Article 2015-04 - From Bad to Worse
Chapter 7: From Bad to Worse
Introduction
Although Satan plans to defeat God and His purposes, God knows about them. He is never surprised or out of His wits for solutions, and nothing can ever thwart God’s plans for mankind. For every upcoming crisis He has His next missionary ready!
Scripture reference
- Lamech married two women, … and said to his wives … ‘I have killed a man for wounding me … If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times’ (Gen. 4:19,23,24)
- I make known the end from the beginning … I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please (Is. 46:10)
The story.
Satan succeeded in seducing man to rebel against God. Man was expelled from Paradise and had death in his bones. The devil even managed to turn Adam’s son into a brother-murderer. Yet he knew he had no reason for optimism. God had planned to send His Son to save humanity. Satan had ideas to stop Him, but considered it even better to stop Him from going to earth in the first place. He laid out a vile plan to corrupt the human race to such an extent that it would become impossible eventually to bring forth the Savior.
Cain never repented of killing his brother, and therefore violence increased in his life and that of his descendants. Later Lamech boasted about how he demanded revenge because someone had wounded him. A cycle of revenge is the consequence of not repenting.
Then Satan built another stronghold in Lamech’s life. He took two wives. That is not how God had designed marriage. And so the devil also caters for plenty of people who hate violence and stay far from it, but who love sex. So he tries to seduce and defile them through unholy sex.
Before Satan made these plans, God knew them. They were meant to stop Jesus from coming into the world to save man from sin. Satan reasoned that violent man cannot give birth to the Prince of Peace, nor an adulterous generation to a holy Son.
So, God decided to drastically remove sin because people had become corrupted beyond repair. There is no way to save those that do not want to be saved, but there was one man on whom God could rely. Although his whole generation was rotten beyond recovery, this one man, Noah, walked with God. God gave his contemporaries a hundred years to repent, while Noah built the Ark and preached. Noah’s generation did not repent; only he and his family were saved. But because God created people with a free will, they had to have a chance to hear before judgment came. The Father is absolutely just. He is never unjust to anybody. That is why He called missionary Noah.
Comment
Because the devil is only a created being, there is nothing he can think about that God has not thought about first. We may think that the devil makes a plan and God reacts, but it is the other way around. God created man with a free will and man abused that ability to sin. Similarly God will use man who does choose the right way, to conquer the devil and make the latter’s bad plans backfire on him. In that way God proves to the devil that saved man is superior to the devil and therefore more fit to rule than he is.
Many of the great people in the Bible prove this, when working out the mission God gave them in life. We only have to think about Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah, Jesus, Peter and Paul, to mention just a few. All of them were important missionary characters who, by their obedience and righteousness did God’s work and pushed back the boundaries of darkness. They suffered, were ridiculed, and some lost their lives, but in doing so they gained what they could not lose: an eternal heavenly reward. Will we join them?
Discussion & Dialogue
Discuss other ways you may know from history or biblical data, how the devil tried to jeopardize God’s plans and how he failed because God overruled
Which theme, treated in one of the past few chapters, is very visible in this chapter?
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