In the beginning, God created rhythms. He spoke on day four,

Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. (Genesis 1:14)

When Adam entered Eden two days later, he stepped into a dance of day and night, month and year, winter and spring and summer and fall. And then, between the rhythms of the day and the month, God added one more, a pattern taught not by the heavens but by his own example: the seven-day rhythm of the week (Genesis 2:1–3).

God could have made a rhythm-less world if he wanted — a world without days and weeks and months and years. But in his wisdom, days four and seven of creation serve day six; rhythms make the world a good habitation for finite humans, in need of rest and refreshment. As creatures of dust, we are creatures of rhythm.

“Which is why it’s so concerning,” Kevin DeYoung writes, “that our lives are getting more and more rhythm-less.” He represents many when he says,

We don’t have healthy routines. We can’t keep our feasting and fasting apart. Evening and morning have lost their feel. Sunday has lost its significance. Everything is blurred together. The faucet is a constant drip. (Crazy Busy, 94)

In other words, life today looks less like Eden, and more like Egypt.

Days in Egypt

By the time we reach Exodus 1, Genesis 1–2 is a lost world. We find no reference to weeks or months, seasons or years in Egypt — only to an endless sequence of workdays. Perhaps some Egyptians lived by routines of work and rest. But for Pharaoh’s slaves, Egypt was a world without rhythms.

Unlike the restful God of creation (Genesis 2:2–3), Pharaoh exhibits a single-minded madness for labor and production. When Israel grows mighty, he sets them to work (Exodus 1:11). When Moses tells him to let the people go, he makes their work harder (Exodus 5:4). And when Israel finally leaves Egypt, he pursues, wondering how he could have allowed them to leave their work (Exodus 14:5). To Pharaoh, a slave’s 80-year life was merely a sequence of 29,200 workdays, inconveniently disrupted by the need for sleep.

“As creatures of dust, we are creatures of rhythm.”

Though the modern West has no singular equivalent of Egypt’s restless king, the cultural air we breathe carries a pharaonic scent. Not only do average work hours in America exceed that of many other countries, but as DeYoung notes, the boundaries between work and rest have stretched and blurred. We no longer need to go to the office to make our bricks; we just need Wi-Fi. And even our “off time” regularly falls prey to what Andrew Lincoln calls “the hectic round of activities [showing] that leisure itself is caught on the treadmill of working and consuming” (From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, 404).

Such is the rhythm-less life, a life with no square on the calendar labeled “Rest.” And many need a fresh exodus.

‘You Shall Not Work’

As soon as God rescues Israel, rhythms return. The first mentions of month and year appear as God commands Israel to celebrate the exodus annually (Exodus 12:2–3). Soon after, we find the first reference to the Sabbath (Exodus 16:23), Israel’s weekly commemoration of creation and redemption (Exodus 20:11; Deuteronomy 5:15). The drumbeat of endless days gives way to the rhythm of the seasons.

Pharaoh knew only how to say, “You shall work,” but God knows how to say, “You shall not work.” Over a dozen times, he tells his redeemed people, “You shall not do any work” (or “any ordinary work”) — a command that applied not only to the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10), but also to Israel’s festivals (Leviticus 23:7–8, 21, 25, 31, 35–36). In this blessed shall not, God snatched something of Egypt out of the lives of his people, and put something of Eden in its place.

Today, of course, we no longer live under the old covenant and its cultic rhythms. Christians are not bound to observe Israel’s festivals — nor even to keep a literal Sabbath, which, along with the festivals, has found its fulfillment in Christ (Colossians 2:16–17). But the imperative to rest still reaches us today, indirectly if not directly.

The heavens above still sing their rhythmic song. We still walk as creatures of the dust. God’s 6-and-1 pattern still invites our imitation. And Jesus’s own routines of work and rest still model the fully human life (Mark 1:35; 6:30–32). “You shall not work,” though not a covenantal command, is still the wisdom of the saints.

Reclaiming Rhythm

So, how might we begin unlearning the rhythm-less ways of Pharaoh? How might we gather up our days into some sustainable pattern of work and rest? Though we would be wise to consider, at some point, seasonal or annual rhythms of rest (in the form of weekend retreats or weeklong vacations, for example), weekly rest is likely our best starting point.

“If nightly sleep places a period at the end of each day’s sentence, weekly rest adds a paragraph break.”

If nightly sleep places a period at the end of each day’s sentence, weekly rest adds a paragraph break: once a week, we slow down, catch our breath, and live in the white space of life’s page. We pause after the pattern of the world’s first week and remember that we were made for rhythms; we were made for work and rest.

Consider, then, a few modest first steps.

Set boundaries.

Rhythms of rest require boundaries. The best resters build a gate in time, the entrance of which reads, “No work allowed.” The boundary need not protect a strict 24-hour period (since, again, we are not under the fourth commandment). But unless we put a boundary around some period of time — Friday morning, Thursday afternoon and evening, sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday — rest will likely prove elusive.

Setting a boundary, of course, is far easier than keeping a boundary. As soon as we build a gate, something will start banging on it. Keeping the door closed calls for bold faith that God will provide for us once we set down the pen, close the computer, finish for the day. God told Israel to rest not only when work allowed for it, but even “in plowing time and in harvest” (Exodus 34:21). In other words, “Even in your busiest seasons, when your livelihood seems to depend on restless work, trust me and rest.”

To be sure, we would be wrong to set our boundaries so firmly that we close our ears to urgent needs. That kind of coldhearted boundary-keeping made Jesus angry (Mark 3:1–5). But exceptions to our boundaries should be just that: exceptions. If they become the rule, we may need to reevaluate our sense of what needs truly are urgent.

Refresh yourself.

As many quickly discover, however, a day off does not equal a day of rest. Just as some people return from a trip saying, “I need a vacation to recover from my vacation,” so we sometimes end a day off feeling like we need another. Maybe we packed the day with good but exhausting activities (sports practices, home projects, taxing social events), or maybe we entertained ourselves into oblivion. Either way, our “rest” has left us more restless than rested.

Again, God’s own pattern gives us our goal: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17). Following God into this kind of rest requires not only setting boundaries, but also filling those boundaries with genuinely refreshing activities — activities that send us back into our work replenished in mind, soul, and body, ready to spend and be spent for the good of others.

The kinds of refreshing activities available to us will vary according to life stage, of course. Rest for a husband and father will look different from rest for a single man — less reading and napping, perhaps, and more time with the kids outside. Even still, all of us would do well to consider (and discuss with family or roommates) what some refreshing rest might look like, taking all factors into account.

Perhaps some time alone refreshes us — or perhaps people time does. Maybe we benefit from reading poetry or taking a walk. Some will want to be more physically active; others less. Probably everyone could benefit from curbing digital technologies and finding what Albert Borgmann calls a “focal practice”: an activity that “has a commanding presence, engages your body and mind, and engages you with others” — playing music, fishing, handwriting a letter, cooking a meal.

And of course, one activity rests at the heart of the Christian’s refreshment: worship.

Worship your Redeemer.

Before God gave Israel the fourth commandment, he gave them the first: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2–3). The Sabbath rested on (1) the reminder of redemption and (2) the call to revere God above all. Which implies that, if Israel were really to rest — if they were really to find refreshment in the Sabbath, and not just a day off — they needed to worship their Redeemer.

“Ultimately, rest flows not from a weekly pause, but from a Person.”

Millennia later, Jesus would issue an invitation that follows a similar pattern: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Ultimately, rest flows not from a weekly pause, but from a Person. Unlike Pharaoh, he has no need for store cities and slave labor, for he owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). He looks not first for workers but for worshipers, and he calls us not to Egypt but to the Eden of Himself.

For good reason, then, many Christians seek to join their weekly day of rest with their weekly day of corporate worship. If we can do the same, wonderful. If not, we can at least find some special way to say with both our hearts and our lips, “Jesus, not Pharaoh, is Lord” — and then live it out by laying down our bricks.

Every Sunday morning, they perch among us. Listen closely and you can hear their wings flapping overhead. Singing voices have quieted, the preacher mounts his summit, the book is laid open. As the people fidget in the pew, readying to hear God speak through a man, the crows and ravens stir in anticipation. Caws and muffled croaks murmur in the rafters. Some sound eerily like a chuckle.

Jesus heard them as he got up to preach.

Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. (Mark 4:3–4)

As the preacher begins to scatter the good seed of God’s word about the congregation, it meets the path — the hard and trampled, unploughed and unhumbled heart. Disinterest, distraction, carelessness, laziness, ignorance all keep the seed out. The truth of Christ, of sin, of salvation goes into this person’s ear, rests atop the heart — never to enter it. Hearing, they do not hear. Seeing, they do not see. They never hear the word enough to turn or be forgiven.

Yet, the seed does not remain atop the hardened path — Jesus watches it get eaten by birds.

They watch from above. Heads jerk up-down-left-right-tilt. Eyes scour below, looking for seed uncovered, defenseless. There. A kernel rests for a few moments, exposed. Swoop — a dark flash falls as lightning from heaven — the seed disappears. The word about the dying God, the word of life, the word of warning, gone. Devoured. Perhaps a feather is left in its place.

Fowl Play

The picture Jesus gives within the parable of the sower unsettles. What could the birds refer to? We eavesdrop on what he said to his disciples:

The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. (Mark 4:14–15)

Who devours the rejected seed from sermon-hearers then and now? Satan. He and his legions perch overhead. He pecks at the soil of our hearts. His crooked beak steals away the miracle seed. His twitchy eyes shift to and fro looking for gospel truth to devour.

This is a horrible revelation: Demon birds hover overhead — keen, surveying — looking down upon your congregation for ignored gospel words, hungry. We can imagine our discomfort if physical birds lofted above us during the sermon. How agitated we would feel if every time Jesus was mentioned they swooped down and came pecking at our ears. But Jesus reveals something more alarming, more disturbing to his disciples: these ravens feed with malice upon words that would save sinner’s souls.

Most Regular Church Attender

Many of us do not think of Satan much; yet he thinks much of us. You might imagine him among the murderous, adulterous, and false religionists on a Sunday morning — not the church. Yet behold one of his great objects of villainy every Sunday: to rob hearts of truth-filled, Christ-exalting sermons.

“You and I might miss a Sunday sermon — Satan doesn’t. You and I might neglect feasting upon the word — he won’t.”

You and I might miss a Sunday sermon — he doesn’t. You and I might neglect feasting upon the word — he won’t. The devil is the most regular and most attentive church attender.

He does not feast for nourishment; he feasts so you won’t, that sinners might not find or continue with Christ. Luke’s account has it, “the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved” (Luke 8:12). Paul calls it, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Jesus would have us hear and through hearing with faith see his glory. “Listen! Behold!” he began his sermon. “Dismiss! Ignore!” is what the birds shriek.

But how do they do it?

How They Devour

How do demons steal the word from hearts? How do these birds devour the word? And while they do so decisively and finally with the unregenerate and dismissive sermon-hearer, my assumption and sad experience is that he has stolen ignored, half-heard sermons from God’s children’s mouths as well — though he cannot finally starve them into hell.

C.S. Lewis gives us an answer at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, a senior demon, counsels his nephew, Wormwood, to stop employing argument to secure his patient’s unbelief. Rather, simply give him jargon, he counsels. To illustrate, he tells a story of one of his humans who wandered off into dangerous thoughts (Christian thoughts) while at the British museum.

Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years’ work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defense by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. (3)

Sunday afternoon lunch. How many profitable sermon words has the contemplation of the after-service meal stolen from believer and unbeliever alike? Simple suggestions from the enemy — about lunch, that annoying mannerism of the preacher, the volcanic warmth in the sanctuary, Mr. Jones’s glaring bald spot staring from the pew ahead, Mrs. Jones’s unavoidable perfume — anything and everything but the word.

Pecking at the Mind

But can Satan really distract us by placing thoughts into our minds? He can and does.

Satan distracts, suggests, and lies in order to steal the word from us. Satan incited David to sin and take a census of Israel (1 Chronicles 21:2). The devil filled Ananias’s heart to lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3). Satan “put it into the heart of Judas” to betray Christ (John 13:2). Paul warns us not to be deceived and have our thoughts led astray from a pure devotion to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:3). Satan lies to us, and when he does, he speaks out of his character as the father of lies (John 8:44). He captures people to do his will by untruths. His stratagems against us haven’t changed since the garden. Our enemy brings thoughts to our mind that are not wholly ours.

Commenting on this text, John Piper highlights threes ways Satan steals the seed: through inattention, ill-will, and ignorance. Commenting on inattention, he writes,

Satan works overtime to keep people from giving serious attention to the word of God. He may keep you up late Saturday night so that you can’t stay awake during the sermon or Sunday School. He may put a dozen different distractions around you in the service to take your mind away from the message. He may send thoughts into your mind about tomorrow’s meeting with your supervisor. If he can only distract you so that the sounds coming out of the preacher’s mouth go in one ear and out the other, he will have successfully taken away the word of God and made it ineffectual for you. Inattention is his game.

“When we long for a distraction, Satan will provide it.”

Now see Satan hovering above you, suggesting trifles, mocking, and bringing endless distractions to your mind to keep the truth from germinating. When the good word meets hard soil — or good but unprepared soil — he strikes to steal. When we long for a distraction, Satan will provide it. How many well-timed daydreams about the football game or this week’s plans have stolen serious contemplations about Christ from our own hearts Sunday after Sunday?

To Those Who Hear Sermons

Dear Christian reader, the pew is a battleground. Every week, either we will feast on the word or Satan will. He sees the significance of the word preached weekly to us — do we?

He visits your church. “That malicious spirit is unwearied in his efforts to do us harm,” J.C. Ryle assures.

He is ever watching for our halting, and seeking occasion to destroy our souls. But nowhere perhaps is the devil so active as in a congregation of Gospel-hearers. Nowhere does he labor so hard to stop the progress of that which is good, and to prevent men and women being saved. From him come wandering thoughts and roving imaginations — listless minds and dull memories — sleepy eyes and fidgety nerves — weary ears and distracted attention. In all these things Satan has a great hand. People wonder where they come from, and marvel how it is that they find sermons so dull, and remember them so badly! They forget the parable of the sower. They forget the devil. (Expository Thoughts on Luke, 158)

Is it not the case that sometimes we do not even make it to the parking lot before it is as though we never even heard a sermon? Let us remember Satan on Sunday mornings. Not out of paralysis — “for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4) — but out of preparation — “put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11).

And unconcerned sermon hearer, may I plead with you in closing? A man may refuse to leave his jail cell for the promise of freedom that Christ offers, but he might reconsider if he knew a tiger is in his cage. You are not alone in your unbelief; Satan is with you. He abets your pretense of atheism and lays siege on your attention and blinds you from the glory of Christ. Before you get to that parking lot bereft of what you just heard, Satan has visited you and ate what you would not.

Let us all, then, heed Jesus’s warning to be more careful how we hear (Luke 8:18).

Audio Transcript

On this Monday, we jump right into the deep end to talk about the pathway from orthodoxy to demon theology. It’s a heavy topic, one inspired by a text we find in Paul’s first epistle to Timothy.

Here’s the question, from a podcast listener named Leland: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for taking heavy questions on the podcast. I have one of my own.” Indeed, he does. “In 1 Timothy 4:1, Paul writes that some professing Christians ‘will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.’ This seems like a very stark transition for once-professing believers. What does this look like? Can it really mean Christ-worshipers become blatant demon-worshipers? Or is this move far more subtle? Can you explain to me what’s happening in this text?”

This is a good question for giving us an opportunity to clarify two things. First, can a true, born-again worshiper of Jesus be led astray into the kind of demonic deception that Paul has in mind? Second, how does this happen? What’s going on here? Does the departure from the church into involvement with demonic teaching happen suddenly or gradually?

Now, the reason I raised that first question is because Leland’s question for me has an ambiguity in it. On the one hand, he refers to “professing Christians departing from the faith to demons.” On the other hand, he asked the question about Christ-worshipers departing into demon worship. It wasn’t clear to me whether he was asking about genuine Christ-worshipers or whether he was asking about professing Christians who are not genuine Christ-worshipers deep down in their hearts.

I think Romans 8:30 teaches that those who are predestined are called, and those who are called are justified, and those who are justified are glorified, so that no genuinely called and justified Christian ever falls away into demon worship — not permanently, anyway. So then, the question becomes (and I think this is what he’s asking), What is happening when people in the church, who have been in the church for years and are outwardly identifying as Christian and yet are not truly born again, are swept away into the teaching of demons?

Lured by Lies

Let me read the text that he’s referring to.

Now, the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to [or paying attention to] deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Timothy 4:1–3)

What’s going on here? Well, first, Paul says, “There are deceitful spirits.” They would be manifesting themselves through people who claim to speak in the name of some supernatural being — in some charismatic way, perhaps, with a spirit of prophecy. This is the kind of thing John was referring to when he said, “Do not believe every spirit” — that’s what Paul is talking about here, deceitful spirits — “but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). So Paul is concerned that professing Christians will pay too much attention to deceitful spirits and not test them with biblical truth and be carried away into the teaching of demons.

Then he says that, through these spirits, there arise cult-like practices that contradict biblical teaching but look religious. In this case, he’s talking about forbidding marriage and forbidding certain foods. Then he says that these cultic practices have advocates whose consciences are seared and who lie about what the Bible teaches and deceive people away from teaching the truth and away from living by faith in Christ. When that happens, he says, “You can see that these are teachings of demons because that’s what the goal of demons is: to lure people away from Christ.”

Increasing Deception

Paul points out that this kind of departure from the faith will be intensified in the later times (1 Timothy 4:1). The danger of seduction by deceitful spirits and teachings of demons is always present throughout this fallen age, from the time of Jesus until Jesus comes back. They’re always there. But there will be a greater temptation as the end of the age approaches and the Lord draws near.

“The danger of seduction by deceitful spirits and teachings of demons is always present throughout this fallen age.”

Paul describes this in 2 Thessalonians 2. The people are worried that the day of the Lord may have come, and Paul says, “No, it hasn’t come, because first there has to be this great apostasy, this falling away, this rebellion, this deception.” A great deception comes first. “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the [apostasy] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Then he says in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” In other words, even though there will be a great deception of lawlessness at the very end of the age, the spirit of deception is always at work in some measure in this fallen age.

He describes it like this: “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception” — that’s what Paul is talking about in 1 Timothy — “for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9–12).

Jesus said in Matthew 24:12–13, “Because lawlessness” — the same lawlessness Paul’s talking about in 2 Thessalonians — “will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Slow or Sudden Turn

In other words, the mystery of lawlessness will have a huge impact on nominal Christians, whose love for Christ is shallow and unreal. They will grow cold. Their resistance to the deception of demons will give way. They will not endure to the end.

This may happen gradually, as the church falls away from preaching the truth, and the people’s love for Christ becomes more and more perfunctory. You see this in churches. It’s tragic to watch. It just becomes perfunctory. They’re just going through the motions. All the former seeming passion and biblical faithfulness for Jesus is gone. Then come the deceitful spirits, and these folks are vulnerable to being swept away into a great deception and the teaching of demons.

“If we remain in the grace of God and treasure Christ above all, we will be kept.”

Or it may happen suddenly. A satanic miracle worker comes to town with a ministry of signs and wonders, like Simon in Acts 8. He takes people by storm because their roots are so shallow. They’re more dazzled by the deceitful miracles than by the beauties of Christ and his salvation and his teaching. Oh, the need for depth and rootedness in the truth in our churches. This is a word for pastors. This is why Paul urges us in Ephesians 6 to “put on the whole armor of God, that [we] may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” and “keep alert with all perseverance,” praying earnestly to be spared this kind of deception (Ephesians 6:11, 18).

If we remain in the grace of God and treasure Christ above all, we will be kept. That’s 1 Peter 1:5. It’s so precious. I love this promise. I put it on my mother’s gravestone (with my father’s permission), in fact. “Kept by the power of God.” But here’s what the text says: “By God’s power [we] are being guarded [being kept] through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” That’s our hope. Those whom the Lord calls, the Lord keeps.