This week on Things Unseen, we've been reflecting on the events that are described in Genesis

Chapter 3, on the nature of the original temptation and the significance of the fall, and then

on the strategies of Satan.

And I said yesterday that Satan's chief motive in dragging Adam and Eve into sin was not

just his hatred of them, but back of that his hatred of God.

He desperately wanted to destroy what gave God so much pleasure, the man and woman he had made

as his image and likeness, made for fellowship with him, made to love him.

I think it's actually very difficult for us to take in how much Satan hated and hates God.

Surely one of the devices that he uses to deceive us, that we often reserve all our blame

for things for other people, and sadly sometimes for our fellow believers, and forget that

we have a supernatural enemy, who wants to stir us up in hostility so that we

no longer reflect the image of God.

So we need to remember Paul's words that we're not wrestling only against flesh and blood,

but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places.

And one of the big reasons we need to learn this hatred of Satan without developing a kind of neurosis

is because he is actually a deceiver.

And I want to think with you today about one important aspect of this.

It's the great deceit of the great deceiver.

This is what Paul refers to in Romans chapter 1, verse 25.

He says, men exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

The result was that they were deceived, and they worshipped and served the creature rather than the

Creator who is blessed forever.

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