ORDER IN THE CHURCH | Fighting False Teaching in the Church | Dr.Eric Mason

good morning good morning again and welcome to our sunday morning worship gathering always as usual it is excited to be able to gather i know you're in your living rooms maybe in your car maybe even at a coffee shop that's opened back up i don't know where you are but uh you may be watching this as we're playing it for the first time or you're watching the replay it doesn't matter just as long as you zoomed in with us um today and i'm excited about what we've been going through um series wise even with everything

going on in our culture i love the providential way in which god will speak no matter what somebody say amen amen well let's dig in we are in first timothy 1st timothy 1st timothy the fourth chapter first timothy the fourth chapter and we will be reading from verses one through the fifth verse says now the spirit explicitly says that in later times some will depart from the faith paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared they forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods that god created

to be received with gratitude by those who believe and know the truth for everything created by god is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving since it is sanctified by the word of god and by prayer i want to talk about today as we have this time together i would like to talk about fighting false teaching in the church fighting false teaching in the church don't check out on me now because you're going to need some some help to give the enemy a holy hook and so i i want

us to be able to dig in let's let's dive in father we thank you that your word is a lamp and to our feet in the light unto our pathway oh lead us now oh direct us now lord god that we would be discerning people that we would mature in every aspect lord god help us to let the word of god cut down to the marrow dividing the soul from the spirit go to the deep places go to the broken places and help us to live lord god in light of our identity as those who

are called lord god to to proclaim uh of the the mysteries of god to the rulers and the authorities may the enemy be put on massive amounts of notice lord god and may people be surrounded by your power and your might lord god and help us to be more serious about what it means to walk as a christian and walk in holiness in jesus mighty name we pray amen and amen amen amen fighting false teaching in the church um you know i've been eating a lot more seafood lately this week has been a little beefy

um but but um i've been i've been eating a lot more seafood you know fresh vegetables salads that type of thing and i'm an i'm pretty much an avid uh sifu person i'm from y'all know where i'm from i'm from the crab capital of the world you understand what i'm saying i grew up you know we we we we we get bushels of crabs bushes you know we put the we put the no no frozen crabs by the way when i grew up that was a no-no they have to still be crawling when they cooked

okay and um they got to be able to bite you grab you snag you you understand and we would put newspaper over the back porch table and you put you i don't know you put a blanket around you a thin or something you know to cover it up because it's going to be old bay everywhere and you're gonna and your fingers gonna be red and you're gonna dig in and pull out the dead man finger see i don't even know what i'm talking about some of y'all eat the mustard i don't eat the mustard cause

you don't know what that is some of y'all still don't know what i'm talking about but i'm a big seafood person but in the um in the 80s there were a lot of what we say in dc curry outs that's some of y'all y'all miss that then a lot of carryouts in dc and they started doing um deep fried crab sticks so i was like tag deep fried crabs i wouldn't eat that now but deep fried crab sticks and so we got them and you look through the the batter and you see this pink line

like this long pink line and i'm like what in the world is that and i ended up later on and philly y'all call it y'all call it mermaid meat that's what y'all call it in philly i always hear the girl at the the spot that soulful spotted the street on for 20 second street she called it mermaid meat but but i was like i ain't no his mermaids existed but um um mermaid meat so but what i found out is that they were making imitation crab and i was like how do you make imitation crap

and it's interesting i found out the imitation crab is a highly processed food made from minced fish with starch egg whites sugar salt and added additives that mimic the flavor the color the texture of crab meat while significantly less listen was significantly less expensive to make than real crab and it's less nutritious and it's laced with questionable additives i would say that uh mermaid meat is like a false teaching false doctrine false doctrine is uh to the word of god and truth as mermaid meat is to crab meat a false teach and present itself as

truth but it's only imitation that is more expensive less nutritious and laced with questionable additives false teacher never presents itself as false but it does everything to present itself as authentic christian orthodoxy and christian orthoproxy family god was clarified more and more when heresy which we'll explain in a minute and what we call heterodoxy heterodoxy is not fully uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh something wrong but uh uh heresy is like heresy's division and and coming away from biblical truth heterodoxy is a is what we would call a variant of the truth yet

still not the truth and dangerous in and of itself and so we'll talk about that in a second and when they came into play in the church uh whenever something false raises his head you need to get into the fundamentals and of the faith more deeply and more robustly as a believer many of us don't realize that many of you um have have have hands shook and hugged false teaching one of the most challenging things um that that's very very dangerous for us is we don't believe that false teaching is dangerous as a matter of

fact i was talking to a an and exterminator exterminator i was talking to him about uh mice pellets i know you know y'all never had no mice before but for those of us who have some mice pellets and he said these mice he said these mice pellets he said when they eat them it's going to eat them from the inside out i was like wow and i was like but how do why do you think they're going to eat these he said it's simple he said rat poisoning is 99 food he said it's 99 food

but he said that one percent is just enough to destroy them you don't realize that some of the stuff that you listen to some of the stuff that you're working through and some of the people that you're listening to and you're waving your hands to somebody i eat the meat and spit out the bones what if the bones and the meat are too heavily attached you can get choked on it we need to begin to be more less careless with truth and many of us in our lives we're careless with the bible and and this

epistle lets us know how seriously paul took it and this this epistle was so serious because if you connect verse 3 of chapter 1 to acts chapter 20 verses 28-31 then you'd understand what's going on here in this passage see paul told timothy to go through and he said yo i want you to i want you to call cats to fall back publicly you need to put on blast cats who are teaching false teachers and you may you must remove them from teaching false doctrine and what but what but but paul had already given the

warning that what is happening is going to happen now listen to what the text says in acts chapter 2 20 verse 28 they're gonna put it up on the screen for you it says be on guard this paul when he's leaving ephesus that's where timothy is he's talking to the elders not the church at this point he's talking to the elders he appointed he said be on guard for yourselves and for the flock of which the holy spirit has appointed you as overseers i love that he's letting them know to it's just like a shepherd

who stands over the sheep and he looks into the pasture to see if there are any wolves any jackals any any foxes anything that could pose a threat because sometimes the shepherd has to has to tap and hook sheep when they don't see the danger that the shepherd sees he says be on god yourselves and for all the flock which the holy spirit has appointed you as overseers to shepherd the church of god which he purchased with his own blood that's a lot of responsibility he says i know that after my departure listen savage wolves

will come in among you not sparing the flock whenever a wolf comes in the flock a wolf never comes in the flock looking like a wolf a wolf will serve in ministry a wolf would express a calling to ministry or a wolf will do whatever a wolf needs to do to get as close as a wolf can in order to do and put in its destructive claws and fangs into the sheep it says men will even rise from your own number in other words there will be people that are in leadership that will fall away

and it says from their own number and distort the truth to lord the disciples to follow them in other words paul warned them that it would be a church split paul prophesied that it's going to happen and so what has happened now is that we're in first and second timothy now that has happened now it is happening but the problem is no one's doing anything about it no one's doing anything about it how do i know that because of everything that paul had to say in first uh timothy chapter one through this point that means

those people are still teaching those people are still talking those people are still running their mouths and the leadership didn't do anything that they were supposed to do about it in order to engage the issue and it's grown as a matter of fact it's men and women doing it that's why chapter two the ending in chapter three is a correction to men and women who are disrupting the spiritual and theological and practical ethos of the church listen family listen some of the people who did this paul broke bread with he broke he was in their

teaching i remember one time in the bible someone paul was teaching somewhere and somebody fell asleep fell out the window he went out healed the person that came person came back into bible study read the bible it's some interesting stuff in the bible you didn't even know that was in the bible read the book of acts he hung with him he taught these people he taught he laughed with he trained and invested in so so he's not saying these things to watch people out of disconnection from actually loving the people he's talking about he's saying

that there's such a danger to the flock i gotta put my feelings aside in order and you have to put yours aside in order to deal with the greater issue of the gospel being a maximum issue in the flock and if you don't do it you are compromising if you view love through the lens of not protecting and so what is false teaching i told you i got a lot for y'all today um what is false teaching we're gonna put all this up there what is false teaching what's a false teacher and what is a

false prophet it's all gonna come on the screen false teaching anything that informationally undermines biblical truth anything and that can be expanded but that's that that's a working definition all these are working definitions for me i hope you all are trekking with me what is a false teacher a false teacher is one who intentionally or this is important unintentionally undermines truth see a person can be a false teacher even if they didn't mean to be one because being a false teacher is about having wrong information and communicating it to people like at the moment that

peter listen listen listen listen listen when peter told jesus he said jesus says i'm going to the cross what did peter say oh he started he started rebuking jesus for saying that and jesus said get behind me satan at that moment peter became a false teacher at that moment he and jesus christ brought him right back so that means false teachers can be a false teacher in the moment and be brought to repentance they can be brought to repentance so what is a false prophet a false prophet is one who presumptuously foretails or forth tells

current things or future things and it's either accurate or inaccurate do you know false prophets can be true prophets in the sense not true prophets but have authentic prophecies look at look at deuteronomy 18 if the thing comes to pass but then they attribute it to another god so what is it letting you know what is it letting you know it's letting you know it's letting you know clearly and surely that a false prophet is a person that is spiritual i remember um i can't tell you everything i said to this because i'm i've grown

in christ more but this dude started prophesying over me and he was just saying all kinds of stuff and i i had some some uh some sanctified slash unsanctified words for him i basically says you know you full of it and he said i know i am i couldn't believe he said that but i didn't say you know you full of it i said something else and and i i i and i had to ask the lord for forgiveness amen point one point one let's dig into the meat and bones of the text leadership must

warn and equip the flock and how to remain stable in the faith leadership must warn and equip the flock in how to remain stable in the faith look at verse one he said now the experience the spirit explicitly says that in later times some that's good to know it says some one of the things i want to say here is you have to be careful of the few sounding like they're more than they actually are that doesn't mean well just be careful of that okay so the spirit expressly says pointing to the fact that he's

presently and constantly saying it he's saying it in a way that either has been said before or it's he's hammering away at this reality that in later times we're already in the last days since jesus got out the grave i believe we're in the last of the last days we'll talk about that in a second some will depart from the faith paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons now when we talk about the spirit we're talking about the true holy spirit we talk about the one that's about to lead us into truth we

talk about the one in in in the old testament uh who empowered moses and the prophets in their ministry we're talking about the holy spirit then in the new testament that leads us into all truth that convicts us of sin righteousness and judgment that we're talking about the one that without him you wouldn't have been able to become a christian how do i know because romans chapter three said he gave you the faith of titus chapter three said he re renewed you uh uh uh prior to regeneration if you believe in the order of salutes

that's a whole other issue and gave you the ability to believe plus the faith that you were able to put your confidence in him because he took the veil off your eyes based on ii corinthians chapter four three and four to say to put over your eyes in order that you may see the light of the gospel if he didn't cause you to be born again and give you the faith and take the enemy's blinders off your eyes you would not be saved in other words salvation is a work of god through the holy spirit

that's very much important for you to know is that the god saving you was a sovereign work of the spirit which shows you that he's sovereign the holy spirit is sovereign so the holy spirit isn't the one you charismatically boss around hey get over here holy spirit right now heal them you must be crazy who do you think you are no he's lord he's leader he tells you what to do he's your master he's my master and so um it says in later times this is interesting because joel chapter 2 verses 28 through 32 talk

about what will happen in later times your young men and older men will dream dreams and see visions you'll see those things happening right women will prophesy all those different things will happen well peter on the day of pentecost in acts chapter 2 verses 17 through 21 what he does is he ends up this is beautiful he ends up repeating that and talking about joel initiating um talking about those days but peter is now saying that the last days have been initiated because the spirit has been poured out on the church and pentecost happened and

this is a partial fulfillment of that prophecy that will still be fulfilled later on right and so both of these passages are for the uh for that uh reality so many things as of late you know i can't talk about too much and y'all know i'm not a spooky pastor but i do believe in the spiritual the gifts of the spirit there have been everything a lot of things i can't talk about everything but a lot of things have been going on there have been some very specific dreams that people have had and they've told

one person i was a little upset at because something that happened recently they dreamt they dreamt it but didn't know they didn't understand what they were dreaming about and when they went when the certain thing happened and they told me i was very upset with them because i said you should have told me this and i would have immediately known the interpretation of the dream someone else a friend of mine had a dream about another whole different situation um and he told me the dream and like mary i said i'll treasure these things in my

heart and he kind of giggled and it's crazy something crazy happened i mean i wish i could tell it but i i i want to be very careful but one of the things i'm not saying is that dreams and prophecy listen replace scripture everything that they jumped about that they were pointing to were things that only affirm what scripture already says it's just put in a particular situation around a certain group of people that puts it in context does that make sense that's very very important so the bible says do not despise prophetic utterances but

examine everything carefully and hold to that which is good that's what scripture says so what i want to do is i don't want to despise he says he says i i wish he said i desire earnestly that you prophesy in other words that's not someone preach the word right so some people try to say that prophecy in the new testament is just preaching the bible it's a form of it's one form of foretelling or prophecy however we need to uh uh through preaching uh prophetic works i would say words of knowledge and wisdom dreams and

visions even tongues and interpretation i'm open to in these times i believe because we're in the last days that these are going to be a little more heightened i really do and because god is going to use the gifts of the spirit to warn i really really do now what's going to happen though some of y'all already getting excited and you got you got to chill in your spirit you're going to be checked though you're going to be checked now if now you say what you want you know you better know you heard from god

you you better not be saying listen you better know you need to pray fast before you tell us but i'm just telling you we put the word above the gifts but we do though we do view those as valuable helps that the spirit use as a way to unify the church that's what they're for i hope y'all are still with me it says some will fall away from the faith the word depart or will depart here not far away i memorized an nasb that was my first bible my mom gave me so all of my

memory verses in the nasb but some will depart from the faith the part is the word apostasy somebody say apostasy the word apostasy means to abandon or distance oneself from the biblical language evokes a category here meaning to forsake or wander or to rebel or cast god it literally means that cast god behind you now a lot of people that have committed apostasy don't think that they've cast a god behind them they think they've gotten a clearer more existential view of god [Music] that's why when someone goes into false teaching and when someone commits apostasy

and you try to rebuke them and challenge them they view themselves of having a more clearer view of god than you but they don't realize that they have oh god i'm getting ahead of myself but but but but but but the idea is is they're so blind when using when someone commits apostasy the enemy has so molested their mind and has so worked on them that without an intervention a spiritual intervention from god i'm getting ahead of myself but that's why mere apologetics and intellect can't you can't do it by itself you're gonna have to

pray you're gonna have to fast you're gonna have to get out some oil listen you're gonna have to treat this like you're going slam to straight wall with the enemy because you're not really warring the person you're wearing the thing that's after and in and on the person so you can't just treat it like intellect you got a travail man i was watching a super book with my kids last night sometimes we'll do it once a week outside of our bible devotion we'll do a super book devotion where we look at superbook and man i

remember i was watching in daniel even though he was plum european just ticked me off that's a whole nother come back eric um and so he he prayed all night to get an interpretation of a dream to tell nebuchadnezzar that thing was convicted like a mug they they they showed him hannah and i me shine azeroth i'm not going to use their slave name and and and they went they was but it was in prayer on the floor and the little girl got up and said they still praying he got it from prayer he said

the lord has spoken i said hey i almost spoke in the holy ghost right there whoo i felt god right there i said well god has spoken he went up and nebuchadnezzar he said you got he said i'm not able to interpret but god is able i say ah i felt that i like all that kind of carrying on so one writer says it like this he says apostasy is a spiritual falling away specifically falling away from god of a people who once knew god so a person i know what you're asking can a a

person that committed apostasy be saved maybe maybe not there's a i don't have time to get into it but in hebrews there are warning passages and these warning passages are apostate passages passages for apostasy and this is the way i break down the idea of apostasy please hear me who who's read the power if you read the parable of the soils you remember the parable of the soils talks about one that receives the word of god with joy so so it's almost like it's presenting it like there's been authentic conversion but then it says the

worries of the world choke it out that's apostasy but the one that the only the only soil that's saved is the last soil now we know that the parable of swords can apply in our sanctification but we're talking about justification initially getting saved this is so important that that if a person begins to reject different core tenets of the faith and a lifestyle of christianity they may not be saved in the first place and usually the bible says it comes from some external force that tests the authentic authenticity of the type of soil their heart

really is where the word of god is supposed to be so what happens is the word of god does grow among the thorn and thistles but it doesn't have enough root to stay there so a person for a while will look like they're bearing fruit but the word falls out because it's not really rooted in them [Music] and so that's very important for us to understand people of god and so he says how how do they fall away from the faith he said in this in this instance he says they fall away from the faith

because they're paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons that just turned up fast deceitful spirits this word deceitful points to the fact it is demarked by deliberate deceptiveness pertaining to or causing someone to be mistaken and leading them astray paul uses this principle in second corinthians chapter 11 verses 2 and 3 he says i have betrothed you to one husband who is christ he says i am fearful lest you be tempted and led astray as eve was led astray and deceived by satan from pure devotion to christ right and so what happens is

the idea of leading someone astray is usually subtle and listen it's subtle and it's constant patient movement deceitful spirits are patient see that's why a little leaven leavens the whole lump see what happens is is the enemy initiates something and then you like i'm intrigued by this then he drops another crumb you eat that you drop an and that the seat is always slow methodical and patient it's never an event but if you see a change on someone and you're like how did you get here it's been happening way longer than that moment that they're

standing in front of you the seat is always slow what is the seat full of lies that's one of satan's favorite things to deceive people with lies he lied to adam and eve one of the other things that satan loves to do and this evil spirits love to do is they love to slander what is slander slander the action or crime of making false spoken statements damaging a person's reputation the enemy loves to slander as a way to create false narratives in the minds of people in order to make the amount of people espousing it

claim credible so the enemy loves to get you slander he loves to create lies that's this deceitful spirits queer lies about jesus lies about the word lies about the church lies about leadership lies about people in the in the church and and what ends up happening is is that because like in this generation there is a hurt church narrative where most people haven't really even been hurt by the church but they vicariously heard about it so then when you bring up church hurt they try to empathize with something they never really actually experienced and then

what ends up happening when someone slanders saying church hurt what ends up happening is there's an outcry not because there's actual experience but because the enemy has slandered the church in such a way where you always hear about the negative of the church you never hear about the positive and so what happens because of our fallenness is that the slanderous narrative takes over the positive narrative and what ends up happening is is now church is a negative thing but church was bought with a price by jesus christ but now you're out here slandering him and

trying to destroy the church and so one of the things that the scripture does is deceitful spirits always love to lie and create a narrative and sometimes the deceitful spirit makes people who have fallen away from the faith listen believe that it actually happened to him even though it didn't happen that's what makes it deceitful it's like so when did this happen who did this to you and what and you've been getting asking questions like that didn't happen to you dawg no but i'm saying no no no no dude it didn't happen see the enemy

is so deceitful he'll even make correction to you seem like abuse that's how that's how that satan is a mug shot i'll just put it that way help me some of y'all think when you get confronted oh see that's what i'm talking about see out of church no no no see that's the devil see that's that's you because you're arrogant and the devil is molesting you and then you're like oh i'm i'm frustrated and hurt with the church he's like no you should have just repented that's what that was about that's all it was about

it was just that easy fam also gossip satan loves gossip casual or in unconstrained conversion conversation rather casual uncon unconstrained conversation or reports about other people typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true so what people to do man have y'all heard about that's how they started off and they sound so innocent but what they're doing is putting it out in the atmosphere to see who'll bite and then when you bite it becomes an entire conversation and those who have the holy spirit are convicted when they leave and vexed because the spirit convicted

your conscience because that wasn't healthy and as y'all say out there good energy you're like why am i feel all negative that's because you were around what your soul was redeemed from god didn't god didn't god didn't save you to be around demonic conversation and see but some of y'all in the midst of it are cowards and won't confront the gossip see some of you all be like i don't know let me think about it we could i see how you can see it that way help me today god help me today you know what

it is we need to grow up we need to stop being we are non-confrontational generation unless the heart unless the herd of everybody's against it because we're afraid to be out there alone standing for truth oh help me today i gotta move division is another one working to break peace and unity among the people of god confusion doing things to promote fear disloyalty biblical illiteracy lack of assurance instability and the knowledge of god's will i told you i got a lot today i'm not even halfway through i got to finish this this is this is

crazy the way god had us flow into this he said deceitful spirits and teachings of demons now to the church in ephesus they wouldn't have seen teaching of demons to be really necessarily a bad thing which is bad because in their society like agathis and apollos and all of those were they were considered um they were considered good demons so they were good demons and bad demons which is which is crazy but teachings of demons comes from this demons are the lowest level of evil spirits in the spirit world please hear me they are the

henchmen of the spirit realm for satan and the sons of and the fallen sons of god um and what they do is this fallen sons of god used to be the ones that were actually with god and satan was and so historically a lot of them know scripture and no history and so that's why and i'm giving away some of the stuff in the book but it's interesting that so the reason why you can go and see the epic of gilgamesh seeming like it's similar to the no noah's flood is because the sons of god

that were over that part of mesopotamia told that story to those people spiritually and attributed to that culture to create confusion today so that people think the narratives of the bible were stolen from other places not knowing that there were evil spirits that were telling them the narrative but attributing it to another deity or a myth so that people wouldn't believe the bible so that's why that's what i'm saying family this thing is crazy and so because of this because of the this idea these teachings of demons you got people like helen helena blavoski who

was a part of the theological society and helena blavoski claimed that she was talking to the ascended masters that's man that thing i was like i come against you satan i don't even like the way that sound uh prophet muhammad claimed that he was talking to the angel gabriel and saying that the koran is a is a continuation of the bible but it contradicts it so was that gabriel ellen g white of the seventh-day adventist church is called the spirit of prophecy even though she was a racist and also had abhorrent views of the gospel

i don't have time to go through it so but but but these but this is the funny thing about doctrines of demons family is those are the obvious ones see those are the easy ones to spot kind of others wrap themselves in less overt garb black identity oh he see that's why the white man realizes no i'm not talking about shut up just shut up and be quiet when i talk about black identity i'm talking about the worship of black identity to the point where it trumps jesus christ in other words your ethnicity influence your

spirituality instead of your spirituality in christ influencing your ethnicity as soon as it becomes bigger it's a doctrine of demons that means if you're guided by melanation and not jesus you're under adoption of demons i know that sound crazy you wrote woke church yup but woke church is about jesus not blackness huh gender identity is a doctrine of demons it's a doctor like now i love y'all that's a doctrine of demons like i'm just i'm just being straight up with you it's it's a doctrine of dream is to believe that god gave you a particular

body and you say inside you're something else that that is not i i i'm now i'm not gonna i'm you know i'm not a psychologist so i can't get into all of that but what i will say is seduction of demons to change your identity and a hyper gender identity in the gender that god created you which like feminism feminism that isn't just dignity restorative for women but that exalts femininity and mutes out masculinity as if both are the same not just equal is a doctrine of demons differing types of nationalism doctrine of demons ethanocentrism

doctrine of demons self-help censored doctrine of demons we say stuff and we don't realize the subtlety of it and i get it when some the whole entrepreneurial culture here always says bet on yourself and you know i hear that and every time they say it i don't know what it is about it as a believer i kind of go you know i get saying invest instead of investing all over the place and wasting your money invest in your idea that's good stuff but when it's like invest in yourself it makes me think of self second

timothy in later times people will be lovers of self give yourself a hug you got to love yourself before you can love someone else i'm like i i get it but something innocent how do i put that is that biblical like or do you love god before you love yourself see because you can't love you until you're taught how to so love doesn't start with you loving you love starts with you loving god and no forget that love starts off you recognizing god's love for you you saw that because love comes from god not from

you that's why ephesians uh ephesians the second chapter says to know the love of christ which surpasses all comprehension because once you know his love it changes but that's why we got to be in the bible family and let the bible inform us secular humanism syncretism you know you know second humanism and synthesis living having our feet straight on the fence i can i can burn sage and be a christian you know i'm not talking about burning sage because you like the smell i'm talking about because you talking about you getting rid of spirits something

i'm just putting the sage across the house man you you can save money just say in the name of jesus get out save that sage money that was free that's free that's free get out of my house devil watch watch war room too when she just yells satan get out that's free right and so it's so important for us as believers to understand what we have in jesus christ whenever you submit to a doctrine a demon you're lessening the value of what we have in jesus christ because false teachers let me just tell you something

they're gonna put these up on the board i can't go through all these verses but i'm gonna just name these bullets so when it comes to false teachers and doctrines of demons right um false teachers are the means to teach doctors and demons let me tell you something about false teachers number one they look and sound authentic you gotta know that second corinthians 11 tells us that satan is even to mask himself as an angel of light satan not gonna come up to you there's nobody with a pitchfork and a tail and horns satan has

never looked like that satan is a beautiful being from heaven that fell from heaven and still looks the same just without god he looks the same so he's very good-looking very good-looking and he is a shape-shifter like the other caribbean that you see in ezekiel this is too deep i don't have time for all of it but you don't know that th they they can change shapes and they can make their faces look like lions they can make their face look like snakes that's why satan when he showed up in the garden and she wasn't

scared because he wasn't a physical being he was a spiritual being that came in the form of a spiritual snake that if you go over to ezekiel you can hermeneutically blend them together and say oh the spirit world and the in the in the natural world were blending and so him talking to them was not strange but they used the euphemism as a snake because god didn't build out the entire theology of the cosmology at that time i wish i had time to talk about it they know what you want to hear they do they

know what you want to hear and they give it to you the bible says wanting to have their ears tickled they accumulate themselves teachers in the quarters with their own desires false teachers tell you exactly what you want to hear they they do anything to not tell you what you don't want to hear because the false teacher wants you fully convinced of them they don't want any negative energy what they call it they want you to feel positive they promote self-love and so in a self-centered way they do miracles did you know that they do

miracles that's why jesus said people are gonna say we prophesied in your name then we cast all demons in your name he gonna say department because i never knew you these were people that were false teachers how do we know their false ages because they never knew him simple they sometimes have accurate prophecy deuteronomy 18. they play into your core desires second peter chapter two sexual they'll they'll downgrade biblical morality and say they have a special thing because that's why we can we can see that's why a lot of times false teaching is connected to

immorality name one is not they always have a way of undermining the gospel galatians 1. so legitimate gripes get used as lies in the face of authenticity local church cattiness toxic and abusive leadership experiences or stereotypes black identity dignity stuff all of that stuff what's your head times you know one of the things i could say is i hate that i would be able to even not say that i have never experienced people saying they've committed apostasy but i remember hearing a young lady tell my wife and i'm my wife used to disciple her years

ago and she said i just don't believe anymore um and we tried to sit with him we tried to talk with him and tried to work with him and they were just like we lo i love y'all we'll talk but i just don't believe anymore are another person we we've experienced that she loved her just a daughter to me said i just don't believe hell is real anymore i just don't believe hell is real pastor e and i love your mom that but i just don't believe that hell is real and i just believe she

basically believed in universalism because she she'd lost someone in her life she lost someone in her life that didn't know jesus and because she knew they were in hell she had to create another reality of their ending in order to comfort herself see even in your grief a demon will get in there and give you a false teaching and get you changing and then that'll be the beginning of you creating an entirely different faith than the one that you were supposed to sing that you believed in that's how subtle false teaching it it comes in

when you're hurt it comes in when you're frustrated demons know the right time to come in and teach you huge issues i don't even have time to go through this entire list of things that i have but it says let me just that was just verse one y'all through the liars the hypocrisy of lies whose consciences are seared let me look at this conscious decision i'm gonna give you some practical things it's interesting let's listen to this now the new american standard says consciousness seared as with and branding iron which that's the idea here see

it points to you know i was in a fraternity college i got branded it's seared right not saying it's right i'm just telling you what happened so conscious is the psychological faculty that distinguishes between right and wrong either affects or comforts the person depending upon their actions listen to what one commentator said what lexicon said it says seared it's to brand with a hot iron listen to this the the imagery pictures crime punished with branding marked on the perpetrator listen such are those with branding marks whose consciences are scarred inwardly and outwardly thus identifying them

as those who have abandoned the faith listen to what another one said this one was this one was telling it says the branding iron or the searing was especially used on livestock listen to this this is this is where you know it's spiritual warfare the searing may thus mean that the conscience is listen please here the consciences of these apostates have become property of evil spirits why is that important and why does it say please hear me and don't let me lose you having your conscience seared what's conscience the conscience is the place where your

values are assessed to let you know what to be convicted of and not to be convicted of hear me this is deep and so the the point is the evil spirit now rewrites the conscience of those it oppresses and possesses with a new sense of morality and truth that is why listen you can talk to someone who has been swayed away from the faith and they can seem so convinced and sincere but sincerely wrong because the the enemy has so branded them as a part of their identity that they can't see you anymore that's why

it takes god it takes god this is why the gospel has to shape our conscience and our values this is exactly why we talk about gospel saying it all the time because it has to shape your conscience and your values you're saying the big part of your sanctification the renewing of your mind is knowing what you're conscious you ever let me let me give an example you ever met somebody and something didn't feel right you ever met somebody or you heard something someone write about it your conscience is the means by which the holy spirit

sets off alarms that something isn't right or it's is right but in order for the holy spirit to convict your conscience you have to have truth in there that tells you exactly what is wrong so the holy spirit can show you what's wrong based on what's in the word that's what the bible says i'll tell you this is deep that's what the bible says i will bring back to your remembrance to all the things i've taught you he does it in your conscience your soul your spirit your ruach you're in the fish right he gives

a couple of examples i got to end it's just too much here he gives a couple of examples he says they forbid marriage and demand abstinence what is this this is basically a asceticism it's a form of unhealthy spiritual denial and it adds to the gospel he just gives an example of what a doctrine a demon is it seems like something that's good that's what's crazy oh denying meat don't eat meat but they don't tell you they believe that the meat affects you in a certain way spiritually which is crazy that's why he says prayer

gets rid of that because of the gospel jesus declared all foods clean so nobody can tell you not to eat that because it has a spiritual issue with it it just doesn't even make sense right so what are some practical ways to fight false doctrine evangelism how did somebody gonna say how does evangelism do that it's simple sharing your faith puts you in situations to answer people's questions when you don't know something you can study and develop a faq list like jesus didn't exist then you could go into josephus and show how he did exist

the bible has has been changed where you ask them um there are a lot of hypocrites in the church so are you you got to develop a faq list well another way is and this is what i'm going to start having us do i'm i'm gonna we're gonna start catechizing the congregation what we need to begin doing is um at some point in our gatherings soon we're gonna start doing the apostles creed because a part of my development if i remember it rightly was just having the gospel and orthodoxy around me so much that it

just blessed me right and so i like this it says it can help reinforce biblical truth i love how the heidelberg catechism because it says what is your comfort in life and death that i am not my own but belong body and soul in life and death to my faithful savior jesus christ he has fully paid for all my sins and his pr with his precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil and it goes on and on and on just good stuff for your soul knowing church history is another

thing this is extremely important because the bible says that there is nothing new under the sun so looking at how christians in the past dealt with these same issues that we deal with helps us to see patterns like a lot of what's going on with comedic stuff and uh it's nothing but new age from the 1800s and new age from the 1800s is nothing but uh neo-gnosticism from the uh first century it i mean it just literally repeats itself i mean the early church had to deal with judaizers gnostics uh marcianus uh uh decedas a

manny's uh sublasian uh uh sublatius rather um uh uh arianism uh uh uh uh a pelagianism nestorianism all of these different now you looking at me like what is all this stuff stuff that we dealt with in years to come and they just they the devil repackages and represents it he represents it he he instead of doing serious he does amazon somebody i'll get that on the way home he upgrades he doesn't stop giving a shopping platform he upgrades it and makes it more relevant but most of all guess what can help you spending time

with jesus your devotional time and worship word prayer will keep you spiritually wide awake and discerning studying your word getting the bible study methods class that we've done and communal discernment the counsel of others being about other people who literally help discern if a lot of people in the body are saying the same sound thing about the one thing it's probably true we're not talking about cults and cognitive dissonance we're talking about biblical truth so closing in closing um um as many of you know that you're always bringing it up i do like sneakers i

do i do um and there are three platforms you know i know a lot of people bought from about from stockx or goat and you know uh and now what's interesting ebay but a lot of times they is with stock and gold they have what's called a jit check so if you buy a shoe from someone the person has to ship it to go to stockx the legit checker checks it to see if it's a fake if it's a fake they market a fake and send it back where it came from if it's true it

passes legit check and it's sent to you because it's authentic the church is god's legit checker the church is supposed to hear something and be bereans about that particular thing we're supposed to be able to look at if you see a legit checker they'll they'll they'll take the insole out they sniff the shoe they turn it upside down they look at how it shapes they look does this does this look like the factory version the manufacturer's version that's what we're supposed to do with information that's in the world and that's why jesus says in the

last days you got to watch out that you are not deceived first peter says gird your minds for action be watchful i pray that we'll be watchful church don't chicken out because one of the things that you want to know is that like i said false teaching never presents itself as false teaching it's never going to you have to be a legit checker to look at these things and see whether or not it's what the lord says if you don't know jesus christ as savior um you're not legit yet you're valued but you're not legit

but god through jesus christ has paid for your sins so that you can be now legit in your humanity legit in your connection to god and legit in every area of life and he wants to take you from spiritual death to spiritual life if that's you in the comments say i want to trust jesus let us know one of our team and hit you up of course it's time for communion communion is a time to celebrate the lord's death jesus christ lets us know that he's fasting from drinking the fruit of the vine until he

returns and when he returns he's gonna we're gonna have the marriage supper of the lamb and we will celebrate the fact that he has put all falsehood and all sin away on the night he was betrayed he took the bread and he broke it and gave it to his disciples says this is my body which is given for you let us eat together after the passover meal he took the cup he said this is my blood blood of the new and everlasting covenant that was shed for you and for many for the remission of sins

let us drink together almighty most master we thank you for the ability as a believer to be discerning lord help us never to ignore any alarms or anything that you set off in our souls that will show us that something may be wrong with something and god help us to be loving and truthful help us to know that the truth with love is edification but the truth without love is condemnation help us to know how to rock the balance but help us not to think love is to exclude truth and the truth is to exclude

love but in order for true truth to be true it has to include love and for true love to be love it has to have true truth in jesus name amen god bless you take care much love see you next week lord say the same