The Price You’ll Keep on Paying

If you have ever “charged up” your credit cards, you know that paying them off can seemingly take forever (maybe you are still working on it)! You feel as though your good money is consumed by interest with very little going to reduce the principal balance. In a previous blog (http://wp.me/p4tk5J-3b), I wrote about the “forever cost” of spiritual deception, a price that no one should be willing to pay—it is virtually all “interest”! This blog will expound on the specifics God tells us are included in that cost.

The first specific is found in 2 Corinthians 11:3:

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

The story about Eve and the serpent in Genesis 3 is a sad one: The serpent (otherwise known as the devil) gets Eve to doubt the content and veracity of God’s instructions, and act contrary to them, with devastating results that continue to this very day! So it happens with us! When we doubt the content and veracity of God’s Word, our minds also become corrupted like Eve’s (as the above verse says)—we have been deceived and all of our decisions are now a product of our corrupt minds! The bad thing about this is that we do not “feel” as though we have corrupt minds and are being deceived—we are too smart for that, aren’t we? God doesn’t really know best, does He? (Watch out!)

The next is in 1 Corinthians 15:33:

Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”

I will also include its lesser-known follow-on verse for context’s sake, 1 Corinthians 15:34:

Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.

Have you fallen in with the wrong crowd? This verse (33) tells you that you are only fooling yourself if you continue to keep “evil company” without it corrupting your “good habits.” “Evil company” is defined in the next verse as those who do not have the knowledge of God. Does this mean not to associate at all with people who are not Christians? No, of course not! However, it does mean that these people should not be close enough to you to exert influence over you, because it will not be influence that tends towards godliness, but away from it. For example, you are fooling yourself if you think going to church is not an important activity for a Christian—church is where we find the examples of those good habits and the people who will influence us toward them!

And, finally, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

I urge you not to skim the list of those who will not be inheriting the kingdom of God, those who will not be found in heaven, but pause at each one, look up the meaning of the word in the dictionary if necessary, and fully comprehend what these verses are saying. Did you notice within them the admonition not to be deceived? One of the categories is “thieves”—have you ever stolen anything? Does that mean you are not going to heaven? What this verse means is that if these sins are not repented of, if you continue to steal, for instance, that keeps you in the unrighteous category. A person who is truly righteous, truly saved, will understand that this list can no longer be a part of his or her ongoing actions.

I hope you agree that a corrupt mind, corrupt habits, and forfeiture of heaven are too high a price for anyone to pay, yet many do and will continue to do so. We are deceived when we refuse to believe that what God says is true. Spiritual deception exacts a cruel cost from this life, stretching into all eternity! I pray that we will all take God’s admonition, found in two of the verses above and the one below, seriously:  Do not be deceived!

Ephesians 5:6  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Talk About Expensive!

What comes to mind when you think of the word “expensive”? Usually, money comes to mind, as we are used to thinking that something that costs a great deal of money is expensive. Most all of us would expect that a luxury villa on a beautiful coastline somewhere would be expensive, yet “expensive” has a relative side, too. If you could buy a $0.59 candy bar at the store, and find the same one at a movie theater for $4.00, that is expensive as well. Something that costs a great deal of money but yields a great deal of value for us may not be deemed to be expensive, and we would say it is worth the price we paid. The Merriam-Webster (online) Dictionary definition of the word is “commanding a high price and especially one that is not based on intrinsic worth or is beyond a prospective buyer’s means.”

Why all this talk about this word? In the long run, there is nothing that is more expensive than spiritual deception. This cost of this deception is not measurable in mere money—it goes way beyond that. Spiritual deception will cause one to expend his or her entire life—money, time, and everything else—for things that seem worthwhile but in truth have no intrinsic worth. One’s efforts are directed at pleasures, ease, and even the necessities of this life with no view to the eternal. Or worse yet, a person may think his efforts and perceived goodness in this life are enough to earn him a pleasant eternity. The cost of spiritual deception is your eternal soul, forever separated from God in everlasting punishment in hell—talk about expensive! Jesus Himself asks:

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? Matthew 16:26

Let us start by examining a Bible verse that teaches us about deception’s high cost:

Thus says the Lord: “Do not deceive yourselves, saying, ‘The Chaldeans will surely depart from us,’ for they will not depart.” Jeremiah 37:9

In the context of this verse, God had told Judah and King Zedekiah through the prophet Jeremiah that their enemy the Chaldeans would defeat them, bringing His judgment on them for their habitual sin. Instead of believing the reality and certainty of God’s words in this verse, that the Chaldeans would not depart, they substituted a message that was more palatable to them—they deceived themselves! It was easier and more appealing for them to believe what was not true, so they lied to themselves by telling themselves the Chaldeans would depart! They put more weight in their own opinion than in what God, who knows everything, had said! They later paid the price in being destroyed by the Chaldeans, as God had said they would be, ignoring the remedy God had given elsewhere which would allow them to escape with their lives.

Many people do the same when encountering God’s initial message to them in the good news of the gospel. God tells everyone to turn away from their sins and believe in His remedy, Jesus Christ, to escape this world with their eternal souls intact. Instead of believing the reality and certainty of God’s words, they believe what is more palatable to them, which can come in a number of different forms: “I’m a good person; God wouldn’t send me to hell.” “I can’t believe in a God who would send anyone to hell!” “I don’t believe all that stuff.” This list could go on and on, but the point is that by putting more weight in their own opinion rather than God’s truth (or what they deem to be someone else’s opinion), they are only deceiving themselves! They will pay the price, as God said they would, in the loss and punishment of their eternal souls, ignoring the remedy God has freely provided! They will in no way be able to say that the expensive price they will pay for all of eternity will have been “worth it.”

Wow, already an entire blog written, and only one verse covered! The Bible has more to teach us about the cost of deception, so I’ll get into that next week. Until then, I’m praying for you!

Scammed by Satan

Ever get those scam e-mails? You know, the ones that tell you in usually not-so-good English that you have won a sweepstakes (that you never entered) for $2.5M, and to start receiving payment you just need to send $100 and your bank account and routing numbers to a certain link. I can’t believe people actually fall for these, but some surely do, and it ends up costing them. Their desire for the news to be true many times blinds them to the caution they should take in dealing with someone they don’t know.

What is going on here is deception; we have all encountered it. We find it not only in scam e-mails, but in other scenarios as well: car purchasing or repairs, investments, buying products that make certain claims, and many other instances. The cost of deception to us is usually in dollars, but it does not have to be. When we are the one who has been deceived we may feel angry at the deceiver, or angry or disgusted with ourselves for not being wiser. We may end up feeling ashamed at being duped. Deception is unfair!

At any rate, deception has these qualities: Lies are told to purposely mislead, we believe the lies, and when (or if) we discover the lies we find it costs us a price we never would have paid had we known. It is no surprise that the Bible frequently warns us against deception, not financial deception, but spiritual deception. “Someone” (the devil) is out to purposely mislead us, and if we believe his lies the price we pay lasts for all of eternity. You don’t believe he exists? Obviously someone who does not exist cannot deceive you. Great, he has just successfully achieved his first deception!

What exactly is his job? According to Revelation 12:9, it is this:

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

He “deceives the whole world”—what a job that is! How does he accomplish this task? John 8:44 (which I will not copy here, but please feel free to read it) tells us that he is not only a liar, but the father of lies! If he can get the whole world to believe he does not exist (after all, we’ve never seen him in person, or heard him speak), half his job is done! If you think he is that “little red man” with a pitchfork and pointy tail, you would leave when you see him coming because you’re too smart to be taken in! One of his most successful tactics is to plant his lies in your thoughts, but make you believe they are your thoughts. (For more information on his other tactics, check out Week 26 of my devotional, “More of God,” which can be ordered here: http://amzn.to/1zhm8Y7)

2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 says:

The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

Although this verse is about the “coming of the lawless one” (the antichrist, which we will not go into here), it informs us of the tools Satan uses to carry out deception, which are “power, signs, and lying wonders, and … all unrighteous deception.” What that term “all unrighteous deception” means is this: Satan does not and will not play fair! He will deceive anyone he can at any time he can, and does not care one whit about the eternal price he exacts from his prey.

How then do we keep from being deceived? We must be able to separate the lies from the truth. How do we know what is truth? Read what Jesus says to Pilate in John 18:37b:

“For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

Jesus is the solution to spiritual deception. Believe and rely on His words and teachings to avoid paying that price you never intended to pay, to avoid one day saying, “If only I’d known!”

Next week’s blog will be more about the actual price paid for being spiritually deceived. Until then, I’m praying for you!