Believing A Lie

The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die. For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3: 4-5 NASB)        

        It has been said that any sin that we commit is always preceded by a lie about God.  It happened in the Garden of Eden and it's been replicating itself ever since.  There is nothing new under the sun.

        Satan encounters Eve with a boldface lie, “You surely will not die.”  Then he said something that was even more cunning. He put the seed in her mind that God had an unrighteous motive.  “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.”  A strategy of the evil one is to distort the character of God.  Why would Eve want to obey God if she believes He is being disingenuous with her?  Before Eve ate of the fruit, she had to swallow the lie that God was not really who He portrayed Himself to be.  Satan succeeds by using deceptive means to tell her that good is bad and bad is good.

        If you want to put a Biblical handle on the sins of Eve and ultimately Adam, call it the Devil’s two-edged sword of pride and unbelief.  Pride, in that it is very tempting to start to believe that the creature can be like the creator.  Only God can be like God.  Unbelief, in that when we start to doubt the goodness of God it leads us down that slippery slope into all sorts of evil.

      So what is the antidote for the lies of the evil one? It is very simple. Just believe the truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; ... (John 14:6). When Satan tempted Jesus, He responded, “It is written” (Matthew 4:4).  The Bible from start to finish reveals a God that is good and without reproach.  Anything that questions the very nature of God is always a lie.  The crux of the matter is, do we fully believe what is written?

       

Ken Barnes, the author of “The Chicken Farm and Other Sacred Places”  YWAM Publishing
Email:  kenbarnes737@gmail.com
website: https://sites.google.com/site/kenbarnesbooksite/

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