When God created all things He created mankind on earth in a garden amongst a wilderness. There God met with the man and woman each day and walked with them as their Father.
In the garden there was also the Son of God, Jesus, who is portrayed as the Tree of Life. They could receive from the fruit of this Tree of Life whenever they wished and by this they lived in the guarantee of an eternal and everlasting walk with God. All they needed to do was to continue walking as sons of God with their Father and in union with Jesus and they would grow as imparted and taught to them by God day by day.
But in the garden there was also Satan portrayed as “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”. As we read in Genesis Chapter 3 Satan cast doubt into Adam and Eve’s minds and they fell into eating from Satan’s life and the eyes of their hearts were opened to His corrupted perspectives and closed to the Tree of Life. (which was their door into the knowledge and understanding of God Himself.) Because of this Adam and Eve were sent from the garden into the full influence of Satan and their lives limited to a shorter term with death at its end.
This we call the ‘fall of man’. From the heights of oneness with God now they couldn’t discern Him anymore and they could only see and hear Satan’s perspectives. This great darkness which we read about in Isaiah 60:2 is the result of this process. Mankind became blind to God and only influenced by Satan whose wisdom, though once the wisdom of God, had become corrupted, Eze 28:17 ff.
From that time onwards God tried continually to send those, who had managed to get the eyes of their hearts opened again to the Tree of Life, to be catalysts of getting the eyes of the general human race opened again to God. All ministry from God had this goal.
Matt 13:13 – 16 / John 12:38 – 40 / Acts 28:24 ff / Acts 26:17-18 / Eph 1:18 / Eph 4:17
Satanic Deception Covers The Human Condition
Near the end of the New Testament in Revelation 12:9 we read these words:
“So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him”.
As Adam and Eve walked from the garden as orphans to their creator and Father, they came under the direct influence of Satan alone: one who had rejected God as a father for himself and wanted to rule over God and was also therefore fatherless himself. Satan covered the truth of God from them and developed other ways of living, beliefs and perspectives of life in the growing human race and led them into his ways, beliefs and perspectives. By this Satan took the whole human race into a whole way of life that was alien to God’s ways.
These systems that don’t see God, with all of their manifestations, cultures, values and ways of life, are seen amongst all human beings on earth today. It is what God calls, THE WORLD!
Why Is It Important For Us To Know This?
When we read the parable of the Sower in the gospels (above) we see that at some time in all peoples lives Jesus comes by and in some way we receive a seed of the truth about God. That almost always excites us and we grow, learn and encounter more or God.
But of course Satan doesn’t want to lose us back to God so He will bring other stuff to us very soon after the seed is planted in us to distract us from God and come back to his ways of life. He knows when he loses this battle his days are coming to an end.
So Satan will show us the most attractive things of the world he thinks will appeal to us to get our hearts back to a love of The World he has created with his deceptions and lies.
(It’s all not real though! When the day of the Lord comes it will all disappear like a mist. It’s just a picture to present the world without God as a real thing. But it’s all smoke and mirrors. It will fold up and those who put their trust in the world will find it will slip through their fingers and disappear.)
So when we first see that Jesus is the Son of God and we taste the good things of God we turn to God and start to walk with Him. But in turning to God we must also turn away from the world and all of its ways or we can fall back into the lies again and be no better off for our receiving the seed in the first place.
We often talk about the time we received that seed using terms like: when I became a Christian, when I first believed, when I came to Christ, when I was born again etc. It was the time we would say we repented of our sins and followed Jesus: When we turned away from sin and were cleansed of them by the blood of Jesus. Many people do this, and it’s wonderful, but if we don’t repent – turn away – from the world we will always be in danger of falling back into it. This is why it is important to be aware of the world and all of its power to deceive us again and again.
Repentance toward God means to turn away from sin, Satan and the world as we embrace God in Christ.
Faith In God
This reveals to us the great truth of Heb 11:6,
“But without faith it is impossible to please Him.”
All the created lies of Satan that have deceived the world have one thing missing in them. They are not built on faith in God.
As a young Christian I pondered on why Jesus raised up faith to such a high importance. He said in Luke 18:8,
“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?”
It will be His major purpose in returning to earth. To find faith! I was surprised that He hadn’t said, “Will He find love on the earth” or sincerity, or faithfulness, or wisdom, or kindness etc etc. Why faith? Then one day I realised that faith in the heart of a human being is the only way for God’s work to be done on earth. It is the hallmark, the watermark, the validation, the credibility, the stamp of genuineness of God’s work in bringing the coming Kingdom of God to earth. And the world has not an ounce of it!
Let me tell you after long years of life as a Christian battling with many of the deceiving ways of Satan from outside and still lingering inside of me from my earlier days of being fully in the world, that wherever your heart is holding to, or still enjoying of the ways of this world, faith will falter in your heart and you will be unfruitful till you abandon the world again at a greater level.
Repentance means turning to God and to His ways fully holding on to nothing of Satan’s concocted systems of the world which is totally enemy territory.
Let us not be like Demas who Paul said had left him and the ministry and had returned to the world and its ways. Let us go on into walking with a pure heart, free of the contaminations of this world, and be usable by God in seeing the Kingdom of God come to our last breath.
Jesus Last Words Before His Crucifixion
John 16:33
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
As I copied this last verse here I remembered again that these words were the last ones spoken by Jesus to His disciples before He was crucified. They are the last words after more than three years of walking the roads and byways of Israel together in a very intimate friendship. Jesus had spoken so much to them and now he sums up all of His purpose in those three years right here. He says:
“These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace”.
Since birth Jesus had been exposed to life for human beings here on earth and had been intensely influenced; even at such a young age, by the sufferings of those He knew. When people wept, He wept. When people suffered injustices, He suffered as they did. When people died, He grieved as much as their closest family members did.
As a child this perspective of a grieving world and the incredible contrast He had within Himself where He had peace because of His Father’s ever present Love and comfort, Jesus had grown in a wisdom beyond even the elders of the Temple in Jerusalem, (the University of the day for Jewish understanding of God and the scriptures.)
From living with this extraordinary contrast within Jesus’ own heart: His peace amidst all He saw around Him in the populace, His God saturated heart of love developed to lay down His life so that all who call on Him will be saved from the hell that is in the world. From the person of Satan who has deceived the whole world and trapped them in His life experience and perspective of blindness to God’s loving, embracing, accepting and imparting life in their hearts. From a world that powerfully entices them to the acid joys of sin which eat their personalities up then condemn them to judgement for falling for that same enticement. He says I have come to you so that you may come into Me and My peace as in this world, you know, you only have tribulation.
I come so that you may escape this world. Be saved from it and live with Me in My heart and with Me in yours. The kingdom of God will come within you and you will know peace amidst all storms.
When I see all around me so many of my friends getting caught up again in the turmoils of this world it grieves my heart. With so many things having been exposed over the last few years and trust in so many of the systems of this world losing their credibility a general instability is being felt in so many hearts. It pains me that even Christians, who stand in the door of deliverance from the world, are also living in fear and anxiety. People are grasping for information that may give them something to hold on to as truth. Average people on a screen are presenting themselves as truth bearers and being believed because they carry the badge of being average. But they are just as flawed in their reasoning as those they are exposing. Political systems and politicians are being revealed in their faults and flaws; war is amongst us affecting every country destroying what was a relatively quiet time of history. World finances, world cooperation and worldwide trust, which was at a high point has been shaken and shaken and is still shaking.
The question is: what is your heart and mine experiencing. Are you being shaken? Are you at peace?
Conclusive Biblical Perspective And Living Experience
Gal 6:14-15
“But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.”
When we were baptised (immersed) into Jesus’ crucifixion, we were united with Him in His death: so that we may also be immersed in His resurrection. (Rom 6:3-4)
Here all things like circumcision; having a record of having known, done and even preached all things right by God’s word, means nothing. The only important thing is are you a new creation in your heart right now? Is your heart being thrown around in turmoil with all of those who are still in the world or are you at peace because you are not of this world?
Are you in the world or in the Heart of God?
Scriptures To Read To Summate
Matt 13:3
“A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it. Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it.”
Mark 4:18
“Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”
Revelation 12:9
“So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
Isaiah 60:2
“For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the LORD will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.”
Jn 5:19
“If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
1Jn 2:15
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
John 16:33
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
2 Tim 4:10
“For Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world”
