Sunday School - Patial Notes On Matthew 7 - Part 2

And the question is, that we raised last week is, can a Christian be a false prophet?

Can a Christian be a false prophet? What do you think?

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, you know, why would we say yes?

So can a Christian get caught up in sexual morality? Yeah. Can a Christian get caught up in gambling?

Yeah. Drinking? You can get caught up in all types of messes as Christians, all right? Christians can get caught up in false prophecy.

Now, the mark of a true Christian is a true Christian is going to do what? Repent. So when confronted with a false doctrine or a false lifestyle, you repent of it.

You turn away from it. And a person can be caught up in false prophecy. And I'll tell you why, because I was caught up in false prophecy.

Obviously, this is a Jehovah's Witness. But even as a Christian pastor back in 2015, when I was a pastor,

I was very into the dispensational theory of the

Shemitah, four red blood moons. It was this kind of hysteria of Bible teachers like John Hagee, Jonathan Cahn, all these other folks who started teaching that in 2015, there's going to be a convergence of four blood moons on Jewish holidays.

And I'm like, Ooh, that sounds interesting. Right? Blood moons on Jewish holidays? Yeah, sign me up for that.

And, uh, and then they started talking about how, you know, you know, the rapture is going to happen and things like that.

And so, and I really started studying this and I'm like, man, I was very convinced that we were at least going to see maybe a life altering event in September, October of 2015.

And so I was getting ready. I was like, uh, I was like, we had bought like jugs and jugs of water, putting them in the basement.

We took money out of the bank just in case the economic system collapsed or something. I mean, they were, they were, they were crossed by doom and gloom because every seven years there's this

Shemitah cycle and the Shemitah cycle indicates that we're going to see something really big happen if not, if not the rapture.

So I got really into that and I started to feel like as a pastor, if I believe this is true,

I should probably warn my people. So I remember I did a sermon series on eschatology and the, uh, the focus was,

I didn't say that something was going to happen, but I left open the possibility that we need to be really watchful during this time and season that we're in.

We got to watch for the signs, things like that. Um, and then when nothing materialized, um,

I felt really stupid and I felt really dumb and I felt really careless. And I felt like, you know what?

I don't know enough about eschatology clearly to be teaching on this. So I said to myself, I'm going to take time to really study this topic because I feel like I've been duped.

And I've been duped once as a Jehovah's Witness when it comes to end time proselytizing. So I don't want to be duped again as a

Christian, let alone as a pastor. So I started studying and it took me about four years to settle in a position, which is the all millennial position that I have adopted.

And so I don't adopt, I didn't adopt my position, uh, eschatologically lightly. I did so after many years of research and study and reading every book under the sun that I could find on end times.

And so, yeah, Christians can get caught up in a bunch of dumb things, right? Um, but a

Christian is going to, when presented with the evidence, he's going to repent. So I've heard things like from Eric Camping in terms of like maybe the origin of his life that he repented.

I can't confirm that. I don't know that that's going to be true. Uh, but I've heard that. So, you know, maybe, um, but we have to be aware of false prophets regardless whether these are, most people who are false prophets are likely to some degree, at least well intentioned.

They believe something, maybe they're under a deep conviction. Oftentimes too, just false prophets, they know they're wrong.

They know that they're peddling falsehood and they do so either for financial gain, and they do so for prestige, for authority, for power.

Uh, false things in life boil down to two things, money and power. And, uh, so false prophets have those, uh, the same, the same desire to say they're false.

But the next false, false prophets are also just false deceitful workers. And it's 2

Corinthians chapter 11, which is in your paper. We've also gone through this study recently in our own groups.

It says we're such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into false

Christ. And no marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an angel mind.

Therefore, it is no great thing. And if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.

What is a false apostle? What's that? A -N -A -R?

What's that? New Apostolic Reformation.

New Apostolic Reformation. And they're going around saying that they're a false apostle.

Yeah. I had, uh, in Canada, I had a lot of, uh, friends who were, well,

I had a lot of friends from Africa who migrated to Canada. And one of the things that I like is that they always call themselves, even on their

Facebook page, Apostle so -and -so, evangelist so -and -so. And it's like, you know, that always, that always bothered me.

Uh, but there are lots of opinions on apostles. First of all, let's, let's define definitions. What does this word apostle mean?

You have to have seen the, the physical Christ painting, right? Isn't that what I'm talking about?

Well, that's, that's a marker of an apostle. But what does the word apostle in itself mean? Settlers. Settlers.

That's right. Um, it's actually very close to the Greek. Two of the Greek words, angels and missionaries.

Both being essentially the same thing once we're set forth messengers.

Um, and apostles are a very special kind of messengers. And what makes them different is the part that they've been set apart by Christ for a particular apostolic ministry.

And so in the first century, as we've been going through St. Corinthians and the homework and the homeworks, we find that there are those who claim to be apostles.

Paul calls them by another term. Do you remember? Super apostles.

Right? And, uh, and he does so almost tongue -in -cheek by pointing out how, uh, well these super apostles are just, you know, they're so high and mighty.

They speak so well. They're so eloquent. You know, they probably know more than I do. You know, they have all this extraordinary revelation that apparently, you know, all the others missed.

And these are individuals who have claimed, uh, to be set up by Christ. And so what

Paul goes to great lengths to do, not only in St. Corinthians Chapel, but in other places in scripture, as does the apostle

John, as does James, as does Jude, warning us about false teachers, warning us about false workers, righteousness.

And one of the things that Paul does is that he tells us that these false apostles are so kind that they transform, they're able to appear as messengers of light.

Light or darkness? They can appear as messengers of light.

Because who do they emulate? Who can do the same thing? Satan. Satan the devil.

And no marvel is that Satan's self is transformed into an angel of light. That Satan's self is so good.

He's so deceitful. You know, the, I remember like the old cartoons back in the day, Tom and Jerry and all those old good cartoons and happy scenes where Tom and Jerry somehow end up in heaven or hell.

And at the end of hell there's the big giant red demon, you know, Satan poking poor

Tom and Jerry and then you get to heaven and there's this big early St.

Peter's gate. All of these imageries are fictitious, obviously. And they're misinformed.

If you were ever to see Satan, he wouldn't have big red horns. He wouldn't have a big flashing red tail.

He wouldn't ask him to sort of try him for something, poking people with it. I think there was a pastor that recently came out.

I don't know if this was a fake article or what, but I saw this article. This pastor said he went to hell.

He died and went to hell. And he saw demons torturing people in hell.

And that they were listening to Rihanna songs. The artist Rihanna. I don't know what this guy was on.

But did you guys hear that? Did you hear that? No, I had a pretty terrible idea. But again, this image of Satan torturing people in hell.

It's not true. It's not believable. The acronym is hell is Satan's domain.

That's his kingdom or something where he has glory. He has no such glory over hell. Hell was actually created for his destruction.

And for the destruction of his angels and for the destruction of the enemy of Christ. But Satan, if you were ever to see him, he wouldn't be this big nasty red monster.

You would see him as angel -like. You would see him as beautiful, as stunning, as magnificent, as a glorious spirit creature, which he is.

And in the same manner, false teachers, false apostles, false prophets can also have a bright appearance.

Righteousness, of holiness, of purity. It can have so much powerful outward appearance.

Just like Satan. Just like Satan. So we can't just rely on the exterior.

But rather we have to look at what these false teachers are saying. What they're teaching.

How they're teaching it. And determine for ourselves whether these individuals ought to be regarded as teachers.

Peter puts it this way in 2 Peter 2 line. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you.

For if we shall bring in damnable heresies, even the lie of the

Lord that brought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. So Peter looking back to the redemptive history of God's people says in the

Old Testament, there were false prophets among you. Even now, there's false teachers among you.

Now this is kind of a really incredible statement because we're talking about the infinite New Testament church.

It doesn't get closer to Jesus on the timeline than the time of the apostles.

You've got the ministry of Christ. You've got the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. You've got the gathering of the church under the teaching of the apostles.

And yet already there's false teachers. Think about that for a minute. That's pretty stunning.

That just within a generation of Christ, there's already false teachers infiltrating the church. It didn't take long.

It doesn't take long for false teachers to infiltrate the church. Even think of a, you know, we think broadly of evangelicalism abroad in America and across the world.

And, of course, we know there's lots of false teachers. There's lots of false teachers out there. But they usually always arise first within the local church.

So the Episcopalian church was, for a long time, a powerful

Protestant church with, for the most part, good doctrine.

About 100 years ago, slowly you begin to see the liberalization of the institutions of the

Episcopalian church. And the seminaries began to teach critical theories of the

Bible. And then within not even a generation of the introduction of those teachings within the seminaries, you have the rise of prominent leaders, pastors, priests, bishops within the

Episcopalian church that began to veer off into heretical territory.

So by the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, you already have within aspects of the

Episcopalian church apostasy of priests, of bishops who were accepting of homosexuality way before this was a huge social issue.

You begin to see people like Bishop Sponge. What's his name? Sponge?

Sponge? Sponge? Sponge? Yeah. He became a very prominent archbishop in the church.

And by the 1960s, he was already working towards full acceptance of homosexuality within the institution of the church.

And he had brought it to such a point of apostasy that the Episcopalian church today is unrecognizable for its roots.

And it's really deviated. You have major denominations. You know, I would say probably over half of Protestant churches.

I'm not talking about Evangelical, I'm talking about the original Protestant churches that are steering out of the Reformation and out of apostasy.

And so, you know, all this is from the search within the local church. And so we have to guard the local church.

And the members of the church are responsible for that. We're going to give you another scripture.

It says, 1 John 4, 1. Beloved, John says, who is the beloved?

Why, you are. You are the beloved. This is why sometimes in Sunday mornings I call you that.

I say, good morning, beloved, because you are Christ's beloved. You are his people. And so, you are the beloved.

He says, believe not every spirit. What is he said to do? Try or test the spirits to see whether they're from God.

Why? Because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

So would you test them by only? Yes. So one of the ways we're in the next section we're going to look at is how to discern whether a person is a false teacher, a false prophet.

And look at the discerning aspect that Christ presented to us. But it's your responsibility as a

Christian. And one of the challenges, of course, is that the way we do church in America, the way we do church today.

I'm not a big fan of it. We hire a pastor. I'm very thankful for my job, by the way.

We hire a pastor. And he's essentially our resident Bible teacher,

Bible scholar, counselor, CEO, janitor, all the things you want.

And you wrap everything up in one month. And he's kind of like the one who we pay so he can know the

Bible for us. And it's almost like a bird, you know, feeding his babies.

You know, the bird first grabs the food, chews it up, and then he regurgitates it into the mouth of his babies. And that's kind of what being a pastor today feels like.

It's like I get the privilege of consuming the Word of God, and then I have to kind of regurgitate it back to you guys.

But in reality, you ought to be strong enough, beloved, to know the

Word on your own, independent of the pastor. You ought to be discerning enough to know that when the pastor preaches, pastors are not infallible.

They are infallible men, and people often sometimes speak things that aren't true or incorrect. I remember once I said something in a sermon, and as soon as I said it,

I was like, ooh, that's not the way I wanted it to come out. It's not what

I was trying to get at, and I knew I was going to get people to come after me afterwards. And I said, you know, you're absolutely right.

You know, I accept it. So, but your responsibility as Christians, a

Christian is a believer. The importance of being essentially guardians of a global church is to tax all things.

And it's not just from the pulpit. I don't want the pulpit to be kind of like the, where your guns are pointed all the time.

But it also should be even within the church itself, in the pews. And not that we're policing each other, like we're looking for heretics, and we're looking for, you know, false teachers in the church.

We don't want to have a hysteria either. But we want to be discerning. We want to be wise and innocent towards evil in the sense that if there are brothers in our midst, and we had this recently.

We had a brother who we loved dearly who had very erroneous doctrines on treachery, for instance, that we couldn't allow to fester and to grab an old root in this church.

And so we had to, you know, draw our separate ways. It's things like that that we have to be on guard for.

Because one of the challenges today, too, is that every Christian, they find what

I call their favorite pet doctrine. You know what a pet doctrine is? Pet doctrine is our favorite doctrine, right, that we talk about all the time.

And it's usually something that's like on the fringe, right? It's something on the fringe, like angels, demons, or, you know, what kind of color robes we're going to have in heaven.

Things like that, right? You know, it's very fringe things that are kind of really not that important. Things that aren't really that.

But what we tend to do is that we tend to exaggerate them because they become important to us.

So I think it's really important. And I see a lot of YouTube videos, right?

My favorite Bible teacher from YouTube said this and that. I want to send you this video. And, you know, we kind of get a little too overboard on certain things.

And I'm guilty of having done that myself, you know, as a Christian. So we have to be aware of that, too.

Don't believe every YouTube video that you watch. Don't listen to every YouTube preacher because, one, they're not your pastor.

No one will ever be able to pastor you from YouTube. It's just not going to work. And, two, test the spirits of Paul and John and Peter who instruct us and tell us to do.

There were many false prophets throughout the world. And now false prophets have happy access to the Internet. So their reach is amplified like never before, right?

So false teacher, false prophet. And I know this one guy who is definitely a false teacher. And he doesn't have a church, but he has

YouTube. And he doesn't even go to church. This guy doesn't even have a church he belongs to. But he gets thousands of views on YouTube.

And he does a live stream, and there's hundreds of people on the live stream. Because he's built an audience online.

And that shows the danger of the Internet in some regard. It is the reach that most false teachers have today.

Any thoughts or questions so far? Matthew 7, verse 16.

He says, You should know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or of figs or of thistles?

Now, he gives us something interesting to work with here. He says, You should know them by their fruits. Know who?

False teachers, false prophets. And he says, Do men gather grapes of thorns or of figs or of thistles?

He says, in verse 17, So even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit.

But a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. Every good tree.

What is a good tree? True Christians, true

Bible teaching, true Bible teachers. Bring forth good fruit. But a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.

This is where you get to, obviously, the word. You should know them by their fruits.

And you should examine every tree by its fruit. Verse 18 says, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.

Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. What's so important about this imagery?

What is Jesus trying to do? Why is Jesus using this imagery of a tree and fruit? I think it's due to the nature of their falseness.

It's not just someone's making a mistake. It's like, in your essence, a great tree is.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. A good tree can't produce bad fruit.

It's almost like, think of a tree in its complexity.

It's got roots. It's got the inside part where water and nutrients are held. And it brings it up to the branches where the leaves are.

It produces fruit. There's an intricacy there. And if a tree, especially,

I'll give you an interesting example. I love bananas.

But did you know bananas are in danger of being extinct? The bananas that we have today are called the

Cappadish. And the Cappadish banana is at risk of being extinct. And the reason why, because there's this killer fungus that is infecting all of the major suppliers in South America and across the world.

And this fungus completely kills the tree and the nutrients and the soil.

And it's almost like a pandemic where they can't get under control. They're actually already saying there's no reversing it.

The fungus is spreading so quickly that within about 10 to 20 years, the bananas that we have today will be totally extinct.

We won't be able to make them anymore because of this fungus that's affecting them. So what the fungus does, then, it goes into the soil, infects the soil, and then it infects the tree, the tree itself.

So the tree can't produce the bananas. And it begins to wither.

It dies. It decays. And then that soil, you can't use it for 50 years.

It's that infected. And that's a perfect example of all dangers.

It goes down to the roots. It goes down to the roots. There is nothing redeemable, in a sense, about the ones that Jesus is talking about.

So every good tree brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit, or fruit that isn't good for consumption, food that isn't real food, poisonous.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Jesus says in verse 19, every tree that brings not forth good fruit is to be cut down and cast into the fire.

That's very harsh. What is the fruit that Jesus is referring to?

What is fruit kind of a standard word? Disciples.

Disciples. It's the evidence. It's the evidence. The evidence of a good tree is its fruit.

The fruit is the evidence of a Christian life. It's the evidence of your walk. It's the evidence of your life.

It's the evidence of the spirits working in you. So fruit is the evidence that we produce of a

Christian life, or of something else. So it's the evidence that we produce.

An example of that would be, of course, the type of life that we lead. But also, in this context,

I think more accurately, it's talking about our beliefs. It's not just talking about our life as a whole.

It's talking about our set of doctrine. And so the doctrine that we hold is important because doctrine is not good just for head knowledge.

It's good for all life. So good doctrine produces good fruit, produces good life. Bad doctrine produces bad fruit, bad life.

So even an example in the Christian church, again, is also, I would say, eschatology is a big one because there are so many

Christians who believe that the rapture is going to happen in a second. So why worry about this world?

Why worry about, you know, I've literally heard Christians say over and over, I'm not worried about that because I'm going to be out of here.

And that defeatist attitude has led the church to give up its moral ground in the culture, give up its moral voice in the world, where we no longer feel the need to invest in future generations because the rapture's not important.

That's bad doctrine, which is producing bad fruit, producing bad life. Which is why, again,

I talk a lot about eschatology. It's my pet doctrine. Any other thoughts or questions on this so far?

Notice what it says. Non -fruit bearing trees will be burned, is what Jesus says.

It says every tree that brings not forth its fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.

What does he mean by that? What kind of fire are we talking about? Hell, he said, everlasting death.

You know, I would say there's two ways in which we can look at this. When Jesus in his parables talks about, and he talks about this often, like Matthew 13 is an example of this as well, where Jesus talks about the weeds and the weeds growing until the harvest, and then the weeds are gathered into barn and they're thrown into the fire.

We see this also in Matthew 25, the second language in the parables of the 10 virgins.

Jesus uses fire as an analogy. Now, fire can be seen as an analogy for two things in Jesus' parables.

One, it can be a refining fire. We see this time and time again in Scripture. I think 1

Corinthians 3 is an example of this, where fire is viewed as something that refines silver and gold, precious stones.

But it can also mean judgment, and eternal judgment, the eternal fires of hell.

In this context, I would lean towards this as being a reference to hell and not a refiner's fire, where some people would actually take this verse and say, no, this is talking about Christians who are false prophets, and God is going to throw them into the fire.

That means he's going to refine them so that they're no longer false prophets. Now again,

I do agree for you all to be watching for Christians to mess up and be able to offer false prophecy and repent. So I think that's true.

But I don't think that's what the teaching of the text is saying or teaching here. Primarily because Jesus went to such great lengths to say, a bad tree can't do up.

It can't produce good fruit. So what do you have to do? You have to cut it down, okay? And you burn it.

That way it doesn't spread. So you know, that's actually what they're doing with those banana trees in South America.

Because again, this fungus is infecting these trees. And one of the things they have to do, a measure to stop it from spreading, and they're losing lots of money because they have to burn it.

They have to burn the ground, they have to incinerate it so that they can stop this fungus from continuing.

And that's what Jesus is talking about in this context. You need to cut it down, add its fruit, and you have to burn it so that it doesn't spread.

And this is talking about judgment. This is a judgment on the false teachers.

Job 18, verse 16. His fruit shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off.

Matthew chapter 3, verse 10. It says, And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees.

Therefore, every tree which brings not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.

Matthew 7, 19. Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.

There's so many verses, and I can go on and on and on, on so many verses that talk about the consequences for bad teaching, for bad doctrine.

It's to cut and to separate. Cut and separate. So what should the church's response be to false teachers, false teaching, and false prophets?

Should we tolerate it? No. What should we do? Excommunication.

Okay. Well, first discipline. Right. Yeah, it should be to cut and to separate.

That should be the response. In fact, when you look at the Old Testament, and you look at the

Old Testament laws regarding holiness, a lot of it was just a practice of cutting and separating.

The word holiness actually means to cut. It means to cut and separate. Think of it like when you're cutting your carrots.

You cut it, and then you separate it. You cut it, and you separate it. That's the exact picture of holiness. God cuts you, moves you, and he separates you, and he says, touch not the unclean thing.

Right? So God wants to take your life. He wants to separate you from the world.

He wants to separate you from false teachers, from the things that he detests. And he commands us, he calls us, to be a wholly set apart people.

And one of the ways that the congregation of Israel did this, many ways, if you read the book of Leviticus, for instance, if a man touched someone who was dead, do you know what the requirement was before they could enter the city?

Seven days they had to be separated. Say it again. Seven days they had to be separated. Seven days they had to be separated.

Not only did they have to be separated for seven days, but they had to purify themselves prior to entering the city.

Right? And so if you had touched somebody that was dead, you couldn't come into the temple.

You couldn't come into Yahweh's presence for seven days. Same thing if a woman was on her menstrual cycle.

She had to be separated from the life of the congregation of Israel for a period, and then go through a ritual of washing as well.

And all this was to preserve the integrity and the cleanliness and the purity of true worship.

Now, we don't have a temple system today where we have to go through all these ritual rites that are involved in the book of Leviticus in regard to cleansing and things of that nature.

We have something even better, because we can approach God through a unit a better way through Jesus Christ and His Shepherd, that gives us access by faith.

But there is still an aspect of having to be cut and separate from the things that God detests.

And through His New Testament apostles, the teachers, Christ is making it known that He detests,

He hates false teachers. He hates false prophets. He wants His people to be cut and separate from them.

And the process that God's put in place is church discipline, but it's also just a gift that God's given the church in His word to be discerning.

So, you know, we don't talk about spiritual gifts enough, I feel, as Reformed Baptists.

But discernment is a spiritual gift. But the problem that I find, even amongst the most charismatic of charismatics, is that they are often the ones who lack the most discernment.

And they're the ones who tend to be so open -minded about spiritual things that they're essentially inviting demons into the church and into their lives.

But it's not at the expense of, we shouldn't use spiritual gifts at the expense of those extremists.

Nor should we fall prey to the idea that some Christian techers say, well, pastor, it's just not my spiritual gift.

Right? You know what? God's given everyone the gift of discernment.

Every Christian has the gift of discernment. You know why we all have this? Because we all have the

Bible. We all have the Bible. And what greater gift of discernment can you have than God's word?

He's spoken to us. He's revealed His character. He's revealed His truth. If you don't have the gift of discernment, you're a fool and it's your own fault.

Because it's in His word. The word is a gift of discernment. And so we have to look at the word, read it, study it, find ourselves a proof, be aware of it, not to be ashamed, so that we can test all things and go past that which is right.

So the consequence of not having discernment is that we end up opening the doors to the church for false teachers, false apostles, false prophets, to mislead

God's people. And so you are the barrier, in some regard, through the work of the

Holy Spirit to preserve the integrity of the church. And so you have a responsibility, dear

Christian, to become separate, separate from the world, separate from false teachers, false apostles.

And that's why it's so important that you know the Bible. And that when you hear the

Bible preached, you ought to be discerning. Again, discerning and not critical.

We've also seen this in a lot of churches, too, where there are those who are just literally almost like a college board, and they're just taking notes just to see if they can find error in the pastor's preaching.

That's a critical spirit. That's not the Holy Spirit. So avoiding critical, but also be discerning.

So find that balance in life, find that balance in the Christian life, even within the pews.

It can be a challenge, but it can be done. And so it's all about the disposition of the heart, what our heart desires and what our intentions are for our brothers and sisters in the

New Testament church. And the question is so important. How can we avoid it being critical, but also discerning?

How can we avoid being critical? Say that again one more time, nice and loud.

Prayer about your own motivations. I think it's really important. That's probably a spot on. Do everything you love.

That's right. Do everything you love. Pray about it. You know, sometimes we might hear something, we might take offense to something that's said, either by a brother or from the pulpit.

And our inclinations to run and say, you know what, I'm Matthew 18. And sometimes we use, we use

Matthew 18 like a loaded gun sometimes. And we have to be really careful and discerning and say, you know what, is this offense?

Is this me just taking offense or is there actual barrier?

Let me pray about how we process this and not making rush or harsh judgment right away.

Taking the time to breathe, let things kind of digest a little bit and then going forward and saying, you know what, maybe

I'll go after it. Maybe this is an issue that I think needs, requires a Matthew 18 intervention.

Yeah, you have it? Yeah. Well, what do you do when someone becomes paranoid?

Like they had just one bad teacher after another come to your church and now they realize, okay, we have to run a tight ship now.

Say it again. What do you do with the believer? They become paranoid because they've seen their church get ravaged by false teacher after false teacher and they realize, you know what, we have to run a tight ship now.

What does it mean to run a tight ship? Well, basically... Because I mean, we run a tight ship.

Well, we take people through like the orientation class and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think every church would run a tight ship in some regard, right? I mean, if not, like Mario, if it's not to guard the gospel, that doesn't trust it to us, right?

So Paul saw himself as a guardian to the gospel. He entrusted it to Timothy and he says, guard the faith.

Scripture tells us that we have to, we have to include apologetics and polemics in our

Christianity. We have to contend for the gospel. It's not to restrict, you know, we ought to run a tight ship in regard to the preservation of the purity of the gospel.

But at the same time, a tight ship doesn't mean that we are paranoid nor that we fall prey to harsh, legalistic, judgmental attitudes with regard to who will come in the door, right?

So you can be an inviting church, a warm church, a church people want to be at and still preserve the integrity of it by having safeguards, right?

So like we as a church, we have safeguards, right? So people want to join the church, right? We'd love for people to join the church. But I literally have seen churches where people say,

I want to join the church. This is really cool. Here, sign this paper and you're good to go, right?

And we take a little bit more time with that because we want to safeguard, we want you to understand first what our distinctives are, what we believe, what we teach.

We want to make sure that that's in line with what your convictions are. And if not, then, you know, we try to show you for the scripture that this is what we believe to be true, right?

Biblical. And then we allow the church to have a process in it in that we read the liturgy report for a testimony, we share the testimony, and then the church votes.

So we have a pretty strong safeguard in that regard. But most churches don't. Most churches don't.

So I think what we do is balance, right? So if people want to be a part of the church, we're very open to that.

We love that. We want more people to be a part of the church. The process is in place to safeguard the gospel.

Any other thoughts or questions? I want to look at one more verse before we close our time.

And it's going to be in John 15. Is that in front of you because I didn't pray? My notes are really long.

I'm giving you guys a very short version of it. But in the end, just turn to John 15.

Jesus says this. Christ loves agricultural variables.

He loves it. He says, I am the true vine, and my father is the divine grower.

Every branch of me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he cleans it so that it may bear more fruit.

You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. See the power of the word? And that's why

I tell you that the word, and there's no reason why you all don't have to have a sermon because God's given you his word.

It's the word that purifies you. And he says this in verse 4. Abide in me, and I in you.

Let's just love that verse. He says, abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

And I just love that. How can you, dear Christian, bear your fruit? Abide.

Abide. How do we know when we're not abiding in him? So when life takes us in certain routes and we begin to lose our fruit, we know why.

He says this also in verse 5. I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much for a part from me. You can do nothing.

This shows us the total dependency we ought to have on Christ. Apart from him, we can do nothing.

This is true of the works that we have. Our works. Isaiah 64.

Our book filled with rags before him. There's nothing we can do to impress him. There's no amount of works that we can do to earn his favor or his fine love.

Instead, it is only in him that our works are approved. Our works are not approved outside of Christ.

Our works are only approved in Christ. In Christ. And he goes on to say this also.

In verse 6. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up.

And they gather them and cast them into the fire in the day of our return. If you abide in me, and I will abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

For my Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and prove to be my disciples.

You must prove to be disciples. By fruit. Jesus says you would know them by their fruit.

And Jesus says you can do nothing apart from it. The only way you can bear good fruit is by abiding in it. So there's the answer that we all need to come to.

The answer to whether we're a Christian is simply this.

Do I abide in Christ? Does he abide in me? Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 13.

He says, Test yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. He says,

If you do not recognize this about yourselves, then Jesus Christ is in you. Unless indeed you fail the test.

That's the test. Is he in you? Does he abide in you? Do you abide in him? Is his word bearing fruit in your life?

Is it changing you? Is it transforming you? That's the test. And so may you, dear

Christian, abide in him. Trust in Jesus. And walk ever closer with him. Any thoughts or questions from today?

And this is the way we avoid false teachers as well. That's one of those conversations we're having. False teachers and false prophets.

We avoid them by abiding in Christ. So listen not to the voice of foreigners, or a stranger who may come into the fold, who is trying to follow you, beckon you away from Christ and his grace, and set on you.

Any thoughts or questions? Well, we finished a couple minutes early, but that's okay.

We can pray and then we can prepare to serve the Father. We do thank you for Jesus.

That he is the true, divine, and that we must abide in him, in him alone, so that we may bear fruit, fruit that will last, fruit that will be pleasing to you, fruit that will gratify your heart, and fruit,

Lord, that is evident to a world that is the fruit of the dying, that your love and your grace is sufficient enough for all of us in our weakness.

Help us when the temptation of the world is strong and we're beckoned by the voices of strangers, of false teachers and false prophets, who are trying to beckon us away from the grace and the kindness of our

God, Savior. Pray, Lord, that you help us in our moments of weakness, not to give in to the things of this world that would so easily entangle us.

Lord, help us to look and have our eyes fixed on Jesus, this morning and forever. In Jesus' name, amen.