Leaven Influences Matthew 16:5-12

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There are two types of ways to communicate through language.
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Literally and figuratively. To communicate literally means to say things plainly.
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In John 11, Jesus shows these two types of communication when he tells his disciples that Lazarus has died.
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The disciples knew that Lazarus was sick, and so when Jesus tells them he has fallen asleep, they respond by saying,
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Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover. The disciples are confused.
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They don't understand that Jesus is using a figure of speech to communicate that Lazarus is dead.
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After Jesus sees their confusion, John 11, 14 says that Jesus told them plainly,
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Lazarus has died. Normally when figurative speech is used, we know it.
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If there is a downpour of rain, there is a saying that says it's raining cats and dogs.
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We know this is not literal. We don't see German shepherds and calico cats falling from the sky.
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This saying communicates that the rain is coming down very hard. In biblical interpretation, it is important to have a consistent literal interpretation of Scripture.
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What this means is that when the meaning is plain, we interpret the text plainly. But when it is a picture, we find out what the picture is pointing to.
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Many Bible interpreters make the mistake of being too creative in their interpretation. For example,
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Genesis 1 should be read literally, not figuratively. There is no indication that there is any figurative language at all.
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Therefore, the correct way to interpret Genesis 1 is to say that God created the world in six literal 24 -hour days and rested on the seventh.
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Sadly, however, people become creative in their interpretation in order to fit secular modern science's view that the universe is billions of years old.
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Mark Brooks has pointed me to a Ron Rhodes quote that is appropriate here.
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When the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest the results be nonsense.
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Let me say that again. When the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest the results be nonsense.
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If the answer is inside the box, then why look outside? In your interpretation of Scripture, it is important not to get too creative, but to interpret what is right there in front of you.
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God wants you to understand His Word, and you don't need a seminary degree to understand what
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He has written. But on rare occasions, figurative language is not so easily spotted.
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I remember experiencing this when I was a kid. My brother and I were trying to decide on something, and he suggested that we play rock, paper, and scissors to make the decision for us.
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So I told him, I will go get the rock, the paper, and the scissors, and then we'll get started.
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He looked at me like I took my first step on planet Earth. What I didn't know is that this was a game where three hand symbols were used to play the game and didn't involve a literal rock, paper, and scissors.
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I was confused, just as the disciples were confused, when Jesus told them that Lazarus was asleep.
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If we don't know what literal reality the picture points to, then what follows is confusion.
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Now the confusion the disciples had about Jesus' words about Lazarus is not the only time the disciples were confused through Jesus' use of figurative language.
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In our text this morning, as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, Jesus is once again going to use a figure of speech with his disciples.
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But this time, the picture points to something evil.
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The disciples will once again go from confusion to clarity, and there is something very important they needed to understand, and you do also as you navigate this dangerous world.
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So this time I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 16. We'll be looking at verses 5 -12.
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And if you're using a red Bible, it's on pages 976 and 977.
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This sermon is titled, 11 Influences. 11
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Influences. And I will begin by reading the text. Matthew 16, 5 -12.
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When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. Jesus said to them,
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Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And they began discussing it among themselves, saying,
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We brought no bread. But Jesus, aware of this, said, O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?
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Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the 5 ,000 and how many baskets you gathered?
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Or the seven loaves for the 4 ,000 and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread?
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Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. Here's our big idea. What this text is calling you to do.
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Watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out. Watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out.
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And we will see three disciplines how in this text. But before I jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we've been the last two
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Sundays. We had one big sermon that took two Sundays to get through. Verses 1 -4 of chapter 16.
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And in that text, Jesus was approached by the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees were the unhealthy
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Jewish conservatives of Jesus' day, while the Sadducees were the secular liberals who were not
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Jews by practice, but only from ethnicity. These two groups were normally rivals, but they found a common enemy,
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Jesus Christ. They came to Jesus with the goal of disproving Him as the Messiah.
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They asked Him to perform a celestial sign. They had a tradition that a demon could perform a lesser earthly sign, but only one from God could perform a sign from heaven.
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A celestial sign like an eclipse. What Jesus told the
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Pharisees and Sadducees is that they have no problem understanding the world they live in.
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But when it comes to seeing the things of God and the signs of the times, they completely missed it.
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Jesus wasn't going to give them a sign because that wasn't the main issue. The main issue was their heart. They could interpret the world just fine, but when it came to interpreting the things of God, their hard hearts missed it.
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This text is instructive to us that unbelievers can observe the world we live in, but when it comes to the things of God, they miss it and the
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Bible tells us why. Their sinful desires lead them away from God.
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Instead of believing the truth of the Bible, they reject it to their own demise. Now this leads us to our text once again this morning that we've already read, but now we will zero in on these verses.
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Let's begin by taking a close look in verse 5 where Matthew writes, When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread.
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What we see in verse 5 is that the disciples just crossed to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. What we saw at the end of chapter 15 is that Jesus fed the 4 ,000 plus women and children.
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The people he fed in that narrative were the Gentiles, where when he fed the 5 ,000, he fed the
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Jews. We know that he fed the Gentiles because the southeastern shore of the
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Sea of Galilee was a region dominated by Gentiles. So the disciples are crossing from east to west and when they arrive on shore, they tell
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Jesus that they forgot to bring bread with them. What they forgot to bring was the seven baskets full left over.
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What Mark 8 .14 tells us in the parallel passage is that they only had one loaf left over.
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And this is a problem because there's 12 of them and there's only one loaf. Now bread has been a big topic of discussion lately.
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As we've seen in Matthew, Jesus fed the 5 ,000, the 4 ,000, and he explained to some after feeding the 5 ,000 that he is the bread of life.
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He said that in John 6 .35. After these episodes, Jesus is challenged by the
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Pharisees and Sadducees telling him to perform a sign from heaven. What we saw clearly the last two weeks is that these people are not following God.
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They are Israelites in heritage, but in their teaching and lives, they are not following the word that God has written.
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So what Jesus does is use the bread theme once again in this passage, but this time negatively.
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Let's see this in verse 6. Jesus said to them, Watch and beware of the leaven of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. So we have seen Jesus apply the physical reality of bread to himself, showing that he is the only one who can satisfy one fully forever.
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But in verse 6, he applies the bread negatively to the Pharisees and Sadducees. These Jewish leaders who were very influential over the
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Jewish population. Jesus compares the Pharisees and Sadducees to leavened bread.
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Some of you in this room cook, and you know the difference between leavened and unleavened bread. Leavened bread has yeast in it that makes it rise, while unleavened bread does not, so the bread is flat.
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In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites to eat unleavened bread at the Passover in Exodus 12.
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They were to eat unleavened bread as a symbol to show the haste with which God led the
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Israelites out of Egypt. From this point in biblical history, leavened bread had mostly a negative connotation.
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The only time leavened bread is used positively is in Matthew 13 -33, when
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Jesus compared a little leaven in a large lump of dough to the kingdom of God. He used this symbol to communicate that though the kingdom of God looks small to the outside world, in reality, it is large as it grows behind the scenes and reaches every corner of the earth.
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But leavened bread mostly had a negative connotation in Scripture. To eat leavened bread during the
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Passover was to violate the command of the Lord. And so Jesus and the New Testament writers picked up on this and used the symbol of leavened bread to describe evil people.
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In Luke 12 -1, Jesus compared the character of the Pharisees to leaven. He said to his disciples, beware of the leaven of the
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Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. In Mark 8 -15,
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Jesus adds another party to this list of the leavened, and that is Herod.
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Herod Antipas, as we saw in Matthew 14, is the one who called for John the Baptist to be beheaded. John the
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Baptist called him out for his sin of incest, and so Herod was happy to put him to death when that was requested of him.
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So Jesus calls him leavened because he's evil. Now, if one who is leavened is evil, then it follows that one who is unleavened is good.
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This is how the Apostle Paul used the term unleavened in 1 Corinthians 5, 6 -8, where he writes,
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Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.
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For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
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Do you see what Paul does here? He ties in the sacrifice of Christ with the
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Old Testament Passover, and the Lord's Supper was a Passover meal that took on a new focus.
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It went from looking to what God did in the past by delivering
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Israel from Pharaoh and Egypt, to now looking at what Christ did at the cross.
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The bread that we eat every Lord's Supper symbolizes the body of Christ.
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And his body symbolizes unleavened bread because he's holy. And I know we don't eat unleavened bread here, but we could.
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And certainly, the unleavened bread symbolizes the perfection of Christ.
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That he is completely set apart from sin. He is holy. In the same way, the church who follows
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Jesus is considered unleavened. We are to be set apart from sin also. What Jesus is telling his disciples in this text is to beware of the ungodliness of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. Remember the verse I quoted from Luke 12 .1. These people are hypocrites.
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To be a hypocrite is to say one thing and to do another.
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And Jesus is telling his disciples to be nothing like them. In your life, you have the opportunity to be surrounded by lots of different people.
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Some are good influences, and some are bad. The bad influences are the leavened.
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Proverbs 13 .20 says, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
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I have shared with you this quote before, but it's worth repeating.
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My old youth pastor used to say, show me your friends, and I will show you your future.
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As I look back at my life, what helped me grow maybe more than anything was hanging out with the right people.
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It was spending time with Dave Abernathy, my old pastor. Brian Stout, a missionary whom we support, who
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I've known for many, many years. Carl Johnson, who's been a mentor to me, who preaches at this pulpit from time to time.
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Hanging out with these men regularly changed my life, and at the same time, avoiding the bad influences out there.
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And there were bad influences to avoid. You can look at your life.
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Spend time with the unleavened. Not the leavened. There is a place for evangelism with the unbeliever, and there is a place for discipleship for the
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Christian who's not as far along as you, but spend most of your time with those who are at your level, spiritually or further along.
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The Lord will use these relationships to make you look more like Jesus. The disciples spent lots of time with Jesus over three and a half years.
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And look what they became over time. And look what you become and will become as you spend time with godly people in your life.
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Watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out. The first discipline, how? Is by avoiding the ungodly influence of others.
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The second discipline, how? You are to watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out is by avoiding the forgetfulness of your own heart.
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And we'll see this in verses 7 through the first half of verse 11. As Jesus gives this spiritual lesson to the disciples, they are clueless as they so often were during Jesus' ministry.
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And this is what they say in verse 7 to show how clueless they were. And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, we brought no bread.
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Now in this verse, the disciples respond to Jesus in a perplexing manner. They do not understand that Jesus is using bread as a figure of speech.
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What they think Jesus is saying is don't get your bread from the Jewish leadership, but get it from somewhere else.
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They think the physical bread has something wrong with it. In other words, don't get the bread from the wrong grocery store.
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It might be poison. Don't get the bread from the Jewish leadership. There might be something wrong with it. The disciples tell
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Jesus, we brought no bread. And if we can't get it from them, where are we going to get it?
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Now in the introduction, I mentioned the difference between literal and figurative language. When someone says something literally, it should be easy to understand.
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But figurative language is more difficult. But when someone says something that is intended to be taken figuratively, it is normally easy to spot.
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Because upon close inspection, if what is written or spoken is taken literally, it doesn't make sense.
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Do you remember the Ron Rhodes quote I said in the introduction? When the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest the results be nonsense.
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In this text, to take what Jesus says about bread literally doesn't make sense.
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The disciples should have known this was figurative because they and thousands upon thousands of people were just supplied with bread to eat through the miraculous power of Christ.
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If Jesus were talking about physical bread, it makes no sense because He has just shown them that He can easily supply it to them.
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This is not something that Jesus would say. This response of the disciples asking where to find bread frustrates
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Jesus. The disciples are once again showing forgetfulness of His past provision.
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And the thousands of people in the crowds who were hungry as He provided for them. This is how
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Jesus responds to the forgetfulness of the disciples in verses 8 -10. O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?
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Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand?
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And how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand? And how many baskets you gathered? What the disciples are telling
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Jesus is that if we don't get this bread from others, like the Jewish leaders that Jesus warns of, then where are we going to get it?
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What this shows is their unbelief. It once again shows their amnesia to Jesus' past provision for them.
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Jesus points this out. If they were going to have trouble finding physical bread, He would provide it for them.
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He tells them, I did it twice before your eyes. I fed the five thousand Jews plus women and children.
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And not long after, I fed the four thousand Gentiles. Not counting women and children.
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And yet, you do not trust that I can help you in this moment if bread were the issue?
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We have seen this in previous sermons and the Lord wants us to see this again. It is common for God's people to forget
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His past works. In your and my lives. The disciples did it and we do it.
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I remember when I lost my job as a sales rep for a running shoe company about ten years ago. Money was of course an issue and it is always unnerving to lose your job because you don't know where your next paycheck will come from.
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Not long after I lost my job, a fellow Christian who I was very close to and knew I lost my job and was worried about my situation, kindly mentioned to a local business that I could use work to make a little cash.
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They listened to this fellow Christian this business did by calling me up and asking me to help.
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When this fellow Christian heard that I was asked to do the side work, this person said, I guess
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God is going to provide. I was grateful for the kindness of this person to mention my name to the local business but the worry for me by this fellow
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Christian was unmerited. When God does provide for us, we should not say,
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I guess He is going to provide, but rather, I know He is going to provide. He has provided in the past.
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He provides in the present. He'll provide in the future. Recently, Kevin Schuman down at Taylor's Falls Baptist took a stand and he ended up losing his job for it.
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He took a stand on his convictions. And one thing he told me is that me and my wife didn't even think about the financial piece because we knew that God is going to take care of us.
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What a powerful testimony that is. The disciples forget this about Jesus' provision and so do we often.
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And when we do, God is displeased. We see Jesus' displeasure with the disciples here.
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We see the toughness He has with His people. I read a book recently titled,
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Gentle and Lowly, which in a lot of ways is a good book. The argument of the book is that God is not harsh with us when we sin, but He wants us to come to Him.
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To a certain extent, this is true. He does want us to come to Him when we sin. And when we do,
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He will forgive us. And the fracture in our relationship will be mended. But there was a problem with this book and the problem is that it wasn't balanced enough.
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It talks little to none about the displeasure of God when we do sin. Jesus is tender, yes, but He's also tough.
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We can see this here from Him. He doesn't put His arm around them gently when they sin.
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He rebukes them. This is discipline. This part of Jesus is minimized because it's not popular in our day.
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People do not like a tough Jesus. They like a soft Jesus. It is not popular in our day and it's not popular in the evangelical church, which is why this book is so popular.
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It doesn't talk about the tough side of Jesus with His people. It talks about the soft side. The evangelical church, much like the world, makes
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Jesus who they want Him to be. And they make the error of seeing the full picture of who
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Jesus is in Scripture. Jesus doesn't just rebuke the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herod.
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He rebukes His own people. But His rebuke is always constructive.
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It's always intended to build up and not tear down. When your child does something that is wrong, you rebuke them.
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But a good parent uses the rebuke for the good of the child. The rebuke is intended to reform the person.
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This is what Jesus does. The disciples at this point have a small faith and Jesus doesn't think that gentleness is appropriate.
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He gives them a swift kick in the butt. This is tough love.
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And sometimes tough love is appropriate. The goal of this kind of love is to get the disciples to turn from their sin and move toward righteousness.
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What we must understand when we correct others is that we have a big plank in our own eyes. When Jesus corrects us,
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He does not. He is perfect. But we are sinners. We should be more grieved by our own sins than the sins of others.
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The most mature Christians are those who are very aware of their own sins.
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They can see other sins, yes, but they're very aware of their own sins. When we see a world that is so evil, let's not lose sight of the evil in each of us.
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But Jesus here is blunt with them. Let's ask the question, is bluntness appropriate sometimes when you are concerned about someone else?
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What direction they're going? Bluntness happens and should happen when one misses the gentle approach to correction.
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Jesus gives us this example here. He fed the 5 ,000. And there, the disciples asked, what are we going to do?
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Remember, at this point, Jesus had already done numerous miracles. They should have known He can make bread for these thousands of people.
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And then later, He fed the 4 ,000. But in that episode, the disciples once again said, what are we going to do? Not long before this,
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He fed the 5 ,000. And that doesn't include all the other miracles that He did.
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So Jesus did not correct them the first time or the second time, but He does here.
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And this is a good example for each of us to follow. We should be generous with people when we see them committing a particular sin or wandering a bit.
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We should be patient. As 1 Corinthians 13 says, love is patient. And what that Greek word means is long suffering.
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You're willing to bear with people. You're willing to wait for them to change their trajectory in life.
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And this is a great time to pray. Pray for the Lord to work on the heart of the person for whom you are concerned.
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Pray for an open door so that you don't have to be firm with them. But after patience is displayed, there is a time for firmness, as Jesus says in the first half of verse 11.
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How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? He tells them, don't you know who
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I am? Don't you know my power? Don't you know what I'm capable of? Don't you know that I am able to help?
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Jesus is rightly offended that His disciples did not trust Him. Now what I've been showing you here is that Jesus is patient with you.
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But if you continue to fail to trust Him, knowing full well that He is trustworthy, He will discipline you.
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And the discipline hurts. It stings. As Jesus rebukes the disciples here, it stings.
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He may discipline you in your life by someone pointing out your sin. He may discipline you by sending a hardship your way to wake you up.
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It's a good thing to be disciplined. All true believers are. And all true believers respond to discipline eventually.
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Hebrews 12, verses 10 and 11 says that He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
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He brings to our attention our lack of faithfulness and uses the discipline to increase our faith in order to reflect
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Him more. He loves us too much to let us fail forever without bringing the sin to our attention, without pushing us to be better.
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When the disciples grew in faith, episodes like this would be few and far between. And so this rebuke made a difference.
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Now one of my favorite pastors and preachers is Paul Washer. In fact, he's not even a pastor.
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He's a missionary technically, but missionaries function like pastors. And Paul Washer was living a sinful lifestyle when he was in college and a
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Christian knocked on his door who knew him and told him very bluntly, you know what, you're going to be miserable if you continue to go down this path.
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He did not mince words with Washer. And Washer got the picture.
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This man got his attention. Look where Washer is now. It worked. When he shares his testimony, he shares that story.
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And the disciples responded well too when rebuked. Now we need wisdom. We need to be patient with people, but sometimes it is appropriate.
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Wake up! No longer go down this dangerous path.
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Turn! Listen to me, Jesus says.
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We all need to hear this. Watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out.
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And the second discipline, how is by avoiding the forgetfulness of your own heart. The third discipline, how you are to watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out is by avoiding the false teachings in the world.
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And we'll see this in the second half of verse 11 and verse 12. Now Jesus closes the section by warning about specific leaven that the disciples need to watch out for.
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Let's read these verses. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
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Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. Earlier in verse 6, Jesus warned the disciples about the leaven of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. And what I showed you in the first point is that when the Bible talks about leaven, it normally has a negative connotation.
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What it means is ungodliness, wickedness, unrighteousness. These are hypocrites.
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And Jesus calls them leavened. Not only is leaven shown through ungodliness, but also through false teaching.
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That's one way to show ungodliness. Teach what is not true. Two Sundays ago,
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I explained to you what the Pharisees and Sadducees believed. Jesus is warning them about their character and their teaching.
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Let me give you a little reminder about the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees that I showed you to last two
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Sundays. The Pharisees were the conservatives of Jesus' day.
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And we look at this and we say, well, great. Not great. These were unhealthy conservatives.
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They were the ones who added man -made laws to the Bible. They imposed burdens on people that God did not.
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These burdens are what motivated Jesus to say in Matthew 11, 28 -30,
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Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and you will find rest for your souls.
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For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. What this verse is telling you and I is that when you follow
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Jesus, you are submitting to Him, yes, but it is a joyful submission.
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It is a pleasure to be under His authority. When you are under His authority and do what
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He tells you, it is a blessing. But under the leadership of the Pharisees and Sadducees, it was a great burden for the people.
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The Pharisees not only put burdens on people, but they also believed, like every false religion does, that your only way to heaven is by earning your way to God.
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If the good outweighs the bad, then you'll enter God's kingdom. If you're at 51 % good and 49 % bad, you're good.
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While the Pharisees were the unhealthy conservatives of Jesus' day, the
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Sadducees were the secular liberals. They believed in God, but didn't believe in angels.
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They didn't believe in the afterlife. They were corrupt, using the businesses at the temple to enrich themselves.
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Following them would not lead anyone to heaven. It would only lead one to ritualism and corruption. What Jesus says here about these two groups echoes what
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He said in Matthew 15 -14 about the Pharisees. What He told the disciples then is they are blind guides, and that the blind lead the blind.
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Both will fall into a pit. If you follow a leader who doesn't know where he's going, that's a problem.
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You want to trust the one you're following. Imagine getting in the car with someone who is supposed to lead you to the right destination.
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But after riding for a while, you realize you are lost and you are on the verge of missing the event you were supposed to go to.
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You'll think twice about trusting that person again. And this was so much more important years ago before GPS, but even today with GPS, you don't want to be late to your event.
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You want to arrive on time. So you want to trust the driver to get you where you need to go.
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Now, if you don't arrive at your destination while driving, it's not a huge deal. You missed the event, so what?
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In the big scheme of things, not a big deal. But when we're talking about one's eternal destination, the importance cannot be overstated.
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It is so important that people listen to the right teachers. There are many wolves in this country and in the world whose teaching will not lead you to heaven.
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It's Satan's teaching. We know about the false teachings outside of Christianity.
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There are many false religions in the world and all those will lead one to hell. No one's apparent good works will matter because one's good works apart from Christ are as filthy rags as Isaiah 64, 6 says.
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And Romans 14, 23 says that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, which means that if you don't have the
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Holy Spirit who produces good works in you, you can't please God unless the
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Spirit's with you. But there are false teachings within Christianity that are put forward by false teachers that will also lead people to hell.
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I have explained these before. What people do with these teachings is try to import worldly ideas to fit the
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Bible and the movement becomes something other than the sweetness of biblical
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Christianity. You cannot force a different religion on the true religion without losing the true religion.
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The easiest way to spot a false religion is to ask, do you earn your own way to heaven? Or does someone else earn it for you?
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If the answer is the former, you earn your own way, it's false.
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But there are many false teachers out there who will tell you that you do, you earn your own way. Satan is creative.
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He's made lots of them up. Some outside of Christianity and some under the umbrella of Christianity.
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But Satan's goal is to lead people to hell. He's going there and he wants to bring as many people as possible with him.
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His war is against God's image bearers. He hates God. He hates his image bearers.
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He wants to lead people to hell. And Satan doesn't care if you're a secular pagan who is irreligious or if you're religious.
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As long as you don't believe the truth. You look at Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodox.
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Oh, it's full of traditions. It's full of ritual. But it's false. You look at N .T.
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Wright's New Perspective on Paul. It's false because it's a works righteousness system.
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You can be religious and be on your way to hell and have this teaching that leads people to hell. We don't earn our own way.
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Only Jesus does. Jesus warns the disciples about the leaven of the false teaching from the
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Pharisees and Sadducees who were leading people to hell. And he warns each of you about the leaven of false teaching that we see in our world.
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And the command from Scripture is not to spend too much time with false teachers and false teachers.
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Do not engage with them hardly at all, but preach the truth.
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In our day, a lot of evangelicals love debating. But is it biblical?
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Are we following Jesus' example? Because when Jesus is engaging false teachers, does he debate them? No, he confronts them.
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He preaches the truth. And I think a lot of evangelicals love these debates because it makes
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Christians look smart. But you know what? The world's never going to think Christians are smart because you're not in the in -club of the world.
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They're always going to malign you. So be a fool for Christ and tell the truth and call people to repent because that is the issue.
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They're following the Prince of the Power of the Air. They're following Satan. And by calling them to repent, by sharing the
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Gospel, you are giving them an opportunity to be freed from that prison. And we need to develop a discerning eye because these teachings are deceptive.
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They are presented as from God, but this is how Satan packages things. In 2
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Corinthians 11 -14, the Apostle Paul writing about false teachers said that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
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Do not be deceived. Anytime something sounds fishy, it probably is.
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Spot those false teachings. Do not be led into them. Warn others about them.
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Be aware of the poison out there that Satan spreads from corrupt people who are his willing instruments.
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To summarize the sermon this morning, watch out for the evil that lurks on the inside and out.
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And we have seen three disciplines how in this text. By avoiding ungodly influences of others, by avoiding the forgetfulness of your own heart, and lastly, avoiding the false teachings in the world as we just saw.
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We live in a world full of landmines that we need to watch out for. Ephesians 2 verses 1 -3 describes these landmines as our sinful hearts,
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Satan, and the world. To follow these will lead you away from God.
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But it is through the power of the Holy Spirit within you that enables you to overcome.
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The Lord Jesus Christ will triumph in the life of the believer. As you listen to his voice to avoid certain things, you also listen to his voice to pursue that which is good.
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When you stay away from the bad, you pursue the good. That's the plan that God has for you.
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So heed his counsel. Stay away from the dangers on the side of the road that will only cause you harm.
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And walk down the straight road that will leave you unscathed as you reach the celestial city.
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As John Bunyan once wrote, now next Sunday, we are going to look at one of the most important conversations in the
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Bible. The conversation between Peter and Jesus where Peter makes a very important proclamation.
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A proclamation that must be made by every wise human.
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And I look forward to looking at that with you. But at this time, let's pray. Father in heaven, what a treasure your word is.
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As we go through the week, we're faced with so much falsehood, but you made it, Lord, that we would come together once a week in this setting to hear from you.
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So, Lord, use this in everyone's heart appropriately. Fill up the tank here.
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My hope is that it has been filled and that it would carry with each person through this week as we live our lives for you.