genesis 3, and that's where the pessimist wins, because it didn't go well.
It opens with the serpent being more crafty than the other beasts of the field that the Lord God had made. Let's talk about the serpent for a while. I don't particularly want to get caught up in animals talking because God can make animals talk if he wishes to. The donkey talks to the prophet Balaam later in the Bible. But what do you think, Peter, is it a serpent? Is it Satan? Is it both or neither? How do you understand it?
Peter: As with most Christians, I understand it as Satan. Whether there was a literal snake who spoke or whether we're dealing with a parable, in either case it was of real events. What we're dealing with here is historical reality. But the evil one was certainly behind the serpent, and we have good reason for thinking that, because that's what the Bible tells us.
Phillip: Revelation 12:9 says it that way
…that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…
Peter: So it's no good laughing at this snake who speaks. We are dealing here with a formidable force in our world and a force for the power of evil.
Phillip: Genesis tells us the coming of sin into the world is by this serpent, who is described as crafty. The word crafty can be used positively. The same Hebrew word is used positively—it's a pun, the Hebrew pun on the word nude. It's very similar to ‘they were naked’. I'm not sure whether it's meant or not; it can be used negatively to mean crafty or subtle, or positively to mean wise, understanding, and clever. So you have this one creature who has cleverness, but it's used, as Satan does use this, in a negative way. The translation puts it quite appropriately: crafty or shrewd; it doesn't call him evil, which is interesting. So it's not that the snake was evil.
In fact, in our discussions week by week and thinking about this, I've become more conscious that evil is an adjective rather than a noun. People want to say, Did God create evil? That assumes evil is a noun, a substantive thing, whereas it's not a thing. God did create a snake, and the snake was clever and crafty. I also notice we tend to use the words good, better, best, and perfect. In the creation, the Bible only uses the word good, and it’s not saying that God created a perfect world, because he created a world in which humanity is, in chapter 1, to subdue and have dominion over the animals. Here is the crafty animal who is coming to the humans, and the human responsibility is to subdue this crafty animal, but instead of subduing the crafty animal, they are actually subdued by the craftiness of the animal.
Peter: That's a very important point. I have gone immediately to saying, yes, this is Satan we're dealing with. But we've also got to understand this in the context of Genesis 1 to 3, as you just have. The fact is, however we read the serpent, it's presented as an animal. I wonder if this is what you're saying: in a sense, then, the order of things is profoundly disturbed by this animal in the success he has. Is that a way of putting it?
Phillip: Yes. But how do you understand this idea of the order being disturbed?
Peter: Very definitely, Adam names the animals. We are given the charter to subdue, using the word in the right sense, the animal kingdom. It is not intended that these animals should in some way exercise authority or control. But this animal comes, given the gift of speech, and is able to insinuate certain things that are going to have a catastrophic effect. When I say the order of things, order can be just a very simple word, not terribly significant, or it can be a profound word. Here it is profound, for without order, there can be no freedom. Without order, what you have is anarchy. So the world is set up in an ordered way. Now here we have disorder.
Phillip: Disorder, yes. Rebellion?
Peter: Do you mean, has the snake rebelled against Adam, or has the snake rebelled against God?
Phillip: It's an overturn of the ordering of God in chapter 2, not creating a temporary order, but overturning the logical order of the man, the woman who comes to be his helper, and the animals who were not fit to be the helper. Now we're seeing that the animal comes to the woman, and then the woman comes to the man, and together they rebel against God. So the disorder is a rebellion. I don’t want to put it in the same sense as the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, but it's an overthrow of the order.
Peter: Yes, with immense consequences. For we discover in chapter 3 that it's not as though the serpent is simply doing this as an accident, for it is to be punished for this. The serpent is also regarded as being accountable for its behavior here. That's what we discover at the end, and is what we should see straight away when the whole story begins. Namely, that here is a powerful attack on the word of God. A powerful attack, therefore, on the kingdom of God or the rule of God. A powerful attack on the goodness of the world.
Phillip: Yet the serpent is made by God - that's what the verse is saying. One of the beasts of the Lord had made, and therefore is fulfilling God's purpose.
Peter: Yes, in the same way I presume that the Assyrians fulfilled God's purpose in devastating Israel, in Isaiah 10 - they were an axe in the hand of the Lord. That doesn't in any way endorse the evil that they were doing, but it simply says that the Lord can take even the evil of men and turn it for good.
Phillip: In that turning for good, it's to take the dominion over the man. The man, or humans, are supposed to exercise dominion over the animal, but the animal is now exercising dominion over the man. There's a lovely phrase in Psalm 115 about how the heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. Yet the children of man have not taken the gift that God has given, but rather have been dominated by the gift that God has given them.
Peter: They should have known this from the very beginning - for even if it was unusual, shall we say, for an animal to speak, they should have known that taking advice from this animal had to be wrong.
Phillip: Adam should have known because he was the one told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We will see in the coming weeks that she is deceived, but he's not deceived; he does it deliberately. So there is a difference in our sinfulness, which is why it's called the sin of Adam. It's never really called the sin of Eve.
Peter: No, and rightly so. I put it this way: Eve sinned first, but Adam sinned worst. Hence, in the New Testament, it is frequently said that we and Adam all die because he was created first.
Phillip: Let's just spend a few moments on this. Next, we'll look more at the temptation that actually came. But for now, in 3:1 we're hit with the serpent, whom we've now seen as Satan. What do we know about Satan, not just from here, but Satan in general? How do you perceive Satan: as a spirit, as a spiritual being, as a power, or as a force? What do you think is the best way to describe Satan?
Peter: To my mind, the revelation of the Bible leaves us little choice but to say that he is personal, not just merely a force. Down through human history, we've got this idea there was a gigantic fall of Satan prior to this, and people quote other bits of the Bible like Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. I don't think they quite come to that—I think we don't know. There's a better way of putting it myself, despite John Milton and Paradise Lost.
Phillip: I'm not disagreeing with you on it, but the argument used is that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are talking about Babylon and Tyre, which are both used metaphorically as the great cities of evil. There's an arrogance of Babylon and Tyre, which leads to their downfall, and they are the epitome, the quintessence of sinfulness. It’s not a crazy idea to see this as the heart of Satan; it's just that the passages themselves are talking of Babylon and Tyre, aren't they?
Peter: Yes, so it’s hard to say that's what the Bible teaches, although it is easy to presuppose that something happened catastrophically, that the good order that God created in the whole universe was destroyed at some point by this satanic force. But we're not talking about dualism. In some ways he is a rival to God, as we can see, but he is not a rival to God in power, force, or anything like that, for he too is a creation. In the New Testament we begin to hear about principalities and powers and authorities in the heavenly realms, some of which presumably are good, but others are not. So the whole spiritual world beyond our immediate perception is, in a sense, summed up in the satanic figure.
Phillip: Well, he's called the ruler of this world by Jesus in John 12 and 14. He's called the prince of the power of air in Ephesians 2, who is at work within us.
Peter: He’s also called the God of this world in 2 Corinthians 4.
Phillip: It may not be dualism—I'm sure it's not—because he is used by God to bring about God's purposes. Like you mentioned with Assyria and the like, or in the book of Job, or that incredible verse in Acts 2 about God's plan put into effect through sinful men in the killing of the Lord Jesus. But, while he's not equal to God, and he's used by God, he is powerful within this world.
Peter: The ruler of this world, the God of this world, has blinded the eyes of unbelievers so they cannot see the glory of the gospel.
Phillip: He’s at work in all of us to bring about sinfulness?
Peter: Yes, not to be trivialized or thought of as non-existent. We are up against powerful personal forces, headed, if you like, by Satan as their prince. It’s a reality in this world.
Phillip: There is a famous quote from C.S. Lewis. I'm not a great C.S. Lewis reader and follower, but there are some elements at which this man just could put his finger on things, and he wrote,
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.2
Peter: It's very clever.
Phillip: Nearly every materialist Hollywood movie about spooky things makes fun of the devil. The Americanized halloween traditions of dressing up as devils that we now have inflicted upon us in Australia are all about devils and pitchforks and opera cloaks and horns and tails. None of that's biblical.
Peter: It's exactly what the devil would want. Interestingly, most people are not materialists. Most people who have ever lived have been conscious of a world beyond this one, of spirits in this world. Let me tell you a story about your father and mine. I once asked him when I was about five years old, “Daddy, are there ghosts?” And he said, “No, no such thing as ghosts.” That's an interesting answer. I wonder if you would give it.
Phillip: To a little boy who was terrified because he was a pessimist, I might be tempted to. But your immediate answer is, “But what about the Holy Ghost?”
Peter: That is not an answer I immediately thought of, but it is typical of the era in which we grew up. Most people throughout human history have believed in ghosts and spirits, and still do. That is not the question for them. But we don't, or we don't treat it the same way now. I think that that arises from the triumph of the gospel in historical terms, particularly in the Reformation. The growth of science and the diminution of the spiritual world have occurred together. That which the Bible teaches, ‘Don't be afraid’, has been turned into, ‘They don't exist’. In a sense, you can live as though they don't exist. The trouble is, that can't last forever. I think in the 21st century, we will see a growth of an awareness of the spiritual world out there and a desire to communicate with the spiritual world out there, little knowing that there is great evil.
Phillip: I'll go along and illustrate. If I remember correctly, before the Reformation, witchcraft associated with Christianity was rampant, and it was the Reformation that preached the victory of Christ in such a fashion as to drive that back. You studied witches back in those days, and I think it was you who taught me. But by the time we were children, there was movie after movie and then later on TV shows in which people like Bob Hawke would be in a haunted house, and you would find out that it was all a trick, and it was all laughed at. So that illustrates the belief in the non-existence of these things. But in the last 30 or 40 years, we've seen the rise of the New Age spirituality, and with the New Age spirituality comes not just an awareness of our own kind of spirit and our own sense of personhood. There's also this awareness of the darker side. So Glastonbury, or the druids gathering around the stones.
Peter: Or closer to home, seances and ouija boards that may sound like a game of Monopoly but are very dangerous because they will open up again the path into our lives of evil forces.
Phillip: In the period we were raised, ouija boards were nothing more than a game of Monopoly; they were just nonsense. They were laughed at like astrology columns. These things that the materialist laughs at, the spiritualist is terrified of.
Peter: Yes. Looking back to those days when we didn't believe in ghosts, the evil one was there regardless. Much of the work of the evil one is, in a sense, humdrum. We don't recognise it. If you remember, he is described by Jesus as the father of lies. By Paul, unbelief is the work of the evil one. Now that's not spookiness, that's not ghosts and spirits and things that go ‘boo’ in the night. That's the ordinary human life, where if you know what you're looking for, you will see that there is evil at work in what some people don't think is terribly evil at all.
Phillip: Lies are so powerful. James talks about the sins of the tongue, which he likens to a spark that sets off a forest fire, a rudder that can drive a big ship and change its direction, and the bit in the mouth of a horse that controls it. Lies have far more power than we who live in the world of lies ever seem to acknowledge. But a lie undermines trust, and trust is necessary for knowledge and necessary for relationships. I've noticed over the years as I've talked to couples who are struggling because of adultery: whereas Hollywood would make you think it's about sex, they think it's about trust. That's the difficulty. “How can I ever believe you again when you have broken trust? I thought I knew, but now I found out I didn't know.” Lies are very powerful. “All men are liars”, say the scriptures. We don’t see the power Satan has to blind our minds through his lies. So the image of Satan—the opera cloak and horns—is one of his lies. It's a brilliant lie, because you see that and you laugh instead of being scared. You shouldn't be scared of that image because it's stupid, but you should be scared of your lies, because by them we live in rebellion against the God of truth.
So in John 8 there is the famous quote which is nearly always misquoted.
Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
People are very big on “The truth will set you free”, but they fail to see the truth that Jesus is talking about is his words. That bit is left out every time, I've noticed, and that's the truth that frees the people who are held captive. The Jews object and say, "We've never been slaves of anybody”, which is kind of humorous, seeing they were slaves in Egypt. That's their whole storyline, “We just have Abraham as our father.” But Jesus says,
I speak of what I've seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.
They object, “Abraham's our father”, but Jesus then says it plainly for them,
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar, and the father of lies.
It is the simple activity of telling lies that has brought death to humanity. You can see it in practice in the lies of the politicians. The lies that they most likely believed, but lies that they told, have led to the wars, murders, and massacres of millions and millions of people.
The devil lies, but I think he does more. He's also known by his name, Satan, which means accuser, or enemy, or opponent.
We should talk next week about what he does with his accusations. But we shouldn't talk about Satan without talking about his defeat; otherwise, it sounds like the pessimist has won.
Peter: One of the ways in which the Bible talks about the death of Jesus is in John 12; Jesus speaks of it as being part of the defeat of the evil one.
Phillip: He says in John 12:31-33,
“Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
Peter: So when an unbeliever becomes a believer, it is a triumph of the power of the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit as the word is preached that Jesus Christ is Lord, the one who has died for us and the one who has been raised from the dead. Every person who becomes a Christian is a triumph of the defeat of the evil one. It's the defeat of the evil one by the power of God, in and through Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the power of the Holy Spirit. In that way, Satan's head is trampled on.
Phillip: But he's still around as a lion, seeking to devour. So what would you do with a lion who's sought to devour you?
Peter: I would get rid of his teeth to start with. We need to withstand him, not in our own strength, but in the armour that God provides, described in Ephesians 6. An armour that is faith, hope, love, prayer, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and standing upon the gospel of truth. In other words, yes, we may defeat Satan in the armour that God has provided, which is a description of living Christianly.
Phillip: We should do so optimistically because of that verse in James about the lion. He writes, “Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). If I saw a lion in the street, I would not expect to be able to resist him, and if I were able to resist him, I would not expect him to flee. But this lion has been defeated in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we must live in respect of the fact that he is the ruler of this world, but we must rejoice in the fact that the ruler of this world has been cast out, and we can resist him, and he will flee from us.
Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism (Random House, 1990)
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (United Kingdom, Geoffrey Bles, 1942)
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this sermon by Phillip on Genesis 2.
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