Stay Alert By Larry Davenport

In the video portion of our class we discussed Satan’s identity and that he is not an imaginary character. He is not a creature that has been made up to scare people. Satan is real. In the remainder of this class session we are going to discuss Satan’s Goals.

GOAL 1 – DESTROY

When I was a kid, there was a comic book character named “Hot Stuff.” He looked kind of like Casper the Friendly Ghost except he was red with horns. He was a funny little character that made the devil seem less frightening. But make no mistake about it, the Devil is your enemy. He hates you and more than anything, Lucifer wants you to burn in Hell forever.

His strategy according to 1 Peter 5:8 is to prowl around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour and we will discuss that more in Goal 2. But The only way we can prevent that from happening is to become a follower of the one and only Jesus Christ by being baptized with faith in God to cut off our sins. And according to Colossians 2:11-15, that is what happens at baptism. When you are immersed in baptism, God is performing an operation on you – He is cutting your sins away – He is removing your sins.

This is accomplished because Jesus, the Lion of Judah is more powerful than Satan, the roaring lion of 1 Peter 5:8. Satan was defeated at the cross and any limited ability the devil possesses is only with the permission of God. (discuss 1 Corinthians 10:13) Satan is not happy at all that you are in this class right now because you might hear something that will save your soul. You see everyone has a relationship with Satan. He is either your friend or he is your enemy and the best relationship we can have with him is that he be our adversary. In John 10 Jesus is called the “door” or the “gate” and it is through this “door” that we are saved. In verse 10 he talks about the thief. The only purpose of this thief is to steal, kill, and destroy – this is Satan’s number 1 goal.

GOAL 2 – MAKE YOU WEAK & INEFFECTIVE

According to Galatians 3:27, once I have been baptized into Christ, I have put on Christ. How does the lion, Satan, devour a Christian? The answer won’t surprise you, and I am sure you will agree that Satan makes the Christian weak by getting us so weighed down and focused on things of this world that we become ineffective in our walk with Jesus and our influence on others.

We get caught up in school, sports, clubs, social media, hanging out with friends, social events and so much more that we are not thinking about leading our friends to Jesus but just existing. There is an old saying, “birds of a feather flock together.” But that is not all of it, the remainder of the saying is, “they all flock to the same place.” We need to do a serious inventory of our friends and be sure those in our inner circle are those that are active in helping the others get to heaven.

If your boyfriend/girlfriend will not pray with you regularly – run away because that is not the person that will help you get to heaven. And if they are not helping you get to heaven, guess where they are helping you get to?

You see, a lion seeking a meal will not jump into the herd, but will watch for a weaker member and work to separate that one before he pounces. Satan will use that same strategy with Christians and watch for and prey on the weak. Gullible and ill-prepared Christians are on his menu. So we need to pursue relationships, activities, and events that will keep us strong and not weak.