We are not ignorant of his devices. (II Corinthians 2:11)

We actually know a good bit about Satan. More than we think, I expect. His history, his driving force, and his game plan are spelled out all through Scripture. We are left with tons of unanswered questions, but we know enough to understand how he works and what to do about him.

His devices. We know his maneuvers, his designs, his schemings, his wiles, and how resourceful he is. (Those are all different ways the Greek for “devices” is translated in various versions.)

Look at it this way. Satan is no fool. He has been studying human nature from the early days of the human race. He knows human psychology to a degree that any university in the land can only imagine. If they gave doctorates to serpents, he would have degrees out the kazoo. He is one smart dude.

He knows you.

The question before us, today, though, class, is this: do you know him? Do you pay attention to how he works?

There are two extremes to avoid: going to seed on Satan and seeing him in every thing, everywhere, is one extreme; and completely ignoring him is the other. There’s a balance somewhere in the middle where God’s people should take our stand.

If you are trying to do right, to live for God, to resist the encroaching infiltration of the world, then you are in his crosshairs. He has targeted you.

You’d better learn how he works and how to resist him.

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As a pastor, I sometimes trip over the words coming out my mouth when I try to say that “God uses ‘little people.'” There ought to be a better way of saying that.

Some of us remember how Leona Helmsley offended the world by saying that “only little people pay taxes.” She is now comfortably serving a long sentence for tax evasion in some federal institution. The judge probably added another six months just for the “little people” put-down.

How about “ordinary.” God uses ordinary people. Folks like you and me. He uses ordinary things. Ordinary days.

Look up the definition and you’ll quickly see the word means different things to different people. To some, it implies inferiority and the commonplace. In this article, it simply means: the normal, the usual.

A day like today. A person like you and me. A thing like this on my desk.

God delights in using the non-special.

Here’s a couple of songs on that theme.

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The July/August issue of “The Atlantic” has an article that blew me away. “Why We Should Mock Terrorists” has as its alternate title “The Case for Calling Them Nitwits.”

I do like this. Finally (I felt when seeing it), someone has struck the right note about these terrorists. They are truly fools.

Underneath the graphics on the lead page of the article we read: They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?

We want to think these jihadists are purists in their faith and disciplined in their devotion to their God. Hardly, it turns out. In fact, we learn that a great many of these terrorists can’t even read and write. All they know is what their wrong-headed leaders tell them. And like dunces, they believe all they hear and never turn a critical eye to anything.

Such people are not only our foes; they are their own worst enemies.

Hence my question: When is it all right to call your enemy an idiot and a nitwit?

Wrong answer: when it’s true.

Right answer: When your goal is not to win him over, but to destroy him.

If your goal is to win him, then gentler methods are called for. You will want to understand his position, sympathize with where he is coming from, answer his objections, and reason with him. You’ll need to build a relationship with him.

But if the enemy needs to be sent into the nether-regions, all bets are off. Forget the nicer stuff and take the gloves off. Tell him the truth about himself.

Believe it or not, there is some Scriptural grounds for doing that.

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If, as we say, the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” is heaven’s Good News, and if this good news is the answer to mankind’s deepest, biggest, worst problems, and if it’s free and eternal and for everyone, one would think people would be crashing through the church doors to get in on it.

Why aren’t they?

Not only are they not breaking down our doors to partake of God’s free offer in Christ, most of our neighbors act as if the church is completely irrelevant to anything that concerns them. And, if and when we do have the opportunity to enlighten them on Christ’s wonderful blessings of grace, some laugh in our faces or even scoff and dismiss us as nuts.

What’s going on here? Why are people not clamoring to get in on this wonderful thing God has made available for all mankind in Jesus Christ?

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I put a note on Facebook this week to say I’m working on a sermon on this theme, based on Zechariah 4:10, “Who has despised the day of small things?” I asked the question, “What small things have you seen God use? Think of things I may have overlooked.”

The answers are still coming in. A song. A flower. A little boy’s lunch. A baby in a manger. A teenage mother. A star. A cup of water. A couple of coins in the offering from a widow. Mustard seed.

In the last year or two, I’ve written on this website a sermon on two on this subject. Without an index here to locate the myriads of messages, the only way I know to locate them is by googling something like “McKeever/Day of Small Things.” It should take you to the previous sermons on this blog.

That sermon–any sermon on the subject I would think–needs to point out that God loves to use:

–Small numbers. Jonathan told his armor-bearer (I Samuel 14:6) that it makes little difference to God whether He saves by the few or the many. Good reminder.

You and I know small churches that feel than can’t do anything because their members are few in number. Not so.

–Small people. The Apostle Paul suggested in I Corinthians 1:26ff that the members of that church look around. They would see not many celebrities, not many people the world acclaims as great or mighty or rich or gifted. God chose to use the nobodies of the world.

–Small gifts.No one illustrates this better than the boy who gave his lunch to Jesus and ended up feeding five thousand (John 6:9) or the widow who dropped her two coins into the offering and went on her way (Mark 12:42). Neither had any way of knowing what this meant to the Lord or that we would still be talking about them 2,000 years later.

Small moments.You prayed a prayer of commitment. You said “I do” at the altar. You decided to start reading your Bible. You went next door and invited your neighbor to church.

God loves to use small things. The thrust of what follows, however, is the implication of that for us. Mark it down in big letters and underscore it, the fact that God delights in using nothings and nobodies means a great deal to his children.

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“Pastor, my aunt Bernice would like you to visit her this week. There’s something she wants to talk with you about.”

I knew this young deacon’s Aunt Bernice. She was up in years and sickly, and while not a member of our church, she was related to quite a number. I figured with her years and health, she wanted to talk with the minister about getting read to see the Lord.

She did, but not in the way I had expected.

The next afternoon, as we sat in the living room of her small shotgun house, she said, “Pastor, I know I’m saved. I have no doubt about that. I remember being saved. But there’s something else bothering me.”

“Pastor, I haven’t done right by the church.”

She continued, “As a young adult, I got away from the church and quit going. I raised my son without the church and really came to regret it. And now I’m old and can’t even go. But if you’d let me, I’d like to put my membership in and become a member. I’ll pray for you all and send an offering from my monthly check.”

I assured her we would be honored to receive her, and took care of that the next Sunday.

I never forgot her statement—“I haven’t done right by the church”—and have had occasion over the years since to tell her story, then ask my hearers, “Have you done right by the Lord’s church?”

A man in our congregation was dying. On one occasion as I visited in his home, he asked to speak to me privately. I felt it coming: he wanted to confess something that was bothering him before he went to meet the Savior.

I was right.

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The other day Oprah made 300 guests mighty happy when she announced plans to take everyone of them with her to Australia. Seven days and nights. All expenses paid.

The youtube video of that has received a lot of traffic as people relived that moment with the lucky audience.

I have an announcement. An even better one.

(Drum roll please.)

“Ladies and gentlemn, we are going…to…HEAVEN!!!!”

And not just for a week. For eternity.

And not just a few of us. All who are in Christ.

And we’re never coming back.

And it’s free. All expenses paid. “Not by works of righteousness we have done but according to His mercy He has saved us.” (Titus 3:5)

That is the glorious hope of all believers. It is the solid promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the consistent testimony of Scripture. It is the eventual destiny of all the saved.

It’s my eventual destination. It’s what the Lord Jesus meant when He told the thief on the cross, “Today, you shall be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

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We don’t like to wait. We want what’s coming to us now.

Financial people are telling us that Americans are buying fewer Certificates of Deposit at banks, preferring rather to have low-interest-bearing checking accounts so their money is always available. We don’t like to wait ten years. (One wonders if U.S. Savings Bonds are selling. I never hear of them any more.)

This weekend in Jackson, Kentucky, a man was upset with his wife because she had cooked his eggs wrong. So, he got his shotgun and shot and killed her, then turned the gun on her daughter (his step-daughter), and killed three more neighbors before ending his own life. Someone said the eggs were cold and that is what set him off.

Aside from the ridiculousness of that happening as a result of cold eggs, I want to raise the obvious question here: Where is the justice in this?

A man takes five lives and pays for it by ending his own life. Is that fair? Not in any book I’ve ever seen. So, where is the justice?

There are only two possible answers that I can see: either there is no justice in the universe or there must be an accounting after death.

It’s the latter choice that Bible-believers hold to, and with great determination and fortitude. Those who know and believe God’s revelation through His Word believe strongly that after this life ends will come a time of standing before the Lord when judgements will be handed out for all eternity–some for eternal reward, some eternal damnation.

Otherwise there is no justice in the universe.

That the ungodly will face a judgment in eternity is the position found in Psalm 73. So it’s not a new revelation, but has been a part of our faith’s framework from the beginning.

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The other evening, my wife came into the den where I sat watching a baseball game on television. “Thank you for doing the dishes and cleaning the microwave,” she said.

I had not told Margaret I did that, and she didn’t see me do it. And yet, she thanked me. Why? Because there’s no one else at our house.

You and I see the brilliant sunrise and drink in the wonders of the night sky and we thank God. Why? We didn’t see Him do anything. We only saw the work.

Answer: There is no one else. He is all the God there is.

When we look at our Lord and say “God,” we have exhausted the category.

The implications of this are enormous.

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Watching Saints quarterback Drew Brees on television last night, I thought about something the leader of Southern Baptists’ evangelism program said some 40 or more years ago.

Kenneth Chafin headed up the evangelism department of what was then called the SBC Home Mission Board. In the early 1970s, they had developed a cutting-edge program of personal soulwinning they called “WIN Schools,” for “Witness Involvement Now,” as I recall. I took the pilot training and led many “schools” in churches across the South.

In developing this program, Chafin was talking about how difficult it is to get the news out to the membership of our churches. “It takes 5 years to say hello to Southern Baptists,” he laughed.

The difficulty, as he saw it, was that he had to tell the various denominational leaders of the program. They in turn passed the word on to their underlings. At some point, the editors of the state Baptist weeklies got involved and picked up the news. Even then, the grassroots of Southern Baptists still did not have a clue of the program. Pastors needed to be told and retold, after which they themselves would get the word to the members. How long it would take for the message to penetrate to the bottom layer of the membership was anyone’s guess. Five years was Dr. Chafin’s guess.

So, last night, Drew Brees was on television speaking at a hastily called news conference. He had a bright idea for a new tradition he wants to begin among the fan base of the New Orleans Saints. Furthermore, he doesn’t have five years to do it. Yesterday was Tuesday and the first game of the season comes Thursday night in the Superdome. Brees wanted to get the word out to all attending the game in 48 hours. Furthermore, he intends this as a permanent tradition.

Big plans. A large assignment. After the clip, an anchor raised the obvious question: “Now, the problem is getting the word to the 70,000 Saints who will be in the Dome Thursday night.”

This morning–Wednesday–I found out how Brees pulled it off.

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