SA Ep64 - Dialogue with the Devil (Part 3)

SA Ep64 - Dialogue with the Devil (Part 3)

 After questioning God’s goodness, Satan moves to the next step in deception by directly contradicting the Word of God. In Genesis 3:4 the serpent boldly declares, “Ye shall not surely die,” openly denying the warning God had given to Adam. This moment marks the first direct contradiction of God’s Word in human history. The same strategy continues today through philosophies that reject absolute truth, including relativism, subjectivism, pragmatism, and postmodernism. When society abandons a fixed standard of truth, moral confusion quickly follows. Yet Scripture stands unshaken, declaring that God’s Word is truth and that it remains forever settled in heaven. This episode explores why the authority of Scripture is essential for both faith and life. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelser from Iliad Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. If I were to ask you what was the greatest lie that you were ever told, I can think of a few that throughout history have really made some headlines. Back in 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, and he returned to England saying, This is peace for our time. Within a year, the world was plunged into World War II. What about in 1912? Before the Titanic ever left the harbor, uh the the the makers and creators of it said that this is this is unsinkable. This is the unsinkable Titanic. When just within a few hours of its maiden voyage, 1,500 people lost their life as the Titanic sank. There's been a few others. Some more generic, like the check is in the mail. That's usually a lie. I'm from the government. I'm here to help. That's usually a lie. There's others. There's the famous story about the emperor's new clothes. I don't know if you've ever heard or read that before, but um that's when the emperor was uh had no clothes on, and everyone around kept saying, look at the emperor's new clothes, and then everyone began to think that he actually had clothes on. That's a it's a little thing uh illustrates the groupthink and deception. But the greatest lie that's ever been told, I would have to say, the lie that preceded all those lies happens in Genesis chapter number three, verse number four. And I want to read you that lie. It says, And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. Why would he say that? Who was he who was he combating when he said, You shall not surely die? Well, this is in that dialogue with the devil that Eve had in the garden where she was being tempted, and you can almost imagine this as the old cartoon would have uh the little devil on one shoulder and the little angel on the other shoulder, and this was that little devil on her shoulder saying, You shall not surely die. And the little angel on the other side saying, Oh, Eve, God told you, you eat of that tree, you'll surely die. You'll die this day. And here is Satan telling the first lie that is in recorded history, and he not only contradicted God's very word, he minimized the seriousness of God's holiness. The suggestion behind what Satan in his statement is that God will overlook disobedience. That that the warning of judgment from God is very real. He was very clear, and that's one thing that we that we want to express during this episode or during these episodes of how to know, how to understand Satan's lies and dialoguing with the devil. How do you know when you're in that dialogue with him? Well, the first thing that we talked about last time is he's gonna cause you to try to outthink God. He's gonna try to cause you to think that there's maybe there's more out there. And the second thing he's gonna do, if he if he keeps you in dialogue long enough, the very next thing he's gonna do is he's going to contradict God and he's gonna cause us to minimize God in any way, and it minimizes goodness or minimizes judgment. God can never be minimized in our life. If he's ever being minimized, if if God is being made smaller and what we desire, what we want, what we are uh you know, pleading after becomes bigger, you know that it's of the devil. There's no question. So here, Satan not only questions God's direct words, but now he's he's questioning the consequences in which God declared. That is one of the most dangerous things that the devil can plant in the human mind, is that God is not serious when it comes to sin and to our transgression. God is very serious about it. And he was very serious when he told Adam and Eve about not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, yet we do the same thing. We give uh uh Adam and Eve such a hard time uh over this, but you know, we're doing the the same thing every day. And yet we we have we don't uh hold ourselves accountable for it, I guess. We we don't you know look at ourselves and say, you know what, maybe we're doing the same thing that Adam and Eve did. Maybe we're putting our needs above those things which God has told us. And here right after creating uh man, Satan is already there lying. He shall not surely die. Why would you even think that? Why do you think God would want to kill you? The Bible speaks with absolute clarity about God's love, his mercy, his graciousness to us, but it also speaks in perfect clarity about his holiness and his righteousness and his uh enmity with sin. Hebrews 9 27, it says it is appointed a man wants to die, but after this the judgment. That's not that's not just to the saved man or the lost man, that is every man, and that is is universal. It is all men, women, everyone who lives will die. There's only two people who has ever lived that did not die. You can find those in the Old Testament. One was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, one just walked off and was not. We call them the was nots. It's the only two people. So death has got a very high percentage uh success rate. Even Christ, the the Son of God, the Son of Man, that came to earth, incarnate, died. Now, he defeated death by rising again, but it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this, the judgment. The Bible consistently teaches that every person will one day stand in judgment before God. God in his holiness cannot stand in the presence of sin. It cannot be ignored, it can't be excused. And his divine love does not eliminate his divine justice. God, and what's sometimes called the simplicity of God's nature, God's love does not interact with God's holiness or his wrath. And there's a there's a large group of people out there that want to preach about God's love. And there's there's a whole wealth of preaching there. You could preach it your entire uh ministry career on just the love of God and never and never exhaust the topic. Henry Morehouse, uh famous um British preacher from many years ago, was the preacher of God's love. He he's famous for come he's famous for preaching uh when he was a young man at DL Moody's church. Moody was out of town. Moody was a very hard and harsh preacher in his career, early in his career, and uh Henry Morehouse uh had kept riding, wanted to come and to preach at his church in Chicago. Finally, uh Moody was going to be out of town. He told his men, look, let this boy come, let him preach, you know, let him preach on Sunday or whatever night it was. If it's not good, send him home, you know, tell the people, you know, that it was just gonna be one night. If it's if it's good, go another night. If it's good, go another night. Just kind of do it on a night-by-night basis. First night, Henry Morehouse uh says, Open your Bibles to John 3.16. Here's for God so loved the world that gave his only begotten son, the whosoever believed him shall not perish by everlasting life. Preach that first night on John 3.16, and it was a wonderful service by all accounts. The men said, Let's come back and do it again the next night. Henry Morehouse gets in the pulpit and he said, I can think of no other verse that I'd like to turn to tonight than John 3.16, for God so loved the world that gave his only begotten son, the whosoe believed him shall not perish by everlasting life. Wonderful service by all accounts that night. The third night. Henry Morehouse gets up and said, I can think of no other verse to turn to tonight than John 3.16 the next night, the next night. Again and again he kept opening and preaching on the love of God. Finally, Mr. Moody makes it back in town. They're still in service, and they hear this young man get up, and the very last night that he was scheduled to be there, he gets up and from all accounts he had tears in his eyes, said, I can think of no better verse than to turn to than to John 316. And for seven straight days, Henry Morehouse preached the love of God. And that moment changed D. L. Moody's uh, I guess, overarching tone in his preaching. He went from being one of the harshest preachers to being a preacher that that preached the love of God. Had those gas jets put in his uh sanctuary there behind him that said, God is love. I mean, we could preach forever on the love of God, and it would all be true. But you will you will rarely ever find in the Bible God's love without God's wrath. You will ever you'll rarely ever find grace without judgment. Because grace without judgment is folly. Grace without judgment is is turning a blind eye, judgment without grace is harshness. You've got to have a you've got to have both, and God's gotten them both, and he's got them both in perfect balance, and they don't interfere. He doesn't look at someone and say, I love you so much that I will not judge you. No, he says, I love you so much that I sent my son to die for you. And your judgment can be placed upon him. So that his judgment doesn't stop, but we must stand in judgment through the blood of Christ, through the blood of the sacrifice. So both exist perfectly and truly within God. And so for Satan to suggest to Eve that you could sin without consequence, well, that's what people are doing today. They think they can live the life of sin and have no suffer no consequences from it. And and all throughout scripture, people were asking, you know, God, it seems like that the the wicked are living with no punishment. How could this be, God? That there needs to be punishment for these things. And Solomon wrote about it in the book of Ecclesiastes. When he talks about that the that the that the um we'll just say that the the slowness of God's reaction does not mean that there's no reaction. Just because he withholds judgment for a time does not mean that he will withhold judgment forever. And that's what the Psalm of Asaph in Psalm 73. And he wrote those 16 verses about how the wicked seem to be flourishing and and he's uh you know wrung out like a uh like a dish rag that's been wrung completely out of water. No, no, no life left in me at all. I can't even stand if I wanted to right now. And then he gets down to verse 17, and he says, until I went to the sanctuary of the Lord and understood their expected end. There is judgment coming. There is punishment coming for sin. And because we think that we're doing it now and getting away with it, and because Satan will remind us that you're not gonna die. There's no punishment for this. What are you thinking about? You think that God's up there, you know, and got his finger, you know, pointing at you, saying, you just wait, you know, you're not gonna die. Go ahead and try it, see what happens. And you try it, and oh, you know what? I actually had nothing happen. I actually kind of enjoyed that. I enjoyed the drugs, I enjoyed the alcohol, I enjoyed the carousing around. But that's the lie of sin. And once you get that far and you're in the lie with Satan, once you get that far in the dialogue, it's very hard. It's very hard to go back. I deal with a lot of young people. Well, I deal with a lot of older people as well, but uh, there's a lot of uh young folks that I will uh counsel with and always talk to them about the um the hooks of Satan. And Satan will will sink his hooks into you. The longer you dialogue with him, you think you're just having a conversation with him. You think you're just talking back and forth, and you're trying to reason these things out, and the whole time, all he is doing is surgically and slowly inserting hooks, barbed hooks that are so hard to get out. And once he gets those things sunk into you, and it doesn't take a very long time, sometimes just one simple conversation, one decision, and once those hooks are sank, they're so hard to get out. They are painful to get out. Ask anybody who's been an alcoholic, a drug addict, uh, uh somebody who's uh you know run around and cheated on their spouse or any of those things, ask somebody who that's happened to how hard that was on the other side of it, trying to get away from it. Either trying to run from the memory of it, trying to run from the consequences of it, trying to run from the depths of despair from it. You ask them how hard that is. There are people who will fight and scratch and claw the rest of their life trying to get away from that. Those hooks, they hurt, they're hard to get out, they leave some massive scars. But that's what he does when he starts telling these lies. And as soon as you start, as soon as you start thinking, Well, I could do this, I could, I could walk away from the ministry, and nobody I mean, who nobody's gonna care. Who would care? I don't need to do my job at the church. Who's gonna care if I do my job anyway? That's Satan. If you're trying to figure out if this is Satan talking to me or not, if it's going against God's word, it's Satan. In our modern uh culture, there's so many spiritual ideas that try to remove the the wrath and judgment of God to try to soften him, I guess, into some pillowy soft um best friend. I will have to say that there's many times that I have no one else to talk to except the Lord. And I I asked this question many years ago in in my um adult uh Bible class I had at church. Uh I asked people to write down uh if I ask what is God to you, write down what you what would be the best way you would describe him. And there were so many people that come back, my best friend. My best friend, my best friend. And that sounds good. But if we're not careful, we'll we'll we'll turn him into this uh marshmallow of a man that uh you know just you know wants to sit and cry with us on the bed, you know, while we're you know uh drinking those bitter tears at night. Forgetting that he is a God that is at enmity with the sin that we have in our life as well. There's this uh there's some words out there. Let me let me run some of these uh thoughts down to you and show you how Satan uses these things. Reincarnation. Reincarnation suggests that a person simply returns again in different forms of life, and there's really no judgment for it. The only judgment is that if you come back as, you know, like a frog or something like that, that you probably didn't live the best life while you were here. And so your judgment is that you come back like a frog. I would say that the people in hell today would be wishing for that judgment. Reincarnation, that's just another lie from Satan. Karma. Karma is another one. I know we we often say that, you know, a lot of times it's kind of tongue in cheek, but there are people who really believe in the life force of karma, that there's some moral balance achieved automatically through the cycles of existence uh rather than through divine judgment of heaven. Karma is a lie straight from Satan. It's another one of those lies that if you do something right now, it's going to be justified, it'll be rectified. Don't you worry about it, it's gonna come right back around to you, and that's not always the case. There's some people who will never see the consequences of their sin until they open their eyes and the j and judgment. And God at that point is saying, Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. Universalism is another one. Universalism says that all people will be saved regardless of their response to God. No matter what you do, you're gonna end up being saved. All these systems that have been contrived by Satan, they offer this appeal to our uh human psyche that that God can't really be as bad as we think he is. Surely God's not gonna send anyone to hell. And I that the the phrasing of that alone is straight out of the pits of hell. God doesn't send people to hell. And no matter what this uh Calvinistic doctrine out there will try to make you believe through their, again, trying to make you think past what God has told us, trying to make you look behind the hidden curtains of what God is saying, that there is some chosen and some elect and select, and those who aren't, you're automatically going to hell, and God has chosen that for you. That is a lie straight out of the pits of hell. Go back to the garden, look at Satan's first interaction with Eve. There was a choice to be made there. Eve chose wrong, she was deceived, explicitly deceived. The Bible says she was deceived. If it was, if it was if there was deception, that means there was a choice to be made. And Satan is still deceiving today. He's deceiving people today because there is a choice. Choose God or choose hell. So God doesn't send anyone to hell. You choose that, God allows it. You choose God, he allows it. So we try to soften God. Well, God why would God ever send anybody to hell? He doesn't. He allows you to choose that, and we choose it by thinking that that God is not uh a God of wrath because we are told that he is just a God of love, and we forget that there is a price to be paid for our sins, and those sins can be paid for either with a broken and contrite spirit who seeks after repentance and begs for forgiveness from God, to be brought under the saving blood of Jesus Christ, or you can stand in front of God in your own works, in your own deeds, and be judged according to the scripture. And I promise you, we will all fall short in that scenario. The Bible says if you're guilty in one of these, you're guilty in all of these. The next lie that Satan will try to tell you is that God is not at enmity with sin. And he is. Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval. You know, our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places. I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day. And join me, Dr. Chris Smelser, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together. Until then, grace and peace to you from Seeking Approval at Gilead Baptist Church.