Satan Cannot Scare You into Hell
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back. On Friday of last week in APJ 1869, I think it was, we looked at the terrible
00:00:13.140 | things that Satan can do to people and to us. We saw that Satan can bring on physical
00:00:20.480 | suffering. He's behind much sickness. We know that Satan brought a thorn of physical
00:00:27.320 | pain into Paul's life. He can even throw Christians into prison, we saw. Satan got
00:00:33.320 | Jesus arrested, beaten, and thrown on a cross. And just as he sought to destroy our Savior,
00:00:41.040 | Satan seeks to destroy our faith today. He's very powerful. But he's not all powerful.
00:00:49.080 | Where Satan acts, he only acts by permission and never with ultimate control. Nevertheless,
00:00:54.800 | he's real. He's strong. He's evil. And he's on a very long leash. And even on that long
00:01:03.040 | leash of God's providence, he does terrible damage. Those were the points from that recent
00:01:10.080 | episode, "Satan is no Joke." But there's another reality we must add into the mix, and it's
00:01:16.040 | this. There's only one finally destructive weapon in the artillery of Satan. Only one.
00:01:23.840 | One lethal weapon that he can wield over you and over me. What is it? Here's Pastor John's
00:01:31.480 | answer in a 1996 sermon.
00:01:35.480 | All the old high priests, remember what they did in the Old Testament? They had bulls and
00:01:39.240 | they had goats and they had doves and they'd go into the Holy of Holies and they'd take
00:01:43.680 | blood and spill it on the altar, cover the sins of the people for a year, perhaps on
00:01:49.920 | the Day of Atonement. And they had to do it for their own sins, too. And here comes Jesus.
00:01:57.240 | And he has in his mind, "I'm going to do a high priestly work one time and it's over.
00:02:03.320 | No more temple sacrifices when I'm done because the blood I'm taking is not the blood of a
00:02:11.800 | bull, the blood of a goat, the blood of a lamb, the blood of a dove. It's my blood.
00:02:18.000 | Infinitely valuable blood. And I'm going to pour it out one time." Or another image would
00:02:23.120 | be, "I'm going to go in there and I'm going to lie down and I'm going to die. I'm going
00:02:28.040 | to do that. I'm going to finish this whole system of sacrificial offerings once for all
00:02:33.880 | by laying down my life that I might propitiate sins."
00:02:40.080 | So the aim of his death is to make propitiation for the sins of his people, verse 17, and
00:02:46.480 | the aim of his death is to destroy or nullify the power of the devil and his power over
00:02:51.680 | death in verse 14. Christ strips the devil of his power in death by propitiating sins.
00:03:01.400 | Now we've got to deal with that word "propitiate," okay? It's okay if you don't know that. It's
00:03:05.720 | okay. It's not common parlance in American vocabulary. You won't hear it on TV, probably.
00:03:10.480 | You won't read it in the newspaper, and even Christians have pretty much dropped it. But
00:03:14.440 | let's get it, okay? Let's just get it. Stick it in so you can use it now and then with
00:03:19.920 | people you ought to use it with. To propitiate in the context of judgment and punishment
00:03:29.800 | for broken law, to propitiate is to take away the wrath and the anger of the offended party.
00:03:40.620 | To propitiate their wrath. So here's God the lawgiver in justice and holiness who has the
00:03:47.620 | expectation that people will love him, honor him, trust him, obey him, delight in him,
00:03:54.880 | and the whole world falls short of that expectation. And therefore the justice of God kicks in
00:04:01.860 | and he has a legitimate just anger against sinners. Now the solution to that is not only
00:04:10.040 | to deal with the guilt of sin, but the anger of God. We've got to get rid of his anger.
00:04:16.440 | We can't. There's not a thing in the world you can do to do that. Only one person can
00:04:22.200 | take away the anger of God. God. And since he's just, he doesn't just say, "Well, we'll
00:04:29.080 | let bygones be bygones. I'll sweep my anger under the rug and sin is okay. It's not a
00:04:32.920 | big deal. My honor is not worth dying for." Instead what he says is, "I love you so much
00:04:40.600 | and I love my honor so much that I will send my son as the high priest to absorb my anger."
00:04:50.240 | That's what happened at the cross. He put his son forward and son willingly in love
00:04:56.160 | to us and in love to his father, lays his own life down on the altar of the cross as
00:05:01.560 | a high priest and as the offering of the high priest. And God pours out on him the
00:05:07.560 | curse of law. Galatians 3.14, he became a curse for us. And in doing that, drains every
00:05:17.360 | drop of the wrath of God against his elect dry. In Jesus Christ there is therefore now
00:05:28.240 | no what? Condemnation. This is a glorious, this is what was meant back in chapter 2 verse
00:05:36.880 | 4 when it said, "Oh, don't neglect your great salvation." This is a great salvation. Now
00:05:45.720 | we're right on the brink of answering our question. We're not there yet. We haven't
00:05:48.960 | got it solved, but we've almost got it solved. The question was, how is it that the death
00:05:56.880 | of the son of God, Jesus Christ, our high priest, by propitiating sin, defeats the devil?
00:06:06.360 | How is it that the devil loses his power to destroy you through death because of that?
00:06:12.880 | There is only one lethal weapon in the artillery of Satan. If you've ever thought about this,
00:06:20.960 | listen carefully. There's only one lethal, deadly, final, destructive weapon in the artillery
00:06:28.680 | of Satan. You know what it is? Your sin. Nobody goes to hell because of being harassed by
00:06:36.000 | the devil. Nobody goes to hell because of being possessed by the devil. Nobody goes
00:06:42.080 | to hell because of being oppressed by the devil. Nobody goes to hell because of seeing
00:06:46.800 | green apparitions on their ceiling at night and hearing weird noises under the bed, which
00:06:51.040 | are real. Nobody goes to hell because of that. People go to hell for one reason, unforgiven
00:06:57.480 | sin. Period. That's all. Satan has one way to get you to hell, keep you from a savior,
00:07:05.760 | and get you to sinning. That's all. He can't scare you. I mean, let's get rid of our fear
00:07:11.440 | of this guy. He has one deadly weapon. Sure, he can rough you up. He can kill you. Revelation
00:07:19.600 | 2.10, he has thrown many of you into jail. For 10 days, you will suffer and you're going
00:07:25.000 | to die. Satan can kill you today. This text does not mean that Satan's hands are bound
00:07:30.680 | and that he can't make you sick or that he can't make you dead. It means the one who
00:07:35.680 | had the power of death to destroy you no longer has that power. Death, where is your victory?
00:07:44.680 | Oh, death, where is your sting? It's gone. Why? Because the law is satisfied and sins
00:07:56.120 | are forgiven. And all Satan can do is look you in the face and just rage at you. And
00:08:01.800 | if you're covered by the blood of Jesus, if you're clothed with the righteousness of Jesus
00:08:06.800 | Christ, you can look him right in the face and say, "Be gone, Satan." Or if he rages
00:08:13.680 | against you such as to put you in jail or to make you sick or to kill you, you can smile
00:08:18.680 | back at him and say, "I'm free from the fear of this thing."
00:08:22.680 | Powerful clip. This is from John Piper's sermon preached on June 23, 1996, titled "Jesus
00:08:27.800 | is able to help those who are tempted," a sermon on Hebrews 2, verses 14 to 18. And
00:08:34.040 | of course, that sermon is online at DesiringGod.org. And if you find a powerful sermon clip like
00:08:40.040 | this one, send it to me. Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp
00:08:44.040 | of where the clip happens in the audio, and make a note of what stands out to you. Put
00:08:47.880 | the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it right to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:08:52.840 | That's an email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:08:58.440 | Well I cast my cares on God, and those cares keep finding their way back to me. So how
00:09:05.400 | do I get rid of those cares for good? It's a great question from a college student, and
00:09:11.280 | it's up next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll rejoin in studio with Pastor John
00:09:15.240 | on Friday to talk about casting our cares on God. I'll see you then.
00:09:19.760 | [END]
00:09:21.760 | 1. What is your passion? What is your goal? What is your goal? What is your passion? What