More Is Hell - [1 Timothy 4:1-5]

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We'll have a question for you this morning. Have you ever eaten too much? You're laughing.
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How about this? You ever eat too much and then have desserts? Somebody, and I won't mention any names, but I've heard this before.
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Remind me when I come here that I don't want to order desserts. I'm absolutely not going to mention any names.
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For me, I mean, I don't even have to eat too much. You just give me a hamburger around 6 o 'clock, and I'll tell you what,
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I'm not going to sleep until 1 .30 or 2 in the morning. It's the beauty of genetics. But if you just had a great meal at a restaurant, and here comes the waitress with the dessert menu, you look at it, and you go, oh, there's that chocolate mousse bread pudding a la mode with the caramel and apple slices.
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We can't leave here until I've had that. Sure, when she brings it around, it looks about twice as big as the 20 ounces of prime rib you just ate and the gigantic baked potato and, of course, the wedge salad that started it all and the steamed vegetables.
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But it's dessert, man. It's the frosting on the cake. It's a great night, and you've got that dessert coming.
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How do you feel afterwards? Not so good. You know, that's when you start saying things like, remind me when we come here and I have that meal.
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Right? When it comes to spiritual issues, people are always wanting to add to the gospel.
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I titled this morning's message, More as Hell, because I thought it kind of has, when you listen to it, it has that war thing, more.
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But natural men, that is to say that those who are not saved, they don't want, as Karen just sang, this kind of gospel of grace, this
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God of grace alone. It can't be that easy to be saved. There must be something more
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I can do to please God, something that will make me more spiritual, something that will bring me more favor.
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Dessert, a little something more. Don't we have to do something?
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Can't we improve the gospel? The just shall live by faith.
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I invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 4. And really what
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Paul is knocking down today is this idea of adding to the gospel, of improving on it, on having some kind of spiritual dessert, as it were.
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By now you should have the theme of 1 Timothy pretty much down. Paul wrote Timothy to tell him how to run a church.
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And in chapter 3, he told him what to look for in terms of spiritual leadership, the men who would be deacons and elders.
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Then he closed with a remarkable passage talking about the truths of the
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Christian faith, the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, and everything in between.
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Let's look at 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 to 5. Now the
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Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
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For everything God or everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.
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For it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
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This morning, I want to draw your attention to three warnings, three warnings and one simple truth, found in this passage so that you will view the gospel and all of creation exactly as God does, that you will neither add nor subtract anything from the gospel.
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I don't want anyone to be deceived about what pleases
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God. Paul wrote this passage to Timothy to warn about deceivers and to point to the contrasting truth.
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Paul in his writing was always very black and white, exhibiting contrast so that we would understand truth and error.
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And it is vital that you understand this so that you will never drift away from the truth nor cease to be thankful that God has opened your eyes to it.
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Our first warning this morning is a warning from heaven. A warning from heaven.
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Look at verse 1. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith.
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Now many of us have heard someone say, God told me this or God told me that. Did they actually mean that they heard the voice of God?
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Here Paul does mean that. It's exactly what he means. There is nothing unclear or vague.
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It's expressly, in other words, these exact words. This is what the
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Holy Spirit said to Paul. This is what he heard. Some say, well, maybe this was Jesus talking to him when he was instructing him.
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But no matter how you put it, this is the precise words of God. It's a fascinating phrase there where it says in latter times, later times.
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We often hear that this prophecy refers to now that Paul was looking forward to the end of time and somehow that that would be the time when people were falling away.
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It's interesting though because that phrase in later times actually refers to what? The entire church age.
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Everything from the time of Christ's death forward. So literally throughout the church age this kind of thing was going to be happening.
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How do we know that? How can we get that exactly? Well, first of all, it's an idiom of the Greek language. But secondly, just look at verse 6 in chapter 4 there.
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Paul writes this. He says, if you put these things, well, what things? These things that he's just written to Timothy.
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If you put these things before the brothers, before those who believe, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.
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This was for then and it is for now. Timothy was to warn the church at Ephesus where he was the pastor about this exact problem, this current happening in the church and a current situation in our church today.
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Note also that he says that apostasy is coming. Some will depart from the faith.
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And I would suggest to you that the translation, the word there that says depart is pretty mild. It's not like, you know, they were just kind of somehow, they were wandering this way and then they just somehow sort of strayed off a little bit.
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They just left. They became apostates. They knew the truth and departed from the truth.
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They left it completely. These are the same people of whom the
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Apostle John, when he was writing 1 John 2 .19 said, they went out from us, but they were not of us.
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For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
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These people who will depart from the faith, maybe they give some indications that they were Christians.
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Maybe they profess Christ. Maybe they've been baptized. And may I just say for probably the 300th time that you've been here and you've heard this, baptism does not save you.
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When you get baptized, it doesn't mean that you're a Christian. You are being baptized in obedience to Christ.
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But no one can examine your heart. No one knows what actually is going on. You make the profession and we baptize you based on that profession.
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But these people who depart, they say that they're believers. And yet they have left the narrow way.
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They're no longer on the same path. What once appeared to be genuine faith, to be genuine conversion, to be a genuine change of life, ends up being nothing more than an illusion.
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It's interesting also, the source of the apostasy. The source of the apostasy is hell itself.
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Look again at verse 1. Some will depart from the faith. Well, how? How did they get there?
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Why did they leave? By devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
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Well, is it true that men deceive themselves? We know this from Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all else.
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Who can know it? Don't listen to your heart. Listen to the word of God. Men can do that, and they do it all the time.
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But this is a glimpse behind the curtain, as it were, into spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is not about casting out demons and binding
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Satan and all that. It is a contest, combat of ideas, truth against error.
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Those who fall away are led astray by deceitful spirits. Literally immaterial beings.
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Not a bad attitude. Not something in them where they say, you know what, I have a really... I have a deceitful spirit.
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No. Immaterial beings. And that's indicated even in the next phrase, following the teachings of demons.
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In other words, these demonic influences have infiltrated the minds of men, and some men followed after these false teachers.
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The world is full of counterfeit teaching. It is a smorgasbord of...
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And here's a word I just like to throw on the front of everything. Pseudo. Pseudo -Christianity. It's close to the truth.
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It really approaches the truth from either side. Either it takes a little off or it adds a little to it.
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Add a little here, take a little there. Whatever will be just enough to sentence to hell whoever believes it.
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That's the objective of pseudo -Christianity. Of these doctrines of demons, of these deceitful spirits.
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Again, the Apostle John addressed this in 1 John 4, verse 1.
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Don't turn there, I'm going to read it. Beloved, do not believe every spirit. What does that mean?
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Don't believe every spirit. Don't be undiscerning. Listen, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.
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For many false prophets have gone out into the world. False prophets, false teachings are all over the place.
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It is a smorgasbord in this sense. You can go to the cafeteria of false teachers and take a little scoop of this, a heap of that. Those who devote themselves to these deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons do so of their own choice.
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But these false prophets have behind them deceitful spirits. I talked before about idolatry and where it really springs forward from.
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What would Satan like nothing more? Or what would he prefer more than anything?
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If his objective is to somehow dethrone God, then he wants you to worship gods, small g, other gods, false gods.
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What do these deceitful spirits, these doctrines of demons do? Well, they want to supplant the truth.
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They want to give you a substitute for the truth. They know the revealed
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Word of God. The demons believe that there is one God. And what do they do? They shudder. But they bring forward this kind of spiritual poison.
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They plant it in the minds of these people who are deceived, who become teachers. And some are led astray by it.
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How? Because it's offered to them and they take it. They weren't really of us. They departed from their profession.
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A warning from heaven, the Spirit expressly says that this will happen not only in Paul's time, but today.
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It is a constant, ongoing battle. The truth is always under assault.
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Second warning. A warning about the teachers from hell. Look at verse 2.
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Through the insincerity of liars, whose consciences are seared. Who are these people?
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These false teachers. They are hypocrites. That's what it means, insincerity.
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They are play actors, mask wearers. On the outside, they present themselves as shepherds. They're tender, they're loving, they're caring.
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They want you to have your best life now. They smile a lot.
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But inwardly, what did Jesus say about them? They are ravenous wolves. This is what they do.
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No one who is representing a demon or demonic teaching, teaching from, as it were, the very bowels of hell, says, hey,
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I've got a message that's going to damn you and take you to hell. They want to help you.
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They want to help you, just like, you know, we used to say internal affairs when
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I was with the police department. Hi, we're from internal affairs and we're here to help. Sure you aren't.
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These false teachers don't want to help you. They act like they want to be your best friend. What happens if you don't help them, if you don't support them?
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Well, they're on to shear the next sheep. That verse also says that they're liars.
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And again, I told you I like this word pseudo. And the Greek word here is helpful. It is pseudologos or liars.
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They have false words. They are false speakers. One man described it this way.
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They are like actors who play parts so well that their words have the ring of truth.
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It sounds true. They're convincing. They are compelling. If it were possible, the very elect of God would be deceived.
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They're so clever. A little tweak here, a little twist there.
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These men have been trained by the best liar in history. The master deceiver.
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What did Satan do in the garden? He didn't just outright lie. He did lie to Eve, but he didn't just outright lie.
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He just took God's word and he just tweaked it a little bit. He just twisted it a little bit. He just gave it a little adjustment.
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And she went right for it. And that's what they do today. They don't really completely ignore the truth.
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They take the truth and they cut a verse here and a verse there and they put them together. Or they import some strange view into a verse.
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Satan doesn't give these false teachers classes on how to deceive people. But he's trained them carefully.
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They have years and years of training under their belts. You know how I know that? Again, look at verse 2.
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They have numb consciences. Their consciences are seared. One man calls this the cauterization of their consciences.
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What do you do if you have a really, really bad wound? I mean, if you're taking first aid, if you have a wound, you're bleeding, you take a bandage and you put pressure on it.
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What if that doesn't stop it? You take another bandage, you put more pressure on it. Eventually, you know it's tourniquet time.
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Sometimes to close a wound, they will use cauterization, which is to take a super hot branding iron and just apply that to the wound.
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Why? Because it closes the blood vessels. And that's the idea here, that they've cauterized their own conscience.
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I think it's important to just kind of understand what the conscience is. The conscience, everyone has one. How do we know that?
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Because Romans 2 .15 tells us that we have the law of God written in our hearts so that we what?
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We inherently know, we instinctively know right from wrong. Everyone has a conscience.
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It's that kind of alarm that tells you, you know, you've gone too far. Young child stealing something from a store.
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All manner of things. At different points in our lives, when we realize we're about to cross a line, we have a
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God -given alarm system that says, you know what? You're about to mess up. You're about to sin.
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But for these men, their conscience is a little bit like the boy who cried wolf.
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I was thinking about it this morning. I was thinking about the old army days. I had a little problem getting up in the morning.
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And you know, so I got an alarm clock. I was really smart. I got an alarm clock, and that thing was loud. And it didn't help.
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You know why? Because I'd just reach over and hit that snooze button. So eventually
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I thought, man, I'm going to get in trouble if I don't watch this. So I went to the PX, the base store, and I got something called
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Big Ben. And it was an alarm clock. And when that thing went off, it woke up everybody in all the rooms.
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I mean, it was like a fire alarm. You know, people are running out. What's going on? You know what? That didn't even help until I put it across the room.
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Then that thing went up, and I had to, I mean, by the time I got it off, I was like, my heart was racing, and I was awake.
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But these men have ignored that alarm for so long. They don't even hear it.
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It doesn't even bother them. The idea of disobeying
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God has become completely immaterial to them. So we've seen two warnings so far.
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A warning from heaven. Secondly, a warning about the teachers from hell. Thirdly, a warning about teaching from hell.
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This teaching would say that marriage is a spiritual hindrance. Look at verse 3. These false teachers, what do they do?
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That Paul is warning them about. They forbid marriage. Forbid marriage.
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By the way, they're not suggesting that you move in with somebody. But what you believe about God and his word matters.
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We say that all the time. Theology matters. For these teachers of demonic doctrine, they very likely had a
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Gnostic worldview. And some of you are going, oh, do we have to talk about Gnosticism? What is it? Well, I need to explain it so that you understand this.
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What is Gnosticism? And I'm not asking for a show of hands. Gnosticism was an early competitor of Christianity.
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A competitor, not a companion, not a part of Christianity, but a competitor.
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And the basic idea was it claimed to be Christian, but they also had this rather unique worldview which said that the
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God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were not really the same. The God of the Old Testament created a physical world, physical beings, and that everything physical was evil, was something to be overcome.
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So, how does that apply here? Well, there are two approaches to believing that the physical world is evil and needs to be overcome.
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One is to indulge it, to really go for it, to live life essentially, but that's not the problem he's addressing here.
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He's talking about those who seek to shun the physical world, and here's a little bit of a fancy word too, asceticism.
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Not aesthetic, meaning pleasing to the eye or whatever, but asceticism.
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Physical punishment. Remember even the story about Martin Luther where he would do things to himself physically.
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Why? Because he was taught that if he suffered physically he would be forgiven sin.
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So asceticism is this idea that somehow the physical world is bad, physical pleasure is bad, and that you need to suffer.
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And this is Gnosticism. This is what they taught. The really good thing,
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Gnostics go so far as to say, you want to know how Gnosticism and Christianity cannot be the same, because Gnostics said that Jesus did not come in the flesh.
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That he only appeared to be in the flesh. So how does this apply to marriage?
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Why would they forbid marriage? Marriage I think is probably the ultimate expression of physical pleasure that God has provided, and so if you forbid it, you are saying, look, you need to push off that kind of physical pleasure.
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That's bad. That's sinful. That's not good. Don't partake in it. Personally I like marriage.
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I think it's good. I'm glad my daughters are married because I get grandkids out of that deal.
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It's very good. Well, can you think of a church that would consider itself
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Christian, that forbids some of its members from being married?
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I'll give you a second to ponder that. Hint for those of you who are stumped.
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It is the largest Christian denomination. You know, for a long time
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I thought this started late, but I did some research and I found out, no. It started early.
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In 306 A .D., the Council of Elvira, it's a place in Spain, said this.
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A priest who sleeps with his wife the night before Mass will lose his job. The Council of Nicaea decreed that after ordination, a priest could not marry.
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That was in 325. In 567, the Second Council of Tours said that any cleric found in bed with his wife would be excommunicated for a year and reduced to layperson status.
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In 580, Pope Pelagius II, what a horrible name for a pope, by the way.
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His policy was not to bother married priests as long as they listened to this, did not hand over church property to wives or children.
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It's about maintaining the church's finances. In 604,
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Pope Gregory the Great said that all sexual desire is sinful in and of itself.
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In 1045, Pope Benedict IX, not the, what are we up to, 17 or whatever we're up to?
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16, thank you. Dispensed himself from celibacy and resigned in order to get married.
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Couldn't be married and be the pope. 1074, Pope Gregory VII said anyone to be ordained must first pledge celibacy.
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Priests must first escape from the clutches of their wives. In 1095,
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Pope Urban II had priest's wives sold into slavery and their children were abandoned.
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Now, we've just gone through, recently, 1
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Timothy 3, which says that you need to be, if you're going to lead the church, you need to be the husband of one wife.
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Whatever happened to that? Of course, the Roman Catholic Church is not the only one to stray from sound doctrine.
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I say of course because, like I said, pseudo -Christianity comes in a smorgasbord. Listen to this from Wikipedia about the
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United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. That is a nice name for a church.
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You would know them as the Shakers. Religious sect, originally thought to be a development of the
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Protestant Quakers, founded upon the teachings of Anne Lee, but the group was known for their emphasis on social equality, social justice, and rejection of sexual relations.
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I like this part. Which led to their precipitous decline in numbers. How do you know your church isn't going to last?
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By the way, we want you to repent and believe, and come to our commune and make some furniture, and there'll be none of that marriage stuff.
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A, nobody's going to die. B, nobody's going to join. And B, when they do, their days are numbered, and so is the church.
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But this is precisely the opposite of what the
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Bible teaches. They forbid being married, and what does the Bible say? It's a good thing to find a wife, right?
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Lots of instruction on husbands loving your wives, wives smitting, wives loving their husbands and children.
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Why? Why? Marriage is bad. It's the first institution that God created.
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Genesis 2 says this. You don't have to turn there. Genesis 2, 23 and 24. Familiar verses.
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Then the man said this at last. After he's seen all these animals, looking for a companion.
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This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
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Somebody's going to forbid marriage. Couldn't be more clear in the word of God. But they don't stop there.
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Some foods are forbidden. Look at verse 3. They not only forbid marriage, but they also require abstinence from food, from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
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Who would forbid eating of foods? I mean, what kind of a
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Christian church would say that during a period of the year you couldn't have beef? Well, it is
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Reformation Sunday, right? So how about the Seventh -day Adventists?
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They recommend vegetarianism and abstinence from pork, shellfish, and other foods prescribed as unclean in Leviticus.
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Why? Because those parts of the law were not done away with. I'm going to invite you to open your
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Bibles to Acts 10. Just keep your finger on 1 Timothy. We're going to look at Acts 10, verses 9 to 16.
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Focus here is on Peter. And listen to Acts 10, verses 9 to 16.
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The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray.
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And he became hungry and wanted something to eat. But while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance.
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Now, this is not something I recommend, but verse 11, And saw the heavens opened, and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth.
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In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him,
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Rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said,
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By no means, Lord. For I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.
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And the voice came to him again a second time. What God has made clean, do not call common.
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This happened three times. And the thing, the sheet with all these animals, was taken up at once to heaven.
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It's insightful. It has to do with a number of things. Primarily to do with the fact that Gentiles and Jews, Gentiles were to be treated with the same respect.
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Let's just hear what commentator Kistemacher has to say. He says, God instructed the Jew to separate himself from the
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Gentile by eating ritually prepared kosher food. There was this wall, as it were, of separation.
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The law divided not only sinful man from holy God, but it divided the
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Jews from the people around them. Made them separate, different, holy, set apart for God.
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The Jewish people would not think of entering a home owned by a Gentile and even eating or drinking with him.
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Why? Because that would make them unclean. Jews also, listen to this, even refused to buy their meat from a
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Gentile butcher. These strict laws of separation offended the
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Gentiles. Fancy that. Oh, your neighbor just thinks he's too good for you. That's a problem.
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But listen, he says, The lesson God teaches Peter in this vision of the clean and unclean animals is that God has removed the barriers he once erected to separate his people from the surrounding nations.
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Things that would have been considered unclean, unkosher to eat,
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God says, Peter, rise, kill and eat. Reptiles. Things that never would have been allowed.
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God set aside the dietary laws. Why? Because Christ fulfilled the law.
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He ended the enmity between the Jew and Gentile. We would see that if we went to Ephesians 3 where Christ brings the
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Jew and the Gentile together. That is a mystery in the Old Testament that has been revealed now into this new entity called the church.
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What did Jesus say? It's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, it's what comes out.
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Well, what is it that defiles food? If it is inherently good, if it is inherently created by God for our use, what is it that makes it defiled?
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I would submit to you that it is a failure to understand and acknowledge its source. Look at verse 3. We're back at 1
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Timothy, by the way. 1 Timothy 4. Everything is to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
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Those who know the truth, that is the gospel, do not seek to please God through some kind of asceticism, that is physical suffering or denial of physical pleasure.
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Not even of foods. Why? Because God has created them for our enjoyment. By the way, that doesn't mean that you should always engage in dessert after you've had the huge meal.
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But the point is, all things are good. God has created them that way.
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So we've had three warnings. First, a warning from heaven. Secondly, a warning about the teachers from hell.
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Third, a warning about teaching from hell, especially with regard to marriage, foods.
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Fourthly, we come to the simple truth. All that God has created is good.
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Look at verse 4. For everything created by God is good. Well, everything.
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Pan. Total. All that exists. What does that leave out?
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Not much. Since God created all things and everything created by God is good, meaning useful, suitable to use, why would anyone shun foods, marriage as some kind of spiritual requirement?
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I'll tell you why. Because they've given their attention to the doctrines of demons.
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It is wisdom. It is the wisdom, false wisdom that says, faith alone?
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You must be kidding. Here's what will please God. Faith plus lifelong celibacy.
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Faith plus not eating shellfish. Faith plus not eating chocolate cake during Lent.
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Faith plus sacrificing something to God so that he'll know that I really, really care for him.
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That is not gospel. That is not the gospel. It's faith plus nothing.
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Faith plus something equals hell. If you think somehow you can contribute to your salvation, if you think somehow you can please
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God through your own efforts, and I don't care what those efforts are, I don't care if it's, you know, I'm going to please
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God through celibacy. I'm going to please God through not eating whatever.
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That is not the gospel. God is not interested in you giving up texting for Lent, all you teenagers out there.
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He is interested in you giving up texting while driving. God is not interested in some kind of, you know,
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God, if you'll give me A, I'll give you B. There are no secrets.
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There are no hidden agendas. There's no higher knowledge. Nothing that, you know, the Bible doesn't address that we need to know for salvation.
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The Bible is the complete, inerrant, sufficient word of God. The gospel is not a matter of what you physically have to do.
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It is this simple. Repent from your sin. Repent from trusting in yourself.
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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in Him fully, understanding that He lived a perfect life in your place, that He died a sacrificial death in your place, and that He was raised on the third day, and that by believing in Him and in Him only, you will be seen as right and forgiven on the day of judgment.
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As a result of everything being created by God for our use, we ought to be thankful for it.
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We ought to be thankful for everything. Again, look at verse 4. And nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.
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Well, surely that means that we should not eat certain foods. Let me read that again. And nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.
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Well, why does Paul go back to this theme? Because it is important. This is the gospel at stake here.
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This is the doctors of demons that says, I will add something to the gospel and thereby lead people astray.
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Does that mean that you cannot have likes and dislikes? No. I'll tell you right now, you invite me over, as much as I may love you, those
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Brussels sprouts are going to be pushed around the plate a little bit or fed to your dog or stuffed in my pocket. They're going somewhere.
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But that's not really the point, that you can't prefer some things over other things. Foods are not forbidden.
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They are gifts from God. Listen to Colossians 2, verses 20 to 23. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?
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Verse 21, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings.
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These have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self -made religion, and here's the word, it's even in the
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Bible, asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
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You can do this if you want, but it's not going to stop you from sinning. It's a matter of the heart.
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It's not what you take in. I mean, so much of what Paul writes, what John writes, over and over and over again are expansions, really repetitions of what
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Jesus taught. There's nothing new here. Jesus taught it.
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The apostles taught it. Why? Because it is the word of God. There's no kind of, you know, if you want to be holy, if you want to achieve a higher status with God, this is what you don't eat.
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On the flip side, if you want to be a vegetarian for health reasons, if your doctor said, you know what, you need to stop eating red meat, fine.
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You want to go on a sugar diet where you only eat sugar every 30 days, fine. It's fine.
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That's for me in my house. The issue is somehow believing that this is pleasing to God.
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That's what asceticism is. I'm going to suffer. I'm going to deprive myself. I'm going to set some standard that God never sets and think
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I'm going to please Him. That somehow He's going to look more favorably upon you if you do eat your
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Brussels sprouts and less upon me if I have my filet mignon wrapped in bacon and blue cheese crumbles on top.
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All things created by God and they are good. Paul summarizes this for us in verse 5.
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For it is made holy by the word of God and prayer, food and all of creation, whatever we partake in that is not inherently sinful.
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There are some things that are sinful and we're not condoning any of that. But if the word of God does not forbid it, it is permitted.
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All of creation is good. God created all things, the entire world for us to enjoy.
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It is good and it is designed for us. So how is it made holy? By the means of God declaring it so.
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He says so in His word over and over again from Genesis all the way to the end. He's been very clear in His word about creation in general and about marriage in particular.
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Demonic deception and it literally is the doctrines of demons introduced to steer people away from the truth seeks to undermine the word of God, to cause people to look for something else, something extra.
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So it was in the beginning, as I said in Genesis, what did Satan do? He just added a little something and then
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Eve added something a little more and she fell. Now, we have to receive these things with thanksgiving.
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Well, what does that mean? Should we pray in thanksgiving for our food? Is this a command to pray before we eat?
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Well, I would submit that it's a command for more than that. Are you thankful for your clothing?
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Are you thankful for your housing? Are you thankful for your job, your families, for everything that you have?
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For this church, for the fellowship of believers? You should be.
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Because every single good thing is a gift from God in whom there is no shadow.
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When is something too much? When it comes to Christianity.
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It's too much when it is an attempt to add to the gospel.
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When it is an attempt to do something in direct contradiction to what
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God says. If you say that something approved by God should be avoided, you've gone too far.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, we acknowledge that there are many false teachers in this world.
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Many who claim to speak for you. Many who would add, subtract, adulterate your word.
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Men and women who would say that they've received a word from you.
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But this stands in direct contradiction to your revealed word. Lord, would you protect each one here from that sort of demonic insight?
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Would you give us hearts of thankfulness and praise for all that you have given us? From those things that we see as small and insignificant to even the very best things.
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We ought to be a people ringing with praise and thanksgiving. You have created this entire world and given it all to us that we might be stewards and we might be enjoyers of all that you have created and called good.
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Father, steer us all away from the notion that we can somehow make ourselves more pleasing to you.
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God, allow us, cause us to plead only the finished work of Jesus Christ, knowing that we can add nothing to salvation.
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Lord, if there are any here who don't know you this morning, Father, I just pray that whatever it is that they are holding up as their hope, as their shield as it were, that they might somehow stand on the day of judgment.
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Father, I pray that you would just burn that away, that they would understand that there is nothing, no good work, no false asceticism that could ever please you.
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It is by faith in Christ alone. Seal that truth to our hearts today.