And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years. Revelation 20:2
Imagine talking to a salesman trying to convince you to buy an expensive item, and knowing that he was being 100 percent truthful. Also imagine leaving your laptop computer on a picnic table at the park and have no concerns about anybody trying to steal it. Or try to picture a courtroom empty and idle because no crimes had been committed. That is how it would be if the devil were removed from this world and was unable to tempt people to lie and steal and hate as he has been doing since he first tricked our first parents. How good to know that a day is coming in which the devil will be taken out of the picture.
Some of us can remember the irreverent commedian Flip Wilson, whose famous punch line was ‘The devil made me do it’. He was wrong, of course; the devil never makes anyone do anything. He did not force our first parents to disobey the Lord God’s command. And today, he does not force us to be disobedient. And yet, it is he who suggests to every liar to tell the lies, suggests to every killer to hate and strike, suggests to every thief to covet and take, suggests to every blasphemer to curse. Even worse, it is the devil who leads people to doubt God’s existence, to question God’s Word, to reject God’s love, to spurn God’s grace. In his relentless pursuit of denying God His rightful glory, the devil works on people in many different ways. With thousands of years of experience, he knows what methods work with what types of people, and he has an amazingly high success rate. But our text tells us about a time when the devil will be bound for 1000 years after the great defeat of his minions at Armageddon. With the devil cast into the bottomless pit, his deceptions come to a halt, and people will be able to appreciate the perfect reign of the King of Kings.
The verse that follows our text tells us that the devil will not be able to deceive people until the thousand years were ended. The devil’s greatest victories are his deceptions. Our first mother declared that the serpent had deceived her. The devil also convinced Cain to make an unacceptable offering, deceived the antedeluvian world about the need for the safety of Noah’s ark, and on he went down through the history of the human race. Many godly men were faithful to the calling they received from God, but none of them were able to avoid the deceptive lies of the old serpent, to their sorrow and disappointment. But with all of his successes, the devil failed to bat a thousand. There came One Whom he tried to deceive and mislead, even quoting Scripture to do it. But the Lord Jesus could not be deceived or enticed in any way to accept the temptations of the devil. And His victory over those temptations provides our assurance of ultimate victory, too.
The victory of the Lord Jesus over our enemy will take us someday to be free of the wicked one’s temptations. But we can also have victory today, as we trust our Lord to protect us from the enemy. -Jim MacIntosh