You Can’t Have It Both Ways — Part Two

Now to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and when you get your Bible open on your lap, let’s pause for a moment and bow in prayer once again:

Lord, we have spoken to you in prayer, we have praised you in our song, and now we come to these moments when we believe that you will speak to us in a way that is beyond simply the voice of a man. And so we pray for alertness, that our minds may be engaged, that our hearts may be stirred, that our wills may be challenged, and that our lives may be renewed. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

We’re returning to the portion of Scripture that we were looking at last time in 1 Corinthians 10. We said then that we’re dealing with one of the dangers of freedom, of which he addresses three in this chapter. Having dealt with the danger of presumptuousness and about to deal with the danger of legalism, to which we will come again, he now, in verses 14–22, is dealing with the danger of compromise.

The context is such that some of the Corinthians were apparently taking their freedom in questionable matters just a bit too far, and as a result of that, they were flirting with idolatry. Paul consequently warns them in no uncertain terms that—and you’ll see this in verse 21—they just can’t have things both ways: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too.”

We saw last time that the approach that he takes is warm. Verse 14, he calls them his “dear friends.” The approach that he takes is directive. He is urging them not to any kind of leisurely contemplation of sin but rather to run from it and to run from it quickly. His approach is also an encouraging one, in that he seeks from them not their blind submission but rather that they would use their critical faculties as intelligent people. And that was and remains a reminder to us of the way in which the Word of God should be proclaimed and the way in which the Word of God should be received.

The picture of the people of God under the Word of God is not a congregation under the Scriptures proclaimed by a man but is the man and the congregation all underneath the Scriptures given by God. Therefore, it falls to those who proclaim the Word of God to constantly be calling the listeners to think. And that is exactly what Paul does. In verse 15, he says, “I speak to you as sensible people. Think.”[1] And then he asks a question in the opening part of verse 16, then he asks a second question in the second half of verse 16, and then he provides an explanation in verse 17. And in point of fact, this is a pattern which I found in this little section, insofar as now, from verse 18 to the end, he does the exact same thing all over again: he says, “Think,” then he has a question, then he has another question, then he has an explanation, and it’s over. It’s pretty good. At least, it was helpful to me.

So, let’s pick it up at verse 18, where he says, “Think.” The word that he uses here is actually “Consider.” “Consider,” he says, “the people of Israel.” The people of Israel, the Jews, had a sacrificial system which centered at the great altar in the temple of Jerusalem. This sacrifice in Jerusalem, in this place, was one in which everyone was involved. And they were involved on three levels: they were involved with their offering, they were involved with God, and they were involved with one another.

So he says, “I want you to think about that,” and then he immediately follows it with his question number one: “Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?” Now, you remember, last time we said this word “participation”—communication, koinōnia—meant something far more than some superficial celebration of that which was external, but rather, it was a heart-level exercise of faith and commitment to be involved in this way. And so he said when the Israelites sacrificed to the Lord, they participated in it by eating. And when they ate the sacrifices, in so doing, they were sharing in everything for which the altar stood. They were participants. They were communicants. It was far more than some mere ordinary eating that nourishes the body.

The picture of the people of God under the Word of God is not a congregation under the Scriptures proclaimed by a man but is the man and the congregation all underneath the Scriptures given by God.

If you’ve been following the news this week, you would notice the judgment that was sent down by the Supreme Court concerning the group of people who were offering animal sacrifices in the course of their worship. And when interviewed, it was very clear that those people knew what they were doing. They were not prepared simply to say that this was an external thing. “No,” they said. “What we’re doing is our ‘Communion.’ We cannot let this go. We must do this. Because when we participate in this way, we express who we are, what we are, and what we believe.” And interestingly enough, the only people that had much to say about it were animal rights activists. But that’s another subject all together. The fact of the matter is, they understood what was involved in terms of participation. And that’s exactly what he’s saying about Israel.

To eat, for an Israelite, was to be part of all the benefits that were being represented: the benefit of forgiveness, the benefit of membership of God’s people, the benefit of growing in grace and in holiness. Indeed, we could say quite simply that any Israelite who refused to eat of the sacrifices would thereby disassociate himself from the altar and therefore disassociate himself from everything that was associated with it.

Now, Paul’s argument is very clear and very important. The issue, he says, is not abstract and external, but it is actually actual and internal. And we’re not going back to last week, except to say this: that when we share in Communion, you don’t get a good meal, right? You don’t even get a snack. So, it doesn’t nourish you physically. If we share in Communion without any spiritual participation, it doesn’t do anything to us spiritually, either. So it’s facile and useless, for we neither get fed physically, nor do we get fed spiritually. That’s why it is a nonsense to participate in it without first having participated in the reality of who Christ is and what he’s done. “Now,” he says, “when you think of the Israelites, they understood that perfectly. They knew what they were doing in the sacrificial system, and they understood it.”

Question number two then follows—verse 19. And here he’s anticipating a deduction that some might make, and it would be a false deduction. They might deduce on the basis of what he’s saying that these idols were reality. And so he asks the question—typical lawyer, very, very good: sets up the question first, and then he answers it. It’s excellent work. We can learn from this. “Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything?”

Now, the readers must have immediately said to themselves, “Good question! That’s what we wanted to ask you. Because it sounds as though what you’re leading towards is an application of this truth that demands our conclusion in that way. We’re supposed to assume, presumably, that since you’re so concerned about idolatry, that this idolatry stuff must be real, because you keep using this word ‘participation,’ and you’re driving to this conclusion.”

So Paul, recognizing that they may be thinking he’s about to contradict what he said in 8:4, where he said, “So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in [all] the world and that there is no God but one”—well, he said that in chapter 8; now is he saying something different in chapter 10? So his question is this: “Am I implying that a false god really exists? Or am I suggesting that that which is sacrificed to any god has some value?”

Now, once again, will you notice that he appeals to the sense and sensibilities of the Christian people? “Think it out,” he says. “Do I mean this? Do you think I mean this?” In other words, “Just don’t open your head up like some kind of old cookie box or cookie jar and wait for me to shovel stuff in. That’s the stuff that cults are made of. That’s the stuff that silliness is made of.” He says, “You’d better come, and you’d better use what you’ve got in that cookie jar stuck on the top of your shoulders, and you better use it properly. Think this out.”

Then comes his explanation in verse 20: “No,” he says. “An idol is no god at all. But we need to realize that at the same time, such idols cannot safely be treated simply as blocks of wood or lumps of stone. It’s a great mistake,” he is saying, “to assume that behind an idol there is just a vacuum. Because in point of fact, something far more terrible than a pseudo-god or pseudo-gods really exists behind idols. So while I want you to know that the idol itself is simply a block of wood that may be chopped up and burned or a lump of stone that may be taken and thrown in a cellar, behind all idols”—whether statues or the idols of our minds and the making of idols in the culture of the late twentieth century—“behind all idols is a force far more significant than a god that doesn’t exist.”

Now, what is this force? He says it is a demonic force. What the Bible proclaims, and clearly, is this: that there are legions, lots of them—fallen angels—who are under the malevolent rule of Satan. Their total existence is about one thing: destroying if they could and hindering while they may the work of God and the progress of the people of God. And it is these demons, or these fallen angels, that are the force behind all idolatry. Therefore, all altars, all sacrifices, all worship that is set up without the intention of worshipping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—although not necessarily consciously and deliberately—all such worship is ultimately, says Paul, the worship of demons.

Now, you need to understand this, loved ones, this morning. There are only two sources from which this stuff may come. It either comes from Christ and is marked by truth, or it comes from Satan and is marked by error. Therefore, I don’t care how nice the building looks in which the people go. I don’t mind how religious they are in their expressions of devotion. If their understanding of the gospel is less than the gospel and if their worship is not the worship of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, then no matter how well intentioned they may be, no matter how upright they may be, no matter how moral they may be, many of them do not know that they are actually involved in demonic activity. We cannot have places that deny the deity and substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ involved in worship without that worship actually and ultimately being idolatry, and the significance of the idolatry is the fact that behind it is demonic activity.

If you wonder why the church is in the state it’s in today, you’ve got to think through 1 Corinthians 10:14–22. When men and women pay homage to idols, believing it to represent a god or even believing them to be nothing at all—because you’ve got both groups. “Oh,” they’ll say to you, “I don’t believe there’s anything here. I just do it, but I don’t believe anything is in it.” Some will say, “Oh, yes, I believe that we are worshipping somebody who got channeled from the past, and they reincarnate themselves at various points in history, and I believe that.” Absolutely junky! It’s bogus, you see.

But Satan is glad to send one of his emissaries to make sure that when the worshipper shows up, they’re not disappointed. Because they encounter something. They don’t encounter the stone. They don’t encounter a vacuum. They encounter a spiritual energy, just in the same way as the Corinthians were encountering this in their expressions of idolatrous worship. They were saying to Paul, “You said we’re free. Hey, we’re free; we can go here. Our heart isn’t into it. It doesn’t matter.” Paul says, “Don’t be so stupid. What is happening in there is not simply something which may be dismantled and recreated at another place. What is happening in there is from the pit of hell itself. It is demonic.”

Now, that is why, you see—since behind the unreality of idols there exists the reality of demonic activity—that’s why when Paul writes to the Ephesians in Ephesians 6… And you should just turn to it in case you’re not familiar with this portion of Scripture. In Ephesians chapter 6, what does Paul tell us? He urges us to “put on the … armor,”[2] he urges us to “be strong in the Lord,”[3] because, in verse 12 he explains, we’re not struggling “against flesh and blood,” but we’re struggling “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

I put it to you this morning that this has not fully dawned, I don’t think, on the twentieth-century church. ’Cause we are still out fighting with cannons on the ground and neglecting the fact that what’s going on here is Star Wars. Take the total preoccupation of our time and our convictions. What is it? It’s completely earthbound. The devil loves it! Conservative evangelicalism in America is consumed with the thought that if we can only re-create the earth, we will win the battle: “If we will only do this, then that will happen.” The devil stands by and goes, “Oh, let them keep it up. This is fantastic! ’Cause I ain’t fighting on this level! I am moving at a different level!”

That’s why Paul later, he says to the Corinthians, he says, “The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons that other people use.”[4] We say to ourselves, “Well, why wouldn’t we use the weapons other people use? After all, they write letters, don’t they? After all, they protest!” That’s the only thing they can do! We don’t use those weapons ’cause they don’t work. Not at the level of spiritual wickedness, they don’t.

Yes, we’re stuck with it, loved ones. This is what he says: “Our weapons are the proclamation of the transforming grace of God in the gospel and prayer.” You mobilize American Christianity to get down on its knees and pray, you’ll see changes in places on the earth, but it’s because the battle was fought in the heavens. We’re trying to change the heavens by fighting on the earth. We are not going to do it. You won’t do it.

And I am tired of listening to people speak as if the proclamation of the gospel was to try and get the Western world sorted out. God is not interested in the politics of the Western world, ultimately. God is concerned about his kingdom. And the proclamation of the gospel is not a means to a democratic end. The proclamation of the gospel is so that men and women who are trapped and enslaved in sin may be liberated, because their life is very short, and they’re going to spend eternity somewhere, and they will either spend it with the demons in hell or they will spend it with the saints in glory, and it won’t matter a dime where they lived and how they voted and what else they did.

Now, you haven’t heard much of this, and you won’t hear much of this, ’cause this runs right against the grain. But you’re sensible people, so you check your Bible, and you see if what I’m telling you is true. We’re trying to move the altars around. We’re trying to move the idols around. We’re trying to get rid of them at this source. They don’t exist. But the hosts of hell are arrayed in great force.

Now, let’s stay with his argument, because I can feel myself going off on a major tangent here. Demons are able to exercise considerable power. Considerable power. A lot of stuff that is apparently occultic is doubtless exaggerated, and much of it is fake, but it is not all exaggerated, and it is not all fake. A great deal of it is real. I think, for example, the explanation of statues that weep is either a man with a watering can, strategically positioned, so it’s fake; or it is force—and if it is force, it is demonic force, it is evil. It constantly draws people away into realms of deception and into experiences of darkness.

Many of you will have gone to see Phantom of the Opera—a wonderful piece of work, I think, on multiple levels. But it struck me again, just the other evening, as I sat and listened to this, that there’s something about it I don’t like. I can’t put my finger on it, but it comes most forcibly to me in the piece when they sing “Masquerade.” Let me read you just a verse from “Masquerade.”

Masquerade! Seething shadows, breathing lies.
Masquerade! You can fool any friend who ever knew you.
Masquerade! Leering satyrs, peering eyes.
Masquerade! Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you.[5]

And as I was listening to that, I said, “You know, there’s somewhere in Corinthians about that,” and I came back to find it, and I found it in 2 Corinthians 11:13.

Now, I’m not saying for a moment that this is in Phantom, that Andrew Lloyd Webber was writing a thing. Don’t go out and say that stuff. Not for a minute; I’m not suggesting that. All I’m saying is that the devil and his hosts loves this masquerade stuff, loves making people think that there is no reality to this dimension. So, for example, a number of people I heard about did certain things for their graduation parties, unable to think up things—you see how the world is left without the influence of Christ—but some people were having palm readers come to the graduation parties so that they could introduce the youngsters to this kind of thing. What about that? Well, a lot of it’s fake, but some of it’s force; and if it’s force, it’s satanic. You can’t touch it. You can’t fool with it.

Here it is: 2 Corinthians 11:13. Paul is talking about the people who will be preaching the gospel from the wrong motivation. He says,

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

Now, we’ll come, perhaps, in a moment to wrap things up in that area. But let us proceed with Paul’s argument.

“Because this is the case,” says Paul, “I do not want you to be participants with demons.” Notice that at the end of verse 20: “The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. Now, understand that, and therefore, do not be participants with demons.” You see, presumably people were arguing, as I’ve said, that since they didn’t believe in it, it couldn’t harm them. Paul says, “Don’t be so naive. It will not only harm you, but it will also harm people who watch you, who will be confused and may in turn be compromised by their actions.”

The whole argument of verses 14–22 is this: religious ceremonies, whether pagan, Christian, or Jewish, involve participation of the worshippers, and the worshippers participate with the object of their worship and with each other. Since that is so, it is consequently completely inconsistent for believers to participate in any expression of worship that is apart from and contrary to Christ and the Scriptures. So, verse 21: it’s just not possible to sit down at both tables. “You can[’t] drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you can[’t] have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.” They are mutually exclusive.

To be in fellowship with Christ means that we cannot be in fellowship with demons. To be in communion with demons means that we are cut off from communion with Christ. Jesus taught similarly. Matthew chapter 6, he said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”[6] You can’t have it both ways.

Were the Corinthians naive? If they were, Paul sounds this warning note. If they weren’t naive and they were going about the matter purposefully, then he stirs their response by asking these two final questions in verse 22. He says, “Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy?” “I mean, are we just doing this to incur the reaction of our Lord?”—the Lord who’d given his command, Exodus 34:14: “Do not worship any other god, [because] the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

When we speak about the jealousy of God, we shouldn’t attach to it any of the imperfections and faults which are part of human jealousy. None of that attaches to God. The jealousy of God is a perfect jealousy: the jealousy that a man would have for the purity and protection of his wife, the jealousy of a mother for her newborn child. She would want no one else to have it, no one else, ultimately, to hold it. It was her child, and she wanted it. And so she should! “So,” says Paul, “do you think you’re going to sit down at the Lord’s Table, and then you’re going to run out of here, and you’re going to go and worship in pagan context? And you think, because of what I’ve been teaching you about Christian freedom, that you’re free to do that?” Now he says again, “You’re sensible people. Work it out.”

His final question is a kind of argument from absurdity: “Are we stronger than he?” Are we stronger than God? The answer to that is no. I mean, Job, in the Old Testament, he says, “Do I have an arm like God?”[7] No. The very idea is preposterous. We can’t outrun God. We can’t outsmart God. And God will not allow idolatry, along with other sin, to go unpunished. When the apostle John writes about how God’s going to wrap things up at the end of the day in Revelation chapter 21, this is what he says in verse 6: “He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” So, all we need to be is thirsty. All we need to know is that we need water beyond ourselves and it is available to us.

I saw a program a Saturday night ago called Pinnacle. I’ve watched it two Saturday nights running—not last night, but I did watch it the two previous. It’s a business program, and it features people who’ve been successful in business. Two weeks ago, it was Mark McCormack of IMG. The last week, it was a fashion designer whose name I do not know.

But in the course of asking this fashion designer the reason for her success, the lady said, “To what do you attribute your success?” “Number one,” she said, “the encouragement of my husband. Number two, psychics.” Psychics! So the lady said to her, “What do you mean? You mean you consult people? Do you really believe in that?” This is what the lady said: she said, “I know this: that there is something beyond me. I don’t know what it is, but it is a force, and I want to plug into it.” Okay?

Now, what she’s really expressing is a spiritual thirst. She probably knows a Christian somewhere who’s missing the chance to read to her Revelation 21:6: “[Whoever] is thirsty I will give [him] to drink without cost … the spring of the water of life.” Lady, that’s what you’re longing for! But you have plugged into fake, and you’ve plugged into force.

And the lady asked her to explain how it was she knew that the psychics were working, and she said, “Because I thought that I was going to do perfume before I did men’s clothing, and the psychic told me, ‘You do men’s clothing before you do perfume.’ And I did men’s clothing before I did perfume, and look at me! I’m rolling in it.” Now, was that the psychic? No. But we could easily argue that it was demonic activity, because the Evil One liked to draw her down the vortex, make her believe in that stuff, and give her no hope. “[Now,]” says the apostle John,

he who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. [And] this is the second death.[8]

What it really comes down to, loved ones, this morning is this: Are we going to believe the agenda that the world sets, or are we going to believe our Bibles? And if we want to believe our Bibles, then we’ve got to get prepared, as we go into this final few years in this decade, of becoming some of the most peculiar people that ever walked the face of this continent. To stand for this stuff in the climate of our day is going to make demands on the church such as we’ve never seen.

So, let me conclude with one or two points of application. Here they are.

Application number one to the instruction of this teaching: let us check our lives for the compromises that we may be making. Put down a note: say, “I’ve got to check for compromise in my life. I want to check my Friday nights, my Saturday nights, and my Sundays, and I want to see if I’m sitting at two tables, because the Bible says, ‘Don’t try and sit at those two tables.’” Don’t tell me that you’re listening to Hot Chili Peppers and then you’re coming in here and you’re singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God almighty!”[9] ’Cause you’re not going to do it. You’re sitting down at two different tables. You’ve got the Hot Chili Peppers? Do with it what ought to be done with hot chili peppers: don’t eat ’em; chuck ’em. Okay? “But that cost me $14.95!” One of the poorer investments of your life. One of the best things you’ll ever do is turn it into a Frisbee and send it on its way. Compromises in the realm of business, compromises in the realm of morality, compromises in the realm of emotion—compromises. Let us check ourselves on the compromise meter.

Number two: let us be in no doubt, in relationship to what we’ve discovered about Communion, that the significance of our Communion lies in our first being incorporated into Christ. It is once we have found Christ to be our all in all that our expression of participation in Communion bears significance. Until that time, as I said to you, it neither nourishes us physically nor spiritually. And that’s why many of our children will sit around and say, “I don’t know why we do this,” and that is why hundreds and thousands of people will flush through a system Sunday after Sunday after Sunday without it bearing any resemblance to reality in their lives: because they have never been united with Christ. And without union with Christ, there is no significance, except to eat and drink judgment to ourselves.

When a society worships itself and worships creatures, thereby giving up on the worship of the Creator, it lays itself open to delusion by and involvement with the Evil One.

Thirdly, let us not kid ourselves: external activities do matter. The Corinthians were saying, “Hey, we can go to the temple of idols. It doesn’t matter. We’re not really into it.” Paul says, “No, you can’t. No, you can’t. The fact that you’re not into it—nobody can know your heart. The fact that you’re not involved—nobody can know your heart. And if you continue,” he says, “to engage in external activities such as these, you throw your life and the cause of the gospel into confusion. And you shouldn’t do that.”

Number four: when men and women in the futility of their thinking worship creatures rather than the Creator,[10] then they are ripe for delusion by and involvement in satanic activity. Okay? When men and women worship the creature rather than the Creator, à la Romans 1, then they are ripe for delusion by and involvement with Satan and his hosts.

Where are we at this point in the late twentieth century? We’re totally consumed by the notion of worshipping the creature. I mean, there’s two flies flying around somewhere on the west coast of California shutting down the possibility for some kind of business being developed because somebody said that the lesser spotted hoogily-woogily cannot be interfered with, because after all, they’re one of “our creatures.” Well, I don’t want to be unkind to flies, but this is ridiculous, folks. There’s more attention being paid to whales and beagle dogs and the proliferation of rabbits than is being considered in relationship to the mutilation of countless children in their mother’s womb. How could you have these two things going on at the same time? I’ll tell you how: when a society worships itself and worships creatures, thereby giving up on the worship of the Creator, it lays itself open to delusion by the Evil One and involvement with the Evil One.

Fifthly—this is the last one—when people pay homage to idols, they are not engaging in neutral activity; they are actually flirting with demonic forces. When people pay homage to idols, they’re not engaged in neutral activity; they’re flirting with demonic forces. In 2 Corinthians 2:11, Paul says, “We are not unaware of [Satan’s] schemes.” He talks about being outwitted by Satan, his tricks and his plots. He’s a schemer. He’s a dreamer. He’s a masquerader.

We need look no further than the life and ministry of Jesus to understand that the devil is both real and personal. It’s not kosher at this point in time to believe in a real, personal devil. Even theologians don’t believe in a real, personal devil, and they haven’t for years: “It’s really just crazy people that live in certain parts of the world who believe in this real, personal devil, and it’s just such a joke. It’s so crazy.”

Well, Jesus never found it a joke. He didn’t find it crazy. And since the devil himself blinds the men and women so as to secure their allegiance, one of the things he loves to do is to make them believe that he doesn’t exist. You ought to think this out. And this is clever! “I’m going to get you to believe in me by making you think that I’m not real.” Now, you go try and sell that. That’s complex. And he does it! So, what he has done is he has made himself in red pajamas, carrying a fork, with two things sticking out the top of his head. And every sensible person in the Western world says, “You’re not going to tell me you believe in that devil stuff with the pajamas and the fork and the thing?” And so people say, “I don’t believe that garbage.” Neither do I! And so, in endeavoring to blind them and suck them in, he re-creates himself in a way that makes himself unbelievable. He trivializes his evil in defining himself in this way. And that’s why Jesus cuts through it.

And we’ll conclude here. John 8:44. Jesus speaks to the religious people of his day. Get this. If anybody was religious, if anybody was going to heaven, if anybody had it down, then it was these guys—the Jews and the teaching Jews. They spoke at the conferences. They were the folks who stood up in the synagogue. They were the ones who prayed at the corner. They were the people who had the law of God wrapped around their head and wrapped around their arms. And Jesus is calling them to commitment, and they are trying to defend themselves on the basis of their lineage. And he’s talking to them about their father, Abraham, and they’re getting all tied up in knots.

And then eventually, in verse 42, listen to what Jesus says to them. This is what he says to religious people of his day: “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now [I] am here. I[’ve] not come on my own; … he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you?” Do you ever wonder that? Now Jesus asks the question. You say, “Why is it that I can talk to somebody and it’s as if I spoke another language altogether?” “Why is my language not clear to you?” he says. Answer: “Because you are unable to hear what I say.”

“Why are you unable to hear what I say?” Verse 44: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe [in] me!” You see? That’s where our culture lives. “Because I tell the truth, you do not believe.” Someone spreads lies, and they are absorbed into their system.

Think about all the lies that are abroad today as we are about to walk out this door—lies about human sexuality and gender, unimaginable things, silly things and bad things, things that human physiology itself says are absolutely ridiculous. And the lies are pervasive. And the further lie is that the issue of homosexuality is not a moral issue. That’s a lie as well; it’s a major moral issue. Think about the lies in terms of what man’s real predicament really is. Think about the lies in relationship to truth—that all truth is relative truth and there is no absolute. Consequently, God’s wrath is revealed from heaven.[11] You can read it in Romans chapter 1.

Jesus said he’s “the father of lies.” Jesus said he’s “a murderer from the beginning.” Adam and Eve sin, and what’s the first sin that’s committed after that? The murder. The murder of a brother with his brother. Think about all the murders. Think about all the murders. Think about your Plain Dealer this week and the discovery of those bones in an incinerator, whether they’re the right bones or they’re not the right bones, and read that stuff! An eight-year-old boy beaten senseless, beaten into oblivion—some little boy called Arthur. A doctor, who has taken the Hippocratic oath to save and preserve the lives of men and women, so consumed by his passions and his lusts and driven by the forces of darkness that he’s able to take the lifeless body of an eight-year-old boy and stuff him in an open fireplace and light it!

Now, don’t try and explain that to me in terms of the fact that the man was brought up wrong or that his granny never brought him candy on the Friday when she promised. That is from the pit of hell! And he may not be doing it because he understands that, but when the records are revealed on the day that we stand before him, it will be seen to have been demonic activity in that man’s life. And loved ones, that is the world in which you and I live. Do not kid yourself for a moment that at the level of music and lyrics and films and so much, you can kid yourself and say, “It doesn’t matter, because it’s just this or that.” Behind that—listen to the Bible—behind that is all the force of hell unleashed against God’s people.

“Well,” you say, “what are we supposed to do?” Well, let’s just be biblical. That is, we have to believe all that the Bible says, and also, we have to hold it in the proportion in which the Bible holds it. In other words, don’t go out and start buying yourself Frank Peretti books on the strength of this, okay? And don’t get this as your framework. Don’t go out and say, “Oh man, demons, demons, demons, demons, demons,” because the Bible doesn’t do that. The Bible doesn’t do that.

Another time, I’m going to come back and teach you about the devil, but I’m going to tell you this: number one, the devil is defeated; number two, the devil is to be resisted; number three, the devil is limited. You’ve got to know this: The devil is not omniscient; only God knows everything. The devil is not omnipotent; only God is all-powerful. And thirdly, the devil is not omnipresent; only God is everywhere.

You ever worked that out? Satan isn’t everywhere. He can’t be everywhere. He can only do it one at a time. Therefore, the chances are that neither you nor I have ever been tempted directly by Satan himself. Jesus was. Do you ever think that out? I mean, ’cause after all, how many million billion people are there in the whole world? And he’s involved in doing them one at a time? Do you really think he came to your door? You say, “Well, you should see some of the things I got tempted in.” Well, maybe he did come to your door, but the fact of the matter is, it’s highly unlikely. Why would he come himself when he is so successful sending one of his boys?

Let’s pray:

Father, these words are so powerful and illuminating in our day in which we live. We’re so bombarded by worldviews and explanations which owe nothing to your Word and owe everything to an agenda that doesn’t come from truth. And so we pray that you will give us a baptism of clear seeing—not a craziness; not some kind of self-absorbed preoccupation, which would delight the Evil One all the more; but simply a sanity: biblical wisdom, wise judgments, careful constraints on our children, speedy responses to the approach of sin.

I pray that you will teach us as a congregation what these things mean so that we will participate with Christ and with one another and gladly, willingly sit down at that Table. But help us not to sit at other tables, for we’ve understood your Word: that we can’t have it both ways.

Bless us in the hours of this day. And this evening, as we come together and worship and as people stand up and say, “I’ve decided to follow Jesus, I want to go after him,” may we stand with them in encouragement and in praise.

Be with us now. May the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon each one, now and forevermore. Amen.

[1] 1 Corinthians 10:15 (paraphrased).

[2] Ephesians 6:11 (NIV 1984).

[3] Ephesians 6:10 (NIV 1984).

[4] 2 Corinthians 10:4 (paraphrased).

[5] Andrew Lloyd Webber, “Masquerade” (1986).

[6] Matthew 6:24 (NIV 1984).

[7] Job 40:9 (paraphrased).

[8] Revelation 21:7–8 (NIV 1984).

[9] Reginald Heber, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” (1826).

[10] See Romans 1:21, 25.

[11] See Romans 1:18.