Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter: 053. The Generations of Doubt
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 053. The Generations of Doubt
Other Subjects in this Topic:
The Generations of Doubt
Then notice what he did. And please keep in your mind as we are talking, that we are tracing now the Eden trail. Wherever you find these things anywhere you are coming across the slimy trail of the serpent.
The first thing he did was to raise a doubt about God's love. "Hath God said you shall not eat of any of the trees? What a hard God He is! Lovely trees! Delicious fruit! It was made to be eaten; it will nourish your body. What a cruel God He is! Can't you eat of this fruit? What an awful God you have got!" That is the suggestion, a doubt about God's love. And following the language of the book of Genesis want to read to you the generations of this thing called doubt. There are ten tables of generations in the book of Genesis, and I am going to add one for our practical help just now.
Doubt! These are the generations of doubt, as Satan begat them that day. Satan begat doubt. It was doubt of God's love that was the first born. Doubt of God's love gave birth to doubt of God Himself. Doubt of God gave birth to doubt of everybody else. We are living in a world of doubt; we are suspicious of everybody; all the time watching others the wrong way; keeping a suspicious eye open. That is the second generation. And doubt always gives birth to misunderstanding. That is a large generation. There are a great many children born there. And misunderstanding gave birth to criticism; likewise a very large family, many of whom, most, or shall I say "all" of whom abide with us until this day. And criticism gave birth to hatred in all its various forms; and the generations of hatred are violence in all its forms. And the children there are, personally, murder; and on the wholesale, war. These are the generations of doubt of God's love which Satan begat that day in the Garden of Eden. And a peculiar thing about these generations of Satan is that they are so long-lived. Methusaleh died in infancy by comparison.
The second thing that Satan did was to tell a lie. Perhaps I need not stop long there. He, of course, is called the father of lies, all kinds of lies, if you will mark. There is quite a large family here. I need hardly label them all to-night. There are white lies and black lies; there are small lies as men measure them, and large lies; there are social lies and there are business lies. There are lies that you live; there are lip lies and life lies. The whole world is filled with the lies that have grown out of the first that Satan told; and they all come from him. If you will mark very keenly again this is a bit of the Eden trail. All lying by look or lip or for any purpose, social, personal, religious—there is a large range of religious lies, you know—the whole thing, the whole brood can be traced directly to this great father of lies.
The third thing—he kindled the fires of an unholy ambition. And I would need to have a whole evening for a talk on a thing of that kind. He gave to Adam and Eve an unholy ambition. He said to Eve, "Ye shall be as God!" Ah; there is Satan's ambition, to be as God! to be worshipped as God. He said to Eve, "You can by a simple act of your own lift yourself above this level where God has put you, to a level with God Himself." And all the wrong ambition of life had its birthplace and its birthtime there. I hardly know how to say briefly enough and simply enough what I want to say here. This itch seems very common everywhere. It is in commercial life; it is in social life, very, very strong; it is in political life; it is in business life; it is in church life; it is in every phase of life; the effort to get yourself up above where God has placed you by improper means. The feverish fingering of the door-knob upstairs, and the insistently working your way up the stairs where you have no right to be. The itch of an unholy ambition was the third thing he gave to Eve.
And the fourth was this, he urged disobedience. The one keyword of the true life is obedience. The keyword of Satan's life is disobedience to God. The one thing that our Lord Jesus Christ insisted on doing was this, obeying His Father. He could make bread, but He would not make it at Satan's suggestion. He waited until the Father said, "Feed those hungry" by Galilee's waters. The obeying the Father was the one touchstone of His life: and it must be the one touchstone of our lives.
"More anxious not to serve Thee much,
But please Thee perfectly."
But Satan that day introduced the further itch of disobedience.
And the fifth thing he tried to do; it came later, after the act of disobedience; please mark that very keenly; the fifth thing came after Eve gave him a very large door to get in, and it was this—a suggestion of impurity. The serpent does not speak of it: it comes as a mental suggestion. Mark keenly, in that third chapter there was no act of impurity, there is nothing wrong in the way of impurity except what is in the imagination of those two, which led to the seeking for garments, which were not intended in the first place for the body but wholly for the mind. And this is the commonest sin of the whole race, through all the world, from that day until this,—impurity, that is to say, if you will mark keenly again, simply this, the using of a perfectly proper, holy function in a way not intended. Simply that; but all of that. That is the core of impurity of every sort and shape and degree.
And I wish you would mark very keenly a difference here in Satan's approach. Before their act of disobedience and afterwards his approach is different. Before that disobedience he came from the outside; afterwards he came from the inside. The serpent said, "Eat the fruit. God is not good!" But when the fruit was eaten the serpent was dismissed; his work was done. Through the act of disobedience there was an inner door open, and through that door the evil one came and put the image of the wrong thing on the mind. Before the eating he came from without; after the eating he came within. To-day, he comes both ways. He had only one way of coming in the beginning: now he has two, and he uses both.