Hello, Life: Counterfeit Guides | Part 4

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Let me start off with this story.

There's a gal named Charlotte Robinette.

Maybe some of you heard this story before, but Charlotte Robinette was a nurse and she was packing her lunch for her shift and she gets a phone call.

And she gets on the phone and all of a sudden she hears her daughter.

And her daughter is completely freaked out.

Mom, they've taken me.

Mom, you've got to help.

Do whatever they tell you to do.

And then she's like, Kristen, what?

Here's another voice come on the phone.

We have your daughter.

If you want to see her again, you'll do everything we ask.

Or she's dead.

She is in a complete panic at this moment.

What do I do?

What can I do?

What do you need?

I need you to go to the nearest bank.

I need you to deposit funds to this account.

Gives her the account information.

She drives in a panic to the bank, rushes there, deposits some of the funds, gets another call.

Now I'd like you to go to this other bank.

We need you to deposit and withdraw other funds, same account.

So she drives there.

She's crisscrossing Phoenix.

Her whole day is spent that way.

She's just withdrawing funds, withdrawing funds, giving money away, giving money away, draining her account.

And then they say, now we need you to go into Mexico and we'll name and they'll name the bank.

We need you to give the rest of the money there.

So she goes across the border into Mexico.

And that final bank withdraws everything from her IRA, everything from her savings account.

She's completely bankrupt at this point.

She needs to see her daughter again.

All of her funds have been dispersed.

And now she and now she's given the demand.

Now drive back.

We'll tell you where you can meet your daughter.

And she's driving back.

She's in a complete panic.

She tries again to call her daughter, Kristen.

And this time she hears her voice.

Kristen, are you okay?

Where are you?

Where can I meet you?

Where are they getting?

She goes, Mom, what's wrong?

What's going on?

Kristen, where are you?

Mom, I'm at home.

I've been here all day.

What are you talking about?

And all of a sudden, Miss Robinette realizes she's been a victim of something called virtual kidnapping.

The FBI has claimed this, and it's a widespread pandemic across the and not just in America, but around the globe, where people will be imposters to try to get you to give your money and they'll come up with some story.

Oftentimes it's from people within prison, and they'll do social media background research to know all about you.

They'll use AI voice encoding, so they'll get your voice to sound exactly like yours, and they will scam people.

It happens all the time.

Last year the FBI said 26 million accounts had happened.

The single most financially devastating scam was one person was scammed for$47 million.

That's just one scam.

And these virtual impostures are rampant.

And oftentimes they'll pose as a family member.

It's interesting because they know that'll that'll get you.

Josh, it's your Uncle Jim.

I'm I'm in a, you know, I need money.

Oh my gosh, I gotta help Uncle Jim, right?

That's that's just natural for us to reach out and all of a sudden be empathetic and then fall for a counterfeit truth.

We get counterfeits all over the place, and and and the the worst kinds, oh gosh, they make my blood boil, but the worst kinds are the spiritual impostors.

The ones who use emotion and manipulation to get you to believe something that's that that's truth adjacent.

It's not quite true.

It looks kind of like true, it smells like true, it feels like true, but it's not true.

And they'll get you and I to believe that and buy into that.

And before we know it, we've just we've just withdrawn all our money.

We've drift withdrawn all of our morality, we've withdrawn all of our intellect, we've withdrawn all of our reasoning, we've withdrawn all of what matters.

And we've bought in to this sort of spiritual deception.

It's the it's the worst kind of deception.

And John's gonna bring up how some people in the early church were getting deceived, and we're gonna talk a bit about how we're deceived in some different ways today, things like relativism that deceives us by showing us that sort of all truth is sort of based on our emotional opinion, or things like universalism, where sort of all paths lead to the same God, right?

And things like Christian nationalism, where we conflate our our Christian identity with our identity as an American citizen.

I mean, there's all kinds of ideologies swirling around, and we just we just buy into them if we're not careful.

And John's gonna give us a grid.

He's gonna give us a one-word strategy so that we can come against this counterfeit truth, and we can see through it so that we don't end up bankrupt.

We can see through it.

He's gonna give us this grid, and it's a one-word grid, and it's this simple word, remain.

Remain.

And he's gonna use it five times in the passage that we'll read.

He's gonna say, remain in community.

He's gonna say, remain in God's word, and remain in Jesus.

Can you say those with me?

So remain in community, remain in God's word, and remain in Jesus.

Yeah.

Those are the three remains that John's gonna give us, and it's the antidote, it's the spiritual antivirus for your mind so that when this counterfeit truth comes around, when this ideology hits you, you can go, wait a second, is that true?

Well, I don't I want to remain in community.

What's the community saying?

I want to remain in God's word.

Is that what God's word says?

I want to remain in Jesus.

Is that what Christ is calling me to?

And so John's gonna give us this strategy because you and I don't have to be victims of spiritual identity theft.

We don't have to be victims of it.

We don't have to go bankrupt.

We don't have to buy into counterfeit truth.

We can know the difference and we can navigate life, and we won't do it perfectly in those times where we'll get caught up in something, we'll make some withdrawals here or there, but we don't have to go bankrupt.

We can keep coming back to the source and find our reality by remaining in community, by remaining in God's word, and by remaining in Christ.

So let's pray and then dive into the passage.

God, thank you for this church, thank you for these men and women who are after you or pursuing you, thank you for the ones that are here just exploring, wondering, is this even real?

Is this true?

Why did I come here?

I'm here, I guess I'll try to listen to this guy.

Lord, thank you for this community.

And thank you, God, that you haven't just left us to kind of wander through the fog of this life with all these different swirling ideologies, but you've given us some things that we can hold on to so we can navigate and have clarity.

And God, that our life might lead to flourishing and peace and shalom and goodness.

God, we ask that you would steer us and lead us and speak to us today, and we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, we're gonna get to this passage, but first, just a little bit of a little bit of context.

I know Dave shared a little bit of it.

Here's John, he's in his 90s, he's an old guy.

He's like one of the closest people to walk with Jesus.

He was there when Jesus was killed.

Only disciples that were there when Jesus was killed.

He was there when he rose from the dead.

He walked with them for three years.

He intimately knew Jesus.

He knew Jesus.

And here he is, he's talking to these first century, you know, believers that have been, you know, it's been decades since the ascension, since Jesus ascended to heaven, so they're probably discouraged, they're probably getting a little maybe maybe apathetic with their faith.

And then some people have been in their community trying to sway them with some counterfeit truth, trying to kind of persuade them about some weird thoughts.

And so John's gonna warn them.

So that's the context.

So check it out.

So get to your Bible, 1 John chapter 2, and we'll start in verse 18.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

It's kind of near the back of your Bible if you bring your Bible.

And you can turn to that or look on your device, 1 John 2, starting in verse 18.

So we're just gonna read the whole passage, okay?

So take a deep breath.

We're gonna read the whole passage, and I'm gonna just dive through it, okay?

One little section at a time.

It says this Dear children, this is the last hour.

And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come.

This is how we know it is the last hour.

They went out from us, but they didn't really belong to us.

For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.

But their going showed that none of them belong to us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

I don't write to you because you don't know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth.

Who's the liar?

It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.

Such a man is the Antichrist, he denies the Father and the Son.

No one who denies the Son has the Father, whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

See that what you heard from the beginning remains in you.

If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.

And this is what he promised us: even eternal life.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.

As for you, the anointing you receive from him remains in you, and you don't need anyone to teach you.

But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit, just as it has taught you, remain in him.

Follow his reasoning.

You see that remain coming up a bunch of times.

Ah.

So let's work through it together.

Dear children, this is the last hour.

He's in his 90s, but as sharp as a tack.

He loves the people he's speaking with.

Dear children.

I mean, he sees them as his own kids.

This is the last hour.

He's not talking chronology or he's talking eschatology.

Big word just means study of the last days.

Eschatos, the last ology, study of.

The study of the end times, the study of the last days.

He's like, it's the last days, it's the last hour.

John's like, I know you've been waiting around for decades and Jesus hasn't returned yet, but he said he was gonna return.

We don't know if it's gonna be like this afternoon after awakening, or it's gonna be like a thousand more years.

We don't know, but we do know that Jesus is gonna come back.

And so John is like, hey, I know it's difficult and it's hard, and maybe you're looking around the world going, is this worth it?

Look at my friends, they seem to be having more fun.

Here I am waiting for Jesus and living for him.

And John's like, no, no, no, it's gonna be worth it.

Stick with it.

It's the last hour.

Jesus is gonna come.

Let's live for what matters most, and let's watch out for deception.

It's the last hour.

And as you have heard, that the Antichrist is coming.

Antichrist.

I don't know what comes to your mind when you hear Antichrist.

It's kind of like, I think of like the old omen movie.

Antichrist, it's like dating me, but it was about like Damien, this devil kid who grows up and it's gonna be, he's gonna be the Antichrist.

The Bible talks about this Antichrist that's gonna come one day.

And and so I remember watching the Omen, getting super freaked out as a junior high kid.

I don't know why my parents let me watch that movie, but there's a scene in it where like the mom, I think, is like looking, because it's there's like the mark of the beast is gonna be on the antichrist.

666 is gonna be on there.

So she's looking in his hairline to like see it, and then all of a sudden she sees the 666, and she's like, It's my son.

And then I'm like, oh my gosh.

And I started watching it like, could I be the Antichrist?

And I remember running into the bathroom that night, and I'm like looking through my hair, like, do I have the 666?

And then I'm like, I didn't find it, and then I looked at my brother, I'm like, maybe it's him.

So I'm like looking through him, I'm like, he could be it.

I remember just seeing so scared, nightmares for weeks.

But the Bible does describe there's gonna be this character, but it won't be like Damien from the Omen.

It's gonna be this character that is very attractive, and they're gonna be brilliant, and they're gonna attract nations to them.

They'll be a global leader, and it'll be very intriguing, like maybe I should follow this person.

And so that's what the Bible, it's not this diabolical, insidious character that shows up with a pitchfork.

It's this really brilliant, engaging, compelling individual.

Everyone's like, wow man, they seem to have the answers.

So the Bible talks about that character coming one day.

They'll come, it'll be global, it'll be a wild event.

It'll be very clear what's happening to people who follow Jesus.

John says, even the antichrist is coming, but then he says lots of little antichrists.

Many antichrists have come.

Many antichrists.

What is he talking about?

And we just jump into the word there.

Antichrist is just against Christ or in place of Christ.

That's what that word means.

So it's just the person in place of Christ, the person against Christ.

John's the only one who uses this word, by the way, for this character, Antichrist.

You don't hear any other biblical author say that name.

You hear him called by different titles like the beast of the sea or the little horn or the man of lawlessness or the deceiver.

But John uses it here, and it's the only time that you see it in the Bible, is in John and his writings.

The Antichrist.

But then there's these little Antichrists.

Well, that's just anybody who's against Christ or anybody who is in place of Christ.

John later in the passage, you'll see he defines it as anybody who denies that Jesus is the Christ.

And that word Christ is not like Jesus' last name.

I know it's kind of confusing, but Jesus Christ.

It's his last full name.

But Christ is like a title.

So it's like Jesus, the anointed one, Christ.

Christos, the anointed one, Jesus Christ, Antichrist against Christ.

So lots of little anti-Christs are gonna come.

And John's referring there, it's like he's referring to a specific group.

And it's this group of people that were in the community and they were deceiving them.

Well, what were they deceiving them with?

They were talking, they didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one.

They believed that Jesus was a man, normal man, normal human.

And then when he was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, he got the spirit of the divine Messiah that came onto him all of a sudden.

And now he had the power to heal people and speak really wise things.

He had authority from this divine spirit.

And then right before Jesus went to die, the divine spirit left him.

And now he died a human normal death, never rose again.

And these people were saying, Hey, we've got access to the divine spirit that came onto Jesus.

We've got access to that now.

And we can give it to you if you do what we tell you and you follow our teaching.

And it's like, oh, whoa, you've got access?

That sounds good.

I want some of that, right?

You kind of fall into it.

And so that's what was happening.

And some of these people also kind of bought into the Gnostic idea, right?

That the body or anything physical was terrible, bad, evil, and only what was good was the mind and the intellect and the ideas.

So therefore, hedonism, right?

Live for pleasure, live to do whatever makes you feel good.

Or the body's bad.

So beat it into submission and self-flagellation and all kinds of terrible, destructive things.

So there's these people that infiltrated the community, and they're like, look, this is what's true.

And so John's like, oh, they're antichrists.

He just calls them what they are.

They're against Christ.

They don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah, God in the flesh.

So they're antichrists.

And they came in within.

Let's keep going.

If they had really belonged to us, they would have remained with us.

There's the first time he uses that word remain.

But their going showed that none of them belong to us.

So here's this first principle that we can grab onto.

That if you want to understand counterfeit truth and be able to see through it and not kind of fall prey to, you know, spiritual identity theft, you remain in community.

And John says the reason they're antichrist, they they they pulled away.

They pieced out.

They're like, these people aren't into it.

We're going to the next group to see if we can sell some of our wares to them.

And John's like, no, no, they truly showed us that they weren't one of us because they left us.

So if you want to be able to discern counterfeit truth, remain in community.

Now, sometimes, of course, right?

If you've watched the cult shows, it's like, oh, this is what they tell the cults like you can't leave the group.

And if you do, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

But cults are different because it's always about a cult leader.

And you can't move the group because you know then you're gonna, you know, it's like that, it's all about the leader in charge who needs the power, who will trick everybody and get them to do weird stuff.

But see, see, the community of faith is different.

It's never about the leader, it's always about Jesus, it's never about a human, it's not celebrity culture, it's so different.

The person leading is the most sacrificial servant who's just it's different.

So, so unlike occult groups, we as the followers of Jesus go, what's the community say?

What's the community say?

And as you depart from community, you become way more susceptible to falling into all kinds of crazy ideologies.

He goes on.

He says, But you have an anointing from the Holy One.

And all of you know the truth.

He goes, You're not like them.

You didn't fall for it.

He makes this major pivot and he goes, Ah, there's spiritual identity theft going on here.

I'm gonna remind you of your true identity.

Your true identity is you have an anointing, you have the Holy Spirit in you.

That when you place your faith in Jesus, all of a sudden the Spirit of God comes to dwell in you.

And he says, Oh, you have the anointing.

And all of you know the truth.

I was at a church service once in Santa Cruz, and there was this guy who came up to me right after kind of the worship time.

He's like, he's like, look at my hands, Pastor.

And I'm like, what?

And uh his hands look kind of weirdly wet, and I'm like, What's wrong with you?

He's like, it's oil.

I'm like, okay, what's what are you doing?

And he's like, that that God gave me oil, and it showed up on my hands.

Look at it, and I'm like, huh! Like, okay, it's yeah, I can see it.

Maybe that happened.

I don't know.

That's that's amazing.

He goes, it's supernatural.

I'm like, okay, very cool.

Wow.

Uh and then he said, No, I need to get up in front, and I need everyone to have the oil on their hands.

I need everyone to to to have this oil appear, and God's gonna make it appear.

Let me go up now.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, no, like we're not doing this.

You're not going up front.

We don't need the oil to appear on our hands.

So that we can have some mystical experience.

We have the Holy Spirit of God in our bodies.

I don't know how much more mystical you can get.

You've got God, the creator of the universe, living in you.

I don't need oil to show up on my hands, bro.

We don't need the whole community to have oil show up on our hands.

We have the anointed one in us.

You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

I don't write to you because you don't know the truth, but because you do know the truth, and because no lie comes from the truth.

I love how John's just like so juxtaposition.

He's just like, children of God, children of the devil, light, dark, truth, lies, righteousness, sin.

Whoa, he's just constantly contrasting things in extremes because so much gray had settled into the community.

He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

There's contrasts so that you can know right from wrong.

And here he's contrasting truth with lies.

He says, Who's the liar?

It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.

Such a man is the Antichrist.

He denies the Father and the Son.

No one who denies the Son has the Father.

Whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

He's just making it really clear.

Here's who the Antichrists are.

It's just the ones that deny Jesus is God.

So we've got like thousands of Antichrists, millions in the Bay Area.

If you look at the globe, we've got about 5.5 billion people, John would say, they're antichrists.

They don't believe that Jesus was God.

We've got about 2.5 billion that say, no, Jesus is God.

He is the Lord of the universe.

That's the ratio in our globe today.

So to John and how he's describing it here, we've got a lot of people that are antichrist.

And then he says, See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.

If it does, you Will remain in the Son and in the Father.

And this is what He promised us, even eternal life.

So remain in community and then see what you heard from the beginning remains in you.

Well, what is it that you heard from the beginning?

Well, you heard this good news that John writes previously that you see at football stadiums that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

This is what you heard from the beginning.

This is the apostolic teaching.

This is Jesus' message.

This is what the entire Bible all points to.

This unified storyline, all directing everybody to Jesus.

And this incredible good news that although we're sinful people, because in the beginning we just said no to God.

He gave us free will.

We said, we don't want to do your thing.

We want to do our thing.

And we're deceived in different ways.

And then sin enters the world.

And God doesn't say, well, I'm going to scrap that world and try something different.

That didn't work.

God enters the brokenness in the person of Jesus.

He lives a perfect life, demonstrating what love really is, and then goes to the cross and pays our debt of sin onto himself, dies, rises again from the grave, defeats death, defeats sin, and makes a way for us to know him and be in relationship with him and be washed clean and be made new and be filled with meaning and purpose and to have a new identity and to be in community and to have purpose in our world.

This is the good news, the gospel.

This is what you heard from the beginning.

And everything in the Bible points to it.

Jesus knew the scriptures inside and out.

John knew the scriptures inside and out, and all of it points to Jesus.

I was hanging out with some Christian leaders some years ago, and they were saying, you know, we can't really know.

I don't know if I'd call them Christian leaders, actually, now I think about it.

They're like, we can't really know if what the Bible says.

I don't know if we can be certain about any of it.

Because we're reading it through a 21st century Western Anglo-Saxon view.

And so because we're imperfect readers, we can't really interpret a perfect text, so therefore the text is imperfect because we're imperfect.

We can never really be certain about anything.

And I was like, huh.

That kind of sounds true, but kind of not.

Right?

I was like, do I withdraw some of my money?

And then I had another friend that was there.

He started like literally crying.

He's like, I can't know anything anymore.

I'm like, everything I've learned, there's nothing I can be certain about.

And he's crying.

I'm like, oh my gosh, this doesn't seem right.

And then I was uh I was in college at UCSC.

I'm like, well, you know, maybe this will work for me because I've got a big essay due on John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

And maybe I'll just submit a paper with just a little sentence at the top, like, I can't really know, I can't be certain about anything from John Steinbeck's East of Eden because I'm reading it from hundreds of years after his life.

And, you know, I mean I'm kind of near Salinas Valley, but I didn't live there, and you know, and so I don't really know.

I can't be certain about anything about this.

So could you please understand?

You know, I've I've got an imperfect lens, and therefore I can't know, and uh, but can you please give me a good grade?

I was like, wait a second, just because there are uncertainties that we have doesn't mean that there are things we can be certain about.

Or as a mentor of mine who's passed away now, but he would always say to me, Josh, you gotta doubt your doubts.

You gotta doubt your doubts sometimes, and you gotta believe your beliefs.

I was like, huh, okay.

And so just because I don't am not certain about you know who exactly John Steinbeck was, there are things I can know.

Like he based the novel off two biblical characters from Genesis 4, Cain and Abel, or that he wrote about the Salinas Valley, because he really wanted his four-year-old and his six-year-old to understand how beautiful the Salinas Valley was.

That's why he was so descriptive and amazing in his literature.

But these are things I can be certain about.

There are things I can be certain about about Giant Steinbeck's East of Eden, and there are hundreds of things I can be certain about when it comes to God's word.

Hundreds, thousands of things.

And just because I have an imperfect lens that I read it through doesn't mean that it's not perfectly trustworthy.

So there's a little difference.

We've got to be aware of it when it comes to remaining in God's word or letting God's word remain in us.

This will help us to decipher a counterfeit truth.

So read it, pray through it, memorize it, live it.

This is one of those big remains.

Remain in community.

Remain in God's word.

And then John's gonna say, and remain in Jesus.

See that what you've heard from the beginning remains in you.

If it does, you'll remain in the Son, the Father, and this is what he promised us, even eternal life.

I skipped that part.

That's a big deal.

We get eternal life in Jesus.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.

As for you, the anointing you receive from him remains in you.

And you don't need anyone to teach you.

But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit, just as it is taught you, remain in him.

The final remain: remain in Jesus.

Remain in Christ.

Remain in community, remain in God's word, and remain in Christ.

These are the three remains that will help us from falling prey to spiritual identity theft.

So now let's talk a little bit about, you know, what are the ideologies today?

What are the counterfeit truths that we battle?

Well, one of them is probably top five, I would guess, is relativism, right?

Relativism where, you know, truth isn't really true.

It's it's based on your societal norms and your cultural context and your sort of personal emotional opinions.

That is what determines uh truth.

We don't really have objective truth.

It's more about what you feel.

And so you have things like, you know, follow your heart or live your truth.

And if you have a desire for something, it's a goal, a dream, a relationship, a sexual urge, you you should pursue that goal.

I mean, that's that's your truth.

In fact, if someone tells you not to pursue one of those things, they are harmful.

You should watch out for them.

So that's that's what culture is saying today.

If someone tells you to suppress that, that's evil.

Sounds a little bit like the hedonism of John's day.

Whatever feels right, that's what's, that must be what's good.

But what does the Bible say?

That sounds actually pretty cool.

Like I if I'm really honest, I'm like, wow, relativism.

I kind of like it.

Because I like to get along with everybody and I don't want to disrupt anyone's life, and and I want things that make me feel good.

So I'm like, God, seriously, I'm like, I want relativism to be true.

But is it true?

And I look at scripture and I go, ah, John 17, sanctify them by the truth.

Your word is truth.

Uh-oh.

That that doesn't sit right with relativism.

All your words are true, Psalm 119.

All your righteous laws are eternal.

Uh-oh.

That sounds different.

John 14, 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus embodies truth.

He says, He's the truth.

Well, how could everybody's truth be true when Jesus says, I am the truth?

So relativism kind of creates this moral fog, and we're trying our best to do what feels right, but then it oftentimes sort of ends us in difficult, broken places.

And Jesus says, I am the truth, and God says his word is true.

So he creates a very clear path.

It's a narrow path, but it's very clear, and it leads to flourishing life.

The Bible says something really different than relativism of our culture.

Deconstructing is kind of a popular thing today.

I'm glad it is, because it's really, there's a lot of deconstruction we need to do.

There's some things I grew up with that's like, whoa, that is not from this Bible.

I need to deconstruct that.

I think the question is, what are we rebuilding on once we've deconstructed?

And I find a lot of friends are kind of rebuilding on this sort of neo-relativism.

That's just like, well, you know, this wasn't true from whatever I learned, but so now I'm gonna base it on this.

And recently I had a friend conversation with a friend.

I'm like, so so what do you think about the Bible?

Well, I can't really trust the Bible.

So, okay, anymore.

All right, well, what are you living for?

What are your values?

Well, you know, I really value justice and equality and sacrificial love and dignity of human beings.

I'm like, wait a second, that's from the Bible.

And she's like, well, yeah, I know, but you know, but I don't really trust it.

How can you really trust this book?

And but everything you've just talked about is from the Bible.

Well, okay, so what?

That's like, oh, whoa, interesting.

It seems that we value the Father's values and world that he's created, but we don't want to credit him as the author, nor do we want to yield our lives to him.

We in our culture today, I think we want the kingdom without the king.

And so we all are building, rebuilding, but it's all building on stuff we think is right versus on what is true.

Relativism often leads to universalism, right?

The idea that all paths lead to God.

It's all really the same, right?

My Hindu friend, my person who believes in uh, you know, Allah over here, and my Mormon cousin, and you know, everybody's just it's all the same, right?

Everything goes up to the same.

By the way, that's a that's a truth statement, right?

Everything goes up to the, can't you see it from my perspective?

Then you'll know the truth.

Uh-oh, uh-oh.

Right?

The error and logic there is pretty clear.

And so, but we fall into it.

It's like IKEA, the last part of IKEA, right?

Three times the size, four times, five times this building, 25 aisles, 40 feet high, every item a different religious belief, every item valid.

Just depending on what you believe.

It's all the same.

And then I go, well, what does the Bible say?

That sounds awesome.

Gosh, I want that to be true so badly.

And yet I go, what does the Bible say?

And I look at Isaiah 45, 20.

There's no God apart from me, a righteous God and a savior, there's none but me.

1 John 5.

We know the Son of God has come so that we may know him who is true.

And then Jesus' words.

Oh, why'd you have to say that?

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

Our culture bristles and says, Oh, you bigot.

But it's not arrogant if it's true.

Another thing that's kind of crept into our ethos is Christian nationalism, where we identify, you know, it's like, well, I'm a Christian, therefore I'm an American.

Or I'm an American, therefore I'm a Christian.

And we conflate our identity as followers of Jesus with our identity as American citizens.

And it's a very destructive thing.

It doesn't just happen here in America.

You could be a Chinese nationalist, Christian nationalist there.

You could be a Christian nationalist in Brazil.

I mean, it could be anywhere, right?

But you see it here in our country start to pop up and boil up, and you go, ugh.

And you see throughout the history of our country, it's the Christian nationalism where Christians sort of cuddled up to power so they could be safe.

And then they fell into weird, false teaching from scripture that where they justified atrocious things to human beings like slavery.

And it's Christian nationalism that led to that.

And all of a sudden you see it in our culture, and it's like, uh-oh, what does the Bible say?

Is that right?

And you look at the scriptures and you go, Philippians 3, our citizenship is in heaven.

You know, it's not about our national heritage, it's about our heavenly citizenship.

Our citizenship is in heaven, not in this country or any country.

It's different.

It's in heaven.

Our ultimate allegiance is to God's kingdom, not some government.

And it's different than patriotism.

Patriotism is just simply the love of country.

Patriotism is actually really good no matter where you live.

You could be a Christian living in Indonesia.

It would be great if you were a patriot of Indonesia.

You'd want Indonesia to be the best country that it could possibly be.

You're a citizen of heaven, you're a citizen of Indonesia, and you want it to be the best country it could possibly be.

When we're inspired by the country we live in, we want to bring our best to it.

And when it's in error, we want to hold it up and critique it.

That's good.

So if you're living in the United States and you love your country, this is actually not a bad thing if you're a Christian.

It's a good thing, including holding it up and holding up values and critiquing when you need to.

So those are some ideologies that we kind of got to look through: relativism and universalism and Christian nationalism.

What kind of posture should we have as we're sort of looking at this?

I think Mark Yarhouse has some really good helpful posture ideas.

He says, one, we can be cultural warriors where we sort of war against anything that comes against that's that's a little anti-uh scripture, and we can just go to battle with people.

You know, you've seen that.

I've been sort of guilty of that at times.

You can be a Christian, you can be a cultural capitulator where it's just, well, yeah, just go along with whatever culture says.

I've been sort of guilty of that at times, too.

Yeah, just, I don't know, we'll just let everything just happen however people want it to.

Uh or you can be a kingdom ambassador where you can say, wait a second, how do I hold these values from Scripture and then lovingly and with compassion in my heart, you know, persuade people toward Jesus.

Knowing that my mission ultimately is to share Jesus with everybody, with every nation.

We're a faith-based group that is for all nations.

It's the original call to Abraham.

You'll be a blessing, and all nations will be blessed through you.

Those are the postures that we can take, and I'm hoping we can take that last one.

Kingdom ambassadors.

All kinds of false ideas.

Woo! Right?

It's like, man, there's hundreds, there's probably well not hundreds, but there's probably hundreds more.

There's several more I can think of.

But that's the only, that's that's how much time we got today, just to kind of look through a few.

And to have this posture as we're as we're wrestling through it.

Uh you won't, you won't fall for these, for these false, false truths, for these counterfeit counterfeit truths.

Because awakening church, you have the anointing.

You have the Holy Spirit in you if you've placed your faith in Jesus.

And you'll walk with Jesus.

And there's three things you can do to make sure you don't fall for it and bankrupt yourself and withdraw all your money.

You can remain in community, you can remain in God's word, and you can remain in Jesus.

And it's personal.

I've got a few friends that were in my wedding that they would say, I don't believe in this.

I don't think Jesus is the Messiah, I don't think Jesus is God.

And I look at their lives and where that trajectory led them, and it is so heartbreaking with each one of them.

One of them won't even talk with his spouse or his three daughters.

They're separated and there's just no communication.

He's totally isolated.

And that's the trajectory where that led him.

And I think of the others, and I just go, wow.

As we pursue these things and fall for these things, it doesn't end well.

And so I want to encourage you, and I want to encourage myself to hold to this and to remain.

And if you're here today and you're like, I've never said hello to life, you know, I've never, you know, I've never known, I don't know Jesus.

I would just encourage you today to go, maybe there's something to this.

To say hello, life.

Hello, Jesus.

I trust that you came, that you died, that you rose again.

And I want to put my faith in you.

I'm done living my life.

I want your life instead.

And as we do that, as we remain, as we turn to Christ, we don't just say hello to life.

I mean, we say hello to forgiveness when he cleanses us.

You know, we say hello to purpose when he shows us what we're made for and how we're wired.

You know, we say hello to meaning when he starts to make sense of our lives, even the difficult, painful parts.

You know, we say hello to belonging when we realize there's a God who loves us and knows us, everything about us, and loves us even still.

We say hello to love when we realize the sacrificial love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross.

And as we say hello to life, we also say goodbye.

We say goodbye to shame, we say goodbye to regret, we say goodbye to we say hello to life.

God, thank you for your life.

Thank you for the truth of your word, thank you for the community of faith, and Jesus, thank you for you.

God, thank you for loving us, for knocking on the door of our lives, our hearts, for saying hello to us.

I thank you that we can say hello back and we can say goodbye to sin, goodbye to death as we say hello to life.

We love you, Lord.

Help us to remain.

We pray it in your name.

Amen.

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