A Different Authority | Brad Straarup

I have a question for all of you this morning.

Have any of you ever believed something that you thought to be true for a long period of time?

And then later you found out the thing that you believed to be true was actually false.

Has that ever happened to anyone?

I was researching some of the lies that are common, some of the lies that we often believe.

And I'm gonna play a game with you because I want to see how many of you actually believed these lies.

Here's the first one.

Goldfish have three-second memories.

Anyone ever believed that?

I believed that.

Like two weeks ago, we were in a pit store, and I said to Paige, I was like, oh my gosh, these goldfish are crazy.

They can only remember three seconds.

I believe that.

Turns out that's false.

They can actually be trained.

I didn't know that.

So whatever you do to your goldfish, they remember these things.

Okay, it's important for that.

So, how about this one?

We only use 10% of our brains.

They don't ever believe, okay.

False.

We use 100%.

And and you would know that if you ever try to memorize song lyrics, you'd be like, Yeah, I'm trying everything in my power to be able to remember that.

That is false.

Here's another one.

And I'm thankful to God for this one.

Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis.

Did anyone used to believe this?

Did your parents used to say you can't crack your knuckles?

Well, you need to know this that way back when a doctor literally spent 60 years of his life cracking just his left hand to prove that that wasn't true.

And I'm thankful to God because it gave me permission just to crack as much as I want.

That's the one thing that I feel like I could never get over.

There we go.

Someone's like, okay, praise God.

Now I can do that.

There's some lies that are harmless, but there's some lies that are harmful.

Here's an example of one.

Uh, doctors recommended cigarettes for your health.

Anyone ever believe that?

In the 1930s, that was the case.

Doctors would actually say, you need to smoke a cigarette because it's good for your throat, it's good for your waistline, it's good for your lungs.

I had an uncle that was told this who was asthmatic and was recommended smoking as a way to get rid of his asthma.

No jokes.

Okay, here's another one.

And I think this is the craziest one.

Number five.

A lobotomy can cure mental illness.

Okay, do you know what a lobotomy is?

It's when they take an ice pick and they put it through your eye and they scratch at the front of your brain to sever your frontal lobe, and they said that it made people docile.

This is something that actually used to happen, and it happened 75 years ago, and it won a Nobel Prize.

50,000 people went under this and it messed people up completely.

Okay?

Completely.

Here's what I want every single one of us to know.

What do those lies have in common?

Not the goldfish one, but the other ones.

What did they have in common?

Here's what they had: there was just enough truth for people to believe them.

You see, one of the most dangerous lies is not a complete lie, one of the most dangerous lies is one that sounds like the truth.

And over the past couple of weeks, we started the series called Cults and Counterfeits.

And what we've been doing is we've been looking at what the gospel is really, and then what are some of the counterfeits that will often come against the gospel.

And what we've learned throughout the series is this that a partial truth can destroy your life, but a whole truth can transform your life.

A partial truth can destroy your life, but the whole truth can transform your life.

Spurgeon said it this way.

Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong.

Discernment is knowing the difference between right and almost right.

Right and almost right.

And as a church, I believe we need more discernment than ever because when the enemy comes, what the enemy does to all of us is he doesn't come and tell a complete lie.

What he does is he starts with the truth and he just twists it a little bit.

He just kind of twists it.

And we start believing it, and the next thing we know, we are in a ditch.

He's doing that now.

He's also done that for the last 2,000 years.

In fact, when Paul writes Galatians, that's what he's writing about.

Well, what you have is you have people that have learned the gospel.

Paul leaves, and then other people come in and start teaching other ideologies.

And he writes to that context in Galatians 1.

He says this, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ, and you are turning to a different gospel.

A counterfeit.

This has been the theme verse for the series, a counterfeit, which is really no gospel at all.

Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and they're trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

He doesn't call it a worse gospel, he doesn't call it a weaker gospel, he calls it a different one.

And then he says it's actually no gospel at all.

So that comes the question that we've been trying to answer, which is this how do you spot a fake?

How do you spot a fake gospel?

And what we've learned is that you do not study a fake in order to know what's fake, you study what's real.

And if you know the real thing, then all of a sudden the fake becomes so incredibly obvious.

That's what we learned in week one of our series.

We looked at what the gospel is and what the gospel is really.

And we built this detector that we said, if you want to know what the gospel is, there's three major questions that you need to be able to answer.

And the first question is this what is your final authority?

And our answer to that is the Bible and the Bible alone.

The second question is, who is Jesus?

And we said, Jesus is fully God, he is fully man, he is uncreated, he is the savior of the world who came to the earth, lived a sinless life, died a sinless death, and was raised again.

Can I get a good amen?

That's who Jesus is.

And the third was this: how are you saved?

And we said, we are not saved by works alone.

No, what we are saved is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God be alone.

Week two, what we did is we took that detector and we took it to our doors where you have people often Mormonism, you have Jehovah's Witnesses who are coming to your doors, and what they're trying to do, they're kind and they're nice, but they're trying to sell you a different Jesus.

Last week we looked at Catholicism, which that isn't at our door for many of us, that's at our tables.

That's family members, people that we love, aunts and uncles and grandpas and grandmas, and what we said is Catholicism, they're not trying to give you a different Jesus, they're actually trying to give you a different salvation, a workspace salvation, which is really no salvation at all.

And this week, what we're doing is we're not at the door, we're not at the table, but we're working upstream.

And what I want to show you is the counterfeiter himself, the forgerer himself.

Today I want to show you how Satan begins to bring counterfeits, and if we're not careful, it can happen to every single one of us.

You see, because even as we're bringing the series to a close, what you need to know is that I do not know what cults, I don't know what counterfeits are gonna come, but what I can show you is the strategy the enemy uses.

I don't know what's gonna come in the future, but I can show you his strategy, and if you can see his strategy, then you'll know how to guard against that.

And the crazy thing is to look at what he's gonna do in the future, all you have to do is look what he did in the past.

So we're gonna go all the way back to the beginning.

If you have your Bibles, I want you to open up to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

If you don't have your Bibles, it'll be on the screen.

You can also tap the circle disc right in front of you.

All of our notes will be right over there.

But we're going all the way back to the beginning, Genesis 3.

It says this, let me give some context while you turn there.

Is that God has created the heavens and the earth, he has created man and woman, and he has said this.

He said, You may eat freely out of every tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If you eat its fruit, you will die.

That's the context.

Okay?

Pick it up in verse chapter 3, verse 1.

It says this.

Now the serpent was more crafty than all the other wild animals the Lord had made.

And he said to the woman, Did God really say?

Did God really say He says, Did God really say that you're not supposed to eat out of any tree in the garden?

I want you to notice this.

He doesn't contradict the Bible, he doesn't argue.

What he does is he asks a question that right that raises doubt.

He opens a question which is already closed, which shows you one of the enemy's first strategies.

God has spoken, he's gonna come and he is gonna try to twist scripture.

That's always the door.

He is gonna try to twist scripture.

That's why we said the very first thing that we care about is what is our final authority?

And we say that it is the Bible and the Bible alone.

Why?

Because it's the first place that the enemy is gonna come and he's gonna attack.

And today it doesn't look like did God really say.

Often what it looks like is that's not what the Bible really meant.

That's how you're here to that's not really what the Bible meant.

Did God really say that sex is supposed to be between one husband and one wife?

Man, that's not really what the Bible meant.

You see, because today what it really means is that God is love and love is love, and it doesn't matter how that happens, as long as you're just safe and happy and healthy, and you'll be good.

Did God really say that there's only two genders?

Man, that's not really what the Bible said.

You know, God made you, some of you are born that way, that's just what it's supposed to look like.

Don't even worry about it, don't stress about it.

It's not a big deal.

You ever heard these before?

Did God really say there's only one way to get to God?

Man, that's not really what the Bible means.

As long as you're a good person, you know, it's so arrogant to say that it's only Jesus.

Like, let's ignore the fact that He said He is the way, the truth, and life.

Let's ignore all of that.

There's many ways to get to God.

Did God really say that there is no hell?

That's not what the Bible said.

A loving God will never send you to hell.

That's exactly what it looks like.

And what happens is we're in a culture where people are deconstructing.

Have y'all heard that word deconstruction?

Here's how deconstructing works is they take people take the beliefs that have been handed to them by their parents and they start deconstructing them and studying them to see whether or not they're true.

Now, here's the thing: I actually think that's wise.

Like, I don't think you just have to believe what your parents believed.

I think it's important to be able to study things, but when you study it, study it with the rock of scripture.

You see, because we're deconstructing, and what we're doing is we're letting culture inform us, we're letting culture be our rock.

We've said this before that we have to come to a place where we decide what is our rock?

Is the Bible our rock and culture comes around it, or is culture our rock and we're trying to whoop the Bible around it?

You can deconstruct and study things, but use the Bible, and you'll what you'll find is we'll be like Joshua, who said this for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Like I'm not here to bring you Brad's opinions.

I'm sure you don't care about Brad's opinions.

What you care about is what does this book say?

We're a church that says, No, we're gonna stand on the word of God, we're not afraid of what it says.

This is our rock, and the enemy's often gonna come and he's gonna try to twist that.

And once he started the conversation, there's two lanes he will walk down.

One is subtraction, which is what we see the Jehovah's Witnesses do with the Trinity and hell, and the other one is addition, which is what Mormonism does when they say that you can become like a God.

I'll show it to you.

Genesis 3, verse 2, it says this.

Genesis 3:2

The woman said to the serpent, We may eat of any tree in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden.

You must not touch it or you will die.

Here's what he says you will certainly not die.

Hey, I know God said that's a pretty big deal.

It's not a big deal.

Like, I know that you're supposed to worry about that, you don't need to worry about that.

This is the first no judgment sermon ever preached.

Like, hey, don't worry about it.

Just do you, just do you, boo-boo.

Like, as long as you do you, you'd be good.

The first no judgment sermon ever preached.

I remember in 2010 there was a uh theological movement that started happening called the hypergrace movement.

Okay, I don't know if you guys remember the hypergrace movement, and what they taught is that the love of Jesus is so strong and the cross is so magnificent and is so final and so beautiful.

All of that is true, and they say to such a degree that you can just keep on sinning.

You can just keep doing whatever you want, God will forgive it, don't even worry about it.

What they've done is they've taken scripture, which is good, but then they've taken another scripture where the Bible literally says that does not give you license to sin, and they've subtracted it.

That happened in our lifetime, that happened 16 years ago.

This hyper-grace movement that started to come around.

Today, what this looks like, many people fall into this trap.

Jehovah's Witnesses did that, but this is also, we haven't talked about this, what progressive or what Christianity does.

Okay, it's also a counterfeit.

They try to reinterpret the Bible through the lens of social justice, humans, right, human rights, and personal feelings.

And they adapt the Bible to fit culture, especially when it comes to views on contemporary sexuality.

Now, here's what they'll do they'll appeal appeal to a non-Christian culture, they appear to be biblical, but they undercut scripture, and as for truth, it looks contemporary, but they rehash old heresies.

Okay?

Progressive Christianity will accept diverse lifestyles, just a you-boo-boo.

They will also call the Bible metaphorical.

So they'll say Jesus says he's the way, the truth, and life.

He didn't really mean that.

Jesus says that, you know, narrow is the path and wide is the path that leads to destruction.

He didn't really mean that.

The whole Red Sea crossing thing, like that didn't actually happen.

Like Jonah being in the belly of a fish that didn't actually happen.

They're gonna say that none of those things are true.

And they'll push back against the consistent teachings of the Bible that have happened through creeds and through history upon history.

In fact, we might say, like, what is the big deal of that?

But you need to know this that when you start pulling one thread and you start lowering the Bible in one area, eventually that will lead into a ditch that lowers the Bible in all areas.

So when we're minimizing one part of scripture, it is a big deal.

Richard Nieber, who's one of the greatest missiologists, said this.

Eventually, the end result is this: a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.

Richard Worty, an American philosopher, said this.

I'm so delighted that liberal theologians are doing their best to do what Pio Nono said shouldn't be done.

They're trying to accommodate Christianity to modern science, modern culture, and democratic society.

If I were a fundamentalist Christian, I would be appalled by the wishy-washiness of the liberal version of Christian faith.

But since I am a non-believer who is frightened at the barbarity of many fundamental Christian beliefs, what we believe about God and gender and sin and salvation and hell, he says this I welcome theological liberalism.

Maybe liberal theologians will eventually produce a version of Christianity so wishy-washy that nobody would be interested in being Christian anymore.

If so, something will have been lost, but probably something more would have been gained.

Y'all, we stand on the Bible.

We're not gonna water it down, we're not gonna be wishy-washy.

Someone came up to me in the lobby and they said, Will you ever talk on this?

And I said, If it's in the Bible, we have talked on it and we're gonna keep talking on it.

Because, like I said, I'm not here to give you my words, I'm here to give you his words.

And if it's said in the Bible, we're gonna believe it.

We're never gonna subtract from it.

It's one of the enemy's first strategies.

The next one is this, Genesis 3, verse 4.

Genesis 3:4

He says, You will not certainly die.

There's the subtraction.

The serpent said to the woman, For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

You will be like God.

What he's doing is he's promising elevation.

That's what Mormonism does.

It says you can also become like a God.

And it is a counter, it's a counterfeit.

I think one of the most common counterfeits today that will add to the gospel is the prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel.

That Jesus died that you can be happy, healthy, and wealthy.

Gospel.

The you're a king's kid gospel.

So you know everyone's just gonna bless you, and everything in your life is gonna be perfect.

You're never gonna have any trouble.

What do we do with John 16, 33, where Jesus said, In this life you will have trouble?

He says, You will have trouble.

He says, But take heart, I have overcome the world.

What the prosperity gospel will often do is it will take a belief, they have this belief that they have the power to manipulate the spiritual realm.

Let's name it and claim it.

Okay?

And I really want you to look in your heart whether or not there's some parts of you that have ever believed something like this, because we can come to a place that we're like, if we're if we're sick, all you have to do is believe and declare it every day and confess it every day.

And if as long as you confess it, eventually God will do what you want.

If you're struggling with something, just name it and claim it.

Just keep saying it, and if you say it long enough, you know, with enough faith enough, eventually that thing's gonna happen.

If you're struggling with your finances, if you're like, man, I'm in this place where I'm really struggling, what you need to do is you need to sow a seed, and if you sow a seed, then you're gonna reap a harvest because that's what God says.

And if you just do that long enough and claim it long enough, then eventually it's gonna happen to you.

Y'all, that is so dangerous.

That is so dangerous, and none of that is what the Bible actually taught.

But so often we have people who are believing that.

Now, I'm not saying wealth is bad, I'm not saying wealth is a gift, is bad.

In fact, in Ecclesiastes, the Bible literally says that if you have wealth because of your work, you can enjoy it.

You see, we don't give to get, we give to give.

We give because God gave.

We give because we care about the mission that God has placed us upon.

Like, why do I give here to Spirit?

I give here to Spirit because I have seen over the short couple of months that we've been in church, 137 people get baptized.

That's not people just lifting up their hands saying, like, man, I'm gonna think about that.

No, that's people saying I'm going all in.

That's what we're about.

But so often we settle for something that isn't actually true.

It's very similar to some proponents of what used to be called the word of faith.

Now, there's spectrums on all of this, so not everyone believes the same things, but what was often taught is this faith is a tangible spiritual force, and that by speaking positive, faith-filled words, positive confession, believers can compel God to grant them physical health, material wealth, and overall success in life.

Have y'all ever heard someone say, I manifested that?

This really new age concept that I manifested this vacation.

There's a book called The Secret, which is literally about that.

That if you just believe it and declare it long enough, the universe will grant it to you.

Y'all, that does not pass the Bible.

That's not what it is.

The challenge is the enemy is always gonna twist and then he's gonna try to subtract from or add to.

So the question is this what do we do?

What do we do?

Here's what I want you to do.

The first thing I want you to do is I want you to trust the Bible.

Can we trust the Bible?

Can we love the Bible?

The Bible is literally called the holy word of God.

What does that mean?

Holy means set apart.

And my question is this does it have a set apart place in your life?

Like, are you actually setting it apart?

Psalm 119, 105 says this your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

That means this the Bible has everything we need for every part of our lives, whether it's marriage or dating or waiting or finances or you're struggling or depression, the Bible has it.

I want you to look at me.

If you're here in the room and you're struggling with depression and anxiety, you're in a hole so deep and you don't know what to do about it.

Pick up his word.

Pick up his word.

It has what you need in it.

It is beautiful, it has what we need.

Matthew 24, 35 says, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Man, man can destroy it, they can try to deconstruct it, they can try to do anything.

But the Bible is here, and the Bible is here to stay.

Can I get a good amen?

That's what it says.

And people are like, How do I know that I can trust the Bible?

Okay, there's a couple of reasons.

One of the reasons is this it's historically accurate.

It's historically accurate.

You can trust the Bible because it's accurate.

Some people are like, you know, the Bible's just filled with really good principles, but you know, it's not humanly possible that a dude can spend his three days in the belly of a fish.

Like it's not humanly possible that the Red Sea can split.

Yeah.

A virgin birth is not humanly possible.

Someone raising from the dead is not humanly possible.

We don't believe the Bible because it's humanly possible.

We believe the Bible because it's God possible.

Come on, he's the one that can make it.

That's why you have to have faith.

I heard a story about a little girl who wrote an academic paper, and she decided to write it on Jonah.

And she took it up to a teacher and she said, I wrote this, I wrote this paper on Jonah.

And the teacher said, You can't write on that.

And she said, Why?

And the teacher said, Because it's not true.

And she said, No, it is true.

Like, how do you know it's true?

She said, Because I believe it.

She says, It's not true.

She said, I'll tell you what, when I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah myself, and then I'll find out.

She's like, What if Jonah went to hell?

And she's like, Well, then you can ask him.

Don't say that.

Don't, don't, that's bad.

Don't don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Bad preacher joke.

Brad preacher joke.

C.S.

Lewis was the ultimate skeptic.

And he said this: I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

It is the Bible that gives us sight.

Psalm 33, 4.

For his word is right and true.

It's not only true, it's right.

Do you know how I know it's historically accurate?

There's three standards that people use to prove whether or not something is accurate.

One of them is eyewitness accounts.

This entire book was written because of eyewitness accounts.

The four gospels are all four eyewitness accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus.

Like we know that's the case.

Another source of truth, standard of truth, is that it needs to be meticulously copied.

And you know the Jewish people are some of the best at this.

When they translated the Torah, what they did is they translated not word for word, letter for letter.

And when they finished the book, they would go to the middle of the Torah, they knew the middle letter, and they would count in both directions.

And if it didn't match perfectly, they would throw away the entire thing.

That's how accurate.

Even when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947, literally a couple uh 70 years ago, when they were found, what they found is they were the oldest scrolls we ever had, but they were as accurate and identical to the newer ones that we had.

The Bible is historically accurate.

A third reason that we know is archaeological confirmation.

Y'all, there were times when people were trying to find out where certain civilizations were.

They started in the Bible and they went where the Bible said and they found it.

In fact, one of the only civilizations that Never found was the Hittites.

For 1900 years, people were like, okay, the Bible kind of missed on that one.

And literally, 1900 years later, they found the Hittite.

Archaeological confirmation.

The Bible is historically accurate.

Not only is it historically accurate, it's scientifically accurate.

How many of you took science in school?

Anyone took science in school?

How many of the things that you were taught in science in school no longer apply?

Yeah.

Why?

Science is always evolving.

Okay?

Science always evolves, but God's word doesn't evolve.

Why?

Because it's truth.

And you would think, if the Bible was fake, that some of the old beliefs would be found in the Bible.

Like there were people that counted the stars 150 BC, and they said there's thousand twenty-four stars.

150 BC.

And then someone counted 300 years later, and they're like, You're wrong, it's actually a thousand twenty-six.

Y'all, I asked ChatGPT how many stars there were in the sky.

It said one septillion.

It's just 200 billion trillion.

That's how many stars.

People believed that you could count the stars, but all they had to do was actually come to the word of God, which says this, Jeremiah 33, 22.

And the stars in the sky cannot be counted.

It cannot be counted.

People used to believe that if you're sick, you can cut yourself and bleed out, and the sickness will come out.

That's actually how George Washington was killed, was through bloodletting.

But we know that that's not actually true.

The Bible says this that life is found in the blood.

Which is why we do blood transfusions.

That didn't come into the Bible.

It's also why we believe that life happens at conception.

It's because it is in the blood.

Can I get a good amen?

The Bible is historically accurate.

Not only that, it's prophetically accurate.

It's scientifically accurate, historically, and prophetically accurate.

Because you don't just need to believe the Bible.

Like imagine you could write the Bible and say, Trust me, bro.

But then what you do is you write down a thousand predictions in the Bible.

And if one of those are wrong, the entire thing is false.

Do you know how risky that is?

And all of those predictions, except the ones in Revelation, that are gonna happen, have come true.

Jesus had 300 predictions about him, he fulfilled every single one.

In fact, the last prediction about Jesus was 400 years before he was born.

Let me give you context.

400 years ago, the land of Manhattan was bought in New York.

Can you imagine making a prediction in this world?

AI, technology, like it's absolutely crazy.

I talked about this before.

Peter Stoner, who was this mathematician, he did the probability of all of these miracles coming true.

And he said that Jesus just fulfilling eight of them was one in ten to the seventeenth power.

Okay, I can't even show you that number, but he illustrated it and he said if we took the state of Texas, the entire state of Texas, and we were to take silver coins and we put that number in Texas, it would be two feet high.

And if we marked one of them with red and hid it somewhere in the state of Texas, and you blindfolded someone, took him in a helicopter, and said, You told me when, and you went down, the chances of him picking the right one on his first try is the same probability as Jesus fulfilling eight.

He fulfilled 300.

The Bible is prophetically accurate.

David, Psalm 22, he prophesied about the cross when the cross didn't even exist.

And when Jesus was on the cross, he quotes Psalm 22.

The Bible is prophetically accurate.

Why?

Because it wasn't written by man, it was written by God.

2 Peter 1:21.

2 Peter 1:21

For prophecy never had its origin in human will, but prophets, though humans, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

I want you to trust the Bible.

I want you to learn the Bible.

I want you to read the Bible.

Pick a plan.

Pick something.

We did an entire series on how to read the Bible.

Go back.

Go back, read that.

Pick a plan.

Do the first 15.

What is that?

Five minutes in the word, five minutes in scripture, five minutes in worship.

Word, scripture, prayer.

I said that.

Prayer, word, script.

Prayer, word, worship.

Thank you.

There we go.

I was like, wow, that was hard.

Do the first 15.

Okay?

Learn the Bible and then finally teach and share the Bible.

We have to come to a place where we decide, are we going to twist scripture?

Are we going to subtract scripture?

Are we going to add to scripture?

Or will we come to a place where we say we have a choice?

Are we going to attack God's word or are we going to live by it?

Are we going to come to a place where we're going to change the Bible to fit us, or are we going to change us to fit the Bible?

Will I deconstruct it or will I defend it?

Will I follow the world or will I follow the word?

And I think the biggest thing is as I was studying this, the thing that shocked me the most is I think the reason why sometimes these lies work is because we want them to.

Like if you go and you actually read Genesis 3 verse 6, it says this when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and was also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and she ate it.

Genesis 3:6

She took some and she ate it.

She wanted to gain wisdom, so what she did is she took some of that fruit and she ate it.

And I think as I was reflecting on this, I started thinking about my own life.

And some of you know some of my story.

When I got deported when Paige and I were first married.

I lived out of a suitcase.

Because I thought that if I unpacked my bag, it means I didn't have enough faith.

And God wouldn't do what I wanted him to do because I unpacked my bag.

I told y'all that during that time I prayed everywhere that I could pray.

I fosted everywhere that I could fast.

And I thought if I could just name it and claim it and just say it enough, like God will eventually do what I asked him to do.

Y'all, and that's so dangerous.

Like I know people that have believed that.

Like you just need to keep declaring and declaring and declaring and declaring, and your kid will be healed.

And then their kid passes away.

They go to the pastor and they're like, What happened?

And the pastor doesn't say, The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.

The pastor says, You didn't have enough faith.

So now people leave their faith because they felt like their faith was deficient the entire time.

It was a counterfeit that ultimately leads into a ditch.

You see, because what Paul says is when he has a thorn in his flesh, he prays that God will take it away three times, and God never does.

Because God says, I gave you that, that you won't become conceited.

I allow that to happen that you won't become conceited because I am powerful in your weakness.

Where does that fit in prosperity gospel?

When Jesus is at the cross and he says, God, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me.

He says, But not my will, but your will be done.

Your will be done.

What is that?

The ultimate submission.

Where does that fit?

It only fits when you take some parts of the Bible and you subtract others.

Yo, we need to have such a good theology on God's gifts, on how God blesses, but we also have to have a good theology on suffering.

And the fact that this isn't our home.

And if we're believing anything other than that, we're just not believing the truth.

So my prayer in this entire series, through all of this, like I said, I can't tell you everything that's going to be said, but my prayer is this that we will trust in the Bible and the Bible alone, not subtracting parts that we don't like and not adding things that the Bible doesn't say.

Can I get a good amen?

Because that's what Jesus did.

Jesus is perfect theology.

Jesus didn't believe in the prosperity gospel.

He grew up poor.

Jesus didn't believe in progressive Christianity, that he can just delete the cross.

No, he went through the cross.

And when Adam tried to gain life and gain status, Jesus did the opposite.

He came and he humbled himself, Philippians says.

He didn't consider equality with God, something to be grossed, but instead what he did is he came to this earth, humbled himself, and died on a cross.

That's the God that we serve.

So let's trust the Bible.

Let's love the Bible.

Let's read the Bible and let's teach the Bible.

Can I pray for you?

Lord God, I want to thank you for every single person that's here.

God, I thank you for all the work that you've done in our lives.

God, I thank you that you are good, that you are great, and that you are good at being God.

Lord, I pray that you give us a fresh understanding and love for your word.

Lord, that we will come to it more than anything else.

We're so grateful for you.

We love you.

While you still continue praying, there may be some people here and you've never actually put your faith in Jesus, you're not following him, he's not Lord of your life.

And if that's you, we just want to give you an opportunity to respond.

And if you want to go hold on to Jesus, I just want to encourage you to pray this in your heart.

Just say, Dear Jesus, I'm giving you everything.

Today I wanted to make you Lord and I make you savior.

I know you came to this earth, you died on a cross, and you were raised that I can have life.

I make you my Lord.

I make you my savior.

In Jesus' name.

If you're here with every head still bowed and eyes closed, and you did that, I don't want to call you out.

I just want you to wave at me and no one's looking around.

I would just love to celebrate with you.

Here we go.

One, two, three.

If that's you, you can just wave at me.

It's awesome.

I love that.

I love that.

Hey, Church, can you do me a favor?

Can you put your hands together?

Come on, for everyone who just said that for the first time.

We love you, Church.

And if you just said yes to Jesus, that is the best decision you could ever make.

We are so proud of you, but you do have a next step.

We want you to text the word Jesus to 480-485-3405.

Because we have a gift we would love to give you.

Because you were not meant to walk this journey alone.

We have something called You Said Yes, a 21-day written devotional we want to get in your hands.

And hey, if you do call Spirit Home, we have a couple things we would love for you to pray about.

The first, we would love for you to pray about sharing this message.

You never know how much a simple share could impact someone's life.

And second, we would love for you to pray about partnering with us financially because your giving enables us to get messages just like this with people like you and all around the world.

So thank you so much for what you do and how you give.

You can do that by going to spiritchurch.co forward slash give.

Well, hey, we love you, church.

We will see you right back here next week.

And remember that with God, there is more.