What is the One Lie That Sabotages Everything?

Every week at the church I serve, I put a sheet with all sorts of quotes on it.   I love quotes.   But this week, one I was thinking of I didn’t include there.   St. Augustine said it, one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all time.   He said. 

“When you sing, you pray twice.”   

I remembered it because of a 1300- year-old prayer by Alcuin of York that we were praying that Sunday.  And it turns out someone set that prayer to music.  And a version of that song you can see below.

But what kills me about the prayer whether your say it or sing it, is how much it doesn’t happen, at least the way you wish it would.   The Eternal light doesn’t shine as deep as you wish.  The eternal Good hasn’t totally delivered you from evil.  If you are like me, you look too often not to eternal power for support but other stuff that doesn’t support you much at all.   As much as you pray this prayer, doesn’t the darkness still come?  So, what’s wrong?  Why no matter what you and I do, do we still struggle with the darkness.  It’s because a lie holds you.  What is it?   In these words, God shows you.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Genesis 3:1-9

In these words, part of one of the most powerful stories ever told, God shows you the lie that traps you.   And here’s the problem.  This lie doesn’t seem all that clever, but it traps you nonetheless, just like it trapped Adam and Eve.   So, what does the lie do?  It tells you to not trust the love.   And that lie, as simple as it is, lies at the root of every human brokenness. 

So many folks get this story wrong.   This story has little to do with the tree.  It has everything to do with the trust.   And right at the beginning that’s what the serpent breaks down. 

Do you see the first lie that the snake tells?   He asks it as a question.  “Did God say, ‘That you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’   The snake knows he’s saying something so ridiculous that Eve will immediately shoot it down.  That doesn’t matter.   He’s planting the seed, the seed of doubt.

Look the internet did not invent fake news.   This snake did.   He tells Eve something that he knows, and she knows is wrong.  But still it leads her to wonder.  Why does God not want us to eat from this tree?  And as she wonders, it has its effect.  She gets God’s words wrong too.   She tells the serpent.  “No, it’s only this tree in the middle of the garden. But this tree we can’t even touch or we’ll die.”  But God didn’t say anything about touching and dying.  What is going on here?

You are getting the first forms of the lie.   You have them around today.   It goes something like this.  This God doesn’t want you to have any fun, any enjoyment.   This God is holding you back, trying to control you.   This God will not let you do anything! But is that what God is doing?

When my son gets out of the car at the store, he wants to run.  Heck, when he gets out anywhere, he wants to run.   That boy hardly seems to want to walk anywhere.  But I have to tell him. Slow down a bit.  Look both ways.  Cross with me at the busiest spots.  But am I trying to hold my son back?  No, I’m trying to keep him alive, to keep him safe.  

And in this story, as we’ll find out, God is doing the same thing.  God doesn’t want to hold you back from life.  But God sure wants to keep you from death.   But the lie of the snake leads you to think differently.  You start questioning God’s motives.  You start wondering if you can trust this God at all. 

But the lie can mess you up the other way too.  It can lead you to, like Eve, go beyond God’s words.  It can lead you to be so fearful of displeasing God, of doing the wrong thing, that it gets ridiculous.    “That tree, we can’t even touch or we’ll die!” 

When I was growing up, my parents put my sisters for a few years in an independent Baptist school.  The folks there worked hard to give these kids a decent education.   But they had their own way of getting caught in the lie.  One day, I was looking through my sister’s textbooks.    As I flipped the pages, I saw a picture that looked like this. 

My sisters had reached an age where they knew what lay behind the censored section.  But God forbid they see it!   

But the censoring didn’t stop them from looking, it only led them to want to look more.  But more than that, it led them to believe in a God terrified of God’s own creation.  

But that’s not the lie.  No, the lie includes these things, but it goes deeper.

And as you reach the pinnacle of the story, the serpent delivers the big lie.   The snake tells Adam and Eve.  “You won’t die.  For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”    But here’s the stunner.   On the surface, the snake tells Eve mostly the truth.   “The tree did open their eyes.  The tree did lead them to know good and evil, but not as God does.”    But beneath all the seeming truth, the serpent had hidden the biggest lie of all.

He was telling them in these somewhat truthful words.  You can’t trust this God.   This God doesn’t want you to eat from the tree because if you do, you’ll be like God.   God doesn’t care about you.  This God doesn’t want the best for you.  This God does not love you.   And you’re a sucker, if you think God does.  That’s the lie, and it will kill you. 

So, Adam and Eve eat.  But it’s not about the tree.  It’s about the trust.  When Adam and Eve pick the fruit, they are saying to God.   I don’t trust you.   I don’t trust that you love me at all. And so, I’m not trusting you about this tree.  And the moment they do, they do know good and evil, but not the way God does.   They know evil because they’ve done evil.   They’ve stopped trusting in the love.   And as they stop trusting, they start fearing.  And out of that fear, they fall.

From that moment forward, the lie seeps into the world, poisoning us all.   How does it poison?   Let’s take two extreme examples.   Let’s say, you have two people that come to South Florida.    One has come to indulge in all the wild and decadent living that South Florida has to offer.   At work, they cut corners.  They do whatever it takes to get ahead.  They want it all.   And God hardly shows up on the radar.  They think of religion as a twisted philosophy to hold you back from success and fulfillment.   They want to get as far away from that junk as possible. 

But the other person, they do the opposite.  They find a church to attend.   They get involved, join a Bible study, serve in a ministry.   They don’t drink or smoke.  They avoid even associating with those who do.   They live as best they can the life they believe God wants them to.   And when this person does mess up, oh, the guilt they feel, the remorse, the shame.   And they promise to God they’ll do better.  They will not fail God again. 

Do you see that both these people are trapped in the same lie?    Now, one reacts to the lie by rebelling, by distrusting anything that this God might say to them.   The other goes in the direction of being so intensely good that God won’t have to say anything to them.   But don’t you see?  Both believe the same lie.  They don’t trust that God really loves them, without limit, without condition, that this God only wants the very best for them.   They don’t trust the love.   So, they hide.   One hides in rebellion.  The other hides in religion.   But the same lie lives in them both.

And of course, hiding began in the garden too.   Adam and Eve first hide from each other. They cover themselves up.   They don’t trust each other anymore.  When God comes, they hide too. 

But what does God do?   God seeks them out.   God looks for them.  Why?  Because God knows the truth.   God does love them, even as God knows they’ve betrayed the love.  The love still remains.   The love will always remain.   That love will never go away.  

So, God’s love seeks them out again and again.   In fact, this whole book tells the story of that seeking, until it ends as it began at a tree.    But at this tree, the only thing that hangs there is God himself.   And at this tree, in Jesus, God does die.    And God dies to kill the lie that traps you.  God dies to give you truth that sets you free.   God dies to show you that nothing, not even the death of God, will take God’s love away from you.   God will go even to death and beyond to bring his beloved children home.

And that love, stronger than death itself, will free you from the lie.   It frees you to live, the abundant, beautiful, wondrous life that God lovingly wants you to have.   So, trust in the love.  Believe in the love.   It’s not only true.  It’s the truest thing that exists.    And it’s the only truth that truly sets you free.