One of the greatest challenges that we will continue to face in 2021 is knowing the truth
Deception began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were deceived by Satan is highlighted throughout the Bible, all the way up to God’s triumphant, redemptive finale in the Book of Revelation.
David declares in Psalm 12:2: “Everyone lies to his neighbour; their flattering lips speak with deception.” If David was living in 2021, he would say that deception is behind most news headlines and stories. It is not the truth.
God’s Word warns us that in the days before Christ’s return, even some believers in Christ will end up following “deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1) and that “evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).
Why are we being overwhelmed by deception in our world? Since the time of Adam and Eve, Satan’s strategy has been to keep people from knowing and believing the truth of what Jesus declares in John 3:18 that “whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
If David was living in 2021, he would say that deception is behind most news headlines
To believe the truth of God’s Word also means that our daily focus and the devotion of our time must not be on “the world or anything in the world” (1 John 2:15). Our focus must be on helping to set people free by the truth of God’s Word because, as Jesus declares in John 8:31-32, it is only the truth of his Word that can set us free from everything that can hold us captive.
And we must “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)“
Don’t be deceived” (James 1:16) is the warning that God gives to us over and again. We must “not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves” but we must be committed to doing “what it says” (James 1:22).
Rev David Foster
Minister of Manor Park Christian Centre, London