The Point of Purity Podcast

Satan's Strategy Revealed (pt. 2)

• Steve Etner • Season 4 • Episode 184

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When you begin to doubt and question God’s Word, it becomes much easier to deny God’s truth. Then it becomes easier to decide to do something other than what God says. This is part of Satan’s methodology.

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Satan does not want you to live in victory over sin. He does not want you to live a godly life. He is waging an all-out war against you by attacking your mind with his cunning deceit to keep you from the simplicity that is in Christ. The way he does this is to get you to question God’s Word, so that you are open to denying God’s truth and vulnerable to accepting his own lie as actual truth.

Welcome to the Point of Purity Podcast! I’m your host Steve Etner – author, National Speaker, Certified Professional Mentor TM and Purity Coach for The Pure Man Ministry and this is Episode #184. This week’s Episode is entitled “Satan’s Strategy Revealed (part 2).”

 

We ended last week’s episode with this thought: we must be very careful not to take away from God’s Word. When we begin to doubt God’s Word – not going to Him for the answers to our questions, and even our doubts – we will find that it is much easier to forget what He really said, and to start to detract from God’s Word. Eventually we will disobey God’s Word and His will.

Satan wants to deceive your mind and to draw you away from the simplicity that is in Christ. Just as he did with Eve, he will begin by getting you to question God’s Word. All he wants you to do is to begin to ask yourself the question, “Did God really say that?” When he is able to get you to question God’s Word, his next step is to deny the truth of what God actually said.

As we move on in our study of Satan’s Strategy Revealed I want you to notice what Genesis 3:4 says. “The serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die!” (ESV) Can you almost hear the serpent’s voice dripping with sarcasm here? Can you see him snort at Eve’s answer, roll his eyes as he coyly says, “C’mon Eve, do you really think you’re going to die? You’re not going to die! God’s holding back on you, and you know it.”

Watch this now – when you begin to doubt and question God’s Word, it becomes much easier to deny God’s truth. You see, when you begin to doubt the truth of what God says, it becomes easy to decide to do something other than what God says. This is part of Satan’s methodology: to deceive your mind, thus leading you away from “your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3 NIV’84) Doubting God’s truth, without seeking God and His Word for the answer, inevitably leads to rejecting God’s truth.

After Eve omitted the word “free” (Genesis 3:2) she then responded to Satan’s accusation that God was a liar by saying, “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.” (Genesis 3:3 ESV) Instead of defending her creator and benefactor, instead of telling the devil he was full of it and to get lost, we can see the deceit continuing its destructive work in her mind. She was choosing to continue to think about what the Father of Lies was saying. The seed of doubt was beginning to sprout, and her thoughts are now pulling her farther away from the actual truth.

It is important at this juncture that we understand what God had actually said. He said, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:17 NASB’95) Do you see Eve’s error? Do you understand what she did? When we compare her response to Satan with God’s instruction, we find that Eve not only subtracted from God’s Word, but she added her own words to God’s Word. What exactly did she add? She added, “You must not touch it.”

Why was she wrong in adding to what God said? After all, isn’t it a good thing to not even touch the forbidden fruit? If you don’t touch it, then you cannot eat it. The bottom line is that when she added to God’s Word, Eve did two things. First, she made God out to be less kind and gracious. She stopped remembering all that God had lovingly provided for her (remember she had an entire garden at her disposal – all her needs were already forever met by God). Instead, she set her focus on the one thing God was not allowing her to have. And because she was already feeding that seed of doubt, she then began to believe that God was infringing upon her rights; that there was no comprehensible reason why she couldn’t eat of that specific fruit, other than the fact that God was being stingy and selfish.

The second thing she did by adding to God’s Word was to make God’s command too heavy a burden to bear. Adding that additional restriction demanded far too much. You can almost hear her thinking, “How could God possibly expect me to walk through this beautiful garden every day and not think about this particular tree? Doesn’t He realize, doesn’t He care how hard it is to not eat of it?” The truth is, “loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3-4 NLT) By adding to God’s Word Eve altered God’s truth, warping it into something God never intended it to be – all about her.

“Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 4:2 NIV’84)

“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.” (Deuteronomy 12:32 ESV)

“Do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” (Proverbs 30:6 NASB’95)

God makes it very clear that He takes His Word seriously. Might I submit: so should we.

Satan does not want you to live in victory over sin. He does not want you to live a godly life. He is waging an all-out war against you to keep you from letting your light shine in such a way that others will see your good works and give glory to God (see Matthew 5:16). To that end, he is attacking your mind with his cunning deceit to keep you from the simplicity that is in Christ. The way he does this is to get you to question God’s Word, so that you are open to denying God’s truth and vulnerable to accepting his own lie as actual truth.

The master deceiver told Eve, “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5 NLT) Can you recognize Satan’s baldfaced lie? When God created man, He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26, 27 ESV) Adam and Eve were already made in the image of God and they knew that. Yet Satan got them to doubt that truth, and then to deny that truth and to accept his substituted lie in the place of God’s absolute truth. Listen my friend – a lie is a lie and will always be nothing more than what it is – a lie. It will never be true. But Satan is adept at getting us to believe that his lie is the truth.

Satan’s subtle lie to Eve that day was that they would be like God. This meant far more than simply being created in God’s image. He was trying to convince them that they could be not just “like God” but an actual god themselves. Here is the absolute truth that permeates Scripture – no one can be like God.

“There is no one like the Lord our God.” (Exodus 8:10 ESV)

“Know that there is no one like Me in all the earth.” (Exodus 9:14 NASB’95)

“How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you.” (2 Samuel 7:22 NIV’84)

“O Lord, there is no one like you. We have never even heard of another God like you!” (1 Chronicles 17:20 NLT)

“Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me.” (Isaiah 46:9 NLT)

When Satan got man to question God’s Word, and then deny God’s truth, man was not only open to believing Satan’s lie, but he willingly received it as truth. Adam and Eve actually were convinced that God was selfishly holding back on them and that by eating the fruit they would experience full deity for themselves.

There is one more thing that Eve did in response to Satan’s deception. First, she omitted God’s Word, then she added to God’s Word, and finally she completely changed God’s Word. The devil’s work of deception was nearing completion. Eve said to the serpent, “God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch, or you will die.” (Genesis 3:3 NASB’95) If you read that verse too quickly you might miss the significance of what she just said. So, to better understand what was wrong with her response to Satan we must compare this with what God actually said. “But from 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.” (Genesis 2:7 ESV)

God’s promise was that they would “surely die.” However, Eve chose to omit the word “surely” and replace it with the word “will.” By that one simple omission she changed God’s word. She shifted God’s promised penalty of disobedience from the firm and absolute declaration that they would of a certainty die, into the realm of mere possibility.

When we begin to doubt God’s Word and deny God’s truth, we are allowing the deceitful lies of the devil to take the place of absolute truth. We will then begin to consider our daily choices and actions apart from Scripture. We will no longer see the necessity for letting the Word of Christ dwell within us richly (Colossians 3:16). Satan’s endgame was to get Eve to consider the tree apart from what God had said. He is still applying the same tactics with you and me today. He tempts you to doubt and question God’s Word, thus making you open to rejecting God’s truth. At this point you are now completely vulnerable to believing the devil’s lies as actual truth.

In the end, Adam and Eve made a harsh, painful discovery that God’s Truth is always and forever absolute truth. Listen closely as I read to you Genesis 3:6-21, 23-24.

“The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed  more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return. ... So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. ” (Genesis 3:6-21, 23-24 NLT)

On that day, at that very moment, they most certainly did “surely die.” Not physically yet, but they experienced the worst kind of death – they were separated from God.

This is precisely what Satan is trying to accomplish in your life today. He wants to draw you away from God’s absolute truth so that you will consider your life and make your daily choices apart from God’s perfect and pleasing will. After all these years later, his strategy hasn’t changed. All he needs to do is plant a seed of doubt in your mind. If you don’t choose daily to yield your will to God, your mind will believe the lie and take you off the path of godliness your Heavenly Father has called you to.

 

OK. Let’s hit the pause button until next week’s episode – where we will continue our look into Satan’s strategy in getting us to willfully turn our back on God in favor of living in sin. 

In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about today’s study, or if you’re interested in learning more about The Pure Man Ministry (what we do to help men across the globe find freedom and victory over sexual sin), be sure to visit our website to see the multitude of resources we’ve made available to you – you can find our website at ThePurityCoach.com.

And if you haven’t subscribed to this podcast yet, let me encourage you to do so today so you won’t miss any of our upcoming episodes!

So, until next time this is Author, Speaker, Certified Professional MentorTM and Purity Coach Steve Etner reminding you that if you are going to glorify God in your everyday living, He must first be glorified in your every moment thinking.