Did God Really Say that?

Did God actually say…? This question is the root of all sin and though it was first asked by the devil in the Garden of Eden, man is still using that question today to cast doubt on God’s Word. Go back to Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" The KJV uses the word subtle in place of the terms other versions use and I think it is important to understand what happened there by thinking of it in terms of subtleness.

You see that is exactly how Satan works. Other translations of the Bible describe Satan as cunning or crafty and the very essence of how he operates is to be crafty through the use of subtleness. John 8:44 tells us Satan is not only a liar but he is “the father of lies” and that he “does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.” And the hardest lie to detect is the one that consists of the subtle twisting of the truth. Satan has accomplished much damage to the world by taking the truth and distorting it by giving it just a little tweak of falsehood. 1 Corinthians 5:6 and Galatians 5:9 both warn us that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump.” Watch out for that little bit of lie that will mess up the truth.

 When Satan challenged God’s Word back in the Garden of Eden and Eve fell for the subtle questioning of God’s Word the world was forever changed. So what has happened today is that Satan has taken clear Biblical warnings against certain sins and twisted them in the minds of man so that we now have acceptable social behaviors that seem right in our eyes. We took down the 10 commandments and made it illegal to have prayer in school. It became legal to abort babies. The sexual revolution of the sixties has sky rocketed our culture into one that accepts pornography, adultery, and homosexuality as acceptable behavior despite clear Biblical commands against them. The list goes on and on and it doesn’t take much to see that our culture is in a serious moral decline.

 The subtle lie comes in the form of tolerance. It comes in the form of free love and in the form of same sex marriage which is redefining what our culture calls marriage. It comes in the form of greed as the abortion industry and the pornography industries make billions of dollars each year off of our sins. These things were unthinkable a mere forty years ago. Of course there have always been a small group of those who would call for the acceptance of these things but in America today we are seeing churches and whole denominations declare these things God calls sin, to be acceptable. This should not be.

 
The question is did God really say abortion is wrong? Did He really mean it’s not ok to have sex with someone not your wife or with someone of the same sex? “Why that is awfully judgmental to say”, we hear. “The Bible is outdated” is the cry. Again the subtle lies of Satan. Yes God did really say that these things are wrong.
 

The problem with declaring that the Bible is wrong about these things being sin that we don’t want to be sin is that if we say it is wrong about those things then how can we say it is right about anything? If we say that, then this whole Jesus thing must be bogus too. If you are an atheist then you have every right to believe that.

But if you call yourselves a Christian then you have no right to say those things. Defining what a Christian is has become almost impossible these days. Unless you believe the Bible is truly God’s Word. Then it is simple; define being a Christian by the Word of God, which is clear. A Christian is a disciple and follower of Christ. But not part of Christ, all of Him. That, my friends, is the truth. Jesus was clear in John 14:23-24 saying, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”

It is time the Church stood up for truth. Not the subtle false-truth of the devil but the truth of God’s Holy Word even if we don’t always like what it says. We cannot allow the world to dictate what is right and what is wrong but as Christians we must stand up and declare God’s Word to be true. We must declare all of it to be true though, not just the parts we like.

The world will call us intolerant and say we are being judgmental. That again is a twisting of the truth and right from the mouth of Satan. The judgment as to what is sin is not being made by us but by God.

So if you are truly a disciple of Christ then do not fall for the subtle lies of the devil. We must become vigilant in knowing God’s Word so that we can be vigilant in defending His truth. This can only come by reading and studying His Word and being filled with the Holy Spirit. Then when the devil asks you, “Did God really say that?” you can respond in truth and say, “Yes. Yes He really did say that.”