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 these 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, man exchanged the truth about God for a lie. The result was that

they were deceived, and they worshipped and saved the creature rather than the creator who is blessed

forever. That is an amazing deceit when you think about it. I mean at first glance how could this be?

Satan's object was to get Adam and Eve to make what is the ultimately irrational exchange,

to exchange the truth about God for the lie. Actually the Greek text has the definite article here.

They exchanged the truth about God for the lie about God. Not just a lie, but the lie, the big lie.

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