THE TRUTH AND THE LIE
Since the dawn human history, our adversary, the Devil, has employed a highly effective tactic in the battle to destroy man’s ability to discern right from wrong. He has vehemently sought to undermine the truth of God’s Word, thereby deceiving man and preventing him from knowing God’s Truth, inevitably producing his intended result; man falling for his lies. The collateral damage has been catastrophic in terms of, not only the effects that it has had on the race of man; in the form of violence, war, murder, hatred, and a whole host of other evils, but also upon the free will of man and his unvarnished ability to accurately choose to follow his creator, or to reject His plan for them. This epic saga has played itself out for thousands of years on the stage of cultures around the globe, but it has also been precisely recorded and providentially preserved for us, throughout the pages of the entire volume of Scripture. The great reformer, John Calvin once said that, “God is not only true, but the Truth itself… this applies to the persons who pay entire allegiance to the word of God, for their expectations shall never be frustrated. God… whose faithfulness was not only tried and proved… is the very fountain of truth ”. (339) Therefore we must defend God’s authoritative word at all costs, and never allow ourselves to surrender His truth to the satanic onslaught that seeks its annihilation.
Up until the end of the twentieth century, a young recruit who had joined the US Navy and found themselves shipped to San Diego, CA. for basic training, would be confronted with the most disorienting and unnerving shock of their lives. In an effort to completely break the will and resistance of the new recruits, the Navy employed the services of senior enlisted personnel who had been recruited from the Philippine Islands. For the first three days, of what they thought was the American Navy, they were harassed and belittled by the loud, shrill voices of Tagalog speaking drill instructors, with devastating effect. The resulting bewilderment and confusion brought on by this deceptive tactic, rendered most sailors incapable of mounting any form of resistance, to the stripping away of their civilian identities.
In much the same way, Satan has skillfully used deception, from the very beginning, to coax us into lowering our spiritual defenses, so that he may fire one of his flaming darts into our lives, with devastating effect. The battle for truth and Satan’s deceitful attacks against it, are not dormant themes in scripture, hiding in some obscure passages of the Minor Prophets or the Psalms. Rather, they appear at the very inception of man’s interaction with God, in the first lying words that pour forth from the deceiver’s mouth, throughout the books of the Bible, and in the final scenes of Revelation, where we find the Devil going out one last time to, “…to deceive the nations…” (NKJV, Rev 20:8). God then, is the fountain of all truth, and Jesus clearly identifies Satan, as the fountain of all deception who, “…does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” (John 8:44) We must keep this thought in mind as we journey through scripture, realizing that whether he is named or not, Satan is behind the scenes causing untold destruction through his deceptive campaign to destroy the truth of God and His Kingdom.
Going back to the very beginning, we see not only the first sin committed by man, but also the first lie committed by Satan, occurring at the same exact moment, which results in man’s eventual downfall. This is highly significant in the light of the rest of Scripture, and it underscores the deceptive nature of this serpent which is, “…more cunning than any beast of the field…” (Gen 3:1) Notice the first words uttered by his forked tongue in all of Scripture; “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” (Gen 3:1) This statement in and of itself is a deceptive one according to Kiel & Delitzsch because, “The serpent calls God by the name of Elohim alone… In this more general and indefinite name the personality of the living God is obscured. To attain his end, the tempter felt it necessary to change the living personal God into a merely generalized divinity… in the hope of exciting in the woman's mind partly distrust of God Himself, and partly a doubt as to the truth of His word.” (Gen 3 ).
This is also a direct contradiction to what God had just said in chapter two when he warned, “…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat… lest you die.” (Gen 2:17) Satan’s reply to Eve is a stunning lie, as he reassures her that, “You will not surely die... your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:4). The implications of this blatant opposition to God’s revealed truth are far reaching indeed, and they set the pattern for the entire future of the human race. Not only does Satan challenge God’s word, he promises Eve a reward for deliberately disobeying it. Notice the results of the deception; eternal separation from God for all of eternity. Sin broke their relationship with God because when, “…they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, …Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” (Gen 3:8).
There’s no denying that our free will has a part to play in our sin, but you can’t escape the implication of the words of Eve, when she told the Lord that, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen 3:13). Paul verifies this connection as well, explaining that, “…Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.” (1Tim 2:14 ) Thankfully, God didn’t give up on His creation so easily because He had already instituted a plan of redeeming man back to Himself, that has been playing out ever since, in the form of a prophetic promise to defeat Satan’s deceptive schemes once and for all, through the coming of the messiah. God informed Satan that He would, “…put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” (Gen 3:15) The battle for the truth raged on, and the, “hostility between the serpent and the woman, between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s seed, typifies the unending conflict between all that represents the forces of evil on the one hand, and all that represents the true and high destiny of mankind on the other.” (Cambridge, Gen 3:15).
The presence of Satan, in physical form, in the day to day lives of men from this time on diminishes severely, but we still see the effects of his treachery behind the scenes, and the subtlety of his lies and rebellious encouragements, as man increasingly follows after the dictates of his own heart, fueled by the lies of the Devil and his angels. The murder of Abel is just the beginning in a long line of sinful rejections of God’s truth leading up to the wrath of God being poured out through the Flood of Noah. God saw that, “…the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually .” (Gen 6:5). In other words, man’s heart was rejecting God’s truth continually, because evil can be defined as the rejection of the righteous truth of God. This can be seen in God’s justification for bringing the flood upon them as, “…God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” (Gen 6:12). For man to have become ‘corrupted’, implies that he once knew the truth of the uncorrupted way, but chose not to follow after it.
Even after the cataclysmic event of the flood, man quickly returned to a state of rejecting the revealed truth of who God was in favor of the lies he chose to create for himself. Rather than obeying God’s command to go forth and take dominion of the entire earth, arrogant man shook his fist at God and said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” (Gen 11:4). But there was one man who heard the voice of God and obeyed His call to come out from among those nations, rejecting their lies and the deceptions of Satan, and he began to follow after God by faith. Through this man, God chose to reveal His truth to the entire world, promising Abraham that, “…all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:3), through him. God revealed more and more of the truth of Himself, through the family of Abraham, dispelling the lies of Satan along the way, for the next 2,000 years. The nation of Israel was to be a beacon of His truth and righteousness to all the other nations of the earth, as God proclaimed through the prophet Isaiah, “For Zion's sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns. The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory.” (Isa 62:1-2) But throughout the exodus, the wilderness wanderings, the conquering of the promise land, the kingdoms of David and Solomon, the Babylonian captivity, and the post-exilic period, the same decision had to be made over and over again: should we obey the truth of God or follow the dictates of our own hearts? Should we worship the true and living God that created the heavens and the earth, or fashion a false god from metal or stone, and worship it?
The consequences of rejecting God’s truth can be seen in graphic detail throughout every era of Israel’s existence, and the lies that they settled for are equally visible. After recounting the entire history of the nation of Israel, the martyr Stephen sums up their unfaithfulness by exclaiming, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.” (Act 7:51) But of course, Israel didn’t have a monopoly on rejecting truth, and when Jesus arrived on the scene to establish the reality of God’s existence, with acts of undeniable power and veracity, He was still rejected. Consider for a moment the reason that Jesus Himself gave to Pontius Pilate for why He came; He said, “For this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” (John 18:37) Jesus spoke of truth quite often, in fact He boldly claimed to be, “…the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6), and you could see how much it pained Him to watch people living a lie . That is why He delighted in telling His disciples that, “…you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) In proving the certainty of His sacrificial love for us, He died on the cross to destroy Satan’s lies once and for all, and after His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit, stating that, “…when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth…” (John 16:13)
But just like in the Old Testament, the enemy of all truth was still on the prowl, and this concerned the New Testament writers deeply, as evidenced by Paul telling the Corinthians that, “I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (2 Cor 11:3) They knew that the biggest danger facing the newly formed church was deception and false teaching . That’s why Paul warned many churches of the infiltration tactics of the enemy, describing them as, “…false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness.” (2 Cor 11:13-15), and to the church in Thessalonica, “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” (2 Thess 2:9-10)
Receiving the love of the truth then, turns out to be a pretty big deal at the end of the book, indeed our eternal salvation depends upon it. But many in the church today don’t see why defending the truth of God’s divinely revealed, authoritative, inspired, and inerrant word, is such a huge issue. Why does it matter if the Genesis account of creation is true or not? Why should it matter if we believe in the miracles of the Bible or not? What difference does it make if Jesus is the same historical person who is revealed through Scripture or not? It should matter to us, because the truthfulness and genuineness of all of these things can be verified by the fact that Satan, the arch enemy of our souls, and the accuser of our brethren, obviously believes them to be true, because he has dedicated himself to destroying, undermining, trivializing, marginalizing, and obliterating God’s word for over six thousand years of human history.
Knowing these things to be true, we need to ask ourselves a few questions about the state of the church today, since Paul would certainly be asking them, if he were here. For instance, why is it all right for the church to discard God’s word, as old fashioned and ‘out of touch’, and to allow society to inform us about what is right and what is wrong? Why has it become ok in the church, and even ‘all the rage’, to question the truth of God’s word, in light of the conjecture and speculation of, “…science falsely so called…” (1Tim 6:20) Why do we allow pastors and preachers to spew secular humanism and seeker friendly non-sense from our pulpits and parishes? People need to hear the truth, as only God’s word can deliver it! There is no substitute! Why are our seminaries and Bible colleges staffed with liberal scholars who don’t even believe the truth of God’s word, and are willing accomplices of Satan, in his efforts to marginalize and destroy it?
Why? Because we must not believe it to be true ourselves. If we really and truly believed what this book is saying about the reality in which we are living, we would never allow it to go on. If we valued truth as much as it should be valued and realized the eternal consequences of trivializing and ignoring its demands, our lives would be far different, and as a result, the effectiveness of the Church would be far greater. Again I say to you, defend God’s authoritative truth at all costs, and never surrender to the satanic onslaught that seeks its annihilation. As we go forward, it should strengthen us to remember that Jesus prayed for His disciples, asking the Father to, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) The Greek scholar, F.F. Bruce, comments on this verse declaring the instrument of our, “…work to be ‘the truth’…embodied in the Father’s word…”, [and that our], “…message is the continuation of His message, just as [our] mission in the world is the extension of His mission.” (334)
Calvin, John, Commentaries, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI., 1979, Vol. 3, Pg. 339
Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the OT, Eerdmans, Grand Rapides, MI., 1970, Gen 3
Cambridge Bible Commentary, Cambridge University Press, 1882, Gen 3:15 notes
Bruce, F.F., The Gospel of John, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI., 1983, pg. 334
New King James Version, Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Publisher.
