Trinity Baptist Church

Obvious Truths from Obscure Scriptures

The Deceptions of God

Jeremiah 20:7

 

What comes to mind when you hear the word deceived or deception?  Chances are you think in negative terms.  Generally we think of scam artists and those who prey on older people or the naïve.  Just recently our sheriff cautioned the public about scammers calling to convince people they had won large sums of money.  One unidentified target had lost $18,000.

 

I read about a preacher, his wife and seven children who had moved to a new city. They didn't want to buy a home immediately, preferring to rent something until they could get a feel for the area and choose a home where their kids would be in good schools and they could be conveniently located.

 

They found plenty of rentals that were large enough to accommodate them, but the landlords always objected to having a family with seven kids occupy the place.

 

In frustration, one day the father asked the mother to take the four youngest children and go visit the local cemetery while he went out to look for a place. She was puzzled by his request, but went along.  She and the four youngest went out to visit the cemetery while he and the other three headed off to investigate another townhouse they had found.

 

The place was perfect and the father told the landlord he would take it. Then came the usual question, "I see you have children. How many are there in the family?"

 

The preacher got a sad look in his eye and let out a long sigh, then said, "Seven, but four are with their dear mother at the cemetery."  He got the townhouse.

 

Generally, a deception involves getting something dishonestly we can’t obtain by honest means. So could God ever be accused of being deceitful?  Would God ever willingly mislead someone to get what He wanted?  That’s exactly what Jeremiah accused him of doing. Listen to what the prophet says:

 

Jeremiah 20:7 (KJV)

 

When Jeremiah made this statement, he had been a prophet for around twenty years. Everything was dark and ominous for him. Because of the message God gave him to deliver, he was beaten and put in stocks.  And from that perspective, he begins to reflect on his ministry and calling and all that had happened to him since.

 

He thinks of all the glorious promises God had made him and tries to reconcile that with all he had suffered and all the ridicule and heartbreak that had been his.

 

God had said, "I will make your word a word of power," yet his word had been tossed aside and laughed to scorn.

 

 

And from his perspective, nothing the Lord had promised had come to pass and with his head and hands and feet locked in those wooden stocks, he comes to the conclusion that God ahs deceived him.

 

Now obviously we know, looking back upon it all, that he was not deceived. Every promise God made him was absolutely fulfilled. He came through a sea of troubles safe and sound, and his word is living and powerful to this day.

 

But the point is that to this great prophet there came a time when it seemed God had deceived him and taken advantage of him, and I just want to point out a couple of obvious truths for you to consider.

 

First,

 

 

Have you ever experienced that feeling of deception?  Have you ever thought maybe God had deceived you?  Maybe you claimed a promise from Scripture and it didn’t materialize.   Sometimes it’s seen in the relationships of our love.

 

It might be a parent or a child.  It might be a brother or sister. It might even be a spouse. You fell in love and just knew this was the one and then it ended.   And even though you’ve served the Lord and honored Him and followed His Word, for all you did, the relationship faltered and the horrible pain of strained and broken dreams fills your heart.

 

 

 

And you just knew if you did this or claimed that, God would come through and everything would be fixed, but it didn’t happen.  And now there is a temptation to believe that God’s promises are empty words and you are convinced He misled you.

 

Sometimes it is in the realities of our life we believe God to deceive us.  When a child lays sick and you pray, in faith believing that God will raise that child up and you experience the unbelievable grief that only a parent in those circumstances can understand when that child doesn’t recover, there is an opportunity for us to believe God is holding out on us.

 

Or it might be a job opportunity or the purchase of a home or planning a family.  You just knew God had made you a promise.  Everything seemed to be coming together just as it should.  And then, it all came crashing down and the circumstances didn’t come together as you believed they would, and like Jeremiah of old, from the bondage of your broken dreams, you cry out, “God you’ve deceived me.”

 

It may even be in the requirements of our Lord that we feel we’ve been deceived.  We hear Jesus say, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." And we come because we’re tired and it is rest we desire.  But before long we are confronted with our draft notice.  We are being called up to active duty.

 

We find ourselves confronted with the requirement to "fight the good fight of faith and to put on our armor and be a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”  And our response is, “Lord, we came to rest, not fight!  We didn’t know all this effort would be required.”

 

Or maybe we read that the kingdom of God is peace, and we come to Christ seeking the peace that passes understanding only to find ourselves dealing with things that rob us of peace and disrupt our lives.

Have we been tricked into accepting Christ?  It can be so different from what we dreamed and how it was presented and so contrary to what we imagined it would be.

 

Try to put yourself in the circumstances of Jeremiah.  Early in his life, God called him to prophecy and accompanying that call, God said, “Before you were born, I sanctified you and ordained you a prophet to the nations. And even though you are young, you don’t have to be afraid because I will be there to deliver you.  You will have all kinds of opposition, but you don’t have to be afraid because they will not prevail against you because I will be with you.”

 

And for the next 50 years, Jeremiah was faithful to that call.  During that time, he was attacked by his own brothers, imprisoned by the king, threatened with death, thrown into a cistern by Judah's officials and opposed by a false prophet.

 

And as I said, at this juncture in his life, he was put on public display in stocks after being beaten by the chief of police because of his message of coming judgment.

 

And when we intersect his story, you can almost picture him as he twists his head around toward heaven to say, “God, you’ve deceived me!  This is not what I signed up for!”  And his conclusion is God just told me all that stuff about delivering me and being with me and not having to be afraid to get me to do what He wanted me to do.  He deceived me.  And I suppose if anyone ever had a right to suspicion that, it was Jeremiah.

 

But that’s a tough way to live life and a very dangerous place to be.  We are so attached to our anticipations and our desires and our dreams there is no room for the hand of God and when things don’t work out like we expected, God is unfair and faith doesn’t work.  And very often a promise doesn’t come to pass, not because God deceived us, but simply because we have narrowed it down to our interpretation.

 

And the temptation is to cry out with Jeremiah, “O Lord, I’ve been deceived and it was You Who deceived me!”

 

But Jeremiah was a Jew and as such he should have remembered how God fulfills His promises. He had such a rich heritage to draw upon. Think about Abraham.  When God called Abram from his homeland, He undeniably promised Abram the land of Canaan for his own.  In fact, God said it was a land flowing with milk and honey and it was to be Abram’s.  Everywhere he set down his foot, he could claim by the word of God.

 

And with that promise and nothing else, Abraham pulled up stakes and headed out, not even knowing where he was going. Yet at the end of his life, Abraham didn’t own a single acre of the Promised Land.  He was a stranger there, nothing but a nomad living in a tent.  In fact, when his wife dies, he’s got to haggle over a place to bury her.

 

But Abraham’s faith never wavered.  Never did he doubt God.  He died not receiving the promise.

Now to a man of lesser faith, when a promise is not fulfilled as they expected, they become discouraged, give up on faith and believe they’ve been tricked by God.

 

And it is from that place of discouragement and forgetfulness we are tempted to cry out like Jeremiah, “O Lord you’ve deceived me.”

 

And I want to remind you, even if you’ve only been a Christian for a very short time, you’ve got some experiences to draw from also.  Chances are you’ve got some family who’ve testified of God’s faithfulness.

 

You’ve got some friends who will remind you to His goodness and in your own life, you’ve been saved by the grace of a God who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up as a ransom for you, with the reminder that if He’ll do that, He’ll not withhold any good thing!

 

So don’t go whining to God about how He’s misled you.  Instead, trust Him to be true to His Word based upon the price He paid for your salvation.

 

Let me point out a second obvious truth.

 

 

Let me suggest some of these to you:

 

 

 

Sometimes God allows things to happen, not because He is deceptive and not because He has broken the promise of His help, but because He is teaching us to trust Him.

 

In my estimation, the greatest commentary ever written on trusting God is the book of Job.  Much of the time, people approach the book trying to discover why bad things happen to good people.  But that is an exercise in futility.  The aim of the book is not primarily to teach us why bad things happen to good people but rather will a man trust and serve God regardless of his circumstances.

 

In fact, ironically, the theme of the book is presented by the question that Lucifer asks of God in the first chapter:  “Will a man serve God for nothing?”  And at the end of the book, Job demonstrates, not only are there men who are willing, but the reality is we don’t serve God for nothing.  God is faithful to Job.

 

But Job had made a commitment in his life not to take the good things for granted and not expect anything bad to happen. In fact, he reprimands his wife for suggestion he should just curse God and die.   His testimony was, “The Lord gives; the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”  In other words, no matter what is happening in life, God is worthy of our praise.

 

If you think about it, had Jeremiah never experienced any challenges and had his message been instantly received, he would have never come to this crisis of faith.  It was the rejection he received and the difficulties he endured that drove him to a deeper understanding and trust in God.

 

Listen:  the richest blessings you will receive from God are not the good things He sends your way.  It is those things that cause you to question your faith and search for your God and develop your character and cause you to go pleading and begging and crying to Him. Those are your best and most prized gifts.

 

Things which we never look for and never desire and would never pray for may very well be the sweetest gifts heaven ever sent our way because they drive us to our God to find what only faith in Him can provide.

 

And very often it is those perceived deceptions that develop our faith in God.

 

 

One of the tragedies of the Christian faith is our love affair with the gifts of God rather than God Himself.  For many, take away the blessings and gifts of God and there is nothing left.  It is in those apparent deceptions when the gifts don’t come that we are driven to assess our relationship with Him.

 

Early on, the Israelites were instructed to “Love the Lord their God with heart, soul mind and strength.”  In fact, Jesus said that was the “first and greatest commandment.”

 

Now anyone who’s ever had children understands that sometimes love has to make some tough decisions and from a child’s perspective that unanswered request is proof positive that parents are mean and uncaring.  In fact, from time to time, Lisa refers to herself as “the meanest mother in the world”.

Unfortunately, God has some spoiled brats for

children also and they have not yet come to realize how blessed they are to be the beneficiary of the love of God.  And very often, in those times of apparent deception when dreams haven’t materialized and hopes have been shattered and the promise didn’t come through is when we discover the depth and height and length of the love of our Heavenly Father.

 

Remember what Paul said in Romans 8:35-39?

 

35 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

 

36 As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

 

37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

 

38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,

 

39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Sometimes God’s apparent deceptions are to develop our faith in God.  Sometimes they are to develop our love for God and

 

When Jesus left the first believers behind on the earth, His promise was to “come again and receive them unto Himself” so they would all be together again.  In fact, at the ascension, the angel repeated that promise by saying, “You’ll see this same Jesus coming again in the same way you’ve seen Him leave.”

 

Paul was fond of preaching on the second coming and reminding his hearers the coming of the Lord was “near at hand”.  He spoke of some of them being alive and on the earth when the Lord returned.  Jesus closes the Revelation with the promise of “coming quickly”.

 

Jesus was coming again to the earth.  That was the bright and burning expectation that shone in the heart of the early church. But the years passed and Jesus did not come. They never heard the trumpet sound.  Many died without hearing the shout to summons them home.  In fact, some of them begin to doubt.  In so many words, they were saying, “You’ve deceived us and we were deceived.”

 

We live today with the same mixture of emotions.  Here we are 2,000 years later and still no return of the Lord.  But we live with that enduring hope.  Jesus is coming again!

 

And I would suggest that without that burning hope, Christianity would have never survived.  Do you think those early believers would have ever suffered and endured what they did without hope?  They were people of unflinching character and stamina.  They put their shoulder to the wheel and lived by faith and placed their hope in the promises of God.

 

They saw no empty deception in the Words of God.  They loved the Lord and served Him faithfully driven by the promise of His soon and sure coming.

 

And one of these days, faith will give way to sight and Love will be personified as our Hope appears in the skies to take us home to be with Him.

 

A little boy was playing outside and was stung by a bee.  He went into his house crying and said to his mother, "I hate bees! I wish God had never made them." The mother eased his pain, then sat him down at the table and gave him some toast and honey.  The little boy said, "This is great!"

 

"You really do like honey, don't you?" the mother responded, "Like it?" the little boy replied, "I love it!"  The mother then said, "The same bee that stings also produces the honey you are enjoying right now."  Her son thought for a minute and said, "I never realized there was a good side to that bee!"

 

We can view a bee as an enemy that stings or as a friend that produces honey.  And that's the way it is with everything in life.  We can choose to look at the plus side in every situation, or we can choose to look at the minus side. The difference will be one of living a life of depression or a life of rejoicing

 

We may be tempted to say, "You have deceived us, and we were deceived" but if we will trust and wait on the Lord, we will discover that what in our ignorance we called deceit was nothing less than the loving hand of God bringing our faith to sight.

 

Let’s pray.