3. Inspiring False Wonders (2 Thess. 2:9)
We recall from the time Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court that the servants of the Devil could pull off miracles too (See Exod. 7.). So, the presence of a miracle—even an answer to your prayer—does not prove the validity of anything.
Jesus said it was a wicked and adulterous people who would do nothing unless they received signs and wonders first. “Wicked” refers to their absence of faith; “adulterous” refers to their lack of faithfulness. Unspiritual people demand a miracle before they will believe, but the effect is short-lived. It has no staying power. They are without faith or faithfulness.
It helps to remember that “miracles do not produce faith.” Instead, faith produces miracles.
Over the years, I have run into people who sought to impress others with their spirituality and godliness by telling of miracles they’d received in answer to their prayers. As much as we want to believe that these are evidence that God is with us and for us, they don’t prove a thing.
Jesus said on the last day people will stand before him and say, “But Lord, we preached in your name, we cast out demons in your name, and we worked miracles in your name.” He will say to them, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity and lawlessness. I never knew you!” (Matt. 7:22–23).
Knowing Jesus. There is no greater thing.
By the way, John the Baptist did no miracles, Jesus said (John 10:41). If miracles are the proof of anything, then what does this say about the man Jesus called “the greatest born of a woman” (Matt. 11:11)?
4. Tempting to Disobedience (Gen. 3:4–5)
Satan uses the same techniques on us that he originally did in the garden with Eve. He questions whether God actually said what he did (implying the Bible does not say what it says) and then accuses God of not wanting what is best for us (slandering the Almighty).
He is a specialist in finding our soft places and playing to them. As a football coach studies game films to find the weaknesses of his next opponent, multiply that by a thousand and you’ll have the degree to which Satan studies his targets—you and me—to find our weaknesses in order to attack us there: “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed” (James 1:14).
Satan has never tempted me with cocaine or marijuana or liquor. He has never tempted me with great success or millions of dollars or worldly acclaim. He knows there is nothing in me that responds to such. His methods for me are more subtle, more specialized. He does better by playing to my pride, certain fears and certain appetites. He knows what he is doing, friend. Make no mistake.
You and I abide in Christ, or we are in big trouble. The hymn tells us to “take time to be holy,” for “temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh.”
5. Slandering the Saints (Job 1:9–11)
Perhaps this is what Scripture has in mind when Revelation 12:10 calls Satan “the accuser of the brethren.” In Job, Satan accuses Job before God, saying he was only serving the Lord out of selfish interests.
It’s worth turning this around, however, and based on the above Genesis 3 text, remembering that while Satan is the accuser of the brethren before God, he is the accuser of God before the brethren.
Read the Old Testament account of Moses’ delivering Israel through the wilderness into Canaan. Again and again, he and God are accused by the people—God’s own ransomed people who should have known better—of not being able to keep their promises, of bringing them out of Egypt but being unable to get them into the Promised Land.
Accusations against God today are more subtle. People do not stand in church business meetings and accuse God of reneging on his Word. But they seem to have no hesitation in accusing the pastor and other ministers, the deacons and other leaders, of weakness, of failures, of dishonesty, of ungodliness.
When a leader of God’s people is accused unjustly, God takes it as an attack on himself.
Mark that down in red letters, friend. It’s a sobering thought. I expect most churches have more than one member who have been penciled in on the Lord’s appointment schedule to give account for such slanderous behavior.
Jesus told Peter that in trying to dissuade him from going to the cross, Peter was Satan, “an adversary.” Likewise, those who play into Satan’s hands today and accuse their brothers and sisters in the church are being adversaries to Christ.
6. Inflicting Disease (Job 2:7)
We must not be guilty of saying that all disease is of the Devil. Some have done that, no doubt, for the simple reason that disease is bad and Jesus fought against it by healings throughout his earthly ministry. It’s taking the easy way out.
Now, I don’t know a single good thing to say about disease, don’t get me wrong. No doubt diseases are a result of the fall of Adam, and will be banished from heaven.
However, if I violate sanitary laws and come down with a cold which I caught from someone else, let’s not blame that on the Devil. I did that myself, by my laziness or neglect. Medical historians inform us that the Black Plagues of the Middle Ages (there were several such plagues, not just one) could have been prevented—and were eventually stopped—by the kind of proper hygiene that is taught in the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament.
But some sicknesses are from Satan. Whatever infirmity Paul had, in 2 Corinthians 12, he called it “a messenger from Satan.”
“And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me” (2 Cor. 12:7).
Three times Paul asked God to remove it. Eventually, the message he received from heaven was God’s assurance that his grace was sufficient, that his strength was perfected in our weakness.
Just because something comes from Satan does not mean God was looking the other way. God uses Satan sometimes for his own purposes.