Click here for entire series and outline.
Click here for previous sermon.
Click here for next sermon.
I. Self-deception
- Deceive – 1. trans. To ensnare; to take unawares by craft or guile; to overcome, overreach, or get the better of by trickery; to beguile or betray into mischief or sin; to mislead. Obs. (or arch.) 2. To cause to believe what is false; to mislead as to a matter of fact, lead into error, impose upon, delude, ‘take in’. b. absol. To use deceit, act deceitfully. c. refl. To allow oneself to be misled; to delude oneself.
- We are prone to self-deception because we love lies (Isa 30:10; Jer 5:31; Jer 38:3-4; Mic 2:11).
- Men deceive themselves by telling themselves things that are false because they don’t want to believe the truth (Jer 37:9).
- We love lies because:
- The truth requires effort to obtain (Pro 23:23).
- The truth hurts (Joh 8:40; Act 7:54).
iii. The truth is depressing (Ecc 1:18).
- The truth will cause us to lose friends and be rejected by others (Gal 4:16).
- The truth about ourselves is hard to accept (Mat 26:34-35).
- The truth is not flattering.
vii. The truth is inconvenient; it makes life difficult.
viii.The truth gets in the way of our plans, desires, and lusts.
- The truth requires us to change.
- “Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.” – Winston Churchill
- “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.” – Ron Paul
- We are prone to self-deception because our hearts are deceitful above all things (Jer 17:9).
- God asked rhetorically concerning our deceitful heart, “who can know it?”
- If we can’t know our own heart, how easy then is it to be self-deceived!
- To resist being deceived we must guide our hearts by the word of God (Pro 4:23; Pro 23:19).
- We must never trust in it (in our emotions) (Pro 28:26; Mar 7:21-23).
- Sin will deceive us (Rom 7:11).
- Our lusts are deceitful (Eph 4:22).
- Our deceitful lusts are desires for such things as money, possessions, sex, power, prestige, attention, recognition, leisure, or pleasure.
- They trick us into thinking that we will be better off if we satisfy them.
iii. Our flesh tries to deceive our spirit into doing what we should not (Gal 5:16-17).
- Sin uses our own lust to entice us and to draw us away from the keeping God’s commandments (Jam 1:15-16).
- Sin is deceitful (Heb 3:13).
- Our sinful lusts will deceive us into thinking that we will not lose our place in the church if we sin (1Co 6:9-10).
- We are commanded to not deceive ourselves (1Co 3:18).
- If we think that we are wise before we have realized that we know nothing, we have deceived ourselves.
- If we say that we have no sin, we have deceived ourselves (1Jo 1:8).
- There is not a person on this earth that does not sin (Rom 3:23; Ecc 7:20).
- Therefore, if we think that we don’t ever sin, we have deceived ourselves.
- Many religious people are self-deceived.
- People that claim to be religious but don’t control their tongue have deceived themselves (Jam 1:26).
- Their religion is worthless.
- They will only fool others for a while until they get to know them and hear them speak.
- Men dream up dreams that they never had to deceive themselves (Jer 29:8).
- Know thyself
- A wise man understands his own way, but fools deceive themselves (Pro 14:8).
- I know people who don’t know themselves.
- They make statements about what they are going to do, and in many cases they probably believe themselves.
- But I can discern very easily that they will never do what they say they are planning to do.
- We must examine ourselves (2Co 13:5; 1Co 11:28; Lam 3:40).
- We must pray that God would search our hearts and reveal to us what we really are (Psa 26:2; Psa 139:23-24; Job 6:24; Job 13:23; Job 34:32; Psa 19:12).
- We must think about where we’re going in life and make sure we are on the straight and narrow (Pro 4:26-27).
iii. We will never grow as Christians until we take an honest look at ourselves and admit the truth about ourselves.