Jan 28
The Wiles of the Devil
A guest post by Chase Green.
Ephesians 6:11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Ephesians 6:16 talks about the “fiery darts of the wicked one.” We must prepare ourselves for the fight, and must be keenly aware of the devil’s devices.
What follows is not an all-inclusive list. The devil has many tools in his tool belt. Some of them, like much of what the mass media has to offer, many things that can be found on the internet, etc., are obvious.
But have you ever thought about some of the following wiles (or schemes) of the devil?
Curiosity
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
Many have fallen prey to this device of the devil. Many individuals, young and old alike, have clicked on sinful things which they ought not because their curiosity got the best of them. Many have dallied with the devil’s favorite board game (the Ouija Board) out of mere curiosity. How many young people first experimented with drugs or alcohol because they were curious?
Genesis 3:6 says, when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.”
The devil’s tool was curiosity.
Lies
“He is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44).
People generally hate being lied to. We hate being lied to because of the damage that can be caused from being misled. God also hates lying (Prov. 6:17, 19).
The devil is not only the father of lies, but he was also a murderer from the beginning, not standing on the truth (John 8:44). The devil convinces men not to believe the truth of Jesus (John 8:45), and has even convinced many that there is no such thing as truth (John 18:38 cf. John 17:17 and 8:32).
The devil used a bold-faced lie at the beginning when he told Eve, “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4).
Confusion
The devil loves confusion.
He loves to blur the lines between black and white, right and wrong (Isa. 5:20). He loves to blur the lines between male and female (Deut. 22:5). He loves to have thousands of different religious bodies all claiming to come from God, yet teaching markedly different things (1 Cor. 1:10).
“If I can’t undermine the gospel with my own reasoning, then I will try to do it with confusion,” says the devil.
God is not the author of such confusion (1 Cor. 14:33). If God is not the author of it, it can only stand to reason that the devil is.
Delusion
“It is easier to believe a lie heard a thousand times than the truth heard only once.”
Those who believe the devil’s lies or confusion long enough progress naturally into delusion. God allows us to make our own decisions, and He will also allow many to be persuaded by “strong delusion, that they should believe the lie” (2 Thes. 2:11).
This delusion comes straight from the enemy, the devil.
Perversion
Perversion happens even further in the process after delusion.
Some of the verses with the word translated as “confusion” in the King James version are translated as “perversion” in the New King James Version (Lev. 18:23; 20:12). Once people begin to accept the devil’s lies about the acceptability of one sin, his next move is to convince people that increasingly deviant behaviors are also acceptable.
Satan has many convinced of this today, and it is perversion.
See also Romans 1:28.
Shamelessness
God’s word extols the virtue of shamefacedness (1 Tim. 2:9), but the opposite of this is shamelessness.
Jeremiah 6:15 interrogatively describes a time as follows: “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; Nor did they know how to blush.”
We are reliving this in society today. Human pride feeds into this, and the devil loves to have it so. This is why nakedness can often be found on full display in public, why many people have no shame anymore when it comes to their speech, and why many people’s entertainment choices are grossly immoral.
May we be well-aware of the devil’s devices so that we can arm ourselves for the fight against him!
Chase Green is a good friend that I spent some time with in preaching school — he graduated in the class before me. Chase preaches for the Marietta Church of Christ in Marietta, Oklahoma.
Chase hosts the Everyday Christian podcast with the Scattered Abroad Network. Chase has recently started writing on Substack about his family’s travels to national parks. Read more at Park Stars
