One Fang for the Family, Another for the Church: Why Satan Rages Against God's Created Institutions

Satan may be overtly wicked, heinous, and wretchedly decrepit, but he is no fool. He may be the most depraved, sinister, blasphemous, and impious of all of God’s creatures but he is not unintelligent. He knows how to destroy cultures. He knows how to dismantle entire civilizations. He has been destroying civilizations since the very beginning.

In the thousands of years that he has been implementing his destructive methodology his record has become quite impressive. Experience has taught him a thing or two about dismantling entire cultures. He just needs time to apply his craft.   

Listen to the full sermon audio of this blog post here. 

One Fang for the Family; the Other for the Church

Wherever the wicked one crawls on his serpentine belly, you can be sure that he is going to aim one poisonous fang at the family, and the other at the Christian church. Destroying these two things is critical to his assault on the glory of God.  

Why does Satan rage so violently against the family and the church? Why is it that Satan puts so much of his demonic energy into destroying marriages and churches? Why does he stop at nothing to destroy our God-ordained gender roles, and undo vows of fidelity and faithfulness?

I think it is because the enemy is a lot smarter than we give him credit for. He knows that above all things, marriage points to Christ and His love for the elect. In Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul writes an extended analogy to compare a husband’s love for his wife with Christ’s love for the Church. In the pinnacle of his comparison, Paul says in Ephesians 5:32, “This mystery” (in context, marriage itself as described in vs. 31) “is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

This is shocking what Paul says here if we grasp his meaning: Christ didn’t just come to illustrate marriage; marriage was created to illustrate Christ! Or to say it another way: the highest possible meaning of Christ’s death was NOT as an illustration for marriage (although it is that too) but rather that the highest possible meaning of marriage is to point illustrate Christ’s love for the elect.

The enemy knows this better than we do. That’s why he will stop at nothing to destroy your marriage and your church. He knows that a good marriage and a strong church inextricably point to the glory of Jesus. Therefore he hates them both. 

Matthew Everhard is the Senior Pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, Florida.