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not ignorant of his devices
by Dr. Vance Havner
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V he A postle P aul has been dealing with an erring but now repentant brother in the church at Corinth. He recommends that the church forgive the man and joins them in this action of offering as one reason our text, “ Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” We may profitably expand the application of these words to many issues among Christians today. It would be well if we could say that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices but, also, for all our vaunted wisdom we are easily taken in by the arts of the adversary be cause we are unaware of his designs. It will pay us to get wise to the trickery of the tempter for he is more cunning than ever and his subtilties these days would deceive even the very elect. I venture to suggest several areas where he prospers with his devices because of our ignorance. For years there has been a conflict over the issue of fundamental- ism and modernism or conservatism and liberalism, or whatever you may choose to call it. There has been un deniably a departure from the faith in churches, schools, and religious bodies. Institutions founded to propagate the gospel have turned to another gospel which is not another. Paul’s verdict concerning the preacher of such false doctrine was, “ Let him be accursed” and he meant it so strongly that he said it twice. A popular modern preacher tells us that Paul, when he wrote this, was neither inspired nor inspiring but some of us still agree with Paul. It is no new issue of course for unbelief has plagued the church from the beginning. Lately, how ever, there is evident in some circles a tendency to grow weary of contending for the faith and sink into a twilight zone where conditions of low visibility prevail and where black and white are merged into a smudge of indefinite gray. The issue that almost broke the heart of Spurgeon, for instance, is not regarded now as so dreadful after all and some see no reason why two cannot walk together though they be not agreed, Much has been made of the sins of fighting Bible- believers. We readily agree that many blunders and errors and often grievous sins have marred our testi mony. Many contenders have become contentious and sins of the spirit have spoiled more than one defense of the truth. But just here Satan sneaks in with one of his artful devices. He raises such a howl over the failures of individual saints here and there that we lose sight of the
issue for which they stood. These occasional mistakes in the heat of battle should not make us forget the cause for which they fought. Every great issue in his tory has been at times poorly represented by its most ardent champions and Satan would stir up such a dust over one molehill that we cannot see a whole mountain of truth. Sound doctrine is as important as it ever was and it will be a sad day when Satan, by magnifying the faults of a few, or by any other device, lures us into a pleasant amiability that mistakes stretching its con science for broadening its mind. “ Tolerance” is the devil’s pet word in this field today but the man who tolerates error soon endorses it. “ The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” — not tolerate it, and that means evil doctrine as well as evil in any other form. We are to abhor that which is evil and even the loving John for bade hospitality to peddlers of strange doctrine lest we be partakers of their evil deeds. Nothing would please the devil more than to lure us into a false truce with error. It has begun to sound almost unchristian in many areas to take a stand against false teachers and there is reason to fear that not a few Christians who still believe the truth themselves are strangely ignorant of Satan’s devices. Another of Satan’s devices of which we seem to be ignorant these days lies in the fact that we are empha sizing the head above the heart. Education is a good thing and it is desirable that a minister should take a course of study before he begins to preach. The value of such schooling will of course depend on where he went to school and what he learned while there. But we have already come to where certain religious bodies allow no man to preach unless he has completed a pre scribed training. Such procedure in the past would have ruled out some of the greatest pulpit giants. Of course there will always be such preachers for God will con tinue to produce prophets after His own mold, church councils to the contrary notwithstanding. But it will be a dark day for us when we are more impressed by how much of the alphabet follows a minister’s name than by how much of God’s anointing oil is on his head and how much of heaven’s fire is in his heart. We are carried away these days with the notion that we must be abreast of all the topics of the Atheni ans in order that we may hold our own on Mars’ Hill.
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DECEMBER, 1965
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