Week 7 - Kingdom of Darkness
The Good News of the Bible is a Story of 2 Kingdoms and a Rescuer King. This Good News is briefly explained in 2 Kingdoms. In this 4-part Bible study, we’ll take a deep dive into:
Let’s start with the kingdom of darkness. This kingdom is ruled by Satan and marked by sin and slavery. This is the bad news of the Good News.
The kingdom of darkness started way back in the Beginning.
The Good Creation
In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth “good” (see Genesis 1-2). Both the visible part of creation (the physical world) and the invisible part of creation (the spiritual world or heavenly realms) were good. Life was good—all good.
Part of God’s good creation was the creation of our First Parents Adam and Eve. God created them to have a loving relationship with Him and a caretaking relationship with the world. In other words, God gave them authority to rule the world on His behalf.
The Dark Rebellion
However, there was rebellion in this spiritual world against God’s authority. The timing and details of this heavenly rebellion aren’t all that clear. But it’s clear that this heavenly revolt preceded and provoked an earthly revolt when Satan showed up in the Garden of Eden as a serpent (see Genesis 3 and Revelation 12:7-9).
Satan tempted Adam and Eve to join his rebellion against God’s authority. And when they fell for Satan’s lie and disobeyed God’s command, their rebellion opened the door for Satan to exercise authority over the world. This is when the world became the kingdom of darkness.
The Rebellious Lie
This dark kingdom is based on this rebellious lie.
Genesis 3:4-5 (NIV)
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Our personal participation in the kingdom of darkness is listening to this lie and disobeying God in sinful rebellion. We want to be our own gods rather than let God be God. We want to be our own kings and queens rather than live under God's reign. Yet our rebellion never leads to independence. If we refuse to follow God's will, we inevitably end up following Satan's will.
The greatest deception of all is believing that if we can rule ourselves, we will finally be free. Instead, our rebellion only leads to slavery under Satan's demonic regime. Satan therefore exercises authority over the people, the structures, and the systems of this fallen world. In fact, Jesus goes so far as to call Satan the ruler of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11).
The Broken Creation
Believing Satan’s lie and disobeying God’s command has also led not just to our own rebellion, but to the consequence of all the brokenness in the world. Thank goodness, there is still much goodness in God’s creation, but there is now so much brokenness—broken relationships, broken promises, broken desires, broken dreams, broken bodies, broken institutions, and the brokenness of division, racism, murder, and war. Ultimately, it leads to the final brokenness: death, both physical and eternal. Things are just not right.
“Life” in the Kingdom Darkness
The following passages give a comprehensive description of what “life” is like in the kingdom of darkness.
Ephesians 2:1-3 (CSB)
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.
Romans 1:28-32 (NLT)
28 Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. 32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
That is a sobering description of what life is like in the kingdom of darkness.
How would you describe the kingdom of darkness in your own words?
How have you seen the kingdom of darkness around you? In you?
Darkness Within
And the kingdom of darkness isn’t just out there; it’s in here—in our hearts. Once again, our personal participation in the kingdom of darkness is our sin. Like Satan, we are in sinful rebellion against God’s authority. So Satan isn’t just at work out there in the world; he’s at work in us.
John 3:19 (NIV)
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
Though the Light has come through the person and ministry of Jesus, we naturally recoil from His light because of the darkness in ourselves called sin.
No Neutral Ground
The question, then, is: Who’s in the kingdom of darkness?
The Apostle John puts it this way.
1 John 5:19
We know that we belong to God even though the whole world lies under the control of the evil one.
Who’s under the rule of the evil one or Satan?
We would like to think that even though we haven’t fully committed our lives to Jesus and don’t really belong to Him yet, at least we’re not under Satan’s rule. Or, even though we’re not in the Kingdom of Light, at least we’re not in the kingdom of darkness. We see ourselves as somewhere in between—we’re just doing our own thing.
But according to this passage, doing our own thing or being our own kings and queens actually means that Satan is our ruler and we are captives of his kingdom. This is everyone's default condition. Everyone is born into the kingdom of darkness because everyone is a sinner—a rebel against God's rule—by nature and by choice. As the Apostle John says, the whole world lies under the control of the evil one.
While some embrace the darkness through dark spirituality and a life of darkness, most try to escape it. But on our own, there is no escape. We are slaves of Satan’s dark kingdom.
A Shortcut Resisted
Jesus, however, came to reclaim the world as His Kingdom and rescue the lost as His people. Satan tried his best to deflect Jesus from His mission of bringing God’s Kingdom and setting captives free. For example, during Satan’s temptation of Jesus, we read:
Luke 4:5-8 (NIV)
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
To whom do the kingdoms of the world belong?
Why was this a temptation for Jesus?
Once again, Jesus came to reestablish God’s Kingdom on earth. Or as the Apostle John put it, The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8). The way Jesus would bring God’s Kingdom and destroy the devil’s work, though, would be through dying on the cross for our sins and rising from the dead to new life.
Satan, however, offers Jesus a shortcut. “Since the kingdoms of the world belong to me, if you bow down before me, I’ll just give them to you. How easy is that?!” That, of course, would have given the kingdoms of the world back to Jesus, but then Satan would still be in charge and we would still be his captives. Praise God, Jesus said, “No deal! I’m going to bow down before the Lord God and do things His way.”
In light of what you have discovered through the Bible readings and your personal reflections, how will you respond? Finish this sentence: “I will …”
That’s the bad news of the kingdom of darkness. In next Bible study, we’ll look at the Good News of the Kingdom of Light.