Satan’s Overplayed His Hand

If there’s one thing Scripture teaches about Satan, it’s that he constantly overplays his hand. For all of his confidence and tactical brilliance, he is effortlessly and repeatedly outmaneuvered by the God of Israel.

It also looks like our Lord has a flair for the dramatic, for it’s always right when Satan’s triumph seems inevitable that Christ emerges victorious and cracks the foundations of Hell with His heel.

Consider the example of Adam and Eve. At their fall, they abdicated their theocratic throne and Satan coronated himself King over the world in their place. Perfection was lost, paradise was lost, and it looked like the hope of God was gone.

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But then, just as Satan consummated his empire, the Lord descended to the Serpent’s new domain and rendered a judgement:

“…I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel" (Gen 3:15)

And that child did come. His name was Jesus, but like Adam and Eve, it looked like He too was conquered by the Devil. For years Christ toiled in obscurity. For weeks he was tempted by the enemy. For hours He languished on the cross. For days, He laid dead in a tomb.

As far as believers were concerned, mankind’s hope was lost, for mankind’s hope had died. Yet it was just as the disciples were coming to grips with Jesus’ apparent defeat that He appeared to them in the flesh. Hope had been resurrected.

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This motif of absolute despair turning into miraculous hope is repeated across the Scripture.

When Herod killed the Bethlehem babies, it fulfilled prophecy to prove that Christ was the Messiah. When the church was persecuted, it expanded from Jerusalem into every empire on the Earth. When the church’s greatest apologist, Stephen, was martyred, Saul became Paul.

The point here is that martyrdom is a direct attack against Heaven, but the consequences of martyrdom are reversed into a merciless barrage against Hell.

Charlie Kirk was killed because he told the truth. The enemy considered him too terrible a threat to tolerate, so he publicly executed Kirk to eliminate him and warn all others who dare follow in his footsteps.

But if there’s one thing martyrdom’s never done, it’s silence faithful believers who preach Christ. On the contrary, martyrdom has only served to be a sort of nitrous for those who preach the gospel, comforted in knowing that the world hates them because the world hated Jesus first (Jn 15:18).

This is why all of us notice the supernatural hope surrounding last week’s tragic events. Exactly what will happen now that Charlie Kirk has died, no one but Christ can say, but one thing is certain: what Satan means for evil, God transforms for good.

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