Satan's Plan

We often talk about how God has a plan for our lives.

He doesn't plan out every detail because we have to make decisions along the way, but He does have an overall plan for our lives. You're here today because God called you to be here. God said, I want you to respond to me and come into a relationship with Him and through Jesus Christ, and God then has a plan for your life.

Now, that plan involves working with us today. It involves getting us through all of our problems and issues and ups and downs of life. It involves, of course, the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins, and that's the only way we have an opening to have a relationship with Him.

And it involves a future, a future for every one of us. There's a lot of things in our lives now that we struggle with. We wonder why God does what He does, you know, what's happening. And actually, in the overall plan of what God is doing in our lives, many of the things that are happening to us, we're doing in our lives now, are very small.

His overall plan is that every one of us become His child, and that means He calls us today to work with us through His Holy Spirit and to make a change in us so that when Christ returns, we are changed. We are changed into spirit beings, and we live forever without sin. We live forever without pain, without all the emotional mental turmoil we're in today. All that's gone as we live forever in a relationship with Him and with Christ. That's His plan, and that's what He's offering to you and asking you to be part of.

But we're not going to talk about that today. What we're going to talk about is Satan has a plan for you. There's another plan. You know, a lot of times we look at Satan and we have this vague idea, forgetting that he is a rational, conscious being, and he is interacting with humanity, and he has a plan for humanity.

And he has a very special attention and plan for those God that he's called. Now, that doesn't mean that all of you are being singled out by Satan and studied, you know, and that you're being... But it does mean that he is involved in your life. There is an existential war going on between good and evil. As was brought out in the sermonette, Christ wins every time. But there's still a war going on. We're in the battle zone, okay? And there are two plans for our lives. And I want to talk about Satan's plan for you and me, what he wants in our lives. So let's start in Genesis chapter 3. Let's go to Genesis chapter 3.

And we're going to tear apart this passage just a little bit to look at how Satan introduced his plan for humanity at the very beginning of his interaction with human beings. His tactics change. He knows how to change his tactics with individuals or groups to try to get them into his plan. The strategy is the same.

He's actually very predictable in his strategy. It's his tactics that change. And what he shows here, what God allows to be recorded here for us to understand, is the strategy of Satan to get all of us involved in his plan. And he has a desire and a plan for every human being. So let's start going through here. But Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve were created by God and put it in a perfect environment. They had nothing to fear.

They had no anxiety. Nature itself was perfect. They had perfect bodies. In the state that they lived in, we don't know how long they could have lived. We do know, even after they were kicked out of Eden, people lived for hundreds of years. So they had these perfect bodies, perfect environment. They didn't have to worry about being bitten by a snake and dying. They didn't have to worry about being attacked by a lion and being eaten.

Everything was perfect for them. The only interaction they had was with each other and with their Creator, who interacted with them and talked to them. So you have to realize they are adults in total function. Their brains work as adults. The level of intelligence, I don't know, perfect human beings, their IQ might have been off the scale. Perfect human beings. So IQ wise, brain function wise, they are perfect functioning adults. Experience wise, they are babies. Now, I want you to think about that. Experience wise, they have no experience. They wake up and they exist. And God is explaining to them what He's doing, and He's created them. This is everything else I've created, and He interacts with them.

He would have given them instructions. He would have told them, this is what you must do. We know some of the instructions He gave to them. But as far as experience, everything's new. I can't imagine the sense of wonder, excitement. Everything is new. Every new creature you see, every new flower you smell, everything is new.

And that's who they are. But there's one great problem with human beings when it comes to what God wants us to be in His plan. In His plan, we have to be conscious and be able to make decisions. Love requires we make decisions. Anytime you love, there's sacrifice involved.

You have to decide to sacrifice. Of course, God is the ultimate example of that, isn't it? Jesus Christ is sacrificed for love for us. So in order to be able to actually love, you have to make decisions. In order to make decisions, you have to understand the difference between good and evil. God was all goodness. God would not expose the evil. It's against His nature to do so. So Satan enters into the scene. Understand, Satan did not sneak into the garden. God stepped back and let him come in. Adam and Eve, with their free will, would have to make a choice between what is good and what is evil. They would have to.

And so he allowed him to come in, and Satan immediately began to work out his plan. What he wanted for these little dirt things that God had made that had the capacity to become his God's children in a way that he could not. Human beings are created to have a capacity to be in a relation with God that's greater than what angels are.

And so here he is, looking at things made from molecules and realizing, because of the way God had made them, they have the capacity to be greater than He is forever. So he has a plan, and he has a plan basically to stop that. So let's now pick it up in verse 1 of Genesis chapter 3. Now the serpent, Satan, was more cunning than any beast of the field was to lure God had made. And he said to the woman, as God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Now if he actually appeared as a snake, you think why would Eve talk to a snake? And the question is why would she not?

I mean, they are children in a new world, no past memories, just what God's teaching them. I mean, they're not born with a memory of what it's like to be six years old. They're created as adults. So reference points aren't there. So this being talks to her, she responds. So this doesn't make this a myth. Adam and Eve are real. We know that because Christ uses them as examples. And the New Testament talks about how Satan was in the garden. So this is the myth. This is actually what happened. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it lest you die. Those were the instructions God gave them. They were very simple instructions. I'm not sure they had a command, thou shalt not steal. There was nothing to steal. There's no concept of stealing. Thou shalt not kill. I'm not even sure they knew what death was. But he said, you disobey me. I'm giving you a simple choice here. You can eat everything here, but that, that is bad for you. I'm telling you, if you take that, you will die. You will change. And something terrible will happen to you. Okay. They believed him. Satan comes along and asks questions.

It feels like a harmless question. This is real important here, and we see how we're going to watch how Satan carries this out. It seems like a harmless question, right? What has God told you to do? He told you not to eat of everything, right? She answers. They're now engaged in a discussion. They're now engaged in a conversation. And so he takes his next step, verse four. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. Flat out lie. She had never heard a lie before. Never heard a lie before.

For God knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be open. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. You realize that statement has a little bit of truth in it. Most great lies have a little truth. You will know good and evil. You'll have experienced both good and evil. How is she to know that evil you shouldn't experience except God had told him you don't want to do wrong. You don't want to do bad. You don't want to eat of that fruit because that'll mean you disobey me and you will have done something evil. So don't do it.

But now someone else said, he's not telling you the truth. He's not telling you everything. He's holding something back. She'd only known good. Now she has to choose between good and evil.

Now there's a curiosity she had to have because God made us very curious beings. As we learn, we have adventures, we go places, we do things all the time. As little boys, we hurt ourselves a lot by curiosity because we're doing stupid things. But we've got to figure out.

So she says, there are things in her mind, she's curious about this. In that curiosity, and this is Satan's beginning, all of his plan begins with some element of deception. Deception is the action or practice of basically convincing someone of a falsehood. You take something that's wrong and you twist it around until they think it's true. So you deceive them. They came in with one set of beliefs and you twist it around and they come out with another set. It's deception. So the first thing he always does is deceive. So the first thing he does is ask her a question, get in a conversation, and then say, yeah, that's not true. Because if you eat that, he will know, because that's what's going to happen, you're going to have the ability to know good and evil. You know, God knows the difference between good and evil, but he's holding you back from the knowledge of good and evil. It's something that you should have. So in that deception, he twists it around to where there's a little bit of doubt. She's now looking at the fruit. We know by your action there was a doubt. If she trusted God, she wouldn't have reached for the fruit. There's a doubt. Well, wow! What is it like to be like God? I mean, wow! It's amazing to be like this. He appears and disappears and talks to us and he made everything. What would it be like to be like God, knowing what good and evil is?

And so that deception twisted into a doubt. So let's go to verse 4. Verse 5, for God knows that the day you eat, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Verse 6. So we have deception that twists into some doubt. Maybe God's lying to me. Maybe God's holding something back from me. Maybe God's not going to give me what I need. Am I missing something here? Verse 6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate. She also gave it to her husband with her and he ate. Now, this is very important. It doesn't say Satan made her do it. Satan introduced doubt and of her own free will, she accepted the lie. There was the truth. God told them the truth. He came along. She didn't know who he was. She didn't know why he was less than God, I guess. I don't know what she thought of talking to Satan. But what happened was she looked at that and these three different motivations, and John talks about these three motivations in the New Testament. These three different motivations became part of who she was, became part of her mindset. What Satan had actually done is introduced her into part of his nature. All she'd ever known was God's nature. And it'd been great. It'd been good. It'd been wonderful. But he came along and introduced how he thinks. He introduced how he feels about things and why she should also feel that way. And she should think that way. And she chose it. Now, we know she was deceived. She wouldn't have come up with that by herself even in the New Testament, since she was deceived. In fact, Paul in the New Testament at one point warns the church. He tells the church, do not be deceived like Eve was. I mean, that's a powerful thing to say to the church. Do not be deceived like she was. She heard that whisper and it made sense to her. And so she chose to do it. Of course, it didn't turn out at all like what she wanted it to be. And so what happens is, you take these steps, and you, you, you, or he does, where he introduces deception, you have doubts, and then you become distracted. There's a third step here. She became distracted. Here's what I mean by distracted. What would happen if she would have said, oh, no, no, I got to go talk to God about this? What if she would have just walked away at that point and wanted to ask God? Now, she would have probably felt a little bit of, wow, I wonder what it tastes like, but she hadn't sinned yet. The wondering of what it tastes like wasn't sin. The sin was taking and eating it. So what if she would have stayed focused and said, oh, maybe I even should go talk to Adam about this? See what he thinks.

Surely we should go to God about this. He told us not to. There must be a reason. But she did not. She got distracted by those three things he talks about there. The three things where basically they're this, being driven by unbridled physical experiences. We're just driven by our own physicalness. You know, what can I do next? What can I enjoy next? What will we be happy next? Which if you love your life being driven right for happiness, minute by minute, you will be very unhappy because you can't make it. You can't create that. The chemistry of your body won't let you feel happiness 24 hours a day because our bodies are all messed up.

Well, because of this event. So this unbridled search for physical experiences, when she saw that, oh man, this is good for food, right? This is going to taste good. It's going to smell good. But also it's selfishness. I want to do what I want. I won't go ask God. I'll do what I want and pride. Those are the three things that you read here that motivated her and that John talks about also in the New Testament. Let's go back and look at it. So verse 6, so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of it through. She saw this.

Satan planted the seed. She grew it and she decided, okay, he may be right. This is what I'm going to do. Something happened to her immediately. She now began to feel and think some of the thoughts and emotions of Satan himself. His nature.

If we could, I don't know if we could even imagine what it's like to be a perfect human being, a perfect genius human being, and in one moment, you're innocent. There's no anxiety. There's no guilt. There's no hatred. There's no fear. There's no, there's none of those things in you. Just happiness and contentment. And just like that, you're flooded with all the things that you and I wrestle with all the time. That's Eve. That's Adam. They opened themselves up. They were experiencing the nature of God. Now they're experiencing the nature of Satan. You and I are born into a world where Satan's nature enters into us very early in our age or influences us. And you and I have suffered the side of Satan's nature our whole lives. We were always experiencing that.

But these people experienced it all at one time as adults.

She was now so distracted by the fruit she didn't go to God.

Satan wants us to be distracted all the time so we don't go to God. He wants to keep us from being close to God so that God becomes the determinate light in our lives.

Think about what we deal with today. I've thought about this a lot lately. Did the Apostle Paul have to answer 100 emails a day? Of which 50% aren't even that important. Did the Apostle Paul have to answer 30 phone calls a day? Now you say, well, that helps some. It does help some, but when does that become life? When does that become life? When is being so mentally exhausted, you sit down and watch cat videos on YouTube for two hours? Oh, isn't that cute? Oh, come watch this.

I mean, I can watch a real cat do that for a while, but I don't know. After a while, it's like, okay, I mean, every once in a while, not cat videos, I do like crazy things animals do, you know. About five minutes of that, that's okay. But what happens when people, people say, yeah, I watch one of those for an hour one time, just couldn't stop. What are we doing? We're getting distracted more and more. I'm not saying it's wrong to enjoy funny things or to watch videos. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about just how you can get so distracted. I have talked to at least five or six people over the last 15 years who left school, college, because they were playing video games all night and failed all their classes.

Why? We're distracted, we're distracted, we're distracted, we're distracted.

He got her so distracted by the fruit that she decided, you know, maybe he's right. Maybe God isn't telling us everything. Maybe God doesn't have what's best for me, you know, in his heart. Maybe he's, you know, holding back. And she ate it. He wants us to be so distracted by our problems. I mean, everything. Our health issues, our marriage issues, our work issues, our money issues. I mean, just everybody has issues, right? And we could all list them out and we have to spend time with them. But there's what happens when that becomes the center of life. All these issues become the center of our lives. And in that moment, instead of turning to God, Eve looked at the fruit. She got distracted. You see how he works?

I have to give you some element of deception. That's how he starts. Once you enter that and you start doubting, he has to immediately get us distracted. And we'll stay distracted for years. Once he gets us distracted, we'll stay distracted for years. Usually till life comes in on us and it's like, where have I been? Where have I been? What happened to me? Because it's caved in around us. So we have to be...distraction is his next point. You know, it's interesting. I've watched people try to obey God all their lives and get distracted by some doctrine that's way outside of the...I mean, we don't have all knowledge. We know that. But it's way outside the obvious core doctrines that they'll get so caught up in a doctrine, they'll get so distracted by it, it'll turn their faith against God if everybody doesn't accept it. I mean, I know. I've known of people who live alone and don't even attend a church because they have some idea about some teaching in the Bible. Nobody else believes it. So they can't even go to church with anybody. How does that happen? Because we're distracted from God. That's why. We're distracted from God and who Jesus Christ is. Look at Colossians 2.

Remember, God's purpose, His plan is to turn us into beings like Him. Satan's purpose is to turn us into beings like Him. The difference is God will give us eternal life worth living. Satan knows if we become like Him, we will die forever. And He doesn't care one bit. Your eternal death means nothing to Him because He's incapable of love. So understand, God wants you to live forever as His child. Satan wants you to become His child and die forever. And He's absolutely happy with that.

Colossians 2, verse 8. And this is the middle of a whole dissertation by Paul. He's dealing with very specific heresies that come into the Church of Colossae. And he gets into the very deep. But I just want to pull out this one verse because he sort of summarizes where these heresies are coming from. And it's the way he puts it. He says, beware lest anyone cheat you. Now that's interesting. You know, you can get cheated here. Actually, how this is translated in most modern translations is take you captive. He says, be careful unless someone capture you. That's a very fascinating concept. You're captured now. You've made a choice and you're captured, which is what happened to Eve and to Adam when he followed her. By their decisions, they now became captured by Satan. Then he got kicked out of Eden. And being kicked out of Eden, they lived under Satan's rule in their lives for the rest of their lives. So he's writing, beware lest you get captured through philosophy and empty deceit. Of course, philosophy was just... I mean, in the Greek term, there weren't Greek philosophies, but it was a general term for philosophical beliefs and religious beliefs. He says, so he's just saying, be careful. You don't get wrapped up in philosophical or religious beliefs and empty deceit.

In what appears to be truth, instead of going to God... Now, sometimes we're faced with truth. It may be a truth. We have to change and adapt to it. That happens all the time. But we can also get confronted and taken captured by a meaningless, empty deceit, an empty argument. And when we get captured by an empty argument, that's exactly what it is. It's emptiness. And what happens to us is not very good as he goes on and he says, according to the traditions of men... He says that we finally, we end up outside of scripture, according to the basic principles of the world, which of course, Satan is the God of this world. And here's where it leads, and not according to Christ. Empty deceit by Satan will always lead us away from Christ. It'll always lead us away from who he is, what he teaches, and how God is using him in terms of salvation and the re-establishment of his kingdom on earth. So here we can even apply this concept of this empty deceit, where does it come from then? It comes from living in Satan's world. I'm going to give an example, though. This is the best example, I think, in the Bible about someone who is deceived. They begin to have doubt and they get caught up in the distraction. Because, you know, we all wrestle with doubt, by the way. All of us wrestle with deceit. We live in a deceitful world. We all wrestle with doubt. We all wrestle with distraction. Okay, this is common. But we can't, we always have to step back at some point and say, whoa, what is happening? Because in that distraction stage, we can really go bad. You know, when you're struggling with doubt because you're suffering a trial, that's normal. The doubt Satan puts in is that God doesn't care, or God doesn't know what he's talking about, or everything you've been told is a lie.

Because God's hiding something from you. Notice he didn't even try to convince them God didn't exist. They knew God existed. They had met God. They had talked to God. He didn't try to get him with that. He got him with, there's something wrong with God. And you have to understand that. You understand there's something wrong with God? That's what's so interesting about so much of the sort of New Age Christianity is that the God of the Bible is cruel and mean and terrible because he killed people. So they have to redefine God. They actually redefine God. And the Bible and the Old Testament can tell us nothing about God. It's not true. That's not who God is. Well, then you throw out the Bible, then you don't know who Jesus Christ is. You throw out Christianity. What you have is a different religion. It's that simple. So this is what was happening in the first century. They were dealing with whatever... well, the issues there were a little different than what we're dealing with, but there's still issues. The main issue they were dealing with there, if you read through Colossians 2, is that Jesus was a created being and was not divine, which of course the Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses believe today. So we still have to deal with that, not to the level they were. So let's go to this example. 1 Kings 13. I'm going to actually read this simply because the story is so fascinating. 1 Kings 13.

2 Kings 13. And behold, a man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. So he's only called a man of God. He's not given a name, but this is a true prophet of God. And he is sent to Jeroboam, the king of Israel, to tell him you're wrong. What you're doing is wrong. And I've been sent to tell you that. Now the man obeys God, and he has the courage to go speak to a king this way.

Then he, this is the man of God, 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 shall he sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men's bones will be burned on you. God's bringing about a man is going to destroy this religion, this false religion he had. And he gave a sign that same day by saying, This is the sign which the Lord has spoken. Surely the altar shall split apart, and the ashes of it shall be poured out. And so it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, who cried out against the altar at Bethel, that he stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, Arrest him. So the king is there with his entourage, giving a sacrifice to a pagan God. You know, there's lots of people around. This is a very special ceremony, grand ceremony. And this man shows up that nobody knows and says, I'm here because the God of Israel has sent me here. And you and this whole religion is going to be destroyed by a future king. And to show you that this altar is going to split in two and collapse. And it happened.

Now Jeroboam, Jeroboam didn't say, Oh God, forgive me. He said, Arrest that man. He says, Arrest him.

And then this is what happened after he says, Arrest him. Verse four. Then his hand, which he stretched out toward him, withered so that he could not pull it back to himself. So he says, Go arrest this man. He's his arm and hand just wither up. The unknown man of God is just standing here.

And everybody's now probably crying out and screaming and, you know, of what's going on. So the altar also 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 shall be restored to me. So the man of God entreated the Lord and the king's hand was restored to him and became as before. Miracle after miracle. Then the king said to the man of God, Come home with me and refresh yourself and I will give you a reward. Come have a meal with me and I will give you a great reward because obviously God is with you. We've seen all these miracles. I was crippled. I am suddenly healed. Come, I'll give you a lot of gold and silver. 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. For so 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 came. So he went another way and did not return by the way which he came to Bethel. So he said, No, I can't do this. I'm not supposed to eat anything. I'm not supposed to associate with you. I can't even go back the same way I came. And that's what God told me to do. That's what I'm going to do. A man who had heard the voice of God, a man who obeyed the voice of God, a man with whom miracles were done before a king. Pretty impressive resume. Verse 11. 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. And their father said to them, Which way did he go? For his sons had seen which way the man of God went who came from Judah. And he said to his sons, Saddle the donkey for me. So they saddled the donkey for him. And he wrote it, and went after the man of God, found him sitting under an oak. And then he said to him, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he says, I am. And he said to him, Come home and eat bread with me. And he says, Come, let me make a special meal for you. You're a great man of God. And he said, I cannot return with you, nor go with you, neither can I eat bread, nor drink water with you in his place. For I've 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. And here's what the old prophet told him. Older man, younger man, probably locate him with some respect. He said to him, I too am a prophet, as are you. 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 then we had this important parenthetical statement. He was lying to him. This is deceit. Now we think this guy, how did he know? Oh, I'm a fellow prophet of God also. An angel was sent to me to say, Bring this man into your house and feed him, because he has fulfilled everything I told him to do. He's done all these miracles. You know, yes, God now wants to reward you. But what had the man been told?

What if he would at that point said, Well, let me ask God. Remember Eve?

The moment that doubt becomes a distraction, this moment, he did not go to God to ask, to inquire, to pray. He simply decided something. So we went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. Now what happened is they said at the table that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back. Now the false prophet hears God talking to him, and he has to tell out loud what he's saying. And he cried out to the man of God, who came from Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God has commanded you. But you came back, ate bread, and drank water in the place of which the Lord said to you, Eat no bread and drink no water. Your corpse shall not come to the tomb of your fathers. So was, after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey for him the prophet who had brought him back. And when he was gone, a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his corpse was thrown on the road, and the donkey stood by it. The lion also stood by the corpse. The man of God, he is not called by name, and he's always still called the man of God. The man who did everything the way God wanted him to, until he gave in to some deception. And he had doubt. And then he became totally distracted by his own hunger. He became distracted by his own thirst. And he decided, now that'll save me another, I don't know, day of fasting or whatever it was to get home. I guess the angel did come and say, God changed his mind.

You know, that must be what the angel meant. And in his distraction, he walked the opposite way and did the opposite of what God told him to do. That is one of the saddest examples. Why is that in there? Because it's to remind us of what happens when God is working with us and working with us, how serious he takes it when we give in to that deception. Now, I'm not saying God doesn't forgive us, but the point this is here is to say how serious it is, how serious it is to become so distracted that we turn away from God. You think, wow, that is a strange situation. Well, let me give you one example like this in the New Testament. Okay, very short. I go to Colossians 4, 14.

Same thing. There had to be deception, doubt. Once again, we all struggle with deception because we don't have all knowledge. We all struggle with doubt.

We all struggle with distraction. But when those three things aren't dealt with, and they go on and on, we reach a dangerous point, a very dangerous point. Colossians 4, 14. Simple line. You've read it numerous times reading through here. You've probably never heard it quoted in a sermon. It's just a line, right? It says, Luke, the beloved physician and Demas, greet you. So Paul was writing to the church at Colossae, and he says, by the way, Luke, you all know Luke, Luke, you all know Demas. These are men in the church that serve me. They're leaders in the church, and they wanted to tell you hello. Now we know a lot about Luke because Luke was with Paul a lot. Luke also wrote the gospel of Luke in the book of Acts, which means in numbers of words, the Greek physician, Luke, wrote more of the New Testament than anybody. In numbers of words, it's actually more than Paul. Paul just wrote more books. But he wrote more words than anybody. But what about Demas? Why did it happen to Demas? Years later, he writes, Paul writes 2 Timothy 4. So let's go to 2 Timothy 4. 2 Timothy 4. Let's start in verse 9.

Because Paul says, Be diligent to come to me quickly. He's writing to Timothy. And it's obvious that he's in distress when you read through Timothy because, you know, he just, he was working alone. He's an older man. He needs help. And Timothy is important to him. He says, Please come. Please come, Timothy. I need your help. For Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world and has departed for Thessalonica. Now, it was hard to work with Paul. The man was driven. I mean, he persecuted saints and Jesus had appeared to him individually and then taught him individually. So let's just say that's a driven man. He could go into a city, be dragged outside, stoned and left for dead, which means he's under a pile of rocks. There's everybody through rocks. And I can't imagine. I just in my mind, it's like, you know, it's like five minutes later and the rocks start moving and tumbling off and this guy stands up. He would have been bloodied and I mean, you know, just torn to pieces by people stoning him. Stagger's off and Paul goes right back into the same town. I can't imagine they're watching walking down the street. Like, Hey, look at his fall. He's staggering down the street. All bloodied, torn clothes. Nope. You can't shut me up. That's a driven man.

So working with him was not easy. I mean, Mark was the first one. He said, I don't want anything to do with that guy. He's too weak to follow me. Bartimas said, okay, let me have him. And Mark turned out to be a very good leader in the church and wrote one of the books of the Bible. Okay. But not if Paul would add his way. But that's what it is to persecute the church, be forgiven by God and then taught personally by Christ. Nothing was to slow him down. So demons may have felt like Paul was a little rough to work with, but that's not what he said. He went back into the world. He loved the world. Somewhere along the way, some deception came into his mind. He sort of played around with it, got filled with doubts, got distracted and left Paul. Now we think, how could you do that? The great man Paul, it wasn't easy following Paul. And demons gave up. He went back to serve in his church area. Okay. But that's not what he says. He went back into the world. So we have to understand how this is part of his plan. And if he can't deceive us with one way, he'll deceive us with another. If he can't get us to doubt with this, it's the same plans all the time. Like I said, it's different tactics. He's using different things to cause it. Same strategy. Then he wants us to get so distracted, we're not going to God. We're just totally looking at the problem in front in front of us. And that problem becomes our obsession. And we don't go to God and wait for his answer. The moment we get deep into that, something happens next. In this plan of Satan, there's an obvious next step. Genesis three. Let's go back to Genesis because we're looking at what happens now. Then the eyes of both of them, verse seven, were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Now you go clear back to Augustine in the fourth century and he says this proves that basically sexual relationships and marriage is bad. It's just there to make babies and everybody should avoid it except for that purpose. That's not what the Bible says. They had no guilt. They had no problem until they turned against God, until they were deceived and they doubted and they distracted and they took the fruit that they were distracted by. Now they're flooded, as I said before. Their minds are flooded with every negative emotion, thoughts that they don't even know what they mean. They don't know what's right and wrong. Oh, they now had the knowledge of good and evil and he found out it was a terrible place to be. Absolutely terrible. But now they had it.

The little truth that Satan told him was now true. Oh, you know what knowledge you have now have the knowledge of good and evil. It was horrible.

So they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cooler today and Adam and his wife hid themselves in the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? I always thought, I think it's interesting when Bible detractors say, see God's so limited. He didn't even know where they were. I always think, oh, you don't even have children because you've never played hide and seek with a three-year-old. As they're in plain sight, giggling, thinking you can't see them and you're walking around saying, where are you? Okay, where are you? They're hiding. I mean guilt, shame. Despair. I mean they're flooded with things that they never had before. They opened up and now Satan's influencing their nature. As long as the nature of God was influencing them and nothing else, they didn't have any of that. Now they have that and it's flooding into their minds and they're hiding from God. So he said, I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Now comes the result of giving into the distraction. It divides your relationship from God and divides every relationship you have with other people.

This is at the core of so much conflict we have with everybody else. Because inside we're in conflict with ourselves, we're in conflict with everybody, and we're in conflict with God. That's Satan and that's the plan he has. He sees conflict as good.

And so he wants everybody to be in conflict.

Then the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. It's very fascinating.

It's not my fault. If I would have talked to a snake, I would have said, hey, talking to the snake is crazy, man. I'm not going to do this. You're the one who gave me that woman. It's not my fault.

And the Lord God said to the woman, what is it that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Now those are true statements. But you know, if Adam would have said, I let her convince me because I wasn't strong enough to stand on my own two feet. If she would have said, I didn't know that there could be a lie. I never faced a lie before and I was wrong. They didn't do that. Why didn't they? Because Satan's nature was already in their minds. Pride, remember? Selfishness, pride. And the desire to have unbridled physical experiences.

And so now their pride won't let them happen. Don't let that happen. They won't repent at this point. They don't even know how to repent at this point. So we have this division.

All of Satan's plans create division. I want you to understand that. In your marriage, in your families, at workplace, in the congregation, in the churches of God, all conflict that becomes dysfunctional, that becomes hurtful, that destroys relationships.

That's part of his plan. That's part of his plan. So we're all participating in it all the time. We just have to become more aware of it. We have to become more aware of his plan and these tactics he uses.

The strategy is the same. Remember that. Just different tactics with different people. Because what may cause you to go down this path is different than your neighbor. But it's always the same strategy. It divides us as people. That's what makes division in our families and division in the church of God so terrible. Because it's a product of Satan's plan.

Now, understand all of us are going to cause division at times because we're all struggling with Satan's influence. So I'm not, I'm just saying we shouldn't. But we're there all the time. He divided them.

Now, that leads us to the next point, the last point, and this is the results of Adam, of Satan's plan. This is where it always goes.

Verse 14. So the Lord God said to the serpent, and he curses the actual animal. But it's a curse on Satan, too. And here's why we know. Verse 15. Because this is, this is the first gospel message in the entire Bible. This is the very first gospel message. And I will put enmity between you and the woman. He said there will always be a war between Satan. And he here uses the woman Eve as sort of the mother of humanity.

There's always going to be this war between Satan and her children. And between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Your seed and her seed. It's an interesting word here that, I mean, he uses seed here as a singular. And he shall bruise his head and you shall bruise his heel, as quoted in the New Testament as reference to Jesus Christ. So he says right away, ties in with the sermonette, you think, by the way, you say, you think you won? No, no, no, no, no, no. You've already lost. There's going to be a human being come from the descendants of Eve, who's not going to really be a complete human being. We know that from the other scriptures. He's going to be God, the Word, become, I need to get smaller gestures or take that thing off, that he's going to become human and he's going to beat you. He's going to beat you in this world. That's why he's called the second Adam. When Paul calls him the second Adam, to me it's almost like, hey Satan, the first one was weak, the second one beat you. The second one comes and you can't beat him. He wins. That's why Christ is called the second Adam. He came here to defeat him because he knows everything. He came with all knowledge, the power of God with him. Adam was on his own and God let him be on his own to say, you're going to have to choose, son, and then I'll have to save your whole progeny with another Adam, planned for the foundation of the earth. Right? I'm going to save with another Adam, but not like you. This will be a different Adam. So Satan is told you're going to be defeated. You haven't won anything here. Verse 16, to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception in pain. You shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. Okay. First thing is child birth is going to get hard. So is every other physical thing you do. Eve was a perfect woman. Adam was a perfect man. Nothing was going to be perfect from this point on. Nothing. Even the simple act of having children was supposed to be simple. It wasn't simple. And for you women who have had babies, it's not simple. Right? That's not the way it was designed. Welcome to Satan's plan. It was to get us kicked out of Eden. And we did. Yeah. It's okay. It'll be harder. But in the end, I still have a plan for these people. His plan is still the same for us. We don't live to be 800 years anymore.

I mean, wouldn't it be great? You're 500 years old and you're in the middle age basketball tournament? Two weeks ago, I had a birthday. I'm 70. I told my wife, she says, well, what's it like to be 70? I said, I don't know, but I don't mean to be negative here. But statistically, I only have eight more years to live. She says, oh man, that's such a downer. I said, well, I sort of meant it to be a joke, but now that I said it out loud, I feel terrible. It's the hard way, but it's how we become the children of God. In fact, he tells Adam, oh, he also says at the end of this verse 16, you're going to also have lots of marriage problems. Marriage problems are going to become normal for you all, because you got messed up here at the very beginning. Verse 17, then he said, Adam, he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I have commanded you saying, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, but thorns and thistles that shall bring forth to you, you shall eat the herb of the field, and in the sweat of the face you shall eat bread. He said, life is going to be hard for you and you're going to work hard your whole life. So, and you know, most of human history has been what? Most people throughout human history are involved in agriculture, growing food so they and others could live. It's only you and I live in a world in which very few people are involved in agriculture. You go back 200 years, it's like 80, 90 percent of all the people are involved in agriculture, just so people can stay alive.

And he said, so this is going to get real hard for you.

And then the last most terrifying thing, till you return to the ground, for out of it were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. The result of Satan's plan is always chaos and the destruction of human beings. When he returns, I mean right before Christ returns, I'm sorry, right before Christ returns, Satan will bring this world to the pinnacle of his plan. When we read all those prophecies, what is it? The world is in chaos. People are killing each other by the billions. The world's coming apart. There's natural catastrophes. There's some kind of weird, I mean there's pollution going on. It's the whole place is coming apart. So much so that Christ says, if I don't come back at that point, I do, no flesh will survive. Satan will think I've done it. I created the ultimate chaos and none of them will survive. I won. That's his plan.

And like I said, he doesn't mind giving people some kind of quote-unquote happiness for a lifetime by making him wealthier because nobody has total happiness doing all that. He doesn't mind giving people some kind of good things and, you know, so that they ignore him because everybody dies in the end anyways. Now that's not meant to be negative. That's meant to say, I mean, life is great. I like this life. But I'm glad it's not the end game. I'm glad there's something beyond this where all the negative human nature won't be there anymore. All of what Satan has done to us won't matter anymore.

When you read what it's going to be like when we're changed, I say, wow, that's actually better than this. So enjoy this, but understand it will always be hard. It will always be tough. And it's not the end. It's just the steps. God's plan, this is part of the steps in God's plan.

The final step is for us to become his children. Satan's plan, his final steps, is such terrible chaos that every human being dies. Interesting we see the absolute now definition of good and evil. God is good. Satan is evil. Two beings. And we're caught in the existential struggle between good and evil. Hey, good wins. In the end, good wins, because God wins. And Satan wants us to be discouraged, always to believe God can't win. Not with me, he can't win. Not with my life, not with my struggles. I tell you, every one of us have days we think God can't win. Every one of us have days we think Satan's winning. And God says, no, he's not. Just stay with me. Just stay with me. Christ didn't go through all that to say, eh, you know, I figured it out 75%. I mean, we're safe. That's not how he looks in humanity. That's not how he looks at us.

We're so trapped in Satan's plan sometimes. We think this is the plan. This, we think what's happening around us all the time is God. No, it's not. Our hope comes from something beyond this.

So when you find yourself struggling with deception and doubt and distraction and division and destruction, which is just the story of Genesis 3, where his entire strategy is played out, when we see that and you struggle with those things in your life, which you will, I want you to do something because remember the distraction, both Eve and the man of God and Demas. They didn't run to God and stay there until the distraction was changed. Sometimes you got to stay with God for weeks before the distraction gets changed. And then sometimes it'll come back three weeks later and then you have to do the same thing. Here's what to do. Go to Psalm 139. When the distractions keep you from experiencing God's help, from experiencing God's care, from having some peace in the midst of the jumbled mess of life sometimes, just get on your knees and pray this before God and stay there for a while. Maybe take your Bible. Just keep praying and ask God this, Search me, O God, this is verse 23, Psalm 139, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. Know where I am troubled. Know where I have no answer. And there are answers that you and I will not receive until we're changed.

I'm a fixing guy. I like to fix things. Not things, but I like to fix people problems. And you know what? I can't.

God can. I can help. I realized a long time ago, as a pastor, a church, a congregation, it's like a house. And everybody thinks pastors come in and want to reconstruct the house. You know, remodel it. All pastors are the men with the blueprints. You construct the house. God constructs it through you. Now, yeah, here's the blueprint. I can tell you how to do it. I can't do it. We do it. Do you understand? We do it. The pastor's the guy with the blueprints that says, okay, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, and we all got to do this over there, but it's we who do it. That's how God works.

So all of us have to go to God and say, search me, O God, know my heart, try me, and know my anxieties, and see if there's any wicked way in me. Have I somehow accepted some deception in my heart somehow? Is my doubt, which we all struggle with, become a chronic problem? Am I so distracted? I'm not listening to you anymore. I'm not coming to you. And then this last sentence, and lead me in the way everlasting. That is God's plan for you.