MAY 10 2026 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S6E7 | The Danger of Deception

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "The Danger of Deception" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · May 10, 2026
Genesis 27:14–24
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

I'd like to see you today on this incredible Mother's Day here in La Jolla. If you have your Bibles, open up to Genesis 27, 14 through 24. We are checking out a mom here that you can probably want to learn what not to do in this scripture. I don't know if you've ever been in a job or you've just followed, I had a boss, and you're like, you leave, and you're like, I learned so much of what not to do. And so that kind of happens.

We're in the story of Jacob, Esau, Isaac, and then Rebecca's in this story as well. And this is a family that has been ruled by a generational sin that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the garden, started with Satan, father of all lies, and deception, and began to deceive. And that deception has continued on for 2,000 years in this family line. I think it's important to know what the generational sins of our family are and be a person who's a chain breaker who breaks that so the next generation doesn't pick it up.

So once again, Genesis 27, 14 through 24, we're going to be reading this story. And you're going to see Rebecca. And moms, I want you to take some points here because obviously none of you were doing this. You were all living in an incredible momdom and momhood and momming and the best momming possible. But listen to this if you have your Bibles once again. I did bring my Bible because I want to read and just model reading out of the Bible.

Unfortunately, my glasses aren't strong enough, so I will have to read out of the paper again. But just pretend I'm up here like John MacArthur reading out of the Bible and is just dripping with wisdom. Verse 14, not me, the Bible. Verse 14, Genesis 27, English Standard Version. So he, Jacob, went and took them and brought them to his mother. Now, if you remember last week what that was, he was bringing this food that he was told to bring.

And his mother prepared the delicious food such as his father loved. Then Rebecca took the best garments of Esau, the older brother, which were with her in the house. And she put them on Jacob, her younger son. And the skins of the young goat she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. And she put the delicious food and the bread which she had prepared into the hands of her son Jacob. So he went into his father and said, My father.

And he said, Here am I. Who are you, my son? And Jacob, verse 19, said to his father, I'm Esau, your firstborn. I've done as you've told me. Now sit up and eat the game that your soul may bless me. Once again, blessing coming from the soul. We spoke about that about a month ago. Verse 20, But Isaac said to his son, How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? He answered, Because the Lord your God granted me success.

It's a lie. Verse 21, Then Isaac said to Jacob, Please come near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not. Verse 22, So Jacob went near to Isaac, his father, who felt him and said, The voices of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau?

He answered in the affirmative, I am. A family rife with deception. Rife with lying. And it has become such a pattern that living in the pattern of deception, the family is losing its ability to discern what is true. Whether you know it or not, you currently live in a society which is struggling to determine what is true. It started with post-modernism with the idea of what is truth. This is something Herod, Pilate, excuse me, said to Jesus.

K at Veritas, I think is what he said. What is truth? We've been asking that question ever since. But now with the rise of generative, things like generative AI and such, you will no longer be able to tell what is truth even if you saw it with your own eyes. You will see videos that people saying things they never said. And the question will be, what is true? And I've recently had many people, I've heard it multiple times, even someone in our church I was talking to say to me, How can I know it's true anyways?

Well, the way you can know it is true is to surround yourself with the word of God and his spirit with a thing called a spirit of discernment. And put yourself in a place of wisdom, following God, where you'll have a deep sense, even if you see something that looks true, it won't resonate with your spirit. And so today, what this passage is about is helping you to become a believer, a follower of Christ, who is very difficult to deceive.

A believer who, when they walk into a situation or they meet a person, or there's a relationship or a business deal or something seems enticing to them and it seems true, will have an inner voice, have an inner sense within them that says, this is not true. Jacob, obviously, has lost the ability to discern that in this passage. The key word today is deception. Let's say that together. That's pretty good, but let's do it one more time.

Deception, right. If I were to ask you to raise your hand and ask you, where are you currently being deceived? Not asking you to raise your hand. Most of us probably wouldn't raise our hand because none of us like to believe that we are being deceived. We all like to believe that what we think about, dare I say, politics, dare I say, relationships, dare I say, what you think is the best thing to do in the right situation, we don't want to believe that what we think is wrong.

But what we find throughout Scripture, and as we'll see in just a moment, this is the main idea with your key word deception, is Satan's primary, circle primary in the notes, doesn't mean it's his only, doesn't mean he uses it the most, but primary means his first line of attack often. Satan's primary weapon against God's people is deception. Because deceived people often do not realize they are drifting from truth towards destruction.

If you had to have five, let's say going forward into the next 50 years of Christendom and living in the secular world, if you had to have five gifts from the Spirit that were the most necessary, I would say in that top five would have to be discernment. If you were in the Middle Ages living on your little farm with your little habitat raising sheep, and no one really ever bothered you, and you're in a little tiny town, I would probably say discernment probably not as high as it would be now.

But us being able to discern what is true, who God is actually using, and who is a false prophet, who is, thank you, who is someone who is leading you astray, to be able to do that from a deep inner place is going to be a skill that will divide the church between the mature and those that are led away like lambs to the slaughter. The main idea, Satan's primary weapon against God's people is deception, because deceived people often do not realize they are drifting away from truth and towards destruction.

I want to just lay out five primary ways, five ways, not primary ways, but ways that Satan will attack you, will end it with deception, but just to show you some of the attacks. There's ones I didn't put in here. I didn't put intimidation. I didn't put fear. There's a whole bunch of other ones that he attacks. And there's a book that we've put, I think, 10 of them in the bookstore. It's called Bondage Breaker, and it's written by Neil T. Anderson.

Its chapter on deception is phenomenal. If you can get it online, it's called Neil T. Anderson. It's called Bondage Breaker. It would be in my top 20 books of all time that have changed my life. It's incredible. This will be a corollary to go along with this message. Let me give you these five ways of attack. The one is direct attack. That's oppression. Attraction. That could be just nagging thoughts, just putting thoughts of darkness in your head.

One could be accusation, false accusations by someone else against you. Persecution. Some of you have experienced that in the workplace. I know a student who was at an Ivy League college recently from our church. They came home because when they stood up for Christ, they began to be bullied, and a bunch of things happened, and they are now back at home and no longer at the Ivy League college. I would much rather send my child to Mesa College than the Ivy League college that they're speaking of because my first kid did go to Mesa College and had an incredible experience, and there's some really awesome and some godly teachers over there.

So no shade on Mesa. So that's just one way, a direct attack. Another way is physical sickness. Now, you can study on that, but we do know that 28% of Jesus' miracle healings with people, 28% of them, you can do the research on your own, it might fluctuate a little bit here and there on the percentage according to who you ask, had a demon involved. That's one of four. I don't think the number is lower now than it used to be.

Just walk around, I would used to say the streets of downtown San Diego, and it won't be hard to see. Now I can say walk out the door and go about four blocks, right? No one's laughing. It's true. That there is this, can be persecution, there can be intimidation and suffering. This is direct attack. And so some of our sicknesses, we're sick, the scripture even says that, can be demonically influenced, and you can study on how, and we'll talk this summer, we're going to have a thing this summer of how to overcome that.

Temptation is another form of attack. Satan will tempt you, and he will try to convince you that just because he's tempting you, you're evil. He'll put a thought in your head, he'll tempt you with something, you'll be like, oh, I'm horrible to have that thought. No, you're not, just fight it and go against it. Temptation, distraction. That's a huge one right now. If he can keep you distracted, if he can keep you focused on something other than what God has as your primary purpose in life, which is knowing him, caring for others, walking in true purpose, that's a huge system as warfare.

Division, causing division in the church, division in the family. And the final one here is deception. And deception, I put, is the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid. Let me say that again. The act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid. And when Satan does this, he often does it by giving you 80% truth, 20% lie. Here's all the amazing reasons God would love this relationship you're in.

There's 20%, he doesn't love, we're not going to talk about that. But this 80% is bigger than 20, right? And so on the law of averages, you still have a passing grade, let's go, right? And so that is deception. And if we live in deception long enough, the deception becomes truth to us and becomes a reality. I've seen relationships where spouses are being deceived about the motivations of their spouse, the future of their family.

They're being deceived on a regular basis because they do not walk in truth and they don't check God's opinion on things. Joshua, one of my favorite people in Scripture, had one sin that I know of. It was with the Gibeonites. He made a treaty with the Gibeonites. And the thing that he did, or that he didn't do, was consult God on the issue. And so he didn't consult, he made that treaty. And so one of the things we want to do regularly is take whatever thoughts we have, take whatever things we want to do, and continually to ask God about that so that we might not be deceived.

So I'd ask you again, where in your life are you being deceived? I recently sat down with the verse, search me and know me, oh God. Test my anxious thoughts. I love that. It's like, God, here's an anxious thought. Test it. Is it worthy to be anxious about? Test this thought. In probably 10 minutes time, I came up with 20 things that I felt like I had been deceived about. Not like to go make a mistake in one way or another, but just things he was telling me about myself that were not true.

You see, if he can get you to live in deception, then he can deceive you about your future. He can deceive you about your future. Did I say that again? He can deceive you about your identity. Over and over again, he can deceive you about these things. So I want to help you become a believer who doesn't walk in deception, who walks in discernment, and walks in truth. Because this is the promise of Scripture for the believer.

You do not have to walk in deception, but it is his primary tool. Here's two points for today. Number one is when spiritual sight fades, deception reigns. When spiritual sight, that means when you begin to become calloused or blunted against the things that go contrary to God, and you become comfortable with the things of sin, the things of the world, the things of distraction, the things of discomfort, you lose your ability.

The Scripture says you begin to become blind. That's what's happening in this passage. He's blind. He can no longer see. Now, that is there for a reason. We'll talk about that in just a second. But you lose the ability. Joshua made a great point last week that whenever there seems to be deception in the Bible, food is involved. Adam and Eve. Some fruit. Some food. Whatever it was. Must have looked good. Right? When this passage, before he gives a blessing, he tells his son Esau, go out and get me some venison.

Go kill some game and bring it to me. Now, either he's having a party, or this is meant to show that his stomach is leading his life. So there's the food again. When you see Jesus, we'll have these Scriptures in a moment. When you see Jesus, the first temptation, right, turn these what? Stones into what? Bread. Food, food, food, food, food. Why? Because your stomach, if you live according to it, will cause your eyes to be blind.

If you want to be blind, spiritually blind, follow your stomach. So, when spiritual sight fades, deception reigns. Appetite, number two, is the bridesmaid of deception. We just said that. All right, let's go to verse one. Verse one. When Isaac was old, when Isaac was old, 27, sorry, verse 27-1, if you have it, and if you have your Bible open to chapter 27. It won't be in your notes. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that what?

He could not see. We're just going to stop there and use that part of the verse. In the Old Testament and in the Scripture in general, you were going to see something that might not be true today. And I think it was on purpose. Where there was a correlation between physical eyesight and spiritual insight. There was a correlation between physical eyesight. And when people, like Samson and others, began to follow their stomachs, they lost their ability to have spiritual insight or to see things that would be very clear and they become more easily deceived.

He's lost the ability to discern. What does discern mean? Discernment, you all have an ability to discern something that you're into, right? So some of you might be, let's just say you're into guitars, all right? And if you're really into guitars, we had Olin, he was here, he just passed away and probably knew more about guitars than any of us in here, most any of us, all of us in here. If you were to take him somewhere and show him a fake Taylor guitar and a real Taylor guitar, I think he could just smell it and know, right?

He just, not this one, right? Immediately. He had the ability to discern what was true and what was not true. If you were a golfer, if you bake, if you, whatever your thing is, all of you can walk in and have an expertise in something and it's usually what we love. For me, it's coffee. I literally can smell coffee and tell you all about it like that, right? I can just know immediately that's from McDonald's. I'm not drinking that, okay?

That's dry, it's past its due date. I just can discern it. Why? Because I've made it a passion on my life. Jacob has lost the ability to discern what is true in his family. He can't do with his family what Olin could do in a guitar shop with a guitar. And my, one of the ways you know if you're in that situation is you are constantly looking, let's just say it's with our families, you're looking at your family and you just don't know what's happening.

Why is this person doing this? Why is my husband doing this? Why is my wife doing this? Why does grandma do, why, why, why? You're just constantly living in whys. You have no sense of direction. You have constant chaos in the home. You don't know how to react to it. You don't know what to do. There are moments where God gives us time to seek him. But the majority of the scripture is that we can walk in the light and have a discernment to know what is going on.

I want to give you a great example of this. I have been a professional codependent most of my life growing up in an alcoholic home. And I would check in on my wife regularly when I thought she was having a bad day or whatever. And I would check in on her and I would, you know, it would never go well. Like for some reason, not all the time, but oftentimes it wouldn't go well. And after about 30 years of this, which we were in Scotland this summer on our trip and something wasn't, she wasn't doing well with one reason or another.

And I had asked the Lord, Lord, I need discernment to tell me what is going on. Why does this keep backfiring on me? So I thought I'm going to go upstairs and see how she's doing. I got halfway up the stairs and this thought came to my mind. Why are you going upstairs? And I thought to myself, to check on my wife. And the immediate next thought was, no, you're not. You're going to check on your wife so you can see if you're okay.

Does that make sense? See, I can't be okay unless she okay. And the Lord said when you do that, she knows it. And she knows that you're not showing care for her. It's actually a false care even though you don't know you're doing it. And she feels the burden to have to take care of your emotions when she's struggling with something on her else right now, on her own. And I was like, bingo. So since October, every time I get that feeling, because we all get a feeling in relationships.

You know you get triggered by something. I ask myself, am I going to do this for her because I love her? Am I doing this for me because I can't be okay unless things are set there and I can manipulate it to make it okay? Does that make sense? That's discernment I'm speaking about. And I have to say, our marriage, next leveled. Absolute next leveled because of seeking the Lord and asking for discernment. Jacob has lost the ability to do this.

I know Esau was hairy, but, you know, for goodness sake, goat skin? My man, goat skin? Okay, Esau, I don't know what you look like, but woo, get a bick on that. Lost his eyesight. Where are you being, let me ask you again, where are you being deceived? I would suggest sitting down and say, search me, O Lord, and write where you're being deceived. You'll be surprised if you listen to the Holy Spirit. You'll be like, whoa, I didn't even know that was, whoa, thank you, Lord.

Because you want to walk in truth. Here's a few places where that eyesight in the scripture, now I'm not saying this is not for us today. This was intentionally done in the Bible to represent a physical ailment that affected or represented a spiritual condition. You have Eli in the book of Samuel, one of the judges. Eli was the high priest at the time. He wouldn't tell his sons, he wouldn't care for his sons or tell them that they were in sin.

He was in all this sin. In 3-2, in Samuel 3-2, I think it's 1 Samuel, yes, 1 Samuel 3-2. At that time, Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was laying down in his own place. Remember, the Lord starts calling to, the Lord starts calling to not Saul, who's the judge with Saul? Samuel, yeah, yeah, that's why the book's called 1 Samuel. I just tested you. I got an M.D.V., I'm just telling you, thank you very much.

I can't remember the Bible. God was calling this young boy, the young boy could hear it, but Eli couldn't anymore. And his eyes had gone dim. What about Samson? And Samson followed his stomach so much that his eyes ended up being gouged out where he couldn't even see anymore. And if you want to go to the New Testament, Revelation 3, verse 17, For you say, this is what he says to the churches, For you say, I am rich, I've prospered, I need nothing.

But you don't realize, or you're deceived, that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, circle blind, and naked. We want to walk in the light as he is in the light. We want to walk in the truth. We do not want to be deceived in an age of deception. This is an age of deception. We'll talk about how to get out of it. I met with three young men I'm discipling right now on Thursday, two of them actually. And we got to the end of this and they said, what can I do about it?

Hang on, we're going to get there. You look at this eyesight, there's the exact opposite with older people in some of the stories. If you look at Moses in 34.7, Moses, it says, was 120 years old when he died, but his eyes were what? Undimmed and his vigor unabated. Simeon, older man in the temple when Jesus comes, he says, Simeon says, For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all people.

A light, light with sight goes along the time. A light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory to your people Israel. The same can be said for Anna, the same can be said for Caleb in the scripture. These people, as they got older, their eyes got brighter, they got more vigorous. That is intentional in the scripture and it has to do with how they live their life. Today, as I was reading the Proverbs, just in my scripture reading this morning, the proverb came along that says, if you live in righteousness, it'll add years to your life.

I was like, well, I thought God was in charge of how all that works. I don't know how all that works. But it says you can add years to your life by living in righteousness. So we see that in that eyesight. So how does this loss of sensitivity happen? See, most people do not fall suddenly into darkness. They drift there through repeated compromises that slowly numb the soul. Ephesians 4, incredible scripture. Write it down if you don't have your notes.

18 through 19, let me read this. It says they, speaking of the world and others, are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of ignorance that is in them due to what? The hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality. See the connection there to the blindness and the inability of spiritual insensitivity. To indulge in every kind of impurity and they are full of greed.

I don't know if you remember Chuck Colson. There's a picture of Chuck Colson here. The Watergate scandal. We hear it a lot about Watergate now. It's really fascinating. Chuck Colson was probably, I don't know, maybe the architect of that scandal that engulfed Nixon back in the 70s. And Nixon obviously lost his presidency and there's all these conspiracy theories about it and whatever. But Chuck Colson, he got rid of one of the conspiracy theories by admitting that he did it.

And Chuck Colson was the one who architected the lying, the deceit, all the things that had happened. And it's really interesting because he said there's four things. You can leave the picture up. There's four things because he eventually made a decision to follow Christ and has had an incredible ministry. I'll share that in just a second. But he said that there was four things that happened on the road to insensitivity.

And the reason I'm telling you this is because if you can become a person who becomes strong in the spirit, then you will not be deceived. So this is how you become deceived. This road will lead you to falling your stomach to deception. He said there's four things. He says the first of all is you have questionable tactics that feel uncomfortable. You do something, feels a little uncomfortable. You been there? Yeah, every week, right?

It's like we feel that thing, right? Then they become explainable. This becomes explainable. Well, you know, you begin to rationalize. Number three, then they become necessary. And number four, they become your reality and your normal. That is, have you ever, I've walked that path. I have definitely walked that path. You do it, something's going on in your life. And you just, I have to make a little compromise, you know.

You're uncomfortable about it. You're uncomfortable. But then in order to deal with the uncomfortability, you start rationalizing it, right? Because it's 80% true you're being deceived at that point. Then, because you've gotten yourself so deep into something, you have to start, you know, making it explainable. And it becomes necessary to continue on in it. And finally, it just becomes your normal. You can take Chuck's picture down.

Chuck ended up creating a, going to prison, creating prison fellowship, which was one of the most incredible, if not the premier ministry to people inside of prisons. His, the backside of Watergate, of his life, has been so filled with the spirit because he learned a lesson and he went on, no longer being deceived in an incredible way. Next is, we're going to go to verse 18. If you have verse 18. And we're going to look about appetite.

It's the bridesmaid of deception. Appetite. Guns N' Roses put out an album. I believe it was 87, 89, 86, 7. It was called Appetite for what? That's right. Good musical album. Not recommending you listen to it anymore, but man, the slash just went crazy. Remember hearing that the first time? Goodness gracious. If you see that, that there is appetite as the bridesmaid of deception because it will lead to destruction. Verse 18.

So he went into his father, that was Jacob, went into his father and said, my father. And he said, here am I. He says, who are you, my son? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you have told me. Now sit up and eat of my game that your soul may bless me. You are in some crazy bad spiritual territory. Number one, when you're lying to your parents, right? And you're not an eight-year-old. Right?

You're in worse territory when you start lying about God when he says, how did you get the food so quickly? Oh, your God gave it to me. Now at this point, God is not Jacob's God. He's just one of many gods. He becomes his God later on. I think it's at Bethel. But he becomes his God. But he lies about God. He lies to God. You lie to God? You tell God you make bargains with God? You say, you can't lie to him. You might as well just be honest.

I was listening to Theo Vaughn the other day. I listened to a lot of Theo Vaughn, but it popped up in my feed. And he said, I tell God that I want to change, but I also know that I don't want to change. And he's real honest. A little too honest sometimes. He says, I know I don't want to change, and so I ask God to fix the part of me that knows that I'm lying to God while I'm telling him I want to change. I thought, man, that's so good.

That's good. That's theologian right there. Theovanlogian. Theologian. He should do that. He should actually do a whole thing on the... No, he shouldn't. That's actually true. Jacob is in really bad territory right now. Like, when was the last time you lied? Even a white lie. When was the last time you took something that wasn't yours? One of the people that went down in the... There was a scandal with Watergate as well.

And as I was reading about it, he said, it started with me when I stole paperclips from the office. I forgot who the person was who was there. But he said the first compromise was he took a thing of paperclips home. And something said, those aren't your paperclips. Those are the government's paperclips. But he said, I pay my taxes so they're mine. And he took them home. You see, that is how we begin to deceive ourselves.

And Jacob is in serious territory. And the more you lie, the more you're dishonest, the less you will have the ability to discern when someone lies to you. It's just how God made it. You will lose the ability. If you want to have discernment, you need to only walk in the truth. Walk in the light as he is in the light. And we will have fellowship with one another. Scripture says, and it continues to go on. This deception happens when...

I said that it is a bride's... You know, appetite is the bride's made of destruction. Genesis 3, 6. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there. But it's also in the notes. This is about Eve and the primary deception. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was what? A delight to her eyes. And that the tree was also to be desired to make one wise. See, that'd make you wise. Make you like God.

She took it, the fruit, and ate. And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her. And he ate. It says in the New Testament that Eve was deceived. Adam just sinned due to temptation. Different thing. Adam wasn't deceived. Adam knew what he was doing. His wife said, do this. He said, okay. I always wonder what would have happened if Adam would have said, no. I'm not going to do that, Lord. I want to stand in the gap here.

I need to make... I don't know. I just wonder what would have happened if he would have stood up and been a man. But no, he wasn't. There was that delight to the eyes. And we begin to follow our stomach. If you want to be, I wouldn't say impervious, but very hard to deceive, don't walk around being led by your stomach. Look, Jesus is the exact opposite, right? Jesus, you can't even tempt Jesus. You've got to get him in a really weak place.

So Eve is like in abundance. She has all this stuff going on. She's eating as much as she wants. Jesus has nothing in him that you can tempt. There's nothing to tempt into him. So you've got to make him weak. So in order to make it a little bit more of a level playing field for the devil and to make it so that he can relate to us more, he goes out into the wilderness by himself for 40 days without his iPhone, right? He's out there.

That's hard enough for him. And then he's there. And then he doesn't eat. He doesn't drink. And he gets in a weakened position. He's incredibly weak. That's the only way the devil would have the ability to even tempt him at all. Because Jesus doesn't have a stomach that says, I want that. He doesn't have the original sin. And neither did Eve. Matthew 4, 1 through 4. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit. I'm going to stop right there.

Why was he led by the Spirit? Because Satan couldn't lead him anywhere. Only the Spirit, and the Spirit does not tempt, can lead you somewhere where temptation might happen. But the Spirit does not lead you to be. He doesn't tempt. God does not tempt, the Scripture says. But he led him because Jesus could not be led. Because the only thing that Jesus could be led by was the Spirit and the voice of his Father. So if he was going to be tempted by Satan, it was going to have to be because God said, go there.

A lot of us go places that we shouldn't be. We get tempted when we get there because it wasn't the Spirit that called you. Maybe it was the proverbial sirens that we read in the book of Proverbs that are at the top of the hill calling out to the young stupid men. Come this way. Come into my house. My husband's gone. I put flowers on my bed. Come on. Come get it. Verse 2. And after fasting 40 days, this is Matthew 4. After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

And the tempter, that's his name, the tempter came and said to him, if, circle if, you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, it is written. How did he answer him? With the word of God. Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He didn't start with the temptation of food. I told you the primary thing is deception. So what did he start with?

If he questioned his identity. You see, deception is oftentimes going to not only have you question God, which he does later, but when you start questioning God, his deception is you're going to question God's character, and you're going to question your place in God's heart, and I'm going to question your authority in Christ. I'm going to question your identity in Christ, your purpose in Christ. If, if, if, if, if. That's what he does.

Because if is the primary word of deception. And so Satan is here. And when I was writing down my 20 things that were lies about myself, there was a few ifs in there about what was going to happen, intimidation, all these things. I thought they're not true. And then I began to have scriptures for those. And you know what's crazy? In the last month or however long it's been since I did that, most of those have dropped off me.

And when they do show up, I hit them with a verse. I hit them with the word of God because that's what we do. That's what Jesus did. So do you see the pattern here? Jesus, and it was so interesting that Jesus went against his stomach. He didn't go for the food. He actually fasted 40 days. So what I'm saying is that when we follow our stomach, we lose the ability to see deception when it comes. Because we follow our stomach.

Jesus fasts because he goes antithetical to his desire to eat. He goes the opposite direction. This is why fasting is so important. I'm coming in for a landing here. It says in 2 Corinthians 11.3, to tag onto this, but I am afraid, Paul writes, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts, that's where most of the deception happens. It'll soon be your eyes because you can't believe what you see anymore on videos or TV.

Your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Sincere, where are you being led? It starts with a thought, right? Just a little thought in your head. That's where Satan starts at. So where's our practical takeaways? Here's your practical takeaways. I told you they were coming. I have one key one, and then I'll have a challenge. One of the things you can do, probably the best things, I've told you, you know, the things that you realize are these habitual desires.

You live according to your stomach. One, you want to begin to cast those aside. And the book Bondage Breaker is all about how to overcome negative thoughts, habits, emotions. Bondage Breaker, I'm going to say it again, it is phenomenal, especially in the audio. The second thing that you can do is stay saturated in the Word of God. Absolutely saturated in the Word of God. Ephesians 4, 11 through 14, talks about how we are saturated.

You're doing it right now. You are saturating yourself in the Word of God right now. Imagine a sponge that goes into water, and God has put certain people, he's given certain people gifts to have a supernatural ability that when they speak, he takes what they're saying, and he makes, let's say there's 250 people here today. He takes that, and he makes 250 sermons, and they relate directly to you. People come to me all the time.

What you said was exactly what I was going through. Oh yeah, because I followed you all week and I knew it. No, because God is supernatural God, and he gives us the ability to saturate ourselves from who we listen to oftentimes and who we follow. Ephesians 4 says this, That doesn't leave you out, ladies. That is anthropos, I believe, in the Greek, to all of us. Verse 13, To the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we will no longer be children.

That's a hard word. Tossed to and fro by the waves that carried about every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by the craftiness of what? Deceitful schemes. Paul is, he is spitting the truth right there. He is saying, even in this time, where it's so easy to be deceived, it is quantumly more difficult to maintain an understanding of truth than it was in their day, because of what we are being surrounded by, at least in my opinion.

So the first thing is to stay saturated in the word. I want to give you a couple things you challenge. Here's the first one. I want to challenge you to listen or read one more, I'm just asking for one minute, one more minute of scripture this week than you do on any other media source. That's the news. That's Instagram. That's your TikTok. That's your podcast, right? The thing that a bunch of believers follow, and the people don't even really follow God, but they follow him more than they follow the word of God oftentimes.

But nonetheless, I'm not going to say anything about Podtakistan. I'm going to encourage you to listen to one more minute, just one minute more of the Bible than you listen to any other media source. Just one minute. I was talking to somebody. They said they'd have to listen to eight hours of the Bible. Yes. Do you see what is happening in our culture? Look, I'm guilty of it. I'm not sure I can do it. I'm guilty of, I'm out in the yard, I'm working four hours of whatever, but it ain't the Bible.

It's this, music, whatever it is. Just try one week. Just see if you can just max, okay? One week where you do one more minute of being saturated into the word of God. Try binge listening to the word of God. I want to challenge you. Do two, this is not, I'll just say one. Do one hour. The resources are available. And just listen to your favorite book in the Bible. Fill yourself with the word of God. Fill yourself with scripture.

You can easily search on Google, give me a list of 25 verses that have to do with this thing I'm dealing with. And sit there and meditate and saturate it. Because Jesus overcame deception by the light of his word. That has the ability to cut through anything that is true and false. We are living in an age of deception. We do not want to be deceived. Because when you are deceived, you will not walk in your purpose. You will not walk in authority.

You will not walk in your true identity. And you will continue to have to you misrepresented what God is doing in the world and what he's doing even in your family and what he's even doing in your future. This is so critical. And on a day like today, Mother's Day, we see a family that is going a direction that it shouldn't be going. And I want to employ you mothers and fathers, if you see these things in your life, to do everything in your power to break that chain, to become the family that stands strong for Christ.

Amen? Amen?