Newsletter Article
May 2003
Deception
I’ll bet you know someone that is a liar. You know what I mean, someone who would tell a lie when the truth would serve them better. Now I don’t want you to dwell on who that is but I want you to think about how the lie makes you feel. At first you may not know you have been lied to but after a while you find out. You feel betrayed, used or maybe even angry. It may not even seem like a big lie but you have those feelings just the same.
Satan is a liar. He told Eve that she would be like God if she ate the fruit. Do you think she felt betrayed, used or angry? I suspect that she felt all those things and many more over the course of her life and at the end when one of them died before the other, I believe that the feelings became even stronger. Satan lied. We will surely die, in the end.
That is the way of a lie. It seems like a good idea at the time. It may be you lying to yourself about something. It might be that you purchase something you know you don’t have the money for but you put it on a credit card so you can have it anyway and you tell yourself that it is ok, you’ll pay it off when the bill comes. Then the bill comes and you don’t have the money. You didn’t have the money when you bought it, what makes you think you’ll have it when the bill comes? At the time you are happy to have the new toy but later when you have to pay for it, it is not so nice anymore. In fact, the bible talks about this in Prov 20:17 where it says “Food gained by fraud tastes sweet to a man, but he ends up with a mouth full of gravel .” What would it be like to have a mouthful of gravel? That does not sound like a good thing at all.
God’s way of doing things is different. To do what he wants probably will not seem as much fun on the front end but in the end it brings great joy. Just the opposite of Satan and the world.
…A knock just came at the door and I am going to tell you about it. It fits and I believe that there are no coincidences so it must have been for a reason. My son answered the door and called me to come. There were two people there nicely dressed and friendly in manner. Not at all threatening. As they began to talk I looked at what they were carrying and I see a bible and a small booklet. They begin to talk about how the bible is true and I agree with them. It is. At this point however, I know that they are Jehovah’s Witnesses and that we really have some differences in what we believe. Here is a group that on the surface you have to admire. They are working hard for what they believe and some of them put it all on the line to go out door to door to witness for their faith. The problem is that they have been deceived. They don’t believe that Jesus Christ is God. They will tell you that he is a god but not THE God and the differences beyond that I am not going to address. This one difference is enough to tell me that what they have is not the truth.
This is one example of the way Satan works. He takes some of the truth and bends it, twists it to suit his purposes and gets us to doubt what God has told us. That doubt is not a sin but it can lead to it if we don’t deal with it. Satan did this with Jesus in the wilderness. He prompted Jesus with some of the truth from scripture and while it sounded good on the surface it was a lie. Jesus saw through him and responded with the truth from God’s word. The changes Satan takes us through are small, gentle changes. Small steps that suit his purpose just and well as large leaps into the abyss.
C.S. Lewis wrote in his Screwtape Letters series “You will say that these are very small sins, and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. (Letter XII).
This letter was written by Lewis to illustrate what it may be like to be a senior demon teaching a junior demon the ways of tempting a man. If you have not read the book, I would suggest you get it from the library or purchase a copy and read it. It is entertaining but more importantly it reveals something about us as mankind and how we handle temptation. It gives us some practical lessons (in reverse) of how to deal with temptation when it comes.
All of this letter has been a long time coming out and now I think that I was delayed so that the exchange with the Jehovah’s Witnesses could be recorded. I don’t know what the final impact of this will be but I trust that God will use it to His Glory and for His purposes. What I want to leave with you is that we need to learn to detect the deception of Satan (and ourselves) to prevent us from being separated from God by sin as we do the job we have been given. Spend time in the truth of His word and in building a relationship with God so that when He speaks to us through His Spirit we know it is Him and we listen. If you realize that you have some sin in your life that is separating you from God, confess it to Him and repent of that sin. You will be drawn into a closer relationship with Him and the rewards are many. Stay faithful and spend time with Him.
In His Grip,
Jerry Robertson
Chaplain