Another thing we must see in the garden is how the devil is able to deceive us because of how he operates with the sinful desires in us. This is very important for us to see when it comes to how the devil is able to deceive Christians—he does so by taking hold of sins in us.

In the garden, Eve was deceived because of her desire, not just because of the tactic of the enemy. She desired something she shouldn’t, and reached out in sin and took it.

In the church, we are deceived by the enemy by not seeing the sinful motivations we have in our “religious zeal”.

“But He turned and rebuked them, and said, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.’” (Lk 9:55)

We do not acknowledge the things we accept and believe and even obey because we are motivated by sinful desires in these things. We are motivated by pride, favoritism, self love, conceit/superiority, and so on. As in the case of the parable of the sower, we don’t take hold of the seed with an honest and good heart, but allow our sinful heart to continue unchecked in our region.

One of the great reasons the devil is able to get so far in the church is because he blinds people with pride and a wrong “assurance”. He gets people to feel that God has promised them some sort of elitism, and a kind of infallibility as Christians. They would of course give lip service to not believing things, but the fruit of their doings show that they secretly believe this in their hearts.

This causes Christians to become a people that are sure they know Truth, are held high above others, and feel they need to maintain this “superiority”, as if this is what it means to be a Christian. Because of this, they become more hard hearted and hard of hearing than people in the world!

They think they know God and obey Him, that they know the Word, have found all riches and life, and are morally wise and good. For many Christians, they feel that their proximity to the Truth of God makes them assured of being just as good. And this great error comes from their sinful hearts, not the Word of God. This “faith” works to make them more self confident and proud, rather than humble and teachable. Therefore they are unable to be continually taught by God, but stay at immaturity.

The Word of God is able to teach us about all of these, that is the great power of it, but we have to be willing to truly receive His Word and listen. To listen past our own ideas about God and Truth, past the ideas other people taught us, and allow Him to teach us by His Spirit, Word, and providence (experience). If we do not, we can miss everything God is doing, and all the devil is doing contrary to this, behind the smokescreen of our prejudices and oversimplifications.

They are just like the people of Philadelphia in Revelation 3:17: “For you say, 'I am rich, and I have grown rich, and I have need of nothing.' And you do not realize that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

We must learn from the warnings in Scripture of all the Lord showed about the religious Jews. “Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” (Lk 9:40-41) We should fear such presumption and instead humble ourselves before the Lord and allow Him to continually teach us.