No Value

In business, there’s what’s called the value proposition. It is how a business describes and positions its products to serve its customers better than its competitors. The consumer must discern between all the marketing claims of “newest”, “best”, “easiest” and all the other descriptors intended to sway your decision to part with your cash. The wise investor/buyer looks beyond the hype, asks probing questions, realizes that when more than one product claims to be the best, only one may be telling the truth.

Satan is in the business of selling falsehoods. The Bible calls him the father of lies (John 8:44). He is a master of counterfeiting everything God created as good (Gen. 1:31). And his strategies continue to work through six or seven millennia of gullible, lazy, and uninformed people. His most successful ploy is to challenge God’s authority and credibility.

In the Garden of Eden,

he asked Eve, “Did God really say?” (Gen. 3:1). Eve responded with a mostly correct answer; she added the phrase “or touch it” to God’s original restriction on eating from “the tree in the middle of the garden.” Satan’s lie was very persuasive, appealing to Eve’s pride: “You surely will not die! For God knows…you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:4,5)

Satan is evil but he’s not stupid. He has had thousands of years to study mankind and hone his pitch. Our pride is so entrenched in us, it drives much of what we believe about ourselves with regard to our intelligence, our abilities and talents, about moral restrictions, about God’s existence and His right to set the rules. But if what we feel is right or okay doesn’t line up with Scripture, it’s wrong…period.

The Apostle Paul

addresses this in his letter to the Colossian Church: (These are matters [see v, 16-22] which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion…but are of no value against fleshly indulgence” (Col. 2:23).

We can see the results of the violation of this principle every day in many places in our country. Just take one example of the violation of “God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27) and look at the damage this has done to our society in men who “identify” as women, crushing women’s sports. Or what about grade school boys who think they’re girls and their parents allow physical and chemical mutilation of their manhood.

Two posts ago (But…)

I quoted 2 Tim. 3:1-5 which describes, in detail, the character of the society living in “the last days.” I think it’s important enough to repeat it here. Think about what believing Satan’s lies has led to and ask yourself, “What is the value proposition of this lifestyle?”

• “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; avoid such men as these.”

Technically, we’ve been in the last days

since Jesus went back to heaven 2,000 plus years ago. So nobody knows for sure when the trumpet will blow (1 Thess. 4:16). But in Matthew 24, Jesus tells us to “be on the alert” v.42 and “you also must be ready” v.44. He also chided the Pharisees for their blindness, “Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” (Matt. 16:3)

We have signs that point to something of a worldwide nature that is growing more tense with every missile that flies, every bomb that explodes, every hateful word about Israel that gets repeated by the media. Is this “the last days” alluded to in the paragraph above? I don’t know. What I do know is that as long as we have breath, it’s not too late to turn to Jesus for forgiveness and life eternal. Elsewhere on this site, there’s a section called Steps To Salvation. It gives you the best value proposition with no hype that you’ll ever read. Do it today. I’ll wait…