sermonette: Satan and the Holy Days
Dealing with Stress During the Holy Days
Cody Ford
Given 04-Apr-26; Sermon #1867s; 13 minutes
Are you stressed out during the holy days? Does every event in your life seem to be more intense at this time? School or work projects are often due right before Passover or the first day of unleavened bread. You move things around on your schedule like puzzle pieces. The trials increase, the stress level rises. Everyone seems to be on edge. Ready to snap at a moment's notice, the invisible tension builds. Why do we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders during this time? Well, I blame Satan. We have a saying in our family and I'm sure you have a similar one as we approach the holy days to justify this pressure on us. And someone in my family might say, oh, well, the holidays are coming. Or Satan likes to attack on the holy days. So I've become accustomed to hearing this. Why would he step up his attacks just for the feasts? I feel like my life, as I'm sure yours is too, is difficult 24/7, so. When someone in my family tries to ease my stress by saying, oh, well, the holy days are coming. I get a little curt with them. How does that help me? There is always a holy day on the horizon. So I hear this saying a lot. However, I do concede that as Passover approaches, The anxiety builds in a unique way. Different from the normal day to day stress of life. Why would Satan bother us more on the holy days than usual? So I decided to dig a little deeper into this subject and answer the question, does Satan attack us more on the holy days, which I'm pretty sure you know the answer to that already. Maybe we are just more focused on God during this time. The mental struggle of, am I going far enough deleavening? If not, does that mean I'm not going far enough to remove sin in my life? Should you deleven the top shelf of your closet? If you do not, what does that say about you? I do not know. De-leavening by itself can cause PTSD in some of us. I flash back to my childhood where my dad made me deleve in the garage. This involved removing scores of old paint cans from the workbench and wiping them down. Are you sure there is Lenin in here, Dad? Also, what is, what is considered Levin? If you go down that rabbit hole, you'll end up removing every single item from your kitchen. So there is lots of reflection and personal decisions for all of us to make. So I, I could not find anywhere in the Bible that explicitly said Satan attacks us more on the holy days. It's not spelled out that way. However, I would argue there is ample evidence to show he's hyperactive. During spiritual development and most definitely during the holy days more than any other time. During the Days of Unleavened Bread, we are more focused on God and removing sin. Hence we are going to experience more resistance and attract Satan. Observing God's holy days are spiritually important, so there is a correlation to Satan attacking us on them. He would love to get between us and God. There is some clear patterns in the Bible that point to Satan showing up whenever we are on the right track. He notices God's people and he does try to derail us whenever he can. Especially when something spiritually significant is happening. I want to explore examples in the Bible where spiritual growth was happening and the devil was there to disrupt it. We'll start with. Jesus being tempted by Satan. Right after his baptism, he's promptly led in the wilderness to be tempted. This did not happen months later, it was right away. And we see this go down in Mark 1 verse 12. I'll read that really quick. It says, immediately. The spirit drove him into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. There was no delay here. Jesus had just been baptized, which was very important for his work, and he was instantly pressured by Satan. We have an Old Testament example now involving Job. He was righteous, of course, and Satan sets out to separate him from God. We see this in Job 1:8 through 11. And in verse 11 in particular, Satan claims that Job will curse God if everything in his life is taken from him. Now Job's trial is rather extreme, but it demonstrates Satan's objective with us to cause us to lose faith. Staying in the Old Testament, I want to go really quick to I Chronicles 21. I'll go there quickly. You guys do not have to. And that even during a time of blessing and success, Satan can attack. This was a relatively calm time for Israel. In verse one, Satan moves David to take a census of Israel showing reliance on human strength instead of God's power. Satan can provoke the wrong decision at key moments in our lives. And we can experience these decision points up to and during the holy days. He wants to pound a wedge between us and God. Uh, another example now, I will have you turn to this one. It's in Mark chapter one. In verse 21. Mark 1:21. And I'll read down through. Verse 26 where we find. Jesus teaching on the Sabbath and once, once again, Satan is there, so verse 21. Then they went into Capernaum and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Now there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, saying, Let us alone. What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be quiet, come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him. This whole event went down right in the middle of services. This demonstrates that Satan is not avoiding the Sabbath, which is our weekly holy day. He makes it a point to be there. We also find in Luke 13:10-16, Christ heals a woman who had a physical infirmity for 18 years. Satan was playing the long game there. Um, this is another instance where Satan was present in church on the Sabbath trying to Disrupt Jesus from doing his work. And finally, we have yet another example involving Jesus. This is in. Luke 22, if you could turn there, please. 22 1. And I'm going to read down through verse 6 and also out of the new International Version. Now the festival of festival of unleavened bread called the Passover was approaching, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the 12. And Judas went to the chief priests and officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. They were delighted and agreed to give him money. He consented and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present. So this is our silver bullet here. Satan enters Judas right before and during Passover. He was actively working during the holy season. And what I find interesting too is the phrase and watched for an opportunity. Satan is observing us. That's what he does. Peter warns us in I Peter 5:8 to be sober and vigilant because Satan walks around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Maybe another way to say that is Satan is watching, listening, ready to manipulate you. Now, I have a personal recommendation here. And that is to not let Satan know more than he needs to. He knows the holy days are coming, of course. He's very observant, but what I mean is to be careful what you type into chat GPT or Grok or whatever you use. He's watching that like a hawk. I can't take credit for this concept. It comes from Kent Hoven, my go to YouTube creationist. Uh, someone asked him what he thought of chat GPT, and he said, quote, Satan can finally see what we are thinking. End quote. This has been his lifelong dream to exploit our inner thoughts because only God can search our hearts and minds. That's shown in many places in the Bible. First Kings 8:39, Jeremiah 17:10, Psalm 139:14, just to name a few. When we pray, Satan is incapable of knowing what the conversation is about. So by exploring AI you can get knee-deep in a conversation and Give him too many details. Deep answers to life's problems should only come from God. Another way to give Satan an advantage is by the classic talking too much. To anybody About anything, less is more. The week before Passover, I always have a knot in my stomach. So many things have to fall into place. At home, at work. It's a pressure unlike any other. Satan is squeezing us and trying to throw us off. He desperately wants to anger us, force us to lose faith, stress us out, change our attitudes so that he can accuse us before God. So what can we do about it? Well, there is a solution. Don't lean on chat, GPT or Grok for the answers to life, but instead pray. Simple as that. I Peter 5:7 says, cast your cares on him. Because he cares for you. And I do like the new international version of that scripture that reads like this, Cast all your anxiety on him. Because he cares for you. How reassuring is that? Speaking of anxiety. This past week was especially trying for me. I was forced to schedule a large project on the day of Passover and also the night to be much observed. I knew this was risky, but I was painted into a corner and I had to go through with it. Many Satanic curveballs were thrown at me Tuesday and Thur Tuesday and Wednesday. And I began to falter. The walls were closing in and I did not see a way out. Until I realized I had not prayed about it. I prayed for the faith to see what he was working out. And within minutes that job site was going my way. Everything I asked for was given to me, including getting off early so I could grill for night to be. Why do we doubt God even for a second? God can ease your anxiety if you just ask. For me personally, all the pressure reaches a peak. Just before Passover, and then it kind of draws down to the normal level of stress that we all have. There are scores of examples from Genesis to Revelation of Satan consistently showing up at spiritually pivotal moments. When God's working with us, when we are growing, and especially around the holy days. The Bible clearly shows Satan's activity level is heightened during God's feasts and spiritually important moments. During this Feast of Unleavened Bread, we are actively removing sin from our lives. And that's why the stress feels different. We're finally doing something worth attacking. I'll read in closing James 4:7, which says, submit yourselves to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
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