Focal passage: Revelation 12:7-12
One of my all-time favorite sports is football. The game requires a lot of preparation, and a huge part of each team’s plan is to study the opposing team’s game films. Coaches do this to learn what formations and techniques of deception their opponents utilize. The church’s greatest opponent is Satan, yet they often either talk too much about him or not at all.
Unfortunately, it’s not a game, and we are often not properly prepared.
“The dragon, the ancient serpent” is the one who tries to deceive us. Just like a quarterback, we must know him and his playbook, and that his favorite route is one of deception. His tactics haven’t changed, and he likes to put us in a position where we question God’s Word and His goodness, just as he did with Adam and Eve.
He twists God’s Word to deceive us and persuade us to question God’s love: “Does God want what’s best for us?”
When we fall for Satan’s deception, he then throws out accusations, which deplete our spirit of hope and strength. It makes us feel like we are not good enough for God, or that our sin is something God could never forgive us for. It’s not true.
There is hope in Christ.
We do not have to be deceived by Satan. Christ’s work on the cross has already defeated Satan’s ultimate “game plan.”
Satan, unlike Christ, is not omnipresent. His hands are tied. The book of Revelation teaches us that Christ will return and will finish Satan off for good.
We know that Satan is able to trick us, to provoke us to jump offside. What we must do, as followers of Christ, is get in the Word of God. We need to examine how Satan operates to know his “plays” of deception.
The more we submit to God and resist the Devil, the more and more his tactics will no longer affect us. The more we turn to God for strength to resist the Devil, the more prepared we will be for our opponent’s deceptiveness.