Satan's Plan

Speaking of God's plan, God has a plan for your life. You hear that all the time.

As we go through the Holy Day season, starting with Passover and through the eighth day, the last great day of the feast, we always talk about God's plan. God's plan. God has a plan for your life. He wants what's ultimately good for you. What you go through today is just preparation for the future. You've heard this over and over and over again. He wants to forgive your sins. He wants to free you from the slavery of sin. He wants to heal the damage that's come into your life and my life from the sins we've committed and from the sins of other people.

He wants to give us a better life now and He wants to prepare us for the future.

But I'd like to talk about that plan today.

You see, Satan has a plan for your life, too. I want to talk about that plan.

He has a plan for your life, too. Now, his plan for your life is the exact opposite of God's plan for your life. But Satan wants to produce in your life.

Well, we can understand it by looking at what he's called in the Scripture itself. He's called the wicked one, a murderer, a liar, the destroyer, the tempter, the ruler of darkness, the deceiver and the accuser of the brother. So that tells you what his motives are.

Just those titles or things that are said about him tells us what he wants to achieve and what he wants to achieve in your life. What he wants to convince you of is that selfishness and greed and doing it your way is the best thing for your life.

He wants to give us all of us of that. That the best thing for your life is to do it your way, no matter what the cost to other people, to pursue your happiness at whatever cost, and you will finally find true happiness and true well-being if you'll just do it your way based on your own selfishness. And you know, let's face it, that's attractive to us. Now, that's not how we approach it, right? We don't think, well, yeah, that's what I want to do in life. I want to be selfish. That's what people say. I would just be greedy. I would just want to step over anybody else. I just want to make people do it my way. I want to be about power and control. We don't say that, but that's what it's all about. And that's what the world we live in is all about. Because that's his plan, that he is the God of this world. I want to look at today some of the methods of persuasion he uses because it's a whole lot more subtle. I mean, what it really is is, let me tell you how to be selfish. But he does it in a whole lot more subtle way than him. So we're going to look at five methods that he uses to carry out his plan in your life. I'm not talking about the big world picture here, which he's doing that on a big world stage, but in your life, in my life, there's methods he uses to try to get us to follow his plan. Now, two weeks ago, I gave the sermon on the proto-avangelium, and I challenged all of you to find a way to use that word in your daily conversation at some point. So I'm sure none of us did. It's not a word that we just use.

But we refer to how Genesis 3.15 is that first good news, what that means in Greek, the proto-avangelium, the first good news. And I said all the rest of Genesis 3 is bad news.

Right? What we're going to do today is go back and look at Genesis 3 and not look at that good news, that one statement of good news. But we're going to look at what Satan does there.

The methods he uses to take Adam and Eve down a certain path. What he does, because what he does there is what he does in your life and my life all the time. We have to be aware of it.

And sometimes we miss it. So let's go to Genesis 3.

You know the story, but I really want to take a look at the words.

We know these stories so well that we forget to really look at what it's saying.

Genesis 3, verse 1. Of course, we know the serpent here is being used by Satan.

The serpent was more cunning than any beast in the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, God has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

Now, I want you to notice right away, because we're beginning to see the first thing he does.

The first thing he does is he deceives us. But it's a brilliant way of deception.

He said, well, why couldn't they see this? I mean, the woman's talking to a snake.

Well, she's already been around a short period of time. There was no way for her to know the snakes didn't talk. You have to understand that. Now, we look at this and say, well, this must be a story. It can't be true. The woman's talking to a snake. Everybody would know you can't talk to a snake. How would she know that? A child wouldn't know that. You know, if you had a play snake, a pretend snake, and started talking to a four-year-old, it would talk back.

There's nobody that child knows that that snake doesn't talk.

She did not know. And it's very interesting. This is an old sales technique. Some of you are in sales. You ask a question, and you get them to say yes. You get them to say yes before you even make a pitch. Because you want them to say yes. So the first thing he does is he asks a question where she has to say yes. Now, has God told you not to eat of all the trees? Now, there's something wrong in the question. Because he knew that they could eat of all the trees except one, remember?

So the question is, is this even? But she has to say yes.

Now we have a conversation going. It's very interesting. When we were in France, one thing they told us was to watch out for pickpockets.

Paris was a very non-violent, safe place, but she had to watch for people who were pickpockets.

And they would walk up, and in English, because they figured out that you weren't French, they'd ask you a question. And as they engaged you, because they asked a question and you give an answer, they engage you, somebody else bumps you, and by the time you figure out what's happened, they pick your pocket. I mean, they're good at it. So the first time this young, pretty woman walked up to me and said, oh, you speak English good, I'm lost, can you help me? I said, no. And I walked away.

And she didn't even seem offended. She just looked around, walked up to somebody else and said, hey, I'm lost, you speak English, could you help me? Come on. And sooner or later, she found someone who was kind-hearted, didn't know what was going on, and said, oh, yes. And guess what they did?

They lost their wallet. They lost their wallet. I almost said, Sprechen sie Deutsch? But I didn't.

So he asked a question. I want you to understand, and we're going to tear this apart a little bit, the subtlety, because it's that subtlety that happens in our lives. We get sucked in where Satan's taking us, and we don't even get it until we're already down the path.

And this is the same method he uses today. He says, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden. Now she's engaged. Well, yes, well, that's not entirely what he says. Let me explain it to you.

But of the fruit of the tree, which is the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it.

The word shall you touch it, lest you die. Now I want to think about something, too.

Did Eve know what death was?

Now, I can remember my first pet dying. I can remember at six years old, my grandfather dying.

By the impression of Eve. All of you can remember, somewhere early in your life, somebody or something died. She had never seen anything die.

This was a philosophical word to her.

You'll die. Oh, what does that mean? You'll cease to exist.

Okay. It doesn't mean anything. And remember, she's never experienced fear before.

She never experienced fear with God.

So she's never even experienced fear.

So she's just open to this discussion.

Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

This is brilliant. Why did she fall for that? Because part of it is true.

All great lies have some truth to it.

She did never experience good and evil. She had only experienced good.

That's all she'd ever known in her short little life.

Remember, cognitively and intelligently, this is a grown woman.

With an intelligence, it's probably way beyond any of us.

Okay.

But experience-wise, this is a child.

You all know good and evil. Have you ever experienced evil?

Nobody's bad. How do you know it's bad?

She begins to twist her, where she begins to ask questions.

And then the next step is he allows her to look at it, to think about it.

And she comes to a conclusion. This is where deceit brings you.

This is very important for all of us because this is where deceit will take every one of us.

Verse 6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and that in a tree desirable to make one wise, she took her the fruit and ate, and also gave her husband with her, and he ate.

It's interesting, of course, that we could go into a whole other subject here. Adam wasn't deceived. Adam simply went along with his wife.

He allowed her to dominate. This is what happened.

And he followed the evil.

Eve, on the other hand, had worked this through because...

You know, it's amazing. A adult could convince a child of almost anything.

She had worked this through and come to a conclusion.

And the conclusion was, God's holding back something.

God's holding back something.

You know, this brings us to...

She had to come to a conclusion that there was a benefit, a perceived benefit in not doing what God said.

The perceived benefit is, not only are you not going to die, but you're going to be like God.

You're going to know something you don't know.

You'll be able to choose between good and evil because you'll know the difference between the two.

That's why in some Gnostic religions, Gnosticism was huge in the second and third and fourth centuries. Much bigger, I realize, in what was considered the Christian community.

In some Gnostic religions, the serpent hears the good person in the story.

The God of the Old Testament was a bad, harsh guy that tried to control people. That's why Jesus came. Jesus came to show that, you know, the God of the Old Testament, the one who says he's my father, he really doesn't know what he's doing.

There were Gnostics who actually taught that.

And Satan is the one who knew what he was doing.

Because people need to be able to choose. And you can't choose unless you know both good and evil. Then only then can you choose.

Which actually is true.

But God never deceived them.

God simply said, this is good and this is bad. Don't do the bad. You see the difference. The totally different approach.

Satan comes along and asks to manipulate the bad person.

And he has to manipulate the situation so that she perceives, wait a minute, let me look at this.

This is good for food.

I bet you that tastes really good. I don't know what it was. You know, people, what is the fruit? All I know is, every time God said, try that, what is it? Just try it. No, no, no, no. You've got to peel it first. It's called a banana. Okay. You peel this thing and you're eating a banana, a perfect banana for the first time.

And you have perfect taste buds.

And you eat that, and God says, you think that's good? When you try a pear. Come here. Let me try it. You see what I mean? This is the world they lived in.

Everything is brand new. Everything's the first time, and everything's perfect, physically perfect.

And she looks at this and says, it's got to taste good.

I mean, think of all the fruit I've already, vegetables and stuff God's already given me. This has got to be good. So she's able to perceive them.

Two, it's pleasant to the eyes.

You know, this looks really pretty.

Maybe the tree had flowers on it.

It was a beautiful tree with a beautiful fruit.

And it made, it would make her wise.

She would be smart.

Wow, I could be really smart.

So why would she want to be smart?

She's not that old.

This would get... Wow! I thought I knew everything there was to go.

I was able to put my Legos together. I walked in, a bunch of little boys were down there playing Legos, and I had to stop them.

Look at the Legos, okay?

They just did our genes. That's all we got to do.

Yeah, wow! There's more to life than Legos?

I could be really smart here.

And so she comes up with something you and I face all the time.

If she said no, she was going to feel uncomfortable.

Think about it.

I bet you that tastes really good.

You know, and it's so pretty, I could be so smart.

If she would have said no, temporarily, she would have felt bad.

And the agave showed up and said, you did well. And then, everything would have been good.

Here's the problem with evil, and I want young people to understand this.

The problem with evil is there's always a short-term benefit.

And when you say no, there's a short-term discomfort.

Oh, if I always say no to evil, then I'll feel better. Not in the short run. Not in the short run.

Eve would have felt bad for a short period of time, but she gave in, and we know what happened.

She gave experience.

When she ate that fruit, she knew that one was wrong.

I'd better get Adam to do it, too.

Come here, Adam. And Adam just blindly goes along.

Okay. And eats it.

And now they're both wrong.

And what did their experience produce?

Guilt, shame, and fear. That was the first thing that happened, and they couldn't go back.

Now they were filled with guilt, shame, and fear, and they couldn't go back.

They couldn't get that out of their emotional makeup. It was now part of who they are. And you and I are born into a world in which you and I very quickly become filled with guilt, shame, and fear.

That's the world that he produced.

And he had the deceiver into doing it. He couldn't have walked up and said, Disobey God, you're stupid.

He had to convince her the benefit here outweighs doing what God says.

It's a great thing about deceit.

Let's go to first show it, too.

A lot of times when you hear a sermon, someone covers this passage in Genesis, they tie in first John 2 because these tie in perfectly together. John has to be thinking of Genesis when he writes this.

First John 2.16.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Satan is going to try to hit you at a very basic core need and desire.

And those desires are going to be wrapped around the flesh, pleasing somehow the five senses.

Trying to please the five senses.

That's why there is an immediate benefit to doing wrong.

Very short, but it's there. But it's there.

And afterwards comes the rest of it.

And there is a bit of discomfort for giving up pleasing one of those five senses.

Oh, boy, that would be fun.

No, I can't do that.

I can't do that because God says, don't, you know, don't have sex out of marriage because God says, you can't, you know, we should, you can't abuse alcohol because God says, no, you can't go do that on the Sabbath.

And there is an immediate benefit to doing it.

The consequences are horrible, just like with her.

I just like with Adam, the consequences were horrible.

The deception is the immediate benefit is worth it.

Whatever happens, believe me, the immediate benefit is worth it.

And it never is.

So the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes.

We always want to see more. We want to take more into our lives.

We're concerned about how we look to others.

Right? And the lust of the eyes can be a whole lot of different things.

It can be how we would just, we can become obsessed with what others think of us.

We've come obsessed with status.

With somehow fitting in.

So that we'll do anything to fit into a certain group.

And of course, the pride of life.

We have to, we want to feel good about ourselves. And we do need to feel that we have value. That there's the great danger. Remember, all lies that are really, really effective have some little grain of truth in them.

Have some little grain of truth. And what happens is we attach on to that little bit of truth because it appeals to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or pride. And because it appeals to that, we'll ignore that it's 99% false. And we'll grab on to a little bit and say, oh, see, that's truth. There is deception at its core.

We always have to sort through anything to see. Is that just a grain of truth surrounded by a lie?

As this were the greatest deceptions.

How do you do that?

We have to do something very, very important here. And this applies to all five of the points we're going to go through today. Let's go to Psalm 139.

Psalm 139.

This is a very fascinating prayer.

It's a Psalm of David.

In order not to be deceived by lies, you and I have to be close to God, and we have to ask Him this.

Now, we ask it in our own way.

We put in our own words, but this is basically what we ask God. Verse 23.

Search me, O God, and know my heart.

It doesn't say, search me, O God, and know what I know.

He starts with, know my heart.

What motivates me? Why do I do what I do?

Search me. Now, if God's going to search you, He's going to show you, right? The next part of the sentence is really fascinating.

Try me and know my anxieties.

I am filled with fear and shame and guilt and anger and a whole bunch of other things that I'm not supposed to be filled with that comes from sin.

I am filled with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and I am filled with the pride of life.

Search me and bring that out.

Find it.

Verse 24, and see if there's any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. In other words, find out what's in me that's not right, and lead me the other way. You have to go ask God. I have to go ask God.

We have to go say, search me.

Help me to see what is not following you, and then lead me into following you.

Now, let me tell you something. Whenever you go ask God to show you what's wrong with you, always say, show me in mercy, and show me in the way that's beneficial to me. You don't want God to open up your mind to you all at one time, even if you have God's Spirit, because it's not really pretty in there.

What you want to have God do is teach you one step at a time. Help you one step at a time.

And of course, He keeps bringing us back to Christ.

Forgiveness, His sacrifice for us. We keep going back there and saying, okay, that's for me. Take me the next step.

Show me my anxieties. That's a fascinating.

Show me all these negative emotions and why they don't work.

Why I'm filled with fear. Why I'm self-centered. Why all I can do is think about my problems. Take me out of that.

Because that's where Satan deceives us.

Most deception is at an emotional level.

Now, sometimes it can be at an intellectual level, but most of the time it's actually at an emotional level.

Think about how he had to get to Eve.

He didn't get into that intellectual discussion with Adam. Adam was a pushover once it became part of the emotional problem or issue between him and his wife.

He gave in to her emotional impact.

It was all emotional from the very beginning to the end.

And Satan plays on our emotions. That's why pride is so, so important. I think before the spring of holy days, I may give a sermon just on pride.

We don't realize how deep pride runs in us and how dangerous it is.

So that's the first.

Now, let's go back to the deceit is the first way he gets to us. Let's go back to Genesis 3 and look at the second one.

Genesis 3 verse 4.

So really, I took a little extra time on the first one because deceit is the core of all these.

It's sort of a launching pad for all of his methods. He has to deceive us somehow. He has to get us to believe that there is a benefit in obeying God or disobey God that outweighs obedience. This is better for you.

This is more pleasant for you. This will make your life better.

So verse 4, he says, let's go back to that. He says, Then the servant said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened. And you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

He had to plant a doubt.

She had to believe that God was holding back something back.

God's not really involved.

God's not really involved here.

Where is he now, Eve?

He left you here by yourself. You're walking through the garden by yourself. You're walking through the garden by yourself.

Why would you believe him or not me? The talking snake.

He has to plant doubt, so that we get to... We look at what God says, and we doubt something about it.

He will get us to doubt God's love.

Well, God can't love me if I'm going through this. I've had that discussion a lot of times with God.

Now, wait a minute. If you love that person, why are they suffering? I've had that conversation many times.

Wait a minute, God.

If you love this person, or if you love me, why is there injustice?

He makes us doubt that he's a God of justice. He makes us doubt that he's involved. He makes us doubt that God loves us. That's what Satan does.

And in that little bit of doubt, we open ourselves up.

We open ourselves up.

Here's what you and I have to do.

We have to be willing to face our doubt head on. See, we don't want to say we ever doubt God. Oh, no, no, no. I've been a Christian a long time. I never doubt God.

Yeah, we do.

We have doubts all the time.

And we will never grow in our faith till we face the doubts.

One of my favorite scriptures on this is Mark 9. Let's go to Mark 9.

Mark 9.

You know the story, but this is just an amazing story.

Mark 9, we'll start in verse...

In verse 14, it's talking about how God is a man who comes to Jesus and he says, I am a son that's demon possessed.

I took him to your disciples and they prayed and nothing happened.

And I don't know what to do.

So they brought him, verse 20, they brought him to Christ. And when he saw him immediately, the Spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, falling at the mouth. So Christ, Jesus asked his father, how long has he been like this? How long has this been happening? And he says, from childhood.

And often, he has been thrown both into fire and into water to destroy him. But if you can't do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

If this is within your power, if God has given you the power to do something here, would you please have compassion on us and do something?

Jesus says to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.

Now here's what most people would do in that situation.

They would have this great doubt. Well, I don't know.

But they would say, I believe.

I believe.

Oh, I'm with you. This man had a great personal honesty.

A great personal honesty. And look at what he says in verse 24.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

I can only go so far here.

That's all the father I can go. So help me believe more.

And if you read through the story, Jesus healed his son.

Jesus healed his son.

That man walked away with a whole lot more beliefs than he had before, did he?

I believe, help my unbelief. The only way we could keep Satan from causing doubt is to go to God and say, I believe, help my unbelief. Like David's saying, try me and search my anxieties.

I struggle here, God. I don't know what you're doing part of the time. It doesn't make sense to my little brain.

I need help and I need insight and clarity and I need comfort and I need all these things.

We have to go ask for those things. We have to be willing to go expose our unbelief, our littleness to God. He doesn't know.

We're so proud we won't go tell him what he already knows.

We have to go open that up and say, I believe, but I can only go so far here.

You have to take me the rest of the way.

That's what he wants to see us.

Because if we don't do that, we'll pretend that we have no anxieties. We'll pretend that we have no fear. We'll pretend that we have total faith. And what will Satan do? He'll plant doubts because we're just pretending.

And those doubts will be there and they'll eat away at us because we'll pretend the doubts aren't there.

We have to be open about it.

The next thing, the third point, let's go back to Genesis 3.

Because, like I said, I took a little extra time with the first one because I wanted to use that one as the setup for all of them.

Genesis 3 verse 6 says, We've already read it.

She saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise.

As long as she stayed concentrating on God, she was okay.

If she would have said, I don't know, you know, let me get with Adam and let's go ask God about this.

Or she could have said, I don't know. God, what do you think? Where are you? He's usually hanging around the garden here someplace.

But she got distracted.

And this is where Satan gets to us so much of the time. He gets us distracted. She's zeroed in on the fruit.

The only thing she was thinking about that moment was, you know, that's got to taste good. I wonder if that's as good as a banana. I wonder if it's as good as a pineapple.

And I'll be so smart.

Won't Adam be surprised?

I'll be smarter than he is.

Remember, this is a child in many ways.

It's actually brilliant.

Experience a child.

I'll be so smart.

And so what happens is, she gets so distracted with the fruit as she becomes preoccupied with the fruit.

Satan wants you and I to be preoccupied with anything but God.

He wants you to be preoccupied with your health problems.

He wants you to be preoccupied with your money problems.

He wants you to be preoccupied with electronic devices.

He wants you to be preoccupied with entertainment.

He wants you to be preoccupied with your job.

He wants you to be preoccupied with fill-in-the-blank.

He wants us to be distracted by whatever piece of fruit keeps us distracted. We get distracted and we look at that and we don't see God. We don't have time and energy for what's really important in life. There's a fascinating story that shows this back in 1 Kings. Let's go to 1 Kings 13. Here we're going to see deception, we're going to see doubt and distraction, all in one story. 1 Kings 13. Here we have an individual who's only known as a man of God or the man of God. His name is never given. But he is a man of God. This isn't a prophet who God interacts with, who God talks to, you know, like Isaiah or Jeremiah. This is an important person here. I mean, there's very few people in history that God has actually personally talked to. And this is one of them. We'll see why he's not mentioned by name here in a minute. This is one of them. This is one of the few individuals that God Himself has talked to personally. 2 The beholden man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Now, I'm going to give the background to the story here to show what happens in a little bit. So we're going to read more verses than we normally do, but I want to really give the background to the story. 3 Then he cried out against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, O altar, altar, thus says the Lord, behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David, and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places and burn incense on you, and man's bone shall be burned on you. Now, this was the man of God. Right before the king, he says, I've come here to tell you that this altar is going to be used to kill all these false priests you have in your religion. Verse 3, they gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord has spoken, and clearly the altar shall split apart, and the ashes on it shall be poured out. So came the pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, who cried out against the altar of Bethel, that he stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, Arrest him. Now, Jeroboam had set up Bethel as a way of keeping the Israelites from going to Jerusalem, and they had a false religion going on. And here this man of God, this prophet shows up and says, God has come to tell me that you are going to pay a terrible price for this sin and its rebellion against him, and that this altar is going to be used for people who are going to kill these false priests you have. And the king says, Arrest that guy. Get him out of here. And he points to him. This is the rest of the verse. That his hand, which he stressed out toward him, withered so that he could not pull it back.

And he said, Everybody's attention. You know, when you point and all of a sudden your hand withers up and you can't move your hand? Now everybody's looking at the man of God. I can guarantee you no soldiers moved at this point. It's like, okay, can you do that with yourself? Okay. So now the king's standing there with a withered hand. The altar was also split apart, just like the prophecy said.

Now think about the power this man is witnessing. God called him to do something. And it's happening! The altar in this temple in Bethel is splitting apart. The king of Israel's hand has just withered before everybody there because he dared to stand up against him. So the altar was split apart and the ashes poured out from the altar according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. Then the king answered and said to the man of God, Please entreat the favor of the Lord, your God, and pray for me that my hand may be restored.

So the man of God entreated the Lord and the king's hand was restored to him. And just before it was before, it became what it was before. Now there's this great healing in front of everybody. The king didn't go to the temple by himself. There was an entourage and soldiers and people from the court and everybody came to see the king. When you set up a temple to keep people from going to Judah, it's got to be a big, big pageantry. And when the king goes, everybody's going to come out to watch this. It's all a big show for political reasons. He built the temple for political reasons. You go back and look, he actually said, Let's build this because if we don't, the people of Israel will keep going to Jerusalem, the Solomon's Temple.

So there's lots of people here. The man of God shows up. He does what he says. He keeps his hands withered. It's healed. The altar splits. These are amazing things. And yet this man's name isn't given. Lie. Verse 7. Then the king said to the man of God, Come home with me and refresh yourself and I will give you a reward. Here, it says, Come to the palace, we'll have a wonderful meal, and I'm going to go home with you.

But the man of God said to the king, If you were to give me half your house, I would not go in with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place. Here's why. For so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return, by the same way you can.

Okay. He says, I can't. The reason all these miracles have taken place is God told me to do this. I did it. He's told me to come home a specific way. I have to use a different route, and I can't eat, can't drink, as long as I'm here in Israel. Got to get back to Judah. Now up to this point, this man has done exactly what God told him to do. He's not deceived. He has no doubt. He's watched all this happen. Right? Verse 11. Well, verse 10. So he went another way, and did not return by the way he came to Bethel.

Now an old prophet dwelled in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told their father the words which he had spoken to the king. Their father said to them, Which way did he go? For his sons had seen the way that the man of God went and came from Judah. And he said to his sons, Saddle the donkey for me, so they saddled the donkey, and he rode him. And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak.

And he said to him, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said, I am. And he said to him, Come home with me and eat bread. Now he responds, I cannot return with you, nor go in with you, neither can I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place.

For I have been told by the word of the Lord, You shall not eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by going the way you came.

Now, got to do it God's way. He told me, verse 18, He said to him, the old prophet, I too have a prophet. God speaks to me just as you are. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water. And there's a parenthetical statement that says he was lying. No angel would come to him. But notice now we have the seed. The seed has come along. He's being lied to. But he has to wonder, well, you know, this is a prophet of God. It doesn't say he's a prophet of God, it just says he's a prophet.

He plugs himself as a prophet of God. He must know what he's talking about. Maybe God wants me to go with him. Maybe he's going to work it together. The two of us are going to go to both the kings of Israel and Judah and maybe bring everybody back to God. Maybe this is what God's doing. Something special may be happening here. So he went back with him and ate bread at his house and drank water.

See? The seed, doubt, and now he's absolutely distracted. God told him just to go home. Don't eat and drink again, just go home. And he didn't. He's now distracted. He's looking at the fruit. Oh, something really good can happen from this. You think about the motivations. Lust of the flesh? I'm really hungry. Lust of the eyes? You know what? You know what? This may be the way God's going to fix this. Boy, why be important? Pride of life? Yeah, yeah. I'm sure God wants this fixed.

I'm a prophet of God. He talks to me personally. I better go fix this. I better go fix this. That's pride. His motivations are the same as Eve's. He's now so distracted, he just goes off with this lying prophet. If you read the rest of the story, they had a great meal. And then, well, let's go to read verse 20. And it happened as they sat at the table that the Word of the Lord came to the prophet who brought him back.

And he cried out to the man of God, who had come from Judah, saying, Now here's the old prophet suddenly inspired by God to say something. He doesn't want to say, but he's going to say it. That says the Lord, because you have disobeyed the Word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment, which the Lord your God commanded you. But you came back, ate bread, and drank water in the place in which the Lord said to you, Eat no bread, and drink no water. Your corpse shall not come to the tube of your fathers. So it was that after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he had saddled the donkey for him, the prophet whom he had brought back.

And he was gone. And when he was gone, a lion met him on the road and killed him. It goes on and says what's amazing is the lion didn't eat him. The lion killed him and then just sat there beside the body. And people came up and down the road and they began to talk about it. They began to spread all over the place.

There's a man killed by a lion. What do lions do with their prey? They eat it. There's a man laying out there on the road and there's this big lion just sitting beside him, just watching everybody go by. Who was it? He always had prophet that came and talked to Jeroboam. See? Doubt? Distraction. We don't even know his name. I wonder what would have happened if the man would have gone back and what he was supposed to do. And if more miracles maybe God would have done to that man's life. We may know his name today, but we don't.

See how subtle Satan is? He simply told him a lie, and the lie sort of made sense. Well, you know, I am hungry, lust of the flesh. You know, this would look good. Yeah, this would be great. Maybe God's going to really do all these things, lust of the eyes. This would look good on my resume, right? All be able to do this would look good on my resume.

My prophet's resume. And then pride of life. I'll be a big man. Boy, you know, I met the king, and now their prophets are asking me over for dinner. How important is that? Distraction. On the fourth, let's go back to Genesis. Wrap up the last two here. Genesis 3. Verse 7. Then the eyes of both, and of an Eve, of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. God says to them, you know, where are you? They say, oh, where are you? God didn't know where they were? And I read a commentary on this once where a person said, see, God isn't all powerful.

He didn't know where they were. You ever play hide and seek with a two-year-old? Where are you? Where are you? Behind the couch giggling. Then they jump, oh, here I am! You're actually surprised. That's what's happening here. Look at what's happened to their lives. This is the next step in Satan's plan always. It's always to deceive, cause doubt, cause distraction, and then it's always to divide. He wants to divide your family. He wants to divide your brother into the church. He wants to divide.

It's his goal. He believes in survival of the fittest. He actually believes that. He thinks the best thing for human beings is survival of the fittest. We all climb to the top of the mountain, and then we try to kill the guy on top so I can get on top of the mountain. So we're all like little ants on an anthill fighting over who gets the anthill. Division. We see the result. This is what he has. And it's not just dividing. It divided God from Adam and Eve. They're hiding from him. They're running away from him. They no longer have a relationship with their Creator. It's also that they're divided between each other.

There was no shame in their marriage before this. Now they look at each other, and they're ashamed. They're ashamed of themselves. They're ashamed of the other person. There's guilt. There's internal conflict. They didn't have any internal conflict. The first time that Eve would have had internal conflict is what he would have said. You know, God's not telling you the whole story here.

There's a benefit to eating that fruit. And she felt this little tug that said, huh, that might be a need experience. First time she'd ever felt conflict. There's never been conflict before. Heard Adam never had conflict. You know the first time Adam felt conflict? Well, she said, eat the fruit. And he said, oh, what am I supposed to do with that? She said, it's really God. And now he had conflict. Satan thrives on conflict. And what he wants to do in your life and my life is to keep us in constant conflict.

Conflict with God, conflict with each other, conflict with God. And he's not going to be able to do it. He's going to be able to do it. He's going to be able to do it. He's going to be able to do it. He's going to be able to do it. Conflict with God, conflict with each other. Most people, you talk to most people, they talk about their jobs, what do they talk about? The conflict. All the office politics we call it, right? Families – we are in conflict with each other. Congregations – it's going to be a conflict with each other. Christians are in conflict with each other.

The ultimate expression of that conflict is what we saw in Paris last night. People killing other people. Because they believe they'll get a benefit. You understand, those men, most of the terrorists, were shot by the police. They blew themselves up. They had bomb vests on. And after they killed as many people as they could, they saw the police coming, they blew themselves up. Why? I get a benefit from this. I get to go to heaven. And I get to live in this beautiful garden, and I get 70 virgins. And that's what I want to spend the rest of my eternity as.

It's amazing to me. You don't see a lot of old terrorists. It's hard to convince a 50-year-old man to do that. They've got to be young. They have to be young. To be deceived at that point, they have to be young.

But the ultimate in conflict, the divinus, that's why there's conflict between you and your children and your grandchildren, and your husband and wife. It's all Satan's desire to create division and conflict. And we see exactly. At this point, Satan says, I'm winning. I've won. I not only have Adam and Eve at each other's throats. I have them at afraid of God, running away from God, refusing to interact with God. I've won. It's my way now. We have to be very careful. What happens is, because of the pride of life, we get to the place where we enjoy conflict. We thrive on it. Especially us guys. If we're not careful, we can get to the place where our manhood is measured by how much conflict we win. Now, there's got to be conflict in life. You can't avoid it. But when we thrive on it, when we thrive on defeating others all the time, we have to ask ourselves, where does that come from? Where does that come from? And then our last point is Genesis 3.14. Genesis 3.14. This is a very simple sermon today. I read this passage two weeks ago, when we went through verse 15, the first good news. But if you read verses 14 through the rest of this chapter, it's all bad news. I won't read all of it. He tells them, you have no idea what you've done now. He said, you are going to have nothing but problems. He told Eve, you're going to have nothing but problems between you and your husband. And it's just going to go on and on. You have no realization how hard this is going to be. Your health is going to deteriorate. He tells Adam, I made the world for you. I made it for you. It was human-friendly. And it's not going to be human-friendly anymore. Because I'm not going to maintain it. See, the world has to be done when it has to be maintained. You know, there were no hurricanes at this point. No tornadoes. No earthquakes. God wasn't going to maintain the earth anymore. It's yours! Go ahead. You and Satan have it. See, if Satan can maintain this, he can't. Satan has the power to maintain the world and the earth. And so it's deteriorating and deteriorating. Human beings deteriorated. We've deteriorated in our physical capabilities. I mean, people used to live hundreds of years. We've deteriorated in our mental capabilities. He said, you have no idea what you've unleashed. Because now you have another God.

And that's our last point here. That other God thrives in chaos. You have to understand that. He thrives in chaos. And that is why you see the world. People say, why is the world getting stranger and stranger, more chaotic? This is what he thrives in. People keep waiting for one world government to come along and solve everything. There'll never be one world government that comes along and solve anything. And by the way, the Bible doesn't think that's going to happen either. This gets more and more and more chaotic.

Until there's groups of people trying to take over to bring order out of the chaos. Satan thrives in chaos. The more chaotic your life is, think about how chaotic their life was. Adam and Eve, still children in many ways, but now they have a whole new experience level. They've experienced sin. They've experienced the result of sin. Emotionally, they're just all distraught. They're filled with anxieties and fears and phobias. Things they've never had before. They're kicked out of Eden. There's an angel there, or angels to keep them from coming back. They're kicked out of Eden. They walk away and they say, but that's our home.

How big is this place? They had no idea how far the world went. How big is this? And the animals aren't the same anymore. They're running from us. What's happening here? There's the two of us, wrapped up in our little, you know, skins that God made some clothes out of. And they're walking out of Eden, being kicked out. And they're walking into chaos. Within a couple decades, their one son murders another son.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine there's only a handful of people in the face of the earth, and your son murders your other son? Welcome to chaos. Welcome to Satan's world. This is what it's all about. This is what he produced, and this is what he wants in your life. The more chaotic your life is, what we think is, oh, I just want things to change. Maybe next year, maybe next month. No. If it's chaotic, stop it now. Do whatever you have to change to get right with God and bring order into your life.

I mean, none of us have total order in our lives because we still live in Satan's world. But get close to God because Satan will use the chaos to destroy you. Satan will use the chaos to deceive you. Satan will use the chaos to distract you, to cause doubt. You have to stop it. You have to go to God and let him bring order. Let him bring order. Oh, he loves chaos. So we see that God's plan.

God's plan is being carried out. We celebrate that all the time at each holy day. We celebrate that every Sabbath. That God's plan is being carried out. But we forget there's another plan for you, too. There's another being who's known as the God of this world who has a personal plan for you. It's personal. When we talk about how God's plan for you is personal, Satan's plan for you is personal, too.

He knows you by day. He knows who you are. And he has a plan for you. And that plan involves appealing to your basic desires and needs so that there seems to be a benefit to not doing it God's way. You know, it's better not to do it God's way. He wants to raise doubts about God's love and justice and involvement in your life. So we're constantly bombarded with, how do you know He loves you?

You know, where is God? Why is He involved? God sure is not taking care of you. Why is He? Why is God's justice? Why are these bad things happening to you and people getting away with it? He causes emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual distractions. He will keep us distracted all the time. That's why we have to be very careful. What is it that we're concentrating on all the time? If it's only your job, if it's only your personal problems, then He's got you distracted.

Because we can't be outgoing in loving others if we're totally distracted on something. And you think, well, if I just had enough money, I see people totally distracted by how much money they have. They're wealthy, and that's all they can think about.

It's what they buy. You think, well, if I just had enough money, I wouldn't be distracted. Oh, no! You just exchanged one distraction, not enough money, for another distraction. I get lots of money. It's still a distraction. And wealth can be just as destructive as not having wealth. So don't fall into that little bit of deceit there, either. He also wants to cause division between you and God.

He wants to cause division between your loved ones and division between you and your brother. That's what He wants to do. That's part of His plan. And He wants to produce chaos. That's what He wants. Chaos. That's where He does His best work. Now, even at times of great despair, we keep going back to, God has a plan here. I don't understand what it is.

God has a plan. He wants to get us out of this. He wants to forgive us. He wants to heal us of the ravages of sin that's been in our lives. He wants to teach us His way of life. He eventually wants us to be in His family. And what we can keep going back to this Bible, back to the Scripture, and we can discover over and over again.

God promises us something, and this overcomes the doubt. He is going to defeat Satan. It's prophesied. In fact, Christ already did it at the resurrection. He's just waiting for it to happen. He's already been defeated. His time is very, very small. So we need to reject His plan and really live every day the plan, the purpose that God has for each one of us.