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If you have your Bibles.
Turn with me to 2nd Timothy 215.
That'll be our first verse that we're going to look at.
This is part three, and my
last message on the topic of discernment.
We've been learning about how
absolutely critical, it is, for
all of us to be discerning.
as Christians.
And I want to start off today with this verse that we looked at
this verse last time in 2 Timothy 2:15.
Look what it says.
Be diligent, to
present yourself, approve to God, as
a workman, who does not need to be ashamed,
accurately handling the word of truth.
Now, notice that title at the end, the
word of truth.
That is a title for scripture.
That's what the scripture is.
The truth, the truth of God.
This is the truth that justifies the truth
that sanctifies the truth, that gives
the hope of glory to all who believe it in saving faith.
What could possibly, be
more important in
all of creation, than
the truth of God, who is the creator of all things.
What could be more important?
Consider this.
It is on the basis of the truth of God,
that we know what is
actual true reality
about God, about man,
about the Holy Spirit, about salvation,
and everything else that matters most in the human experience.
And that's why it's critical that
we accurately handle the word of truth,
as 2 Timothy 2:15, says, We
are to be diligent workmen
who are never ashamed of ourselves for an
inaccurate handling of God's truth.
And in light of that, also consider next what 2 Timothy
3 1 says, but
realize this, that in
the last days, difficult times will come.
Now, some translations say,
dangerous seasons will come.
And that phrase really gets better at the
meaning, because the Greek word for times here is not
clock time, Cronos.
It's a word that means epics, or
if you're from jollio, England, you say epochs, but
we say epics.
Here are movements.
And I don't think I have to make the case.
for the reality that right now, we definitely live in
a dangerous season of human history.
We definitely live in difficult times.
right now.
And in these dangerous times that we live in.
It is also critical for us to handle the
word accurately, because the greatest spiritual
danger that the church and
all Christians face today is the danger
of deception.
We are not only approximately
30 years right now into the internet
age being in the general public.
Different articles I've read, I've told you in the past,
generally look at 96, 1996, is kind
of the year.
There's give or take a few here backwards.
96 was the first year I became aware of the internet.
So we're about 30 years or so into the internet age,
but now, moving at a very
rapid pace, we are moving into the AI age.
Artificial intelligence.
And it's increasing in its abilities,
far faster, and far greater than any
technology that we've ever seen in world
history.
If you've not been keeping up with what's happening with AI, you
need to, because things are going to be changing dramatically
in our world, in the not
so far off future.
Think about it this way.
We can logically put together in our thinking.
OK?
On the one hand, if the truth of God
is the most important thing that there
is in human existence, then anything
that assaults the truth of God is therefore
the most severe danger, right?
So Paul is warning young Timothy
about this problem here.
Go a little further down in 2 Timothy 3,
verse 13, where he says,
But evil men, and impostors,
will proceed from bad
to worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
And the idea here is with the evil men and impostors, false teachers.
false prophets who misrepresent the truth.
It says they will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving,
and being deceived.
Now, it's important to understand that phrase there, look
at it, last days.
That phrase right there in verse one is referring
to the days that started when Jesus arrived.
This is not the last of the last days.
This is what we can refer to as the Messianic
era, the last days.
That's been going on for over 2,000 years.
And guess what?
We're still in it right now.
And every day that goes by, takes
us closer one day closer to the
last of the last days, and we have no idea when those are
going to be, and the second coming of Jesus Christ, right?
Could be cranked up today.
Could be 500 years from now.
I don't know.
And no man does know the day or the hour, right?
Isn't that what Jesus said?
But in general, Paul is basically saying,
as these last days of the messianic
era progress, here's what's going to happen.
Deception is going to increase.
And you know what?
History has proven that to be true.
Just think of the
massive false religions, alone
that proclaim the name of Jesus, that
have come, and that have gone, with
billions of people, since the time of the early church.
I want you to just consider, for a second, the
Mormons and the Jehovah Witness alone, just those two groups.
Both groups name the name of Jesus as Savior.
Both groups say that Jesus died on the cross
for the forgiveness of sins, and he rose on the third day.
They have the exact same words as us, but
two totally different dictionaries.
Everything I just said is defined completely different,
including Jesus being a created being.
All right?
Guess what?
I looked it up.
Right now.
Just those two groups have 27
million active members on the Earth, 27 million.
And there's many more groups.
that are false that name the name of Jesus.
There's one, I can't say the name of it, it's in Mexico.
I watched two episodes of cultish, a podcast that
comes out of apology, a church about this huge group in Mexico,
and they think this guy is Jesus, that leads him.
It's hundreds of thousands of people adhere to it.
It's completely false in the name of Jesus.
There's many all over the world like this.
And the primary reason for
the increase in deception in the last days,
and remember, I'm talking about the messianic era, is
because the truth landed fully
and completely in the person and work of Jesus Christ on the earth.
That's when the full truth landed.
Now, understand what I'm saying.
While the Old Testament is absolutely
every word, the Word of God,
just like the new, as you know, the Old Testament
didn't give us the full picture, right?
The Old Testament revelation was
progressive, and it's not that it went from
error to truth, it is that it went from incompleteness
to completeness.
You understand?
We got types and shadows, but not the full
picture, until Jesus came.
For example, if all we had was from Genesis to Malachi, and that
was our Bible, we would have an incomplete revelation, right?
But with the final arrival of the full
truth in Jesus Christ, and then add
to that the completion of the New Testament,
that is what brought about the escalation of
deception to assault the full truth.
And it's been happening, since right at the very start, in
the early church, in this ramped up progressively, to
where we are today.
Those dangerous epochs started
in the last days, beginning with the ministry of Jesus.
And as time marches on,
As I read my Bible here, according to Paul, they
get worse and worse, as the deception continues to increase.
And history has proven that to be true again.
And it only continues to escalate, and let me throw this
in as technology increases.
The truth continues to be under greater
and more sophisticated assault,
as technology increases and more diverse assault.
The number of false religions that have come
and gone and still exist today that, in some way, name the name of
Jesus, both large and small.
Let me tell you, they're more in number than we
have ever seen at any other time since the early church.
And think about this.
With the most people living on the planet ever
in history right now, the
numbers are continuing to grow.
There are some things that you can ask AI that
are general AI can give you some wrong answers.
Have y'all learned that?
But there are some general topics that you know you're going to get a right answer.
I asked Groc, how
many people currently population worldwide now?
We've reached over 8 billion.
8.3 billion humans on Earth is
the approximate number that I got.
Now, you got to understand, I've been talking to
you about false religions that name the name of Jesus
that have millions and millions of people following them.
I haven't even included yet.
False religions like Islam.
You know how many they have?
2 billion.
Two billion people.
Buddhism, somewhere between 350
to 500 million Buddhists on the Earth.
Hinduism, one billion.
We hadn't even got to all the new age and all the other things that are out there.
Let me tell you.
Paul was right.
Religious deception abounds on the Earth.
No question.
Again, 2 Timothy 3:13.
But evil men and impostors will
proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and
being deceived.
Now, as an aside, maybe,
somebody, one day, can
convince me otherwise, but from what
I read in this Bible, it just looks like
to me that the dangerous epics and
religious deceptions of the last days that started with
the ministry of Jesus just keep getting worse and more intense
until Jesus comes back.
That's the way I read the Bible.
Our post millennial friends, see things gradually,
getting better till we get to this golden age of Christianity.
I'll tell you what, it ain't going to happen today, unless
God regenerates about six billion people, right?
So right now, we are in a very dangerous
season in these last days,
and you want to know what the extremely
sad reality is,
at a time in our nation's history,
When deception is so formidable,
and technology right now is advancing
into a reality that we can't even conceive
of right now with the future of AI, at
this very point in history, the
church in the United States of America is
weaker than it's ever been.
The preaching that comes out of the majority of our pulpits is weaker
than it's ever been in our nation's history.
Christian colleges and seminaries are
weaker than they have ever been in our nation's history.
Just go look and read history for yourself.
Ivy League schools, like Princeton and Harvard
and Yale, at their start, they
were rooted and grounded in sound doctrine, and the
sound theology, and now, what are they?
They are bastions of leftist, woke,
cultural, Marxism, and communism.
And that's rife throughout most of our universities in this country.
And I'm not to say that there's not been positive gains for the Church.
Of course we know the church is not going to be defeated.
Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not
avail against it, but, and there have been positive
things, like the resurgence of the doctrines of grace in the '90s,
that continues to go on today, but let me tell you.
If we add up the negatives and the positive right now, the negatives are winning.
No question about that.
The slaughter of the unborn.
I mean, I can go on and on.
Transgenderism, all the rest, all the false religion.
All that to say is this.
This is not a time for weakness in the church.
And that's why, with the very little small
bit of influence in this society that
God has given me as a pastor and us as a
church, I'm telling you right now, with everything I've got.
Till I can't do this no more, or I'm dead.
I am 100% fully
committed to what it says at the end of Jude, verse 3.
Look what it says.
To contend earnestly for the faith,
which was once, for all, handed down to the saints.
So what I'm doing right here today.
I'm contending earnestly for the faith.
This is going out on the internet every week.
This is what I've given my life to doing.
in service to the king.
And I want to pass the torch down to my kids, my
grandkids, and you should want to do that as well.
So if there was ever a time in
this very dangerous season,
Let's go back to 2 Timothy 2:15.
There was ever a time for all of us as believers to
be diligent to present yourself, approved
to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed,
accurately handling the word of truth, that time
church is right now.
You should well know, by
now, if you've been with us for any period of time, that
I'm not a pragmatist.
I mean, I have no interest
whatsoever in being pragmatic
and trying to figure out what methods
and gimmicks and gadgets, as Ed Lacy used
to say, I have to employ in
order to grow a church.
You ought to know that about me, Mike.
I don't follow that.
plan.
I got one plan.
One plan only.
1 Corinthians 2, 2.
For I determine to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And in line with that, the only plan I have is 2
Timothy 4, too.
Preach the word.
Be ready in season and out of season, reproved,
rebuke, exhort, with great patience, and instruction.
That's my plan.
The same plan I've had for 25 years.
If you can't handle that, this is not the place for you.
And boy, have we seen many come
and go, who figured it wasn't a place for them?
Think about the visitors that we've had.
You know, last month, maybe three years we've been in this building?
I forgot to mention that last week.
Three years, we've been in this building.
We've seen a lot of people come through the turnstile
and go back out the other way.
You know, we've actually only added two people in three years.
We got Eric and Miss Linda.
That's it, right?
Now, I don't
say that as some kind of, oh, man, we got the truth, and nobody else can handle it.
That's why the church doesn't.
Lord grows churches that have just as sound doctrine as we do.
He's decided to keep us to this group, whatever his
reasons are, I don't know, but I defer to him, and I trust him.
And I believe his plan, right?
But the point is that this is not a time,
no matter how big or how small we are, for
weak Christians, weak
pastors preaching weak, watered down messages,
in this dangerous season that we find ourselves living in.
This is a dangerous time.
And that means for Christians, for the true
church, this is a time for discernment.
Now, let's go back and think about that definition of discernment.
It is the skill in distinguishing
truth from error.
Now, maybe more importantly, in
addition, it is the skill in
distinguishing truth from error and half truth.
That's where we really have to be discerning.
When you put a little truth in there, mixed in with error.
We have to guard the truth.
Look at what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 114.
Guard, through the Holy Spirit,
who dwells in you, the treasure,
which has been entrusted to you.
The treasure is God's truth.
He makes it clear again.
In 1 Timothy 6:20,
O Timothy, guard, what
has been entrusted to you?
Look at this.
avoiding worldly and
empty chatter, and the opposing arguments
of what is falsely called knowledge.
How many of you know that the internet is full
of worldly and empty chatter
that opposes arguments with what is falsely called knowledge?
And you got to think about this.
starting with me.
We're going to stand before the Lord one day, every Christian.
And we're going to have to get an account of what we did with our time from the moment we
were regenerated to the moment we physically die.
How much time do you spend scrolling on
empty things?
Useless things.
Things will be of no value that will burn up
like wood, hay, and stubble that
you scrolled through when you're standing before your king, and you spent
hours scrolling at empty, useless
things, falsely called knowledge.
You're going to have to stand and give an account.
So am I.
For every moment that you did that, instead of things that are of
eternal value, things that are spiritual.
What I'm telling you is, we have to be thinking, Christians.
And we have to have the ability to separate between
the thoughts and the ways of God,
and the thoughts and the ways of the world.
Spiritual discernment is the ability to distinguish
God's truth from everything else.
And there's everything under the sun on the internet right now.
There's no greater way to honor God
than to make that distinction in your mind.
between God's truth and everything else that's out
there, because God is honored.
When his word is believed rightly,
this is why there is so much instruction in the New Testament about
the mind, the renewing
of your mind, this is a mental process, this is a cognitive process.
If you want to know what God approves, if
you want to know what God wills and what God has said,
you have to have your mind continually renewed.
Otherwise, you're just going to fall victim to
the thinking of that which dominates the
society around you.
All the empty clatter.
that's out there, that is of no use spiritually.
Listen to Philippians 19.
And this I pray.
that your love may abound,
still more and more, look at this, in real knowledge
and all discernment.
That's love and truth, in perfect balance.
Look at Colossians 1, 9 to 10.
For this reason, also, since the day we heard of it, we
have not ceased to pray for you, and to
ask that you may be filled with the knowledge
of his will in all
spiritual wisdom and understanding,
so that you will walk, remember, that's
way of living, in a manner worthy of
the Lord to please him in all respects,
bearing good
fruit in every good work and increasing
in what the knowledge of God.
There you see it.
It's right here.
And that brings us, lastly, for today some things for us to think about.
Number one, how can
I become a discerning person?
Well, let me tell you what the first step is.
You have to want to be.
You have to have the desire in your heart and your
mind to say, I want to be a discerning Christian.
How important is it to you to be that?
Well, this is where the rubber meets the road.
Look at Proverbs 2.
Proverbs 2 is all about wisdom and understanding and discernment.
Verse one, my son, if
you will receive my words, and treasure
my commandments within you, verse two, make
your ear, attentive to
wisdom, and your heart to understanding.
Now, I'm asking you, do you want that?
You got to say to yourself, I really want to know God's truth.
I want to know it so that it
will have an impact on my life.
I want to know it so that I can live a
life that brings him glory.
Verse 2 says, make your ear attentive to
wisdom, incline your heart to understanding.
How do you do that?
Expose yourself to the Word of God.
Read it.
study it.
Listen to it accurately preached.
And how are you going to get to the point of real discernment?
Well, look next in verses 3 to 5 here in Proverbs 2.
For if you cry for discernment,
lip your voice for understanding.
If you seek her as silver, and
search for her as hidden treasures, then you
will discern the fear of the Lord,
and discover the knowledge of God.
There it is.
So it really comes down to this.
How badly do you want it?
It's pretty amazing, the things that people will do to
acquire wealth in their quest to
achieve the man centered American dream with their life.
Their life is all about that.
The commitment that they'll make.
The kind of things that they will go through just
to make more and more money, what
level of commitment, are you
willing to make, towards gaining
discernment.
The same kind of commitment?
Are you after it like money?
Are you after it like silver and treasure?
If you don't run that race, you can't win it.
If you don't pursue that goal, then you'll never achieve it.
If you, in your life, right now, in your Christian life,
if you are content with just a minimal knowledge
of the truth, if you are content to
just stay at the shallow end of the theological
pool, if you are content to
not pursue, with your time, attention,
and energy, the deep things of God, I
can promise you you will never get there.
Never.
As I said many times, it doesn't come through osmosis.
It just doesn't just happen.
You have to first want it, desire it,
and then you have to diligently pursue it.
I have all the books.
In my library here and at the house, that
you could possibly need to
get this started in your life, but guess what?
You have to crack them open and read them alongside your Bible.
It takes time.
It takes time to do this.
And in our day, you know where that starts?
Turn the TV off.
Put the phone down and crack open your Bible.
That's the only way you're going to grow as a Christian.
If you make it a priority in your life, the
pursuit of God's truth and God's wisdom, I promise you,
then you will be discerning.
If you don't, you won't be.
And your discernment, if you gain it, will lead to greater worship.
You know why?
Because you won't be worshiping out of a shallow understanding of
God, you will be worshiping out of a deeper,
puller, richer understanding of God.
And I promise you, it'll make the most profound impact on
your life, because naturally what'll start to happen, when
circumstances and events come into your life, especially adverse
ones, very automatically, you will bring the truth of
God to bear on whatever that thing is, because you're already flowing in it.
You're already in the middle of it.
That way of thinking, we'll start to become your default
go to reaction to things that happen.
What's the word of God say about this?
So first, you have to desire it.
If you don't have it, ask God to grant
you that desire if you don't have that desire.
And that leads me to my next point.
Prayer.
Look at James 1, 5 through 6.
You know, we studied this.
But any of you lacks wisdom.
Involved in wisdom, of course, is discernment.
Let him ask of God, who gives you all generously,
and without reproach, and it will be given to
him, but he must ask in
faith, without any doubting, for
the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven
and tossed by the wind.
So you have to start with full confidence.
that God alone is the source of wisdom, and
with that confidence, you have to pray,
and ask him, ask God.
You know what I like to pray?
Lord, please grant me ever increasing measures of wisdom.
I pray that all the time.
Wisdom, grace, courage, strength,
perseverance, give me ever increasing measures of those things.
When you're reading and studying scripture and
you crack open your Bible, you say, Before you start, Lord,
please help me to understand this correctly.
Please lead me to whatever resources I need to help me understand this correctly.
God, grant me, ever increasing measures
of discernment as I'm growing in grace.
Pray that.
It's a matter of a desire to want to be a discerning Christian.
Secondly, it's a matter of prayer, and thirdly, it's a matter of pattern.
Now what do I mean by that?
Well, hang around people who have discernment.
Listen to preachers who have discernment.
Get everything you can out of them.
Listen to people who particularly engage in
apologetics in ministry, which is
pointing out error, and false religion, people
like Dr. James White, read his books, he's got some great books.
Get connected with people who know how to answer the heresies
in the church, who know how to identify
error from the word of God.
And also, follow the example of mature Christians.
Look at Hebrews 5 14.
But solid food is for the mature.
Who, because of practice, have their, what, senses,
trained, to discern, good and evil?
Again, it goes back right here.
Find, spiritually mature people
who have been walking with the Lord for a good long
while, and learn from them.
Make them your pattern.
Now next, you have to be totally dependent, as
you already know, on the Holy Spirit.
Look at 1 John 2, 21.
Writing to Christians.
But you have an anointing from
the holy one, and you all know, I have not
written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it.
And because no lie, is of the truth,
the reason that we know the truth, and the big meta
picture is because we have an anointing from the holy one.
Look at verse 27.
As for you, the anointing which you received from him,
abides in you.
And you have no need for.
anyone to teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things,
and is true, and is not a lie, and just that has taught you,
abide in him.
Now, understand, John is not denying here the importance of
gifted teachers in the church.
We know that to be true from other scriptures, but rather,
what he's teaching is the reality here, that all teachers
of scripture and all believers, for that matter,
are totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit.
He is our resident, truth teacher,
above all.
And he dwells, as it says here, in every believer.
If you're a believer, he's in you, and he is your
resident truth teacher, and he promises.
To disclose the truth of God to you as you
expose yourself to the Word of God.
He will illumine the scripture for you.
And that leads me to our last point.
I think I said last point earlier, but I didn't really mean it.
I wanted to make sure you were paying attention.
Study the Bible.
diligently.
Remember the Bereans from Acts 17.
They studied the scriptures daily to see if the things that Paul said
about the Messiah out of the Old Testament were really so.
Let me tell you.
As you study the Word of God, and
you pray, and you depend on the Holy Spirit
to be your teacher, I promise
you, discernment will begin to develop in
your mind, and in your life,
And in addition, I want to re emphasize what I said earlier.
Then find out those who demonstrate
spiritual maturity, theological
knowledge, years of
exercising, discernment, and make
those people your heroes.
Next year, Mark's 30 years that
I've been living the Christian life, which is wild
for me to even utter those words to you.
But from the start, almost from the start,
I had heroes that I exposed
myself to, and that I learned from,
who modeled discernment, and
spiritual maturity.
I had men like Huey Moat.
And Ed Lacy.
Early on in my Christian life that I learned from personally,
one on one, and then other heroes that
all of you know, who I begin to learn from in
my very earliest years of the Christian life,
heroes to many of you, and many besides me, like
John MacArthur and R.C.
Sproul, who we had this morning in Sunday school, Martin
Lloyd Jones, C.H.
Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, I could just go down the list of
these names that you know,
who have exercised and modeled discernment, and whose writings
are still being published today.
100 years later, 200 years later, and more.
Don't make the fancy people of the
world your heroes.
Make the discerning and spiritually mature
people, your heroes, and learn from them.
Well, let's close this out.
with Philippians 19.
Again, Paul says,
and this, I pray, that your love will
abound still more and more in what?
In real knowledge and all discernment.
So he's saying, I want your love to be
the product of real knowledge and all discernment,
because the more you know of God's truth, the more legitimate your love will be.
Your love for him and your love for others,
because you'll understand it more deeply.
You'll understand it spiritually.
And then Paul says, Next, look in verse 10.
So that you may approve the things that
are excellent in order to be sincere
and blameless until the day of Christ.
This is still Paul's prayer in this section.
He says, so that you may approve the things that are
excellent, so you can make distinctions.
When you can make distinctions, you will be what it says next.
Look, sincere and blameless until the day
of Christ, and for all of us.
Look, that's either the day that Jesus returns,
or, by way of application, the
day you go to be with the Lord, before the second coming.
One way or other, you're going to meet him.
And let me tell you, this prayer that Paul prays
here, this is my prayer for you too.
Like I've said before.
What am I doing here, Christian?
I'm just trying to get us all ready to meet Jesus.
And I know that he's going
to hold you to account for what you
did with your time, your tension, your energy, and your Christian life.
So, I want you to be able to stand there, just
like for myself, saying, man, I gave it my all.
in the Christian life, because I was so thankful that you saved
me from what I deserve, namely, the wrath of God in hell forever.
Well, Paul finishes the prayer.
In verse 11.
Having been filled with the fruit of righteousness
which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory
and praise of God.
Isn't that the goal for all of us?
To live a life that praises God?
To live a life that glorifies God?
That honors Christ?
Being a person who can choose what
is truly excellent because you
have real knowledge,
biblical knowledge, spiritual knowledge, and
all discernment.
So that's my word on discernment.
And three, messages.
My prayer is this.
that what you've heard will motivate you to
strive for discernment, because
we're all going to need it, as
we get ready to go on this journey together, and studying
the book of Hebrews.
Let's pray.
By the way, thank you, Lord.
For all of these scriptures that we've looked at today, that
Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, made it
so clear for all of us about the critical nature
of discernment.
I pray that today, the
word that has been proclaimed would motivate all believers here
to desire first, to be
discerning, and then to act upon that desire.
in a fresh and new way.
We pray we honored you today and brought you glory.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.