The Truth Will Set You Free
Krambach and Old Bar Bible Churches
Sunday, 11 February 2024
OT: Genesis 3:1-15
NT: Romans 8:28-39
Bob, the butcher, had just one chicken left in his freezer and he was keen to sell it.
A customer came in, wanting a good size chicken for Sunday dinner because her two boys were coming home from uni that weekend.
Bob said, ‘I have just what you need’ and he went to the freezer, brought out the last chicken and put it on the scales. ‘There you are,’ he said, ‘one kilo exactly.’ The lady asked, ‘It looks a bit small, do you have anything else?’
Bob took the chicken back into the freezer and then came back with the same chicken. He put it on the scales and said, ‘This one’s 1.25k, but I’m happy to give it to you at the same price as the other.’
‘Well, thank you very much, said the customer, ‘in that case I’ll take them both.’
Just when he least expected it, Bob, the butcher, had been caught in his lie.
In a survey carried out in the UK a few years ago by Richard Wiseman, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire, 8% of the respondents claimed never to have lied.
I find that very hard to believe. Now this was just a survey, not a study.
Other work has invited people to keep a detailed diary of every conversation that they have, and of all of the lies that they tell, over a two-week period. The results suggest that most people tell about two important lies each day, that a third of conversations involve some form of deception and that four in five lies remain undetected.
In our Old Testament reading, Eve wasn’t able to detect the lie that she was being told, and no wonder, she was being deceived by the best in the business.
Who is that? John tells us in Revelation 12:7-9: ‘And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.
The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.’
We’re told in Genesis 3:1, ‘Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ’
In that conversation, the first thing that Satan does is introduce an element of doubt: ‘Did God really say…?’
I do feel a bit sorry for Eve – innocent and naïve – up against the best con artist in the business. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Satan vs Eve. He knows all the tricks, because he invented them. This is what Jesus said to the disbelieving Jews: ‘You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.’
Satan gets Eve alone and whispers in her ear. He mocks what God has said and speaks with seeming authority, ‘You will not surely die’ and he gives a plausible explanation, ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
Eve must have been curious, because she’s come to where the tree in question is and she’s standing there looking at it. The forbidden fruit is appealing in many ways, not only is it (v.6) ‘good for food and pleasing to the eye’ but wait, there’s more … not steak knives, but the gaining of ‘wisdom.’
The wise thing would have been not to have listened to Satan in the first place. There are lots of lessons we can learn about resisting Satan and temptation from this. When we look at it in black and white, it’s easy to see where Eve went wrong. Not just Eve, of course, Adam as well. He followed Eve’s example and Satan had another win.
8% in that survey might say they never lie, but I can tell you that 100% of people are sinners, because that’s what the bible tells us. Romans 3:23 says, ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’
And what’s more, we continue to struggle with sin. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 7:18,19: ‘I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.’
We can see what Eve could have / should have done differently, so what can we learn from it?
With hindsight we’d all be experts in lots of subjects, but how do you think you would have gone in the same situation? Have you ever been conned or scammed?
Actually, - keep this fairly quiet! – I’ve come into possession of some recently discovered rainbow crystals from the rain forests of Nigeria that warn you whenever someone is trying to scam you.
Obviously, there are lots of people, mainly big business, who don’t want you to know about them, but I think everyone should know who is being honest and who isn’t. So, I’m willing to sacrifice them at an extremely low price, but you’ll have to be quick because they’re in great demand. An opportunity like this only comes once in a lifetime, all you have to do is see me after the service with all your credit card and banking details and passwords.
Well, it would have been sensible for Eve to have stayed away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the first place, but she spent some time standing there admiring it. If there’s a particular sin that is our downfall, doesn’t it make sense to try to stay away from placing ourselves in a situation where it might occur? If we can’t resist buying some particular food when we see it, we shouldn’t go down that aisle at the supermarket.
Eve being tempted when she was alone does point out the strength that comes in worshipping together. We best resist Satan when we support each other. The fact that you’re here, fellowshipping with other believers, is of tremendous value to you in your Christian walk and to me in mine. I think it goes a step further when we get involved in mid-week study and prayer groups as well.
The best lies have an element of truth, and Satan’s argument to Eve had just that. He told her she wouldn’t die if she ate the forbidden fruit.
That fruit was not necessarily an apple, by the way. In the 4th century AD, Pope Damascus ordered his leading scripture scholar, Jerome, to translate the Hebrew bible into Latin.
When Jerome was translating the fruit, he decided upon a word for the translation that meant both ‘fruit’, but more commonly ‘apple’, and ‘evil’. It was a pun, but you can see how it was a good choice. And in case you’ve ever wondered about it, the term ‘Adam’s apple’, is a reference to the forbidden fruit being stuck in Adam’s throat.
Anyway, there was some truth in Satan’s statement as Eve didn’t fall down dead immediately. Adam saw that Eve had eaten the fruit, apparently without harm, so he followed her example. As punishment, Adam and Eve were then expelled from the Garden of Eden; their lives changed dramatically for the worse and sometime afterwards they both died, as foretold.
Adam followed Eve’s example, and we do have to be careful what we do as Christians, so that we don’t lead others into sin. In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul talks about eating food that has been sacrificed to idols.
Though it isn’t something that resonates with us, in the 1st Century AD it was a very real problem to some Christians. Paul had no issue with it himself, he could eat such food with a clear conscience. His reasoning was simple, v.4: ‘… there is no God, but one’, and ‘an idol is nothing at all in the world.’ Food offered to idols is nothing special because idols are nothing.
However, Paul acknowledges that eating such food is problematic for some who think they will be defiled by it, so he concludes, ‘Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.’ (1 Corinthians 8:13)
Sin can look good. That was this lady’s downfall – she looked too good for her claims. Her name is Belle Gibson, you may remember her. She rose to fame in 2013 when she claimed she beat brain cancer by eliminating gluten and dairy from her diet. She quickly amassed a following and was even named Australia's most inspirational woman by Elle Magazine.
She launched a diet app and book based on her experiences and made hundreds of thousands of dollars, which she claimed was donated to various cancer charities.
In July 2014, she announced on social media that she had been diagnosed with two more forms of cancer, but her lies started unravelling when the money promised to charities never arrived.
An innocent comment from a TV host also made the public realise something was off. A presenter said Gibson looked incredibly healthy for someone with brain cancer - and she was right. She looked too good for it to be true.
It was revealed in March 2015 that Gibson never had cancer to begin with. She was eventually found guilty on several counts of fraud.
Well, what should Eve have done, what should Adam have done, when they were tempted? Why do we call ourselves Krambach/Old Bar Bible Church? Because the bible – God’s Word – is the foundation of all our beliefs, it’s what we follow. Adam and Eve didn’t have the bible, they had something even better: God conversing directly with them in person, so to speak.
We check God’s word to make sure we’re doing the right thing. Adam and Eve had God’s direct word. God had said to Adam in Genesis 2:16,17, and he had made it clear in no uncertain terms, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’ That directive they should have followed.
How sorry they must have been afterwards, but it was too late – their disobedience resulted in punishment.
Satan didn’t get off scot free, either. For a start, the vehicle he used – the serpent – was cursed. As the bible commentator, Matthew Henry, puts it: ‘The devil’s instruments must share in the devil’s punishments.’
The serpent had convinced Eve to eat the fruit, now the serpent had to crawl and eat dust. Where the serpent and Eve had been familiar and friendly, now the serpent would become an object of hate and fear to Eve and her descendants. Ask Google about animals that we fear the most, and you’ll find that snakes are always on the list.
V.15 says, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
That’s true of the serpent in a very literal sense. The other day I went into some long grass to check a fence, and immediately something slithered away from me. I have since seen a brown snake near the same spot.
When I do go to repair that fence, I’ll make sure I wear long boots because a snake is more likely to strike near my feet. I’ll also take a long shovel with me and I’ll be aiming for the head.
The principal agent in this, though, is Satan. With the taking of the forbidden fruit a continual struggle commenced between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, a conflict between grace and corruption in the hearts of God’s people, a struggle between truth and lies.
Those lies still abound.
There are three main lies that Satan wants you to believe. The first is not that God does not exist, but that he, the devil, does not exist. Many more people believe in God than believe in the devil, and that allows the devil to have a field day. Satan is the father of lies. He won’t appear in a black suit with horns, a tail and a pitchfork. To Eve, Satan was in the guise of a snake, a friend, a confidant, to others it will be in another guise, even, as we’re told in 2 Corinthians 11:14, ‘an angel of light.’
Peter says, Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…’ (1 Peter 5:8,9a) If you don’t believe in him in the first place, how can you resist him?
The second lie is that you aren’t who God says you are. This lie makes you doubt yourself, it makes you wonder whether God actually loves you, whether he has a plan for you. It’s the same doubt that Satan whispered into Eve’s ear in the Garden of Eden, ‘Did God really say …’ If Satan can sew enough doubt in someone’s mind that God is just unpleasable, that we can never be worthy, that we can never match up to God’s standards, then can you see how the devil wins?
But if God has chosen you, it’s because he loves you. In him you become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and our previous failures, our weaknesses, all those things become irrelevant. When Satan sows seeds of doubt about who we really are in Christ we can proudly say with Paul: ‘… neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:38,39)
The third lie is that you’ve really blown it this time. That’s what Satan wants you to believe, and do you know why this lie is so effective? Because in actual fact it’s true. But Satan twists truths into lies. The simple truth is that we will never be worthy of God’s love in and of ourselves. As I said earlier, we are all sinners, we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. That’s true, and that’s where Satan leaves it. His is a lie of omission. He tells us one part of the truth, but not the next most important part: Jesus died on the cross to pay for every sin and every mistake, every turning of our backs on God, large, small, past, present, future.
The great reformer Martin Luther once had a dream in which he stood on the day of judgement before God. Satan was there to accuse him and when the books were opened he pointed to transgression after transgression of which Luther was guilty.
Luther’s heart sank in despair but then he remembered the Cross and turning upon the devil he said, ‘There is one entry which thou hast not made, Satan’. ‘What is that?’ asked the devil. ‘It is this,’ answered Luther. ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin’. (1 John 1:7)
In the Garden of Eden, the punishment of Satan was also spelt out, it paralleled that of his agent, the serpent: ‘… he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’ (v.15)
The father of lies has, in many guises been striking at the heel, leading a rebellion against God, and sending Jesus to die. But there is a counter to lies – the truth. ‘What is truth?’ Pilate asked’ (John 18:38) after speaking to Jesus.
‘Jesus answered”, in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’
The truth is that Satan’s fate was sealed – the crushing of the head – when Jesus went to the cross. With his sacrifice, Jesus, the son of Adam (see his genealogy in Luke 3), rectifies the sin of Adam and brings about restoration of our relationship with God.
As Matthew Henry puts it, ‘Christ’s heel was bruised when his feet were pierced and nailed to the cross …But, while the heel is bruised on earth, it is well that the head is safe in heaven. … by his death [Christ] gave a fatal blow to the devil’s kingdom, a wound to the head of this beast, that can never be healed.’
What is truth? Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8: 31b, 32)
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