The Expansion of the Battle, Part 2

Once you focus on what you don't have, rather than what God has done, you have just joined enemy territory. Dr. Tony Evans says self-centered dissatisfaction heads you on a path away from the Creator. That is a trick of the devil to cause you to miss the goodness of God. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative.

Magicians use misdirection to shift our focus away from where the trick is actually being done. Well, today Dr. Evans says Satan uses the same technique, and he'll explain how to see beyond the sleight of hand. Let's join him now in the first chapter of Genesis. Verse 26 says, then God said, let us make man in our own image according to our likeness.

Let them rule over the fish of the sea, birds of the sky, cattle, and all the all the earth, and over all every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them, and God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, subdue it, and you rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves over the earth.

I hope you caught that. God comes into Satan's territory, creates man, and says, man, you're in charge here now. Man, the lesser, because no man is equal to an angel, has been made in charge by the voice of God over the greater, over his house called planet earth.

And Satan says, not in this house you don't. That's why chapter 2 is so important. Verse 9. Out of the ground, the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing in the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How many trees are in the midst of the garden?

Two, not one. See, most people talk about the one tree. No, there are two trees. Two trees. One tree gives life, one tree gives death. There's the tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Now what are the instructions? Verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man, put him into the Garden of Eden. Remember, Satan was in the Garden of Eden. Satan was in the Garden of Eden.

He got booted out. He was put on planet earth. He took man, he placed him into the Garden of Eden, he cultivated to keep it, verse 16 says, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat, for in the day you eat of it, the Hebrew says, dying you shall die.

You shall surely, show enough, bank on it, die. We are told in verse 25, God gives him a helpmate, he gives him a woman, because they were to be partners in this endeavor of taking over the earth, and now Satan must move quickly. And he says, has God, now get this, said, so it's about the Word of God, that you shall not eat any tree out of the garden. Please notice the strategy of the devil.

Follow me, folks. God said, every tree that I've created you may freely eat, but of this one tree you may not eat it lest you die. Satan does not bring up all the other trees in the garden that they can freely eat. He only wants to discuss the one restriction that God placed on them. And Satan always does that. He focuses on where God says no, rather than the many times God has said yes.

He gets her to focus on this one tree, this one no, this one limitation. Many of you parents have experienced this at Christmas time, when you go buy toys for your kid, they ask for ten things, you get them nine, they want to know on Christmas morning where is number ten. Rather than, oh no, thank you for one, thank you for two, mama, thank you for three, daddy, thank you for four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, they want to know how come number ten's not here. That is a trick of the devil to cause you to miss the goodness of God.

Do you hear me? The devil's trick is to cause you to miss the goodness of God. That is why the Lord says when you come to him about a need in your life, when something is worrying you, Philippians chapter 4, and you are in despondency and you come to God, he says come to him even though you have a need in your life with thanksgiving. Don't just come saying, God, why haven't you done this for me yet? Start with all the trees in the garden I have provided you. Start with all the good things I have done for you. That's why you always start with praise. Yeah, you have a need, yes, you have limitations, but you don't start there. You start thanking God because there are a lot of trees you've been eating out of, but Satan don't want to do that.

He wants to focus on the restriction, the limitation. Young people, if your parents haven't given you everything you want, if they haven't bought you every kind of tennis shoe that exists, if they haven't gotten you every kind of designer jeans, rather than spending time saying, Mama, how come you didn't buy me this and buy me that? Thank you, Mom and Daddy, that I eat every day. Thank you, I got a roof over my head every night.

Thank you, Leith, I got clothes on my back and shoes for my feet. Because once you focus on what you don't have, rather than what God has done, you have just joined enemy territory. That is precisely what Satan wants.

He wants you to lose sight of the goodness of God. So the woman responds, Are there any limitations? She says, Well, now that I think about it, yeah, there are a thousand trees out here, but there is one I can't touch. Now she's dialoguing with the devil over what God has said no about. So now he's got her discussing God negatively.

And in doing so, she changes God's words three times. Number one, the woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. That's not what God said. God says, From the fruit of the trees of the garden you may freely eat. See, that word freely is a very important word, because what God was saying is all creation is accessible to you at no cost to you. It's freely eat, not just eat. It's eat for free.

Let's tell the rest of the story. God wasn't just good, he was real good. He didn't cost you anything. Secondly, she says, But from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it lest you die. God never said anything about touching it. He never mentioned touching it. All he said was, You can't eat it. Now why is touching it important?

Because now she was turning God into a legalist. God didn't just say you can't eat it. Don't go near it. Don't touch it.

Stay back. God is this mean miser who won't even, he won't, not only won't let you eat it, he can't even let you near enough so you can reach out and feel the bark on the tree. God is tight, narrow.

So you get people interpreting the Christian life. You can't do this and you can't do that. You can't do this and you can't do that. Can't do this and you can't do that. You can't do this.

Can't do that. And now God looks old and stale and he's a miser. Why become a Christian? Because after all, it's only you can't touch this and you can't touch that. And then thirdly, he said, If you do, lest you die. That's not what God said.

God said, If you mess with this tree, you will surely die. Not lest you die. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. You'll come close to death.

No, no, no. You sure enough gonna be deader than dead, you gonna die. Dying, you shall die. Spiritual and physical death.

Follow. Satan now contradicts God's Word in verse 4, and the serpent said to the woman, You're not gonna die? You're not gonna die like dead die.

Inconvenience maybe, but not die. You surely shall not die. That's a direct contradiction of what? The Word of God. You shall not die. He challenges God's veracity, his truthfulness. He says, What God said won't really happen. So it boils down to, is God just talking or is God talking?

Now, why won't you die? Let me tell you the problem, Satan says in verse 5. God knows something.

Let me tell you what God knows. He knows in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be open, you will be like God, knowing good from evil. Now, what did Satan want more than anything else? To be like God. He says, Hey, Satan says to the woman, God has a problem.

Okay, he's jealous. He don't want nobody to be God but him. He wants to be God all by himself. He won't share any of this divinity thing. He wants to be a soul deity in the universe, and I know cuz I tried it, that's why I'm down here talking to you. But let me tell you the secret, girl.

Girlfriend, the answer is in that tree. Because if you take a bite of that tree, he knows you gonna know what he knows. You're gonna be as smart as he is. You're gonna be as intelligent as he is. You're gonna be as swift as he is.

You're gonna be as powerful. How would you not just like to be a creature of God? How would you like to be equal to God? Man, this tree is not a tree anymore. This tree of divinity. And ever since, man has been trying to be like God. Guess what Satan was trying to do? He was trying to erase the creature-creator distinction. You see, the trees in the middle of the garden would always be a reminder that they were creatures, that they had to obey a higher authority, and that's why God puts restrictions. Hey, kids, there's always supposed to be a parent and child distinction.

This is very fun. It's a fundamental rule of theology. We're living in the day of the adultification of children, where the distinctions have been erased, and kids talk to adults like they're adults too, and children are supposed to obey their parents.

We got parents obeying kids. It is the erasing of a distinction. There is always to be clear distinction who the parent is, who the child is. There was always to be a distinction that God is God and you are creation. But what Satan was saying is, but he made you in his image.

You're supposed to be equal. You are to never erase the God-man line. There's only one God and we are not He.

There's only room in the universe for one God. Satan now invites man to join him in his angelic rebellion to erase the distinction by offering the woman forbidden fruit, and he's been offering forbidden fruit ever since. It could be sex, it could be money, it could be power, it could be drugs, but God says don't do it. We say, but it tastes so good. It feels so good. It smells so good.

I should be able to taste it. Why do you turn me down, God? Because God says there's a distinction here. Dr. Evans will return in a moment with more insights about the spiritual battle we're involved in. But first, I want to let you know that today's lesson, The Expansion of the Battle, is part of a two-volume 12-message collection from Tony called Spiritual Warfare. In it, you learn how to tell when the problems you're facing aren't just problems, but spiritual battles you can't possibly win without the help of God's tools and strategies.

As you discover that truth, you'll also see yourself turn from a victim into a victor. We want to help you fight the right battles with the right weapons, so we're offering a copy of the Complete Spiritual Warfare series on CD or instantly downloadable MP3s as our thank-you gift when you make a donation to help keep Tony's teaching on the station. The alternative is a 100% listener-supported broadcast, so we depend completely on you to stay on the air. Visit tonyevans.org to make your donation and let us know where we can send this powerful collection of messages. That's tonyevans.org, or call our resource request line at 1-800-800-3222.

It never closes, so there's no need to wait. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Well, Dr. Evans will return right after this. How do you share the gospel with confidence? What's God's plan for our communities?

Why does the Old Testament matter to your faith today? Those are just a few of the questions you'll get answered when you enroll in the Tony Evans Training Center, an interactive online study experience with Dr. Tony Evans where you can grow in your knowledge of God's Word and learn to advance His kingdom agenda in your life. Visit tonyevanstraining.org to get started today.

That's tonyevanstraining.org. So, let's move on. The woman sees the tree. Now, this is not the first time she's seen this tree, but she's never seen it through Satan's eyes. He don't just want you to see sin.

He wants you to see it through his eyes. He wants to deceive you, and so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it had always been good for food. When it was a delight to the eyes, it had always been a pretty tree, and it was desirable to make you smart. Well, God said it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but she fantasized about the tree.

She developed a passion about the tree. Now, she just had to have the tree, and so she took it, and she ate, and she said, Adam, and he ate. And now, what happened to the earth when Satan fell and it became a garbage dump?

Happens again. Happens again, because now, like Satan was alienated from God, man becomes alienated from God because man has just joined Satan's rebellion. And so, what happened? And the eyes of both of them were open, verse 7, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. The verse tells us that they disobeyed, and when they did, their own fellowship with one another was broken, human tension. Their fellowship with God was broken because it says in verse 8, they hid themselves from him. They're living in fear and shame, verse 7 says.

They knew that they were naked, their innocence is lost. God says, where are you? They give the excuses, and then it finally comes out, we disobeyed you, because of what? I hate to say this because it sounds insensitive, but it's the bottom line. Their feelings took precedence over God's revelation. It boils down to that.

She felt, ooh, gotta have a piece of that tree. And their feelings overruled revelation. Nothing wrong with feelings, but feelings are never to cause you to lose sight of divine revelations.

Feelings must be restricted to God's revelation. This is because the basis of God's, this became the basis of the commandment, thou shalt not covet. What is coveting? Desiring something that belongs to somebody else.

This is the basis of that condemnation. Don't desire something that belongs to God, starting with his glory. Now, Satan has won. In lickety split time, Satan has made his move, and mankind and everybody who would come after him was now belonging to the hands of the evil ones, so God now collects them all together, because we're in a battle. And he pronounces a curse. He says, you're gonna be cursed. He says, the first of all, that, that serpent is gonna be cursed, because that serpent is gonna be on his belly from here on out. Verse 14 says, on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat. He curses the woman, I will put empathy between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. The woman I will blatantly, verse 16 multiply your sorrow and childbirth.

He says, your desire shall be for your husband. To Adam he said, cursed be the ground because of you, and toil you shall eat. Verse 19, by the sweat of your brow you shall eat, and then you're gonna return to the dust. And man is losing the battle on God's behalf. God could have wiped it all out, but God said, no, I will work through the lesser. Adam hears the prophecy, and here's the judgment.

Adam said, God I believe you. I believe that you are going to produce through my wife Eve, her seed, a seed that will crush the devil's head. And the way you know I believe you is by my name I'm gonna give to my wife. She's no longer gonna be woman, she's gonna be Eve. She is gonna be the mother of the living one who will bring about the solution to the satanic battle. Her seed will crush the seed of the devil. God says, I gotta condemn you, you're gonna die, you're going back to the earth for rebelling against me, but there's gonna be a war. Adam says, I believe you, I'm gonna name my wife in light of my belief. She will be the mother of the living who will produce the seed who will fulfill the promise of verse 15, that the seed of this woman will overcome the seed of this serpent, and I believe you. God says in verse 21, you've exercised faith, so what I'm gonna do is take those raggedy leaves off of you that you got covering you and giving you a covering that's my covering.

Your covering won't work, your covering won't solve the problem, but I have a covering that will work and that will fix the problem. God went out and found an animal, doesn't say what kind, slew the animal, shed the animal's blood, took the animal's skin, wrapped the animal's skin around Adam and Eve so that they now had divinely provided covering rather than earthly covering. You see, men have been trying to come up with earthly covering ever since, trying to cover themselves from a holy God.

The only thing that can cover you from a holy God is God's covering. Galatians 4-4 and Galatians 3-16 says, and there was a seed from the woman, and that seed's name was Christ, and that seed from the woman would be born of a woman and come into the world, and that tells us the whole biblical story because in Matthew chapter 4, what does Jesus do? He goes into the wilderness to be tempted to the devil. What does the devil want to talk about? The Word of God. What does Jesus use?

The Word of God, for it is written, and they go back and forth. What's the first temptation? Oh, what you gonna eat?

You can turn these stones into bread. Why? Because the first Adam ain't wrong. Second Adam gonna eat right. The first Adam messed up.

Second Adam is gonna fix it up. So they're up in heaven now. And the question is, what was gonna be our next step? How are we gonna beat this woman?

Because every man is gonna fall to Satan because every man belongs to Satan. So the question is, who's gonna go? The second member of the Trinity says, I'll go, but I need somebody perfect. I'll go, but I need somebody who's willing to be a man. I'll go.

I need somebody to be born of a woman, to come down a woman's birth canal. I'll go. I need somebody to meet him in the wilderness and allow Satan to do with him what he did with the first Adam. Jesus says, I'll go. I need somebody who'll be willing to go to the other tree.

The first tree got him kicked out of the garden. I need somebody who'll hang on another tree to bring him back in the garden. Jesus said, I'll go. Then I need somebody to rise from the dead to demonstrate I've got victory over. Jesus said, I'll go. And then I need somebody who's gonna empower sinful man to become like me. Jesus said, I'll go. And in the nick of time, Jesus was born of a virgin, came into this world. Why?

So you and I could get back into the garden. Jesus Christ is the second Adam who will do what the first Adam failed to do. We have a Savior, the man Jesus Christ. He is our Deliverer. He is our Savior. He is our solution. He is our covering.

He is our hope. Dr. Tony Evans will return in a moment with some good news to conclude today's message. First though, I want to remind you that Journey with Jesus, the popular film starring Dr. Evans, Crystal, Priscilla, and Anthony Evans, is available to stream online, but only for a limited time. In Journey with Jesus, you'll travel the streets, fields, and synagogues where Jesus walked, visiting the locations where some of the most powerful events recorded in the Bible took place.

Previously shown in theaters around the country, you now have the opportunity to bring this extraordinary film right into your own home. Find out more about streaming Journey with Jesus at tonyevans.org. And while you're there, be sure to look into getting a copy of Tony's current teaching series called Spiritual Warfare, a set of 12 messages that will help you readjust your spiritual armor.

It contains today's message as well as plenty of material we won't have time to present on the air. As I mentioned earlier, it's yours with our thanks when you make a donation toward Tony's ministry. Just visit tonyevans.org for details, or call us at 1-800-800-3222. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222, or online at tonyevans.org. In any war, if your commander isn't smarter than your enemy, you've got a problem. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans will explain how trusting God's leadership can keep you from becoming a spiritual prisoner of war.

Right now, though, he's back with a final challenge to wrap up today's program. Let me give you the good news in closing. If you know Jesus Christ, you're on the winning side now. If you know Jesus Christ, the curse has been lifted. If you know Jesus Christ, you don't go from dust to dust.

You go from glory to glory. If you know Jesus Christ, the Bible says you'll never die because of the absence from the body and to be present with the Lord. If you know Jesus Christ, he's covered you.

Why? Because you put on his covering the blood of Jesus Christ. If you don't know Jesus Christ, run to the Savior. Run to the cross of Calvary. Find in him the answer to your battle. Some of you are in a battle now and you're losing it. Come to Jesus and find in him the hope you need to be victorious. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.