Five Steps to Deception

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Transcript:

We’ll actually be in 1 Timothy chapter 4. 1 Timothy chapter 4. Has anybody in this room ever been deceived?

Deceived. Have you ever been deceived? Been deceived.

Well, it might be the same thing. Good night, everybody. Now, have any of you ever been deceived?

Have any of you ever deceived yourselves? Those are both possible. I was thinking about this concept of deception which is what we’re going to talk about from the scriptures tonight but thinking about this concept of deception and we think it’s something that someone else does to us which is sometimes the case not always an example of deceiving someone else would be a couple weeks ago when I was working in the I was filling in in the cafeteria at the school because if our cafeteria lady’s gone I’m the only other one with a food handler’s permit, so who do they pull out of class?

Me. I was filling in, and one of the little girls, we have a girl who is Jewish and can’t eat pork and always asks what kind of meat it is, and so I told several of the little girls, they were beef, the meatballs were beef, I told several of the little girls that it was squirrel. And they threw it out, even though they’d eaten half of it already.

You ate it already? and I figured they knew I was joking but convinced them it was squirrel and evidently they believed it because they came back a few days later and asked if the roast was squirrel too. And I had to tell them, we can’t feed you squirrel here legally.

There’s nothing wrong with squirrel but we can’t legally feed it to you here, I think. So they were deceived by me. Didn’t intend to lie to them, I was just intending to joke They were deceived because I misled them.

Another example of deception would be when I tell myself that because something is lower in fat, I can eat twice as many of them, and it’s okay. Don’t raise your hand. I was going to ask if any of you have ever done that, but I won’t ask you to raise your hand.

You know if you have or not. Deception, the reason I bring that up, deception is something we think of, well, somebody deceived me. sometimes we can deceive ourselves as well.

Sometimes we can, sometimes somebody else can deceive us, but we can ourselves willingly go down that road. Sometimes we are deceived through no fault of our own. But more often than not, we’re involved somewhere in the process, either by telling ourselves things we know are not true, or just allowing ourselves to believe those things.

And it can be, you know, there can be consequences. If for years I keep eating twice as many of the reduced fat things, thinking it’s okay, there can be consequences down the road. For some deception, there are even greater consequences.

For some deception, there can be eternal consequences. And we want to be very careful about believing lies, about either because someone else has convinced us of an untruth or because we were in a place where we chose to believe, you know what, I believe that I can eat twice as many of those reduced fat things because that’s what I want to believe. That fits into what I need to know at that moment.

So sometimes we can be totally taken in by somebody’s lies and other times we go willingly into believing something that is not true because that’s what we want to believe because our feelings lead us in that And Paul wrote to Timothy about this in 1 Timothy chapter 4. He says in verse 4, Now I did not come tonight to preach to you about food. Although food has been on my brain quite a bit this weekend.

I went for lab work on Friday morning and could not eat for about 12 hours before. And there’s something about being told that you can’t eat that makes you want to eat. I got home and everybody it seems was snacking and I just I hate people who eat and I got out of the doctor’s office and went went to Sonic for a snack on my way to lunch so food and I haven’t slowed down since food has been on the brain but this message really is not about food now Timothy does address an issue that they were sorry Paul to Timothy addresses an issue that they were facing in some of the early churches, which I’ve talked about so many times, this idea of Gnosticism, which you may think we don’t deal with that so much anymore, but it’s out there in all sorts of religious thoughts and feelings today.

It’s just changed the name. But this idea of Gnosticism was that there’s secret knowledge that can be had, and we get closer to God through this secret knowledge that the initiated have. And one of the ideas behind that was that matter is evil, spirit is good and so the material world we need to withdraw from the material world now a big problem for that with the early churches a big problem for us as Christians today was this idea that well Jesus to be truly good couldn’t have come as a real man because to be born in flesh he had to be evil and so he was just a spirit well a spirit can’t bleed and if he couldn’t bleed he couldn’t purchase the forgiveness of our sins.

So that becomes an issue very quickly. But also it was affecting Christians in the sense that they were being led astray to retreat from the material world. Not that I want us to be materialists.

There’s a problem on the other hand if we start to think that the material world is all that there is. But God made creation and said that it was good. And so to say that we’re going to reject this world entirely is a a dangerous foray into Gnosticism.

Please understand what I’m saying here. Because we’re told to be in this world and not of this world. And yet here I am saying we can’t reject this world.

Two different meanings here of the word world. Try not to get tongue-tied here. The word world.

When it says to be in the world, but not of the world, the Bible is talking about existing in this world, in this physical world, without being part of this world system, without being spiritually part of the world, without going after the idols and the false gods and the false ideas of God that this world has to offer, the sin and the wickedness and the lust of the flesh and all of the things that characterize this world system, if we can say it that way. But when I say we shouldn’t reject the world, I’m not talking about that world system. I’m talking about the very creation that God has put us into where we think we need to deny ourselves things that God has never said, deny yourself.

You know, we need to stay away from human contact. We need to stay away from food. We need to stay away from anything enjoyable.

You know what? God made this world in part for our enjoyment. Now, that’s not licensed to go out and say, let’s do whatever we want.

That’s to say God gave us things for enjoyment. We should enjoy them within the bounds that he set up. And these Gnostics were leading people astray.

And one thing they’re saying is, you’re not allowed to marry. You shouldn’t marry because marriage is evil. And they were saying that you shouldn’t eat meat.

You shouldn’t do this. And building up all these rules. What’s the problem with rules?

The problem with rules is if you build up man-made rules and begin to tell people this is what God expects, all of a sudden you’re teaching people that they can get to heaven by living according to your rules. And where the Bible teaches us that where we mix grace with the law, it’s no longer grace. And what that means for us is that if it’s Jesus plus anything else, it doesn’t matter if it’s 99.

999% Jesus and. 0001% something else. I hope I got those numbers right.

I forgot how many digits I said. But it doesn’t matter. If it’s all these other parts Jesus and one part something else, then it’s not really faith in Jesus.

And it’s not really the faith that leads to salvation. So it becomes very deadly. When they start setting up these other rules, well, you have to abstain from this, you have to abstain from this, you have to abstain from this, when God had never said that.

To be very clear, God says abstain from all appearance of evil. He said that. He also told them to abstain from meats that were offered to idols.

I could understand that. But when you go beyond that and say, well, you abstain from all meat, abstain from marriage, abstain from this, abstain from that, when God had not set that rule in place, what they began doing was offering people an alternate way of salvation. And if it’s not Jesus, it’s not the truth, ladies and gentlemen.

Can we all agree on that tonight? If it’s not Jesus, it’s not the truth. If it’s not Jesus, it’s not the way to heaven.

If it’s not Jesus and only Jesus, it’s not the way to heaven. It’s not the way to salvation. It’s not the way to peace with God.

It’s not the way to forgiveness. And so he warns of those who would come. And he says in the latter days.

Well, what are the latter days? I would assume anything after that moment. It doesn’t necessarily mean just the end times because it was taking place in their day.

Guess what? It’s still taking place in our day. Now, do we have a lot of Gnostics running around?

Well, believe it or not, we do. They just don’t call themselves Gnostics. You know, there are some similarities.

I’m not going to say that they are Gnostics, but there are some similarities between Gnosticism and Mormonism. There are some similarities between Gnosticism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are a lot of similarities between Gnosticism and Christian science.

Beyond that, if you want to take it further and say this idea that the Gnostics had of these other rules that would lead you to peace with God. We could include Eastern religions. We could include Catholicism, Oprah, Dr.

Oz. Folks, we are inundated with these philosophies that have some connection back to Gnosticism. Now, don’t get mad at me if you watch Dr.

Oz. He may have great medical advice for all I know. I know my mother is sold on the whole coconut oil thing.

We might as well just anoint the whole house with coconut oil. because he talked about the health benefits of it. You know what?

He may have some good advice on medical things, but I’m talking about some of the other things that have been featured. Folks, this Gnosticism is all around us. We have to be careful.

We have to be on guard. I don’t mean to make you terrified to ever turn on your television again, although it might not be the worst thing in the world if we didn’t. I don’t mean to make you terrified that behind every corner there’s a Gnostic.

Can’t walk to my car. The Gnostics are out in the bushes watching me. That’s not the point tonight.

But we do need to be on guard against the ideas taught in Gnosticism. And quite frankly, the ideas taught in any false religious system that there is any other way to peace with God, that there’s any other way to forgiveness of sins, that there’s any other way to hope of eternal life in heaven, but through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. And if we’re not careful, better people than you or me, and that’s not to say that y’all are bad people.

Okay, let me rephrase that. better people than me, have been caught up in these ideas and the idea that they can, maybe there is something else out there. Maybe there is another way.

And so Paul warns, you need to be on guard against these things because the Spirit speaketh expressly. When he says the Spirit speaketh expressly, he means that the Spirit has made it abundantly clear that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith. There would be some who were in the faith and then were not in the faith.

Now I believe it was John who wrote that if they were of us, they would still be of us. They would still be with us. I’m paraphrasing a little bit.

But he says that there were those who departed from us, which proved they were never really part of us. Because if they were really part of us, they would remain. But he says there would be some who would depart the faith.

There would be some who would have the appearance of being in the faith. Not so much the physical appearance, but they would look and sound the part, like they really are believers, and yet they’ve walked away from that. I don’t think a true believer in their right mind walks away totally and completely.

Now, totally and completely, there are some people who walk away and later come back, and we need to pray that those who’ve walked away would come back. Those who walk away and stay gone for the rest of their lives, the Bible indicates they never were part of us. And he said there would be some who would be in the faith and then would walk away.

They’re going to depart the faith. And then he says they’re going to give heed to seducing spirits. Seducing spirits are anything that says, hey, you’ll like what I’m selling.

I know that that word seduction has a certain connotation in our society, but it’s broader than that. Seduction really just means to draw you in towards something. I won’t go any further with what it means to our society because I’m shy.

But, you know, it’s the job of commercials, for example. We could say, when you see that commercial for. .

. I hate commercials. I don’t watch them very much anymore.

I’m trying to think of an example. When you see the commercial for. .

. I did see one today for a Lincoln SUV. I thought it was a dumb commercial. But it was designed, it was designed, if we can use the word this way, to seduce you into buying a Lincoln SUV.

They want to make you want whatever it is they’re selling. There’s a chicken restaurant that is not Chick-fil-A. I love Chick-fil-A, and I love this one.

It’s like apples and oranges. They’re not the same thing. There’s a chicken restaurant that they have in the Fayetteville area that my kids and I loved.

And I have been craving that chicken restaurant for a year that I’ve not been back in Arkansas. And I saw, or rather, Charles saw a few weeks ago a sign where they’re building one in Norman. They don’t have them here.

They’re building one in Norman. And now I drive down Main Street all the time and see that chicken, that cartoon chicken on the side, and it’s seducing me into coming and buying chicken, and I’m just waiting for them to get the building built. These seducing spirits are spirits that pull us in and draw us into what they’re selling, and what they’re selling here are these false ideas about God and these false ideas about salvation.

And Satan will attack. We’ll come back to this in a minute, that Satan will attack when we’re at our weakest point. He will use those things that we’re most susceptible to to draw us in.

He says that they would give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. This seduction takes place more on an emotional and physical level. And this doctrines of devils, we’re talking more of an intellectual level here.

We’re talking about something that goes on in the brain. He says, here’s what I need you to believe. Here’s what I’m really selling.

And we say, okay, that sounds good. So he says that some would give in to these seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Then he goes on and says, speaking lies.

Now they’re not just buying these lies, but they’re actually speaking them. They’re selling them themselves. Speaking lies and hypocrisy.

Why is it in hypocrisy? Not everybody who lies, not everybody who tells untruth is a hypocrite. Now I’m not defending them, but I’m saying some people tell untruths and think they’re telling the truth.

Those nice clean cut missionaries show up on your doorstep. They really believe what they’re telling you. Doesn’t make it true, but they really do believe it.

So what makes these people that he’s talking about, what makes them speaking lies and hypocrisy? It’s because they were once in and around the faith and they know that. They know that what they’re speaking, what they’re selling is not true.

Now they may have long since abandoned the faith. They may have long since agreed to these ideas, these doctrines of devils that they’ve been sold, and yet somebody who was in the faith, or at least among the faithful, if we can put it that way, someone who was among us, someone who has departed from the faith rather than being brought up in lies, somewhere in the back of their mind, they know what they’re doing is wrong. They know that what they’re telling and what they’re believing is wrong.

There is often some semblance of conviction still there. I used to ask my mom all the time, well, why did this person behave this way? That didn’t make any sense.

She’d say all the time it’s conviction because they know what they’re doing is wrong. Mom, why did this person avoid me when I saw them at the grocery store? Because they know, and they know you know, and they know you know they know, and it’s conviction.

Oh, okay. So somewhere in the back of their minds, they know that what I know that they’re doing, they know it’s wrong. They know they’re not supposed to be doing that.

Sort of like Adam and Eve in the garden. God came walking through in the cool of the day and they hid. If they had not, if they had not realized that what they did was wrong, they would have been upfront and honest about it.

There was this conviction, this realization. And so when we know that something is wrong, we know back somewhere in the back of our mind, in the back of our spirit, we know that it’s wrong and we continue to advocate for these doctrines of devils, then we’re speaking lies in hypocrisy because we know one thing is right and yet we say another. I say we, I’m not saying that anybody in this room is in this category tonight.

Please understand this. And he says, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. This is one of the most wonderfully descriptive portions of all of scripture, having your conscience seared with a hot iron.

I mean, there are a lot of good descriptive things in scripture that we can understand. But this one I identify with, not so much that my conscience is seared, but I know what they’re talking about. A few years ago, I played in the orchestra at Southgate, played the clarinet.

A lot of people don’t know that about me. But I played in the orchestra at Southgate, and one day I was ironing clothes. And I couldn’t tell if the iron was on or not.

And like a big dummy, I thought, well, I’ll find out. And stuck my index finger, I believe it was my index finger of my left hand, on the iron. And boy, I found out real quick that the iron was hot.

And it burned my finger. The reason I brought up being in the orchestra. It burned my finger and it blistered.

I couldn’t play in the orchestra because the left hand index finger goes on the very top hole. And if that’s not covered right, none of the rest of the notes work. It was blistered.

It hurt. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, what do you say? I could not use it to play.

Even after the blister went down, I noticed for several weeks, I really didn’t have much feeling in that finger after the blister and that pain went away. There wasn’t much feeling in that finger, and I noticed as I was practicing, I don’t always get my finger in the right spot to cover that hole correctly. It’s just a story that happened to me that illustrates that.

Because you can burn yourself to the point where the nerve endings either die or are just so overloaded that for some people from then on, for some people for just a while, there’s not a lot of feeling there, if any. Our conscience is like that. Our conscience is like that.

Our conscience, I think of as the receiver when the Holy Spirit calls and hears that voice. And we ignore the Holy Spirit so long. Somebody ignores the Holy Spirit so long, they get immune to that voice.

They start to build up a tolerance. And eventually that still small voice is drowned out because of the nerve damage. Because our conscience is seared.

There’s no feeling left. And we can’t hear him when he speaks. And that happens eventually if we wander away from the truth long enough and far enough.

And so Paul presents a warning to Timothy and says, be careful about this. Be careful about these ideas in particular, but be careful about deception in general, because it’s very sneaky and it sneaks up on you and then it’s got you. Oh, my goodness, I watch nature documentaries a lot.

Not as much as I watch historical ones, because if you’re watching a nature documentary, they’re going to sneak a snake in on you eventually. But watch these nature documentaries, especially about the animals that sort of blend in with their surroundings. I know they’re, what is it called, a rockfish?

There’s a fish that looks like a coral reef, and it just sits there. It doesn’t move until something swims close enough by, and all of a sudden it lures the fish. It comes closer, and he thinks he’s at the rock with the coral reef, and all of a sudden the fish leaps out, and he’s got it.

And it happens before he even knows he’s into it. showed an Answers in Genesis documentary, a creationist documentary, to some of my classes several weeks ago about carnivorous plants. Fascinating.

Like the Venus flytrap, these plants that eat bugs and sometimes mice, these giant pitcher plants in the Amazon. They would show these bugs climbing into the pitcher plant, and it’s just real subtle. They’re attracted to the aroma of it.

Some of them smell sweet. Some of them smell like rotten meat. I can’t imagine.

But the flies love that. And so they go in and they get closer and they get closer. It’s very subtle.

It’s very subtle. And they don’t realize how deep they’re in until it’s too late to get out. And deception can be like any of those things.

It can be like the rockfish. It can be like the pitcher plant. And before we realize it, if we’re not on guard, before we realize it, we’re ensnared and it’s too late.

So we need to be careful. This passage outlines for us five steps that lead to just total deception. Five steps that lead us to being ensnared in deception.

And where we’ve got to be on guard and make sure we’re not on any of these steps. And we avoid them like the plague. The first thing we do is we fail to focus.

We take our eyes off of God’s truth. That’s where the problem starts. It doesn’t start with the lies we believe.

It starts with taking our eyes off of the truth. David, you remember the story of David and Bathsheba. and how he looked out and saw her bathing on her roof.

There’s a lot about that story I don’t understand. Why was she bathing on the roof? But you look at that story, and we think, okay, David’s problem began when he looked at Bathsheba and said, who is that?

Now, the world would say his problem began when he committed adultery with her. I’ve heard preachers say his problem started when he gave her a second look and said, who is that? I say, ladies and gentlemen, David’s problem started when he wasn’t where he was supposed to be?

Because the beginning of that chapter says that it was the time of year when kings go out to war. Why was David not out there focused on what he was supposed to be doing in the first place? Why was he not out leading his army in battle?

I realize that’s not the exact same thing, but it illustrates a principle here that we don’t go astray when we start believing lies. We go astray. The beginning of the problem is when we take our eyes off the truth in the first place.

That’s when he says some shall depart from the faith, Departing from the faith can be as simple as, I don’t want to do that anymore. What else is around here? And it’s not even that I’ve bought into some cult doctrine yet.

It’s that I’ve taken my eyes off the truth. I’ve ignored God’s word and said, I’m not really going to focus on his truth anymore. I’m going to focus on other things.

I’m going to focus on what I want to do. I’m going to focus on money. I’m going to focus on this person.

I’m going to focus on this job. Guys, anything, even a good thing, that’s out of place can be an idol. Anything that we allow to take God’s place in life can be an idol.

And when we begin to focus on something other than God and His truth, that’s where the problem begins. So we fail to focus. Then there’s temptation or confusion is the second step.

This giving heed to seducing spirits. Once we’ve wandered away from God, even just a little bit, Satan can take advantage of our biggest weakness. Satan can take advantage of our biggest weakness.

And I do not mean to sound sacrilegious by telling you this, but I think I’ve given you this example before. I think of God’s protection for us. I think of it sometimes like those cartoons that I used to see when I was a kid, and maybe you’ve seen them too, where it’ll be Tom and Jerry or something, and there will be the cat and the mouse, and there’s the big dog.

Or maybe the cat and the puppy and the big dog. and as long as the puppy or the mouse are by the big pit bull dog, that cat leaves them alone. As soon as they wander too far from the big dog, then the cat goes after them.

We are safe as long as we stay close to God. He can’t, if we stay, I mean, he can, I need to go into detail about what I mean by that. Let me just say spiritually, we are safest when we are close to God.

Doesn’t mean he can’t throw other things our way, but spiritually we are safe if we stay close to God. When we wander away even a little bit, we put ourselves in danger. And he knows what weaknesses to exploit.

We all have weaknesses. We all have sins that we’re more prone to than others. Some people are tempted to drink.

That’s not really a temptation for me. You know, I have temptations that are not temptations for other people. And that’s why the writer of Hebrews says, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us.

We each have a sin or maybe a whole list of them that are the ones that trip us up every time. And Satan knows which weaknesses to prey upon because he knows where we stumble. And so these seducing spirits, he knows exactly what to try to sell us.

Because we get to a point where we’re physically weak or emotionally weak and we’re confused and we’re tempted because we’ve wandered away from God and he sends just the right lure out to try to lead us astray further. So we fail to focus. We give in to emotional confusion or temptation.

Then we are primed. We are prepared to agree to ideas that we never thought we’d agree to. A lot of times we agree to ideas we never thought we’d agree to because this justifies what I’ve just done or just believed or just been tempted by, and it makes it okay.

Say, I know X, Y, and Z are wrong, and yet I’m so tempted by it that I’ll buy into this idea because it says it’s okay. even though we know better. He says that they give in to the doctrines of devils.

Once we’re sufficiently confused, we’re willing to fall for anything. Once we wander away from God, that’s the first step. Once we fail to focus on God and wander away from Him, Satan knows which weaknesses to pray on to pull us down.

And once we’re far enough down, we’re praying who will fall for anything. Once he has people, once he has people, this reference back to speaking the lies and hypocrisy. Sometimes we’ll begin to parrot the things that we’ve heard and believed.

We will begin to promote the lies ourselves. We’ll begin to tell other people, oh, it’s okay for you to do that. Guys, in part, I’m talking about false doctrines like Mormonism and buying into those things.

I’m also talking about the whole, oh, it’s okay for you to do this. And I hear Christians being interviewed in the media who say whatever we’re talking about. Oh, that’s okay.

I don’t really think God deals with that in the Bible. Okay, clearly we’re not reading the same book here. we begin to propagate lies ourselves.

All of this begins with that first step of wandering away from God. And then eventually there’s that fifth step that some people get to that they just get so far away they can’t recognize the truth. I mean, without God’s direct intervention, like we talked about this morning, just taking everything away from them, stripping them down to nothing to get their attention, that they just can’t even recognize the truth anymore if it’s right in front of them.

There’s an inability there to recognize the truth. Now, does everybody go through all five of these steps? I’m not entirely sure.

I just know these are things that are outlined here in this passage that he seems to be indicating there’s a progression that happens here. Because first of all, they depart from the faith. There was a moment when they were in among us, and then eventually their consciences are totally seared.

And it doesn’t appear to happen like that. There’s a progression here. Does everybody go through all of these?

Somebody might skip a step and say, hey, I’m going to depart the faith and I’m going to believe a lie without going through the whole seducing spirits issue. But you know what? We need to be on guard and make sure we don’t go through any of these steps.

I’d say at the minimum, probably every Christian at some point takes their focus off of God. For a moment, for a season, that’s where we need to be on guard. That’s where we need to be on guard and say, oh, I’m about to step into that.

I’m about to fall into that step. So if we can pull it out there, it’s much easier to deal with than trying to extract ourselves from any of these others. Or extract one another from any of these other points.

And so there are these five steps we need to be aware of, we need to be on guard against. But most importantly, if you take nothing else from tonight, so our focus needs to be every day, every season of life on God and His truth and promoting that actively. If we’re busy focusing on the truth and promoting God’s truth, it makes it much harder to get caught up in lies.