How to Defeat the Devil

Take your Bibles with me and turn to Mark 1:12.

How you start a story is very important. When I write my sermons, I almost alway spend a lot of time thinking about my introduction. If my introduction is boring, you probably won’t get much from the rest of the sermon. If I can get your attention with the introduction, there is at least some chance I can keep it until the end. So I usually start my sermons with a story, some surprising fact, or by talking about something you might find interesting, and then tie it into the text.

But introductions in stories aren’t like introductions in sermons. They are important for another reason. They have the hard job of helping you get to know the main character of the story. If you think the main character in a novel is boring after you’ve finished the first chapter, then you probably aren’t going to finish the novel.

Four people wrote the story of Jesus’ ministry, and three of them (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) started it the same way. They started it with Jesus getting baptized in the wilderness by John the Baptist, and then it goes right into Him fasting alone in the wilderness for 40 days before being tempted by Satan.

So obviously, this is important. If it’s such an important part of the story that it’s the first thing three out of the four writers tell us, then we need to pay special attention to what it says.

In our text this morning, the book of Mark tells us this story very, very quickly in just two verses. Look at Mark 1:12-13:

”And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.”

See that word “immediately” there. You are going to see that word a lot in the book of Mark. Remember: It’s a book of action, and here is the action that Jesus did first. Before He healed anyone and before He preached a single word, He went alone into the wilderness to fast and pray.

Now, we are going to look at this story in Matthew and in Luke before we are done, but I want to go ahead and tell you what we are going to learn from this story. It’s important.

• We are going to learn how Jesus lived and what His operating principle was.
• We are going to learn why Jesus had to go through a trial and temptation, and
• We are going to learn how Jesus defeated Satan.

And here is the good news: Jesus is our Great Example. Jesus is the one we are supposed to emulate. He is our pattern, so...

• I’m not just going to teach you how Jesus lived; I’m going to teach you how you can live like Jesus.
• I’m not just going to teach you why Jesus had trials and temptations; I’m going to teach you how you should think about your trials and temptations.
• I’m not just going to teach you how Jesus defeated Satan; I’m going to teach you how you can win spiritual victories too.

Let’s pray and we’ll jump right in.

The first thing we can learn from this story of Jesus is...

I. How to live like Jesus lived.

Look at our text again. It says, ”And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness.”

Now, obviously, that doesn’t mean that Jesus got baptized, came out of the water, looked up and saw the Spirit driving an old Caddy, saying, “Hey Jesus, get in,” and then the Spirit drove the old Caddy to somewhere else in the wilderness and said, “Okay, get out now.”

No. “Driveth him into the wilderness” means that the Spirit led or pushed Jesus into the wilderness.

The story in Matthew says, ”Then was Jesus led by the spirit into the wilderness,” (Matthew 4:1) and the story in Luke says, ”And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.”

This is an important detail. Jesus didn’t just wake up one day and decide he wanted to go fast in the wilderness for forty days. He was directed to do that by the Holy Spirit.

This is the first lesson for us from this important story: If we are going to be like Jesus, then we have to be directed by the Holy Spirit. We have to let the Holy Spirit lead our life.

This is actually very clear in the rest of the Bible. Romans 8:14 says:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

Galatians 5:16 says:

”Walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.”

Ephesians 5:18 says:

”And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;”

I think all of these are referring to the same thing. They are referring to letting the Holy Spirit direct your life.

If you are a believer this morning, you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, and He wants to give you directions. He wants to lead you. He’ll speak to you if you’ll listen.

And the key to living like Jesus lived is to listen to same Holy Spirit that directed Jesus.

Do you remember that fad in the ‘90s where people would wear the WWJD bracelets? What would Jesus do? That’s a great question to think about, and the answer is actually really simple: Jesus would walk in the Spirit. If you are a Christian, then the same Holy Spirit that directed Jesus lives in you and gives you instructions. You need to listen to Him and let Him direct you.

Sometimes He leads you through impulses likeHe led Jesus here into the wilderness. Sometimes the Holy Spirit says clearly, “I want you to do this,” or, “This opportunity is something I’ve ordained for you,” or, “You need to walk across the room and apologize to that person.” I don’t want to minimize that.

But most of the time the Holy Spirit speaks through the scriptures. Remember: The Holy Spirit wrote the scriptures, and when we hide the scriptures in our heart and fill our mind with the scriptures, the Holy Spirit uses that to direct our life and to help us.

So how do we walk like Jesus walked? We walk in the Spirit. We see that right from the beginning in the introduction of His ministry.

The second thing this story teaches us is just as important...

II. How to think about trials and temptations.

Our text says that Jesus was led into the wilderness for 40 days by the Holy Spirit, and that He was tempted there by Satan.

Matthew and Luke add the detail that He was fasting. He didn’t eat at all for forty days.

My daughter Audrey thinks that if she has to fast for forty minutes, it’s trials and temptations. Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit to go without food for forty days. Remember Jesus was 100% God, but He was also 100% man. He had a human body just like you and I do, and I don’t think it was any easier for Jesus than it would be for us. This was an extreme trial. This had to be really, really hard.

Do you know that sometimes God leads you into hardships? There are preachers on TV that will tell you if you are right with God, then you will be healthy, there will be money in the bank, and everything will be hunky-dory. They are charlatans. They are liars. That’s not what the Bible teaches us at all.

The Bible teaches us that God ordains trials and hardships, and that those hardships build up our endurance and test our faith. Your faith is like a muscle. The only way that it gets any stronger is if it gets stressed and pushed. We’ve actually been talking about this in James on Sunday nights. You can go to our website and watch those sermons, and they’ll help you.

Why does God lead us into trials? For three reasons:

• Sometimes trials are to reprove us.

  Sometimes God puts us in the fire to burn some of the junk out of our lives. Just like a silversmith would melt down silver to take the dross out, sometimes God heats it up in our lives so we can come forth as gold.

• Sometimes trials are to improve us.

  Sometimes God uses the trials to build our spiritual faith muscles, and He stresses us to make us stronger and more complete Christians.

• Sometimes trials are to approve us.

  Sometimes trials are like a test to show where we stand. Remember Job’s trial? It was a test. God allowed it in part because He knew Job would pass the test.

So God allows trials to reprove, improve, and approve us. But what about Jesus? Jesus didn’t need to be reproved. He was sinless. He didn’t need to be improved. He was God. He didn’t need to be approved. God had just audibly said, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

So why would Jesus have to go through trials? I think Jesus went through trials for two reasons:

First, Jesus went through trials so we could know that He knows what trials and temptations are like.

Hebrews 4:15 says this about Jesus:

”For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as [we are, yet] without sin.”

Listen to me here. Jesus was really tempted and tried. I mean, I don’t understand this theologically, but there was a possibility that Jesus could have failed this test. If it wasn’t a possibility of failure, it wasn’t a trial.

And also, it was hard. I mean, it was a struggle for Jesus. He had the same impulses to quit that we would have. He had to struggle just like we have to struggle. And the reason is so that we would know that our Savior (our High Priest as Hebrews calls Him) would know what it’s like.

So when you are going through a trial and you are praying for help, Jesus knows. He knows what it’s like to have your heart broken. He knows what it’s like to really feel like quitting. He knows what it’s like to feel crushed, burdened, weak, and helpless. He knows what it’s like to suffer. He knows, and He cares.

Hebrews 2:18 says this about Jesus:

”For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.”

So Jesus was tried so we would know that He knows what trials and temptations are like, but He was also tried so we would have a pattern for victory.

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We don’t really see this hear in Mark, so let’s turn to another passage that tells this story and read in Luke. Turn to Luke 4, and we’ll read verses 1-14:

”Luke 4:1-14 (KJV) 1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. 3 And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. 4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. 5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. 7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. 8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: 10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: 11 And in [their] hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season. 14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.”

The last lesson or example that Jesus gives to us in this story is...

III. How to defeat Satan.

1 Peter 5:8 says:

”Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

The Bible has a lot to say about the devil. He is a real person; a real creature. Sometimes he is called “the devil,” which means “slanderer,” and sometimes he is called Satan, which means “the adversary.” He is a fallen angel who is opposed to God. He wants to ruin God’s plan and will for everything, and he is the ruler of the world system.

He’s smarter than you, he’s more powerful than you, and he’s been at this for a very, very long time.

So how do we defeat the devil?

Christ gives us an example here in this passage. Take note of a few things:

A. You defeat Satan by understanding how he attacks:

There are a few places in scripture where we see the attacks of the devil. This is one of them, and the other is in the Garden of Eden where we see him attacking Eve. In both this passage and in the Garden of Eden story, the devil uses the same tactics.

First,

1. He twists and denies the Word of God.

In this story, the devil misquotes a lot of scripture. He twists the meaning of some verses and tries to get Jesus to do something that is contrary to God’s will.

There is a half-truth to everything that the devil says. He’s smart like that, but we have to be prepared. We have to know our Bible well enough to know what is and isn’t a proper reading of the Bible, because there are thousands and thousands of people on the devil’s payroll who know just enough Bible to be dangerous and who will tell you what you want to hear.

Sometimes the devil outright denies scripture. He is the father of lies. He will say “Yea, hath God said?” He’ll get us to either doubt the word of God or to misunderstand it. That’s his game. That’s weapon number one in his arsenal.

The second consistent method the devil uses is...

2. He reuses the same appeals.

The devil is no dummy. The devil has been in the advertising business a lot longer than anyone on Madison Avenue. He knows how to craft a pitch, but he also knows what works. He used the same three pitches in the Garden of Eden that he used on Jesus here in the wilderness, and he uses those same pitches on us every day.

1 John 2:15-16 tells us what those pitches are. They are...

• The lust of the flesh
• The lust of the eyes
• The pride of life

Put another way, they are:

• Wanting to experience what God doesn’t want you to experience (the lust of the flesh.)
• Wanting to have what God doesn’t want you to have (the lust of the eyes)
• Wanting to be what God doesn’t want you to be (the pride of life)

The devil presented Jesus with the opportunity of eating when God wanted Him fasting. That’s the lust of the eyes. He presented Jesus with the opportunity to have the angels save him publicly and receive their help, which wasn’t God’s will . That’s the lust of the flesh. He presented Jesus with the opportunity to be worshipped then and there as the ruler of the world if he would just bow to Satan. That’s the pride of life.

The same three things, used over and over and over again. That’s how the devil works.

So we have to understand how he works if we want to defeat him. The second thing you have to do to defeat Satan is...

B. You defeat Satan by focusing on the will of God.

None of the things Satan presented to Jesus were inherently evil. Jesus would eat bread again. Nothing wrong with that. Jesus would be helped by the angels. Nothing wrong with that. Jesus would eventually be worshipped. Nothing wrong with that. What was wrong was that none of those things were God’s will for Jesus then and there at that time.

Jesus was laser-focused on fulfilling the will of God for His life. He was laser-focused on obedience. The reason He resisted the devil was because the devil was trying to get Him off course, and to get him to take a shortcut from the will of God.

Listen, folks: The devil doesn’t usually tempt you with evil things. He doesn’t put things before you that are inherently bad. His goal is to get you to take good things at the wrong time, to get you off course, and to get you to take shortcuts from the will of God. We have to live consciously seeking and valuing the will of God, or we will fall prey to the devil.

So if we want to defeat the devil we must know how he operates, and we must focus on the will of God. One more thing...

C. You defeat Satan by knowing and living the scriptures.

Look at Luke 4 again. Look at all the red words there. Note that Jesus says twice, “It is written,” and then quotes scripture at the devil. Actually, all three times Jesus spoke in this chapter, He was quoting the Bible.

King David said in Psalm 119:11, ”Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

Ephesians 6 teaches us that the only offensive weapon in the Christians armor is ”the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Hebrews 4:12 says…

”The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword.”

Our greatest weapon in spiritual warfare, our greatest tool in fighting off the devil, is the Word of God.

That’s why I get up here and preach and teach every week. That’s why we place such a big emphasis on learning what the Bible actually says. That’s why we encourage you over and over to read the Bible, memorize the Bible, and study the Bible. That’s why we do Sunday School and Sunday morning and evening services. You can’t win the fight against the devil who is trying to devour your life if you aren’t in the scriptures and if the scriptures aren’t in you.

Jesus said in this passage, ”Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God.” You don’t eat just once a week. You eat every day; likely several times a day. You need more spiritual nourishment than a Sunday morning sermon. You need to be in the word every day.

There’s a real devil, folks. There is a real spiritual warfare going on. The only way to defeat Him is to know what he’s up to, to follow God’s leading in your life, and to get God’s word in you.

Let’s stand for invitation and prayer. Every head bowed, every eye closed. I want to ask you some questions.

1. Are you saved?
2. Are you walking in the Spirit, letting the Holy Spirit lead you day by day?
3. Are you letting God use the trials of life to strengthen you?
4. Are you falling for the devil’s schemes?
5. Are you focused on the will of God?
6. Are you in the Bible?