Losing My Religion

Good morning and uh welcome again to Church of the Grove.

We're so thankful that you guys are joining us this morning.

Um, if I haven't had the chance to meet you, my name is Nathan.

I'm one of the pastors here.

And uh we're just thrilled that you're joining us today for our last message in our Build Your House series.

It's been an incredible series, and I really don't want to leave this series as we've kind of journeyed through the Sermon on the Mount the past 10 months, but I'm excited about what the Lord has for us today.

But before we jump in, if you are a guest or if you are a visitor with us today, um, we just want to say a special welcome and thank you for joining us today.

And that's not just including the people that are in the room with us this morning, but if you're watching online this morning, uh we just want to say a special welcome to you as well.

And well, here at Church of the Grove, we're not just about consuming content, um, but we want people to actually take next steps.

And here at Church of the Grove, we want to help you do that.

And uh really the best way that we can help you do that is by uh kind of finding out information about you.

So if you are a guest or visitor here in person or watching online this morning, uh we would love just to connect with you.

If you can fill out our encounter card or connection card, you can do that through clicking the link.

If you're watching online, if you're here in the room, you can click the uh app you're on our Church of Grove app, you can uh click the UR code on the chair in front of you or uh go to the desk and the lobby on the way out and uh fill out a physical card there.

But we'd love to get connected with you to help you take next steps in following Jesus um today and in the weeks ahead.

But I'm excited about this morning and what the Lord has in store for us for sure.

And uh funny story, last uh about I guess two weeks ago now, um I went to the doctor and uh the doctor gave me a prescription, a prescription that I had taken um a few times before, and uh I went to the pharmacy, I got the prescription filled, I came home, I was just taking one in the afternoon and then one in the morning.

And so I took the first pill in the afternoon, and about 30 or 45 minutes later, I started feeling incredibly drowsy, like where you can't hold your eyes open.

Like, I don't know if you've ever taken a sleeping pill of some kind, but that's kind of how I felt, like just incredibly drained, a little out of sorts.

My eyes were heavy, and I really kind of was in a fog.

And I was just thinking, man, it's been a long day.

I was in a meeting all day long, and I was just thinking, man, I guess I'm just really, really tired, but this is an odd way to feel.

And so kind of fought through it, went through the rest of my afternoon and evening, and then on uh the next morning I got up, took the pill just like I normally would, just like I was prescribed to take.

And uh about 30 or 45 minutes later, I'm in my office trying to read my Bible, and like I can't see the words.

Like the words are kind of hazy and I can't like make them out clearly, and my eyes are real heavy, and I'm just out of sorts again, just super kind of out of it and in this haze and dizzy.

And I just think to myself, I wonder if I was given the wrong medication.

And so I go into the house and I get the prescription bottle, and the prescription bottle has the right name of the medication that I'm supposed to be on, the right amount of the medication, as everything is correct on the label, but on the inside, the pill, although it looked exactly like the pill that I had taken previously, it was a pill to treat something entirely different.

It was a pill that was given towards people that struggle with schizophrenia and um bipolar disorder.

And so I had taken two of those pills, and as a result, it had caused all of these physical reactions in my body.

My body was kind of revolting against this medication because it wasn't meant for me to take this.

And I mean, as scary as that was, and as luckily it wasn't something more major than it already could have been, um, I thought to myself, that's such a great illustration for how many of us live our lives.

Where everything looks good on the outside, it's everything is true on the outside, but on the inside there's something entirely different going on.

Or there's a lot of times in our lives when it comes to the things that we believe and the things that we give our lives to, it looks right from the outside, but on the inside, it's really not a scriptural or biblical concept that's straight from scripture.

And this is the tool of the enemy.

Ultimately, the enemy uses deception to come into our lives to deceive us into going down paths and into directions that we never were intended to go.

And the incredible thing about what the enemy does is the enemy comes with the information that looks right, but on the inside of the bottle, it's incredibly harmful for us, and it is incredibly uh deceptive and goes against what the scriptures teach.

And so this morning I want us to look into that as we kind of close out the Sermon on the Mount, but just think about some of the things that we just commonly believe in our world and our culture today.

Things like this statement.

We probably have all said it or maybe heard it.

Um, God won't give me any more than I can handle.

Um, we've all heard that said, right?

And it sounds comforting, right?

It sounds like that would be true, that we have a loving God, and our loving God isn't going to give us anything that we can't handle.

The only problem is that's not a Bible concept.

God all the time gives us more than we can handle so that we don't trust in ourselves, but that rather that we will trust in Him.

But that's something that our world and our culture and our church world has commonly believed.

It seems right from the outside, but on the inside, it's falling apart.

It's deceptive in nature.

There's this idea that God wants me to be happy.

And yes, we have a God that cares about us, and we have a God that wants good things for us, but at the same time, our God is not in uh his main focus is not for your happiness, but rather for your holiness.

And when we walk with him, when we surrender our lives to him, then ultimately there's joy and there's satisfaction that comes from walking in his ways, but his main goal in our lives is not for our own happiness, but our holiness.

But our world and our culture would teach something drastically different, right?

That it's all about your happiness.

You go and do whatever makes you happy, which leads into the next one that we commonly believe, this idea of follow your heart.

You know, what is your heart telling you to do?

What do you feel in this moment?

And while the Spirit of God sometimes does give us discernment and he does give us this opportunity to kind of know what's right and what's wrong and the directions that we need to go, ultimately our hearts are deceptive.

Our hearts are wicked, and our hearts can lead us into the wrong directions.

Because a lot of times when we base our decisions on just how we feel in the moment, our feelings and our emotions can trap us and lead us in directions that's contrary to truth.

But our world and our culture, and even our church world and culture today says, follow your heart.

What is your heart telling you to do?

It looks good and it sounds good from the outside, but on the inside it's deceptive in nature.

This idea of believe in yourself.

If you believe it, you can do it, right?

If you dream it, you can do it in life.

That's kind of this mindset and this mantra that has been given to uh our kids and this younger generation that's coming up.

If you just try hard enough, if you just work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you want to do.

And it pushes into self-esteem and it does all these things.

And there's good in the in there being challenging and being encouraging for people to go and do for more.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, it's not about believing in ourselves, but it's ultimately putting our faith and our trust, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.

Um, there's this idea of your truth and my truth, and these two things being mutually exclusive.

And this is a lie that sounds good maybe from the outside, but on the inside is super deceptive in nature.

Where you can believe one thing and I can believe another thing, and they're both equally true, but they're very opposite of one another.

It doesn't make sense, but that's what our world and our culture has believed.

And this is how the enemy works.

The enemy comes in, and he comes in and he deceives us into believing something sounds good, a half-truth, a lie altogether, that it's something sounds good in nature, but on the inside it's deceptive and destructive to our lives.

Lies ultimately distort our soul and drive us to ruin.

And this is why over and over and over again in Scripture, we see that the Bible warns us about protecting ourselves from listening to false teaching, that we protect ourselves from false doctrine.

Over 40 times in the New Testament, there are warnings against deception.

And this morning, as Jesus is coming to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, this incredible message that we've spent the past 10 months kind of breaking down almost verse by verse, he's going to address deception.

He's going to address false teachings because he knows that there's this tendency that there's going to be things that sound like they're true that are going to be taught to us, but in the end, they're deceptive and destructive on the inside.

And so our big idea, our main point, the thing we want to walk away with is that we need to be people that test to ensure that what appears true is actually true.

That we need to be people that test to ensure that what we hear, what we take in, the things that we read, the things that we listen to, the TV shows we watch, the media things that we consume, that those things that appear to be true are actually true.

We need to test those things.

And Jesus is going to address that this morning.

Now, if you're just joining us, the Sermon on the Mount is this incredible message that Jesus is preaching right towards the beginning of his ministry.

And what he's doing is he's laying the foundation of what his followers are ultimately going to look like.

And they're going to look totally different from the world and the culture of his day.

And as a result, we're going to look very different from the culture in our world of today as well.

Matthew 5 through 7, Jesus has laid this foundation and he's not giving just platitudes, but rather he's giving commands that need to be lived out on a daily basis.

He's given us the DNA of his followers.

And he's speaking against the religious system oftentimes throughout this message.

He's given us the beatitudes.

He's kind of talked about this, uh, he's used statements like you have heard it said, but I say unto you.

He's changed and transformed the idea of prayer and giving and fasting.

He's given us a new way to approach money and to think about the future and our lives and how we should not worry.

And as he comes to the very end in Matthew chapter 7, verse 15, he says this.

Matthew 7:15

He's given this incredible statements.

And then he says this Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep, but are really vicious wolves.

You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.

Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.

A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit.

So every true tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire.

Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

So Jesus, as he's coming to the end, he wants to address, he wants to tell us to beware, to warn us, to look out for false teachers.

And I think that's an important message.

Anytime Jesus is telling us to beware of something, we need to beware of it.

We need to be cautious.

So beware of false teachers and to test and ensure that what appears to be true is actually true.

Now here's what we got to remember.

In the Sermon on the Mount, he has not been kind of giving us this breakdown and giving us the, he's not been distinguishing or comparing between good and bad or what's moral and what's immoral.

Really, the Sermon on the Mount has been giving us the difference between the religious culture and the religious system of the day and ultimately what it looks like to follow him.

And so he's breaking down these two things.

He's separating these two pictures.

It's not about religion, it's not about going through the religious duties, but rather it's about having a relationship with him and following his commands and following his way of life.

And so Jesus, all throughout these three chapters of scripture, has been giving the comparison between these two, and he's been telling people it's not about the religious system, but it's about following me.

It's about following me and engaging in a relationship with me.

This is what it's all about.

Now here's the thing religious people and Jesus' followers have similar behaviors.

Think about it.

They both pray, they both give, they both try to obey the Ten Commandments, they are kind to their neighbors.

On the outside, they look the same, but on the inside, there are utterly different reasons for their obedience.

There's utterly different reasons for their character, and as a result, what their character ultimately comes out looking like.

And so Jesus is saying to us, beware of these false teachers.

And what he's warning us again is really, beware of religion.

Beware of the religious teachers of the day that are going to come in and they're going to tell you something that sounds awfully close to being true.

But in the end, it's deceptive in nature and brings destruction into your life.

See, anyone can tell the difference between what's good and what's bad or what's immoral and what's moral.

But Jesus is trying to get us to think more deeply and say, hey, what's the difference between religion and being a follower of Jesus?

See, here's the thing about religion.

Religion seems true, but it's ultimately a ruthless trap.

Religion seems true, but it's a ruthless trap.

Listen to the words he uses.

He says that they're like the false teachers.

They appear like they're sheep from the outside, but on the inside they are vicious wolves.

That word vicious can literally be translated to blackmail somebody or to exhort something from someone.

So the verse could read this way: Beware of false prophets.

They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are blackmailing you.

And this is what religion does.

The false prophets come promising life, and they ultimately hold you hostage to religious duty.

They blackmail you, they exhort you, and they force you into religious duty in order to hopefully gain life, but in the end, you don't gain anything.

You lose everything.

Religious people are ultimately wanting to make everything about themselves.

This is why they do good works.

And they do because they appear on the outside to have their lives all together, but on the inside, they're hoping that the outside works will move onto the inside and transform them.

They're trying to prove that they are worth something, and this is why religion is so exhausting.

You have to keep up with all the appearances.

You're hoping that things that you do on the outside will somehow change your inner life.

And sadly, so many people fall into this mindset and this way of life, especially here in the Bible Belt in the South.

Many, many people fall into this trap.

Um, a few years back, not so much anymore, but uh one of our local funeral homes uh in our county, um, they would uh call myself or call Russ, our pastor up at the Walnut Grove campus, and uh they would say, uh, hey, um, if there was a family that came in and they needed a pastor to officiate a funeral, um, and they didn't have a pastor or church connection in any way, um they would just say, hey, can we put you all on the list and we'll call you and you guys can come in and minister to the family.

And so I'm not great in funeral situations.

I'm not great with grieving people and emotions and all that kind of stuff.

Like I'm kind of don't hug, don't touch me, like that kind of thing.

So it's a little odd for me, but I was put in several situations where I was doing these funerals.

And so I would go in and I would visit the family, hopefully before uh the funeral, before, you know, a couple days before, and I would meet the family and I'd talk to them and kind of get to know them a little bit, hear a little bit about the person that had passed away, and uh, you know, hear stories and hear characteristics and different things about them.

And then at the end, it everything would always naturally turn into a spiritual conversation.

Anytime you're talking about death or the afterlife or eternity, things turn spiritual.

And nine times out of ten, the families would tell me, uh, well, they're they're in heaven.

And I would go, well, why is that?

Well, they were a good person.

That was the natural comment that was given back to me.

Now that's what our world and our culture believes, and ultimately that's a religious idea.

The religious idea is always saying that you somehow can adhere to some good works, and as a result of those good works, that you can get to heaven.

You can make it into eternity all by yourself.

But this ruthless trap, because religion is never done.

Religion is always requiring more.

Religion is wanting you to not be content with just jumping through one hoop, but it wants you to jump through another hoop and another hoop and another hoop.

It thrives on shame and condemnation and guilt.

And this is why so many people have even left the church because of religion.

They're exhausted and it's a burden that's too heavy to carry.

And so religion and the definition of good here is also a moving target.

We don't really know what good is.

When somebody tells me that they're a good person, it's like, well, what's the standard that you're using?

Are you a good person based on what scripture says?

Are you a good person based on just what your own conscience and how you were raised or what part of the country you grew up in?

Like, what's your definition of good?

That can be translated into a many different kinds of perspectives.

But then there's also this idea that there's never assurance for our where our relationship stands with the Lord.

There's always this overarching question of how good is good enough?

To have my good works outweighed my bad works, which one is the greater good here?

And you never truly know.

And so religion is this dangerous practice that so easily creeps into our lives, and it's ultimately, I believe, what our culture is fueled upon.

And so, for the followers of Jesus, we must be so intentional about testing to ensure that what appears to be true is actually true.

And so, what I want to do with the rest of the time that we have this morning together, I want us to kind of break down what I would say are three kind of common tendencies for falsehoods.

And this isn't an exhaustive list, there's probably more that we could add to this, but I think there are three very common things that we see that are uh uh go with false teaching.

So people that do false teaching, practice false teaching, false prophets are going to have these three things in their messages most of the time.

First thing is this.

So, how do we see and how do we find falsehoods?

The first thing is this, that when they teach, uh they will teach with a wide way rather than a narrow path.

They'll teach a wide way rather than a narrow path.

Now, we read this a few weeks ago, but in verse 13 of Matthew chapter 7, Jesus is giving this passage about the narrow way and the wide path.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

And then immediately following that passage of scripture is this verse, beware of false teachers.

And I don't think that's a coincidence.

I think that there's a tendency that false teaching is always going to go towards the wide path rather than pushing people towards the narrow path.

Let's read that scripture together.

Matthew 7, verse 13.

Matthew 7:13

It says, You can enter God's kingdom only through the narrow gate.

The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for many who choose that way, but the gateway to life is very narrow, and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

So those were the words of Jesus.

Jesus himself said that there is a narrow way.

There is a narrow way to life, and only a few people find that.

But then there's the wide path, and the wide path leads to destruction, and many people are on that path.

Those are the words of Jesus.

But our secular culture has come in and said that uh that there's many ways, right?

That there's not just one road, but there's many roads to the same destination, which makes absolutely no sense, right?

If I go north on 85, I'm never going to end up in Florida.

It's never going to happen.

You cannot go on the same roads and just expect to end up in the same destination, but that's what our culture has taught.

If you're just sincere in your beliefs, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are, as long as you're sincere, as long as you're devout, as long as you're kind to others and you're loving towards others, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day because all roads are leading to the same place.

That goes exactly against the words of Jesus.

You can't believe that and believe.

In Jesus, because Jesus tells us that wide is the gate to destruction and narrow is the path to life, and only a few find it.

But false teaching, I think, will come in and they'll tell us that there's multiple ways to go to get life.

But I think there's also a tendency that there's this teaching that comes that says that when it comes to following Jesus, that there's no need for radical discipleship or obedience.

And this is where I feel like, especially in the Bible Belt, we have found ourselves.

We've found ourselves in a place where it's, hey, you pray a prayer, you get walk an aisle, you check a box on a card, you maybe get wet in a baptistry pool, and you don't have to change anything about your life, right?

You know, you got somebody standing up front, they're just like, okay, let's start counting hands.

Okay, one, two, three.

All right, we had 10 people that were saved today.

But then there's no life change, there's no radical discipleship.

There's no calling people out of their old life and pushing them into the new way of life.

And this is going exactly against the way of Jesus.

Following Jesus, it is a gift.

It is a gift, it is a free gift that is given to us, but it's not a gift that was free.

It cost Jesus his life.

And as a result, we now wholeheartedly follow him with everything that we have.

And so while we talk about following Jesus and beginning that relationship, it's as simple as the ABCs.

It's about admitting, believing in Jesus, that he was who he says he was, that he rose again or he uh died and uh was buried and three days later rose again, and then we confess him as our Lord and Savior.

That might start the relationship, but that's only the beginning.

Then it begins a continual process of repenting and believing, where we walk away from sin and we believe in Jesus and his truth and we walk in the right direction.

But false teaching will always come in and preach an easier way of life.

It will preach a way where it's not about our radical abandonment of self and dying to self and picking up our cross and following Jesus, but rather it's just about simplicity of praying a prayer, checking a box, walking an aisle.

It ultimately doesn't cost us anything.

Anytime you hear someone teaching that following Jesus doesn't cost you anything, or that Jesus doesn't demand your complete allegiance, it might sound good, but it should automatically be a teaching that you should be aware of and call into question because the narrow road is difficult and only a few find it.

So I think the easiest way for us to picture falsehoods and false teaching is to see are they teaching that there's a wide road to life or a narrow path?

Because Jesus said there was a narrow path and few find it.

Second thing I think we see is that there are messages that promise a false hope or a false peace.

Um I've been reading in my personal time with the Lord, I've been reading uh through the book of Jeremiah.

I just finished it uh this past week, and um it's an interesting book.

It takes place during the time when uh the people of God have been uh taken over by Babylon.

Babylon has come in and they've exiled the people of God and they've forced God's chosen people, the ones that He's loved, the ones He's called out, the ones He's blessed, and He's taken them from their homeland and He's forced them to now move into the nation of Babylon, where they don't know the language, they don't know the culture, they don't know the religion, they don't know the customs.

And this is God's plan.

This is what God ultimately has established.

Because the people were disobedient, because they didn't follow through on God's word, God said, Okay, I'm gonna use this pagan nation, I'm gonna bring judgment on the nation, and as a result, these are the consequences for your action.

And so the prophet Jeremiah comes onto the scene and he's delivering a hard message just over and over and over again.

Jeremiah is preaching a difficult truth.

He's pretty much saying, hey guys, repent.

Destruction is imminent, judgment is coming, we're gonna be exiled, these foreign nations are going to invade from the north.

Over and over and over, Jeremiah is preaching this message.

And the people get so angry with Jeremiah that several times Jeremiah's pleading with the Lord, going, God, they're gonna kill me.

They're gonna kill me, like, do something, rescue me, save me.

He's known as the weeping prophet because he's carrying around this heavy burden and this heavy message of judgment from God that's coming for God's people.

And all of a sudden, as Jeremiah's bringing this hard, uh this hard uh message from God, um, there's these false teachers and false prophets that begin to pop up.

And they begin to say, God's not going to bring his judgment.

God is going to rescue us just like he always has in the past.

And there's no judgment, there's no wrath, there's no nation that's coming from the north.

And so you've got this one prophet that's preaching this hard and difficult message that's hard to kind of cope with.

And then you've got these other prophets that are preaching something that's just sounds a lot better, honestly.

Who do you think the nation began to believe?

They began to believe the easy message and not the prophet Jeremiah.

Listen to what it says in Jeremiah 23, starting in verse 16.

It says, This is what the Lord of heaven's army says to his people.

Do not listen to these people when they prophesy to you, fulfilling uh filling you with futile hope.

They are making up everything they say.

They did not speak for the Lord.

They keep saying to those who despise my word, Don't worry, the Lord says that you will have peace.

And those who stubbornly follow their own desires, they say, No harm will come your way.

Have any of these prophets been in the Lord's presence to hear what he is really saying?

Has even one of them cared enough to listen?

Look, the Lord's anger burst out like a storm, a whirlwind that swirls down on the heads of the wicked.

The an the anger of the Lord will not diminish until he has finished all he has planned in the days to come.

You will understand all of this very clearly.

I have not sent these prophets, yet they run around claiming to speak for me.

I have given them no message, yet they go on prophesying.

Verse 22 If they have stood before me and listened to me, they would have spoken my words, and they would have turned my people from their evil ways and deeds.

See, they were promising people a false hope, a false peace, rather than pushing them towards repentance where they could ultimately find the peace that their souls longed for.

And I think any time that there's teaching that points us towards a false peace and misses the point of Jesus and the cross and the wrath of God being poured out on Jesus for the sins of mankind, then we miss it.

We miss it.

That true teaching needs to be about repentance and the answer to our problem, which is ultimately Jesus' atoning work on the cross.

There's incredible communicators out there that have followers in the millions and millions and millions.

And they promise a false peace.

They give messages that help increase our self-esteem and make us feel better about ourselves at the end of the day.

And listen to me, I don't think there's anything wrong with being encouraged.

I think we need encouragement in the days in the world that we're living in today.

But there's always the peace that comes from Jesus rather than a peace that we find in and of ourselves.

They might teach that the way to find peace is not through dying to yourself, but rather making life all about yourself.

The way of peace that we find in Scripture is dying to ourselves to follow Jesus rather than making life all about ourselves.

And so anytime someone comes preaching a message of false peace, then we should be concerned about that.

We should have ears that kind of perk up when we hear that type of message.

And religion always pushes towards this.

Religion would lead you to this promise of false hope, that if you can do enough good stuff, then you can save yourself.

If you come to church, if you give money, if you, you know, kind of don't smoke or drink alcohol or whatever it might be, whatever the rules are, if you don't do these things and you do do these things, then you're good.

And that's what religion teaches.

It's promising a false peace.

And anytime a false peace is being proclaimed, we should be concerned.

The third and final thing is this is that there's a disconnect between what is said and what is seen.

The third way that we determine if teaching is actually true is to look at the person that is teaching and see if their lifestyle lines up with what is being said.

Verse 16 in Matthew chapter 7, back there again, it says this.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

You can identify them, talking about the false teachers, by their fruit.

That is, by the way they act.

Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.

A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit.

So every tree that produces that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire.

Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

So Jesus makes this simple but challenging statement that a tree is known by its fruit.

That what they say and what they do should coincide, that they should line up.

But anytime there's false teaching that's coming in, there's a disconnect between what is said and what is seen.

And this is not just talking about good works, all right?

When it says good fruit here, it's not just talking about doing some good deeds.

It's not walking an old lady across the street or picking up a piece of trash.

Those things are good deeds, but that's not what the scriptures are talking about.

It's talking about good fruit, good spiritual fruit.

That there's a difference here.

That it's not about our works, but it's about supernatural spiritual character formation that's happening in our lives.

Paul gives us a picture of this in Galatians chapter 5, verse 22.

Galatians 5:22

He says, But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

These are the characteristics of the follower of Jesus.

These are the characteristics that we shouldn't just have one of those, but we should have all of those.

This is the fruit of having the Holy Spirit.

And it's not just something that we attain on our own, but it's a supernatural thing that the Spirit empowers us to have in our lives.

And we should be growing and becoming more in each of those areas.

So I should be coming more loving as I get in more maturity.

I should be coming more joy-filled, more peace-filled as I move into maturity.

This is the way of life.

This is how we follow Jesus.

But when it comes to false teachers, they might be able to demonstrate these fruits, but it's not going to be in a supernatural way over an extended amount of time.

The fruit of the teaching of this truth will also produce good fruit in the people that hear.

And so the message, if the message is ultimately truth, then it should strengthen and encourage the people that are listening, and they should follow Christ in a more deeper and more intimate way.

If false religious teaching is being spewed into the lives of the people that are listening, that typically will not produce godly spiritual character or fruit, but rather diseased worm-infested fruit.

That's what religion does.

It decays, it breeds in something that we never were intended to have.

So, see, deception has a way of coming into our lives, and it's the number one way that the enemy creeps into our lives to deceive us and get us to move in a direction that we were never intended to go.

And so we've got to be diligent.

We've got to be diligent not to be deceived.

We've got to know what the truth says.

We've got to walk in that truth, be founded on that truth, and test and ensure that what appears to be true is actually true.

The bottle of pills that I had, it looked like it was true.

It looked like it was what I needed to take, but in the end, it was very much not what I needed.

And we have to be so proactive in what we take in, what we consume, not just here on Sunday mornings, but what we take in throughout the week, what media we consume, what podcasts we listen to, what TV shows we watch.

We have to be so consistently focused in on this idea of taking every thought captive and making sure that we test to ensure that what appears to be true is actually true.

Jesus comes to the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

As we finish this series this morning, I want us to challenge ourselves to follow truth, to be people that are living in the power of life in the life transformation.

That we don't let the world and the culture disciple you, but rather we let your minds and your hearts be discipled by Jesus and Jesus alone.

There's been a lot of powerful truth that we've read over the past 10 months from the Sermon on the Mount.

Life-transforming message from the person of Jesus.

And here's my question for you.

If you've been with us for the past 10 months, what have you done with it?

This message was never a message that was just given to us so that we could talk about it, that we could quote it or memorize it.

But this is a message that was given to us so that we would live it out.

So what have you done with it?

As we close out the Sermon on the Mount, I encourage you to go back and continually read through these three chapters.

Make it a weekly practice in your life because in it, there's so much life and so much challenge for the follower of Jesus.

But as we close this morning, I want to leave you with just one last scripture.

Matthew chapter 7, verse 24, the last section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says this.

Matthew 7:24

Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise.

Like a person who builds a house on solid rock.

Though the rains come and torrents and the flood waters rise and the wind beats against the house, it won't collapse because it is built on bedrock.

It's built on truth.

And when everything comes against it, it stands.

But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey it is foolish.

Like a man who builds a house on sand.

When the rains and the floods come and the winds beat against the house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.

Verse 28.

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority, quite unlike the teachers of the religious law.

When we build our lives on religion and religious duty, in the end we will reap destruction.

But if we build our lives not just on hearing the words of Jesus, but actually living them out, doing what they say, then we will be like the wise man that builds his house on the firm foundation, on the bedrock.

And nothing can come against us.

So I want us to do this.

If you would, if you would just stand with me as we kind of close in prayer this morning.

And the band's going to come back up.

But I just want us to invite just the Holy Spirit in this morning and just ask him to reveal in our lives maybe the deceptions that we believed and how we need to maybe put into practice some of the teachings that we've heard over the past 10 months.

So let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, Lord, we just ask you to come.

Lord, we could preach all day long on the messages from the Sermon on the Mount.

But ultimately, what we need in this moment is we need a message from you.

And so, Lord, I pray that everybody that's watching online this morning, everybody that's sitting in this room this morning, Lord, that you will speak to each and every person directly.

Lord, even right now, Lord, help them to see maybe the deceptive lies that they have believed in their lives.

And Lord, I pray that today that they would turn from those lies and that they would ultimately walk in the truth.

So, Lord, just reveal that to them.

Reveal that to us.

Lord Jesus, I pray that as we've looked at the past 10 months, your word, it's in the Sermon on the Mount, and the incredible messages that you have given us.

Lord, our tendency is to hear but not actually put into practice.

And so, Lord, today I pray that you would not only reveal the deceptions that we maybe have believed, but Lord, that you would also, Lord, show us how we can practically live out the commands that you have given us in the Sermon on the Mount.

Let us build our houses.

Let us build our lives on the firm foundation of your word.

Let us not build our lives on the sand, but let us build it on the bedrock.

Let us stand secure when everything else is falling away from us.

Because we know that your message is truth.

And in your truth, in your way of life, Lord, there's freedom.

And so, Lord, let us walk in that this morning.

Holy Spirit, give us the power we need to do what you have called us to do.

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.