Monday, March 29, 2021

SUBTILTY AND THE CRAFTSMEN

  Most of us have hired a skilled tradesman to build or repair things. Many times, their claims are exaggeration. They convince the naïve customer that they are the best of their trade. Then, when the bill comes, it is high, and the workmanship shoddy.

  People are the same way. Satan sells himself with great promises, but only provides shoddy workmanship. He is not as good at his craft as people credit him for. Many even believe that they are craftier than him and can outwit him. Well, only God can do that, and you are not God. But Jesus, the Master Craftsman, did outwit the poser, Satan.

  Both Jesus and Satan are journeyman tradesmen. Neither are amateurs at using their skills. When Jesus is called a “carpenter,” in the Greek it is “tektron” which means not exactly carpenter but craftsman (Strong’s Dictionary). That Jesus was a carpenter may have come from the Hebrew wherein “created” [i] means specifically “cut wood.” A craftsman in prehistoric days would have likely been a carpenter.

  The Garden of Eden was a Garden of Trees. Therein, God would have cut wood, so to speak. Satan’s role was as a bad craftsman; to destroy the “wood” cut by the Creator.

  God, the Creator, is a great craftsman (tektron). Today, a tektron would be considered a “technician” which comes from the Greek word, tekhnikos. God is a technician in all senses of the word. He created, not just cut wood, but particles of all types including electrons, photons, neutrons and made them all sizes and shapes. He created all things seen and unseen, and that would be heaven and earth, or space and matter.

  God created all things in a gradual manner. He did not need to, but He did. In like manner, mimicking Jesus, Satan perishes all things gradually. God had created Adam and his kind, and Satan would kill them. After eating the tempting fruit, nothing seemed to have changed with Eve, so Adam ate as well. Although undetectable, both immediately began to wither so gradually that it went unnoticed. Adam and Eve would perish. Not their entire being but their flesh. God would preserve their souls which the Serpent would try to destroy again and again.

  God (Jesus) is the Craftsman. However, Satan, poses as one, to wit: “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made” (Gen 3:1). Subtil means “crafty.” Satan in the Serpent was a “craftsman” just as Jesus. Whatever God Crafted, Satan endeavors to re-craft. His goal is not to repair but change the nature of whatever God made. God’s best design was Adam who was patterned after God Himself. To undermine God, Satan would need to re-craft the man that God had crafted. He would try that with God’s “Second Man” as well, not Cain, but Jesus!

  God crafted Adam by molding him from the mist and dust of the ground, then breathed life unto him. [ii] Satan re-crafted Adam and Eve by sucking life from them. God imbued their “vessels” (souls) with Holy Spirit, and the crafty Serpent diffused what God had imbued. In other words, God molded the “cup” and Satan cracked it, so microscopically, that the “crack” is unnoticeable. Often the person fails to understand that it is cracked but still wonder why he feels so empty inside.

  God made Himself in the image of Adam and came to save the day. As the Great Craftsman. He came to regenerate what the amateur craftsman degenerated. He came not just to fix the soul but the body as well. He came to repair the “cup” and refill it with Living Water just as He had crafted it in the beginning.

  When Jesus asked His Father to pass that “cup” from Him, [iii] he was referring to refashioning the broken “vessel” of mankind. He would repair the soul.

  Down by the Garden, Satan would try to fix things before Jesus was able to. He provided shoddy craftsmanship, and by the work of his own hand, he marred his own “cup” beyond repair. Judas hung himself and his guts spilled out. He perished and would never be repaired. Judas died, and Satan still seeks another vessel to corrupt.

  Satan’s faulty craftsmanship worked once with the first Adam, and why would it not work with the “Second Adam?” Because Adam was not Jesus. He was very good, but Jesus is Perfect.

KEY VERSES: The Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him. (Mat 26:2-4)

  Judas, with Satan in him, [iv] betrayed Jesus just as he had the first Adam. Satan had entered the docile viper and rendered him a Beast. Satan crafted a Beast from a gentle snake! Millennia later, Satan took the friend of Jesus and made him His enemy. Satan recrafted and made a friendly man into a wild beast who would kill, ostensibly for money!

  Judas, the friend of Judas? Crazy! Or is it? The psalmist wrote, “Mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me” (Psalm 4:9). That was a prophecy about Judas and his relationship with Jesus. He at least posed as a friend, but perhaps he was indeed a friend who turned on Jesus by allowing Satan to enter him. Satan “paid” Judas 30 pieces of silver for the short-term use of his body. He only needed his services for a moment, but the penalty was eternal.

  Satan knew that would work because the Word foretold it, to wit: “I (God) will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15).

  Satan would use the same method. It worked before, why would it not work again? Well, the answer to that is that although Satan tempted Adam and it succeeded, he tempted Jesus and it failed! Adam was not God but Jesus IS. Adam was only the image of God.

  In the key verse, Judas was the Betrayer. He was not alone. He had Satan in him just as the Serpent of long ago. Remember, the Serpent was more subtil than any beast. He used his craftiness to deceive Adam and Eve.

  The same thing happened to Jesus (see the key verses), “They might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him.” Satan “killed” Adam and Eve by his subtilty. That was how the first Adam was killed. It worked then; would it work now? The assembly used the High Priest, Caiaphas, to kill Jesus by the same subtilty. Satan would work his craft again, and not only did Judas assist in the conspiracy, but so did Caiaphas, to wit: “Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people” (John 18:14).

  Caiaphas used Judas to betray Christ. Judas had to do that because it was prophetic. Satan had to have a body to craft his plan to kill. Originally, the body that Satan used was a mere beast that Adam had named. Animals were to befriend Adam. This time, the Beast would be a friend of Jesus as well! Satan often uses friends of people for his purposes.

  Caiaphas was not a friend of Jesus and he would never do! However, Satan was not the one who was sacrificing. Jesus was sacrificing himself. Jesus was not Adam. The Serpent would not have his way with Jesus. Caiaphas was elected by God to do the “bloody deed”[v] of circumcising God’s Flesh from the earth.

  The key word is “subtilty.” The Serpent was more “subtil” than any beast of the field, and Judas was selected from all the field at the assembly to take Jesus by “subtilty.”

  Judas, however, was not a good enough craftsman to plan the conspiracy. Conspiracy? This event was the ultimate conspiracy, the granddaddy of them all: “Thou (Lucifer) hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, (Isa 14:13). 

  That was the subtil plan of Satan, but just how crafty he turned out to be? He hung himself from a tree with a noose so inept that Judas fell to the earth and spilled his guts. Isaiah was prophetic — the conspiracy was to exalt Satan, perhaps with the silver, but what happened? The craftsman was not very crafty: “O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” (Isa 14_12).

  Isaiah knew all along that Satan was not the craftsman that he claimed to be. He is not as crafty as he is said to be!

  On the other hand, Jesus is THE Crafts-Man and He is so crafty thar he Created all things and shall re-create them in the end. Jesus crafted his own death and Satan and Caiaphas got the credit. Caiaphas and Judas were the Oliver and Hardy, about whom Hardy said, “Ollie, look at another fine mess that you got us into!”

  Satan got himself and Caiaphas into a fine mess with God. Jesus said, to Pontius Pilate, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin” (John 19:11). Pilate may have converted and the soldier who pierced Jesus was. Judas nor Caiaphas were converted. The subtil Satan in Judas had gotten the two into another fine mess — a mess for which they are still punished.

  When I read the key verses. I said aloud, “That is the craft of Satan. He is the one who beguiles!” Then it struck me — It was Satan doing his thing all over again. Indeed, Solomon was right… there is nothing new under the sun! [vi]

(Picture credit: dreamstime.com; "Crafty Person")


 

 



[i] Gen 1:1

[ii] Gen 2:5-7

[iii] Mat 26:39

[iv] Luke 22:3

[v] Exod 4:25

[vi] Ecc 1:9

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