11. To Defeat the Lie

What most Christians just don't get is that the serpent is lying. Every single word he speaks is twisted and false. He never speaks anything true.

 

I have looked closely at the Lie in these letters before; I think it’s important to look at it again.

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”’ Genesis 3:1-5

What most Christians just don’t get is that the serpent is lying. Every single word he speaks is twisted and false. He never speaks anything true. Let’s set the stage here.

Eve is the crowning glory of all the creation of God, the highest pinnacle of His achievement. Eve in her humanity has an IQ somewhere over 1000 and probably closer to 2000 (100 is today’s average, with geniuses clocking in around 160 –180 or so). She is brilliant and perceptive, but what she lacks is experience. She has not been around long enough to understand all the angles that life throws at us. But more than that, she is utterly innocent. She has no knowledge of evil or deceit. Here in front of her is a most amazing creature, created by God, speaking to her. God didn’t tell her or Adam that deception lurked in the Garden.

On the other hand, the serpent is the most brilliant psychologist in the universe, save only God Himself. His words are oh-so-carefully chosen. He wants one particular answer from Eve to his first question and he gets that answer. He gets Eve to say exactly what he wants her to say. And really, she could not have said anything else, his words commanded the direction of her mind, as they would have yours or mine who are not nearly as smart as Eve.

As we have seen, the serpent’s first four words, “Has God indeed said,” were spoken much more for God’s benefit than for Eve’s. The serpent was throwing down the gauntlet, striking Christ, the Word God speaks, across the face, and challenging Him to a showdown and a duel. God spoke Christ into the earth, will Christ win in that same earth? Satan claims He won’t, that Christ will not be revealed in the flesh.

But the words, “You shall not eat of every tree in the garden?” were spoken exactly in that way to get the answer from Eve that the serpent wanted, the only answer she could have given.

Now, look at her answer. Eve first speaks Christ, blessing, the invitation to freely eat of LIFE, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.” This invitation had boldly included the tree of Life. But then, in counteraction to Life, Eve herself speaks the words of the Curse, just as the serpent intended. Satan wanted the woman herself to speak the very words of the Curse, that through the Curse, he might extend the Lie. Satan wanted Eve to be the one to speak the Curse out loud with her voice into the earth.

Then look at the serpent’s immediate answer, “You will not surely die.” The serpent openly speaks the opposite of what God speaks; he contradicts the Curse. The instant result of those words is to confuse Eve. The serpent immediately keeps on speaking, wanting to plant the Lie into Eve while she is confused.

Here is the Lie. “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Now, every single word in this statement is twisted and false. But here is the amazing thing! Christianity claims that Satan was speaking the truth. They say that he was actually offering to Eve the chance to “be like God” Himself, and that, reaching for that chance to “be like God,” she fell into darkness.

Eve was already just like God. She was created in God’s likeness and as His image. Every fabric and particle of her being was constructed exactly like God Himself, first, and second, she possessed the capacity to be filled with all the fullness of God and to reveal God as Himself through her to His creation as His image.

All Eve had to do, with her husband, was eat of the Tree of Life, and she would have been sealed forever into all the fullness of Christ, into the incorruptible nature and being of God.

The serpent’s desire was to edge her away from that stunning reality, pretending to give her an inside track, a “short cut.”

There is no relationship between anything the serpent says in this Lie and any form of reality in God. Let’s look at the words again. This is the ring of power we are taking to destruction, that we are bringing to a final and ignominious end.

“For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

First, “you will be like god,” must be seen as just that, a false image of the serpent himself, an independent “self ” striving to exist on his own as an entity with a life of his own, separate from the God who created him. This “god” the serpent was talking about was himself, not the Creator. Second is the final line, “knowing good and evil,” presented as the basis and foundation of “godhood.”

I get the weekly listing of “Meetup” meetings in the Houston area in my email inbox. Yesterday, I read these most horrible words.

“Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Romans 7:18-25 Hi :-) This week study is about: Christian life is a constant struggle, we try not to let our old nature take over and rule our lives.”

This so sad a statement IS the lie offered to Eve in the garden, presented again by a dear Christian woman who just does not know the gospel of Christ.

“You know what’s good, you know what’s bad; you know what’s right, you know what’s wrong. Now, with your own knowledge, you ‘TRY’ not to do the bad and you ‘TRY’ to do what is good. You ‘hear’ what God says and YOU ‘obey’ Him.”

Independent self masquerading as the Christian life. Trying so very hard to be “like god,” knowing deep down that you will never ever succeed.

But lest we look down on the precious sister who wrote these awful words, we MUST understand that the words and thought patterns of the Lie are still woven all through our own minds and how we see the world. We are learning to see all things as God sees them; we are learning to speak the truth in Christ that Christ is our life, we have no other life; we are learning that there is no independent self, no “old nature” trying to “take over our lives.”

We are learning, yes. But so much of the fabric of the Lie yet remains upon our minds, twisting in tiny and indistinguishable strands all through our growing knowledge of the truth. There are so many minute ways in which we look at everyday things through the focus and lens of the Lie. So many ways in which we imagine that “our eyes are open,” when in fact we can’t see the truth at all.

Here is our task, if we will receive it. Here is our “mission impossible.” Here is “our Father’s business.”

By God’s grace, let us remove every last vestige and thread of the Lie from our hearts and minds. It is not true. We do not have to make it “untrue.” It is already untrue. We just have to remove it entirely from the patterns of our thinking. And even this is not “we have to,” that is just the limited human way of declaring what Christ Himself is doing right now in us.

The moment that happens in fullness, the moment the accuser is cast down for real, in that moment – “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come.” In that moment is the unveiling of Jesus Christ, the manifestation of the sons of God in power upon this earth.

Christ and I — Daniel Yordy — (put your own name in the blank), are one. I am in Him and He is in me. There is no distinction or separation. I share fully all the power of His glory; He shares fully all the weakness of my frame.

All that He is I am. All that I am is He. The Lie is proven false in my flesh upon this earth. Christ is unveiled in me!

But here’s the deal. Christ must be proven at the center and core of this world. God requires it.

There is a time and a place that God has set in the concourse and avenues of this world as it really is for the demonstration through our weakness of the life and power of Christ.

Satan challenged Christ in the beginning to a showdown, a duel, a contest.

That contest is Christ – He who reveals Himself in human flesh – VERSUS anti-Christ – the argument, the contradiction, the speaking against, the claim, that Christ IS NOT in human flesh.

You and I are the flesh of Christ. You and I are the fulcrum, the center point, the dividing line of that conflict, of that final showdown upon this earth.

But that showdown is very specific to reality in this world. It is the contest, the fight to the death, over the inheritance.

Come, let us kill Him, that the inheritance might be ours.

He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I shall be His God, and he shall be My son —  And they did not love their lives unto the death.

And I saw thrones and they sat upon them and judgment was given to them.

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The Lord placed the following challenge in front of me.

“Step away from the Lie; step away from the Curse. They do not pertain to you. There is no more separation. Death does not exist for you; limitation does not limit you. There is no shadow, no key, no door, no prison walls. There is no delay; the grace that is to come rests upon you now without measure.

“My purpose and the mission upon which I send you is the only thing in front of your eyes. You do not know sin; you do not know the limitation of the human in this world.

“You ARE love; you are life; you are joy. You are light and judgment. Your body is made alive by My Spirit. In your flesh, the life of My Son is revealed.”

I do not believe the Lord means for this to be a “word of faith.” It is for real. If you watch movies, it is Neo in The Matrix. He put out his hand, and the bullets stopped and fell to the ground. Not because he had “power,” but because he knew that he knew that he knew that they were not real, they did not exist.

All that is real is Christ manifest through us as the Son of God.

Nothing else.