Satan's High Crime
Still learning about who I was in Jesus, it was back in 1985 that I met a dear but somewhat spacey girl I will never forget. I had flown out to California for a series of teachings in a church I had never visited before, and afterward I thought, This is the last time I’m going to California. I was in rural, conservative California near the redwood forests, and since I’m a guy from the deep south, everything was strange to me. The gigantic trees only intensified the feeling that I was on another planet. I hadn’t traveled very much, and I was still overcoming inferiority complexes and wrestling anxiety when it came to public speaking. I was also uneasy about my topic. I was bringing a message that I knew would rock the boat—a revolutionary picture of God’s grace that many Christians found hard to accept. I was facing the possibility of hearing “Heresy! Heresy!” or worse, dead silence.To top it off, I’m directionally challenged. Plain and simple, I get lost.
I hate to admit it, but a friend of mine likes to say that I could fall off a building and get lost on the way down.
This can be a problem because I also hate to be late; I think it’s rude. But I was lost in California and panicking. I was going to be late for church, and I was the guest speaker!So, even though men in general hate to ask for directions, I humbled myself and went into a small mom-and-pop grocery store. There was a young girl behind the counter. Bless her heart, I’ve named her Callie in my memories. She was a sweet girl, but she seemed to have lost multiple brain cells through whatever lifestyle choices she had made.
Her body was there, but I don’t know where she was.
The conversation went like this:“Ma’am, I’m lost, and I need help.”“You’re not from around here, are you?”“No ma’am. I’m looking for (such and such) church. Do you know where it is?”“Uhhh...ye...yeah, yeah. I know where that is. Yeah.... I know where that is at, and yeah, yeah, uh-huh, yeah.”“Can you give me directions?”“Uh...yeah. Yeah, I think I can get you there.”I waited while this girl tried to find some synapses that were actually firing. Have you ever been talking to somebody and been able to tell they were not really with you? That’s how I felt with Callie.
The whole time I was talking to her, she had that “deer in the headlights” look.
She was just scratchin’ and scratchin’ for an answer. All at once, tiny firecrackers went off inside her head, sending little bits of light through her eyes. She got a revelation! She lit up! I lit up, because, yes, here it comes! The way out of here! We were standing face to face, and I was so eager to get going that I was hanging on her every word. And she said, “Uh...uh...” and my ears were all primed to hear.
“Do you know where the Walmart is?”
YES! Everybody knows where the Walmart is! That is the first thing you find in any town you go to. So yeah, I knew where the Walmart was. I was so excited. I was going to get what I needed.
Then that girl looked me right in the eye and said, “Well, it is nowhere near there.”
At that point, she drifted off to some other place in her head, looking at candy bars on the shelf and bottles of water in the cooler. I stood there for a minute watching her, then decided to let her drift, and I went back out to the car. I could not wait to get on the phone and call my wife. I had to tell her, “The oddest thing just happened.”To this day, neither Sue nor I can remember how I finally found the church, but I managed to get there. The meetings kicked up some dust and discussion. I got to know and enjoy those Californians, and I’ve been glad for any opportunity I’ve had to return. Yet, my most endearing memory is of Callie. She holds a special place in my heart, and I hope to get to meet her again one day. Callie had become something God never ordained her to be. She was as lost in life as I was in my directions. And years later, a basic but pivotal thought became crystal clear.When I was in Callie’s little mom-and-pop store, I didn’t know where I was so I couldn’t get to where I wanted to go.
I needed a point of reference—a knowledge of where I was in relation to where I needed to be.
Walmart was supposed to be my reference point to help me find my way to my destination—the church. What an excellent picture this is of man without God. When man is disconnected from God in this life, he is lost and doesn’t know where he is. His reference point is in Adam— which means he is “away from God.” His destination, however, is connected to God; his reference point being in Christ. The first step we must take to restore that fellowship with God through Christ is to recognize where we are—in Adam. Once that’s recognized, we can plot a course from being in Adam to being in Christ.Unlike Callie, God can show man where he is—lost, confused, in Adam, and fallen. Then by grace, He will direct us to where we need and were ordained to be before the beginning of the world—found in Christ.I’m continually comparing Adam to Jesus. I think about what Satan did in Adam and how it affected all of mankind’s identity. Then I think about what God did in Jesus, and how in a grand triumph, Jesus also affected mankind’s identity once and for all. It’s as stark as the difference between life and death. What Jesus did on the cross was a magnificent identity restoration. Jesus countered what Satan did in Adam in the garden—deceiving man and disconnecting us from our true reference point.
It was a colossal spiritual identity theft.
The whole premise of my message is summed up in a question and a statement:“Do you know what Satan did to your identity in Adam?”“Well, what God did for you in Christ is so huge, it’s nowhere near there!”The Message Bible expresses this very well: Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person [Adam] did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person [Jesus] did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right (Romans 5:18-19 MSG). [Brackets mine]
Satan's High Crime
According to the most recent statistic available from the U.S. Bureau of Justice, there were 17.6 million people in the United States alone who had their identities stolen in 2014, with financial losses racking up into the billions. That is huge, but when it happens to you personally, it’s gargantuan. It paralyzes your entire life. If you lost your job during that crisis, you would have a hard time getting another one because in a credit check you would appear to be financially irresponsible. You would be held accountable for debt you did not authorize. It’s an absolute character assassination. You could stand accused of terrible things you never participated in. Your purchasing power would plummet, and what used to be the ebb and flow of ordinary, daily living—buying food, gas, and clothes—would become a daunting task.I have a friend who was a victim of identity theft and what that man went through was horrible. He said he wouldn’t have wished it on his worst enemy. This is the perfect picture of Satan’s high crime against humanity. It was a devastating spiritual identity theft. He’s a smooth talker, that devil. While he was selling Adam a piece of oceanfront property in the Arabian desert, he swiped Adam’s “kingdom-of-God ID card” right out of his wallet. He did this by getting Adam to doubt God’s love, honesty, and generosity. Adam sinned and lost his sense of value and worth that had been given to him by his Creator. His source for all things pertaining to life and his identity were now placed in something besides God. Confusion, insecurity, and fear—all different forms of death—began to dominate him. Then Adam, as a father and a representative of man, passed that negative identity onto every man born after him.In the Genesis account, when God showed up in the Garden of Eden to fellowship with Adam after he disobeyed, God asked him, “Where are you?” Of course, God knew where he was, but evidently, Adam didn’t have this information for himself. He was left with only a stark revelation: Because of what he had done, he was “not in Kansas anymore.” That’s right.
Man was like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when a tornado plopped her house down in the middle of Munchkin Land.
Adam was transferred into another kingdom where he became lost, confused, and insecure. When God asked, “Where are you?” He was pointing out the change—the new condition Adam had brought upon himself. The Lord needed to show man where he was so He could lead him out. The first step to being saved is facing the harsh reality that you are indeed lost.Adam said, “I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Then, God asked him, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” Notice again that God asked, “Who told you that you were naked?” God hadn’t told him. Adam listened to somebody else and got information from an authority other than God. Unfortunately, the information redirected and redefined him. When Adam committed this treason, he lost his spiritual connection to God (a form of death). He lost his reference point, which was heavenly and God-focused, and he became earthly and man-focused. He became self-conscious instead of God-conscious. He lost the reality of his own value (in God). He no longer lived in the awareness of where he came from (God), who he belonged to (God), and what he could do (anything God told him to do).Many people listen to what others say about them rather than what God says about them. Who told us we were ugly? Who told us we were fat? Who told us we were sorry, no good, worthless, or stupid? We all do a piece of stupid now and then, but we are not stupid.Who’s telling us all this stuff? Not God! Who says what’s pretty anyway? Who decided that? Cosmopolitan and Teen magazines, Hollywood? All the media have cast their vote—television, shiny magazines, billboards, department stores, and more. We’re bombarded with images everywhere we go. But taking our “what’s cool” cues from the world is thinking with a horizontal reference point. It’s asking man to determine what’s beautiful, significant, or worthy about people. God never ordained for any of us to find our identity—our sense of value—in other people or from anything in the earth.The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good [vertical, Christ centered], your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad [horizontal, man centered], your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23). [Brackets mine]With Adam’s help, Satan’s crime was a catastrophe for us.
It took nothing short of the Son of God Himself to come to earth to fix it. And fix it, Jesus did!
If you will listen to God—seeing Him as your reference point—I promise you will recover your identity. It is in God’s Word that we discover who we are, what we have, and what we can do.