Anything built on a lie is as fragile as a house of cards, or, as Jesus said, is built upon unstable sand. When the wind of God’s truth blows upon it, it will come crashing down. Satan, the great deceiver, has erected an enormous house of cards here on earth constructed of lies piled upon lies. The only thing that keeps it from completely falling apart is our spiritual blindness and resultant complicity. Once we see through his lies, the entire structure will come down.
...Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true. As the Scriptures say about him, “You will be proved right in what you say, and you will win your case in court.” Romans 3:4 (NLT)
I am convinced that the lie that supports all other lies is that God is a liar and his words do not mean what they appear to mean.
Jesus told us that the devil is the “father of lies” and that there is no truth in him. (John 8:44-45) His chief weapon is deception. Often he cuts away at the edges of our faith – death by a thousand cuts, but he prefers to go straight for the jugular, so to speak. In the garden, Adam and Eve only had one prohibition – to abstain from eating fruit from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
All they had to go on was God’s simple command and his warning that disobedience would result in death.
Satan, taking the form of a sly serpent who appeared to know amazingly interesting things of which they were ignorant, flatly contradicted God’s words, impugned his character, and enticed them to seek the hidden knowledge he claimed to have by venturing to go against God’s counsel. Satan implied that Adam and Eve were naive simpletons who were ignorant of the wonderful things God was keeping from them. We are still suckers in this area.
We still find it difficult to fight against the lure of gaining esoteric knowledge, promised by someone who seems to know more than we do. We dread being called an ignorant simpleton.
If the foundations are destroyed, What can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3 (NKJV)
Satan understands that in order to topple a structure, the foundations must be eroded and destroyed. In the “old days” when armies besieged walled cities, men called sappers would burrow under the walls to undermine them. Once the walls came down, the defenders were rather helpless. God has given us the protection of his Word, which is a wall of truth that protects us from the lies and schemes of the devil and the consequences of sin.
Satan’s chief aim is get us to tear down the protective wall of our faith in the absolute truthfulness of God’s Word.
In the garden, the serpent asked Eve, “Did God really say?” He asks us the very same question, hoping that, like Eve, we will waver.
If I wanted to destroy the foundation of faith in God’s Word, I would start in Genesis Chapter One.
I would send an army of atheistic “experts” who claim to have knowledge of the heavens that is vastly more complicated and wonderful than the Bible’s account of creation. I would try to replace God’s account with my own contradictory explanation.
If I were Satan, I would say that those who believe the “archaic fable” of the Bible’s account of creation are simpletons. In so doing, I would undermine the authority of the Bible and cast suspicion on all its words and God himself.
Satan has done an “admirable” job in accomplishing this grand plan, but, thankfully, his cleverly layered edifice of lies is a house of cards. Nothing can stand for very long in opposition to God’s truth. The Copernican lie is coming down! In the end, God’s Word will stand.
Jesus is the one called the Truth (John 14:6). The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of truth (John 16:13). It is his responsibility and joy to guide us into all truth as we are able to bear it (John 16:12). Interestingly, sometimes truth is hard for us to receive.
The Spirit of God is working in the hearts of individual believers and the church at large to deliver us from any area in which we may still be agreeing with Satan and calling God a liar.
Jesus promised us that as we continue reading, meditating, believing, and putting into practice God’s Word, we are truly his disciples, will know the truth, and will experience true freedom. (John 8:31-32)
One day, Jesus will reveal himself to the world in such a way that all will acknowledge him as the Lord (Romans 14:11). In the meantime, it is important that each of us submit every area of our life to Jesus, including our cosmology. We should not derive our understanding of the earth and heavens from anyone other than him.
We are promised that God one day will pour out his Spirit on all people (Acts 2:17), and his glory shall fill the earth (Numbers 14:21). There is coming a day when everyone will know the Lord.
No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:34 (NKJV)
As we wait in expectation for that day, may the Lord deliver us from believing any of Satan’s lies. My prayer is that God will lift the shroud of deception from the eyes and hearts of the entire world, starting with the church, and reveal God’s glory. Amen.
But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” Matthew 4:4 (NKJV)
