Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Library of Sermons # 9
Library of Sermons
1. Armageddon
2. Can a Saved Man Choose to Be Lost?
3. Does God’s Grace Blot Out the Law?
4. Hidden Eyes and Closed Ears
5. How Evolution Flunked the Science Test
6. Is It Easier to Be Saved or to Be Lost?
7. Man’s Flicker or God’s Flame
8. Satan in Chains
9. Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits
10. Spirits From Other Worlds
11. Thieves in the Church
Copyright © 2006 by
12. Why God Said Remember
Lu Ann Crews 13. Why the Old Covenant Failed
14. The High Cost of the Cross
15. Hell-Fire
All rights reserved.
16. Is It Possible to Live Without Sinning?
Printed in the USA. 17. Blood Behind the Veil
18. Spirits of the Dead
19. The Brook Dried Up
Published by:
20. Death in the Kitchen
Amazing Facts, Inc. 21. The Search for the True Church
P.O. Box 1058 22. Is It a Sin to Be Tempted?
23. Is Sunday Really Sacred?
Roseville, CA 95678-8058
24. Heaven ... Is It for Real?
800-538-7275 25. Rendezvous in Space
26. Christ’s Human Nature
Layout by Greg Solie - Altamont Graphics 27. Point of No Return
Cover design by Haley Trimmer 28. The Rich Man and Lazarus
T wo Strategies of Satan
How does Satan orchestrate his pro-
gram to make even the most religious people
Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits 11
sin? Before we look at his two most effective
strategies, we need to understand that we are
dealing with the greatest counterfeiter who
ever lived. As the archdeceiver he often em-
ploys a mixture of good and evil to accom-
plish his ends. He doesn’t even mind utiliz-
ing the Scriptures if it can serve to achieve
an ultimate end.
Satan did not write the Bible, but he was
looking over the shoulders of the men who
did, memorizing every bit of it. And he has
often quoted texts, as he did to Jesus in the
wilderness of temptation. In that instance
he actually quoted the Psalmist correctly
that angels would protect from even dash-
ing a foot against a stone. But take note that
he misapplied the text by urging Jesus to
presumptuously leap from the pinnacle and
trust the angels to save Him.
This clever ploy of distorting Scripture
forms the basis of the two special tricks
which Satan uses to make Christians disobey
God’s law. The first argument goes like this:
Since the Bible says “Blessed are they that
do his commandments, that they may have
right to the tree of life,” the most important
12 Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits
thing in order to be saved is to obey the law
(Revelation 22:14). If we can just do that
well enough, in every detail, we will qualify
for eternal life.
Does that sound familiar? And is there
some truth in such an argument? Indeed,
it is very important to obey the command-
ments. But is there also a strong element of
error woven through that belief? The fact
is that no one can make themselves good
enough to deserve salvation. Such a doc-
trine is rank legalism, the very antithesis of
God’s way of being saved. It is the founda-
tion of every non-Christian religion and has
deceived millions of professed followers of
Christ into a fatal delusion.
But you may ask how such a doctrine
could lead to more breaking of God’s law.
Wouldn’t it actually motivate more people to
carefully keep the commandments in order
to be saved? In this case the answer is no.
You see, Satan knows very well that things
have changed since the Garden of Eden.
It was a thousand times easier for Adam
to obey than it is for us. He had a pure, un-
fallen nature that had no inclination toward
Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits 13
sin, and all of his temptations originated
outside of himself. With our inherited fallen
nature our greatest temptations spring from
within. But Satan has convinced millions
that they can avoid sin, just like Adam and
Eve, by trying harder to obey God. So they
manfully struggle to exercise more control
over their sinful tendencies and fail in their
fleshly efforts. Finally, they decide that it is
impossible to get the victory over sin and
that God will not require something that
can’t be done. The result is more and more
breaking of God’s law.
Consider this thought for a moment:
Suppose you could keep every one of God’s
commandments from this moment right on
through the remainder of your life. In other
words, you would not make a single mistake
or commit another sin for the rest of your
life. Would that save you? Of course not, be-
cause you have already committed sins be-
fore starting this future program of perfect
obedience. Therefore, you have come under
the death sentence by those past transgres-
sions. No amount of good behavior can
change the record of your past misconduct.
14 Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits
The truth is that only one man ever came
into this world and lived an absolutely perfect
life without committing a single sin. Jesus
had an impeccable record of right-doing.
Our record is blotted and blurred by re-
peated failures to measure up to God’s stan-
dard of total obedience. Not one of us can
stand before God on the basis of our past
record. We know God will accept nothing
but a perfect righteousness, or right-doing,
and none of us has such a record. Unless we
can somehow get the credit for that holy, un-
blemished life of Jesus and have it actually
imputed to our account, there is not the least
possibility for us to be saved. How thankful
we ought to be that such an arrangement
has been made available through the grace
of our Lord Jesus.
One of the most amazing texts in the
Bible is found in Romans 5:10, “For if, when
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
by the death of his Son ...” Let’s pause and
examine that first half of the verse, because
it contains the most crucial message in all
the Bible. It tells us that we became enemies
of God when we sinned. A reconciliation
Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits 15
was required if we were to have any hope.
In order to remove the sin that separated us
from God, an at-one-ment, or atonement,
needed to be accomplished. Our text says
that only the death of Jesus could effect such
a reconciliation.
How did the cross remove the enmity
and restore the relationship of God and
man? What did Jesus carry to that cross?
Upon His own body He assumed vicariously
the guilt of every descendant of Adam and
Eve. In fact, Jesus offered to make an ex-
change with each one of us. He would take
our condemnation and death sentence, bear
it to the cross, and exhaust the penalty of sin
against us. At the same time that He bears
our punishment, He covers over the ugly re-
cord of our past transgressions. In fact, He
accomplished this by imputing credit to us
for living His own perfect life of obedience.
So what do we yield up, and what do we re-
ceive from Him? We give up our death in
exchange for His life; and as a result, God
treats us as if we have never sinned, and He
treats Jesus on the cross as though He were
guilty of all our sins.
16 Satan’s Confusing Counterfeits
Now look at the rest of Romans 5:10.
After describing the reconciliation effected
by the death of Jesus, Paul continues, “much
more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by
his life.” Please notice that we need both the
life and the death of Jesus to achieve full sal-
vation. Past sins are covered by the imputed
benefits of His atoning death, and future
victories are assured by the imparted ben-
efits of His sinless life in the flesh.
We cannot change or improve the ac-
tions that have already been recorded against
us. They can only be canceled by claiming to
our account the credited record of His per-
fect obedience. Any of our future actions
can be changed by accepting the imparta-
tion of His victorious experience as He lived
it in our own fallen nature. And that brings
us to the second strategy that Satan uses in
making people sin.