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Granite Bay SDA Church

Doug Batchelor

The Devil’s Deadliest Deception

Loving Lord, we know that you fill heaven and earth, that there's nowhere we can flee from your presence.

But there are times and places where you reveal yourself in a special way, where the Spirit is felt in a concentrated form.

And Lord, right now during this holy time on the Sabbath where we've come together to worship you, to honor you, to learn of you, we pray you will reveal yourself that way again.

We ask that all that we think and do and say and give will please you and glorify you, and that we can know we've been in your presence.

I have some friends that were telling a story that they were taking a dream vacation.

They bought the tickets themselves, but then online they purchased this vacation with a beautiful hotel, white sandy beaches on this island, meals included, there were tours and diving and excursions.

And they said, boy, well, this is a great deal.

It cost a couple thousand dollars, but they were getting a week in paradise for both of them in just a very nice hotel.

They got there and the hotel said, we've got no record of your reservation.

And they searched and searched and they said no, and then they asked for the receipt.

It turns out they had bought this vacation from a bogus website that had ripped them off.

And the only thing they could do is stay at the Fleabight Hotel overlooking the cemetery and eat at the Sleazy Spoon.

You think you're going to paradise and you end up somewhere altogether different.

You know, there are about 2.2 billion Christians in the world today.

But biblically, Jesus said, the road is narrow and the way is straight, and few find it.

And that's because a lot of people are being misguided.

I want to begin by taking to a verse in the Bible, it's in Ezekiel.

Matter of fact, we're going to visit Ezekiel several times in our study this morning.

Ezekiel 33, and stay with me, I'm just going to read the first 11 verses here.

Again, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of your people, and say to them, When I bring a sword upon a land, when an army comes and there's a battle.

And the people of the land take a man from their territory and they make him a watchman.

And when he sees the sword coming upon the land and if he blows the trumpet, he warns the people, then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet, if they don't take warning, the sword comes and takes him away and his blood is on his own head.

If they don't take warning, the sword comes and takes him away and his blood is on his own head.

He heard the sound of the trumpet, but he did not take warning.

His blood will be upon himself." And Bible times, you know, they had cities often on a hill and they were...different areas had fortifications.

Most people lived in the suburbs and the farms and they worked the field, and you'd have someone that was at a prominent spot on the city wall, cities were on a hill frequently, and if there was an approaching army, they had different ways of signaling from different high spots so they could even see the cloud of dust and the glint of their armor and there was an army coming.

Blow the trumpet, warn people, folks in the field would hear, they'd drop what they were doing, they'd head to the city and they would be protected off and be able to withstand the attack.

But if someone hears a trumpet and they stay out there in the field, if they're overtaken by the army and killed, they're bad.

They heard the sound of the trumpet, they did not take warning.

But he who hears, who takes warning, will save his life.

But if the watchman sees the sword coming, he sees the approaching army, and he's more concerned with his own safety, and he runs and tells his family, but he doesn't blow the trumpet, I'm paraphrasing here, and the people are not warned, And the sword comes and takes away any person among them, he's taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I'll require at the watchman's hand." And then the Lord summarizes this and says, So you, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.

Therefore you shall hear a word from my mouth and warn them for me.

When I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you will surely die.

And you do not speak and warn the wicked from his way that the wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I'll require your hand.

Nevertheless, if you warn the wicked to turn from his way and he does not turn from His way, He'll die in His iniquity, but you have delivered your soul.

Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel, thus you shall say, if our transgressions and our sins lie upon us and we pine away in them, how can we then live?

If you're pining away in your transgressions?

Say to them as I said, live says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

Turn, turn from your evil way, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" So the message there is hard to misunderstand.

God is saying that ministers have a responsibility, to some extent every believer, that we are watchmen on the wall to let people know that there's an enemy out there that wants to destroy us and that we must flee from the wrath to come, we must seek the refuge that we find in Jesus, we must turn from our sins, if we are just going to pine away in our sins, we will die.

And he appeals at the end of this, he said, sin will be your undoing, turn, turn.

You know, in Hebrew, you did not raise the volume when you wanted to increase the point, you did it through repetition.

It's like Jesus said, surely, surely, truly, truly, I say to you.

And so here He's saying, turn, turn, why will you die?

And 1 of the most important messages that God gives in His Word is that we need to be careful not to be deceived by this outward form of godliness without the power, form of religion without the power.

So there's a lot of things we may not understand.

What they are, I know good Christians that disagree on if they're past, future, or if there's a dual application.

There are about 145, 000 people that view the 144, 000 differently.

You know, there's gonna be people in heaven that were baptized the wrong way.

There are different views on diet and healthful living.

There are going to be people in heaven that ate pork.

There are going to be some people in heaven like Martin Luther that drank beer.

You thought that was the unpardonable sin.

There are gonna be people in heaven like John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace who smoked.

They thought it was good for your lungs back then, believe it or not.

There's gonna be a lot of people in heaven that maybe misunderstood some things, but there's some things you cannot get wrong or you lose everything.

What you can't get wrong is what is required to be saved.

Misunderstanding that is like going out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without a compass on a cloudy day and saying, I think I'm just gonna wing it and find my way home.

You're not being brave or cavalier, it's suicide.

If you don't have a dependable compass, then you don't know where you're going.

So of all the things that we might not understand, 1 thing we need to understand is what does God want from us to be saved?

Now I'm going to tell you right away what the devil's deadliest deception is.

You find it in the beginning where you might expect.

I'm just going to read the first few verses here.

Genesis 3, Now the serpent was more cunning, more wily 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 from every tree in the garden, he starts out by questioning the word of God and misquoting actually.

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat from the fruit of the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, namely the 1 of good and evil, God has said you shall not eat of it nor even touch it lest you die.

Then the serpent said to the woman, you'll not really die, for God knows in the day that you eat of it your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was pleasant to the eyes, probably had a nice fragrance, attractive, evidently he had done something remarkable for the serpent, he's talking all of a sudden.

A tree desired to make 1 wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

She also gave to her husband with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of them both were open and they knew they were naked.

So, the devil's most dangerous deception is that the warnings of sin do not apply to you.

That sin is really going to bring you satisfaction, but it doesn't.

That somehow you'll have some enhanced experience through sin, but it's a lie.

You know, Back in 2008, we all saw the unfolding of the most serious Ponzi scheme and fraud and scam in history of the world.

Bernie Madoff, people had fun with his name because he made off with everybody's money.

Bernie made off, made off with $64.8 billion of other people's money.

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The Devil’s Deadliest Deception

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