Device

This word study first appeared in the March 1, 2024 issue of the Standard Bearer.

Device

All sorts of devices pass through our hands and before our eyes each day. The way the world works nowadays, it can be hard to imagine things otherwise. Many jobs involve various devices, or revolve around developing them. The smartphone has become man’s constant companion, the Internet his bank of knowledge, the screen the first place to lay his eyes in a spare moment.

The Bible has much to say about devices. True, many of the things we call devices were not around when the Bible was written. But what the Bible says is full of in­struction for us today. We can glean a few lessons by looking at the word device in Scripture. In II Corinthi­ans 2:11 Paul makes a comment about the Christian’s awareness of the Devil’s operations in the world: “for we are not ignorant of his devices.” This ought to give us pause and make us think.

We typically use the word device to refer to a use­ful physical invention. The Bible often uses the word to describe a plan, plot, or scheme with intelligence and intent behind it—often malicious ones. A device is something skillfully contrived and often deceitfully em­ployed to ensnare or harm another person for the gain of the one who devised it. There is no greater deviser of wicked devices than the Devil himself, the father of lies, the murderer in the beginning, whose devices deceived and ensnared our first parents, bringing ruin to our race. Sinful man fashions his own gods “graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29), exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God into an image (Rom. 1:23). Man’s heart is both an idol factory and a found­ry of deceitful devices. By nature man bears the image of the father of lies, unless, by grace, he is conformed to the image of Christ. David recounts in Psalm 21:11 how God’s enemies have ceaselessly “intended evil against thee” and “imagined a mischievous device.” Job answered one of his miserable comforters “I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me” (Job 21:27). With tears Esther besought Aha­suerus to “put away the mis­chief of Haman the Agagite, and his device that he had de­vised against the Jews” (Esther 8:3). Behind Haman’s wicked device was Satan’s own device deployed to destroy the line of Christ. The persecuted Jeremi­ah lamented, “their device [is] against me all the day” (Lam. 3:63). Fallen man’s nature is that he “deviseth wicked de­vices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right” (Is. 32:7). He employs “wicked tricks and devices” to ex­ploit his neighbor, “whether by force or appearance of right” (Heidelberg Catechism, LD 42 Q&A 110). Apart from grace, we must all confess “we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart” (Jer. 18:12).

But for the believing child of God, there is comfort and there is hope. God thwarts the devices of Satan and every weapon formed against His people. There are “many devices in a man’s heart,” but “the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand” (Prov. 19:21). The Lord “disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise” (Job 5:12). Je­hovah brings “the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect” (Ps. 33:1).

Jehovah’s counsel stands! His counsel concerning our redemption in Christ! No scheme of man or device of Satan or even of our own hearts can pluck us from His hands. God has disappointed the devices of the sub­tle serpent, the old dragon, through Jesus Christ, His cross, and His empty tomb. God in His justice causes the wicked to “be taken in the devices that they have imagined” (Ps. 10:2).

As Haman’s device returned “upon his own head” (Esther 9:25), so the serpent’s own device resulted in the crushing of his own head. For as Satan bruised Messiah’s heel upon the cross, pouring out his ven­omous hatred against the Christ, it was then, in giv­ing Himself to death, that Christ vanquished the foe, and sprung our souls from the snare (Ps. 124:6-7). Christ was taken and by wicked hands crucified and slain (Acts 2:23), yet it was our salvation, and the utter undoing of every device deployed against us. “We are more than conquer­ors through him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37)!

Take heart people of God! Every wicked device the just God will in due time unravel. “Rest in the Lord, and wait pa­tiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass” (Ps. 37:7) The wicked shall not truly prosper. For God declares they shall “eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices,” and “a man of wicked devices will He condemn” (Prov. 12:2). “A man of wicked de­vices is hated” (Prov. 14:17).

But let us be watchful! “For we are not ignorant of his devices” (II Cor. 2:11). Or are we ignorant? Naive sometimes? The many digital devices we use day by day are not evil in themselves. But do we use them wisely? Or do we use our devices in ways that make us easy prey for Satan’s devices?

May this awareness of Satan’s devices lead us to sanctified vigilance in our use of every device that passes through our hands and before our eyes each day, that it be not a snare but a servant, to Christ’s greater glory.