I went to Wal-Mart this week to but some groceries. As I was getting out of my car and elderly lady approached me. Some of you may know I have magnets on my car door advertising our church. She asked me if I was the pastor. I told her I was. We were both heading into the store so we talked as we walked.
She told me she was new to the area. Her husband had passed away so she was forced to live with her divorced daughter and two kids. She was expected to pay a small amount for rent and purchase groceries with her retirement money. She had attended a small church in Florida and missed her friends.
She wanted to know a bit about our church. I told her about our music, our style of worship, our dress code, and so on. She said she would like to get her family into a church in this area because they were not attending one. So I gave her my card and invited her to check out our website. She said she would and would see me Sunday. As she started to walk away I asked for her name and she said “Everyone just calls me ‘Mom.’”
After I had gathered up my list, I headed for the cash register. I turned to see Mom standing behind me. She was on her phone and I could tell from the conversation that someone was giving her a hard time about being late. I quietly asked her if she would like to cut in front. I could see the gratitude in her eyes.
After she checked out she turned to me and smiled. She said “Thank you and I hope to see you Sunday.” I replied, “Me too Mom.”
The cashier rang up my order and told me the total was $362. I was stunned. I did not buy that much and begin to protest. “Yeah,” the cashier said, “But your mother said you would pay for hers.”
Okay. It did not happen. If it was April first I could just April fools and get away with it. Instead I have told another lie from the pulpit. Please do not run me off.
Deception can be an easy thing to pull off. The Bible is filled with stories of deception. It began in the Garden when satan deceived Eve with the forbidden fruit. We read the story of Jacob, whose name meant deceiver. We read of how he deceived his older brother Esau out of his birthright. The Bible says to beware of deceptive people and emotions. The Bible warns us about deceptive spirits sent by satan. Jesus warn us to be aware of false messiahs who would deceive many. One of satan’s jobs is to lie and deceive us. There have been many deceivers throughout history. Let me share a real life story of a modern deceiver.
His name is Frank Abagnale. Frank was born in 1949. His parents divorced when Frank was 12. When Frank was 15 his father gave him a gasoline credit card and a truck to get back and forth to work. To get date money, Frank devised a scheme to purchase tires, batteries, and other such items on the card and return them for cash. He soon discovered how easy it was to deceive people. It worked until his Father got the bill for $3400.
Shortly afterwards he left home and began writing personal checks on overdrawn accounts. This worked until banks began demanding payments. So he created new identities for himself. In this deception he would establish a bank account, overdraw the account, use a portion of the money to open a different account at a different bank under a new identity. He also would print his account number on blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank deposit slips in the bank. If a bank customer used one of these slips without noticing the account number was already printed, then their money went into Frank’s account.
One day Frank was in an airport. He observed where airlines and car rental businesses would drop off their daily collections of money in a zip-up bag and deposit them in a drop box. Using a security guard costume disguise he bought at a local costume shop, he put a sign over the box saying “Out of Service, place deposits with security guard on duty” and collected money that way. Soon the police and the FBI were looking for him.
Wanting to leave the country, he decided to deceive Pan Am and become a pilot. He was 16. He acquired a uniform by calling Pan Am, telling them he was a pilot working for them who had lost his uniform. He not only was able to achieve a uniform but also a fake ID. He then forged a Federal Aviation Administration pilot’s license. For two years he was a pilot for Pan Am although he knew nothing about flying except how to enable the auto-pilot. He always flew as the co-pilot and never had to take off or land a plane. Pan Am estimated that for the two years he was a pilot he flew for over one million miles, staying at hotels for free. Everything from food to lodging was paid for by Pan Am.
After nearly being captured disembarking a flight in New Orleans, he decided to flee to Georgia. When filling out a car rental application he listed his occupation as a doctor and a fake ID using the name Frank Williams. In Georgia, he befriended a real doctor that lived in his apartment complex. He was able to deceive this man into believing that he had one time interned at a hospital, so when a temporary position at the local hospital for a “supervisor of resident interns” came available, the doctor offered him the position. He accepted because supervisors did no real medical work. He simply let the interns handle the medical emergencies that came in on his late night shift. However, he was nearly exposed when an infant almost died from oxygen deprivation because he had no idea what it meant when a nurse said there was a “blue baby.” He left the hospital rather than jeopardize the lives of people.
Always trying to stay one step ahead, while he was posing as a pilot he forged a Harvard University law transcript. He told a stewardess that he dated that he was a Harvard Law student. She introduced him to a lawyer friend. He told him that the Bar needed more lawyers and in Louisiana you could take the bar exam as many times as needed. Moving to Louisiana he prepared himself for the exam. He failed in his first two attempts. But he came to realize it was just a matter of eliminating what you got wrong. So after studying his failed attempts for eight weeks, he passed and got a job at the Louisiana State Attorney General’s office. He was now 19 years old.
He was just a “gopher” fetching coffee and books for his boss. However, a real graduate from Harvard came to work at the office. He hounded Frank with questions about his tenure at Harvard. Soon he heard that inquiries were being made about his background, so after 8 months Frank resigned and left the country. He was finally arrested in France in 1969.
At the age of 21 Frank had been an embezzler, a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. He did all this through deception. He spent 12 years in prison. Now at the age of 65 he owns a firm that assists the federal government with solving cases of fraud and embezzlement.
He was truly one deceptive individual. But as deceptive as he was, we face an even more dangerous deceiver in ourselves. Paul, James, and John warns us about ourselves.
1) We deceive ourselves with wisdom
1 Corinthians 3:18-20 Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say,
“He traps the wise
in the snare of their own cleverness.”
And again,
“The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise;
he knows they are worthless.”
Paul is addressing a problem that has erupted in Corinth. People are arguing about who is the best leader, Paul, Apollos, or Peter. They are using their wisdom to argue this point. Paul is telling them “If you think you can figure out who God has decided to place in leadership, you are deceiving yourselves.”
Churches today do the same thing. “I like this evangelist but that evangalist is leading people astray. The (fill in the blank) denomination is the true church. The hymns of old are the only way to worship. Those contemporary churches are of the world.” We have all heard these comments, maybe even made them. When we use our wisdom, it is worthless. It may even be a trap to teach us. Look at how many wise people Frank deceived. Do not rely on your wisdom. Rely on God’s. 2) We deceive ourselves with flattery.
Galatians 6:1-3 “Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.”
This passage tells us how we are to care for other members of the body of Christ when they sin. We are to treat them with love and help them be restored. We are to help shoulder the burden of their sin. However, most of the time they are ostracized from the church. For example, some denominations will not allow you to serve in a leadership role if you have been divorced. I have often heard the comment that the army of God is the only army that kills its wounded. Sadly, it is true.
There is a warning here also, for us to be careful lest we too sin. More than one great evangelist has fallen into a sin that they preach against. One preached against prostitution while being involved at the same time. One preached against homosexuality while secretly being involved in that lifestyle. The list could go on; pornography, graft.
The scripture says do not think you are too important to help those who have fallen. We call that being “high and mighty.” When we fall into thinking ourselves so holy that we are above that brother or sister who has sinned, God says “Step back. You ain’t all that. You are deceiving yourself if you think you are.” God sees deep within our heart and knows what we are capable of doing. Remember the word says “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9)
3) We deceive ourselves with neglect.
James 1:22-24 “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.”
Have you ever thought about a time before photographs and mirrors? How people may have seen their own reflection, perhaps in water? If not for photographs and mirrors, we would not know what we looked like. We would only have the description put into words by someone looking at us.
If we are just hearers of the word and not doers, then we maybe fooling ourselves to how much like Jesus we look. The world does see you the way you see yourself. In fact, they may see in you a reflection of themselves.
When you accepted Jesus you became new. What you saw in the mirror was new even if it looked like the same old you. But the danger comes when we forget what we looked like then.
What would happen if on the biggest day of our lives we primped and dressed up and was looking good? We looked in the mirror and we have never looked so good. But then we walked away, never to look in the mirror again. We never primped anymore, changed our clothing and thought we looked as good as the last time we looked in the mirror. We are deceiving ourselves, aren’t we? That’s what it is like to be a hearer but not a doer.
4) We deceive ourselves with words.
James 1:26-27 “If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”
The scripture is addressing what I call getting on your soap box. When we walk around throwing Bible verses willy-nilly to prove our wisdom, the scripture says we are not controlling our tongue. This makes our religion worthless. Of course, if all we have is religion but no relationship with God, it is worthless anyway. We are deceiving ourselves if we think that there is power in our words to affect a change. I wish some street preachers would realize this.
God says true religion is shown when we take care of the downtrodden, those in distress and when we take a stand against all the world has to offer.
5) We deceive ourselves with our purity.
1 John 1:8-10“If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.”
Debbie and I went to see the movie “Noah.” It is only about 5% accurate. It is just a Hollywood epic that is a mix of a Transformer movie and a disaster movie. I expected it to be just that and I was not disappointed as some are.
But there is a point where the character Noah realizes that wickedness lives inside all men, including his family. He decides to not allow two of his sons to take a wife before the flood. His other son has a wife who is barren. His goal is to bury each other until the last one dies and along with that death, God’s world will be free of wickedness.
Wickedness lies within each of us. We can call it our flesh. We can call it our sinful nature. But it is wickedness. And the scripture says if you think that you do not have that wickedness in you, you deceive yourself.
When we know we have sinned and confessed that sin to Jesus, then we can be certain our sins are forgiven. But if we rationalize our behavior and call it anything else but sin, we call God a liar. We have to fess up.
One more statement about the movie “Noah”. The barren woman gives birth to twin girls. The character Noah has decided they must die to insure the end of man. But as he raises his knife to kill them, he instead drops them. Latter when asked why his reply was wonderful. “When I looked at them all I saw was love.” God knew by sparing by sparing Noah and his family once again wickedness would reign. But when He looks at us all he sees is love.
