Tag: "Too Good to Be True?"

Genesis 3:1-6 The Message

3 The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”

^2-3 The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It’s only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t even touch it or you’ll die.’”

^4-5 The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.”

⁶ When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.

The Word of God for the Children of God.

Adeste Fideles! Laeti Triumphantes! Venite Adoremus! Dominum.

Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

Few people have not been here: Once you received some mail from a popular sweepstakes company claiming you had already won a $$$$ grand prize.

Your mind almost instantly races at all the possibilities that someone is going to knock on your door, put a camera in front of your face and hand you a check for some gargantuan amount of money per week for the rest of your natural life.

Then the excitement which is now locked into your mind is likely to race ahead and tell you, and show you, all that you could and should do with the winnings.

You look at raising Power Ball and Mega Millions Jackpot figures on a billboard or when you are in your favorite super market doing your weekly shopping for your family and you walk over to the customer service area and buy your tickets.

You are undoubtedly thinking – well, there will always be a winner, a someone who will suddenly have their mundane struggling lives changes in one instant.

You have this back and forth conversation with yourself – “someone has to win it, someone will win it, maybe, just this one maybe, this one today, it will be me.”

Never mind that the calculated odds that it will be you is probably hundred of billions to one if not higher.

But not caring one iota about the odds, you throw your money into the world.

What, and how much have you gained?

What and how much have you lost?

What have you just been reminded of?

Who is doing the reminding?

Spouse, Children, Mortgage Company, Lawyers, your Boss, your Enemies?

God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit?

The Lord and Master of ALL Lies – The Serpent, Satan, the Devil, Lucifer?

Yourself countlessly repeating – “Does this sound too good to be true? Did it sound to good to be true? Do I care if it is or if it sounds too good to be true?”

“Yield Not to Temptation For Temptation is Sin?”

Well, from the world’s perspective it is too good to be true.

Not that one day you might just win for yourself that Mega Millions Jackpot – in which case I offer you my utmost congratulations on such a windfall of income.

God Bless you as you navigate your new found riches with the tax folks at IRS and every one of those “relations” that’ll suddenly come out of the woodwork.

But, we are humanity with too many faults, fragilities, frailties, and failures to count in countless thousands, millions of lifetimes – we cannot help ourselves.

Things That Seem Good, Even Too Good to Resist.

Genesis 3:6 The Message

⁶ When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.

As Eve suddenly found herself gazing longingly at the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, it’s fairly easy to understand just why she was drawn to it.

Delightful to the eyes and desirable for wisdom, it was too tempting to resist.

Many of us can relate to Eve’s dilemma as we encounter things that seem good—too good to resist, too good pass up – “just that once – but never ever again.”

But in the end, some of those seemingly irresistible good things lead us away from the intended path God has for us – leads us to run away, hide in shame.

And, the delight of our eyes can leave us with an unsavory mess of unfavorable consequences we are seldom in any mood other than embarrassed to explain.

One practical example would be buying a car.

You set out to replace your old, unreliable car for something newer.

However, the moment you step onto the lot, your budget-friendly goals are met with stars-in-your-eyes options, offer the latest and greatest everything.

Those brand new, shiny vehicles are a delight to the eyes.

And there is a pull for your affections that’s difficult to resist.

Another practical example is buying your first house or your next house or your final retirement house.

Everything about that home is advertised to sell, to maximize its market value so the seller can achieve the very best price possible and can move on with life.

To avoid unforeseen, unnecessary repair costs we do our inspection homework and negotiate with the realtors for the best price for all the parties concerned.

Another practical example is “what about planning for realistic career plans, all the promises of the “worlds best job and company, that next great promotion?”

You want more for your family, you want to be the best provider, mother and the best father, so what are you willing to risk and just how soon do you risk it.

The thing is, there are myriads and myriads of temptations that seem so good, then too soon, will often lose their appeal (and value) once you give in to them.

That so called dream job – how did that pan out, were all of the big promise real or were they so much efforts at entrapment, manipulation, fakery and fraud?

That top-of-the-line vehicle depreciates the second you drive off the lot.

And the hefty monthly payment soon becomes a burden you wish you didn’t have to carry.

The cost of that first repair bill, the cost of the monthly mortgage, the cost of the utilities and the homeowners insurance will soon bring reality to the front.

What always seems so good, too good, at the moment almost always opens your eyes to the undesirable consequences that reality will always soon bring with it.

I wonder how many times Eve thought about that fateful moment in the garden.

Did she and Adam lay awake at night, talking about how different things could have been—should have been? 

Genesis 3:6 describes the battle of the flesh—the tendency to follow our own desires.

Yet, there was another element to Eve’s dilemma that happened right before she considered the forbidden fruit.

How easily the enemy slithered in without warning and disrupted her thoughts.

As she went about her day, without a single care in the world, the serpent swept in with a single question, slithered right by her side, opened the conversation.

The life of contentment Eve had was suddenly disrupted by a hint of doubt.

And it’s no different for us.

We smilingly go about our lives doing just fine until one thought, one question, one suggestion, one crisis, suddenly offers us something too good to pass up.

Eve’s story can be an effective “how to avoid trouble” guide for us; an example of how NOT to listen to the whisper of the enemy – if we recognize the enemy.

Even when something seems so good, we can (and should) stop, take a moment to pray and ask for God’s wisdom, and Jesus’ invaluable lessons on living life.

His Holy Spirit will then either confirm that it is good, or He will open our eyes to the truth of the situation – if we’ll automatically acknowledge and trust God.

Imagine if Eve had recognized Satan’s question as a diversion from the truth.

If she would have first instinctively stepped away from the situation and called out for God’s help, talked with God, imagine what a different world it would be!

The next time something seems too good to resist, allow yourself some time, space to ask for God’s direction – one good course of action you won’t regret.

The Enticement of Evil

Genesis 3:1The Message

3 The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”

Let us move on to consider the strategy that the Tempter employs.

This is most instructive because it is exactly the strategy he employs when he appears as an angel of light to us—not that we shall see visions of shining beings—but the charismatic and charming personality that he exemplifies, the character in which he appears, is the same now as then – he is an angel of light.

Scripture makes clear that the devil can also appear as a roaring lion, meaning he can strike in tragedy, in sickness, or in physical evil, as he struck Job or Paul, with his thorn in the flesh, which Apostle Paul called the messenger of Satan.

When he appears as a lion, he can instantaneously strike fear into our hearts.

But his most effective strategy is to appear as subtle, someone good, someone attractive, something or someone who highly appeals to us as an angel of light.

If you learn how to recognize the strategy of the devil, you will find that he invariably employs the same tactics.

There is a sense in which he is very limited, and doesn’t vary his tactics widely.

Sometimes we feel too easily disarmed, too easily feel as if we shall never learn how to anticipate the devil.

But we can learn.

Paul said that he was not ignorant of the devil’s devices (2 Corinthians 2:11).

If we learn how he works, we can easily learn to detect him in our lives.

James has described this strategy very plainly in one or two verses.

He says, … each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death (James 1:13-15 The Message).

^13-15 Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: named sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.

There is the strategy of the devil.

He always approaches us in the same three stages, and those steps are outlined clearly in this text.

His first tactic is to arouse desire.

James says that every man is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed (James 1:14).

Each step the devil takes with us is always to arouse desire to do wrong, to create an insatiable hunger, an irresistible lure, or enticement toward evil.

The second is to permit intent to form an act to occur.

James describes this: after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin (James 1:15).

Notice that the symbol he employs is that of conception and birth.

There is first a gestation period in temptation, for once desire is aroused, there occurs a process within which sooner or later issues in sin, an act that is wrong.

The third stage is that the devil immediately acts upon the opportunity afforded by the evil act to move in and to produce results that Scripture describes as death—sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. 

This is the devil’s ultimate aim.

Jesus said that he was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).

He delights in mangling, smashing, twisting, destroying, blighting, blasting.

We can see his activity present everywhere; it is going on around us, in our own lives, in the lives of others, in the lives of vulnerable children and their parents.

These are the works of the devil, says the Scripture (1 John 3:7-8 The Message).

^7-8 So, my dear children, don’t let anyone divert you from the truth. It’s the person who acts right who is right, just as we see it lived out in our righteous Messiah. Those who make a practice of sin are straight from the Devil, the pioneer in the practice of sin. The Son of God entered the scene to abolish the Devil’s ways.

Lead Me Not Into Temptation, Deliver Me from Evil

Matthew 6:9-13 English Standard Version

⁹ Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.^[a]
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,^[b]
    on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread,^[c]
12 and forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from evil.^[d]

When Rabbi Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13), he was not merely suggesting that it was all about someone else subtly, or suddenly, drawing us into temptation.

We are responsible too.

Dealing with life’s host of temptations calls for our heightened and maturing awareness of the tempting ­power of sin.

It includes recognizing that others, like the proverb writer and our parents, know the powerful temptation of sin.

Proverbs 1:8-19 The Message

^8-19 Pay close attention, friend, to what your father tells you;
    never forget what you learned at your mother’s knee.
Wear their counsel like a winning crown,
    like rings on your fingers.
Dear friend, if bad companions tempt you,
    don’t go along with them.
If they say—“Let’s go out and raise some hell.
    Let’s beat up some old man, mug some old woman.
Let’s pick them clean
    and get them ready for their funerals.
We’ll load up on top-quality loot.
    We’ll haul it home by the truckload.
Join us for the time of your life!
    With us, it’s share and share alike!”—
Oh, friend, don’t give them a second look;
    don’t listen to them for a minute.
They’re racing to a very bad end,
    hurrying to ruin everything they lay hands on.
Nobody robs a bank
    with everyone watching,
Yet that’s what these people are doing—
    they’re doing themselves in.
When you grab all you can get, that’s what happens:
    the more you get, the less you are.

The words of the tempter can seem so enticing or desirable, and they may wear us down.

Temptation is everywhere in our lives.

A wise person knows this.

A wise person hears the proverb writer say, in effect,

“It takes away the lives of those who give in to it.”

Sin is self-destructive.

It’s terribly sad and tragic when we subtly or suddenly succumb to temptation, we ultimately end up hurting others and ourselves – sometimes irreversibly.

Following God’s wiser instructions, how­ever, leads to life as God intended it.

Jesus put it this way: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

If you’ve been blessed with parents who taught you these words, thank God.

If not, give thanks that you know them now.

And if you don’t know what they mean, seek out someone who can help you learn and understand – it will always and forever be time vastly well spent.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Psalm 46 The Message

46 ^1-3 God is a safe place to hide,
    ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
    courageous in seastorm and earthquake,
Before the rush and roar of oceans,
    the tremors that shift mountains.

    Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
    God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

^4-6 River fountains splash joy, cooling God’s city,
    this sacred haunt of the Most High.
God lives here, the streets are safe,
    God at your service from crack of dawn.
Godless nations rant and rave, kings and kingdoms threaten,
    but Earth does anything he says.

⁷     Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
    God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

^8-10 Attention, all! See the marvels of God!
    He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
    breaks all the weapons across his knee.
“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
    loving look at me, your High God,
    above politics, above everything.”

¹¹     Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
    God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

Adeste Fideles! Laeti Triumphantes! Venite Adoremus! Dominum.

Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

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