Could You Be Deceived?

In the Olivet prophecy, Jesus says that, we're going to be talking about how we can be deceived today. So we'll have another sermon here about the great deception that's coming at the end time. But I want to look at how we can be deceived today and how we have to be aware of deception today and where it comes from in our lives. To deceive someone means you trick them. Although a deceiver doesn't necessarily know they're deceived. There are two kinds of deceivers. There's a deceiver who just wants to trick you for whatever personal reasons they have. And we'll look at, in the New Testament, there are mentions of people who had come into the church to deceive people for their own purposes.

In other words, they chose to do what they were doing. But then there are people who are deceived themselves. They deceive others believing they know the truth. That gets more complicated. So how can we be deceived? And it's interesting in the New Testament. There's numerous ways that it talks about we can be deceived. The first one I want to talk about is what is usually called conventional wisdom. All societies have conventional wisdom. It's how that society as a whole believes that what is reality, what is truth, how problems are to be solved.

I mean, if you go to Iran, their conventional wisdom is diametrically opposite of the conventional wisdom of the average person in the United States. How they see life. How they decide, yes, this is wise and this is foolish. So the average American would look at them and say they're foolish. The average Iranian would look at the Americans and say, you're foolish.

You don't understand what true wisdom is. Conventional wisdom in the United States has been based upon a sense of democracy, of capitalism and individual rights. And that formed a lot of the conventional wisdom over the history of the United States. And it still does today, but that's being fractionalized. And the reason why is, once a group of people gets big enough, especially on a national level, especially in a democracy, people will begin to form their own little sets of conventional wisdom.

And as that forms, it creates now conflict because you don't have an overall arching conventional wisdom. You have multiple conventional wisdoms, depending on which group you're part of. It's just the way humanity has always been. It's where it always goes. So we're in the midst of a very worrisome problem inside the United States as conventional wisdom is being defined by separate groups, all arguing over what is the wisdom here. How do we define reality? How do we define what's right and wrong? How do we make decisions? At the time of the New Testament, as the church expanded beyond Judea, they ran into a whole new conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom that the church had to deal with when it was founded by Jesus and then the apostles went around and started churches throughout Judea was the conventional wisdom of Judaism.

And some of that was based on the Scripture, and some of it was not. I mean, Jesus never attacks Judaism when they're right with the Scripture. You see Him confronting Judaism, or groups of different groups like the Sadducees, the Pharisees, you see, they had their own groups that said, this is what the wisdom is, this is what the truth is. And they were divided, and He confronts them with their against Scripture. But the church at first had an easier time reaching people. They had some biblical background. And the conventional wisdom was, when I say the Bible, they had the Old Testament.

The New Testament wasn't written yet. You know, when Jesus was walking the earth, when Paul was going around starting churches, there was no New Testament. In fact, He didn't know it, but He was creating part of the New Testament. Every time He wrote somebody a letter, not every time, because we know there's letters He wrote that God chose not to keep. But there's letters He chose to keep. So, they expanded out into this Roman world, and there was a whole different conventional wisdom.

The Roman world said, all religions are equal. Actually, you'll find that is a conventional wisdom in the United States today.

The Roman world said that free enterprise, free trade, is the greatest thing we can do. That's sort of what the United States, except you have to pay your taxes. That's exactly like the United States. There was a conventional wisdom there that the church expanded out into that they now had conflict with at a level that became very intense.

Also, as they left Judaism, got kicked out of Judaism, they looked at them and said, you people aren't wise anymore. You've left the truth, and therefore now they were persecuted by the Jews and the Roman world. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 3. The reason I'm bringing this up is because conventional wisdom in all these different world or societies they came into, not all of it was bad. The problem was it was all based on the wrong set of values. Eventually, the people who followed the teachings of Jesus Christ came in conflict with the conventional wisdom of the world, the country, the province that they lived in.

And we have to be careful to look at the conventional wisdom of the world we live in, the United States, and is it biblical or not? Some of it is, much of it isn't. We have to be aware of that. I mean, I like being in the United States. It's the best place to live in the history of the world. But its conventional wisdom is not based in the Kingdom of God, and we have to recognize that. We have to know that. And understand when our wisdom is coming from God in the Scripture and when our wisdom is coming from the conventions of our country. You know, it's interesting, capitalism has a lot of pluses to it. When you look at the economic system God gave to ancient Israel, part of it was capitalistic, and part of it was what we would call socialism.

So, when Jesus Christ comes back, we're not going to have, at least what I can see, and what was given to ancient Israel, we're not going to have the big market capitalists that control society because they control so much of the wealth. That's not going to happen. You say, well, wait a minute. God's all about free enterprise. To a point, to a point. So, He's not about free enterprise that hurts other people, or causes poverty, or causes stratification. He's not for certain things. I mean, in ancient Israel, if you owned a field, in an agricultural society, the animals and the land you owned was everything. And you could not cut the corners of your fields. You had to leave that open for poor people to come in and take. And you could argue, they're stealing from me, and God said, no, they're not. This is called generosity. And note, this is what you're supposed to do. From a pure capitalistic viewpoint, that's a wrong value.

So, when we look at the Scripture, we still look at it sometimes from our experiences in the conventional wisdom of the world we live in. The more we become truly citizens of the Kingdom of God, the more we sort through that, the more we sort through that. Like I said, in terms of human governments, this is where I want to live. It won't exist when Jesus Christ goes back.

It won't exist anymore. There'll be a whole new government, a whole new way of doing things. 1 Corinthians 3, verse 18. This is a pretty long discussion here by Paul, but I'm just going to break in and make up just a couple of point here. He says, let no one deceive himself. Now, that's interesting. If you remember a few years ago, I gave a sermon on the greatest deception, the self-deception. We end up deceiving ourselves. We can find a way to justify almost anything. So human beings have been doing ever since they got kicked out of Eden. Just like Adam and Eve found a way to justify their actions. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, then he may become wise. Now, that's easy for us to say, oh, I'm glad he's talking about the Roman world. And there were, I mean, the Roman world was at its core evil. The massive slavery and the way slaves were treated, abortion, the violence they perpetrated. But, you know, so it's easy for us to say, oh, good. They needed to learn that the Roman world they were in was not God's kingdom. We need to remember and not be deceived by the fact. The world, we are sojourners in this world. And as much benefit as we get, and as much good, this is not God's kingdom. And we are citizens and ambassadors of a different kingdom. And this conventional wisdom is not, will not be the conventional wisdom when Christ returns. He says, for the wisdom of this world, verse 19, is foolishness with God. For it is written, He catches the wise in their own craftiness. In other words, God says, you know, I catch you in your own mess that you're making. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are futile. Therefore, let no one boast in men, for all things are yours. All things come from God. Now, once again, we can look at that and say, boy, I'm glad He told those people in Corinth. But the same message is for us to remember.

That we don't live under the righteous rule of Jesus Christ. But we are to live that way in our own lives. Which means that we have to be able to sort through what is conventional wisdom and the wisdom of God. Literally, when we study what the wisdom of God is, we have to learn to reject every aspect of culture in the light of the Word of God. We have to look at culture and say, what is God's and what is not? Now, once again, that doesn't mean we have to reject, you know, we're going to go live in a monastery someplace and reject living life. We live life. And we enjoy the life that we have. But there's something about the Christians of that first century I want us to think about in terms of how we think of ourselves in the world we live in. Like I said, I'm proud to live in this country. I think the United States has done a lot of harm over the years. But you know what? It's probably done more good. No, I know this. It's done more good for the world than any other country in history. That still doesn't make it the Kingdom of God. Let's go to Acts 17. This was the effect of those early Christians in their society.

If you've ever been to the ruins of Ephesus or Laodicea, these are amazing cities, amazing cultures. And they tended to be very wealthy because they traded, they had businesses. There were big businesses. There were little businesses. People started their own little...entrepreneurship was big. There was all these things going on.

But when the Christians really lived their way of life, this is what happened. Acts 17 verse 6, breaking once again in the middle of a story here. But when they did not find them, they were looking for some Christians here to persecute. They dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city crying out, these who have turned the world upside down have come here too. We've heard of these people. Everywhere they go, they turn the world upside down. Now you have to understand, in these areas where this was happening, the Christians were a very small minority.

Very tiny minority. Many of them met in people's homes as their church, you know. They found church homes, the ruins of church homes. They could seat 50 to 100 people, and the rich person would attach it to their house, and that's where people met.

And yet, their way of life, because they didn't riot, they didn't protest, it's amazing, they didn't do things to try to change society. Just their way of life turned the world upside down. The whole Roman world was sent, you're just like, man, these people are nuts! We usually allow any religion, but they're crazy.

I mean, they won't even sacrifice to the emperor.

As I've said before, in the Roman world, many of the leaders were actual atheists, not all of them, and you can see letters they wrote, why are we persecuting these people? They don't hurt anything. So what? They don't believe in the gods. They don't believe in the gods either. Yeah, but you still went and sacrificed to the gods for the emperor. You still went and did the ceremonies. You know why? It was patriotic. Christians were told, we don't care if you believe in the divinity of the emperor, but you do a sacrifice and you attend the public ceremonies, because that's patriotic. Otherwise, you're not loyal to Rome. Your religion is making you disloyal to Rome. Your religion, therefore, is illegal. Therefore, you are an enemy of Rome.

So when we worship the god of the Jews, that's okay. They believed in the god of the Jews, the Romans did. He was just a weak god because they defeated him by conquering Judea. You're unpatriotic. We can look at a country where patriotism sometimes is the common wisdom, conventional wisdom, but there's some sorts of patriotism that we don't participate in. You know, when the Vietnam War was winding down and I got my draft notice, I had to think through the teaching of the church that we should not participate in military service. So I did, and I wrestled with it. You know, is this something that is my commitment to my country? I'm a citizen of this country. And it's a hard thing to wrestle with at 18. You're trying to work all that through. Should I do this? Should I not do this? And finally, it became very clear to me, I should not, because my loyalty was the kingdom of God, and if I went into the service, I would, I couldn't keep the Sabbath, I couldn't keep the Holy Days, I couldn't practice my religion, and I could be told to kill people, and I, you know, I wasn't, this isn't self-defense, I'm going to go kill people maybe in a village someplace. I can't do this. I cannot do it. And I had to send in to the draft board. I cannot do this as I'm a conscious objector. Now for some people that may not be a big thing. That was a big thing to me to wrestle through that. I had to decide what do I truly believe. Now what my church believes, you know, and I decided that the conventional wisdom that I should be drafted to go, to be sent overseas and kill people was not what a citizen of the kingdom of God would do. I got back and said, two out of the three officers said we want you to appear before us. Now that's actually a good thing. I didn't realize it at the time. That means, yeah, you probably are truly a conscious objector, but you've got to appear before us. So I had to study the questions they would ask. That was real interesting. Because the war is going on. Anybody here have to register during the Vietnam? Okay. That's an interesting thing. I mean, they're going to ask me if your neighbor's house was being attacked by a gang. Would you go help your neighbor? Well, yes. Do you have a gun? Well, just a hunting rifle. Would you take it over there and defend your neighbor? Yes. Why are you not willing to go fight the godless Communists over in Vietnam so that they don't come here and attack your neighbor? Don't you really love your neighbor? The Bible says you're supposed to love your neighbor. Those are the kinds of things they would throw at you. And we had to learn to prepare for that. Fortunately, President Nixon came out and said, Ah, we're getting out of Vietnam. Let's just stop the draft. So I got a letter that said, no need to appear within the next six months or a year, whatever. We're going to stop the draft anyway, so don't come. But working through that had me have to think through the conventional wisdom, and what I was drawn towards is I must defend my country. And yet I had a different standard of wisdom that I had to go through and believe in.

And I had to choose between the two. This happens in life all the time. This happens in life all the time.

Conventional wisdom becomes so ingrained in the thinking of the people that that's how they define reality. And it changes. Let me explain how it changes.

My mother was a registered nurse and she had to work in a mental institution for a while as part of her training. I remember her talking to me about things that I had, you know, I was a young teenager, I had no idea what she was talking about. You know, different people's conduct and stuff. Let me just say, a transgender would be in the mental institution when she worked as a registered nurse. It was considered a mental illness. It is a spiritual illness and a mental illness, and I'm saying there has to be a better way to deal with it. But now it's accepted as not only normal if you don't accept it, you're the mentally ill person. That's how conventional wisdom changes. Now it took a long time. You know, it took basically almost two generations, but it's happened. And we wonder how does that happen?

Well, that leads us to our second point. We have conventional wisdom that we all get used to. We all sort of accept as true. We're grown up believing as true, and then find out is it the wisdom of God? Is it the wisdom of the kingdom of God? And we have to ask ourselves. So then there's a second point, and it's sort of what creates this. It is the seat of sin. Why do you say, well, I'm in deceit of sin. When I sin, I know I'm sinning and I go ask for repentance. Okay. But you keep doing the same sin long enough, and it deceives you.

It deceives you into believing that the sin is not truly wrong.

Sin has its immediate rewards, and it has terrible consequences. So we can say, you know, here's how the seat of sin. You know, I need to go ahead. I believe in the Sabbath. I believe you should work on the Sabbath, but I need to do it this week because if I don't, I'll lose my job. Start down that road, and there might be a point where you're working every Sabbath. You're deceived by the sin, right? The sin now becomes a normal decision that's wise in your mind. This is wisdom. Sin appeals to our corrupted human nature, and there's the problem we have.

When you look at corrupted human nature, you can sort of boil it down to three motivations. Now this is very complex. Each one of these motivations have many facets to it. But here's where we get deceived by our own nature. So this is why this makes it so difficult. We've already been deceived by our nature being corrupted, so we automatically think in a deceived way.

One of the things, one of the three aspects of human nature that really we can deceive ourselves with is this unbridled desire for physical experiences and fulfilling physical desires. I mean, God made our senses for good, right? He made it that we're supposed to enjoy food, not eat so much food that we die 20 years early. God created sexuality for in marriage. Outside of marriage, it can reap terrible consequences. So he designed us to live a physical life. We're supposed to enjoy physical life. The problem is, because we like physical experiences, because we want to try new things, we're so easily deceived. A lot of teenagers don't intend to get drunk, right? I didn't intend to get drunk, officer, you know, as you're pulled over. This wasn't my plan. I don't think I'm drunk. I didn't drink that much. Step out of the car, please.

And they've deceived themselves along the way. This is what we do. It's a physical application of our brain, and we actually can deceive ourselves into all kinds of things that aren't right before God. The second part of it, so it's unbridled physical, you know, experiences. I mean, how many times do you have to go to a baby and say, No, no, don't, don't do that. Stick your fingers in there and you're going to get shocked.

Looks like a good idea, right? And that's not sin, but it is the function of the human brain.

I remember taking our kids, all three of them, and every one of them wanted to touch the hot stove. So what I decided, I took their hand and I kept saying, Hot, hot. And I got it down, not where it would hurt them. But every one of them had the same experience. Their eyes got big, they pulled their hand back and said, Hot. And I said, Ah, you learned the word. Now you know. When we tell you that's hot, don't touch it. You'll know what we mean. And after that, that finally drove it in their minds because they didn't know what hot meant. And fortunately, this didn't cause them any pain, didn't cause them any trouble. It's just they could feel it, you know, just, oh, okay. I don't want to know what that is anymore. I figured it out.

So it's just a natural function of the curiosity that God built into us. The problem is we can just desire that so much. It's why people get addicted to video games. It's why we get addicted to all kinds of strange behaviors, substance abuse. We just, it starts out with, oh, a physical experience. I want to see what it's like. Or it takes me away from my troubles for a while, whatever. And we end up deceiving ourselves to the point one day we wake up and realize we're controlled by behaviors we don't even want. And we can't get control.

We're deceived by sin. Because of good things God designed in us, but they sure have to be controlled. The second thing is we are deceived by our own selfishness. I mean, it is absolutely normal. I mean, we are self-contained. I mean, when God says, when Jesus says, the Father's in me, I'm in the Father, and we're going to be in you, it's like, what does that mean? God shares His nature with others. I mean, the relationship between Christ and the Father is a shared relationship. When He says, I will put my Spirit in you, that's the beginning, the begettle of what? Of that shared relationship with us. When we're changed, we have a relationship with the Father, with Christ that we can't even imagine. And with each other, by the way. It'll be different. But right now, we're self-contained. So our whole world is going on inside of our head all the time. When we think what we feel. It is so easy. We learn to be outward. We learn to care for others. It's one of the great things about marriage and having children. You learn to give up some selfishness. Any relationship to work, each person involved has to give up a certain amount of selfishness for it to work. When we stay selfish, we're driven totally by internal drives for self.

And so what we do is, without realizing it, we make ourselves the center of the universe. I am the center of the universe in my world. I don't understand why the rest of you don't revolve around me. You know, I'm the center of the universe. No wonder we're running into each other all the time. We think everyone should be revolving around us. We all feel that way. You don't say, well, I don't feel that way. But sometimes we do. When you think about our actions, we're waiting for everything to revolve around us. That selfishness becomes a wisdom in our minds. And so what we do is we try to make everybody else revolve around us. That's not what life is. It's learning to be outward. It's learning to be outward. And that's why we use terms like self-centered. Well, that person is self-centered, right? All they can do is think about themselves. We will say, that person is self-willed. When we say someone is self-willed, what are we saying? Everything they do has to be their way. Those kind of people drive you crazy, right? Everything has to be their way, no matter what. And they just can't understand other people. They can't sometimes say, oh, okay, we'll do it your way. They're self-willed. And then we say people are self-indulgent. Everything in life is done to please me. When you look at this, what we're actually doing is we're making ourselves God.

Fortunately, God isn't self-indulgent. But we see ourselves as a God, where everything is about us. Now, it's not wrong. I mean, we all need love. We need interaction with others. It's not selfish to say, my favorite food is steak. You see what I mean? I mean, that's your favorite food. We are individuals. We're designed by God to be individuals. We're looking here, though, how we define relationships in this self-centered viewpoint.

And it becomes sin, and we become deceived by our own selfishness.

Our interaction with our own corrupted human nature is our biggest problem. That's why we're about to celebrate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be forgiven and to receive His Spirit and have sin removed from us. That's what we're going to celebrate during the days of the love of bread. These parts have to be removed from us. All those things we consider automatically wise. My wife and I both said, you know, we just don't get it. I'm teasing this, of course, but we're firstborns. Everybody that's not a firstborn would just do what the firstborns say. The world would run perfectly. Of course, if that ever happened, then the firstborns would turn on each other. No, no, it's my way. No, it's my way. But if you're a firstborn, you know what I mean. All those other kids that come along, it was dad, mom, and you. And all the rest of them, they're interlopers. And they're breaking up the family unit, and it's your job to keep them in line so that the family unit can stay intact. And I can maintain my place as the firstborn.

I was going to ask any firstborns feel that way, but I won't. The third thing is our pride. This driving force of flawed human nature, we need a superiority over others. We need to feel our goodness is better than others, our importance is more than others. Or, we get so damaged, we feel like we're not worthy of even having other people talk to us. There's two extremes this goes to. One is a pride that is wrong, and the other is no proper pride. There is a proper pride that says, I have value because God gave it to me. God gives me value I don't have. The other side is, I have value because I'm me. Why can't the rest of you see that?

And so much deception in our own lives come from these three things. Our unbridled sort of emotional and physical experiences, our selfishness and our pride. Let's look at Ephesians 5.

Ephesians chapter 5.

As we approach now the Passover, these are good things to think about. That's why I took out the prophecy part of this and expanded it out. Because these are things for us to think about in terms of our preparation for the Passover in the spring holy days. And why those are such positive things is so positive to know, oh God fixes this. We just follow the wisdom of God. We're not deceived because we see what God is doing. Now we don't understand all of it. We don't have all the knowledge and all the understanding. But we can see what God is doing enough to know He's in our lives.

Ephesians 5 verse 3.

He tells him that before this, well let's start in verse 1. He says, Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us, and given Himself for us, and offering in a sacrifice for a sweet aroma to God, or smelling aroma. But fornication, all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints. Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. Now, you know, we could go through all the meanings of all this, but you can see what He's saying. These are the normal things that human beings are driven to do or want to do or pulled towards. He says, we have to pull back from that because of what God's doing. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, or covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of God, of Christ and God. Now, notice what He says next. Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. He said there was a deception, there's a deception having in the church there, where God doesn't care about these things. God accepts you just the way you are. Well, there is a truth that God accepts you the way you are, and then says, okay, first thing we have to do is change you. Right? That's the first thing God does. I accept you, now we've got to change you. Because you're all messed up. We only come to God when we realize how messed up we are. We really respond to God when we're so broken, we have no other place to go. And God says, okay, good. I accept you, you messed up, broken person. Let's get you healed. Let's work with you. Let's change you.

And so He says, don't be deceived that it's okay. God just says, no, it's okay. You can be what you are. This is all about what God is, what we're becoming. How do we become deceived by sin? I've thought about that a lot. And I've been thinking about that in terms of society, too. Here are the steps, the four steps, of how society deceives us about sin. The first thing is, you have to tolerate it. Now, it's true. If your neighbors are, you know, you know they're using drugs all the time and drinking all the time and, you know, having wild parties. What are you going to do? You can't go shut it down. You tolerate it in your neighbor. It doesn't mean you participate with your neighbor. Right? You're not out in front of their house every day with a big placard. You know, please. In our neighborhood, the field next to our neighborhood, this woman that owns the property wants to have a ukulele festival. And as you all know, ukulele people are just the wildest people there is. But we were, the neighborhood started, you know, people started talking about us, like, wait a minute. They're going to put all these campers, it's camping. Right? All these campers in there, no porta-potties.

And they're going to be in there for three days. This isn't going to be good for our neighborhood. I mean, our houses are butted up against this. So someone in the neighborhood came around and said, we have to go to the meeting and ask them please not to do this. Because it's really going to be, and everybody agreed. And then the woman stopped us yesterday, who owns the property, and she waved, and we rolled down the window, and she says, I own the property next door. I've shut out, there will be no campers, because there's no porta-potties. What I'm going to do, there is a little building on there. There's only going to be maybe 50 people. We all fit in the building room and play ukuleles, okay? And that's all we're going to do, and we're not going to do these other things that she had. And we all said, well, I know Kim and I said, well, thank you for working with us. We have no problem with that. You have some people come over into your property and in your barn, you know, play ukuleles. Imagine, that's just the wildest crowd you could get, the ukulele crowd. They're worse than, you know, heavy metal. It's just amazing. But, you know, now we know probably all of us will say, oh, okay. That's all she's going to do. But, there is a point we weren't going to tolerate certain things. We don't know what it's like to have 100 camping units in the field next door. What are they going to do all night? Our property, our whole neighborhood is going to be, you know, what if they're up till 2 o'clock in the morning playing the ukuleles? I don't know. What's going to happen? What if there's all kinds of drinking going on?

But now, we're working with each other, okay. And, I'm willing to tolerate her using her property the way she wants, as long as it doesn't affect us in the wrong way. So, yes, we tolerate, we don't go around telling our neighbors, knocking on the door and saying, I hear you smoked open there, and I'm here to tell you it's a sin. Okay? We tolerate things. The problem with society is that toleration, the people that you're tolerating, take it a step further. Eventually, you must accept it. You must accept me. No, no, I think what you're doing is wrong. I'm just tolerating you. No, you're judging me. You must accept me. The next step is, you accept it long enough, and you get involved in certain things long enough, and you begin to find certain things attractive. You begin to be pulled to it. That's that human nature, that corrupted human nature. Well, that's interesting. That can't be all wrong. And then, the fourth step, you're participating. You've been deceived by sin. Tolerate, accept, find attractive, participate. This is what society does with sin, and this is what we have to be aware of. The third thing is in 1 Timothy 6, and this one's a little surprising in one way, until you really read both the Old and New Testament, all the Scriptures on this subject. Because there's a lot about this subject in the Bible. 1 Timothy 6, verse 6. Let me get there.

For godliness with contentment is great gain. Being converted by God, becoming a child of God, and learning to be content, he said, that's as good as life gets in this life. Because with contentment comes happiness, with contentment comes peace.

He says, For we brought nothing into this world, and in certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these seasons we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

We can be deceived by wealth. Now, there are many people in the Bible that are very wealthy. To tell you the truth, just about all of us in this room, compared to the majority of people in this world, are wealthy.

Abraham was wealthy. Some were wealthy, some weren't. The point he's making here is, don't let wealth cloud your viewpoint. And sometimes our viewpoint as Americans can be clouded by the fact that we have it so well.

That we have so many things, we're so used to these things, and don't realize, you know, there's a place in this world where electricity is a luxury. And we're just divorced from that. We don't see it. We don't feel it. There's places in the United States, I remember, a visit I went on one time, in Texas, out in the middle of nowhere. And they had a... I went in, it was a one-room house, there was a man and a woman and a child. Their electricity was a car battery. So they had one light bulb, and they cooked on some kind of fire stove, and they wanted me to do some counseling with them. They served me a meager meal, and then I had to sit around for entertainment and listen to him play a harmonica, which I like harmonica music. I like blues. He couldn't play the harmonica. But you know, I wasn't going to be selfish. I sat there, listened to him play the harmonica as entertainment, and then we all hugged each other. I left. They never came to church. But you know, I was going there and realizing they were living in what would be a third world type situation. And they were the kindest people. But I don't know how God was working with them. They had some questions about the Sabbath, and some questions about a few things. I spent a couple hours there, and then they had to feed me. Their hospitality was they had to feed me because I had driven over an hour to be there, out in the middle of nowhere, which actually made me feel humble. It humbled me. You know, I walked into my suit and all this stuff, and they showed me a hospitality that was really quite remarkable.

We have to be careful that we're not deceived by riches, because it deceives us into never being satisfied with what we have, always wanting more and more. And then the last reason I want to bring up, we have to be careful about this. You and I come into the truth growing and learning, and we realize, once we're in this long enough, it's a constant state of growing and learning. You know, none of us knows all of it. We've never arrived with all understanding.

So we're growing. But in that growth, we have to be very careful, because there are those who will bring false teaching into the equation. And if we're not aware, we can be deceived by that. And I bring it up because the New Testament talks about it. And in the Bible study, the Wednesday night Bible studies, the Bible study that's like last Wednesday night as we're going through 2 Peter, it was sort of a downer. Because Peter spends an entire chapter talking about, and this was to multiple churches.

Peter didn't write to one church, like Ephesus, like Paul did, or Thessalonica. He wrote to a whole bunch of churches, and he said, you all have this problem, that there are people who are bringing false teachings in, and you're getting enamored with that, and you're losing truth. And what he said to them was very harsh. First of all, he's very harsh on the people who are bringing in the truth.

He says this false truth, this false teaching. He said they are heresies, or they teach heresies, they're heretics. That's a very important word. It actually comes from a Greek word, heresy, in English. It's a very important word. God acknowledges that all of us are ignorant, you know, of the greatest truths. We have bits and pieces, we're learning, we're growing.

But a heresy is a choosing. The person chooses the falsehood. So we all, all of us carry around in all of us, something that's not right, something that's not completely what God wants. All of us are learning truth. All of us have bits and pieces of untruth still in us. That's what this process is, this learning and going through that process. The heretic says, no, I have a better understanding. I do. My personal understanding is what I choose and what all of you must choose.

I mean, I have actually had conversations with people over the years. I remember one man telling me some things he believed, and I said, that's amazing. Do you realize if that's true, you're the only person on the face of the earth that knows it? And he turned to his wife and said, see, I told you so. We ended with an agreement, he shouldn't come to our church, and he didn't want anything to do with me. Okay, that's how the discussion stopped. And we sure can, and walked away. But the heretic gets so enamored with their own thoughts and their own feelings, they choose that.

And there's no way to argue. Like I said, we're all struggling. The heresy is a totally different thing. Hairy is a totally different thing. Hairy is a scary thing. And what Peter says is, the ones who were teaching heresy were, and he was writing to those churches, were ones who had been baptized, and he says, if they continue this, they will lose their salvation. It's one of the most difficult passages to digest.

I mean, the meaning is quite clear in the entire New Testament, because it's saying there are those in the church who will lose their salvation. It's because they've been baptized, they received God's Spirit, God led them to a point, and they said, No, I know better. And now they want to teach others. So we went through that on the Wednesday Night Bible study. I'll just read where Paul tells Timothy something very similar. I'm going to read this from the NIV.

I just like the way it sort of reads out loud. It's 2 Timothy 4. And verse, let's start in verse 12. He says, In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Well, evil men and impostors, that's its imposter, someone that's coming in and trying to take over a congregation with a false teaching, or at least infect others with their false teaching. He said, while these impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Now, that's interesting. It's not just, well, they're deceived and they're passing on a deception.

They are being deceived. They are becoming heretics. They are choosing the deception. And to the point where they knew it was wrong and then they reached the point, no, it is absolutely right. Once again, we all have to struggle because we're all struggling with interpreting Scriptures all the time. Right? So we all know that we're learning all the time. But the heretic takes it, he twists it farther, till the heretic becomes the purveyor of truth.

He knows the truth. She knows the truth. And anyone who disagrees is not of God. And they must be followed at all costs. But as for you, continue what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know from those whom you have learned it. And now from infancy you have known the Holy Scripture, and how it is able to make you wise, for you have known the Holy...

make you wise through to salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scriptures God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now, Peter said... I don't even understand some of Paul's writings. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what he said. That doesn't mean Peter was a heretic. Peter's saying, we still are working things out. We still have to work through sometimes what is an explanation of Scripture. But that never goes away from the basics. It never goes away from the basics. The core is the core. You prove the core.

You stay with the core. And so, false teachings are something we've always struggled with. And even determining what is false and true. The heretic chooses the false and then must make everyone accept their way. Now, it's interesting. A person who might discover a piece of truth and be right, if they do that, they tend to be motivated... they're not motivated by selfishness and pride. The heretic is motivated by selfishness and pride. It's not about the truth. It's not about learning.

It's not about working with others. It's about, I'm right, do what I say. Now, in the church, there's times you're going to see me and others get up here and say, look, this is what God says. It's right, do what it says. But we're always trying to say, do what it says.

We're not trying to say, do it because I say it. Because we're trying to point everyone towards the Word of God the best that we can understand it. So, those who were in the church in 1995 understand heresy. You understand what it is when people decide, we know you're wrong and we're going to kick you out of the church and change everything you believe.

We based almost everything we believed was going to be changed. That was heresy. And those, you know, the people who do those things, they're judged by God. I make no judgment about anything, but I can only tell you what heresy is. And that was heresy. Those that weren't here in 95, you think, I don't know what they're always talking about happening there. Well, it was a hard time. But that was heresy. And there was deception. And out of a church that numbered well over 100,000 people, half of them followed the heresy.

The deception. So, we can see that the early church had to fight deception. And they were told that it would come from the wisdom of the world, conventional wisdom. It would come from sin, so you've got society to fight. You have sin, your own personal sin, to fight. Wealth and false teachers. Those four things still exist today.

We still combat those things. We combat the wisdom of society. We combat the sin that is in us. We combat having a lot of wealth, which most of us do. And if you have running water and heat and a roof over your head, you're better than probably 20% of the people in the world. And we can be deceived by that. And we also have to make sure we don't get caught up in some, you know, Biblical teaching that just starts to tear apart the foundation.

That doesn't tear apart the foundation, yet still remaining open to growing and learning. So, this started as a sermon on dealing with the future deception of the beast of false prophet. But it's now ended up with what we fight right now. We fight this now. We'll see that when it happens. We don't fight this now. And we will be susceptible to that as it happens. So you have a good day, and I was able to stand today, which was a blessing.