In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it and he said, “It is good.” There was one thing missing, God wanted a family, so he created man in his own image. The man he created, Adam, was given the rulership of the earth as the son of God. It did not take long for a deceiver to appear on the scene, a nemesis, who sought to usurp both God and his heir and through his temptation of man did just that. He deceived, man fell, and sin, death and destruction were brought into the world. His goal and his tactics have not changed.
Today the sons of Adam are under the same onslaught of deception of the evil one. As he questioned Eve, “Has God said?”, he is still sewing doubt in the minds of men. He has challenged God’s creation in the form of evolution, a ludicrous theory that says nothing exploded and created everything! Today, he continues to cast doubt about God himself, the truth of His word, heaven, hell, sin, and eternity. It is tragedy that millions have listened to the same deceiver that lied to Adam and Eve.
However, he is not satisfied to deceive the deniers of God, he has set his set his sights on a greater target. His sights are set on those who seek God. He cannot use his nefarious lies denying God’s existence against those who seek God so he must use a cleverer deception. He must create lies and deceptions against the truth of God’s redemption of man, he calls it religion. God has made it clear from the beginning that man’s sin must be atoned for so that man can be redeemed and this atonement only comes through the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:22). This shedding of blood must be from a perfect sacrifice. In the Old Testament, it was a spotless lamb, which only pointed to the real lamb, Jesus Christ, the son of God and the lamb that would take away the sins of the world.
God has made it clear beginning with Abraham that his salvation can only come through faith, trusting totally in God’s perfect sacrifice. Enter the deception that says you can accept God’s sacrifice but still you must “work” to gain God’s redemption. This is nothing new for it began with Cain who brought “the works of his hand” while Abel brought the shed blood of the lamb. God rejected Cain’s offering and still does so today. The lie is that it is your good works that gets you into heaven. Paul spells it out clearly in his letter to Titus: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” In warns us in Galatians 1 that any other message is a false gospel. Ephesians 2 assures that no one can be saved by his own religious works, it can only be received as a “gift” of God and it is the greatest gift in the world!
