The title of the message today is, How to Spot a Liar, Part 1, The Most Subtle Father of Lies, which is Part 6 of the series on lying. John 8, verse 44 says, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. God, we pray that you would be with us now in the preaching of your word, God. We thank you for being with us during our church service, God, for you promised that where two or three are gathered together in my name, there you are in the midst of them. God, help us to really know your presence today and to take attention to your word, God, We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So when we desire to know the truth, where do we turn? Internet, AI chatbots, social media, books, magazines, our friends, our family, our pastors and teachers. All of those might have some good information at times, some much more so than others. But we need to keep reminding ourselves, as we are so prone to easily forget the fundamentals, that as believers, we have the Holy Ghost to guide us into all truth. And the primary way the Holy Ghost speaks to us is through the Holy Bible. Even if we had someone like the Apostle Paul, right here in the flesh, who wrote more Bible books than anyone else, even he would not be the best and ultimate source of truth. Consider the Bereans and how they tested Paul. In Acts 17 verse 10 it says, And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were true or were so. Do we search the scriptures daily, seeking truth? The Bible is the Word of God. It's not a normal book. This cannot be overstated. The book itself is supernatural. It's a miracle that it even exists. If we don't understand this, we are either babes that need to grow, or we're blind. If we know this and yet try to ignore it, we need to understand that, much sooner than we think, our time on this earth will be over. Then we will stand before the judgment seat, and this word that we ignored will be our judge. In John 12, 48, it says, He that rejected me and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. So when we want answers, the first place we should go is to the Bible. Today we're gonna look at liars and some ways to spot them. The great history, that is the first book of Moses called Genesis, has so many foundational truths that appear in it in seed form. These truths are timeless. To learn how to spot a liar, let's study the father of it, which is Satan or the devil. So let's look at the first lie, chronologically speaking. It is where the devil, known by his name Lucifer at the time, lied to himself. In Isaiah 14, starting at verse 12, it says, How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud. And here it is, I will be like the Most High. The devil said he would be like the Most High. That was a lie. The devil will never be like the Most High. Imagine a created being thinking he can be like the God who has always existed for an eternity, for so long that we cannot even comprehend it with our pathetic brains, this God who made heaven and earth and all that is in them. To think that a created being thought he could be like the Most High This is where the most subtle lying begins, begins with lying to yourself. In the next verse though, God decrees what will really happen. Verse 15 says, Now this event must have happened before the devil came to Adam and Eve in the garden. We see that the angelic beings, including the devil, already existed when God was laying the foundations of the earth. In the book of Job, God is speaking to Job very strongly and gives him a little history lesson regarding the creation of the earth. If you want, you could turn to Job 38, starting at verse 1. We'll be reading a few verses here. And it says, Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man, For I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fashioned? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof? And here's the verse. When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy, or who hath shut up the sea with doors, when it break forth as it had issued out of the womb. When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and the thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and break up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed. Notice it said, the sons of God, in verse seven, sang and shouted for joy during this creative process. The sons of God are angels. They are apparently called by that term, sons of God, because they are direct creations of God. They have no earthly father, like Adam. In Luke 3.38, at the end of a genealogy, it says, which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. Adam was said to be the son of God because he had no earthly father, but was directly created by God from the dust of the earth. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, although not a creation, but the Creator, also had no earthly father, no earthly biological father, so he is known as the Son of God. Now when a man lies to himself, it makes his lies the hardest to detect. This is not surprising, since the devil lied to himself, and he is the most subtle of liars. So what are the results of that first lie, where the devil said he would be like the Most High? For him, it will ultimately be the lake of fire, as Revelation 20 verse 10 says, and the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. It is good to remember these consequences of lying Though a believer will never lose his ultimate salvation, we have consequences we can face as well for lying. Also in Revelation, in the next chapter, 21, seven through eight, it says, he that overcometh shall inherit all things. And I will be his God and he shall be my son, but the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars. shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. So what other consequences did this first lie have? To see that, let's turn to the first lie that appears in the Holy Bible when we start reading it from the beginning. Genesis 3 is where we see the first lie. And you might want to turn here. We will be looking at this a lot more even than Job. We can see Lucifer must have already fallen by this point, which means the fall described in Isaiah 14 that we read was the first lie, but Genesis 3 describes the first lie we come to when we are reading our Bible from the beginning. It begins in Genesis 3, So in Genesis 3, starting at verse 1, We'll read this extended passage. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life." So, we're going to look carefully at several things the devil said here. We're going to see that he is indeed the most subtle of liars, and we'll learn to not be ignorant of some of his devices. So the first question I want to explore is, why did Adam and Eve not die in the day they ate from the tree? Why did they not die? If Satan was lying, why did they not die that day? After all, this is what it says back in Genesis 2, starting at verse 15, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. God said Adam would die the day he ate from the tree. What's the explanation for this? Well, the Bible says Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world. In Revelation 13, verse 8, it says, and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Adam and Eve, when they sinned, deserved death. They didn't just deserve the die of old age later. God's warning was not merely that in the day they ate of the tree, that it would start the clock ticking for some future day when they would die. They deserved death immediately, and that is what God said would happen. Also, Their spirits did not die that day in some mystical way. That was not to threaten death. They deserved death of both body and soul in hell, on the spot. And they would have gotten it, had Jesus not volunteered to be their propitiation. Our Lord promised to take their place. This is why it was said He was slain from the foundation of the world. They received this gift by discarding their fig leaf garments they made themselves, which represented trusting in their own works to save themselves, and instead accepted the coats of skins, which involved blood shed by God himself, who killed the beasts. The first thing to die in that world were innocent creatures, representing the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. This is why Adam and Eve did not instantly die. They were saved by grace through faith, in God's mercy, as He shed innocent blood in their place. This looked forward to the death of our Lord on the cross, where He paid for Adam and Eve's sins, as well as all our sins, as we are all sons and daughters of Adam. Consider Jonah for a moment. James has been preaching on Jonah, but he hasn't gotten to this part yet. In Jonah 3 verse 4, And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah said Nineveh was going to be destroyed, but look what happened in verse 5. So the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed the fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth and satin ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent? and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not. And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not. God said he was going to do evil to them. Jonah prophesied that he would. But God didn't end up doing it. Was he, Jonah, or God forbid, God himself, a liar or a false prophet because what he said did not come to pass? No. There is an implied, implied means it was not stated directly, but it's still there, an implied condition in God's judgment that he will show mercy on us if we repent. Nineveh repented, so they lived. Incidentally, this passage teaches us that repenting of our sins is a work. It's not a part of salvation by grace through faith alone that gives us everlasting life. Looking at verse 10 again, it says, and God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. Nineveh's repentance is works. If there's any doubt about it, look at what our Lord said in Luke 11, 32. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here. Jesus said the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonas, and the narrator of Jonah calls their repentance works. Repentance from sin is needful if we want to avoid destruction in this life and at the judgment seat of Christ. But it is a work. It's a work and it is not part of our salvation in eternity. But back to our study on lying and liars. Let's look at what the devil said after he asked his question and Eve answered him. Back in Genesis 3 in verse 4 and 5 again it says, And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. The lie was not seemingly the statement by the devil, ye shall not surely die, as they didn't die in that day. Was the lie that their eyes would surely be opened and that they'd become as gods, knowing good and evil? Well, look at what happens next. In verse six and seven, it says, Again, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Their eyes were opened. And are they now as gods, knowing good and evil? Well, look at what God himself says in verse 22. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground. And it goes on. But to recap, the devil started by asking a question in Genesis 3 verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God hath made, and he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. We have not examined that question yet, but suffice it to say that the devil could try to deny that question was any way a lie by saying it was a question. He didn't really make any explicit claim. But in verse four and five, or in verse four when it says, And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, They did not die that day. So the devil can at least try to claim that what he said was true. And in verse five, when he said, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. The devil can also try to claim the statement was true as the Bible plainly says later in the chapter that their eyes were opened and they were like God and knew good and evil. So does that make God the real liar? Obviously not. Though years ago when I first got saved, I saw some supposed scholarly woman who was part of a little round table of scholars make this very point, but she just left it as being some kind of mystery. We know some people who have a false doctrine of lying, in which as long as what you say can be screwed or interpreted to be true in some form or fashion, that you're not really speaking a lie. That's how that doctrine goes. They would presumably say the devil was wrong here, but they would not be able to demonstrate that he actually lied. Obviously, a doctrine that could justify the devil's lie because he did not speak with his lips anything that was technically false has serious problems. The logical conclusion of that false doctrine, which we discussed at length in previous sermons, would be that Rahab and Joshua and the midwives in Exodus were liars, but in Genesis 3 the devil was not. But we know the devil lied in Genesis. The Bible tells us that. Look again at this verse where the devil is said to be the father of lies. John 8, 44, you are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer, when? From the beginning, and abode not in the truth. Notice it says from the beginning, the devil abode not in the truth. Genesis, of course, is the beginning. Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. So how exactly, then, did the devil abide not in the truth? That is, how did he lie? Well, look at what Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, verse 13 and 14. So the Bible plainly says the woman was deceived by the devil. And just as an aside, the devil's wiles did not fool Adam. He sinned without being deceived, and died, like countless men after him did, and still do, by passively following his wife into sin, instead of protecting her and delivering her from it. He loved her more than he loved God, and thus destroyed both of them. He was with her when she first ate. He should have stopped her. His sin was therefore greater than hers. So again, the woman was deceived by the devil. How did he deceive her? 2 Corinthians 11, verse one through four says, Would to God you would bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me. For I'm jealous over you with a godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which we have not received, or another gospel, which we have not accepted, you might well bear with him. Now the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety. Webster's 1828 says, for beguiled, beguiled, deluded, imposed on, misled by craft, eluded by stratagem, The devil beguiled Eve. He tricked her. He deceived Eve into thinking eating the forbidden fruit would be a good thing. Again, as it says in verse 6 of Genesis 3, And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. The devil spoke words that deceived Eve. Well, in a lot of ways, These words were technically true. The fallen sheriff speaking them was not abiding in the truth. He was full of guile. He deceived Eve, maybe without technically saying one thing that was necessarily false, but what he did do was he made her think that eating the tree would be good for her. He was trying to deceive her. He knew that, regardless of any truth that was in his words, that eating from the tree would not be to her benefit but would be to her destruction and to the destruction of all of mankind. So the devil used words to cause Eve to believe something that was very false. Whether his words were technically true or not is beside the point. He was still lying when he used his words to beguile Eve into believing that she should eat of the fruit that God himself forbade her from eating. This, then, is the most subtle form of lying. deceiving someone into believing something that is not true, or beguiling someone into doing something wrong while speaking true words. The devil started off by lying to himself when he said, I will be like the Most High. He then set out to destroy mankind by beguiling Eve. The serpent said things that could be considered technically true. But he did not abide in the truth. He was full of guile. This most subtle of creatures successfully beguiled Eve. He spoke what he spoke with the intention of getting her to believe the lie that God did not have her best interests at heart and that eating the fruit would be a good thing for her. Lies are hardest to detect when they are believed by the person telling them. The devil's imagining in his mind that his statements are true as he deceived Eve would have made his deceitfulness very hard to pick up on. but not impossible. As we have read, Adam was not deceived, even by the one who is such a master of deception, that it is written, he will deceive the whole world. In Revelation 12, 9, and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceived the whole world, he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And Paul also said, he was not ignorant of the devil's devices either. In 2 Corinthians 2.11, lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and he gives us his comforter that will guide us in the all truth. In John 16 it says, Next time, if there is a next time, Lord willing, we'll study the examples of liars in the Bible and see that even the subtlest of liars will reveal their lies sooner or later. We'll learn how to detect lies and thus help prevent ourselves from being deceived. But if we somehow don't detect the liar before he fools us, or worse yet, if we get tempted to lie ourselves, remember what the scripture says in Proverbs 19, 5. A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape. And if that is not enough, God repeats himself almost word for word, just four verses later. A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish. That means die, body and soul. If we have lied, any of us about anything, let us turn to our God today, while it's called today, that we may repent and be delivered from our lies. As we alluded to, there's a salvation into the coming kingdom that all liars will miss. Behold, it is written now is the day of salvation. Let us turn from our lies and not miss this coming glorious kingdom. God, we do thank you for giving us your word, God, for telling us how our great, great, great, great way back there grandparents, what happened with them, how the devil lied. Thank you for telling us how it all ends, how the devil's gonna be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone. Please, Lord, help us to live holy so that we don't have a part with the devil in that place in the future, for we know that time is coming sooner than we think. And God, just give us wisdom, guide us in the all truth now. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.