Deception - From Apple to Zion

Deception has been around as long as:
Women have been asking, "How do I look?"
Men have been selling used cars.
Children have been liberating cookies.
Lions have looked lazy.
Satan has had horns and a pitch fork.

Adam and Eve weren't very good at it on their first try - God saw right through them. But give them a few years and watch their children. "Am I my brother's keeper?" A classic line of innocence and 'woe is me' that rings from siblings lips today. "It wasn't my fault!" ""I didn't see him standing there." "He shouldn't have put his head where I was swinging my fist!" "I mean seriously, am I my brother's keeper?"

Then, not so very long later, we see a younger brother wrapped in goatskin and feeding his father meat and broth that he didn't cook and claiming a birthright that he didn't deserve. No wonder God told the Israelites, "Don't cook a kids in his mother's milk." Jacob was stewing in his mother's deceptive juices. And he didn't see a thing wrong with it - just opportunity.

We could go right through the stories of the Bible adding deception upon deception until we were so tied up in a knot of lies that we wouldn't know which way to look for truth. A woman named Jael who invited the king in to rest, warmed his drink and then spiked his head. A warrior named Ehud who said he had a message for the king, but put a short sword in his belly instead. King David sending his right hand man Urriah to his death to steal a wife and silence a story. Solomon holding a sword ready to dissect a newborn to discover the deceptive mother. If only it were always that easy. If only we were always that wise!

But, perhaps the most devastating deception of all unravelled when the least of the twelve returned to throw thirty pieces of silver back at the priests. "I have betrayed innocent blood!" The whole thing had been a deception from the start. Judas' original plan, I'll sell him out and he'll fight when they attack! Then we will set up our kingdom! Failed. Jesus didn't fight back. Judas saw his plan sputtering and the money began smacking of treason. Judas returned to the halls of religious piety to reclaim his innocence. The money flew through the air at the priests, the words cut the night cold, "I have betrayed innocent blood." And the reply severed a heart, "What is that to us?" He too was deceived, by his own heart. They couldn't forgive him. Only Jesus could. And Judas couldn't bring himself to face Jesus. I am beyond forgiveness. I did what I did. His death is on my head. And with such deceptive thoughts he wrapped one end of a rope around a tree, the other around his neck and leapt off the branch. Judas was dead. Dead wrong.

Jesus came to forgive sins. He came to forgive all who call on His name. Judas would have heard him say that a time or two in their three years together. So, why the misconception? Why the hard hearted self treatment? Because the master of this Earth is a deceiver. He is the father of lies. And he has been weaving his web of deceit since Eve's first wayward bite. He'll do all he can to convince each of us that we are unworthy, that God is unwilling, that life is unchanging and that forgiveness is unavailable. But he is wrong. Dead wrong.

One day we will see. But for now he continues to deceive and many of us continue to emulate his deceptive ways. There is only one way out of his devastating downward spiral of deceit - Look to Jesus. Eyes fixed on Him are released from the snares of the old snake. Hearts fixed on Him are perfected. Lives fixed on Him are forever His. Let us lift our eyes. Lift them up from the serpent's bites all around us. Lift them to the centre of the camp - to the cross. Let us fix our eyes on Christ, who became sin for us, so that we might become righteous! And we will be healed. Then, let us not look back. Ever.