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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 091. Working Under Cover
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Working Under Cover
A disguise is a lie. Its purpose is to deceive. It is something bad hiding its face behind something good. The bad of itself would not have any chance if it came barefaced. It would be refused admittance at once. And if it insisted on getting in would be booted out vigorously. So it steals some good to hide behind. It pretends to be as good as the good. The door is opened for the good, and the bad sneaks stealthily in to carry out its plans.
A disguise is a counterfeit. It aims to make things look different from what they are, and to look better. There are, of course, make-believe disguises used in play in carrying out a part; but these only make it more emphatic that the purpose of a disguise is to deceive.
Now it is a marked charactertistic of the tempter that he uses disguises. It is a most significant characteristic. It puts him at once in sharp contrast with God. God is always in the open. At times He conceals His glory. But that is not that He may hold back something from us, but that we may the better take in what is revealed of Himself. Too much light blinds, and the blinded eyes get nothing. A carefully shaded light, restraining the excessive brightness, enables us to see more, and to know what we can't see by what we do see. God is always in the open. Our Lord Jesus said to His accusers, "I have spoken openly." He was contrasting His openness with the secrecy with which they stole upon Him under cover of night to arrest Him, and which also marked His trial.
Satan works under cover. It is immensely suggestive of his character and purposes. In Eden he came behind the covering of the most intelligent and beautiful of all the lower animal creation. He is seldom mentioned by name in the Old Testament. That is a bit of the faithfulness of its description of things as they actually are. He carefully conceals his personality, but his disguises can be found all through the Book, and all through the book of life. His footprints are easily found in every roadway of life.
In the story of Job, it is noteworthy that Job supposed that all the suffering that came had been sent directly by God. It is true that it had been allowed by God, for a purpose, but it had not been sent by Him. But so skilfully had the actual instigator of Job's troubles worked, that the suffering man actually mistook him for God.
The tempter is bad; he is only bad; he is bad clear through; he has no spots of good, nor any spurts of good. He is bold as well as bad. He is as bold as He is bad. He hides behind God. The worst hides behind the best. Satan uses God's roads. He never makes roads. His boldness is startling in its daring. He is as blasphemous in his unblushing boldness as in his unmixed badness.
We want to talk in a very simple way about some of the disguises which the tempter uses. We need keener eyes to pierce through the disguise to the real thing underneath. Satan is a rare expert in make-up. He is deceiving even the very elect of God. He has great skill in new disguises when the old ones are found out. It takes keen watching and habitual praying, much study of God's Word, and a God-guided judgment if we are to detect and avoid his disguises, and yet be controlled by a sane, poised common sense in all our daily relations and contracts.