Advent Logos

I realized something profound about the devil the other day and I feel the need to share it with everyone.

While the book of Ezekiel hits to us that the Devils first job may have been something of a musician or worship leader, he certainly changed career paths after the fall. Instead of protecting the holiness of God, his new mission was to be above God. How do you rise above something greater than you? Simple: Challenge the perception. Does a more powerful tool to belittle and denigrate someone exist than mockery?

Everything the devil does is out of mockery for God and all of His creations. That is the foundation of what I want to reveal here today. Satan has to make fools out of all of us in order to undercut God. After all, he isn’t the one committing the sin, he just deals in temptations and the blindingly obvious.

The Devil became a trickster, performer, and comedian.

Those of us that enjoy humor know that the best jokes contain an element of truth. The element of truth is what makes a joke brutal yet so true. Without truth, jokes become un-relatable. It’s the truth within the human connection that delivers the punchline.

The Devils punchline is that we CHOOSE sin. He sits back and laughs as we willingly make choices against God. That’s all sin really is. Satan is a dealer of choices. By choosing sin we are rejecting God and his logos.

On the surface it’s really that simple, but it goes deeper than that. It’s not about the sin. It never was. That is where most churches stop. While God instructs us not to sin, he is not doing so to confine our lives to a rule book. It took me many years to learn this. I sometimes saw the commandments as an inconvenience meant to guilt me out of doing all the things I wanted to do in my youth.

Then, with maturity, I realized that the rules aren’t in place just to keep our souls out of hell. The rules are in place to prevent us from relinquishing our authority.

Gods commandments become so much more clear once seen from this perspective. Thou shall not lie becomes thou shall not lie because you relinquish your authority to be trusted. Thou shall put no other gods before me becomes you relinquish your authority to the thing you worship and you are no longer under my (Gods) providence. And so on.

What God has been warning us about all along is not the rules. What he has been warning us about is how much authority we give to the devil.

Think about it. What does the devil do with that authority? He tells you you’re just a sinner. You’ll never be worthy of God. You’re not even really saved. You’re not really forgiven because you’ve done so many bad things. You’ll never measure up. You seriously think you can talk about that subject after all those things you’ve done? Hypocrite! You’ve missed your calling! You’re worthless! Just give up! You’ve already lost!

We have all heard that voice inside our heads mocking us. Notice that the devil uses the authority that your sin relinquished against you. To use a metaphor, sin is to lay the blade that cuts your own throat at the devils feet.

The good news is that Jesus came back to forge a new covenant. Jesus died to forgive all of your sins. He didn’t die so you wouldn’t feel any guilt about the things you have done. He died to restore your authority over the devil!

With restored authority we are given the right to make use of Gods power to enforce spiritual law. Spiritual law is literally Gods word aka the Bible. Ephesians 6:17 says that the word of God is the Sword of the spirit. It is the one and only weapon we are given against the enemy. Therefore, the only way we can have authority over the devil is to be forgiven of our sins and have our authority restored through Jesus. Our greatest weapon against evil is authority!

We are the punchline. But through Christ, and only through Christ, our authority is reborn. Pick up the blade that is no longer forfeit and wield it.

No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment, You shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And their righteousness is from Me, Says the Lord. – Isaiah 54:17

As always, I hope you had some revelation through this message. If you enjoyed this read, please subscribe through email to be the first to know about my most current posts! Support what you love!

God Bless

AL