[Note: The following is the prepared text for a message given to the Portland congregation of the United Church of God on Sabbath, June 3, 2023.]

Happy Sabbath to you all, and I hope you have had a productive week. In 2 Corinthians 2:10-11, Paul makes a statement about forgiving someone who had repented of sin, and he made a comment that is worth reflecting on in greater detail. 2 Corinthians 2:10-11 reads: “Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.” Paul cannot usually be accused of being too sanguine about human nature or understanding, but it is worth asking, are we ignorant of Satan’s devices? How was it that Paul could be so confident that his audience of brethren in Corinth was knowledgeable about Satan’s devices? And how can we be as confident as Paul was in our awareness and knowledge of Satan’s devices? Let us take some time to explore Satan’s devices, beginning with a brief discussion of Satan’s nature and the vulnerabilities we have to Satan’s devices, followed by a comparison and contrast of two notable biblical cases where Satan attempted to use these devices on humanity on Eve in the Garden of Eden as well as on Jesus Christ during his temptation in the wilderness.

Before we see Satan’s devices in action, it is worthwhile to consider what the Bible says about how we can recognize Satan’s own approach and how we can best resist him. We find a very useful passage about this matter in 1 Peter 5:5-11, so let us turn there. 1 Peter 5:5-11 reads: “Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.  But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.  To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

When we comment on this passage, we generally note that Satan is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and this is something that is important to recognize. Satan is a predator, and desires to make us his prey. Whether he aims to devour us to deceive us, he has the same destructive end in mind either way. The antidote to this threat that comes from Satan is a surprising one. Peter emphasizes humility here, submitting to elders, submitting to each other, humbling ourselves under the hand of God and putting our faith for our deliverance in Him. We acknowledge that dealing with Satan leads us to have suffering in this life, and a great many people have suffered from the behavior of those people who like Satan seek to exploit and take advantage of others and seek whom they may abuse, but Peter also reminds us that God’s goal is to perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle us ultimately, and we all look forward to a world without Satan and his influence even as we have to deal with it here and now in this fallen and corrupt world.

It is also worthwhile to at least briefly discuss our vulnerabilities to Satan that result from the human nature that we all naturally possess as an inheritance that has been passed down for thousands of years through flawed and imperfect human beings. 1 John 2:15-17 reminds us of the vulnerabilities that we have to the evil one by reminding us of the qualities of the world in which we live. 1 John 2:15-17 reads: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.  And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” It is worth noting that both Peter and John in their discussions of what we should resist and avoid in this life both focus on the issue of pride as being a central aspect of the vulnerability that people have to Satan. Similarly, the Bible speaks often and powerfully about the need to avoid lust of one kind or another, and we should not be surprised to find that Satan’s attempts to attack both Eve and Jesus Christ involve issues of both pride and desire.

Before we look at the temptation of Eve in the first part of Genesis 3, let us begin with a brief look at Genesis 2:15-17, which tells us what God told Adam about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Genesis 2:15-17 reads: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” Let us note that God allowed Adam the freedom to eat every tree except one only, and that eating that one tree would lead inevitably and certainly to death. When we understand what it is that God said, and the context in which it was said, we may be better informed about Satan’s devices that tricked Eve and that he continues to use to this day when it comes to what God allows and prohibits in our lives.

Genesis 3:1-7 tells us the story of the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden, and it is a story that we are all likely very familiar with. Let us read this story, though, with a focus on what Satan is specifically doing here, because his behavior in this passage is part of a larger and repeated pattern of behavior for him. Genesis 3:1-7 reads: “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.”

This is a familiar passage to us all, but how much information about Satan’s devices do we notice in what is said here? First, let us notice that Satan directly targets Eve. God gave his initial prohibition against eating the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam, and yet Satan chooses to ask Eve, who had heard the prohibition second-hand through Adam, presumably because like any good predator he sought a weaker and more vulnerable target rather than seeking a fair and open contest. Let us note as well that Eve made a blunder in her opening move in exaggerating what God had said about the tree in the midst of the Garden that was prohibited, saying that even to touch it would lead to death. Satan’s asking of a rhetorical question about what God said invited Eve to phrase what God said in her own words, and that invitation subtly influenced her to accept how Satan framed the prohibition of the tree as denying from Eve (and Adam) the freedom to choose for themselves.

When we consider that Satan framed God’s action as a denial of freedom when in fact it was a very minimal placing of boundaries around only one thing that was denied them, and that Satan’s response to this situation was to inflame Eve with desire for exactly what was forbidden, we can see that a major aspect of Satan’s devices, and one he commonly uses today, is to inflame in people desire for precisely what is forbidden, making something attractive simply because it is across some sort of line that should not be crossed. It need not matter what line that is, the existence of a line that should not be crossed for fear of legal or social consequences itself makes whatever is on the other side of that line more attractive to us as fallen and rebellious human beings, whose longings and lusts can easily be worked on and encouraged by Satan. And here we see Satan appealing to Eve to be her own boss and authority and reject what was said by God and to replace it with her own sense-based judgments about the appearance of the fruit with regards to its taste and beauty and desirability, masking that this rejection of God’s authority was a replacement of that benign authority with the far more abusive and tyrannical authority of Satan himself. And all of this we can see from just this one passage, a host of devices that Satan has used and continues to use with considerable success against us and others in our evil generation.

It should be noted, though, that we may not feel that the specific devices that Satan uses against specific people are very relatable to us. Although the vulnerabilities that are common to human beings with regards to pride and lust are very broad, the very specific nature of those vulnerabilities may not be relatable to us when we read accounts of Satan’s temptations. What one person may feel particularly prideful about might easily strike those without that particular weakness as somewhat ridiculous, and the desires that lead one person astray need not be universal or even widespread. To the extent that Satan knows our nature, he can target attacks on us based on those things that we are most vulnerable to, even if it is not a weakness that many others may share. We must also consider, especially with regards to Satan’s attempts to attack Jesus Christ’s integrity, that Satan may simply assume that others are beings like himself, and may fundamentally not know what the true nature of others is really like. Whether Satan is targeting us based on weaknesses he knows or weaknesses he falsely assumes about us, such weaknesses may not be particularly common, and we should not worry about whether or not we can relate to the specific aspects of Satan’s devices as we study their overall patterns.

When we look at the temptation of Jesus Christ, there are at least a couple of options that we can consider, as both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke discuss it in detail. For today’s message, I will be going through the account in Luke 4:1-13, largely because I believe that Luke as a careful historian records the temptations in their proper order. That said, you may, if you wish, read the parallel account in Matthew 4:1-11 and it covers the same material, although it reverses the last two temptations from the account in Luke. That said, let us turn to Luke 4:1-13 and read what it says about the temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness. Luke 4:1-13 reads: “Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry. And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ” Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.  And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.  Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.  For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ ” And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ” Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.” There is at least one aspect of the account in Matthew that is worth commenting on, so I will quote it here so that we will comment on it shortly. Matthew 4:11 closes the account of the temptation in the wilderness as follows: “Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.” This will be important to note later on.

Let us comment on this passage in some detail, as it tells us a lot about how Satan operates, and also about how God operates in contrast to this. First, let us note that Jesus’ temptation was not some sort of trap that was set by Satan for Jesus Christ, but was rather something that the Holy Spirit led Jesus to engage in. Jesus was led to initiate the interaction with Satan and dealt with temptation over the course of 40 days that we do not read any details of, only knowing the last and biggest of the temptations that took place at the end. At the end of the encounters, both Matthew and Luke note that the devil departed from Jesus Christ after being unable to tempt Him to sin against God, and it is important to note that all of the temptations would have been sins, which may not necessarily be easy to understand. The account in Luke adds that Satan departed until an opportune time, suggesting the opportunistic way that Satan sought to attack Jesus Christ at His weakest moments, though ultimately just as unsuccessfully as was the case here.

Let us now turn our attention to the three temptations themselves and how it was that Satan sought to entice Jesus Christ into sin. The first temptation was to turn stones into bread. How was this a sin? Jesus had been fasting for 40 days, and was obviously extremely famished by this point. But when invited by Satan to use His power to turn stones into bread so that He may satisfy His hunger, Jesus’ response was to quote scripture by saying that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. God specifically wanted to provide for Jesus Christ’s hunger, which He did when the angels came to minister to Him after Satan departed, as Matthew records, and there was a specific way that God wanted to show His care for His son through His own providence, and not through Jesus Christ using His powers to gratify His own desires. It is hard to know exactly how God wishes to satisfy our own wants and needs, but in our lives, as was the case here, God may want us to patiently wait on Him to provide for us and not seek to solve our problems through our own power and in our own timing. We can get into a great deal of trouble when we seek to gratify our own longings ourselves apart from His provision for us.

Moving on, the second temptation is perhaps the most obvious sin among the three. We know that it is obviously a huge sin to worship Satan, and Jesus’ reply to this temptation was precisely on the mark in pointing out that only God should be worshiped and served. Satan’s offer to Jesus Christ to have rule over all of the kingdoms of the earth as Satan’s viceroy and lieutenant has two additional implications, though, that are true only for Jesus Christ and are not relatable to other people. None of us has any reason to suspect or hope that Satan would offer us control of all of the kingdoms of the world in exchange for us worshiping him. What Satan offered Jesus Christ was a way to avoid having to suffer the cross in order to obtain short-term rulership of the world. We know–and Jesus Christ knew–that Jesus Christ was to have rulership over the world for all time and to open up salvation for humanity, which would have been impossible had He failed to offer Himself as a sinless sacrifice on our behalf, for we cannot enter into eternal life on our own merits. It is also worth noting that Satan’s offer of rulership of the nations was presumably something that Satan had the authority to offer during the period he had been allowed to be the ruler of this evil age, and it is not hard to wonder at the sort of deals with the devil people have made in order to obtain temporary authority over the nations of the world in their involvement in sordid earthly politics.

Let us now turn to the third temptation, which is more subtle than the second one and is also not one that is relatable to a lot of people. Satan invites Jesus Christ–by misquoting and misapplying scripture no less–to deliberately put Himself in harm’s way so that He may draw attention to Himself and may also induce God to deliver Him from self-inflicted danger. Jesus’ reply, also from scripture, that one should not tempt God, reminds us that it is a sin for us to deliberately put ourselves in dangerous situations where God has to save us from our recklessness or our stupidity. It would similarly be a sin for us to boast or proudly brag about God’s care for us as if we were something special ourselves. What is perhaps least relatable for most people is the desire that Satan mistakenly assumes that Jesus Christ has in terms of deliberately seeking attention for Himself. A common misunderstanding among those who, as children of Satan, seek to accuse the people of God, is that those who have public and obvious gifts from God seek their own personal attention when most people would rather live private and content lives without a great deal of attention for themselves. Such people may accept such attention that comes as they fulfill their duties and obligations without seeking it. Jesus Christ was clearly that way, and His own modesty and humility is hopefully more relatable than Satan’s judgment that Jesus Christ wanted attention for himself like a social media influencer.

What can we learn about how Satan operates and how we are to deal with it from Satan’s unsuccessful attempts to tempt Jesus Christ? There are several observations that we can make about Satan’s unsuccessful efforts to entice Jesus Christ to sin. First, we should note that these temptations themselves may not necessarily be relatable to us in specific but that the general patterns they involve are more accessible to us. None of us are going to be asked to fast 40 days, none of us can offer ourselves for the sins of the world, and none of us can expect that we may jump down from great heights and expect that God will keep us from dashing a foot upon a stone to gratify our own pride or our own desire for attention as being special to God. That said, Satan can easily tempt and entice us through the desire and longings that we have as well as our own vulnerability to feeling proud about ourselves, and can tailor attacks on us based on our real or imagined flaws. Not all accusations are true ones, after all. We can learn from Jesus’ responses to Satan that the appropriate way of dealing with the temptations and enticements to sin that Satan offers us are to know and use scripture appropriately to deflect the temptation and to rely on the strength and care of God to address the underlying wants and needs that make us vulnerable to abusing our own power and abilities to gratify those longings and desires.

Also, returning back to our discussion of the temptation of Eve, how can the devices that Satan used against Eve be countered, now that we are not ignorant of these devices? First, we can recognize that Satan seeks after easy targets, and that arming ourselves with knowledge about ourselves and about God’s ways and about our enemy makes us less vulnerable and attractive targets to him. Second, we must be vigilant to stick to God’s words and not to trust in our own understanding of what God has commanded and prohibited to us. Third, we must be aware that Satan seeks to reframe God’s generous and wide allowance of what is permissible to us as denying to us what would make us happy or allow us to have fun, painting himself as a generous being and God as being a harsh and demanding killjoy. Indeed, we need to be especially wary of the way that Satan seeks to inflame desire for forbidden pleasures which inevitably lead to suffering and death and judgment for ourselves and others. Finally, we need to be careful of the way in which Satan promotes autonomy and freedom for those who follow his ways but which exchange the kind and gentle authority of God for the far more tyrannical authority that Satan exercises over those unfortunate enough to be under his misrule. If we can overcome these devices, we will be well on our way to living godly and happy lives free of Satan’s cruel domination, as Paul wished for his original readers in Corinth and for us today.