God is A Liar!

And 3 Other Lies By Satan

Part 1

Satan's first lie to Eve began an eternal game of "he said, she said" between heaven and hell. Satan calls out God, as a liar by telling Eve, "You will not surley die." Each day, in each tempataion since that first encounter in the garden of eden Satan's deception has been the same; to tell mankind that God is a liar.
I was reminded by our minister Chuck last night in Bible class of the three simple techniques Satan uses to pass this deception onto mankind. These are laied out explictily by the Apostle John in 1 John 2:15-17. Here he teaches us that the only three tools Satan has to to appeal to our inner nature and defend his thesis that God is a liar are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. We can see this personally when we understand the means Satan uses to pawn off these falsehoods on our minds.

1. The Lust of the Flesh - Adultrey, Gluttony, Sloth - "If it feels good do it even if you shouldn't." This is the mantra of the narcism Satan wants all mankind to dwell in. Satan knows that when we focus our time on seeking what feels good to us, we will have no time to focus on seeking a relationship with God. Our flesh resist the spirit. Satan wants men to pursue "pleasure without conscience. The greatest manifestation of this lie has been the infusion of the idea into the American evangelical churches that "worship without sacrifice" exists. As the old cliche' goes, "Grace is Free, but it is not cheap." Our pursuit for relevance to a society of vanity has allowed the church to become weakend by her acceptance of a cheap grace that teaches the same self-exaltaion that robs our relevance and weakens Christian's into proseltites of humanism.

2. The Lust of the Eyes- Envy, Covetousness, Greed - "he who dies with the most toys, wins!" We are a society of collectors. Our desire for aquistion of the beautiful is the basis of capitalism. In the middle twentith century a phrase developed "Keeping up with the Jones." That idea has been replaced in these infancy years of the twenty first century. Instead we seek to make more, collect more, and own more than the Jones'. Our quest for neighborly equality has been superceded by a race for neighborhood supremacy. The lust of the eyes is our need to own the things that those around us deem as beautiful and valuable.

3. The Pride of Life - Haughtyness, Anger, Divisiness, Pride - "If I could be like Mike..." Each of us thinks of ourselves as the greatest. We think our ideas, priorities, and passions are more important than the ideas, priorities and passions of those around us. It is this lie that that divides us. We dig foxholes and form entrenchments to protect our illusion of our own importance. We value only ourselves, and become unimagineably disenfranchised, genuinely hurt and ultimately even angry with the people around because they do not share our self-centered vision. We seek the rewards of fiscal sucess, the accolades of the public, and degrees of academia to demonstrate our value over the people around us. Pride is a devourer because it must be worked at: pride destroys our ability to experience contentment because we must continually strive for greater accomplishments. The pride of life seeks to fulfill our need to silence the doubts we all face when we look in the mirror at ourselves.

" These three remain knowledge, power, and beauty, and the greatest of these is beauty" This is the centerpoint teaching of Satan's religion of humanism. Our inner nature leads us as a people to long for the achievement of these three attributes because they touch us on each level of Satan's deceptive tricks. The search for ultimate knowledge, is the ultimate indulgence of pride. The pursuit of absolute power, is the absolute prize to our flesh. The hope of irresitable beauty is the irrestiable allure of what appeals to the eye. Knowledge, power and beauty are so seductive to the fallen nature of man that we are explictly warned against all three in the Bible.