GOD,
EQUALITY WITH

YOU’VE heard a teenager say it or maybe you’ve even said it yourself. You may be staying up fairly late until you are ready to go to bed, and your child wants to know how come he or she can’t stay up because you’re doing it. They have lost the distinction between parent and child. Hopefully you’ll tell them that there is a difference and that you are doing it because you are the adult! Our children simply can’t do everything we do because we are the parents and they are the children. There is a distinction. They cannot ever be fully like us. We will always be the parents and they will always be the children.

When Satan comes on the scene and says we can be like God, it’s just not true. It’s just not possible.357

[God’s Holiness; Pride, Problem of; Satan, Lies of; Satan, Strategy of]

Gen. 3:1–6; Prov. 16:18

REMEMBER the Nike commercial? “I wanna be like Mike.” They sold a lot of tennis shoes with folk wanting to be like Mike. They sold a lot of #23 jerseys because folk wanted to be like Mike. The problem is that it takes a lot more than tennis shoes to be like Mike! You got to be able to fly to be like Mike, because Mike is in a class by himself. He is unique among professional basketball players, so desiring to be like Mike and wearing the paraphernalia that gives the impression you’re like Mike does not make you like Mike, because he is too unique.

When Satan offered the possibility of being like God to Adam and Eve, he was offering an impossibility. He told them that the reason why God set up a boundary is that He didn’t want them to be like Him. However, the truth is that boundary or no boundary, they could never be like Him. We can never be like Him. He is in a class by Himself.358

[Deception, Satan’s; God’s Holiness; Satan, Lies of; Satan, Strategy of]

Gen. 3:1–6

MUHAMMAD Ali, true story, got on a plane one day and he was sitting in first class and a flight attendant came to him and asked him to buckle his seat belt as they were nearing takeoff. The flight attendant came back; Muhammad Ali had not buckled his seat belt. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Ali, but you are going to have to buckle your seat belt.” She came back again, right before the plane was getting ready to taxi down the runway; Ali had not buckled his seat belt. She said, “Mr. Ali, we can’t move until you buckle your seat belt.” Mr. Ali replied, “I don’t need to buckle my seat belt.”

“What do you mean you don’t need to buckle your seat belt? Everybody has to buckle their seat belt.”

“Well Superman don’t need no seat belt.”

The flight attendant now was ticked off. She looked squarely at him and said, “Superman don’t need no airplane, either.”

A man has got to know his limitations. Autonomous man, man who believes he can live without God, make it without God, do science apart from God, or create apart from God will be rudely awakened.359

[Boundaries; Pride; Pride, Problem of; Self-Sufficiency, Danger of]

Prov. 16:18; 29:23; Matt. 23:12