The Strategy of Satan

When we play with sin, sin winds up playing with us. Dr. Tony Evans talks about the strategy Satan uses to destroy lives.

You're in charge of it one moment, and then it's in charge of you the next. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, 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. Con artists use temptation and distraction to keep people from figuring out what's really going on. And since the devil is the ultimate con man, today Dr. Evans will discuss why your best defense is a clear picture of the truth. Let's join him. Let's assume that you are going on a journey. You're going on a trip. It's a journey that you have to take.

You don't have an option not to go on this journey. You are informed when you begin the process of entering this journey that this will be a dangerous trip. There will be landmines that you will not be able to see, explosives that you will not detect, quicksand that will be covered over. There will be pits that you'll be able to fall into, and they are all through this journey.

But they will not be obvious to you, but they will be there throughout the journey. But after being told this disappointing, discouraging news about this journey you must take, the person speaking to you gives you a map. And on this map are all the places where the dangers lie. It's written on the map.

It shows you where every landmine is, where every explosive is, where every pit is, where every place that would seek to bring you harm, do you in, and destroy your life. They're all laid out on the map, on the journey you must take. We are all on a journey called life.

Once you were born, you started this journey, and it's a journey you must take. God has given you a map, His Word, and His Word is designed to reveal to you the pitfalls so that you can make the journey. What you think about the map will affect how well you do on the journey. You might decide to ball it up and put it in your pocket and ignore that it's there, or you might decide to look at it but not pay attention to it. You might decide a weekly visit to it is enough.

I'll take my chances the rest of the week on my own. Or you can decide that this map is absolutely essential, because I want to complete this journey and I don't want to be killed by what's on the road undetected. In Genesis chapter 3, we have the strategy of the devil to bring consequences into your life, negative consequences. In verse 1, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Crafty means sneaky.

Crafty means clever or shrewd. The snake, the serpent, was more crafty, sneaky, slithery than any of the other creatures God had made. So when Satan wanted to make his move, he chose something that would be consistent with what he wanted to achieve. He wanted to achieve craftiness, so he chose a crafty creature. Satan knows what to choose and who to choose to slither into your world in order to get your undivided attention.

He knows how to maneuver wine and dine in order to cause you to have a conversation with him. And the serpent said, indeed has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. Please notice a missing word. The serpent was more slithery than any other beast the Lord God had made, but then the serpent said, hath God said, not half the Lord God.

Now that missing word is on purpose. The word God, Elohim, deals with God's power. The word Lord deals with our covenantal relationship with God. So the serpent is basically saying, let's talk about God, but let's leave out relationship.

We can be religious, but not be relational. The creature that Satan used to bring death and consequences to Eve and then Adam and then the human race was a creature over whom men and women were to rule. And watch this, and the creature was good, because the Bible says whatever God created in chapter 1 was good. The strategy is to use something good to create something bad. And isn't that how it works in our works in our lives?

It starts off looking good. But once infiltrated with his purposes, then what was good, even that included God, became bad. So his strategy, first of all, is for you to miss him.

So if you're looking for somebody with horns, a red jumpsuit, and a pitchfork, you're looking for the wrong creature. He's going to use something that is good to create something that is bad so that you can have consequences, negative repercussions. Like an illusionist at a magic show, some of these things these guys can do are just spectacular. And one of the main reasons that they are able to cause us to go, oh wow, is because they do something over here to get our attention while they're doing something else over there.

In other words, they distract us from what they're really about. Satan is not going to tell you up front, I'm here to destroy your future. He's not going to tell you that.

He's going to be crafty, sneaky, slithery. Some of you have gotten what I've recently gotten in my mail from a credit card company. Congratulations. Congratulations.

You have been awarded a $5,000 increase on your credit limit. You are now, because they want to make you feel good, platinum. Who doesn't want to be platinum?

Who doesn't want to feel platinum-ish? And you are a preferred customer. So they've made me, they made me feel good about me. They tell me that I'm worthy to have a higher credit limit. But behind all that, behind all that, and the reason I know what's behind it is because I pay consequences. Some of you know what it is to be paying on something minimum amount, year after year after decade after decade after decade, all because they made you feel good. Gave you a platinum sense of yourself.

You started smelling yourself. So he wants you to miss him. And so he uses something that's crafty and will make even God part of the conversation.

What's the second thing he does? That's in verse 1-2. Indeed, as God said, you should not eat from any tree of the garden. He wants you to think God is holding out on you. He never references all the trees she could eat from. He wants to talk about the one tree that you got a no-no on. That you got a no-no on. He can't make you sin.

Why? Because Colossians 2 says that the death of Christ defeated him. So he cannot force you to sin. Since he can't force you to sin, he makes you want to. Because he can't impose sin on you, he starts messing with your mind. And so the way he does that is deceiving the thought pattern so that we begin to think differently than we ought to, so it becomes our decision influenced by him, not enforced by him. So the second one is God is holding out on you. He's keeping that tree from you when God's whole point of restriction was to enhance freedom. The third strategy, the woman responds, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree, verse 3, which is in the middle of the garden, God said, you shall not eat it or touch it or you're going to die. He said to the woman, you surely will not die. There will be no consequences.

So what is he getting at here? What God said is not going to happen. I know God told you that, but don't buy it.

Strategy. God's Word cannot be trusted. You can't believe that Bible. You can't act on that Bible.

You can't trust that. That was written 2,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago. If you're going into the Old Testament, they don't know what you're dealing with.

They didn't have all this technology. You can't buy that. God's Word cannot be trusted. The Bible says in Romans 3, verse 4, let God be true and every man a liar. Let God be true and everybody who disagrees with him is lying, even if they a good liar. The Bible says in John chapter 8, verse 44, Satan is a liar and he's the father of lies.

Well, there's a couple of things there. Number one, he's a born liar. Anybody know any born liars? If you're a father, you got children.

So he spawns deception. You're not going to die. This is not going to hurt you. You're not going to get into trouble. You're not going to catch a disease. You're not going to live a lifetime in debt.

You're not going to become emotionally unstable. You're not. You're not. You're not. It's okay.

Hey, you got to check out whoever's talking to you whether they're a child of the father of liars. Don't worry. It's not going to be that bad. Probably enough folk in the audience today who know, yeah, it can be that bad.

It really can be that bad. Dr. Evans will come back in a moment to uncover more of the devil's tactics when he continues this message from his new series, Consequences, a look at the cause and effect relationship between disobedience and death and how to break that cycle by recognizing and rejecting the traps Satan puts in our way. Contact us right away and we'll send you all six full length messages in this collection on both CD and digital download as our way of saying thanks when you make a contribution to help us keep this program coming your way. Along with it, we'll include one of Tony's most popular and helpful booklets, 30 Days to Overcoming Emotional Strongholds as a special bonus. This offer won't be available for long so be sure to contact us today at tonyevans.org to make your contribution and your request or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222 where team members are standing by around the clock to help you.

Again, 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that information for you after part two of today's message coming up in just a moment. Stay with us. Every man wants to make a difference, to influence others to impact the world around him and Tony Evans has written a powerful and personal book to show you how. Kingdom and Rising, the long-awaited follow-up to Tony's previous bestseller, Kingdom Man, with over 400,000 copies sold, shows you how to take the next step on your journey to intentionally live as a man of influence right now. Get Kingdom and Rising online at tonyevans.org or at your favorite Christian bookstore today. Together we rise. One of the things most of us have learned on some level is when we play with sin, then sin winds up playing with us.

You're in charge of it one moment and then it's in charge of you the next moment, months, years, decades. Verse 5, for God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good from evil. He says, look, let me explain why God does not want you to eat from this tree. God is selfish. God doesn't want anybody to be like Him but Him. And because God is selfish and knows if you eat this tree you're gonna know as much as God knows, be as smart as God is, He wants to keep you from being like Him. He doesn't want you to be His equal when He knows you could be His equal. Of course, that was Satan's whole goal to be God's equal in Isaiah 14. So God doesn't want you to be His equal and to keep you from being His equal.

He doesn't want you to get that tree because then you won't need Him anymore, because you're gonna know it all yourself. You won't be like God, but you won't need God. You will be able to determine and discover good and evil, but you can leave God out of the equation of the discovery. There is good and evil information, but evil has not entered into the world yet other than the presence of Satan. There is no evil. So what he is saying is there is an information base of knowledge that will discuss things you don't know anything about, and you can get that without God, because you will have become your own God, because you will be like God.

Therefore, you won't need God to discover your own truth. As I tell you often, many of you living with people who want to be like you, parent. They're called teenagers. The problem is they want their independence while still depending. Don't tell me what to do, just feed me. Don't tell me what to do, but you got to get me some clothes.

Don't tell me what to do, but you got to take me where I need to go because I don't got my driver's license yet. So I want to be independent, but I still want you to cover me. See, what we're doing is we're living in a world now who has insisted on independence, and God has said, you got it, and the result of consequences. There was a separation which made the body inactive, but you're going to discover there are different kinds of death. There's economic death, social death, environmental death, relational death. There's all kind of deaths. A lot of us in here this morning are dying, are dead in a certain category because we ate from the independence tree. I don't care how much education you have, what degrees you have, what notoriety you have, what success you have, what money you have, where you live, what car you drive, what clothes you wear, you cannot be like Him.

He is in a class by Himself, and you are to submit all of those categories to Him. When you don't, consequences. And so, so many of us are dying, dying with regret, dying with debt, dying with relationships.

We're just dying, not knowing that's a consequence. Verse 6, his final move. It says, When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

If it feels good, do it. When she saw that the tree was good for food, that tree was always good for food. That's why he told him to eat it.

But here's what he did. He let her see the tree through his eyes, because he's now looking at this tree different than when she talked about it earlier. When she saw the tree was good, she'd been passing that tree in the middle of the living room of their house every day. But when she saw the tree was good for food, why did she look at the tree differently? Because now evil has been dropped from the conversation. See, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but now she's only seeing the good part of the tree. And isn't that how deception works? You only see the good part.

You don't see the outcome. So he increases her physical appetite when she saw the tree was good for food, physical appetite. Then, on top of increasing her physical appetite, he increases her emotional appetite. It was desirable.

That's what he said. It was desirable. She was feeling that tree. She feeling the tree. That tree had gotten a gizzard.

She feeling that tree. Then he increased her intellectual appetite, her intellectual appetite. It can make one wise.

I can really be smart. The danger of so many of us—and we have a fairly educated constituency here—is that you have allowed your degrees to rule over the Word of God. There is a way that seems right to man, Proverbs 14, 12 says, but the end thereof is death.

Proverbs says in Proverbs chapter 3, verses 13 to 18, it says, you are to eat from the tree of life, which will give you wisdom. Because, you know, our biggest problem today, all of us on varying levels, our biggest problem is our lack of discernment. If I would boil it down to our biggest problem, we are not able to discern. So we get impressed with the front stuff that looks impressive, because we haven't discerned the back stuff.

That's the end of the story. So we lack discernment. And that is the one thing that spiritual people have, according to Hebrews chapter 5, verses 11 to 14. Spiritual people know how to discern, it says, between good and evil. They're not faked out, because it looks good up front. They are able to see good and evil.

Why? Because they eat not from the tree of independence, they're eating from the tree of life, which gains wisdom. And so, James 1 sums it up. We read these verses in verses 13 to 16. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth what? Death. It doesn't mean you're going to drop dead physically. It means something's going to die.

There will be an illegitimate separation. So Satan's strategy can be boiled down to one word, deception. Because something holding up is he deceives us. And, you know, we're not picking on anybody, because everybody's been tripped up at some level. But when you find where a trap is, you don't keep walking over it.

So how do we avoid making those same mistakes over and over again? Dr. Evans will have the answer when he comes back to wrap up our program in just a moment. First though, don't forget that if you'd like to review this lesson on your own or pass it along to someone you care about, you can get it as a part of Tony's current audio series, Consequences. As I mentioned earlier, it's available right now as our gift to you in appreciation for your donation to the Urban Alternative, along with a special bonus, Tony's popular booklet, 30 Days to Overcoming Emotional Strongolds. Visit tonyevans.org today to get all the details before time runs out. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or call 1-800-800-3222. Our phone center is open 24-7.

That's 1-800-800-3222. The deadliest, most effective traps are the ones that look harmless. Dr. Evans says that's exactly the way sin works, and tomorrow he'll explain how to avoid becoming a victim.

Right now though, he's back with a final thought for today. So the question on the floor is, do you want to avoid any future consequences? And do you want to see as much mercy as God can give you for carry consequences? Because if you're tired of consequences, you qualify for God's abundant grace. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.