The Demons At The Door

God loves us. He desires the best for us, and He wants us to choose Him. He doesn’t force Himself on us; He simply stands at the door and knocks, because we have to make a choice. That’s part of the burden of having free will. We get to make a choice, but with this freedom comes consequences. We get to make our own choices, but that means that we must bear the consequences of choosing poorly. He’s knocking on the door, but we have to choose Him and open the door to Him; not once, not twice, but every day of our life because there is something else also knocking at the door. Let’s take a look at Genesis 4:7.

Genesis 4:7 NKJV — “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Our adversary also lies at the door, just hoping to trip us up like a bad doormat. Sin can’t destroy us unless we choose sin over Christ. We get to choose who we let in the door, and unfortunately, more often than not, we let sin in instead of Christ. 

Sin starts in our minds just as obedience to God does. We have to protect our minds fiercely against letting sin in. It is always there at the door of our mind whispering lies and trying to get us to swallow its poison, but we must guard our hearts and our minds! God is our shield, and it is our faith in Him that gives us our defensive strength; our obedience. 

Choosing Christ gives us a helmet, a gift from God called salvation. 

Romans 6:23 NKJV — For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Quite often, this verse is translated as being a free gift, but that could be a little misleading. It is free in the sense that we could never pay the price to earn this gift; Christ had to do that for us. However, the Greek means a gift that we don’t deserve. Nothing we could ever do could make us worthy of being given this gift because guess what? We choose to let sin in. What this verse doesn’t mean is that there is nothing required on our part.

This gift from God is our helmet. It protects our minds because it brings with it another gift, the Holy Spirit. God gave us His Spirit to connect us to Him and to give us the strength and wisdom to no longer choose sin. Sin is very attractive, and the entire world around us has not only chosen sin a couple times, but they wallow in the muck of it. What is sin? 

1 John 3:4 NKJV — Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

Sin is the breaking of the law. This Biblical definition of sin tells us a couple of important things. First, it tells us where we must look to find out what sin is. Second, it tells us that in order for sin to exist, laws must also exist. Without law, there is no sin.

Romans 4:15 NKJV — because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.

Because of this fact we can create an if/then statement. 

If sin exists, then there must also exist a set of laws. 

The whole Bible tells us what these laws are and gives us examples of people who have broken them. Just because every single law is not restated in the New Testament doesn’t mean that they no longer exist. Why would God have to restate everything He already said just because it was challenged? In our new and enlightened age, though, whatever people believe to be true is true for them, right? Whatever you believe is your reality. Not exactly. God’s law exists whether you acknowledge it or not, kinda like the laws of physics. God authored both sets of laws; the only difference between the moral law and the law of physics is that we are given a choice of whether or not we obey the moral one. The law of physics demands obedience whether we acknowledge it or not. So why would God need to restate what He has already set forth and caused to be preserved? Does He change what He commands? There is a story in the book of Kings that tells what happens when we think that God will change what He commands us. 

1 Kings 13:11-24 NKJV — Now an old prophet dwelt in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel; they also told their father the words which he had spoken to the king. And their father said to them, 

“Which way did he go?” 

For his sons had seen which way the man of God went who came from Judah. Then he said to his sons, 

“Saddle the donkey for me.” 

So they saddled the donkey for him; and he rode on it, and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak. Then he said to him, 

“Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” 

And he said, 

“I am.” 

Then he said to him, 

“Come home with me and eat bread.” 

And he said, 

“I cannot return with you nor go in with you; neither can I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place. “For I have been told by the word of the LORD, ‘You shall not eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by going the way you came.’ ” 

He said to him, 

“I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” 

(He was lying to him.) So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house, and drank water. Now it happened, as they sat at the table, that the word of the LORD came to the prophet who had brought him back; and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, 

“Thus says the LORD: ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the LORD, and have not kept the commandment which the LORD your God commanded you, ‘but you came back, ate bread, and drank water in the place of which the LORD said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water,” your corpse shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.’ ” 

So it was, after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey for him, the prophet whom he had brought back. When he was gone, a lion met him on the road and killed him. And his corpse was thrown on the road, and the donkey stood by it. The lion also stood by the corpse.

Whoa! God doesn’t change what He commands us to do! Not only does this section tell us that bit of importance, but it also shows that we are to measure what people claim God has told them through angels or other means by what He has already told us. You must have a baseline standard that you can measure against! God gave us this when He gave us His word in the form of the Bible. Whatever people claim came from God must be measured against this standard. 

1 John 4:1 ESV — Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

“New revelation” is a tool of Satan, and it is part of the sin that lies at the door.

Jude 1:3 Beloved, when personally exerting all my diligence to write to you concerning the common salvation, I was compelled to write to you, exhorting you to fervently fight for the faith, which once for all time has been delivered to the saints.

God isn't going to change what He has already given, as we saw above, with the story of the unfaithful prophet. Deception and lies are a major precursor to sin, and temptation always precedes sin. Cain was angry, and God told him to watch out because sin would use his anger to bring about his destruction. The world around us is a storm of temptation. We must face it on a daily basis. We mustn’t give sin an opportunity to take hold, and we must kick temptation out of our minds.

Ephesians 4:26-27 ESV — Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.

The love God has shown to us is that He has extended a hand to save us from the waves of the storm around us. He has given us an alternative to sin! The law reveals this sin to us, and His blood wipes away our debt. He stands at the door of our heart and knocks! All we have to do is open to Him and love Him back by keeping His commandments. God doesn’t want us to suffer; He doesn’t want us to be open to sin. That is why He gave us His law and sent His son to give His blood for our sins. 

Christ desires our love. He is our future bridegroom, and He deeply desires our affection. He defeated the ancient magic that Satan wielded to drag us down with him by trading His life for ours, and Christ thus dealt the first blow to slay the Dragon. He deeply loves us, and His Father loves us so much that He allowed Christ to give His life for ours. Christ loves us, and He wants to dwell with us. We are the family that He has built. He wants us to open to Him and to have a relationship with Him. Someone is knocking at the door, and we have to choose; who are we going to open for?