Satan: How Does He Operate?

Selected Scriptures

Tonight we are going to do the third in our brief study on Satan: Is he? Who is he? And what is he like? The Apostle Paul in II Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 11 says that we are not to be ignorant of the schemes, or the plans, or the stratagems, or the tricks of Satan. We need to know how he works. We need to know something of his character, something of his person, something of his approach. And since we have the Word of God which unmasks Satan's disguises and which reveals his schemes, there's really no reason to be ignorant.

What we're attempting to do in our study together is simply open the pages of the Word of God and show you what God has revealed about our enemy.

We have already seen that one of his most clever ploys is to make men believe that he doesn't exist. If there is no enemy then there doesn't need to be any defense, and if there is no defense then victory is easy. For those who insist on believing that he exists, Satan would rather set forth false ideas about himself. That he does exist but he's something less than what he really is. Some would imagine him to be a sort of a mythological figure representing general evil. Others would see him as a satin‑ suited horned red‑forked tail, pitchfork sort of degraded fairy‑ tale monster. Others would see him as somebody to be feared and somebody to torment Christians from whom we have to run and go somewhere to get delivered. Believe me, Satan would rather be non‑existent, and if he can't be non‑existent, at least in the mind of a man, he would certainly like to be, at least, invisible in his reality. And so he masks himself and the Bible unmasks him.

It's amazing that even those who claim to worship Satan are really not worshiping the Satan that exists, but a manufactured Satan that Satan himself uses to trap men. He is a deceiver. He is the master deceiver of the universe. And we've seen in past weeks how careful we need to be in understanding that.

For religious people, for people who not only believe in the devil, but believe in God and maybe believe in the true God, Satan has another approach. He likes to be mistaken for God.

Tertullian once said: "Diabolos est Dei simia." And that translates into "The devil is God's monkey." What Tertullian meant was that the devil likes nothing better than to ape God.

And, believe me, there are a lot of unwitting Christian people who think God is doing something when it isn't God at all.

Now we have, in the past several weeks, carefully tried to explore his character in an effort to explode the myths that he has authored to hide his true self. We have tried to unmask him.

We have studied the question ‑ Is he? And determined that he is.

We've studied the question ‑ Who is he? And we've unmasked him as a fallen angel. We've talked about what he is like and we've gone to study what he is like from the standpoint of his names and his titles and the terms used to describe him. And tonight we come to the fourth point in our outline ‑ How does he operate?

And this really brings it down to the practicum of our own living.

How does Satan operate in the world to bring about his own ends?

Now, this gets us into the very nitty‑gritty of living.

Hang on to your Bible because we'll be pointing out many important things.

Now, in the operation of Satan we simply need to understand that he operates in two categories; he operates in his own children and he operates on the children of God. And those are the two spheres in which Satan functions.

Now let's look, first of all, at category number one, and see how Satan works in his own children. And, I believe, that all people in the world who are without Jesus Christ, who are outside the family of God are the children of Satan. And I would take that from I John 5:19 where it says: "And the whole world lies in the wicked one." Jesus said in John 8:44 of the Pharisees: "Ye are of your father the devil," and I believe it could be broadened to include anybody who's not a child of God.

Now how then does Satan work in his own children? Let me suggest to you three ways generally, and some specifics under that. First of all, his work of preventing. Satan is busily engaged in the work of preventing. There are several items we could talk about under this, but for a beginning look at the eighth chapter of Luke and then we'll compare with it the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. The eighth chapter of Luke, and we'll skip the initial instruction of our Lord in the parable and we'll go right to His explanation of it in verse 11, Luke 8:11. Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. And, of course, you know a sower was sowing seed. The sower speaks of that one who spreads the Word, who spreads the truth. The seed is the Word of God. "Those by the wayside are they that hear. Then cometh the devil and taketh away the Word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved."

Now you will notice back at verse 5 that the wayside is described there as trodden down. A path that is pressed down, that is rock hard. The seed falls, it just sits there and the birds take it. And that's emblematic of the Word of God being spread on hard soil that does not receive it and the devil comes and takes it away. The devil is in the business of preventing.  And the first area is he snatches away the Word. He snatches away the Word.

Further, to understand the complete picture of the parable we should look at Matthew chapter 13, there are some other items there that would add to our understanding. Matthew chapter 13, we have the parable again here. Verse 19: "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and understands it not then comes the wicked one catches away that which was sown in his heart, this is he that received seed by the wayside." Here comes the devil and snatches it away. Now in this parable we have four kinds of hearts, four kinds of soil. We have the unresponsive heart in verse 19, "Understandeth it not." It doesn't register, there is totally an unresponsive heart.

Then we have the impulsive heart, verse 20 and 21: "Receive the seed the same and hears the Word and immediately with joy receives it, yet hath he not root in himself, endures for awhile," tribulation or persecution arises because of the Word and immediately he's offended. This is the impulsive heart.  The person who makes an impulsive commitment to Christ that has no real root.

Verse 22 tells us about the preoccupied heart. "He also that received seed among the thorns is he that hears the Word and the care of this age and the deceitfulness of riches, chokes the Word and he becomes unfruitful." Here is the case of somebody who's too preoccupied with the system to give himself to the Word.

Then there is in verse 23 the good ground, the responsive heart. 

So, you have an unresponsive heart, an impulsive heart, a preoccupied heart, and a responsive heart. We find then in our look we are looking at an unresponsive heart. And the Word of God lands on that heart where there is indifference, where there is callousness, where there is unresponsive attitude, there is rejection and the devil comes along and just snatches the Word away. Now notice this, the devil can do that because the heart is hard. The issue here is the hardness of the heart. The parable teaches that the result of hearing the gospel is always dependent on the condition of the heart. And it is only where the heart is hard that Satan can move in and take away the Word, and that is precisely what he wants to do. Before the person can meditate on it or think about it or allow it to become in any sense significant, Satan snatches it away by dragging new allurements that are more appealing, new allurements that haven't been rejected in front of the attention and those divert and the Word is lost.

There is a second passage that would help us to understand his work of preventing and that would be in II Corinthians chapter 4 verse 3. Here the Apostle Paul is talking somewhat about his own ministry and about how God changed his life and he...he was transformed from one who propagated the hidden things of dishonesty to one who spoke the truth. And he says in verse S: "If our gospel be hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost, in whom the god of this age...who is that?...Satan...has blinded the minds of them who believe not." And here again the inference is that Satan can only blind one who willfully won't believe. That it isn't the idea that God wants you saved and Satan wants you lost and you cast the deciding vote. It isn't the idea that you're being victimized by Satan, you're sort of trapped, you'd like to vote for God but you're blinded. It's the idea that because there is an unbelieving heart Satan can move in and make you blind. Satan is in the business of preventing. And to such people with hard hearts, the gospel is irrelevant.

In I Corinthians 1:18, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish...what?...foolishness. Satan moves and snatches it away.

But not only is Satan involved in the work of preventing in terms of his work in his own children, but secondly, in the work of perverting. He not only desires to prevent the truth, he desires to pervert the truth. So that what people are hearing isn't the truth at all. And he does this by several means. Number one is by teaching false doctrine.

Dr. Pentecost has a very helpful statement. This is what he says, and I quote: "Satan, of course, would rather not have to do the work of taking away the seed that has been sown. He would rather so control the one who is doing the preaching that something other than the good seed of the Word of God is proclaimed."

"Now listen, think of the work that Satan has to accomplish when the word is preached. If there are 500 people present when the true Word of God is planted in 500 hearts, he has to have 5O0 demons getting into 500 different lives to take out that which has been sown. I don't know if that's true, he could have one very fast demon, or any multiple of such. But the point is...is obvious. What an economy of operation it is if he can have those people who think they will be taught the Word of God, hear some lie of the devil. He had to work with only one individual instead of 500. But knowing that the Word of God will be proclaimed and that the truth of God will be declared, Satan has prepared to prevent the good seed of the Word from falling into the good ground if he can."

I'm sure that he's right in this sense, Satan would much rather pervert than prevent. That's after the fact. He is actively perverting by teaching false doctrine. Believe me; Satan's ministers speak every Sunday from thousands of pulpits, don't they?

In II Corinthians I would draw you to a familiar portion of Scripture that must be considered in relation to this, II Corinthians chapter 11, and verse 13 says: "For such are false prophets, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ."

You want to know where Satan is most active, it's within the framework of religion, and in our case the framework of the Christian religion. "No marvel...don't be surprised...for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, therefore it's no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness." Satan does the work of perverting by putting his own demon‑influence and demon‑possessed people in pulpits, propagating false doctrine.

In I Timothy, for example, you're familiar with the passage in chapter 4 which says: "The Spirit speaks expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy. having their conscience seared with a hot iron." They go right ahead speaking hypocritical lies and it doesn't even seem to bother them.  False prophets...and they are myriad...they are Satan's great weapon.

In II Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 9 we find that Satan is going to do some amazing things apparently during the period of the tribulation. It says: "Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders." Not only do they sometimes speak lies that sound like the truth but they sometimes do deeds that are Satanic but appear to be godly. And there we have again Satan aping God.

Have you ever analyzed what the core of Satan's false doctrine is? Let me just give it to you in a nutshell. As one guy said ‑ If you can get this in your head you've got it in a nutshell. But just one thought...what is the basic false doctrine that Satan propagates? Number one, is he...he always denies the authority of Scripture...always. You see, if you can destroy the authority of this book there isn't any authority anywhere...and then nothing matters...nothing.  Everything becomes arbitrary. He began in the very beginning, in Genesis 3, when he said to Eve ‑ "Hath God...what?...said?"  Did God say that? How do you know God said it? Casting aspersions on the truth of God. Now that's typical.

Second Timothy chapter 4, he not only did it at the beginning, he's going to do it all the time till the end. "They shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables."  Verse 3, "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers," false teachers," tickling their ears." Satan denies the authority of Scripture.

Secondly, Satan invariably denies the deity of Christ.  False teachers will invariably deny the deity of Christ, denying the Lord that bought them. And that includes the doctrine of salvation. If you wipe out the deity of Christ you've wiped out the doctrine of salvation with it. The two have to go together. If Christ was not the God‑man and if He was not God Almighty in human flesh, dying on the cross, then the atonement that He purported to accomplish, He didn't accomplish at all. And so salvation is gone. And that fits Satan because his great lie in the area of salvation is that you're not saved by faith, you're saved by...what?...works. There's only two ways to get saved; one is the religion of divine accomplishment, and the other is the religion of human achievement. That's Paul's great argument in the book of Galatians, that a man is not saved by human achievement but by divine accomplishment. So Satan denies the authority of Scripture, he denies the deity of Christ, test the spirits, said John in I John 4 and find out whether they're real, any spirit that denies Jesus is Christ. God come in the flesh, is spirit of antichrist.

Another thing that Satan always denies along with the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and salvation by grace through faith is he always denies the second coming. Because the second coming is connected with judgment. And you'll find that usually false teachers have the most messed up eschatology conceivable. Because they've got to get rid of ultimate judgment. In II Peter 3 it tells us that the false teachers are saying, scoffingly in verse 4, "where is the promise of His coming, for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."  Peter says ‑ Are you willingly ignorant of the flood or is that an oversight? All things haven't continued as they were.

And so they are busy propagating false doctrine...denying the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith and the second coming. In its place they propagate a lot of other false doctrine. For example, one of Satan's very favorites is that you can get away with rebellion, he loves that one. As I told you last week. Satan is trying to prove that rebellion against God works. That's the whole plan that he's trying to unfold. And that is what God is trying to show you is not the case, rebellion against Him will not work. God wants the universe to know that. And so, Satan is able to run the gamut of his rebellion, that God may show every creature in the universe that rebellion run out as far as it will go won't work. But Satan wants men to believe that you can do just exactly what you want and everything's going to come out all right.  Rebellion will work. That's the lie.

I always remember reading the story of Hemmingway. It was in a...an article written in Playboy magazine, which was quoted in Eternity magazine, where I read it. (laughter) It stated the fact that...it was right after Hemmingway's death...and it was regarding the fact that in his heyday, it was said, that he had proven that you could sin and get away with it. He had destroyed biblical morality by doing exactly as he pleased and having the world on a string. It said he had won wars and tumbled women and done this and had drunk as much as he want...on and on it went, giving him every bit of credit for having just obliterated the biblical morality. And then 10 years later, to the very day, he took a gun, put it to the side of his head and blew his brains out.

Satan says you can get away with rebellion. Don't you believe it. That's one of his false doctrines. You can sin all you want, everything will be all right. 

Another thing that Satan is propagated historically is that idolatry is the thing to do. It's wonderful to have a god. He'd love everybody to have a god, as long as it's the wrong one. He doesn't want everybody to be an atheist, he just as soon have everybody a religionist, worshiping the god who isn't there.

That's why the Bible tells us that the gods of the nations are demons. Man wants to worship a rock, Satan will let him worship the rock and have a demon impersonate the god he thinks is in the rock and hold him hooked to the rock. Psalm 106, I think it is, verse 36 says: "They serve their idols which were a snare to them, yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons."  When they were sacrificing to idols they were sacrificing to demons, for demons had impersonated the god they assumed to exist. Satan would love people to be religious as long as it's the wrong god.

Satan even promotes angel worship. Read Colossians chapter 2, verses 18 to 23, he would like people to worship angels. There are people today who do that. They do that even in the Roman Catholic Church. So, Satan perverts by false doctrine, counteracting true doctrine and propagating false doctrine.  Another way that Satan perverts is by molding a damning life style. Not only by false doctrine, but just by trapping people in a damning life style, from which they are unable to be extricated.  And we find that in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 3: "And you hath He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sin, in which in time past you walked according to the course of the world."  Satan would love to get people trapped in his system, "So that they walk according to the course of the world, so that they are under the prince of the power of the air so that he is working in them.

The spirit that works in the sons of disobedience." He wants to trap men, as it says in verse S, in the lusts of the flesh so that they fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind and are by nature the objects of God's wrath. Satan wants to get men trapped in a damning life style from which they cannot extricate themselves.  Not just propagating theory, but dragging them into practice that...that becomes binding.

And then more specifically, and those may be somewhat general, more specifically, Satan works in his own children by oppression.  And that's just a word, it..it isn't trying to be a distinct word, it's just a word that covers a lot of things; possession, obsession, oppression, whatever you like. He works in his own people by a very direct oppression. There are many ways to illustrate it.  Through lusts, there are lots of different demons. Did you know that some of them are more rotten than others7 Apparently there are degrees of evil. Some of them apparently by the terms used to describe them are specially wicked ones. Satan would like to drive men into the total abandonment to their lust, and he was successful.

If you'll look at Romans chapter 1 you'll see, for the most part, that the world did just that. It says in verse 24: "God gave them up." That's the way they wanted to go, they exchanged God for Satan, so God gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves.  Verse 26: "For this cause God gave them up to vile affections' for even their women did exchange the natural use for that which is against nature." You'll notice the body seems to be the...the major feature of 24, whereas the heart seems to be the affection seems to be the major feature of verse 28, and the mind the major feature of verse 2S. "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." So, body, heart and mind...body, affections and intellect, all corrupted.  'And they were filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whispers, etc. etc. etc."

"And even thought they knew the judgment of God," verse 32 says, "that they who commit such things are worthy of death," they not only do the same but have pleasure in the others that do it. And so Satan would desire to oppress people through abandoning them to their lusts. And my, don't we see that in our world today? Don't we see people who have lost control? They are totally abandoned to all the lusts.

Other ways that Satan can oppress his people, not only through their lusts, and I've talked to people who..who have gone so far in the area of lust that they despise themselves, there are people who have killed themselves because of that. I talked to a girl, one time, who couldn't look in a mirror because the sight of herself made her sick. But he also oppresses his own people through sickness. The Bible in the gospel record gives us accounts of people who were made dumb, they couldn't speak by Satan and his demons, others who were made blind, others who had physical deformities, others who had epilepsy. People who actually had diseases that were propagated by Satan and his demons.

Further, he not only oppresses his people through lusts and through sickness but through mental illness. I believe that one of the great causes of mental illness in the world, and even today obviously, is Satanic effort. Have you read Mark chapter 5 recently about the maniac in Gadera, the man living among the Gadarenes who was living in the tombs? They were trying to bind him, he kept breaking everything with which they bound him. And he was cutting himself and he was crying out. He was a horrible creature.  His insanity was due to the fact that he was absolutely possessed by demonic hosts. He was a maniac. 

In Mark chapter 9 and verse 22 there was a suicidal maniac who was trying to kill himself, strictly as a result of demonic power. I'm sure that not only much mental illness but much suicide is a result of the activity of Satan...his oppression of his own people. And then. of course, the illustration of Mark 5 also points out that Satan can oppress his people not only through insanity and suicidal desire but even masochism,