Sermonette: Poles Apart

The Ploys of Satan
#571s
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 10-Aug-02; 23 minutes

Recently, I picked up a C. S. Lewis book. I do not know how many of you are aware of C. S. Lewis, but he was a professor of Middle Age Literature at Oxford University over in England. And when he reached his own middle age, he was converted; he became an Anglican. He had been an atheist before.

He spent the rest of his life not only pursuing his interests in history and literature, but as an apologist for Christianity. What that means—it does not mean that he said he was sorry that we were all Christians—an apologist is one who explains to the world some of the doctrines, and just the way Christianity is; they put it in their own words. They try to give reasons for this way of belief and this way of living.

Well, he wrote a book called Mere Christianity. The name of that book would make it sound like Christianity just does not mean very much; like it is just a little thing. But that is not what he meant. He meant that these are the simple, basic aspects of Christianity. He wanted to explain them in a rather brief book.

And I quite enjoyed the book, maybe less for his doctrinal explanations, but for his writing. He was a master of prose, and he knew how to turn a phrase, and get people interested in this sort of thing. That is one of the things that makes him a great apologist, because he makes people interested in what he is actually saying. That goes a long way in getting people to continue to read the book.

He does a very fine job of explaining the more basic doctrines like God's existence, sin, the need for a Savior. However, we have some trouble with him over certain other doctrines where he takes a typical Protestant line on these things. But be that as it may, he has a knack for coming up with interesting illustrations and analogies, and philosophical ideas and explanations, so that people can understand. He comes at it from one direction or another, and maybe one of those directions will really hit a nerve and take you on to understanding.

Now one of these things is something that I came across just this past week. And I want to read just a bit of a paragraph. This is on page 161 of Mere Christianity. He writes:

The devil always sends errors into the world in pairs, pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worst. You see why, of course. He relies on your extra dislike of the one error, to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal, and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

I would like to pursue this thought in the sermonette and look at the truth of it from God's Word.

Let us begin in Revelation 12, verse 9. Herbert Armstrong often referred to this verse to highlight one particular point about Satan's deceptions. I do not think I will be going to any scriptures today that are in any way unusual or ones that you have not gone through before.

Revelation 12:9 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.

Mr. Armstrong emphasized, “Who deceives the whole world,” with a special emphasis on whole. Not just part of us, not just most of us, but all of us have been deceived, and many of us greatly.

It takes an act of God to bring us out of such deception. He wrote a booklet right toward the end of his life called, A World Held Captive. Remember the book with the world behind prison bars. We are in prison down here with our captor; he deceives us, he deceives the world. No one has been untouched by his efforts to delude us about God and His way of life. That is his whole purpose—to trip us up, to find some way to keep us from attaining to the reward that we should have.

So, this verse clearly identifies Satan the Devil with the cunning serpent in the Garden of Eden, where his campaign of disinformation began against mankind. And ever since then he has been trying to trip us up.

Before we go back to Genesis 3, however, I would like to stop in II Corinthians 2. Keep in mind what C. S. Lewis said. This is what we are getting back to, that the Devil often tries to get us to try to make a choice between two opposites.

II Corinthians 2:11 . . . lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.

Paul was alluding to the fact that we, having our mind opened by God, have the ability to see the way Satan works. And once we know the way he works, we can spot it. Forewarned is forearmed, as it were. And so, once we know what his methods are, what his tricks are, then we can be prepared to defend against them. And this is one of those methods—one of those tricks—one of those things where he gives us a choice between two extremes. And God's way is maybe not either. Or it may be somewhat closer to the one or the other, but Satan tries to get us all the way in one ditch or the other, rather than finding the truth, which may be somewhere in between.

Let us get back to Genesis 3. This is the famous seduction scene of the Bible.

Genesis 3:1-5 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" 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.'" Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

In a subtle way, here, Satan begins to use this choice between opposites with Eve. Like I said, it is subtle. He does not say, “This is one, and this is the other.” He does it by taking what God said in Genesis 2:16-17, and twisting it, presenting it as an either/or choice.

Genesis 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree [listen to the positive way that He says this!] of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

What God basically said was, “Look at all this I have given you to consume. But there is just one that I would wish you not to take of; leave that one alone. So I give you 99.9 of the trees here. Just leave that 0.1 alone.

Now notice how Satan says it. Chapter 3, verse 1, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” Does that not sound like he said, “You aren’t able to eat of every tree of the garden?” He made it sound like God had withheld something from them! It is just the way it comes across that God had done something that really is a bad thing, not a good thing. He [Satan] made it negative rather than positive. He makes it seem like God is cheating them of something. Rather than bountifully blessing them, He is actually cheating them.

Satan’s ploy comes down to what we would call all-or-nothing. God said, “All but one.” Satan makes her think He said nothing but these.

Do you see the way the emphasis is? God is positive, Satan comes through negative. He makes a stand—Satan does. He makes a stand on one pole and deceives Eve into believing that God is on the opposite pole. He draws her over, as C. S. Lewis mentioned, with arguments that persuade her to dislike God's way, which really, the truth of the matter is, it is neither unlimited freedom nor total subjection. It is somewhere in the middle.

So he plays this game of opposites with Eve, making her think that God is harsh, unloving, and ungiving, when really He had given them everything but this one tree. So he made God look like a stingy old bear when he was willing to give them all that He had offered and more.

Let us see how this works theologically. Go to Romans 2, verse 4. We are going to skip through several chapters just reading a few verses here and there. Romans is one of the great theological epistles where Paul was laying out the basics of the way God works with humanity, and why He works the way He does. But this particular one I want to pick out is His approach toward law as well as grace.

Romans 2:4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

This verse says that God is the one that leads us there. We are not going to repent on our own. God is working. Go down to verse 13.

Romans 2:13 for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

Here is another part of it. That just because God has done all this for us, there is something we must do as well. We must keep up the justification by doing what God wants us to do. That is very simplified. I do not want to go into any more detail on that, but that is the gist of it.

Romans 3:21-31 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.

Let us go to chapter 6, verses 12 to 18. He says,

Romans 6:12-18 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

One more small section in chapter 7, beginning in verse 12,

Romans 7:12-14 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.

Now these are just a smattering of verses that present this tension between law and grace. But we know, it is very clear, that we are saved and justified by grace, which enables us then go back to Ephesians 2:8-10 that being justified by grace enables us to do good works, which is what we are being prepared to do. It is very simple. And part of those works is being able then to keep the laws of God, to please Him, and to assist in forming Christ's image in us. If we go without law altogether, we are not going to end up like Jesus Christ, which is the goal that we are trying to accomplish here.

We went over all that because I want you to see what Satan does. He gets Christians to argue over grace or law, rather than grace and law. He wants us on one pole or the other. Either we are all for grace or we are all for law. But the sad part of it is, on either side is sin and death, because if you go over to the side that is just grace, you end up breaking the law and coming out from under grace back under law. And if you try to justify yourself by law, it is total self-righteousness, and God will not accept self-righteousness into His Kingdom. He wants the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not our righteousness, which is as filthy rags as Isaiah says.

So both ditches end up at the same place: Condemnation, rather than the proper combination of the two—justification by grace, and keeping the law to please our God, to do what He says, to be prepared for whatever it is He wants us to do in His Kingdom.

So if we put them together, they lead us to eternal life, perfection, holy righteous character, and whatever it is that God has in store for us in the future.

Another theological argument where there are these two ditches, two poles apart, is God's nature. Is God one? Or is He three? What is it? Are Christians monotheistic? Or are they polytheistic? Is there one God? Or three in one? Is there unity? Or trinity? To us, the truth is neither. We think God is a Family. And right now there are two Persons, God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ; but They are one in character and purpose.

Another one is predestination versus free choice. I think you understand that this is not an either/or proposition. There are elements of both in the calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification process. That is what we have been seeing over the past year or two. God does a great deal of the work, but there is that infinitesimal bit that we do. That is why God gave us choice, because we can muck up the whole works if we ourselves do not agree to it. Too much emphasis on one or the other distorts the process. So we must study and meditate and pray for God to reveal the proper perspective on it, which is His, not one ditch or the other.

So do you see the danger, now, of taking extreme positions on things? Satan does this with our emphasis on things all the time. Should we preach the gospel or feed the flock? What is the answer? You do both as God opens the door to do them.

Should we preach prophecy or steer clear of it? No, we should preach prophecy, but we should make sure we understand that God will reveal these things in their due course, and not take dogmatic positions on them.

Should we think we are close to the end or still have a few decades to go? Should we run the gun lap or plod like marathon runners? Where are we? Well, the answer is what Mr. Armstrong said, “You hope that it is tomorrow, but you act as if it were a long way off.” You are prepared if it should be tomorrow that Christ returns.

So Satan wants us to choose an extreme position on these and many other issues, and fight tooth and toenail for our side against our own people, our own brethren.

God, on the other hand, wants us to come to the truth while living peaceably, honorably, and righteously with all men.

Let us close in Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4:17-24 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

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