Why did Satan think he could defeat God?

The following are the features of the king of Tyre's character, or that of the enemy of God, the prince of this world. He is the anointed cherub — he is covered with precious stones — he has been in Eden the paradise of God, upon the mountain of God — he walked in the midst of the stones of fire — he was perfect in his ways until iniquity was found in him. He is cast out of the mountain of God on account of his iniquities; his heart was lifted up because of his beauty, and he corrupted himself. Farther, we find that which, as to the creature, is most exalted; he acts in the judicial government of God according to the intelligence of God (this is the character of the anointed cherub). He is clothed with the moral beauty that variously reflects the character of God as light. He is recognised among the plants of God, in which God displayed His wisdom and His power in creation, according to His good pleasure, as Creator. He had been there also where the authority of God was exercised — on the mountain of God. He walked where the moral perfections of God were displayed in their glory, a glory before which evil could not stand — "the stones of fire." His ways had been perfect. But all these advantages were the occasion of his fall, and characterised it. For the privileges we enjoy always characterise our fall. Whence have we fallen? is the question; for it is the having failed there, when we possessed it, that degrades our condition. Moreover it is not an outward temptation, as in man's case — a circumstance which did not indeed take away man's guilt, but which modified its character. "Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty." He exalted himself against God, and he was cast out as profane from the mountain of God. His spirit, independent in security, was humbled when he was cast to the ground. His nakedness is manifested to all; his folly shall in the end be apparent to all.

Every man in this world finds something to boast in, some quality in himself that distinguishes him from others, and in this he boasts. If a man has no good quality in which to boast, he will boast in evil. It has been said that a man would rather be the cleverest thief in the city than have nothing to distinguish him. The reason is that God has lost His place before the soul of man, and the poor slave of the devil wants the homage for himself which belongs to God only. He is a fallen creature who is occupied with anything but God. No unfallen being is found contemplating his own excellency. Pride of heart was the cause of the fall of the devil. I suppose we may take Ezekiel 28 as having reference to him. He is spoken of as full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Every precious stone was his covering; but what is said to him is, that his heart was lifted up because of his beauty, and that he had corrupted his wisdom by reason of his brightness. Whatever he was, he was God's handiwork, and the glory all belonged to God, but he gave the glory to himself. His heart was lifted up with pride, and he drifted away from God and fell headlong. Now there is no brightness or beauty about him, and he is the most foolish being in the universe, for what could be greater folly than to pit himself against his omnipotent Creator? He has also corrupted man, and the means by which he secured the downfall of his victim was the delusion that he might successfully aspire to divinity: "ye shall be as gods." The devil was not satisfied to remain in the position of a creature, and through his subtlety man became corrupted and under condemnation. Man's moral foundations are destroyed. He has usurped the place that belongs to God and to Him only, for he has made himself a centre around which everything is to revolve, and he judges of everything by the way in which it stands in relation to himself and by the way in which it affects him. He calls things evil if they affect him adversely, and good if they seem to be to his advantage. The way in which they stand with relationship to God is of no account to fallen man.

It was the poet, John Milton, who described Satan as preferring to be first in hell, than second in heaven. Indeed we know from Scripture that his fall came by not being content with the very high place God had assigned to him as a creature—the anointed cherub that covereth” (Ezek. 28:14). He dared to say in his hart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High” (Isa. 14:13-14). What a fall was his, and his end will be most lamentable—“cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:10). Here we trace the source of the evil spirit of Diotrephes, and of all who have transgressed like him from his day to this.

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground... For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds: I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit.” The beginning of his sin was pride, and out of that sprang the determination to be independent of God, and to be as God, ruling a kingdom of his own, a kingdom of darkness, from which the knowledge of God should be utterly excluded. This kingdom bears the character of its founder and must in all things be opposed to God and His kingdom by its very nature. There can be no compromise between light and darkness, no league between good and evil; though with consummate audacity Satan proposed such a compromise to Jesus in the wilderness, when he offered to Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Did he think that as he had beguiled the woman in Eden so he could beguile the Woman's Seed in the wilderness? If so what a surprise, what a check he got! The lie was detected and resisted and the deceiver was defeated. There can be no fellowship between Christ and Belial, the fight must be fought to the finish; it must end in the final and complete overthrow of one or the other.

In his fall from his exalted place the wisdom of this great being was corrupted into devilish subtlety, and he is first introduced in Holy Scripture as the serpent, the deceiver (Gen. 3). It was by his subtlety that Satin beguiled Eve and turned the man and the woman into sinners against God, and by that same subtlety he is blinding men and women today and making them deny the truth of Genesis 3, in which indispensable chapter of the Bible he is exposed as the deceiver and adversary, and his defeat foretold. It does not suit his plans that his ways should be exposed, indeed it suits him well when he can induce men to believe that he does not exist at all, but certain it is that no man was ever of any use to God and an overcomer who did not believe in the existence of a personal Devil.

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground … For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds: I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit." The beginning of his sin was pride, and out of that sprang the determination to be independent of God, and to be as God, ruling a kingdom of his own, a kingdom of darkness, from which the knowledge of God should be utterly excluded. This kingdom bears the character of its founder and must in all things be opposed to God and His kingdom by its very nature. There can be no compromise between light and darkness, no league between good and evil; though with consummate audacity Satan proposed such a compromise to Jesus in the wilderness, when he offered to Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Did he think that as he had beguiled the woman in Eden so he could beguile the Woman's Seed in the wilderness? If so what a surprise, what a check he got! The lie was detected and resisted and the deceiver was defeated. There can be no fellowship between Christ and Belial, the fight must be fought to the finish; it must end in the final and complete overthrow of one or the other.

Satan, filled with ungovernable hatred against God, lost no time in tempting our first parents. Pride was his fall, and he skilfully appealed to that, which was his own undoing, when he boldly said to Eve, “Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Satan, the highest creature of God, aspired to more than a creature’s place and he fell. Now he tempts our first parents with the same lure, and they fall.

Overweening pride was his ruin (compare 1 Timothy 3:6), and “the pride of life” is his chief instrument in enslaving men’s minds. He fell, and carried with him a huge following of angelic beings, corrupted by him and partners in this rebellion, before the creation of man. His first sin was seeking to get out of a creature’s place and become as God. On these lines he provoked our first parents. “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” was the tempting bait. “Fall down and worship me” revealed the consuming ambition of his heart, as he urged his daring and impious claim upon the Son of God Himself (Matt. 4:9).

The sin of selfishness, of which we spoke last, may be specially characterized as the sin most unlike Christ; but the sin of pride is directly of the devil. The one is anti-Christian, and the other is Satanic. Such, indeed, is the calm language of Scripture. In 1 Timothy 3:6 we read that being lifted up with pride was the cause of “the condemnation of the devil”; and in Ezekiel 28 we read the detailed account of how the heart of one who was once “full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty” was lifted up because of his beauty, and his wisdom corrupted by reason of his brightness, and who therefore fell from heaven to hell.

Ezekiel 28 depicts the prince and the King of Tyre, both judged for their pride. He who is the prince of this world's glory (see John 14:30, John 16:11) is represented here as a man, and is told, "Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas. yet thou art a man, and not God … thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas" (Ezek. 28:2, 8). There is little doubt that in what follows, in Ezek. 28:11 to 19, the King of Tyre is emblematical of Satan — the prince and god of this world. A creature of God, his heart was lifted up; he corrupted his brightness, became an apostate from God, and the enemy of God and man. His advantages had been the occasion of his fall. He exalted himself against God, and was cast out, as profane, from the mountain of God.

Isaiah's prophecy in these verses applies first to the visible king — verses 4-11. The Lord will break his sceptre and cast him into hell as is more fully explained in Revelation 19. But in verses 12-15, we seem to pass from the visible king to Satan, whose nominee he is to be. Satan, whose original sin was an attempt at self-exaltation to equality with God, is to be "brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit," as we also see in Revelation 20.

Verses 13 and 14 are most striking. Notice the five-fold repetition of "I will." The very essence of sin is the assertion of the will of the creature against the Creator. In Genesis 2, God said to Adam, "Thou shalt not;" but in Genesis 3, tempted by Satan, Adam virtually said "I will." The complete contrast to this is found in Philippians 2, where the One who was "the Most High," whose throne was "above the stars of God," who could not "ascend," since there was no place higher than the one He occupied, descended and took the form of a Servant. Satan sought to exalt himself and is to be abased. Christ humbled Himself, and He is, and shall yet be, exalted.