You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing - if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
Sorcery and magic were common in Paul’s time. Acts 8:9-25 NIV tells of a man named Simon who practiced sorcery in Samaria , his many "wonders" causing people to say that he was the "divine power known as the Great Power". On Cyprus (Acts 13:4-12 NIV), Paul was confronted by Elymas the sorcerer, whom Paul - through the power of the Holy Spirit - struck blind. Now Paul is talking to the Galatians as though they had been bewitched. Magicians and sorcerers used both optical illusions and Satan’s powers to perform "miracles". People were fascinated and were drawn to these people, without realizing the true source of their power.
Sorcery and magic aren’t dead. They’re alive and well and living in the world today. Consider psychics, those folks who have become so popular that they even have their own TV programs and telephone call-in lines. Millions of dollars are given over to psychic research every year, not to mention the millions spent by consumers at $4.98+ a minute on the telephone. Paranormal matters are becoming a matter of course, with one television special after another on the subject… and it’s the rare individual who does not know his or her astrological sign, including Christians who see nothing wrong with reading their daily horoscopes in the paper. People who are otherwise normal, sane, rational human beings, listen to "spirit guides" and indulge in "guided imagery". The "Force" espoused by Star Wars is the identical "divine power known as the Great Power" spoken of in Acts. And Halloween is the second highest commercial boon for retailers in the United States every year.
This bewitching is not just limited to the secular world… it also has crept into our churches one by one. More and more people are being turned away from the simplicity of faith in Jesus toward New Age philosophy. Buying into not only some churches’ theology, but also New Age mysticism, people seem more ready to believe in their ability to become gods - or to believe that they already are - than to believe in the one and only God Almighty who created them.
Still others have turned God into a big “vending machine” in the sky who is compelled to dispense whatever the requester asks for, if he/she only asks the right way, using the right “formula” for prayer, and exhibits enough “faith”…
Perhaps most maligned of all, though, is the sufficiency of Jesus’ death on the cross. Unable to accept the fact that Jesus did all the “work” at Calvary, people (and churches) insist on adding to what He did, either through additional requirements for salvation (“good works”) or payment for one’s own sins in one way or other, the worst of which is the shedding of one’s own blood.
Don’t be bewitched. Don’t allow Satan’s deception to pull you into a fascination with his deceptive tricks. Study God’s word and let it abide in you, building up your armor against the bewitching ways of the devil.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Ephesians 6:10-18 NIV
All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
Paul had been sent to preach the gospel message to the Gentiles in the countries surrounding Israel . Many, if not most, of Paul’s converts were, if not wealthy, at least quite comfortable financially. The Christians in Jerusalem , however, were not so well off. In fact, they had come upon hard times due to a famine. Knowing this, Paul was constant in his seeking of donations of funds which he sent to the church leaders in Jerusalem to be distributed to those in need. Paul was eager to help the poor, to see that no one went without food or clothing or shelter.
Are our churches so generous today? Are Christians as willing today to make sure others have food, clothing, shelter, transportation? If so, why do we have so many people who are homeless? In the U.S. , approximately 78% of the people call themselves "Christian." If each one of these people had a heart like Paul, not one person in the United States would be homeless… not one child would go hungry… not one person would have to wear rags.
If that were accomplished, that same spirit of giving could spread from every person in this country to all the countries in the world where poverty is the norm, where many of those who are considered poor in this country would be considered rich.
If you live in the U.S. and want a wake-up call, talk to someone who lives in one of the poorer countries in Africa where children die by the thousands from malaria – which could be cured with one of the least expensive drugs in existence – quinine. Where having a bed and blanket of your own is a luxury… or where you’re considered “well off” if you have your own bathroom and a real floor in your one-room apartment rather than dirt… and where you never know from day to day whether you’ll have electricity or whether violence will break out nearby, making it dangerous for you to even go to the grocery store.
Unfortunately, most of us consider giving like this: We clean out our closets and take all the things we wouldn’t be caught dead in to mission efforts or the Salvation Army. We buy some groceries - a whole load of things we wouldn’t think of putting on our own tables - and give them to the food pantry. We make sure our own children have the best clothing, the best toys, the nicest houses, the newest cars, and - if it doesn’t get in the way of our budget - throw a few dollars into the pot for those less fortunate than ourselves. Think about this… how much would it help someone else if you gave up HBO and gave what you’re paying the cable company to a mission every month? That’s just one thing. There are thousands of other things that you and I can and should do to help those in need, and not just financially. How about volunteering to teach an adult literacy class? Could it be that your efforts might result in one person moving from poverty to prosperity simply by learning to read?
Jesus said that the poor would always be with us, and He didn’t lie. How much are you doing to make sure that the poor have what they need – both financially and through giving of your time and effort? How often do you remember the poor?
"I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40 NIV
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
From reading Paul’s letters, he kept running into the same problem again and again… He had travelled quite a bit, preaching the gospel to the lost, and planting new churches … and not long after he would leave a city or region, others would come along behind him, teaching false doctrine… and the new believers were soaking it all in, and changing their beliefs to fit with what these preachers of false doctrine were teaching.
So, just as Jesus had spent many hours straightening out the mess that the Pharisees and teachers of the law had made of God’s word, Paul spent many hours writing letters to the churches he’d planted, straightening out the mess that false teachers had made of the true gospel he’d taught them in the beginning.
With all this “correcting” going on throughout the New Testament, you’d think that we wouldn’t run into this kind of thing in today’s world, right? Wrong! For every one preacher or teacher who is teaching the truth, there’s at least one (and often more than one) false teacher today who is taking God’s word and twisting it to fit his conception of what HE thinks it says… and just like schools of lemmings, Christians and non-Christians alike are buying into the false doctrines and leaping onto the bandwagon of lies… deserting the one who called them by the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel – “which is really no gospel at all.” As a result, a world full of lost people is buying into lies, and getting further and further away from salvation through Jesus Christ. And when – as has happened – a pastor has allowed himself to be deceived, he’s led his entire congregation down that same path, buying into the lies, and selling them to his congregation wholesale.
One thing is a proven fact… there is not a person alive who cannot be deceived… IF he isn’t taking the needed measures to protect himself from deception, he’ll buy into the lies… and then “sell” them to his own family!
OR, parents who know and are following the true gospel will feel secure about their children… thinking, “We’ve taken them to church every time the doors are open, so they know the truth.” And then, without warning, those children become ensnared in yet another bag of deception… Too late, the parents cry, “What can we do to get them away from those lies?”
At that point, the answer is… nothing, other than prayer… and “living” Jesus in front of the children in hopes they will wake up and see the difference.
If you’re still in the “safe zone” – with your entire family following God’s truth – then arm your family with the truth in such a way that they will recognize the lies when they come along. How? By going to the source… God’s word… the Bible… the ONLY source of truth available to us today. Be a “Berean”… Acts 17:11 says, “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” They didn’t take Paul at his word… they listened to what Paul had to say, and then compared that to scripture (what is now our Old Testament, the only scriptures they had) to make sure Paul was telling the truth. We must be just like the Bereans, using God’s word as our “measuring stick” for truth. If we do that, we won’t be deceived… and if we share what we learn with our families, neither will they be deceived…
Yes, the Bible is 66 books long… and that can be intimidating if you’ve not yet become familiar with it. But we all have to start somewhere, so make a commitment today to start spending time in God’s word every day, reading and studying so that you will know the truth and can recognize the lies when they come along. Then, if you hear something that doesn’t quite jive with what you think you remember from your studies, go check it out… use your concordance to look up scriptures. Use a “Study Bible” so you’ll have the added advantage of footnotes and cross-references. If you have children, spend time with them doing the same thing… Possibly studying for yourself one day, and then teaching your children what you’ve learned the next… building their “armor” against deception with every lesson. If you hear something that doesn’t sound right, but you’re not yet familiar enough with your Bible to know how to look it up, ask a mature Christian to help you. In fact, don’t believe what anyone says without question – including your own pastor… or this devotional writer… people are human, and we all make mistakes… so check everything you hear against God’s word.
Do everything you can to keep yourself and your family from being among those that Paul was talking about when he said, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” 2 Timothy 4:3 NIV
"For such men (and women) are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve."
Sometimes it’s extremely difficult to believe that a person is a deceiver, and in reality, is nothing more than a servant of Satan himself. I met a practicing witch one time (yes, the world is full of them, believe it or not!) who belied the common image of a witch that is portrayed by Hollywood . She was, instead, cute, blonde, blue-eyed, and looked like the ideal college cheerleader type - bouncy and beautiful (think Nicole Kidman in “Bewitched”). Then there was the man who was Comptroller of a company I worked for. You never saw that man without a Bible under his arm, and he never missed a Sunday at church. But other than those two things, there was nothing in the man’s life that reflected Jesus. Then there are those people who seem to be good as gold, who spend most of their time "doing good", whose every action seems to be done to benefit others. These deceivers are, by far, the most difficult to discern.
So how do you and I know who the servants of Satan are? How can we tell in advance and avoid being pulled into their deception? By being obedient ourselves to God’s Word. 1 John 4:1 (NIV) says, "….do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world." How do you "test the spirits"? John goes on to say, "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God."
To put any person or organization or church to the test, ask three questions. First, does the person or organization or church proclaim that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate… the only begotten Son of God who came into the world as a man to save people from their sins? Do they change any aspect of who Jesus is – like denying the virgin birth, or saying He was married, or that He is “one of the gods.” Remember, Satan knows who Jesus really is and will cause people to state partial truths to mislead you.
Second, emulate the Bereans in Acts 17:11 who were commended for checking what Paul said against the scriptures (our Old Testament) to see whether Paul was telling the truth…. Does what that person or church or organization say affirm the Bible? In the alternative, does anything at all go against God’s Word in any way? Do they proclaim that His work on the cross was all sufficient, and there is nothing left for us to do but accept His free gift of salvation, period? Or do they give you a long list – or even a short list - of “do’s and don’ts” that you must adhere to in order to be saved? Remember, Satan sugar-coats his lies with smatterings of the truth, so examine everything carefully.
And third, does that person or organization or church advocate and practice a lifestyle that is consistent with Biblical morality? Does it glorify God in everything it does?
The world is full of angels of light. Be watchful and don’t be deceived.
"But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your mind may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ."
It’s amazing how easily people are deceived and led away from the simple truth that is in God’s Word. Educated people… uneducated people… all people. This means you and me. How can this happen?
It’s pretty obvious to most when a hoax arises. Like when Doe, the “prophet”, led all of his followers to commit suicide, convincing them they’d all end up on a comet’s tail, or something like that… When that kind of thing happens, the vast majority of people can instantly see the deception. Others can’t. Some didn’t and died because of their own blindness.
Then there are the not-so-obvious deceptions. Psychology, for the most part, is a deception. (Apologies to those good Christian psychologists and counselors who are using God’s Word to temper the fallacies in humanistic psychology.) Virtually all self-help books and magazine articles are filled with deception. Psychics and astrologers are the epitome of deception. Your friends, unless they are firmly rooted in God’s Word, will deceive you. And sadly, many, many pastors and preachers are deceivers, with the most prevalent deception one that drags whole congregations into bondage to a “law” of some kind – either returning to the Old Testament laws (the ones that were nailed to the cross with Jesus), or to “laws” of their own making… rules and regulations designed to keep people “in line” and in bondage.
So how do you and I protect ourselves from being deceived? How do we make certain that we, unlike Eve, avoid the deception that Satan places in our paths daily? By being like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, who were considered "more noble than the Thessalonians" because they listened with joy to everything that Paul said, and then went home and checked what he had said against the scriptures, to make sure what he said was true! By studying God’s Word - ALL of it… by not taking verses out of context to prove what we want to believe… by spending time each day alone with the Lord so that we might listen to His voice and understand what He says… by becoming like children, able to trust totally, to understand the simplicity of His love, and to return that love unconditionally and completely.
Guard yourself against the deceivers - look to God’s Word and only God’s Word for your truth. It’s the only really trustworthy truth that exists.
"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers…. What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? … ‘Therefore, come out from them and be separate, says the Lord….’" (vv. 14a, 15b, 17a)
Most of us use this scripture as a directive for dating and marriage. But it’s so much more. In this portion of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul was speaking of any binding relationship with others - business, friendship, dating, AND marriage. So what do we mean by a "binding" relationship? Any relationship wherein you are in “partnership” with another individual and participation in that partnership might cause you to have to either compromise your Christian walk or where your beliefs might end up being a dividing “wall” between yourself and the other person.
Let’s look at an excellent “for instance”… a situation I allowed myself to get into some years ago which continued to haunt me for years. I got involved in a writing project, one that had a written contract, with a man who – on the surface – was the nicest of gentlemen. He was well dressed, intelligent, educated, successful, and quite elegant in his demeanor. Going against good sense as well as what I knew to be right in God’s eyes, I involved myself in this project which covered a span of several years and involved many, many hours of work and some expense on my part. I didn’t even consider bringing up the subject of this man’s spiritual life until about a year into the project, when we were having lunch one day. During this conversation, the man revealed that he was a professing atheist! At that point, I had too much invested in the project to back out, or so I thought. So I continued on. Time began to show me what a mistake I had made, and how difficult dealing with this man was to become because his "boss" and my boss don’t get along! For several years, problems resulting from that project kept rearing their ugly heads – to the point that the project – which came close to launching me into a career of screen writing for major films – was eventually brought to a dead standstill, and finally was “shelved” permanently because a Christian and an atheist could not agree on certain aspects of the work. All six years of work on what was, in my opinion, the best writing I’ve ever done, was packed away… never to see the big screen where it had great potential to be a huge box office success. All was lost because I went against God’s Word and allowed myself to become unequally yoked.
This same principal applies in friendships. If we allow ourselves to become close friends with those who are not committed to Jesus, those friends will influence our thinking, whether we want to admit it or not. Inevitably, such a close friendship will come to a point where we either have to stand up for what scripture tells us to do and lose the friend, or compromise what we should do and head down that dark road outside of God’s will.
Does this mean we have to stay completely away from non-Christians? No, of course not. How else would we witness to them? How else would we be able to acquaint them with our Lord through our verbal witness and the witness of our lives? What it does mean is that you must avoid any relationship that might put you, a Christian, into a situation that might cause you to have to compromise your Christian walk. Think about the relationships in which you’re involved right now. Are you taking Paul’s sound advice in all relationships, or are you treading in the dangerous water that he tried to warn us all about? Think about it… and then think about what you should do about it.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Do you have a past? Yes, you say? Okay, let me see it. Show it to someone. Hold it out for someone to look at and touch and feel. Pretty hard to do, isn’t it? Why? Because what you consider to be your past isn’t there. It’s gone. In fact, what you perceived at the beginning of this paragraph is gone. You cannot perceive it in the same way twice. If you go back now and re-read it, you will have a different perception of it than you did the first time. So, in essence, your second reading of it is brand new, and you can never recapture the first reading.
Yes, it’s true that all of us have a history, a slew of years behind us with all sorts of things, both good and bad, that occurred in them. However, a very bad practice is becoming the norm today… allowing people to shirk their responsibilities for their actions today by blaming them on what happened in the past. Watch the nightly news. See how we excuse serial killers because they were abused as children. Feel sorry for the rapist because he was influenced by pornography. Excuse our codependency and our compulsive behavior and our many, many other actions because someone did something awful to us ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Hate all men because your first husband was a louse. Consider all women worthless because your first wife slept around on you. Have a lousy marriage because the only one you ever witnessed was your parents’ lousy marriage. It goes on and on and on, doesn’t it? But that’s because the majority of us look just like Meryl Streep in "Death Becomes Her" - we’re running around with our heads turned totally backward, unable to deal properly with the present because we’re so busy looking at the past. And then a man takes captive and slaughters a school room full of little Amish girls because of something that happened to him when he was twelve years old! Do you see where that kind of thinking leads?
If you’re a Christian who is living with your eyes on the past, you are even more guilty than other people. Why? Because… "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!" If you are a Christian, you have no past… only a bright and beautiful future!
Make a new and strong commitment to this day - the one that begins the rest of your life. Commit to stop dwelling on your past - something that is gone, irretrievable, non-existent - and start living in the bright and beautiful today that Jesus Christ has given you.