He tempts you to sin. That we read about many, many times. He tempts you to lies, to temper, to the full range of transgressions. He will visit with false doctrine, if he can; he is constantly trying to introduce false doctrine into the church. He will introduce denial of the Scripture, doubts ‒ you see it in history. Suddenly, when the Bible colleges and the seminaries are all sound doctrinally, suddenly error comes in and doubt comes in. When you read the history books you are amazed how swiftly it happens. There are those who are teaching something other than the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the infallibility and inerrancy of the word, and down it goes, as one doctrine after another is denied. He does it gently at first, little by little. He will be doing it among us if we are not watchful.
Then he is tempting us personally to doubt, and to cynicism, just as he stole up to Eve, ‘Hath God really said what you think he has said? Has God really done this? Will he really do that?’ If you should skip your prayer time and your Scripture reading, the time when you tell the Lord of your love to him and review all your blessings, when you thank and praise him and yield your heart afresh to him; if you should leave that out one day, two days, then by day three you are thinking doubtful thoughts. By day four nothing seems real to you anymore. By day five you are being assailed more heavily and you become cold and you find yourself singing hymns in church without actually meaning or understanding the words anymore. You are going for friendship’s sake and not for the Lord's sake. How quickly it begins to happen. The devil is the architect of our coldness and backsliding, and he knows how to bring it about and produce cynicism and unbelief, and faithlessness and hypocrisy.
It is he who leads the church into false methods, trusting in the flesh. He is the one who has brought in all the pop music, the bands and the drums, into churches. You go into a church and you see a drum kit on the platform. Who put that there? The devil put it there. He brings in the reliance upon the worldly and the fleshly, and the things that God hates. He brings in the desire for ease. Am I not entitled to some ease? Cannot I relax this week, this month, and stand back from the fray and ease off? He is tempting me to lack of compassion and fervour, taking away my zeal. He is tempting me to worldliness, to too much television, to becoming enraptured. He is tempting me to addiction - to what? To substances, to food, to drink, or to sounds, to rhythms? Are we addicted to rhythm, to mood enhancers? Sounds or substances: which is worse? One leads possibly to the other. He leads me to pride, and self-sufficiency. O, the levels along which he will attack me! He tempts me to love my business too much, if I am a businessman, or my career too much. We have to be diligent and do our best, but he knows how to take us that bit too far and then further and further.