Sibbes Ch 9: “Believe Christ, Not Satan”
What is Truth? It was Pilate’s question.
Pilate was preceded by the Apostles and followers of Jesus, and His opposers, the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, scribes (all of The Religion Industry, TRI). Pilate as a hinge point was then followed in the Book of Acts and all the Epistles this same question was asked by those to whom the Gospel was presented.
But we can skip all the way back to Eve, at the ‘eve’ of it all, in Gen Ch 3. There she stood before conflicting claims of Truth, that which she heard from Adam, and perhaps God Himself, and now this serpent speaking with the voice of Satan himself. Which claim was, is, True?
Her conflict, remains ours, even now multiple thousands of years later. What is True?
Sibbes introduces this conflict in his Ch 9. Headline sentences from Sibbes are below:
9.1 How We Should Think of Christ
Matt 4:6
Satan’a Strategy of Separation, Isolation
Sibbes lays out the principle of Satan’s always strategy:
so his [Satan’s] daily study is to divide between the Son and us by breeding false opinions in us of Christ, as if there were not such tender love in him to such as we are. It was Satan’s art from the beginning to discredit God with man, by calling God’s love into question with our first father Adam. His success then makes him ready at that weapon still.
Sibbes Ch 9, Sec 1 (Highlights mine)
The Bibles Examples of Satan’s Separation Strategy
- Eve from God, then Adam from God, resulting in them both being separated (expelled) from God.
- Abel, then Cain himself, from the first parents, Adam and Eve using the covetousness of honor-seeking on one’s own behalf
- Joseph the Christ-type son of Jacob from his brothers and father, by the pride of the brothers
- Job from his children, his possessions and prominence, his wife (no loss there), from his physical health, and finally by his three closest friends (who painfully judged him condemned before God), by Satan’s two-fold attack claiming that Job would then curse God
- God’s people from the Promised Land into slavery of Egypt because of God’s judgment upon the idolatry of TRI as it had emerged in Israel, blended with and part of TPI (The Political Industry), energized by Satan taking command of Israel’s worship and order
9.2 When Christ Seems To Be an Enemy
John 17:6, 11
9.3 When Doubt Assails Us
Isaiah 53:5
Closure
Sibbes ends Ch 9 as follows:
Whatever may be wished for in an all sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ:
1. Authority from the Father. All power was given to him (Matt. 28:18).
2. Strength in himself. His name is `The mighty God’ (Isa. 9:6).
3. Wisdom, and that from his own experience, how and when to help (Heb. 2:18).
4. Willingness, as being bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh (Gen. 2:23; Eph. 5:30).
Sibbes Ch 9, Closing words.