Congratulations to my nephew and his wife who were blessed with a boy they named Timothy Robert last night. It's great to hear that everyone is doing well after the childbirth.
I wanted to post this morning on the topic of the sovereignty of God. The Bible makes clear that God is Creator of everything in heaven and on Earth (Genesis 1). Here are but four of the dozens of verses proclaiming that God is Sovereign (Rules with supreme authority having controlling power over all that takes place in heaven and on Earth): Dan. 4:25, :35; Romans 9:15-23; 1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 4:11.
So if there is anyone who could have authority other than God, it would be Satan. Satan is called the god of this world - 2 Cor. 4:4, John 14:30. He is also called the adversary (Job 1:6-7, 1 Pet. 5:8). And so, the initial question I ask is this: is Satan the adversary of God, or as is more likely, the adversary of humans?
And so, to answer my initial question, Satan is the adversary of mankind and not the adversary of God. This is made clear in other verses describing Satan and his activity:
He seeks to cause evil John 13:2,27, 1 Tim. 4:1
He seeks to secure or trick people to worship him; Luke 4:6-8, 2 Thess. 2:3-4
He seeks to make men renounce God Job 2:4-5
He seeks to undo God's work in people's lives Mark 4:15, Matt. 13:19,38, Luke 8:12-13
He seeks to steal, kill and destroy John 10:10
He attacks through thoughts 1 Chron. 21:1, Matt. 13:37-39, Acts 5:3, 2 Cor. 10:5
The people of the world are his children Acts 13:10, 1 John 3:10
They do his will John 8:44, 2 Cor. 12:7
He causes distress and trouble 1 Sam. 16:14
He makes evil attractive Gen. 3:6
He tempts thru lack of self control in sex 1 Cor. 7:5
And so, from these Bible verses, I have shown that Satan is an adversary of all people, believers and unbelievers alike. I make this my first step in showing that God is Sovereign over the universe. If there is interest, I will show and deal with at least three sets of verses where Satan attacks the work of God more directly. But I will still try to make the point that despite these verses God is Sovereign despite the activity of Satan in the world. For God's glory, /s/Tom
2 comments:
Hello Tom,
I see a couple flaws with your initial reasoning here... Perhaps these will be explained in a forthcoming post?
First of all, none of the verses you quoted do anything to alleviate Satan as God's adversary. In fact, the verses you note do not really establish Satan as man's enemy either. Hitler was guilty of everything the verses claim for Satan TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE, and yet he was not an enemy OF the German people. He was just really, really, evil. The same can be said for Satan and the people of the Earth: Satan wants to RULE us, and is willing to use every evil to do so, but the one he actually contending with for every soul out there is no less than God himself. To say that Satan is not God's enemy, and/or vice versa, is an interesting semantical exercise, but not to my mind accurate.
By making Satan and his relationship with humanity the center of your unfolding arguement also raises the disturbing possibility that you are heading straight into a False Dichotomy where you will wind up asking us to choose ONLY between God and Satan as Sovereign, because that would clearly be a logical Fallacy... i look forward to the rest of this, just to see where it goes...
:-)
~E~
Thank you, Ed for your thoughts on this. I'm not sure that I agree with you that Satan wants to rule people. He wants to be worshipped (see the Temptation of Jesus (Matthew 4)). But I think that Satan's evil nature just wants to wreak havoc on people. Here is a couple of examples:
Luke 13:16 - a woman was disabled by Satan, which caused her to be bent over for 18 years. Jesus healed her on the Sabbath which caused a great deal of anger in the Pharisees, in their understanding of His violating a 10 Commandment.
John 10:10 - Satan is described as wanting to "steal, kill and destroy" the lives of people. This doesn't sound like someone who is seeking to rule over people, but just trying to cause mayhem.
Do you agree?
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