The director of a mental asylum was asked, “How do you determine whether a patient should be institutionalized.”

“We fill up a bathtub. The patient is handed a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket and asked to empty the bathtub.”

“Oh, I understand,” the inquirer said. “A normal person would use the bucket. It’s bigger than the spoon or the teacup.”

“No,” said the Director, “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?”

Many people would have made the same mistake by assuming the Director is limiting them to the three items supplied tools. They would have ignored obvious means of accomplishing the proscribed task. The instruments were misdirection.

Satan uses misdirection to distract us from the clear message of God’s Word. He will argue against God’s word by beginning with a false premise and having us think that we must debate him on the basis of that false premise. Satan knows that an untrue premise always results in an untrue conclusion.

He tries to make us limit our thinking to the parameters he defines. Those parameters leave God’s word out of the equation. Satan would have the believer think a biblical based reply is not an acceptable argument in a modern world.

Jesus gave us His Word for proclaiming the gospel and dispelling darkness in the world. Satan deceives us by introducing instruments of lesser power. He makes us think that we only have a choice between a penlight and a match when we really have the Light of the Word. Forget about penlights and turn on the Eternal Floodlight to scatter the darkness in the world. Otherwise, we end up playing with buckets, spoons, and teacups when all we must do is pull the plug on Satan by opening the Bible.