MINISTER: PASTOR OLUSOLA OGIDAN
13TH OCTOBER, 2020
In the course of this teaching, it has been established that Eve was deceived by the serpent (2 Corinthians 11:2-3) and that treachery is one of the devices that Satan uses to push believers off-track. Note that the essence of deception is to pull you away from your standing position to a wrong course. Today, we will take a step further to see the instruments the devil uses to deceive men.
- Sweet Words (Romans 16:18)
The devil uses eloquent words and analytical rhetoric to deceive the simple. Rhetoric is the act of using language to persuade or impress others. There are orators, who are good at using very sensational speaking to capture the hearts of men. When Paul said he had not come to preach the gospel of Christ with ‘excellency of speech’ (1 Corinthians 2:1), he meant he has not come to sweet-talk people with words. One of the problems of the church today is that she seeks for orators. Nevertheless, we have heard stories of men who lived years ago, who were not good with speech but had God’s power manifest in their lives and ministries. This is not to say that God cannot use eloquent men but the strength of the gospel is not in eloquence.
- Fair Speeches (Romans 16:18)
Fair speech is worse than sweet words. With fair speeches, you make a person have a false perspective of their personality. They use flattery to deceive men. They make people feel cool and nice when they are not. Peter mentioned in 2 Peter 1:16 that what we have come to believe as Christians was not cunningly devised fables, rather they are the reality of the existence of Christ which were experienced and have been penned down by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. However, today Satan and his agents push fables and vain words to believers in order to pull them off the right ground where they stand. Examples of this are preachers who flatter just for financial gain (Philippians 3:19).
- Enticing Words (Colossians 2:4)
Enticing words are arguments, persuasive words, intelligent reasoning capable of causing one to sway from course. Here, we are talking of wisdom, intelligence and knowledge. In Colossians 2:8, Paul mentions philosophy and vain deceit as the Devil’s instrument of deception. Philosophy as mentioned by Paul meant earthly wisdom and intellectuality focused on deceiving men and this intellectuality produced by human wisdom is never spirit-based.
- Signs and Miracles (Matthew 24:24; Revelation 13:14)
The devil tries to deceive men with supernatural signs and miracles. Satan takes deception to a high level such that it looks like the truth. A man is susceptible to this trick of deception when he does not understand that the real source of power is God. Many just assume that any supernatural operation that solves their problems must be from God without realizing that Satan can also move supernaturally and having made them to believe, leads them into error. An example was Simon (Acts 8:9-11).
- Lust (1 John 2:16-17)
This is the devil’s grand instrument of deception. It is evident that everything that God created in garden was good and pleasant (Genesis 2:9, 3:6) but the problem was that Eve saw pleasantness in what God had tagged bad. In essence, lust is simply seeing goodness in what God has said ‘No’ to. In Eve’s deception, lust was a principal thing. As a believer, if you can fight lust, you can successfully fight deception.
Lust cannot operate without knowledge. You can only lust after a thing that you know exists. Eve would not have fallen for the deceit of the serpent if she had not known about the tree. Satan successfully furnished her with information about the tree which made it easy for her to eventually see that the tree was pleasant to the eyes. Eve was wrongly informed and civilized by the devil till she ended up craving for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which was against the will and instruction of God.