How Much Authority Does Satan Have in the World?
00:00:00.000 | Well, what legitimate authority does Satan have over this world?
00:00:08.600 | It's a very important question and it arrives today from a listener named Aaron in Texas.
00:00:14.200 | Hello Pastor John, in Matthew 4.9 and in Luke 4.6, what authority is Satan talking about?
00:00:21.480 | Is he lying that he has authority to give or does he truly have authority over the earth?
00:00:27.860 | If so, what is it and how does this relate to God's complete sovereignty over all things?
00:00:35.520 | Here's what the devil actually said to Jesus at the temptation in the wilderness that creates
00:00:41.080 | the question we were just asked.
00:00:44.000 | Matthew 4.8, "Then the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the
00:00:49.760 | kingdoms of the world and their glory.
00:00:52.800 | And he said to him, 'All these I will give to you if you fall down and worship me.'"
00:00:59.160 | And here's Luke 4.5, "The devil took him and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in
00:01:06.040 | a moment of time and said to him, 'To you I will give all this authority and their glory,
00:01:15.320 | for it has been delivered to me, and I will give it to whom I will.
00:01:23.240 | If you then will worship me, it will be yours.'"
00:01:28.120 | So my first answer is, if Jesus had worshipped Satan, of course Jesus would have abdicated
00:01:39.260 | his divine authority.
00:01:41.200 | He would have ceased to be God.
00:01:43.580 | If he were worshipping the devil, he wouldn't be God.
00:01:46.760 | The devil would be God.
00:01:48.180 | And yes, Satan would then give him the whole world and still control the world, because
00:01:52.940 | Jesus would not be God, he'd be Satan's lackey.
00:01:57.040 | All of which, of course, did not and could not happen.
00:02:00.360 | And Satan, as usual, was a fool to suggest it.
00:02:03.280 | He's an idiot.
00:02:04.440 | He's always saying stupid half-true things.
00:02:08.040 | But notice the words of Luke 4:6.
00:02:12.700 | Satan is not the ultimate authority in the world, because in Luke 4:6 he admits this,
00:02:21.240 | "I can give all this authority because it has been delivered to me."
00:02:29.760 | Ah.
00:02:30.760 | Namely, by whom?
00:02:32.480 | God.
00:02:33.660 | In his sovereignty, God considered it wise, as part of his curse on the world after the
00:02:42.140 | fall of Adam and Eve, to give Satan a huge power in this world.
00:02:51.740 | But he doesn't have ultimate power.
00:02:53.860 | We're not dualists.
00:02:54.860 | We don't think there's God and Satan duking it out for power in the universe.
00:03:01.180 | God is God, not Satan.
00:03:03.460 | Satan is not God.
00:03:05.180 | All Satan's power is by permission.
00:03:09.100 | He has no autonomy to do anything God does not permit for infinitely wise purposes.
00:03:20.520 | So we see Satan given permission to afflict Job, right?
00:03:25.560 | This is the same kind of paradigm.
00:03:27.640 | The Lord said to Satan in Job 1:12, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand, only against
00:03:37.160 | him don't stretch out your hand."
00:03:40.240 | So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
00:03:43.560 | All his acts of opposition to God, all his acts of opposition to God's people, are part
00:03:49.820 | of God's plan as he gives Satan permission to exercise tremendous power in this world.
00:03:59.160 | Nevertheless, Satan's sway in this world is terrible and vast.
00:04:06.920 | Here's what we read.
00:04:08.500 | This is 1 John 5:19, "The whole world lies in the power of the evil one."
00:04:14.640 | Or Ephesians 2, 1 and 2, "You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked,
00:04:21.340 | following the course of this world, following the"—note this phrase—"prince of the
00:04:27.280 | power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience."
00:04:35.640 | Or 2 Corinthians 4:4, "The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers."
00:04:43.240 | Or John 14:30, Jesus says in his last night, "I will no longer talk much with you, for
00:04:51.360 | the ruler of this world is coming," meaning coming against me tonight, the ruler of the
00:04:58.520 | world.
00:04:59.520 | But the note of the New Testament, the note that is struck in the New Testament is that
00:05:07.600 | in Christ's death and resurrection, the decisive blow against Satan has been struck.
00:05:17.840 | And as he comes against Jesus in his final hours, Jesus says, John 12:31, "Now is the
00:05:26.240 | judgment of this world.
00:05:28.880 | Now will the ruler of this world be cast out."
00:05:34.260 | Or Luke 22:53, he says, "The ruler of this world is judged."
00:05:40.360 | No, that was John 16:11, "The ruler of this world is judged."
00:05:46.400 | And here's Luke 22:53, Jesus says—I love this phrase, it's just so sovereign—"This
00:05:52.740 | is your hour and the power of darkness."
00:05:56.840 | You get an hour.
00:05:58.140 | You get one hour.
00:05:59.360 | I know when it starts, I know when it ends.
00:06:02.080 | That's your hour.
00:06:03.080 | It's all by sovereign permission that you can do your dastardly deed in Judas and in
00:06:10.040 | me tomorrow morning.
00:06:12.440 | The most important passage on Satan's defeat in the cross of Christ is Colossians 2, 13-15.
00:06:20.320 | Goes like this, "You who were dead," that's us, us Christians, "You who were dead in your
00:06:26.200 | trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having
00:06:33.600 | forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us
00:06:40.600 | with its legal demands."
00:06:42.400 | That's a sweet sentence.
00:06:44.440 | The entire record of your life that you regret, canceled.
00:06:49.200 | "This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."
00:06:53.000 | And here comes the decisive Satan verse.
00:06:55.440 | "He disarmed," so in dying for your sins, in nailing your record of debts to the cross,
00:07:01.560 | he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to an open shame by triumphing over
00:07:07.380 | them in him.
00:07:08.900 | So he disarmed them by nailing our record of debts to the cross.
00:07:16.320 | Because Satan's power is this, he's a great accuser.
00:07:20.000 | Nothing in his court folder, as he stands before the bar to accuse us, if he has nothing
00:07:25.720 | in his folder, what's he gonna do?
00:07:28.640 | Powerless in this courtroom, because our record of debts has been canceled.
00:07:35.060 | So his one damning weapon against God's elect is taken out of his hand, namely unforgiven
00:07:42.240 | sin.
00:07:43.240 | There is no unforgiven sin anymore.
00:07:45.720 | We're forgiven, so what's he gonna condemn?
00:07:47.840 | Nothing.
00:07:48.840 | So now, in every battle with the devil, we can have total confidence of final victory,
00:07:57.880 | which is why Romans 8, 38 says what it says, "I am sure that neither death nor life nor"—now,
00:08:06.360 | these are demonic beings—"nor angels nor rulers nor anything else nor present nor things
00:08:13.420 | to come nor powers," satanic powers, "nor height nor depth nor anything else in all
00:08:19.880 | creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."
00:08:24.800 | He has been decisively defeated.
00:08:28.200 | A friend told me once that when he was converted in college, along with several other athletes—he's
00:08:35.320 | a big hulking football player type, and he was converted by an old elderly woman, a petite
00:08:42.840 | woman—and she hosted in discipleship groups at her house these football players, you know,
00:08:48.360 | twice the size of her.
00:08:50.240 | And she insisted, as her discipleship method, that every one of them say, after their conversion,
00:08:59.360 | one hundred times a week, "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world,"
00:09:09.200 | 1 John 4:4.
00:09:10.200 | And I thought, wow, that's a wise way to start a Christian life, because that's really
00:09:16.400 | true.
00:09:17.400 | Amen, and profound.
00:09:18.400 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:19.400 | Aaron, thanks for the question.
00:09:21.600 | For everything you need to know about this podcast, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:27.400 | Well, self-love is a loud mantra in our culture.
00:09:32.600 | It echoes in our advertising, and it's on repeat in our social media feeds.
00:09:37.800 | Self-love is becoming inseparable from our cultural image in America.
00:09:43.040 | Self-love is just what we do.
00:09:45.120 | So do we need to learn to love ourselves more as Christians?
00:09:48.720 | It's an important question from a high school teen, a listener to the podcast, and it's
00:09:51.760 | on Friday.
00:09:53.960 | Next time.
00:09:54.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:55.960 | We'll see you then.
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