The Devils Gambit: Keeping you at the Board!
The Devil’s Gambit: Keeping You at the Board
A sermon manuscript
When I was a boy, my father taught me how to play chess. We sat at the dining room table in Jackson with an ornate set my grandparents had brought back from Mexico City. The pieces were tall, heavy, carved from bone that looked like ivory, Spanish in style, ornate and weighty. I still have that set somewhere. I remember sitting across from him as a boy, maybe eleven or twelve years old, concentrating on those pieces. I remember the shock on his face the first time I finally beat him.
Chess isn’t easy. It takes thought, strategy, rules, discipline. My uncle Shane also played. He got very good because he had one of those early computer chessboards—the kind you could play against—and he sharpened himself against it. But the truth was, he never liked real competition. He could play in the backyard, but he wouldn’t join a league or a team.
Chess, though, was something I loved to play but i loved to play baseball
more and work was always important too so i’ve always
kept it a game. Even so Years later, when my own kids were little, I painted a chessboard right on our dining room table. We played there. Recently I’ve encouraged my wife to play too and she has gotten pretty good, she mostly taught herself and she wins some, loses some, and enjoys the game a lot.
But here’s the thing: chess is a game. Life is not.
Hanging in the Louvre there used to be a painting by Friedrich A. M. Retzsch called The Chess Players, better known as Checkmate. It was originally done in somewhere around 1831-2 and has been copied in variations since. I believe the original has been sold and is in private hands now. In it, a young man sits across from the devil, locked in a match for his soul. The man is tense, his eyes glued to the board. Across from him sits Mephistopheles, calm, smiling, utterly confident. But notice—the devil isn’t even looking at the board. He’s looking outward, toward you. His mouth curls in a sardonic half-smile, as if to say, “This poor fool thought he could win. You’re next. Why don’t you sit down?”
Hovering nearby is an angel. But not the kind we read about in the Bible. Not Michael with a sword, not Gabriel proclaiming the Word of the Lord. No, this one is soft, delicate, almost feminine. Its eyes are on the man’s struggle, but it does not intervene. It does not rebuke Satan, it does not deliver, it does not even speak. It is pity without power, sympathy without salvation. Paul warned us of such figures: “For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14–15).
Now look again at the board. If you know chess, you’ll see something strange. The pieces just don’t seem to add up. The positions don’t make sense. The rules don’t hold. This isn’t really chess at all. It’s an imitation. It looks like chess, but it isn’t.
And here’s the heart of it: the devil doesn’t have to play fair. He doesn’t have to win by rules. He doesn’t need a real board or real strategy. He just needs to keep you sitting at the table. Keep you Thinking you can win Notice that he even lets the man play White?
That is his gambit. In chess, a gambit is when you sacrifice something early in order to trap your opponent later. And the devil’s gambit is to let man make the first move, let man take a few pawns, to give him a few small victories, to make him believe he’s “holding his own.” The young man in the painting looks as if he’s captured a piece or two. He probably thinks he’s still in it. But the whole thing is a fraud. He cannot win, because there are no rules to win by. That’s what the psalmist meant when he wrote: The board is the snare. The devil’s gambit is the trap. He keeps your eyes on the pieces, your head bent down, your mind racing in despair. And to the one who looks on from the gallery, the devil lifts his eyes with a grin, mocking one man and inviting the next. This is the lie the devil has told from the beginning: that life is a game, that man can outthink God, that with enough wit or wisdom he can find the right move. But the Word of God says otherwise: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Man cannot win. There is no version of this game where the sinner walks away victorious. And yet, how many pulpits retell this painting as if it were a parable of hope? They preach it dramatically: “Don’t give up, the King has one more move.” They polish it and present it as if they thought it up themselves. It makes for a good closing story, easy to remember, easy to repeat. But life is not easy, and life is not a game. That rehashed story is just another illusion. It makes God sound like a clever chess player, waiting to make a surprise move at the last minute. But God is not playing the devil’s game. And Christ is not a piece on Satan’s board. No, the gospel is not that man has “one more move.” The gospel is that Christ already made the only move that mattered. At Calvary, He did not sit across from Satan and play by his rules. He overturned the table. He crushed the serpent’s head. “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). That is victory. Not that you outwit the devil, not that God waits with a trick up His sleeve, but that Jesus Christ has already won. That’s why David could sing: “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped” (Psalm 124:7). That is the gospel: the snare is broken. The board is overturned. The illusion is shattered. So I ask you, where are your eyes tonight? The man in the painting stares at the pieces. The false angel gazes at him. The devil smirks at you. But the Word of God calls us to look higher: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Have you taken the Devil’s gambit—sitting at his table, keeping your head bent down, staring at the crooked board, convinced that if you just try a little harder you might yet win? That is the trap. That is the snare of the fowler. The devil doesn’t care if you capture a pawn here or a piece there—so long as you never look up. His gambit is not to defeat you by fair play, but to keep you playing until you are lost. But that’s the Savior’s mercy—He lifts your eyes, He breaks the snare, He sets you free. Just as Jesus entered the temple and saw the tables of the money changers, and He flipped them over because they had turned His Father’s house into a den of thieves (Matthew 21:12–13), so too at Calvary He overturned the devil’s board. He broke the illusion, He shattered the false game, He spoiled principalities and powers, and triumphed over them openly. And the promise of God’s Word is not that you limp away from the table with barely a draw. It is this: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37). More than conquerors—not by wit, not by strategy, not by one more move—but through the finished work of Jesus Christ. So tonight the invitation is simple: your first move is to walk away from the devil’s board. You don’t have to play his crooked game another second. The King has already won. Lift your eyes to Christ, trust Him, and step into the victory that has been purchased at the cross. The snare is broken, the board is overturned, the Savior calls—will you rise and follow Him?
