known unknowns, part 1

As I said in my sermon, scripture provides us very little in the way of a behind the scenes look as to what kind of a being Satan is and the origins of the heavenly battle over creation (or even if that’s an appropriate description). Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have summed up the nature of our spiritual battle best. “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.”

Moses says this: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law” (Dt. 29:29). Part of being human is learning to be comfortable that only God knows certain things, and being comfortable with unanswered questions about some of those things. We are free to speculate, but we should only build our lives on what is solidly grounded. God doesn’t want us focusing on Satan, but rather on God, and the things we know we can do to stand firm.

I’ll give you some examples of things we know and things we don’t know.

We know this: Satan is not the opposite of God in the sense of being an equal opposing force. He opposes God, but his abilities are not anywhere close to equality. He answers to God, he’s dependent upon God to have any ability he has, he’s been defeated by God, and he ultimately will be destroyed by God. We know that Hell is not his home; he’s not Lord of the Underworld as people presume. Heaven is his origin, Earth is his current residence, and Hell is his destination, his punishment. He’s not the giver of Hell’s punishments, but the chief recipient.

Here’s what we don’t know. We don’t know exactly what Satan is. We don’t know for sure that he’s an angel – it may be a good term, but there are lots of terms for lots of kinds of heavenly beings, and we do not know exactly where Satan fits into all that. I’ll tell you what I’ve heard claimed by many people my whole life, but I have to say that you can’t find it in the Bible. We don’t know that he was the very highest angel. We don’t know that he was an archangel. We do not know that his name is or was Lucifer (Isaiah 14 is clearly talking about the king of Babylon). We don’t know that he was the chief musician in heaven. We don’t know that he was the angel in charge of Planet Earth. We know he has a serious beef with human beings, but we don’t know why or how that came about. We don’t know if he’s got a highly organized force of demons and humans who follow him in a grand conspiracy that is marching ahead in the world according to an ancient plan. We don’t know what the devil knows. We don’t know that he gave us modern technology or rock and roll. We don’t know if he’s a Democrat or a Republican. We just don’t know much of that.

The next post will give a brief synopsis on what we do know about Satan from the Old Testament.

- Pastor Bo