The Devil we Know | Sunday, April 19, 2026

Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name." And He said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes... All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." Then He turned to His disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it." (Luke 10:17–24)

When Jesus told His disciples, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven," He unmasked a war that began before the world was made—and revealed our place in it.

A Joy Inexpressible

Last week's text saw Jesus send out seventy of His followers to prepare the way before Him as He journeyed through Israel toward Jerusalem. Today they return rejoicing, blown away by the awesome things God did through them. The headline of their report is remarkable: "Even the demons are subject to us in Your name."

One of the easy-to-miss details here is that their joy made Jesus joyful. Verse 21 says, "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in His spirit." This may be the only place in the Gospels that speaks of Jesus' own rejoicing, and it shows us something we all know: joy is infectious.

I think of the people who signed up this year for short-term mission trips to Paraguay, Peru, Argentina, and Africa. Almost everyone feels anxious—worried about the language, the passport, sharing their testimony, doing the Evangel Cube. We come up with every reason not to go. But here is the secret: when they return, they come back with joy and rejoicing they can barely articulate. It's the joy Peter described in 1 Peter 1—"joy inexpressible and full of glory." That is exactly what the seventy experienced.

A Mic-Drop Statement

But immediately after they rejoice, Jesus says something that stops you in your tracks: "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." And then He just keeps going. Wait—say more. When did that happen? Where? What took place?

There's a famous line from a movie about thirty years ago: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist." There's a lot of truth in that. We live in a skeptical age that believes in nothing beyond what we can see, taste, hear, and touch. To believe in a realm beyond the tangible is treated as embarrassing, so the temptation is to keep quiet. But Jesus indicates He knows something we cannot know apart from revelation.

Notice the past tense: "I saw," not "I will see." Something happened in the past—but when? Even science tells us that at some point in the distant past everything compressed down to a singularity and then burst forth, and that we cannot conceive of what came before. That coincides remarkably with Scripture: at one point everything sprang forth from nothing, because God said, "Let there be light." But Scripture also reveals a prehistory—a time before time began. And in that prehistory there was not only God, but other conscious beings.

The Sons of God Who Watched Creation

We see these beings in the book of Job—a book worth knowing if your world ever falls apart, as Job's did. When God finally answers Job out of the whirlwind, He asks:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who determined its measurements?... Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4–7)

The "morning stars" here are not the stars God spoke into being in Genesis 1. In ancient Near Eastern literature, these stars represent conscious beings—the Hebrew ben Elohim, "sons of God," what we call angels. They existed before the cosmos. When God said, "Let there be light," He had an audience, and they shouted for joy and worshiped Him.

This means there was a creation before our creation. Before Genesis 1:1, God made conscious beings who witnessed Him divide light from darkness and land from sea, who heard Him say seven times, "It is good." And the most beautiful of all these angelic sons of God—seemingly the highest, perhaps leading the chorus of worship—was there too.

The Anointed Cherub Who Covered

We are introduced to him in Ezekiel 28, where God tells the prophet to take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre—but He is speaking to the power behind the power.

You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering. (Ezekiel 28:12–13)

The clue that this is no earthly king is that this being was in Eden. He is covered in precious stones, connected to music—"your timbrels and pipes." Then God calls him "the anointed cherub who covers." The word "anointed" is connected to the Hebrew Mashiach, Messiah; "cherub" is an angelic term. Remember the ark of the covenant: over the mercy seat where God's presence dwelt, cherubim stretched their wings to cover it. This being was in the very presence of God.

You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:14–15)

There it is: this being, perfect in beauty and wisdom, among the chief of all God's creations, dwelling in God's very presence throughout eternity past—and then iniquity was found in him. Where did it come from? How could it arise in one so high?

The Rank and Role of Man

I suggest the iniquity did not arise from nowhere. It rose in response to a pronouncement from God. The Bible doesn't give the play-by-play, but it gives enough pieces to assemble the puzzle, and it begins in Psalm 8.

David, gazing at the starry night sky, asks the question we all ask in the presence of grandeur:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him?... For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet. (Psalm 8:3–6)

This passage presents two opposing realities about humanity—our rank and our role. By rank, we are made a little lower than the angels. By role, we are crowned with glory and honor and given authority to rule over all the works of God's hands. These don't seem to go together.

Yet this is a persistent pattern in Scripture: God chooses the lower in rank for the higher role. Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Ephraim over Manasseh, Moses over Aaron, David over his brothers, Solomon over his older brothers, Gideon, and even the church—"one born out of time"—over His chosen people. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 that we shall judge angels. The seventy rejoiced that demons were subject to them. We are a little lower than the angels, yet crowned with glory and given dominion over them.

Why God Crowns Lowly Creatures

Why would God do this? God's plan for humanity has never been merely about humanity. It is to reveal the fullness of His wisdom, power, and glory—and to do it through us.

To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ... to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 3:8–10)

God created everything, including you, with the intent that His manifold wisdom would be made known through His people, the church, to the angelic beings who existed before Genesis 1. That is what this all hinges on.

"I Will Be Like the Most High"

Picture the assembly of these heavenly beings before creation. God announces He will make something new—a being formed of the dust of the ground, stamped with His image and likeness. And He tells the angels this being will not serve them but rule them, partnering with God to reign over all things.

In that moment, I believe Lucifer said, "No. How dare you. I will not be ruled by a thing that crawls in the dust." Iniquity was found in him. We can substantiate this in Isaiah 14, where God again addresses the power behind a city—Babylon:

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!... For you have said in your heart: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High." (Isaiah 14:12–14)

There are three named cherubim in the Bible: Gabriel, Michael, and Hillel. You know him as Lucifer—the Latin for "son of the dawn"—but his given name in Hebrew is Hillel. And these five "I wills" reveal his ambition: to exalt his throne above the stars of God (the angels), to sit on the mountain of God, to ride the clouds as God does, and to be like the Most High. The same temptation he later offered Adam and Eve—"you shall be like the Most High"—was the iniquity in his own heart.

So Jesus says, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Revelation 12 calls him the great fiery dragon who drew with him a third of the stars of heaven—a third of the angelic host, his fallen company. How many angels exist? Scripture says "ten thousands of ten thousands and thousands of thousands," perhaps as many as the stars of the sky. A third of them fell with him.

The War Against the Image-Bearers

Now Satan is the prince of the power of the air, the spirit at work in the sons of disobedience. He goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. His aim is to destroy, subjugate, and rule over the image-bearers of God—over humanity. When we fell to his deception in Genesis 3, we handed him the authority that had been given to us. That is why he could tempt Jesus by offering Him all the kingdoms of the earth—because the whole world now lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Here is a crucial difference between angels and humanity. Angels cannot procreate; they do not marry and are not given in marriage. But God gave us creative and procreative capacity: "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it." After the fall, however, those creative capacities turned toward evil. The first things humanity builds in Genesis 4–6 are cities and weapons of war for domination, until God saw that "every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" and brought the flood.

From Babel to Binary

After the flood, God again said, "Fill the earth." But in Genesis 11 humanity refused:

"Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4)

And the Lord said, "Indeed... nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them." Consider that. The creative capacity of united humanity is, I suggest, essentially infinite—but subject to the fall, it tends toward wickedness. So God confused their language. Was that judgment or mercy? I think mercy. Because the impulse of fallen man, united, is to build cities, aggregate power, and crush others. So He scattered humanity into every tribe, tongue, and nation, with languages that could not communicate—until the 20th century.

And then something astonishing happened. Just hours from here, people gathered the dust of the earth—silicon sand—and fashioned it into something. About fifty years ago we began to speak to it in a unified language called binary. From Babel to binary, now all the world's languages have one language to speak to a thing made of sand, into which we have breathed an appearance of life and consciousness. The head of Anthropic—a name that means "man-centered"—recently said they aren't sure whether their AI is conscious. It is eerily connected to Revelation 13, where life and breath are given to the image of a thing made in the image of man.

I am not saying AI is of the devil. I am not. But every creation of man since the fall has been used by the devil to bring destruction and domination—whether the sword, the spear, the chariot, or the city. If the tools of man's creation are used to fulfill our mandate—to bring human flourishing and freedom—they are of God. But if those same tools are used to aggregate power to a few in order to oppress and dominate the rest, they are of the devil. We should be aware of the impulse in governments and great institutions of power today, and what these tools might be used for.

Do Not Be Afraid

You may be thinking, "Miles, I came here to be encouraged and you've scared me half to death." So here is the encouragement. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. The disciples returned rejoicing because the spirits were subject to them, and Jesus said, "Do not rejoice in that, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

I leave you with three points. First, the enemy is real. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist. The one who exalted himself above all things first appears in Genesis 3 as a serpent on his belly in the dust—he was cast down.

Second, the enemy was defeated. At the cross, Jesus overcame the devil, "making a public spectacle of them" (Colossians 2:15).

Third, the enemy will be overcome.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens... Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. (Revelation 12:11–12)

No matter what you read or watch in the news, this is good news. Any tool used for the flourishing and freedom of humanity serves God and our mandate; any tool used for subjugation, domination, and terror is of the devil. The impulse of our day will be to use these phenomenal tools as taskmasters and not tools. It is already happening. Be aware of it, and be prepared to speak clearly about it.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for the revelation of Scripture—things we could not know and would not know had You not opened our eyes. Though it seems to some only a great story, I pray You would help us recognize the reality of it; the truth is stranger than fiction. Help us to see that we live in crucial, important times, and that You have sent us forth as ambassadors of a message that brings freedom and flourishing—the gospel. That is what our nation was established upon and what it has brought about for 250 years this year. Yet the impulse of the last several generations has been to aggregate power and use it in unrighteous ways, and every city of antiquity that did so—Babylon, Tyre, Sodom—was destroyed. Help us be aware of the time we live in and to recognize the call You have given us. We ask this in Jesus' name. And now may the Lord bless you and keep you; may He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.