“How do you deal with Satan?”

Steve Brown:
“How do you deal with Satan?” The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus in the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us, but there is a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey. Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you too. There was a day when Fridays were not so happy because that was the beginning of the week, we’re neither one pastors and we’re both glad that we’re not. That’s Pete Alwinson. Check out ForgeTruth.com and listen, check on that podcast. That is a great podcast and you’ll be glad I told you about it. It’s every Monday, it’s aired. And it’s archived, isn’t it? So, they can go back and listen to the, to any of them that have gone before. And if you’re a guy and you live in Central Florida, you might want to consider being a part of Forge. Go to ForgeTruth.Com. As you know, Pete comes in and we answer questions on Friday and we do love your questions. You can ask any question you want, anytime you want, 24 7, by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, following the instructions and recording your question, and sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your questions to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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if you live in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
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or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. I promise we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. And if you can’t, we’re not going to beat you over the head, we understand that. Do pray for this ministry. If you can help, that would be great. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Let’s pray together. Our great God, what a joy it is to stop for just a second and to remember who you are and to rest in you, the sovereign God of the universe. So, we come before you right now, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we thank you that we’re your children, deeply beloved and redeemed children of the Most High God. We come to you and we confess our sins, Lord. We need you every day of our life. And Lord, we rest and run to you, our Savior, with everything that we need for our lives. But you know us and you know our needs. And we need wisdom. We need kindness. We need your character. We need power. We need strength. We need faith. So, we trust you now. And we ask that this week-end, as we head to church, as we hang out with your people, as we worship, we pray that you’d catch us up in your greatness and your grandeur and your mercy and your kindness and your truth. And so, we pray for our leaders, pastors, teachers, priests, all those in the worship team who lead us into your presence. May we literally and figuratively bow our knees before you and would you speak into our hearts. Thanks for Key Life and this ministry and Steve Brown and this great team here and we just commit our time right now of Q&A to you, pray that you would use it for your glory. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

Steve Brown:
Hey, let’s go to the phone lines.

Caller 1:
Steve, you have opened the June 6th edition of the program with the teaser, Slay the dragon, then rejoice. However, you have stated over the years, time and time again, that the dragon has been slain, but his tail still swishes. I would like to know if there is a way to cut the dragon’s tail off and stop the swishing. Thank you.

Steve Brown:
That’s a good question. That’s an interesting way to put it. It’s simply stating a Bible doctrine that the battle has been won. Satan has been defeated and we are not dualist. We don’t believe that there’s two equal powers in the universe. One is good and one is bad. One is God and the other is the devil. If you’ve ever heard that the devil sits on one shoulder and God sits on the other and whichever one you listen to is the direction, that’s nonsense. That’s not the Christian faith. It’s over. Satan has lost this battle. But, there are plenty of Scriptures that give us warning about Satan. Jesus said to Peter, Satan has desired to have you. And, that means he’s desired to have you, the listener, and us, the teacher because that’s his business. He doesn’t like us. And so, when you say his tail still switches, it’s something that Christians need to not obsess about, but they need to be aware of. Lewis said that in his book The Screwtape Letters, that those were the two bad mistakes we make. We focus too much on the devil, or we don’t focus on the devil at all.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Absolutely. You know, when we go, the parallel that we have in our family is when we go gator hunting, you get that gator harpooned and brought into the boat and then he goes into his twirling and then you shoot him, in a particular way, with a bang stick in Florida. And then you’ve got to hold that mouth shut and tape it, but you’ve got to make sure before you grab his snout, that he’s really dead because even with some, you know, some, whatever’s left over, he can still do an enormous amount of damage. You’ve got to make sure. And we’ve got to make sure, you can’t, too many Christians, like you said, ignore Satan or give him too much credit. Yes as to, how do we cut off the tail? I don’t think we do. I think the answer is Jesus, when he comes back, he’s going to give the final death blow. So, the tail won’t swish anymore. It’s going to swish until Jesus comes back.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And that’s for a purpose.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You know, it’s God’s purpose. He’s sovereign over that anyway. I was looking for the question. We got an e-mail question on, can a Christian be demon possessed? Which I guess we can juxtapose with that particular question. Can a Christian be demon possessed?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, the Greek word is demonized. Can we be influenced? Can we be oppressed? I think so. But can we be taken over? I don’t think the Holy Spirit will allow that.

Steve Brown:
Because the Holy Spirit is resonant.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And there ain’t room.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. But we know that Satan can have, can gain fortresses. He can gain some footholds. And we have to be very serious about cooperating with the Holy Spirit to get him kicked out completely.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And the way you do that, the way you make a defense against Satan is recognize him, recognize the power of God, stay close to the means of grace, make sure that you’re with God’s people, study the word, pray, be aware because he prowls.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And I like what you said about the means of grace, prayer, the word of God, the people of God.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Worship. Yeah. A lot of those things.

Steve Brown:
What is the purpose of guilt? How can I determine true guilt and false guilt?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right. And that’s something that you’ve majored on in teaching, real guilt and false or unhealthy guilt.

Steve Brown:
Real guilt is when you’ve done it and you ought to feel guilty about it. And you’re forgiven if you’re a Christian. False guilt when they have done it unto you and it had nothing to do with you and you think that you are awful, that’s shame too. And those two things can play against each other. Guilt really has one real purpose for the Christian. And I’m talking about legitimate guilt. And that purpose is to send us to Christ. And it’s there that we get fixed if he wants to fix us. It’s there that we get forgiven. It’s there that we can affirm what the Christian faith is all about.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. Because we have been washed in the blood of the lamb. We have been cleansed. We’re wearing white clothes in the presence of God, but we still sin and grace and the work of Christ gives us the ability to say, to own our sin and which is so hard for people.

Steve Brown:
Oh, it is.

Pete Alwinson:
And it gets us into all kinds of relational problems You know, where we justify ourself, or we say we’re sorry, but here’s why I did it. No, I did it. And Jesus still loves me, and I’m okay. But I’m sorry.

Steve Brown:
That is so freeing. I mean, it makes, repentance is not difficult

Pete Alwinson:
it’s not really.

Steve Brown:
And confession is not difficult. Once you get God’s grace, that’s no big deal. You go, but of course I did it and I’m not going to do it again, but if I do, you’ll forgive me. And that’s the reason I won’t do it again. So, there is a wonderful gift that we’re given by God in the gospel. What does the Bible teach about, this is an e-mail, observing the Sabbath?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. You know, that’s one of those debatable issues when you get to the New Testament times. Is the Sabbath fulfilled in the Sabbath rest that we have in Christ, a la the book of Hebrews? Or do we have to rigorously maintain it like, you know, Exodus and Deuteronomy talk about? You know, one day in seven for worship, for sure. But we, you know, I don’t think it’s as rigorous as the Old Testament.

Steve Brown:
I think it’s good to remember, you know, when Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, that was a profound statement. And he was saying that God gave you this as a gift. And he says, sit down, rest, be still, set things aside, because you need that as a part of your life.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
It’s the gift that God gives and even commands.

Pete Alwinson:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
So. It’s okay.

Pete Alwinson:
And when you think of the feasts in Israel that he’s, sometimes they were week long and God is not a workaholic.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. He’s not.

Pete Alwinson:
And he doesn’t want you always working for him.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. What we must, this is quick and we only have a little bit of time. What do we have to do to be saved?

Pete Alwinson:
Jesus.

Steve Brown:
All right. We’re finished.

Pete Alwinson:
Accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord and add nothing to Him.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And realize that you need it. And you deserve nothing from Him.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
It’s that simple. You know, we give month long, year long courses on that, when it’s simply, I love the way you answered Jesus. I’ll go on that for a long time. That’s what it means to be saved. And, you want to sing for us or something? We have about 30 seconds.

Pete Alwinson:
No, because those who are saved would lose their salvation if I did that.

Steve Brown:
Hey listen, we do appreciate your questions. And no question is inappropriate except the one you don’t ask. We love sitting around and we love talking about this. Ruth Graham said to me one time, she said, I love hard questions because they send me to God’s word. Well guys, we’re out of here. But first, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.