Good News from the Stony Creek Church of Christ

Do not believe Satan’s lies! (Part 1)

Have you ever looked around and thought, “How did we get here?” I mean as a culture. Where something foundational to creation has become hated, rejected, or blurred? Like marriage, gender, family, etc. Has this world lost its mind?

Paul describes a similar culture where gentiles rejected God from their minds and cultures (Romans 1:18-32). So, God let them believe all of Satan’s lies and He gave them over to all kinds of confusion and uncleanness. Here is the point: The further away we get from the Creator the further away we get from truths of creation itself. The further away we get from the light the darker our minds (and eventually our cultures) become. The further away from the source of truth the more we believe the lie.

That is what we are watching. We have all been there and done that. We have all given ourselves over to the “futility of our minds,” had our “understanding darkened” and our lives showed the fruit of it (Eph 4:17-18). That is why God has called us to be transformed by the “renewal of our minds” (Rom 12:2).

Satan is “a liar and the father of all lies” (John 8:44). The very first sin on earth was committed because Eve believed a lie of Satan and we have all been feeling the effects of it ever since. Believe me, the devil has not stopped lying. There are many lies he is telling us today.

Perhaps one of Satan’s biggest lies is, “There is no such thing as truth.” Have you ever heard that before? From college courses to political (im)moral discourses, it is the rationale for so many of our societal trends. Most people who say this do not believe this, but what they are really trying to say is something like this: “There is no such thing as your truth, and I want to tell you about my truth … There is no such thing as objective truth, but truth is subjective … What is true for you, is not true for me (and vice versa).”

Did you know the Bible warns us about this? Both Judges 17:6 and Judges 21:25 say something like, “… everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” That is the bookend to the book.

In Judges 17:6, Micah had made some idols. There were a bunch of weird things going on with religious practices. We would call it “religious relativity.” You can worship however you want to worship, and I can worship however I want to worship, and God will just have to be pleased with it. But that is not true! The truth is, God has a certain way He wants to be worshipped, and Micah was doing it all wrong.

In Judges 21:25, there were men desiring to know other men carnally and the Levite’s concubine that they abused and then divided into pieces and sent body parts throughout the whole land. It was just a terrible story. That’s what we call “moral relativity.”

So, the moral of the story is that when men do not live by a higher standard, but do what is right in their eyes, these are the kinds of things that happen.

That reminds me of this description of God’s people in Isaiah’s day in Isaiah 5:20-21. Again, these were God’s people. These are the sour grapes of God’s vineyard (cf. Isaiah 5:1-7). He had done so much for them, hoping He would get good, godly, profitable, delicious fruit, but all he got was sour, worthless grapes.

This is what he got instead: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

Have you ever seen that? Values trade places. Roles get switched. Where something once said to be right becomes wrong, and something said to be wrong becomes right. You do not have to use much imagination, do you? If you have lived in this country long enough you have even watched that happen, haven’t you? Things God calls wrong, sinful, and even unnatural have not only become tolerated but celebrated.

THE TRUTH: What God calls wrong is actually wrong. What God calls right is actually right. Just meditate on those passages and consider them as you hear people preaching or proposing things like, “There is no such thing as truth … You do your truth, and I can do my truth … Who is to say one is right and the other wrong?

God has, and He is the standard.

Visitors are welcome and valued. We meet at 15530 Herriman Blvd., Noblesville. Our phone number is (317) 219-5852. We meet for Sunday morning Bible Study at 10 a.m. and have classes for all ages. Worship begins at 11 a.m. and we have a Bible Study Wednesdays at 7 p.m. A warm welcome awaits!