DECEIT         Christians are reminded of their past and how they were deceitful, underhanded, self-serving and manipulative.  We were described as representatives of darkness but now being transformed are admonished to “Walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:8).   God hates deceit and so called half-truths and white lies.  This is foreign to God’s nature, and it is His desire that this should be foreign to the nature of His blood-bought people.  God has, does, and will reject all who in vain try to play deceitful games (Ps. 119:118).  All who know of the all-knowing God know it is worthless to try to pull one over on Him.  He sees right through our word games.  He expects His children to be truthful not only to Him but also to ourselves and others.  Deceit is listed in Mark 7:22 as an evil coming from our inner-being; and this sin alone does make one unclean, defiled, and sinful  before God.  He guarantees He will destroy all liars, bloodthirsty, and deceitful men because He abhors such behavior (Ps. 5:6).   Peter through the Spirit admonishes us if we really want to experience the best in life and see good days that we will choose to practice some self-control with our tongues  (1 Pet. 3:10).  We will choose to keep (control) our lips which sometimes whisper deceitful speech.  Any way you want to look at it, God expects us with His help to rid ourselves of some rather serious sins which often over-lap one another like malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking (1 Pet. 2:1).   Sadly, due to a lack of personal study, there are among God’s people those who choose to be weak instead of strong in God.  There are those who know better and still choose their will to be done.  These God calls hypocrites.  Then, of course, there are babies in the faith who may be wrestling with this sin and have not matured.  Obviously, these things bring problems for God and His church family to deal with.  The sin of deceit aught not to be known among God’s people.   Like faithful Jews of old, Christians are to be a people who possess clean hands and a pure heart (Ps. 24:4).  On judgment day God will find His people to be a people in whose mouths He will find no deceit for they are without fault before Him (Rev. 14:5). Christians, we are not to be naive and gullible believing everything we hear.  We can be deceived!  We are admonished to keep our guard up.  “Let no one deceive you with empty (worthless) words (verbiage) (Eph. 5:6).   We must choose to be careful as to what we choose to believe as true.  There are those out there and even in the church who want to cheat you with “empty deceit” (Col. 2:8).  Do not believe everything you hear.  You do not always know the heart or motives of those who may choose to mouth-off, and you may be beguiled and used of the devil to further pass on “empty deceit.”  Choose to be selective in both your hearing and your speech.  If you will choose to do this, your credibility and trustworthiness will increase; and you will be blessed by God by experiencing good days (1 Pet. 3:10.) Religious teachers of error are spoken of as being both wicked and full of strife, deceit, evil-mindedness and they are whisperers (Rom. 1:29).  We do not need to pass judgment on these.  God has done that and will do that; however we do need to know who they are and that their communication is not reliable.  God’s pure and holy ones will not endure their establishment but will in fact choose to come out from among those (2 Cor. 6:17) who deceive.  False teachers who may tell half-truths, before God and man are rightly observed as being false apostles and deceitful workers who pretend to represent Christ   (2 Cor. 11:13).  There is today chaos among those who claim to follow Christ.  Satan’s work of deception continues.  All too often, sincere people are neither hearing nor obeying the whole counsel of God (Ac. 20:27).  Today, sadly, the majority of professed Christians are deceived by various organizations of deception.  There are so many of these today that the multitudes think this is the norm for Christianity.  These religious organizations claim to speak for God; but clearly by their fruits they don’t know the true and living God of the Bible. What happens if people continue to not seek truth but just sit idly by and let someone else do their thinking for them?  These people will sadly experience the results of ongoing deception.  Consider how Jerusalem during the time of Jeremiah choose perpetual backsliding because they insisted in holding fast to the deceit they had given themselves over to (Jer. 8:5).  Deceit by its very nature has to lead to other sins like lying (Prov. 14:25).  The end result of this ungodly sin has to result in punishment and destruction to those who allow themselves to be beguiled (Ps. 55:23; Jer. 9:7-9). The sin of deceit is what Satan used in the beginning to beguile the woman, Eve.  Satan came between Eve and her husband, Adam.  Satan came between God and Eve.  He enticed or beguiled her and filled her head with lies.  She decided she did not want to listen to her husband or God and that she and Satan had a better idea.  We need to be careful of the “better idea” people out there today.  Like Satan, all too often these folks want to take us away from God; and they often use all types of deceit to ensnare and entrap us.  Watch Out!  It’s your soul!