Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 7, 2021 | Bad Religion - Truth

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November 7, 2021 | Bad Religion - Truth · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Welcome, welcome.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: I hope to reiterate something that Teresa mentioned.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Hope you guys get a chance to put your item of thankfulness, your thought of thankfulness on our walls of praise out in each of the lobbies this morning.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Like she said, we're going to be looking at that this week and next week, and then on the 21st during the Thanksgiving service of praise, we'll have those up behind us here and be able to see everybody visually, sort of all the things that we're thankful for.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you'll take a chance to do that.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, this morning we are in week two in our series called Bad Religion.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: And bad religion is this idea that our actions don't always meet our convictions as Christians.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: And that can be a problem for two important and devastating reasons.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: The first is because we can lose faith in God when we our actions don't match our convictions, but also that the world around us can lose faith in Christianity as the hope for everyone when we don't live up to the standards that God has called us to.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes we're not even talking about just like, you know, being perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, but it's the stuff that we just choose to willingly abdicate those responsibilities that give off the worst impression.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: This is the USS Connecticut.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: It is a Sea Wolf class submarine coming in at$3 billion a pop.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: It is faster, stronger, quieter, and sturdier than any of its predecessors.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: It has uh can hold up to 50 missiles.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: It has advanced sonar, a stronger steel hold to be able to withstand the depths of the ocean.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: And uh on October 2nd, operating in a covert mission in the South China Sea, it hit an underwater mountain.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: Um you might think, huh, how is something that advanced able to hit a gigantic underwater mountain?
2:09
SPEAKER_00: And uh the Navy's asking the same kind of questions right now.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we look at the USS Connecticut, we see a simply a war machine, basically, that is fit for all types of duty, but failed in this very critical juncture to do what was directly in front of it, which was uh avoiding a mountain.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to our Christian faith, we can be feel like we are equipped to handle all of these different sorts of challenges and obstacles and intricate arguments and things like that, but sometimes we miss what is standing right in front of us.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, we have been called by God to share the gospel with the entire world.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: That is one of our jobs.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: That is the great commission that we talked about a couple weeks ago.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: That is the last mission that Jesus gave his disciples was to share the gospel with the world.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes sharing the gospel with the world actually leads them further away from God.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: How?
3:06
SPEAKER_00: How is it possible that telling the world about God could lead them further away from God?
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, it starts at the very beginning.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: You see, when uh we say that we are Christians, that means that we have trusted in God, that we have placed our trust in Him and Jesus as our Savior, that we might be forgiven of our sins and get to be with Him forever.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: But that trust is supposed to extend into all corners of God's commands.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: That when we uh read the Bible and we see this, that we say that we're going to trust in what he says.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: And when we don't do that, when um the parts of his word meet our culture and conflict with it, too often Christianity sort of sinks back into its turtle shell, and we say, well, I mean, yeah, but not that part, right?
4:01
SPEAKER_00: How can that be convincing to anybody?
4:04
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: It's like we are the worst used car salesman in the entire world.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: And you've got this bad boy right here, and no, that's not an oil spill, that's the horsepower juice underneath it, and the the rust is part of the charm.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to sell this bag of mixed goods.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: If our attitude is that, you know, saying that, hey, I love Jesus, I love everything about God, he is my savior, he's my king, man, but yeah, these parts, don't worry about those.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: And I know this one, you're doing that right now.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: This says you shouldn't, but like, that's okay.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Keep on going.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And we just, we aren't really presenting anything that is authoritative.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a good idea rather than an eternal opportunity.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: It's a problem when uh we relent on this idea of truth into something that is just more focused on comfort and our own idea of um peace than it is being at peace with God and his truth.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: It's a problem.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: And this morning we're talking about it because it can be bad religion when we want to share the real truth with the world around us, um, but we stop short of giving them the full truth.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: So our uh we are going to be looking at another prophet this morning.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at the book of Amos, right?
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And I know everybody went home afterwards and read all of Amos.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh this morning we are going to be looking at the book of Jeremiah.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah was another prophet.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Um he was uh we're, right, if you remember last week, our quick little history lesson.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: At this point in Israel's time, they've split into the northern and the southern kingdom.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: The northern called um Israel still retained that name, the southern kingdom called uh the Judean Kingdom.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah comes along here.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: It's unlike last week.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: It is sort of notoriously hard to date exactly where Jeremiah falls, partially because uh being the longest book of the Bible, it covers uh Jeremiah's entire ministry, which was probably somewhere like over 40 years.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: He he started before the exile and continued on into part of the captivity.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And so the best sort of dating is in Jeremiah 1, 4 through 10, where he's called to ministry by God around 627 BC, which was during the reign of King Josiah.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And so Jeremiah continued on through the last of the Judean monarchs and into the captivity of Babylon.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: It's about 120, 30 years past the book of Amos when he gets going.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: So we've got the same kind of problem that's happening here, though.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Is God's people are behaving in an idolatrous fashion.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: They are worshiping these false idols that are not just false, but it's requiring the sacrifice of children.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: They are not being true to him, they are then pursuing a whole lot of immoral and licentious behavior.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: And so Jeremiah walks into that space and is just brutalized.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: He is, I mean, there's a debate for this, but man, easily one of the most persecuted prophets that we read about in the Bible.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because God's people loved the message of comfort.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: They had these people that had been telling them, like Amos and his contemporaries last week, and then now Jeremiah, they had these people who are coming to them and saying, Hey, listen, you've got to pay attention.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: God says you should not be doing these things, and if you keep doing them, you're gonna run into trouble.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go into captivity.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: The nations from the north are gonna swing down and they're going to take you over.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: And then actually later on in the book of Jeremiah, he continues into the time where that's happening, and he says, Hey, the Babylonians are like knocking at our doorstep, submit to them.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, give in to the Babylonians, it won't be as hard on you.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And all the Israelites could not stand that, and they beat them up, and they're like, What do you mean, give in to the Babylonians?
8:16
SPEAKER_00: God's supposed to save us.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, Well, you you sort of miss the couple hundred years where we could have turned this ship around, and now this is where our judgment is at.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna read this morning from a passage in Jeremiah 23, and one of the main focuses of um the book of Jeremiah, it like I said, it is a longer book, but one of the main points is that Jeremiah is standing firm in Israel, and specifically in the southern kingdom of Judah here, uh around uh Jerusalem, that he is standing firm as a true prophet from God when there are false prophets that are around them.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, and these false prophets are saying things in the name of God, but they are not actually revelations from God.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: They are using his name and using it to put the people into a false sense of security when that is the last thing that God wants.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a hard truth.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: So I will be in uh Jeremiah 23, verses 16 through 22 here.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord of armies says.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: They are deluding you.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: They speak visions from their own minds, not from the Lord's mouth.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: They keep on saying to those who despise me, the Lord has spoken, you will have peace.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: They have said to everyone who follows the stubbornness of his heart, No harm will come to you.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: For who has stood in the counsel of the Lord and seen to see and hear his word?
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Who has paid attention to his word and obeyed?
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Look a storm from the Lord, wrath has gone out, a whirling storm, it will whirl about the heads of the wicked.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's anger will not turn away until he has completely fulfilled the purposes of his heart.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: In time to come you will understand it clearly.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: I did not send out these prophets, yet they ran.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: If they had really stood in my counsel, they would have enabled my people to hear my words and would have turned them from their evil ways and their evil deeds.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: God is speaking through the prophet Jeremiah here, condemning the false prophets in the land, condemning them for saying that they have his authority when they really don't, saying that they have his truth when they really don't.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: And that is not, first of all, a good position to be in with God, to be his sort of phony representative.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: He does not like that.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: And also it was condemning the nation of Israel.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: There was this vast multitude who were lying on behalf of God and then leading the people into further destruction because as this one clear voice was saying, God wants you to turn from what you're doing, they were saying, everything's fine.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Keep doing what you're doing.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: They loved the idea of worshiping God, but when it came to his truth, they said they couldn't hold to all of it.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: So there are two areas, though, that Jeremiah stood out.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned them already.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: First is that he had God's authority, second is that he had God's truth.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Those might seem like simple items, but he is a rare breed when it comes to this time in the Old Testament.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: And so I just wanted to show you briefly some of the things that we have read and then some other context to help you understand why Jeremiah had the ability to give this sort of message.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: The first is something that we just read.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: In verses 18 and 22, there are two comments that are separated but talk about the same thing.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, God through the prophet Jeremiah says, For who has stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and hear his word?
12:02
SPEAKER_00: If they had really stood in my counsel, they would have enabled my people to hear my words.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: What is the counsel of the Lord?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: This is this is a whole nother sermon because this is a huge topic and really interesting.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: But what he's saying is, Who has stood in my presence?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: Which one of your prophets has come to speak with me and see my word go forth?
12:26
SPEAKER_00: We see the calling of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Other popular accounts would be like the prophet Isaiah and Isaiah 6 or Ezekiel and Ezekiel 1.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: There are other prophets of the Lord who spoke with him, like Moses and again, many, many, many others.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: It's replete.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, this information is in the Old Testament, if we're looking with it.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that signified God's prophets was that they legitimately were in the presence of God.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: It's not like a news reporter that's saying, Oh, I'm getting new information here, and God is somehow speaking through them like that.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: It's not like they went unconscious and opened up their mouth and God started talking.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: It's that they go into the presence of God, they meet with him, they talk with him.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: The experiences differ a little bit, but that their authority was from God Himself, and the message they were preaching was from God's mouth.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: So when God is saying, Who has stood in the counsel of the Lord?
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah has.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah has stood in the counsel of the Lord.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: He has really stood there and is the only one enabled or who can enable the people to hear God's words.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah has this authority given by God.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: It is his truth, and only Jeremiah during this time and the other prophets that God has in the southern kingdom, only they are the ones who are qualified to be able to do this sort of thing.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: God's truth stands apart from the culture.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: God's truth stands apart from the comfort of the people, and they need to listen to Jeremiah.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: They need to listen to God's word.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: Second is uh something which actually came right before the passage that we read, Jeremiah 23, verses 5 through 6.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: He says, Look, the days are coming.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration, when I will raise up a righteous branch for David, he will reign wisely as king and administer justice and righteousness in the land.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: This is the name he will be called.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is our righteousness.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Think for a second.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Who is he talking about?
14:37
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna say it all together on the count of three.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, Jesus.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: We have our Sunday school lessons down pat.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the answer.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is always the answer.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's talking about here.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the beautiful things about knowing the New Testament and then reading the Old Testament, is you get to pick up on all these sort of holy Easter eggs that God is dropping.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And seeing that Jeremiah, in the midst of this calamity, in the midst of this mission that God has given him to uh tear up the nation of Israel and to pull up the roots, he is also planting seeds and planting roots for future, where God is going to rescue his people.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: So, what was the other thing that marked Jeremiah as separate from the other prophets?
15:24
SPEAKER_00: He actually had truth.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: He had real prophecies.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: It says in Jeremiah 23 that these other ones, they were, they were like stealing ideas from each other.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: They were making up that they had these dreams.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: And they'd be like, oh, that's a really good idea.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say that came from God, and then I'm going to like, you know, add these parts onto it.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah actually had the truth with him.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: So he's speaking this truth.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about a future where Christ is coming.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is our righteousness.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: But what was God upset about?
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Because Jeremiah had the authority.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: He had the truth.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: What was God so frustrated about?
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, earlier in Jeremiah 14, this is what he says.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to me, Do not pray for the well-being of these people.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: If they fast, I will not hear their cry of despair.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: If they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Sound familiar to last week?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Rather, I will finish them off by sword, famine, and plague.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah replied, Oh no, Lord God, the prophets are telling them, You won't see sword or suffer famine.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: I will certainly give you lasting peace in this place.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord said to me, These prophets are prophesying a lie in my name.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: They are prophesying to you a false vision, worthless divination, the deceit of their own minds.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: This false teaching that was happening, those who were claiming to follow God were saying that the truth that the Lord had given them, which they would know because it was part of the old covenant that they had made with God, that they were supposed to be honoring to him.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: They would know it if they held fast to it, but they didn't like the idea that God had a hard message for them.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: They didn't like the idea that God's truth was not comforting at all times.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And we might say, well, what about in our Bible?
17:23
SPEAKER_00: We read that, I mean, there's a peace that surpasses all understanding.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Isn't God supposed to be the one who is comforting us?
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes and no.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who comforts us, but that comfort comes through our trust in him and our belief in Christ and our hope for the future.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: That is where comfort comes from.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Our comfort does not come from God just telling us everything that we want to hear.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's dangerous in our world today as well.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: There is a um a prominent American pastor known for preaching what um I would call a prosperity gospel.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: And scrolling through his Twitter account, um, I pulled up just a few comments over the last uh two weeks here.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Um God wants to help you.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: He wants to heal you, to free you, to increase you, to take you places that you've never dreamed.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: He's longing to be good to you.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Look to him as your source.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: All right, that might sound good at the outset.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's be clear, right?
18:27
SPEAKER_00: God is the giver of all good things that we have.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Every wonderful and beautiful thing that we have is from God.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: But is his job to take you to the places that you've always dreamed about?
18:42
SPEAKER_00: No.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: He's not your vacation travel agent.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: He is not trying to take you.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: You are not the one directing this path.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to be in his will, and when we walk with him in his truth, then we find the peace that surpasses all understanding.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Another one.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews says, Hold fast to the confession of your faith.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: You have to hold fast to what God put in your heart.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: There are forces trying to convince us that what God said is never going to happen.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe those lies.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: In the unseen realm, things have already changed.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: First of all, have no idea what he meant by the last part there.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Second of all, that verse that he's quoting, which is either the part that he quoted, is either in Hebrews 4 or Hebrews 10, has nothing to do with living out your dreams that God has given you or anything to do with purposes in your heart.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: It is about Jesus and both of those chapters.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: It's always about Jesus.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: This truth that they say they are giving, which sounds sweet and captivating, it is cherry-picking the most lovely verses in the Bible and saying that they apply to every single person at all times, in all situations.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: That if you have hard things going on, that God is not bringing a word of judgment, that he is not bringing correction, that this is certainly not a time of testing or of trial or of difficult circumstance, but that if you just focus on the words in your heart and the promises that he has made to you, supposedly, then everything will be okay.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: We've got to understand that this is it is captivating to those who feel vulnerable, right?
20:27
SPEAKER_00: It is it is meaningful and feels comforting, certainly, to those who um don't exactly um feel like God is with them in the current moment.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: But this is worse off than anything else that we could possibly give somebody in difficult time.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: It is the medieval practice of leeching blood.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: We think that it can be helpful, but in reality it just makes us weaker and weaker and weaker.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: So let's get um let's focus though on something here.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: To to summarize, I guess, what I've been trying to say is God's word is always true, but it's not always comforting, and that's okay.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: That does not undercut our faith.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that Jesus is not still our Savior.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that we can't find hope and joy and all the fruit of the Spirit in our relationship with God, but it does mean that if everything that we say is coming from the Bible is comforting to us, or if that is the only message that we are surrounding ourselves with, then we are in a dangerous and precarious position.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: So, like last week, was this problem contained in the Old Testament, or did it continue on?
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, Peter talks about this in 2 Peter.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: He says, There were indeed false prophets among the people.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the Old Testament, just as there will be false teachers among you.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: themselves.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Many will follow their depraved ways, and the way of truth will be maligned because of them.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: They will exploit you in their greed with made-up stories.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Peter had a problem, his own problem, and that while he was trying to preach the gospel, the message of Christ, that Jesus was not just a good teacher, but was God in flesh, there was the Jewish ruling council and those who had killed Christ and ultimately would later kill Peter as well.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: They were those who were saying that the message that he was preaching was false, that they hadn't sort of missed the whole boat about Jesus and the Messiah, but rather that he was still going to be coming.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: It was another message of comfort, but it wasn't God's truth.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter warns his disciples.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: He says, listen, it is not only those outside of the church where you're going to have to be on guard against, but it's those inside the church as well.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: They're going to be false teachers who spring up from within your body, and you must be on guard against them also.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: You can't let down your guard at all.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: He says it's going to be crafty, though.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be slight, it's going to be subtle, but it's going to be powerful.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: And if you let these false teachers in and don't test them and make sure that they are giving you truth and not just what you want to hear, then you're going to be pushed apart.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the dividing point between the North American tectonic plate and the African and Eurasian plate.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: And every single year, North America moves one inch further away from Africa and Europe than it was before.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: And it has for a long time.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't able to travel.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: So but it is moving literally the Earth's continents.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: But it's slight and it's subtle.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of danger that Peter was warning them about.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: He says there is a false teaching that is obvious, but there's a false teaching that's subtle as well.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: So let's walk through Peter's message here in 2 Peter and break down a few things quickly to see how he was warning us so that we might be able to be on the lookout for those who were teaching falsehood.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: He says that many will follow their depraved ways.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the crowd does not matter.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: The size of the crowd that is following somebody who claims to be a teacher of God does not matter.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: What matters is the message that they are giving.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: There are some of the most faithful people, I think, in the entire world are going to be those who are at, you know, First Baptist Church of Buc Tussle, where they have got a congregation of four people and have been there for 90 years.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And those people, when they get to heaven, God is not going to say, Man, you only had ever had three pews filled, but you preached a message that was honoring to me every single time.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Well done.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: God's truth is not about the crowds.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: If we remember that Jesus, when he had the gigantic crowds, he would often give them hard teaching.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: He would give them truth, and then people would fall away.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: If he had continued to just heal the sick and the lame and feed them, he probably could have had a lot larger crowd.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: But that wasn't his mission.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Many will follow their depraved ways.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: This word uh it just means I don't mean I don't, I'm not trying to give you the definition for depraved, but the Greek word that they're using there for depraved, it's licentious behavior, it is um uh wantonness, it is lust, it is um a depravity and an understanding of sinfulness that Peter's trying to bring, saying that many will follow them down their paths of sin.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Many will follow them ultimately to the grave.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Second, he says, and the way of truth will be maligned because of them.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Again, in the Greek, this word is um it means blasphemy.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: He's using the Greek word where we get blasphemy.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And so he's saying that the way of truth, right, the way that God has intended, it's going to be taken off course.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to look like God's truth, it's going to look like the world's truth.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: If every person we follow that says they are Christian never challenges us in the gospel and makes us feel like we can blend in with the world and never be set apart from it, then we have to be careful.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: We have to be careful.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: The Bible does say that we are supposed to be a part of this world, but we're also supposed to be set apart from that world.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And this is why I don't have anybody in mind necessarily when I'm saying this, but if you're on social media and love following like Christian influencers, like just be keeping some of these things in the back of your mind.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: That there are those who say that they're following Christ and might even genuinely be following Jesus, but they're not good to receive teaching from because what they are saying just looks like the world around them.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: God's truth is often difficult to hear.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Third, they will exploit you in their greed with made-up stories.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: They take advantage of the poor and the needy, they take advantage of the vulnerable, they recognize that their message is captivating to those who are in pain.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And if you are in pain, if you are feeling desperate, if you are feeling like you just need a sweet word from the Lord, then it's important that you recognize also that as you are walking forward in your relationship with Christ, that you don't fall into this ministry that is just about sort of putting verses on coffee cups and selling it to unsuspecting people.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: But it is about getting deep into our relationship with Christ.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: And that the hope and the peace that surpasses all understanding is still there.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Um made up in the great this one had a lot of fun Greek words, that's why I keep bringing it up.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: But made up is uh the word is the root for where we get our American word, English word, not American, our English word for plastic.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: So it's plastos.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: So they have plastic words.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Um it can also mean like malleable, like clay and something that is created.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: So they will exploit you in their greed with their conforming false, thin, fabricated stories.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Another thing to watch out for.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: But fourth and finally, Peter reminds us, he says, their condemnation, those who are teaching a false gospel, pronounced long on ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Um Peter was uh very cognizant of the idea that we have where um we might accuse God of being slow to act.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Later on in Peter's letter here is where we get the idea that God is not slow in the matter of our thinking, but rather he is waiting for as many people to come to repentance as possible before the second coming.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: That God's idea of time is different than ours.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter reminds us, as he would have seen back then, and we see today, all of these people who are preaching a false gospel and leading Christians astray and practicing a bad religion by abdicating the whole truth of God.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Peter says, listen, their time is coming.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Their time is coming.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: God is not idle, he is not sitting on his back legs here and just, you know, waiting for things to play out.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: It's coming.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: It's coming.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: I want to put a quick little asterisk in here, though, because I want to make sure that we don't get the impression that anybody who teaches something that is not exactly in line with God's will is somehow a false teacher, and you're like, that was a weird statement.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: Um I teach things.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Not everything I say is from God.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a prophet.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: I do my best and I try and do a good job to teach you um things and teach myself things as we're going through God's word together that are from his word and are honoring to him and glorifying to him and are true, but not everything I say ultimately ends up being true.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the distinction I'm making here?
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Like when I say something, it obviously does not carry the same weight as God's word.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: What I am saying is not as declarative as the words of the prophet Jeremiah.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm just doing my best to explain them.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes in the student ministry, which I had the privilege of serving in for a while, we would have people who come in who are nervous about being like a volunteer mentor or something like that.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: And they'd say, man, I just I don't feel like I'm ready to teach.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like I know enough.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
31:16
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, like, they would say something that wasn't entirely correct.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: But there's a difference.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference here between those who in Jeremiah's time and in Peter's time are using the name of God to spread a false narrative for their own desires and to head towards their own depraved ways.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between that and just sometimes being a little ignorant, which I am frequently.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: So let's separate those things.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Don't allow the message of this morning to make you say, like sort of be shaking in your boots that you can't walk forward and sharing the gospel with people, but rather just that you have an attitude of being committed to his truth and not using the Bible to get what you want.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: In summary, really, it's the lesson that Jeremiah gave us.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 23, he says, Who has paid attention to his word and obeyed?
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Is that your attitude?
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Is your attitude one of listening to God's word and obeying it?
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Is your attitude that of Jeremiah or one of the false prophets that were around them that just wanted comfort?
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is my life, which is found in the Bible, that determines God's truth.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: The way that I'm living my life, find these verses that might comment on it, might speak into it.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: Condition of the heart, a way that I'm acting, a way that I'm thinking, the way that I'm treating people.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna twist them so they make me come out on top.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: My life, found in the Bible, determines God's truth.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Or is it that God's truth, which is found in the Bible, determines my life?
32:58
SPEAKER_00: It requires making God your king.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: It requires making him your master.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't want to do that, then we've got a problem.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Because that is sort of the whole thing about accepting Jesus, is that we repent of our sins.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: We turn away from the mistakes that we have made.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And we not only accept him as our Savior, but if you remember that verse or that prophecy that Jeremiah gave just a couple slides ago, um in Jeremiah 23, verses 5 and 6, he says that there is one who is coming, speaking of Jesus, that is the Lord of righteousness.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: And that is not a prophecy about Jesus coming and dying on the cross.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: That was a prophecy about the second coming and the kingdom of God in eternity.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: God's truth found in the Bible should determine our lives.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: This sets up a competition, and really the last thing I want to leave you with this morning.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: It sets up a competition where our life is often in combat with God's truth.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's going to be the case as long as we live because we are sinful people.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: We have a sin nature.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh we love to rebel against God.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a hobby of ours.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, some of us really enjoy practicing that hobby.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: But these two things are always going to be in conflict.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean, though, that we always have to take our own side.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: We can still, the ultimately, when we get to be with God forever in heaven, his truth will reign supreme and our life will be conformed fully to his truth.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: But until that time, we are the ones who determine how much these two things are in competition.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: And as we head into a time of communion here together as a church, I would love for you to reflect on the areas of your life, as I will reflect on the areas of my life where we know, and I feel like the Holy Spirit is convicting us even now, about those areas where we know that God's truth speaks into it, but because it is comforting, we have sort of sidelined that narrative.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would think about that.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: So here in a second, um, I'll give you a time of reflection.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna exit the stage, and uh you'll have a few moments as uh Doug plays here to just think about this, to think about the grace and truth of Jesus Christ and to be a people, be a church that practices his truth.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll come back on stage and we will take the elements of communion together as we read in God's Word.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: So uh take that moment here now.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Also, he took the cup after supper and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord, for your truth.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you have given it to us uh through your word, that we might have the opportunity to know what it is that you have for us, and God, how we might just honor you with our lives.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Lord, sometimes that truth hurts, sometimes that truth makes us really uncomfortable.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that in that the friction that we feel there, Lord, you would comfort us, uh, remind us of your grace, remind us of what it means to be covered by the blood of Jesus, his body broken for us.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: And God, that we might take the path that is honoring to you instead of honoring our own desires.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, God, this is, I pray that your spirit would give us the power here, because it's hard uh to follow you sometimes in this world.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: It is hard to feel like we can break out and glorify you, share your word, and be a people who uh live it out on the back end as well.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: God, we pray that you would, like I said, give us the power to do this because, Father, your truth is something that the entire world needs to hear.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name that we pray.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: All right, have a great week.