Self-Deception

You hear all the time the phrase, we use it all the time. You hear it in sermons, we hear it in conversations. Satan has deceived the whole world. Right? We know that. Paul actually said he's the God of this world. And as Christians, we believe that God has called us out of that deception into his truth, into God's truth.

Well, today I want to go through why it is so easy for us, for human beings, to be deceived by Satan. But I also want to talk about a different deception. This is going to be real hard today to really face what we're talking about. We're going to talk about a deception that we participate in and don't even know it. So that everyone in this room, I include myself, deceive ourselves at times and we don't even know what's happening. We're going to talk about that. Now we have to begin by starting out when deception entered into human experience. So this is a story we all know, and there's a danger in reading stories we all know, parts of the Bible, because we read through it and we say we know it, and many times we're glossing over what really we should be getting out of it. So let's go to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3.

This is where human beings were introduced to deception. The telling of a lie with intent to have the person believe the lie and do harm to them.

Adam and Eve, of course, have never experienced deception in their short lives. They only know God. God told them the truth. They believed it. And everything was fine. There was no separation between human beings and God, and there was no separation between human beings. There was harmony. There was peace. There was no sin. We know what happened here, but let's go through this, because I really want to zero in on some things that we know so well.

We may be missing the impact in our lives. We know the knowledge, but how does it apply to you and me right now, today? Now, the serpent, verse 1, was more cunning than any beast of the field. We know this is Satan, which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God indeed said that you shall not eat of every tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the trees of the fruit of the garden. That's a very interesting way to enter deception. You start with a question, and the person corrects you with their answer. Oh, no, you're wrong. It's very interesting that the subtlety in which he does this is fascinating. Because he asks a question, and she tells him he's wrong.

Oh, no, I know more than you do, because this is what God really said. And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of 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. Now at this point, I'm not sure she totally understood death. They had never seen anything die. But she knew something bad happened. You cease to exist, whatever that means. So I say that because there's a difficulty that she's experiencing here in confronting a spirit being that's playing a mind game with her.

Now the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die, for God knows in the day that you eat of it your eyes will be open, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now there's something real interesting about that lie.

It's in two parts. One, you shall not die. So here we have the introduction of the immortal soul. You're not going to die. You don't die. That's not what you're made to die. But also the idea that your eyes will be open. You will know the truth. God's sort of holding something back from you. And when you know the truth, your eyes will be open. You will be like God. Because right now you know good.

But you need to know good and evil. You need to be able to make your choices. Well, God had already gave them a choice. Don't eat the fruit, whatever the fruit was. There wasn't magic fruit. It was in the act of disobedience that was the problem. And so the subtlety of this of the mind game and thinking about a person who has never had a reason through any of this before, oh, so if I eat that, I will be like God having this enormous knowledge and understanding.

And besides, I will die. Then we have this very interesting verse, verse 6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate, and she gave it to her husband, and he ate.

Now, there's three things here that motivated her. Now, if you're taking notes, I want you to write these down. Because we're going to come back to this. Good for food. In other words, she saw fruit. It wasn't poisonous. She saw fruit that was appealing to her senses. It would have smelled good. It would have tasted good. It appealed to her senses. It was pleasant to the eyes. It was appealing to the human desire for new experiences. Curiosity.

Something new. Something different. I mean, think about it. Her whole life, every bite she took of something, was a new experience. She was in the midst of all these new experiences, and now she gets another new experience. And desirable to make one wise. Appealing to her desire to learn.

Now, what's interesting about these three motivations, and to take you where we're going to go, we have to understand something. Knowing that something is good for food is not sin. That motivation, I mean, if you go home and say, oh, I'm going to eat a banana, it's not a sin. It's good for food.

It smells good. It tastes good. It's actually good for you. So that motivation to eat good food, or experience things with our senses, as long as it is within the confines of what God says, is not wrong. Her motivation is pleasant to the eyes. In other words, oh, a new experience is not wrong in itself. And it will make me wise. The desire to learn is not wrong. Now, these became very wrong, and that's what we're going to talk about in terms of deception.

You know, if you have a little child, and that child you know, sits down and you give them some food for the first time, you know, sweet potatoes, or something that has a different flavor, and they just can't stop eating it. They have not sinned. If you want a new experience, and you say, oh, wow, I'm going to plant a garden this year, or I'm going to do something different this year, I'm going to learn how to paint this year.

There's nothing wrong with that. They need to learn. We all actually have a need to learn. You see what I...it's very important here to understand. Satan knew these motivations were built into her nature. The deception came from manipulating that basic part of her nature. Now, Adam, on the other hand, he wasn't deceived, because that's what Paul says in 1 Timothy. Adam's problem here is he just reasoned out, could. Okay, I'll do what she said.

He wasn't deceived. He knew this isn't what God wants, so we have a real problem here. Her talking to Satan and being manipulated, and we have Adam saying...instead of saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, you and I need to go to God right now, okay? We need to go to God right now. Come on, we're going to go find him. Adam didn't do that. Adam simply gave in to her.

They both end up in the same boat. They both end up with the same problem that they were deceived by Satan. She was deceived by Satan. He was deceived by something else. We're going to talk about that other kind of deception that comes into our lives. Verse 7 now. So here's what happens. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

A major change in who they are in the inner person begins to happen. We see shame here. We see other problems are going to begin to happen immediately. They begin to feel and experience the effects of sin. So we have these motivations that we wrote down here. These three motivations of themselves. They were designed. Curiosity is designed in human beings by God. All the excitement of discovering something you don't know.

Because we're designed that way. Satan took those things and twisted them. The moment that became twisted in both of them, they began to have a whole series of inner problems and outward problems. So, they began to have this shame, these sexual problems, and then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called to Adam and said, where are you? It's very interesting. In the second century there were Gnostics who formed a new type of Christianity that claimed that God was stupid. Or the God of the Old Testament was stupid. He couldn't even find Adam. Have you ever played the game where you have a little baby and she hides behind the couch or the chair and you walk around saying, where are you? Where are you?

And you hear giggling? God knew exactly where Adam was. That's not the issue. The issue is he's hiding. So, he's separated from God. He's separated from God. He's filled with all kinds of anxiety and fear and worry. He had never experienced any of that before. Neither had Eve. The two of them are absolutely overwhelmed with all kinds of negative emotions. They're actually now into insanity. They were designed to feel this way. You and I were designed to feel the way we feel much of the time.

That's a reaction to being cut off from God. And so they're hiding from God. And so he said, I have heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you verse 11, that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat? And the man said, the woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. Lord God said to the woman, what have you done?

Of course, she said, well, Satan did this. The serpent came along and convinced me to do this. So the first thing that happens with these motivations, these three motivations of human beings become twisted and corrupted is they begin to have a whole series of effects. The first one is all kind of sexual problems. Immediately, they never had sexual problems before they did now. They also have, you see anxiety, you see fear, you see stress, you see guilt, you see shame, you see irrational behavior.

I'm going to go hide from God. This is all irrational at this point. This is the effects that happened in their minds. These are the effects of disobeying God that happened inside who they were. The effects of Satan's deception upon them. You also see that they're separated from God. But now you see they're separated from each other.

Adam doesn't say, God, I knew it was wrong and she and I did it. We ate that fruit. He says it's her fault and it's your fault for giving her to me. Right? Because he says she gave it to me and you're the one who gave me her. What she says is I went, look, this this serpent told me this and I did it.

But it's his fault. How was I to know? The only thing, the only two beings I've ever talked to is you and Adam. The jerk. Why didn't he come save me? They're now separated and if you read through you see that separation between all human beings and separation between men and women would be a battle that would be fought now throughout history. This is all what happened. They're separated from God and they're separated from each other and they begin to blame each other. What are they blaming each other for?

What is Adam saying when it's her fault? Adam is saying my problems, my guilt, my shame, my worry, my anxiety, my fear is because of her. And what is she saying? My anxiety, my fear, my irrational behavior is because of him. They simply blame each other. So now, if you wrote down the three motivations if you wrote down the three motivations let's now write down the effects of when those motivations got twisted.

First one was sexual problems, anxiety, fear, stress, guilt, and irrational behavior. And you can go through there and list other things on there, too. It doesn't take much to figure out what they were experiencing. Sexual problem is anxiety, fear, stress, guilt, irrational behavior. What's the second thing that happened? They were separated from God. They actually hid from God. I'm going to go hide from God. Third, separation from each other. There was anger. There was resentment. I mean, when we start blaming and accusing each other for anger and resentment, and there was shifting of the blame to justify their own behavior.

Adam's defense is, it's not my fault she motivated me. And her defense is, it's not my fault Satan motivated me. So they justified their behavior, which was sin against God, by blaming others for it. What you're looking at here is the first steps of corrupted human nature. Those three things, that we just covered, the three little packages of things, is what happens when those three motivations are corrupted. We all become that. Now, you may be saying, I think God, I'm not that way.

All of us have corrupted human nature. As was mentioned in the sermon, Ed, to be called now, it's the grace of God, it's not because we were any better, it's because God says, I call you to become better. I call you to be changed to become Christ-like, to have His Spirit work in us.

From now on, the rest of this sermon, we're not going to be talking about Satan's deception. We're going to be talking about a different kind of deception, a deception that you and I do every day. At least I do. Maybe you're all different. I do this deception every day. And I'm affected by this deception every day. Jeremiah 17. I told you it's a hard sermon today. We're getting down into the very core of why we struggle, why we fail.

Of course, God doesn't fail, God doesn't give up, but why you and I struggle and fail. Jeremiah 17. Now, the context here is Jeremiah is giving a message from God to Judah. But this passage we're going to go through and apply just as much to us today in the church as it did to Judah back then. Thus says the Lord, verse 5, Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord.

So he says there's a curse on a person who knows God and departs from God. And trust in human reasoning. Trust in himself and other people. Now, I mean, there is a trust that we have to have with each other, but he's talking about the trust we can only have in God. There's a level of trust that only we can have in God.

You can't even have it to your best friend or your spouse. There's a certain thing that faith between us and God goes way beyond all that. He says, for he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit parched places in the wilderness, and assault land which is not inhabiting. Now, this is poetic.

He's basically saying, you know, a person who departs from God in his heart, in his core motivations, in his core motivations he departs from God, he might as well go live in a barren nothingness desert, because that's all his life's going to be. Then he contrasts that. Verse 7.

So here he uses another poetic, you know, but a man who has faith in God, who truly is dedicated and given his life to God, his life is better. Now, we can look at this physically, but we understand. Primarily, this is spiritually. Our lives are better. There's a purpose every day. There's a meaning every day when we trust in God, as opposed to something that's not true. When we trust in God, as opposed to someone who does not.

And then that is the context of the next verse, because he's comparing these two men. The heart is deceitful above all things. Oh, I thought Satan was deceitful above all things. Yeah. But inside our motivations, your motivations and my motivations are the greatest exceptions you will face we deceive ourselves. Look at what it says. The heart is deceitful above all things. And desperately wicked, who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I trust, I test the mind and even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.

What he says here, he's comparing these two ways of life, and he says, in this one way of life, in which a person does not trust God, they trust their own motivations, they trust their own reasoning, they deceive themselves. He says, oh, okay, how can I deceive myself? Remember, Satan got to us probably when we were born. Somewhere early in there, as we develop motivation, I mean, baby's motivation is pretty simple. Feed me, change my diaper, hold me. Okay, I mean, they're pretty simple. But as a baby grows, their motivations change.

And if you look at a baby saying that's good for food, because they don't know, right? They eat dirt. And you go teach them, that's not good for food. Oh, good, this is good for the eyes. This is a new experience. This is exciting. Oh, I'm learning something. They're motivated by that. Those motivations are put in them by God. But what happens to a baby? What happens when they get to about two or three?

What happened to my child? That inner core gets changed. Your inner core was changed. My inner core was changed. And because of that, you and I became experts at deceiving ourselves. We say, oh, why of God's spirit now? You and I still deceive ourselves because we're good at it. Sometimes Satan doesn't have to do a thing. We do it to ourselves. Because the core was twisted of who we are. Now, God's spirit is to change that.

But we have to look at how we participate in that changing. How do we participate in that changing? John looked at this same thing in the New Testament, and he says, let's look at what's the problem with the world. Let's go to 1 John 2. And he words this differently than what is worded. It's the same concept. But it's worded differently than in Genesis. And there's a reason why. In Genesis, she was learning how to sin. She was being deceived and learning how to sin. Oh, it's good for food. Of itself, that's not sin.

Then when you pick and take something you're not supposed to eat, then it's sin. By the time John comes along, you have thousands of years of human experience. And in these thousands of years of human experience, 1 John 2, verse 15, here's how he describes the problem. Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh. Remember we said, she saw it was good for food. The motivation was, oh, my five senses tell me this is okay. He doesn't say here, oh, that what's the problem with the world is, is people are motivated by their five senses.

That's not what he says. He says, the lust of the five senses. They've been corrupted. What we do, this gets into our desires, our desires are already corrupted, and you and I learned at a very early age to convince ourselves that our desires are the most important thing in life. We all did it.

Which means that every one of us will convince ourselves that our desires are what we should do. That's best. He says, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, she saw it as a good-looking fruit.

And the pride of life. In other words, he said, the problem, the base problem of her looking at and saying, desire will make one wise, wasn't that she wanted to learn. What happened was our desire to learn got twisted into pride. We have to know more than other people so that we are better than them. Remember what he told her, you'll be like God. That's still part of our nature. Oh, I will know more than other people. I will be better than them. Because of my knowledge, that came from God. We didn't have it. We go back to Genesis and read it all the time and don't realize you and I are still suffering from that effect because our inner person still suffers from deception. But many times, it's not Satan. We're doing it to ourselves. We're actually reasoning things out and doing it to ourselves. So now write this down. This will be your third little, if you're taking notes. So now we have the lust of the flesh, which is the use of the senses that are not the way God intended them to be used. Lust of the eyes, pursuit of experiences that God did not intend us to experience, and the pride of life. Arrogance, stubbornness, and self-will. So now that, by the time of John, he just explained to you, this is what humanity has become. We use our senses in a way that God never intended. We pursue experiences that God never intended, and we're filled with arrogance, stubbornness, and self-will. Boy, I'm glad I'm not part of the world. That's a deceptive statement. If I believe I don't have any of these problems, I'm already deceived because I'm convincing myself. I'm deceiving myself. I guess Satan just laughs. He's like, man, he's so good at it, I don't have to do anything. Self-deception is so hard because you deceive yourself, so you believe it. You believe it. Okay. How do we work through this? I'm going to give you a structure. I can't go through all this in a 55-inch sermon, but I'll give you a structure to start thinking about this. Because the only way that you really deal with self-deception is understand what it is and reach out to God so that He helps you work through your self-deception. I've been working on this sermon for a while. Do you know why? Because I started to realize how self-deceived I am at times. I really didn't want to give the sermon. It's hard to get up and give a sermon about yourself. I realize we're so good at it. So I'll show you what I mean. Let's go through the list of effects now. The list of effects that happened on Adam and Eve. So you're with me so far? You have these three lists. The list of effects. The first one was sexual problems, anxiety, fear, stress, guilt, irrational behavior. And you can just add whatever you want to on there. You can see that they experience. Shame is one of them. So sexual problems, anxiety, fear, stress, guilt, and irrational behavior. These are common to all of you. Just common to what we have become. But why do we still suffer that? Because there's a core issue that you and I have to deal with that we don't want to deal with.

It is easier to know the Ten Commandments and keep the letter of the Ten Commandments than it is to keep the spirit of the Ten Commandments. And the reason why is you can change your behavior to keep the letter of the Ten Commandments. And when you become first get in to being a Christian, that's what you learn. You change behaviors. That's part of this process. But there is a point where we have to keep the spirit of the Ten Commandments and that means you have to go into something else. You have to go into that inner core of who you are that's all messed up and deceived. And you're part of the deception because you're deceiving yourself and you have to look at that part of you. We all have to look at that. It's ugly. We don't want anybody else to see. We hide it all the time. Let's look at what James tells the church. James chapter 1.

Verse 12. Blessed is the man who endures temptation. When he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Blessed is the person who receives a temptation. There's an attempt to deceive that person to sin. Anytime we sin, it's because we're giving in to deception. God determines reality. Deception is a lie. So anytime we sin, we're committing a lie. We're accepting a lie. Somehow this sin is better. But why do we do that? If it was just an intellectual exercise, it would actually be very easy. But it's not. So he says, We receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I have tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. Though God will test us, but that's a different thing. When God tests somebody, it's because the outcome is for the betterment of the person. Temptation is another thing. Temptation is the one doing the tempting, what's an outcome that is not for the benefit of the person. Here's the great strangest thing about self-deception. When we deceive ourselves, and we do what we've deceived ourselves to do, we've actually hurt ourselves. We've done the opposite of what we wanted. It's the great funny thing about deception. And sometimes, and we know this, we know that when we're doing it. We know it when we're doing it. Oops, this is not going to turn out well.

So let's go on. But each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin, when his full grown brings forth death, do not be deceived, my beloved brother. Where's the deception coming from here? Now, the temptation may be coming from Satan, but deception is our own desires. Here's where this gets very complex. Because the desires themselves may not be wrong. We desire to be valued. We desire to be loved. Those aren't wrong. That's all part of how God designed us. We desire to have new experiences. We desire to eat things that are good. We desire to learn. We desire these things. On their own, these desires are not wrong, but remember, every desire you have has been twisted. Every desire you have has been corrupted. So the problem is, we become driven by those desires. We can't understand what God is doing, and we sure can't understand what everybody else is doing, because what everybody else is doing is keeping us from our desires. You know what the world is? It's 7 billion people, all of them keeping each other from their desires. That's what it is. So of course they're going to fight. Of course nothing's ever going to be solved. Because deep inside of us, we have these desires. We have these needs. Of themselves, they're not wrong. The problem is, they drive us. It's the problem Adam and Eve had. I don't know what Adam's desire was. I guess he was afraid he would lose Eve. That's my guess. But we know what hers was. It's written right in the Bible. She reasoned through this. These things made sense. And she was drawn by those desires to disobey God. It seems Adam just was like, well, if she did it, I guess we're together here. I guess we'll do it. He missed a real opportunity here to do right. That's why he's condemned in the New Testament more than Eve is, by the way. He didn't have to face Satan. He just convinced himself. You see, Adam was deceived by himself. It was self-deception. He deceived himself. For whatever reason he was there, we could come up with all kinds of reasons why he would have done that. None of us can really become more Christ-like, which we know is the purpose of Christianity. He'd be fair to be the firstfruits to serve Christ when he comes. Until we begin to deal with those desires. Whatever they are. And we have multiple, multiple desires. Most of them are not evil in themselves. But they become corrupted. We have to understand that. Because the bottom line is we're in trouble much of the time in life because what we desire is what we think is different than what God is telling us. But what I desire isn't that.

I don't know about you. I've gone to God at times and just poured out something I wanted to change in my life or something. And then after a while I started to figure out that's not what I want in your life. So you throw a little temper tantrum. And then you say, okay. But that's what I want in my life. That's not what I want. And I know better than you. Do we believe he knows better than us?

Not when we're driven by our desires. When we're driven by our desires we believe he doesn't know. Because you know why? It's very painful. It's what we want. We're not receiving what we want. Because of that, all of you have at least some of these. Sexual problems, anxiety, fears, stress, guilt, irrational behavior. All of us have irrational behavior. We're all there. So we look at all this, well I don't have that one. Okay, we have the other ones. All of us do. And the reason we do is because we're driven by our desires, not God. We have God's spirit, so we should be driven by it.

We ignore those problems all the time. We'll talk about that in a minute. God's spirit gives us problems like, don't do that. Or that's stupid. Or a scripture. And you know, here's what I should do. Here's where we miss the problems much of the time. It's not what we're doing. It's what we should do and don't do. You should do this. No, I don't want to do that. And so we fly right by something God wanted us to do.

We just, we're right by it. And then we don't figure out, we can't figure out why the, you know, there's a car wreck at the end of the road. Not literally. Because we've missed what God was prompting us to do. I mean, think about it. How many times have you compromised with something of God's law because you said, God will understand? God will understand. But something inside of you is saying in the inner person where God's spirit is, is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, God will understand.

And you deceive yourself and you can just go all over the place and just, I've seen people deceive themselves of committing horrendous sins. And it's okay. God will understand. That's self-deception. Because our desires drive us. Learning to deal with our desires is a lifelong battle. You will never conquer your desires entirely. Well, whatever those desires are for. Money, wealth, I mean, we all have different desires. Whatever your desires, you will fight until you're changed and then they will be changed.

But you have to fight them until you're changed. You can't give into them. And when we do, then we have to work through the process of repentance. You and I must repent all the time. Okay. I told you this was going to be hard. Are you still with me? Have I lost you? So I assume all of you have desires. So we're okay. Now, because we've just begun to scratch the surface of self-deception. You know, money in 15 minutes, let's see. The second point was separation from God. That was the second immediate effect.

They wouldn't hit themselves from God. Think about this. If you have a deep, meaningful relationship with another person, what's the one thing you really want to do? Spend time with them. Right? If that's true, why is it so hard to pray and do Bible studies sometimes? Why? He's invisible. That's tough. But we all know what it's like when we have those moments where we have that connection, that deep connection with God.

Why can't we maintain that? Because deep inside we still separate from God. Fortunately, He doesn't go away. But we separate. We still separate from Him. And we can deceive ourselves into thinking it's okay. God's fault, like Adam did, you gave me the woman. Not my fault. Look at 1 Corinthians 3. You see, we don't want to accept that God's answers are the best answers. I struggle with that. That's what I said.

I really had a hard time with the sermon together because, yeah, I think that sometimes. God, that's really not the answer, is it? That's not what you really want. I mean, this person really abused me. They lied about me. They did terrible things to me. And I have to love them? Can't I just tolerate them? Can't I just feel absolute disgust when I'm around them, but hey, at least I don't punch them. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that way. Sometimes I think I think maybe I'm really weird.

1 Corinthians 3.18. Let no one deceive himself. Uh-oh. Paul's talking about... He's not talking about Satan here. He's talking about human beings. James talked about it, no. Paul's talking about it. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For his written, he catches the words in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are futile. He says here, we have to be careful. Don't be deceived and let the newest book on pop psychology believe that's the solution to your spiritual problems, because it's not. And there's a prompt you'll get from God that says this isn't, but there'll be part of you driven towards it. And it's very interesting. You know, one of the reasons we're driven towards pop psychology... I'm not saying everything in pop psychology is wrong, but I mean, you know, sometimes people get just inundated into this stuff, and it's not biblical at times. And you know why? Because all we want to think about is our own feelings. When we get trapped in the feeling... just thinking about our own feelings all the time, we're doomed. We're spiritually doomed, because we're trapped in... you know, this is number two. We're trapped in number one. Utility, depression, worry. We're trapped in it, because that's all we can think about is our own feelings. That's not an easy thing to get out of, but it's part of the problem we have as human beings. And so he says here, you know, when you think the answer to life is a career in which you have no life with your family, that's wisdom of the world. When you think that both of you having a great career so your children are raised by the state is a good idea, that's wisdom of the world, and it will keep you separated from God. Why? Because your family won't be what it's supposed to be. And you will not fulfill your commands on how to take care of your children. See, I'm not saying people can both have a career. What I'm saying is if that becomes the sacrifice of your children, it's wrong. How can you say that? God says, that's not how I designed this to be. Parents are supposed to be parents to their children. That's how it's designed. But see how we can lie to ourselves. See how we can deceive ourselves. Now, we have to work. You can spend 24 hours a day with your kids. That's not the point. I think you all know that. The point is, the values. We stay separated from God because we keep finding another solution to the problem. We buy into some concept of status. Oh, I'm an important person to my community. That's not bad. If you're doing it for good, if you're doing it for your own aggrandizement, and sacrificing your relationship with God, you will stay separated from God. Here's what we do. We deceive ourselves. That we're separated from God because it's God's problem. No, if we're ever separated from God, it's our problem. Next time you're separated from God, I just can tell you from experience. Get on your knees and say, God, why are you separated from me? And wait for the answer. I didn't go anywhere. I'm the king creator of the universe. Where did I go? Boy, that's what you get. That's what you get.

The third point was, separation then from each other as human beings. How much of human behavior is just anger and resentment, and we blame each other for everything? Think about this. Think of how this breaks down into your everyday life. Have you ever been in a grocery store? And you look and there's long lines. I have to tell you, I don't go grocery shopping with my wife very often, but when I do, we get in different lines because we're a little competitive.

Who's going to get through first? Who's going to get through first? Sometimes I win. Sometimes I don't. But we still do it. After 40 years of marriage. I'm getting in this line. I'll be through first. No, I'll be through first. We're not mad. It's fun. We are a little competitive at times. But how many times have you gotten in a line and you're looking at the 10 people in front of you and you're thinking, I'm in a hurry and pretty soon you resent all 10 people in front of you.

You actually resent them as if they don't have a right to food. Think about it. How dare you people come and buy the food that keeps you alive on my time. Think about the resentment you can have. That's self-deception. Because what you do is you make all those people objects that are there for you. You are the center of the universe, not God. And they're there for you. How dare they interfere with my life. And of course, do you know what most of them are doing?

There's six people in front of me. There's three people in front of me. The guy that's number two is saying, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. You're holding up my life. Someone suggested I read it. It was a scriptural based book, but it was an interesting book. It was about business. It's called Leadership and Self-Deception. I'm preparing the sermon, so I read the book this week.

There was something in the book that grabbed me because they were talking about how we see people as objects for our advancement. And he described a scene that I've done. You get on an airplane and they announce it's not full, and you're close to the front of the line and say, oh good, I can get a seat. I can see that one. So you get your seat. You know, maybe by the aisle, and then you put your briefcase on the seat beside you, and you pull out the magazine out of the back, and you're doing it like this. You're hoping everybody says, oh, I don't want to disturb him. And there's something on the seat.

So they won't take the seat. And so pretty soon, every person comes in, you're judging them like, oh no, he won't take it. That looks like a jerk. Take that seat. And so you're sitting there evaluating every person who comes in as if their money and their right to a seat wasn't real. They have just as much right to a seat on that airplane as you do. Morally, they have just as much right they paid their money. You know, in this case, you just have to be privileged that somehow you got to the front of the line.

And I read that, and they said, see, we look at people as objects that are keeping us from what we want. And I read that and thought, I've actually done that. I've actually done that. And he was right! I mean, this guy, he might be an atheist. I don't know. It's a book on business. But he's right! This is what we do. We separate ourselves from everybody else, and everybody else exists for our, for us.

And that gets very, very dangerous. Now, I mean, there are issues between us that is somebody else's fault. I mean, Adam, you know, Eve, I'm sure said to Adam, why weren't you a better leader? He should have been. And Adam said to Eve, why did you listen to him? That was wrong! Right? There are times people hurt us. People do things, and we need to deal with it. But what happens when we get in this where we just blame everybody for everything? Everything is a blame game.

At that point, how do you love anybody? I can't even love the people on the airplane. Because I'm afraid one of them is going to sit beside me. And I won't have my extra space for an hour or two hours. See how self-deceived we are? The machine didn't do that to me. I did that to me. Now, was it wrong for me to want two seats? Actually, no. Because it's not wrong to want extra space. Is it wrong for me to judge and tell somebody else you don't have a right to this seat and I'm going to try to keep you from it?

No, that's wrong. I have the right to do that to somebody. I have a right to. See, it's in these little things that we don't even notice. We don't even notice. I remember on a plane one time, I was sitting on an NC, and this woman came in and said on this end, and this little boy beside me, he's about nine or ten years, came down and said beside me, and you could tell he was real nervous and everything. I asked him, and I don't think he'd ever flown before we were talking.

I looked over at her and said, you want to sit here so you're next to him? And she said yes. So I just switched seats with her. I didn't think anything about it. I remember the guy next to me looked at me and said, that was a really nice thing you did. I thought, why was that nice? And then you realize, well, that's not normally what us fliers do. I think I should do that all the time.

We see other people as the source of all our problems. Once again, they are sometimes a source of problems. I'm not saying we hurt each other, we mystery each other, we don't understand each other. We're supposed to deal with those things. But what if you're going through life looking at everybody? If you're driving and the traffic's backed up for three miles, why are you mad at the guy in front of you? He's not doing anything to you except be that mad at the guy in front of him. It's your fault my life is a mess. And I'm not going to get to work on time, and it's your fault that my boss is going to yell at me. So you shake your fist as you go. You've seen people do that. But that person isn't at fault. And the guys that are working on the road aren't at fault either. If they don't work on the road, pretty soon you can't drive on them. It's a fact of life, folks. But what we do is we fix blame. We fix blame. And so we're really unhappy, and we're filled with anxiety, and we're angry. And then we do it to each other. We do it to our families all the time. Husband, wife. And you fix blame to your children. They come home late three nights in a row. And then they come home and they're all excited because they're on time. And they walk in and you look at them and say, boy am I surprised. Boy am I surprised. I thought, you know, I just thought you were gonna do it again. And I was ready to take the car away this time. You know what that kid's gonna do? Next time he's gonna stay out no matter what. Why do good? Because I'm just gonna yell down either way. We get caught in that blame game. And what we do, we destroy relationships. We keep separating each other. You know. So I'm saying thanks for doing what was right. That was really good. Hey, you know, that's a man. You did something here of responsibility. And I appreciate it. I don't know. When I was a kid, if a man would have said that to me, I'd have tried really hard to do it right the next time. And felt really bad when I didn't. Isn't that what we wanted to do anyways? We wanted to feel good when they do what's right, and feel real bad when they do what's wrong. Not because they're afraid of us, but because they know the difference between right and wrong. See how this song gets messed up? Because we're driven by our own desires, our own emotions. We're driven by this separation. And in this separation, we just blame each other for everything. So now what you have is the son's blaming the dad for being a rotten dad, and the dad's blaming the son for being a rotten son, and that separation goes on for 20 years. Goes on for 20 years. Because we're not driven by understanding and loving the other person. All we want is what's good for us. And guys, we do this with our wives all the time. We do it with them all the time. Galatians 6. Or maybe I don't know what it does.

This is an interesting little passage here. He says, Brother, and if any man is overtaken in any trespass, you or a spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Someone's committed to sin, and in this case, they've been actually asked not to attend services. Sometimes a person can be in such a sin that we ask them, look, until you stop this sinning, I'm sorry, you're an alcoholic, until you go in and go to a hospital and get dried out, until you're sober for a month, you can't come to church. And then you work with them, and you see them, and you get people to help them, and you get the family to help them. Other church members help them. But there's a point where you say, you have to stop the sin because I won't participate in your self-destruction. And what he's saying is, when that happens, okay, that person that works through that problem, they come back, they're to be accepted completely back into the congregation, completely 100%, no problem. Why? Well, he makes a point here. Considering yourselves, so you bring them back to gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. He says, you know what? The moment you say, well, I'm glad I'm not a sinner like you, just because you have a different kind of sin, you already have deceived yourself. You've already deceived yourself. I don't have sin like you. I don't even think you should be in the church. Well, we're all sinners. So he says, you're going to be tempted now. You're going to end up being deceived. And you know, in this case, who's going to deceive you? Probably yourself. Then he gives on, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another, for each one will bear his own loan. In other words, what he says here is, instead of measuring yourself by each other, and this is what we do when we justify ourselves. Thank you, Lord. I'm not like this guy. We measure ourselves by other people. So you can look around the congregation. You can say, wow, this petty just said he had this problem never. I'm glad I don't have that problem. We probably need a new pastor. Right? So we can just judge each other and judge each other. How? We're measuring ourselves. Why do we measure ourselves? To show we're better. To feel better. You know what? That's what a lot of gossip is. I mean, we talk about, hey, did you hear someone's so sick? And we should. We should talk about each other. But you know, the thing is, you know, I remember 10 years ago when he did this.

Why are we doing that? We have to be honest. Because we're deceiving ourselves. It's not because we love him. It's because it makes us feel better. We've deceived ourselves into measuring our righteousness by each other. But don't measure it by me. It won't take much to be more righteous than me. So that's a bad measurement. Measured by Jesus Christ. When you measure your righteousness by Jesus Christ, it's very sobering. That's who we measure ourselves by. Each other, we're just dragging each other along. That's what we're supposed to do. We carry each other burdens. We're just dragging each other along to where God is taking us. You look closely at the three passages I just read. James and Paul in 1 Corinthians and Paul in Galatians. And you know what they deal with? Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Those three passages, not intendingly. I mean, they weren't thinking of that, I don't think, because it's not part of the context. But they deal with those issues. Because a lot of the New Testament deals with those issues. As you're getting into the core person, it has to be changed. The corrupt human heart is deceitful. I think it's safe to say, all of us, or maybe most of us, practice self-deception every day. In some way or another, we practice self-deception. And yet, there's something inside saying, that's not right. That's God's Spirit. But we run right past that prompt because we're driven by all these other stuff. That means to not run by those prompts. And this is another sermon, so I'm just going to mention it. What we have to do, we have to fill our minds with the word of God. You and I have to be in that Bible a long time. So the prompt comes in strong. Secondly, we have to be praying and asking God for that prompt, for that guidance, for that so that we are dealing with our pride, our righteousness, but we're always asking Him for what we should do. And then, here's the hard part. You and I have to respond immediately to the prompt. Because if you don't, you'll probably convince yourself not to. You'll deceive yourself not to. So when we know it's right, we have to respond. Remember, God has given us the Spirit. Paul says, love, power, and a sound mind. You and I naturally don't have a lot of love, except maybe for our friends or media family. You and I don't have any spiritual power. And when you look at those three things that we said that were the immediate effects of sin, which you and I suffer all the time, we don't have a sound mind. The natural state of human being is messed up.

But God has given us His Spirit so that we can go through this changing process. And that means that we have to humbly submit to God's Spirit not just so we can resist the deceptions of Satan, but resist, because we know about Satan, we know the basic truth of the Bible, we actually face something that's a whole lot more dangerous than His deception. We face our own self-deception.