House Rule #10 Beware of Apostasy (1 Timothy 4:1-5) Part 1

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House Rule #10 Beware of Apostasy (1 Timothy 4:1-5) Part 2

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We're going to open our Bibles back up to 1 Timothy this morning and continue in our study of Timothy's, Paul's letter to Timothy, this powerful little letter concerning the church.

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There is a set of notes here for you if you haven't received one already. And these notes we will use again next

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Sunday. So bring them back and we're going to work through part of them this morning, but we'll get to the last page next

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Sunday. Let's commit our time to our Lord and ask His blessing on our study this morning. Our Father, we do thank

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You for this opportunity that we have to be able to gather together in the name of our great

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God and Savior, Jesus Christ, to learn from Your Word this morning by Your Spirit.

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And so we would pray that You would teach us this morning, bring to us by Your Spirit everything

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You would have us learn and apply in our lives. And we will praise You in Jesus' name, Amen.

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Last time we finished up chapter 3 and we arrived at the theme verse of the letter to Timothy, the first letter to Timothy.

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And Paul said to Timothy that his purpose in writing this letter was so that Timothy would know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

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God. And we talked a little bit about what was going on in Ephesus in that day,

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Timothy being left in the city of Ephesus, a city that probably had around 200 ,000 people there. The dominant structure in Ephesus would have been this tremendous temple to Artemis, the pagan temple.

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And we looked at Acts chapter 19 and how some of the people there in Ephesus, the pagans, who were using the temple and the trade of the silversmiths there, and Paul upset their trade by preaching the gospel because people abandoned the purchase of these temple artifacts.

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And we saw how they reacted to Paul, they weren't real happy with him for doing that. And one of the things, one of the ways they expressed that was to cry out, great is

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Artemis, great is Artemis. Artemis was the false goddess. The Romans called her Diana.

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And so it's thought by many that when Paul wrote this letter back to Timothy, who was ministering in Ephesus several years later, that some of this language that Paul uses here is directed toward what was going on there at the time.

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So they worshipped this dead goddess, Artemis, and all false gods and idols are dead gods.

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And so Paul said, we serve the living God, the one who is the creator

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God, the one who is eternally alive, and he's eternally alive in Jesus Christ.

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He's the one who was raised from the dead, and he ever lives, as we have heard from Hebrews, to make intercession for the saints.

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So it's thought that maybe his language is kind of a tweak at what was going on there in the city. Also, the church of the living

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God, a pillar and buttress of the truth, and he may be referring to the structure of this great temple, the marble columns that were beautifully carved and sitting on top of these round column bases that were also ornately carved.

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That held up the superstructure of this idolatrous temple. But the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth, the

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Word of God. We have been saved through the gospel, the Word of God, and now we are tasked with proclaiming it.

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We are also tasked with protecting it and preserving it, as we have seen. And he says, great indeed, we confess.

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These Ephesian pagans are all confessing how great Artemis is. Great is Artemis. Great is

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Artemis. You remember how they did that for two hours? Paul says, no, she's not great. The idols aren't great.

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God is great. And this is our confession. This is what we confess.

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And great is the mystery of godliness, and that is in a person, in a person that he rehearses the attributes of this one that we worship in these next six statements here.

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And as we commented, this little six -verse statement probably was at least a creedal statement that they had memorized and quite possibly was put to music and sung in the churches and their congregations.

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He was manifested in the flesh, a statement of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

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The eternal one became flesh and dwelt among us, as John says.

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But it's also a statement of his humanity. Many people in that day, there was lots of heresies that were bubbling up.

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One of them was that he really wasn't manifested in the flesh. John deals with this later on in his letters.

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He truly was manifested in the flesh. He was the perfect God and perfect man. And then he was vindicated by the

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Spirit, the Spirit's ministry to affirm and confirm and certify that he is exactly who he said he was.

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He was seen by angels. Angels attended every aspect of his ministry. And even right now, this very moment, they're attending to him in heaven.

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Proclaimed among the nations, the gospel is proclaimed, believed on in the world, and then taken up in glory.

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So it's sort of a chronological doctrinal statement in miniature form compared to what we would say is a doctrinal statement.

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But it really encapsulates the person and work of Jesus Christ. And Paul says, we confess this, or by common confession.

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And so this little statement is the focal point of what Timothy was to proclaim, but also to protect and preserve.

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And as we get to chapter 4, he's going to be dealing with one of the great assaults on this truth and on this statement here.

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And so what we're gonna see in chapter 4 verses 1 through 5 is how this is under assault.

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So the last part of chapter 3 really does set up what we're going to be studying in these next five verses.

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So I wanted to see if there were any questions or thoughts you might have about this last part of chapter 3 verses 14 through 16.

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One of you clever types should take this and put it to music. We can sing it. Well, today

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I thought, because this issue of apostasy is such a big issue, and it's an important issue in the church, not only 2 ,000 years ago or 2 ,200 years ago, but even here and now, it's huge.

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The church has always been plagued by apostasy. God's program has always been plagued by apostasy and apostates.

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So it's nothing new. But as we're going to see, it's going to increase, it's going to get worse, it's going to intensify.

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And so I thought what I'd do is just, if you would look at chapter 4 verse 1,

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Paul says, now, or but, some of your translations may say but, I think but is a better word than now because it's more contrastive, okay?

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The Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith.

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And I'm going to stop right there. Next week, we're going to look at this passage in more detail.

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And that's page 16 on your notes, okay? So make sure you bring these back next time.

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And today, I thought what we would do, we would just spend a little time talking about apostasy. What is it?

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How is it sort of defined in Scripture? Because it is an important issue.

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It's basically all around us in the professing church, in what might be called

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Big Eva, the big tent, evangelical circus tent, we might say.

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And so it's a critical issue to understand and to have just some basic information about how to identify it.

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Yeah, Rick? Yes. It is actually that word.

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It's one of the several usages of the verb form of it there. They will depart.

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They will apostasize. And it's actually, when you look at it, it's very interesting. We're going to be looking at it.

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It's in the middle voice. They will apostasize themselves, okay? But I thought we would do that today, and I think it will be well worth our time.

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That way, next week, when we move through this passage, we'll have some groundwork laid.

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And so it'll set us up, I think, a little bit to see what Paul does next time. Paul, next time, we're going to see, and you should read through it, he's going to really drill down deep, and he's going to tell you what is the energizing underlying forces that are involved when you see this.

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So on page 13, let's just talk about apostasy and do some, just do a real basic study.

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Now, those of you that studied through Jude with us this last fall, and even before that, are going to recognize this, okay?

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You'll recognize our furry little friend here. So this might be, this will be old hat for some of you folks, because you've gone through this, but I thought it would be well worth it to do it again here, just this basic part of it, to just sort of set sort of a basic framework and definition for what we're going to be seeing next time.

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So on page 13, this verb, aphistemi, means to depart or fall away.

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It occurs 15 times in the New Testament, and this is one of them here in chapter 4, verse 1. The noun form, apostasia, falling away, or rebellion, only occurs twice in the

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New Testament. And it's kind of ironic that one of those times, it's actually applied to the Apostle Paul, but not by God in his word, by the

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Jews who hated what he was doing in telling Gentiles that they didn't need to become

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Jews in order to be saved. This was Paul's ministry to Gentiles, right? And so Paul would preach the gospel to Gentiles and tell them, you can be saved as Gentiles.

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The common Jewish mindset was, no, you have to be Jewish before you can be saved.

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And so they would say to the Gentiles, like in Colossae and different places, well, sure, you

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Gentiles can be saved, but you first have to become Jewish. You have to be brought under the

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Mosaic law. You have to practice the right of circumcision, and then you can be saved. These were the

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Judaizers. And Paul just reacted against that almost violently. In Galatians, the first chapter, you can see what he did there.

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Let them be accursed, because that's a different gospel. This had been decided at the Jerusalem council.

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It's recorded in Acts chapter 15. And yet, Paul, every time he would come through some area and he'd proclaim to the

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Gentiles the gospel of Christ and that they could be saved as Gentiles, the

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Judaizers would come behind him and try to pervert the gospel. And they accused him of forsaking

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Moses in Acts chapter 21. And the other one, of course, the noun form is in 2

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Thessalonians 2, 3, and it speaks about the apostasy.

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It's thought by many that that is a reference to the future massive apostasy that will take place in the future.

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So this word apostasia, stasia, that compound word, it means to stand, stasis, and apa, apart, to stand apart.

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In other words, it's somebody who stands apart from something that they have already learned. And in the spiritual sense here, as it's used in Scripture, they are standing away from the gospel that they've already heard.

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The concept can be seen in many passages in Scripture. If we have time, we'll look at some of these.

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But here's a pretty good working definition. I always try to find things that boil things down to sort of a working definition.

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And, of course, this is Pastor MacArthur's definition from his book published back in 1985.

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Wow, a long time ago, but really still a great work on just basically understanding this whole issue of apostasy.

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He says, it is the event, and one reason it's so good is because we need to avoid the extremes.

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We evangelicals, we like to swing like a pendulum sometimes, you know. We see something over here and we say, well, we don't want to be like that, and we swing way over here and go, oh, well, we don't want to be like that either, and we swing over here.

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To avoid swinging around like a pendulum, we need to know what it is, but also we need to know what it isn't.

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Because one of the extremes is to not know anything about it or ignore it or pretend like it's not there.

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And this is a major part of the professing church today. You talk about apostasy or you try to speak of a person who clearly is an apostate, and you get a reaction against that, well, we don't know, we can't judge, and so that's one extreme.

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The other extreme on the other side is to see an apostate under every tree, you know, and to try to stamp everything as an apostate when maybe it doesn't really fit the biblical definition.

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So this is a good balance of both, what it is and what it isn't. So Pastor MacArthur says,

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It is the abandoning of truth. It is not to be confused with mere indifference to the

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Word, for it involves an intellectual acceptance of the Scriptures. Neither is apostasy to be confused with error.

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It is not necessarily believing false doctrine. An apostate can acknowledge that certain doctrines are true but fail to believe them in his heart.

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An apostate can acknowledge Christ without accepting him. On the other hand, a true

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Christian could fall into doctrinal error, but that's not apostasy. Apostates have received light, but not life.

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They have known and accepted the written Word, but they have never met Christ, the living

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Word. Do you see the distinction there? People can profess one thing but not really truly be regenerate, truly be believers in Jesus Christ.

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And then another quote I found, very, very good, from the Scottish scholar, commentator

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William Barclay. He sort of drills down into a word that we're going to be seeing here when we look at 2

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Peter 2 and also in Jude. This word that in most of our translations is the word sensual or that type of thing.

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It's the word aselges, and he comments on that. This is just part of the quote here, and I went back and when

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I looked at this again, I thought, I'm going to give you a broader quote, so I'm going to give you this quote, but it's also in a broader context because I think he really captures it well.

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What you need to remember is, when you hear this, is he wrote this in 1960, okay? So what he talks about he's seeing out there in the world was written that many decades ago, and you guys know where we are right now because of what you're seeing out there.

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So he says this in his commentary, the Scottish commentator William Barclay, and he's talking about this word.

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The word in the Greek, which we have translated blatant immorality, that's one of the English translations, is a grim and terrible word.

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It is the word aselgeia. The corresponding adjective is aselges.

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Most men, when they sin, seek concealment. They try to hide their sin. They have enough conscience left, and we're going to talk about conscience next time.

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They have enough conscience left to have at least some feelings of shame.

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They have enough respect for common decency not to wish to be found out. But the aselges is the man who is so lost to honor, to decency, and to shame that he does not care who sees his sin and his immorality.

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It is not that he arrogantly and proudly flaunts it. It is simply that he can publicly do the most shameless things because he has ceased to care for shame and decency at all.

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These men were undoubtedly tinged with Gnosticism. Gnosticism was that line of thought which set out with the idea that only spirit is good and that matter is essentially evil.

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If that be so, it means that the body is essentially evil. And if that be so, it does not matter what a man does with his body since it is evil.

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Its lusts and its desires can be sated and glutted because it is of no importance what is done with the body.

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Further, these men believe that since the grace of God is wide enough to cover any sin, a man can sin as he likes.

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He will be forgiven anyhow. The more he sins, the greater the grace. Therefore, why worry about sin?

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Grace will look after that. Grace was being perverted into a justification for sin.

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Now remember, he wrote that in 1960. Where are we now? We're way beyond that.

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Not only is sin out of the closet, so to speak, I mean it was 30 years ago, now it's basically being legislated and put basically in your face and you have to agree to it, you have to accept it, and so we're way, way, way beyond where Professor Barkley was way back in 1960.

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So do you have any thoughts or questions about either of these definitions before we look at the second

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Peter and also Jude? Can you see what is going on in the world around you now?

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Sure you do. Yeah, you see it. You mean, it could certainly include that.

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I don't think that's specifically what it's talking about here because the sin of being the only sin that cannot be forgiven by God, yeah,

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I don't think that's specifically what he's talking about here. Now, clearly when an apostate apostatizes, as we're going to see, that person moves outside the realm of being saved.

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We don't know who is or isn't, ultimately, until they breathe their last breath.

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She was asking about the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, if this is what both these definitions are talking about.

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I think that certainly would be included there in that context, like in Matthew 12 when the

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Jewish population had seen Christ, they'd seen his miracles, there's been a crescendo of rejection against him, and in chapter 12, there's a real turning point where he basically says that you've sinned against revelation and you've seen it, but you've sinned against it.

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And then in chapter 13, he begins to teach in parables, and the teaching of a parable is teaching truth, but it conceals and reveals.

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To belief and to faith, it reveals the truth, but to unbelief, it conceals it.

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So I'm sure they're related, but I'm not sure it's exactly the same thing that he's talking about here.

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Okay? Anything else? Yeah. Yes. That's exactly the same word.

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Can you repeat the question, please? Is the word aselges from Jude, verse 4.

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Sensuality, and also Peter uses it as well in 2 Peter, as we're going to see. That is his commentary,

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Letters of John and Jude, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1960. It's a great little commentary.

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He does all four of those in a little concise, compact book. It's really pretty good.

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Was there more thoughts or questions? Yeah, Rick? Yeah. We'll go there for sure.

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Yeah. That's a very important passage. Okay? Anything else? Okay. So we're just trying to get a sort of a working definition, and then we're going to kind of try to work through sort of a framework definition.

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So on page 14, 2 Peter chapter 2, okay? So here's your homework assignment for next time, okay?

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Homework assignment. Like Professor used to say, this might be on the final, and you'd see everybody grabbing pens.

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Homework assignment in Sunday School class. So 2 Peter chapter 2 to read, and also Jude. Now I've given you part of it here, but both of these letters are just so important.

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And you know, 1 John, first couple chapters as well, we're going to be looking at those this morning. But it is thought by many, and when you read 2

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Peter 2, and then you read Jude, you realize it's like these two guys were sitting in the same room when they wrote.

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But what probably happened here was Jude was relying on 2 Peter chapter 2.

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He does quote him in verse 18. But you're going to see the parallels here, so I included parts of both of them there.

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But to just get us set up for next time, read 2 Peter chapter 2, but also read through Jude.

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And of course, our passages we're going to be looking at here. Peter deals with this in chapter 2 verse 1.

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He says, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

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And many will follow their sensuality. That's the Greek word, aselgeia.

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That's that word. And because of them, the way of the truth will be blasphemed.

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And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

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Now I've just skipped to verse 20 through 22 here. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

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For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

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What the true proverb says has happened to them. I know you haven't had lunch yet, but it's the word of God.

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The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.

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Mire, there's a relatively polite word. If you confine a pig in a pigsty, they wallow around, and if it gets wet and muddy, that's what they wallow in.

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That's what the word mire actually is. It's kind of a polite word. But you get the picture here, with the dog and the sow.

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And so what you see when you look at these passages, and we're going to walk right through it, is really down there at the bottom.

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And this is what I hope to kind of set in place as sort of a framework, sort of a template.

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How do you categorize somebody as an apostate? Well here are five steps that they take.

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Peter talks about it, and other writers do as well. First they have revelation. They have some revelation.

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Now you might use another word. You might use the word light, if you like that better. They have revelation of God in some way, shape, or form.

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Then they have a rescue from it. Peter says they escaped the defilements.

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There's some acquiescence to the truth. There is some movement toward the things of God.

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They maybe leave off some things in their life. They stop doing this. They stop doing that.

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And they show some evidence of believing in Jesus Christ. But then there's rejection.

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This is the one you can't see. This one's invisible, because it takes place internally.

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We can't see that. And so when people say, you can't judge, well I can't. I can't see a person's heart, or I can't see a person's mind.

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But what I can see is the next one, a return. That's the part you can see.

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And that's why he says, they are again entangled in them and overcome.

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So there's some light. They have some knowledge of God. They are rescued in some sense. It's a very limited sense.

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They are not born again. These are not people that lose their salvation. That's impossible. But then at some point in time, something happens internally.

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And they make a decision to turn. It's almost like a reverse repentance.

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Instead of turning from idols to worship God, they turn from what looked like worship of God back to their idols.

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And then they have the worst rejection you can imagine. They're rejected by God.

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Every time you see in the Bible a statement about a false teacher, false prophet, apostates,

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Old Testament, New Testament, someplace, look in the context, you're going to see a statement about their judgment. It may use the language of their end, like in Psalm 73.

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Asaph, when he was troubled about what he was seeing, he was seeing that age -old kind of a conflict.

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He saw the righteous suffering, but he saw the wicked prospering.

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Can you identify that in our world today? And it troubled him. Why? It troubled him because he knew God. It doesn't trouble people who don't know

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God. It only troubles people who do know God because he knew what God was like. And he struggled with it.

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And then it says, and then I went into the sanctuary of God. And all of a sudden, it came into focus for him.

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It had been as if he were watching a parade through a knothole and a fence. All he could see was what was passing right in front of him.

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But when he went into the sanctuary of God, it was as if God took him way back up on a hill and said, okay, here's the panoramic view.

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There's where the parade starts, but look where it ends. And that's when he said, then I saw their end.

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So when you see this in scripture, Peter does it here, Jude does it,

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Jesus did it. When you hear and read of these false teachers or false prophets or apostates, there's going to be a statement about their judgment.

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It's just in scripture. And so they are ultimately rejected by God.

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Verse 20, after, and he puts them out of order here. He talks about what happens after they escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our

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Lord. They started with some knowledge of God. Some knowledge, some level of understanding. And then they escaped the defilements, but then they are again entangled in them and overcome.

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The last state has become worse than the first. Why? Because now they're under the judgment of God. Now they have abandoned the one source of salvation that's available to them.

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And there is no more hope in that regard. So Jude says this in his little letter.

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Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith.

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All right, now we've been talking about the faith. This is page six in your notes, all those references to the faith.

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It's not talking about necessarily our subjective faith, our trust per se. It's talking about the objective faith that we have.

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Really, it's verse 16 of chapter three of 1 Timothy, right? That's the faith.

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This is the thing that people abandon, these truths about who Jesus Christ is. Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, for certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation.

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Ungodly people. Now watch what they do with the grace of God, okay? Remember what the commentator said about they take the grace of God and they turn it into an excuse for sin?

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This comes right out of Jude. Who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality, aselgeia, and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

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Later on he says, but you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our

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Lord, Jesus Christ. Apostolic doctrine, the faith. Don't you abandon the faith.

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You remember what the apostles taught, and that's what we do every time we open up the word of God, is it not?

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We remember apostolic doctrine. That they were saying to you in the last time there will be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts gives you an idea of how they're motivated by their ungodly lusts, and this is where Jude basically essentially quotes 2

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Peter chapter two. And you can see here that Peter is saying there will be false teachers, okay?

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He sort of is looking into the future like Timothy, or Paul's going to do with 1

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Timothy, but Jude says, yes, they're coming in the future, but they're here, they're here right now.

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And so he even interrupted by the spirit of God his initial purpose in writing this letter to the

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Christians out there, and Jude changes and says, now I'm gonna write to you to contend for the faith.

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So it's a very interesting part of this little letter because it gives you some insight into the doctrine of inspiration, how the spirit of God moves and motivates these men to record his word.

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One thing he comments on here, and the very same thing that Peter says, they deny our only master and Lord.

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Very important, he uses that word master. The word is despotess. We have the word despot, an absolute dictator, absolute ruler.

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I think they both use this word to point out the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ.

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If it's one thing false teachers and apostates hate, it's any kind of lordship over their lives.

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That's the essence of apostasy. That's the essence of unbelief, right? You're not

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God of my life, I am, right? They are autonomous, autonomous, self -lawed, right?

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They hate anything having to do with the lordship of Jesus Christ, and he is

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Lord. And I think that's why in both these cases, that word despotess, he's the despotess who bought them bringing upon themselves with destruction, and also

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Jude uses it too. They deny our only master and Lord. They deny him because he is master and Lord.

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If he was not the Lord of the universe, they'd probably grab hold of him. This is what cults do, right? But they hate the lordship of Jesus Christ because he then assumes that he has authority over every aspect of their life.

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They can't stand that. But this pattern is one that's typical of apostasy and apostates.

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This is absolutely true of the classic New Testament example of an apostate.

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You know who that is? If you had to pick one person in the New Testament to be the apostate, who had as much light as anybody else in the

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Bible? Judas. He is the classic, and we're gonna talk about him a little later on.

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But I just wanted to stop, see if you had any thoughts or questions about what we've seen so far.

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You're gonna be able to see that this pattern of light, acceptance of the light, acceptance to a certain degree, but then a return back to the sin and rejection by God is all through scripture, okay?

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Jude's examples, of course, yes. Okay, they return, they are again entangled.

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In other words, they make a decision in their mind and heart to reject the truth that they have.

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That's the rejection right there in the middle. And then they go back to their sin. They go right back where they came from.

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And then they are then, at that point, rejected by God. Yeah, sure has, yeah.

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Yeah, basic lesson, probably don't get our spiritual wisdom from actors and actresses.

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At least, that's who? Not from some pastors either. Yeah, and a whole lot of pastors, yeah.

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Heidel, I'm still trying to get over, Whoopi Goldberg's gone for two weeks.

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What am I gonna do? Yes. Oh, yes, yeah, that's a very good point.

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The issue is the statement about they've crept in, they've come in secretly, they've crept in unawares.

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And do they know that they're doing that? Well, I think they do. This is, there's different kinds of apostates.

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There's the person that maybe would come in a church and hear and listen and then agree to it, maybe join the church, maybe give some evidence that they're trusting in Christ, but then they just sort of disappear.

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They go, and if you contact them or talk to them, they might say something, oh, well, that's just something

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I thought I might be interested in, or maybe it's even more severe than that. They say, well, maybe, I was promised this.

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I was told Jesus would solve all of my problems and take care of my issues of my life and make me feel better about myself, but that didn't happen.

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And so they just depart. The ones that are the dangerous ones are the ones that come in, and you've mentioned it, they have some semblance of power and authority in the church.

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They get everybody's attention. There have been some recent, well -known, very much public apostasies take place in the last several years in the evangelical framework of things, and they start out by getting people's attention.

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Everybody watches them, and they buy their books, and they listen to what they say, and everybody's looking at them, and all of a sudden, they just go, boom.

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Well, everybody's looking at them, and they say, well, I'm not a Christian anymore. And they actually tell you that they're not

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Christians anymore. Those are not quite so dangerous, except those same people then oftentimes say, but I'm not going anywhere.

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I'm still gonna blog. I'm still available to speak at the evening service. Can you give me a little time, pastor, or whatever it might be?

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The ones that the Bible warns us about are the ones that secretly, did anybody know that Judas was an apostate of that 12?

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Three years later, all the way up to the end, Jesus had to tell them, one of you will betray me, and they're all going, is it me,

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Lord? Is it me? And even to the end, they didn't recognize who he was.

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Now, I think there was some other things at play here. Number one, that was to fulfill Scripture, as Jesus said, and if he would have pointed out in the upper room,

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Judas is gonna betray me, I think Peter, probably John, and two or three of them would have pulled out their swords, and hacked him to pieces, and tossed his carcass out the window, right?

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And, you know, come back to the table, saying, okay, let's eat. Took care of that little problem. But it was written in Scripture that this would happen, and so it did happen that way, but even then, on the human side of things, they didn't know that he was the one.

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None of them did, and that's why Judas is the classic picture of an apostate within the church.

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They're secretive. You don't really know until they abandon the faith. And again, you can't see that internal decision that is made, or that internal thought process.

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Admittedly, we can't see that, but what we can see is the results of it. Jesus said, you'll know them by their fruit, and that's the passage where he's talking about our furry little friend there on the front.

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So, Nathal? We need all the help we can get, and one of the reasons why

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I wanted to sort of stop and focus on this a little bit is because it's, I mean, as you all know, so you're a group of people that probably can see it, but we always have to be thinking about out there and the bigger, broader, and the thing is, 150 years ago, we wouldn't know so much about what goes on out there, right?

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But now we have social media, and so there's this sense of this big, broad churchianity in the

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United States of America in particular, and to make assumptions about people, you just have to test everything according to scripture and keep bringing it all back under that, you know, and be willing to say that's not biblical, and maybe not to the extent of saying, pronounce it as heresy or whatever.

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This is why, again, we have to have that balance, you know, and I think this little framework here is what you see in scripture.

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We're gonna walk Judas right through this before we're done here, but, yeah,

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Lisa. Yeah, and I would be the first to raise my hand to identify with that, because they, accidental?

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Well, I do think it's an act of the will to abandon the truth. This is what

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Paul does in his first part of Romans, in Romans chapter one. In fact, this is a good place for us to look right now, but, yeah,

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I think they make a, there's something, there's a decision that is made in there somehow, and again, it's internal, so it's hard to sort of,

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I know I can't do that, but I can sure look at how they live and if they abandon, this is

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John, first John, they went out from us because they were not of us.

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That is a clear statement of abandoning a group, by the way, that is identified as us, you know, like a church membership kind of thing.

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So how, how did he do that?

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You want me to answer that? Didn't let Dave answer that, he's got the answer to that one.

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Well, I think, I think, I think that was it. He was enticed by what was around him.

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That's probably my best answer, other than that, yeah, I mean, yes, back to Judas.

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He had the fullness of the revelation of God for three years in Jesus Christ, okay?

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Let's, I think we have time. Yeah, we do have time. Let's look at Romans real quick, because Romans chapter one, and we did look, spend a little time in Romans chapter one, but I wanna,

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I wanna look at it from this perspective. Romans chapter one, verses 18 and following, and I think,

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I mean, Jude uses the Israelites, he uses the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, he uses angels to illustrate apostasy, and if you just go back and read through the

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Israelites, did they have some knowledge of God? Boy, did they ever, right?

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And even, he led them out into the wilderness, and they got up to the edge of the promised land, and what did they say?

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Oh, no, we're gonna have a fight, we're gonna have a war, let's go back, and Jude uses this as an illustration of apostasy, and they died in the wilderness, so they went right through this entire, this entire process here.

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They had the revelation of God, they were rescued, they came physically, came out of Egypt, slavery in Egypt, but then they rejected what was there in front of them, and they not only returned mentally, and by making decisions, they said, let's go back to Egypt, it was better back then, and then

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God did not allow them to enter the promised land, they all died in the wilderness, except the few that went in, who were believers.

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Rick? Absolutely. They crossed that, the

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Red Sea, I mean, they had provision from God in the wilderness over for year after year after year, and they still said, no, we wanna go back.

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But in Romans chapter one, okay, now see, you can probably, we'll just step right through this little framework here.

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Starting in verse 18, Paul says, for the wrath of God, now he starts at the end, he starts with the wrath of God, okay, but he's gonna walk us through this, this pattern here, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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And here's the starting point, for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

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They have revelation, okay, but notice it's limited, because he's gonna talk about creation. Creation is evidence of God, and God holds people accountable for that.

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That's why no one was ever gonna be able to stand before God and say, hey, you can't throw me in that lake of fire. I never knew that there was a

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God. Yes, you did, because you were part of creation, you were in creation. Psalm 19 says, the heavens declare the glory of God, right?

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The glory of God. If the heavens declare the glory of God, then certainly you must know to some degree that there is a

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God, and that's what he says here. What can be known, and this is what holds them accountable, is plain to them, because God has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world.

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This is why the doctrine of creation is the foundational doctrine for everything else in the Bible, including the condemnation of men, okay?

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And this is why the theory of evolution is so popular out there in the world. They have to have it. They have to have the theory of evolution.

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Why? That's how you get rid of God. If evolution is true, there's no God, right? They have to have it.

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They're addicted to it. You notice how powerful it is with them? It's like the spiritual fentanyl for these guys, okay?

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They have to have it. They're addicted to it. It's how they get rid of God, and without it, they have nothing but creation, which holds them accountable for their sin.

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If evolution is true, they're not accountable, right? But evolution is a lie.

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Creation will hold them accountable, and they are trying to suppress the truth in their unrighteousness.

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Evolution is the opiate of the atheist, okay? They have to have it. They're addicted to it, and it's in everything.

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I mean, it's worked its way out into social constructs, not just from biology, but social constructs, even religion, even

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Christianity. Remember the emergent church? It's emerging. It's evolving.

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We're gonna emerge, and we're gonna bloom. We're working our way toward God in some way, shape, or form.

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That's not what Paul says. Paul said, you started out with the knowledge of God, and you've rejected him in your unbelief and in your unrighteousness.

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Well, in verse 21, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

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Notice, thinking, heart, mind, and heart. If you wanna separate those two, it's okay.

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He deals with both of them, you know? Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal

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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, here we are, down at the bottom of the list,

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God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.

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For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their females exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

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And the males likewise gave up natural relations with females, were consumed with passion for one another, males committing shameless acts with males, receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

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And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

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Some of the older, I think the King James, reprobate mind, it's the mind that has been abandoned by God because that mind has abandoned

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God, okay? Reprobate mind. You look at what's going on in our world today. Never in the past, oh,

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I don't know, five, six years have I heard more comments like, oh, those people are crazy. Those people are nuts, those people.

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Well, you're looking at the reprobate mind in action, okay? It is incapable of making sound, rational choices and decisions, particularly in any area of morality whatsoever.

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So do you see the pattern here? Some knowledge of God, and in some sense, they escape the defilements, like Peter says, of their former life, and yet at some point, something happens in their thinking, and then they reject the truth of God.

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They suppress it in unrighteousness, and then they return, and they're again entangled, and then they suffer the condemnation of God.

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Paul goes on to just show you how this works out in all these different areas of life. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

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They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, and here it goes.

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He goes back to the front. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them, okay?

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You see the pattern there? Starts with the knowledge of God, some knowledge, and creation holds every single human being accountable for that.

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We were pretty good, we evangelicals, at saying, answering the question, what must I do to be saved? But sometimes we're not so good at answering the question, what must

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I do to be lost? And if you answer that with anything, you're wrong, okay?

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You don't have to do anything to be lost. You just have to be born and exist.

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And you are held accountable by creation. So there, just from Paul's several verses opening up Romans, and of course, what he's doing, he's got to indict every single human being under sin before he can present the gospel that is going to save people from all kinds of life and all kinds of sin.

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Well, if there's no more questions, let's look at 1 John real quick. In the time we have left, 1

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John. Yeah. Maybe it's time, maybe it's time, maybe you gave up on, exceeds my ability to,

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I am thankful, so we are guided and led, and it's

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Andy Stanley. Yeah, Andy Stanley. I recognize it. His daddy was a famous preacher, though.

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Got a big church, right up through middle America, apple pie, 4th of July.

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He makes a false dichotomy between part of the scriptures, which teaches one thing, and what we would call the word of God.

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He's very careful in how he does that, and he's absolutely wrong. That is a, that's a heretical teaching.

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I don't care if his daddy is a famous preacher, so. No, that's his son. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, and that's, yeah,

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I mean, it's in our face, and it's so broad, and again, we all have access to this, and it has access to you.

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We need to be prepared with this, but yeah, good point. And those examples could be multiplied within the big, broad tent of evangelicalism.

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It's very influential, and it's gonna get worse and worse and worse, and that's why, you know, in 2 Thessalonians, there will be the apostasy.

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It's converging together. Have you noticed that Oprah, the Pope, and Joel all have pretty much the same religion?

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There's gotta be an acronym in there someplace. Pope, Paul, Joel. I mean, it's, yeah, they're almost, it's merging together, and you go, well, wait a minute.

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These people are basically saying the same thing. Of course, it's going to merge together in a one -world religious system, and we need to be prepared for it, but just let me take a minute or two here.

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Listen to 1 John, chapter one. Everything John says here, when he says we, okay,

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Judas would be included in that, okay? That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, right, 1

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Timothy three, and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you eternal life, which was with the

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Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed, our fellowship is with the

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Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Everything there, except that last part, we have fellowship with the

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Father and with Jesus Christ, can be said of Judas. He had light, like very few people on the planet had, and yet, what did he do?

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He rejected it, and then he suffered the consequences. In Matthew, chapter 26, verse 24, this is in the upper room, the night before he was crucified.

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The Son of Man goes, and he's just predicted that one of them would betray him, all right? And the disciples are going, is it me,

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Lord, is it me, Lord? And Judas is sitting right there. The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the

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Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Judas, who would betray him, answered, is it

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I, Rabbi? He said to him, you have said so, you have said so.

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And he went out and did that very thing. I've always been very much taken with John's account.

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Listen to, before we close here, John and his account of that same time in the upper room.

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It's somewhat different, but you'll, the way he writes, and of course,

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John is looking back decades later when he writes his gospel account. John 13, 21, after saying these things,

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Jesus was troubled in his spirit and testified, truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke.

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One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, this would be John, was reclining at table close to Jesus. So Simon Peter motioned to him to ask

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Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, Lord, who is it?

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Jesus answered, it is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when

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I have dipped it. So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, up to that point, okay?

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Still reaching out to him. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him.

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Jesus said to him, what you're going to do, do quickly. Who's in charge here?

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Satan entered into Judas, but Jesus is in charge, right? The sovereign God. What you do, do quickly.

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Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that because Judas had the money bag, Jesus was telling him, buy what we need for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor.

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So after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out, and John says, and it was night, and it was night.

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Pretty symbolic of what was going on with this man, and yet Christ was in charge of every bit of it, okay?

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Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your word this morning.

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These are difficult issues, difficult topic to study, but it is so important. We thank you that you have given us warning from your word.

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You want us to be prepared for dealing with these issues when they arise in our time and in our generation.

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We see it all around us, but we know that we can trust you. We know that you are still in charge of this universe, and so help us,

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Father, give us strength, give us grace. Help us to deal with these things in a way that brings honor and glory to Christ.