Can Satan Put Thoughts into Our Heads?

Audio Transcript

We have been talking about feelings lately, our thought lives. On Friday, we requested if God can study our thoughts. The resounding response is of course, God can study our views, and not only our feelings, but also the intentions of our hearts. That fact carries large implications for every of us. It usually means God can see the difference amongst what we want to say and what we basically do say. He can weigh the variation. So we can glorify God by halting sinful words from exiting our mouths. That’s a single of the fascinating implications we looked at Friday, in APJ 1917.

We’re going to begin this new week with one more brief but profoundly critical dilemma about our thought life. It’s questioned by Garrick: “Pastor John, can Satan himself put ideas into our heads?”

Certainly, he can and he does. And of program, the urgent thoughts then are, How do we figure out them? And how do we resist them and not get controlled by them? But prior to I give some biblical examples of this, it would be fantastic to remind ourselves that Satan’s putting ideas in our minds and placing desires in our hearts or our bodies are quite closely similar.

In some cases he may put dreams for something sinful immediately into our hearts, adopted by thoughts that justify these sinful desires. In some cases he may perhaps do the reverse by putting deceptive ideas in our minds that lead to sinful wishes. Now, Garrick only questioned about ideas, but I just desired to make plain that feelings and needs are so carefully associated that we ought to be asking about both, so I’ll retain that in thoughts.

Satan and Our Sinful Nature

Let us begin with the biblical text that really utilizes the terms that Garrick made use of in posing his question — namely, “Does Satan basically place thoughts in our minds?” Here’s John 13:2: “During supper” — that is, all through the Previous Supper — “the devil experienced already put it into the coronary heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him.” The imagined, the intention, the drive was there in Judas. Satan, John claims, “put it” there.

Now, here’s an additional clarification while. That does not necessarily mean — it does not necessarily mean for Judas, and it doesn’t necessarily mean for us — that the intention and the want did not occur out of Judas’s personal sinful character. He’s described in John 12:6 as a thief who is getting funds out of the disciples’ funds bag. It claims he’s a individual who experienced no heart for the very poor, which means he was also a liar, which also suggests he was greedy. So we can infer fairly certainly from this that Jesus was not the kind of Messiah Judas desired to adhere to. He experienced other matters heading on in his mind and coronary heart. All Satan had to do was intensify and immediate Judas’s individual sinfulness. That’s genuine with us as nicely. There’s no apparent good line concerning the feelings that Satan puts and the views that we occur up with, or the dreams that Satan places and the dreams that we occur up with.

“Our individual sinfulness is like an invitation, like a welcome mat and an open up door to Satan.”

We don’t know precisely how. It is these how inquiries that baffle us, isn’t it? We really don’t know exactly how Satan interacts with our own sinful mother nature to do his ugly work. But I think it is honest to say that our possess sinfulness is like an invitation, like a welcome mat and an open doorway to Satan. That’s what Paul suggests in Ephesians 4:26–27: “Do not enable the sun go down on your anger, and give no chance to the satan.” In other phrases, sinfully keeping a grudge is like a welcome mat place out for Satan. And it performs the other way all over. When Satan beckons us to sin with misleading feelings or desires, our own sinful mother nature kicks in and can make those beckonings far more attractive.

Unguarded Minds

Here’s another biblical example to reply Garrick’s problem, “Does Satan put matters in our heart?” Here’s Functions 5:3, in which Ananias and Sapphira determine to lie to the apostles and keep back again section of their pledge. Peter stated, “Ananias, why has Satan crammed your coronary heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to maintain back for you component of the proceeds of the land?” Ananias and his wife had the assumed, “Ah, let’s make a minor further revenue for ourselves by lying about how considerably we sold our land for.” And the assumed became a plan, and the approach turned a deed, and Peter describes that complete course of action as “Satan stuffed your hearts.” Satan brought about the prepare to appear a lot more fascinating than honesty or worship. Satan’s design filled them up and conquered all their other feelings and desires. It was a very costly sin (see Acts 5:5, 10).

Another instance is how Satan moved King David to just take a census in Israel from God’s will. “Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to variety Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1) — that is, to choose a census of Israel. He put the assumed in David’s head, and he designed the believed seem like navy wisdom when it was, in simple fact, distrust in God. And ultimately, he experienced to repent of that folly.

We could think, as we go back to the incredibly commencing of the Bible, that the deception of Eve in the garden of Eden was not like the way Satan performs today, simply because it was by signifies of an real dialogue concerning the devil and Eve. But Paul claimed that Christians should be on guard towards a equivalent assault just like in the garden of Eden. He explained in 2 Corinthians 11:3, “I am worried that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a honest and pure devotion to Christ.” Here, Satan’s operate in our minds is referred to as primary us astray, corrupting our feelings. We never know how Satan does it, but there it is he does it. He can wreck and distort and mislead our thoughts and change them into thoughts against Christ and for sin.

Weapons of Truth

Now, the main fact to keep in head in all this is that Satan is a deceiver, a liar, a murderer. He performs his destruction mostly by deceiving, by lying — sometimes with fifty percent-truths, but generally with misleading, murderous intent. Here’s Revelation 12:9: “The excellent dragon was thrown down, that historical serpent, who is known as the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the complete globe.” John 8:44: “[The devil] was a assassin from the beginning, and does not stand in the real truth, because there is no reality in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his very own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

All his views, in other words, are deceptive. They are deceptive views. Whether they are 50 percent-truths or full falsehoods, they’re deceptive. All his miracles are lying miracles — that is, miracles in the service of a lie (2 Thessalonians 2:9) — which means that the central and constant-point out weapon versus him is fact, faith in the fact.

Here’s the way Paul claims it in 2 Timothy 2:25–26. We must suitable our opponents “with gentleness. God may possibly perhaps grant them repentance primary to a understanding of the truth of the matter.” And here’s the impact of that: “. . . and they might come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil.” That is how he does it: know-how of the real truth. Jesus said, “You will know the truth of the matter, and the truth will established you free” (John 8:32).

Allow me preserve looking through 2 Timothy I stopped in the center of verse 26. “. . . they may arrive to their senses and escape from the snare of the satan, right after currently being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26). How did he seize them? How did Satan seize them? By trapping them with lies, untruth. He persuaded them to imagine a lie by placing lies in their hearts, by deceiving them that error is greater than truth, sin is superior than righteousness. The solution, Paul claims, is to converse the truth of the matter and show righteous enjoy.

That is precisely what we get in Ephesians 6:11–18. “Put on the entire armor of God, that you could be capable to stand versus the schemes of the satan.” Then 6 parts of armor are stated, and 4 of the 6 relate right to reality, mainly because the schemes of the satan are lies, and we defend ourselves and others with the fact:

1. belt of truth of the matter (Ephesians 6:14)
2. shoes of the gospel (Ephesians 6:15)
3. sword of the Spirit, which is the phrase of God (Ephesians 6:17)
4. protect of faith, which is religion in the term of God (Ephesians 6:16)

“Satan can place ideas in our minds, but God has specified us all the things we want to understand them and renounce them.”

You have the term of God in your hand like a sword, and you put the defend up, and you trust the phrase of God, the truth of the matter.

Renouncing Satan’s Lies

I believe the reply to Garrick’s dilemma is pretty distinct. Certainly, Satan can put thoughts in our minds, but God has supplied us everything we will need to figure out them and renounce them. Right here are the inquiries I believe we have to have to talk to of each assumed that arrives into our thoughts.

1. Is this considered fake to Scripture?
2. Is this imagined fake to the glory of Christ?
3. Is this considered bogus to Christ-honoring enjoy for some others?
4. Is this imagined bogus to purity?
5. Is this imagined serving to make sin eye-catching and to make holiness unattractive?

If the reply to any of people inquiries is indeed, then we don’t forget Revelation 12:11, exactly where John states, “They have conquered [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the phrase of their testimony, for they liked not their life even unto dying.” In other words and phrases, we transform to Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us, and we acquire maintain of treasured claims that he’s specified of his exceptional really worth and helpfulness, and we testify to Satan, “Christ is my reality. Christ is my treasure. Be gone!” And we switch and we walk with Christ in the real truth.