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Welcome to the Hope Community Church! Hope is a multi-site church community with locations around the Triangle in Raleigh, Apex, Northwest Cary, Garner, and Fuquay-Varina. We are here to love you where you are and encourage you to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ! We strive to speak the truth of the Bible in a way that is easy to understand, helpful in your current life circumstances, and encouraging. No matter who you are or where you come from, you are welcome here!
5: How we doing? Doing all right. Good.
Hey, uh, about two months ago, um, actually almost exactly two months ago,
we welcomed our daughter ever into the world. And, uh, when we did, yeah,
she's sleep in the back. She can't hear you, but you know, go for it. Um,
we welcomed her into the world.
And I think the only people that were more excited than us to have a child were
our friends who had children who had outgrown all their old stuff.
And now they just want to get rid of all of it. Uh,
they couldn't wait to come to our house and drop stuff off on our front door.
Many of you guys did exactly that. We're super grateful for you. Um, but also,
uh, the grandparents as well. Uh, specifically my wife's parents. Uh,
one weekend while Morgan was still pregnant,
we went over to my in-Law's house and uh, I'm asleep.
I wake up later than everybody else,
and I walk into the living room and I go in the living room and there's just all
this furniture everywhere, like all this baby furniture. Uh,
I looked around and there was a crib, there was a cradle,
and there was this changing table. And I see it and I'm like,
what are we gonna do with all this? Right? Because, uh,
I see all the furniture that's around the house. And, uh,
her parents start to explain to us, uh,
this was Morgan's like crib from when she was a baby,
and it was her cradle and it was her changing table.
And they always had this dream that one day that when Morgan had kids,
that we would use that furniture for her kids. Uh,
and so we're looking around at all of it, like, man,
that's super sweet and super sentimental and all that other stuff.
But the only thing I can think of in my mind is this,
none of this matches like the color scheme.
None of it goes along with like the Pinterest board that my wife made.
None of it goes along with the stuff on the registry. And so like,
this is a really sweet gesture, but, but what are we gonna do with all of it?
Uh, because we had this idea of all these like bright pastel colors,
but this is kinda like a darker brown, you know what I mean? I'm like,
it's just, it feels like it's gonna clash, but we didn't wanna be mean.
We didn't wanna say no, all this stuff. So anyway,
we're having some conversation about it, and eventually the truth comes out.
They're like, Hey, listen, um, we don't really care what you do with it.
Just get it out of our house.
Like we've been holding onto it for almost 30 years.
We just want to get rid of the stuff, right?
So they load it all up in the truck, they drive it from Wilmington to Fuke Way,
and they drop it off at our house. Uh,
and I remember we had all this stuff and we, our brains are turning. We're like,
what do we do with all this? And so, uh, one day Morgan,
she's at TJ Maxx and she finds this gold mirror and she's like, man,
this mirror would look really good if it went along with the crib.
And if we changed kind of the design and the layout that we had for the room.
So she bring brings it home, we start thinking through it like, man, this,
this actually could be pretty cool. So I have a picture of it here.
This is a picture of our nursery now. Um,
and so there's like these gold accents and you have the, uh,
you have the crib in there and you have the green.
It's kind of got this kind of like speakeasy vibe to it, you know what I mean?
Like we, it's our favorite room in the house now. Uh, but that's the crib.
That's what we decided to do with it. We realized, man,
we can actually redesign the room in order to fit the crib.
Now we also had the cradle. Now lemme tell you something about the cradle. Okay?
Um, it's just very similar to the crib. It's wooden. It's kind of big and bulky.
But when we were at the hospital, they put ever,
when she was born in the little like rolling bassinet thing,
you know what I'm talking about?
And I remember we were walking around with her in the hospital like, man,
this thing is great. It's mobile. Like we can, if we gotta go to the kitchen,
we're good. If we have to go to the living room,
if we need to bring her into our room, we can do all that.
So I'm sitting in the hospital, I pull my phone out,
I order a rolling bassinet before we get home.
It's waiting for us on our doorstep when we get there. Uh,
but now we have this wooden cradle that's not easy to move around.
It just kind of takes up some space. Um, it would probably serve somebody well,
but not us. Uh, and so here's a picture of the cradle. It's, um,
disassembled , and it's sitting in our office kind of collecting dust.
Now, when I started telling you about all the furniture that we got,
we also received this changing table.
And the changing table was pretty worn down. It was pretty old.
There was like some water stains on it. We realized, man,
we're probably not gonna be able to use this. This is probably just trash.
But we didn't dump it out. It's actually still sitting in the, in-laws attic.
They're doing a great job holding on to us. Please don't ever change. Um,
but I was sitting there, I was sitting in the office the other day,
and I saw that cradle sitting in the corner of the room.
And I started thinking to myself, I'm like, man, I'm working on this message.
And we're, we're talking about the Bible. And I realized, uh,
our approach or the way we accept the scriptures can fall
into, uh, the same way that we think about the crib, the cradle,
and the changing table. I think for some of us,
we think the Bible is like the changing table. It's old, it's worn down.
It's, it's really like not all that appealing. And the truth is,
is we could probably just throw it out and nobody would miss it.
Then there are others of us who would treat it kind of like the cradle. Like,
Hey, it might be useful for some people.
There might be some stuff that we could eventually use it for.
Maybe if we keep it around the house long enough,
we'll think to get it out of the corner or go into the room and grab it and dust
it off, and then maybe we can decide to use it one day.
But I really think about it this way, and I, I,
my prayer for us as a church is that we would all kind of start to think about
it like the crib that like,
even though it doesn't seem to fit in to begin with that, think about this.
We didn't like throw out the crib. We too quickly.
Instead we said, Hey,
what if we reoriented the nursery to fit the crib instead of the other way
around?
So what if we took our lives and reoriented our lives around the scriptures
instead of trying to make the scriptures fit around us?
That would be a beautiful thing. I, I genuinely believe that.
And so over the course of this series, uh, two weeks ago,
what we talked about was is, uh,
we looked at the story of King Josiah and how when we rediscover the word of
God, that it leads us into a transformative walk in our relationship with him.
And then last week, Jason gave us the overarching narrative of scripture.
He taught us how from beginning to end the Bible is one grand story that points
us towards Jesus. So if the Bible, the purpose of it,
if the purpose of the Bible is to point us to and make us like Jesus,
well then why do so many of us treat it like the changing table or the cradle?
Why do we throw it out? Why do we treat it like it's not important?
The reason for this is because we have an active enemy who wants you to believe
that it's not useful to you. Over the course of this series,
we've been referring to the Bible as the word of the Lord.
And so Satan's goal is that you would see the word of the Lord as
irrelevant and outdated and not useful for your life. That's his strategy,
and it's been his strategy ever since the beginning. If you have your Bible,
go ahead and turn to Genesis chapter three. Uh,
I'll give you a minute to get there. If you hit revelation,
you went way too far. It's okay. Um, but this is the very beginning of time.
And if this passage sounds familiar to you,
it's a very familiar passage of scripture. Uh, if you do the Bible in a year,
it's like day two or three. So you've probably hit it before. Um,
but also Jason talked about it last week, right?
And so this is the moment when sin enters into the world.
And I know you might be super familiar with this, but man,
one of the things we're gonna talk about today is how the word of God is living
and active.
So just lean in for a minute because you might notice something that you've
never noticed before. Okay, starting in verse one, it says, now the serpent,
who is Satan, our enemy,
he was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
And he said to the woman, Eve, Hey,
did God actually say that you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
And the woman said to the serpent,
we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said,
you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
But the serpent said to the woman, you'll not surely die,
for God knows that when you eat of it,
your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight
to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
she took of its fruit and ate.
And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked,
and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of day.
And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among
the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him,
where are you? Adam responded. And he said,
I heard the sound of you in the garden.
And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
God asked him, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree,
which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman who you gave me,
she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.
Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is it that you have done?
And the woman said, the serpent deceived me. And I ate.
The first description that the Bible gives us for Satan, our adversary,
is that he's crafty. That's just a way of saying, Hey, he's got a plan.
He's scheming behind the scenes and he's really good at it.
He's naturally deceptive,
and there's a way that we as humans are susceptible to his craftiness.
And so let's just, let's reverse engineer this story for just a second.
Satan's goal is he sees Adam and Eve walking in the garden with God in the
cooler today. There is perfect unity. His goal is, Hey,
how do I create separation between them?
How do I separate humanity from God? And his strategy is, well,
if I can convince them that the word of God is wrong or bad or
doesn't want what's best for them,
well then eventually I can convince them of something that will draw them away
from their intimacy with God. And this has been his strategy ever since.
I think the reason why we have so many questions about the Bible,
I think the reason why we have so many doubts about the Bible,
I think the reason why this book seems to be on trial all the time is because
Satan is still using the same strategy that he used in the garden.
If I can convince people that there's something wrong with this book,
well then maybe I can convince them that there's something wrong with the author
in this strategy. It works, right? It it,
we see the way it plays out in the garden, but it's very similar in 2024,
right? The question is, did God really say in Genesis Pen in 2024, it's, oh,
come on. You don't really believe that. Do you? Listen,
I know the word of God says that Jesus is the only way to the Father,
but that's so exclusive. You're smarter than that. Surely, right? Surely,
all religions lead to God or you, you won't die. Just, just take the fruit,
take a bite, take the bait.
You really subscribe to the Bible sexual ethic in 2024. Are you kidding me?
That's so outdated and so antiquated. Hey,
did you know that if you do, uh,
a study of the Bible and you actually look at the original language,
you realize Jesus didn't teach anything about hell? He,
he actually doesn't say that anybody goes to hell,
that nobody is punished for their sin. Come on. Well, besides,
would a loving God really send anybody to hell?
Our modern unraveling of scripture is just a modern remix of the drama from the
garden.
Satan's goal is to get us to question the word of God,
because then we challenge the authority of God.
So here's the first thing that I want us to accept.
It's this is that the Bible is the ultimate authority because it has the
ultimate author.
We don't just trust this book because churches all around the world stand on
stages on Sundays and say, Hey, you should believe it 'cause why not? No.
We believe in this book because of the authorship,
because we trust that God is the one who inspired every word on
every page. But Satan's goal is doubt the book, doubt the author.
So today what I wanna do is I want to expose four lies about the Bible,
and I wanna replace them with four truths about God.
Because I think if we trust the character of God,
then we will trust the word of God. So let's start here. Here's truth.
Or I'm sorry, here's lie number one, the not lie.
The first lie many of us believe is that the Bible is full of errors,
so it can't be trusted. Uh,
I wanna start here because it's probably the most practical and honestly
probably one of the easiest to refute, um,
because there's been a ton of work on the topic, like so much work,
too much work that we don't have enough time to get into all of it today.
But here's a couple of things that I want to,
I just want you to have in the back of your mind as we continue to talk about
this, okay? Uh,
first is that there are people who are way smarter than me who have done
the work of confirming that the Bible that we have in our hands is the same as
the Bible. That the early church had that not much, if anything at all,
has changed. That there are no ever, uh, no errors, if any,
and that despite any errors that there may be in the translation process,
uh, none of them affect the message of the Bible in any way, shape,
or form that is critical or debilitating to the Christian message overall.
So I just want you to imagine that you are having a conversation with someone
who speaks a different language and there's a translator in the middle. Um,
the translator is not like, Hey, let me ruin some people's lives today. Like,
that's, that's not the goal. The work of the translators is, Hey,
let me communicate this from one language into another in a way that makes sense
to the hearer and that translates well. In fact,
if there is any margin of error in that entire process,
the leading scholars in the world who deal with this will agree that the margin
of error is less than a quarter of a percent.
And most of that has to do with spelling and grammatical errors and stuff like
that. So there's nothing that changes the overall message of the Bible.
On top of that, there's historical accuracy that the Bible is true. Uh,
so archeologists, the longer they dig,
and I actually think this is like a physical principle that we can apply to our
spiritual lives, the longer they dig, the more it affirms Scripture,
not like denies any of its realities. Here's a fact. Uh,
there are places all across the world where they have been able to determine,
hey, uh, Jericho was a city that had these massive walls that were destroyed.
Uh,
there's a way you can point back to and see that there was some historical event
in Babylon where there was a mass confusion of languages. There's, uh,
areas where they believe Sodom and Gomorrah was where you can see that man,
there was some sort of fiery desolation that happened here at some point.
But on top of all of that, and uh,
there's a mountain of evidence that says these things actually happened.
There's no evidence to say they didn't happen. What do I mean by that?
For example, let's say if I told my wife, Hey, I was home at two 30 yesterday,
but she checks the ring cam and realizes Aaron's car wasn't in the driveway.
Well, now she has cause, right?
But there's never been anything in all of history that says the car wasn't in
the driveway. There's always something they can point back to and says, man,
we have a lot more proof that this did happen than it didn't. Now again,
we don't have time to get into all that today.
We actually had this conversation a couple of years ago. Um,
we did a series called Asking for a Friend, and there was a message on May 8th,
2022 called Is the Bible Reliable? Highly recommend it.
Go back and watch it for yourself. You can find it on YouTube,
it's on our website. Anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can go listen to that.
And it's like 30 minutes of nerding out about how we know that the Bible is
true. Okay? So that's there for you. But I also wanna let you know,
the Bible doesn't try to hide anything from you.
Like the Bible's not trying to convince you that it's anything that it's not.
Uh, in other words,
the Bible is not like a magician using sleight of hand to be like, ah,
I got you, I tricked you. Right? No, everything is there.
And the work of the translators, uh,
they include a lot of those details in there as well.
So I'll give you an example.
If you open your Bible and turn to Matthew chapter 18, verse 11,
you'll notice something weird. It's not there.
If you open your Bible, you go to Matthew chapter 18, and you have verses 9, 10,
12, and 13. Well, where's verse 11? , what happened to it?
Lemme tell you,
you actually will find it if you have a King James or a New King James version
of the Bible.
And there's reason for this that's actually listed in most Bibles that you
probably have in your hand right now. If you look down at the bottom,
there's a little footnote in there that says, Hey, listen,
we have reason to believe that some of the earliest versions of this verse,
like the earliest version that people had of the Bible, uh,
some of them didn't include that verse. And we've done a lot of work,
we've done a lot of grueling research,
and we really can't determine if it's supposed to be in there or not. So, uh,
based on all of our knowledge and our research and all the hard work we've done,
we've decided it's probably best to pull it because it's not in the most
reputable copies of the Bible that we have,
but we're not just gonna hide it from you.
We're gonna number it verse 11 and put it in the footnotes.
So if you wanna do more research on your own, you can.
Same thing is true of John chapter seven, verse 53 through eight 11.
If you go on your Bible, this is a very common story. It's a story of, uh,
the woman being caught in the act of adultery, right?
Let him who's without sin cast the first stone. If you go in your Bible,
most Bibles have a little detail in there that says, listen,
the earliest versions of the text that we can find don't include this story,
but through all of our research, one,
we agree there's nothing in there that would contradict that this possibly
happened. You know, the reason why they don't include it in the Book of John,
or at least why they include this detail,
it's because they don't know for sure if John wrote it or if a follower of John
wrote it later on when he was recalling Jesus' life. So again,
there are little moments in there where they may have some questions,
but they're not trying to trick you at all. In fact,
they give you more information than you need to say.
If you wanna do the research yourself, go for it.
But here's the way that we landed on what we have. Why?
Because they care that the Bible you have in your hand is the Bible that you
always intended to have. Here's the truth about truth.
It's not afraid of a little investigation. It in truth isn't a concept,
it's a person God is truth.
Jesus says in John 14, six that he is the way, the truth and the life.
So here's the truth that we need to know about God that replaces any lie that we
have about whether or not this Bible is true. Simply put,
God loves you and he's sovereign.
So the Bible you have in your hand is the Bible he wants you to have. Listen,
God's not telling you to check your brain at the door whenever you interact with
his word, he's saying no, engage with it, investigate it, ask your questions,
and that's all okay. But as much as he's inviting you into the process,
I actually get more comfort knowing that he's in the process.
And he has been since the beginning of time to make sure that this book ends up
in your lap, just the way that he intended for it to be there.
With all the truths that we talk about. I want to tie them to scripture.
And for this one, I wanna point you to Psalm 33, 4,
which says that the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is
done in faithfulness.
If he trusts that God is good and that he's faithful,
well then we can trust that the Bible that we have is the Bible.
He's always intended for you to have Lie Number two is that the Bible doesn't
fit into today's culture or society. So I don't have to agree with all of it.
, listen, here's the problem with this lie
to say that God's word is so antiquated that it can't keep up with an
ever changing, ever evolving world,
is to then say that culture is actually the most powerful entity in the world,
not God.
So if we say men culture keeps changing and the Bible can't keep up, well,
now you're placing culture with a higher voice and a higher uh,
authority than we do with God. Lemme tell you something,
I dunno if you know this or not, but the Roman empire fell.
Michael Jackson is no longer at the top of the billboard, top 100,
the Motorola Razor is no longer the most popular phone that people have in their
pockets. In 1882, a philosopher named, uh, Frederick Nietzsche said,
uh, he coined the phrase, God is dead.
It was this big philosophical and cultural milestone moment. You know,
who is dead? Nietzsche , he's not there.
But till this day, you can go and visit Jesus's tomb. And guess what?
His body isn't there. Because the truth is, is that as much as culture changes,
God is consistent. But come on, Aaron, man, there's so much stuff in there.
The Bible talks about slavery and women and sexuality and incest and polygamy
and all these different ways that we would never tolerate in our culture today.
And you're absolutely right.
But something we need to know about the Bible is that the Bible was written for
you, but it wasn't written to you. Okay,
let me, lemme tell you what I mean by this.
It means that the Bible was written to a specific audience at a specific time in
history. So when you open your Bible and when you start reading in a way,
you start to travel, you time travel into ancient civilizations,
you travel into cultures that are very much so different than the Western
culture that we live in today. You, uh,
travel to a nation that's totally different than the nation that we find
ourselves in today. And all of these things that we read about them,
at least the majority of them, they're more descriptive than prescriptive.
What do I mean by that?
It means because the Bible wants to give you an accurate historical account.
It doesn't change any of the details of what happened.
But usually you have to kind of follow some breadcrumbs to realize, okay,
what's the lesson that's here? So for example,
all the things about incest and polygamy, keep reading the stories.
They don't turn out well. The Bible is not saying,
this is how you should live your life.
It's saying this is how people live their lives.
And now as we engage these stories, these historical narratives, and these,
this poetic literature and all this narrative, uh, with the Holy Spirit,
we'll start to realize, listen, this is descriptive of some things,
but it's not prescriptive all the time. Obviously,
there are cases where the Bible tells you exactly how to live,
and you should live that way. For example,
let's look at the passage that we looked at earlier, right?
The snake in the garden, like,
none of us will ever hold a conversation with a snake in a garden. If so,
let us know. We have plenty of counselors on hand.
We'd love to connect you with somebody. But what will happen,
we will,
we will all be faced with some sort of outside temptation to accept the truth of
God's word or to reject it.
You may never be told to march seven times around the wall of a city and on the
seventh time blow the trumpets,
and then the walls will come crumbling down like we see in Joshua chapter six
with the, the city of Jericho.
But God may invite you into doing something that feels foolish or
scary because he wants the opportunity to reveal his power through your
obedience. Listen,
the principles of the Bible apply to each and every one of us today in some form
or fashion, and they all teach us about a God who is eternal,
moreover, like that's the number one priority. Moreover,
it teaches us about temporary cultures.
The author Dan Kimball puts it this way. Scripture isn't antiquated,
it's timeless.
There are principles that we can apply from all over scripture that affirm this.
And Jason talked last week about how this main, uh,
narrative of the Bible is that God loves man rebels and God is
faithful. We all know that to be true. I don't,
I don't wanna make that assumption.
Many of us know that to be true because it has perpetuated and we've seen
it in our lives and in the lives of our friends and in the lives of our family.
And we see the narrative played out over and over and over and over and over
again throughout human history, despite what culture does.
Hebrews four 12 puts it this way.
It says that the word of God is living and active.
It's sharper than any two-edged sword piercing to the division of the soul and
of spirit of joints and marrow discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
heart. Listen,
there's a reason why the Bible and why the church is still around today.
And it's not because the Bible has a great PR firm,
it's because there's a supernatural power behind it.
And that is God moving this message of redemption throughout human history.
We're gonna hit two more of these lies really quick,
but I do wanna just take a moment to tell you that there's a high likelihood
that if the first two haven't offended you in some way, that the next two might,
in the first two, um, these were kind of geared towards.
And I think they're most common for people who are either new to the faith or
asking questions of the faith or have some natural doubts about the Bible. Uh,
these next two lies that we tend to believe,
I think are for those of us who feel really comfortable with the Bible,
but maybe a little bit too comfortable to the point that we read it,
but it doesn't really change our lives. And here's the first one.
The first lie is, uh, I don't ha or this is really number three,
I don't have to read the Bible because I engage with a lot of Christian content.
Remember Satan's goal, it's separation from God.
And the truth is,
is that you can engage with a lot of Christian stuff and still not have an
intimate relationship with God.
And I'll illustrate this for you using my own story.
When I was a junior in high school, I got invited to go to a youth camp,
and it's like youth camp, you know what I'm talking about? It's like, man,
people are crying and dedicating their lives to Jesus all over again and hugging
each other and snotting all over each other. And it's this,
this mountaintop moment. You're like, man,
I'm team Jesus forever and I'm never turning back until camp next year,
right? Because summer's coming and I'm gonna get wild again, right?
So we go through this and man,
I go to this camp and it's incredible and it's awesome,
but I leave that camp waiting for next year. Man,
I can't wait to go back to that camp again next year.
God did something really cool here. I can't wait to see what he does then.
And what happened was, is that I,
I genuinely wanted to have a deeper relationship with God.
I I genuinely believed that, but I tied all of those,
I tied my relationship to those experiences.
So over the course of 365 days, I was just, wait, man,
I can't wait to get back to camp. I can't wait to get back to camp.
I can't wait to get back to camp because I thought camp was awesome and I didn't
realize, no, God is awesome and he's with you wherever you go.
And so what ended up happening in my life was,
is I found myself in the name of like, wanting to know God. Uh,
I wasn't really knowing God. I was learning things about God.
So what would happen was,
is I would get really excited about these mountaintop experiences or, uh, uh, I,
instead of reading the Bible, I would start reading books about the Bible.
Or if I did read the Bible, I didn't pause to say, Hey God,
what do you want to teach me about this?
I would read a verse and then I would go to YouTube to see what is my favorite
pastor from the other side of the country wanna say about this?
And I was doing all this stuff.
And anybody could have looked at my life from the outside in and say, man,
Aaron loves the word, he loves God, all this stuff. But the truth was is I,
I actually didn't have an intimate relationship with God.
I was just looking for this sort of intellectualism.
I was looking for all this sort of stuff. And so Satan had very craftily could,
uh, he had, he had accomplished his goal in my life. I was doing the things,
but I was separated from God.
And I tell you this because I don't want you to fall into the same trap. Listen,
your favorite pastor or Christian author is great.
They can't compete with the Holy Spirit. Your morning devotional.
It's a good idea,
but don't let it replace your time actually in the word of God. Listen to me.
The chosen is awesome, big fan of the chosen.
Our small group watches the chosen together. But you know what happened?
I watched a whole lot of the chosen and didn't read a lot of my Bible.
So when I read the stories in the Bible, I'm like, wait a minute,
whatever happened to this guy? That guy's not in there, .
They're making a TV show.
There's an entertainment aspect that they need to add to keep you hooked and to
keep you watching, right?
So I got so duped by this not saying that there's anything wrong with it or that
it's bad or that you shouldn't watch it. What I'm saying is,
is that it has to take a backseat to God himself.
Why would you rob yourself of that?
Why would you rob yourself of knowing the creator of the universe and instead
settling for some sort of substitute?
Because it just makes you feel a little bit better .
What if God actually wants to transform you? Lemme put it this way,
here's the truth. We need to know God is real,
so we don't need a lesser alternative.
The scripture that I wanna put together with this,
and for you to memorize and to to internalize is one John 2 27 that says,
but the anointing that you received from God abides in you,
and you have no need that anyone should teach you.
But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie,
just as it has taught you, abide in him. Listen, you can,
you can check out all these other things.
You can check out all these other resources, but man, it's just not,
it's not the same. I was talking to Jay, one of our elders earlier about this,
and he goes, man, I was reading over your notes,
and you know what I thought about? He's like, he said,
I heard somebody describe it one time as eating pre chewed food. And I went, oh,
that's disgusting. He's like, yeah, that's the point. ,
imagine someone else eating the food and then giving it to you when you can go
and get the nutrients for yourself. Psalm says that, uh,
we are to taste and see that the Lord is good for ourselves.
And this fourth lie, it's actually kind of attached to that first one.
And this is one that, that I, I, I genuinely like, man,
I I pray for our church all the time,
and I pray for our culture and our society all the time.
I i pray for me all the time because I know how susceptible we are to follow to
this one. Lie number four is,
is everyone who teaches me the Bible is teaching me the truth.
And that's not true. In our current day and age.
It's so easy to spread misinformation. It's insanely easy.
Anybody with a phone can pull something out and they start talking and post it
to TikTok. And now you're like, man, I didn't know know that, that's super cool.
I didn't think about it that way.
But that's what happens when we check our brain to the door when we don't
compare what's being said to the word and to the truth of God. Listen,
I want you to think about what Satan did in the garden, right?
He didn't say like, oh, God never said that. He tried to misinterpret,
he tried to disin, uh, uh,
dismantle what God had said because that misinterpretation and that
misrepresentation is just as deadly because again,
his goal is to separate you from God like the true God of the God of the Bible.
So he will let you settle for any version of God you made up in your mind
'cause that God can't change you.
And I see this happening in our world all the time.
Here's the truth about Satan. He doesn't come as some dark,
like non-Christian ideology. He slips in, in a very convincing way. Like,
think about this. People are always like, man,
why did Eve talk to a snake in the guard? Listen,
I don't know why the snake was talking. I I can't tell you all that. I'm,
I'm sure there's people much smarter than me who can tell you,
but I do know this. You expect to see a snake in a garden.
Satan didn't come in as a bulldozer and say, Hey, you should sin against God.
No, he came in craftily and cunningly,
and he does the same thing in churches all the time.
And we actually start to see this. I actually think that the,
the reason why we've seen an uptick in deconstruction is because we've also seen
an uptick in what we call progressive Christianity.
And I would say that this isn't a Christianity at all. It's, uh,
whenever someone talks about progressive Christianity,
essentially what we're talking about is, is there's an escape from orthodoxy.
And orthodoxy is the traditionally held view, uh,
the church has had for millennia. Like this is what we've always believed.
This is the way that we've always held onto,
it's the long held traditional view of the faith. Now,
some of the tenets of this, uh,
some of the tenets of progressive Christianity include, um, listen to the,
listen to how there's like a little bit of truth in here, okay? Uh,
a connection to a divine source.
Will we all say that we have a connection to it? Yes, God is a divine source,
right? We have some connection to that, but they don't pinpoint, oh, like,
it's like the God of the Bible, is what we're talking about,
inclusivity at the sake of holiness. Inclusivity sounds like a great idea,
but not if it means I have to give up all my Christian values and things that
God has admittedly said, this is right and this is wrong.
There's a tenant that says that there is more value in questioning than
certainty. I think all of us would say, yeah,
it's important to ask questions of things,
But not if it means that we're neglecting the certainty of what God has already
said in his word.
So when the Bible warns us of this second Corinthians 11,
Paul writes to the church in Corinth and says this, he says that for such men,
people who spew this type of stuff, they're false apostles.
They're deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of
light. And here's the truth.
We all have a little bit of the garden in us still.
Like we all have that desire in us to pursue things other than God.
Two Timothy four, three says this,
it says that for a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching,
but having itching ears,
they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions
and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off to myths.
Satan's goal is to separate us from the truth that God offers us. So how do we,
how do we discern this? How do we withstand this
one?
I think we have to have the word of God so deeply and internally inside of us,
that we don't have time for Satan's lives because we know the truth.
We see Jesus do this in the, in the wilderness, right? Matthew chapter four,
you can read about it. Jesus goes into the wilderness.
He's being tempted by Satan,
and Satan is hitting him with all these things that would play on his natural,
uh, human desires, but instead he meets him with the word of God.
Maybe you're not at that point yet. Maybe you haven't memorized the scripture.
Maybe it's not written on your heart.
But I I want to encourage you to adopt this mantra.
Be a berean. What does that mean? ,
The berean were a group of people of, uh, Jews in Acts chapter 17,
who when Paul and Silas went and preached to them, they loved it.
They were like, man,
these guys are in the synagogue and they're preaching the pain off the wall.
The organ's going, amen. Hallelujah. They're hooping and hollering.
But then look at this, look at what it says in Acts chapter 17, 10 through 12.
It says, the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea,
and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now,
these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonika, who, uh,
for some context, they disregarded the teaching of Paul and Silas.
It says they received the word with eagerness,
examining the scriptures daily to see if the things that they were saying were
so many of them,
therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing, um, as,
as well as men. Here's the truth,
just like the buras,
God has placed his spirit inside of us and given us his word so that we
can discern truth from lies. It just takes a little bit of effort.
So before you like, or subscribe or retweet something that you see online,
stop and think, no, how does it, like, it sounds good,
but how does it compare with the truth of God's word?
The scripture I want to tie to that is John 16, 13 through 15.
It says that when the spirit of truth comes,
he will guide you to all truth.
Meaning you don't need anything external to find more truth.
All of it comes by way of the spirit. He will not speak on his own authority,
but whatever he hears,
he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
He will glorify me, talk Jesus,
for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. He'll give you truth,
all that the Father has his mind. Therefore,
I say that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
And guys, that's what we want for you. We want you to be like the barrens,
that you don't just take somebody's word because they're like, what is,
this is a stage. It's made outta wood. Like you can,
you can come up here if you want. There's nothing special about it.
what gives life to anything that we say we hope is,
is the word of God that you have access to, and you have the spirit of God.
So you don't need anyone else to do this for you.
So come back next week because what we're gonna do next week is we're actually
gonna give you some tools. We're gonna open our Bibles together.
We're gonna whip out some notebooks and pens and highlighters.
If you have that stuff, bring it with you. And at all of our campuses,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna work through passages of text with certain
resources that we think will help the scripture come alive to you, uh,
so that you're not dependent on someone else or so that you're not susceptible
to the deception of the enemy. Let's pray. Father,
thank you so much for your goodness. Thank you for your word.
Thank you for your Holy Spirit.
Lord, I pray, um, I just,
I just really have it on my heart to pray that you would put to death the parts
of us that want anything other than you.
Lord, don't give us a,
i I pray that you would kill our appetite for lesser things.
God, let us hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Let us taste and see that you are good Lord.
Let us be transformed by your word so that we don't fall to the
schemes of the enemy. We ask all these things that Jesus name, we pray, amen.