The Father of Lies

“Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:43-44

Presently America is enveloped in what can only be described as a near civil war over racial issues. The strife is heart wrenching and terrible to watch. The reason for all of it, the root of it all, isn’t what the world’s leaders believe, though. Sin is at the bottom of every crime and every injustice. And the root of sin is the lie, spoken by the Devil way back in the Garden of Eden. That lie was posed in a soft question at first if you recall. He came to the woman and asked the question that set the world on fire. It was, “Did God really say…?” It quickly led to a direct assault on the integrity of God – he said, “…surely you won’t die.”

This is what the Lord meant when he said that the Devil is a liar and was one from the beginning. And this is the genesis of sin. Sin starts with the questioning of God’s word. It’s that simple. So, when Adam and Eve, our first parents – whether we’re white or black or anything else in creation – took of the tree and ate, they declared God to be a liar.

There’s a great issue that’s missed in this that we should note. It was in the form of the serpent that the Devil presented history’s first question of God’s authority and veracity. Do you see it? Serpents don’t talk and weren’t talking, so why was this one yapping? That’s the unnaturalness of it all. Adam and Eve were in charge of the garden. Adam had named the animals and had been given authority from God (where all authority rightly commences) to rule the earth. So, what gives? All of a sudden one of the animals is starting casual conversation? Why was the serpent talking? And why was he asking theology questions? How would you respond if your dog strolled up to you one morning and asked how the stock market is doing? In our day where stores like Trader Joe’s are super concerned with foods being all-natural, we should note that there’s nothing less natural than questioning the authority and goodness of God’s word. A serpent brings the first challenge in history to God’s rule because it’s an unnatural act, a bizarre one, a completely irrational one. To suggest that God doesn’t have complete authority over creation, including us, and isn’t altogether loving and good is a monstrous lie. Adam and Eve should have run to see God. He was there, remember? He was walking in the cool of the day. And He’s there for us now, Christian! His perfect, holy and life giving word is at our fingertips.

We should run to it before we form opinions lest we be like Adam. When we don’t base our lives and ideas on the principles of Scripture we build on the very principle that sent all of mankind crashing into sin and misery. The Devil asked, “did God really say?” Paul asked, “what does the Scripture say?”

Thus it is that Jesus tells the religious scholars of His day, the Pharisees, that they’re childen of the Devil. It’s not as though they didn’t know the law and the prophets. They certainly did – and probably ten times better than we do today. It’s that they didn’t truly believe them. And why was that? We need to settle this question or else everything else we do is useless, vain, and leads us to that wide road of destruction that’s so heavily traveled.

The Pharisees, like many of the protestors today, were self-righteous. They don’t think it’s their sin that needs fixing, but everyone else’s. When Jesus came and spoke of their need for grace and to be born again, the message was offensive. The gospel, when properly understood, is always offensive to sinners. A Christian who shirks their responsibility to tell the world of sin, therefore offending it, is more worried about the present emotional comfort of the sinner than their eternal destination. Jesus Christ was illegally arrested and unjustly murdered not because He didn’t do signs and wonders – He did. Lazarus was brought back from the grave. Blind men could see the resplendent rays of sunlight at last, and witness the smiles of loved ones for the first time. The lame stood, stretched their formerly useless legs, carried their beds and walked! The deaf heard laughter and birds and even whispers. Jesus did all this and everyone saw it. But it wasn’t for this that He was murdered. He was executed, yes for our sin – that’s the theological point of it, of course – but the cause of it was the telling the world of its sin.

Thus, you can know so much Scripture that people call you pastor, teacher or priest, but you aren’t saved until you know and agree with it. And this means that you know you are a sinner that deserves wrath. This and only this alone will draw you to Christ – and only there, at the foot of the cross, is redemption found.

The Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t want to hear this any more than the Pharisees wanted to hear about their need of repentance. The way to check whether you understand the gospel and are living in agreement with God is to see whose sin bothers you the most – yours or someone else’s. Judas likely betrayed Jesus because he didn’t see how the Lord was going to shake off the Roman rule. Remember the Devil and his lies. He tempts you with his basics. It’s always the basics. He works off the jab. He asks you if you can trust God’s word. He gets you worried about your finances and daily bread. He offers earthly power and kingdoms.

Our cities are burning because people have fallen for these lies. The answer to all of it isn’t the poison cup of Marxism and ever bigger government. It isn’t “making America Great Again” but having America understand and submit to God’s righteous decree that the government is His servant, not ours. God’s servant must not try and be the church – that is, try and make people good. It must, however, punish anyone, regardless of their race, if they violate the God-given rights of another human being. Nor is the answer abolishing the police. Black Lives Matter is an unabashedly Marxist organization despite Marxism being ideologically responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the last century. It seeks to solve one problem with a greater one. Only a deal with the Devil can make someone think that’s a good idea. But, again, the same Pharisees who saw Jesus call Lazarus out of the tomb plotted to kill Him. Sin is always irrational. The Devil will always play us for a fool unless we cling to the word of Christ. Satan doesn’t drive up in a van, slide the door open, overpower us and drive us to some vacant warehouse where he then has his way with us. That’s nonsense. He lies and those lies are so subtle.

The answer to the sin of racism is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only that can change the hearts of sinners. The answer to crime and legal oppression is for the civil magistrate to obey God’s righteous decree in Romans 13 and act only within its mandate – as God’s avenger. God’s righteousness demands that all crime, which is to say theft, assault, murder or rape, against a person or group be avenged. This must be done impartially because God shows no partiality. Scripture has provided the blueprint for a fair and civil society but sinful man doesn’t want to hear it. Sinful man is drunk with power, busy playing with the lives and fortunes of his neighbors, constantly denying that there are moral absolutes but then issuing his own willy-nilly.

The lie of the Devil is that we can fix these problems before us without submitting to God’s law. The lie is that God’s moral order doesn’t apply to us and we must come up with another way. For all of us concerned with justice on earth – and we should be – let it be known once and for all that mankind must repent of his sin and submit to God or else he will only succeed in trading one oppression and injustice for another. The Scripture alone provides us with the divine principles in which we can order our personal, professional and political lives in accordance with God’s character, thereby living in peace. This isn’t paradise on earth, be sure, as sin is still here. That’s why the church must preach the gospel and the government must punish evil (as defined by God) and neither may usurp the mandate and power of the other. God has ordained that the church preach the gospel and that the state punish criminals without partiality. That alone is justice on earth. Any other plan will end in frustration, tyranny, anarchy and bloodshed.

This is the change that Christians should and must clamor for, not the false gospel of Black Lives Matter, socialism, Marxism, libertarianism, democracy or any other worldly philosophy. We must all repent of this fatal lie that we can govern ourselves without God’s law.