In episode 58 of the “No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe” podcast, host Greg Ryan continues his series on the Armor of God by focusing on the wiles of the devil, arguing that deception is Satan’s sole and most effective weapon. He traces this theme from Genesis 3, describing how the serpent’s cunning words led Eve and, through Adam’s silence, resulted in the fall. Ryan interprets Adam’s sin as a conscious choice to follow Eve’s deception, emphasizing that the deception opened the way for humanity’s inherited sin. He then moves to the New Testament, citing Matthew 4’s wilderness temptations to illustrate how Satan’s strategy is to flood the mind with persuasive lies, contrasting Jesus’ reliance on Scripture. Ryan references Romans 8:1 to underscore that believers have no condemnation and must meet Satan’s accusations with the truth of God’s Word. Throughout, he links the need to combat deception with the biblical instruction to “put on the whole armor of God” (Eph 6:11), urging listeners to quiet the noise of modern information overload, focus on Scripture, and rely on the Holy Spirit to discern truth. The episode ends with a promise to continue the armor series in future, encouraging listeners to actively use the Word and faith to bind Satan’s attempts.
Welcome to episode 58.
John 1:1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Welcome to episode 58. I'm glad you're here, and I think I'm gonna finally move on in my Armor of God, my spiritual warfare, the Armor of God episode. I've spent 5 episodes speaking about surrender of the last 6 that I've done, and I think I want to move the page. I think I want to go to the second verse in our, in our scripture where it's, uh, 6:11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. And I want to stop there for a minute and I want to describe to you, in my opinion, what I think Satan's biggest, or his really his only real weapon, and that is deception. And that if he's able to deceive you then he's got you. And we don't have— we got to go all the way back to the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 3, where he picks up with Eve. He's talking to Adam and Eve. In fact, I think Adam, you could call him the strong silent type because he doesn't say anything. He lets the— he lets Satan and Eve carry on the conversation. And I believe it gets everybody into trouble. And I think Again, this is a little rabbit that I'm going to chase real quick. I think the, the reason Adam, it was counted to him as a sin, was because Adam was specifically told by God, the word of God told him, do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and he ate of it anyway. It said, you know, I've heard that the saying that Eve was deceived but Adam sinned Well, Adam sinned. I believe if you're looking at— and I'm going to do the spiritual realm and the physical realm, and I think I talked about this on Spirit, Soul, and Body episode— but when Adam saw Eve bite the fruit, Adam, Adam saw Eve's spirit die. And so he was standing there, she wasn't dead, her body wasn't dead, and her soul, her mind, will, and emotion was not dead. But he saw something, 'cause he still had spiritual eyes. His spirit man wasn't dead. He saw something happen to Eve. I believe that. I don't know that, but in my mind, if Adam, if the sin is counted against Adam, then I believe that Adam saw or knew something, and when he took and chose to follow Eve versus follow the word of God. That's where, that's where Adam sinned and put and plunged all of us into sin with, with one man's sin. Adam's bite of the fruit drug us all down. But I'm not here to beat up on Adam. I've talked about him before. I want to turn this because it's talking about the wiles of the devil. Satan is very cunning, but He's got to be cunning because Adam— we, we've been given dominion. Satan was not given dominion of this earth, so Satan could not come at Adam and Eve on a full frontal assault attack. He could not come at them and demand they eat the fruit. He has to deceive. He's got to deceive you. He's got the same bag of tricks. I mean, I, I believe that Satan is just all mouth. All he does is talk and run his just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just always constantly talking. And that, I think it's kind of a reflection of this whole, not the society, but all this information in it. There's just a flood of information. There's a flood of words. There's a flood of noise. There's, there's so many distractions. And I think that that is by design. It's to distract you, is to deceive you, is to keep you away from the Word of God. And it's just going to take a little bit of effort, a little bit of time, and you kind of got to settle down and quiet down. But I think if we're going to defeat— if we're going to put on the whole armor of God, we have to, we have to do it with the intention of defeating the wiles, the deception, the deceit, the distraction Can't think of another D word. We've got to concentrate on what the word of God says and not what Satan wants us to hear. So okay, let's go to Genesis 3 with the idea that we're going to stand against the wiles of the devil. So we've got to, we got to figure out how we're going to fight this yahoo, and it's be— it's going to be in the spirit realm, but it's going to be— we have to fight him with the word of God. And we're gonna, we're gonna go to Genesis, and we may end up in Matthew. And we're going to start in, in Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which in the is which is in the midst of the garden. God has said you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. That's Satan's whole MO, is that his modus operandi is to deceive. And that is what Paul is telling us in Ephesians, that we need to take a stand so that we don't fall for the deception or the deceit, the wiles of the devil. And the only way to do that is to know the truth. And Jesus said, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." And I think that's in John 8:32. And now we're gonna pick up Satan in Matthew 4. This is where Satan comes and tempts Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. This was after he was baptized by John the Baptist. And it says, then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter had come to him, he said, if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Now, I'm not going to read all of the, the 3 temptations that Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, but I just want you to, to get the picture that Satan is talking. He's running his mouth. He's talking to you. And I've talked about him being a punk and about all the condemnation, the stuff that's going on in my head. And I'm quite certain, after talking to other people that it's going on in your head too, that he's always condemning. He's all, you've got that negative self-talk or that thought, and maybe you don't have it, and God bless you if you don't, but most people, he's constantly just trying to make you question everything and make you question, you know, your salvation, make you question everything you do, and condemning. He's so condemning. In fact, I think it's in Romans 8, I want to say it's 8:1, uh, where it says, there is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. They— you have no con— you've got to know the truth. When all that, that accusations and all that condemning comes, you've got to bring the word of God. You got to bring the word of God to that and defeat that. And so this is— I've kind of looked up at my clock and I'm starting to get a little bit further on down the road. And I do want to get, um, to this point that, that we have an accuser. Satan is not all-powerful. Now, he is very good at what he does, and he is very cunning. And the Bible says the most cunning. So he's gonna— he can— he's gonna be able to trip us up if we don't know the truth. Now, he tried to trip Jesus up. But again, Jesus was all wisdom and knowledge, and he had the Holy Spirit. So it's going to be a little bit tougher. But you know, it's— we got the same spirit that Jesus had living on the inside of us. So if we just, if we just dial in or tune into that spirit, it's going to be a whole lot harder for him to trip us up. So I, I want to stop right there. I'm, I'm kind of getting a little long-winded on this, but I want you to see that Satan He is, he's still alive. He has not been banished to the Lake of Fire yet. He's going to be, he's going to be thrown in there forever and always, but he's still roaming the earth. And he has not— we— he's been defeated by, by Jesus, but he has not been banished. And we have to continually defeat it. We have to use the word of God, we have to use our faith to defeat him, and we've got to bind up all of his attempts. We gotta We're going to put on the whole armor one of these days. I'm— I promise you I'm going to get to the whole armor, but I kind of want to set the table with, with these little 10-minute episodes. It's kind of hard just to— I don't want to dump it all on you on one, on one pod, one podcast, because I, I can't talk that fast and there's just too much to cover. I will pick this up, this thought up on the next episode, and I appreciate you listening to the very end. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
