False Teaching in the Church

But here's where we're starting off.

So we're in the third letter of the uh revelation letter.

So what has happened is we'll kind of recap, Jesus has visited John the apostle on the island of Patmos, and he has said to him, John, I want you to write this down.

What I'm about to say and reveal to you, I want you to write down.

And he began with uh John actually began writing Revelation depicting who he had seen give him this message, who it was that was speaking to him.

He said, from he said in the writing the first chapter of Revelation, I heard like the voice of a trumpet from behind me.

And as he turned to see who was speaking to him, he saw this person.

He saw the risen, resurrected Christ, and he began to describe him.

And what we have here is this revelation of Jesus, right?

The book of Revelation itself is a revelation of Jesus and what he's accomplished in the earth and what he is going to accomplish in the earth.

But one thing about Christian doctrine and theology, the Christian faith that we have, is that we believe in a God who has revealed himself.

We believe in a revelation throughout God's word of who Jesus is, what he has accomplished for us, and what he expects from us as believers.

And this is a critical part of our theology and doctrine, this thing called revelation.

You see, we serve a God who has revealed himself rather than a God who has concealed himself.

If we served a God who concealed himself, then we would just be left with speculation.

Our best guess of who God is, what he's like, what he expects from us would simply be just that.

Our best guess.

We'd have no concrete objective truth to go back to.

But because God has revealed himself, we then have to work to try and understand that revelation, who he is, what he's done, what he expects from us as his people.

Another thing about Christian theology is that the revelation we have has been produced or cultivated within community.

You see, most other major religions have revelation.

That's a pretty general thing with a lot of religions.

There's some that don't, but most of the time, most major religions have some sense of revelation.

But what we find is an individual who went and heard from a divine being, maybe wrote down or transcribed what they heard, what they received, and then they present it to a public audience, and they expect faithfulness and submission to that.

So if you look at the Book of Mormon, you have one individual, Joseph Smith, who goes out and he receives this revelation.

He writes it down in isolation.

No one else was around him, then he brings it back.

Kind of the same thing with Muhammad in Islam.

We see a lot of he got special revelation in isolation, comes and delivers it back.

That's really not the case that we have with Christianity.

That's what's one of the things that makes it so unique is that this revelation is communal in nature.

In fact, throughout the Bible, we even see challenges.

If you want to guess or if you want to challenge, or if you want to uh uh come against what I'm saying, here's all of this evidence.

Here's these people of whom you can go and talk to to show you and and actually be a witness to what I'm saying is actually true.

And so revelation is important.

Revelation is important to us because it allows us to know God for who he's revealed himself to be, it allows us to submit to God and what he expects of us, and it allows us to have confidence in God and what he's actually accomplished for us in his son, Jesus.

And so, in this revelation, John depicts of who Jesus is at the beginning of each letter, as we've talked about in the previous two letters, he uses an aspect of that revelation to coincide and correlate with the message that he has in the letter that he's writing to that specific church.

And what he's re what he's using in this church uh for this letter to the church of Pergamum is that out of his mouth comes a two-edged sword.

When John turned around to see the voice that was like a trumpet behind him and who was speaking it, and he saw Jesus, one of the ways that he described him or revealed him is as one who had a sword coming out of his mouth.

And Jesus is coming to the church of Pergamon and said, It's me, right?

Hello, it's me.

It's me, the one who has the two-edged sword that comes out of his mouth.

Why is this important to the church of Pergamon?

It's important to the church of Pergamon because what Jesus is establishing from the beginning of the letter is that he judges by his word.

Jesus judges by his word.

There's a strong, strong correlation between Jesus' words and the sharp two-edged sword, this wielded weapon that Jesus has coming out of his mouth is his word.

Now, his word is a sword that defeats his foes.

His word is a sword that defeats his foes.

You see, we believe that the gospel always accomplishes its intention.

The gospel always accomplishes its intention.

Here's how the Puritans understood that.

And the way that they would try and phrase that and shape that is that they would say, the same sun that softens the wax hardens the clay.

Now, the sun that they were talking about was the gospel, the word of God.

The wax or the clay that they're referring to is our hearts, the condition of our hearts.

So the same sun, either, the same gospel, the same word, either melts our hearts, softens our hearts, or it hardens our hearts and keeps us in the rebellious state of which we find ourselves when we first engage with the gospel.

So we would say that the word of God, the message, the gospel proclamation, always defeats its foes.

And it does so in two ways.

Either it defeats them through judgment resulting in reconciliation, or it defeats them in judgment leading to condemnation.

But either way, the gospel always defeats its foes.

You see, we have to understand that the gospel message is a message of judgment in its very foundation.

It's a message of judgment that our sin demands God's wrath.

And that Jesus stood in our place where God should have crushed us under the weight of his wrath and judgment because of the sin nature of which we had, because of the sinful rebellion of which we participate in, Jesus stood in our place.

He lived a perfect life of obedience to the Father, submitting to him in every aspect of his existence.

Then he was put to the cross, sacrificed in our place, bearing the weight of our sin in God's wrath.

He was buried, but victoriously rose again on the third day, conquering death, hell, and the grave.

You see, that's a message of judgment.

The reality, though, for us as believers, when we respond to that gospel message by grace, through faith, and trusting Christ, that message of judgment becomes reconciliation for us.

It becomes hope for us.

He has conquered his foe by making them a friend.

But that's not true for all of us.

For some of us who bear his image, who hear the gospel message, it will be a gospel message of judgment leading to condemnation.

Those who reject gospel judgment will be made to face the condemnation that their sin actually deserves.

And so this word out of Jesus' mouth is a wielded weapon that always accomplishes what it sets forth to.

You see this revelation, Jesus' word, it communicates authoritative truth for us.

It communicates a standard for holiness, it communic communicates the condemnation of sin.

And so when he's approaching the church at Pergamum, and he's identifying himself as the one with the two-edged sword coming out of his mouth, he's establishing that his word brings judgment.

So the church of Pergamum should perk up.

They should begin to listen to what he has to say.

Then we come down into verse 13.

If we look at verse 13, we try to summarize this, it would be nothing should cause us to turn away from Jesus.

Nothing should cause us to turn away from Jesus.

Let's try to paint the scene of what Pergamum is actually dealing with in this letter.

So Pergamum, like Ephesus and like Smyrna, the two churches that we have studied before Pergamum, was this booming metropolis area.

What we understand is this that urban metropolis centers establish culture.

You see, Jesus wasn't writing to some rural kind of country town where uh that's not really shaping culture or influencing the primary uh cultural normative, right?

He's writing to these booming metropolis urban areas.

And Pergamum was beautiful.

Pergamum was one of the biggest cities.

And what they had was three, really four primary things that established them as culture makers with inside the Roman Empire.

They had three primary temples to mythological gods.

They had the temple of Zeus, which is known as the father of all gods.

They had the temple of Dionysus, which is the god of fertility and wine.

So you can imagine what that worship looked like.

And then we had uh the temple of Athena, the goddess of war.

You see, these three temples were in Pergamum.

These were huge temples.

In fact, if you understand the way Pergamum looks, imagine that there's a valley, and on one side of the valley is this huge mountainside, this hillside.

At the top of that hillside sat the temple to Zeus.

So when Jesus says, I know where you dwell, that where Satan's throne is, you can almost imagine as if this temple was this demonic throne that resided on the very top point of the city and overlooked all of its inhabitants.

But they weren't just people who sacrificed and worshiped mythological gods, they were one of the primary epicenters of what's known as the imperial cult.

So the imperial cult is this: that a belief that the Roman emperor would become God, that their office and position actually deified them.

Now, up until the point of Augustus, that belief had only been accounted to emperors who had already passed away, emperors who had already died.

Pergamon was the first city to ever erect a temple and acknowledge the deification of a living emperor, Augustus.

So they were on the forefront of this thought, this worldview, this uh religious practice.

So they have the three major temples and and uh and other temples as well, but the three major temples to the mythological gods, but then they had the temple to the emperor himself, a living, embodied God.

At least they so believed and so practiced.

And so when he says, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and at the bottom where Satan dwells, Jesus is speaking to the stronghold of demonic presence, the stronghold of demonic worship that takes place inside of the city of Pergamum.

And so this is what he does.

He begins to then commend the church of Pergamum for two things.

That they held fast to his name and they held fast to his faith.

Held fast to his name and held fast to his faith.

And they were able to do this in the context of extreme persecution.

So imagine you're a Christian, you have been saved by grace, you believe that Jesus is Lord, that he is the Christ, the Messiah, who will save sinners from condemnation and judgment of God, that he is the giver of all good gifts, that he is the one that provides all of your needs, that he is the one that sustains you in this life.

Well, think about the Pergamum context.

If you just look at the good gift-giving nature of God that these Christians would believe, well, what about Dionysus, who is supposed to give us all of the good things that we desire?

Who is supposed to give us our harvest, our meal, our sustenance, right?

Who is supposed to provide the grape on the vine for us?

But that's nothing compared to what about the emperor is Lord?

You see, that was an expectation that the people of Pergamon would actually identify and acknowledge that the emperor himself was Lord.

Now, for a Christian to say the emperor is Lord is declaring fully that Jesus is not.

Those two things can't coincide with one another, they can't coexist with one another.

And so, in the midst of extreme persecution, Jesus identifies that they held fast to his name and his faith.

And he says, even in the time of Antipas, my faithful servant.

So we can imagine that persecution was difficult, but there's something here that Jesus is pointing out, some type of uh uh instance that happened inside of culture and to persecute the church that led to Antipas dying for the faith.

Now, this is the only time Antipas is mentioned in the Bible, he's not mentioned anywhere else in the scripture, but Jesus is saying, even then, when when Antipas himself died, you you remember what was going on around that time, you remember the persecution you were facing, you remember the cultural pressure that was coming to you.

Even then, you held fast to my name and you held fast to my faith.

So while facing grave persecution, Jesus commends the church.

When he says that they held fast to his name, you see, they held fast to the revelation of who Jesus is and what he has done.

It is the confession that Jesus is Lord.

Not to dec concede to declare that the emperor is Lord, but declaring Jesus is Lord.

And it's a recognition of all that he is.

You see, to say that Jesus is Lord is to say that he alone is King of kings, Lord of Lords, Christ, Messiah.

He is the Son of God, He is the one of whom we should worship and adore.

But then they also held fast to His faith, the gospel message that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus' finished work.

We're not saved by any works of our own, by any sacrifices, by any false God or by any earthly ruler.

We are saved by grace through faith in who?

In Jesus.

And so holding fast to his name and holding fast to his faith, even in the midst of extreme persecution, Jesus commends the Church of Pergamum.

So by all accounts, as we look at the Church of Pergamum, what we're gonna see is that they were a faithful church in the midst of extreme persecution, in the midst of such trying times that they were losing their life over this faith.

They seemed to be a faithful congregation.

They contended for and held fast to the name and faith of Jesus.

But then verse 14 comes around.

And Jesus says, But I have this against you.

So in every letter, we're gonna see this kind of pattern.

Jesus commends or affirms things that he sees within that church, things that are good and healthy, right?

And then he comes back and he says, But this I have again.

We call that the critique sandwich.

Hey, you do really good at this, but you're not so good at this.

But let me remind you that you're good at a couple things, right?

That's that sandwich that you built.

Don't critique sandwich me.

I see right through it, it tastes like trash.

I don't want to eat it.

Just tell me what I'm doing bad, and then I'll fix it.

That's how my mentality works.

I've had people try to do it to me, and I'm like, no, I know what you're doing.

Just tell me what I'm doing bad.

That's all I need to know.

But Jesus, right, the author of the critique sandwich, he comes and he says, Hey, you're doing really great at these things.

I have this against you, but hey, if you overcome and you conquer, here's some good stuff on the back end of it as well.

This is this pattern we see.

So, what does Jesus have against the church at Pergamum?

It's this that some of them hold to false teaching.

Some of them hold to false teaching.

So if we look at 14 through 16, what we're gonna see is that false teaching actually leads to idolatry and immorality.

False teaching leads to idolatry and immorality.

This is why Jesus is correcting it, this is why he's addressing it at the Church of Pergamon.

Again, we have to realize it wasn't the entire congregation that recklessly embraced false teaching.

That's not what Jesus is saying to him.

In fact, overwhelmingly, he's saying, You, even in the midst of persecution and trial and tribulation, held fast to my name and my faith.

But it's that some of you hold to false teaching.

It's not that they've outright denied the faith and sound and sound teaching, but that some of them have.

Jesus isn't condemning them because they've embraced idolatry and immorality.

It's but it's this it's because they haven't completely closed the door to it.

You see, they've allowed false teaching to be embraced by some, and in so doing, have jeopardized the entirety of the church.

This is what he's trying to communicate.

Not that all of them embraced false teaching, not that all of them practiced idolatry and immorality, but some of them have.

But this is what's interesting about the letter.

Jesus is addressing the entire church.

And what we see in this is that false teaching jeopardizes the entire church, even if it's just held by some.

We cannot be a church that has most of us in sound doctrine, who has most of us in sound teaching.

We have to be a church that contends for sound teaching and sound doctrine to be embraced and lived out by all of us, because any amount of false teaching will jeopardize the health of the entire church, because false teaching leads to idolatry and immorality.

This is its natural fruit in every circumstance.

And he identifies what false teaching they were actually believing in the teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans.

Now, this isn't the first time that we heard the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

If we go back to Ephesus and the Ephesian letter, we actually see that Jesus said, You hate the teaching of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

But that's all that we heard about their teaching.

Here is the first time we're actually able to see some type of understanding of what the Nicolaitans might have been taught.

And it's not a lot.

Historically, if we look at it, we can't very concretely or objectively identify what this teaching was.

We knew that it was bad, we knew that it produced idolatry and immorality, and the only hint that we get is that Jesus compares it with the teaching of Balaam.

Balaam, an old testament, false God, false teaching, false doctrine, is now being paralleled and compared to a New Testament worldview.

False doctrine, false teaching of these Nicolaitans.

He corresponds it to the teaching of Balaam.

Both the teachings of Balaam and the Nicolatans bring idolatry and immorality to God's people.

And so, whatever the specifics of the Nicolaitans' teaching were, what we can gather is that the general implication was an embracing of the culture around them, to some measure.

To some measure, we can be confident that an aspect of the teaching of the Nicolaitans included embracing aspects of the culture around them.

Now, this false teaching that came into the church made way for idolatry and immorality, as it always does.

Any teaching that minimizes the name of Jesus or the faith of Jesus will lead way to idolatry and immorality.

What teachings do we see in the church that makes man great and God small?

Right?

We see this in uh church uh pulpits and preaching all the time where you are the central figure and hero of the message, right?

You are the David and David and Goliath.

But the problem is you're not David.

If you went against Goliath, he would have crushed you under his sandal, right?

He would not have been a fight or a competition.

Jesus is David who defeats the giant of our sin.

Christ is supposed to be the central figure and hero of every sermon, of every text of the scripture.

But we have this propensity to make man big and God small.

And we diminish who God is so greatly that he is just some type of wise guide or special key to unlock.

The true greatness that we so deserve.

This is a false teaching that comes into the church that produces idolatry.

Idolatry of what?

Idolatry of self.

The idolatry that we are supposed to be the ones who are great.

We are supposed to be the ones who accomplish the great things of this world, and that God is simply assisting us on this journey.

But that also produces immorality, selfishness, greed.

We become unloving.

We become unkind.

We become those who use and abuse people to get to the places that we're supposed to be in our journey of greatness.

What about teachings in the church that we see that minimize sin?

Right?

Here's some actual statements from global preaching voices.

We don't talk about sin, we just talk about how we could do better next time.

That is such an offense to the gospel of Jesus.

The cross dictates that we couldn't do better next time.

The reality of the cross dictates that there was nothing we could have ever done next time that wouldn't have equated in demanding Jesus dying on a cross.

We don't like to talk about sin.

We like to talk about how good God is.

Sweeping sin under the rug, not addressing it, not working to understand how much it offends the holiness of God, how much it offends the gospel and saving grace of our Lord Jesus.

But we love teaching that minimizes sin.

And so what do we do?

We turn the pulpit into a self-help series in three to four ways that you can make your life better, your marriage better, your bank account better, your job better, your whatever better.

But we don't want to talk about sin and what's happening in our culture.

Sin is running rampant.

If we look at a state of theology of the church, the amount of uh self-proclaimed Christians that do not believe in hell and do not agree on what sin is astounding.

Because we've abandoned the doctrine of hell, we've abandoned the doctrine of sin and thrown it to the wayside so that we can embrace a feel-good message that people would want to be attracted to.

And what have we done?

We've bred idolatry and we've bred immorality.

Idolatry of our good works, and immorality where sin cannot be identified objectively.

And so, therefore, whatever we want to do, we can do because it feels good or we enjoy it.

What teachings in the church can be mimicked without alteration by the world?

Now, this is the most ch one of the most challenging ones here.

If we listen to the preaching of the word in most churches, you could take that message and you could put it in any secular venue, TED talk, inspirational message, banquet for your corporation, whatever.

And you could line for line repeat that message and not have to alter it.

And you're speaking to a completely secular audience who has not been regenerated, who is still dead in their sin, who has not experienced the grace of the gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit.

It can be mimicked like a like a parrot to the world.

You see, it's this weaving of the Bible and the world that's so deadly to the church then and is so deadly to the church now.

When we start to weave the world and the Bible together, we start losing the gospel.

We start embracing false teaching, and this cultivates always idolatry and immorality.

One way we've seen this is in the church in the last um uh couple, uh probably I'd say 25 to 50 years, is this hyper focus on compassion.

Somewhere down the line, the church dictated that doctrine was going to cause us to not grow any longer.

So we can't preach the Bible.

What do we need to focus on?

We need to focus on compassion.

We need to focus on doing good things.

So, what did we do?

We we we we recruited and we put resources around, digging wells in countries, providing clean water, providing food for the hungry, uh, making sure that people had shelter, safeties, and securities that human beings need to have, right?

We started these endeavors of compassion.

And this is what I've seen and witnessed within the church is that most likely the world's not going to be mad that you're going out and trying to help people.

And what we've done is we've said, hey, come join us in our works of compassion.

And we have left confession by the wayside to where now unbelievers and believers are joining together in doing these good works.

And you'll find people connected to those movements of good works for decades, not repenting of sin, not believing in the gospel of Jesus, not putting their trust in the finished work of Christ, and they just stick there.

Why?

Because they can get behind doing something nice, they can get behind doing something kind for someone else.

It is the balance of compassion and confession that the church so desperately needs, because it's confession, it's confession that actually makes the church, and its implication of believing it rightly should move us to works of compassion.

But we put compassion in front of or in complete place of confession that we lose what it means to be a Christian altogether because Jesus judges by his word.

So we need both.

We need the confession that makes and shapes and forms the church, and we need the works of compassion that helps us to be identified amongst the world.

We cannot have one without the other.

You see, it wasn't that Pergamum as a whole needed to repent of false teaching, but of their toleration of it within the church.

It's only at the name of Jesus and through his faith that men can be saved.

And if we truly love our neighbor, if we truly love the people in our culture, then it is through the preaching of the gospel we will most demonstrate that love because it is only through saving grace can we be saved.

And if we look at verse 17 in the closing of this letter, we see that only Jesus can truly satisfy.

Only Jesus can truly satisfy.

You see, all of our pursuits of idolatry and immorality are really working toward two things.

We pursue idolatry because we need provision.

We pursue idolatry because we need provision.

And then we pursue immorality because we need intimacy.

You see, look at the God of Dionysus, right?

This Roman mythological God that they worshipped in Pergamum.

What was that God supposed to do?

It was supposed to provide for him.

If you look at every Roman mythology, by and large, they worshiped and sacrificed to that false god because it provided something for them.

Now, we might not have temples erected to false gods here and now in our culture and society, but inside our heart we erect idolatrous temples all the time because we're looking for provision.

We want it to provide something for us.

That's why we chase down false gods.

And this is understood in all kinds of aspects of our life.

Let's just take for an extreme example drug abuse.

And I've talked about this before, but maybe life has just kicked us in the teeth, and we can't handle the emotional and mental realities of our life, and we want to escape them.

So what do we do?

We'll turn to illicit drugs, just to escape that.

Because we want out of our hell and into our heaven.

And so we're expecting that that drug will provide for us.

We seek idolatry for provision.

And what happens is we start worshiping that false God to give us what we truly want.

And what we truly want is escape out of our hell and into our heaven.

For some of us, it might be success and recognition in the workplace.

So to not be successful, to not have the title, the job, the bank account, the car, the whatever that you really want, see, that's your hell.

To be in heaven would be to be successful, to have the job, to have the bank account, to have the recognition, to have the power.

And so the idols that we will create to worship, to provide will be hard work, education, maybe uh um using and abusing our coworkers and other people in our lives to get what we truly want.

You see, we go and chase after idols for provision, but we go and chase after immorality for intimacy.

Every single one of us longs for intimacy.

We were designed to do that.

And if you look at the pursuit of all immorality, especially sexual immorality, at the end of that pursuit is intimacy.

We want to be known.

You know, that's what God created us.

In the garden, what were we?

We were naked and unashamed.

What that speaks to is not eroticism.

That speaks to the vulnerability, the intimacy of which we were able to know one another.

At least Adam and Eve were able to.

It wasn't until sin came in that they started to cover their intimacy.

And intimacy became harder to accomplish and have.

But all of us want to get back to that state.

We want to get back to being naked and unashamed.

We want to be back to vulnerable with one another so that we can truly be known by another human being.

And so we pursue that intimacy in other places, primarily through immorality.

Because we believe at the end of that sexual conquest or sexual practice, we're going to find the intimacy that we actually long for, but we're not.

We're fooling ourselves constantly.

Only Jesus can truly satisfy.

And that's what's beautiful about the end of this letter is that Jesus at the end of this letter says, He who overcomes, this is what I'm going to do for you.

I'm going to provide and I'm going to bring intimacy.

I'm going to provide, I'm going to bring bring intimacy.

Because here's how he does this.

He says, if you conquer, if you hold fast to my name and my faith, I'm going to give you some of the hidden manna.

What's Jesus talking about?

He said that those who eat of my flesh, those who come to me hungry and eat of the bread that I give them, they will never be hungry again.

You see, Jesus satisfies through the provision of himself.

And he says, those who overcome, you think that you're going to be nourished on this other provision, you think that you're going to be nourished by what these idols can offer up to you.

You won't be satisfied by that.

But if you overcome, if you hold fast to my name and my faith, I'm going to satisfy you with the provision of my own flesh, this hidden manna, that you will never be hungry again.

And then the stone with the name, Jesus is providing intimacy.

See, what scholars believe that Jesus is actually referring to is the name of Himself.

Jesus is known by many names: Prince of Peace, Son of God, Messiah, Lord, Christ, Lion of the tribe of Judah, Lamb of God.

Jesus has many names.

And Jesus, what they believe he's trying to communicate to the people of Pergamum is that if you hold fast to my name and you hold fast to my faith, the intimacy that we will share with one another will be so transcendent, so great that I will share with you a name of myself that no one else will know.

Think about that.

The God of all creation, who made all things, who holds all things, all things suspended in his very being, comes to us, his image bearers, those of whom he died for, have been brought into his relationship with him through his gospel.

And he says, Do you want to see how how cosmic I am, how great I am, how majestic I am, but also how intimate I am, that with you I will share a name that no one else knows.

We can't understand, we can't wrap our minds around that intimacy.

Think about it.

There's things, how much between even you and your partner, if you're married, right?

How much between you and your partner are there things that no one else knows?

Only you know.

You hold that intimacy, and that creates an intimacy between one another.

And that's just through us.

And at any given time, right, if you're a goofball like me, you'll probably spill the beans somewhere and then it'll be shared with the whole world.

Because I like to look at my wife and say, Can I share this?

And then she's forced to say yes because she's sitting right here, and then I just share whatever it is, right?

Because I'm an open book, I just let everything out.

But Jesus, the God man, creator of all things, he says to us, You want to know what intimacy is?

I'll show you intimacy.

I'll share a name with you that no one else will ever know for all eternity.

So, what we have to walk away believing this morning is that it is insufficient to simply embrace sound teaching.

We must also reject false teaching.

It's insufficient to simply embrace sound teaching.

We must also reject false teaching.

This is jeopardizes that provision, that intimacy that Jesus has promised for us, for those who overcome, who hold fast to his name and faith.

The church has both an individual responsibility for self, but also a corporate responsibility for one another.

You see, it's our love for one another that must drive us to see the trappings and leadings of false teachings.

We're not here simply to grow closer to Jesus, but we're here to walk with others as they grow closer also.

We hear all the time, I'm trying to find a church or I'm coming to this church so I can be fed, so that I can grow, so that I can mature.

Look, if you're here for selfish endeavors, I have a list of other churches you can go check out.

That's not why we're here.

Are you here to be fed?

Sure.

Are you here to grow in your relationship with Christ?

Sure.

Why?

So that you might walk with others as they grow closer to Jesus.

We're not here just to consume and try to mature in our own self, but we mature so that we can help others mature in their faith in Christ.

We are the body, we have a corporate responsibility for one another.

It is only through faithful teaching of Jesus' name and Jesus' faith that we're able to grow closer to Him.

And so we have to share and labor in that pursuit with one another.

You see, to allow for false teaching to come into our church, even if it's only held by a few, is allowing for idolatry and immorality to come in with it.

We have to love one another.

We have to love the gospel.

We have to love what those two things dictate for one another.

When we allow false teaching to come into our church, we are communicating we don't love one another.

Because through the door of false teaching creeps in idolatry and immorality with it.

And when we allow people to sit in that, to embrace that, we're simply communicating that we don't love them.

You see, a lot of us believe that doctrine divides.

We believe doctrine divides.

And this has been a statement that I've heard a thousand times throughout from church people.

Doctrine divides.

I don't get hung up on theology.

I don't get hung up on doctrine because doctrine divides.

And there's a reality, we're gonna get to that here in just a second, that historically we've seen some truth in that.

It's not because of the doctrine, but it's because of the jerk who's proclaiming it.

Doctrine itself doesn't divide.

Doctrine itself brings life to the church and unifies the church.

But what we've done is we've allowed the message of the world, the message of the Bible to start interweaving with one another.

And so we've resolved in that doctrine divides.

Why?

Because the world tells us that truth is relative.

It's not absolute, it's not objective, it's relative.

And so what makes you happy, you should believe.

What you think is truth should be your truth, right?

This is something that we've heard constantly refrained.

Hey, you do you, I'll do me.

Your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth.

However, in the pursuit of that relativism, what we become is destructive enablers.

We become destructive enablers, and what we've said to people we so-called love, as long as it makes you happy, believe it.

But what really is underneath of that is their own pursuit of self-destruction in our absence of desire to jeopardize the relationship.

But what we don't realize is that we are jeopardizing the relationship at the end of the day.

Even in this subjectivity, even in relativism, you are jeopardizing the relationship because you're allowing them to go off in self-destruction.

You won't have a person to love over time.

You see, we believe that love becomes so important that nothing is worth fighting for the cost of it.

Love becomes destructively enabling without truth.

But some of us, we pursue division over non-essential doctrine.

We pursue division over non-essential doctrine.

A lot of where the person who would say, I believe doctrine divides, and so I try to stay away from it, has experienced this somewhere.

We see it throughout the whole church in all kinds of different expressions and contexts, right?

If you don't dress a certain way, if you don't have a long denim skirt and a hair and a bun and no jewelry on, you then you know you're you're probably not a Christian, right?

They call these women call themselves fruit inspectors.

I don't know what fruit they're looking for, but it ain't the fruit of the spirit, right?

Call themselves fruit inspectors.

No, uh I could go on a tangent of that, but we don't just do it in that way, right?

We do it in think about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

That's a doctrine that divides.

And it's been held by charismatics as a doctrine to divide over, that if you're not really filled with the Holy Spirit, you're not really a Christian.

And by cessationists, it's been a doctrine to divide over.

They're crazy because they believe in that, Joan.

We also see it in end times, eschatological uh doctrines.

We see it in what the church is, we see it in all of these different segments of doctrine, and we want to contend and fight over all of them, and we pursue the division over non-essential doctrine.

You see, truth becomes hard if it's not softened by love.

And if the person who believes that all doctrine divides, if they believe nothing is worth fighting for at the cost of love, the person who will divide over non-essential doctrine believes that everything is worth fighting for at the cost of love.

You see, I love this.

We just ended this uh uh our opening session of mission school where we looked at introduction to systematic theology.

And one of the hardest lessons in that whole 10-week study was you had to write out what was essential doctrine.

I challenge you to do that.

What is essential to the faith?

I would argue one of the most essential statements, one of the most essential confessions that we see is the thief on the cross.

Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

That's packed full of robust theology.

Who Jesus is, what he's accomplished, looking at a dying man on a cross and saying, Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Such powerful theological phrasing.

But I would challenge you to think through what's essential.

Look, I love to debate, I love to fight.

I'm a fan of Martin Luther.

He's like, I'm a spirit animal, right?

And uh I went to check out his house in Wittenberg a couple years ago, and there's this plaque in his house.

It's a museum now.

I took a picture of it.

It said, fight at all times, if necessary, use fists.

I love that statement.

I I love to contend and debate and argue, but I realized how ineffective and unfruitful that was.

We spend so much time dividing and creating division over non-essential doctrines.

Look, when you look at the crucial historical doctrine and confession of the church, it's like this long.

You look at the uh the Nicene Creed or you look at the Apostles' Creed, it's super short.

It ain't a volume library of doctrinal statements.

It's who is God, who is Jesus.

What has he done?

And how can we be saved and reconciled to him?

That's like the essentials of the faith.

Right?

But we create all these non-essential division points.

And we have to stop.

I want us to be a church that fights for sound doctrine.

I want us to be a church that contends for the faithful preaching of the word.

But if we're always at war, what are we doing?

If we're always creating dividing lines, are we actually contending for the unity of the church of which Christ has called us to?

You see, because that's the hope of the gospel this morning.

That Jesus unites his church by his word.

Jesus unites his church by his word.

You see, it is the very gospel that makes the church.

How are we made into Christians?

By the preaching and receiving of the gospel of Jesus.

It is his word that makes us.

It is the church that is established on, made by, and formed through His Word.

Not through our behavior, not through acts of compassion, not through our 501c3 status with the government, not by any means but his word.

You see, confession is the primary unifying factor of Jesus' church.

If we study throughout all of history, when the church was being kind of flipped on its head, when it was being scattered, the way that they unified the church collectively to bring them back in unity with one another was through confession.

What do we say we believe?

What are we supposed to believe?

What is sound teaching?

That's how they always reunited the church historically when it was being threatened of dispersion.

We have to be a church that realizes that, that Jesus unites his church by his word.

And so what should we do as believers?

Number one, we should pursue sound doctrine.

We have to be a people who pursue sound doctrine.

And what that means is we have to be a people who study God's word, not just rely on preaching, not just rely on mission groups.

We have to be a people who are working to the maturity in Christ of which He's called us to by studying God's word.

I think if we took time to understand what we fill our day with, we'd be appalled by how much of it is in opposition to kingdom development in our hearts.

And the world is fighting for your attention at every corner and angle.

We have to be conscious and aware of that.

We have to fight against that.

And I'm not saying even just reading the Bible on a devotional level.

I'm saying you should be buying little layperson commentaries.

I'm not talking about if you want to, I've seen, I've seen some women in this church with commentaries this thick.

Man, that's awesome.

Let's have more of that.

But if that is maybe uh um something that makes you nervous or right, uh a little sweat too much, hey, buy just a little slim commentary and go through a book of the Bible through that commentary.

See what's the context, what the historical prevalence is, what is the church always thought about this passage of scripture?

What are we supposed to draw from it?

We should rely on the Holy Spirit to be our teacher, but the Holy Spirit also uses men throughout time and history to help us understand the scripture as well.

And so we should be studiers of the Word of God.

Why?

Because we're not coming into our own maturity, we're coming into our maturity for the benefit of others to bring them into their maturity also.

We should love our Lord so much and love our brother and sister so much that we work so hard for our own maturity and sound doctrine for his glory and for their good.

Also, on a community level, this means that we should correct false doctrine.

Now I'm not talking about us going out and be the theology police, right?

Next time you're in a mission group, be like, well, actually, right?

You're the you're the Oscar of the office.

If any office fans at Oscar uh Martinez always says, well, actually, to correct someone, right?

That's not what you're supposed to be.

Don't go around being the theology police.

Look, like I said, most of the people who believe doctrine divides, is they they're frame framing that worldview, not through the doctrine itself, but from the jerk who proclaimed it.

You see, one thing that we do also is that we get into this reality where we think that we have to shepherd and and be the kind of worldview police on in all of creation.

And so we have this friends list that's a thousand people long, and they all post uh goofy stuff on there, and then we have to come in and comment or correct, or we have to involve ourselves in all these other postings, or we have to say that little uh you know, quip or comment that is gonna mic drop everybody on our friends list and like, ha ha, I just proved you all wrong, right?

That that that we put so much time and energy into this junk.

And we and the reality is that these people on our friends list, they're not gonna come share meals with you, most of them.

Most of them have never even met you in real life, right?

You we the if you think about the time and energy we put into impressing people that cares nothing about us is insanity.

When you have a church community who many of us have made covenant promises to one another, that is struggling through the same junk you're struggling through, that needs you to say, hey, come over and have a meal with me.

Come over and have some time with me and my family.

Let's be face to face with one another.

Let's shepherd and care for and share one another's burdens and joys.

Because guess what?

This friendslist, this world around us, this culture that we vie for their affection and their approval and whatever else, they don't care about you.

But the church should.

And so when we see false doctrine and false teaching, look, don't be worried about what your goofy, you know, tertiary friend, acquaintance posted on Facebook.

You gotta go correct that.

No, no, no, no, no.

When a brother or sister is believing the false teachings of this world, what do you do?

You come alongside them in intimate relationship.

Hey, come over.

Let's have a drink, let's talk.

I want to encourage you in something.

I want to question you on some stuff.

I want to walk with you and seek understanding.

Maybe you just heard some blurb out of context that didn't mean what they actually meant it to mean.

Then listen to them, hear them, and reinstill the imago day inside of one another, right?

Because we work to strip it out of each other.

And so we should correct false teaching.

But how should we correct false teaching?

In loving, intimate relationship with one another.

Because who do we have responsibility for?

We have responsibility for this.

Our church, who we make covenant promises to one another, that we've got your back, that we'll be there when you need us, that we're gonna help each other grow in our faith in Jesus.

And lastly, we should abstain from the idolatry and immorality of this world.

We should abstain from the idolatry and immorality.

And this is coming after us in every level.

You want to see the idolatry of America?

It's in who's the next president.

That's the idolatry of America.

Where are they looking for?

I want to get out of my hell, my hell of what?

My hell of liberalism, or my hell of white supremacy, or my hell of whatever you want to call this hell that you're finding yourself in in our culture.

And you know what I want?

I want my heaven.

I want my heaven where I don't have to deal with this junk anymore.

Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, whatever your hell is.

And so who are you hoping is gonna get you out of hell?

Your candidate.

If we're really honest, we're all struggling with idolatry right now.

And what immorality are we struggling with?

Well, the world is pressuring us to believe a worldview that is contradiction to that of the gospel.

A worldview that they can fix their problems.

So you know how they're gonna fix their problems through revolutions, through conquest, through force.

They're gonna change it by violence.

And it's beckoning us to engage in it, or at the very least, to bow our knee to it.

We have to abstain from it.

There is a king and a kingdom of which we belong to that is not of this world.

And you know what?

If socialism becomes the government standard of America, Jesus is still on the throne.

If communism reigns like it did in the USSR, Jesus is still on the throne.

No matter what the outcome of this election, Jesus is still on the throne.

And that gets back to we've got to care for one another.

We have to be the church.

We have to be the community of believers that works to see the maturity of Christ develop in one another.

And how are we going to do that most?

Through his word.

Because it's his word that makes the church.

Let's pray.