Know Your Foe - Part 3

 

He, [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

—John 8:44

As a teacher, I noticed the ability of some students to lie, even in my youngest students. I’m sure that this ability to lie came from practice. They had learned the skills of pseudo-believability and used those skills to their own advantage.

In contrast to the graphic at the beginning of this blog post, you have likely seen a similar picture of a person with the devil on one shoulder whispering in one ear, while an angel sits on the other shoulder whispering in the other ear. In such a situation, the individual seemingly does not know which one to believe. But, of course, that person should know.

We must never forget the clever pseudo-believability of our foe, the devil. Adam and Eve learned the hard way that Satan always tells lies. From the very beginning, in Genesis 3:1-5, we observe the following exchange, with Satan speaking to Eve in what I imagine is his high-pitched, scratchy voice:

“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.”

Satan always begins his manipulations by distorting and maligning God’s truth. In the case of Adam and Eve, God had given very precise and very specific instructions. In Genesis 2:16-17, God actually said:

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Yet, Satan ever-so-cleverly twists and distorts Eve’s thinking about what God actually said that she unknowingly adds to the restriction that God had placed on the one special tree. Then, Satan takes advantage of Eve’s confusion and offers Eve a false promise, saying in Genesis 3:5:

“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.”

Throughout Scripture, we read of the devil lying. In Psalm 10:6, speaking about the wicked oppressor of the poor, the Psalmist states that the wicked one says:

“Nothing will shake me; I’ll always be happy and never have trouble.”

This oppressor heard what he wanted to hear. In the same Psalm 10, in verse 11, this same oppressor spouts the lie of Satan, that God is not omniscient, by saying:

“God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees.”

Continuing to spout Satan’s lies, further on in Psalm 10:13, the same oppressor says about God:

“He won’t call me to account.”

Satan’s manipulation of the truth continues to this very day. We have all heard these kinds of lies coming into one of our ears. Have we believed them? Has all Satan’s trickery worked to undermine God’s truth in our lives? Have we listened to the evil one so long that we have a hard time recognizing God’s voice when we hear it?

Even when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, we read in Matthew 4:1-11 that Satan quoted Scripture to Jesus, twisting the meaning of it in order to try to tempt our Lord. Of course, Jesus was not fooled. He knew the truth of what His Father had actually said.

Where does following this kind of false “wisdom” from Satan lead? Why, into sin, of course.

In John 8:44, we read Jesus’ words stating that Satan:

“…was a murderer from the beginning.”

And, Romans 6:23 tells us that:

“For the wages of sin is death…”

Living in such a way as to compromise God’s truth, to deny it, to ignore it, to turn our backs on it will lead to death. Our enemy loves to promise us the “moon” and actually deliver eternal damnation in hell.

In the book, Voices from the Past, Puritan writer Thomas Brooks writes: ¹

One of Satan’s devices to draw the soul into sin is to present the bait, and hide the hook; to present the golden cup, and hide the poison; to present the sweet, and the pleasure, but hide from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow … Satan promises the soul honor, pleasure, and profit, but pays the soul with the greatest contempt, shame, and loss … Sin will usher in the greatest and the saddest losses that can be upon our souls. It will usher in the loss of that divine favor that is better than life, and the loss of the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, and the loss of the peace that passes understanding.

We do well to fight this evil foe with the truth of Scripture. We need to know and understand the written Word of God and use God’s truth as a sword against the lies of Satan that we hear day after day, as the evil one speaks to us in one sly way after another. After all, we are told in 1 John 4:4:

“You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, [the spirits of false prophets and antichrist], because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

May God receive our highest praise!

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1 Brooks, Thomas (author) and Richard Rushing (editor). Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Reading. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009. p. 15.