The Alternative

Dr. Tony Evans: You should enjoy the fellowship, but it can't substitute for Bible doctrine. You should enjoy the worship, but it cannot substitute for Bible doctrine. What doctrine does is serve as a filter for the soul in order to catch stuff that's trying to infiltrate itself in your life that doesn't work.

Guest (Male): Dr. Tony Evans says nothing takes the place of knowing the truth that's only found in God's Word. This is The Alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans.

Con artists rely on distraction and deception to keep people from seeing the truth. And since the devil is the ultimate deceiver, Dr. Evans says our best defense is a clear understanding of God's truth. Let's join him to find out more.

Dr. Tony Evans: The story is told of a farmer who was perpetually having his melons stolen by thieves. He put a sign in his garden or on his farm that said, "One of these melons is poisoned." And of course, the next day he went out, none of the melons were gone because, of course, the thieves wouldn't know which one was poisoned.

And he was quite satisfied that he had tricked his thieves, but much to his chagrin, two days later, he came out to his farm, he looked at his sign, and in utter terror, the word "one" had been scratched through and the sign now read, "Two of these melons are now poisoned." Our farmer friend lost his whole crop because now he didn't know which melon was poisoned.

That's a lot like dealing with the devil. No matter what you come up with, he can come up with something better. Today we want to look at the strategy of Satan, and it can be understood in one word. Satan's strategy in your life and mine is one of deception. He is the master deceiver.

First of all, let's look at the power of Satan's deception in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. I'm going to make a number of points here. I want to make four points, actually, so some we'll spend a little bit more time on than others. Verse 3, 2 Thessalonians 2: "Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come—that is the day of the Lord—unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God."

Now please notice verse 8: "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming. That is, the one whose coming is in accordance with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all deception of wickedness for those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved."

Talking about the day that is to come when the lawless representative of hell will be revealed, this person who will be empowered by Satan. He says that this power will manifest itself in a masterful deception. Now, the reason why Satan has developed deception as an art is because he cannot outpower God.

So what he had to do was come up with a plan to seek to outmaneuver Him. Because he does not have the power of creation, he has had to maximize the performance of deception. The reason why this person—because evil is personal, it's in a person—is so powerful over you and why you should never say that won't happen to me is number one: Satan has constitutional superiority over any man or woman.

By constitutional superiority, we mean he is an angel. He's a spirit being. He has not the limitations of flesh and blood. So you can't compete with him on the level of deception. You can't deceive a deceiver. He's a spirit being, and you can't compete with him. Secondly, he's got millions of years of experience. You are not the first human he's come up against. He has been against better than you and won.

And then, one we will look at in a moment, he has the ability to transform himself. He is the master chameleon. But he is not to be taken lightly. Another reason for his power is that he has a master, massive organization. We've already learned that in Ephesians 6:11 and 12. We wrestle against principalities, powers, world forces of this darkness. He's got an organization that's well run and heavily disguised.

There is no substitute for Bible doctrine. You should enjoy the choir, but they can't substitute for Bible doctrine. You should enjoy the fellowship, but it can't substitute for Bible doctrine. You should enjoy the worship, but it cannot substitute for Bible doctrine. Being busy cannot substitute for Bible doctrine, because what Bible doctrine gives you is the meat and potatoes of the Christian life.

We have a lot of dessert Christians. They want more peach cobbler and spiritual apple pie and pralines and cream and cookies and cream. They're dessert Christians. Now, there's nothing wrong with dessert, but you try to live on it, you're going to die. You have to have some stable meat, potatoes, and green vegetables.

All of it won't be exciting. All of it won't necessarily be energetic. It may not make you flip and jump, but it'll stick to your spiritual bones so that when the enemy comes, you will be able to handle it because you have built up categories of doctrine. What doctrine does is serve as a filter for the soul in order to catch stuff that's trying to infiltrate itself in your life that doesn't work.

Now, you may not remember all the doctrinal details. You don't have to. But when your life is filled with doctrine, when you understand the categories of truth that are in the word of God, you may not know all the details, but you will know something's not right about that because the doctrine, the meat and potatoes, the vegetables will have housed themselves in your soul.

The program of deception is next. 2 Corinthians 11:3: "But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ." And that's what autonomous man has done. He has created his own kingdom right after Satan. Satan also told Eve, "You will know good and evil." If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will know good and evil. In other words, you can make your own decisions about what's right and what's wrong.

He told her, "You won't die." God didn't really mean like, dead. Maybe you'll get sick or something, but he doesn't mean die. There are no consequences to your actions. You can do what you want to do without consequence. You can do what you want to do without retaliation. You can do what you want to do and God won't do anything about it. There are no consequences to evil.

Let me tell you what else he told her. He said, "Your eyes will be opened." You will see if you just do it your way and not God's way. Your eyes will be opened. Personal pleasure will become more important than objective truth. So skip truth and go after an experience. If it feels good, do it. Get the experience. You don't need the facts. Have the fun.

Satan cannot stand objective truth. Satan does not want you to believe something simply because God said it, whether you experience it or not. He has all kind of systems in place to deceive you and me from objective, stated truth. One of the things he wants you to believe is that truth is ever-changing. It's called relativism. What's true today may not be true tomorrow. Or he wants you to believe that truth is merely personal. That's called subjectivism. That is, it may be true for you, but it's not true for me.

Just because something is miraculous doesn't mean it was God. Satan is a spirit being, remember? So don't get thrown off by a miracle. God does miracles, so it could very well be God. But don't think just because it was miraculous it was God. And Satan will deceive many people by doing that which sits outside of their normal natural frame of reference. They say it's a miracle because Satan can imitate the miraculous.

Guest (Male): Dr. Evans will point out what the Bible says about the process of deception when he returns in just a moment. First, though, I want to remind you about the powerful follow-up resource we've selected for Tony's current series. It's his book, "Warfare: Winning the Spiritual Battle."

In it, he explains how many of life's struggles are connected to the unseen spiritual conflict taking place around us and shows how believers can rely on God's power to stand strong against the enemy's attacks. Along with the Warfare book, we'll also send you Tony's current two-volume series, "Angels: Good, Bad, and Ugly."

Across all 12 full-length messages, Dr. Evans explores what the Bible really says about angels, demons, spiritual warfare, and the invisible realm that impacts our lives every day. Together, these resources are designed to help strengthen your faith, sharpen your spiritual awareness, and deepen your confidence in God's authority.

This special offer ends tomorrow, so don't wait. Visit tonyevans.org today or call 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our resource team members help you. I'll repeat that information for you after part two of today's lesson.

Get ready to set sail for spiritual renewal. Join Dr. Tony Evans on a relaxing seven-day Caribbean cruise departing February 28th. You'll experience powerful teaching, meaningful worship, and the beauty of unforgettable destinations. From the turquoise waters of the Bahamas to the shores of the Dominican Republic, each stop and every day at sea offers time to relax, reflect, and be renewed. Don't miss this unforgettable journey. Find out how to book your passage today at tonyevans.org.

Dr. Tony Evans: What is the process of deception? How does he do it? Turn to James chapter 1:13: "Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is accomplished, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my brethren."

He gives four stages in Satanic deception. Stage number one starts with desire. Lust. The word lust means desire. Now, lust is not necessarily a bad word unless it's an illegitimate application of a legitimate desire. And that is the definition of temptation. Temptation is an attempt to get you to do a good thing in a bad way. Desire for food is good, gluttony is sin. Desire for sleep is good, laying in the bed all day and being lazy is sin.

It's a legitimate desire, but temptation is when you take a legitimate desire and use it in an illegitimate way. Secondly, desire leads to deception. Notice what he says. He says when one is carried away and enticed by his own lust. The idea here is of a fisherman. Does a fisherman just throw a hook in the water and wait? He'll be waiting a long time. That hook has to be covered with a worm because fish don't go biting naked hooks.

They go biting hooks with worms on them. They go after worms and wind up getting hooked. They don't go after hooks. Satan is not just throwing hooks out. He doesn't say at the local bar, "Come here, get drunk, become addicted to alcohol, lose your family, have your wife leave you, have your children grow up to be alcoholics, come, we offer all of this at your local tavern."

He invites you in for one drink, then two, then three, then four. Now you're an addict. So desire leads to deception. Deception leads to disobedience. "And when lust has conceived," verse 15, "it gives birth to sin." When the desire is applied illegitimately, it is then sin.

Fourthly, when it is finished, it brings forth death. You know why it brings forth death? Because verse 17 says every good gift is bestowed from above. He causes us to miss the goodness of God. When we do, we turn to sin and we die. We have broken fellowship with God. So what did Jesus do when he was confronted by the devil? He didn't sleep on it. He didn't say, "Let me think and I'll get back to you later."

He said, "It is written." Let me deal with this thing right now, in front of your face. When the thought has come to my mind to turn stones into bread, it is written: man shall not live by bread alone. Boom. He dealt with it then. He didn't meditate on it. Satan wants us to roll that sin over in our mind, doesn't he? Because the more we roll it over, the better we feel about it. And we roll it over, roll it over instead of dealing with it. Jesus didn't roll it over, he dealt with it.

Finally, the purpose of Satan's deception. It is to deflect you from the will of God. Satan wants to interrupt God getting the glory. So he keeps non-believers from getting saved. 2 Corinthians 4:3 and 4. Because the more people who get saved, the more glory God gets. So he doesn't want you witnessing to your unsaved friends. He doesn't want your unsaved friends hearing the Gospel because the more people who get saved, the more glory God gets.

He wants to keep you ineffective. That's why he's keeping many of you discouraged. That's why he's keeping many of you under the circumstances. He wants you under there because he knows you can do nothing for God if you're miserable. So he'll make your life miserable, your circumstances miserable, your family miserable, because God won't get glory if you're too miserable to give it to Him.

In fact, he'll twist this thing so nice that he'll get you blaming God for your misery. Which means you not only aren't giving God glory, you're taking glory away from Him. So he'll get you to blame God for things that are his fault, because he's the master deceiver. He will build his own kingdom up by it. He will make you a deceiver, 2 Timothy 3:13, so that you can be a deceiver in the lives of others. If you're deceived, then what you tell others will deceive them too. So he has a whole line of deception.

And finally, he will frustrate God's will for your life. Turn to Matthew chapter 16, verse 21. Peter is talking to Jesus about his death. "From that time on," verse 21, "Christ began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, scribes, and be killed and raised up on the third day."

And Peter took him aside. "Come here Jesus, you obviously don't know what you're doing." And began to rebuke him. "Jesus, be quiet. You don't know what you're talking about. I know you're God and everything, but listen to me." "God forbid it!" Peter uses theology on Jesus and he's one of Jesus's disciples. So we're talking about a Christian talking to the Son of God about how wrong he is and what the will of God is. So watch out for your brothers and sisters in Christ sometimes.

"God forbid, Lord, this shall never happen." You're out of God's will, talking all that cross stuff. You're out of God's will, Jesus. Can you imagine Peter telling Jesus he's wrong? And he turned to Peter and eyeballed him and said, "Get behind me, Satan." Why didn't he say "Get behind me, Peter"? Because Peter was under the influence of somebody else and didn't even know it. And he was a preacher.

"Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, God's program, God's agenda. You are setting your mind on what men think." And we are going to be miserable until we stop trying to please men and start getting around to trying to please God. He says, "Get behind me, devil. I have to go to the cross. Satan is using you, one of my children, to stop me from doing the will of God."

He was trying to get him to look at the hardness of the cross rather than the glory of the resurrection. Now you say, well, that's got to do with Jesus. No, let me tell you how it has to do with you. He says in verse 24, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."

Your life will be mediocre until you do what Jesus did and pick up your cross. You will have a mediocre existence if you don't have a cross. A cross means that I am willing to publicly identify with Jesus Christ and anything that goes with that identification. I will bear the scar of being identified with Christ.

And if that means that I'm single, I'm going to be single and identified with Christ. If I'm married, I'm going to be married and identified with Christ. I am going to be identified with Jesus Christ, no matter what my state. But that could be hard. Only if you don't see you're going to be raised the third day. It's only hard if you don't see the resurrection.

Ask any Olympian, he'll tell you. It's hard preparing for the Olympics. But ask him how he feels when he stands on that top circle and they put a gold chain around his neck. How it feels! He will tell you it was hard, but it was worth it. Satan may be giving you a tough time, and you may have to go through some hard times to follow Christ. But when you stand on that block and get the gold crown put on your neck, you'll be able to say, "It's worth it. It's worth it." Apart from that, Satan will own you and you will live a mediocre kind of life.

The US Army used to have pneumatic decoys. These decoys are rubber units that they would inflate at night when the enemy would do reconnaissance missions in the Korean War and World War II. They looked like the real thing. But it was nighttime. They were painted in such a way that they looked like a tank or trucks. They would do thousands of them in strategic locations. So when the enemy flew over or was doing radar reconnaissance missions, it looked like they were fighting a far larger number than they actually had coming against them.

Satan has pneumatic decoys. And he wants you to think there's more to him than there really is. He wants to blow up the balloons to make you think he is more powerful than he really is. Jesus Christ's death left him powerless. So now he only has the power of deception to make you think he's more than he really is. So when you go home today, tell him what you think about it. I know who you are, I know how you act, and I know that all you do is try to trick me into leaving God to follow you and you can't have me anymore.

Guest (Male): Dr. Tony Evans, encouraging us to stay connected to Christ no matter how tempting other offers may be. If you'd like to hear the complete full-length version of today's lesson, check with us for details on the title, "The Strategy of Satan." Or better yet, request it as a part of Tony's current two-volume series, "Angels: Good, Bad, and Ugly."

This 12-message collection contains practical biblical insight into the spiritual battle taking place behind the scenes of everyday life. And as I mentioned earlier, when you support Tony's ministry, we'll also send you the powerful companion book, "Warfare: Winning the Spiritual Battle." Together, these resources will help equip you to recognize the enemy's tactics and stand firm in the victory God has already provided.

Visit tonyevans.org today to make the arrangements, or call 1-800-800-3222 anytime of the day or night and let one of our resource team members assist you. That's 1-800-800-3222. Now, if you find these messages from Dr. Evans helpful, you'll also want to listen to "The Unbound" podcast, a place where Tony engages in thoughtful discussions on a variety of topics with other followers of Christ.

You can find these conversations on his YouTube channel or wherever you stream your favorite podcast. Tomorrow, Tony wraps up his series on angels by focusing on God's victory over Satan, a triumph won in several significant ways. There's good news coming. Be sure to join us for that.