Tag Archives: deception

YOUR WORD IS TRUTH – 22

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John 17:14-17 NIV‬
[14] “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. [15] My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. [16] They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. [17] Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

Jesus’ prayer centred, first, on Himself, not to save Him from His ordeal, but to achieve His purpose.

‭John 17:1 NLT‬
[1]” After saying all these things, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you.”

Everything Jesus was and did on earth was designed to shine the light on Himself so that He, in turn, could reveal the true nature of the Father. He was the perfect reflection of the Father in human form.

‭Hebrews 1:3 NLT‬
[3]”The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God… “

He expressed His submission to the Father in four little words – “the hour has come.”

Jesus’ second focus was the group of men, excluding Judas Iscariot, who were to continue His mission in earth. He was concerned for their personal protection, not from the “evil one” as most translations interpret, but from the evil within them that posed a far greater danger to them than the devil.

‭John 17:12 NLT‬
[12] “During my time here, I protected them by the power of the name you gave me. I guarded them so that not one was lost, except the one headed for destruction, as the Scriptures foretold…
[14] I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. [15] I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil (one)…
[17] Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth.”

Why would Jesus be concerned about the enemy’s efforts to harm His disciples? Would He Himself not defeat and disarm him through His death?

‭‭Colossians 2:14-15 NLT‬
[14] “He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. [15] In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.”

What are the devil’s weapons against God’s people? Lies! Deception! Accusation! Condemnation! All are designed to breed mistrust and fear, to break our unity with God and destroy our fellowship with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit.

How did Jesus win the victory?

“He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.”

Jesus paid our debt, forgave our sin, cleared our record of all charges against us, and broke sin’s power over us by giving us a new nature.

Now the devil has nothing to substantiate his accusations. Whatever he uses to accuse us is a lie. He can’t even keep his grip on us through our old evil desires because we have a new nature; we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus.

‭Romans 8:28-29 NLT‬
[28] “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. [29] For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become LIKE HIS SON, so that his Son would be the firstbrevealing His heart attitude to the coming ordeal,
orn among many brothers and sisters.”

God’s people have a powerful weapon to protect them from the devil’s schemes to deceive… the truth!

‭Ephesians 6:14-17 NLT‬
[14]”Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. [15] For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. [16] In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. [17] Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

The truth about righteousness, peace,
faith, and salvation are all to be found in the Word of God. It is the truth which cuts through all the devil’s lies, exposes his wiles, and frees us from his efforts to drive a wedge between us and God.

Jesus’ prayer, then, is that the Father would activate His Word in the hearts of His disciples. Protected by the truth from the devil’s lies and the lure of their old nature, they woud be set apart from sin to God, clean vessels to do His will.

So, Jesus did not give much credit to the devil’s attempts to attack His disciples. He was more concerned about His disciples’ ability to defend themselves against Satan’s tricks because there was a traitor within them. They had an old nature that would side with the enemy unless it was brought under control.

The only way to overcome the devil was to discern his lies and neutralise them with the truth.

In a rather blunt way, James put it like this,

‭James 4:7-8 NLT‬
[7] “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [8] Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.”

As disciples of Jesus we, too, are eligible to be beneficiaries of His prayer. However, we all have the potential to be tricked into condemnation or trapped into sin if we are not committed to walking in the truth of God’s Word.

We have powerful protection if we are armed with truth. We can live daily in security and peace if we take up the shield of faith and buckle on the belt of truth. These are our safeguard against a defeated foe. STAND, therefore!

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – WHAT’S BEHIND THE APPEARANCE?

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WHAT’S BEHIND THE APPEARANCE?

“When the Pharisees, a money-obsessed bunch, heard Him say these things, they rolled their eyes, dismissing Him as hopelessly out of touch. So Jesus spoke to them, ‘You are masters at making yourselves look good in front of others but God knows what’s behind the appearance.'” Luke 16:14, 15.

What a powerful hold deception has over people’s minds! It is Satan’s potent and elusive weapon, blinding us to the most simple and obvious truths. If we would just stop and think logically for a moment, we would recognise how easily we have been duped.

In this case, the Pharisees, who loved money and power and paid any price to get it, made two serious errors; they thought that by outwardly acting holy, they could cover up their greedy hearts, and secondly, they thought that they could fool God. Had they only stopped to think, they would have realised how wrong they were.

Jesus’ words should have brought them back to reality with a bump, but it only drove them deeper into their hardened attitude. That’s the other part of Satan’s arsenal that is so difficult to overcome. He trades on human pride to keep his deception in place. Once a person has made his erroneous beliefs public by acting on them, he will not easily back down and admit that he is wrong.

This stubborn attitude disqualifies a person from access to the kingdom of God. Truth and humility are the two requirements for understanding and entering into the realm of God’s rule. They are like the guiding lights that must be lined up to give a ship safe entry into the harbour. Truth displaces the lies that cause us to veer off course, and humility softens our hearts to believe and receive the truth.

Jesus gave us clear directions for getting free from the lies that ensnare us and drive us into misery, pain and loss, “To the Jews who believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'” John 8:32 (NIV). The truth in and of itself cannot set us free. It must first be believed and internalised to become effective in breaking the bondage of deception.

There is a process in moving from deception to truth. Sometimes it happens is a blinding flash of understanding and at other times it follows a period of careful investigation and growing conviction.

For the disciples, barring Judas Iscariot, it was a combination of the two. They followed, watched and listened to Jesus for three years and then came His death and resurrection. His appearance to them was the last piece of the puzzle. From that moment, nothing could budge them from the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Until then, they still wobbled and tottered in their faith, but the presence of the risen Jesus cancelled all their doubts and misunderstandings.

This is the moment of revelation and transformation. It happened to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus; it has happened to millions of people across two thousand years but it never happened to the Pharisees because they refused to examine the evidence. They chose lies over truth and became part of the tragedy of those who never fulfil their God-given potential.

If you examine the evidence with a humble desire to know the truth, there will come for you the dazzling moment of conviction and the life-changing experience of faith, giving you entry and access into the realm of God’s passionate love and unfailing goodness. All His resources will be yours; you will find the meaning and purpose of your existence, and your eternal future will be secure, based on the infallible truth of God’s word.

But is all comes back to the same thing. You choose….

Stay With It

Christian Life, , ,

STAY WITH IT

“‘You’ll even be turned in by parents, brothers, relatives, friends. Some of you will be killed. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me. Even so, every detail of your body and soul — even the hairs of your head! — is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it — that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry, you’ll be saved.'” Luke 21:16-19 (The Message).

How terrible is that, that a parent will betray a child and siblings each other for the sake of an ideology that has no foundation in truth! Such is the power of deception that it even overrides family loyalties.

There are countless stories of these kinds of betrayals from the Communist era, for example, that ripped family and friends apart. There are devotees of other religions today that are equally ruthless in the name of their god and teach that anyone who is not one of them must be destroyed.

But, unlike the gods who ‘require’ this kind of behaviour to protect them, Jesus assured His followers that He was in charge and would protect them, even down to the hairs on their head! Herein lies the difference between lies and truth. If a god cannot take care of him and demands that his followers go on the rampage and riot and murder to guard his name, does he sound like the sort of god that attracts both trust and security?

What if you did something to annoy him? If he requires you to kill even your own family for him, what guarantee do you have that he won’t take you out for some infringement? How much security is there is a god who is capricious and unpredictable?

Once again, Jesus was utterly truthful. He faithfully warned His followers that there was trouble ahead for them if they remained loyal to Him. He gave no guarantee of physical safety if they followed Him but He did assure them that no part of them would be eternally lost. How many times have we already seen that He always viewed life from the perspective of eternity? Life did not end at the grave. It was only a part of the whole, a preparation for what lay ahead beyond death.

Persecution would not destroy them, however tough it was, but it would weed out those who were only in it for what they could get out of it. It would be part of a refining process by which faith in Him would be stripped of props and false expectations and would be anchored in His trustworthiness alone.

Jesus wanted His followers to trust Him so completely, in His character and His promises, that they would stake their very lives on what He had said. And they did! History reveals the story of many thousands during the first three centuries of the church who gave their lives rather than denies Jesus, and they did it joyfully because they believed His promises.

People foolishly follow the words of someone who claimed to speak for their god with no proof of their authenticity. Jesus Himself spoke these words, “‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?'” John 11:25-26 (NIV).

Once again we are left with a choice — to believe and follow the teachings of a god who never speaks for himself and who offers no infallible proof or his existence and has to rely on fallible humans to speak for him, or to believe in the one who said He would die and rise again and did it, not for Himself but for us, so that we can entrust ourselves to His proven trustworthiness.

Who Is Really Responsible?

Christian Life, , ,

WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE?

“But Jesus shot back, ‘You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?’ When He put it that way, His critics were left looking quite silly and red-faced. The congregation was delighted and cheered Him on.” Luke 13:15-17 (The Message).

Could the synagogue ruler have answered Jesus, ‘But my animals are not under the law of God like we are’? From his perspective he could have been right but Jesus never viewed life from the human perspective. That’s the difference between Him and us. Our logic is human. Jesus always thought God’s thoughts. The very essence of our new life in Christ is to learn to think God’s thoughts instead of our own.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 (NIV).

So what was Jesus’ perspective on this woman’s condition? Satan! He was the culprit. But, lest we assume that we are automatically Satan’s victims, we need to understand the way he works. Neither God nor Satan has any power over the gift God gave us – the freedom to make our own choices. We choose according to what we believe. God calls us to respond to truth while Satan works through deception.

In this woman’s case, somewhere in her life something happened that gave Satan his opportunity to sow lies into her mind. She believed his lies and emotional pain followed, which blocked out the truth of God’s love and caused her body to become as twisted as her mind.

Satan’s lies are always directed at discrediting us, other people and, eventually, God, resulting in feelings of fear, anger, rejection, insecurity, unforgiveness, bitterness and worthlessness which are the ideal breeding ground for demonic harassment. The devil’s ensnarement comes in the form of mental, emotional and physical bondage from which there is no escape except by diagnosing the lie and replacing it with the truth which, said Jesus, is the key to freedom.

People in this condition desperately long for someone to rescue them. There is not a person in the world who can do this except Jesus. He came from the Father to bring both grace and truth to His world. Only He can set captives free; no psychiatrist, psychologist nor counsellor can reveal the truth to the heart of the sufferer. No medication can cure the mind of the lies which hold people prisoner to mental and physical ‘illness’.

How tragic that our medical scientists, in their human ‘wisdom’, have chosen to bypass, ignore, and reject the only person who has the power to set people free, Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace. Every malady has a ‘diagnosis’ and is so catagorised that its real cause is masked by the name of some or other disorder. We are satisfied as long as we have a ‘diagnosis’ even if there is no ‘cure’. Our conditions are ‘managed’ while Jesus came to set captives free.

His anger was aroused by this heartless ‘religious’ man who saw more value in his animals than in a woman whom Jesus deliberately called ‘a daughter of Abraham’. She had has much right to freedom as the animals whom he faithfully led to water, even on the Sabbath, because was a member of God’s covenant people. Freedom from the shackles of emotional pain is the inheritance of believers in Jesus. Have you come to Him to set you free?

Killer of Prophets

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KILLER OF PROPHETS

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets, abuser of the messengers of God!
How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen,
her brood safe under her wings — but you refused and turned away!
But now it’s too late; you won’t see me again until the day you say,
‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'”
Luke 13:34, 35 (The Message).

Oh the heartache of Jesus! Such is the power of deception and the terrifying possibilities in the most precious gift God gave humanity – the power to choose! But that is the nature of love – risking everything for the sake of a free and willing choice to believe and trust the God who calls us into a love relationship with Him.

Not to be able to love Him freely would be grossly unfair, to say the least. He has given us the right to choose, based on the evidence that we must evaluate for ourselves. God hides nothing from us. What He says is true with no small print to mislead or mask a hidden agenda.

Jesus could rightly claim, ‘I am the Light of the world,’ because light dispels darkness and reveals everything. He could claim, ‘I am the truth,’ because what He has spoken and what He has promised has stood the test of time. Only truth can never be destroyed and the words of Jesus have never been proved false.

Deception’s power lies, as much in what had not been said as in what has been said. Satan is a master of deception, sometimes by just plain lying, contradicting the truth of God, and sometimes by concealing the truth; for example, he makes sin look appealing and attractive but he neglects to talk about the consequences. ‘It’s okay,’ he says to young people, ‘to sleep around. It’s nice and everybody’s doing it. Nothing will happen and no-one will know.’

And then comes the unexpected pregnancy. ‘It’s okay to get rid of it,’ he says, ‘It’s only the ‘product of conception’,’ as if that changes the truth that it is a baby-in-the-making. Then, when it’s all over and there is no going back, comes the lifetime of emotional pain – guilt, shame, remorse – that he didn’t warn you about, and oh, does he rub it in, ‘You fool, you wicked person, look what you’ve done. God will never forgive you. There is no hope for you!’

Jesus wept for a city that had been deceived by its spiritual leaders. ‘He’s a devil and a deceiver,’ they insisted. ‘He works through the power of the devil. Don’t listen to Him. We are right and He is wrong.’ and so the people made their choice, swept along by the gloating deceiver himself. They murdered Him in spite of the evidence. And forty years later the city and its people paid the terrible price, the city destroyed, the temple taken apart stone by stone – just as He said – and its people slaughtered until their blood ran like a river in the streets.

Had they believed Him, they would have been as safe as chickens sheltering under mother hen’s wings. But they did not. They refused to weigh up the evidence and so, they were wilfully deceived. And that’s the biggest tragedy of all – deception is, in the end, our choice. There is enough evidence to disclose the truth, if we want it. “It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that He exists and that He cares enough to respond to those who believe Him.” Hebrews 11:6 (The Message).

Here is His non-negotiable promise, “Now this is what my Father wants; that anyone who sees the Son and trusts who He is and what He does and then aligns with Him, will enter real life, eternal life.” John 6:40 (The Message); no small print, no hidden agenda, only the truth.

But it’s your choice….