There are three lies above all others that the devil wants you to believe. And surveys show that at least for his top of the pops, Lie Number 1, he’s being really successful at it. But … what if we knew what those lies are, and how to hit them out of the park?

The Devil Doesn’t Exist

I had someone ask me the other day, with quite some scepticism in their voice I’d have to say, “You don’t actually believe there’s a devil do you”? It was that kind of intimidating tone that says if you answer yes you must be a blithering idiot, you know that tone right? “You don’t actually believe that there is a devil do you?” And my answer to this person was, “Sure I do, absolutely I do, a thousand times yes, I do”.

At which point the look on their face told me that as far as this person was concerned their suspicions about me were confirmed. Yep, Berni Dymet is a blithering idiot, a religious nut, a fundamentalist. But the reason I do believe in the devil is because Jesus believes in the devil.

Here’s an interesting set of statistics. The Barna Group is a highly respected research organisation in the United States. They conducted a survey on spiritual beliefs and attitudes. This is what they found. 78% of self-described Christians believe in an all powerful God, I guess you kind of expect that, I would have thought it would be higher but 69%, almost as many don’t believe in a real personal force of evil, the devil, and a further 8% weren’t sure.

Add the 69% and the 8% and you get 77%, so boiling it right down to basics about the same number of people who call themselves Christians believe in God but don’t believe in Satan or they’re not too sure.

Now I don’t know where you’re at, one person listening today might be a Bible-believing Christian, the next one may not. You may never once in your life have considered the possibility that Jesus is who He said He is. Wherever you are though let’s just look at those survey results objectively, dispassionately for a moment.

Almost 80% of Christians believe in an all powerful God, begs the question what the other 20% believed and why they call themselves Christians in the first place. Nevertheless round the figures, 80% believe in God, almost exactly the same number don’t believe in the devil or they’re not sure.

Today I’m kicking off a series of four messages called ‘The Top 10 Lies That The Devil Wants You To Believe’ and when I was planning all that out my first instinct was to say, “Look, the top one, numero uno, would have to be that God doesn’t exist. But when you look at this research that’s not what it tells us. The top number one lie that the devil wants you and me to believe is this that he doesn’t exist”.

Do I find that in my Bible? Actually I do. He makes his very first appearance in Gods Word pretty early on in the piece. So when this personal force of evil appears to deceive and to tempt Adam and Eve how does he do it? Does he rock up as a devil with horns and an evil face dressed in black and red with a pitch fork in his hand breathing fire and smoking around the edges?

Does he introduce himself, does he say, “Hi Adam, hi Eve, my name is Satan, your regular local personal force of evil, here to tempt you and lead you astray from God.” Actually no, he came disguised as something entirely else. Genesis chapter 3:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of that tree that is in the middle of the garden nor shall you touch it or you shall die.

But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You won’t die, for God knows that when you eat off it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took from it fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made loin cloths for themselves.

He came disguised as a snake. He came breathing lies, twisting what God had said to Adam and Eve.

When I was in the military one of the arts of war that they taught us was the art of deception, making things appear to be something that they weren’t so you’d trick your enemy for the sole purpose of defeating your enemy. When I was in the military they taught us the art of camouflage to hide from the enemy. In fact the snipers took this to the enth degree.

I remember once we were told that there were three snipers concealed in this small patch of forest and they told us to walk around openly and to find them. We did not find a single one of them. When the instructor told the snipers to stand up, one of them stood up within just a few feet of me and I couldn’t believe it.

You see it’s exactly what Satan does. If he can somehow make us believe that he doesn’t exist at all he can just sit there and take pot shots at us all day ruining our lives. And you know, he’s a very good shot. God’s Word even tells us that, 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 14:

And no wonder, even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So if you want to sneer at the notion that someone believes in the existence of the devil go right ahead, stand in the snipers field of fire and let him take pot shots all he likes. Me? I’m going to do what God says. We each have our choices to make and I absolutely, one thousand percent believe God when He says through the Apostle Paul that we shouldn’t be ignorant about the designs and the deceptions of Satan, so that we aren’t outwitted by him, 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 11.

Or, when He says through the Apostle Peter that we should keep alert because like a roaring lion our adversary, the devil, prowls around looking for someone to devour. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8. I guess C S Lewis the author of the Narnia series, also a great theologian, sums it up best for me. He says:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our human race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence and the other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail the materialist and the magician with the same delight.

Let me say it again, the reason that I believe in the existence of a personal force of evil, the devil, Satan, is because as I read my Bible, as I read what Jesus said and did, what I discover is that He clearly, clearly believes in the existence of Satan. Who am I then to disbelieve?

You Aren’t Who God Says You Are

Have you ever found yourself doubting yourself? Who you are, what you’re capable of? Do you ever find yourself wondering whether God actually loves you, whether, given the hash you’ve just made of things just the other day, whether He really is going to forgive you this time? Whether you’re in the right place doing what you should be doing? Whether God has a plan for you, a destiny for your life?

Do you ever find yourself doubting? Well you know, that list of questions, that list of doubts, I’d be so surprised if there’s not at least one or two of those that didn’t strike a chord with you. I heard someone say recently that these days, when it comes to God, it’s not so much guilt that many people experience its uncertainty. That makes sense because we live in a world where, these days just about anything goes.

So we don’t experience guilt so much as the thing that ultimately convinces us that we need a relationship with Jesus but that’s been replaced with a sense of uncertainty. In a world full of so many choices, in a world where indeed anything does go, in a world where we’re told you can have it all. Our experience is much more of a sense of uncertainty about our worth, about our direction, about where our lives are headed, about whether God would actually ever think to forgive us.

And my experience that applies almost equally to those who don’t yet know Jesus personally and those that do. That may sound a little bit odd. Shouldn’t Christians be free from doubts about who they are and where their lives are headed? You’d think so after all in some respects that would be the whole point wouldn’t it? But in my experience many aren’t. Just the other day a woman posted this on my blog site, she said:

“I feel that God does not seem to want to help me for reasons that I cannot understand. I pray and I pray and I pray and nothing ever seems to happen. I try my hardest to serve Him and to love Him but things just seem to go from bad to worse. I want victory but I just don’t know what else I’m supposed to do. God seems unpleasable.”

Yeah okay, Robyn was going through a really tough patch in her life but often that’s when we start questioning God. What’s going on? Is there something wrong with me? Why aren’t you answering my prayers? The questions go on and on. We all have them from time to time, they’re quite natural I guess and if Satan can convince us that things aren’t right with God or that God’s forgotten us or that He’s unpleasable, can you see how destructive that can be?

Man, if Satan can sew enough doubt in someone’s mind that God is just unpleasable, that we can never be worthy, that we can never match up to God’s standards, then can you see how the devil wins? This is one of the huge lies he perpetrates and actually it’s the lie that lies at the heart of Robyn’s problem.

Her symptoms are the questions she’s asking, the uncertainty she has, the anguish she’s feeling, the pain is a symptom. It always is. It points to a disease and in Robyn’s case. The disease is that she doesn’t really know who she is in Christ. She believes in Jesus, she just doesn’t know what honour and blessing and status that confers on her. If she knew that, God, right there in the midst of her trials would be healing her disease.

Consider this powerful truth, it’s a Scripture you don’t often hear quoted and yet it talks about the sharp contrast between the world’s standards and God’s wisdom in choosing us to be His people. It comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 1 beginning at verse 25:

For Gods foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and Gods weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call brothers and sisters, not many of you are wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are. So that no one might boast in the presence of God, He’s the source of your life in Jesus Christ who became for us the wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption in order that, as it’s written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

Do you see how Robyn’s operating by the world’s standards? Now I’m not being critical of her at all, we all do this naturally, we all look at who we are, our circumstances, where our life’s headed or not headed as the case may be and we add all of those up and decide we’re are mess, we’re not worth it.

God comes along and says this, “I don’t choose you because you’re some superstar, I don’t choose you because you’re fancy and flash and bright and noble in the world’s eyes, I chose you because I love you. The world may not have chosen you, the world may think me a fool for having chosen you but I chose you to shame and confound those who think themselves wise, I chose you the weak, the Robyn’s of this world to show my glory through you.” And so what God’s saying here, “When people start to see the strength you have in your suffering, when you see how to overcome your suffering other people will see my glory through you.”

Let me ask you something, with all the doubts and the questions and the uncertainties that perhaps you have experienced in your life, does that give a whole new perspective to what you’re going through? Does that completely change things for you?

Gods foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.

He chose you to be one of His people for a reason. The instant we come to grips with the truth, the truth that God is with us, the truth that we’ve been chosen by Him, the truth that Jesus is the source of our life and our forgiveness and our right standing with God, our uncertainty, our whimpers turn into a boast, boast in the Lord. Look at what Jesus has done for me. I was weak, He came into my life with strength, I was lost and now I’m found.

Circumstances become irrelevant; our failures, our weaknesses, the apparent directionlessness of our lives, all those things become irrelevant because in Christ we have a new life. In Christ we are set free, in Christ we have a future and a hope and a solid foundation, He is the rock on which we stand. So when the devil comes sowing seeds of doubt about who we really are in Christ we can boldly proclaim:

If God is for us, who is against us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loves us.

 

You’ve Really Blown it This Time

That’s what the devil wants you to believe – you have blown it buddy! And did you know the great power of this lie? Do you know why it’s so effective? Do you want to know why it had the power to keep me away from God for two decades of my life? Here’s why.

Because in actual fact it’s true! But Satan is so good at twisting truth’s into lies. He takes the simple truth that we will never be worthy of God’s love in and of ourselves. We aren’t, we’ve all sinned, we’ve all failed, we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. And he kicks off this marketing campaign that tells us in very clever ways that not only are we not worthy but there’s no possible way that we will ever be worthy again in our lives and at that point it’s game over.

If I sound particularly passionate about this one it’s because I am. It’s because this lie kept me from having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ for a good twenty years of my life. I was totally unaware that the devil existed at all let alone that he was behind this lie fuelling it in my heart.

I couldn’t face God, I couldn’t because deep down I knew that the way I was living my life didn’t honour Him. I absolutely knew that I had to clean up my act before I could approach God otherwise He’d, I dunno and that’s what causes many a person never to go to God in the first place and it causes many a person to turn their backs on God for the same reason because they’re not worthy and they’re afraid of the consequences.

A few years ago I received this email from a young man who’d listened to one of these radio programs on his radio station locally. I’ve kept it because what he said had a powerful impact on me. Have a listen to what he wrote:

I’m only a new Christian and I’ve been with the Lord probably about ten weeks and I’ve been going great guns and then I had a night when I went out drinking and I told my friend I wasn’t sure if I could be a Christian anymore. I felt so terrible about it and I thought I’d really blown the whole thing with God. It’s only when your program came on the radio tonight that I realised that that’s why Jesus died for me. Thank you God for Your grace, it was really awesome tonight.

Of course it was awesome, he thought all was lost and then he heard the good news of the grace of Jesus Christ. This young man was fed this lie by the devil because the devil knew that if he could get this guy to swallow it he would do what he did to me for twenty years, keep him from going to God and ask Him for forgiveness.

So what do we do with this lie? What’s the answer? Do we crawl away into a corner and hope that God doesn’t notice the hash we’ve made of things? I mean Adam and Eve tried that. They tried to run away from God and hide in the garden. When they believed the lies of the devil and they ate the fruit of that one tree, just the one that God said don’t eat from this one:

They’re eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked, they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze and the man and the wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees in the garden.

Have you ever considered how patently ridiculous it is to try to hide from God? But we all do it when we swallow the devil’s lie. Why did they hide? Because they were ashamed, because they instantly knew they’d disobeyed God. It was just ordinary fruit on that tree, nothing special inside the fruit; the point was the one thing that had changed was that for the first time they were experiencing guilt.

For the first time they knew that they had disobeyed God, they had disrupted their relationship with God and their immediate reaction? Like that young man, like me and like you was to go and run and hide.

Friend what’s the answer? The answer to this lie is knowing the truth, the answer is that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is totally, totally for me and for you. It’s totally bullet proof, have a listen, Romans chapter 5 beginning at verse 1:

Therefore since we now have a complete right standing with God through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

For while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person though maybe for a good person someone might actually dare to die but God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Much more surely then, now that we’ve been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of Jesus, how much more surely, having been reconciled, will we now be saved by his life?

What’s all that saying? Simply this, because Jesus died on that cross to pay for every sin and every mistake, every turning of our backs on God, large, small, past, present, future, the requirements of the inherently just nature of God have been met and when we put our trust in Jesus and what He’s done for us on that cross we’re forgiven by God, freely, it’s called grace for a reason.

If we could somehow work our way into a right standing with God through our own strength and our own ability Jesus wouldn’t have had to die on that cross but we can’t, that’s why Jesus died, that’s why God forgives us, by grace and so when we put our trust in Jesus instead of crawling away and trying to hide behind the bushes, we can boast in what Jesus has done for us.

While we were totally unworthy God proved His love for us by sending Jesus to die. He didn’t wait for me to sort my life out; He didn’t wait for you to sort your life out because He knew that if He did that He’d be waiting for an eternity. He proved His love for you and for me by acting before we acted and not only have we been saved in that through the death of Jesus we’re forgiven, we’ve been saved in that when He rose again from the grave He gave us a completely new life.

And in case it hasn’t quite sunk into our hearts let me finish with this story. The great reformer Martin Luther once dreamed a dream in which he stood on the day of judgement before God, satan was there to accuse him and when the books were opened he pointed to transgression after transgression of which Luther was guilty.

Luther’s heart sank in despair but then he remembered the Cross and turning upon the devil he said, “There is one entry which thou has not made Satan”. “What is that?” asked the devil. “It is this” answered Luther. “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin”. (1 John chapter 1, verse 7)

That’s the truth, the God honest truth. And now as you know the truth may the truth set you free.

You know the devil will go to any lengths to keep you from having a relationship with Jesus. One of the things he loves to do is to convince us that God’s a liar. And he’s better at it than some of us may think.

God Doesn’t Exist

Hey, let me ask you something today. If you wanted to make sure that people didn’t get all the blessings of God in their lives what would you do? How would you go about it? I mean if you wanted to deceive me, convince me that there is no God, that there is no greater being out there who wants the best for me, who loves me so much that He wants to share eternity with me, what would you say? What would you do? How would you go about it?

The reason I ask you is that there is someone who wants to do just that. His name is Satan and he’s intent of robbing us of God’s best and if he can convince us that there is no God then it’s game over. He can stop wasting his efforts on us and concentrate on someone else.

That’s why this is absolutely one of his top ten lies, absolutely, and that’s what today is going to be all about, the second message in a series that I’ve called, “The Top 10 Lies The Devil Wants You To Believe”.

Now when it comes to not believing in the existence of God, consider this statement from Bertrand Russell:

The objections to religion are of two sorts, intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.

In other words there can’t possibly be a God because look at the violent terrible people that God has chosen to reveal Himself through. But not all of the devil’s deceptions about God are intellectual arguments, in fact 99% of them aren’t.

If the devil can get us focused just on the here and now, looking down at the tasks at hand then we don’t have time to look up at God. I’ve had a see-sawing thing happen in my life for much of my life when it comes to deciding whether or not there is in fact an all powerful, all loving God.

As a child I went to Church with my parents every week, most people did back then but I can honestly say that not once did anything happen at Church or anything that was said at Church or any of the songs that we sang at Church, nothing convinced me that there was indeed a God. In fact the thought never occurred to me.

Going to Church was just something we did back then, it wasn’t meant to make a difference in our lives, in fact as I looked around there was nothing different, nothing inspiring about the people who attended the Church, it was just something we did.

In my mid to late high school years I encountered Jesus for the first time in a powerful way through some friends, in particular a young mate of mine, Grant. I attended the Christian fellowship meetings at lunch time at school each week and I even went on a few camps and that was all good. But when the luxury of those idealistic years of high school ended, when I had to go out and earn a living and find my way in the world, when I was confronted with the harsh realities of life outside the covering and the blessing of my parent’s home things changed.

And what changed is that, well like so many of my peers I hopped onto that treadmill of life. Studies, university, career, finding a house, paying a mortgage, worrying about what car I should drive and what people would think of me and on and on and on and pretty soon God was irrelevant.

Did God exist? Well maybe and as time went on that maybe became more and more tenuous. The idea that there might be a God became more and more distant until one day I probably didn’t really believe that there was a God. In fact when I finally did cry out to God in a time of pain and distress about all I could manage was something like, “God, if you’re really out there now would be a good time”. That’s all I had and fortunately that’s all He needed to hear.

I wonder in your day to day life, how’s it gone for you? For many people it isn’t the grand apparently logical argument that convinces them that there’s no God, it’s just that the busyness of life distracts from ever asking, ever looking, ever thinking about it. And for many it’s not until they hit a brick wall that they even consider the possibility that there’s a God.

You’ve heard that saying, “take time to smell the roses”, most of us don’t. I’m convinced that if more people took time to smell the roses, if we took time to breath in the fresh clean air around us, if we took time to go out for a walk through the forest after a heavy rainstorm or sit on some craggy rock looking out at a angry dark ocean, if we took more time God would be a whole bunch more obvious to us.

Don’t believe me, listen to what the Apostle Paul has to say about how God reveals Himself, Romans chapter 1 beginning at verse 19:

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God’s shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and his divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things that he’s made.

So they are without excuse for though they knew God they didn’t honour him as God and give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.

In other words take time to look around, look at the wondrous beauty of the rose as you smell it, look at the birds of the air, look at the wonder of this world, the vastness, the incomprehensible vastness of the cosmos. So big is the known universe and it’s only the known universe I’m talking about, that for light to travel at a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second from one end of the universe to the other would take twenty billion years.

Look at the wonder of creation and tell me point blankly it was an accident. To me it takes a whole bunch more faith to be an atheist than a Christian. To me it seems incredibly far fetched to believe that in the beginning there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason which then turned into dinosaurs.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make light of it but that about sums it up for me. If the devil can have us believe that there is no one behind creation, if he can have us believe that all there is, is now, that’s what Richard Dawkins wants us to believe when he writes:

Be thankful that you have a life and forsake your vain presumptuous desire for a second one.

If the devil can just keep us with our heads down living out the daily grind he’s won. That’s the lie, it’s a lie that permeates much of the thinking in our society, it’s a lie that permeates life of many a man, many a woman and many a child as we eke out their existence.

But stop and think about it, stop and look around, stop and look up at the millions of stars in the Milky Way on a clear night, stop and notice the wonder of the intricate design of that rose you smelt and it’s exquisite perfume, stop and notice all that Gods created. And there’s a small voice inside us that says, “there has to be something more, there just has to be”.

C S Lewis was the author of the Narnia collection and he was a great theologian, he said something along these lines. He said, “In the absence of any other evidence the existence of the human thumb is sufficient to convince me that there’s a God.” So great a feat of engineering did he consider the human thumb to be, that he couldn’t look at it in any other way than as evidence of the genius of God.

The devil wants us to believe there is no God, that there’s only here and now. What a cruel lie that’s going to turn out to be for many, many people. So let me ask you this, when was the last time you took time to smell the roses? To look at creation? To ask yourself, “how did all this happen?”

When was the last time you asked the question, does God really exist? Is He really concerned about my life? Maybe it’s time to stop, to think, to observe, to question.

God’s Word Isn’t True

So what have you thought about the devil’s lies so far? Maybe if you’re like up to 80% of Christians surveyed who don’t actually believe in the existence of the devil you might be saying to yourself, ‘this guy on the radio is a bit loopy. He believes in the existence of the devil’ and it’s true. 78% of the people in the US who called themselves a Christian either don’t believe in the devil or aren’t sure that he exists.

So I guess there’s more than just a few people listening today who think, “maybe Berni’s a bit loopy” and that’s lie number one. We looked at that last week. If the devil can trick us into believing that he doesn’t exist at all, hey bingo, he’s won. He’s actually very good at it.

And another biggie which we explored just before the break is that the devil works very hard indeed to get us to believe that not only that he doesn’t exist but neither does God and if that doesn’t work on us then he moves onto the next lie, the one we’re going to look at right now which is what God says isn’t true. And you see that lie for the very first time in only the third chapter of the first Book of the Bible.

So often what the devil does is he doesn’t confront the big issues, the big truths head on because it’s just too hard to do that. Why try and knock over the tower through a full on frontal attack? No what he does is that he quietly chips away at the foundations until all of a sudden the whole fortress crumbles.

All of a sudden we don’t know anymore what we believe. It’s just what he did with Adam and Eve. We had a look at Satan’s first encounter with humanity last week but let’s have another look at that same passage today from a different angle. Genesis chapter 3 beginning at verse 1:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘we can eat from any tree in the garden but God said, ‘you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden nor shall you touch it or you shall die.

But the serpent said to the woman, ‘you will not die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like God knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make them wise she took of it’s fruit and she ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made loin cloths for themselves.

Do you notice how rather than taking on what God said head on satan twists the truth and dishes it up in a different form? Gods instruction to Adam and Eve was that you can have the whole what everything in the garden, just don’t touch the fruit on this one tree and Satan twists that into a lie:

Did God say, ‘you shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden?

Now Eve knows the truth so she gives it back to the serpent, “No, no, God said we may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden” but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden nor shall you touch it or you shall die.”

You’d think the whole thing would end right there but see Satan’s smart and he’s persistent. Instead of attacking the do/don’t truth of God because first round it didn’t work, he simply undermines the impact that doing the deed will have.

God said don’t do it because you’ll die, Satan says, “No, no, no, you won’t die, you’ll be just like God. It won’t kill you, so there’s no reason not to do it in fact there’s a benefit, you can be like God; you’ll know the difference between good and evil just like God. It’s not really a sin. Even if it is, come on, it’s only a small one.”

That’s how he works and that’s how he works with the Bible too. He undermines God’s living Word and here’s how he does it. There are parts of the Bible that we just can’t wrap our minds around. Some of the Old Testament law for instance, the punishments seem totally outrageous to us today and so the enemy can use those to undermine the truth and the certainty we have in God’s Word.

The West Wing is one of my favourite TV shows, I think it’s one of the best TV series ever to come out of the US and there’s a great scene in one of the episodes where President Bartlett attacks a not so nice talk show host on a particular issue and he hurls these Old Testament quotes in her face. Have a listen to them:

Bartlett – I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluid Italian, always cleaned the table when it was her turn, what would a good price for her be?

My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath, Exodus chapter 35, verse 2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police?

And here’s one that’s really important because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus chapter 11, verse 7. If they promise to wear gloves can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions would you?

Now I think you’ll agree that the President Bartlett character has something of a point with those. Not only do those laws not apply to us but it seems totally inconceivable that an all loving God would give such laws to His people. And so therefore Bartlett’s reasoning goes, “Everything in the Bible is up for grabs, there is no real truth, did God really say …”

Do you see how easy it is to get on that slippery slope? And yet at the same time there are clearly parts of the Bible – written as it was over a few thousand years by a whole bunch of different people, most recent Book having been completed almost two thousand years ago – there are parts of it that are bound not to make sense for us today.

Would we put any of those laws that Bartlett quoted into action today? I don’t think so. Therefore, the devil’s reasoning goes, “A whole bunch of things are up for grabs. Really … really the Bible’s a bunch of myths and legends. Maybe there are a few reasonable moral things in there but that’s about it.” That’s the devil’s logic and it’s easy, it’s very easy to follow his line of thinking.

And yet I believe. as do hundreds of millions of people across the globe, that the Bible is the living Word of God; alive, sharper than any two edged sword. The hardest thing for people to agree on is not what the Bible says or whether the events recorded in it actually happened, the hardest thing for people to agree on is what does it mean to us today in a totally different time, a totally different culture from the times and cultures in which it’s various Books were written?

It’s going to make a few Christians a bit squeamish. We try not to think about that or talk too much about it but it’s true. There are bits that clearly don’t make sense to us today. There are bits that clearly do. Which is which? That’s what the arguments are all about and the devil loves it.

For my part I believe that the Bible is the living Word of God. Yes there are bits of it I struggle with, there are bits of it I don’t understand; the ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Book of Joshua is a great place for me to start. I want to ask God about that when I spend eternity with Him.

And yet there is a power, there is a consistency, there is a truth in God’s Word, the Bible, which is undeniable. Do I work hard in understanding not only what Gods saying through His Word but how it applies today? Yes I do. Much of the Bible is meant to be taken literally.

Other parts, like the poetry in the Psalms speaks to us in a different way. A Book like the Book of Revelation is a form of literature, apocalyptic literature for which there’s no direct parallel in our 21st Century English speaking culture, but it speaks powerful truths to us by painting pictures.

I’m pretty hard nosed kind of guy, I don’t swallow fable’s easily and yet I’ve come to the conclusion, like Paul the Apostle, that the Word of God is exactly that, the living Word of God and that:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

 

Let the Truth Take Root

Most of us at some point in our lives have heard God’s Word; we’ve heard the Good News about Jesus. Maybe we lived it for a while, maybe we’re even trying to live it right now but it ain’t working so well.

The reason for that is that often Satan comes along with his lies and plucks the truth out of our hearts. Don’t believe me? Have a listen to what Jesus has to say on this very thing, Luke chapter 8 beginning at verse 4:

When a great crowd had gathered and people from town after town came to him he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed and as he sowed some fell on the path and was trampled on and the birds of the air ate it up.

Some fell on the rock and as it grew up it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among the thorns and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil and when it grew it produced a hundred fold.

As he said this he called out, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen’. Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, ‘to you it’s been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God but to others I speak in parables so that looking they may not perceive and listening they may not understand.

The parable is this; the seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard then the devil comes along and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved.

The ones on the rock are those who when they hear the word of God receive it with joy but these have no root, they believe only for a while and in time of testing they fall away.

As for what fell among the thorns these are the ones who hear but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature.

But as for that in the good soil these are the ones who when they hear the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patient endurance.

You see I totally relate to that. There was a time in my teenage years when I received the Word of God. I took it into my heart, I believed it but then Satan came along and plucked it from my heart like a raven coming to eat the trodden grain on the path.

And so for the next twenty years or so I wandered in this wilderness, I look back on those two decades of my life it could have been so different, it could have been so much less suffering, there could have been so much more fruit in my life and yet God’s Word hadn’t fallen into the good soil of my heart, it had fallen on the path.

And so when that happens the devils able to come along with his lies and plucks the truth from our hearts. Can you see the tragedy of that? I had the truth, I had the Word of life and it was stolen from me and I let him take it away, that’s what the devils lies do.

It doesn’t matter which lie we swallow, just one of them will do. Whether we believe that God doesn’t exist or whether we let the devil diminish Gods Word in our lives to pluck the truth from us, he doesn’t care which one we swallow, either way he wins and we lose.

Let me encourage you today to take God’s Word and wrap your heart around it and literally let the seed, the Word of God, fall on the good soil in your heart. In other words don’t just treat it superficially like grain lying on a hard rocky path where it can never strike root and grow.

Take God’s Word to your heart, take it seriously, feed on it, let it grow, let it take root, let it become part of you because when we do that this is what, according to Jesus, is going to happen.

But as for the good soil these are the ones who when they heard the word of God held it fast in an honest and good heart and bore fruit with patience and endurance.

Friend that’s precisely what Jesus wants for your life. Take His Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and your life will bear such fruit; actually you’ll have so much fruit you won’t know what to do with it all.

It’s so easy to get our … our view of the world, our perspective, distorted. If the devil can get us to believe that it’s all about us, all about today, all about the here and now and how we feel – man, he can play merry hell with our lives. And you know what, he does!

It’s All About Now

Hey have you ever noticed when the weekends over and Monday rolls around yet again, it’s hard to get going isn’t it? For most of us who kind of work generally Monday to Friday, well, the weekends about us, maybe not just about us, family, friends, relaxing, that’s the theory right? Of course it doesn’t always work out that way.

Some of us have to work over the weekend and that’s something of a sacrifice. Others, well there’s running the kids to their various sporting or musical, social activities and then there’s this and then there’s that and before you know it you can look back on your weekend and you think, “Hang on a minute what was that all about? I didn’t get a rest at all. I spent the whole time racing around after other people, what about me, what about some me time?”

And pretty soon we start resenting that. There’s something about the here and now, there’s something about missing out on the opportunity to enjoy the moment as they say. I mean sure there’s tomorrow, sure there’s the future, hey there may even be an eternity but eternity forever? Nah blow that I want to enjoy today. I want to live in the moment, to hell with eternity.

And that’s pretty much how the thinking goes; to hell with it, people might say. I used to be like that and this whole living for today thing, the fact that there is an eternity became completely obscured. It’s the easiest thing in the world to live just for today and the more we want to enjoy what the world has to offer the more distant, the more unreal, the more implausible eternity becomes.

Now there’s someone listening who’s saying, well yeah, I guess, but isn’t that for non Christians, this focus on the here and now is really only for people who don’t believe in Jesus. And yes, most of the people in that boat focus very much on the here and now, but can I tell you something? As a passionate follower of Jesus Christ, as a guy who’s decided to spend his life telling others about Jesus who came for him in his darkest hour, I find it really easy to get caught up in the here and now because stuff just happens.

We do. And we run and we work and we play and stuff and stuff and stuff and the totally biggest reality in our lives becomes getting the most out of today that we can. And when that doesn’t happen, when we get to the end of the day or the weekend and we look back and we feel like we’ve missed out we experience resentment.

It should have been better; I should have got more out of it than I did. It’s all about the here and now. And can I tell you something? Our enemy the devil loves … absolutely delights in obscuring the reality of eternity from our sight.

Today we’re continuing on in our series of “The Top 10 Lies That The Devil Wants You To Believe” and lie number six which is where we’re up to in the Top Ten is this. Lie #6 says, “It’s All About Today”.

I don’t know if you’ve read the Old Testament Book of Job but it’s all about when the devil goes to God and asks God’s permission to ruin Job’s life. Now Job is a godly man, Job is blameless, a really good guy and yet God gives the devil permission to progressively take things away from Job – more and more and more. And when Job thinks he’s hit rock bottom then the devil takes away yet more all in the hope of turning Job against God.

But Job never forsakes God. What he does do though is he goes back to God time and time again and asks basically, “God what is going on? God why are you doing this? God when is this going to end? God what have I done wrong? God …?” Does that sound familiar?

What’s our problem? Our problem is that when we’re in those places we don’t want to be we lose sight of the fact that God’s got a much bigger thing happening. Do you see how easy it is for us to fall for the devil’s lie that the only thing that exists is the here and now? The stuff we see, the stuff we experience and most importantly the stuff we feel.

Feelings are so important, after all the advertising industry has been telling us for years now that it’s all about us, it’s all about me, it’s all about getting everything now. And so what we do is we set about making our life here and now as good and as comfortable and as wonderful as apparently fulfilling as we possibly can. And at that point we’ve totally lost the plot, completely lost the plot, completely swallowed the devils lie hook, line and sinker – that there is no eternity. It’s only today that matters. Perfect. He’s rubbing his hands, he’s got you. Luke chapter 12 beginning at verse 16:

Jesus told them a parable. The land of a rich man produced abundantly and he thought to himself, what should I do for I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, ‘I will do this, I’ll pull down my barns and I’ll build larger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, ‘soul you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink and be merry.

But God said to him, ‘you fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you and the things that you’ve prepared whose will they be?’ So it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘therefore I tell you don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or about your body or what you’ll wear for life is more than food and the body is more than clothing.

See there is a future, there is eternity. And something happens, something totally awesome happens when we lift our eyes to gaze upon the heavenly things; when we open our eyes to the expansive view of eternity.

All of a sudden the trials and the tribulations we’re going through now, well somehow we’re able to put them in perspective. All of a sudden the wealth and prosperity like that man with all his barns that we maybe going through now, we’re able to see them in true context of eternity.

No longer is everything about the here and now and no longer do we live in this constant state of dissatisfaction because somehow the here and now never lives up to our expectations, certainly not beyond the odd fleeting moment, have you noticed that?

There’s always something to rob us of satisfaction, the satisfaction we think we’re entitled to in the here and now. That’s because the truth is that we’re living in just a small part of eternity. Again have a listen to how the writer of Hebrews, the New Testament Book, puts this here and now thinking, this only here and now lie in sharp contrast with the truth of eternity. 1 John chapter 2 beginning at verse 15. He says:

Don’t love the world or the things of the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches comes not from the Father but from the world and the world and it’s desire are passing away but those who do the will of God will live forever.

That’s the cold hard reality that one day this world and our association with it are going to pass away and the more the devil can dupe us into believing that that’s not true the more he’s going to rob us of our lives here and now and for all eternity.

You see friend it’s knowing the truth, I mean really knowing the truth that sets us free.

It’s All About You

As we’ve just seen there are times when we get things completely out of perspective, completely out of whack. Not just in terms of the big picture of time but also, well who’s at the centre of the universe? It doesn’t seem to matter who we are and where we live sometimes we get to looking at our lot in life and comparing it to the next guys and wondering, “What about me?” And please, the last thing I mean to do here is trivialise the incredible suffering that some people are experiencing right now.

But at the end of the day we all come to this point of thinking, “What about me?” You’ve been there, I’ve been there. It’s a universal condition and it’s a condition that manifests itself in the good times and the bad. The better things are in our world, the better our lives are, the more comfortable, the more well off we are, the more it turns itself into a insatiable appetite for more.

I remember one social commentator a few years back talking about cocooning. Cocooning is the name given to the trend that sees individuals socialising less and retreating into their homes more. The term was coined in the 1990’s by Faith Popcorn, a trend forecaster and marketing consultant, this is what they said:

Cocooning has been around for thirty years, that’s how early we discovered cocooning and cocooning is about staying at home, creating a safe place around you. The garden as being the barrier between us and the garden, the alarm system being the barrier between us and the outside world. Filtration systems for our water and our air. Working at home, we stay at home, we in effect cocoon ourselves in luxury and safety and comfort. That’s cocooning.

And don’t we just start complaining when everything doesn’t go quite our way? When the traffic in our local neighbourhood gets too heavy or when our neighbours make more noise than they should, when anything comes along to disrupt our nice safe little oasis. And as an African friend of mine pointed out those things we complain about here in the affluent west are so out of perspective with the pervading reality for the vast majority of the world’s population who are just struggling to survive.

But even when we do face genuine trials, even when we’re in that place we struggle with this sense of me, my rights, my entitlements, my comfort, my lot in life compared to everyone else’s. In fact it seems that our sense of me is a very strong one, it’s rooted deep in our basic survival instincts and it manifests itself in all sorts of different ways.

So in one sense there’s a good side to it, yes survival instinct is fine but when we get things out of perspective, when we become me-centric then it becomes dangerous.

As I’ve previously observed on this program with almost seven billion me-centric people walking planet earth at the moment it’s not hard to figure out how it is that wars start is it? That’s why this is one of the devils top ten lies, that I am at the centre of my universe, it’s all about me and that you in your little world, your universe are at the centre of your universe and it’s all about you.

I know we know that’s not true but so often we end up living our lives as though it is. The very first deception of the devil involved this same notion that we are at the centre of the universe. Let’s have a listen again; we’ve looked at it over the last few weeks, Genesis chapter 3 where the serpent comes to tempt Adam and Eve:

Now the serpent was more crafty than the other wild animals that the Lord had made. He said to the woman, ‘did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘no, we can eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, God just said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden nor shall you touch it for you will die.

But the serpent said to the woman, ‘you won’t die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like God knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes and the tree was to be desired to make her wise she took one of it’s fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Do you see what happened? The way the devil disguised of course as he was as a serpent, got Eve to take that apple by convincing her that her need, her desire, a desire which incidentally she didn’t seem to have had until the devil fed it to her, her desire to be like God, to eat the good fruit, to be elevated, promoted, satisfied, whatever you want to call it, her desire came above Gods will. She put it before her obedience to God despite the enormous blessing that God had already given her by making available every other living thing in the garden for her and hubby to throw in the wok for dinner tonight.

And it’s exactly that lie that the devil feeds us in good times and in bad. You’re entitled, you deserve it, you should have the best, you should be like God, have you got it? Do you recognise it? Then remember it.

The next time you’re feeling sorry for poor little old you, the next time you’re imagining that your lot in life just ain’t fair when compared to everyone else’s please remember the insidious lie the devil’s feeding you.

Can I tell you something? I don’t know why great big tsunami’s hit Japan or Indonesia or Thailand. I don’t know why some people suffer so much and why some don’t. I don’t know why some parents give birth to a beautiful child who in its twenties contracts schizophrenia and they have to look after the child into their old age.

What I do know is that sometimes life dishes up some stuff that doesn’t seem to be fair and other times we have to live through some stuff that we cause through our own disobedience just like Adam and Eve had to but there’s one thing I do know, that when it comes to suffering God didn’t even spare His own Son.

When it comes to loving us He paid the price of suffering and death that we might live and when it comes to His lot in life He accepted it in love and did what He had to do no matter what it cost Him, to obey and to honour His Father in heaven.

Next time you’re being fed this lie by the devil, the line that’s its all about you may these words light up your heart.

He’s as Powerful as God

I’ve often wondered what the world would be like if rats were as big as cats or if cockroaches were as big as a pet dog. Have you ever wondered what it would be like? How would your world change? I mean it’s not a nice thing to think about is it?

Just imagine a rat in your house the size of your cat or a cockroach the size of your dog. They’d be ugly, nasty, scary, frightening and very, very dangerous things to be around wouldn’t they?

If cockroaches were as big as dogs I think I’d have bars on my windows and doors, you’d have to otherwise they’d be able to kill you. Fortunately God was smart enough to make sure that that wouldn’t be the case. He’s created a kind of a pecking order in the animal kingdom that by and large makes it pretty safe although I know there are exceptions.

I don’t think I’d like to run into a grizzly bear in North America or a polar bear in the Arctic for sure but cockroaches, disgusting, disease carrying though they are fortunately are nice and small. The same with rats, they’re manageable. Now I hope I haven’t given anyone nightmares.

Why are we talking about this stuff? Well quite simply for this reason. Because this is exactly the sort of nightmare the devil wants you to believe. How so you may well ask? Well he wants us to believe that he is as big and as powerful as God.

Just imagine if that were true and what was really happening in this world was the two of them, God and the devil, equals and opposites were slogging it out to see who was going to win. It would be like living in a cage with a dog sized cockroach and a dog fighting it out not knowing who was going to win and how it was going to turn out for us.

Can you imagine? I mean just imagine living your life like that. So why do so many people live their lives like that? Why is it that so many people believe in Jesus and yet they live their lives in fear? They live their lives feeling condemned, they live their lives not really knowing in their heart of hearts whether they are forgiven, whether God does love them, whether they’re blessed or cursed, free or chained, right with God or condemned by Him.

Why do so many people live like that? Well I’ll tell you why. Because someone, someone’s dropped this idea in their heads that the devil is just as strong and just as powerful as God. That life is actually a battle between these two equal and opposite forces of good and evil, God and devil.

That view of the world is called dualism and here’s the thing, you won’t find it anywhere in the Bible. It’s just this idea, a false idea, this lie that someone has dropped on our head. Gee I wonder who that could have been.

See this is one of those lies that on the one hand in the cold hard light of day you ask someone who believes in Jesus whether they believe it and they’ll say, “No, no, no! No way!” but come on how often do we find ourselves living our lives as though it was true?

How often have you struggled with a sin and thought to yourself, “you know there’s just no way that I’ll ever overcome this, I just have to live with it, I just have to accept that in this particular department of my life the devils won.” Well?

Today we’re going to deal with that lie once and for all. Are you ready? The well accepted narrative of how the devil came into being comes to us from the Book of Isaiah chapter 14, have a listen, beginning at verse 12:

How you have fallen from heaven O day star, son of dawn. How you are cut down to the ground you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon, I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high.

But you are brought down the Sheol, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you. Is this the man who made the earth tremble and shook the kingdoms? Who made the world like the desert and over threw its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home.

You are cast out, away from your grave like a loathsome carrion, clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword who go down to the stones of the pit like a corpse trampled under foot.

There it is, that’s satan’s narrative from beginning to end. He sought to lift himself up and make himself like God, equal to God and as a result he was destroyed. See God always destroys pride, God always opposes the proud and the devil was proud and so he tries to set himself up, he tries to live this lie that he’s equal to God and God destroys him. That’s the devils ultimate end, to be destroyed.

He’s going to spend eternity in a lake of fire. He was an angel created by God who fell and has fallen to the depths of depravity. Now sure he’s pretty clever, he’s pretty wily but he’s someone who’s living out his own lie and he wants to believe he’s equal to God and he wants to perpetrate that lie on my life and yours.

Do you remember when Jesus sent the seventy disciples out to do amazing things among the people? And they came back, they were stunned at what they’d been able to do. Luke chapter 10, verse 17:

The seventy returned with joy saying, ‘Lord in your name even the demons submit to us’ and Jesus said to them, ‘I watched satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightening. Do you see? I’ve given you authority to tread on snakes and on scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing will hurt you.

That’s the truth right from Jesus own lips. When Jesus speaks the devil has to submit because Jesus is the Son of God, He has all the power and all the authority. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 20 and 21:

God put his power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heavenly places far above the rule and the authority and the power and the dominion, above every name that is named not only in this age but also in the age to come.

And as Paul writes elsewhere, Colossians chapter 2, verse 15:

Jesus disarmed the rulers and the authorities (That’s the devil) and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in the cross.

See friend that’s the truth, God is powerful, God cannot be brought down by the devil, the devil has already been defeated by Jesus on that cross and when we believe in what Jesus did there on that cross that victory comes to life in our lives. That’s the truth, the devil is a liar, he believes his own lies and he wants you and me to believe them too.

Well let’s not. The next time you feel defeated, the next time the devils got you duped into believing that he’s just as powerful as God again may the Holy Spirit remind you that we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us, no matter how compelling, how convincing, how powerful a lie may seem, a lie is a lie. Jesus has disarmed the rulers and the authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them at the cross.

The devil’s lies are so pervasive – they’re in everything. Everywhere we look. The way people think. The way societies behave. So when we hear God’s truth sometimes … well, most times – it sounds foreign, it feels foreign. But truth is truth. Truth works. As Jesus said, when we continue in His Word, we will know the truth … and it’s that truth, that sets you free.

Following Jesus is Too Hard

Many, many people have spent a lifetime on yoyo diets. Their weight goes up, goes down; goes up, goes down; and eventually they just give up and they decide they have to live life fat. I used to be one of those people. These days I’m a shadow of my former self. The problem seems to be their willpower. Actually, it’s not. In a few months we’re going to spend some time on this programme to discover what the real issue is.

So the Holy Grail if you will of the multi-billion-dollar weight-loss and fitness industry is how to lose weight quickly, without really trying. You see it now not just in the wealthy west; you see the whole overweight thing happening now as an epidemic in developing nations as well. It all has to do with one substance – a substance that you never find, not once, in the Bible. I digress ‘cos that’s for another time.

The effect, however, is that people struggle with their weight. Most lose the struggle, give up, get cancer, die of heart attacks or strokes, or succumb to complications around type 2 diabetes. In fact, diabetes is what killed my father, and it was a horrible death. The problem isn’t that people don’t want to lose weight. I’m speaking here from first-hand knowledge; most of my life I’ve been seriously overweight. I knew all the consequences and as personality types go, I have a lot of self-discipline and a lot of self-control.

The problem is that you can’t live life as a constant struggle. If your body’s saying to you “Eat” and you’re constantly having to say “No” over and over and over again, every day of your life, what happens is you get tired of that. It’s just too hard to live your life like that. Maybe you’re out with friends and … and they’re handing around those nice salty, cheesy, fattening things or those sweet, creamy, yummy things, and everybody else is tucking in. Eventually, doesn’t matter how strong you are, eventually we’re going to break. We’re going to give in, right?

Anybody who’s ever struggled with their weight knows exactly what I’m talking about. If you happen to be one of those skinny frames who seem to be able to eat anything without gaining weight, well, God bless ya, but the rest of the 99.9% of us, we’re not. We walk past a fish-and-chips shop, inhale that stunning aroma, and just 2 or 3 times – you know that deep breath? “Ooooooh, man, that smells so good”, and we seem to put on a couple of pounds.

See, the constant struggle wears us down. The constant battle is exhausting. Eventually we give up. It’s not the lack of willpower so much; it’s that we’re tired of living like that, and so we’re back on the odd bit of cake here and there, the odd chocolate bar, the odd ice-cream, and before you know it, you’re back to being the size of a house. Is anybody with me today?

What we need, what we really need, is a way of changing what we want to eat. What we really need is a way of changing our appetite so that we don’t want all the stuff that makes us fat. What we need is a way to regulate our appetite so that when we’ve eaten what our body needs, we stop eating. Think about this. If we could change our appetites, we wouldn’t need any self-control anymore. You only need to exercise that muscle of self-control if you have to deny yourself something that you really, really want.

What if when it comes to eating, you could look at ice-cream or chocolate or whatever, and simply not desire it? Losing weight and sticking to a healthy weight would cease to be a sacrifice; it would cease to require a huge bucket-load of self-control, and maintaining your weight would be the most natural thing in the world. It turns out that that’s how God created us in the first place, and it’s because of the huge volumes of one substance being introduced into our diets just over the last half a century or so, in my lifetime, that our appetites are whizzing way out-of-control.

So, we’re going to talk about that another time, but the reason that we’re talking about it today is that we’re in the middle of a series (or at least towards the end of a series) of messages called, “The Top 10 Lies that the Devil Wants You to Believe”, and the one we’re talking about today is that it’s just too hard to follow Jesus. He sets the bar too high; it requires too much self-control. After all, Jesus Himself said, Matthew 7:13:

He said, ‘Look. Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction. There are many who take it, but the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it’ – Jesus’ own words, and again He says to His disciples:

Luke 9:23:

He said to all of them, ‘If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will save it’.

And so, many people decide to follow Jesus, and … and the going gets tough and it gets harder and harder and harder and harder, and the devil comes along and sits on your shoulder and tells you: “You see? It’s just like that yoyo diet thing. You can’t win. You can’t live the rest of your life struggling like this”. And up to that point, he’s absolutely right. But then he continues on and whispers: “Just give up. Just let it go. Just stop trying to live up to something you can’t live up to. Come on through the wide gate. Come and take the easy road”. And thing is, when you’re tired and exhausted and you’ve been doing it so hard, that second part is so tempting. It’s so easy to take the easy road. He knows that, but the problem is – the problem is – that that easy road leads to destruction.

So here we are; we know the truth; we’re faced with the dilemma in our exhaustion, and so as the devil starts to hand out his cream treats with icing sugar all over ‘em, it’s easy to swallow his lies. What’s the answer? The answer is Jesus. The answer is that Jesus has already provided a way to change your appetite. He’s already provided a way to change your heart, and that’s the thing. Just like the whole eating/diet thing, if we can change our appetite, if we can change the desires of our hearts, then we need a whole bunch less willpower. Willpower becomes a ‘now and then’ thing, in those really tough moments, not a 24×7 thing. Listen to this fantastic truth. I know it’s going to set a few people free today. Philippians 2:12:

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, for it is God that is at work in you, enabling you to both will and work for His good pleasure.

The point Paul’s making here is that we don’t have to struggle, because God is at work in us, enabling us both to will and to work – did you pick that up? – to will and to work for His good pleasure. Just drink that in. Just swallow that.

You know what I’ve discovered? The more time I spend alone with Jesus each morning, the more He changes my desires – my appetites; what I want; my will. It used to be really hard for me not to get angry with people all the time. You know what? These days, 99.9% of the time, it’s not. It’s easy and it’s getting easier, ‘cos God’s Spirit’s at work in me. I want not to get angry; I want to do stuff that’ll bless other people; I want to honour God. My desires have changed; my heart’s changed; my appetite’s changed. And yes, it involves taking up my cross; and yes, some days it’s hard and it hurts, and it costs, and it feels like we’re losing our lives. And that’s exactly what Jesus told us would happen. Fortunately, He didn’t have any PR agents or spin-doctors to put a spin on that message.

Jesus went to the cross, loving us, and that cost Him His life, in the most painful, gruesome way you and I can ever possibly imagine. And He calls us to live exactly that sort of life – the sort where we take up our cross, where we follow Him, in order to gain real life. But the point is though, it’s a whole bunch easier because I’m not fighting so much anymore, because God has done and continues to do a work in my heart to change my appetite, and that’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

That’s why Jesus baptises everybody who believes in Him in His Spirit – to change our hearts, to fill us with power … the power to be holy. It’s the only way real change ever happens, so it’s not about how hard we work; it’s not about how much we pedal; it’s not about how hard we try to be good; it’s about how close we are to Jesus – how much time, how much sway we’ve given Him in our hearts. Then, when the trials come, we have the courage; we have the power; we have the desire to do it His way. End of story.

What You do Doesn’t Matter

Man it’s almost the end of another series of messages again – where do the weeks go? The series is called ‘The Top 10 Lies that the Devil Wants You to Believe’. Remember, over the last 4 weeks, the lies that we’ve dealt with so far? Well, let’s recap them. Here they are:

1. That the devil doesn’t exist.
2. That God doesn’t exist.
3. That God’s Word isn’t true.
4. That you aren’t who God says you are.
5. Man, I’ve really blown it this time.
6. That it’s all about now.
7. That it’s all about you.
8. That the devil is as powerful as God.
9. (We just looked at that before the break) That following Jesus is too hard.

It’s quite a list, and it’s not finished because right now we’re going to look at Lie # 10 in the devil’s hit parade, and Lie # 10 is this: That what you do doesn’t matter; there are no real consequences. Now before you think me a bit loony for talking about the devil, just consider what God’s Word has to say about him, and in fact, his ultimate end. Revelation 12:9:

The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

The devil is the deceiver, and as much as he tries to hold a gun to our heads, his ultimate end is complete destruction, but in the meantime, he wants to drag as many down with him as he possibly can, so he feeds us with this lie that what we do really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things.

You see it all round; we live in a world where anything goes, where in order to sell us their wares, advertisers will tell us whatever they can, just to get us to part with our money. Now I don’t blame them. The economy is what makes the world go round, isn’t it? They’re just doing what everyone else is doing, aren’t they? It’s free enterprise, isn’t it?

I was in the supermarket the other day and I picked up a box of popular breakfast cereal. It’s promoted on TV as an energy food. It shows Mum feeding it to her son when he’s young and then to the same boy when he’s a strong, athletic teenager – the very sort of son that every mother would love to have. I look at that little panel on the back that tells you what’s in the food, and 33% of it by weight was sugar. One third of this energy food was sugar.

Consider this. In the early 1900s, obesity was almost non-existent. There were some, but very few people who were grossly overweight. Today, it’s an epidemic. Last night on the news on TV I heard that generation Y, my daughter’s generation, by the time they get to their late 40s/early 50s, if they keep consuming sugar in their food and drink at the same rate they are now, around 15 to 20% of the whole population of this healthy sports-loving nation called Australia – that’s millions of people – will have contracted type 2 diabetes. Do you see the link? On the other hand, we’re being told that anything goes. It’s all okay. Eat this; do that; you deserve it, and yet there are dire consequences. We don’t like to think about those, let alone even talk about them, do we? Now, that’s a practical example. What about the way we live our lives?

You may recall, if you were able to join us a few weeks ago when we kicked off this series, that the devil’s greatest lie is that he himself doesn’t exist. Turns out that in a comprehensive study conducted by the respected Barna Group in the US, about the same number of people (almost 80%) both believe in the existence of an all-powerful all-loving God, and disbelieve in the existence of the devil. Kind of blows you away.

So if the vast majority of those who believe in God disbelieve in the devil, then you can see how easy it is for him (the devil, that is) to fundamentally and powerfully entrench this ‘anything-goes’ mentality – do it if it feels good; no consequences – in the very fabric of our social consciousness. In the way that we promote breakfast cereal; in the way we promote an ‘anything-goes’ approach to sexuality; in the way society as a whole has come to a point of vociferously defending a person’s right to choose sin.

If I just bobble along through life doing my own thing, as long as I don’t really hurt anyone else too much, I mean seriously injure them, then pretty much what I do with my life – my money, my emotions, my desires, my sexuality, my time – well, that’s my business. Galatians 5:19-21:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I’m warning you,” (said Paul) “as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God”.

Now, we want to create some hierarchy of sin. This one’s worse than that one, and depending on who we are and how we’ve been brought-up, and what moral framework from our parents has stuck with us, we’re going to have different views about which one of these listed above are the really bad ones. But the others – well, you know – they’re not really that serious. Adultery – now that’s one that most of us consider really, really bad, but the odd quarrel? Come on, we all do that. Sorcery? Well if you’ve been brought-up in a Christian home all your life, the very notion of sorcery – the occult, witchcraft – is going to make your skin crawl and give you a cold, horrible feeling inside.

But look at this list that Paul writes. Right next to sorcery come enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions and envy. Just look at that list – the sharp juxtaposition of what we consider to be the really bad sins, right up against the not-so-bad ones from our perspective. Just look at that list again from a different perspective – from God’s perspective: Sin is sin, and sin has consequences. Full Stop. End of story.

And when you say it like that, doesn’t it stand in such stark contrast to the anything-goes lie that the devil has so brilliantly, so cleverly, so insidiously, woven into the fabric of our 21st-century mind-sets? Doesn’t it? And my friend, consequences there are – serious consequences. Here’s Jesus on this very subject. Listen carefully to His words. Matthew 13:40:

Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with a fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man” (that’s Jesus) “will send His angels, and they will collect out of His kingdom all the causes of sin and evildoers, and they’ll be thrown into the furnace of fire, where there’ll be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

Now there’s an answer to that terrible dilemma. There’s one way – just one way – to avoid that fate, and no, it’s not by working harder; it’s not by pedalling harder; it’s not by doing things that’ll get us into God’s favour because you and I, everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The one way – the one answer – is Jesus. By trusting in Him and the price He paid for my sin and for your sin on that cross, so that we might be fully forgiven. The consequences of not taking that step, the consequences of not believing in Jesus and trusting fully in Him, are horrific. I don’t care what the devil says.

You feed your son that sugary breakfast cereal, and you’ll produce a fat, unhealthy young man. You keep living your life with the “anything-goes” mentality, believing the lies of the devil, then you’re going to end up with a terrible eternity. That’s it – no ifs, no buts, no maybes. And yet the moment we give our lives to Jesus – completely, fully, holus bolus to Jesus, we have the free gift of life.

And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life.

Maybe that’s why they call this news about Jesus the good news.

The Truth in Review

You know what’s really struck me between the eyes as we’ve been working our way through the top 10 lies the devil wants us to believe? It’s the power – the awesome power – of God’s truth. Funny thing is that these days, people aren’t so interested in whether something’s true or not, because we’re far more pragmatic these days. We want to know: “Does it work”. But so conditioned are we by the devil’s lies, so pervasive are they everywhere we turn in this world, so cleverly has he infiltrated the social consciousness of our day, that when all of a sudden we run into God’s truth, it looks foreign; it feels foreign; it sounds foreign.

Jesus said things that absolutely turned people’s worlds upside-down. To the poor, insignificant peasants who followed Him up on that mount by the Sea of Galilee to hear that famous sermon, He said:

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

To the self-interested religious leaders of the day, He said:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but the inside are full of greed and self-indulgence.

These were the powerful people; these were the people who all those peasants on the Mount wanted to be like, and on and on. The truth sounds so foreign.

Take up the cross; follow Me. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other one. If they demand your shirt, give them your coat as well,

And this to people who had one coat maybe, if they were lucky, which they wore for years and years.

Love your enemy; pray for those who persecute you; pay taxes to Caesar even though the system’s ripping you off.

To the prostitute, whom they wanted to stone, well He protected her, and He said to her: “I don’t condemn you. Go your way and sin no more”.

And to you and me, He said: “I love you so much that even before you have a chance to love me back, I’ll give My life for you so that you can find the way back”.

To His disciples, He says: “You know, this God who’s only been with you in the Holy of Holies in the temple – totally awesome – totally inaccessible to you personally, well I’m going to rip that curtain in front of the Holy of Holies in two”, which is exactly what happened when Jesus died on the cross.

I mean, I’ve just rattled off a few truths that sound so foreign to our natural way of thinking. When you stop and just reflect on any one of them, it becomes blindingly, glimpsingly obvious that the truth isn’t just truth, but the truth works. When something’s true it’s bound to work. Love your enemy – I mean, how many wars would there be if people loved their enemies? How many children would be dying of poverty and starvation and disease each day, do you think? Today, this very day, there’ll be between 25 and 30,000.

But if each disciple of Jesus actually did lay down their lives, if we did take up our cross and follow Him, how much more would all the others around the world be loved, be provided for, be cared-for? How many more people in this world would meet Jesus because they were loved by Him through us – His people? How many, do you think? Wake up – the truth works. Wake up! The devil’s lies are lies, and they rob us of life and they rob others of life.

The devil’s lies, no matter how staunchly they’re defended by people in this world, are lies. They’re insidious, they’re painful, and they don’t work. Yeah, sure, they pander to our desires in the same way that heroine panders to an addict’s desires. Just because we desire something, it doesn’t mean it’s good for us. Just because someone defends something, it doesn’t mean it’s right.

My friend, Jesus came to set you free. He came to set me free. He came to set us free from the lies of the devil – free from the sins that Satan snares us into through his lies; free from the pain, and the fear, and the hurt, and the loss that come as a direct consequence of living out the devil’s lies. My friend, Jesus came to set you free. Wake up! It works.