Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Satan's Favorite Strategy | The Gospels | John 8:31–47

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

How does Satan actually tempt us? What lies does he want us to believe? And how do we fight back? In today's episode, Keith unpacks John 8:31–47 to reveal the enemy's strategy of deception and how fixing our eyes on Jesus exposes every lie with the truth. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 8:31–47

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. You have a spiritual enemy that seeks to destroy you. I know that's a rough way to start your day, but it's true. In 1 Peter 58, it says, be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Your spiritual enemy wants to devour you, to defeat you, and he's got a plan.

of how to make that happen. Wouldn't it be great to know his plan? Wouldn't you be able to fight against him if you just knew what strategy he was using to attack you? The Battle of Antietam in 1862 lasted for 12 hours and was one of the bloodiest in the Civil War, 10,000 Confederate casualties, and even more on the Union side. The battle ended in a draw, but it is so significant, not just because so many men lost their life, but because the mediocre Union General, George McClellan was able to end the career of the brilliant general Robert E. Lee. How was that possible? Well, it was possible because two Union soldiers had found a copy of Lee's battle plans and had delivered them to McClellan the night before the battle. You see, in some respects, we're no match for our

adversary, but Satan's plans have fallen into our hands. We have Satan's battle plans. And when you open up what you find is that his main strategy against you and me is deception. We're in John chapter 8 today and here's the verse that I want us to think about. John 844 Jesus says to the Jewish leaders who are opposing him, you belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language. For he he is a liar and a father of lies. Now I want you to notice something about how Jesus diagnoses the devil. He doesn't lead with horns and pitchforks. He calls him two things,

a murderer and a liar. And in Jesus's mind, those aren't separate. They're connected. The lying is the way he murders us. The lying, you might say, is the murder weapon. Because the very first lie ever told back in the Garden of Eden is the lie that brought death into the world. The serpent didn't stab Adam and Eve. He just talked to them, and they died. So if you want to understand how the enemy works in your life and in my life, we have to understand him as a liar. And the good news, the thing I want you to walk away from this passage with this morning, is that Satan's lie has no power except the power you give it by believing it, which means the whole battle is fought on the field of what is true. And the truth, Jesus says it four times in John 8,

isn't finally a fact, no, the truth is a person. But let's start all the way back with the first lie in Genesis chapter 3. The serpent, which is Satan, is talking to Eve about God's command to not eat the forbidden fruit. God had said that if they eat the fruit, they will surely die. But Satan contradicts God. He says, you will not surely die. See, that's a lie about the consequences of sin. And then Satan says that God knows that the day you eat of the forbidden fruit,

you'll be like him. And God doesn't want the competition. See, that's a lie about God's character. And tangled up in both lies is a third. And that's the suggestion that the woman needs to seize for herself a status that she already has. You see, Satan said, if you eat this forbidden fruit, you will become like God. But Eve was already like God. Adam and Eve were made in the image of God. She didn't need to grab for that. The lie convinced her that. that she was lacking, that her identity was a thing to be achieved by reaching rather than something that she'd already been given by grace. Every lie the enemy tells is some version of those two. It's a lie about who God is or it's a lie about who you are. Let me show you how it works and I'll

move fast because the enemy has a deep catalog. There's a whole family of lies designed to get you into sin. And notice those lies almost never say, this is evil, do it anyway. That doesn't work on people who want to do what is right, so the lie is much more subtle. The lie sounds something like this. This sin won't really hurt you. You can handle it. You'll stop whenever you want. The novelist David Foster Wallace opened a commencement speech with a little parable.

It's about two young fish who are swimming along, and an older fish passes them and says, Morning boys, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on, and after a while one turns to the other and says, what the heck is water? His point was that the most important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see precisely because they're the ones you're swimming in. They didn't understand what water is because they never knew life without water. Well, that's the genius of the minimizing lie that Satan tells. It hides the water. It convinces you that the thing you're drowning in is just the air everybody breathes. And so the first work of grace in your life is almost never behavior. It's sight. It's the

ability to see because you cannot be set free from the bondage you've been convinced that you're not in. But here's what's diabolical. The very same voice that whispered, sin is no big deal before you sin. The moment you've done it, that voice changes. It's tuned completely. Now it says that sin is unforgivable. You've gone too far. A real Christian would never act like that. You've used up your grace. We need to see that it's the same liar telling both lies. Satan will argue either side of the case. Before you sinned, he was your defense attorney, minimizing the charge, and after you've sinned, he's the prosecutor, demanding the maximum sentence. He doesn't care which, whether it's self-confidence or self-condemnation. It's all

the same to him, as long as you're looking at yourself and not at the cross. There's a courtroom scene in chapter three of the prophet Zechariah. I find it enormously comforting. Joshua, the high priest, is standing before the angel of the Lord, and he's dressed and filthy garments. And standing at his right hand is Satan, whose name literally means the accuser. And he's there to do exactly that. He accuses Joshua. And what happens? Well, God doesn't argue the facts. God doesn't say, now Satan, those robes aren't that dirty. No, the filth is real. Instead, the Lord says, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. And then he commands that Joshua's filthy clothes be taken away, and he's dressed in clean robes. The accuser is silenced, not by a denomination.

of the charge, but by a change of clothes that Joshua had nothing to do with. Martin Luther said that when the devil comes to accuse you and says you are a sinner, don't deny it, don't plead your own goodness. You'll lose that argument every time, because he has the evidence on his side. He's right in this case. Instead, agree with him. Say, yes, I am a sinner, and Christ died for sinners. Concede the charge, plead guilty, but also plead the blood of Christ. The accuser has no rebuttal to the cross. He can prove you're guilty,

but he cannot take away the forgiveness that is offered in Jesus. But remember, Satan is called the Father of Lies. All lies find their origin in him. He tells all kinds of lies. Some of his lies distract you from Jesus. Some of those lies tell you that you're too busy to pray, too busy to read your Bible, too busy to go to church,

that you'll get back into that stuff, when life slows down. Some of Satan's lies are dressed up in religious clothing and look spiritual. Second Corinthians 11 says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. These are the lies that maybe should scare us the most because they don't really feel like temptation and they feel like devotion. For example, Satan tells us the lie that your busyness for God proves that you are right with God or that that's the reason that God loves you.

That lie allows you to mistake activity and busyness for a real relationship with him. Satan lies to get us to compare ourselves to others. In Luke 18, the Pharisee prayed, Lord, I'm glad I'm not like that tax collector. Comparison often blinds us to our own sin. Satan tells us some of the most painful lies when we are suffering. He says that our suffering is proof that God has abandoned us. Or like Job's friends, he tells us that if we had more faith,

we wouldn't beat suffering at all. Maybe the most unexpected lie comes in seasons of success, not failure. We expect the enemy to come when we are the valley of the shadow of darkness, but we don't expect him on the mountaintop. But in Deuteronomy 8, Moses warns the people that the promised land was just as dangerous as the wilderness. He says, when you're full and when your house is nice and your barns are stocked, then be careful because your heart might be lifted up at just that

point, your heart might forget the Lord. The lie of success is the quietest of all. It's the lie that you built this, that you don't need to depend on God the way you used to. Prosperity and success can numb us to our need. Satan tells us the lie that he will make you happier than Jesus, that your sin will make you happier than obedience. Jesus says, the thief has come to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come to give you life, a full life. Satan's lies minimize sins. Satan has no power over you other than to get you to believe his lies. And sometimes it feels like there are a thousand different lies that he can tell us. But really, every lie is about God's character or your identity. Satan says God isn't good, that you can't trust him, that he's absent, that he's punishing you,

that you don't need him, or he lies about who you are, and he says that you are defined by your performance or your past or your feelings instead of the son who set you free. You can't out-argue the father of lies. He's been at this since the Garden of Eden. You defeat a lie by seeing the truth it denies, which brings us back to verse 36. It says this, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The truth that frees you is not a proposition but a person. The accuser says you're a slave. The son says you're an adopted child. The accuser says God is holding out on you. The cross said, God is holding nothing back from you. He gave you his own son. How will he not also along with him freely give you all things? The accuser says to clean yourself up before you come back.

The gospel says, come now, filthy robes and all, and let God clean you. let God clothe you in his robes of righteousness. The Father of Lies has one strategy, and that's to get your eyes off Jesus. So the whole of the Christian life, in a sense, is the daily discipline of fixing your eyes, of fixing your thoughts on him, and not looking at yourself, but looking at him at who he is and what he's done and that he is enough. Because you know what? He is enough.

He's the way, the truth, the life, he's everything you need and everything you wanted. And when the Son of God sets you free, you are free indeed.