We move too fast over God’s Word. I fear we skim lightly over the very voice of God, and so miss its thundering, reverberating tones. We are too hurried to allow the tension to build, the drama to heighten to just the right pitch. And so the fireworks fizzle. It might slow us down, it might help us enter into the story if we would enter into the telling of the story.
Imagine then that you’re in the desert. You’ve witnessed the all powerful hand of God Most High bring down your former master. He leads you to the Promised Land. You’re on the other side of the drama, a page turn away from “They all lived happily ever after.” As you sit with your family, free, Moses begins to tell your story’s beginning. He describes that power that freed you as it first freed the light from the nothingness. He explores not just the power of God, but His wisdom as God separates day from night, land from sea.
Moses paints the picture of God painting His garden, and setting His children therein. Eden has all the glory of the Promised Land. And you’re almost there. Moses sips from his wineskin and continues the story- Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. Wait. What?! You’re jolted, alert, your attention laser focused. A cloud has passed over, chilling your bones. An owl in the distance hoots. All the portents have come out to play.
This changes everything. Would you rush on to the next verse, or would you stay a spell? What is this serpent, slippery, slithering into paradise? And what is his crafty craft? Therein lies the tail. The serpent’s goal is less crafty, more crass. He wars with God, seeking to topple Him from His throne. His seething hatred of God drives him to a seething hatred of man. He rages at the grandeur of the power of God’s Word, that has just fashioned the whole of the universe. So he speaks his lie to God’s truth.
His enemy, ultimately isn’t obedience. His weapon, ultimately, isn’t pleasure. Part of his craftiness is we think his strategy is to tempt us with illicit pleasures. But pleasure is God’s gift so even illicit pleasures are anemic evils. The great evil is when we fail to believe God.
The first temptation in the garden wasn’t the fruit. That, after all, would have eventually been given to Adam and Eve. Indeed the serpent didn’t begin his beguiling by talking up the fruit. Instead he began with a question- has God indeed said? The serpent invited Eve to do something truly evil, to doubt the truth of God’s Word. And so he has been doing ever since.
This is we call Satan the Father of Lies. Not that he lies a great deal. Not that he isn’t shy about lying. It is that lying is essential to what he is, part of parcel of his nature. It defines him. We must remember, however, that he is crafty. A crafty liar doesn’t tell us black is white, up is down, evil is good. That’s too ineffective a strategy. No, his craftiness is that he melds together just enough truth to get us to buy into the lie.
Satan means the accuser. He delights to remind us of the depth of our sin, to fill us with discouragement and doubt. His accusations hit their mark; they sting, precisely because they are true. The devil tells us we’re guilty of this, we’re tainted by that. He shows us the sins we’ve committed, reminding us of the terrible truth that we’re apt to commit them again. Here he fails to tell the truth not because he’s overstating his case, but because he’s understating it. He doesn’t know us well enough. We are far, far worse than he says.
He accuses not to get us to believe the truth that we’re guilty, but to believe the lie that we’re not forgiven. The unspoken lie, the one he so desperately tries to persuade us of is- God could never forgive and love someone as vile as you. The first premise is true – we’re wicked, wicked people. But the unspoken premise, that God could never love and forgive wicked, wicked people, is false, which leads us to the false conclusion, God could never love and forgive me. He doesn’t want us to doubt our guilt, but to doubt His grace.
The solution then to fighting the devil is less resolve not to fall into sensual sin, but resolve to believe God, beginning with His gospel promises to us. To embrace the totality and immutability of our forgiveness in Christ. We must rest in, give thanks for our adoption as His sons. As we rest in His grace He quenches the devil’s fiery darts.
How then can we believe? We begin by heeding what God says. When our diet is His Word, when we feast upon His promises in His book, our faith grows stronger. We read account after account in the Scripture of God rescuing His own, forgiving His own, delighting in His own. Thus we not only have no reason to fear the devil, but can laugh in his impudent face.
At His table we feel the weight of the accusations. As we behold His broken body and spilled blood we remember that we crucified the Lord of Glory. But we do not go to our Father’s table to be condemned but to be welcomed. We are the olive plants that adorn His table (Psalm 128). His table gives us a foretaste of eternity, an entrance into the marriage feast of the Lamb. He prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemy. There we see and taste all He promised. There he sees all that he’s lost. We rest; he rages.
With His first step out of the tomb, our Lord crushed the head of the serpent. For all of his bluster, all of his fury, the devil is defeated. He cowers in his bunker like Hitler as the allies descended on Berlin. He’s already dead; he just won’t admit it. The serpent is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. He was a liar from the beginning. And he will lie to the end. Then however, through clenched teeth and bitter tears he will speak the truth with all of creation- Jesus Christ is Lord.