The Lie of Satan

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Introduction:

Today we are going to start off by talking about lying. I read a statistic this week that said in a study by the University of Massachusetts, 60% of people cannot go more than 10 minutes without lying. That’s a scary thought! How about some of these other statistics I found:

1. Most people — about 75% of survey respondents — told zero to two lies per day.

2. At four years of age, 90% of kids will understand the meaning of lying.

3. Siblings are the third most lied to, accounting for 73% of victims.

4. Parents are the primary victims of lying, with 86% of lies being told to them.

5. Second to parents are friends of individuals, who are lied to 75% of the time.

6. The fourth most lied to are our spouses, who are victims of lying 69% of the time.

7. Online, lies are most often seen on dating sites, where 90% of participants engage in untruthfulness.

8. 40% of lies are seen on resumes.

Most common lies in relationships:

I’m fine.

I love you.

I didn’t do anything wrong.

Why do we lie?

To avoid punishment.

To gain an advantage.

To protect themselves or others.

There are three kinds of lies; a lie told, a lie taught, a lie acted out.

Joseph Caryl

A lie acted out is a lie believed. We act out lies we most likely believe. When we truly believe a lie, just like when we truly believe a truth, it affects our actions.

Now, the interesting part in all of this is that I have heard it said that the biggest lies are the lies we tell ourselves. And there is a lot of truth in that. We all believe things about ourselves that are simply not true. We are too short, too fat, too tall, too ugly, too stupid, too unlovable, not deserving, not cared for, not important, not valued and so on. Or the opposite. We all believe lies about ourselves.

And the really sad part in all of this is most of us Christians are aware of where lies come from. Satan is really only given two names in Scripture - Satan and The Father of Lies.

Today, we are going to look at the lies that Satan tells us. Turn with me to Genesis 3.

Genesis 3:1–13 ESV

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And 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 the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of 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 of its 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 themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

This passage is what is commonly called the Fall of Man. Now in order for there to be a Fall, there has to be a place from which man fell from. Where did we fall from? We fell from perfection. We fell from a place of goodness. We fell from God’s design. We were in God’s favor. We were in his garden, planted for us. We were living in heaven on earth. This was the design. This was and is God’s heart for us, his desire. He wanted us to live with Him in paradise. That was the plan.

But we fell. Man disobey’s the one command that God had given him. You can eat of every tree in the garden, except that one. And man takes a bite of the forbidden fruit. He disobeys God and sin becomes his new master.

The fundamental deception of Satan is the lie that obedience can never bring happiness.

R. C. Sproul

The Bible is fairly unique in that it starts with the tragedy. It starts with the conflict. Most books build up to the conflict, but in human history, our conflict comes early. We are now in conflict with God.

God wanted us to trust him and remain in paradise with Him forever, but we chose to believe the lie of Satan. And the lie of Satan is not a simple lie, it’s actually a multi-layered lie and we are going to look at this in big picture form today. Satan his three main goals in his lies and these have not changed. He still has three main goals in his lies today. His first goal is to make you question God, his second is that you would question what God says and the third is to make you question your own identity. Let’s look at these individually.

Satan wants you to question God

In this passage it gives a glimpse into who our enemy is. Contrary to popular belief and pictures and all those things, we actually don’t know a whole lot about Satan. The Bible doesn’t give us a lot to go on, other than the fact that Satan is crafty.

The whole theme of this passage is this - God isn’t who He said He is, his word is not trustworthy and you aren’t who He says you are. In other words, God is a liar. You can’t trust Him. This is exactly what Satan is saying. He’s not someone you can put your trust in.

Lies and false reports are among Satan’s choicest weapons.

J. C. Ryle

This is and always will be the biggest lie Satan tells people. He first and foremost does not want you to believe that God is who he says he is. He doesn’t want you to trust in Him. That’s always the root of his plan. He wants you to doubt Him. He wants you to question Him. He wants you to put your trust in some other thing. He’s happy for you to put only part of your trust in Him. Satan’s biggest desire is for you to question God and His character.

You start thinking about the fact that God is love and Satan will come along and say, “yes He is, but does he really love you? I mean, after all you’ve done. How could He love someone like you?” LIES!

You start thinking about God’s grace and Satan will come along and say, “yes, he has grace, but not for what you did.” Or, he might say, “it’s not really grace, it’s more like mercy. He will forgive you, but you don’t have an inheritance in Christ, you don’t deserve that.” Or, “you can certainly earn some grace if you do well.”

Satan wants you to question God’s word.

Notice the first thing the serpent says is this - “Did God really say...” This is the essence of one of his biggest lies. He wants you to question what God has spoken. In this passage, we see that Eve gets confused. She says first correctly that they shouldn’t eat of it, but then she adds to what God says. She says that they cannot touch it, or they would die. Now there are three big issues when it comes to God’s word:

Not knowing it. The old saying that ignorance is bliss until the oncoming traffic forgets to swerve comes to mind. Not knowing God’s word is a major issue for many people. This applies not only to the Bible, which is a major issue in society today, but also his spoken word also known as his prophetic word. Remember Adam and Eve didn’t have a Bible. They had God’s spoken word though and they did not treasure it. They didn’t hold fast to it.

Adding to it. The Pharisees were guilty of the sin that Eve commits here. She adds to God’s word. She puts words into his mouth. In other words, his word wasn’t sufficient for her. She needed to add something to it. This is typically leads to legalism. When we add extra boundaries to God’s word and neglect what he actually says.

Taking away from it. The rumor is that Ben Franklin grabbed a bible and a pair of scissors and starting cutting out the sections of the scripture that he didn’t like. He was left with a Bible that had a lot of holes in it. When we take away from God’s word, we are saying that we disagree with what he says. We don’t trust it. We don’t believe it.

So Satan is trying to get Eve to question God’s word. Did God really say. What is the remedy for this? What should she have done? She should have stood on the Word. She should have held fast to that which was spoken. Paul encourages Timothy to do the same thing:

1 Timothy 1:18–19 ESV

This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith,

In other words, Paul tells Timothy to hold on to God’s prophetic word over him and fight the good fight by standing on those words. He even goes so far to say that some people have rejected this, rejected God’s prophetic word over their lives and shipwrecked their faith. Now, this doesn’t mean every prophetic word is right, Paul also says:

1 Thessalonians 5:19–21 ESV

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.

So there’s a fine line here. We need to know the prophetic word, we need to test it and the parts that are true, we need to hold fast to. And we also need to make sure we don’t despise prophetic words. Because again, one of Satan’s tools is to make you question what God says. Prophetic words are weighed against Scripture. And Scripture is God’s written word. We hold fast to these things.

Satan wants you to question your identity

Now the essence of our passage is that Satan wants you to question your identity. He’s not happy with you just questioning who God is, he wants you to question who you are. He tells Eve that if she eats the fruit, she will be like God. Now, we know because we’ve been in this series for the past several weeks that Adam and Eve were created in a very specific way. In Gen 1:26, God says that he is making man in his image, after his likeness. So catch this. They were already like God. They were created in His likeness!

Satan presupposes that Eve wasn’t made in his likeness when he tells her she needs to be like God and if she eats of the forbidden tree, she will be like him! He’s getting her to question her own identity! Think about this, there are only a few things that Eve knows to be true, we are only in chapter 3 after all. She knows she is created in God’s image. She’s created in his likeness. She knows Adam named all the animals. She knows she was created as Adam’s helpmate. She knows not to eat of that tree. And that’s about it. Satan is having her question one of the few things she should know.

Now, this is exactly how Satan still operates today. In fact, we see Satan appear at the temptation of Jesus and try the exact same thing. Listen to this:

Matthew 4:3 ESV

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

Satan says to Jesus, if you really are the Son of God. If you are who you believe yourself to be. If you are his Son, then prove it. Now, Jesus doesn’t fall for this. He doesn’t even respond to it. Why? Because he knows who He is. He doesn’t need to prove anything. He’s the very Son of God and nothing anyone else says or believes will change that. He knows his identity and it’s not up for debate! If only Eve had that same assurance.

If only we had that same assurance! God has spoken amazing promises over us. He’s told us amazing things about our identity. First and foremost that we are his children! We are like Jesus. We are sons and daughters of the King. And nothing Satan says can take that away from you, but too often we believe the lie!

The best protection against Satan’s lies is to know God’s truth.

Unknown

Here’s some truths for you to hold on to today. I could have made a list a mile long, but I’m going to give you five. Now I’m giving you these five and I want you to realize, these are areas in which the enemy will want you to question what God has said. It’s simple. He doesn’t want you to be confident in who God made you to be. So here are five truths found in God’s word about your identity.

Ephesians 2:19 ESV

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,

You are saints and members of God’s household.

2 Corinthians 9:8 ESV

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

2. You have everything you need.

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

3. You are God’s righteousness. You are enough.

1 Peter 2:9 ESV

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

4. You are his possession.

Colossians 3:13 ESV

bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

5. You are forgiven.

Closing -

Now, here’s one thing I have learned in my short time on this planet. All of us have believed lies told about us. I’ve believed so many lies over my life. I was told I would never amount to anything. I was told I’ll never be a pastor. I was told I wasn’t a good pastor. I was told that God wouldn’t love someone like me. Some of these lies are lies told to me by others, some are lies I’ve told myself.

So this morning, to close, I want us to take some time first and pray to God and ask Him, what lies am I believing about myself. Just ask him. Maybe its something I’ve mentioned here today or maybe its something God is bringing spontaneously to your mind right now.

Now, what I want to do to end today, is I’d like for you to grab a prayer partner, two to three people in a group at most. And I want you to confess the lie that you’ve believed and ask for that person to pray for you. Remember, James says this -

James 5:16 ESV

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Now, you might not think it is a sin to believe a lie, but Paul says in Romans 14:33 that anything that does not proceed from faith is sin. So if you are believing the lies of the enemy today, you need to let God in so he can heal that part of you. Some of you have believed the lies for so long that its become a part of you. It’s time to let go of the lie and believe the truth. The truth will set you free from Satan’s lies. Let’s stand and prayer together.