God Isn’t So Serious About Sin
Another thing that Satan has a way of doing to trip us up is to make us doubt God's seriousness. In Genesis 3, as we saw yesterday, he tries to make Eve doubt God's Word, and Eve says, “God did say, ‘you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not touch it or you will die.’” So she said, No, this is the word of God.
The serpent, then, in verse 4 says “you will not certainly die for. God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
It's interesting to me that he tried to downplay the seriousness of God in this little sentence. “No! Don't take seriously all those difficult passages of God saying ‘you must not or you're going to feel it’”, he says, “that's not true!”
The Deceptive Influence of Sin and God's Call to Holiness
I think in a sense, he has done this in the modern world, too, telling us, “don't take seriously the words of God. Take this stuff about Him loving you and leave the rest and then just carry on with what you're doing.”
And as he feeds us these sorts of lies, we just go on doing our own things and expecting God to forgive and be full of grace. God's grace always comes into play in the lives of people when they repent. When they repent, when they turn from their evil ways instead of continuing in them.
I hope that we don't fall prey to Satan's lie that if we indulge in sin, we're okay and it doesn't really matter. God is a holy God. God longs to forgive us, He longs to set us free. He loves us, but he desires deeply for us to be holy and free from the sins which are so rife in the world.
Answering God's Call to Holiness and Rejecting the Devil's Lies
First 1 Thessalonians 4:7 says, “God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life”. He called us to turn from sin. Let us carefully avoid the lie of the devil that says, “Just do what you want”, but let us answer the call of God to live holy and pure lives because He's loved us and we love him so that we want to honor him in all we do.
When those lies are whispered in your ears, reject them! And remind yourself that you are called to holiness and that God's Holy Spirit is in you to live out that holiness every day.
