How much do we know about the enemy: The Basics
Hi Friends! For those who have been praying for my wife, her Georgia family and the Fab5Falks here in Colorado, thank you so much for your prayers. The funeral service for my FIL went really well and it was great to be with family in Georgia during this season. I’m going to miss my FIL so much! He was a super great man and I’m thankful to have him a part of my life for so many years! Thank you again!
Now that I’m now ‘back in the saddle,’ I continue with the second installment in my blog series on ‘How much do we know about Satan?’ If you haven’t read the first installment, you can do so here. Today, let’s look at some of the key basics of Satan so we will be prepared for the really good stuff… namely how to tell when he’s trying to influence your life and how to not only resist him but also defeat him!
Satan is a created being
When God created the world, we are told that He surveyed all he made and declared that it was good.[1] That seems to indicate that the angelic world at that time had no Satan and no demons. But by Genesis 3, we get our first look at Satan, in the form of the serpent, ‘the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.’[2] The Bible says that Satan was created by God as a cherub, the most powerful of God’s angelic beings.[3] His name at the time was Lucifer.
The Fall of Satan
As God was creating man in His own image[4], Lucifer saw God doing for man what He hadn’t done for any of the rest of His creation. This caught Lucifer’s attention since Adam and Eve were given something that Lucifer wanted. Isaiah 14 describes what happened next:
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.[5]
Lucifer understood that if he could get to and deceive Adam and Eve to willingly give up their authority to him that he could become the god of this world. He wanted to take the authority that we given to mankind to receive the praise and glory he wanted.
So who actually created Satan?
The answer is that we did! At the very moment Adam and Eve gave into Lucifer, he became Satan, the god of this world. And I believe that the very moment that Lucifer rebelled against God, he lost his angelic power. We know that Satan has no power of his own, he only has was people have been willing to give him. Think about that for just a moment…. As I’ll write about in the next blog of this series, as we fight and resist the devil, he has no power of his own, he is completely and absolutely dependent on the cooperation of us humans to give him power in our lives that is reserved solely for God.
We read in 1 Peter 5 that ‘your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.’[6] He is looking for people who will open the door to sin and temptation, and when we open those doors, we are empowering him to get us off the track that God has for our lives. In the next post, I’ll teach you a bit about how to discern when the enemy is attacking us and some practical steps on how to win the battle against his attacks in our lives.
[1] Genesis 1:31
[2] Genesis 3:1
[3] For additional study, read Ezekiel 28:13-19
[4] Genesis 1:26
[5] Isaiah 14:13-15
[6] 1 Peter 5:8