A killer in our midst – Part 1
My grandfather was a story teller – well, sort of. A Baptist preacher, he told stories that put you in the Biblical passage. He painted pictures that, at times, were so vivid you not only saw what was going on but you heard what the people were saying. The Bible was a living book to him.
Over the past 10 years or so, I have begun to “live in the Bible” as I read it. The places and conversations – I see and hear them. As a Teacher, I believe this is one of the ways the Lord is teaching me about His book.
You are about to hear a narrative about the fall of man. My prayer is that through this story you will see, perhaps in a different way, how Satan relentlessly works to deceive the Body of Christ in the same way he deceived Adam and Eve.
Long before he appears in Genesis 3...
Lucifer had rejected God’s love. The hands of love had created him – an angel like no other – second only to God in wisdom and perfect in beauty (Ezekiel 28:12). He is the only angel that the Bible says had been in “Eden the garden of God” (verse 13) and was the anointed cherub who was on “the holy mountain of God” (verse 14).
Lucifer had spent more time with the Creator than any of the other angels. The angels – millions and millions of them – knew him. They believed he was the Creator’s confidant. They believed only the Creator was greater than Lucifer and they treated him that way.
And he let it go to his head.
Lucifer began to believe he could rule heaven as well or better than the Creator. “I can do this. I should be in charge, not the Creator. The angels will follow me, I’m sure of it,” he thinks to himself and plots his rebellion. I’m sure that was part of it. But there was something else at work in him that could only be satisfied if he ruled heaven.
• He saw how the heavenly host adored the Creator.
• He saw how the heavenly host obeyed the Creator.
• He saw how the heavenly host praised the Creator.
• He saw how the heavenly host worshiped the Creator.
He saw and then coveted what he saw.
The Bible says Lucifer was created perfect in all his ways “until iniquity (every imaginable evil and wickedness) was found in him” (Ezekiel 28:15). Remember, God created him perfect.
But Lucifer was not a robot to be told what to do. Neither are we. Lucifer has free will to make his own choices and so do we. He chose to rebel against the Creator – so can we. In verse 17 we see the cause of Lucifer’s downfall and, if we’re not careful, our own.
“Thine heart was lifted up [with pride] because of thy beauty, thou has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness...”
Somewhere along the way, Lucifer forgot how much he was loved.
Pride had corrupted how Lucifer thought about the Creator. He began to believe he could care for the Creator’s realm better than the Creator himself. How dangerous is pride to us today? When we believe we can live our lives however we choose and still believe we will spend an eternity with God we’re living in pride.
Because of his perceived position, Lucifer persuaded one third of the angels (Revelation 12:4) to walk away from the Creator. Never underestimate Satan’s ability “to talk you into doing something.” He and the angels were cast out of heaven – banished from the place where eternal life dwells – because of pride and what it produced in their lives.
The odds of our spending eternity with God decrease when we walk in pride – when the Bible is not the standard we follow to govern how we live.
Lucifer’s pride manifested itself in behavior that has become the hallmark of his presence today, even among the Body of Christ. Look at First Timothy, especially the words that I’ve highlighted.
(2) “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, (3) Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, (4) Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; (5) Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such turn away.” (I Timothy 3:2-5)
(When you have some time, read this passage again and then the definitions of these words. And remember, this passage is addressing the Body of Christ.)
Lucifer and his angels turned their backs on the Creator. They walked away from love. Now their eternity is death – complete and irreconcilable separation from God – with no possible reinstatement of life. Pride did this. Let that sink in.
Having been stripped of everything that was dear to him, Lucifer’s rage against the Creator consumed him. God had to pay for what he had done, he reasoned. So he waited.
The killer in the Garden.
Lucifer sees God create a universe and then the earth. Day after day he watches as God brings forth life – birds, fish, animals, plants. But it is on the day the Creator makes man that Lucifer sees, once again, his love and his heart.
He sees the love and tenderness in the Creator’s eyes as he forms, makes and creates man. And when man takes his first breath Lucifer sees an expression on the Creator’s face that he had never seen before. He sees a Father’s love for his son. (Genesis 2:7)
The Creator had never looked at him that way, Lucifer thinks to himself, as he watches with increasing anger and disgust. “I was the cherub of cherubs. I was the one the other angels followed. Me! But he never looked at me the way he looks at this, this clay!”
So he watches. The bond between Father and son grew so strong that the Father brings all of the animals to his son and says “Adam, I want you to name them one by one. Whatever you decide that will be its name forever.”
The killer hears the warning.
As the Father and son spend more and more time together their relationship grows. They talk for hours as they walked the length and breadth of the Garden. With each passing day, the son begins to see and understand more and more of his Father’s heart.
(As I write this, hear an old hymn in my mind that we sung in my church back home: “And He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”)
One day as they’re walking, God stops them and points to a tree in the distance. They had seen it many times before so why are they stopping now, Adam wonders. God tells Adam he can eat from every tree in the garden but that one – the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
“If you eat of that tree,” the Father says as he placed his hand on his son’s chest, “one day the beating of your heart will stop and when it does you will die.” 4 | P a g e
God looks at Adam and says sternly, “But that’s not the most important reason. If you eat of that tree Adam, we will never be able to walk together again,” he says as tears develop in his eyes.
The words stun Adam. “What? We won’t be able to take our long walks anymore? I won’t be able to ask you questions about the things in the garden?” he asks in disbelief. “Father, you’re telling me I will never see you again?”
“Adam, if you eat of that tree,” God says placing his hand on Adam’s shoulder, “how you feel about me will also change. And,” God says slowly, “you will no longer be my son.”
“I won’t be your son,” Adam whispers and looks at his Father who simply says “Adam, don’t eat from that tree.” “I swear father, I won’t even touch that tree,” Adam says walking to his father and hugging him.
The killer is taking notes.
Lucifer hears the Creator’s instructions to his son. “Ah,” he says to himself, “now I know how I can hurt the one who is now a father. Since the Creator loves this clay so much, I will turn the clay against him. I will make the clay like me. Then the Creator will know my pain.”
As time passes, Lucifer sees the Creator’s heart yet again when he introduces Eve to Adam – the wife to her husband. When his son sees his spouse and smiles the Father smiles. Lucifer also smiles.
Lucifer watches the son and his wife. He sees how they interact and respond to each other. He’s fascinated by the humans, by the clay. “They are so much more fragile than angels,” he thinks to himself. The more he studies them the more clearly he sees a pattern emerge. The woman influences the man as much as the man influences the woman – and perhaps a little more.
The killer uses the wife to get to the husband.
That old serpent – that sly dog – approaches Eve with the same seductive prowess that he used to condemn one-third of God’s angels to eternal damnation. He’s like the strange woman in Proverbs 7, who, from her window, smiles as she sees her unsuspecting prey.
The serpent woos Eve. His deadly lie is so easy to hear and seems so right – “If you eat of the tree Eve, you won’t die but you’ll be like a god yourself,” he whispers to her over and over again, day after day, perhaps even month after month.
The more she listens, the more she begins to believe his lie. She looks at the fruit and imagines its sweetness and how it can make her more like the God she loves so much. So she yields.
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.” (Genesis 3:6)
Eve listened to a stranger’s voice.
Eve was deceived because she listened to the stranger’s voice that spoke deceit and death into her life. But to her, it didn’t sound like death at all. It sounded like “being more like God, my Creator – being more like the one who loves me.”
From time to time during the day Eve finds herself daydreaming – hearing the serpent’s words and smiling. “I know the Creator loves me. I can feel it when I’m in his presence. Why wouldn’t he want me to know more of his love and be more like him? The serpent isn’t telling me I can’t be more like God. In fact, he’s saying I can be more like him just by eating of the tree.”
Eve chooses to listen to the stranger’s voice – a voice that appeals to her soul and emotions. She is seduced and persuaded to believe a lie. She is deceived into doing what pleases her rather than what pleases her Creator. In her mind, there is no difference.
Eve was collateral damage.
Like the unsuspecting suitor in Proverbs 7, Eve never sees the deadly dart the serpent’s flattering lips produces until her husband eats the fruit from the forbidden tree. Adam was the serpent’s true target. His father had charged him with guarding the Garden.
“And the Lord took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep (guard) it.” (Genesis 2:15)
Adam needed to eat of the forbidden tree for Lucifer to accomplish his goal – condemning the human race to an eternity with him and his angels in the lake of fire.
Adam doesn’t stop Eve as she bites into the fruit. “Hmmm. She didn’t die,” he says to himself. “Nothing has changed. She looks the same.” Perhaps his father didn’t tell him the whole truth that day when he pointed to the tree, he reasons.
Did Adam forget that he told his father he wouldn’t even touch the tree? No. He willingly disobeys and eats the fruit, just like his wife. Adam condemns the human race, not Eve.
“And Adam was not deceived; but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” (I Timothy 2:14)
The killer is so persuasive.
This narrative, based on passages from Ezekiel and Genesis, shows how persuasive Lucifer, now Satan, was in convincing one-third of the angels that he could rule heaven better than the Creator.
It’s the same strategy he used to convince Adam and Eve that what the Creator had said he didn’t really mean.
It’s the same strategy he’s using today to convince the Body of Christ that what God says in his word he didn’t mean, and what he says about us in his word is not true. And it’s working.
Do you know what’s so sad? It is God’s Word, on the lips of those who truly believe, that we need to use against Satan to defeat him. Remember his encounter with Jesus in Matthew 4? “It is written,” Jesus’ response to his attacks – to his temptations – has to be our response to Satan’s unrelenting temptations to draw us away from the truth of God’s Word.
Next time, in “A killer in our midst – Part 2,” we will take a detailed look at Genesis 3, the foundation for this narrative. We will see how Satan convinces Eve – and the Body of Christ today – that he is the one speaking truth, not the Creator.
