Is Satan real? An actual person with ideas and motivations and some kind of celestial power and the ability to interfere with God's plan? Or is Satan a metaphor for the evil that exists within a fallen, broken world and the potential for evil that exists inside all people? Or is Satan entirely a literary invention that came after the fact and was inflicted upon the Old Testament in the early age of Christianity? Those are kind of the three leading theories as to what the deal is with Satan. And the historical Orthodox position, one that, well, literally Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and most Protestants hold to, is that there's actually a character named Satan. It looks like the Bible holds this out as being an actual character. And Matthew 4, which we're working on right now, is no exception. It says, then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. And then it goes on to talk about an actual exchange between Jesus and the devil. Now look, there are other parts of the Bible. I say other parts. I can only think of one off the top of my head. There's at least one other part of the Bible where we talk about someone who is the embodiment or the epitome of a set of values. And I'm thinking of Proverbs. Maybe you already beat me there, but the idea of lady wisdom, I mean, there's not actually some lady named wisdom. She's a characterization, she's wisdom incarnate or given imagined dialogue powers and imagined flesh. And so maybe it could be argued that what we see here with the devil, and that is the specific language used in this passage in Matthew chapter 4, maybe it could be argued that what we're seeing here is a proverb, uh a metaphor or like a an artistic summary of Jesus' cosmic eternal battle against evil and fallenness and sin and brokenness, but the text doesn't indicate that in any way. The way the text is written, the way I believe this would have been received by the original audience, uh, all the clues point to this being an actual conversation that happened. Now, look, one of the easiest ways to do away with the tension of not being sure what to do with a literal Satan is to just not believe that the Bible is accurate, that it does a lot of metaphoring that we take literally, and that would relieve the tension. Another way to relieve the tension is to say, well, I mean, if there's something instead of nothing, and something had to exist outside of the physical natural world that we understand in order to make something instead of nothing, then there must be at least some entity who is more significant and powerful than entities like you and me that are bound by the limits of the physical natural world. Is it really any kind of stretch or crazy talk to imagine that there would be entities that are on the opposite side of the maker that want to do damage and destruction? Uh, it feels like you're getting into hazier territory with that second assertion, but the Bible gives us a lot of accounts of something that looks like this character called the adversary. And as we look at the history of Satan throughout the Bible, Lucifer, the devil, whatever you want to call him, it gets a little bit slippery because there are different names for this character. One of the principal passages that people will look at when they talk about Satan, uh, for any reason or from any perspective, is in Ezekiel 28. Now, Ezekiel 28 literally says that it's talking about the ruler of a kingdom called Tyre. This was up north. I think Tyre is technically in modern-day Lebanon or historical Lebanon. I could be wrong, I'm not looking this stuff up, but it's north of Israel and Galilee. And in the middle of chapter 28, there's this pivot where the language goes from like politics and history and stuff that just sounds like you're talking about a dude who's doing stuff. And it says, I have spoken, declares the sovereign lord. That phrase has been in the mind of popular culture a lot lately. And then verse 11, it just pivots into stuff that doesn't sound like a person at all. It sounds like uh ethereal and otherworldly and powerful and atemporal. And why am I telling you what it sounds like? I'll just read it to you. So uh it says, The word of the Lord came to me, Son of Man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre, and say to him, This is what the sovereign Lord says. You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone adorned you, ruby, topaz, and emerald, chrysalite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and barrel. I don't know if I'm saying these things right. I'm not very good at my jewels here. Your setting and oh, your settings and mountings were made of gold on the day you were created. They were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God. You walked among the fiery stones. Okay, this no longer sounds like the language of the first half. It's like uh you were smart and there are gonna be some wars and people are gonna fight and you're gonna fight in them and stuff. I mean, this is this is crazy talk. I've never heard this kind of language about a human in any other context ever. Okay, cherub anointed, and you'll start to charge her. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade, you were filled with violence and you sinned, so I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth, I made a spectacle of you before kings. But your many sins and dishonest trade, or by your many sins and dishonest trade, you have desecrated your sanctuary, so I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground, in the sight of all who are watching. All the nations who knew you are appalled at you. You have come to a horrible end, and will be no more. Okay, look, I get how somebody could read that and say, that sounds like a metaphor, and maybe we're not tracking with the metaphor anymore, because that language is, you know, pretty confusing to try to process through. But I also get how somebody could read that and say, We're not talking about the king of Tyre anymore. And if we take our cues from Matthew, we know that Isaiah pivots very quickly from talking about, you know, Hezekiah or his kid or whatever, to clearly prophetic language that's pointing to Jesus. So I don't see why Ezekiel couldn't do the same. Uh but there's not really clarity there. We don't get a name out of the deal. I mean, we don't we don't call him per se Satan at any point here. And you might be like, well, yeah, but they called him Satan in the Garden of Eden. Ah, do they though? If you go all the way back here to Genesis, whatever it is, I don't this is embarrassing. I don't even know what chapter it is. Um I know it's before that. Uh three, no, that's Cain. Uh temptation judgments. There we go. Yeah, okay. I'm skimming through chapter two and chapter three. And I'm not seeing any name for this creature that tempted Eve other than the serpent. Yeah, uh no, there's no name here whatsoever. And at this point you might be like, wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa. But in Job, it specifically says Satan. Well, yes. And that could be a proper name, Satan, like you know, Daryl or Kyle or Melvin or something like that. Or it could just mean the adversary, because when the word Satan in Hebrew, and I'm not good enough at Hebrew to have any idea or remember what that actually is, but when that gets used, I am told by smart people in real life and in writing that about half the time this is referring to a human adversary or enemy, that it just really means like adversary, maybe in the context even of accuser, and that at a few points that word is used in a way that describes something that seems more celestial, like you know, we think of Lucifer or whatever. So some Bibles are going to translate that word as Satan capital S in the book of Job, when you know Satan waltz up and is like, hey, what about this you know, Job guy? And God, of course, is saying Job's you know great, he's a faithful servant, and Satan's like, Yeah, that's because you're taking it easy on him. And so there's this heavenly counsel that is going on here. And if we're to understand that as being the literal guy slash celestial being Satan, then what's interesting is if we look at that and we look at the passage we just looked at in Ezekiel, and we think we're talking about the same character here, it means that somewhere before the creation of what we understand as the world, there's this falling out in the realms of eternity. I don't even know how to talk about this stuff. It sounds like key-man now. It gets really weird when you get before time. But there's this falling out, this celestial parting of ways, and Satan then goes about becoming this adversary, this enemy that wants to disrupt God's plan to do all the things he wants to do, and apparently eventually to allow fallenness to happen, to allow redemption to happen. But if we're reading Job properly, and Job is to be understood as a story of an actual thing that happened, as opposed to kind of a metaphor from a lost genre of literature where we wrestle through characteristics with characters and personalities who each represent an idea. If we read this as like an actual thing that happened, it means that somehow this accuser, this Satan character, still has access to the heavenly council. I don't know, is that word loaded theologically? Wherever God hangs out and talks with people beyond the physical realm, again, this gets kind of confusing and sketchy. I understand that. So as we get into the New Testament, it becomes a little bit more clear. Right here, we get a reference to the devil. We get references to the enemy, the father of lies. Paul, in the famous description of the armor of God, says, you know, part of the reason we're doing that is to resist the fiery darts of the enemy, of Satan, of the devil. I can't even remember which word he uses there, but you can look it up. Um, and then, you know, in Revelation 2, we get a little bit more clarity about what's going on and who we were talking about in other parts of the Bible. And maybe it kind of brings all of the language about Lucifer, Satan, the serpent, the enemy, the devil who walks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, according to 1 Peter 5, 8. It sort of brings all of that maybe a little bit under one heading, as Revelation 12, 7 through 9 says, and war broke out in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought, but they didn't prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out. That serpent of old, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. So I really think there's kind of a catch-all thing in Revelation chapter 12 that clarifies that all of these enemies, adversaries, accusers, the the this character who has so many different names is it's all the same guy. It's all the same tormentor, it's all the same problem character. And of course, Revelation goes on to describe in more detail the victory ultimately of Jesus and his kingdom over the attempts to thwart that Satan is trying to pull off. So I'm gonna do a YouTube video on this that's gonna be massive. It's gonna be like Pontius Pilate level kind of video where I just deep dive forever down the rabbit hole into it. I don't have time to do that here. Here's how we're gonna operate moving forward. I am going to treat the text in the way that it holds itself out as wanting to be treated, and that is there's an actual celestial character who comes to earth and is interacting with Jesus. Is it possible I'm wrong? Heck yeah! It's possible I'm wrong about everything. You guys get that, right? Like I'm trying super hard, but I just don't know all the things, and I don't like have a secret trove of stuff that I figured out, and then I'm trying to make it sound like I'm still thinking about it here. Like I'm still thinking about it here. So that is how I'm gonna treat it. If you see it differently than me, we are pals, no problem. And we'll move forward and see what plays out with all of this stuff. If you want a deeper treatment of this, go and subscribe to the 10-minute Bible hour YouTube channel, and there'll be a video coming down the pike where we will get into this profoundly. Whew, that was a lot. Remember, this week of the podcast is brought to you by Hebrews 4.12. You should memorize it, you should put it in your brain, and just tuck it away in there because it's gonna help you understand the whole Bible a whole lot better, whether you come to the same conclusions of belief as I do or other conclusions entirely. And either way, whichever of those places you land, golly, I like you. And I'm really glad that we get to do this together, and I can't wait to do more of it tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. We'll catch you soon.