Robert Jeffress - Satan's Blueprint For Your Destruction
You may not recall the name Muhammad Al-Shahif, but you may remember his nickname, Baghdad Bob. Do you remember Baghdad Bob? He was the minister of information—really, the minister of disinformation—during the final days of Saddam Hussein’s rule over Iraq. He was always trying to convince people that Saddam was winning when, in fact, he was losing. On April 6th, after coalition forces had secured the airport, we changed the name from Saddam’s Airport to Baghdad International Airport. And yet this minister of disinformation claimed, «We butchered the enemy’s forces at the airport.»
The next day, as our forces marched through the streets of Baghdad and overtook one of Saddam’s palaces, Baghdad Bob said, «There is no presence of the Americans in the city of Baghdad at all. We besieged them and killed most of them.» His comical efforts to deny what was evident to everyone made him fodder for late-night TV shows. Even the president at the time would ask about Baghdad Bob. He chuckled and said, «He’s quite a guy, isn’t he?» You know, I was thinking, «Satan is a lot like Baghdad Bob. He wants to convince us that he’s winning when, in fact, he’s losing. Even though he was defeated at the cross of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago and the day of his final judgment is already on God’s calendar, Baghdad Bob—meaning Satan—wants to convince us that he is in control of us and our destiny. The result is that if Satan cannot rob us of our eternal life in the next life, he’ll rob us of the privileges of being a Christian in this life. That’s his goal: to deceive people to keep them from becoming Christians, or to deceive Christians into forfeiting the benefits of being a Christian.
Now, let’s stop talking about them and others and discuss you and me for a moment. Do you realize you have an adversary, the devil, who is intent on destroying you? Do you realize you have an enemy who is determined to deceive you about his power—or lack thereof—to deprive you of your privileges as a child of God, destroy your effectiveness as a witness for God, and deny you the rewards that God wants to grant you in heaven? In addition to these devious objectives, Satan has a strategy to accomplish them. He has a plan, a scheme for the destruction of everything that is important to you.
In Ephesians 6:11, the Apostle Paul said, „Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the schemes of the devil.“ The word „scheme“ in Greek is methodia, meaning the method, the blueprint for your destruction. This word originally referred to an animal that stalked its prey. The predator wouldn’t use the same tactic on every prey; different prey demanded different tactics. But Satan has a tactic, a methodia, a scheme for your destruction, and this scheme is usually a threefold plan that we will expose this morning. We will discuss Satan’s blueprint for your destruction.
First of all, his strategy is to discourage you from worshiping God. If you’re a Christian this morning, Satan wants to discourage you from worshiping God. We mentioned this several weeks ago, but whether you realize it or not, you are part of an unfolding drama that the entire universe is watching right now. Planet Earth is the stage for that drama. Who is the audience for that drama? This kind of blows your mind when you think about it, but the Bible says, first of all, there are angels in heaven who are watching what is happening on Earth. It’s not only angels in heaven, but the residents of Earth are in the audience.
And if that’s not enough, there’s another audience beneath the Earth—in hell—those who have died, who are non-Christians, watching what is happening here, along with a group of demons that we will discuss in the weeks ahead, who have already been chained in hell. They’re all watching this play that is unfolding on the stage of Planet Earth. You and I are the actors in that play. It is a play that will answer questions about God. Is God just? Was He just in casting Lucifer out of heaven and sentencing those angels to become demons? Is God the better master, or is Satan? Is God justified in condemning those who reject His gift of salvation to an eternal destiny in hell? All of these questions will be answered in this unfolding drama.
Satan is also aware of this vast unseen audience, and he is desperate to redeem his reputation after being cast out of heaven. If he can’t possess the souls of God’s redeemed, what he wants to do in this drama is turn the redeemed against their Creator and actually use them to destroy the kingdom of God. How does Satan accomplish that purpose? How does he transform God’s servants into God’s enemies who are working against Him? Strategy number one in your life is to discourage you from worshiping God so that you turn your back on God. I remember reading a story once—it’s obviously fictional—but it is about the day Satan decided to go out of business. He decided he was losing, so he would go out of business and wanted to sell his tools, which he had no use for any longer.
So at the midnight sale, he had all of his tools displayed on card tables—his favorite tools: greed, envy, malice, lust—each with a price tag. But there was one tool that was larger than all the others, on a separate table, and it was the highest-priced tool of the group. A potential customer asked, „Satan, why is that tool by itself? Why is it larger, and why does it cost much more than any other?“ Satan smiled and said, „Oh, that’s my favorite tool, discouragement. With it, I can get into a person’s consciousness. Once I have wedged my way into that consciousness, all my other tools are free to do their work.“ Never forget, Satan is doing everything he can to discourage you. That’s what he tried against God’s servant, Job.
If you have your Bibles, turn to Job chapter 1 for a moment. Discouragement was Satan’s primary strategy against Job. We find this in the opening verse that describes Job. Job 1:1 states, „There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job. That man was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil.“ But then we see the drama behind the scenes on Earth. It was taking place in heaven. Satan approached the Lord, and the Lord said to Satan, „Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.“ In effect, God was saying to Satan, „Satan, not everybody made your choice to rebel against me. Not everyone chose to follow you like that group of angels did. I still have creatures who worship me.“
Satan replied, in effect, „Well, God, of course, Job worships you. Look at all the good things you’ve done for him! He would be a fool not to worship you. But if you take away those blessings, I guarantee you he will turn away from you and turn toward me.“ Look at verse 12. Then the Lord said to Satan, „Behold, all that he has is in your power. Only do not put forth your hand on him.“ So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord. The rest of chapters 1 and 2 record Satan’s relentless assault on Job’s life. Notice what Satan was able to do. First, he was able to take away all of Job’s possessions, burn them up, and destroy his source of livelihood. Then he sent a violent windstorm that, in a freak accident, caused all ten of Job’s children to be killed. If that were not enough, he destroyed Job’s health—all of this in a very short period of time.
By the way, have you noticed that discouragements and trials don’t come one at a time in your life? It would be so much easier if they did. One would come, you deal with it, and then the next would come. But it doesn’t work that way. They ambush you; they come in a very short period of time. Job lost a lot in a short amount of time. One day he was sitting on the ash heap of his incinerated possessions, his dead children, and his broken health. His wife came to him and said in Job 2:9, „Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.“
She was just Satan’s mouthpiece. The goal was to get Job to curse God, to turn his back on God, and die. Satan employs the same strategy today. I don’t understand it, but it’s evident, and the scripture confirms it, that God has given Satan limited power over this world. In fact, the Bible calls Satan the god of this age, the prince of the power of the air. He has certain power to bring hardship into your life and mine, whether through natural disasters, medical illnesses, financial setbacks, or broken relationships. All of those things are at Satan’s disposal. But take courage! Satan, although his power is considerable, is not unlimited. God said to Satan, „You can do anything you want to him except you can’t take his life.“ It’s the same way with Satan. Martin Luther, the reformer, said, „The devil is still God’s devil.“ Somebody described it this way: „Satan is like a junkyard dog on a very long chain. Although his power to destroy is considerable, it’s also limited.“
Well, why would God even give Satan limited permission to go against Job? Doesn’t that leave open the possibility that Job would turn against God? God understood—and even Satan understood—an important principle: untested faith is really no faith at all. For Job’s faith to be genuine, it had to go through the crucible of testing. So does your faith and my faith. Remember when Satan unloaded on Job and did everything he could? In Job 13:15, Job cried out, „Though God slay me, I will still trust in him.“ Job passed his test with flying colors, and now he has moved off the stage, and you and I are on the stage.
Satan does the same thing to us. He is assaulting us with everything he can possibly dream up, and his goal is to discourage us from worshiping God. As I watched the heartbreaking scenes on television over the last 48 hours—the stories of children who perished in the central Texas flood, parents heartbroken over the loss of their children and grandchildren—I thought of the late Joe Bailey. Joe Bailey was one of the organizers of the Christian Medical Society. He was a gifted author, and he and his wife suffered the loss of three children. One of them, four years old, died a very painful death from leukemia. People asked Joe Bailey how he could keep trusting in God after going through such a thing. I remember listening to a cassette tape in which he shared his testimony. He said this: „When we can’t reconcile our loss with our faith in God, we have two choices: either give up our faith in God or keep trusting in God even when we can’t see His plan. Faith means something when exercised in darkness.“ That was Job. He trusted God even when he couldn’t see the ultimate outcome of his obedience.
Satan’s number one strategy is to discourage you from worshiping God. His second strategy is to distract you from serving God. If Satan can’t get you to outright reject God, if he can’t get you to disobey God, his best next choice is to get you to ignore God, to distract yourself from God so that you don’t serve Him. How does he distract us? It’s through what a previous generation called worldliness. Have you heard that term before—worldliness? Now, worldliness doesn’t mean overt sin. It doesn’t mean getting drunk or having immoral relationships. Worldliness means becoming focused on the delights and details of everyday living. That’s what worldliness means: being focused on this world and this world alone. Being focused on the delights, the pleasures, as well as the details of everyday life.
Let me be specific about what it means. It means choosing to watch another episode of your favorite sitcom at night instead of reading your Bible. It means allowing the ups and downs of the stock market to influence your emotional well-being. Worldliness means permitting your concerns about your child’s social standing at school to consume your thoughts on Sunday mornings when you’re trying to worship God. It means being so consumed with your job that you have no time or energy left for ministry and serving God. Jesus talked about worldliness in Luke 8. It’s the famous parable about the sower and the seed.
Remember, Jesus was trying to answer the question, „Why doesn’t everyone respond the same way to the word of God? Why do people respond differently to the word of God?“ His answer was to consider a sower of seed. In Jesus' day, if you wanted to plant seed, you didn’t pay for a machine. You did it by hand. You’d walk out into the fields, grab a handful of seed from your pouch, and throw it out. It would land on different kinds of soil. Some of the seed would land on hard soil—this was the soil by the footpath that was tight and packed from foot traffic. When seed landed there, it never penetrated the soil; it just lay there, and the birds would come and pick it up. It would never grow a plant. Jesus said this is like someone who hears the word of God so often that their heart becomes hardened, and they cannot receive it—the hard soil.
Other seed fell on shallow soil. This soil looks good and soft, but underneath is a thin bed of limestone. When the seed penetrates the topsoil, it begins to grow roots, but those roots stop because of the limestone. Without a proper root system, when the hot Middle Eastern sun beats down on that plant, it dries up because it lacks moisture. This is like Christians who hear the word of God, decide to act on it, but never develop a spiritual feeding program to give them the nutrients and moisture they need; they wither away when the trials of life hit them.
Then there was the third kind of soil Jesus spoke about—weed-infested soil. This is seed that falls on soft, deep soil, allowing it to develop a root system. But underneath that soil is also a network of weeds that have been there for a long time. Once that plant begins to grow, those weeds strangle its life by choking the roots. This is akin to people who hear the word of God, receive the word of God, but allow weeds—so to speak—to strangle their spiritual life. Jesus names those weeds. Look at verse 14 of Luke 8: „The seed which fell among the thorns—these are the ones who have heard; as they go on their way, they are choked with worries, the riches, and the pleasures of this life, and they end up bringing no fruit to maturity.“
Let’s examine those weeds for just a moment. First, the weed that can distract you and strangle your spiritual life is worry. What is worry? Somebody has defined worry as a thin stream of fear trickling through our minds that, if left unchecked, will cut a deep ravine into which all other emotions and thoughts drain. Let me illustrate that. Have you ever been having a productive day at work, enjoying a wonderful time with your family on the weekend, or experiencing a great worship service at church when suddenly, out of nowhere, an alien thought enters your mind—a fear? What if I lose my job? What if my spouse leaves me? What if my children or grandchildren turn away from God? What if I develop an incurable disease?
The more you try to dismiss that thought, the less you are able to. It captures your thoughts and emotions. Where does that alien thought come from? Well, one place it doesn’t come from is God. Second Timothy 1:7 says, „God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind.“ If it doesn’t come from God, where does it come from? Here’s a clue: have you ever noticed that most of the things we worry about never happen? We often find ourselves obsessing over things that never come true. Years ago, I read a study by Dr. Walter Kaert, who claimed 92% of the things we worry about never come to pass. Why is that? Because most of those worries originate from Satan. Jesus described him in John 8:44 as a liar and the father of lies. Satan wants to motivate you to worry and therefore strangle your spiritual life. So, the first distraction is worry.
The second distraction is riches. In Luke 8:14, Jesus said, „The riches of this world can strangle and distract you from your spiritual service.“ Now, I can read your minds because I can see your expressions from up here. Some of you are thinking, „Well, preacher, that doesn’t describe me. I’m not rich. I don’t have a six-figure income or a seven-figure net worth.“ First of all, you may be richer than you think. If you have a roof over your head tonight, a place to sleep, a few changes of clothes, and a reliable source for your next meal, you are richer than about 95% of the world. You are wealthy; you just may not know it yet.
Even if you don’t accept the notion that you are wealthy, did you know that people can become as fixated on money when they don’t have it as when they do? It’s not only the rich who focus on money; the poor do so as well. In fact, people without money may be even more prone to worship it than those who have it. Where do I get that in the Bible? Consider Matthew 6:24. Jesus made this statement in the Sermon on the Mount: „You cannot serve God and wealth.“ You cannot serve God and money.
In the next verse, Matthew 6:25, He says, „For this reason, I say to you, do not be anxious about your life, as to what you will eat or drink, nor for your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?“ Jesus recognized that it can be people without money who worry the most about money. Not much has changed in 2,000 years. Today, people obsess over the fear of not having money. The investment industry spends millions of dollars every year trying to convince us to invest millions by age 65, claiming that if we don’t have a pile of money by then, we will be eating oatmeal for the rest of our lives! The insurance industry preys on people, saying, „You need to buy these expensive nursing home policies; otherwise, you’ll be out on the street in old age.“
Now, please don’t send me any emails! I understand you need to plan for the future. Proverbs 6 advises you to be prudent in how you handle your finances, but you should not obsess about them. Over a hundred years ago, French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States and recorded his observations about our country. Some were positive, but he noted that he knew of no other country where the love of money had such a grip on people’s hearts as in the United States. The Bible says that a preoccupation with finances is a spiritual enemy number one in our relationship with God. Remember 1 Timothy 6:10: „For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.“
What distractions does Satan use to deter us from serving God? We talked about worries, and we talked about riches. Thirdly, we mention pleasures. Jesus cautioned, „Watch out for the pleasures of this life.“ Now, He was not condemning any enjoyment of life whatsoever; in fact, when kept in balance, pleasure can draw you toward God. It can make you a worshiper of God if you experience pleasure in the right way. Satan is very aware of that, so he tries to push us into one of two extremes regarding pleasure. One extreme he promotes is abstaining from any pleasure at all.
Some people try to be more spiritual than God wants them to be; they think, „If I’m going to be a godly person, I must quit all pleasure.“ For them, reading a book just for fun—without any spiritual value—or watching a movie or television program, is a sin. Eating certain food that isn’t on their diet is considered a sin, as is going to a mall and buying a shirt or dress simply because they want to. All of that is wrong. In order to enhance their relationship with God, they impose a strict self-discipline program that refrains from any pleasure whatsoever. Did you know that when you embrace that philosophy, you are playing into Satan’s hands? You are doing precisely what he wants.
C.S. Lewis exposes the danger of this approach in his book „The Screwtape Letters.“ Have you ever read it? It’s a fictional series of letters supposedly written from a senior demon named Screwtape to his novice nephew demon, Wormwood, showing him how to effectively carry out Satan’s plans. He addresses the subject of pleasure and says to his novice nephew, „Never forget that when we’re dealing with pleasure in its healthy, normal, and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the enemy’s ground"—referring to God. «I know we have won many souls through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures. All our research so far has not enabled us to produce even one. All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures that our enemy has prepared and use them in ways and degrees that He has forbidden.»
Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 2:24–25 tell us that pleasure is good. In fact, Solomon said, «There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. Also, I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat, and who can find enjoyment without God?» If Satan can’t convince us to abstain from pleasure, he makes us go to the other extreme and become excessively obsessed with it. The Apostle Paul warned about this in 2 Timothy 3:2–4 when he described unbelievers as «lovers of self and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.»
Today, you can see this in our culture; people are gravitating to that opposite extreme of worshiping pleasure. Did you know Americans spend over $700 billion a year on pleasures, vacations, out-of-town trips, and endless sports activities that keep many of us in perpetual motion? All this activity leaves us with no time to worship or serve God! Even if we’re not wasting all our free time and extra money on recreational pursuits, we work tirelessly to save enough money for a retirement age defined by doing absolutely nothing of value. The only worry we have is what to do to entertain ourselves each day! That is not God’s plan for any of us.
You may retire from the job you have now, but God never intended for you to be unproductive or do nothing. Because of this inordinate desire for time spent in inactivity, people believe they have to save an unrealistic amount of money to enjoy themselves. What I’m saying to you is this, ladies and gentlemen: whether you accept it or not, Satan has a strategy, a method to destroy everything important in your life. Which one of these strategies is he using right now in your life? Is he trying to discourage you from worshiping God by allowing trials and tests to enter your life? Is he attempting to distract you from serving God by encouraging you to focus on worries, money, and pleasures?
Remember, I said Satan has a three-pronged strategy: discouragement, distraction, and the third strategy, which we’ll look at next time, is his attempt to deceive you into disobeying God. I hope you’ll be here next time as we continue to discuss Satan’s blueprint for your destruction. Let’s bow together in a word of prayer. I’m asking no one to leave or move for any reason. This is an important time in our service—our invitation time. If you’re not a Christian, one thing Satan is trying to do right now is to blind you to the gospel and your need for Jesus Christ as your Savior. But if you’ve come to that point in your life where you realize you need God, understand that Jesus came to die for you; you didn’t arrive at that truth by yourself. God brought you to it. Today, if you would like to receive the greatest gift of all—the gift of forgiveness—I encourage you to pray this prayer in your heart as I pray it aloud, knowing that God is listening to you. Would you pray with me?
Dear God, thank you for loving me. I know I have failed you in so many ways, and I’m truly sorry for the sins in my life. But I believe what I’ve heard today—that you love me so much you sent Jesus to die for me. Right now, I’m trusting in what Jesus did for me—not in my good works, but in what Jesus did for me to save me from my sins. Thank you for forgiving me, and help me to live the rest of my life for you. In Jesus' name, amen.