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18 Jun 2007 07:42:44 PM |
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02-Your Adversary, the Devil - The Fall of Satan |
02-Your Adversary, the Devil - The Fall of Satan
Ezekiel 28:11-26 Where did Satan come from? Did God create the Devil? Is
God responsible for evil? Such questions plague the individual who
wrestles with the existence of our adversary in the light of the Bible's
revelation of the holiness of God. Philosophy can never give a
satisfactory answer to these questions. The only satisfying answer is
God's answer found in His Word.
In Ezekiel 25-32 the prophet is pronouncing judgment on many of Israel's
enemies. He describes God's divine judgment on nations that have
persecuted Israel. In Chapter 28 verses 1 to 10 he has delivered a
message of judgment against the land of Tyre. Tyre, a part of the
biblical Syria to the north, occupied by the Phoenicians, one of Israel's
chief enemies. But in verses 11 to 17 he moves beyond the physical
"prince of Tyre," the king of that nation, and addresses a word
concerning judgment on the one who controlled the "prince of Tyre." This
one is called the king of Tyre. We should observe that Satan works
through men. He works through governmental leaders on many occasions.
Because Satan desired to exterminate Israel so that God's Messiah could
not come to bless the earth through that nation, he stirred up Gentile
nations against Israel. Those Gentiles in persecuting and seeking to
exterminate Israel were working out the philosophy and program of Satan
without recognizing or realizing it. So as the prophet pronounces
judgment upon this enemy of Israel in verses 1-10, he moves on to speak a
word of judgment upon the one who controlled these gentile princes.
The one whom we call Satan was originally known by the name of Lucifer,
which means, "the light bearer," or "the brilliant one," "the shining
one." In Ezekiel 28:11-13 we discover why that name was so appropriate.
The prophet begins his judgment by saying, "take up a lamentation upon
the king of Tyre [that is upon Satan himself] and say unto him, Thus
saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect
in beauty." Verse 12 describes for us something of the perfection of
Lucifer before his fall.
Lucifer was a created being. That is pointed out to us in the 15th verse.
"Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till
iniquity was found in thee." God alone is eternal. God alone possesses
eternal, or untreated life. All else that lives, lives because God
created it. All created things have a different kind of life than God
has, a created kind of life. And God in His work of creation began by
creating an innumerable host of angelic beings one of which was Lucifer.
As a creature he was obliged to worship and serve and obey the Creator.
Satan was not created the arch fiend that he has become by his rebellion.
The Scripture testifies in verse 15, "Thou (Satan) was perfect in thy
way."
Not only was he perfect in his way but, according to the 12th verse, he
was the epitome of wisdom and beauty. Lucifer was, first of all, the
wisest of all of God's created beings. God had established him as
administrator of the affairs of the angelic realm. Although all authority
resided in the throne of God, He had delegated certain administrative
authorities to Lucifer. God had prepared him by creation for the
discharge of those functions.
The Word of God reveals to us a number of functions that angels were
designed to perform by the Creator. In Ephesians 1:21 we discover that
there are different gradations or classes of angels. They are referred to
as principalities, powers, mights and dominions. These four words refer
to different gradations or classifications of angelic beings, each one
with its own responsibilities, each one with its own sphere, each one
with its own ministry.
Some angelic beings have a ministry of preservation. For instance, in
Hebrews 1:14 the writer tells us that angels are ministering spirits;
that is, they are servants who protect and preserve those who shall be
heirs of salvation. If he could do so, Satan would depopulate heaven by
preventing people from receiving Christ as Saviour. He cannot do it
because of the ministry of angels to those who shall be heirs of
salvation. In Psalm 91:11 the Psalmist says that God will give his angels
charge over thee, to bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot
against a stone. It comforts me to know that some of God's angels waited
through time until I was born, watched over me until I could receive
Christ as my Saviour, and continue to watch over me now. When I drive the
crowded freeways I'm thankful for this scriptural teaching. Thus we see
that innumerable hosts of angels were created to watch over and preserve
those who would be heirs of salvation. Some angels are the agents through
whom God performs miracles. This is illustrated in Acts 5:19, where it is
recorded that the apostles were delivered from prison through the angel
of the Lord who opened the prison doors. This happened again in Acts
12:7, 8. God brought release, but He worked through angels to accomplish
the miracle.
Then in Revelation 16:1 we discover that certain angels have a ministry
of judgment. We read there, "I heard a great voice out of the temple
saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the
wrath of God upon the earth." As we read through the book of the
Revelation we notice that the judgments of the end-times are administered
through angels. We recall in Israel's past history, when God judged the
Egyptians in order that the Israelites might be delivered from bondage,
it was an angel that went through the land to smite the first-born son
where there was no covering blood. Angels then also have a ministry of
judgment.
Then, in Hebrews 2:2 we discover that some angels have a ministry of
revelation as channels through which God's truth is revealed to men. He
says in that verse, "if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and
every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of
reward; how shall we escape .?" He perhaps is looking back to the
experience at Mt. Sinai where the law was delivered to Moses through the
ministry of angels. That is another classification of work assigned to
the angels.
The previous ministries, you will notice, all had to do with men. But
other angels perform ministries having to do with God. In Isaiah 6:1 we
find Isaiah says, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the
temple. Above it stood the seraphim. ." Now the seraphim were a class of
angels with a ministry that was Godward. These seraphim surrounded the
throne of God and cried one to another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord
God of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory." These angels are
worshiping angels who protect the throne of God from any invasion by
unholiness.
In the first chapter of the prophecy of Ezekiel, we find a reference
again to angelic beings, referred to in verse 5 as "four living
creatures." In verse 13 we find that they had an appearance like unto
"burning coals of fire, like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down
among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire
went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the
appearance of a flash of lightning." You will notice the angels are
referred to as "burning," as "shining" as "lamps" that are lit, or as
"lightning." The word seraphim in Isaiah 6:2 means literally shining
ones, or burning ones. Here in Ezekiel 1 the glow that emanated from
these angelic beings is described.
In Ezekiel 10:1 these who were called "living creatures" in chapter 1 are
called cherubim: "Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was
above the head of the cherubim there appeared over them as it were a
sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne." Verse 3,
"Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, when the man went
in; and the cloud filled the inner court. Then the glory of the Lord went
up from the cherub." In referring to the cherubim, the prophets are
speaking of another class or gradation of angels who had a ministry
before the throne of God different from the seraphim.
The cherubim occur several times in the Word of God. In Genesis 1:24,
after the sin of Adam and Eve, God expelled them from the garden and
placed a cherub with a fiery sword at the gate to keep the gate of the
garden. The next reference to cherubim is in Exodus 25:18 where Moses was
told to build an ark, the ark of the covenant, and there was to be a
mercy seat built on that ark as the lid for the ark and two cherubim were
to be placed on top of the ark and they surrounded the mercy seat. Then
in Revelation 4 we find another reference to these living creatures, the
cherubim, in verses 8 and 9. John says that these living creatures "rest
not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was
and is, and is to come. And . those beasts give glory and honour and
thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever." You
will notice that these living creatures in Revelation 4 are worshipers.
As the seraphim cried "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," they were
looking out from the throne to protect it from any invasion by
unholiness. When the cherubim surround the throne, they are looking
toward the throne and declaring that the One who sits on the throne is
"holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." The cherubim in Genesis 3 at the
gate of Eden were there to protect holiness. The cherubim were on the ark
of the covenant over the mercy seat declaring that through the offering
of blood holiness would be satisfied. The cherubim in Revelation are
worshiping before God because Christ's victory over Satan has vindicated
God's holiness.
When we turn back to Ezekiel 28:14 we discover that Lucifer was one of
the anointed cherubs that covereth. Hence you can see from the preceding
discussion Lucifer's exalted position at the time of his creation.
Lucifer was not some angel of a lesser order. He was one of the cherubs
that could look upon the throne of God and could voice praise and
thanksgiving, adoration and worship to God because He was a holy God. Now
if we were to try to assign positions to the different orders of angels,
we would conclude that the cherubim who could stand and look Godward, or
minister throneward occupied the highest position of all and had the
greatest privilege of any created being. It was over such a privileged
class of angels that Lucifer was placed in authority by Divine
appointment.
Satan was not only the wisest of created beings, but also the most
beautiful. In Ezekiel 28:13 the prophet describes for us something of the
beauty of Lucifer. He does it by referring to him through the use of
precious stones. He says, "Every precious stone was thy covering, the
sardius (which is a reddish-brown stone), the topaz (golden yellow), the
diamond (colorless, reflecting all colors), the beryl (which is a dark
red stone), the onyx (which is multicolored), the jasper (which is
bluish-green), the sapphire (which is deep rich blue), the emerald (with
its scintillating green), the carbuncle (or garnet, which is deep blood
red)." What an array of color! What a rainbow of brilliance! But, of
course, a gem stone has no light of its own. If you were to take any gem
stone into a dark room, it would not shine. It would not glow. Its beauty
is not in itself! Its beauty is in its ability to reflect light from
without. When God created Lucifer, God created him with a capacity to
reflect the glory of God to a greater degree than any other created
being. All of the beauty that was seen in this highest of angelic beings
was a beauty that was given to him by creation, not a beauty that was
innately his own. It was a reflected beauty. God in His holiness was the
light that made Lucifer radiate and scintillate the glory that was His.
It could be said that Lucifer was perfect in beauty, for no creature so
fully reflected the glory of God.
Musical instruments were originally designed to be means of praising and
worshiping God. It was not necessary for Lucifer to learn to play a
musical instrument in order to praise God. If you please, he had a
built-in pipe organ, or, he was an organ. That's what the prophet meant
when he said "the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was
prepared in thee in the day that thou was created." Lucifer, because of
his beauty, did what a musical instrument would do in the hands of a
skilled musician, bring forth a paeon of praise to the glory of God.
Lucifer didn't have to look for someone to play the organ so that he
could sing the doxology - he was a doxology. The very beauty of God
reflected through Lucifer brought praise and honor and glory to God.
Lucifer was called the shining one, the light bearer, and no other angel
could reflect the degree of the glory of God that Lucifer reflected as he
shone forth with praise to the God who had created him.
What is the responsibility of a creature? To be in subjection to his
creator. The creature must recognize that he has come from the hand of
God and that the Creator is superior over him. But we read in Ezekiel
28:16, 17 that Lucifer left the place of a creature and usurped the
position of the Creator. "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy
beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness." God,
who had demonstrated the exceeding greatness of His power by building
such beauty and glory into Lucifer, was not recognized by the creature as
sovereign. The wisdom that God had given to Lucifer was perverted. He
said in effect, "One as wise as I ought to be God; one as beautiful as I
ought to be worshiped and not to worship another." And it was that which
God had given to him that became the snare that perverted him from the
place of obedience, the place of submission and the place of subjection.
This one who was created to demonstrate and to manifest the glory of God
sought to glorify himself through his declaration of independence. Did
God know the pride that would captivate the heart of Lucifer when He
created him? Yes, since God is omniscient, He knew. Could God have
prevented it? Yes, because God is omnipotent, He could have. Why didn't
He? No one knows. God has chosen to enter into conflict with the prince
of the power of the air so that through His victory over the innumerable
hosts of wickedness God can demonstrate to all of creation that He is a
God of glory, a God of holiness, a God of power, a God who is worthy to
be worshiped and praised.
Some years ago when I was a pastor in the Philadelphia area, a man came
into our congregation who moved from the midwest to assume a position in
the precious gem section of the large John Wanamaker store in
Philadelphia. In calling on him several times in the course of pastoral
ministry, I had talked to him about his work and about some of the gems
that he had seen and handled. One day I was passing through the store and
he beckoned to me and said, "I thought you might like to see a diamond
that we just got in from an estate." He went back into the vault and came
out with a little chamois bag, and said, "Hold out your hand." He opened
the drawstring and shook a stone into my hand and asked, "Have you ever
held a half- a-million dollar diamond in your hand before?" I said, "Not
too often!" He had placed a half-million dollar diamond into my palm. It
made chills run up and down my spine. When I examined the huge stone, I
was overwhelmed with disappointment because even the little stone that my
wife wore on her finger shone more brilliantly and had a lot more life
and fire than that diamond had. Evidently he could read my mind. He
smiled and said, "Let me have it." He reached down under the counter and
took out a piece of black velvet and put the stone right in the middle.
Suddenly that diamond just leaped into life. It was brilliant and
sparkling. He explained that, when I held the diamond in my hand, because
it reflected the color of my flesh, it became very dead and dull. But,
when he put it on a black background, it reflected the light and then we
could see the diamond's beauty. Even so, when God would show forth the
perfection of His holiness, He revealed it against the black backdrop of
sin. When Jesus Christ came to save sinners, the contrast between Himself
and sinful humanity made the glory of His absolute holiness shine.
I believe that no man can ever grasp why God permitted Satan to fall. But
Scripture records the fact that the wisest, the most beautiful of God's
created beings looked away from the Creator to himself. He failed to
recognize that all he was and all he had came as a gracious bestowment
from the hand of the Creator to whom he was responsible. In turning away
from God, he turned to himself and became an essentially selfish being.
Every man born into this world from the time of Adam's sin has had a
nature just exactly like his father, the devil. That which characterizes
sinful man is selfishness, self-centeredness. Man is characterized by
pride. He lives his life in independence of God and he is only
perpetuating the nature of his father, the devil. Unless you come to
understand something of the basic selfishness, pride and independence
that characterized Satan when he left his original state, you will
neither understand yourself nor will you understand the temptations that
come day by day.
A man today may walk according to Lucifer's pattern. He may become proud
of his education, of his intellectual capacities, of his attainments and
not recognize that all that he has is a gift from God. He may become
proud of all he has in the material realm and fail to recognize that it
has come from God. He may become proud of his position in the
professional world and not recognize that it too is God's gracious gift.
When a man sees himself apart from God, then he is perpetuating the sin
of Lucifer by walking according to his own way. A man's pattern that
conforms to Lucifer may be broken - only when he receives Jesus Christ as
a personal Saviour. He then, by a new birth, receives a new nature; his
basic selfishness can give way to a concern for others. Pride that once
characterized his every thought lets the newborn child of God see himself
in relationship to God; he sees that he is nothing, that he is dependent
upon a father. May God bring you to the place that you will recognize
that you are a child of your father, the devil. You are not little
Lucifers; you are little devils. There is a vast difference. It is God's
desire to take you out of that family and bring you into His family. Will
you accept Him as your Saviour?
Pentecost, J. D. (1997). Your adversary, the Devil. Originally published:
Grand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, 1969. (11). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel.
.
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