Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 5:8
Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter
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Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles
Message: Satan: The Roaring Lion
Airdate: 11/6/2026
Program: 2395
Satan: The Roaring Lion Part A
The Field Museum in Chicago. Big building, if you haven’t been there. Lots to see. One of the displays that you see when you go to the Field Museum, and if you don’t know to look for it, you might miss it, but there is a display there. It’s two stuffed trophy lions that they have on display. They don’t have big manes, and they’re not particularly big by lion standards, but they are... the most notorious killers, animal killers, human killers, in history. And if you go back to 1898, that’s where those lions are from. 1898, there was a construction, big construction project in Africa, so all these guys went out there, they’re all living in tents, and they’re building this big, massive bridge there. When these two lions began to terrorize the camp, and they developed an appetite... for human flesh. It is estimated that these two lions killed and devoured up to 135 people before being shot. They’re known as the man-eaters of Tsavo. And the story of these guys, there’s been several movies that have been made about this. In the 90s, there was a movie called “The Ghost and the Darkness” that maybe you’ve seen. And so you can check out these lions next time you go to the Field Museum.
But I’d like you to imagine with me, if you would, what it was like to be in one of those camps, let’s say after about 25 people have been eaten. It’s nighttime. There you are in your tent. You’ve heard all the stories. Maybe you heard the screams of the people that were being eaten the night before. And it’s nighttime. What are you doing? I’m thinking you’re not sleeping, right? You’re laying there, eyes wide open, and you are on high alert. “What was that? Did you hear a twig snap? What was that? What was that shadow? Did you see a shadow there?” “No, I didn’t see a shadow. Did you see a shadow?” That’s what I think it was like. Everyone laying in bed, wide awake, on high alert. Why? Because there was a lion lurking. There was a lion, two of them actually, on the hunt.
It’s kind of the same thing that happens when we maybe think there’s an intruder in our home at night. All of a sudden, you know that feeling, right? You have that rush, that adrenaline rush, and you lay in bed and you listen, don’t you? Do you hear anything? And if you hear something, maybe you let the German shepherd go, or you get in touch with your friend Smith and Wesson, and you get ready to take care of business. When an enemy is close, we go on high alert.
And my dear church, what I want to say to you today from God’s word is that there is an enemy amongst us. There is an enemy that is lurking. He never sleeps. He is far more intelligent than we are. He has all of us under constant surveillance. He knows us better than we know ourselves, knows our tendencies, knows our weaknesses. He is very powerful. He has a huge army that is at his disposal, and he hates us. If we had eyes to see, I believe that we would see his presence or one of his associates right here in the room with us right now. And I am, of course, talking about our great enemy, Satan. Our great enemy, Satan.
I wonder if I, as I said his name, did anybody sort of quietly sort of roll their eyes at the name or the thought of... because we certainly live in a culture that laughs at the suggestion that there is a spiritual evil being. And I think back to the 90s when the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live would have her sketches, and oftentimes she would sort of coil her face, and she would say, “Satan,” right? Like this. And everybody laughed and laughed. And if our secular world denies the existence of God, they certainly giggle at the existence of Satan. They see and fear no lion in the jungle. And friends, it’s not just the secular world. All those people out there, they don’t believe in Satan. There was a recent Barna poll of self-professed Christians, and half of them said that Satan is a symbol, not a real person. I would say the lion has camouflaged himself really, really well, wouldn’t you?
And then you go to the Bible. And you begin reading through the Bible, especially the gospel accounts. And what do you run into over and over and over again? Demon, demon, Satan. Jesus is constantly being confronted or confronting these evil beings. So much so that to deny the existence of Satan and demons is... you almost have to deny the existence of Jesus. Because their stories are so intertwined.
So today, this is what we’re talking about from 1 Peter, verse 8, chapter 5, verse 8. We’re going to be talking about our great enemy and spiritual warfare. And my conviction is that most of us, I say myself included, do not think nearly enough about this reality. And Scripture calls us to take this very, very seriously. How do we fight this enemy, and to do so biblically? So let me read what Peter writes here, 1 Peter 5, beginning in verse 8. Here’s what Peter says. “Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.”
Now in these two verses, you’ll notice there are four things that Peter calls us to do in battling against Satan. They are, first of all, we are to be sober-minded. Secondly, we are to be watchful. Third, we are to resist him. And fourth, we are to know that others are suffering in this as well. All four of these... these admonitions are based upon the reality of a spiritual being, a dangerous enemy that is lurking amongst us. So what I want to do is I want to spend today talking about the enemy and sobering us to the reality of what we’re actually involved in. And then next week we’ll talk about how do we do this? What does Peter say in terms of how we resist him, and other passages of Scripture? So let’s begin with this lurking enemy and let that motivate us to all want to do something about it.
First of all, who’s Satan? Satan is the personal name of an angelic being that is the Lord of the demons and the Lord and the leader of the demons. In fact, Satan literally means adversary, adversary. I think Peter is actually doing a play on words here in verse eight when he says, “your adversary, the devil.” He could have said, “your Satan, the devil.” Satan means adversary. Jesus calls this angelic being by the name Satan at least twice. He does so in His temptation by Satan in the wilderness. And then you might recall that Peter was talking to Him one time, and Jesus says to him, “Get behind me, Satan.” He identified who was really speaking through Peter and what Peter was saying. So Satan is his name, but Satan has not always been his name for reasons that we’ll get into.
I want you to realize, first of all, that Satan is a person. Satan is a person. He is not a... an influence. He is not a force. The danger with something like Star Wars is that the categories that it sort of calls us to tend to be... sometimes then we apply those to things even in Scripture. So we sort of see the force and the good force and the bad force, and that is George Lucas’s Buddhism, essentially, that he’s built into that story. So don’t think in those categories. I would say to you that Peter’s better than George, okay? Peter is better than George, and Peter... and Scripture wants us to realize that Satan is a person, a created person. He has a mind, he has a moral will, and he has an intellect. He is spiritual, but he is a person.
Next, Satan is a created angel, a created angel. He has not always existed. He is not eternal. He was created. When was Satan created? He was created in Genesis 1 along with everything else. Genesis 1, God creates this world, but He also creates the angelic world. So Satan had a birthday. And for a time then, that means that because God steps back and says it’s all very good. And that was true for the angelic world. It was true for the physical world. So for a time, there was harmony then between God and Satan, between, harmony amongst all of the angels. There was not any conflict. Everything was very, very good.
We also find that the Bible talks about hierarchies in the angelic world. Ephesians talks about principalities and powers and rulers in dark places. There is a hierarchy of authority and of beauty within the angelic world. And in that category, Satan, or Lucifer, as he’s known in the Old Testament, was the most powerful, the most glorious, the most beautiful angel that God created. There was no angel like him. The only person more glorious, more beautiful, and more powerful than Satan was God Himself.
And this leads then to what happened. Satan rebelled against God. Two passages in the Old Testament describe this, and this is somewhat debated, to be honest with you. I think that it certainly applies. The first one is Ezekiel chapter 28. I’m going to read now the prophet’s description of Satan’s rebellion against God. “You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God. In the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.” Here’s the key. “Your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground.” Here’s Isaiah 14, just adds this. Satan thought to himself, “I will make myself like the Most High God.”
What was going on? Satan looks in the mirror and sees the glory, the beauty that God had given to him. He looks around, he sees every other angel is less than him, but there is one that is greater than him. And that led to something in his heart. Donald Grey Barnhouse describes it this way, “Satan awoke in the first moment of his existence in the full-orbed beauty and power of his exalted position, surrounded by all the magnificence which God gave him. He saw himself as above all the hosts in power, wisdom, and beauty. Only at the throne of God itself did he see more than he himself possessed.”
And now this sounds like a familiar plot and story, doesn’t it? What do they say is the hardest instrument in any orchestra to play? Second fiddle. So before there was Brutus to Julius Caesar, or Absalom to David, or Judas to Jesus, there was Satan to God. And in that moment, the pride of Satan’s heart in the beauty that God had given to him leads to a jealousy for the glory that God Himself had, and leads Satan then to rebel against God and to seek to dethrone Him, to join the Trinity, to make it a quodinity or something. I don’t know what he did. We’re not told how he did it. All we know is it was pride that motivated Satan. And God judged Satan’s rebellion by casting him out of heaven.
And guess where He sent him? Right here. This world is Satan’s home. This is where God sent him. And if one passage in Revelation is to be taken literally, a third of all the angels followed him in this rebellion. The demons of a feather had flocked together, and they were all judged and condemned. So when you read in the Bible that Jesus cast out a demon, for example, that demon used to be an angel. That demon was an angel that followed Satan in his rebellion and then was corrupted, sent to this world, and is part of Satan’s army. Our world is their home. Their malice for God and His glory is raging. It is raging, and it is absolute.
Jesus describes this moment in Luke 10 this way. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” He was the great angel of light. When God cast him down, I’ll bet it did look like lightning. Down he came, and here he is now. So somewhere between Genesis 1, when God sees everything and says it is very good, and Genesis 3, when Satan now is the serpent who is tempting Adam and Eve, somewhere between those two chapters, this rebellion took place.
The next thing to know about Satan is that he is the enemy of God, of His purposes and His people. Listen to what Ephesians 6 says about... who our real enemy is. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Your enemy is not your sister. Your enemy is not your husband or your wife. Your enemy is not that guy at work or your neighbor. Your enemy is not the brother or sister in the church that has a little different belief about something than you do. Our enemy is Satan and all the demons.
And they live in a world. The Bible describes reality this way, that there is the physical world that we can see. And there is another world. It is the spiritual world. And that world is as real as this world is. We just can’t see it. It’s kind of like if you’ve ever gone snorkeling. You put on the snorkel, you get the little thing, you know, and then you sort of swim out into the little cove or wherever you are, and you put your head down, and all of a sudden there’s an entire world that you couldn’t see before. And there’s these pretty fish and all the things that are going on. You’re like, “I had no idea that was there.” There’s a day coming when all of us are going to be like, “I had no idea that was there.” This whole thing that is going on, if we had eyes to see, right here, right now, in this place, I believe there would be beings, spiritual beings, right here.
Remember the story of Elisha when the armies surround the city, and the servant’s like, “We’re gonna die. What are we gonna do?” And Elisha prayed. He said, “God, help my servant see what is really there.” And all of a sudden, he sees the chariots of the armies of God. That world is just out of our view. That loved one that died in the faith, that’s the world that they’re living in right now. It’s as real as this world is. And it is in that world that these demons and Satan primarily are existing. But, so they live there, but they are seeking to influence this world. And they’re able to do so for their own twisted purposes.
And my dear friends, we need to realize something. Satan is completely evil, absolutely, completely evil. There is no vestige of goodness in him. There is no Anakin Skywalker that needs to come out from the Darth Vader. “I knew there was goodness in him. Father, come.” There is none of that with Satan. He is absolutely, totally bent on demeaning and defaming the glory of God. That’s where our... you know, we’re in rebellion. We’re enemies of God. We’re born in sin. But we are different than Satan. The unbeliever can do good things, walk old ladies across the street, give money to good things like that. They can do that. It doesn’t favor with God. It doesn’t save them. But they retain a certain, although broken, goodness to them. Satan has none of that. So these people that, “I’m going to worship Satan. I’m going to see if maybe he’ll do good things to me.” It’s ludicrous. There is nothing good in him. There is no mercy in him. There is no kindness in him.
They are filled with pride. They are filled with hate and bitterness and murder. Their every thought and intent, all the time, always, is towards evil. The destruction of God’s glory, the destruction of God’s people, the destruction of anything that’s good that reflects the beauty and the glory of God in this world, they hate it. And how do they do this? They tempt. They influence. They corrupt. They compromise, they divide, they discourage, they defame, and they destroy anything intended to bring God glory. They’re like parasites. They can’t make anything good, they can’t make anything beautiful, but they can live off the good and the beautiful and corrupt it and twist it. That’s how they operate.
So guess what is the most glorious thing that God is doing in this world? It is redeeming sinners from the kingdom of darkness and bringing them over through the gospel into the kingdom of light, and it is the church. So guess where they primarily want to operate and to do their destructive work? It is within God’s people. It is the church of Jesus. Hebrews 2, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Describing the work of Jesus.
2 Corinthians 4:4. “In their case, the god of this world,” Satan, “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” Satan? Get that? How can people laugh about the lion lurking in the jungle? Their eyes have been... blinded to keep them from seeing something. “The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” They are doing all that they can. Maybe right now in this room for an unbeliever who’s visiting right now, they do all that they can to make you think this is silly. This is nothing to worry about. There’s nothing to it. To blind people to real glory and light, which is found in the face of Jesus Christ. It is in the gospel of Jesus.
What’s salvation, in fact? Salvation is “when I was blind, but now I see.” What do I see? I see truth. I see hope. I see forgiveness. I see a relationship with my Creator by believing in Jesus and His work on the cross. I see real beauty. When I see Jesus by faith, my eyes are wide open. Now I am able to see. And I’m in the kingdom of light. But they obfuscate. They darken. They blind. They don’t want anybody to see that.
Christian, can I just say it this way? Satan hates you. He hates you. He hates every good thing God is doing in your life. He hates every good reflection, God’s goodness seen in your life. He is absolutely committed to doing everything that he can to destroy you. But it’s not about you. This is important to understand as well. It’s not really about us. This has everything to do with what happened between Genesis 1 and Genesis 3. Satan really hates God.
