September 26
Isaiah 47-48
Psalm 106:40-48
Proverbs 23:24-25
I Thessalonians 3
The Evil of Magic
“Keep on, then, with your magic spells and with your many sorceries, which you have labored at since childhood. Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. All of them go on in their error; there is not one that can save you.” Isaiah 47:12-15 NIV
Yesterday we discussed the absurdity of worshipping man-made idols and giving our time and attention to things that cannot satisfy. Today Isaiah warns us of another danger that is just as prevalent today as it was in biblical times. Astrologers, sorcery, and magic are all around us. Satan has used the entertainment industry to desensitize us to the evil it represents. It has happened so slowly that we didn’t even realize it. When I was a kid, I loved watching Bewitched. It was pretty harmless. Samantha was a “good witch” and just wanted to live a normal life married to a human. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Wizards of Waverly Place, and The Good Witch were all used to slowly introduce witchcraft to us in a way that seemed harmless and intriguing. Harry Potter introduced a more exciting element to sorcery and witchcraft and targeted impressionable preteen and teenaged kids. It is nothing new. Ouija boards have been around since the late 1800’s. Astrologers, fortune tellers, and Tarot cards have been around for centuries. Magic has been used by Satan since the beginning of time to entice people to participate in activities that do not glorify God. We all have an innate desire to want to know our future and control the world around us. I know Christians who read their horoscopes every day. They think it is just harmless fun, but there is an element to which they believe it.
Satan is very powerful, and he is very smart. He has been around for centuries. He cannot tell the future because He is not omniscient. Only God, the One True God, Creator of the Universe knows what the future holds. He knows everything that has happened in the past and everything that will happen for all of eternity. Satan does not have that power. However, he can see things happening in the present that we cannot see that affect future events. A fortune teller could tell you that your boyfriend is going to propose to you, and it come true because Satan saw him buy you a ring. A medium could tell you something they claim to have “received” from your dead grandmother that only she could know because Satan saw when it happened years ago. Satan is very good at deception. He knows you and he knows how to entice you. He looks at what is happening now and what has happened in the past and makes an educated guess as to what is likely to happen in the future. Magic and fortune telling are schemes by Satan to tempt us with knowledge we are not intended to have and power that does not belong to us. We are not supposed to know the future. God holds our future. We have the idea that if we know what is going to happen in the future, we can prepare for it, good or bad. But the thing is, we don’t have to worry about it. God can see the future and He is already at work preparing us for whatever will happen. He is giving us the life experiences we will need to deal with whatever comes to us. He is developing and maturing us so that we are ready for what He can see is in our future. Our loving Father is taking care of all of it. Satan is not tempting us to find out the future for our good. His motive is to get us to trust in ourselves and not to place our faith in God. As believers we need to recognize his schemes and flee from them. We do not need to allow Satan to get a foothold in our lives by participating in any of these activities. Horoscopes, astrology, tarot cards, witchcraft, Ouija boards, and fortune tellers are evil. There is no place in the life of a believer for any of these things. And it is even more important that we protect our children from these things. They may seem harmless, but they are not. Even allowing them to watch movies and read books about witchcraft and sorcery desensitizes them to the evil in the world that is very real and powerful
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