Dear Friends,
The devil isn’t a numpty. He’s a strategist.
And we’re exhorted to be on our guard against his wiles. He doesn’t telegraph his punches, as often as not plays the ‘long game’, and is prepared to pay a short-term price for bigger, long-term gains.
He’s good at chess.
Except the ‘chess’ he plays is set on a far larger board, and the stakes are infinitely higher. The aim, though, is always the same. He’s out to check and corner the King. To kill the King.
There’s a sense in which that’s the backdrop to the whole great story-line of the Bible. The devil’s endeavor to kill the King and wipe Him off the board. Cain kills Abel. Pharaoh engages in genocide. Saul throws his army at David. Athaliah tries to wipe out the whole royal house of Judah. Herod massacres the Bethlehem boys.
Check, corner, kill the King. The King is always his ultimate target.
But the queen – that is, the bride of Christ – the queen he has in his sights as well, because, next to the King, the devil knows well that the queen is the one he has to watch for.
He’s good at chess. He knows how the game is played. He knows that the queen is always the greatest single danger to his purposes, the biggest threat to all his wicked plans, the one best able to scupper all his sorry schemes, and the one most likely to ruin his own vain attempt at a reign.
So he’s careful, therefore, to do whatever he can to render the queen, the bride of the King – to render the queen immobile, and leave her largely impotent. So the queen is a target too.
The church is his way of getting at Christ. We need to be watchful, alert. Wise as serpents, said Jesus (Matt.10.16). He didn’t mean that His church should stoop to low-down, mean and take-no-prisoners tactics: nor did He mean that His bride should be deceptive or destructive in the way in which His kingdom is advanced.
He meant rather that we are to get into the mind of the serpent: we’re to learn the serpent’s wisdom, in order to anticipate and counter it, rather than in any sense to imitate and copy it. Recognise the devil’s standard strategies and figure out how best they can be nullified and foiled. Be wise as serpents. Always.
And especially in days such as these, when it’s easy in the maelstrom of a damaging pandemic to lose our concentration, to be somewhat distracted, and to miss the real significance of what’s going on. That there’s a war against the coronavirus I don’t for a moment doubt or dispute: that the threat is grave, the challenge is great, and the consequent damage severe, none in their right mind could ever deny.
A war far more serious still, though, is also at present being waged. What if Covid-19 is but the camouflage, subtly disguising and hiding a far more lethal offensive being planned against the King? What if our wholesale pre-occupation with this dreadful disease is the means by which a danger far more damaging remains undetected and missed? What if this virus which goes for the lungs is a cover for a move designed to throttle the queen, to suck from the lungs of the bride of the King the Breath which is her very life?
The devil is good at chess, remember. The master of cunning camouflage. He doesn’t advertise his presence, nor does he ever telegraph his punches. Indeed, the opposite’s the case. He’s the master of deception, feigning to attack one way, so that fooled by his move he can catch us off guard and land his killer blow.
Be wise as serpents, said Jesus. For perhaps His queen, the bride of Christ, is in danger today of being conned into complacency, and exposed thereby to something of a ‘killer blow’ the devil means to land – a blow designed not just to ‘wind’ her, but to remove the Wind of the Spirit entirely from her lungs. A few pawns lost in the progress, even a knight or a bishop or two – that’s a price which perhaps he concludes it’s worth paying if he can immobilize the queen.
Let’s get a bit more specific. The lockdown saw the churches all being closed. Congregations not allowed to congregate. The gathering of God’s people to declare to all the praises of their Saviour and their Lord – well, that was all precluded. Up and down the land. Everywhere.
It felt for a moment as if the church had suddenly been gagged. Unable to meet. Unable to gather for worship. Unable to preach the gospel. Silenced, it seemed, overnight.
But then came ‘Zoom’, a word we’d mostly never used that much, except perhaps when buying a colourful ice-lolly for the children as a special summer treat. The queen then did a crash course on technology, embracing Zoom and ‘livestream’ like some much-loved, long-lost friends. And before you could get the word ‘YouTube’ out of your mouth, we were grinning again like some Cheshire cat as the tables were turned and the bride of the King was wiping the smile from the serpent.
The churches may all have been closed. But the Word of God isn’t bound! Hallelujah, our Lord God Almighty reigns! Jesus has triumphed and He gives His people the victory!
Because, of course, our recourse to the use of technology has meant that our ‘reach’ is immeasurably greater. Isn’t this invariably how wonderfully our wise and sovereign Jesus always works? Let the devil do his worst: the Lord ensures the ploys of the devil backfire, and only serve to further the purpose of God.
Isn’t that what happened at the cross? The devil’s cruel endeavor to destroy the King itself secured the very grace of God’s salvation which the devil had so carefully sought to thwart. Hallelujah, our Lord God Almighty reigns!
Isn’t that what happened through the wave of persecution which the early church endured? The devil’s ruthless endeavor to bring about the extinction of the church, the bride of the King, issued only in a remarkable expansion of the church. Hallelujah, our Lord God Almighty reigns!
Isn’t what we’re facing now just the same? The devil’s attempt to close down the church, to ‘immobilize’ the queen and silence her voice – that’s only served to further the cause of the gospel, to advance the purpose of God, to sound out the message more widely. Hallelujah, our Lord God….
But wait, wait…..
What do you take the devil for? He’s not a fool. He’s a strategist. He’s good at chess.
Do you think the devil hadn’t figured out that the queen would move as she’s done, resorting to the wonders of contemporary technology? Do you think that really took him by surprise, and left him muttering, all red-faced, ‘Oh dear, I should have thought of that’?
He’s wily. Not a numpty.
He thinks long-term, down the line, a few good moves ahead.
What if the closure of the churches was in truth a feigned assault, precisely because he’d anticipated just how the queen would then move; how we’d be fooled by this move and resort as we’ve done to the use of a ‘livestream and Zoom’ sort of life?
What if he’s happy to have the queen start to crow over how much greater a ‘reach’ we now have, and grow just a little complacent as we celebrate this ‘victory’ and adjust to this new way we have of ‘doing church’ (because novelty always has a certain appeal)?
What if the closure of the churches was but camouflage? What if he’s been banking on our consequent complacency when seeing how that closure can be countered – what if he’s been banking on precisely that complacency to blind us to the ‘sucker punch’ which he’d planned for all along?
What if the far greater ‘reach’ the church has now acquired is the trade-off he was willing to make, the hit he was willing to take, the price he was willing to pay, for the chance to effect a far more damaging blow to the bride of Christ, a blow that would ruin her lungs and leave her unable to breathe?
What if the devil is better at chess than you care to give him credit for?
What if he’s been simply positioning himself for his next, far more death-dealing move?
Here’s what I think he may be up to, at least in some measure. And here’s where we, therefore, need to be so very much on our guard.
First, there’s the danger we become competitive (if we weren’t inclined that way already). There’s a market out there, we realise – in these days of lockdown and closure, we’re told, one in every four persons has been tuning in to a church service on the internet. That equates to over 15 million people – which is a sizeable ‘market’. And in days when geography has little or no real relevance, we’re keen to tap into that market.
For the glory of God, of course!
And the way you tap into that market is by putting your wares up and out there on the internet. As accessible as you can make it. As slick as you can produce it. It’s a buyer’s market, so you’ve got to be good. We’re inclined to start looking over our shoulder to see not only what others are doing but also .. well, how they are doing. In terms of market share. Because the stats are all there. How many people are viewing. How many people are ‘liking’. And so on.
And before you know it, worship has become a ‘production’; and what were once just local fellowships have become (in a world which is suddenly no longer local at all but wholly and thoroughly global) – they’ve subtly become but ‘brand’ names in a dog-eats-dog environment. If we’re not on our guard, without even being that aware that it’s taken place, we will find that in truth we’re competing against one another.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. Jesus said it. The devil isn’t stupid: he knows it. The lockdown’s created a context where, free of any geographic bounds, an ‘empire-building’ culture can be grown. We must be on our guard against that, because it’s a subtle, insidious thing. And a part of being on our guard will surely mean we’re careful, and quick, to work in close conjunction with like-minded congregations: rejecting the lure of ‘empire’ and embracing the call of the Kingdom.
There’s the danger, too, we become more and more consumers. The ‘market’ is competitive, because the customer is king. When travel and time are no longer significant factors in an internet version of church, you can pick and choose both where and when you join a service of worship. You get to choose. You can ‘shop around’. You can choose what’s most convenient. You can surf the worship services until you find whatever suits your preference.
It’s a very real temptation, is it not? Why would you not, after all? But the end result can easily be we sleep-walk our way into living our faith as consumers. Church becomes a commodity. Worship is reduced to being a ‘product’ on the shelves out there in cyberspace. We can ‘shop around’. We can pick and choose. We can drift into being mere consumers – and play into the devil’s hands. For in that world where ‘church’ has become a market place, the customer is king.
Except, of course, as sinful men and women we are neither customer nor king. It’s a lie of the devil, beguiling us into a version of faith which will throttle the very life of the church; the queen will simply be immobilized in terms of any spiritual potency.
How careful we all need to be to recognize the dangers that there are in these new days of ‘global reach’. It’s not just the church whose ‘reach’ has increased. It’s each of us as individuals too: our ‘reach’ has vastly increased – you can ‘go’ where you like, you can choose what you like, you can call the tune. You can be in a sense like God. It’s garden of Eden stuff all over again. We must be on our guard.
There’s more to be said, but I must leave it at that for now.
We can never be too vigilant in time of war. The devil is a strategist. Out there on the chess-board of eternity, to get at the King he will always target the queen. May we not be found wanting in these days of great challenge, and may we learn to be wise as serpents.
Yours in Christ Jesus our Lord
Jeremy Middleton