Teaching Resources International

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.” — Genesis 3:1.

Or course, we understand that this verse refers to “that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan.” That old deceiver, of whom our Lord Jesus said to the Jews. “When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it,” was “more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” God has been pleased to give to many beasts subtlety … in order that they may be the more destructive to certain classes of animals whose numbers require to be kept under. To others, he has been pleased to give instincts of most marvelous wisdom, for self-preservation and the destruction of their prey, and for the procuring of their food. But all the wise instincts and all the subtlety of the beasts of the field are far excelled by the subtlety of Satan.

Satan has abundant craft, and is able to overcome us, for several reasons. [First], because he is malicious; for malice is of all things the most productive of cunning. When a man is determined on revenge, it is strange how cunning he is to find out opportunities to vent his spite. Let a man have enmity against another, and let that enmity thoroughly possess his soul, and pour venom, as it were, into his very blood, and he will become exceedingly crafty in the means he uses to annoy and injure his adversary. Now, nobody can be more full of malice against man than Satan is, as he proves every day; and that malice sharpens his inherent wisdom, so that he becomes exceedingly subtle.

Besides, Satan is an angel, though a fallen one. We doubt not, from certain hints in Scripture, that he occupied a very high place in the hierarchy of angels before he fell; and we know that those mighty beings are endowed with vast intellectual powers, far surpassing any that has ever been given to beings of human mould. Therefore, we must not expect that a man, unaided from above, should ever be a match for an angel.

Again, Satan may well be cunning now — I may truthfully say, more cunning than he was in the days of Adam — for he has had long dealings with the human race.

And now, brethren, I shall for a few minutes first occupy your time by noticing the craft and subtlety of Satan, and the modes in which he attacks our souls; and secondly, I shall give you a few words of admonition with regard to the wisdom that we must exercise against him, and the only means that we can use effectually to prevent his subtlety from being the instrument of our destruction.

I. Let us notice, in the first place, THE CRAFT AND SUBTLETY OF SATAN, as we have discovered it in our own experience.

And I may begin by observing, that Satan discovers his craft and subtlety by the modes of his attack. There is a man who is calm, and quiet, and at ease; Satan does not attack that man with unbelief or distrustfulness; he attacks him in a more vulnerable point, than that— self-love, self-confidence, worldliness—these will be the weapons which Satan will use against him. Another person is noted for lowness of spirits and want of mental vigor. It is not probable that Satan will puff him up with pride, but examining him, and discovering where his weak point is, he will tempt him to doubt his calling, and endeavor to drive him to despair.

There is another man of strong robust bodily health, having all his mental powers in full and vigorous exercise, enjoying the promises and delighting in the ways of God. Possibly Satan will not attack him with unbelief, because he feels that he has armor for that particular point, but he will attack him with pride, or with some temptation to lust. He will most thoroughly and carefully examine us, and if he shall find us to be, like Achilles, vulnerable nowhere else but in our heel then he will shoot his arrows at our heel.

I believe that Satan has not often attacked a man in a place where he saw him to be strong; but he generally looks well for the weak point, the besetting sin. “There,” says he, “there will I strike the blow;” and God help us in the hour of battle and in the time of conflict! We have need to say, “God help us!” for, indeed, unless the Lord should help us, this crafty foe might easily find enough joints in our armor, and soon might he send the deadly arrow into our souls, so that we should fall down wounded before him.

And yet I have noticed, strangely enough, that Satan does sometimes tempt men with the very thing which you might suppose would never come upon them. What do you imagine was John Knox’s last temptation upon his dying bed? Perhaps there never was a man who more fully understood the great doctrine that “by grace are ye saved,” than John Knox did. He thundered it out from the pulpit; and if you had questioned him upon the subject, he would have declared it to you boldly and bravely, denying with all his might the Popish doctrine of salvation through human merit. But, will you believe it, that old enemy of souls attacked John Knox with self-righteousness when he lay a-dying? He came to him, and said, “How bravely you have served your Master, John! You have never quailed before the face of man; you have faced kings and princes, and yet you have never trembled. Such a man as you are may walk into the kingdom of heaven on your own footing, and wear your own garment at the wedding of the Most High;” and sharp and terrible was the struggle which John Knox had with the enemy of souls over that temptation.

The modes of Satan’s attack, then, as you will speedily learn, if you have not already done so, betray his subtlety. Ah! sons of men, while you are putting on your helmets, he is seeking to thrust his fiery sword into your heart; or while you are looking well to your breastplate, he is lifting up his battle-axe to split your skull; and while you are seeing to both helmet and breastplate, he is seeking to trip up your foot. He is always watching to see where you are not looking; he is always on the alert when you are slumbering. Take heed to yourselves, therefore: “put on the whole armor of God;” “be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith;” and God help you to prevail over him!

A second thing in which Satan betrays his cunning is, the weapons which he will often use against us. Sometimes he will attack the child of God with the remembrance of a ribald song, or a licentious speech which he may have heard in the days of his carnal state; but far more frequently he will attack him with texts of Scripture. It is strange that it should be so, but it often is the case that, when he shoots his arrow against a Christian, he wings it with God’s own Word. “Ah!” he will say, “here is a text that I love, taken from the Book that I prize, yet it is turned against me. A weapon out of God’s own armory is made to be the instrument of dearth against my soul.” Have you not found it so, dear Christian friends? Have you not proved that, as Satan attacked Christ with an “It is written,” so also has he attacked you? And have you not learned to be upon your guard against perversions of Sacred Scripture, and twistings of God’s Word, lest they should lead you to destruction?

At other times, Satan will use the weapon of our own experience. “Ah!” the devil will say, “on such-and-such a day, you sinned in such-and-such a way; how can you be a child of God?” At another time, he will say, “You are self-righteous, therefore you cannot be an heir of heaven.” Then, again, he will begin to rake up all the old stories that we have long forgotten of all our past unbeliefs, our past wanderings, and so forth, and throw these in our teeth. He will say, “What! you, YOU a Christian? A pretty Christian you must be!” Or, possibly he will begin to tempt you after some such sort as this: “The other day, you would not do such-and-such a thing in business: how much you lost by it! So-and-so is a Christian; he did it. Your neighbor, over the road, is he not a deacon of a church, and did not he do it? Why may not you do the same? You would get on a great deal better if you would do it. So-and-so does it, and he gets on, and is just as much respected as you are; then why should not you act in the same way?” Thus, the devil will attack you with weapons taken from your own experience, or from the church of which you are a member.

Ah! be careful, for Satan knows how to choose his weapons, He is not coming out against you, if you are great giants, with a sling and a stone; but he comes armed to the teeth to cut you down. If he knows that you are so guarded by a coat of mail that the edge of his sword shall be turned by your armor, then will he attack you with deadly poison; and if he knows that you cannot be destroyed by that means, seeing that you have an antidote at hand, then will he seek to take you in a trap; and if you be wary, so that you cannot be overtaken thus, then will he send fiery troubles upon you, or a crushing avalanche of woe, so that he may subdue you. The weapons of his warfare, always evil, and often spiritual and unseen, are mighty against such weak creatures as we.

Again, the craftiness of the devil is discovered in another thing, in the agents he employs. The devil does not do all his dirty work himself; he often employs others to do it for him. When Samson had to be overcome, and his Nazarite locks to be shorn away, Satan had a Delilah ready to tempt and lead him astray. He knew what was in Samson’s heart, and where was his weakest place, and therefore he tempted him by means of the woman whom he loved. An old divine says, “There’s many a man that has had his head broken by his own rib;” and certainly that is true. Satan has sometimes set a man’s own wife to cast him down, or he has used some dear friend as the instrument to work his ruin.

You remember how David lamented over this evil: “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: but it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.” “Ah,” says the devil, “you did not think I was going to set an enemy to speak evil of you, did you? Why, that would not hurt you. I know better than that how to choose my agents; I shall choose a man who is a friend or an acquaintance; he will come close to you, and then stab you under the folds of your garments.”

The devil is always ready to take in his hand the net into which the fish is most likely to go, and to spread the snare which is the most likely to catch the bird. I do not suspect, if you are a professor of long standing, that you will be tempted by a drunken man; no, the devil will tempt you by a canting hypocrite. I do not imagine your enemy will come, and attack and slander you; it will be your friend. Satan knows how to use and to disguise all his agents. “Ah!” he says, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing will be better for me than a wolf that looks like a wolf; and one in the church will play my game better, and accomplish it more readily, than one out of it.” The choice of Satan’s agents proves his craft and cleverness.

And once again, Satan shows his cunning by the times in which he attacks us. I thought, when I lay sick, that if I could but get up from my bed again, and be made strong, I would give the devil a most terrible thrashing, because of the way he set upon me when I was sick. Coward! Why did he not wait till I was well? But I always find that if my spirits sink, and I am in a low condition of heart, Satan specially chooses that time to attack me with unbelief. He will therefore come upon us when there is a cloud between ourselves and our God; when the body is depressed, and the spirits are weak, then will he tempt us, and try to lead us to distrust God. It is the timing of his attacks, the right ordering of his assaults, that makes Satan ten times more terrible an enemy than he would otherwise be, and that proves the depth of his craftiness.

And yet once more, and I will have done with this point. Satan’s subtlety in another thing is very great, that is, in his withdrawings. When I first joined the Christian Church, I never could make out a saying which I heard from an old man, that there was no temptation so bad as not being tempted, nor did I understand then what Rutherford meant, when he said he liked a roaring devil a great deal better than a sleeping devil.

Now, dear friend, do you know anything about your own state of heart just now? If so, that is the answer to the enigma, that not being tempted is worse than being tempted. Really, there have been times, in the past experience of my own soul, when I would have been obliged to the devil if he had come and stirred me up; I should have felt that God had employed him, against his wish, to do me lasting good, to wake me up to conflict. If the devil would but go into the Enchanted Ground, and attack the pilgrims there, what a fine thing it would be for them! But, you will notice, John Bunyan did not put him there, for there was no business for him there. It was in the Valley of Humiliation that there was plenty of work cut out for Satan; but in the Enchanted Ground the pilgrims were all slumbering, like men asleep on the top of the mast … therefore the devil knew he was not needed there; he just left them to sleep on. But it was into the Valley of Humiliation that he went, and there he had his stern struggle with poor Christian. Brethren, if you are passing through with drowsiness, indifference, and slumber, you will understand the craftiness of the devil in sometimes keeping out of the way.

III. And now, in the second place, let us very briefly inquire, WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THIS ENEMY?

You and I feel that we must enter the kingdom of heaven, and we cannot enter it while we stand still. The City of Destruction is behind us, and Death is pursuing us; we must press towards heaven; but, in the way, there stands this “roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” What shall we do?

Shall we attack him with wisdom? Alas! our wisdom is but folly. The only way to repel Satan’s subtlety is by acquiring true wisdom. Again I repeat it, man hath none of that in himself. What then? Herein is true wisdom. If thou wouldst successfully wrestle with Satan, make the Holy Scriptures thy daily resort. Out of this sacred magazine continually draw thine armor and thine ammunition. Lay hold upon the glorious doctrines of God’s Word; make them thy daily meat and drink. So shalt thou be strong to resist the devil, and thou shalt be joyful in discovering that he will flee from thee.

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way,” and how shall a Christian guard himself against the enemy? “By taking heed thereto according to thy Word.” Let us fight Satan always with an “It is written;” for no weapon will ever tell upon the arch-enemy so well as Holy Scripture will. Attempt to fight Satan with the wooden sword of reason, and he will easily overcome you; but use this Jerusalem blade of God’s Word, by which he has been wounded many a time, and you will speedily overcome him.

But, above all, if we would successfully resist Satan, we must look not merely to revealed wisdom, but to Incarnate Wisdom. O beloved, here must be the chief place of resort for every tempted soul! We must flee to him “who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” We must keep close to him in communion. The sheep are never so safe from the wolf as when they are near the shepherd. We shall never be so secure from the arrows of Satan as when we have our head lying on the Savior’s bosom. Believer: walk according to his example; live daily in his fellowship; trust thou always in his blood; and in this way shalt thou be more than a conqueror even over the subtlety and craft of Satan himself.

What has the devil been doing these thousands of years? Has he not been the unwilling servant of God and of his Church? He has always been seeking to destroy the living tree; but when he has been trying to root it up, it has only been like a gardener digging with his spade, and loosening the earth to help the roots to spread themselves the more; and when he has been with his are seeking to lop the Lord’s trees, and to mar their beauty, what has he been, after all, but a pruning-knife in the hand of God, to take away the branches that do not bear any fruit, and to purge those that do bear some, that they may bring forth more fruit?

[At one time] the Church of Christ was like a little brook — just a tiny streamlet — and it was flowing along in a little narrow dell. Just a few saints were gathered together at Jerusalem, and the devil thought to himself; “Now I’ll get a great stone, and stop this brook from running.” So he goes and gets this great stone, and he dashes it down into the middle of the brook, thinking, of course, he should stop it from running any longer; but, instead of doing so, he scattered the drops all over the world, and each drop became the mother of a fresh fountain. You know what that stone was; it was persecution, and the saints were scattered by it; but then, “they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word,” and so the Church was multiplied, and the devil was defeated.

The current formatting and editing is copyrighted by Jim Ehrhard, 1999. You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author; (2) any modifications are clearly marked; (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction; and (4) you do not make more than 100 copies without permission. If you would like to post this material to your web site or make any use other than as defined above, please contact Teaching Resources International