A deception is often something that looks good on the outside and makes great promises, but on the inside you find it is empty—and there is really not much to it.

We've all bought into an empty deception. You've put money into a machine and pushed a button for a bag of potato chips that, judging from the appearance of the package, looked as if it were full of chips. When the bag comes out and we open it, it turns out to be mainly full of air and contains only a few chips. If we had examined the bag closely before making the purchase, we would have seen it as an empty deception.

The Colossians are an example of believers who were in danger of buying into an empty deception. The apostle Paul warned that they were being presented with religious philosophies and humanly imposed ideas that looked good on the surface. But, when examined on the inside, they were found to be hollow and empty of truth.