Do Not Initiate Engagement

The Devil is no ordinary foe. He is the father of lies (John 8:44)—the supreme master of deception. Because of that, we are not to engage Satan in conversation. We do not summon him, challenge him, or curse him. In some churches preachers call down curses on the Devil—an action the Bible says is only performed by ungodly people who reject authority.

… these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. But even the Archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the Devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’ Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand (Jude 1:8-10)

Not even these two: the Angel of the LORD or the Archangel Michael ever rebuke the Devil. We humans (who are of lower spiritual rank than angels) should be much less given to challenge the Devil. God has made us, after all, ‘a little lower than the angels’ (Hebrews 2:7; Psalm 8:5).

… he showed me Joshua the High Priest standing before the Angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, ‘The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?’ (Zechariah 3:1-2)

So, we are not to engage the Devil. We are not to rebuke him or to engage him. But the Devil will engage us, and when he does, we have one option: resist him. That's the only option God gives us in his Word.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the Faith… stand fast in it (1 Peter 5:8-9, 12).

To resist is not to challenge or to defy. But it's also not to run away.

It won’t work to run away from the Devil. He is like a lion--so what should you do when a lion is chasing you? To run away makes a lion aware that you are afraid, and to run away will drive him to chase you. That’s why Jesus didn’t run away from the Devil, and that's why you shouldn't either. Rather, Jesus resisted the Devil, and so should you.

The Secret to Resistance

So, what does Biblical resistance look like? Do we simply hold up a hand and yell ‘no’? Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus resisted the Devil by standing firm in the Faith, just as Peter commands us. How does this work precisely? What does it look like to stand fast in the Faith?

Firstly, someone firm in the Faith must be grounded in the doctrine of the apostles. They must have the proper framework for interpreting the Bible—sound doctrine. With it, they are not going to be swayed by the Devil’s lies.

Above all else, the Devil is a liar, and the best way to resist a liar is with the Truth. That’s why Paul reminds us to extinguish the Devil’s fiery darts by holding up the shield of the Faith--the Bible does not call it the shield of faith. It's the shield of the Faith. That is, sound doctrine is what protects you from the lies of the Devil.

In addition to all this [the full armor of God], take up the shield of the Faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the Evil One (Ephesians 6:16).

People who are firm in sound doctrine will not allow the Devil’s twisting of the Scriptures to trick them. And make no mistake, he’ll go to the greatest lengths to fool us. The Devil even quotes God’s Word in his own nuanced way. He quotes Scriptures in such a way that seeds of doubt are sown in our minds, spinning God’s Word to produce false doctrine. Our response should be to requote the Scriptures, but rightly—that is, we put the right interpretation on the Word of God.

Illustrated Story of Satan

The story of Satan was depicted by Gustave Doré, a French illustrator and painter (1832–1883) who illustrated the book Paradise Lost, authored by John Milton. In it, Milton included the following etchings from Doré. Enjoy them but at the same time reflect upon the hatred Satan has towards humans. Consider how much he wishes to destroy our race.

1. Satan was expelled from Heaven.

2. Satan was cast down to Earth.

3. Satan landed on Earth.

4. He schemed as to how he could avenge himself.

5. He located the Garden of Eden.

6. Satan entered the Garden of Eden.

7. Possessing a snake, Satan drew near to his victims: Adam and Eve.

Entangling Eve

The method Satan used with Eve in the Garden of Eden was to misquote God. After Eve naïvely allowed the Devil’s misquote to pass unchallenged, she herself misquoted God. She did not resist, and so she began to lose her memory of exactly what God had said.

By the time her conversation with the Devil was over, she not only forgot what God had said, she had forgotten what she knew of his character. After a conversation with the Devil--to whom she offered zero resistance--Eve was convinced that God was unfair and selfish. She allowed the Devil to persuade her that God was withholding from her what was best for her.

He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman (Genesis 3:1-4).

It would have been best for Eve not to chat with a snake in the first place, and it would have been great if her husband had intervened, but aside from those two solutions to this primordial temptation—what could she have done?

Could Eve have been firm in the Faith? Not really. The Faith hadn’t been established at that time. Sound doctrine had not yet been defined. However, the foundations of found doctrine existed: trust in God. The God who had already proven his love for mankind had already spoken, and Eve could have been 'firm in the Faith' by simply trusting in his Word.

… faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17; NKJV).

Eve should have simply trusted God to guide her in his love towards what was best for her and Adam. She should have trusted in the words he spoke to her husband Adam:

You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die (Genesis 2:16-17).

Eve did not trust God's Word, and the result was death and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Through her story we see that not resisting the Devil is what got humanity into the mess we're in. Resisting the Devil is what will get humanity out of it.

Hope is not lost. Paradise will be restored. Let's encourage one another to resist Satan by being firm in the Faith. Let's encourage one another to stand firm in it. Adam did not encourage Eve the day Eve was tempted, so he bears the guilt of the primordial sin too.

Eve could have resisted the Devil’s twisting of God’s words. She could have called him out for having distorted God’s words. If she had, then the Devil would have fled from her. That would have been enough to scare him away.

Resist the Devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

If you will simply respond to the Devil with a direct quote from the Word of God, he’ll have no other option than to leave you. He is a liar, and liars are vanquished with truth. If you respond to him with God's Word, you will be victorious!

Engaging Jesus

With Jesus in the desert we see a similar strategy from Satan. He quoted God's Word again but he did not change God's words as he did with Eve. Rather, Satan took God's Word out of context.

Here’s the Devil's accurate citation of Psalm 91:

He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone (Luke 4:10-11).

The Devil presented Psalm 91 to Jesus and intentionally lifted it out of context. He turned the Word of God (which otherwise would have been a blessing) into a snare. Observe the psalm in its original context:

If you say, ‘The Lord is my refuge,’ and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone (Psalm 91:9-12).

The psalm states that God's promise is given based on a condition: If we make God our refuge, harm and disaster will not come near us. That is, Psalm 91 promises that if we put our confidence in God, he’ll send angels to protect us from harm.

That condition is why it would not have been an act of faith for Jesus to jump off of the pinnacle of the Temple. He would not have been trusting God to protect him from harm--he would have been flirting with harm!

The Promise: For Victims of Attack

The promise for God to command his angels to guard us is for people who are trusting that God will protect them from harm. In other words, there is no promise for people who are looking for trouble. The promise is for people who are victims of trouble. It’s for people who are under attack, not for people who are trying to prove to others that God is on their side.

Gideon is a good example. Gideon did not test God with the fleece. He was just confirming God’s command that he should go to war and risk the lives of thousands of people by asking for a double sign. He was not putting God to the test.

Gideon said to God, ‘If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.’ And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.

Then Gideon said to God, ‘Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.’ That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew (Judges 5:36-40).

If Jesus were to have leapt from the pinnacle of the Temple, it would have been a “show off” miracle. Jesus wouldn’t have been seeking a sign for the glory of God, but a sign that would have been for his own glory. He didn’t fall for Satan’s trap.

Jesus resisted the Devil by being firm in the Faith. Jesus stuck to the correct interpretation of Scriptures. Jesus did not allow self-glorification to drive his choices. Consequently, the Devil fled from him. He went away until another opportune time.

On the Alert

We live in a state of alertness if we stand fast in the sound doctrine. This mental alertness can save us. If we’re firm in the Faith, we’ll always be prepared for attacks. Peter calls this attitude sober mindedness. Do you have it? Is God’s Word and the sound doctrine at the front and center of your thinking?

The Apostle Paul uses the same expression firm in the Faith in one of his epistles. What both Paul's and Peter's passages have in common is that they are accompanied by an exhortation to alertness.

Be on the alert, stand firm in the Faith… (1 Corinthians 16:13; NASB)

So, let’s be alert. Both Peter and Paul have warned us. Eve's story warns us. Jesus' temptation warns us. The Devil is still prowling around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. The deception of demons will lead some into the Apostasy. Apostasy from what? From the Faith!

... the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will apostatize from the Faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons (1 Timothy 4:1; NASB).

We resist apostasy from the Faith by being firm in the Faith. We have dangerous enemies all around, including Satan and armies of fallen angels. If we’re strong in sound doctrine, we won’t be tricked by their twisted interpretations of God’s Word.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the Faith… stand fast in it (1 Peter 5:8-9, 12).