Defending the Truth of the Gospel

The other lie that is becoming more and more loud and prevalent in our world today is this false teaching of Christian nationalism. God did not call America to be a Christian nation to bring the glory of God to the rest of the world. It's quiet. It's uncomfortable. But this is the truth of the gospel that we are called to the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of America. But today, as we dive into our text, we're going to be in 2 Corinthians chap 11. So, if you have a Bible or your phone, go ahead and grab that, start flipping over there. And as we dive in, this is just such a relevant and rich passage that speaks to some of what we are facing in our culture today. I don't know about you, but have you ever pulled up your phone and opened it up and opened your uh app of choice, your social media, and for me, it's X, the artist formerly known as Twitter, right? Right? I still call it Twitter. Like who says X, right? And as I'm scrolling and sometimes you see a post or a meme or a video or a real and you ask yourself the question as soon as you intake that information, is that even true? You saw it and you're like, is that real? Like it sounds real, but it might not be real. I was actually going to use an example of a celebrity set a quote and then the more I researched it, I found out it's not even real. They just made it up. But a lot like 3,000 memes were shared. So we thought it was real. And this past Friday, um, as I'm depressed from Thursday night because the Cardinals are trash. Um, and Thursday night, the Diamondbacks decide to be trash. And then Friday, the Diamondbacks got eliminated from playoff contention after a long and arduous road. And then I'm watching the ASU game. And as I'm watching the ASU game, I'm having aneurysm after aneurysm that like this team is trash. And somehow after all of it, they pulled out a victory. And and I was like, I'm pumped. I'm excited. I'm not even ready to go to bed, but I'm like, yes. Like, we won. This is awesome. I start looking at social media and start reading some things. And I saw a bitter UFA fan account that has a lot of followers, and they're bitter cuz they live in Tucson. Can you blame them, right? Okay. Uh, I think that's hilarious. But anyway, they're like, I can't believe ASU fans rushed the field after beating TCU. And then I thought for a second then I started reading the comments and all these are mocking ASU fans for rushing the field. TCU is ranked 24. It's not a rushing the fieldw worthy event. Okay. Um so I'm like reading this. I'm like I I don't think they rush the field. And then it took to the 20th comment to be someone like no they didn't. And then like 23rd comment was like here's a picture of them not rushing the field. And then there was videos but the lie was already out there. People had already bought into it. People thought that ASU fans thought we rushed the field against TCU. All right, at home and as we go in our world, here's what we're going to see addressed in our passage today is we're inundated with information about politics, about sports, about entertainment, and even bigger things like our spiritual life and religion. And we're inundated with so much information. How do we know what is true and what is not? And today as we come to 2 Corinthians chap 11, Paul is going to give us kind of a way to filter the spiritual trash to how do we have a meter to detect spiritual bull? I had a different title for this message and I decided to change it, make it a little more um spiritually friendly. All right, but how do we siphon through the garbage of life and all that is out there to know what is true and what is not? Another way to ask this question and our key question for our passage today is how do we know that we are rooted in truth? And asking this to you is are you rooted in truth? Through the first half of second Corinthians when we started studying through these chapters, we called it rooted in holiness. And one of the things we said is what we are rooted in determines what we'll be ready for. That if we are rooted in holiness, we are ready for the holiness of God to move in our lives. If we are rooted in truth, we're ready to see truth and filter out the lies. And as we dive into this in 2 Corinthians 11, starting in verse one, Paul is going to show us the truth of the gospel, how it shows up and does things in our lives in so many ways. And he starts this in verse one this way. He says, "I wish you would put up with a little foolishness from me." I love that line. And then he adds on to it. Yes, do put up with me. I'm going to start every sermon like that right now. I put up with a little foolishness. Put up with me a little bit longer. But he continues in verse 12. He says, "For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy because I have promised you in marriage to one husband to present a pure virgin to Jesus Christ." He's talking about the church at large. But verse three, but I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. As Paul starts this chapter, he's going to show us in here how the truth of the gospel moves in our lives in so many ways. And the first way we see here is the truth of the gospel presents us to Jesus. As Paul starts this, it almost seems like an odd request. He's like, I I want you to put up with some foolishness for me. And what he's actually saying, he's like, I want you to put up with the fact that he's like, I'm going to brag about myself a little bit. And Paul constantly is in this tension throughout this chapter. He's like, "I am nothing. I am nobody. In my weakness, God is strong." But he's like, "I'm going to brag a little bit." And Paul's like, "I'm going to brag cuz I'm going to show you why I have the authority spiritually to speak into the life of your church." And then as he kind of starts going down, he tells them the reason for this in verse two. He says, "The reason I'm going to brag and tell about this authoritative presence I have," he said, "because I am jealous with you with a godly jealousy." He's like, "I've promised you the the church at large, the bride of Christ, to be presented pure and spotless to Jesus Christ." And Paul uses this imagery of marriage here that would have been very familiar to his first century audience. In those days, fathers would arrange marriages for their daughters. And their job was to prepare them, was to present them, and to make sure when they gave them over to their husband that they were a pure, blameless virgin. And Paul sees himself as playing the spiritual role for this Corinthian church. His job wasn't to impress them or to win their approval. It was to present them pure and undefiled to Jesus. I don't know what stage of life you're in, but I have two daughters and two sons, but my two daughters are nine and one, so I'm not planning any marriages anytime soon. I actually heard about a disturbing fact last night that my daughter, my nine-year-old, not my one-year-old, she's not that advanced yet, but my nine-year-old daughter uh made a picture in a note for my wife and my wife's friends, who are some of our friends, and they have boys. And and she gave this to my wife, and it said, "Flip over said, "I have a crush on this boy." I said, "She had a what on a what?" Like, that ain't happening. All right. There's like an embargo for another like 10 years or something before any of these conversations are coming up. I'm like, she is too young for that. But some of you have been in the stage of life where maybe your daughters have grown up. Maybe you've given them away at the wedding. And and during that preparation, your focus, your love is on your daughter to hand her off into the next stage of life. And Paul says, "I I love you so much. I have this jealousy for you that I want your church to be pure and holy and spotless and focusing on Christ." And as Paul does this, he then moves to the first deception in human history. And in verse three, he gives a warning. He says, 'But I fear that in this process, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds might be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Paul references all the way back at the start of mankind that we hear about in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, they were created by God and they were and and and it was good and they were put in the garden and and they were with God and everything was perfect. God was with them. And then all of a sudden, Satan came. And as Satan entered the picture, he didn't come with horns and a pitchfork and say, "Hey guys, I'm the devil. What's up?" Instead, he slithered in undetected. He came in and he used his words carefully to Adam and Eve. He talked to Eve and he said, "Did God really say?" He put doubt in their mind. He started to get her to doubt the word of God, to doubt the message of God. And he offered an alternative truth. He made sin look attractive and reasonable. And Paul is seing in the church at this time that false teaching. It seduces us away from this pure devotion to God. This is why being rooted in truth matters so much because if you're not grounded in God's truth, you'll be vulnerable to every attractive lie that comes along the way. And Paul dives into some of those attractive lies that we can fall victim to and we can listen to. And he continues on in verse four. He said, "For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach or you receive a different spirit which you had not received or a different gospel which you had not accepted." He said, "You put up with it splendidly." He's chastising the church at this time. He's like, "All this falsehood is coming up and you put up with it." Verse 6 or I'm sorry, verse 5, he says, "Now I consider myself in no way inferior to those super apostles." These, this is the false teachers who are bringing this. Verse 6, he says, "Even if I am untrained in public speaking, I am certainly not untrained in knowledge. Indeed, we have in every way made that clear that to you in everything." Paul here as he moves along this road, he shows us that the truth of the gospel not only presents us to Jesus Christ but also protects us from false teachers. Paul here gets more specific about the danger. He says for a person if comes to you and he lists some of the ways that these this deception comes in. First he says if they come and preach another Jesus, another Jesus would be the same name but a different character. Our world is full of producing a lot of other Jesus's. And we say all the time, "We're having pizza with the pastor after church today at 12:00. Come if you want some pizza and to hang out with me." I mean, what can be wrong with that? There's not even a Cardinals game to watch. We're already depressed from Thursday. So, it's fantastic. But in that, we talk about how we are a biblical church. And one of the things we say is our goal is to make Jesus known, but to make Jesus known, make the Jesus of the Bible known. Not the Jesus of our imagination, not the Jesus of a meme, not the Jesus of a TV show, not the Jesus we have created in our minds. Cuz sometimes we create a Jesus that is all love and no judgment. Or we created Jesus that's all judgment and no love. But Jesus was fully God, fully human, fully full of love and fully full of justice. Is when we say another Jesus that that is a falsehood. Instead, we follow the Jesus of the Bible. But Paul also says a a different spirit. He says some that claim to the same spiritual power but from a different source. If if we ever claim to have the power to see people saved or the power to do amazing things, it only comes from the power that is through Christ and through his word and through what he has shown us. When there are different ways to get different powers, to get different enlightenment, it is a false teaching. I think in our world right now, a different spirit might be taking shrooms and you're going to see some different spirits, right? and become more enlightened. Um, you joke, but that's that's really popular right now. Um, in first service, I had to give a disclaimer that I have never done shrooms. All right. Um, and I told him not to put that video on the online, but anyway, it's like somewhat the spiritual enlightenment, the spiritual power, but outside the source of God's word. But he also says a different gospel, the same promise of salvation, but a different method. There there is one method that we are saved that scripture tells us is by faith. and faith alone. When we believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord and we confess it with our mouth, we do not earn our salvation by works. We do not earn our salvation by being born into a certain family. We do not earn salvation in any other way than through faith and faith alone. And you see the Corinthian church, they were tolerating all these counterfeits. Paul essentially was saying to them, you guys are so open-minded that your brains have fallen out. You ever drive and you see a bumper sticker? Those coexist bumper stickers and apparently never. All right, you guys are a fun bunch today. All right, we'll lighten you up. But they say coexist and they have all these different like religious symbols. Like the T is a cross, I think, maybe for um Christianity. And the idea is like all religions can coexist and all religions are true. When I see those bumper stickers, I make it my goal to cut them off. Yeah. I can't fix their theology through car windows, but I can cut them off and make them rethink their life choices. All right, I'll start putting my cross church sticker on the bumper that I don't have. And then they're like, "We don't coexist. Go to cross church." All right. Um that might have an opposite effect. I don't know. But here's the thing is our world has fallen into the same trap that the Corinthian church has. When our world embraces all truth, they've essentially embraced no truth. If everyone's right, then no one is right. And Paul is showing them that they have embraced these different truths. But then he moves on to then defend his authority. And in verse 56, he says, "Hey, I'm not inferior to those super apostles." And he's going to break down those super apostles in a second. But he says instead, he says, "I know the truth." And Paul, as he starts getting in this, he said, "Hey, those false teachers, these super apostles, they they're great speakers. Maybe they have charisma. They have charm. They have eloquence." But Paul says, "Don't judge a teacher by their presentation skills. Judge them by their knowledge of the truth." And this brings us to an important truth checker that Paul gives us. And actually, if you flip over, we're going to just look real quick at chapter 12 of 2 Corinthians at verse 11. And and this might be titled in your Bible, Signs of an Apostle. But this kind of piggybacks and we see the linking in that Paul uses these of showing us why that he is an apostle, why he has the authority to speak the truth. And in verse 11, he says this. He says, "I have been a fool." He says, "You forced it on me. You ought to have commended me since I am not in any way inferior to those super apostles even though I am nothing." Paul is giving a defense to why he is carrying the message of Christ in these other apostles are not. In verse 12, this is hugely important. He said, "The signs of an apostle were performed with unfailing endurance among you, including signs and wonders and miracles." Here's a little truth checker that Paul gives us in this is how did we know Paul was truly carrying the message of Jesus and not carrying a message of a falsehood. And this is what he shows us is apostles are marked by God's signs and wonders in the New Testament as Paul is going and starting churches and preaching the gospel is arguing about the faith. The way that they knew Paul was legit is he didn't have a Bible here. He's literally writing the New Testament through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But he didn't have a Bible to point to and say, "See how me and Luke say the same thing?" Instead, when they're scattered across regions, they didn't have social media. They didn't have Twitter to like link all up. Instead, it know to the sign to say these guys are different is they performed miracles that they did spiritual things that couldn't be complained. And it was God putting his stamp of approval on Paul and the apostles. We hear about these stories if you go through the book of Acts. Paul got bit by a snake. He shook that snake off in the fire and he should have died. He's like, "No big deal. God's got me." Right? And like Paul, Peter, all these guys, they were different. They were with God and they were carrying the message of Christ. And God was stamping their approval on him through these signs and these wonders and these miracles. But then Paul keeps going cuz you may hear that and it's like, "But we don't have apostles the same way today. We don't have apostles that have walked with Jesus, that had firsthand knowledge of the life of Jesus, that were there with him and were going around with him for 3 years or specially revealed to him like Paul had with Christ. So, how do we know our leaders are legit today? Well, Paul continues in verse 13 of 2 Corinthians 12. He says, "So, in what way are you worse off than the other churches except that I personally did not burden you? Forgive me for this wrong." I I love this because Paul is now showing, hey, not all churches have an apostle that's preaching in there regularly. Not all churches are being led by an apostle. But Paul, he he kind of gives this inkling that we see in his other writings that these churches had leadership set up in a certain way. And we actually see this in 1 Timothy chapter 3. I'm going to read these verses quickly. Uh but he says this, this this kind of gives us the qualifications for elders or overseers or pastors that we see in scripture. In 1 Timothy chapter 3, you can see this on the screen behind me if you're not there. He's saying, "This saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to be an overseer or elder, he desires an overwork. An overseer therefore must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach. Not an excessive drinker, not a bully, but gentle, not quarrelome, but greedy or not greedy. He must manage his own household competently and have his children under control with all dignity. If anyone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of God's church? He must not be a new convert or he might become conceited incur the same condemnation as the devil. Furthermore, he must have a good reputation among outsiders so that he's not fall into disgrace and the devil's trap. Paul is showing the qualification, showing the truth checker for teachers in our churches. Now, he's saying these are the people that we make sure that are carrying out the message of the gospel that if they're aligning with this, they are in his will. If they are not, there's something that you got to raise the red flag and go off of. In chapter 5 22 of 1 Timothy, uh he gives this little caveat. He says, "Don't be quick to appoint anyone as an elder and don't share in the sins of others. Instead, keep yourself pure." What Paul is giving us is a truth checker, a meter here of how do we know leaders are faithfully taking and preaching the word of God and not another gospel like these super apostles. And here's our true checker I think for churches today is pastors are marked by God's word and accountability. You see Paul what he lays out here is he's showing that pastors need to one first be beholden to God's word. That's why here at Cross Church, we preach out of books of the Bible. We preach the Bible every Sunday because we are not knowledgeable. I am not smart enough. You know that by listening to me very long, right? It's like, I don't have all the answers, but I know the book that does have the answers. And we preach out of God's word. That's why when we say we're biblical, we want to preach this. But then our Bible groups throughout the week, we want to form our groups around God's word that we're diving in. We encourage you to read your Bible, to have a personal relationship because all of this is pointing to the truth of scripture and not the truth of our world. But we also do this in accountability. That's one of the reasons here at Cross Church I love is we are an elder model. That we have elders, we have a board that keeps our pastors and one another accountable to God and to one another. That we have other people speaking into our lives to making sure that we are following the character and following what God has. I loved when I started preaching, I had people in my congregation, leaders I knew I could rely on and and when I could go, I'm like, was that did that make any sense? Or did I I wasn't heretical, but maybe heresy light if I went down that road. Like, and they would lovingly correct me and moving in and keeping in God's word. And here's why this is so important. Because there is so much noise in the world around us. You go online and there are so many voices, even pastoral voices, and you hear things and you're like, "That sounds good. I want to apply that to my life and I want to go this way. But like Paul in God's word is showing us that we need to be careful who we are listening to. For example, if someone claims to have a special revelation or refuses accountability to a church, run away from that leader. If someone claims to see a sign, vision, or have a prophecy that doesn't line up with scripture, run away cuz that's heresy. If someone has a vision, they say they don't know what it means, like run away. I just saw this recently on social media where a guy's like this pastor, well-known pastor, he's like, "I have this vision and this is what's happening and and God is doing this." And he's like, "I don't know what the vision means." And I'm like, "Bro, if you don't know what the vision means, then don't share it with social media and hundreds and thousands of people as it goes around." I'm like, "That is called getting your clout, not preaching God's word." Because we have visions and signs and what God is doing and he shows us in his word and where we are going. And all of this is Paul is giving these guidelines to the church at Corinth and to us today is how do we have the guidelines that we're not following these false teachers but instead we are going towards we are moving in line with what God has for our life and the truth of the gospel protects us from false teachers but it doesn't stop there. He continues in 2 Corinthians 11 looking at verse 7. He says, "Or did I commit a sin by humbling myself so that you might be exalted?" He said, "Because I preached the gospel of God to you free of charge." He said, "I robbed other churches by taking pay from them to minister to you." He said, "When I was present with you and in need, I did not burden anyone since the brothers who came from Macedonia, these are other churches, supplied my needs. I have kept myself and will keep myself from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of a cay. He's like, I'm not going to stop telling you about how I have the authority to preach God's word. In verse 11, why? And he asked this rhetorical question, because I don't love you. He said, "No, God knows that I do, but I will continue to do what I am doing in order to deny an opportunity to those who want to be regarded as our equals in what they boast about." You see, the truth of the gospel not only presents us to Jesus and not only protects us from false teachers, but also provides us an opportunity to do ministry. I love how Paul goes into this. He's saying, "Hey, I'm not taking a dime from you uh because I I just want to preach God's word free of charge." And and and this made them mad. This made the super apostles mad. And and they kind of accused him. They're like, "Well, if this guy truly had a good message to bring, then he would take our money. He he doesn't want to be beholden to you. He doesn't want to be accountable to you." And Paul's like, "No, no, no. That's not it at all." He's like, "I am doing this." He's like, "I'm accountable to other churches." He said, "But I'm not going to play by your rules so that you can control me." What's funny in this and and then Paul goes on is he supported himself through tent making and through other offerings of other churches. Now one got to give Paul some props for tent making. They didn't have sewing machines back then. All right. So that's like needle thread. I don't Were needles invented? They had to be invented 2 years ago. Um Google the history of a needle and then you'll see when that was first invented. All right. But he was like making tents by hand. Like this was a hard job, a laborintensive job. And he was doing it so he didn't have to take money from the church. And the reason for that is in Corenth it was a common practice where you would get like your personal philosopher. They would come to your home. You would pay them a wage. They would make arguments on your behalf. You get some of us need a personal uh one like Twitter argue warrior, right? Or Facebook, someone that will argue on your behalf. You give them some, you know, you sell them some money and you're like, "Dude, I need you to win this argument for me. Come in." Um but but they would do this and they'd have these people in their home and they would entertain. They would argue for them. And Paul's like, "I'm not doing that." Paul's like, "I'm not going to be your trained spiritual monkey to do what you want me to do. Instead, because I love you so much, I'm going to show you why God has given me the authority to speak into your church, and I'm going to be faithful to it." And here's why this is so important. Because he says here, why do I do this? Because I love you so much to share the truth of the gospel. And I think for us, this is important ideas. When we are rooted in truth, it creates opportunity to serve others. Not necessarily just to yell at others how they're wrong. Not just to be rude and say you don't know what you're talking about and demean them. But Paul, even though he's correcting their false beliefs, he's correcting it more by preaching the truth. And Paul understood that sometimes the best defense against false teaching is simply continuing to live and teach the truth consistently. I think about this from the aspect of being a dad. And and I'll be honest, my fleshly desire, and don't ask my wife, cuz she'll just say yes to this and give you more details than you need, but my first desire when my kids do something and drives me crazy, is I'm like, I can yell, right? I I want to yell and correct that. And I'm like, don't do that. Don't do this. Don't do that. And sometimes yelling's appropriate. Like when one kid's about to bash another kids on the hard floor and you're like, that's an ER visit that we can't afford, right? And that's going to that blood's going to be hard to get out of a carpet. Like yelling is appropriate. Like stop the emergency from happening. But when you're raising kids, here's what I found out is yelling is not as effective as positive affirmation when they do something right. So it's like it's when they do the great things, you're like, "Yeah, that's great." And then they light up. That was so awesome how you didn't try to bash your brother's head into the ground. That was so great. Keep doing that. Right? That was so awesome how you you love your family and are helping clean up. Like keep doing that. Like that positive affirmation is a good thing. You correct the falsehood, but you continue to give credence and give approval to the good stuff. And Paul is saying like, I'm correcting your false teaching, but I'm also going to keep praising you for what God is doing. I'm going to keep showing you the truth. And when you are doing good things, which Paul shows in this letter, I'm going to tell you how God is moving through you. But then he comes to verse 13 and he begins to wrap up this section and he says here in 2 Corinthians 11:13 he says for such people he's been building all this right he's been saying this is my credentials these are how these guys are wrong he's been building and building and building in verse 13 for such people these super apostles they are false apostles they are deceitful workers they are disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and he says and no wonder he says for Satan disguises himself self as an angel of light. He's comparing these super apostles to Satan, the ultimate vessel of evil. Verse 15, so it is no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will be according to their works. Paul shows us what the truth of the gospel does. It presents us to Jesus. It protects us from false teachers. It provides opportunities to do ministry and to tell people about the gospel. And lastly, and this is huge, it penetrates the disguises of evil. Paul starts to pull back the curtain. He He's been given a lot of body blows, but here he goes for the knockout. He's saying, "These guys are false teachers." He's like, "These guys are false apostles." He says, "Everything they're telling you is wrong." He's saying, "Run away from them." He's saying these weren't honest people who were simply mistaken and misguided and needed a little loving correction. He said these were deceitful workers who were disguising themselves to do the work of evil. And then Paul gives one of the most important principles for I think discerning truth from error. And he says this and we see in verse uh 14 he says no wonder for Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. He says it's no great surprise if his servants also disguise himself. He's saying Satan's primary strategy isn't to look evil. It's to look good. Satan and evil and falsehood usually doesn't tempt us with things that are obviously sinful. It's easy to say like, "That's wrong. That's wrong." And point out that be like, "No, I'm not going there." But he tempts us with things that seem righteous, that seem loving, that seem to be pushing forward the kingdom of God, that seem to be enlightened, but that are wrong. go back to Genesis in the Garden of Eden and you think about the original temptation is Satan didn't say eat this fruit because it will destroy you. He's saying hey guys eat this fruit cuz it's going to be super cool because instead of living for eternity instead you're going to die. It's awesome. and say like, "Hey, instead of uh living in the presence of God, um instead of that, actually, uh you're going to be um you're going to be an evil and you're going to be cut off from him. Instead of like all of a sudden your baby somehow naturally being born and it's not hurting at all, all of a sudden like Eve, it's going to really really hurt and they're going to hate me. You're generations of women are going to hate Eve for the rest of their life, right? Because of that." He didn't tell him any of that. Instead, he says, "Eat this fruit because it will make you like God, knowing good from evil." He gave a sliver of truth in there. They would know good from evil, but they wouldn't be like God and said they would be cut off from God. And so, they would be strained from God because they were sin and have in their relationship. And I think for us, here's what the problem is. is Satan has throughout time made sin look like spiritual growth or made sin look like growth in some area of our life when that just simply isn't true. And I think in our day, false teaching is around us and has come disguised as a lot of ways. And I think there are some ways that false teaching has come that we need to recognize and we need to run from. We see false teaching of individual personal empowerment. Meaning like if I just become more, if I just become smarter, if I just become greater, if I just turn myself, and some people will do this in isolation. They're like, "If I just study scripture all alone, I I don't even need church. I don't even need a community. I just need to better myself, better myself, better myself, better myself." Then you get stuck in an echo chamber and other people aren't speaking into your life. And this has happened so many times where you know that person that thinks they're more righteous or thinks they're smarter than everyone else. And it's like, "No, dude. You need some loving people around you to correct you in the right way." And when we do this, here's the problem. When that personal individualistic empowerment goes, all of a sudden it creates people who are their own god and create their own truth. We see this false teaching in the side of spiritual enlightenment. It is the spiritual enlightenment has become with these newagy and all these religions gathering together and all a sudden they like cherrypicked. They're like, I like a little bit of Christianity. I like a little bit of new age. I like a little bit of this. I like a little bit of that. And they create this all religions are basically the same thing. Jordan Peterson is one who sees all these roads that interlink together, but they're not seeing the truth of the gospel that stands alone. We see this in churches that churches that call themselves churches, but that I think have gone in false areas. Churches that will say language like we are open and affirming. And here's what they're saying is they're open and affirming of sin of not just like everyone is open to our church. Everyone can come to our church. Everyone can be a part of what we're doing, but we will condemn evil. We will condemn sin. We will convict one another. And even though we are broken, we will move broken down that road. But open affirming churches will say, "Yeah, I know you're sinful, but God still loves you. It's going to be all right. You don't need to change your ways. You don't need to change your behaviors. You don't need to recognize it and try to do better. It's okay. We accept your sin and we affirm your sin." And that is not the gospel. Here's where it's going to get a little closer at home. Cuz if you're like, "Check, check, check. That's not false teaching. I good." Like, I'm good. Like, none of that is me. Here's the danger. I think our church is going in now. There's one side, there's a social gospel movement that all of a sudden we need to bring heaven down here to earth that all of a sudden we need to work through programs and we need to restore people and that we need to good do good do good deeds. We need to do that, right? We have we care Saturday this week. We need to love our community. But they think by loving people, by installing programs, all of the sudden our world will become righteous and it will usher in the millennium and then all of a sudden we're going to be chilling with Jesus. That's not how it works. We've been preaching the gospel for 2,000 years and our world has not gotten better. Our world has gotten worse in its sin. And we call people out of that sin to be a part of something greater and freeing. But it's not all of a sudden we can implement programs and all of a sudden we can fix all the issues. God is the one that will do the restoration. But here's the other lie that we can buy into. And the other lie that is becoming more and more loud and prevalent in our world today is this false teaching of Christian nationalism. God did not call America to be a Christian nation to bring the glory of God to the rest of the world. It's quiet. It's uncomfortable. You're staring at me with beating eyes just like first service did. But this is the truth of the gospel that we are called to the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of America. That God can still work through Christians in our country. And we should celebrate that. We should celebrate when Christians are politicians and moving things that are Christian values through our world. We should be involved in speaking out against evil and turning the tide. But guys, God is not lifting up America. God is lifting up his church in his kingdom to do his work, not to do the work of our country. [Applause] And when these false teachings come, we need to be so grounded in the word of God that when we see that stuff, we say that's that's not the same Jesus that I follow. that that that's not the same Holy Spirit that empowers me. That's not the same gospel message that I see through scripture that I know is how he's moving. That I must speak out against that and I must live counterculturally to what God has called me to do. And the problem is so many of these false messages, they sound so good. They appeal to our desire to be loving, to be just, to be empowered, to be enlightened, to have a better community for our families and our friends. But as Paul warns, there are counterfeits that lead people away from the true gospel. And Paul ends with a sobering reminder in verse 15. He said, 'The end will be according to their works. You see, truth ultimately matters because eternity is at stake. When people run to these falsehoods, when they run to these counterfeits, when they run to these things that are outside of Christ, what it will lead them to is an eternal hell separated from their creator. And when eternity is at stake, when people believe these lies, they are believing a lie that will hurt them forever. So we come back to how we started all of this is why is this is so important to know truth from falsehood. Why is it so important to have a spiritual garbage meter that lets us sift things out to know truly who Jesus is and how he is working? Well, here is I think our last point I want you to leave with today as we apply this passage and as we attempt to live out this passage is the job of the church. The church that we are a part of both here in Christ Church and abroad and across the world is to expose ourselves and to expose others to the truth of Jesus Christ. Here's how this works is first we expose it to ourselves. What is exposing the truth of Jesus Christ means is first it means we need to be people who are constantly bringing our thoughts, our beliefs, and our practices into the light of God's word. We can't defend what we don't know. We can't recognize the counterfeits if we don't know what is real. This is why here, as we've talked about, we emphasize Bible reading, Bible groups, teaching through books of the Bible because we're not trying to turn you into theologians. It's because we want you to be so familiar with God's truth that you can spot lies from miles away. We need to expose ourselves to the word. And we want you to know when someone is sharing a different gospel. The gospel is clear. The gospel is easy. The gospel is that we are sinners. We are broken. We make mistakes all the time. And and because we make mistakes, we are separated from God. But God didn't say, "Good luck. Have a great life. You're going to die eventually and then going to be an eternal abyss." Instead, God said, "I have a plan. And my plan is to send Jesus who is fully God and fully man to earth. That he is going to live a perfect life. That he is going to die on a cross. That he's going to take your place for your sins. He is going to raise again to defeat those sins so you can be forgiven. so that you can be restored and you can have a new life and a new relationship with God. That is the gospel that we expose ourselves that we cling to. But then second is we expose that gospel to the world around us. This happens through evangelism through disciplehip through simply living lives that demonstrate the reality of the gospel. Being uncomfortably hospitable and bringing people into the messiness of our lives and showing them how Jesus has changed us and all of this. This is so important. Here's what I love about Paul's approach is he doesn't just tear down false teaching, but he builds up true teaching. He doesn't just expose error, but he exposes people to Jesus Christ. And you see, the job of the church isn't just to point out what's wrong with our culture, and sometimes we need to do that and consistently do that. But the job of the church is to show them the hope of Jesus Christ. One year ago, today actually this Sunday, Cross Church took one of the riskiest steps we've ever taken. Is one year ago, our lead pastor, Jackie, he stepped down to a part-time role to help plant churches in the mountain range and estates all around our country. And he became part-time at Cross Church. And with that meant, he wouldn't be preaching here week in and week out. It means you want to be leading our surprise staff. And one year ago today, they called me over from our Phoenix campus to come here to start leading our congregation and be our campus pastor. And here's why that was such a risk. Jackie's been pastoring for 40 plus years. Jackie has proved what we've seen here to be a teacher of light, to be a teacher of the gospel, to proclaim the truth, and God has blessed it. when Jackie started here 10 12 however many years ago he's old but you're not that old right uh but he took a church about two to 300 people and some of you were here then to being over a thousand here in surprise to starting three other campuses around our state and three campuses internationally and God shined and gave his favor and brought the harvest because he preached the word unashamedly and preached it boldly and as I stepped in here. I'm like, "God, are you sure about this? I might run everyone off cuz I think I'm funny, but I'm not. God, I might talk too fast. God, I might not be ready for this. God, I don't know. Maybe like I won't click. Maybe things won't right." And God, and here's what eed the nerves of me and eased the nerves of our elders and Jackie as we did this is it's not about the messenger. It's about the message. Because even though the pastor changed, the mission did not. We've all been about making Jesus known. You see it on our walls, on our t-shirts. Uh we should make bumper stickers instead of cross shirt. Just say making Jesus known. Then they can't get you mad, right? And we say all these, we say this, we live this. We proclaim it. And it's about the mission, not about the people behind it. The mission never changes even if the voice does. The mission never changes even if the feet that take it out does. in God's church will endure when we cling to the truth of the gospel. When we expose ourself to the truth that Jesus is our Lord, he has saved us and he has something greater for us. And when we expose others to it as well to make Jesus known to show us how they can have a better life, to show our worlds how there is a truth that rises above all the falsehood. A truth that rises above all the noise. A truth that not only endures in this age, but that will endure for all of eternity. In just a second, we're going to celebrate, as we did in first service, we're going to celebrate baptisms of people who have proclaimed that truth, who have accepted that Jesus has changed their life, that it is the one truth that matters for all of eternity. And my prayer is that as we celebrate that today of those who have exposed their lives to the truth of Jesus Christ that we can leave these doors knowing truth from falsehood and we can share that truth. We can make Jesus known to the world around us. [Music]