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Dealing With Deception

© Virginia Marin

Have you ever been deceived by a friend, a known or unknown enemy, or something you just could not quite put your finger on? What is deception and how does one deal with it? The Book of Joshua speaks to deception. It is a Christian handbook for spiritual warfare.

"We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us" (Joshua 9:6).

WHAT IS DECEPTION

Deception as defined by Webster is to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid; trickery; lying; providing false ideas, or deceiving so thoroughly as to obscure truth. Deception, therefore, is built on a lie.

This certainly sounds like a strategy of Satan, because at the heart of all deceit is a lie. When we give in to Satan's tempts, what we have done is bought a lie, and we are deceived. We are then engaged in a struggle between good and evil, truth and lie. I don't go for all this Satan and other stuff in the Bible, someone might retort. All you need do to confirm this is to read the daily news. The pages of our papers and the screens of our televisions are filled daily with graphic accounts of violence, cults, lying, deceit, and human depravity of every horrendous kind. It has been said that human governments would collapse if elected officials spent only one day of not lying. Why is this true? Something is gravely wrong.

SPIRITUAL ARMOR

This is a continuation of a previous article on the "Armor of God" as recorded in Ephesians. The Book of Joshua corresponds to the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament. Joshua and Ephesians mirror one another. We are told in Ephesians 6 to put on the whole armor of God. There is a spiritual enemy fighting against us. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12)). Ours is a spiritual enemy, or that thing which sometimes we just can't quite put our finger on.

JOSHUA MEETS DECEPTION

Now Moses had died, and Joshua was commissioned and commanded by God to take his place. God gave the Israelites the land, but their enjoyment of it depended upon their taking possession of it. When the people of Gibeon heard the destruction that Joshua had raised against Jericho and Ai, they resorted to a lie to get into good favor with Joshua for protection of self. They sought him out and presented themselves with exausted donkeys, worn-out sacks, and old cracked and patched wineskins. The men shod themselves in worn out sandals and wore old clothing. They replaced their good bread and staples with that which was stale and moldy. Then they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the men of Israel, "We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us." Joshua disobeyed God and made a treaty (Joshua 9:15) with those whom God had forbidden contact. Joshua was deceived by the enemy and made a terrible mistake. By this one deception, Israel was stuck with the liability of the Gibeonites for the rest of her days as a nation.