What does Satan own?
What does the devil control?
What does the enemy dominate?
Only what we leave in his wicked, pathetic little hands. Put another way: The devil only holds what we let him keep.
Our mission – our Great Commission – is to press the crown rights of King Jesus in every realm of His creation right here and now. By His grace-fueled Gospel we have been commanded and equipped to become and propagate disciples who will strive – all by His grace – to increasingly conform every area of their lives to His Nature as revealed in His Word, thus transforming everything that they touch into a more and more Christ-honoring area of life.
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Judah’s Lion Has Burst His Chains
I love the hymn that proclaims the beautiful, cosmos-shaking, enemy-terrifying truth that “Judah’s lion has burst his chains”! Death could not contain Him and nothing can deny Him.
The serpent’s head has been crushed and the enemy is bleeding out before our eyes. Victory has been secured and is unfolding as that defeated enemy fades away.
Judah’s Lion has chosen His people by His grace through His Gospel and His Great Commission to make His victory ever clearer and clearer throughout His creation.
Art, math, law, economics, business, and education – they’re all His, along with everything else. We are here to make that plain, in word and application.
That’s our job…all by His grace, all for His glory, and all to our eternal benefit.
In-between yesterday’s From Post-Christian America to Post-America Christianity post and what will, Lord willing, be a Part 2 follow-up later this week, it seemed like a good time to pause, remind ourselves, and marinate in the important truth that greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world (see: 1 John 4:4).
So it is that when we submit ourselves to God, we can effectively resist the devil, driving him from the field of battle. When the devil encounters a biblically obedient Christian, it is the devil, not the Christian, who is compelled to flight, retreat, and loss of ground (see: James 4:7).
How contrary is this to what most American Christians have been pitched and programmed to hide under when it comes to the relationship between the devil, Christians, and ground to be gained from (or lost to) the enemy here and now?
Consider the following passages:
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. ~ 1 John 4:2-6 (emphasis added)
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ~ James 4:7 (emphasis added)
These are but samples from one of the great themes in Scripture – a theme that has been almost completely abandoned and forgotten by the professing Christian sub-culture in America. We have drifted (or, more appropriately, run) from this truth so hard for so long in America that today far more professing American “conservative” Christians are prone to mock this matchlessly empowering truth than they are to embrace it. (See also: Encouragement from Satan.)
The crushed, dying serpent must laugh at – and greatly appreciate – such accommodating foolishness, which allows him to pretend and hold onto territory for just a little while longer.
The real world changing, supernatural power of the Gospel-fueled Great Commission is something that we desperately need to recover, which is why the enemies of Christ are so desperate to see it remain in its largely abandoned and forgotten state.
But those enemies are getting nervous.
They’re getting concerned.
Here and there in the culture – including the professing Christian sub-culture – enemies from within and outside of the church are becoming more and more desperate in their disparaging of the authority of Christ as King and those who would dare to proclaim and apply Christ’s comprehensive lordship right here and now in what they imagine and claim to be “the devil’s world”.
But it isn’t working.
His people, by His grace, are on the move.
The Gospel – the whole Gospel – in all of it’s supernatural life- and culture-transforming glory, will not be contained.
It will not be denied.
Because He will not be denied.
Judah’s lion has burst his chains.
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© 2015 Scott Alan Buss – All Rights Reserved.
Soli Deo Gloria!
From here on out, I reserve the right to stop reading comments that include the phrase "I stopped reading this article at…"
😉
Good article. The new Adam in Mat 4 was tempted as the first but said this:
Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written…
Thank you, Robert. I really appreciate the encouragement!
And as for the manner in which Jesus has empowered us to drive our the enemy…amen and woohoo!
I stopped reading this article at this statement :
“Only what we leave in his wicked, pathetic little hands. Put another way: The devil only holds what we let him keep.”
This is such bologna, sorry but who thinks like this? A true Christian does not leave anything to Satan. It’s not even a thought. Scott, on some things you are spot on and at other times, not so much, not even making sense with this one. Sorry Bro
your sister in Christ Jesus
Cherie c.
Howdy Cherie,
When you stop reading a piece part way through, you are choosing to leave yourself in a position of ignorance as to what the author is actually and fully saying. Context is vital. When you go on from that position of ignorance to comment about what the author is saying from that position of willful contextual ignorance…well…that's just really, really bad in many ways (as evidenced by your post here).
The full article makes very plain the basis for the statement at which you "stopped reading".
Feel free to read it all if you'd like to see that corroborating, coherent, and utterly biblical context.
I hope that this clarification is helpful and that you will take to heart the admonition to read and understand an entire thought before presuming to understand, much less coherently criticize, a small portion of it willfully taken out of context.
In His grip,
Scott