Bondage or Liberty; Deception or Truth (Part 1)

Bondage or Liberty; Deception or Truth (Part 1) Bondage or Liberty; Deception or Truth I. Truth makes us free. JOH 8:32. A. Truth is our first line of defence against Satan. EPH 6:14. B. Truth (when received and obeyed) sanctifies and purifies us. PSA 119:9; PRO 16:6; JOH 17:17; 1PE 1:22. C. If we have not a love of the truth, we are liable to be turned over to delusion. 2TH 2:10-11. D. Since delusion and deception are Satan's power over men, nothing less than repentance to the acknowledging of truth will set someone free. 2TI 2:25-26. 1. Repent: “To feel contrition, compunction, sorrow or regret for something one has done or left undone; to change one's mind with regard to past action or conduct through dissatisfaction with it or its results.” 2. Acknowledge: “To own the knowledge of; to confess; to recognize or admit as true.” 3. The only truly free person is the person who is fed up with the lies that he has heard, the lies that he has read, and most of all the lies that he has been living and so submits himself completely to Christ and His truth. 4. This process of acknowledging truth that leads to genuine liberty involves a need to be truthful about ourselves and our errors. 5. Deception is essentially being enticed (by others or by one's own carnality) to deem a lie an acceptable substitute for truth. 6. We will never be at liberty until we stop deceiving ourselves about what constitutes right thought and action because deception blocks deliverance from bondage to a lie. ISA 44:20. II. Freedom demands that we confess and forsake our sins. PRO 28:13. A. Confess: “To declare or disclose (something which one has kept or allowed to remain secret as being prejudicial or inconvenient to oneself); to acknowledge, own, or admit (a crime, charge, fault, weakness, or the like).” B. Forsake: “To give up, renounce....To break off from, renounce (an employment, design, esp. an evil practice or sin; also, a belief, doctrine). To abandon, leave entirely, withdraw from.” C. The opposite of confessing and forsaking our sins is to cover or hide them. 1. Adam tried covering his sin. JOB 31:33. a. Adam first tried to hide from God to avoid detection. GEN 3:8-10. b. When that didn't work, he shifted blame. GEN 3:12. 2. Our attempts at avoiding detection and denying responsibility for sin are so many efforts to cover it. 3. We deceive ourselves when we think that covering sins as did Adam is the way to prosper. a. That is the first and most dangerous form of self-deception. b. Rivaling that is when we deceive ourselves about the consequences of our sins or foolish decisions. c. We must ever renounce the notion that God did not see or does not mind our sin and folly. d. We must ever renounce the notion that sin can be covered by anything but confession and forsaking. e. We must ever renounce the notion that unconfessed and unforsaken sin is of no consequence. III. Satan sells his lies by deception and the better the deception, the bigger the lie that can be sold. A. Paul's great concern was that saints might be deceived as was Eve. 2CO 11:3. 1. Beguile: “To entangle or over-reach with guile; to delude, deceive, cheat.” 2. She who was beguiled was deceived. 1TI 2:14. B. Consider Eve's deception. GEN 3:1-6. 1. Eve was without sin when Satan deceived her. Do you think that you who are a sinner would be more immune to Satan's influences than Eve? 2. Mark the order: a. Satan cast doubt on God's truth and perverted it. v.1. b. Eve took liberties with God's truth, as if naked truth were not enough to counter Satan. vs.2-3. (1) This is one of Satan's greatest deceptions since the fall: convincing men that the truth alone is inadequate to please God---we have to add our own ideas. (2) The traditions of men make the word of God of none effect and lead to our being further deceived. MAR 7:13; COL 2:8. c. Satan denied God's truth about consequences of sin. v.4. d. Satan offered a rival gospel of independence from God. v.5. e. Eve rationalized away the truth based upon sensual fulfillment. v.6 c/w 1JO 2:16. (1) Mind that yielding to the lie was a means of satisfying a legitimate human need: food. (2) Whenever we are tempted to meet a legitimate need by acting contrary to God's will, this is temptation by “the lust of the flesh.” (3) Food, comfort, sex, happiness, peace, rest, success, acceptance, significance, etc. are all legitimate human needs. But we sin when we meet these needs by acting independently of God. f. Whether we know it or not, every time we yield to temptation, we have done the same thing: reasoning that the perceived advantages of a lie are more valuable than truth. C. Satan tried essentially the same tactic on Christ. MAT 4:3-11. 1. He cast doubt on God's word: “...If thou be the Son of God....” v.3 c/w MAT 3:17. 2. He appealed to legitimate physical need. v.3. 3. He perverted the truth. v.6. 4. He implied that doing his bidding would not have harmful consequences. v.6. 5. He offered a rival gospel of independence from God. vs.8-9. 6. But he lost this battle to a constant appeal to unaltered, unadorned truth given by revelation. D. Basically, Satan had deceived Eve into thinking that she could achieve fulness by acting independently of God and His truth. 1. Jesus Christ's life on earth was the model of NOT acting independently of God. JOH 5:30; 6:38, 57; 8:28, 42, 54; 14:10. 2. There is no fulness acting independently of Christ. COL 2:9-10. 3. There is only futility in doing so. JOH 15:4-5. 5. There is no good thing that we can do independently of Christ. 2CO 3:5-6 c/w PHIL 2:12-13; 4:13. 6. The person who seeks to achieve emotional, mental or spiritual fulness independently of Christ will never make it. a. The Book of Ecclesiastes stands as a witness to this fact. b. Pay particular attention to Solomon's conclusion about finding true fulness. ECC 12:13-14. c. Mind how much of modern day psychological and psychiatric counseling is based upon the fallacy of helping people find fulness without God. That is exactly what Satan wants people to think! IV. Satan has many devices by which he deceives men to hold them in bondage away from God and the fulness that can be enjoyed in Him---all of them being denials or distortions of God's revealed word. 2CO 2:11; EPH 6:16. A. Satan will use carnal wisdom and humanistic reasoning as he did with Eve. GEN 3:5-6. 1. Paul says, “...the world by wisdom knew not God...” (1CO 1:21). c/w ROM 1:22. 2. Paul purposed not to preach man's wisdom but to declare Christ. 1CO 2:1-5. 3. We are warned against the spoiling characteristic of philosophy. COL 2:8. 4. Unbiblical human wisdom, “oppositions of science falsely so-called” (1TI 6:20) can corrupt or destroy one's acknowledgment of the truth about God's existence, His power, His promises and His purpose for man and his environment. a. It tends to reduce man to nothing more than a highly evolved animal locked in a chaotic struggle for survival which leads to expensive, futile and often fatal mechanisms for survival and personal peace. b. It tends to make man the pinnacle of all things and therefore his own god.