The Righteous Divide

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to believe, but we only have four regular youth groups left in the school year.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you are really excited to reach the summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe you just really don't like your stronger and you're ready to be going to hit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully not that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our youth group continues to meet in the summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want you to still come.

[SPEAKER_00]: It looks a little bit different, but we'll talk more about that in coming weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: This year has really flown by, and if you've been with us in high school, we've been working our way through the book of first John, first John.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight we're going to be continuing in first John 4, but we're going to start in a different spot, so you can maybe put a finger in first John or put a note there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to come back to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a goal tonight.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to convince you that the Bible is awesome, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's my goal, all right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Turn your Bibles with me to Genesis Chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis Chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: As we go there, let's go to the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: Father, help us to see the things that are beyond natural reason tonight.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you that your word is discernible by faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, we ask for that faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: For those of you who have trusted in you with their life, I pray that they would be encouraged and strengthened to walk as Christians in a sinful and broken world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, to those who have not yet received the good news of Jesus, for whatever reason, Lord, would you press your word upon their hearts tonight?

[SPEAKER_00]: Would you make it inescapable that they must repent and turn from them their sins and trust in you?

[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, as students do that, would they find the joy that they have been looking for their whole life?

[SPEAKER_00]: God, thank you for blessing us, for revealing amazing things to us in your world, help us to glean so much out of it tonight.

[SPEAKER_00]: We pray this in Jesus' name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis, being the first book in the Bible, lays the foundation for everything that's going to come after it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: God creates the heavens and the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: He creates the world and all that is within it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He made humans who are designed to represent him in the world, but instead of doing so, they turn their back on him, they denied him, they chose their own path of sin, many of you are familiar with this.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I preached on it last week.

[SPEAKER_00]: But look with me, in Genesis chapter 3, verse 14.

Genesis 3:14

[SPEAKER_00]: Here God is communicating the judgment, the consequence that comes from the sin against him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And He starts by cursing the serpent, remember the one who tempted Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 15, God declares something very significant.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look there.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I will put enmity, hostility, division, anger, hatred.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will put enmity between you, that is the serpent and the woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: and between your offspring and her offspring.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the same?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, God is telling this serpent, which is a description of Satan throughout the course of Scripture, that there is going to be a war between his descendants and the descendants of the woman that is Adam and Eve.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he says that they're going, he is going to bruise the heel of her offspring, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning, Satan will inflict a powerful painful blow, but the woman's offspring will crush the head of the serpent.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are not one for one.

[SPEAKER_00]: The offspring of the woman will be hurt and wounded, but the offspring of the serpent will be destroyed.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is an amazing promise.

[SPEAKER_00]: because Adam and Eve had just sinned.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you look back a few verses, Genesis chapter 2, verse 17, God warns Adam that if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that they shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.

Genesis 2:17

[SPEAKER_00]: That is, if they sin in this way, they should expect the judgment of death.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they sinned in that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: death.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet as the Gable falls the Almighty Judge says, yes, you will suffer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, one day you will die, but this story is not over yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are going to bear a child.

[SPEAKER_00]: And your child, your offspring will actually come back and overcome the offspring of the one who was too strong for you in the garden.

[SPEAKER_00]: Adam and Eve act in faith and they have a child and his name is Cain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as we see in the beginning of chapter 4, the way that they respond is they have this hope that this child will be the offspring to overcome the enemy, the seed of the serpent.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when you know this Bible story within a few verses, Cain kills his brother

[SPEAKER_00]: Abel was righteous and his brother, Cain was wicked.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of them represents the seed of the woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of them represents the seed of the serpent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who does it look like one in this encounter?

[SPEAKER_00]: What looks like the serpent?

[SPEAKER_00]: The one of Anger and V. H.R.

[SPEAKER_00]: towards God, bested the one who was righteous.

[SPEAKER_00]: Naturally, the parents, Adam and Eve, have their hopes for a deliverer crushed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The sun that they anticipated bringing them hope in life actually brought dismay and death.

[SPEAKER_00]: But by the end of chapter 4, verse 25, we read that Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and called his name, Seth.

[SPEAKER_00]: For she said, God has appointed, that's what his name means, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of able for Cain has killed him.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're still hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're still hope that this deliverer will come.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then Genesis 5 happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you've ever read through this in Genesis 5, you're like, this is such a boring stretch of scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a bunch of people who were born and had spatisan and undied.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis 5 is a genealogy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the first ancestry.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're listing the ancestors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it makes you wonder about this deliverer who's supposedly supposed to come from Adam and Eve,

[SPEAKER_00]: But where is he?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because this guy, he has a son and then he dies.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the son grows old, has another son, and then he dies, on and on and on and on.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the point?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's an anticipation for this deliver and he still has not come.

[SPEAKER_00]: We continue in Scripture we reach.

[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis chapter six, the world has gotten so corrupt that God must purge the evil from it, which includes the judgment of all people except for Noah and his family.

[SPEAKER_00]: but Noah doesn't turn off to be the deliverer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He bears sons and then he dies.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this pattern continues, again and again, Genesis chapter 12, God chooses Abraham.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I'm going to bless you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to make your descendants like the stars of heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give you land to inhabit and blessings to enjoy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Abraham has two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the one that's born first, Ishmael,

[SPEAKER_00]: According to Genesis 16, Abraham had him according to a sinful and worldly design by sleeping with his servant because his wife was barren.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then after this fact, God proves that he is stronger than any deficiency in the human body and Sarah can see as at age 90 and has a son, Isaac.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later on in the story, Ishmael was found mocking his weaker little brother.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many of you know the names of the people after them in Genesis, Isaac, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: As the child of promise, he Mary's Rebecca, he has two sons, Esau and Jacob.

[SPEAKER_00]: Esau despises his parents' advice, Mary someone against their counsel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob Mary's Lea and then Rachel, which actually proves to be a great mass because it's against God's design, it turns out to have two wives, but God still blesses him many bears, 12 sons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sons that we become the 12 tribes of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wish we had time to go in a greater depth, but I'm sure some of you are already wondering why are we spending so much time talking about Genesis 1 through 23.

[SPEAKER_00]: and a passage, when we're supposed to get to first John.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why.

[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis lays out a pattern that will be carried in virtually every book of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the dominant theme in first John and it comes up in our text tonight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chooses unlikely candidates to become his heroes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Time and time again, the person that God selection calls is always disadvantaged, according to the world's standards.

[SPEAKER_00]: God always chooses a man who marries a wife that can't bear children and then they bear a child and then instead of choosing the firstborn which you would expect in that culture God chooses the secondborn.

[SPEAKER_00]: He flips the order on its head.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chooses a man with a speech impediment named Moses to be the spokesman for his whole nation Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: God humbles the mightyest man in the world, Pharaoh, not only by convincing him to give up his slaves, but by sending him out with riches as they left.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later, we see David as enthosen instead of his mighty brothers.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see a son Solomon as chosen instead of his mighty brothers.

[SPEAKER_00]: The weak armies of Israel somehow keep defeating these massive armies of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: because God is trying to show that the seed of the woman will defeat the seed of the serpent.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a sentence of the woman will be outnumbered, despised, be little, insignificant prey to pawn, and seemingly will have no hope of success.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet in that very moment, God will show that he is stronger, that God is more capable.

[SPEAKER_00]: The final victory will be theirs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 127 this way, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chose what is low and despise in the world, even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: So that no human being might boast and the presence of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that as success is seen in God's people,

[SPEAKER_00]: They can't say, look at me, look at all that I accomplished.

[SPEAKER_00]: They say, don't look at me, I can't do anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at God who did this amazing thing and won the victory.

[SPEAKER_00]: God stacks the deck over and over against himself, inscripture, just to prove that his power is greater than anything the world can create or comprehend.

[SPEAKER_00]: He gives the enemy a head start, just to show that he can outpace him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He does this again and again in the Old Testament, and we find John alluding to the same thing in our passage, in first John chapter four, verses one through six.

[SPEAKER_00]: First John four, one through six.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna read, starting in verse one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God,

[SPEAKER_00]: For many false prophets have gone out from the church into the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: By this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming in now is in the world already.

[SPEAKER_00]: Little children.

[SPEAKER_00]: you are from God and have overcome them, for He who is in you is greater than He who is in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are from the world and therefore they speak from the world in the world and the world listens to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we are from God and whoever knows God listens to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever is not from God does not listen to us and by this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

[SPEAKER_00]: My title tonight, if you're taking notes, is the righteous divide, the righteous divide.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a divide between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a divide between good and evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a divide between truth and falsehood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is right that we examine it, that we inspected.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the first point.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, to test the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: test the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's remember that the context that John is speaking into in this message is important.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a church that he has founded and there are members of the church that have left and not just gone down the street to another church, but they have abandoned the faith and they've said, we've found this new teaching, this more advanced teaching

[SPEAKER_00]: And evidently, it was working.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were trying to convince the people in the church to follow them, and people were leaving.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so John is writing this letter of an encouragement to still the believers and say, no, you are in the right way.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are on the right path.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are following the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And John begins by addressing this church in love.

[SPEAKER_00]: and warning them not to believe everything that may sound good but to test the spirits or test the teaching or test the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christianity can get a bad rap because it is understood that without faith,

[SPEAKER_00]: Your understanding is going to be incomplete.

[SPEAKER_00]: There will be things that do not make sense without faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: But because of that, the world, many voices in higher education will say that this is a blind leap into hope based on nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They say faith is actually the opposite of reason and thought.

[SPEAKER_00]: But John reminds us that that is not true.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see that those who hold the faith are

[SPEAKER_00]: This is active and not passive.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is thought full, not thought less.

[SPEAKER_00]: If someone's faith does not include knowledge, it is not the Christian faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Christian faith requires knowledge.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to determine if it is according to the right knowledge, you have to test it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, test it with what we will see.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people who are aiming to entice others to leave the church are presenting themselves as these false prophets, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're speaking and saying, thus says the Lord, this is from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the right way, but they're advertising a lie.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those who come to us, likewise, with appealing arguments, are going to be presenting them as true.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you are about to graduate high school, and you're going to go off to college, and you're going to be presented with new arguments, perhaps against the existence of God or the authority of Scripture or the sufficiency of Scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: They will be presenting it as if it were true.

[SPEAKER_00]: But here is what we must remember.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ultimate test of truth is not our ability to wrap our heads around it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ultimate test of truth is not our ability to make sense of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is actually a greater test that holds a higher level of authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse two.

[SPEAKER_00]: By this, you know the spirit of God, every spirit, teacher, or teaching,

[SPEAKER_00]: that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: There you have it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Very clear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I remember reading this in study and thinking, that's it, that's the only test is to say, well, if you believe that Jesus was a human being, then you're good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, God, that doesn't seem right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the difficulties that we find a lot of people that we know, that we may have a conversation with about this, and they believe that Jesus was a real human being who lived like 2,000 years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet they don't believe that He is God, they don't believe that He is Lord and save you.

[SPEAKER_00]: As John saying that those people are going to be saved, do they pass the test?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so, and here's why.

[SPEAKER_00]: The main lie that was attacking the church at this time is called Nosticism, from the word Noses, which means knowledge.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what you need to know about this, where the rubber meets the road and this theology, is they believe that the spirit of Christ descended, it came upon this guy named Jesus when he was baptized, and then before he was crucified on the cross, it left him because they could not conceive

[SPEAKER_00]: of God suffering, and this helps us to understand what John is getting at.

[SPEAKER_00]: If someone doesn't believe that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man, living and dying, both as the Son of man and as the Son of God, they cannot be saved.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have denied the foundation of the Christian faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a clear denial of the Scripture's teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's how we take this, and what does it mean for you, student?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it means when someone comes to you with an argument that is appealing, or compelling, or seems persuasive, even in an experience that takes you outside of what you know and hold to and believe, if it contradicts or goes against our standard authority, which is this word, it cannot be trusted, it fails the test.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you know it is from the Spirit of God?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Spirit of God will always work according to the Word of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are the perfect pair.

[SPEAKER_00]: They never contradict each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: They never go against one another.

[SPEAKER_00]: Health or illustration can be to think about a beautiful painting on display at an art gallery.

[SPEAKER_00]: In order to have that painting there, you of course need a master artist who conceives of this

[SPEAKER_00]: beautiful picture and actually constructs it and then you need the painting itself that needs to be sitting there and of course when we think about a spiritual analogy this embodies the work of the Father who planned the mission of redemption and the work itself Jesus Christ is the one who accomplished it within the question is where does the spirit fall in all of this?

[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit is like the spotlight on the ceiling, streaming down on the canvas, illuminating, displaying a radiant glory on the image itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Spirit highlights the work of the sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Spirit lets forth its light shine on the work of the sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is his purpose, not to draw attention to itself,

[SPEAKER_00]: We are to test the truths that we hear, according to what God has communicated in His Word.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we must test what we observe, because God's method in teaching are often not what we would expect.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, we got a taste of that in the introduction to this sermon, but as we test it, and we see what we believe confirmed, we are to number two, to be confident in victory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm sure that even if many of you do not stay up to date on news, you will know we are at war as a country with Iran, we've been at war for the last two months.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or can be scary, it has an enormous cost financially.

[SPEAKER_00]: It also risks and jeopardizes thousands, potentially even millions of lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has never a light decision, but countries enter a war because they believe that their people will be better off than if they avoid it.

[SPEAKER_00]: They enter either because they expect to win, or even if they don't expect to win, they see that this is the best possible option for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other options are even less hopeful.

[SPEAKER_00]: But how do you think wars would be approached if a country was guaranteed to win?

[SPEAKER_00]: John includes a little verse in the middle of his passage that addresses this very thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Verse four, he says little children.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are from God and have overcome them, not might overcome, have overcome them.

[SPEAKER_00]: For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Church believing and trusting what God has said reveals that you are from him, and that you have overcome the wires and their lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know that word overcome is called Nicaro.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means to conquer.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also the inspiration for the name brand of a deed.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is biggest rival, Nike, that's where it comes from.

[SPEAKER_00]: Overcome, conquer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Usually when we think of conquering, we think of a huge warrior with rippling muscles.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or we think of a massive military force

[SPEAKER_00]: It's opponent, but how does John address these Christians who he says are overcomers?

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, little children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Little children, we really shouldn't be surprised at this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: Simply for all those, the pattern of the whole Bible, God choosing the weak things, the little things, the despise things, the lowly things,

[SPEAKER_00]: to bring to nothing the strong and powerful and mighty things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those who are addressed as little children are those who are from the seed of the woman, not the seed of the serpent.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reminder needed, the reminder needed here is that those who are on the side of the woman, which is the side of God's chosen people may feel and seem like they are all

[SPEAKER_00]: but they're not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he who is in you, Christian, is greater than he who is in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: That power resides within you by faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the Old Testament figures were born, lived and died, they continued to wonder if, when this offspring would come,

[SPEAKER_00]: But all along the way, God continued to provide promises that reassured him, he's coming, he's coming, and they also gave promises that clarified what he would exactly do in what he would be like.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the enough, the people of God still assumed wrongly about him.

[SPEAKER_00]: They thought that they were gonna get this really strong king like Saul, but they actually got a really humble king like David.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, they thought that they were going to get this great warrior to fight against the tyranny of Rome, not a carpenter who was executed as a criminal.

[SPEAKER_00]: They thought they would get a glee and jolly fellow who would leave the people in joy and they got a man of sorrows.

[SPEAKER_00]: they were looking for the wrong thing, even Jesus' own disciple Peter tried to fight back with a sword against the betrayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He did not get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: It made no sense that the deliverer would be delivered over to death on wrongful charges.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it made even less sense that he didn't defend himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the cross, we see the great plot twist of the entire story, that in the moment that Satan thought he would have the decisive victory he was overcome.

[SPEAKER_00]: When he thought he had the upper hand and he would strike the seed of the woman with a great blow in that same event Christ showcased his complete and overwhelming power.

[SPEAKER_00]: He may strike your

[SPEAKER_00]: heal, but you will crush his head.

[SPEAKER_00]: He used his own weapon to defeat him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just like David, the wielded Goliath sword, and came up and cut his head off with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Christ wielding the weapon of Satan used it to land a fatal blow against his enemy.

[SPEAKER_00]: This leads Paul to cry, death is swallowed up in victory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, death, where is your sting?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, death, where is your victory?

[SPEAKER_00]: But the power, the sin, the sting of sin is death and the power of sin is the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: But thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the storyline of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: that even though Christians may be weak, timid, anxious, fearful, sin-ridden, even though they are just little children, they have overcome because the overcome are lives in them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, student, be confident and victory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Live with the hope that is yours and Christ, that you will be on the side of final victory.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that doesn't mean that you're not going to experience any hardship, which is my third and final point.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, expect to push back, expect to push back, and Nazi Germany Hitler used his political influence to influence others into committing heinous crimes, and the way that he did so was propaganda.

[SPEAKER_00]: convincing people with these specially curated statements that were designed to shape what the public thought and actually deny some of their thought because he wanted to establish this hierarchy of races and sadly it was very effective and even those who stood up against the regime would be lumped into the batch of the unworthys and they would be executed in the same way.

[SPEAKER_00]: The truth is costly in this world, believing and standing up for it will probably not cost you your life student, but do not assume that it won't cost you anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the good news is that the truth is also free.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus tells His disciples that abiding in Him and in His words means that they will know the truth and the truth will set them free.

[SPEAKER_00]: freedom according to Jesus doesn't always appear like we expected.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we might naturally think of freedom, we think of no structures, no consequences, no problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the idea of freedom.

[SPEAKER_00]: A life of ease is the free life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus makes clear in Matthew 7 that the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction and those who are on it are many.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the gate is narrow in the way hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is the theme that John is alluding to in verses 5 and 6, that there are these false teachers from the world, and the world is going to gladly listen to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But those who are from God will listen to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: This false prophets will teach a false message.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the trademarks of a false message is that it fits with all of human's natural desires.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul warns his young disciple Timothy of the 2nd Timothy 4-3 that worldly people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves, teachers to suit their own passions, and they will turn away from listening to the truth, and they will wander off into mess.

[SPEAKER_00]: that's the warning.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be easy to follow the message of the world because it gets at the things that we naturally simply crave.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you avoid that person?

[SPEAKER_00]: You expect push back.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give four quick examples of this and then we will wrap up, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, how do you avoid this personally?

[SPEAKER_00]: You commit to regularly attend a church that will preach the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even when that means they're going to say hard and unpopular things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Receiving the gospel requires understanding the bad news that we're all sinners and we need a Savior.

[SPEAKER_00]: Church absolutely should be encouraging, but that doesn't mean that every time

[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, invest in friends who are willing to call you out.

[SPEAKER_00]: You should be wary of surrounding yourself only with people who flatter and compliment you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Give permission for the people in your life to tell you hard things when they see that you are not aligned to what God's word has to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number three,

[SPEAKER_00]: anticipate not being liked.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you are a Christian, then the deepest core of who you are is opposed to the core of your unbelieving friends and teammates and co-workers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now this doesn't mean that you try to be annoying or offensive, but don't expect

[SPEAKER_00]: the hopeful, amid discouragements.

[SPEAKER_00]: The seed of the serpent has always loved pointing out the weaknesses in the seed of the woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: Regularly, he seems to have the upper hand and even student, when you feel that you are in that battle and you are losing, and you feel this crushing weight upon your back, remember that the war has already been won.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember that you are on the side of victory, Christ has accomplished it, and if God calls you to endure a great burden, even when you feel beaten down, do not take it as a sign that God is not pleased with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take it as a sign that God is perfect to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's making you more like His Son, Jesus, and call to mind that He who is in you is greater than He who is in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's pray.