In our last session we considered the New
Testament teaching of the role of Satan in the life of the Christian, and we saw Satan
as being the third of the three obstacles to Christian growth, and we realized that
there are many people who don’t take Satan very seriously in this day and age. I remember when I was in graduate school in
the Netherlands with my professor, Professor Berkouwer. He made a comment – it was just an off-the-cuff
remark one day in a classroom situation that stuck with me. Somebody was raising a question about this
sort of thing – about demons and angels and Satan and so on – and he just paused,
and he said, “Gentlemen,” he said, “without demonology, there can be no theology.” And what he meant by that simply was that
the same source that we use from which we gather our understanding of Christ, of God
the Father, of the Holy Spirit is the same source that speaks to us of the reality of
Satan. Now I mentioned in our last session that in
my judgment one of the most formidable functions of Satan in the life of the Christian is in
the work of accusation. I distinguished that from temptation. Temptation is where you go, “Wouldn’t
you like to get involved in this? This is what will really make you happy: if
you’ll just compromise your ethics at this point,” and so on. That’s temptation. Accusation is that situation by which Satan
torments the conscience of the believer. Now, we’re living in a culture now that
is virtually obsessed with self-help pop psychology remedies to make us happy. You go into any bookstore, and you will see
a large section of the bookstore devoted to how to achieve a good self-image. Now, I think that it’s very dangerous to
become so introspective and so self-centered that that’s all the kinds of things we deal
with, is massaging our own egos throughout life. But what I am discovering here in the secular
world is that secular psychology has discovered that there is a raw nerve that is screaming
for attention in contemporary humanity that has to do with what we call “self image.” It’s not by accident that these books and
the teachers who emphasize a good self image and so on are so successful. It’s because we are a guilt-ridden people,
and I often will say to people who are not Christians, I’ll say, “You’re not a
Christian, but let me ask you this: What do you do with your guilt?” That’s really kind of a complex question. I don’t say to them, “Do you have guilt?” I assume that they have guilt. I have yet to have anybody say to me, “I
don’t have any guilt.” I say, “What do you do with your guilt?”
because they identify with that, that even those who are not particularly religious have
troubled consciences that we call “guilt.” I have had psychiatrists say to me that the
number one problem that they have to deal with in their medical practice is the problem
of unresolved guilt, and we discover that the problem of unresolved guilt is not something
that affects a person for one day or for one week or for one year, but it can mold and
shape and inhibit the personality for one’s entire life. So what I want to look at here is why, at
the heart of the biblical message, very practically speaking, is an announcement of forgiveness
because at the heart of our struggle for sanctification is what we’ve already seen, is that as I’m
trying to be obedient, as I’m trying to please God, as I’m trying to grow in my
Christian experience, I am being burdened and loaded down with all that baggage of guilt
that I have brought into my experience, and every day there is a certain sense in which
I add to that baggage because I don’t go through a day without sinning. Do you? I sure don’t. So every day I have to deal with the problem
of guilt. Now we know from psychiatry and psychology
that guilt is one of the most powerfully paralyzing forces there is to the human spirit. Fear can paralyze. People would say, “I’m frozen with fear,”
but also guilt can cause a person to be virtually locked in immobility. Now if there is such a thing as Satan, and
Satan can bring you to ruins by causing a scandal through your succumbing to his temptation,
that’s one way to destroy the works of Christ. Another thing is simply to paralyze the people
of God so that their influence is next to nothing. Now I want to look then, if we can, at an
example of this activity of satanic accusation that we find in the Old Testament in your
favorite book, the book of Zechariah. Everybody reads that for their daily devotions,
right? The book of Zechariah, beginning at chapter
three – Zechariah chapter three, “And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing
before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.” You get the picture. Here is the one who has been chosen and called
of God for the ministry – he’s a minister – and this minister is standing in the presence
of an angel. Now you would think so far that that image,
that picture, is one that’s very positive and inspiring; but right next to him, on the
other side of the one where the angel is there, is the fallen angel – the malevolent angel,
the malicious angel – who was standing there accusing him. Now what’s he accusing him of? “And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘The Lord
rebuke you, O Satan, even the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments
and stood before the angel.” Do you see what’s happening here? The priest appears in the presence of God,
and his clothes are dirty. People ask me, you know, do I get nervous
before I have to speak in front of a group? And I say – you know courtesy says that
we’re supposed to say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but that’s a
stupid question. That’s like Claude Harmon, in the pre-event
at the Master’s several years ago, had consecutive holes-in-one on the golf course – (I said
I’d get these golf stories over early, but I had to save one) consecutive holes in one
– and afterwards at the press conference a newspaper reporter put his hand up and said,
“Mr. Harmon, is that the first time in your career that you’ve had back-to-back hole-in-one?” That’s a stupid question. But we look at Joshua, and his clothes are
dirty, and that indicates that there’s a blemish or something that is taking away from
the purity of his office and of his mission, and it’s that that Satan sees and focuses
upon. And what he’s doing basically is what? He’s saying to the Angel, he’s saying
to God, “Look at this man. He is not fit to be a minister in Your presence. His clothes are dirty.” I’ve had those kinds of dreams. I said I get nervous before I stand in front
of a group. I get so nervous that sometimes I have bad
dreams, and I’ll dream – this is the kind of stuff I’ll dream about: I’ll dream
that I’m supposed to speak in a church on Sunday morning, and I get to the church, and
it’s time for the service to begin, and I don’t have any shoes or I don’t have
a white shirt or I don’t have a necktie. In other words, I’m not appropriately dressed. Now I’m not – a psychiatrist could have
a field day with that, I’m sure. It’s not – I never dream that I forget
what I was going to say, and that’s the thing I worry about before I go. I mean I really worry about, “Am I going
to have anything to say? Am I going to forget myself in the middle? What am I going to say to these people?” So I never consciously worry about, “Am
I going to show up there without a pair of shoes or without a necktie or without a white
shirt?” But when I sleep, those are the things I dream
about, and I think it would be so embarrassing to stand up in front of 2,000 people and not
have the proper clothes on. We’re very conscious about that sort of
thing, aren’t we? But imagine a priest being ushered into the
presence of God, and you remember that the priestly garments in the Old Testament were
ordered and decreed by the detailed prescription of God Himself. God said, “This is what I want the priests
to wear,” and we are told in the Old Testament that the garments of the priest were designed
for beauty and for glory that God would be honored by the magnificence of the garments
of the priest; and here comes the high priest into the presence of God with filth all over
his garments; and Satan jumps at that. “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here! This is no place for dirty people, in the
presence of God.” And in the midst of the accusation God opens
His holy mouth and speaks and says, “Satan, you shut your mouth! Is this not one of My brands that I have plucked
from the fire?” Oh, I love that passage. I love that statement from God, don’t you? I mean think about it. Have you ever been out camping in the woods,
and you roast marshmallows? You get a stick, and you stick the stick into
the fire. You build a little fire from the twigs, and
at the end you want to make sure that you scatter the things so that you don’t start
the forest fire and have that bear with the hat come around and – what’s his name? Smoky – Smoky the Bear come around and give
you a hard time – give you a ticket. Or you get that stick with the marshmallows,
and afterwards you want to clean it up, and have you ever tried to move some of those
sticks that have been charred by the fire? And virtually, those sticks – if you pull
a stick out of the fire before it is consumed by the fire – you want to save that stick,
keep it from perishing – you pull it out, chances are you’re going to get charcoal
and grime all over your hand. If you don’t wear gloves, and you go with
your bare hand to pull a stick or a brand and keep it out of the fire, your hands are
going to get dirty. And that’s how God describes not only Joshua,
ladies and gentlemen, but He’s describing you. He’s describing me – a brand that has
been snatched out of the fire. So that when God redeems you, when God rescues
you and pulls you out of the flames, He gets His hands dirty; and when He rescues you you
are a brand snatched from the fire. That means you’re covered with creosote. You’re covered with charcoal. You are a filthy mess. God doesn’t wait for a person to be pure
and unblemished before He redeems him. That’s the gospel, isn’t it – that while
we are still filthy we are given the cloak of the righteousness of Christ, to be received
in the fellowship with God so that every Christian is a brand snatched from the fire; and what
that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that every one of us has filthy garments. There is some filth in your life. There’s filth in my life, and we don’t
want to go around and parade that garbage in front of everybody else in the world. In fact, we do everything in our power to
conceal it. But there are two people who know about every
skeleton in our closet. There’s God, and there’s Satan, and Satan
is a skeleton rattler. He loves to go into the closet and shake up
those bones, and he comes and then he comes before God and says, “Look at that filthy
coat.” “The Lord rebuke you, Satan. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ Now Joshua was clothed in filthy garments
and stood before the angel, and he answered and spoke unto those that stood before him
saying, ‘Take away the filthy garments from him,’ and unto him He said, ‘Behold, I
have caused your iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe you with a change of raiment.’ And I said, ‘Let them set a fair mitre upon
his head.’ So they set a fair mitre upon his head and
clothed him with garments, and the Angel of the Lord stood by.” Do you see what’s happening here? Is that when God redeems that man out of the
fire the person still has filthy garments. But God doesn’t stop. God goes through the process of replacing
those dirty garments with clean garments, and He promises to do the same thing for every
one of you – to put a new turban on your head, a new cloak on your body that is free
of all of those blemishes. But in the meantime, as we live our lives
in the presence of God, we have to listen to that enemy who’s constantly calling attention
to our sins – to accuse us, to take away our peace and our fellowship. Now, I know that Christians debate over the
question of whether or not it is possible to know for sure whether you are redeemed. There are some people who take the position
that we can really never be sure if we are in a state of redemption. In fact I remember when I was in seminary
we did a poll of the seniors in the seminary class, and 50% of the seniors in our seminary
class not only said that they didn’t think a person could know if they were in the state
of redemption but that to assume that you were in the state of redemption was an act
of unspeakable arrogance. Now I take the position that not only you
can know if you are in the state of redemption, but it is your duty to know because God commands
us to make certain what our status is before Him, and I personally believe, ladies and
gentlemen, that one of the most important doctrines that a Christian can learn, and
learn early, in his walk is the doctrine of the assurance of salvation. You need to know whether you’re in a state
of grace or not in a state of grace because if you don’t know then you’re totally
vulnerable to the paralysis of the accusation of the enemy. Remember Joshua was listening to this conversation. Joshua was standing there with the filthy
garments, and he hears the accusation of Satan. Satan says, “He is dirty.” Now what do you suppose would have happened
to him if that’s the only voice he heard? But thanks be to God, God spoke and said,
“Shut your mouth Satan. This is a brand plucked from the fire.” We notice that the very first fruits of justification
according to Paul is this: “…that being justified we have peace with God, access into
His presence.” The person with a troubled conscience, the
person who is under the weight of this accusation does not have peace. People who are at peace with God, who know
where they stand, who know that they are redeemed, have a freedom to work out their Christian
life that makes them people of power in the world. But it’s the person who isn’t sure, who’s
stumbling, halting between two opinions, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. That person is crippled in his spiritual pilgrimage. That’s why it’s so vitally important to
get it settled in your life where you belong, and are you redeemed. Now the thing that’s so subtle about Satan’s
accusation is that Satan is called, at times, the “slanderer,” and what is a slanderer? A slanderer is somebody who charges you with
things for which you’re innocent. When somebody accuses me of something I haven’t
done, that’s slander, and that person has inflicted an injustice upon me. And Satan does that. Satan is so concerned about paralyzing people
and getting them upset he will tell lies about them. He will get their reputations tarnished by
false accusations. But ladies and gentlemen, that’s not the
only way he does it. Sometimes he accuses us where we are in fact
guilty. Joshua’s clothes were really dirty, weren’t
they? It wasn’t just that Satan was coming along
saying, “Oh, he has dirty clothes,” when in fact he had clean clothes. No, he was telling the truth. Now here’s where it gets very difficult
in working out the Christian experience because in our study of the Holy Spirit we went over
this, that the Holy Spirit – one of the Holy Spirit’s ministries in the life of
the Christian and sanctification is to convict us of sin – if we commit a sin and don’t
feel guilty about it that we shouldn’t rejoice in that because that’s like having a disease
and not feeling any pain. We may think that that’s a benefit but in
the long run it’s very, very destructive. To feel guilt is a healthy thing if in fact
we really are guilty, and if we don’t feel the guilt then the Spirit comes and convicts
us of our sin that we may turn from it. But what’s the difference between conviction
of the Holy Spirit and the accusation of Satan? Suppose I commit a sin, and I try not to deal
with it, and Satan comes along and says, “You did it. We know you did it. What kind of a person are you who would do
something like that?” The Holy Spirit comes along and troubles me
about the same thing. How do you tell the difference? Well what’s the purpose of the Spirit in
the conviction of sin? When the Spirit comes to convict you of sin
– if you’ve experienced the conviction of sin you know that, though it is painful
to be brought to an awareness of one’s sin, there is still something very, very sweet
about it. Somehow that when the Holy Spirit confronts
us with our sin, at the same time that He tells us we are guilty, He assures us that
we are forgiven as we turn to Him – that He comes to us not as somebody trying to destroy
us. But Satan’s accusation is designed not to
redeem us but to destroy us, and there’s a total difference. You know the difference between the person
who comes up to you and says, “I want to tell you this out of love,” and then POW!
really sticks the knife in. That’s when you want to say. “Get out of here Satan!” and the person
who really does communicate that they’re for you. The Spirit always communicates that He’s
for you when He convicts you of your sin, and that’s the answer to the debilitating
accusations of Satan. In other words, this: Satan will hit us where
we really are guilty, and there – and we have to acknowledge that there is such a thing
as real guilt, and the only remedy to real guilt that I know of is real forgiveness. I taught – this is my favorite illustration
of this. I had a college student come to me on one
occasion who was very, very provoked. She was a Christian, and she said to me, “I’ve
got to talk to you,” and I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “Well I’m engaged to be married,
and my fiancé and I have been sexually involved, and I have felt this terrible burden of guilt. So I went to see the chaplain at the university,
and I told him of my problem, and the chaplain said to me, ‘The problem with you is that
you have a highly sensitized conscience, and you’ve become a victim of a Victorian taboo,
a Puritan ethic in your society, and you just have to understand that things have changed. You’re not living promiscuously here. You’re being involved sexually with someone
to whom you’re betrothed, you’re engaged, and this is the twentieth century. This is the sexual ethic of our day and age,
and you have to understand that to be free of this paralyzing guilt you have to understand
that you’re not guilty of anything.’” And the girl looked at me, you know, and she
said, “But Dr. Sproul, I still feel guilty.” Right away we were involved with the great
mystery of guilt here – the difference between what I call “objective” and “subjective.” It was the difference between guilt and guilt
feelings. Guilt is defined legally and theologically
as a transgression of the law of God. If a person steps across that line and violates
the law of God, he incurs guilt in the sight of God’s justice. Now that person, when he violates the law
of God, may feel terribly about it, or he may feel nothing. How he feels has nothing to do with the reality
or unreality of the actual guilt. Do you see that? Forgiveness,
again, is something God does, and when He does it it’s an objective reality, and it
is not dependent upon my feelings.” And that’s what Satan does. He hones in on your feelings. He tries to make you a sensuous Christian
so that you will only be as certain of your forgiveness as you are of how you feel at
the given moment. That’s why faith, ladies and gentlemen,
comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. It’s as we read the promises of God and
embrace them into our lives that we become free, and we can read with the apostle Paul,
“Who will lay any charge against God’s elect?” We understand that Christ is our righteousness
and the only way we are ever going to please Him is by living daily in dependence upon
His grace, keeping short accounts, confessing our sins as we go, but not being paralyzed
by the guilt that we incur along the way, confessing it, being cleansed of it, and moving
on for the high calling that is ours in Christ.
